Will Dove 0:00 The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms provides pro bono lawyers to Canadians whose constitutional rights have been violated. The JCCF is a registered charity founded over a decade ago by John Carpay, who still serves as the organization's president. Their work is supported entirely by donations. Since the start of the COVID plandemic, JCCF lawyers have worked tirelessly to represent those who lost their jobs and businesses, to defend everyday Canadians who received fines or prison sentences for defying mandates, and have partnered with my own organization, Strong and Free Canada,` to bring Canadians the truth in the form of brochures, demonstrations and podcasts. In this the first of a four part series on the legal actions being taken by the JCC F on behalf of their clients. I am joined in the studio by JCCF lawyer Glenn Blackett, who is currently representing Dr. Frances Widdowson, in her suit against the University of Lethbridge for canceling a talk she had been scheduled to give and fellow lawyer Roger Song, who is suing the Law Society of Alberta, over their diversity, equity and inclusion agenda, which they are attempting to force upon lawyers. The JCC F is the largest of illegal organizations in Canada fighting for our rights in the courts. Currently, they employ nine full time lawyers and four paralegals and are representing or have represented to Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, organizers of the Freedom Convoy and the Honorable Brian Peckford, who served as the third Premier of Newfoundland, and is the sole surviving author of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While many cases have been lost due to judges who are ignoring our Charter rights, many cases have also been won. When Judgment Day comes for the corrupt politicians and unelected tyrannical officials, who have trodden on our constitutional rights, it will be JCCF lawyers who will see to it that justice is served. Glenn, welcome to the show. Glenn Blackett 2:22 Thank you. Will Dove 2:22 It's a real pleasure to have you here. We met in person recently at a JCCF event, and we had a conversation there. And from that conversation, you kind of gave me the idea of doing this series of interviews with JCCF lawyers, because you guys had been fighting for what's actually for quite a long time. JCCF was launched, I think 2011 2012. But of course, you've been very busy the last few years with all the COVID stuff that's going on. And the first thing I want to ask you is why did you choose to work for the JCCF? When did you start working for them, but more importantly, why? Because of course, you could make more money elsewhere? Glenn Blackett 2:55 Well, I spent, I spent about 20 years working in a partnership downtown, you know, making decent money and I enjoyed the work. But I looked with increasing uncertainty and fear on what was happening in Canada, just the deterioration of liberal democracy, and creeping authoritarianism. And it worried me and I want to find a way that I could lend my legal skills to that fight. And, but what really shoved me out of my comfortable little perch was COVID. You know, through COVID, I really saw I think the bottom fall out of the kind of civic mindedness of Canadians, including my legal profession downtown that I expected would would, in some respects, at least champion the rights of Canadians and, and insist on evidence and foreign policies and that sort of thing. But I saw the legal profession crater to the basically, pandemic fears as many other parts of the society did, and it just made me realize that if the legal profession is, is, you know, in the state it's in, that we were in real trouble. So I wanted to wanted to get out and do something about it. Will Dove 4:20 Now, what area of law were you practicing before this? Glenn Blackett 4:22 Civil litigation, you know, basically helping businesses suing each other. Will Dove 4:26 Okay. And how does that lend itself to getting into constitutional law? Glenn Blackett 4:31 Well, it didn't. I mean, uh, my, my constitutional experience came actually, primarily originally from my undergrad degree, which was in political science. So I went to University of Calgary I graduated from the University of Calgary in about 98 or something like that, and I studied under Ted Morton and Tom Flanagan, Barry Cooper's and like different members of what I think were called the Calgary Mafia in the Calgary School but a pretty conservative group at the University of Calgary Political Science, and historian, History departments. So that was where I really got a an interest in constitutional law. But yeah, when I was practicing private practice, it wasn't something that I was doing hardly at all. Will Dove 5:21 And so when you started with the JCF, when? Glenn Blackett 5:24 I started with them in August of 2022. Will Dove 5:28 Okay, so you've been with them for over a year now. Glenn Blackett 5:30 Yes Will Dove 5:30 Now, what cases are you working on right now, and I realize that there's not, you can't discuss details of active cases, but you can, I think, tell us at least what cases you are working on. Glenn Blackett 5:38 Well, I could talk about public details of active cases. So there's a bunch I can talk about. So I'm, I'm working on on a number of cases, but there's three that I thought you might find interesting. One is a case dealing with Leah McInnes, Leah McInnes is a registered nurse in Saskatchewan. Basically, she is up for she's in a hearing right now being charged with professional misconduct effectively for, well, I won't say that, but arising from her opposition to vaccine mandates. Will Dove 6:15 Yes. Like many nurses and doctors across Canada. Glenn Blackett 6:19 [unintelligible] Will Dove 6:19 Yes. And I'm assuming that she lost her position because she wouldn't either would either wouldn't take the vaccines or wouldn't disclose her vaccine status. No, Glenn Blackett 6:27 it wasn't that. In Saskatchewan, they had, you could either you could either get vaccinated or tested. I actually don't know if she's even vaccinated, frankly. And it doesn't really matter what her crime was was, according to the College of Registered Nurses in Saskatchewan, was that she promulgated misinformation. And so, and basically, the primary piece of misinformation that she apparently promulgated was using the term vaccine mandate by just simply using the term vaccine mandate to describe Canadian vaccine policies. And the the allegation against her is that that's misinformation, because and effectively, anything short of holding the person down and stuffing over the needle against their will is not a vaccine mandate. And so there were no... Will Dove 7:17 Despite the fact that we'd had Trudeau go on television and say, Well, yes, you have a choice you can you can choose to take the vaccine, or you can choose to lose your job. Glenn Blackett 7:23 Right. Will Dove 7:24 Yeah Glenn Blackett 7:24 Right. Not get on a plane, not get on the train... Will Dove 7:26 Right Glenn Blackett 7:26 Put us in danger, blah blah blah. Yeah, I mean, there was there was definitely well, and there's another piece of misinformation she's alleged to have disseminated, which is, she was she opposed vaccine mandates, in large part because they're a violation in her mind of informed consent. You know, which is a medical et hic, and one of the primary medical ethics that applies to medical professionals. And according to informed consent, you have to both inform the person, you have to get their consent. And the consent can't must be freely given it must be free of coercion. They actually in the, you know, in various ethical codes across Canada, there's a definition of informed consent, and they often use the term coercion to to delineate what constitutes free will, right. It has to be free of coercion. And so she said that, you know, these policies are coercive. And again, the college, College of Registered Nurses of Saskatchewan said that's misinformation, because the policy because he didn't hold the person down and stick a needle in him, there was no coercion. Because apparently now, I mean, I think if you play that tape to its end, what the CRNS, the college is saying is that, it seems to be saying that you can obtain informed consent from a person as long as the pressure you apply to them isn't physical restraint. Other, you know, any other kind of influence is, doesn't have any bearing on the concept of informed consent, seems to be the logic of the argument. Will Dove 9:03 But then, of course, we've also got the issue of informed consent, to my knowledge to this day, the sheets that come with the vaccines are still blank. The manufacturers are not providing any information on what's in them. Glenn Blackett 9:15 Yeah, well, I think there's Yeah, I mean, you're getting a bit out of my, my knowledge level there. But there's, there's a lot of information that we had about