Auto-Generated Transcript The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms provides robonal lawyers to Canadians whose constitutional rights have been violated. The JCCF is a registered charity founded over a decade ago by John Carpe, who still serves as the organization's resident. Their work is supported entirely by donations. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, JCCF lawyers have worked tirelessly to represent those who have lost their rights. 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 third of a four -part series on the legal actions being taken by the JCCF JCCF on behalf of their clients. I am joined via Zoom from Ontario by Justice Centre lawyer Chris Fleury, who has been with the JCCF for only a year, but has already won some key cases. In today's interview, Chris gives us details on the acquittals of two men charged in association with the Freedom Convoy and the persecution of Christian churches. in Ontario. The JCCF is the largest of the legal 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 Tamara Litch and Chris Barber, organizers of the Freedom Convoy, and the humble Brian Peckford, who served as the third Premier of Newfoundland. Land and is the sole surviving author of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Despite only being with the Justice Centre for the past year, Chris has been exposed to enough corruption, both in the courts and from our government, to understand the ways in which Trudeau's Liberals are attempting to dodge responsibility for violating our constitutional rights. Time will tell how. how long those strategies will continue to protect them, and perhaps less time than we thought. Late in this infre -you, Chris and I discuss the case before the federal courts challenging the constitutionality of the Emergency Measures Act, invoked by Trudeau to shut down the Freedom Convoy. In the few hours between the time we con - the interview and I recorded this introduction, we received news that the federal court has accepted arguments by the Canadian Constitution Foundation's lawyers, another organization fighting for our rights, that the invocation of the Emergency Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests was unreasonable and violated the Charter rights to expression and security against the unreasonable searches and seizures. Chris, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. It's great to be here. Well, thank you. Now, so far I've interviewed two JCCF Warriors from here in Alberta, but you are in Ontario, and it's great to have you here so that you can give people a view of what you've been working on. and the cases that you've been taking on there And I'd ask you to come along today armed with what you feel are your three most significant cases And so I'm going to ask you to just start with the first one and we'll discuss that and then we'll move on from there Sure, so the first case is a case that I think you mentioned when you first approached me It's a case of a protester who was present in Ottawa in February 18th, and this is when the emergencies act after it had been invoked and during the police enforcement action, if we can call it that, in downtown Ottawa. He's swept up, and he's arrested, and he's charged with mischief and obstructing police. The short story is that we ended up running a trial, and after the trial, it was a one -day trial, very short one witness, just the arresting officer. officer and some Facebook images as well as the couple videos were admitted on consent. And after that one day trial, the judge acquitted Mr. Blackman. The other moving part there is that if he were to have been convicted, Mr. Blackman was subject to the seizure or sorry, the freezing of his bank account and we had planned to make an application for a stay in the event that he was convicted, because his bank account was subject to searches issued by the federal government. And we would have argued that that was a systemic issue, given that it happened to literally hundreds of Canadians and their bank accounts. Certainly a favorable outcome for Mr. Blackman. But the update is that the Crown has appealed. Actually, as of today and this morning, morning, they actually, I should say last night they sent me their appeal materials and their factum. I've had a chance to look over it very, very quickly, but the essence of it, it's no surprise. It's the same position that they've taken in virtually all of these cases in my experience, which is that mischief is criminal mischief is so broad as to capture. persons who are walking by a mischief. So courts have generally found that the and we can agree or disagree with this, personally disagree with it. But the courts have generally found in most cases that the freedom convoy did create a mischief. The question is whether or not Mr. Blackman was a part of that mischief or a party to the mischief, whether he committed it himself or is a party to the the broader mischief in the crowd. crown's position has largely been that a person who is essentially in close proximity to a mischief and expresses some, what I would consider a trivial level of support for the cause behind said mischief, then that person is guilty, which is just not an accurate statement of the law in my opinion. And we'll see how that plays out on the appeal. appeal. Right. And so I think at this point in time, Chris, we need to give people some of the details of this. For people who've never heard of Evan Blackman, don't know what was happening. So as Chris mentioned, folks, Evan