Auto-Generated Transcript Human-reviewed transcript coming soon John Carpe, the founder and president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, has been fighting for our rights for 24 years, first as a director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation from 2000 until 2004, then with the Canadian Constitution Foundation until he founded the JCCF in 2010. For the past 14 years, the JCCF has provided more pro bono representation to Canadians than ever before. For more information, visit www .JCCF .org defend their constitutional rights than any other organization. In fact, I think it would be safe to say more than all other legal organizations put together. From defending freedom of speech on university campuses, to representing the organizers of the Freedom Convoy, from taking governments to court, and in at least one major case in Alberta, winning a significant victory. victory, to defending the rights of many everyday Canadians under the tyranny of Trudeau's COVID policies. In the past few years, John has also become a close friend. I can tell you that he is everything he appears to be, conscientious, hardworking, and honest. Yes, an honest lawyer. In this, this, the last episode of my four -part series on the JCCF, John talks about the corruption in our courts, some of the most significant cases in the past few years, the challenges involved in running the JCCF, and his very perceptive views on how we can save Canada. And like myself, John believes that we will save our country. It will take time and yet more hard work and dedication. But in the end, Canada and Canadians will once again be free. Free to live our lives as we choose, free to raise our children as we see fit without state interference, and free of government tyranny. John, it's great to have you back on the show. Glad to be here. And here we are, interview number 404 on the JCCF. But before we get in to the Justice Center, specifically, you and I have been friends for a couple of years, and clearly I haven't been asking you enough questions about yourself, because recently I learned something very interesting about you that I did not know, and that is prior to watching the JCCF. You were, for several years, president of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. I was the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation from 2001 to 2005. So yeah, four and a half years. Right. So here's the question I want to ask, John. It's the same question I've asked all three lawyers I've now interviewed with the JCCF. You have a lot of degree. You could have gone out there and done anything. You could have started up your own practice. You could have worked for some high -end company, made tons of money. But instead, you chose to fight for our rights and fight against government corruption. Why? Well, I'm just driven. There's a lot of people that have, there's a lot of lawyers that have the same views that you and I would have emphasis on the dignity of every individual and human rights, constitutional freedoms, limited government not being subject to... to government tyranny. And yet they are comfortable, uh, you know, working at a big firm or a small firm and they might donate money to the, to the justice center myself. I'm just driven. I would be very unhappy. Okay. So I don't want to, I don't want you or anybody else to make me out as a bigger hero than what I might be because in fact, if I was earning twice as much money, you know, working a small firm, you know, working at a big firm or a small firm, you know, working at corporate commercial, whatever, you know, acting for corporation X is suing corporation Y for $50 million and, you know, big lawsuits, whatever. But I would be very unhappy if I was not practicing constitutional law. So it's not, it's not a huge sacrifice to say, okay, well, I'm earning half as much, it's worth it because I want to be involved in something that's meaningful. meaningful and you know those other lawsuits are also important but they're not they don't have that same societal impact. Right now you said you were the Alberta director for the taxpayers federation up until 2005 now you launched the JCCF about 15 years ago so what were you doing in those few years in between? I ran the Canadian Constitution Foundation from 2005 to 2010 and I took it from a very small Outfit that that very few people had heard about and when I left five years later it was on the map and a lot You know most people still hadn't heard of it But a lot more than than five years prior and so it was it was a good experience for me And the group has carried on after I left and they do good things like they're they're they organize an annual law conference and they Every judge January, February and Toronto and they bring in, uh, law profs and judges and lawyers and so that's very worthwhile and, uh, they also do, uh, a lot of good commentary on cases and they've got podcasts and, uh, they've got a small staff. So they're, they're doing good work. All right. Very good. So then you launched, uh, 2010, Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms. Freedoms. Now, the last few years, it's been very obvious that we've needed protection for constitutional freedoms. But what were you focusing on then, 15 years ago? So 2010 to 2015, in the first five years, the campus free speech was probably half or maybe more of our caseload fighting battles. So we, we want a court of victory against the university of Calgary. We were defending the university. the free speech rights of some pro -life students, and they were putting up a display on campus, and the university actually threatened to expel them, or penalties up to and including expulsion if they continued to peacefully express their views on campus. So, we took the University of Calgary to court, and the court ruled against the University of Calgary said they were unreasonable. to have disciplined the students. They didn't expel the students, but they did find them guilty of non -academic misconduct for having continued to put up their their pro -life display on campus. And then a few years later, the University of Alberta, they tried a clever trick to bypass the University Calgary court ruling, and they said to students at the University of Alberta, Alberta, once again, pro life students, they said, "We're not censoring your speech. You can say whatever you want. You just need to pay a teensy weensy little $17 ,500 security fee in order to put up your display on campus." Yes. Totally misguided because they're punishing the students who are acting legally to express their views in a peaceful manner and ignoring that the threat to safety and security came uniquely from anybody that was going to use violence or physical force to shut down their display. So it's just this willful blindness towards the real source of the problem, which is the counter protesters that were threatening physical obstruction or violence. And the university ignores who's causing the problem and just says, well, the pro -life students have to pay the security fee, which is twisted. So we sued the University of Alberta, and we lost a trial, but we won in the Court of Appeal. So that was a big part of the Justice Center in the early stages. We did free speech, religious freedom, the right of parents, foster parents to not be discriminated against on the basis of religion. We had the Easter Bunny case in Ontario where the Hamilton Children's Aid Society actually removed these two young, vulnerable girls from a loving foster home because the foster parents would not tell the girls that the Easter Bunny was real. And it turned out to be not just a rogue social worker. 'cause that can happen. She was backed up by all of her superiors all the way to the top of the organization. - So I'm sorry, so there, and I am somewhat familiar with this case, but they're honestly trying to convince the court that not telling your children the Easter Bunny is real is some form of child abuse. - Fundamentally, yeah, because sadly, they ended up removing the girls from this loving foster home, this loving couple that had gone through the... whole application process and screening and interviews and background checks, everything. So the two vulnerable girls that needed to be temporarily away from their biological parents because of a bad home situation, they were in this loving foster home and they got removed solely because the foster parents who were evangelical Christians who said that for us to talk about the Easter Bunny. Bunny would be lying to the kids. We're not going to do that. And so for that reason alone, they took these girls away from a loving foster parents, put them into a different home, which we don't know about, but chances are it was not as good of a home as what they were in. Now, wouldn't that be a violation of constitutional rights, of a parent's rights to raise their children as they see fit? Yes, because a foster parents at that moment in time, they are the parents effectively, right? So, it's a ruling saying that effectively the state can take your kids away from you if you've got a religious conviction that it would be wrong to tell the kids that the Easter Bunny is real. Now, we won that court case, we got a court ruling. But you won it on appeal, and this is a little won at trial first level Oh, you won that one on okay first level It was I think it was the Ontario Superior Court of Justice a theoretically it could have if the Hamilton Children's Aid Society could have appealed it to the Ontario Court of Appeal. They didn't appeal their loss So we got a court ruling in favor of the religious freedom of the foster parents And the court said that a government agency cannot discriminate against foster parents or adoptive parents or regular parents on the basis of religion. But now at this point in time some damage had already been done because the children had been removed from that foster home for how long? Well, this case took place. My understanding and my memory is a bit vague. I think the two young girls, way back at that time, they were four and six or something. I think they were eventually reunited with their biological parents. parents who had improved the home environment. So I hope that they're doing well. And I don't know how long the gap was between when they were removed from our clients home and when they were reunited with their biological parents. I don't know whether that was a few weeks or a few months or a year. I don't know what the time period was. Okay, so