Western Standard - WATCH： Calgary lawyer discusses employment law and human rights with regard to vax mandates

00:00:00.000 good morning i'm melanie risden with the western standard and we're going to be checking in with

00:00:20.320 a calgary lawyer leighton gray with gray woke spencer llp and we're going to be discussing a

00:00:26.320 bit about employment law and human rights law and just getting into some of the the issues that

00:00:32.560 we're seeing you know a lot of people have a lot of questions right now around employment law and

00:00:38.880 especially with regard to the vaccine mandates so we're going to touch base with Leighton here

00:00:44.080 very quickly but first we're going to head to our newsroom we're going to talk to Dave our news

00:00:49.760 editor and we're going to get a little bit of an update on some of the stories we have been

00:00:54.800 working on this morning and perhaps some that are coming this afternoon hey dave how's it going

00:01:00.160 mel i'm missing you already in the newsroom oh i know so uh you enjoy your time in tv land though

00:01:08.720 i know you'll be coming back to me soon i will be so what do we have for some news stories today

00:01:15.280 well another busy morning uh as usual uh linda slobodian our manitoba reporter slash columnist

00:01:22.880 has just filed a good story on the manitoba government is going to be sending 300 patients

00:01:28.800 south of the border into fargo for uh serious spinal surgeries 300 uh i'm not sure if they're

00:01:36.120 moving them all in greyhound buses or or what more details are coming on that later on this

00:01:41.920 afternoon but belinda's got the story up there now you've actually done a story mel on uh some

00:01:48.720 good news out of the UK today. Prime Minister Boris Johnson basically has announced an end to

00:01:55.580 all of the COVID restrictions. They were hammered for a couple of weeks by Omicron, but now the

00:02:02.880 infection rates seem to have stabilized and are now dropping. So the UK government is withdrawing

00:02:09.260 things like face mask mandates and vaccine passports. So that's a bit of good news on 1.00

00:02:15.260 that side of the pond. New inflation figures today, again, telling us what Canadians already

00:02:22.340 know. It's getting more and more expensive out there, whether to fill your gas tank or buy

00:02:27.600 groceries. 4.8% was the official rate for last month. Quickly, Canadian Taxpayers Federation

00:02:36.340 jumped in and called for an immediate reduction in taxes from the Trudeau government. Erin O'Toole,

00:02:43.460 the opposition leader also chimed in with uh with his thoughts on it so that's a story up there

00:02:49.860 and uh an interesting story we've got on the illegal immigration up 40-fold uh since the

00:02:57.860 pandemic started it's so bad that the the federal government has had to take over book 11 hotels

00:03:05.060 11 separate hotels uh down in quebec just just to house uh these illegal immigrants uh the quebec 0.99

00:03:12.580 border crossing area is the worst. And I guess British Columbia is second. Mike Thomas, a new 0.99

00:03:20.340 addition to the Western Standard. He's got decades of experience covering the real estate market in

00:03:26.740 Calgary and elsewhere. He's got an interesting piece looking across Western Canada, the various

00:03:32.780 big cities on just what your local real estate price has done for last year and how much money

00:03:40.180 you've made in home equity, but make sure you hide it because I'm sure the Liberals are going

00:03:46.220 to tax it anyways. So that's what's on the site for right now, Mel. Awesome. Thank you. And I'm

00:03:53.140 sure more to come as the afternoon unfolds. So thanks, Dave. Thanks for the update.

00:03:58.900 You're welcome. All right. So we are going to check in now with a Calgary lawyer,

00:04:05.200 Layton Gray, actually the Gray Woke Spencer LLP sort of works between Calgary and Cold

00:04:10.940 Lake. And so we're going to talk a bit about employment law. Now, I know that the law firm

00:04:17.760 and Layton also represent quite a few different sectors when it comes to employment law. So

00:04:26.260 we'll introduce you to Layton. And just first of all, thanks for joining us today, Layton.

00:04:33.780 and giving us a bit of an update.

00:04:37.640 So give me a little bit of background

00:04:39.140 on who you're supporting right now,

00:04:43.580 what kind of cases you're working on,

00:04:45.680 what kind of clients you're working with

00:04:47.960 with regard to the employment and human rights issues.

00:04:51.880 All right.

00:04:53.480 First of all, thanks for having me on.

00:04:55.160 It's a pleasure to be here.

00:04:56.020 It's my first time speaking to the Western Standard.

00:04:58.980 I've followed you very regularly

00:05:02.380 And I see that you've had my good friend and colleague James Kitchen on before.

00:05:08.180 We've been working very, very intensely over the past several months, specifically in relation to vaccine mandate cases, as these cases really came to the fore in really October and November of last year, not coincidentally after the last federal election.

00:05:30.760 um our work is not on behalf of employers it's not on behalf of unions we act for workers and

00:05:40.000 the reason what we've seen in acting on behalf of workers both unionized and non-unionized

00:05:45.040 is uh i've come to the uh the informed opinion that the vaccine mandates really have nothing to

00:05:54.500 do with health and safety. I think that recent data, real-world data about the ineffectiveness

00:06:02.740 of the vaccines, both in terms of preventing infection and preventing transmission of the virus

00:06:10.100 have informed this opinion and also the fact that the virus itself is not cooperating because

00:06:18.100 let's face it everybody is getting omicron because it's 140 000 times more transmissible

00:06:25.060 i understand than the original virus but what's really going on in my respectful view

00:06:31.620 with vaccine mandates is it's a it's really a surreptitious attack on the canadian working

00:06:36.900 class that's designed to to hit the canadian workers people i call the best canadians the

00:06:42.900 galoo canadians the ones who are really supporting their communities and paying all the taxes and

00:06:48.740 serving on school boards and doing all the things that really support our country it's an attack on 1.00

00:06:55.540 them so that they could not that they lose the ability the freedom that comes from having an

00:07:02.260 income to support their families to acquire and maintain personal property the vaccine mandates

00:07:08.020 do not hit destitute people, they do not hit street people, they do not hit people in prisons,

00:07:15.780 they do not hit the political class or the uber rich, they hit the Canadian working class.

00:07:23.620 It's my view that this is a weaponization of COVID-19 as a means to achieve a political

00:07:31.140 agenda that's been very clearly and publicly mapped out by the Liberal government in Ottawa.

00:07:38.020 Now, a lot of things are starting to change, especially as you mentioned with the Omicron

00:07:45.800 variant and how it is highly infectious, but really much less severe in symptoms and illness.

00:07:56.880 So a lot of things are starting to change.

00:07:58.540 I mean, even this morning, as we mentioned, we just did a story covering how UK is moving

00:08:04.840 completely away from mandates.

00:08:07.760 They're moving away from mask mandates, they're moving away from the vaccine mandates.

00:08:13.080 And so we're seeing this sort of unravel in other countries as well.

00:08:18.280 And I know in Canada, you were just mentioning that the Treasury Board has sort of updated

00:08:25.940 the work from home guidelines and have now said that instead of the mandate being federally

00:08:34.300 imposed it's going to be sort of left to the different departments to be

00:08:38.540 decided on whether whether federal employees will be will be mandated can you can you speak to that

00:08:43.500 a little bit i i can um more broadly speaking i i think you make a great point about what's going

00:08:51.340 on in britain i think that if you look back over the past 18 months or two years i think it's fair

00:08:56.940 to say that britain has been a little bit ahead of north america maybe three to six months ahead

00:09:03.100 of us in terms of uh you know signaling to us what's coming from covid and it is uh it is

00:09:10.620 encouraging to see that in britain really they're starting to wake up to what uh the people on our

00:09:16.540 side of the case have been saying for about two years um there's a really really excellent source

00:09:23.580 of information that's been largely banned uh on social media and the internet um and which dr

00:09:30.140 Fauci has publicly criticized called the Great Barrington Declaration which was formulated by

00:09:36.140 a group of world-renowned scientists and if you go back and look at that document now

00:09:41.020 about two years on virtually everything that they were saying two years ago has come true.