was involved with the Freedom Convoy, not involved, but he was there at the demonstration. There was not so much a conflict between police and the demonstration. Chris, do you correct me if I get any of these details wrong? But there was something of a face off. Evan Blackman not only did not commit inactive violence and cite inactive violence, he attempted to stop it. I believe at one point in time he was putting his hand up to the demonstrators to basically motion them to back off, to not confront the police. He knelt in front of police, he put his hat over his heart and he sang the national anthem. And as far as I know, that was the song of his actions on which he's being accused of mischief. That's pretty accurate. Well, I would just say the sum of the evidence against Mr. Blackman is a, there's a drone video from up, it looks about 50 feet in the air maybe, and you're looking down on the police line and you're looking down on Mr. Blackman. And there's, from my memory, something like 13 minutes of video, Mr. Blackman is arrested at something like 11 minutes, and he doesn't appear until about three minutes into the video. So there's only that very short amount of time that we actually observe Mr. Blackman's actions that day. And as you mentioned, during a large part of those actions, we first see him appear on the video. He is trying to hold back other protesters. He's sort of motioning with his arms. We don't have audio, so we can't actually see or turn it off. hear what is happening. And in that regard, they're actually, the officer could not confirm that Mr. Blackman did sing O Canada. So what we see in the video is him on his knees, you know, hand on his chest. At one point, he's sort of, he looks up into the heavens, and he's obviously saying something with passion. And he, if he had have testified, he would have asserted that he was singing. the national anthem. And what we eventually see is that while he is on his knees, the police line moves forward in one swift motion, and then he's caught up in it, essentially. Hang on, Chris. You've just said something important. You said, "If he had testified," so he didn't. Now, you said this was only a one -day trial or hearing or whatever, and the charges were dropped. Is that why he didn't testify? Because he didn't need to? to, or was he barred from testifying? No, it's always a decision in a criminal case whether or not, it's always an important decision in a criminal case whether or not an accused testifies. In this case, our opinion after hearing the Crown's case was that they had just not proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt and Mr. Blackman under those circumstances chose not to testify. Bye. Now, this video, when I reported on this on my new show back when he was acquitted, I went looking for the video, couldn't find it. Was this a police video? Was it something that was only submitted in front of the court and that's where I could not find it? That's right. So it was provided through what's called disclosure, which is the crown's obligation to provide all of their evidence. I received it through that and it's mandatory that before disclosure is provided, there's an undertaking that Defense Council has to agree to, which is that the disclosure can only be used for the purposes of making full answer defense. So unfortunately, we can't publish that video. All right. Now, the charges were dropped. I believe this is when October, this happened. Now you've told me that just this morning, as you're sitting in doubt, do them to do this. this interview third week of January that they've The crown's appealing so they they want to try them again essentially for mischief. If I can just remember they they appealed It was within 30 days. They had 30 days and they did file their notice of appeal The notice of appeal is in many cases very It doesn't include the level of detail that for example the factum and eventually the oral argument will contain So this last night and then it came to my attention this morning. I received the factum from the crown Okay, so I'm a little confused Chris because you said they only have 30 days to do that But I thought the charges against Evan Blackman were dropped back in October So they filed their notice of appeal. There's there's a couple different documents that they have to file with their appeal I apologize if that's not clear They filed their notice of appeal within 30 days. That gave us a court date. It was in early January. And then at that court date, they requested a little bit more time to what's called perfect their appeal, which is to submit all of the required documents. And then late last night, they did that. All right. So I'm going to ask a point of law because I'm not a lawyer. Most of my viewers are not. not lawyers and something about this It's really confusing me. I mean putting aside the ridiculous a charge of mischief Which is what they're using against everybody who was involved everybody who spoke up and said something the government didn't like It seems to me that under the law if you're if you're gonna charge somebody with something and especially an offense that affects the public Wouldn't it be necessary to demonstrate that your actions had some harm? attached to them? And if that's the case, what harm is the government claiming that Evan Blackman committed? So the offensive mischief has to do with the interference with the use and enjoyment of property. So that's if you do legitimately interfere with the use or enjoyment of property, a