now we fast forward to 2020 and governments. completely overstepping their bounds and violating our constitutional rights left, right and center. And you've all, I believe you always had on your website a form where people can apply for pro bono representation, but it must have exploded at that point. It did. We, and we grew, we were the, we were the, to the best of my knowledge, we were the first registered charity in Canada, uh, defending rights and freedoms that called for an end to lockdowns. lockdowns. Other civil liberties groups were either they were cheering on the government or at least not opposing the government. So we stuck our neck out. On principle, I didn't know what impact it would have. The impact it did have was that we lost some donors who said, "What's wrong with you guys? Don't you understand the government's trying to save lives, you idiots? Why aren't you cheerleading for the government?" So we lost a few donors, but for every donor, we lost, we got two, maybe three new donors that came in. So we grew in 2020 and we got more money and whenever we get more money, we hire more lawyers and paralegals and also more communications and admin staff. So we ended up growing, but it was not a calculated strategic move as such. It was a move on principle which I didn't know. what the impact would be, but it ended up that we got a lot bigger in 2020. And then in 2021, we more than doubled again, because we were against the vaccine passports when other civil liberties groups were standing by watching and observing. We got right in there and took governments to court. Now, if I'm recalling my numbers correctly, at this point in time, you have to pay nine lawyers. lawyers and four paralegals. That's correct. Yes. Now, where were you at in 2019 in terms of staff? 2019, we would have been at about, you know, five or six lawyers and two or three paralegals, so definitely smaller. Right. But then, you know, all of this happened in people, you lost some people, but I imagine other people donated more generously because they were wanting you to protect more people. people and people donating more money. Like we absolutely grew because we were, for a while, we were the only civil liberties group in Canada that was fighting the madness. And you know, people, I'm really touched. I was in Edmonton last week with Tucker Carlson was visiting Canada. He came to liberate Canada, he said in one of his videos. And but there were people that came up to me at this, I spoke, I introduced them. Tucker Carlson at the Rogers Place Arena, downtown Edmonton, there are 8 ,000, 9 ,000, 10 ,000 people there, I'm not sure. But a lot of people came up to me and said, thank you for being a voice of sanity, because when the lockdowns came, I thought I was going nuts, because I was the only person at my workplace, or the only person in my family, or the only person at my church, or the only person in my community. community that knew there's something not right about this, and I thought I was going crazy. And the Justice Center came out and explained why this is not right. And so people to this day are so grateful, and I'm deeply touched that they're grateful for for us being the the only voice or one of very few voices standing out against these these tyrannical, oppressive, utterly unscientific, unjustified, unwarranted lockdown measures. And we were the first and for a while the only group to oppose that. Yeah. And you were. I mean, I launched my organization, Strong and Free Canada, in the summer of 2020. And when we launched, it was basically you and us. And I got many of the same messages from people who had found Strong and Free Canada. They'd sent us messages of thank you. I thought I was the only one who thought this way. And so it was great to be able to give people that sense of community to understand that, no, you're not the only person who understands what's, you know, that our rights are being violated. So, but it wasn't a smooth ride, you know, up and down and up and down and up and down. I know you had some serious challenges in the last few years, but what about, I want to still back up to prior to 2020. I mean, you were running this organization for a good 10 years there. It must have been. have been very tough at times because you were running entirely upon donations. Well, it was, you know, we always kept our, you know, if from one year to the next, if our revenue has jumped by 20 % because we grew because we got better known because media was covering our cases. Pre 2020, we were actually getting considerable amount of press coverage. in, you know, the Calgary Herald, the Calgary Sun, the Vancouver Sun, the Ottawa Citizen, the Edmonton Journal. We got a decent amount of mainstream media coverage that gradually just dried up to almost nothing after 2020 because, you know, the media were not imperfect before. and there's definitely, there, there's kind of a bias there towards bigger government and higher taxes and more regulation. There's definitely a bias there, but you could still get your point across in spite of a bias media pre 2020. But after 2020, it went beyond bias. They just, they became a total propaganda machine for the government in a way that I had not seen prior to 2020. Prior to 2020. Again, it was, it was. biased media, but not not the JCCF wasn't the enemy, but come come 2020, I imagine you were. And the way that they the way that they tackled us as the enemy was by not providing coverage at all, because that's the biggest kind of media coverage. I mean, you can have biased media coverage in a story where they only interview one side, but the biggest form of media bias. is where they don't cover things at all. And so quite often the Justice Center was our court cases and our activities and so on. Quite often they got no coverage at all, but thankfully we've got the rebel and True North and the Western Standard and the epoch times and the counter signal and a whole bunch of other groups and organizations. So we're still getting the word out, even though it's not through the government funded media, which is, which as Jordan Peterson said, in June 2023 at a dinner in Toronto, he said, they're dead. They're dead. Don't worry about it. Don't lose sleep over it. He mentioned that CNN, when they count their viewership numbers, they include people at airports that are walking by and they got CNNs on the TV at an airport and they add in. in those thousands and thousands of people at airports as being part of their viewership Wow, so People are tuning out. They're tuning out CNN and Here in Canada people are tuning out the the CBC and the other government -funded media. Yeah, indeed They are so now let's get into the last few years because it was a rough ride You and I have been friends for some time and you know, I watch you go through a lot of that I don't know how much of this you feel comfortable discussing, but there was basically a rebellion on your board and they kicked you out for a while. I was prevented from working for about six weeks and we had six out of ten directors resigned in August of 2021. I think they were people that had good intentions, but but they were not handling the situation the right way. I had made an error in judgment with doing surveillance on government officials, which is not a bad thing to do, but then I included a judge who was sitting on our case, which was a mistake. I apologize for the mistake. But then to just keep me away from work on and on and on and on was not helpful. to the Justice Center. So they've parted. There was no acrimony. They left. It was fine. They're good people. They're doing other things. But yeah, it was not a happy year 2021. Yes, but then just a few months ago you were acquitted. Well then, yeah, I think things got a year and a half later, I suddenly got these criminal charges December the 30th, 2022, this is 18 months after the judge's surveillance. And that was a surprise. I was told by a half dozen lawyers that practicing criminal law, not just criminal defense lawyers, but crown prosecutors, like acts of practicing crown prosecutors. prosecutors told me privately that the charges were just baseless and had no merit. To make it clear, I think I can mention this because it's kind of a matter of public record now that you had a private investigator who was following one of the judges for the purpose of determining whether or not that judge himself was following the very COVID rules that he was prosecuting everybody else on. And we're feeling too, we're feeling, yeah. you know... Right. Yeah. Upholding the government. And unfortunately, the private investigator did something stupid and got caught at it. So then, but the point here, and we had this discussion at the time, it's not illegal to do what you did. Lawyers routinely hire private investigators, particularly in insurance law. You know, you got the guy who, he says, "Oh, you know, you got this..." sore back and I deserve $500 ,000 in damages, but then the insurance company gets videotaped with a guy, you know, water skiing or hiking or putting new shingles on his roof. And so it's a it's a fraud prevention fraud deterrence type of a measure. If the wife of a judge thinks that he is having an affair, or she can hire a private investigator and just because because he's a judge doesn't mean that she can't hire the private investigator to see if her husband is cheating on her. So it is perfectly legal to hire a private investigator. It's just not wise. In fact, it's unwise to include the judge who's sitting on your case because it just raises a lot of questions, you know, what were you planning to do, right? So, and the timing was bad because the decision had not been made. been released. So if that same private investigator had been retained after the decision had been released, it would have been a whole different story. But the fallout of that was that you spent New Year's Eve, 2022, in a prison cell. 23 hours. Yeah, I got out on New Year's Eve, so I was still able to spend New Year's Eve with my family, but it was 23 hours. hours in jail from the 30th to the 31st and then I retained a criminal defense counsel in Winnipeg and to make a long story short the charges were stayed in October late October so I did have this hanging over my head for 10 months. Now I think you really should describe for the viewers what that prison experience was like. right right from the beginning because what you did was you turned yourself in you knew that there was a warrant for your arrest you turned