A federal court has ruled that the Trudeau government broke the Constitution when they invoked the Emergencies Act, and now they can't do anything about it. We talk about the ruling and what it means for the future of the case, and where the government stands on the matter.
00:01:37.420Well, obviously, the biggest news story of the week so far has been the federal court ruling that the Trudeau liberals
00:01:45.760broke the Constitution when they invoked the Emergencies Act.
00:01:49.340So, Mike, why don't you break down this story for us a little bit more?
00:01:56.400It didn't surprise me at all, that ruling, because it's the truth.
00:02:01.420I remember two years ago when the trucks were rolling into Ottawa, and I wrote a column about it and said,
00:02:07.400this is great, but how are they going to be accepted in Ottawa?
00:02:11.840We all know that story, but it's really, really refreshing to see the federal court go,
00:02:17.640no, no, no, no, that was wrong and you got to fix it. Not surprisingly, Trudeau's government is not
00:02:24.080going to appeal it. So who knows where it goes from there? Hopefully the appeal gets shut down.
00:02:30.260Yeah. So Sean, tell me about this appeal. How would they appeal it? Because looking at the
00:02:36.280ruling and what was written, I'm not seeing very much wiggle room here. The judge even came out
00:02:42.640and admitted that he was biased against the protesters before the ruling
00:02:47.880and wrote that into his ruling, and that's rare on its own.
00:02:51.040Well, my understanding is that because it is in a federal court that it can be appealed.
00:02:56.160So the federal court and the federal court of appeal are kind of one and the same thing,
00:03:00.300but it seems that they would be able to appeal that specific ruling.
00:03:04.680And I'm not sure what would happen after that, but it would go to the Supreme Court.
00:03:09.760I don't know who would challenge the ruling, maybe it would be the same parties that brought it forth, the Constitutional Foundation, and then it's going to the Supreme Court, and I'm pretty sure this is exactly where this is going to wind up.
00:03:22.400Yeah. So the it's Christine Van Guyen, I believe. Sorry, I probably butchered that from the Canadian Constitution Foundation. And of course, they were joined with our friends at the CCFR, John Carpe and the Canadian Centre. Oh, wait, that was the Canadian Centre for Firearms Rights. So sorry, CSSA. So the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
00:03:48.240We have so many acronym clubs going on. So those groups, they grouped together and then they fought this at the federal courts. And now we've got this ruling. I don't see that they're going to give up the fight on this at all. And, you know, the ruling that came out was pretty damning, specifically around the unlawful search and seizure, the seizure of the bank accounts.
00:04:13.340What kind of fallout could we see from that seizures now?
00:04:17.440Well, we were talking around this morning that it's highly ironic that it is a Trudeau government
00:04:25.520that is trampling on two signature pieces of his father's legacy, which happened to be the War Measures Act,
00:04:31.980just watch me, and also the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is what the Emergencies Act was meant to replace
00:04:39.620because the War Measures Act, you know, as we know, it dates back to World War I,
00:04:44.300and it's only been invoked a handful of times, including the FLQ crisis, and so there's a bit of an irony there.
00:04:50.480The other irony was that he made Deputy Prime Minister Christopher Freeland basically stand up and answer for it
00:04:57.120because he didn't really have the courage to do it on his own.
00:05:00.620Well, I mean, what happened when the protesters showed up?
00:05:04.400He had COVID went into hiding, and so did half of the ministers.
00:05:08.460Yeah, they refused to meet with any of the protesters. They even refused to meet with the protester surrogates and lawyers. They just, no, we're not talking to them. I believe he called them a small fringe minority with unacceptable views.
00:05:23.740You know, bullies are cowards. So it's hardly a surprise that he would do that.
00:05:27.820Oh, exactly. It's, you know, it's just another thing in a long line of his missteps. And if anything, it shows his arrogance. This is the third case, I believe now, or third law that's been a pinnacle of his leadership that's now been ruled unconstitutional by courts in the country.
00:05:48.580and he has vowed to appeal all of them i think even uh alberta premier danielle smith said that
00:05:55.140the ucp if they appeal this would intervene as well as an interviewer yeah yes and she also
00:06:00.840cited the plastics ban uh the environmental review ban you know now we've got uh emissions caps
00:06:07.720you know clean electricity regulations you know there's a whole list of about but the only one
00:06:13.360that they've actually managed to put through was the price on the carbon the carbon tax yeah and
00:06:18.180So that was one of the only ones that ended up in the Supreme Court as well.
00:06:21.840And the Supreme Court ruled that perhaps there is enough of an existential crisis that the only way to combat climate change is nationally.