00:09:49.100 The only jurisdictions that really paid close attention to the Great Barrington Declaration

00:09:54.460 and instituted it were places like Texas and Florida and Tennessee and you can go and you

00:09:59.420 You can look at how they have fared in terms of COVID-19 versus what the lockdown restrictions have done.

00:10:09.340 And I think anyone can see that the lockdown restrictions have been a huge mistake.

00:10:14.840 So it's very encouraging to see that some of these governments, the British government, are starting to see the need for a new policy in terms of COVID.

00:10:28.220 But I also noticed in the news very recently, Bill Gates, who, of course, has been a proponent of vaccines, in fact, a purveyor of vaccines, is saying that Omicron is essentially the common cold and that we have to start dealing with Omicron and COVID as though it is an endemic situation.

00:10:47.840 there's also been signals um in canada that this is this is coming i i saw a recent interview

00:10:54.800 that dr bonnie henry who's the chief medical officer for british columbia game where she said

00:11:00.080 things along the same lines and in other words she basically said that she sees omicron as an

00:11:05.280 encouraging sign that uh that that uh covet 19 has essentially run its its its course and that

00:11:13.200 we can see the end of COVID. What's interesting about that, and again this is my opinion as

00:11:18.800 somebody who's been following this story, this narrative for about two years and following it

00:11:26.960 very closely as someone who's immersed in it, I think what we're seeing is governments especially

00:11:33.600 trying to find an exit strategy, an end to COVID, let's say an elegant exit to it.

00:11:39.760 and I think we're starting to see preparation for that. At the same time, what's interesting

00:11:45.360 is we're seeing this competing force, this tension, where some people, in particular our

00:11:51.200 Prime Minister in the province of Quebec, or at least the Quebec government, are really trying to

00:11:59.600 race against the sunset to push these vaccine mandates through as far as possible, really

00:12:04.960 against, in defiance of all sense, and everything that we're learning daily about COVID-19 and

00:12:12.320 the effectiveness of vaccines.

00:12:14.520 So to sum it all up, I think that, if I'm being optimistic here, we are coming to the

00:12:21.860 end of COVID, and that's a good sign.

00:12:25.600 I think that what Canadians need to be concerned about, and vaccine mandates are, I think,

00:12:30.540 an indicator of this.

00:12:31.880 I think we still need to be watchful of government overreach because to me, apart from the impacts

00:12:42.380 of the lockdowns and what we've done to children, what we've done to our communities, the families,

00:12:49.120 what we've done to the economy, the impacts of which will be generational.

00:12:54.900 The greatest long-lasting concern that I have as a human rights lawyer and as somebody who

00:13:02.700 has a conservative slash libertarian bent is the extent to which COVID-19 has allowed

00:13:08.240 government to enter every single aspect of human affairs in the name of safety, security

00:13:16.400 and public health.

00:13:17.900 So I think as Canadians, we're going to need to be much more watchful about government

00:13:24.900 government overreach. And people like me will be advocating in the aftermath of COVID for

00:13:31.560 serious legislative change, which will restrict, for example, the accessibility, the easy accessibility

00:13:39.800 of governments to declare states of emergency and to assume really undemocratic, unconstitutional

00:13:48.020 executive powers and i think also to set limits upon government spending because i think if we

00:13:55.860 had limits on the ability of the federal government to spend money let's say back in march of 2020

00:14:02.980 i think that that would have been beneficial to canadians in two respects firstly it would have

00:14:09.380 prevented the ungodly unconscionable spending that has driven our country into hopeless debt

00:14:14.900 we're dealing with you know endemic really frightening inflation and tax increases like

00:14:20.100 mr naylor was just talking about as a result of that but it also would have forced our government

00:14:25.780 to be much more resourceful and creative and wise about the decisions that they were going to make

00:14:32.340 in order to deal with a pandemic as opposed to simply uh you know adopting the philosophy

00:14:38.340 that no problem can be defeated if we throw enough money at it

00:14:44.900 So, my question to you is this then. So, you know, there's been sort of a shift in some of the narrative that's been going on. And I know, again, with this decision that's come down that was announced just two days ago from the feds, basically that the federal public service is going, so the feds are going to leave it to the different departments to determine whether they're going to mandate

00:15:14.900 vaccination, whether they're going to allow workers to come back to work, who work from home.

00:15:19.960 I mean, that to me, when we're talking about even the logic behind the law and talking about real

00:15:25.980 public safety, I happen to have a friend who worked for an airline as a call center employee,

00:15:32.360 and she was put on leave without pay for, you know, she worked from home and was not able to

00:15:40.600 do her job working from home. I mean, like legally that I just can't understand the leg

00:15:47.340 that they would have to stand on to say that that is a public safety issue for somebody working from

00:15:52.160 home being required to be vaccinated. You know, I'm sure you're dealing with that for other

00:15:59.260 clients as well, but what's your thoughts on that? No, it's a great point. And actually it supports,

00:16:05.260 It really informs the opinion that I expressed a moment ago about the fact that the vaccine mandates really have little or nothing to do with occupational health and safety, because the vaccines really are not protecting workers.

00:16:19.320 The people who have taken the vaccine have not been protected, for example, from Omicron.

00:16:24.040 Coming back to the question about the Treasury Board, I think that's an example of what I was saying earlier, where I think governments are turning away from or trying to turn away from.

00:16:35.260 the expansion or the extension of the COVID narrative. The Treasury Board decision, I think,

00:16:40.640 is very important in and of itself because apart from, I believe, apart from CRA, the

00:16:49.640 revenue agency, every other government agency and department relies upon funding that comes

00:16:58.980 through the Treasury Board. The Treasury Board is sort of the circulatory system for the federal

00:17:02.600 government and the delegation or let's say the the walking back of the blanket vaccine mandate

00:17:12.280 that you talked about is significant because it didn't it didn't really exist before in fact

00:17:19.640 if you trace it back a couple of steps you'll see that the the letters of appointment that

00:17:26.120 that Prime Minister Trudeau sent to people like Minister Fortier, who's the president

00:17:32.520 of the Treasury Board, in those letters appointing these new ministers when he had his last cabinet

00:17:39.400 shuffled, he specifically charged them with the duty to ensure that everyone in their

00:17:47.680 department is vaccinated. So I think on one view of the matter, we can look at this Treasury

00:17:55.360 Board announcement as a promising sign that perhaps the winter is starting to thaw.

00:18:01.040 However, I would say that we still need to be, as Canadians, we still need to be vigilant

00:18:06.480 and watchful, much more vigilant and watchful of the actions of our governments than we ever

00:18:11.600 have been before. I think I read a book recently that I'd recommend to your viewers that was

00:18:17.760 written by Conrad Black his most recent book and in it he talks about how well Canada historically

00:18:25.440 has been governed and as a result Canadians are very very trustful of government and but I think

00:18:32.480 we've entered a new era I think that going forward we're all going to have to have to be much more

00:18:38.320 watchful much more questioning what the government has been telling us not the least of which and

00:18:44.640 And this might be the most concerning thing about the public health system, if we can

00:18:52.700 call it that in Canada.

00:18:54.400 Perhaps the most concerning thing to me is the high level of censorship and the use of

00:19:00.620 things like words like misinformation, where we've essentially been told from the very

00:19:05.740 beginning that we shouldn't look at other sources of information.

00:19:09.920 We shouldn't look at things like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or other therapeuticals.

00:19:14.640 even though Pfizer is developing one of their own right now, because that information is not

00:19:19.980 coming from government. In other words, the only reliable source of information about public health

00:19:24.520 comes from government. When you track through, for example, what the Alberta government has

00:19:29.900 been telling us about public health information, it's basically been an avalanche of inconsistency.

00:19:38.680 In fact, I don't think any party has put out more misinformation about COVID-19 than our governments.

00:19:50.220 It's interesting you bring that up because we actually just aired a video from MLA, Peter Guthrie, from the Airdrie-Cochran area.

00:20:00.540 And he said the exact same thing, you know, taking into question AHS, the fact that it seems as though things have obviously changed from the beginning of the pandemic to the end.

00:20:13.960 I mean, in the beginning, we didn't have much information.

00:20:16.200 We didn't have much data.

00:20:17.280 And we also didn't have vaccines.