yourself in here in Calgary what happened? Well I was I was working at the office it was Friday December 30th I got a phone call around 2 p .m from a sergeant or I don't know what his title was but I think it was a last name was weird anyway Calgary Police Constable Calgary Police Service Person and and he said, "Canada wide warden for your arrest, and you've got to turn yourself in," blah, blah, blah. I found out later that that wasn't even necessary. I could have turned myself into a local Calgary police station and signed a document promising to appear in court, fingerprints, and be on my way. There wasn't any need for me to spend time in jail, but that was arranged by, I'm not sure what I was going to say. I'm not sure what I was going to say. if that's the Manitoba Crown Prosecutors or the Winnipeg Police or the Calgary Police. I don't know who was responsible, but I was certainly after the fact was informed that there is no need for me to spend any time in jail. The whole matter could have been dealt with by me going into a police station, right? There's a half dozen or more all over Calgary, gone into a police station, gotten fingerprinted, signed a document, document agreeing to appear, and it could have been dealt with without putting me in jail. So that's... But you did get put in jail, so that's all in hindsight. But you told me the story of what the whole experience was like, and I think you should tell the viewers from the time you showed up at the police station, what happened? Well, you know, it was surreal. I mean, I've never been around. before, never really practiced in criminal law, but, you know, being a lawyer, I know a little bit more about criminal law probably than the average Canadian, but it's not my area of practice. I showed up there and, yeah, had to get searched. I didn't get strip searched or anything like that, but make sure I didn't have any weapons and, you know, they got told. certain items, I just left him in the car, locked and other things, the wedding band and, you know, got taken away and got locked in a cell for 23 hours. And at the time I was quite serene about it because just recently in the month prior to getting locked up in jail, I read two different books from two different... different resistance fighters who were Dutch activists, who were resisting not cooperating with the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. And in one case, it was a woman. She spent several months in a Dutch prison and was eventually released. Very unpleasant compared to what I was going through, right? Because I was in clean place and it was... warm and I was fed as you know They came around every three four hours with you know, you could have sandwich or Right so like compared to what she went through it was it was a cakewalk and then this other guy who was a pastor who resisted the Nazi moves to control education. So parental rights. It's a theme right it's it's totalitarians They can't stand parents raising their own kids because parents are not going to raise the kids properly into the ideology of the tyrant who wants you to believe whatever their ideology is. This was a pastor and he was actually sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany and spent a year or two there. And that was hell on earth. And so I had a fresh in my mind, these other people who went through something far worse. So when I was in jail, I was quite serene. I didn't really get become more angry about it after the whole process was resolved. And finally, October 2023, and the crown, you know, was going to stay the charges. And then after that, I felt more angry about it than I did at the time. Yeah. But it was, it was, I mean, you're right. There's people who've had far worse experiences than I have had. Yeah. However, um, given that you didn't actually break any laws, uh, 23 hours in a bare, concrete cell, um, and of course it never turned the lights off. You didn't have a cot to sleep on. No mattress, no blanket, no pillow. No, no, I didn't sleep much that night. I, you know, dozed. But yeah. yeah, concrete is surprisingly uncomfortable. You're trying to sleep, but just you're in one position for a minute or two and you think it's comfortable, but then two or three minutes later, it's just like you got to move again because it's not a mattress, it's not what you're used to. Now, you're going to have to refresh my memory, John, because there was the possibility that you would lose your license. I don't think that happened, but have they not suspended you for a time? time from practicing law? Well, the deal, the deal that I entered into with the, with the crown is that I agreed in October, 2023, I agreed that I would, uh, uh, not practice law for three years, uh, I've been asked, and it's a fair question. You know, well, why didn't you put up a fight because you were innocent? And, uh, the reason is fundamentally, fundamentally, it's a bit of a risk. You don't know for sure. I mean, your lawyers can say you've got a strong case, you are innocent. If you come before a fair -minded judge, you're going to be acquitted. But there's still that risk involved. Well, what if the judge is not fair -minded? Or what if the judge wants to verse your signal about how he's going to crack down on Carpe or whatever, right? You don't know who the judge is going to be. so there's a risk are you willing to take that risk of going to a trial and getting convicted and then having a criminal record and being you know precluded from from traveling into the US or whatever else so so I entered into an agreement that I would not practice law for for three years so currently I am in inactive non -practicing member of the law society of Alberta. And that's the status for the next three years, uh, which is not going to impact my work with the Justice Center because I'm spending all of my time on fundraising and writing columns and, uh, networking and media interviews and public speaking. So, um, I'm not really practicing law anyways. Right. Okay. And, and in fact, yeah, I'll, all those things that you're doing, I think probably people have the impression that you're sort of overseeing all the court's cases, but that's actually more who does that isn't it? That's correct. I don't, I do not oversee the court cases. I'm aware of what our court cases are because I'm always asking people to donate money so that the justice center can provide, you know, like nurse Amy Hamm and BC or nurse Leah McKinnis and Saskatchewan or Constable Michael Briscoe and Windsor, Ontario, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah. So I'm always raising money, asking people to donate so that the justice center can provide the lawyers, uh, but I'm not running any of these files. I'm not supervising the files. I'm not deciding on legal strategy, legal tactics. It's the lawyers that are doing a hundred percent of that. Right. Now, and I want to just cover a little bit more about the judges and the courts before we move on, because I know that your own view of this has changed somewhat the last few months. years, and you've had some fairly choice comments about our captured courts. Now, of course, they're not all bad. There are still some good judges out there. But there is very much this feeling that the courts are-- they're siding with the governments. They're taking things from judicial notice. Basically, they're not doing their job of adjudicating the law. And how bad do you think this problem has gotten, John? Well, they're not doing their job of adjudicating the law. Well, they, there are at least a half dozen judges, maybe we're up to a dozen or two dozen, but there are judges who have tossed the Supreme Court of Canada test that they established in 1986 in a case called R versus Oaks, O -A -K -E -S Oaks. Yes. And in the Oaks court ruling, the Supreme Court interpreted section one of the charter, which says that governments, if they violate any of our charter rights and freedoms, they must demonstrably justify with persuasive evidence that their law is actually doing more good than harm. That's one of the four components. I mean, there has to be pressing objective that's being pursued. There has to be a rational connection so that the health order order is actually saving lives and evidence for that. They have to violate rights and freedoms as little as possible. And they have to show that the health order or law policy that is violating charter rights and freedoms is producing more good than harm. So that's the test. And that got tossed out the window by many judges or at least several judges in the last few years. years. When you get a comment, this is a quote, "I am neither equipped nor inclined "to resolve scientific controversies about COVID -19." It's like, well, then you're not doing your job because your job as a judge is to wade through the scientific controversies in, you know, if you've got a plaintiff patient assuming a defendant doctor over medical malpractice, you could be the judge that's asked to resolve that. You're not a medical doctor. You're not trained. But yet you go in there, you listen to the expert reports, and you come up with a ruling and you say, yeah, the doctor is liable for negligence and has to pay damages. Or no, the doctor is not liable, does not have to pay damages. And you don't, these same judges in other cases. cases before them, where it's not the government that's one of the parties, you wouldn't hear them say, "I am neither equipped nor inclined to decide scientific controversies." That's just a completely inappropriate comment. The first one who said that was Justice Renee Ponderance in an Ontario case, Trinity Bible Chapel, and Justice Renee Ponderance. been quoted by other judges. They have they've said, "I'm neither equipped nor inclined to resolve scientific controversies." Yeah. And Chris Flurry is still fighting that Trinity Bible Chapel case is being appealed now to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Yeah. But now you've made this comment about not equipped or inclined, but actually not the Trinity Bible case, but the Randy Hillier case where the court ignored. This is another problem. They ignore evidence placed before them about lockdown harms. There's massive. We already knew this in 2020. We knew anecdotally, right? Like I know you, you've probably shared a story about somebody that you knew who knew somebody who committed suicide and that it was related to lockdowns. So you and I and, and I guess anybody with, with any common sense and a set of of brains