person would be guilty of mischief. mischief. The theory of the crown, and I'm just going to try and give the devil his due here for the moment, is that there's a case from, I think, 1983, early early 80s out of Ontario. It went up to the court of appeal. It has to do with a, I believe, a union and a protest. They block the street. And essentially, what that case says is that, or the holding of that case, is that if if a protester is one of many protesters shoulder to shoulder blocking a street completely, then they can be found guilty of mischief. So the crown is constantly citing this case. It's a case called Mamelita, and that they're asserting that essentially the Freedom Convoy and all of these individuals who are charged are essentially liable under this case called Mamelita. The trouble is that Mr. Bray... Blackman, he's present at the line, and this is the case for a lot of protesters, they're moving around, they're not really shoulder to shoulder, they're found in some cases, there are other cases where they're found, you know, a distance from the protest itself and they're still arrested. So that's, that's the crown's theory. It wasn't proven in this case, they've, there's certainly been some convictions where they, where they have proven it. it. So it seems to me, based upon that logic, since demonstrations happen across this country all the time, have been since long before the COVID narrative. And in many cases, those demonstrations are quite packed. I've been to a number of them myself. So by the government's logic here, isn't pretty much everybody who shows up at any large demonstration that blocks a public area for a period of time guilty. of mischief. Because I don't disagree with that logic at all. And that's been the trouble that's been the trouble throughout, I'd say from 2020 on, is the selective enforcement of the law. And particularly, I'd say, the criminal law is probably even less egregious than the selective enforcement of COVID regulation. And maybe that's going too far afield from what we're talking about. But that selective enforcement of the law has certainly been an issue. And we've seen anti -lockdown protests are investigated by police very diligently. They're devoting resources to it. And then there are for just for sake of example, there is the indigenous vigil that happened in it's 2022. I can recall if it's 2021 or 2022. I had clients in Kitchener who had a protest shortly before this every child matters vigil in Kitchener. They're charged. The vigil happens. There's hundreds of people with no masks. They're not distancing and so forth. Police are there. They don't charge a single person and then there's a protest a couple days later with my client who was a member of the the People's Party of Canada and you can guess what happened to him. He's arrest or not arrested, but he's ticketed during that protest. So there's a There's a real issue. I agree with you in terms of the selective enforcement of the law here So I and that brings me to another legal question. It's It's been my understanding that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the highest law of the land. And we all know that there are cases where, yes, one law may contradict another. And so the courts have to decide where they're gonna go with this. But if my information is correct and the Charter is the highest law and the Charter gives us the right to freedom of assembly, then would that not supersede? any possible charge of mischief, which is a misdemeanor? I suppose the argument of the crown, and I'm not really in it, I don't usually give the devil so much due here, but there's no freedom of expression doesn't come into play when blocking a roadway, for example. That would still be a criminal offense under this case called Mammalita. I agree with you for sure that there are and this is part of the Judicial Review Challenge of the Emergencies Act, is that the protesters' rights were violated. And I certainly don't agree with you there in terms of the heavy -handed nature of what happened. Okay, so now we've got the situation where the crown is appealing. If Mr. Blackman is ultimately found guilty of mischief, what is the penalty likely to be? It's tough to say. Jail time seems unlikely. Sentencing is a very individual. It's a process that's really centered on the individual of the the offense and the offender. Mr. Blackman doesn't have a criminal record, he has no criminal history, he's a working person, a contributing member of his community and so forth. So in those circumstances, you wouldn't expect to see him go to jail. I've seen similar cases have resulted in what's called a conditional discharge or an absolute discharge, which is a finding of guilt, but not a conviction. And these are some of the essentially lowest possible cases. sentences that the court can impose. And when is this appeal due to be heard by the courts? It's not scheduled yet. We have a court date coming up in March, and then I anticipate from there in March we'll set the date for the appeal. All right. Thank you very much. So let's move on to case number two, please. Sure. So there's, I mentioned to you, there's a gentleman named Scott Bennett. He was one of the many out there. in a decision called Yeats, which challenged the arrive can and specifically the so the arrive can application, I'm sure every all of your listeners are familiar with what was involved there. There's a couple things. One is the mandatory disclosure of medical information, which is your vaccine status or his vaccine