Vice Admiral Mark Norman’s two-year prosecution collapsed after the Trudeau government withheld exculpatory evidence, including a 60-page memo by Gerald Wernick, leaving charges unproven despite six leakers and 73 recipients—only Norman faced suspension. The carbon tax, deemed "wholly unconstitutional" in a Saskatchewan dissent, targets working-class Canadians while elites like Supreme Court justices (earning up to $400K) avoid scrutiny, risking public backlash over judicial overreach. Andrew Lawton’s crowdfunded team of nine journalists will expose Tommy Robinson’s trial, contrasting British media bias with a focus on due process, while critics link climate activism—like Greta Thunberg’s—to indoctrination, shaping "Generation Trudeau" voters through teachers' unions and early exposure to carbon tax narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Well yesterday I went up to Ottawa for the what was supposed to be the trial of Mark Norman.
Instead it became the vindication of Mark Norman as the prosecution hastily dropped the charges against him.
What was so crazy about that is that they had been denied facts that exculpated him, that exonerated him.
Justin Trudeau's government withheld facts that once the defense lawyers gave them to the prosecutors, the prosecutors immediately dropped the case saying, we don't have a case here.
Justin Trudeau wanted an innocent man to go to prison.
I tell you about my visit to Ottawa and the legal stakes at hand.
That's next, but can you indulge me and go to the rebel.media slash shows and become a premium subscriber.
It's $8 a month.
That gives you not only the video version of this, and I encourage you to watch the video version of this, because I asked some questions of the prosecutor in a scrum, and I think you've got to see it.
You also get access to Sheila Gunrid's show and David Mancy's show.
And you support us, that's something.
It's eight bucks a month.
That's the rebel.media slash shows.
All right, without further ado, here's today's podcast.
You're listening to a Rebel Media podcast.
Tonight, Justin Trudeau tried to destroy Mark Norman's career, but it blew up in Trudeau's face.
What happens next?
It's May 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Yesterday, I went to Ottawa for what was supposed to be the latest in the two-year prosecution of Vice Admiral Mark Norman, the second in command of the Canadian Forces.
Things were heating up in court, and Norman's hotshot lawyer, Marie Hinnane, was effectively turning the tables on the Trudeau government.
Her client was accused of one count of breach of trust, which is a terrible charge to level against a top military officer.
Breach of trust?
It's almost tantamount to treason.
It's typical for someone who, say, would steer a shipbuilding contract to a political friend in return for a secret cash payment.
That would be a breach of trust.
That's actually what Brian Mulroney was accused of doing during the Airbus scandal when Air Canada was a crown corporation.
Mulroney's cabinet chose Airbus instead of Boeing.
And funny thing, an Airbus lobbyist named Karl Heinz Schreiber paid Brian Mulroney at least $225,000 in cash after Mulroney stepped down as prime minister.
Yeah, that's the kind of thing that breach of trust was made for.
But Mark Norman, he sort of did the opposite.
See, the Canadian Navy really needed a supply ship, basically a floating gas station for other ships, and it was needed in a hurry.
So he championed a plan to refurbish an existing ship to get it done faster.
Now, that was approved by the Harper government.
The contract was given to a Quebec shipyard to do it.
But after Trudeau won the 2015 election, wouldn't you know it, Scott Bryson, the Liberal cabinet minister, came to cabinet with a letter from the liberal-connected shipbuilding firm in the Atlantic, owned by the Liberal Irving family, saying, hey, why don't you do the right thing for your liberal friends and give us that contract instead?
Not only did the Irvings not win the competition in the first place, but canceling the Quebec shipyard would incur $89 million in cancellation penalties.
So Mark Norman mentioned this to the Quebec shipyard and he apparently leaked this proposed interference by Bryson to the media.
The resulting embarrassment called Bryson and Trudeau to back off.
The contract with the Quebec firm indeed went ahead, and incredibly the ship was built on time and on budget.
How rare is that?
But oh my God, don't you dare cross Trudeau or Scott Bryson.
Haven't you learned that yet?