00:20:19.760 And Peter Guthrie kind of brings it to the forefront that now we have these things.

00:20:25.020 we we have these tools we're looking at but the narrative and and the response has not changed so

00:20:31.740 he's talking about how you know even in our province ahs is kind of working in this secular

00:20:37.900 circular motion where they're just they're just not um adapting to the data that we have and the

00:20:44.940 information that we have and changing course and and and you know he talked about the the billions

00:20:49.980 that have even been spent in in our province alone yet we don't have an increase in hospital

00:20:56.700 beds we don't have an increase in ico icu capacity our hospitals were still struggling at times for

00:21:03.100 for capacity so you know the question too is where's the money been spent right i mean there's

00:21:09.980 there seems to be um you know a lot of a lot of talk of this being a real tax uh on our health

00:21:16.540 care system but yet you know where was the money spent as far as expanding that capacity level in

00:21:23.420 our province so it yeah sorry that's an excellent point in fact i i agree with mr gothry i would go

00:21:30.540 a bit further though and in that um i'm actually counsel on a case that uh is being brought by the

00:21:37.580 justice center for constitutional freedoms uh against the alberta government over charter

00:21:42.540 violations stemming from the lockdown restrictions and as part of that case which is going to be

00:21:47.900 heard in calgary next month we're going to be cross-examining dr hinshaw and some of the other

00:21:54.860 experts that the albert government is producing or has produced in support of lockdown measures

00:22:00.700 and as part of my preparations for that hearing i've been going through a binder of every single

00:22:06.780 press release that Dr. Hinshaw has made. And I can tell you, going back to even February

00:22:12.280 and March of 2020, Dr. Hinshaw was telling us that children were at very low risk. We knew that

00:22:21.480 already, even before the virus hit Alberta in earnest. The Alberta government was already aware

00:22:29.900 of that and they also knew very very early even before the world health organization declared a

00:22:38.920 worldwide pandemic that the most at-risk group were the elderly and yet uh that even that that

00:22:48.500 has not really informed any of the policies that you talk about that were wasteful and damaging

00:22:55.060 there is no evidence that I'm aware of to support the fallacy that there is a pandemic among

00:23:03.020 children. And yet one could frame a very persuasive argument that the most seriously

00:23:11.560 adversely affected group by COVID, not because of the virus, but because of the way that our

00:23:20.180 governments have chosen to deal with the virus through lockdown restrictions, that children

00:23:27.120 are the most affected group.

00:23:30.260 Even today, children in Alberta, the ones who are able to go to school, have to wear

00:23:36.180 masks.

00:23:37.180 They have to social distance.

00:23:38.180 In most schools, they cannot even remove masks to drink water.

00:23:44.300 And there is a plethora of evidence to show that these masks restrict breathing.

00:23:49.960 impact their learning. I even saw a recent study that said that long-term carbon dioxide exposure

00:23:57.800 due to the mast and the toxicity from it has long-term impacts on kidney function.

00:24:05.960 So I think there is a mountain of evidence, intellectually the size of the Canadian Rockies,

00:24:14.280 that these lockdown measures are just a terrible terrible error of history and the sooner that we

00:24:22.040 stop this madness and we get out of it and we find better ways to manage the risk of covet 19

00:24:28.760 whatever that is the better but to continue and to uh to impose these these indefinite lockdowns

00:24:37.640 and it's important to know here that because of changes made to public health legislation

00:24:43.240 in provinces like Alberta, BC, even though the legislation sets time limitations for the expiry

00:24:50.160 of these emergency measures, the provinces of BC and Alberta have actually put in special

00:24:56.200 provisions to extend these measures indefinitely. So then in Alberta, we're not going to be out of

00:25:02.680 these lockdown measures and we're not going to be out of a health emergency until Dina Hinshaw

00:25:07.360 declares that we are. Now the case you were referencing this this one that

00:25:13.500 you're that you're working on right now with the JCCF that one's the case

00:25:17.600 against suing the provincial government. I understand that that we reported on

00:25:24.700 this a couple of months ago actually I understand this has been sort of you

00:25:28.720 know the can has been kicked quite a few times down the road. Yeah what's

00:25:35.240 happened there i mean i mean i know hinshaw was supposed to be in court uh in september but but

00:25:41.640 uh chose well didn't choose but but said that she wasn't available because she was dealing with the

00:25:46.680 pandemic i mean this has been so stretched out what's happening well what happened in september

00:25:54.600 was that um we were supposed to go to hearing in the third week of september and a few days before

00:26:02.120 that hearing was to to start it was to be an in-person hearing um uh the province dr hinchaw

00:26:09.800 declared a further public health emergency and we were essentially told that um uh she would be

00:26:17.640 indefinitely unavailable because of dealing with the with the pandemic and myself and the other

00:26:23.240 lawyer involved uh jeffrey rath um were told that we could proceed with the hearing but without dr

00:26:31.320 hinchas involvement um that seemed to us rather like having a birthday party without a cake and

00:26:37.400 she's the key witness in the case right yeah and so we were we were placed in the situation where

00:26:43.320 we really could not proceed with the hearing and we were faced with a necessary adjournment we then

00:26:49.720 learned shortly afterward that she took the two or three days when she was supposed to be testifying

00:26:55.400 she took them off anyway. What happened then is in the early part of this year, right before

00:27:03.240 Christmas, in the early part of this year, we secured new hearing dates, which will begin in

00:27:08.540 the middle part of February. The most recent development, to answer your question, is that

00:27:13.220 we've been approached by lawyers for the Alberta government where they want to have the entire

00:27:19.820 hearing done in a virtual setting so that under a platform called Webex, we conduct

00:27:28.820 the whole trial, which amounts to cross-examination of Dr. Hinshaw and other experts into a Webex

00:27:35.820 format.

00:27:36.820 Both myself and Mr. Rath feel quite strongly that that would seriously impair our ability

00:27:46.620 to conduct a proper cross-examination of Dr. Hinshaw.

00:27:49.620 So we've taken the position that we would agree to the WebEx hearing, with the exception of Dr. Hinshaw,

00:27:54.500 whom we would want to have testifying hearing.

00:27:57.680 The main reason for that is because it's our intention to confront her with literally hundreds of documents

00:28:03.680 for the purposes of impeachment to attack her reliability and credibility

00:28:11.500 in terms of the statements that she's made to the public about COVID-19 and lockdown measures.

00:28:17.820 Most recently, your listeners are probably aware of a recent press release that was made by Dr. Hinchon, really a public admission by both she and Alberta Health Services, that the numbers of people during the heart of the pandemic, which were used as really the impetus for lockdown measures, were misrepresented to the public.

00:28:41.000 in that the number of people who are actually in ICU with COVID

00:28:48.460 versus people who tested positively for COVID

00:28:53.220 but were not there really suffering from COVID symptoms

00:28:56.980 were misrepresented to the public.

00:29:01.080 So that's one example of the type of contradiction

00:29:04.200 that we would want to put to Dr. Hinshaw under oath

00:29:07.660 and we want to do it with her in person

00:29:09.960 as opposed to Webex, the Court of Queen's Bench Justice, Justice Romaine, is going to

00:29:18.440 rule on that application and will be very interested to see over the next few days what

00:29:24.080 she decides. I know, for example, another case, a similar case in Manitoba, was done

00:29:31.280 entirely with virtual testimony under a virtual platform. And so it's conceivable that Justice

00:29:39.840 remain will will agree to the government's request but for what it's worth we've done our best to

00:29:45.600 oppose that application now i'm curious layton can can the average person watch in if this is a webex

00:29:55.760 hearing can the average person watch in because i'm seeing a lot of comments from our our viewers

00:30:01.600 that are saying they would like to be able to and they think it it should be made public that

00:30:06.640 the public can watch this this hearing well that's part of the reason why we wanted to have

00:30:12.080 an in-person hearing uh because our courts are still open open to the public and uh to my nose

00:30:18.560 there was no restriction placed upon the number of people who are going to be uh in the courtroom

00:30:23.600 at any given time however under the virtual platform um uh i don't know the precise answer

00:30:31.600 to the question i i expect that the it will be possible for a certain number of people

00:30:40.320 to be on a platform to to view the trial uh i don't know the precise circumstances under which

00:30:46.640 that type of access is going to be granted i would expect that members of the media

00:30:52.480 accredited media would probably be given uh preference um but um that that it's important

00:31:00.480 to note and it's disappointing actually that this is a very important case it might be the most

00:31:06.320 important civil case that's ongoing in the entire province and yet uh most people don't know anything

00:31:11.680 about it uh because it hasn't been really publicized at all in the legacy media so we're

00:31:18.080 grateful for uh for uh people like the western standard to get this word out to the people

00:31:24.420 But the hearing is going to take place during the last two and a half weeks of February.