status, whether or not he had chosen to take the two doses of the the COVID vaccine. And then the other issue is the mandatory quarantining of individuals who either didn't get the vaccine or chose not to disclose their vaccination status. And what was argued in that case was that that is arbitrary because the vaccine actually doesn't prevent transmission. And that should have reasonably been known to the government at the time. So what Mr. Bennett did along with Yeats and these other Canadians is they went to the federal court and they said, "We have this common issue. We'd like to have it heard in the federal court. It will be much more convenient. It will be helpful for all of these other Canadians across the country who are facing similar charges." The federal court said no go. I wasn't the lawyer on the federal court challenge. but the federal court said no go, the case is moot, and you can bring it back in the ticket court. So that's what Mr. Bennett did. And let me just jump in for a second here, Chris. Was this the same case that Brian Peckford was involved in? No. No. This is a different one. You treated me with the moot, because that's the same thing they did to his, whether it was the travel ban case. Right. Right. Right. Right. right, so before we move on, I've got to ask your opinion as a lawyer. I've made this comment a number of times to my viewers, but you're the first lawyer I've been able to ask this of because it seems to me that the court declaring any of this moot, it's a clear, I would call it dereliction of their duties because it is not the court's job to determine whether or not a crime is in progress. It's the court's job to determine whether or not a crime occurred. But what they're saying is these cases are moot because it's no longer in force. I'm sorry, but that just, that, I can't make any sense out of that. That's not their job to tell us whether or not a current crime is happening now. Whether or not it did happen. But I would say it's not the court's job to tell us the the effect of all of this of what you're describing of the moodness Because it's not just again the peckford case. It's not just the eights case It's a number of cases in Ontario and across Canada as soon as the The legislation is no longer in force the crown or the The government asks the court to find that it's moot and in many many cases it has been found moot But But the effect of that, the practical effect of that is for the government to essentially escape any evaluation of whether or not its actions were constitutional. And as you point out, I can't go and commit a crime. I can't go, you know, drink and then drive into my truck. And then the officers, you know, get there, say, I'm not driving in my house or whatever. it is and they say no we've observed you driving and we believe you're intoxicated they can arrest me and I would be charged with impaired driving in those circumstances or pick your crime or offense and it doesn't work for the individual but it works for the state to go and I commit an assault and then my argument is well the assault is no longer in progress so the full case should be declared moot. Sounds like the same thing to me. And yet if a court ever did that on an assault case, the public would lose their minds, and quite rightly so. - Yes. - So how are they justifying this, Chris? How are the government lawyers and the courts justifying what is clearly a miscarriage of justice? - Yes, you want to know what that is. they're saying? What the cases say? I want to know what they're saying. How are they justifying this? So the issue of mootness is whether or not there is a "live issue" before the court. And what they've found is that essentially just seeking a, I should say just, but seeking a determination of constitutionality is not enough for the case to continue on and not be moot. And so what the court found is... again the Yates case is that they should have to the ticket court. But this is actually where it gets pretty wild is that the way that these tickets proceed. So he's got a ticket for five thousand dollars plus what's called a victim fine surcharge of twenty five percent. So it's six thousand two hundred fifty dollars. The way that these are proceeding is under. We were talking about provincial offenses earlier. The elite the less. or serious provincial offenses proceed in Ontario under what's called Park One of the Provincial Offenses Act. So this is for sort of lowest level traffic offense, there's things like running a stop site or a red light, speeding, and these are things again where you can face a fine of a thousand dollars or less and no jail time. And the way that these cases usually proceed is very, you'd expect, expedited. The trials don't take very long. The officer shows up. up and says, "I saw him run a red light. I stopped him, identified him. It's the accused before the court." And case closed, they're convicted. Again, the procedural expediency is really emphasized in these sorts of cases. So what happened, we went to what's called an early resolution meeting. On behalf of Mr. Bennett, we let the Crown know about our constitutional challenge, what our position was. and we requested what's called a judicial pretrial, which is a very common part of the process in virtually any type of litigation. You go before a judge and you discuss what the issues will be a trial, you talk about witnesses, how long the trial will take, you try to narrow issues or agree if you can. And it's a, again, a normal part of the process. The crown