Jesse Johnson, owner of the now-closed restaurant, Without Papers Pizza, shares the heart-breaking story of what the government took from him, and how he's now coping...
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That they were just stopping just to sort of let you catch your breath, and then they were just going to come after a little bit more.
And it was one little liberty taken, one little freedom taken, one little right taken until you had none.
And by the time they rolled out the vaccine passports, I had enough.
We had complied with every ridiculous mandate that they had put forth to us.
You know, clothes open, clothes open, mask, plexiglass, move the tables away six feet apart, just every ridiculous thing you could possibly imagine.
When customers came in, they had to have masks.
When they sat down, they could take them off.
If they stood up to go to the washroom, they had to put them back on again.
It was pure lunacy.
And when they came out with the vaccine passport, I had looked at it as if that this was the final straw for me.
And what this essentially meant is the next thing that they're going to do is literally take away my right to own and operate my business unless I consent to getting that vaccine.
And by that point in the pandemic, I knew that I was never going to take that vaccine.
Well, and you definitely made the right choice not getting vaccinated and not partaking in that scam.
But between the vaccine passports coming out and these things being implemented, how did that actually affect your business and lead to you getting shut down?
Took two weeks.
They implemented the vaccine passport on September 20th, and I came out in opposition of it on that exact day.
And I was very vocal in my opposition to it.
I thought that I would record of charity and contribution to my community, of acceptance and inclusion of all, that would have some weight and that I might be able to inspire some other people to speak out against it.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
I came out on the 20th and they shut us down on October 9th.
So it took roughly, I guess, a little over two weeks for it to happen.
So at first, my statement on social media, which was literally a statement of pure love and acceptance and my belief that all Canadians are equal, was viciously attacked by social media influencers and the public at large.
When I look back on it now, I think that the hate that rolled down on me was actual humans, but also a lot of robotic hate, which I didn't realize at the time.
And that caused a lot of our neighbors and people in the city to phone into police, to phone into Alberta Health Services, who then sent, sorry, Alberta Health Services came in, checked to see whether we were open and checking vaccine passports and showing the sign that says that we're going to check vaccine passports.
I wasn't doing anything.
That resulted in all my licenses being rescinded and taken away.
So my liquor license, my food handling permit, my business license, that in essence negated my lease as well.
And by the time they came to close us on October 9th, they showed up with the sheriff, the police escorted the sheriff, and Alberta Health Services, who by this point in the pandemic had essentially turned into the Gestapo.
And they changed my, they gave us two hours.
And you paid for these licenses, right?
Like, I mean, you actually paid the government, so they took away something that you paid for.
I paid for all of them.
Yeah.
I was just a giant free-range human on a giant tax farm.
But yeah, we paid everything.
You know, hundreds, thousands of dollars.
Who knows how much it was for all of it?
I mean, Canada, you need a permit to wipe your ass.
So this is crazy.
I mean, this is not anything that you could be prepared for.
This is not just getting fired from a job.
We've all been there.
This is actually taking away your ability to not only get a new job, but to even create one.
As an entrepreneur, this has all been stripped from you and your livelihood and your identity and your purpose are all completely obliterated in a moment because you tried to do something that you believed was right.
You got targeted.
So explain to me, like, what happens in a situation like this?
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Let's just jump right back into this interview.
Now, this might be a little bit too much to ask.
And I mean, if this is, you know, feel free to let me know.
You can make a note here to the producer if we need to cut it.
We can.
I don't want to invade your life, but I mean, I've got to understand the depth of what they've done to you.
What did this do to you financially?
Like, where are you financially after the government targeted you like this?
Yeah, they almost broke me, man.
I couldn't believe what happened.
I couldn't believe that I lost what I loved because, you know, I was doing the right thing.
Did I preach love and only received hate?
It broke me.
It broke me for a while.
Yeah.
And I started to fight right away.
I started to fight like my life depended on it.
I held rallies.
I joined rallies.
And I did everything I could to defeat the oppression and to bring down the tyranny and to try and make other people see what was going and what was going to happen.
I fought like my life depended on it.
You know, it's weird.
So for 20 years, I've collected taxes and paid taxes.
In my estimation, I've, well, I don't really have an estimation, but I've paid millions of dollars in taxes, unemployment insurance, Canada pension plan, you know, old age security, workers' compensation, you know, all sorts of things.
And the ironic thing I found, you know, when the government took me down and destroyed me and took away my business and took away my livelihood, that I was literally left with nothing.
I was unable to get unemployment insurance because I was a business owner and that's the way the laws are in Canada.
I was unable to apply for welfare because I had a property that was in my name and various other factors.
And yeah, it was really shocking.
One of the other shocking things for me was that all during the apocalypse, and I refer to the pandemic as the apocalypse, and excuse me, people get offended at that.
But all during the apocalypse, all the government did was tell us to defer, you know, to defer your GST, defer this payment, defer that payment.
We're going to take away all your customers.
So don't send us this money right now.
You know what I mean?
Hold on to it because you're going to need it.
Well, by the time they shut me down, I was doing pre-pandemic, I was doing $2.5 million a year in revenue.
And then during the pandemic, I was still doing a sizable amount of revenue.
I actually, I'm sure I was doing over a million dollars during the first year of the revenue.
So by the time they shut me down, I owed in GST close to $175,000.
Plus, I also owed SIBA loans.
So SIBA loans were these demand loans that the government of Canada gave you because in order to stay in business.
Well, I took out a demand loan with the government of Canada.
I had been better off if I had taken out that loan with the Hells Angels.
At least they have scruples and morals.
Owing money to the CRA is like owing money to the mafia.
They charge you an interest rate of 29%, which is the highest interest rate possible in Canada without being considered a loan shark.
So by the time they shut me down, I owed a shitload of money.
And, you know, I've come to this realization.
It's like, well, how am I even going to pay that money?
How is it possible?
In my business, I wouldn't have been able to facilitate that debt.
But now you take away my business and my revenue stream.
I have zero chance of paying that money.
And it's only a matter of time until CRA comes for whatever it is that I have left.
It's shocking to me as a business owner how high and dry you can be left.
And I was a bit naive to it.
Speaking of the SIBA loan, every single business, well, every single restaurant in Canada took that loan out.
It was $60,000 that they gave.
And they made it so that you only had to pay back $40,000.
And it's in the form of a demand loan.
I'm not sure if you know what a demand loan is.
Most loans are, let's say you took $60,000, you'd amortize it over 60 months and pay $1,000 a month.
Well, a demand loan is, you know, here's $60,000.
You don't have to pay it back until January 1st of next year, unless, of course, we want it tomorrow.
Then you have to pay it all back tomorrow.
We were the only restaurant in Canada to pay back that loan.
I'm going to, well, I shouldn't say the only one.
I'm guessing there was very, very few.
But we were one of the few that pay back that loan.
And the way that we paid it back is in order for us to get out of this financial shifst, we had to sell a house that myself and my business partner owned in the neighborhood that we operated in that he lived in.
We owned that house for 12 years.
We had to sell that house to survive this.
And as soon as we sold that house, the government of Canada took that loan right off the top of it.
