In this episode, we discuss the use of injunctions to enforce health and safety laws, including those that prevent people from exercising their First Amendment rights, as well as those that allow police to arrest and detain people who don't comply with those laws.
00:00:00.000Well, we've got the Brian Peckford litigation challenging the federal travel mandates.
00:00:07.280Canada is one of the few countries in the world now that has any restrictions left on travel.
00:00:13.720Even, you know, Greece and Switzerland are recent examples of countries that just within the past week, you know, have dropped their restrictions.
00:00:25.140I mean, these are utterly unscientific.
00:00:28.300The vaccine manufacturers themselves have stated publicly that the vaccines don't stop the spread.
00:00:36.440We know this from our experiences with the Delta variant, with the Omicron variant, that vaccine does not stop the spread.
00:00:43.600So I think it's a political punishment that Trudeau is meeting out to the unpopular minority of people that have not taken the COVID shots.
00:00:59.240Here in Alberta, we've just announced that we are representing a student who is filing a human rights complaint against NAIT, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton,
00:01:10.440which in a very arrogant and cavalier fashion denied a student's request for a religious exemption and simply declared essentially that his religious objection just wasn't valid, as if that institution is able to get into his mind and heart.
00:01:37.340The city of Calgary, the city of Calgary filed an injunction application to ban peaceful protests.
00:01:45.680Sorry, not to ban peaceful protests, but to make it possible for police to immediately arrest and handcuff and imprison somebody if they honk their horn too loud or if they were outside of a designated area downtown.
00:02:06.920So that was positive development and very, very sinister on the part of the city to have sought and obtained that injunction ex-party without notice to anybody, secret court application to secure an injunction.
00:02:22.760And now the city has just said, OK, we're abandoning that.
00:02:26.860I think some people have speculated, though, also with the city abandoning that is that they were worried that they might feel compelled to apply it to people celebrating hockey on the Red Mile down there.
00:02:36.280And they didn't want to get into that sticky situation.
00:02:38.900So they just kind of quietly dumped it and backed off.
00:02:41.580It wasn't really a good point of principle.
00:02:43.620It was more, I mean, a good outcome is a good outcome, no matter what the reasoning.
00:02:47.120But it's unfortunate it was ever imposed in the first place.
00:02:49.820Well, what's interesting about the city of Calgary injunction is it ties in with the with the same issue that we saw with with pastors getting jailed in Alberta over not complying with the health orders.
00:03:05.460And Premier Jason Kenney has said, well, you know, I can't interfere with what Crown prosecutors are doing.
00:03:11.800I can't interfere with with the rulings of judges, which is true.
00:03:16.620But there's a there's a very specific reason why in Alberta we jailed pastors, whereas in other provinces did not jail pastors.
00:03:26.280And the reason is that Premier Kenney's government went to court like what the city of Calgary has done.
00:03:33.760They went to court to get an injunction to enforce the health orders.
00:03:39.100And what that does is it transforms your regular, ordinary law enforcement where a public health officer or a policeman might give you a ticket for violating one of the silly COVID rules.
00:03:57.720And then you get to plead not guilty to the ticket and you can potentially challenge the constitutionality of the health order under which the ticket was given.
00:04:07.820And this is kind of your normal law enforcement.
00:04:10.500Now, what the Kenney government did was they went to court and they obtained injunctions for such that if you if a policeman or or public health order officer believe that you were violating a health order, they could immediately arrest you, handcuff you and throw you in jail.
00:04:30.740And that was Jason Kenney's government that sought and that was Jason Kenney's government that sought and obtained those injunctions.
00:04:36.280And so that completely transforms the law enforcement, because now if you're caught, if a policeman sees you and believes that you're breaking a health order instead of getting a ticket, you're now in contempt of a court order and the police can immediately arrest you and jail you.
00:04:54.640And that's what Jason Kenney did in Alberta is to change the law enforcement through injunctions.
00:05:02.700Yeah. So, I mean, basically, you can periodically change the law to suit what you feel is an immediate need, in a sense, using an injunction.
00:05:11.100Are some of those cases with the pastors still active right now or have those been resolved through the courts?
00:05:18.360We act for Pastor Coates and he was charged for for violating the Health Act because his his church was not going along with these these unscientific rules.