the vaccines, but there's also a lot of information that we didn't have about vaccines. You know, we didn't know when were implementing vaccine mandates, how effective they were, and effective at what, and one of the things that you are supposed to discover in the clinical trials that leads to regulatory approval is the degree of efficacy and at what, and they were often although they were approved on the basis, they were, I think, largely effective in randomized clinical trials to reduce the incidence of either symptomatic infection, which is not same as infection, symptomatic infection or severe illness and death. And so there was some information about its efficacy, but not a lot of information about its efficacy. We didn't know, for example, whether or not they would be effective at reducing transmission. And as it turns out, they weren't. Will Dove 10:20 Right. Glenn Blackett 10:21 And this is this is another one of her crimes, by the way, was, she, one of her social media posts that's an issue she said. She, first of all, she said that they don't provide sterilizing immunity, which the experts that have, that the expert that testified on behalf of the college agreed. They don't provide sterilizing immunity. In fact, that expert said there's no such thing as sterilizing immunity, no vaccines provide sterilizing immunity, okay. And so she said, you know, she made some arg- she basically made the argument that the vaccines aren't going to be as effective at reducing transmission as they are going to be effective at reducing serious illness and death. And so she said in her post, that the greatest job they have is in reducing, reducing serious illness and death, not in reducing transmission. And, and the the college said, well, that's misinformation, because you're claiming that they don't reduce transmission, which is not what she said. Will Dove 11:19 Now, you've just said in her posts, so I'm assuming that this all came about not necessarily things that she said in the workplace, but she posted something publicly online. Glenn Blackett 11:27 That's right. Yeah, yeah. And so so it's a special area of professional regulation, where you're not doing something in your professional capacity, you're doing it in your personal capacity. So it's called off duty conduct. And there's some special rules that apply to that. But, you know, she didn't identify herself as a registered nurse. So that, you know, gets the regulator involved, that may get the regulator involved. And then they say that, you know, based on the things she was talking about, because you know, are medical in nature and stuff, I guess, they thought it would, that it was appropriate to, to have a hearing into whether or not she was guilty of misconduct. And I say they want to be careful. There's a bit of a distinction between the college and the Investigative Committee, the Investigative Committee is kind of a little police force in the college that first investigates them and kind of lays a charge and then proceeds to charge and then the college also appoints a hearing panel, basically, that determines whether or not the thing has been, whether or not the charge was made out. And we don't know whether or not the charter has been made out yet. So... Will Dove 11:27 Now I have to assume that freedom of speech has to come into play somewhere here. Glenn Blackett 12:30 Right. Will Dove 12:30 And she's, she was just expressing her opinion online as a member of the public. Yes, she identified herself as a nurse, but that's not a problem. If you post something you would identify yourself as a lawyer, I would identify myself as a journalist. How does that play into this case? Glenn Blackett 12:50 Well, in a couple of ways, you're right. Free speech is a huge part of it. That's certainly one of the defenses that the charter protects her speech. But there's kind of a, I'd say, like a public dimension to free speech and a private dimension of free speech. The private dimension of free speech is, you know, Leah McInnes is an individual that would like to be able to open her mouth and speak and say what she believes and participate in the democratic discourse and, you know, oppose things that she believes are immoral. That's what she wants to do in order to live her life. Right. So according to the Canadian Constitution, except where reasonably justified in a free democratic society, Canadians have those kinds of individual rights. And so that plays into it, and the charter is certainly one of the issues we've raised in pleading. But to me this, and that's an important, right, obviously, for Miss McInnes herself for sure. But the more important aspect of free speech that I can see is not so much a charter argument. It's, it's the necessity of speech for all of the institutions that we enjoy in Canada to operate properly. One of them being science, in order to have, you know, I mean, science operates through dissent. So you you have to have a falsifiable hypothesis that you attempt to falsify and fail to falsify, and then you release your results to the public. And then people have an opportunity to critique and present dissenting viewpoints. And it's that critique and dissenting viewpoints, that is the essence of science. So you don't have a scientific method that's operating, you don't have science adv- scientific advancement unless you have, you know, that dissent, which means you need to have freedom to speak about scientific issues. So that's one kind of public dimension to it, but the one that maybe relates most closely to Miss McInnes is, is kind of the same dynamic as it relates to morality, and, in particular, medical ethics. The College of Registered Nurses has as many professional medical professional organizations across Canada, they have various sort of, you know, codes of conduct and standards of practice and such. And they all talk about this concept of the moral community, where basically, you know, two, two heads are better than one when it comes to deciding what's moral. And it's important that a person who sees a problem, raise their voice and blow the whistle so that ethical violations can be analyzed and resolved if there's an ethical violation. And so, if you, you know, if the college decides that, well, we shouldn't be suppressing her ability to have a good, yeah, what I believe was in good faith attempt to, rather, I should say, what I think the evidence shows is a good faith engagement on her part in the in the conversation about what constitutes medical ethics. If the regulator is going to suppress that kind of free speech, it makes the moral community that she's supposed to be participating in weaker. Certainly. Will Dove 16:01 Right. Now, earlier, you said that there's an investigative committee that looks into the post that she put up and makes a decision on whether or not there's something here that they should pursue, and as soon as the college decides that there might be disciplinary action. Glenn Blackett 16:13 Right. Will Dove 16:14 So where is Leah's case now? Glenn Blackett 16:15 So we're basically almost all the way through the hearing. So we had we had a hearing. We Yeah, we had written arguments, sort of we had a hearing, then we had some written arguments. And then we got together for some sort of closing arguments. And those closing arguments are going to complete on Tuesday of next week. Tuesday at 6:30pm. Will Dove 16:37 And this is a hearing with the Saskatchewan College of Nurses. Glenn Blackett 16:39 That's right. Will Dove 16:40 Right Glenn Blackett 16:40 Yeah. And so then. So we finish the argument, basically, on Tuesday, I hope next week, and then we wait for decision. Will Dove 16:48 Right. Now, of course, there's been other nurses that have been attacked by the colleges across this country. Can you give us any indication of of your level of optimism or pessimism with this case? Glenn Blackett 16:59 With the McInnes case? Will Dove 17:02 Yes. Glenn Blackett 17:02 Um, I think, well, you know, I have to remain optimistic. I'm fairly optimistic. I think it's a I mean, I, I think it's an incredibly weak argument to suggest that it's misinformation to use the term vaccine mandate. And I think it's embarrassing. So, you know, I, if, if a college can can win on a, or if a college wants to sanction a nurse for something like that, you know, I think that for many Canadians, that might be a bridge too far. So I think I hope that I hope that she's successful. I mean, I certainly think she absolutely must be on the on the facts and the law, but you know, we'll have to. Will Dove 17:45 So. So if I'm understanding correctly, the entire case against her is that she used the term vaccine mandate, and she told people, which has been admitted to by the vaccine manufacturers that it does not prevent transmission. Glenn Blackett 17:58 Yeah, I mean, there's some other details, but that's kind of Yeah, I mean, there's some other specific things that she