didn't want to do that. And essentially their position was that their hands were back and that the only way to proceed was to set a trial date unilaterally, which is exactly what was done. And without consulting with me about my availability. And the expectation was that on that day, we would have the usual amount of time that you would have for a not so serious traffic events. So there are, I couldn't tell there are hundreds of people on the docket that day, but there were many, many acute before the court that day, all of which were scheduled for a trial. And most cases, they plead out, people don't have lawyers and they get frightened on the day of trial and they plead out or they get a deal or whatever it is. So most cases don't actually proceed but the ones that do take up court time. So what we did, we immediately requested an adjournment of the trial to get A .G .D. pretrial, letting the court know our intention. We filed this notice of constitutional question. The crown's position perversely was that the issue had actually already been decided, which is, again, wrong in law. We end up getting all the way to the trial date. Our adjournment application is before the court. Our notice of constitutional question is before the court. court. And for whatever reason, the particular, I can't recall if it's Public Health Agency of Canada or CVSA, but the officer didn't. So the crown chose to withdraw the charge. And the odd thing about that is that we were actually requesting to adjourn the trial that day. So we didn't really care if the officer showed up or not, but the crown chose to withdraw the charge. And then the consequence of all of this, again, is that the state is escaping any sort of accountability for what has happened, because we try to do it in the federal court and in a sort of systemic way that we believe would have been efficient, much more efficient than each individual person who's charged running their own charter application. That's the And then as soon as we, what I would consider to be a very convincing case, compelling case, we file our materials and the charge is just withdrawn. So there's no accountability for the government. And obviously, that's a very, very positive outcome for Mr. Bennett himself. He's not subject to that $5 ,000 buying plus the confined surcharge. And that's great for him. But for Canadians overall, again, they're left wondering wondering, "Can I be quarantined based on a medical decision which has nothing to do with public health?" Arguably, it had some personal benefit for a short period of time. There's some argument there, perhaps, but the overall impact on public health was non -existent. It just didn't prevent the spread. The vaccine didn't prevent the spread. of COVID. So, detaining people on that basis is, again, this is what we argued and what I believe or what Mr. Bennett believes is completely arbitrary. So, you sense something very significant there, Chris, that really started me to think because we've got, as you said, the government avoiding responsibility for their actions. But it just occurred to me they're doing this in two different ways. There's, yes, having these cases declared moot, but then at any time when somebody actually decides to fight them and has good grounds for which to do so, they just drop the charges. It even happened to me. I received a couple of fines. I was represented by a JCCF lawyer. The afternoon before the morning I was supposed to appear in court, they withdrew the charges because they knew they were going to lose. It isn't this, I mean, and it's happening on such a wide scale. scale Should we not be asking I think it not necessarily in the courts, but as as people Isn't this the government essentially admitting that? However, you want to put it they overstepped their authority if you want to be nice They're persecuting law -abiding citizens if you don't want to be so nice and they know that what they're doing is illegal The mootness, withdrawing cases anytime they're properly challenged, seems like an admission of guilt to me. I'm not going to comment on their motivation for doing it. And I can understand why you're a lawyer and I don't want to put you in that position, but I'm just raising that comment for our viewers to think about. about. So rather than putting you in that position, Chris, let's move on with a much better - I would just to respond though, I would emphasize just the practical effect of the whole thing. And your viewers can certainly draw their own conclusions about what any motivation would be. But the practical effect is that the government is escaping any sort of accountability by the courts. Right. So in this case charges were drawn I assume $6 ,250 fine has gone away. As of any other developments we talked about, Evan Blackman and the crowns appealed it, they are just leaving this one alone or they have appealed this one too. So it was withdrawn at the request of the crown. So the crown really has no basis to appeal. I don't anticipate any appeal on this within time, I think. but I really... They both wouldn't make any sense since they're the ones who withdrew the charges. So, yes. Okay. So, let's move on to the third one. And this is one I've really been wanting to get to. It was the Victory Church, I believe, and everything has happened with them. So, it's the Trinity Bible Chapel. Trinity Bible Chapel. six elders as well who are also charged. So Trinity Bible Chapel and their lead pastor, Jacob Breome, were I would say among the most vocal critics of the lockdown