00:31:32.560 It'll be decided in Calgary, but it's likely that most of the participants will not be in the same courtroom.

00:31:41.200 Again, this is due to the ongoing health emergency that the province of Alberta has declared and really has been in place since the middle part of September.

00:31:51.340 Right. So I will do my best to look into that to see if there's an option to potentially

00:32:01.660 watch this in some ways. Is there any way that you know of to petition that the court

00:32:06.540 make this viewable for many? I'm just responding to an overwhelming

00:32:13.740 response here from a lot of viewers who think this should definitely be something the public

00:32:19.580 is is allowed to watch well obviously there is the the option of contacting your your mla um and uh

00:32:29.180 and and sending emails or or calls of course they they are the people who are charged with

00:32:35.740 the responsibility of representing them locally um there may be information available on the alberta

00:32:42.300 courts website um i would caution people against inundating the you know the courts the courthouse

00:32:50.220 with calls because they're very the clerks they're uh very very busy and of course they're they're

00:32:55.820 dealing with a lot of uh coveted restrictions themselves and coping for you know really

00:33:01.500 coping well with that um so i would caution people uh about inundating them with with uh

00:33:07.580 inquiries about this um but uh but those that that's what i would that i would suggest probably

00:33:13.900 the best avenue would be to contact your local mla um because they would have some influence

00:33:20.220 over talking to uh to the alberta government about uh about perhaps increasing um the the level of

00:33:27.660 visibility of this hearing of course it's entirely conceivable and i don't know this to be true that

00:33:33.820 the alberta government would not want the public to be able to widely view what's going on in the

00:33:38.140 hearing i hope that that's not true because the issues that are being dealt with in that hearing

00:33:44.300 really concern whether lockdown restrictions violate essential freedoms fundamental freedoms

00:33:52.140 that canadians have under the charter under section two of the chart in particular freedom

00:33:56.860 of religion. It's a huge one. But the real question is whether what the lockdown restrictions

00:34:04.620 have done in terms of impacting Albertans is whether that outweighs any good that was done

00:34:18.780 in terms of preventing the infection transmission of COVID-19.

00:34:23.500 If there's a strong case to be made for saying that anything that the Alberta government has

00:34:31.740 done has reduced the infection rates and transmissibility of COVID-19, I can't see it.

00:34:44.300 In fact, we have a very close comparable if we look at the state of Florida, which has been open

00:34:50.620 really since last spring with no COVID restrictions, but for the concentration of their public

00:35:01.400 health resources on the most vulnerable population, which is obviously the elderly, we can see

00:35:08.580 that Florida actually has one of the lowest infection, I believe the lowest infection

00:35:13.560 rate in all of North America without masking, without social distancing, without closing

00:35:19.160 down businesses without vaccine mandates and things of that nature. But the case is really

00:35:26.760 about what are the impacts of these lockdown restrictions and are they a reasonable limit

00:35:34.200 on the constitutionally protected freedoms that are enshrined in our charter. One of the witnesses

00:35:40.520 in our case is a man named Brian Peckford who is the last surviving premier who was at the table

00:35:47.800 when the charter was conceived and signed into law and he's been a very outspoken critic

00:35:55.320 of the way that governments and our courts have have dealt with this and

00:36:01.480 we we hope to have him testify at the hearing to talk about this to say that really the approach

00:36:08.920 that's being taken to assessment of this charter question and particularly to the saving provision

00:36:15.560 there's section one of the charter saying that this is wrong headed so we know what he's going

00:36:22.200 to say it's a question of whether the court is going to give it any credence or any weight

00:36:26.600 we we hope that the court does because our charter is going to turn 40 in april

00:36:32.040 it's very important it's a cherished part of our of our nation and it's an expression of our

00:36:39.160 of our collective culture and our history and our values and it's not being respected right

00:36:45.160 now in this country and it must be because without it um as we've discovered over the

00:36:51.640 last couple of years we're not very free what what's always seemed so surprising to me in

00:36:59.880 these last two years is that there hasn't been any public forums and you know i think that's

00:37:06.040 what has led to people feeling so much mistrust and feeling so misled and lied to, flat out lied

00:37:13.960 to. I mean, you alluded to the conversation or the announcement Dr. Hinshaw had. I know yesterday,

00:37:22.040 they also started to report on the percentages of hospitalizations that are because of COVID,

00:37:29.400 not just with COVID. I mean, that's a big difference. I know, you know, if somebody's

00:37:33.240 in there with a broken arm or a hip surgery and that's the reason they're in the hospital,

00:37:40.520 but they're counted as a COVID case and reported on as a COVID case just because they tested

00:37:45.560 positive in hospital. I mean, it's created such a fear narrative to just be reporting

00:37:55.780 on all of these cases. So yesterday was the first time that I actually saw Hinshaw report

00:38:03.200 on the the percentage and it was kind of 50 50 really 50 of the people were in there

00:38:08.080 because of covid and 50 were were in there this is just regular hospitalizations i know it was

00:38:13.520 higher it was in the 70 range um for people in icu but but that i think that makes a difference

00:38:20.560 and and and i think you know i think there have been a lot of calls from the public and others

00:38:26.560 that that ahs be more transparent and the ministry be more transparent with these numbers and the

00:38:31.920 reporting yeah it's a great point and i must say i i feel very badly for people who i see

00:38:40.320 walking around outside with masks on they're in fact the the the government's expert in the

00:38:48.720 manitoba case was asked uh under oath whether there was any any study uh showing that there

00:38:57.040 was a risk of contracting COVID outside and they said quite frankly that there is not. There is

00:39:02.800 virtually no risk of getting COVID outside and you see people walking around with masks on.

00:39:09.040 Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is the chief expert on our side in the Ingram case that we were just

00:39:14.320 talking about and also one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, he is a

00:39:20.560 a professor of medicine and an expert in virology and epidemiology at Stanford University in

00:39:27.120 California. He, in discussing this with him, it's his opinion that the real pandemic is,

00:39:35.340 as you quite rightly state, is fear. And what Dr. Bhattacharya said to me, his greatest concern,

00:39:44.780 Because, of course, just like Dr. Hinshaw, he's a professional in public health.

00:39:51.400 But Dr. Bhattacharya's opinion, and this is a man with a 35-page resume, 1,400 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

00:40:00.680 He said the greatest legacy of public health out of COVID is going to be a legacy of distrust of public health, just as you say.

00:40:11.740 And so the net effect of that, unfortunately, is that although it's good and we're fortunate that COVID-19 did not turn out to be the worldwide super killer that we thought it was going to be perhaps in February, March, two years ago.

00:40:31.240 when we do get a very, very dangerous virus, like, for example, in Ebola, where things like

00:40:41.660 contract tracing and social distancing and quarantining will be necessary in order to

00:40:47.100 protect the public, because Ebola is a virus that actually kills humans, as opposed to being,

00:40:53.880 as opposed to a coronavirus, which is really evolutionarily adapted to focusing on transmission

00:41:03.380 as its success story. When we have a real killer virus, probably more than half the population,

00:41:10.400 based upon recent polls, is not going to take that seriously, because they will have learned

00:41:15.400 from COVID-19 to distrust what public health officials tell us. And Dr. Bhattacharya says,

00:41:23.440 basically is that what we have through COVID-19 is a distortion of the role of public health.

00:41:29.140 The role of public health historically has been to provide the public with reliable information

00:41:36.440 about the risk, the prevalent health risk that they can use in order to make informed,

00:41:44.440 responsible decisions to reduce their own risk and by extension, the risk to the public.