00:06:30.140They don't actually debate the science around climate change, just whether or not the federal government has the power to impose that, I guess it's, what do they call it, a levy?
00:06:41.100As you noted though, it's on a national scale, doesn't necessarily give them the authority to start going after singular provinces and singular sectors of the economy. The notion of that ruling was that it was going to be applied equally through all sectors.
00:06:59.100One of the other things that's interesting with this is if you're the prime minister and you're sitting around looking at your cabinet table and now this is the third law that's been a big part of your leadership and your time as prime minister, do you start looking at your attorney generals and say, why does every law we try to pass get struck down?
00:07:21.220And do you start to regroup and maybe consider the constitution before you start making laws going forward?
00:07:27.340I don't think the prime minister is of that mind. No, no. He's got an agenda. And like I said,
00:07:36.540he's pushing it through. He's a bully. And damn the bridges. I don't think he cares.
00:07:41.820Yeah, it would take a little bit of, you know, reasoning. So kind of sober second thinking,
00:07:49.100because if you think about it, pretty much everything that they've done in this last term
00:07:52.540has been unconstitutional. I mean, you know, since the liberals have been in power,
00:07:56.540I think the most secure and best career you could have ever been in was a lawyer because since day
00:08:02.300one there have been nothing but lawsuits lawsuits lawsuits and that's between the provinces and the
00:08:07.180feds uh between the citizens and the provinces everybody is just going to court over everything
00:08:13.820which this ruling now is going to open the floodgates I think on on class action lawsuits the
00:08:20.060folks who have their bank accounts frozen are gonna have a very good case that the government
00:08:25.180acted illegally in in freezing their assets oh yeah i agree i agree and i think that that when
00:08:31.660all of that was taking place two years ago uh initially people were they were afraid of a
00:08:37.580number of different things and i'm not talking just about the people in audible who were afraid
00:08:41.820of the convoy and bouncy castles because they're scary um yeah spongebob but i think i think people
00:08:48.940reacted in fear like like okay what is really going on what is going on and that fear factor
00:08:58.000It took any kind of fear that they were having back then out of it.
00:09:02.760And I'll bet you dollars to donuts there will be a class action suit with the 500 plus bank account people
00:09:11.080or people who had their bank accounts frozen because they got a really good case right now.
00:09:16.600I remember when this was all happening that, you know, my thoughts were like,
00:09:21.840is there some kind of an insurrection going on in here?
00:09:24.000you know like they're raising funds and funding money and they're talking about tents full of guns
00:09:29.440you know off parliament hill and all this kind of stuff and then foreign interference and foreign
00:09:34.640actors and and you kind of thought like well geez is this really a revolution you know but that
00:09:40.400all that came from from the other side of the freedom convoy and you know they're just it's
00:09:44.960propaganda and they're trying to increase the the fear factor and what bad people they are
00:09:50.800and stuff like that so they'll bring in fake stuff like that like the the nazi flag yeah uh
00:09:56.080it's totally fake um but people canadians i mean people are busy they're doing what they do and
00:10:01.760they look at that on tv on the union news or and they're going oh wow this is bad this is really
00:10:06.480bad if that's happening and that's happening and then you start talking to each other and that
00:10:09.920just makes it worse yeah so this ruling i think people go wow okay maybe i was wrong maybe i was
00:10:16.800wrong. Maybe it's okay to go after them now and take and get even if you, for lack of a better
00:10:22.600term. Yeah. I mean, there was even polls coming out. I believe, I think the last one I was looking
00:10:28.460at was from November, 2022. And over 70% of the Canadians polled in that poll were against the
00:10:35.360convoy. But if you go back to the mainstream's media coverage, the way the politicians had
00:10:41.900phrased everything. Even Jagmeet Singh has now come out saying, well, I didn't support the use
00:10:47.660of the Emergencies Act. But everybody's sharing the letter that you wrote, Jagmeet. We can read
00:10:52.720it. We have memories. The internet doesn't forget. But it's fascinating that the judge,
00:11:00.680and if that judge was just going off of what he's seen in the media, what he was hearing from his
00:11:05.560politicians, no wonder why he went in thinking that all of the protesters were guilty of sin.
00:11:10.620But now you have someone who has gone through and looked at every single aspect of this case, and he's saying, no, this was inappropriate. There was no threat to Canada's national security. We can argue if there was a threat to Canada's economic security, specifically around the border blockades.
00:11:28.420But, you know, in Coutts, there's three other border crossings all within a couple of hours of Coutts.
00:11:33.480All of the traffic was rooted around it.
00:11:44.820But I don't see if one border crossing is so important to the economic interests of Canada, we may have bigger problems here that we need to diversify our borders.