said that are alleged to be misinformation, but there's nothing more provocative than what I told you. Will Dove 18:08 Okay. All right. Second case. Glenn Blackett 18:11 Um, so another case, I'm building up to my main one that I'm most excited about. The other case is the Widdowson, for Frances Widdowson, and Jonah Pickle, and Paul Viminitz, a professor at the University of Lethbridge had either arranged, agreed to attend and give a speech, or wanted to attend to watch the speech of Frances Widdowson at the University of Lethbridge in early February 2023. And this follows not too shortly after, but in about 2019, the univers- sorry, the Ministry of Education, had required of all universities in Alberta, that they pass a free speech policy, that their, I think it was their Senate have to pass a free speech policy. And the Free Speech Policy was gonna be modeled on the Chicago Principles, which is kind of what you would expect a university to say about free speech along the lines of, you know, as an institution, what we do is free speech. All academic progress depends on free speech. Free speech means nothing if it doesn't mean the ability to say things that are wrong, provocative and considered immoral and terrible by some people. Surely there are limits on a free speech like you can't, you know, incite a mob to kill someone. I mean, you couldn't on a university campus until recently, but we saw a wave of, I think are objectively pro Hamas terrorists, protests on university campuses across Canada across North America. And I didn't see a lot of pushback from universities. So maybe that rule has been bent somewhat recently. But in any case, in 2019, the government required universities to pass free speech policies, universities all complied, including the University of Lethbridge, they passed a free speech policy that kind of echoes what I just said. And then turn the clock forward to January of 2023. And basically progressives on campus catch wind of the fact that Frances Widdowson is coming to give a talk and her talk was going to be on how, ironically, how wokism destroys academia. That might not be the exact title, but something like it. Will Dove 20:27 Well, it's gonna be something like that. For our viewers who are not familiar with Professor Widdowson, I know something of her history. And she was hired by Mount Royal University here in Calgary about 15 years back precisely because she was conservative, and she would bring debate to things that were happening. And then a couple of years ago, she was fired because she was conservative, and was expressing her views. Glenn Blackett 20:48 Yeah, I mean, I, I'm surprised to hear she's conservative. I don't think she's conservative. Will Dove 20:52 You don't think so? Glenn Blackett 20:53 No, I think she's.. I've read Widdowson's 15 years ago Will Dove 20:56 Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry Glenn Blackett 20:58 Right. Right. Will Dove 20:58 I would say it's fairly conservative. Well, not, Not, not, maybe not hardcore conservative, but she's very, very honest in her assessment of what's happening. Glenn Blackett 21:06 Yea, that's Will Dove 21:07 She doesn't pull any punches. Glenn Blackett 21:08 Right Will Dove 21:08 Tells people the truth. Glenn Blackett 21:09 Right Will Dove 21:10 And she doesn't shy away from the truth just because it might not, you know, match some leftist viewpoint. Glenn Blackett 21:15 Right. Right. Well, right. I guess it depends what you mean by conservative. What we meant by conservative 15 years ago, she wouldn't have met that threshold. I think she's more she's more left than anything. I think she's and I I don't know how far left, I, she is in the political spectrum, but fairly far left. I think. Will Dove 21:34 I think I think you're absolutely right. 15 years ago, when she retired when she wrote the book, Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry, I think, yes, you would describe her as, actually yes, somewhat left... Glenn Blackett 21:44 Right. Will Dove 21:44 ...in that she she definitely admits that there's a problem with what's going on with the aboriginals, their country and how they're being manipulated and used by this industry, basically, is run by by rich white lawyers and activists who were taking money that's supposed to be going to them. But at the same time, she doesn't shy away from the fact that there are serious problems with the aboriginals and what they're facing and comes up with some, I think, very realistic plans for how to fix it. Things that I think most leftists would not even consider. Glenn Blackett 22:15 Right. Yeah. Yeah, she's, she's, I think her major crimes were, so she was in, en- ensconced at the University of Lethbridge as a tenured professor. And I think she had, she made two or three major mistakes. I wouldn't describe it as mistakes. But in retrospect, it was things that got her. One of them was, I believe she, she disagreed that residential schools could should be classified as some form of genocide. I think her view was that it's important to use precise terms, and this doesn't qualify. The other thing she said, which I think really led to her undoing was suggesting that the Black Lives Matter Movement had really deteriorated the quality of education at the University of Lethbridge. So the Twin Towers of, you know, residential school denialism, they now call it, which I wouldn't characterize it that way. But that's how it's that's the the phraseology that's used. Residential school denialism, and an anti Black Lives Matter Advocacy is how they would describe it. But I mean, I think, anyway.. Will Dove 23:28 So, I think I have my timeline a little long, because I know she was with Mount Royal University here in Calgary. At what point was she with Lethbridge University? Glenn Blackett 23:35 Did I say Lethbridge? Sorry, that's, you're right. Mount Royal... Will Dove 23:38 Mount Royal University... Glenn Blackett 23:38 It was ten years ago Will Dove 23:40 It's good to know that I'm not... Glenn Blackett 23:41 Yeah. Will Dove 23:42 ...[unintelligible] my facts. But now I distracted you from talking about the case because it all started when she was going to do the talk. Glenn Blackett 23:47 Right. Right. So she was gonna give a talk on number of progressives... so I guess, let me back up a second. The University of Lethbridge is I don't know I don't know to what extent other universities and colleges in Alberta are this way but the University of Lethbridge is very vocal and upfront with its reconciliation efforts. It has a, and I don't know what it is, but it has a, you know, a Blackfoot name and a lot of materials you see on the University of Lethbridge website, they talk about it. So Blackfoot name and we're on Will Dove 24:20 Even I can attest to the fact that it is, it's got a very woke feel to it. I went there a couple of years ago with my son who was considering going there and and even though the university was closed at the time, and then we ran into some professors and had a short conversation with them. You know, they're all wearing masks, and it's all very woke. Glenn Blackett 24:38 Yeah Will Dove 24:38 Very woke. Glenn Blackett 24:39 Yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that. Anyway, so a number of students and faculty on campus got upset about the fact that she was gonna come give this talk. Most of them, you know, asserting that she was, you know, a hater and a residential school denier, don't listen to that. And, to his credit, Mahon, who was the president of the university, at the end of January said, resisted the mob's urge to cancel her talk and basically said, you know, free speech might be uncomfortable and all that kind of stuff, but free speech. And then about four days later, he, he turned tail and ran and put out another post that said, okay, just kidding, we're gonna cancel the talk. And, and we're not going to provide any further, you know, platform for Widdowson to come speak here. Will Dove 25:39 Wow Glenn Blackett 25:39 So, yeah. So that's our case. Will Dove 25:42 So where is that case right now? Glenn Blackett 25:44 Um, kind of at the beginning stages. We filed the, we filed the originating application for judicial review in May or June. And then we're kind of we've got now the hearing scheduled. The University of Lethbridge wants to bring an application to kick Paul Viminitz off of the originating application. They say that he should be taking his, he should be taking his charter complaints through our union grievance process. And so we're gonna fight about that, I think in June, and then I think it's in 2025 we'll have a hearing on the on the matter, finally. Will Dove 26:21 And just to be clear, with Frances Widdowson's case, this isn't a case of defense like it is with Leah. This is, Francis Widdowson is going after the university for canceling the talk... Glenn Blackett 26:30 Right Will Dove 26:30 ...for denying her right to free speech. Glenn