00:41:49.980 What public health has become under COVID-19 is an excuse to create a medical dictatorship where people are infantilized and they're treated like children and told precisely what to do.

00:42:09.640 And if they don't, that they'll get seriously sick and die, overwhelm the health care system.

00:42:15.440 And in fact, what we found, and Mr. Neal was just talking about what's happening in Manitoba, it's not COVID-19 that's overwhelmed the health system, but it's lockdowns and the restrictions and the way that our healthcare systems are managed and rationalized and mismanaged and bureaucratized that is the greatest threat to our health.

00:42:41.880 not COVID-19, but in my view, the irresponsible way in which public resources are being used

00:42:51.180 and applied as regards public health care. And I think for me, the sort of pink elephant

00:43:00.420 in the room is the hundreds of billions of dollars federally that's been spent over these

00:43:06.500 last two years, and we're still in no better position. We're still seeing

00:43:11.460 hospitals. I mean, that money, I'm certain, could have opened thousands upon

00:43:18.940 thousands of hospital beds. If truly the issue in our country is a

00:43:25.580 shortage of beds and shortage of care workers, you would think that the

00:43:31.680 hundreds of billions that we've spent would have would have gone a long way to

00:43:35.840 fix that. So yeah, there's I think a real realization now that there's been some

00:43:44.080 huge mismanagement financially as well through this pandemic that is leading to mistrust which

00:43:51.280 you know I think is in a way a good thing because as you're calling on people that we need to be

00:43:56.640 you know really wary moving forward and really keeping a good eye on things I think

00:44:02.560 I think this will help people focus on that a little bit more.

00:44:10.120 I agree.

00:44:11.180 And this gets back to my other point about in the aftermath of COVID,

00:44:15.760 I think that as Canadians, we need to demand some legislative changes

00:44:20.520 that are going to place some restrictions on the ability of governments

00:44:26.940 to do things like spend money and to drive the country into debt.

00:44:33.100 If you look at right now, we have a record debt in this country.

00:44:38.760 And really, if we had, as you quite rightly pointed out,

00:44:44.380 if we had rationalized our resources and been more intelligent,

00:44:48.280 more wise in the way that we use them,

00:44:51.680 we wouldn't be in the situation we're in as a country right now.

00:44:56.940 with expanding debt, inflation, and a legacy that we're passing on to our grandchildren's children

00:45:04.660 of having to pay back the money that was doled out, literally doled out under COVID.

00:45:12.560 That was a disastrous policy, which created a problem that I think is going to be much more serious

00:45:19.380 and long-lasting and punitive to not only this generation, but future generations of Canadians

00:45:25.720 than COVID-19 would ever be, because it looks as though we're coming to the end of COVID-19,

00:45:31.940 thankfully, knock wood, but we're going to have this legacy of debt and inflation for a long,

00:45:38.500 long time to come. Yeah, very long time. Now, Leighton, we are still in the midst of it here

00:45:44.920 in this province and in this country specifically, too. A lot of people still facing being put on

00:45:52.440 leave without pay. As we speak, I'm hearing from people every day who are facing this. And I mean,

00:46:00.800 we're talking, you know, when we get into the employment laws and human rights laws, I mean,

00:46:05.620 some of the, even the idea of the exemption, a religious exemption, for instance, you know,

00:46:13.720 I have somebody who's dealing with looking at trying to get a religious exemption as we speak

00:46:20.820 to continue working. What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of religious exemptions and

00:46:27.000 the fact that they are being sort of blatantly ignored or rejected? Well, I can tell you that

00:46:34.580 with a couple of notable exceptions, every single religious exemption that has been applied for by

00:46:43.880 our clients and that's numbering several hundred people no religious exemption has been granted

00:46:54.560 the most extreme case is a lady who worked for many years for the Salvation Army that's the

00:47:02.580 Salvation Army and her religious exemption was denied because they had no regard for her

00:47:09.860 christian faith and their salvation faith-based organization right card for someone's christian

00:47:17.180 religious beliefs uh you know where where do you go um so so um i have a suspicion

00:47:25.980 that uh these exemption claims um whether they're medical or they're religious uh

00:47:34.920 In virtually every case that I've seen, whenever a worker applies for these exemptions, they have to provide very detailed personal information about themselves, their religious beliefs, their medical background that would normally be protected by privacy legislation.

00:47:57.340 Right.

00:47:57.700 And I've been advising our clients that I'm very concerned about the disclosure of this information because if these exemptions are just being uniformly denied, and they are, like we're talking about form letters in response where it's clear that these applications have been dismissed out of hand,

00:48:21.780 that there may be a much more surreptitious purpose behind the collection of this data.

00:48:30.340 We know how important and valuable people's data is nowadays.

00:48:35.920 In fact, this is the main asset that companies like Meta, formerly Facebook, Google, Twitter,

00:48:44.720 they sell this data.

00:48:46.980 It's very, very valuable.

00:48:48.080 And I'm concerned about employers and public and private employers having this information and the use that they're making of it, particularly in a situation where it seems clear that the goal of mandatory vaccination in Canada is to have everyone carry around vaccine passports with QR codes where we can be tracked everywhere we go and whatever we do.

00:49:18.080 so the exemptions themselves have been uh as i said not not a very useful exercise for most

00:49:25.760 workers and i would caution people who are thinking about provide applying for exemptions

00:49:31.760 to be very mindful of the risk of providing this personal information

00:49:35.920 to an employer who is in the act of violating your human rights

00:49:41.680 So, but all of these people that are reaching out with questions,

00:49:49.040 they're just hoping somebody can give them some guidance. What should I do? My employers,

00:49:56.160 my back's against the wall with my employer. I need to stay employed. I need to be making money.

00:50:01.040 I don't want to get vaccinated. But you're also saying, I would hazard that you produce all of

00:50:08.320 that information to your employer what do you recommend what what is the best course that these

00:50:14.240 people can take well i still think people should claim their exemptions the best exemption in my

00:50:20.720 opinion is to claim uh the doctrine of informed consent but there's a an eminent doctor named

00:50:27.920 dr payne p-a-y-n-e who wrote a brilliant letter last september 20 page letter to dr hinshaw

00:50:35.360 uh three of the last three or four pages of that are just references because uh the letter is so

00:50:42.340 is so well done and uh and so brilliantly uh noted noted up and cited uh both medically and legally

00:50:51.440 that it it really presents a replete a complete uh argument in favor of the doctrine of informed

00:50:59.080 consent and the essence of that letter just to boil it down is that no one can provide informed

00:51:07.000 consent to the taking of the covet 19 vaccine it traces back the this all the way back to the

00:51:14.360 ancient greeks and hippocrates who uh sort of is sort of the granddaddy of all doctors famously

00:51:21.480 said you know do no harm the hippocratic oath but also uh in 1947 there was an international

00:51:29.560 charter called the nuremberg code which basic which is which recognized that certain medical

00:51:36.680 atrocities happened in the death camps in europe during world war ii medical experiments where

00:51:42.520 people were injected with things and heinous medical experiments were conducted on people

00:51:47.320 against their will the nuremberg code people can google that and it sets out uh the whole doctrine

00:51:53.160 of informed consent and states clearly that no person can be forced to put anything into their

00:51:58.360 bodies against their consent dr payne's point uh which is made up as i said very well in his letter

00:52:05.960 is that there's no person who can provide informed consent to the taking of the code 19

00:52:10.680 vaccines because firstly we can't be informed we don't know the short-term impacts of the

00:52:17.000 taking of these vaccines which are still experimental until 2023 and by the way

00:52:22.200 Pfizer is about to release in March their their next version of the vaccine so that this is going

00:52:28.920 to go on interminably but also apart from the short-term impacts of these vaccines

00:52:34.600 some of which are being reported and are horrifying, no one knows the long-term impacts

00:52:40.760 of these vaccines, both the medical and the long-term social impacts of both the vaccines

00:52:48.600 and the vaccine mandates, which have been so divisive that our Prime Minister recently made

00:52:56.040 a statement publicly that equated the unvaccinated with essentially political dissidents who are

00:53:04.600 racist, and misogynist. And of course, you have the Quebec government that has now passed

00:53:10.020 legislation aimed at taxing and penalizing people who simply do not want to have a vaccine,

00:53:18.240 which really is not a vaccine at all, but more of a bioweapon, ingested into their or injected

00:53:24.380 into their bodies. So really, what I suggest to people in terms of exemptions, that's the best

00:53:31.720 exemption claim you can have because in that situation, you don't need to provide a lot of

00:53:37.540 personal information to your employer in support of an exemption. What you're claiming is you're

00:53:43.840 relying upon a well-documented and world-renowned and recognized claim for exemption from the

00:53:54.220 application of a medicine. We've never had a situation in, certainly in the West,

00:54:00.820 where we've been publicly extorted, privately and publicly extorted into taking a substance

00:54:09.760 into our bodies and vilified, publicly vilified and penalized for not doing so. It's an

00:54:19.060 unprecedented situation. In fact, the government of Canada's own lawyers in a 1996 report to

00:54:27.300 government told them that they couldn't do it because it violated the constitution.