and particularly as it related to their own religious freedoms, they're quite vocal and particularly during December of 2020 through to about June. of 2021, they were holding church services, which during that time in Ontario, there were gathering limits at its most restrictive 10 persons. So they held church services, which the allegation was, and this was found by the courts, that they were well in excess of the numbers that were permitted. And they were I don't think they were trying to hide it either, suffice to say, suffice to say that. So they obviously encountered some trouble with the, with the police getting these tickets. They were also subject to a civil court order, and then found in contempt of that order, and ordered to pay a number of, there were some significant fines with that as well. That was back in 2021 or 2022. And that was before I got involved with their case. I picked up on the tickets in January of 2023. And this was by the time that the constitutional challenge had already been decided at the Superior Court level. And we didn't, it was, there's a difficult argument to make in the Provincial Offences Court when the Superior Court has already decided the charter issue. So after the Supreme Court Court of Canada, finally, it's appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, leave is denied. And at that point, Trinity Bible made the decision to agree to a resolution which did involve the payment of some fines. So what that resolution was that they admitted to conducting three of the church services, and they paid a the court ordered a $38 ,000 fine. And have they paid that fine? I don't know. They have a year to pay. That's, I don't know the status of it at the moment. Okay. But now you said there were six elders involved in this Trinity Bible case. You mentioned, I believe it was Pastor Realme. What about the others? I mean, at the location that they leveled this $38 ,000 fine against the church itself. but what about these six individuals who they went after? Right, sorry, that's a really important point too. It's not just these six individuals, there's other individuals in Kitchener who were, for example, Mr. Michael Teeson and Nathaniel Wright who were, they are pastors in Ontario who visited at a, the police called it a protest, but it occurred on a Sunday and it was entirely pastors who were speaking. so you can draw your own conclusion about the nature of it. But they attended this "protest" and they were ticketed. Those charges were also withdrawn. There's a couple other charges that were withdrawn as well out of the Kitchener jurisdiction, and all of the charges against the elders were withdrawn, including the pastor, Jake Braille. So that was part of the discussion in terms of of coming to this resolution and certainly a motivating factor. All right, Chris, these three cases that we've talked about and the ones that I've discussed with other JCCF lawyers, the common theme that keeps coming back to me is that these cases, if, and I'm probably not using the correct legal terms because I'm not a lawyer, but they sound like misdemeanors to me or the equivalent thereof, obviously, Obviously, we who are very concerned with our rights and freedoms are paying a lot of attention to these cases. But I'm wondering if, as far as the courts are going, what percentage of their caseload at this point in time has anything to do with the violations of our rights and freedoms over the last few years? Most of these cases have found their way through the courts. I would be totally guessing if I gave you a percentage of these cases. terms of how much of the Provincial Offences Court has caught up in these tickets. At this point, I would say it's a relatively small percentage, but any specific number would be a total guess. For a long time, and this is part of the problem as well, is that the Provincial Offences Court actually closed down for agreement. great, close down, I should say, to in -person matters for a majority of the pandemic up until, I believe, the spring of 2022. The Provincial Offences Courts across the province were closed to in -person matters. Some jurisdictions chose to, they got things together in terms of Zoom and they were able to have proceedings via Zoom. But many of these cases were delayed for a long time because of these court closures. They didn't get trial dates. And there are obviously your next question is going to be about delay. And the the courts have said no, actually, it was reasonable to for the court to close during this period, despite the fact that the other jurisdiction or the other divisions of the Ontario Court of Justice, the criminal division and the family division, those were open for the great majority of the pandemic. They closed down a new for a couple months, but then they opened up in the summer of 2020, and courts were mostly open during the pandemic. But for whatever reason, this particular court chose to close, which is again, the court where most of these tickets are being prosecuted. And there was a tremendous delay for a long time. That has since, I would say, a majority of the cases have worked their way through the system. But the delay, it's, it's not just that there are all of these tickets which are, in my opinion, nonsensical and clogging up the system or did clog up the system. But there's also the court, the Provincial Offences Court in Ontario actually closed for a long time. And that in and of itself caused a tremendous delay as well. The reason I'm asking that question, Chris, is