Blackett 26:32 Right. Will Dove 26:32 Okay. Now, you said you were saving the best one for last? Glenn Blackett 26:35 Yeah, this one is the last. It's my buddy, Roger Song. Will Dove 26:39 Yes. Glenn Blackett 26:39 So Will Dove 26:40 And I'll be doing an interview with Roger. Glenn Blackett 26:42 Right. I heard. Will Dove 26:43 Yes. Glenn Blackett 26:44 So, and it's something that concerns me too, which relates to the politicization of the Law Society. And so this, I'll give a bit of background, I'll go in chronological order using Roger as my sort of compass here. Roger, was born in the late 60s in China. And therefore he was born just before Mao's Cultural Revolution. And so Roger lived through the worst aspects of Maoist revolution in China, and knows a thing or two about totalitarianism and authoritarianism. He, but he was a, you know, he was indoctrinated from the time he was a young kid, as most Chinese people are, I think. And he took courses in what was called political competence, I think, or something like that. Basically, in your, throughout your school years and into university, you have to take these political competence courses, which are just political indoctrination basically, you don't just take them passively, you have to take them and then you have to do well on them. So you have to be effectively their indoctrination in Maoist theology, ideology, whatever you want to call it. And if you don't pass these things, then you you either can't advance or you can't get sort of advanced placements and institutions and stuff like that. So. So he did as a good communist student should do and attended and did well in this class. He eventually became a professor of law at the University of Beijing. He calls it Peking. And he was a professor of law at the University of Peking during the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. His students actually marched to, to Tiananmen Square. And he, I think it was, anyway, so he then he wanted to get a placement where he could go to South Korea to work at a university there, he had to do another test with the government to demonstrate that he was, you know, ideologically compliant, and he passed that test, obviously, he was allowed to go to South Korea to another university. From there, he went to New York. And then from there, he went to Canada and eventually emigrated to Canada in about 2004 I think. He got called to the bar in, I think 2014 or something like that when he was about 50 years old. And so by the time he was called to the bar in 2014, the Law Society of Alberta was still pretty much the same law society it had been for the 100 years before it was for the last 100 years. And then in about 2019, things started to kind of change quite a bit but the Law Society, they adopted in 2019 a new strategic plan. And as part of that strategic plan, they also adopted a new set of regulatory objectives, they're called. And so the regulatory objectives. So maybe I'll back up the laws. So you have a legal profession in Alberta, it's a self governing profession. So you have a self governing body called the Law Society of Alberta. And legislation creates the Law Society of Alberta, and gives it its powers. Okay, so the Law Society is supposed to do the things that the legislation tells it to do. But other than that, the government's hands off the Law Society, it's that's the self governing nature of it. And that's important because you don't want a government interfering with lawyers directly, because then you could have a government that, you know, can persuade lawyers to massage and bend the law in their favor. And next thing, you know, you're living in an authoritarian state. So freedom requires an independent, professional lawyers. And the lawyers job is really I mean, there's, I'd say they have two major jobs. One is to be neutral towards the law, not break the law, not try to break the law, not allow people to try to break the law. And then number two, is to be fiercely loyal to the interests of your client alone. And that, you know, so you, everything is derivative from that, I would say, like if you know, a lawyer, what's the worst case scenario for a lawyer? When he steals money from a trust one, that's not loyalty to your client, if a lawyer isn't competent, but takes the file and screws it up for the client, that's not loyalty to the client, either, right. Loyalty to the client is honesty, to the client, that I'm not capable of this, or I don't have time to do this, or I haven't been working on this, you know, you should sue me instead of letting me continue to work on this file. My point is that almost all ethics are kind of derivative of that duty of loyalty to the client. That's how important that duty is. So the Law Society in 2019, they they passed a new the benchers, it's called that's kind of a an elected body that runs the Law Society, they they passed a new set of what they call regulatory objectives, which does not mean what are the objectives that were provided to us by the legislature, but rather, given the powers and and interests we have under this act, what are our objectives? How do we interpret that act? You know, to meet like, what are we going to do with that power? And they there was some stuff in there you would expect and hope for, things like, you know, well, there's five kind of main pillars, I can't remember all of them. But one of them was rule of law, which is kind of the whole sine qua non of a lawyer is to, you know, help manage the rule of law. So one of their primary statute, statutory objectives is to uphold the rule of law. Another one now, as of 2019, is diversity, equity and inclusion, to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. And the regula- the statutory objectives go on to say, well, it's kind of interesting, they put, they put EI or DEI, whatever you want to call it at the end of the five objectives, you know, as if to sort of, it's not, you know, a very important objective, perhaps, but then they say, No, these are in no particular order. And by the way, if it ever happens that these things conflict with one another, these different objectives, including the rule of law, and diversity, equity inclusion, we'll just have to look at them and decide which one basically you shouldn't trump the other in some situations, you know, and sometimes you don't have to have one trump another, but sometimes it may happen that you know, one trumps another, they acknowledge Will Dove 33:45 Before we go on, but I just want to clarify now. So what you're telling me is that now, with the Alberta Law Society, it's one of their five tenets, whatever, I can't know which word to use for diversity, equity inclusion. That's one of the things that lawyers are supposed to be promoting. Glenn Blackett 34:02 Yeah, I mean, yeah, so that's a little step further, that's, but that's basically the idea, but it, but there's a bit of nuance. That's what the law society takes its objectives to be, right. This self governing body, its objective is to promote diversity, equity inclusion in the legal profession. Will Dove 34:22 I see. Okay. So a little bit of difference there Glenn Blackett 34:25 A little bit of difference. But, you know, if you know a thing or two about diversity inclusion, there's not much difference there, right. Will Dove 34:32 No, there's not. Glenn Blackett 34:33 No. So... But the... so then what they what they've done with this objective, so the question then becomes, okay, well, how have they implemented this objective? And there's, I mean, they've made a lot of changes in their own internal processes and stuff that we could get into, but that's fine. That's their own organization. They've made a bunch of changes. And they have a bunch of programs and stuff that are diversity, equity inclusion kind of programs for them internally. They also have have other programs that relate to the legal profession a little more peripherally. But some major, I'd say pieces of work that they've used to roll out their their objective on a profession. One of them is in 20. I think it was in 2020. So basically sorry, back up for a moment. In the first 100 years of the Law Society's existence, there was no obligation. While there might have been an obligation, there was no mandate from the Law Society to do continuing professional development CPD, which is basically just, you know, like a doctor does CPD, the doctor goes home at night after a hard day's work and reads a bunch of new studies and stuff like that, and case studies and whatever else to keep up on what's going on in medical science, or Will Dove 35:47 Like with teachers where they have to regularly take fresh courses, married to a teacher for 27 years, and that was always part of her day. Glenn Blackett 35:54 Right, right. And that's, and I mean, as a professional, you do that that's part of being a professional is maintaining your own competence, right. Again, whatever your