knew in 2020 that the lockdowns once they were past that two weeks to flatten the curve And they went on and on and on and on and we all knew that there was massive harms coming But in one of the Justice Center's court cases, we actually had an expert report by Dr. Kevin Bardosh Who's a Canadian? Who is teaching at I think Washington State University in in Washington? Washington. And, uh, we got all the data for this in his expert report. It's not just anecdotal what you and I knew in 2020. He's got the data there from 2020 and 21 and 22 on mental health damage and you know, speech impediment or children not progressing in learning speech because of all this mass querying, um, drug overdoses, uh, data. showing that there's more people dying from additional drug overdoses than there were of lockdowns. The economic harm, the people driven into poverty and bankruptcy and unemployment, people driven into loneliness and despair, psychological torture imposed on seniors who were locked up and family was not allowed to see them. They were not allowed to see them. see family. They couldn't even make their own choice about what, you know, COVID risk they might choose. Because there's a lot of elderly people that say, "I'd rather risk getting COVID and being able to see my kids and grandkids as opposed to being locked up." So all of this harm put before the court and the judge mentions the report. There's kind of one sentence there. Ignores the contents of it. and just moves on and says, "Well, yeah, we rule in favor of the government." Without even looking at the evidence, that's a decline and a deterioration that needs to be reversed. And it must be very frustrating. My own organization, Strong and Free Canada, I know from messages that we received, especially during the first couple of years of all this nonsense, that we prevented some suicides. But, that doesn't help the people. people that we lost. And I know that you feel the same way. And so it's got to be very frustrating for you to be fighting these cases, to be bringing an expert witness, and not just the ones you've mentioned, Dr. J. Bahta -Korea, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration has testified several times. I believe Dr. Byron Bridal, a number of others, you bring in these expert witnesses, people who are highly qualified epidemiologists. epidemiologists, virologists, and the courts ignore them. We don't have a single court ruling. And this is an important point for people to say, "Oh, well, the courts have upheld these measures." Yeah, they have. There's not a single court ruling on file where a judge explained why, in his view or her view, the government's evidence was better, stronger, more persuasive than the evidence put forward by citizens who are are challenging the violation of the Charter Rates and Freedoms. I would be disappointed, but I could live with if judges actually looked at and took a hard look at the evidence, and then if they came up with an explanation, which I think would be impossible to do, but nevertheless, they came up with an explanation and said, "Okay, I've actually taken a serious look, a hard look at the government's evidence. I've taken a hard look at the evidence brought forward." by citizens challenging the violation of charter freedoms. Having thoroughly reviewed and considered this evidence, here are my reasons as to why I think the government's evidence is stronger and more persuasive. You won't find it. There's not a single court ruling where the judge goes through and explains. What they do instead is they, they largely ignore, they might mention it in passing, but they largely ignore the evidence of lockdown harms. And they say, well, it's the worst pandemic in a century. And so we just need to be deferential to the government because the government's saving lives. They never explain how they come to that conclusion. They just kind of accept, and that's what's meant by judicial notice. notice. - Yeah, they just accept the government's claim that there isn't an emergency, right? Which we knew early on, this was not COVID is real. It was a serious threat and still is a serious threat to perhaps a 10th of the population if you are elderly and have comorbidities, right? So you're already old and you've got, you know, one or more of emphysema and heart disease and... and dementia, and high blood pressure, and on and on and on. But we knew early on that this was not the Spanish Flu of 1918, which is what the authorities made it out to be as bad as. So you have some judges that just accept the government's claim. Why? Because it's the government that's making the claim. Like they seem to to not comprehend that governments are made up out of people. And if individual people can lie, governments can lie. We've seen plenty of evidence in human history of, of politicians who lie. So why this, this naive, credulous, uh, oh, well, it's a government official that said it. So it must be true. That's, that's not right. And it's not what we saw pre 2020. Pre 2020 judges were not saying, well, the government said it. I believe it. That settles it. No, no, no, no. Pre 2020, they were holding the government to that higher standard and saying, well, you have to prove with evidence, uh, you have to justify your policies. Yeah. And I think that brings us to a couple of specific cases that I wanted to discuss, starting with the Ingram case here in Alberta. A major victory eventually. but it was a very difficult case, especially trying to get the public health officer at the time, Dina Hinshaw, to testify, which she tried to dodge several times. She, at one point, I don't know to what extent this was her doing or her lawyer or both, I don't know, but her lawyer told the court that she could not be available for questioning by our lawyers because she's working these 80 -hour weeks and she's busy saving lives, and so she's working 16 hours a day to keep us all safe. So she can't possibly take time away from her 16 -hour days to go and be asked questions about her horrific destructive policies that are causing a lot of harm to a lot of people. No, no, she's too busy for that. She's too important doing this important work. And so, at one point, the days that she was scheduled to be cross -examined by, questioned by our lawyers, the days that she was not available, we learned that she took a holiday. So, on those very same days where she was not going to be available to get questioned by our lawyers, because she's ostensibly, she needs to work her, her 16 hour days to save us all. And she took a family holiday. Now I've got no problem with her taking a family holiday, but, you know, for her lawyer to mislead the court in that fashion is just reprehensible. - And of course there was no repercussions for the lawyer for that. - Not to my knowledge. - And so where's this? I have to ask this, was this a statement that this lawyer made before the court? I should, I should look into it some more because wouldn't that, if it was, wouldn't that be perjury? Well, you know, if, if, uh, if a complaint was filed against that lawyer with philosophy, I don't know how it would go. I don't know if the lawyer would say that he was, uh, repeating information he'd heard from his clients, in which case he was not. not misleading the court. I don't know. It's hypothetical. Yes. But eventually that case did turn into, as I said, a major win. Perhaps quite, not quite the way we would have liked when all of the COVID mandates in Alberta were ruled to be illegal by Justice Romaine, but not on the constitutional grounds. And I think you should explain on what grounds they were ruled illegal. Yeah. So the Alberta's Chief Minister. officer, Dr. Dina Hinshaw, she testified under oath that all of these health orders were not really hers. They were the orders of Jason Kenney and the cabinet. And Justice Barbara Romain interpreted the Public Health Act as conferring the power only on the chief medical officer. So this judge ruled that these health orders were invalid because they ought to have been imposed unilaterally by the chief medical officer and not with considerable political input from then premier Jason Kenney and the cabinet. So the court ruled this is incorrect. The public health act in our interpretation says that these health orders are to come from DNA Hinshaw alone, not the cabinet. And because DNA Hinshaw testified, well, these weren't really my orders. They were of Premier Jason Kenney in the cabinet because of that testimony. The court said, okay, uh, all of these orders are invalid because they ought to have come from DNA Hinshaw alone and not from the premier and cabinet. So that was the reason why they were struck down. And but as a result of that, that, a lot of the cases against people in Alberta have now been dropped. - Well, just recently we had one medical doctor. I'm gonna skip his name. I don't wanna get the college of physicians and surgeons of Alberta too upset about it, but they stopped prosecuting a particular doctor in Alberta in January in large part because they felt that. that the prosecution might not succeed because all these health orders were illegal. And so we had the prosecution cease against Pastor James Coates, who spent 35 days in jail under Premier Jason Kenney, the great champion of religious freedom, locking up pastors, Pastor Tim Stevens of Fairview Baptist. Ty Northcott and his No More Lockdowns Rodeo and a whole slew of other people, they stopped the prosecutions. So that was good. Right. So that brings me now to the most recent win where Judge Mosley ruled that the Trudeau's use of the EMA was inappropriate and unconstitutional. And, of course, right now we've got still scheduled, I think, to pick up again and march the trial of Chris Barber and Tamara Litch. And it was now that was a CCF case, but many of the witnesses had been represented in the past by the JCCF. Do you think that as a result of that judgment, we're going to see a lot of these cases that had to do with the freedom convoy dropped? Well, yes and no. I think that, strictly speaking, and the Justice Center is paying for the legal bills of Chris Barber, we're also paying for the legal bills of Tamara Leach in defending against a civil action launched by the Ottawa bureaucrat, Zexi Lee, and some other Ottawa residents. Is Zexi's ridiculous lawsuit for how many millions of dollars is it? Only 290 million. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the grounds that it cost your business, I believe it was. They're claiming, they're claiming business losses, but you know, the downtown Ottawa restaurants that stayed open and did not buy into the prime minister's false narrative about the truckers being these racist white supremacists, neo -nazi, criminal, violent, dangerous people, anybody who rejected that false narrative and there's no, there's no family. for that narrative, any business that rejected that narrative and stayed open was doing booming business in Ottawa because all these truckers want to go eat in a restaurant. Right. If you're sleeping in your cabin 24 hours a day and you don't have access to a fridge and a stove, you're going to want one hot meal a day or maybe two or three. But, so the Justice Center is, is we're paying for for, uh, uh, the legal defense of Chris Barber. Uh, and we're also paying for Tamara Leach, freedom convoy, Chris Barber, and, um, other people in, in the civil action. Now the federal court ruling on the, uh, that's the case of, uh, Joest versus Canada. So it was issued on the 23rd of January, ruling that the. Prime Minister acted illegally. There was no national emergency to justify emergency powers. In my view, it's not going to have a direct impact on the criminal charges because criminal charges were laid for, having violated the criminal code of Canada. But I think there'll be a big psychological impact. I think it's a signal to other judges. judges that, hey, it's okay to buck the trend, and you don't have to rule in favor of the government. Because this judge, when you read his ruling, it's really clear he dislikes freedom convoy, he dislikes the truckers. He somewhat buys into this Trudeau narrative that the truckers were probably pretty bad people and probably kind of dangerous. dangerous, it's just it's so evident from his ruling that that he takes a very dim view of the truckers. He calls the protests an occupation. He calls them blockaders. He makes two references to this diagonal on, you know, the scary group, which has been completely debunked. Yes. Yes. You know, it's it's a joke. It's a fire. Jeremy McKenzie started it as a joke. He literally finger -plated the flag himself. It was never never anything serious behind it. But the judge takes diagonal on seriously in his judgment. Well, I'm still reading articles today from mainstream media that clearly take diagonal on seriously. This is good, and I'll tell you why it's good. It's good because here you have a judgment from an Ottawa -based judge. I think Justice Richard Mosley, as far as I know, lives in the Ottawa area and he's part of the Ottawa legal establishment and he takes a very dim view of freedom convoy and and the protests and the truckers takes a very dim view, says that they cause significant economic harm, which I kind of think compared to lockdowns, no, but anyways. So when you have a judge taking a dim view of the truckers and then still saying based on the facts, the facts were not there to justify the government declaring a national emergency. That's a very strong ruling and the federal government is going to have a tough time trying to get that overturned. I'm not making any predictions, they might win on appeal, but it's an uphill fight for the federal government on this case. [BLANK _AUDIO] Now, there's been reference made, and you made this reference in Justice Mosley's decision to blockades. And I think this time we cleared up some of the misconceptions about that. My understanding was that one of the excuses that Trudeau used for invoking the EMA was based not on what was happening in Ontario, but on the demonstration here at the Coots border crossing, where he claimed that they had blocked the border crossing. And now to my knowledge, and you might have more information on this. this, nowhere in Ontario did they ever block a border crossing. I think they blocked a lane. In Kootz, I think they briefly, very briefly, blocked it. And then they moved all the trucks into one lane so that there was hardly any period of time at which these truckers blocked a border crossing. Traffic was still going through. Well, my, my, my understanding, and I stand to be corrected is, is that there may not have been a total block. but there was an impact on cross -border-- Well, there would have been if you blocked a lane, but that's kind of the point of a demonstration, isn't it, to get some attention. But they didn't actually stop anybody from going through the border. Well, they may-- They may have slowed it down a little bit. They may have slowed it down, and they may, for some people, they may have slowed it down a lot. But here's what's interesting vis -a -vis this ruling, is that-- and this is a matter of public record. the Coots border situation was resolved, concluded, ended with open borders, and the same with Windsor, Ontario, and the same with the Manitoba, they had a brief, they had some, you know, a temporary border, you know, partial closing, whatever. And all that was gone. When Trudeau declared a national emergency, at that moment in time, the Coots border, Windsor border. Manitoba border had been resolved and there's free and open traffic, the demonstrations were over, they were finished, they were concluded. All that was left was a peaceful protest in Ottawa and the truckers through their lawyers provided by the Justice Center, they had reached a deal that they were going to move out. Now, because it's a loose movement of hundreds of independent people, there could have possibly been some non -compliant. You could have had a number of trucks that said, "We're not part of this deal." Okay, fine. But the bulk, under the leadership, the informal leadership of Tamara Leach and others, they had negotiated a deal in Ottawa. They had reached an agreement that the truckers were going to move out of the downtown core. They were going to focus on Wellington, which is the street. street in front of the parliament buildings. That deal was reached and still the declared national emergency sent in police from areas other than Ottawa. Cause the Ottawa police had a great working relationship, like on the ground, these peaceful protesters were in touch with the police. They were talking to each other. The police told them where to park their trucks, where not to park their trucks. It was, uh, cooperative and harmonious on the ground. but they brought in police. It wasn't the Ottawa police by and large that - Yeah. It was my understanding from my interview with Chris that they were getting on quite well with the Ottawa police. Yes. It was the other police that were brought in, and of course there's still questions about exactly who they were. So yeah, as you say, there wasn't a problem. At the time, was he in both the EMA? Well, there were problems, but here's part of the EMA. There's a bunch of - Justice Mosley, and it's worth, or anybody who wants to read it online, it's worth reading. It's lengthy, but it's an interesting read to read the judgment. You can look it up on Cannelly, Canadian Legal Information Institute, C -A -N -L -I -I. And when you read through the judgment, there are several components to the Emergencies Act that the judge goes through. One of them was... is serious violence or threat of serious violence, and the judge ruled not there. No serious violence or threat of serious violence. The other one, the big criterion is that you can only declare a national emergency when other law enforcement techniques are not working. And they did work because without the Emergencies Act, and I don't know the details of how it got resolved, but long story short, Coots, Windsor, and Manitoba were reopened without the Emergencies Act. So however-- - And that was Justice Mosley's point is that all of the necessary legal structure to deal with it was already there. You didn't need the MA. - Yeah. Yeah. And there was, there could have been, you know, and there probably was, you know, illegally parked vehicles or truckers that were violating provincial laws where you have provincial laws that you cannot obstruct a highway. So, presumably, you know, in Ottawa, if there's a place where you normally have three lanes and then two of them are blocked off and there's only one that's still open for emergency. vehicles would probably be violation of provincial offenses. But they had those options, right, to issue tickets for illegally parked vehicles, to issue tickets for breaking provincial laws, even had if there was any crime, which there's next to zero as far as I know, but if there was crime, you use the criminal code of Canada and you, you press, you lay charges against individuals that are violating the criminal code. And we have the Ottawa Police's own statistics to show that during the Freedom Convoy, crime in Ottawa actually went down. Yeah. Yes. And also, I think I should mention, and I can't recall the lady's name at this point in time, but this came out in the Litch Barbara trial just a couple months ago that, I believe it was the lady who coordinates the buses, and it was her and some of the police officers who admitted under oath that the truckers were ready to move. The police were obstructing them from moving. They were in certain residential areas. They were supposed to move to Wellington Street in front of the house apartment. They were prepared to move. The police weren't letting them. I've heard that many times over. I have no reason to doubt that. Well, it was testified, not just by this one lady, but by at least one of the police officers. officers involved as well, who said that they received orders to basically obstruct this from happening. So they don't have much of a case to stand on, and I've been following this case, reading up on as it comes along, and it seems to me like the government lawyers are just getting destroyed. Well, we knew that, so the Emergencies Act was there in force for about 10 years. days, from February 14th to February 23rd. And we knew at the time that the public inquiry, the Public Order Emergencies Commission would not necessarily hold the federal government to account, which turned out to be not when Trudeau's appointing all of his cronies to run it. No. Well, it turned out to be correct. We got this very weird, vague, you know. you know, Justice Rulo said that the federal government was justified, you know, however, then he goes on to provide all these reasons as to why it wasn't really justified. And so we launched a court action right away in 2022. It was followed in February because we wanted a court to rule specifically. and, you know, we took a risk, I mean, we might have