00:05:30.940And that case is still put in abeyance waiting for the Court of Queen's Bench case where we we were cross examining Dina Hinshaw in April.
00:05:42.620Waiting for a ruling in that case before the criminal action against Pastor Coates moves ahead.
00:05:50.080So, like, is there a mechanism, though?
00:05:52.920I mean, I guess it's on the part of the government or the courts, though, as we learn, as new information comes out to back off and change.
00:05:59.580I mean, maybe a little bit could be excused if with Pastor Coates, it was early in the pandemic.
00:06:04.320People really felt he was putting the congregation was putting a number of people at risk.
00:06:08.260But we look in hindsight and we realize these larger gatherings, I mean, we're allowing the playoffs right now with everybody in stadiums and yet the pandemic is still going.
00:06:17.060You know, can they say, well, we've learned more.
00:08:04.260It seems you have to fight tooth and nail to get every one of these repealed.
00:08:07.840Well, it was really tragic to see in September that Nate and I think it was nine other post-secondary institutions, I think that included University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Mount Royal University in Calgary.
00:08:25.820They all got together and after students had paid their tuition and that was on, you know, without strings attached, no conditions.
00:08:35.340You pay your tuition, go to school in September.
00:08:38.860And suddenly in September, they come out with these vaccine passports and these post-secondary institutions, these taxpayer-funded institutions suddenly started demanding that every student on campus get injected with a substance for which there's no long-term safety data.
00:08:58.160In respect of a virus, which with precious few exceptions, it does not pose a threat to the 20-year-olds and 22-year-olds and 18-year-olds who form the vast majority of students on campus.
00:09:12.880And yet we've had so many cases where the university expelled students and even refused to accommodate students by providing online instruction,
00:09:25.640which the prior year the whole campus had been online, like it's not like they don't have the technology to do it, but just an incredible arrogance and very vicious attitude towards a minority.
00:09:41.120Just despicable to see that in a country that considers itself to be progressive and tolerant and enlightened.
00:09:49.060But as it's been said, society never becomes truly more tolerant, but rather we just shift the object of our intolerance.
00:10:02.140And, you know, going further with the mandates, one that you didn't mention, I saw your release was for soldiers with the vaccine mandates and you've got another lawyer on that case.
00:10:12.560Yes, we've retained a lawyer who himself is a former military who knows the system really well.
00:10:20.760We are representing 20 Canadian Armed Forces members.
00:10:26.580The, this is still, statement of claim has not yet been filed, but they are being treated horribly and forced out in a way that is somewhat analogous to a dishonorable discharge.
00:10:41.280I don't know the military terminology, but we're, we're taking the Canadian Armed Forces to court over that because they too, like the universities and other institutions have been very irrational, very unscientific.
00:10:57.440And in all of these cases, we're demanding that the employer or the government or the government agency, they have the onus of, of, of putting forward the proof that these vaccine mandates were necessary and, and, and, you know, backed up by, by science.
00:11:18.080Yeah, well, lots to, to carry on with.
00:11:22.720So, I mean, going further, maybe this ties more into the, the Peckford case.
00:11:26.880Like the concern is, you, you, you know, we're going to be working through the, the legal after effects of this last couple of years, probably for some years to come.
00:11:33.620But what can we do then to ensure it doesn't happen again?
00:11:37.120Like that's the next fear, you know, we're trying to, you know, go through the courts with the people who've had their rights infringed on this time.
00:11:43.740But until we see some legislative or possibly what constitutional changes, there's nothing to say we won't have to go through this all over again.
00:11:51.040If some sort of emergency there is, you know, the government wants to declare emergency will prompt them to override our rights again.
00:11:57.860Well, we're, we're in grave danger of moving further along to a communist Chinese social credit system.
00:12:07.640We released a short video on this within the past week.
00:12:14.620The social credit system in China is not the political party that governed Alberta for 35 years or that was in power in BC and it's not the federal party.
00:12:23.400But the social credit system in China, the government uses the technology to monitor where citizens go, who they hang out with, what they do, their, their purchases, their banking, you know, where they get on a plane or a train, what, what groups or activities they're involved in there, whether they're praising the government on their, you know, Twitter accounts.