obligations is not practicing competently. So you have to do a lot of continuing professional development in order to make sure that you maintain your competence. Every time you take on a new file, you do a lot of research and reading and stuff like that to figure out some new little details that you haven't really thought of before. So that's a huge part of being a lawyer, there's no problem with continuing professional development as a thing. I don't have a problem that. But so what the Law Society did in about 2008, is they said, Okay, we're gonna change things up a bit here, instead of us being completely uninvolved in in continuing professional development CPD, we're going to now get you to just report to us annually that you have done see that you have a CPD plan and you're doing CPD, basically, you don't have to tell us what the plan is you don't have to interact with us in any way other than just sort of announcing to us that you've done it. And that was in my line, the thin edge of the wedge. So that was when a thin edge was placed in 2008. And it sat there until 2016. And in 2016, they said, okay, and if you don't report to us that you're doing CPD, you'll be automatically suspended. Okay, so wedge goes in a littlee further. And then in 2020, they said, Okay, you know what, we're going to suspend CPD all together for a moment. And they ended up suspending it for three years. And they said, basically, one of the reasons we're suspending it is because we're rolling out a new continuing professional development requirement on lawyers. And specifically, lawyers have to complete cultural competency training, mandatory cultural competency training called The Path. And so this was indigenous cultural competency training. And it was basically a program where you would go online, and you would watch these videos and do quizzes and all this kind of stuff to learn to become culturally competent about indigenous people. And so this is new, right? So before the Law Society hadn't really been involved in CPD, then they said, Just tell us that you're doing some now they said, Okay, there's no CPD requirements, except you must take the course we command you to take and you must, I mean, as part of that course, you have to do quizzes and get answers correct. And so I think you had to get the answers correct. I tried to. And, of course, by getting those answers, correct, you're, you're confirming and affirming the contents of that course. And, I mean, maybe it strikes people as a bit odd that law society would be in the business of cultural competency training. But I would say that if you read the actual materials, it's much harder still. Because the the the content of the course was, I mean, it was full woke, obviously. But it was, it was epistemological, right, it had a lot of theories of knowledge in there, like how we come to know things and what how, how do indigenous people know things compared to how white people know things and stuff like that. So these epistemological elements, which is bizarro land for a lawyer to be required to read in this stuff Will Dove 39:07 It is bizarre for anyone. Frances explains a lot of that in her book, Glenn Blackett 39:10 but Will Dove 39:11 that they have, you know, traditional knowledge except the traditional knowledge is not there. One, there's, there's no substantiation for, there's nothing you can prove, because, of course, prior to us coming along, they didn't have any written language. So there's no records of anything. Glenn Blackett 39:23 Right. Will Dove 39:24 And, two, you're not allowed to question it. So whatever they say it is... Glenn Blackett 39:27 Right Will Dove 39:28 ...and you're not allowed to question it Glenn Blackett 39:28 But but Will Dove 39:29 Yes Glenn Blackett 39:30 Right. Well, and it, you know, I mean I, it it troubles Roger, and me and other lawyers, I think because it suggests that indigenous people just think differently. You know, they just have different thought structures. It's almost as if their brains are wired differently or something which had I said that 20 years ago, you know, I'm sure like a racist jerk for saying that, Will Dove 39:52 Yes Glenn Blackett 39:53 You know, and now it's mandatory training that we come to know that indigenous people think very differently than white people, which I think is I don't I think it's helpful to indigenous people to have those theories about indigenous people. Will Dove 40:03 No Glenn Blackett 40:04 Not at all. But anyway, so The Path had epistemological content. It was it was a history. So it was a lot of historical content. But it wasn't a good history. It was I think it was wrong in a lot of respects. I mean, for example, it said that, Sir John A Macdonald brought in the Indian Act, and he didn't, he was in opposition when the Liberal Party brought it in. You know, it said, Sir John A MacDonald wanted indigenous people to suffer. And I don't think that's true, I think, I think, I think Sir John A McDonald had for his time an extremely progressive attitude towards indigenous people. Will Dove 40:37 It's a matter of historical record, that the way that Canadians dealt with the natives, when we got here was very different from what the Americans did. The Americans largely just killed them. Glenn Blackett 40:45 Right Will Dove 40:46 We, at least, tried to set up treaties and to get them right. So it's a very different situation. Glenn Blackett 40:53 Yeah, that it is, yeah, but these kinds of nuances really get flattened in a woke conversation. But yeah, so it had this bad history, you know, that, boy ,I could go on, but it had the bad history. And it, you know, would encourage all sorts of well had it had bad, I'd say, sociology, it, it made the same claims that we're now quite used to, which is that the justice system is a colonial justice system, or has colonialism somehow still embedded in it, or systemic discrimination embedded in it somehow. And it's for that reason that we see so many indigenous people in prison, and that we see, you know, for example, more indigenous people, or more indigenous women likely to be sexually assaulted, and higher poverty rates among indigenous people, etc, which is, I mean, that's okay. That's a theory that a person could have. And if you were scientifically minded, you would posit that as a theory, a falsifiable theory, and then you would present evidence, and then you permit others to critique that. And I think that in social sciences, there would be a lot of people who could come up with some very substantive critiques to that entire model. But nonetheless, we're taught this as if it's, you know, I mean, it's, I mean, it's dogma, really, right? We're not taught it as something that can be questioned, it's taught as something that must be accepted. And again, we had a question and answer thing, I don't remember if that particular item was one of the questions and answers, but the point is, whatever they had in this course, we had to affirm through questions and answers that we were that we agreed with it. Will Dove 42:34 So let's do a summary here Glenn Blackett 42:35 Sure Will Dove 42:36 because, so [unintelligible] about Roger Song was in China in 1960 before the com- Glenn Blackett 42:39 The long way around Will Dove 42:40 Yeah. Moved to Canada, became a lawyer here in Alberta. And then we're talking about the the DEI, 2008, the law society puts in place the professional development standards, to 2016 and make them mandatory, you have to report them to them, by 2020 they suspend them Glenn Blackett 42:59 Right Will Dove 42:59 For three years, which means it came back this year, and I can guess how they came back. Glenn Blackett 43:03 Yeah, you can. How can you guess? Will Dove 43:05 Yeah Glenn Blackett 43:06 It's amazing. Yeah, so they came back this year. And so I'm going to skip over a couple pieces of Roger's story in order to get there right away. But Will Dove 43:16 We can cycle back to it later Glenn Blackett 43:18 Sure, sure Will Dove 43:18 Let's, let's tie all these together now. Glenn Blackett 43:20 Yeah, in April of 2027, the Law Society changed their rules. And in early May, did I say 2027? 