00:54:33.060 This is precisely why, in my opinion, employers, public and private, are being used as a mechanism,

00:54:43.300 as a conduit to impose a vaccine mandate that is fundamentally legal. In other words, governments

00:54:50.020 are doing indirectly what they cannot do directly. Having said that, I have to applaud premiers like

00:54:56.840 Mr. Kenney and Mr. Mo, who, despite the pressure that's coming from the federal government

00:55:02.660 to impose these vaccine mandates, are standing firm and saying, no, we took this out of our

00:55:08.520 public health legislation. We think this is wrong and we won't have it. Unfortunately,

00:55:14.560 that hasn't led to the repeal of these programs that are in place in Alberta that are requiring

00:55:22.980 businesses and most public places to require proof of vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test

00:55:31.640 just to enter now i i'm sure you heard of the uh the story uh out of shell scotford's location

00:55:39.800 where they have now sort of reversed their vaccine mandate they are not requiring

00:55:45.400 uh any workers or contractors to show proof of vaccination they are doing on-site testing

00:55:52.200 uh for people who are coming on site but uh no longer mandating at least for now it says that

00:55:58.720 they've temporarily stopped. Thoughts on that? I mean, that seems hopeful as well. It seems like

00:56:07.140 they're recognizing that maybe these decisions have not been wise business since.

00:56:14.440 I think that is hopeful. I think it's a move in the right direction. I do not like the

00:56:23.380 requirement of testing, however, I consider that to be still a human rights violation

00:56:29.480 because what it is requiring people to do is to provide a bodily sample for analysis

00:56:35.040 that the results of that analysis then have to be disclosed to the employer.

00:56:44.440 And then if those results turn out to be unfavorable to the employee in terms of a

00:56:49.740 positive result then there are prejudicial impacts for the employer for the employee so i i am i i

00:56:57.660 equate that testing uh to to uh to be something similar to um unjustified uh testing of uh people

00:57:08.320 for example if if they're out driving and uh if the police can haul somebody off on the side of

00:57:14.700 the road and take them down to the police station and test them for the presence of of alcohol and

00:57:19.540 test their blood alcohol level, even though there are no reasonable, probable grounds

00:57:23.640 for the belief that that person has been, you know, has been, is impaired.

00:57:27.780 In this situation, we're testing asymptomatic people, and under circumstances where that

00:57:38.100 really should stop, and Dr. Hinshaw recently stated in a press conference that she hinted

00:57:44.020 strongly that perhaps this is something that we were going to stop doing, but then of course

00:57:48.540 the federal government is telling us that they've ordered many millions of rapid tests that have

00:57:54.740 been delivered to our schools. Another promising sign, apart from Shell, is I believe this was

00:58:01.760 just announced, the National Hockey League has announced that after the All-Star break, which

00:58:06.520 is upcoming, they will no longer be testing players for COVID-19 who are asymptomatic.

00:58:13.900 so so i think what we're seeing if we're want to uh sort of look at the bright side of the moon

00:58:21.020 is that there is a progression a movement away from the what i say and what many experts say

00:58:28.540 is the myth of asymptomatic spread it never made sense to be testing uh people who were had no

00:58:36.140 symptoms. The risk of asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 is banishingly low. It always has been.

00:58:43.100 We've known it for a very long time. And to have people going around wearing masks and social

00:58:49.200 distancing and all these sorts of things really does no good and does tremendous harm. And so

00:58:56.840 I do applaud Shell for taking a very bold step. And I certainly am hopeful that other large

00:59:05.380 companies, large-scale employers will follow suit. Unfortunately, it hasn't yet gathered

00:59:14.900 enough momentum that we can call it a trend. It's a step in the right direction and let's hope that

00:59:20.740 other employers follow suit. I think the big one is going to be the federal government because

00:59:28.180 really, they are the drivers of all this stuff. I suspect that there are several provinces,

00:59:38.860 and I think Alberta is among them, who would like to have COVID-19 in the rearview mirror.

00:59:46.520 Premier Kenney has expressed this repeatedly in some of his public statements, but it's very

00:59:51.420 difficult to do that when the entire country is under public pressure from the federal government,

00:59:57.860 which is the largest employer in Canada to keep the COVID narrative going, despite all of the

01:00:08.660 evidence that really COVID-19 no longer poses a serious public health risk, either at work

01:00:16.260 or anywhere else, and that the lockdown restrictions and the vaccine mandates are doing much more harm,

01:00:23.220 both presently and long-term than the virus ever has or could.

01:00:29.820 Now, Leighton, I know I've had you for about an hour, and if you can give me a little bit more time,

01:00:35.200 I have a few more things that I wouldn't mind touching on with you if you have the time.

01:00:41.700 Certainly.

01:00:42.600 One of the things that I've had a lot of people bring up to me when it comes to the exemptions

01:00:47.840 is the the notice of liability which isn't necessarily necessarily an exemption but

01:00:53.440 people have been you know wondering if these notices of liability that they're presenting

01:00:58.320 to their employer telling the employer that you are taking responsibility um you know for any

01:01:05.520 outcomes or you know any any issues that i may suffer from you know like what what are

01:01:11.280 your thoughts on those notice of liabilities are they effective do you recommend them um

01:01:17.840 I do endorse them. I do encourage them. I think that it is important for workers to let the employer know that they're taking the position that their rights, their employment, and their human rights are being violated.

01:01:37.680 and to put the employer on notice that if these violations continue that there will be legal

01:01:46.720 repercussions. I'm not convinced, I'm not as cynical as some, I'm not convinced that most

01:01:53.520 employers who are subjected to these vaccine mandates actually support them. In fact,

01:02:02.500 I'm privy to when I saw a correspondence exchange between the current Minister of Transport and the

01:02:11.800 CEO of Canadian Pacific in which the CEO of Canadian Pacific was basically saying to the

01:02:18.560 Minister that if the vaccine mandate the Minister of Transport's order were applied strictly it

01:02:26.720 essentially shut down Canadian Pacific and the CEO was questioning how that would be good for

01:02:33.680 the Canadian public to essentially shut down one of its essential railways and especially in the

01:02:41.840 context of what we're talking about constantly about supply chain problems. So I think that

01:02:49.120 there's two purposes that are served by these liability letters and my firm usually puts them

01:02:55.920 into the form of something called the cease and desist letter. Firstly, it gives notice to the

01:03:02.320 employer. It's information that they can use so that they are aware that certain numbers of their

01:03:09.280 workers do not accept the vaccine and are opposed to it. And I think that's important information

01:03:15.840 for employers to have. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the employee has a duty to provide

01:03:21.120 that information but i think it certainly shows um it's it's good conduct on the on the part of

01:03:27.600 the employee to provide the employer with that information so that they can make proper decisions

01:03:34.000 and i think the second part of it is it does give notice to the employer that what they are doing

01:03:40.400 exposes them to the risk of of litigation and and i think that also informs the employer so that

01:03:48.640 they can seek legal advice and make proper decisions and it's just likely and i believe

01:03:53.920 it this is happening that as this situation develops it's an organic situation that's in flux

01:04:01.120 i have no doubt that many of the employers in shell might be a great example

01:04:05.440 whereas some of their employers i don't know this to be true but it's entirely conceivable

01:04:09.520 and even probable that some shell employees uh complained about this and uh claimed exemptions

01:04:16.480 and gave notice to the employer that they saw this as a human rights violation.