lost, but we put it before the court, and so we're asking for a declaration that the government acted illegally and declared a national emergency while not meeting the criteria set out in the Emergencies Act for the criteria that are supposed to be met in order for a government to be able to do that. We wanted a declaration, and so we did. We got the declaration that it was illegal. And again, in a very strong judgment, because the judge ruled against the federal government, even though this judge was definitively not a fan of freedom convoy or the truckers. Right. Now, John, I want to get onto what is at least in my opinion, that the most egregious miscarriage of justice, abuse of authority that we've seen yet in the last four years, the Coups Four. It's tragic. The Justice Center is not acting for them, so our lawyers are not representing them. But you are well aware of the case and some of the details of it. These four gentlemen who have been in jail now for 23 months for almost two years without a trial and accused of plotting to kill a police officer. But the evidence seems to me awfully circumstantial, uh, you know, but the evidence here, here's the point. The, maybe there's compelling evidence. Maybe these four guys are, are guilty of sin, or maybe there's three out of four, two out of four, one out of four that are guilty. I don't know. But, uh, for, for the crown to not get its act together and to keep these guys locked up, I, I've been, I was talking, uh, uh, this morning with one of the lawyers, the four gentlemen have four different lawyers, uh, which is necessary because there's kind of conflict of interest as to who, who is guilty, who is not guilty. So they all have, one of the four currently does not have a lawyer, but I think three out of four, they have their own lawyers. Stog into one of these lawyers this morning and, and as of, uh, a few months ago, uh, in the summer of 2023, so a year and a half after after the crown still didn't have its evidence together. And to me, that's just bizarre because the events in question took place in February and January of 2022. And a year and a half later, you haven't finished your investigation yet. It's, uh, that, that's just poor performance on the part of the crown, full stop. Well, one. to mention there's been no new evidence presented either, not since they were arrested. You know, I don't, I'm not familiar with what evidence has or has not been presented, but it's my understanding that they're not done yet with assembling it and getting it ready, which two years after the fact, again, just strikes me as very odd. odd. I'm trying to be charitable here. I mean, maybe there's a good reason why two years later they don't have the evidence assembled yet. But the same lawyer I spoke with, and I've heard this from other lawyers, there are people charged with manslaughter, people charged with second degree murder that are out on bail. Okay. These guys are charged with conspiracy conspiracy to commit murder. And even if there's evidence there, they're still in jail. Well, people who have actually killed somebody are out on bail. Why are these guys not out on bail? And there have been numerous and some very high profile names over the past two years have argued bail applications unsolved. unsuccessfully. So I don't know the details of that either. But it's a grave injustice to keep these guys locked up for two years. The Crown should get its act together and schedule a trial date and let's get on with it and let's see what the Crown's evidence is. Right. So, John, I've brought up a number of the cases that I felt were very significant, but you've been at the center of this. you run the JCCF. What are some other cases presently in over the past few years that the JCCF has been involved in that you think are very significant that should be mentioned? Well, Premier Brian Peckford, last living signatory to the charter documents way back in 1982, he is asking the Supreme Court of Canada to hear his appeal. His case was... was tragically and very unjustly dismissed as moot. In October of 2022, this was after the federal government, as well as Premier Peckford and Maxine Bernier and other Canadians, there were four actions in total. Two of them were provided by the Justice Centre and other two were not. These four court actions, all the expert reports have been filed, all the experts have been cross -examined under oath, and the judge said, "Well, the order is expired, so this is mooch. It's no longer relevant." When the federal government itself said, we could bring these measures back at any time. Yeah, very important to note, travel ban was not canceled. It was suspended. Suspended. Suspended. Yes. And I believe that still the case is it not? I believe so. Yes. I mean, the order, I think the order had expired, but whether it was either way, there's a real problem here where the, it takes years to get a court action to a point of, of, you know, all the different steps, the, the submission of evidence and the testimony of witnesses, the testimony of experts who are witnesses, cross -examination of experts, the legal argument. There's so much work that goes into it. From the time that you file your court action, you're lucky to get a ruling within 24 months. That's just the nature of the beast. That's another big problem that needs to get solved. I think we need more judges and more courtrooms. It shouldn't take years to get a ruling. Let's talk about why we have a shortage of judges. judges. It's because Trudeau has been appointing liberals, liberal supporters as court justices, which has left us with a shortage because he doesn't want it. Right now, I believe it's the percentage, if I'm recalling correctly, it's 76 % of the justices right now are known liberal supporters and only 24 % are not. No. You don't have to quote me on that, but as I recall, that's the statistic right now. No. But the problem is that we have a shortage of judges, which is why we have a shortage longstanding. Under Harper, it was taking two years, three years to get a court ruling. Which is bad. I think it's gotten worse since Trudeau, though, because of what he's doing. We'll probably stop it. Quite possibly that or just the whole lockdowns and the partial shutting down of courts that we saw a lot of us in 2020 and '21 and '22. Which is bad. of course due to a backlog. But it's so important not, you know, for criminal law, whether you're the accused person or whether you're the victim of a crime, regardless of which side you're on, you want a speedy resolution. You don't want something to drag on for years. If it's a family law, you know, dispute about child support, spousal support, custody, access, you want a ruling within weeks or months, not years, if it's a civil law. matter and somebody cheated you out of $10 ,000 in a business deal and you're suing, you should get a response. You should get a ruling within months, not weeks or months, not years. So this is a longstanding problem of there being too few judges and it was a problem under Harper as well as Trudeau. Yes. And you mentioned that they declared it moot, and that's not the only case they've done this on. And I've made this comment. I want your opinion on it, because to me, the judge is not there to determine whether or not a crime is in progress, but whether or not a crime has been committed. So declaring it moot would be no different than saying, "Well, we're going to declare an assault case moot because the assaults are longer in progress." Well, I think it's a fair comparison. I mean, courts are always looking at things. I think it's a fair comparison. I think it's a fair comparison. I think it's a fair comparison. is another disappointing aspect of some court rulings where judges have said, well, what happened has happened. You can't change the past. And we're not really going to look into it because, excuse me, every case before the courts, whether you're a judge that's looking at a claim for a a claim for a judge that's looking at a claim for a judge that's looking at a claim for a judge that's looking at a claim for a judge that's looking at a claim for a judge that's looking at commit the crime? Yes or no? Regardless of what the case is, the court is always looking backwards in time and trying to figure out what went on and then issue a ruling. And it should be no different for constitutional matters, especially when we know that the governments were flying blind. You know, they didn't have the science to back this up at the relevant time. It's not just what we we know now, it's what was known at the time. So, no, there's no excuse for it. So, Brian, this is a great thing about Richard Mosley's ruling in the Joest case, declaring that the federal government acted illegally when invoking and using emergency powers. [end of transcript] to rule that it was moot because, well, the emergency powers stopped being used on February 23, 2022. That was almost two years ago, it's moot. No, he mentions in his judgment that the time it takes to litigate a matter, to bring a matter before the court, it takes longer than how long these emergency measures are in force. So if we just buy into this mootness, practical result is governments can violate our rights and freedoms whenever they feel like it. And then after a few weeks or a few months, they just withdraw and there's no accountability if the courts are just going to say, "Well, it's moot. The emergency order expired." So that's what I hope that the Supreme Court of Canada will hear Brian Peckford's case. Now, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear Brian Peckford's case. Now, the silver lining on the cloud, even though it was terrible that it was dismissed at Moot, is that because of that court action, we had federal government officials admit under oath that there is no medical or scientific basis for the travel restrictions. Yeah. So we still have that victory. Nobody can take that away from us. And it was because of the court action, because at a news conference, you're not going to have Trudeau or any other politician admitting. at a news conference that there's no medical or scientific basis for the government's measures. Well, and it's not the first time it's happened. In the Ingram case here in Alberta, when the government was requested to put full of their evidence, it took, they delayed for months and months and months. And my understanding is they handed over five, 600 pages of basically fluff. Nothing had no scientific evidence at all. There's