2023, April 27 2023, they changed the rules. And in May 2023, they made an announcement to the profession that we were now required to use a new CPD tool that they had come up with, this is online portal that you log into to now do your planning on the Law Society website. And your planning is done with reference to a new set of basically a second code of conduct, I'm going to call it we have a code of conduct that says things like don't steal from clients don't disrespect the courts, that kind of stuff. Okay, now we have this new thing that I'm going to call it a second code of conduct. It's called the professional development profile. And the theory is that this is the the guide for you to understand areas where you are incompetent, so that you can understand what competency looks like. And you can come up with some plans for remedying your competence. So long story short, it's a new a guide for the Law Society to tell lawyers what what they now consider to be new forms of competence. And you guessed it, two of nine of those new forms of competence are woke. One of them is diversity, equity and inclusion and cultural competence, I believe it's called and then the other one is truth and reconciliation. And so and then the other ones are, I mean, some of them are, some of them are just so dumb, I think like, some of them are, like, you know, you should do things like, figure out what is in the client's interest and talk to them about it. And you know, I mean, I don't remember exactly what but he's kind of simplistic things like, I Will Dove 45:11 I would think that's pretty complex. That's what a lawyer does. Glenn Blackett 45:13 Yeah. I mean, some of it is just kind of, not Yeah, I don't remember exactly how to rephrase. But there's many that are just so simplistic, that they're just, they're just, in my mind useless. That's something that you if you can't do that as a practicing lawyer, then you shouldn't be a practicing lawyer. But then we have these two areas, diversity of conclusion, truth and reconciliation. And both of those are fully woke. And there's a number of problems with this. So I mean, well, there's so many problems with it. But one of the main problems with it is the content of what diversity equity inclusion means, right. And so they they say in there that, for example, a lawyer who is is competent in in diversity, equity inclusion, we'll be aware of their unconscious biases, and how that affects their conduct Will Dove 45:13 Right Glenn Blackett 46:02 But you just think about that aware of my unconscious bias, you can't do it, you can't do that Will Dove 46:07 Exactly Glenn Blackett 46:08 Become aware of your unconscious biases Will Dove 46:09 You can't know what you don't know Glenn Blackett 46:11 No. And so in order to be aware that you have these unconscious biases, you must have faith in this ideology that tells you you have them. Right. So. Will Dove 46:23 So basically, let's, let's be blunt about this. They're telling you, you're a racist, you don't realize you're a racist, but we're telling you, you're a racist, and you have to adjust your the way you do things, because you're a racist. Glenn Blackett 46:34 Right. Yeah. And in fact, one of the tenets of wokism is that, you know, white people, and I don't know if that means people, they call them white skinned people. I don't know if that just means white skinned people, or if it means, you know, people who are conservative, I think it's more of an ideological test and a skin color test being enough to say, Will Dove 46:53 I wonder where if I were if I was a lawyer where I would fit in on that spectrum, since I'm Mickey. Glenn Blackett 46:57 That's, I think you're white, I think you're white. Will Dove 46:59 I'm white. Glenn Blackett 46:59 Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. And this is, yeah, we can get back to Roger. But this goes back to Mao and people are the enemies of people. But anyway, it so well, I mean, Roger sued the Law Society saying that they can't do it. So in in late October, we filed an originating application for judicial review. And our position is basically twofold. One, that the if you read the legislation that gives the Law Society its powers, nowhere in there, does it say in the law, society can have a political objective and force what, pause on the word force, influence lawyers, let's say, to accept and promote that political objective. It doesn't. the Law Society, I mean, if you read the act, and you understand its history, and its place in Canadian law, and in common law jurisdictions worldwide, a law society absolutely cannot have a political objective. That is a complete violation of their of their position. Will Dove 48:00 Of course, it would have to be because there are times when lawyers are suing the government. Glenn Blackett 48:04 Right? Yeah, yeah. Will Dove 48:06 But if you, that's often obvious conflict of interest if the lawyers have themselves a political agenda. Glenn Blackett 48:11 Right. Right. Will Dove 48:12 Yes. Glenn Blackett 48:12 Yeah. But I mean, political is broader than that, right? I mean, political can mean, you know, anti or pro government, that could also mean, anti or pro this law, or that law, or this constitution or that constitution. So, you know, when I use the term political, I mean, I mean, basically, what I mean is a desire to change the law. Okay, that's political. So the Law Society, they're not supposed to, their job is not to have an attitude about the law, and then tell lawyers, hey, here's what we think about the law. And we encourage lawyers to share their views about the law. And then as a profession, we go and do something about that. That's not our job. Our job is to be neutral towards the law. We're not legislators, we're lawyers, we're supposed to take the laws that are given to us by through the democratic processes, and we're supposed to basically help our clients in that legal system. We're not supposed to be tinkering with and changing the legal system. So so that's a major problem. And that's kind of the first major plank of the case is that this is clearly not within their jurisdiction, because it completely violates what they're supposed to do, which is basically, you know, insulate the lawyer from political influence, not become the lawyers' political influence. And then secondarily, that the all of these principles really violate a lawyer's freedom of conscience, and especially, maybe especially a Christian's freedom of conscience. And and Roger as a, as a God fearing Christian and there's a lot of the content of the Law Society's new, professional development profile that runs directly contrary to his Christian values. So in order to practice law, he has to apparently believe that the things he learned in the Bible are false and a heinous white supremacist evil. And that he, and he should promote that understanding of the world. Will Dove 50:13 It seems a strange statement. I realize you're paraphrasing them when you say a white supremacist evil, but the Bible wasn't written by white people Glenn Blackett 50:22 No. Yeah. No, I guess not Will Dove 50:24 [unintelligible] logical contradiction. But anyways, a question for those of us who are not lawyers don't understand how this system works. Since Roger is himself a lawyer. Why are you going after Law Society on his behalf? Why don't he just do it? Glenn Blackett 50:38 Because, well, there's an old saying in the law that a self represented lawyer has a fool for a client. Will Dove 50:45 Okay. It's just that it's generally not a good idea to represent yourself? Glenn Blackett 50:49 Yeah, it makes it a little awkward. And, yeah, I mean, I have some background in this area. I, you know, so yeah, I just agreed to help him. And it's nice to have somebody to, that's responsible for, you know, has that as a as a block of time that they need to devote to their workday to instead of, you know, Roger, who's got his own practice, and he's trying to get his own files down. He doesn't want to spend a bunch of time and energy just pursuing this thing on his own. Will Dove 51:17 Right. And where's that case right now, Glenn? Glenn Blackett 51:20 So we just filed it. We've heard from the Law Society's lawyers, we're kind of talking to the Law Society's lawyers about scheduling things. And that's kind of where it's at right now. Will Dove 51:29 Okay. So it's very early stages. Glenn Blackett 51:30 Yep. Will Dove 51:31 Okay. Now. So we were talking about how the DEI has crept into the Law Society. And they're trying to push this on lawyers. And recently at the United Conservative Party annual general meeting here in Calgary a few weeks ago, the members voted on one of their new policies that they're suggesting to the government is that we get rid of DEI in the universities and the schools. Now, of course, that still has to be enacted into law by the government. But if that would happen, what, do you think it would have any bearing on this case at all? Glenn Blackett 52:02 Oh, a little bit. No, I mean, not on the case. No, I mean, on the on the on the issue a bit. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the policy as you've just described it right there wouldn't have any specific bearing. But I'd say the bearing that it would have is, you know, we so for example, in January, one of the things that Roger did is he, he organized a special meeting of the Law Society, which I don't know that that's ever been done. I've never, it never happened in my time. So far, as I recall. He organized a special meeting Law Society to get rid of the law society's rule that allows them to mandate The Path and that kind of stuff. And that was defeated by a moat by a vote of about, I think it was 3000 and change to 850, or something like that. So kind of three-one, something like that. Which, you know, and I think part of that is, you know, we're Roger's a sole practitioner working in a small practice. He doesn't have the power of the Law Society, or power of the organizational power of big firms. And so, you know, I think a lot of that is a is a product of get out the vote. But still, the point is that in the legal profession, we have a lot of people who are woke, right, so those because it's a self governing profession, the people in the Law Society, or sorry, the people in the legal profession, who are woke are going to, I guess, condone encourage, promote this kind of woke conduct by the Law Society. And so, you know, really what we're seeing now in the Law Society, these changes are downstream of, of these people in the Law Society, or in the legal profession who are woke and how do they get woke, well, they got woke in their, mostly, I think, at school. Will Dove 53:57 Yes. In university. Glenn Blackett 53:59 Yeah. Well, in, I mean, look in elementary schools. Will Dove 54:00 Yes. And now, it's now in the schools as well, but I think it really hit the universities first, a trickle down into high school, junior high, elementary. So yes, now they're going to this whole woke indoctrination process as they go through their entire education. So they come up brainwashed with this stuff. Glenn Blackett 54:16 Right. Will Dove 54:17 Now, another question I want to ask you is, I've interviewed Leighton Grey several times, I'm sure you know Leighton. Glenn Blackett 54:21 I do. Will Dove 54:22 And in my very first interview with him, which, and he was one of my early interviews a couple of years back. And I asked him if he felt that the judiciary was corrupt. At that point in time, he said, No, and this is getting back to something you were talking about where it's not the job of lawyers or judges to rule on the law itself, not to make new laws or criticize the boss but simply to adjudicate those laws. And at the time, he said, No, I don't think they're, they're corrupt. I think that that's just the judges are very, very reluctant to criticize the laws that are being handed down by the government or the mandates in this case. But then I did an interview with him just a few months ago where he'd done a complete one eighty, and believes now that the courts are captured. Now, that's all Leighton's opinion. I want to ask you for yours because you've been in these courts, you've been fighting for our rights. Do you think our courts are captured? Or do you think that it's just a case of judges maybe are indoctrinated with this, this woke ideology? And for that reason, are not necessarily ruling in favor of our constitutional rights. Glenn Blackett 55:23 Right. So captured is sort of a binary, right? They're either captured or not. Do I think they're fully captured? I don't know. Are they in the process of getting captured? Absolutely. I just did a column on the weekend in the Western Standard, which was about the about judicial education. So we had a chief justice in Alberta up until last month, Mary Moreau, and Justice Mary Moreau was just recently appointed by Trudeau to the Supreme Court of Canada, where she's gonna sit on the bench with Richard Wagner, our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Richard Wagner has agreed with the premise that the Supreme Court of Canada is the most progressive court in the world. And I don't know what progressive means to Chief Justice Wagner. The term progressive and woke, they're, in my mind, they're nearly synonymous. Yes. And certainly, if you look at what the courts have been up to, it does suggest that, by progressive we need woke. So Mary Moreau, when she was a chief justice of the Court of King's Bench in Alberta, I think it was under her watch as the Chief Justice that the Court adopted, so this is a Court of King's Bench adopted a strategic plan that included diversity and inclusion. I don't remember if it included equity. But it included including diversity and inclusion. She, the Law Society, one of the kind of woke projects they were working on, was a thing called the My Experiences Project, which is a study in bad social science, basically, they said about looking for instances of discrimination in the legal profession, by asking for people in the legal profession to report instances of discrimination in the legal profession. And lo and behold, they got some answers. And therefore they concluded, oh, my gosh, look at that there's all this discrimination in the legal profession, we really got to do something about this. So they did this, My Exp-, it's called My Experience Project. And, and the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal of Alberta, Court of Queen's bench, Justice Moreau, and the Provincial Court in Alberta, now the Court of Justice, all signed a public statement applauding the My Experience Project by the Law Society, confirming that the, all of the testimonies that were provided were truths, and that conscious and unconscious bias continue to affect the profession and the people in the profession, etc. So this kind of, you know, I think, testament to wokeness, they signed this, they signed this, this public document, which I, just, to me, it seems wildly inappropriate for a judge to be political in really any way, but to be political in that way, and that overtly, I think, is a problem. And then she was she was also involved in judicial education. And so just a moment on judicial education. In I think it was in 20. Oh, I don't know when it was, but it was sometime before 2022. Probably not long before the federal government amended the Judges Act, and the Judges Act, among other things, controls who gets to be a judge in the Court King's Bench. And the the addition, the amendment that they made was, that in order to be appointed, as a judge, the judge had to undertake to do continuing professional education in the area of sexual violence law and social context, including systemic discrimination. So, in order to be appointed to the bench, you must first you know, I but I hear that to mean, must be indoctrinated in wokeness. Will Dove 59:36 Yeah, it sounds very much to me, like stacking the woke deck. Glenn Blackett 59:39 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because of judges that, you know, a judge that doesn't agree with progress made by the candidate who doesn't agree as well as might not want to go through that might not want to lie and say that I'm going to participate in this thing, and so and wouldn't so it would seem to filter the judiciary, you know, to, to segregate out and filter out the ideologically non compliant and tilt to the mushy middle, which are a lot of judges that I don't you know, I don't think a lot of people when they're presented with all of this wokeness they don't they, what they hear is that this is civil rights. And this is just the next step in civil rights. And, you know, we need to sort of double down to really eliminate racism, because racism is still a serious problem in Canada, they, you know, they believe it, I think they genuinely believe it. And I don't think I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but it's that it's got, you know, these very, I think, corrosive destructive elements to liberal democracy. That's certainly what I see in wokeness, but I don't I don't know that judges who either agree to do that training or who do that training, see any connection between, you know, woke indoctrination that they get and any risk to liberal democracy, and in fact, they seem to think that it enhances it. They seem to think, you know, in that statement that Mary Moreau signed, that public statement, she talked about, you know, the importance of, you know, not being discriminatory in a democratic society. So, anyway, so, yeah, so judges now both in order to get onto the King's Bench and Court of Appeal, and now because of provincial legislation was brought in by the Kenney Conservative Government in 2022. Provincial Court judges also need to, actually Provincial Court Judges need to complete the training. So which is better or worse, in some respects, but anyway, and in the in the provincial legislation, it says the judges have to take training in sexual violence law and social context issues, but then they don't tell you what social context issues means. So you know, this is democracy in action. Right. But yeah, so social context, though, is an important, it's an important concept in law. Because, you know, when a when a judge is dealing with a case, especially one that has, you know, wide ranging political ramifications, you know, charter cases or cases dealing, you know, with, you know, set precedents in areas involving, for example, indigenous incarceration, that kind of thing. The judges, they can't just have this very cloistered view of what's happening to the parties in front of them, they have to be