because and the answer you gave me is about what I was expecting. So the conclusion that I would draw not being a lawyer, not being in the court. courts is at this point in time, as far as the courts, the judges are concerned, most of this violations of our right stuff, it's done, it's been dealt with, the vast majority of the cases they're dealing with right now have nothing to do with that. And so they're feeling, well, this is in the past. But as we discussed earlier in this interview, the government has been using at least two different tactics to avoid, you know, responsibility for what they've done. this worries me because it seems to me like, well, if they've managed to sweep most of it under the rug, and with the exception of a couple of fairly, you know, significant victories, mostly here in Alberta, um, yeah, they've, they've just basically, yes, swept it under the rug, so it didn't happen, nothing to see here, kind of leads us wide open to them doing it again, doesn't it? If we don't have any real decisions from the courts, say saying, wait a minute, this was unconstitutional. That's, that's the concern is that, um, the times, civil liberties are rarely, uh, curtailed in, in quote unquote, normal times. It's times of emergency where, um, civil liberties are curtailed. And by almost definition, the emergency, it can't last forever. Um, so this sort of situation. whatever the next emergency is, and we don't know what that will be, is the outcome going to be different? It's difficult to have any faith that it will be. And especially since there was no court that ever decided whether there was or was not an emergency, all that happened was true to appointed as cronies to investigate it. And of course, they came back and either said nothing or said, Oh, no, it was all just Well if you're going to have any precedent to say well wait a minute you can't do that again. Right we may be talking about there's a couple different Ontario declared emergencies and then obviously there's the emergencies act issue. I was talking specifically about the EMA and the freedom convoy because that was kind of where we started this but you're right yes there are other provincial emergencies acts that were a problem as well. But to my knowledge, other than in Alberta, and it wasn't really specifically, I think the emergencies act, it was the COVID mandates that were found to be illegal and not because they violated our charter rights, but for another reason. Other than that case, I'm not aware of any, are you, where the courts looked at these emergencies acts and investigated whether or not there really was an emergency, whether there was justification for the violation of our rights. But on the federal level, the Emergencies Act that was invoked in February of 2022, that was subject to judicial review. And as of this time, I believe it's still before the courts, they're still waiting for a decision. I think that has been challenged. Yeah, so I think you'll be pretty sure what that decision will be. All right. So, Chris, you've been in... And there's some introductory questions that I really should have asked you. I'm going to ask you now, how long have you been with the JCCF? January of 2023. So, I'm pretty new. Okay. So, you're fairly new with them. And I'm going to ask you the same question I've asked the other two JCCF lawyers I've interviewed. You're a lawyer, Chris. I mean, you could go into private practice. You could work for somebody else. You could make a lot more money than you make working for the JCCF. Why do this? So I'm going to go way back. I graduated from law school in 2014. My experience in law school was that it was an escalator to Bay Street. And if you didn't have some other idea of exactly what or where you wanted to practice, you would have just ended up in downtown Toronto, one of the big firms practicing corporate law. law litigation, or maybe a boutique that does the exact same thing next door. And I didn't want any of that. And I felt like the only person in law school who was of that mind, I ended up, I articleed, and then I ended up practicing with the small firm in Belleville, Ontario. It seemed to align with my values at the time that they were mostly acting for individuals against insurance companies, large corporations, the state acting for the little guy. I was doing that sort of work, criminal defense, again, suing insurance companies. It was a, I'd say it was rewarding for a long time. It felt like a great fit. And then COVID happened. And it just became clear to me that there were more important issues that I should be litigating, and that I had a certain skill set that could be applied to a better use. And I'm not going to go into my own sort of personal story that there are Canadians who have been affected by it much, much more than I was. I didn't lose my job, although I was certainly pressured to get the vaccine. But that was certainly COVID itself and all of the effects, the closure of schools for our family in particular, it might not sound like a big deal, but the YMCA that we couldn't go to, we had a infant daughter at that time that was very helpful programming and so forth. All of this was just, it was very difficult. And again, recognizing that for many Canadians, it was much more, much more difficult. But in the summer of 2022, I had an interview with John Carpe and then it just, it took a little while for me to wind down my private practice. And then I ended up starting in January of 2023. 