00:11:56.300and beef up our security and our economic stability.
00:12:00.220But I don't think that was the problem.
00:12:01.620I mean, we've got a lot of border crossings, as you point out.
00:12:04.280Coutts is maybe the highest profile because of where it is.
00:12:07.980And so if you're going to have a blockade, that's where you have it.
00:12:37.980And, you know, it's funny because a week before the Coots border blockade, and this is when the trucker convoy was already going on,
00:12:45.000A caller called in to, I believe it was QR77, you know, Shea again on the talk show there, and said there is going to be a blockade at Goetz next week, and this is going to be big, and it's going to be even bigger than what's going on in Ottawa.
00:12:59.360And really, the problem in Ottawa was just the lack of preparation for the police.
00:13:04.540You know, they knew these guys were coming.
00:13:06.400They had 10 days to prepare for it, and they just, they didn't.
00:13:10.380So when you've got a bunch of rowdy hooligans and hot tubs and peeing, drinking beer in the streets, peeing on a war memorial, that's the thing.
00:13:20.200The story with that is it was actually the Western Standard.
00:13:24.040We got sent a message from a source in the trucking community that I know.
00:13:28.380I passed the information on to Melanie Risden.
00:13:31.180We started working the story, and yeah, we found out there was, but there was three groups of Coots.
00:13:36.020There was farmers. There was the truckers. And then there was some more freedom orientated folks that were there. I don't know. I don't want to get into the conspiracy theories on who those people were and what they believed and what they stood for.
00:13:52.740there may be some evidence that part of those protesters did have a plan to engage with the
00:13:57.600police. That's going to come out in court as well. But the overwhelming majority of the people that
00:14:04.700were there were tired of the COVID restrictions. They had gone too far, and they had gone on for
00:14:11.780too long, and they were concerned about themselves, their own health, and for the health of their kids.
00:14:16.360They did not want to overthrow the government. Their group in Coutts wanted to have coffee with
00:14:20.980Jason Kenney, and that is hardly a scary situation, and the demands out of Ottawa were meet with us.
00:14:30.620I've never, have you guys ever heard of any government that was overthrown by a meeting?
00:14:35.520No. And also, it seems to me with the coots, because the border was open for cross-border
00:14:43.320trucking traffic, even though it was closed to tourist traffic and pedestrian traffic, and it
00:14:49.020was when they imposed the vaccine restrictions
00:14:52.480on the drivers when they were crossing back
00:16:14.800But, you know, even still, Christy Freeland yesterday repeated several times that there was this existential threat to the health and safety of Canadians.
00:16:26.140But everything that we've seen come out of it, and even the Roleau, that report, you know, that one said that what they did was constitutional.
00:16:37.880But none of these reports have ever actually indicated that there was a threat to Canadians' health or safety.
00:16:44.260at all you know and and i was in arizona when everything's got clamped down here like in in
00:16:51.780early 21 when everything got bad and in arizona it was totally different down there yeah um they
00:16:59.620they treated adults like they were adults which they didn't do here it's like we've got to cuddle
00:17:05.540all our little children who are 45 years old and keep them safe down there no masks there's a big
00:17:11.540big signs on all the stores. If you want to wear a mask, that's fine, but you don't have to.
00:17:17.600And it was handled so much differently. And the sense down there was, okay,
00:17:23.860something's going on. I guess we should look after ourselves. Whereas up here,
00:17:27.220we were corralling and herded around like cattle. Yeah. If you look, Canada and Australia had some
00:17:34.960of the strangest and strictest lockdowns and COVID rules in place in the entire world.
00:17:42.600Canada and Australia were some of the hardest hit countries too.
00:17:46.180Well, China had some pretty bad restrictions. And when I think the turning point for me was when
00:17:52.120they had locked all those people up into that apartment building and there was a fire and
00:17:55.860all the people died. And the government was using the restrictions basically as
00:18:28.400Yeah. And is there a lesson? Like, are the feds going to learn a lesson here? Like, like I said, we've got three different cases now ruled unconstitutional. They've been told to stay in their lane. They've continued like Stephen Goebel has not taken the foot off the gas pedal on plastics at all, even though the courts have just said no. And I mean, not going to get too far into our next topic here, but does this at least restore some faith?
00:18:57.440because I think Canadians have lost a bit of faith in our judiciary and our judicial system.
00:19:01.720Do you think this kind of ruling restores them faith and says that, no,
00:19:05.460there's actually quite a lot of very good people inside the judiciary in this country?