aware of the sort of bigger picture. And that's fair and appropriate, I think. And so why don't we call it like, I think it's fair to call that social context, what is the bigger picture, but if you if the, if you teach a judge and convinced them that social context should be understood in this kind of woke from this woke perspective, that's going to change how the judge rules in that case. So this social context thing is an important thing for judges to think about. But if the if you load into that social context basket, the woke view, it's going to generate a bunch of woke changes in the law, or what's going to happen. Will Dove 1:03:05 And the most extreme example that comes to my mind was the case that happened here in Calgary, I can't remember how long ago it was, it was sometime in the past year, of an indigenous man on the sea train, who cut the throat of a, I think it was a 61 year old white man he didn't even know just walked up behind this guy and cut his throat, almost killed him. And the judge, in his decision, said, well, the history of colonialism has to be taken into account. And that just that left me speechless. I'm sorry, but I can't think of any cultural context that makes it okay to walk up to a total stranger, and cut their throat, try to murder him. Glenn Blackett 1:03:42 Right, right. And that, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna guess that that probably came into relevance in the decision at the sentencing stage. Because Will Dove 1:03:51 I believe it was yes, I can't remember what the sentence was. But I do remember it was extraordinarily light in what was essentially attempted murder of a total stranger. Glenn Blackett 1:03:59 Yeah, yeah. I mean, and maybe this is an oversimplification, but basically what the courts have done, and there's a number of cases you can look at, and I talked about these in my column, there's Moge versus Moge, there's R v Gladue and then there's R v IP Lee. In those cases, basically, what the courts have done is, well, in the last two anyway, the courts have said much like we learned in our path in the path from the from the Law Society, that the reason there's so many indigenous people in prison is because of the colonial systemic discrimination, etc. nature of Canada. Which, I mean, I, I always have to just pause and and marvel at that like so, an indigenous person and I don't know the exact numbers, but I believe that something like this, but an indigenous man is about eight times more likely to find himself in prison than a non Indigenous person. So there's, so there is an eight to, you know, so you can you can imagine that for every eight indigenous people in prison, seven of them are kind of, you know, disproportionate number of indigenous people, okay? And then my law society tells me that the reason for that is colonialism and residential schooling and you know, whatever it is you want all the other statements, okay? But if the cause of that is that you have a racist, discriminatory colonial justice system. What that means is that seven out of eight indigenous people are sitting in prison for no reason other than the fact that we have a colonial justice system, just pure racism. I mean, that's it. If that's true, you know, it's just boggles the mind how many people we have imprisoned for no reason, etc. Because we're discriminatory, you know, unconsciously discriminatory, apparently. I mean, it's this. It's this heinous kind of attack on the integrity of the justice system. You know, it's a profound attack on the justice system. [unintelligible] Will Dove 1:05:54 Yes, that you, me or my viewers, we're all having the same reaction to this. But for a moment, I want to try to put you in the others' shoes, because you've been practicing law now for over 20 years. For the last year now, you've been ground zero on constitutional challenges. And to me, that's, that's also ground zero for dealing with woke lawyers, woke judges, you go into a court, and you're there to practice your fiduciary duty to look at the interests of your clients to not make, you know, pronouncements on the law, but simply to, to, you know, adjudicate a law or to argue the law as it stands. What do you think is going through the minds of the woke lawyers and judges? What is their thought process? Glenn Blackett 1:06:38 Yeah, I mean, I'd say, I ask myself this question when I think of what the Law Society's doing and I read some of the materials that they put on their website, I mean, they've got a, they've got an article there called whiteness. And they've got another article from the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center. What I mean, it just blows my mind. But you know, they've got an article here called whiteness, they've got another one, which tells me all about what whiteness is and that it's a system to oppress people. It's just, okay. They've got another one they called liberal racism, which suggests that really, a lot of what we consider to be the bedrock principles of liberal democracy are in fact, a sort of secret, you know, plot to, to injure minorities, or to oppress minorities. So I mean, some of the stuff on there is just really out there stuff. And I, I don't, I really don't know, I wonder myself, you know, when, you know, when the bench was a law society who thought that this was appropriate material to put on their website? Who thought that this was stuff that they should introduce lawyers to and to some extent, you know, encouraged or forced them to encounter? Do they really? Do They Know It? Do they fully understand it? Do they understand what these ideologies are? Do they understand when somebody like I don't, I would bet that 80% of them, but if I said to them, it's postmodern, they would have no idea what that even means. Much less would they be able to recognize any postmodern entity in the in the principles? So I don't, I don't know, I may be wrong. I think a lot of people in society generally, again, when I deal with wokeness, they, they believe it is effectively just an extension of or a modern version of civil rights. They just think it's Martin Luther King, you know, on steroids or something like that. But it's, I think it's its opposite. You know, and sort of the Law Society, because the Law Society in a couple of places, quite overtly says that the concept of colorblindness, which I think Martin Luther King might be most famous for promoting, is a form of racism. It's a way to deny, it's a way to it's basically a way to be blind to racial injustice, by pretending that you don't see color, or something like that. Will Dove 1:09:07 Yeah. Glenn Blackett 1:09:07 So yeah. So I mean, I can't I can't call into the minds of these people and understand, you know, what they know or what they think, I think, I think most people who are woke and I think that that probably goes for judges that that would be woke or lawyers that would be woke including, including those of the Law Society. I think most of them probably think that it's civil rights and aren't aware of the of the other dimensions and the full sort of majesty of woke ideologies. So no, I think they're well meaning and, you know, but I Will Dove 1:09:45 Now we're in a unique position here in Alberta because a few months ago, all the COVID mandates that were ruled illegal thanks to the work of Leighton Grey and Jeffrey Rath, working in partnership with the JCCF but that's not the case in every other province. And you have been for over the past year now working as what I've called Ground Zero of the constitutional challenges or threats to our rights and freedoms. And so what final thoughts would you have for our viewers, and especially those who are not here in Alberta, and you're still facing provinces where they could very well turn around, do that again? And that the courts will always be unconstitutional? Glenn Blackett 1:10:20 Like, do you mean just about COVID in particular, or Will Dove 1:10:22 Any challenges to our rights due to our rights and freedoms, all this wokeness that's going on, the DEI, the COVID management, the whole nine yards, this whole attack upon our culture and society identity and everything? Glenn Blackett 1:10:35 Well, I mean, one thing I would tell your viewers, but I don't think they need to hear it as don't pay attention to mainstream media. You know, you don't get good information out of them. But probably people who are listening to this broadcast wouldn't wouldn't spend a lot of time in mainstream media. That's one of them. I think that it's important to stay informed. It's important to not trust that the institutions that you've known and love for the last 50 or so years are going to continue to operate as they do without a lot of civil civic input by by people. And so people need to get educated and get active. Will Dove 1:11:15 Glenn, thank you so much for your time today and for your work for the JCCF. Glenn Blackett 1:11:18 All right. Thanks very much.