00:12:47.520So the government's watching every citizen very closely and if you're well behaved as determined by the Chinese Communist Party and you're a good Communist Party supporter and if they like your behavior, you get extra privileges.
00:13:02.420Like you get less frequent inspections of your business, you might get a slightly lower interest rate when you go to the bank.
00:13:09.140And if you have a low social credit score, then you can be denied access onto a train or a subway or a plane because the technology is being used that if you have a low social credit score, you suddenly you get blocked and you can't go to certain hotels or restaurants.
00:13:26.760So we experienced a small version of that when we had vaccine passports enforced, turning many Albertans and Canadians across the country into second class citizens.
00:13:44.640If you did not get injected with COVID vaccine, you were denied the basic human dignity of being able to go to a restaurant or participate in sports or go to the gym and even currently you can't get on an airplane.
00:13:58.900So we have a lot of work cut out ahead of us to restore freedom because governments can use digital ID to implement a social credit system in Canada, like what we actually had under vaccine passports.
00:14:17.180Yeah, that's another big one that we can see rolling towards us.
00:14:21.860Yeah, a term we used to hear a lot and we don't hear often anymore was social engineering.
00:14:25.280That was a big one. And that's, you know, where the state was trying to control what we think and what we do.
00:14:29.700And, you know, social credit is more getting towards how we're going to do it as an enforcement arm to ensure that you stay, you know, keeping that new speak going and walking the line.
00:14:38.640It's very troublesome. And as lots of people like to point out, you know, things that were called conspiracies two years ago have come into being today.
00:14:45.660So, I mean, you know, as they say, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
00:14:48.760I remember so vividly in March of 2020 when lockdowns were first brought in after they'd been in for a few weeks and it was already becoming obvious to any thinking person that looked at data,
00:15:02.180was becoming very obvious very early on that this was not the Spanish flu of 1918.
00:15:08.820Neil Ferguson's prediction about, you know, over 300,000 deaths in Canada from COVID within a few months, you know, proving to be completely false.
00:15:18.580And I remember vividly there were people saying, you know what, they're going to use these lockdowns as a mechanism to entice everybody to get vaccinated and they're going to say the only way to get rid of lockdowns is to get injected and then you're going to have the whole population get injected.
00:15:36.820And then when there's a few stragglers, they're going to bring in vaccine passports to really apply pressure and they're going to pressure everybody to get vaccinated.
00:15:44.020And that was a conspiracy theory in early 2020.
00:15:50.180And, you know, as you said, that became reality, that conspiracy theory.
00:15:56.600Yeah, so people got to pay attention to the warning signs now.
00:15:59.180Just finally, with the truckers protests in Ottawa and things such as that, is the JCCF representing any of the people who have been charged under that or is that through different lawyers at this point now?
00:16:10.320Yes, we are in the sense that we've got at least a half dozen, if not a dozen, criminal defense lawyers that we have retained.
00:16:21.060So the Justice Center is paying the bills for the criminal defense counsel for the truckers that were wrongfully charged with criminal conduct when, in our view, was absolutely false.
00:16:36.540I mean, the worst thing that the truckers were guilty of is parking infractions.
00:16:42.560And even there, that's questionable because the Ottawa police was working with the truckers every day and telling the truckers where to park.
00:16:51.560So, yes, we're paying for the legal defense, for criminal defense counsel, for truckers that have been accused of criminal conduct.
00:17:02.300Great. Yeah, I know there's a lot of follow-up there and things on the go as well.
00:17:08.500And as we've kind of said, plenty to come.
00:17:10.100Where can people find more information on your organization in case, you know, they want to keep up with it or if they need legal help or if they want to support you guys?
00:17:20.300I would encourage people to sign up for, we have a newsletter that we send out once every three weeks or so and sign up for the newsletter and that will give you an update on all of our cases.
00:17:35.400And there's also an icon on the homepage that says need legal help?
00:17:38.900If you need legal help, complete the online form and we have an intake team that looks at all of the incoming requests.
00:17:49.680We are forced through, you know, limited resources.
00:17:54.300We actually have to say no to most of the requests coming in, but we try to say yes to as many as possible and provide legal help to people.