00:19:09.400I don't know. I don't know if that's what I'm hoping,
00:19:14.460is that people who have been on the sidelines, either who bought into the whole thing
00:19:20.260or just sat back, I mean, this doesn't look right, but kept quiet,
00:19:23.360that people will now be motivated to come forward and make some noise with the politicians because
00:19:30.060there's only one thing that scares a politician and that's not getting re-elected and if the
00:19:36.000people stand up and wave flags and go you're out of here unless you do this this the other thing
00:19:40.900um they're not going to do anything yeah but the people need to stand up and go enough is enough
00:19:47.320and if they want to revisit what happened they should do that and talk among their they should
00:19:51.680sit down with people they know and say we have to get together and do something about this because
00:19:57.760we can do something about this at the at the polling booths and and just by making a lot of
00:20:02.960noise instead of the politicians scaring the populace the populace need to rise up with the
00:20:08.160pitchforks and the torches you know and scare the politicians well my impression of this whole thing
00:20:13.440is it doesn't really restore any of my faith in the justice system but i think what it does is it
00:20:19.440reinforces uh some of that anger that's out there in some of those old divisions and it's like you
00:20:23.600know see we told you so like all the way along and we were right and you're wrong and they're
00:20:28.560gonna go ahead and appeal it oh for sure i i was lucky enough to host the cory morgan show earlier
00:20:34.000today and the comments they there was people in there and they said no we're we're gonna sue
00:20:38.080we are going to come back after you and you know what i hope i hope you all win i do uh i'm a little
00:20:44.880have said that it's tax dollars. I wish our politicians would start respecting the money
00:20:49.880that we're paying them instead of pumping them all into these legal cases. If you do what you're
00:20:54.820elected to do and you do what you said you were going to do, you're not going to have everybody
00:21:01.660taking every single policy to court. So one of the other things that's happened out of this now
00:21:06.760is a liberal MP from Newfoundland, I believe it's Ken McDonald, has now called for a leadership
00:21:13.520review of Justin Trudeau. And we've seen when people started calling for a leadership review
00:21:19.640of Jason Kenney, that ball started rolling and that ball didn't stop rolling. Do we think this
00:21:24.620is going to pick up momentum here in the next few months? I think, yes, yes, short answer.
00:21:31.160I think that, again, when there's a leader of things that people have been afraid to undertake
00:21:38.100by themselves, but understand now that there's possibly a group of people who will join in and
00:21:43.980do that kind of thing. More people will join in and do that. So I think it'll have an effect and
00:21:50.220I think it could snowball. But again, people have to get involved. I'm not so sure. I think that
00:21:56.060it's because of the liberal power base is so concentrated, you know, out in the Atlantic
00:22:01.040Carolina, it's a little bit of an outlier. And we've seen some of these things with the fuel oil
00:22:05.140And, you know, those guys are genuinely scared that they're not going to get re-elected.
00:22:09.360But, I mean, you start coming out west here, we've got, like, what, two in Alberta?
00:22:15.560The Conservatives were out door knocking in Calgary Skyview here last weekend.
00:22:21.540So they're taking aim at George Chahal.
00:22:25.840And I think he's going to have a big fight in the next election.
00:22:29.900But speaking of former liberals and former liberal ministers and Alberta liberal ministers, Amarji Sohi, Jody Gondek, Calgary and Edmonton's war on lunch.
00:22:43.120But not just Calgary and Edmonton, Banff. Banff is in on this, too.
00:22:47.800So, Sean, you wrote the article on this. Please explain this to me.
00:23:52.140So when you go through your fast food and your takeout, I think it was publisher Derek there was complaining that they'd put his food on a tray and they'd put it on the hood of his car and have him to come out and get it or pay 15 cents.
00:24:07.380And, of course, you know that he's not going to pay 15 cents.
00:24:09.160But even paying 15 cents, they're saying, don't use these bags unless you pay for them.
00:24:15.280But we want to keep these bags out of the landfills unless you pay for them.
00:24:43.280But inflation, the cost of living, and just living life is inconvenient enough.
00:24:50.480And now you're going to get, like, what, you were supposed to carry lunch kits around with us everywhere, you know, when you go out for the night.
00:24:57.520Sometimes you don't expect to take anything home.
00:25:00.000I usually eat a portion of my meal and I'll save the rest.
00:25:03.880But now you're telling me that I can't have a bag to take that home.
00:25:07.400You have to bring your little lunch bucket.
00:25:28.520They have that, a lunch kit, and a reusable set of forks and knives, a metal straw, and all of this just in their vehicle now, just in case they want McDonald's.
00:25:40.700I don't know what your guys' vehicles are like.
00:25:43.700I would not eat off of anything in my car.
00:25:46.400So, like, I just, you know, what are the sanitary concerns?