2023. All right. Now, Chris, of the JCCF lawyers that I have interviewed, you are the most recently graduated from law school. And my viewers, many of them understand that today law schools are pretty much woken doctoration centers. And you made an allusion to the fact that even in 2014, when you were graduating, you seemed to be the only one in the class of this mindset of I would have to say, your job is to defend the rights of your clients, to actually uphold the law or at least to argue in favor of upholding the law. And you've got all these other lawyers out there who've bought into this woke indoctrination. And you've got experience working with these people, going through school with these people. So I want to ask, what, especially in terms of? our constitutional rights, what's the mindset of the average woke indoctrinated lawyer today? I don't I honestly, I don't know if I can speak to that my my experience in law school in, again, I graduated in 2014. So this is a before and even my experience in undergraduate. I'll tell you a little bit about that. I graduated from a very left -wing university called Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and my experience at that time, I think 2004 through 2008, was that it was a great experience and sure there were left -wing views, but did I ever feel compelled to sort of repeat them for a grade? Absolutely not. In fact, the opposite. When I challenged my professors, I felt like I had them. the better grade. And I think my law school experience wasn't really radically different from that. A lot of it was just black letter law in the sense that you're learning about contracts and they're not trying to weasel in, there's some gender element to the contract or whatever it is. So I just, I didn't have that experience in law school and it may be different now. It probably is from what I'm hearing But I just personally I didn't have that experience. It was again. It felt more like I was being to the extent that there was a pressure or a peer pressure it was to Go through the process of what's called OCIs or on -campus interviews Which again are largely just large Bay Street firms and the pressure pressure, if anything, was to go and to practice corporate law. I see. Okay. So that's what you were referring to when you said that you weren't of the same mindset as all these other graduates that where they were headed for was let's get out there and make as much money as we can possibly make. And you were actually much more interested in, well, defending people's rights and arguing for the law. And I shouldn't say I graduated from a class of 300. individuals. And I'm not going to paint everyone with the same brush. And I certainly, I worked at the legal clinic, legal aid clinic when I was in law school. And there were, at the time, I think there were five other individuals who were doing criminal defense with me. And they were all of largely the same mindset. I think almost all of them without exception are now practicing criminal defense law. So there are some individuals of that mindset that, again, it's there's a real pressure, a social pressure, a peer pressure to do on -campus interviews, do all of the normal things that you're expected to do and to eventually take a position in a large fair. So Chris, you've been with the JCCF for about a year now. Obviously, you're very busy because you keep popping up on my Raiders. I'm doing my weekly news. news shows, I keep coming up with Chris Flurry doing this, Chris Flurry doing that. So you're very much at the center of this fight. And in what many people with Canadians, especially people like myself here in Alberta, despite some of the things that happened here, would see as kind of ground zero for the fight for our rights, what's going on in Ontario, what's going on in Ottawa. And you've had some victories, you've had some losses, you've had some time to see how this is playing out in our courts, we've discussed some of the concerns. that we both have about the direction. It's gone and I wanted to ask you as as a lawyer who is fighting for people's constitutional rights What are your concerns about the future of our country in that regard? I mean where I see the fight going in the immediate future I Think it's this question of gender identity and the impact that that often has on the rights of, for example, biological women and others. I think that there are real issues there. I think that that's the direction, I'd say my own concerns are going and where I see my own practice going. I think that there are many, many other concerns, certainly that the, I suppose I'll say this. In Ontario, we have our conservative Premier Doug Ford, and he was, yeah, exactly. We were probably in Toronto in particular, I don't live in Toronto, but Toronto in particular was one of the most locked down jurisdictions globally. Ford is not going to get reelected and there's going to be either an NDP or a liberal government coming in. And I expect that the constitutional litigation after that happens will continue and there will be plenty of need for for JCCF lawyers once that happens. Sadly, I suspect you are right. Chris, thank you so much for your time for this interview today. Thank you for the work that you're doing with the JCCF. and for the fantastic representation that you're giving to your clients. I personally would ask you, please don't get discouraged by the cases that you don't win because if it wasn't for people like you fighting for people's rights, there wouldn't be any cases we would be winning. Thanks, Will. I really appreciate that.