nothing that the Alberta government did not put forward persuasive evidence to change it. justify the lockdown measures. It was a lot of models and a lot of fear mongering and a lot of repetition of slogans. And sadly, that seems to be enough for some judges. Yeah. So, John, I want to ask you this because you've been a constitutional lawyer for a very long time. You've been fighting for rights for a very long time. And I've made my own feelings in this quite clear that I feel the notwithstanding clause should be removed. for two reasons. One, if it's there, sooner or later, a government is going to misuse it. And two, because if there really is an emergency, my feeling is all the government has to do is tell people what they should do and 99 % of people will follow them. What's your opinion on this? Should that clause be removed? Should there be something changed to limit their ability to use it? Well, just... just by way of, as a matter of historical background, we would not have the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of our Constitution today, for better or for worse. There's different viewpoints on that as well. The Charter would not be part of our Constitution today without the notwithstanding clause, because a number of premiers in 1982 said we're not going along with this if we're not going along. we're going to give this unfettered, unchecked power to judges to declare laws to be null and void without any opportunity on the part of the legislature to opt out of a bad court ruling." So we wouldn't have the charter without the Notwithstanding Clause. That's just historical background. The Notwithstanding Clause got a bad name because in the first two or three decades of the Charter's history, it was used almost exclusively by the Quebec government to opt out of court rulings that said that the French -only or anti -English language laws were an unjustified violation of freedom of expression. And the Quebec government said, well, thank you court, but we're not going along with that. We're using the notwithstanding clause and we're opting out to keep our language laws on the books." So go to bad reputation. More recently, though, I've seen very positive uses of the notwithstanding clause. We saw the Ford government in Ontario use it very wisely to opt out of, I think, a terrible court ruling that said that reducing the number of Aldermanic Aldermanic districts or city council districts in the city of Toronto from 56 or 55, reducing that down to 25, that that was a violation of freedom of expression, and a violation of the right to vote, both of which are just, it's ridiculous. It's insane. No, it caused a lot of hardship and inconvenience to candidates who are justifiably very upset. You know, you're running in this little district and now all of a sudden the government goes, "Brrr." And, you know, you spend all this time and effort and energy and money on your campaign literature and door knocking. I could see the candidates being really upset about it, but nobody's freedom of expression was violated. Nobody's right to vote was violated. And so the Ford government said we're using the notwithstanding clause to opt out of a bad court ruling. In Saskatchewan recently, we had a court ruling to strike down on an interim basis. It was interim injunction. Interim injunction was granted to strike down parental consent policy whereby the Saskatchewan government said that if kids under the age of 16 want to embark on a social transition, and so for the boy to start using a girl's name dressing like a girl using the girl's bathroom for or vice versa, the girl wanting to use a boy's name, dress like a boy, going to the boy's change room. For kids under 16, the parents need to be notified, good policy, to protect kids. Court struck it down. Saskatchewan government used the Not With Sanding Clause to say, "Thank you, Court. We're putting this law back on the books." Now, because I'm... I'm not a lawyer and I've had a hell of a learning curve myself in the last few years, I may not be completely understanding the notwithstanding clause because what you're referring to, if I'm following correctly, is the right of a province to - Or the federal government. Or the federal government. But where I'm seeing the benefit of this is that my understanding is that, yes, it is within the purview of the federal government to pass a law that unilaterally applies to all Canadians, but... But if the provincial government did not have a say in the writing of that law, they're not required to enforce it. Now, is that part of the notwithstanding clause? Or is that something different? Well, the notwithstanding clause means that the federal government or the provincial government, whichever the case may be, they will say this law operates notwithstanding the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the charter. So let me give you a hypothetical example. About 20 years ago, 15 years ago, there was a group that challenged the, there's a criminal code section that authorizes parents and guardians and teachers to use physical force in raising kids. So spanking is legal in Canada. and the use of force. So, a teacher can use force to, I guess, subdue an unruly student in class. Well, not if she wants to keep her job, she can't. I've been married to a teacher for 27 years. You're not allowed to do that. But in theory, at least, in theory, but no, if you actually do it, no. Okay. But here's an example, okay. So, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the right of parents to spank their kids in a court ruling. They rejected the arguments of an activist group that went to court to seek a court declaration making it illegal for parents to spank their children. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled against the activist group and upheld the right of parents to spank their children. It placed a bunch of limits and restrictions on it, but okay. Now, culture has changed, society has changed. So let's say three years from now, we've got a prime minister, Pierre Poilierva, and you've got the same activist group where a different one goes to court, and this time succeeds in getting a court ruling that it's illegal for parents to spank their children. What the Poilierva government could do is they would reenact that legislation and they would say notwithstanding Canadian Charter Rights and Freedoms were authorizing parents to spank their children. So the government can opt out of court ruling by passing the law again, but this time when they passed the law, they say notwithstanding Charter Rights and Freedoms, this is the law. Right. So where I was getting at with my original question. was, and please do correct me if I'm wrong on this, it was the notwithstanding clause that allowed governments across the country to violate our rights over the last four years. No, no, no, because you only use the notwithstanding clause to opt out of a bad court ruling. So there wasn't a single government. What they could have done, theoretically what they could have done, the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, government of Canada, all these governments, they could have passed laws saying... "Notwithstanding the continuity rates of freedoms, we're passing these draconian health measures to push people into isolation and loneliness and depression and poverty and bankruptcy, et cetera, et cetera." They could have done that if they wanted to. They didn't do that. They just went ahead and violated the rights and freedoms without having used the "notwithstanding" clause. So, if I'm understanding correctly then, there's no constitutional found foundation for them to violate their rights. Well, you know, this is where we went to court and sadly, because some judges have lowered the standard from where it was under the Oaks test, they've lowered it down to governments merely need to produce some scientific support for their measures. So they lowered the standard. So we've had court rulings that have have upheld the lockdown measures as valid. But once again, there's the notwithstanding clause has nothing to do with it. There's nothing in the Constitution that gives them the right to do that. Well section one of the Constitution says governments can override or write some freedoms provided that it is a reasonable limit prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Okay. So the authority is there in section one of the charter for governments to violate charter rights and freedoms. So then let me reword my original question. And I'm glad we went down that road of the notwithstanding clause, which was important. But my opinion is that clause that gives them the ability to under certain circumstances violate our rights, I think it should be removed. Well, that depends on the big question there is who do you you trust more or who do you trust less? Judges versus politicians. And myself, I don't have much confidence in either group. I think judges can buy into tyrannical anti -freedom narrative and fail to uphold our charter rights and freedoms. So judges are fallible human beings, they can make wrong decisions. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled at one point that women are not legally persons. That's the Supreme Court of Canada. That did last very long because it was immediately appealed to the Privy Council in Britain, which at that time was a higher authority above the Supreme Court of Canada and overturned the Supreme Court of Canada. But we have to remember judges are their fallible human beings and they will issue rulings like the Supreme Court of Canada saying that that women are legally not persons. Judges, sorry, politicians can also be, as we've seen firsthand in the last few years, not trustworthy when it comes to upholding your rights and freedoms. But you've got section one of the Constitution gives judges this latitude to condone the violation of our rights and freedoms. So section one allows the judges to not protect us. And then section 33 allows politicians to opt out of court rulings that the politicians deemed to be unacceptable. So section 33 allows politicians to violate rights and freedoms. Section one allows judges to do so. So let me rephrase my question. then. Let's say I get my wish and those, those two clauses are removed. Both, both, both. Nobody under no circumstance because I'm sorry, I'm a libertarian. If you're very strongly about this, I don't care if there's, there's two million Chinese soldiers landing on our shores. I don't believe this should ever be a situation in which courts or politicians can violate our constitutional rights. But I'm not a constitutional lawyer. if I got my wish and those clauses were removed. What bad things could happen as a result? Well, we'd have to embark on the big task of finding certain principles that allow some violations. Let me give you an example. Okay, let's say that you're a Satanist. Satanist and your religion requires you to and I'm sorry, I apologize if I'm mischaracterizing Satanism because I don't say that they don't, they're not into kidnapping children and subjecting them to to ritual abuse and whatever. Okay. So hypothetical example, let's say you belong to a religion. Okay. Maybe it's not Satanism is some other religion. And your religion requires you once a year to kidnap a young child and subject that child to horrific torture and abuse. And that's part of your religion, religious conviction. So we have a criminal code law that says it's illegal to kidnap children and subjects them in torture. Is that a violation of your religious freedom? Well, to me, it seems like, well, yeah, you've got a religion that requires you to kidnap and harm children. And we've got a criminal code law that violates your religious freedom to kidnap and abuse children. So how do we come up with a set of principles that would allow some kind of violation to place limits on religious freedom? Again, that's a very extreme example. But wouldn't it, under any circumstances, those, those rights and freedoms are subject to obeying the law, the criminal code. If you break the criminal code, it's the opinion of many people, very much. that once you break the criminal code, you just gave up your rights. Okay, but then you have a problem. What if the criminal code criminalizes Islamophobia? And so if you have been taken away from you, it's not about you, but there's some commentator that says, quote, "Islam is a scary evil religion and we should ban it. We should ban it." should ban Muslim immigration into Canada." End of quote. If somebody says that, if the criminal code says that that person just committed a crime, the crime of Islamophobia, then it's not that simple as simply saying, "Well, we just have to obey the laws," because the law itself could be unjust. True. And there is an example. Anyway. So, what I'm saying is that you can get rid of section 33 not with standing clause. You can get rid of section 1. which is the window, and it's a pretty big window these days for governments to violate our rights. You can get rid of those two sections. You're going to have to develop a body of legal principles to manage what limits are reasonable or not. So maybe I'm not understanding, and I'm sorry to harp on this, John. John, but so, yes, you're saying that if we got rid of those clauses in section one and section 33, that would give the government the right to violate our rights under certain circumstances, that that would be, could potentially a problem if the criminal code was changed to, say, persecute certain groups. But it seems to me that there's nothing stopping that from happening anyway. Well, this is why I'm here. often said, and it remains my opinion today, that the ultimate guarantor of our rates and freedoms is not found in the written text of any constitution, necessarily. It's not found amongst the judges, it's not found amongst the politicians, but if we want to protect our rates and freedoms, the only way to do that is for every citizen of Canada, or if not every one at least 90%, 80%, 70%, to really understand and cherish our rights and freedoms. So it's in the culture that our rights and freedoms are preserved. And I'll give you an example. Before 1982, so the Charter was not there. And yet, in practice, we respected the rights of a criminally accused person, a right to remain silent and not not speak. So if you're arrested, you can zip it and say nothing. The right to have legal counsel. The right not to be tortured. You can't be locked up somewhere or deprived of food or water or whatever to pressure you into a confession. The right to face your accuser and ask questions of your accuser. The right to a fair trial before an independent and emergent tribunal, whether it's a court or some other tribunal, all of these criminal protections for the accused person were alive and well prior to the charter coming in force. What were they based on? They were based on the fact that every Canadian, or if not every Canadian, at least 90%, 80%, 70 % of the population understood that a man is innocent until proven guilty, that that the crown has the burden of proving the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. All these criminal law protections were in force. Why? Because there is a broad -based cultural understanding where everybody, the citizens, the politicians, the police, the judges, the crown prosecutors, everybody understood that a person charged with a crime has these fundamental rights. So it's in the culture, that's where the solution is. The charter comes along and now enshrines these same rights in the charter, didn't really make a big difference. So do you feel that maybe the charter was a mistake? I mean, we did, after all, already have a bill of rights. We had a federal bill of rights, which was legislation passed by parliament, which could be repealed by parliament. But yeah, we had a bill of rights and it was certainly, that's not a bad idea to enshrine. them, but the problem is still in the culture because if you have a culture where let's say, let's take the same criminal procedural protections again as an example. So let's say we're down to only 20 % of Canadians who really understand that a man accused of a crime has a right to refer trial and this and this and this and this and this. That's, if you're down to 20 % of Canadians who have a right to refer trial and this and 20 % of the people believing that and cherishing that, you're in big trouble. Because if you've got 80 % of the population, which is going to include the majority of lawyers and the majority of judges believing that somebody charged with a crime does not really have these rights, if that's where the culture is at, you're in trouble. And it doesn't matter what the charter says. Well, that seems to be the way the culture is going. So my next natural question would be, be then, in your opinion, how do we fix the culture? Well, we've got the Justice Center is we're providing one piece of the puzzle. It's not the be all and end all, but we are developing a charter curriculum for high school students. We've already released the first module on freedom of expression. And in this year of 2024, we will be finishing other modules covering freedom of expression. conscience and religion, freedom of association, freedom of peaceful assembly, mobility rates, bodily autonomy, so on and so forth. So we have to educate our kids and educate Canadians of all ages about why the free society is superior to a repressive regime. And it's an ongoing work of education. And we've got a lot of work ahead of us in the next few years, I would say the next few decades to return Canada to this point where, you know, if not 100%, at least 90, 80, 70 % of Canadians really understand why the free society is a good thing. All right. So, John, I just want to ask one last question, because I know you've been working just ridiculous hours for producing now, defending our rights, running the JCCF before that with the CCF, before that with the Canadian taxpayers federation. What's been the hardest part of all of that? The thing that makes me the most sad is, I think the hardest part for me was September of 2021. The Justice Center was receiving literally thousands, I think it was September. it was like 30 ,000 requests for legal help from people that were, their employer was threatening to fire them if they didn't get injected. Students threatened with getting kicked out of their college or university if they didn't get injected. You know, millions of Canadians forced into second -class citizenship where you cannot travel, you cannot freely enter and leave the country, so on and so forth. So we had, I seem to recall, 30 ,000 requests for legal help, and we did not have the resources, and that still makes me sad. We took on a lot of cases. We played brinkmanship with the Alberta government. And I remember there was one Christmas, and it was Christmas. Christmas 2022 or '21, where the Alberta government was on the verge of firing thousands of nurses. And last minute, they blinked because we had started a court action on that bodily autonomy vaccine choice issue. So we did help a lot of people, but I am horribly saddened. Even today, there's people that are are still out of work. Today, January 2024, people in Ontario and British Columbia that are out of work over a decision they made in 2021, three years ago, not to get injected. Anyway, I think that was the hardest thing for me was September of 2021, with tens of thousands of people contacting us for legal help. And we we did not have the resources to help them. And I have to thank you because I am one of the benefactors of the organization. When I received a couple of fines, one of your lawyers represented me and the night before I was supposed to walk into the courtroom, they dropped the charges because they knew they were going to lose. So, John, you've been in this fight for a long time. If you had some final thoughts for viewers, I think how to save our country, what are the One of Winston Churchill's quotes that I like is, "When you're going through hell, keep on going." And so a lot of people to varying extents have been going through hell, and the solution is to keep on going. The two virtues that we need to cultivate in ourselves and encourage other people to cultivate it, you can only cultivate it. in yourself. You can't really push it on somebody else, but the two virtues that we need to cultivate are the virtue of courage to speak truth to power and the virtue of perseverance to keep on going and recognize that we're not gonna turn things around in days or weeks or months. We are looking at years and decades and so we need to persevere and keep on going because we are gonna get our rates and freedoms back. It's a matter of time, but it's up to us to practice that perseverance, to refuse, to allow ourselves to get discouraged. That's the key. I agree completely. And as a final statement, courage, folks, is not the essence of fear. It's action in the face of it. John, thank you so much. Thank you. Well.