01:04:22.480 And then a company like Shell went back and reassessed their original decision

01:04:27.020 and then moved forward and made a better decision.

01:04:31.560 I mean, companies are run by boards of directors and they're beholden to shareholders

01:04:38.020 and they can only act on the best information that they have.

01:04:42.880 and I think this is an important purpose that these liability letters and cease and desist

01:04:51.080 letters serve and I think that so I encourage workers to do it not only for their own good

01:04:57.220 but for the good of the employer and anything that's good for these employers by extension

01:05:03.020 is good for Canadian workers and good for the Canadian economy. Right and it sounds like the

01:05:08.240 more a company receives these, these notices of liability, it can sway their, like you're saying,

01:05:15.920 it can sway their decisions, how they want to move forward with these, these mandates and whatnot,

01:05:20.900 because, you know, I think the louder their employees are, the more they're protesting this

01:05:27.100 with these, these kinds of notices, I think you're right, it definitely can affect decisions down the

01:05:32.040 road. Now, I know there are a few different sites that people can find these notice of liabilities,

01:05:39.100 you know, ones that you can sort of print off. Anything you can recommend where people can go

01:05:44.560 to find a good notice of liability that's comprehensive? Yeah, well, I mentioned my

01:05:53.920 friend James Kitchen, who has been on, and he's a lawyer for an organization called Liberty

01:06:00.820 coalition they have a lot of uh documents like this on their website that are downloadable

01:06:06.900 the justice center for constitutional freedoms which is based in calgary has information uh

01:06:13.060 like that some of the um some of the cease and desist letters that we have produced

01:06:20.580 are posted on uh the rebel news site uh because uh many of of our clients are engaged through

01:06:29.220 an organization called the democracy fund which is a third-party crowdfunding organization and

01:06:35.460 so uh when we do for example the university of winnipeg uh lawsuit that has been publicized

01:06:41.780 recently is an example of a case that we've undertaken on behalf of uh some some teachers

01:06:47.780 at the university of winnipeg through the auspices and the support of the democracy fund and so uh

01:06:54.260 when there is actually a cease and desist letter an example of that uh in relation to that case on

01:07:00.340 the rebel news website so those are those are a few examples where people can can access this

01:07:06.660 this information great appreciate that uh one of the other things i wanted to touch on you late

01:07:12.820 uh touch on with you layton is uh this the the and and you did mention it a little bit earlier but

01:07:19.380 this sort of overreach that's happened, especially when it comes to medical professionals,

01:07:25.460 doctors who have been trying to say, treat patients for COVID or, you know, doing things

01:07:33.540 against what strangely has been has been sort of deterred by the College of Physicians and

01:07:41.940 surgeons or AHS or the ministry. You know, there seems to be this this fear that's happening even

01:07:50.180 for doctors. I know I've heard from a couple who've actually been raided by the College of

01:07:55.860 Physicians and Surgeons. One of them was an interesting story that we covered on

01:08:01.940 uh doctor or sorry um the lawyer uh jeffrey rath his doctor ended up getting um raided and they

01:08:12.500 specifically went for um jeff rath's file at his doctor's office while mr rath was in active

01:08:22.980 litigation against the college of physicians and surgeons um you know for clients that that seems

01:08:30.660 like a massive overreach in in my opinion uh what are your what are your thoughts on that

01:08:38.340 well the best expression of my thoughts about that are actually published in a paper uh that i've

01:08:45.700 that i've written and if people are interested it's on a another website there's a wonderful

01:08:50.900 website called the frontier center for public policy i've actually written a paper on this

01:08:56.900 But just to boil it down, what I say in that paper is that COVID-19, in my opinion, is an example of a trend, of a progression that's occurred in Canadian and in Western society and in Canada,

01:09:19.060 whereby problems that we used to solve locally as individuals and as society,

01:09:28.100 what we've done is we've delegated responsibility for that to the state.

01:09:34.140 And what that has permitted the state to do is to translate that responsibility into power.

01:09:41.860 And in my view, in terms of a successful functioning democracy, which Canada is set up to be and historically has been, right now we have an imbalance of power as between the individual and individual societies and the government.

01:10:05.320 For example, historically, as communities in Canada, we've been able to do a very effective job to deal with things like, you know, forest fires, flash floods, things of that nature, public emergencies and health emergencies.

01:10:24.340 And the public, that is society versus the state versus government, has been able to do a much better job of managing resources and of providing real help to people and solving problems than governments have been able to do.

01:10:45.060 But what we've had through COVID-19 is a situation whereby the power of government has been massively expanded.

01:10:58.700 The best example of this, the best proof of this in Alberta is if you look at the Public Health Act.

01:11:03.520 During COVID, the government of Alberta significantly amended the Public Health Act and bestowed

01:11:17.740 upon Dr. Dina Hinshaw, the Chief Medical Officer of Health, dictatorial powers, executive

01:11:27.320 powers whereby she could declare laws. 1.00

01:11:33.020 could impose immediately prohibitions on activities, compel people to do things, and this made 0.82

01:11:42.440 her, and she still is, the single most powerful person in the history of our province. And

01:11:51.460 these, even after COVID is gone, those powers will remain. That should be of concern to

01:11:58.280 Albertans because that's not a good thing. It's not a good way. It's not the way that

01:12:02.560 our democracy is set up. The way that we all learned in social studies class about how laws

01:12:07.980 are made in Canada, in terms of the proper functioning of a parliamentary democracy through

01:12:14.940 debate and exchanging free ideas about the wisdom of laws, first reading, second reading,

01:12:23.440 third reading, that's all been swept away. And for the past two years, Alberta and indeed

01:12:31.800 all of canada has been governed through executive uh dictatorial order and uh it's it's in in my

01:12:40.520 respect for you it's inverted uh the whole the whole uh way that our democracy was intended

01:12:48.600 to function and although it's true that this executive form of government is more immediate

01:12:57.560 and in some ways is more effective in terms of getting things done i don't think that it serves

01:13:04.040 the public good very well because and we can see the impacts of this uh just if you sit down and

01:13:11.320 you think about all the things that you can't do now that you could do uh a few years ago

01:13:18.600 before government was given all of this emergency dictatorial power.

01:13:24.440 It's my view that these emergency powers should not exist at all.

01:13:29.500 I think they're redundant.

01:13:31.140 I don't think governments need to have these executive powers,

01:13:33.980 these emergency powers, because our elected representatives

01:13:39.240 could still get together and debate, for example,

01:13:44.040 the wisdom of of a lockdown or a vaccine mandate and they could make those decisions in a much

01:13:52.460 more democratic way and that that that could have been done and in my respective view should have

01:14:00.520 been done just because the the the Alberta government the existing Alberta government

01:14:09.480 happened to have been elected at the time democratically um that did not give them in my

01:14:16.120 in my view the executive dictatorial power uh to ignore the constitutional process the past laws

01:14:24.200 that clearly violate the charter and violate the constitutions the constitution of canada

01:14:29.560 and which severely restricted uh the civil liberties of all albertans so i think in the

01:14:35.160 the aftermath of COVID, one of the things we're going to need to do, and it's going to be difficult

01:14:40.000 because people are not going to want to hear about COVID anymore. But I think we've got to

01:14:46.360 get to a place in our society, in our government, in our law, where we sort of cut into and reduce,

01:14:56.300 and I would like to see actually the abolition of these emergency powers because they're quite

01:15:01.480 necessary and I don't think that they serve the public good. Agreed. I noticed a comment here

01:15:11.360 from Cheryl. She says she knows a lot of judges who were forced to be jabbed or lose their jobs.