00:25:53.680I noticed in the Banff bylaw that they don't have to accept a dirty bag if it's unsanitary.
00:25:59.660But I know of some people here in Calgary that have been handing the folks at Wendy's McDonald's bags and Burger King's got in a few Dairy Queen bags.
00:26:10.860You know, is it sanitary to hand fast food employees back a used fast food bag?
00:26:15.860They're encouraging, the city will have bag police.1.00
00:26:20.800They will go around and they will check it, you know?
00:26:23.940And so, I mean, it's just, the whole thing is ridiculous.
00:31:34.560Like, instead of accepting a reasonable solution where people can, you know, if you just inconvenience
00:31:39.600them and just piss them off, then people just aren't going to go wrong.
00:31:44.320Well, and even on apps, Skip the Dishes, Uber Eats, stuff like that. Now they're just tacking on a bag fee, but it's just a 15 cent bag fee. So the amount of bags doesn't seem to matter because Uber Eats doesn't know how many bags you're going to need to package that order. The restaurant doesn't know how many bags you're going to need to package that order.
00:32:03.320so you know I feel like some businesses are just going to completely ignore it and say okay city
00:32:08.820go ahead come get us and some businesses are just going to do okay we'll put 15 cents on we can't
00:32:15.420guesstimate excuse me how many bags we're going to need so we're just going to throw 15 cents on
00:32:20.880there and other businesses like you said co-ops charging a dollar for a paper bag already well
00:32:27.160it says 15 cents so please tell me why your paper bag is so expensive it's i i don't know
00:32:35.160and it's just a single use wine bag you know which reminds me everybody please vote in the
00:32:39.560next election uh i'll talk about this column for the second time today december 12th preston manning
00:32:45.40020 of calgarians support this mayor or voted for this mayor so 80 were the majority let's
00:32:55.320make some changes in 2025. All right, so moving on, Tucker Carlson is in town. Tucker. Tucker Carlson
00:33:03.880is in town, and holy what, I don't get it. So there's protests going on, I believe, in Calgary.
00:33:12.120There was a, whatchamacallit, there was a GoFundMe change.org petition to have him
00:43:42.680Yeah, every time I read one of his columns, I read it in his voice exactly the way he would say it.
00:43:48.680Yeah. I actually do it with Nigel as well. It's from when Nigel, Nigel, when he's on the show or when he used to read some of his columns for video work, just the way he reads it, the way he speaks. Now when I when I read one of his columns, I hear his voice in my head the whole way through.
00:44:07.520yeah so uh finally uh last thing we've got on the list here sneaky fourth topic uh the alberta
00:44:14.640pension plan so is that done did did the united conservative party just give up are they gonna
00:44:21.840throw their hat in what do we think uh i was talking to a lady when that was first uh announced1.00
00:44:29.520and she's she's collecting CPP and she's was like totally against the Alberta pension plan
00:44:38.640because she didn't think she didn't understand it she thought she was going to lose her pension
00:44:44.020she wasn't going to get any money and I think that's a general thought especially among them
00:44:49.740the older people like me um who I don't why wait who who don't understand it and I think the Alberta
00:44:58.480government could do a lot better job explaining it. And I think they may have just gone under the
00:45:04.720cloud cover for a bit to get organized, to get the word out there properly of how actually it works,
00:45:11.840because they just went, well, I'll get $3 billion from CPP and we'll do this, we'll do that.
00:45:16.720And nobody believed it. It sounded like, no, that can't be happening.
00:45:21.280Well, I do know because I sat in on a session here out at Pritis a couple of minutes back
00:45:29.120before Christmas, and Travis Tabes was talking, and they had been working on the pension plan
00:45:34.620reform even before, well, when Jason Kenney was still premier, and he was still finance minister,
00:45:41.320and he was basically saying, so they're waiting for this actuator's report on how much they are
00:45:46.580actually going to get back he said because when they saw that 344 billion dollar number because
00:45:51.380their eyes popped of course and he goes if it's even half that much you know then this is an easy
00:45:57.220sell right yeah but the problem is is that we don't know how much it is or no no or how their
00:46:02.340ottawa is going to respond and we need to know that we need to find out well they need they need
00:46:06.100us i don't think until i don't think anything's going to move on this until we actually get the
00:46:12.180I think it's the parliamentary budget officer that's putting out the report on how much Alberta's portion actually is.
00:46:18.300Parliamentary budget officer is fairly empathetic to these kinds of causes that we are in favor of.
00:46:24.240I like him because he is no nonsense, and all he ever says is exactly how much something's going to cost.
00:46:30.220There's no politics, there's no feelings, there's no nothing, there's numbers.