01:15:17.940 If our court system has broken our laws, how can we expect the judicial system to do the right

01:15:23.780 thing well that's a great question and actually uh i uh i gave a a recent podcast review i was

01:15:33.060 asked this question specifically about you know some people say that uh you know our judges are

01:15:39.300 biased and just going along with the government i i don't happen to sign on to that in fact i know

01:15:45.460 uh because i've spent you know a lifetime the last 30 years appearing in the courts of our province

01:15:50.020 I've never met a corrupt judge.

01:15:55.780 All the judges I've known and I do know are very principled people.

01:16:01.880 They care about Canada.

01:16:03.700 They care about making good decisions.

01:16:07.340 And they got into or they went up to the bench because I think that by and large they felt

01:16:13.380 that they had a duty and something to offer Canadians in terms of public service.

01:16:19.700 The explanation I would say about why we haven't had decisions in Canada from the bench questioning

01:16:29.740 the government's authority or setting aside these laws is for a couple of reasons.

01:16:37.860 Number one, honestly I think that people like me haven't done a good enough job of persuading

01:16:45.920 courts to do it.

01:16:48.660 We need to present better evidence and better arguments to persuade a court to do it.

01:16:54.500 I think then that's something that's on us that we're going to have to do.

01:16:58.260 And I expect, I not only believe, I expect that as we go on and we develop better arguments

01:17:04.960 and can produce better evidence, that the courts are going to be more questioning of

01:17:11.800 these powers that our governments have been exercising.

01:17:15.380 I think that's one part of it.

01:17:16.560 Secondly, I think that courts have been historically reluctant to enter into the realm of being lawmakers.

01:17:29.400 The role of our courts is to interpret and apply the law in making rational decisions that are consistent with the Constitution.

01:17:40.440 It's the role of government to create law.

01:17:43.480 And so what we've been asking courts to do is very, very difficult.

01:17:47.320 You think about it in the midst of a pandemic, we've been asking judges to come in and really second guess the laws that the governments have been making in order to deal with something called the pandemic.

01:17:58.540 The only criticism that I would love of the courts, which I think is a fair one, is that

01:18:08.560 courts have been very ready to presume the existence of something called a pandemic,

01:18:15.160 as opposed to going deeper and really analyzing the evidence to determine the question of

01:18:22.340 whether or not COVID-19 actually poses an existential crisis, a serious public health

01:18:29.960 risk. But, you know, that gets back to the onus on lawyers. People like me, perhaps we

01:18:35.900 haven't done a good enough job of persuading the court to enter into that inquiry. But

01:18:41.740 I think there is a reluctance on the part of courts, and I think a healthy one, to not

01:18:49.440 be quick to second guess and strike down. I mean, let's take it to the nth degree. What if we had

01:18:58.160 a court system that was constantly striking out the laws that government made? What kind of society

01:19:04.240 would we have then? Then we'd be living under a judicial dictatorship, wouldn't we? So I think

01:19:10.120 there's a balance there that needs to be struck. And I think that there are very good people in

01:19:15.260 our courts, very intelligent people, highly principled people. And I think that ultimately

01:19:20.020 they are going to strike that balance. We're going to see some decisions come about that are

01:19:26.360 going to reveal very clearly that our judges are not biased, that in fact we still have a very

01:19:33.000 well-functioning free court system. The other thing I would say in defense of the courts is that

01:19:41.660 But it has been very, very difficult to keep the courts open throughout the pandemic in the face of the information that the courts have been provided.

01:19:52.200 And I can tell you from somebody who's working in the courts that the chief judges of our province have worked very hard and been very innovative in terms of continuing to provide access to justice for Albertans.

01:20:08.180 And so I think they deserve credit for doing that.

01:20:10.860 I'm speaking specifically to the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench and also of the Court of Appeal and also the pandemic.

01:20:20.040 The one, I think, excellent development that will be a legacy that comes out of COVID-19 is that it has allowed the courts to really modernize some of its structures.

01:20:32.280 For example, access to justice has been significantly improved in a lot of ways through the introduction and the advent of modern technology, like the one that you and I are accessing right now.

01:20:44.780 So I don't buy into this idea that the courts are biased.

01:20:48.620 I think that we still have a free and independent judicial system, and I think we're going to see better decisions or more favorable decisions to our side of the case as we go forward, if we're able to rise to the challenge of being more persuasive, providing the court with better evidence in these cases.

01:21:07.940 So, Leighton, you're hopeful.

01:21:10.460 You're optimistic.

01:21:11.980 I am.

01:21:12.640 Is that right?

01:21:13.280 I am.

01:21:13.980 I believe in Canada.

01:21:14.980 I believe in Canadians.

01:21:15.820 I think we've got a great country.

01:21:18.620 I think we have a great constitution.

01:21:21.520 I don't think that we've been governed very well.

01:21:24.680 I think that Canadians deserve better government, but we've got to demand it.

01:21:30.940 We have to demand better government.

01:21:32.620 If we demand better government, we're going to get better people going into government

01:21:38.180 for the right reasons.

01:21:40.300 I'm very concerned about what I see the grafting of power that these COVID-19 restrictions

01:21:50.560 have made possible.

01:21:52.900 And I think that we're going to be, if we do the right things and make the right decisions,

01:22:02.060 we're going to be a much better country, more free country that is going to cherish freedom

01:22:08.520 more um and i think that we'll be better equipped to deal with crises like a public health crisis

01:22:16.680 going forward if as a society we demand more of our government and if we're willing to make

01:22:22.760 you know uh the right the right decisions uh going forward uh i'm optimistic that canada still

01:22:31.240 uh has a very bright uh future we're going through a very difficult time

01:22:35.240 but you know as they say strongest steel is forged in hottest fire and this may be something that

01:22:43.760 we were just had to go through in order to get to a better place in Canada and I know many people

01:22:52.840 in my profession believe that to be the case and let's let's hope that we're we're all willing to

01:23:00.200 do what it takes to get there, but it's going to take sacrifice. Liberty is not free. Benjamin

01:23:09.280 Franklin famously wrote that one who would give up a little bit of liberty for some security

01:23:16.420 will end up with neither and deserve neither. There's a price to be paid for freedom and

01:23:21.800 we all have to pay it, even if it means, for example, that we're not willing to trade our

01:23:28.960 liberty and the integrity of our bodies for the security of a job. Well, I'll tell you, we've got

01:23:35.880 a lot of comments thanking you. And, you know, I get the impression that people are feeling a little

01:23:41.920 bit more hopeful with what they've heard from you today. So I really appreciate that, Leighton.

01:23:47.080 And I know you were mentioning that Frontier Centre for Public Policy. You'd mentioned that

01:23:51.400 was a fantastic resource with just loads of information that people can access. So what

01:24:01.120 I'm going to do is make sure that that's on our website on the page for this story for

01:24:06.360 this interview. So I'll grab the URL from you and have that up on our page for people

01:24:12.460 to access. And you know what, Leighton, it would be great to continue to check in with

01:24:17.940 In fact, I would really like to to talk with you again once that court case starts to starts to move in February with the with the case against the provincial government.

01:24:30.940 So hopefully I can check in with you again on that and we can keep people updated on how that's going.

01:24:35.940 And again, hopefully I can find find out if there's any chance that can be a public option for people to watch.

01:24:46.940 great thank you for having me on it's been a real pleasure yeah thanks for joining us

01:24:51.340 Leighton and again just really appreciate your your your optimism on how things are unfolding and

01:24:59.580 yeah I appreciate your time today thanks very much thank you that was Leighton Gray with uh

01:25:06.300 Leighton sorry Gray Woke Spencer LLP I know all of the lawyers that we speak to on a regular basis

01:25:12.700 are extremely busy with all sorts of cases representing everything from employment law to

01:25:19.100 union law and whatnot so again if if you're struggling with a situation with work we'll

01:25:26.620 have that website for frontier center for public policy up for you to access and again it's great

01:25:32.780 woke spencer llp i will also have their the url for their website for you to access coming up

01:25:40.620 up shortly. So thanks again for joining us this afternoon and hopefully you're feeling a little

01:25:44.620 bit more hopeful as well.

Western Standard - January 20, 2022

WATCH： Calgary lawyer discusses employment law and human rights with regard to vax mandates

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