Jody Wilson-Raybold crossed Trudeau by not dropping criminal charges against his corrupt friends at SNC Lavalan.
So she was fired from cabinet and smeared by the liberals.
Well, same thing with Mark Norman.
The government launched an internal investigation to find out who leaked the news of their secret plans to give this shipbuilding contract to their liberal buddies.
Boy, were they furious and curious.
And they found that it was Mark Norman.
Now, he was not on the take.
No $225,000 cash payment to him.
Nothing for him, in fact.
He just wanted that ship for the Navy.
He wanted to stop Trudeau and Bryson and the Irvings from wrecking those plans all just to steer a big contract to Trudeau's friends.
He was a whistleblower in his own way, like Jodi Wilson-Raybold was.
And you know, his crime of leaking the news about Scott Bryson's scheme, well, turns out that the investigation into the leaker found not one leaker, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six.
Six people leaked this super secret news to a total of 73 people.
Funny though, Mark Norman was the only one suspended from his command and prosecuted for the crime of breach of trust.
Oh, and the government, which normally pays for the legal defense of civil servants and military personnel who are sued for what they do on the job, the Trudeau government, funny, refused to pay for Mark Norman's legal defense funds.
So the second in command of the Canadian military was forced to put up a crowdfunding page.
He had the smarts to hire Marie Hinane, well known as one of the best criminal lawyers in the country.
She's the one who got Jeanne Gameshi off.
I suppose I should rephrase that.
She's the one who got Jeanne Gomeshi acquitted.
So she was the right choice for Mark Norman.
Now the government had so many lawyers prosecuting Norman.
So many that they filled up the tables and chairs in the courtroom normally reserved for lawyers.
There were so many lawyers against Mark Norman on behalf of the Trudeau government.
They spilled into the cheap seats meant for public observers in court.
That's how much of a hate on Justin Trudeau had for Mark Norman.
I mean, you don't cross Justin Trudeau, especially not when it comes to a liberal donor like the Irvings.
And you know, it was this guy, the crooked former clerk of the Privy Council who resigned in disgrace over his handling the SNC Lavalan file.
It was this guy who called the cops on Mark Norman.
Did you know that?
Anyways, that's the backstory.
The case has been before the courts for two years, but Hinane wasn't getting what a criminal lawyer is entitled under law to get.
It's called disclosure.
It's in if you're accused of a crime and the police are coming for you and they have all the resources of the government and all the powers, the power to subpoena documents, to interview people, maybe even the power to wiretap or execute search warrants, you have the right to know the case against you.
So the police, in any criminal case, the prosecutors, the police have to give the accused what's called disclosure, as in give them copies of everything that the police know.
Copies of any damning evidence against you, any recordings, any notes, anything.
It's called disclosure.
But they also have to give you anything that would exculpate you, exonerate you, help prove you innocent.
They have to give you that too, of course.
Otherwise, police could hide things.
I mean, theoretically, without the obligation to disclose exculpating evidence, they could, theoretically, have someone else actually on tape confessing to the crime you're accused of, but they could keep that a secret from you.
I'm just giving you an example of why disclosure has to include stuff that gets the accused off.
But funny enough, the Trudeau government, including the crooked clerk of the Privy Council, just wouldn't hand over their records, including a 60-page memo written by Wernick.
Why not?
I mean, what was in there?
Henane applied for orders for motor disclosure.
The court agreed, but Trudeau and his thugs refused.
I'm calling them thugs because they wanted a man to go to prison.
They said, get this.
Trudeau's PMO said this.
They said, we don't keep notes in our meetings, really?
A government with no paperwork, that's a new one.
As one commentator put it, the only organization that doesn't keep notes about their meetings is organized crime.
Oh, and it came out that, in fact, there were plenty of discussions and emails and records about this, but Trudeau's government specifically decided not to use Mark Norman's name.
They would use pseudonyms or code words for him so they could later claim they didn't have any records about Mark Norman when they were asked by the court.
They actively deceived the world, not just the media, not just the public, but Mark Norman himself and his lawyers and the judge.
Justin Trudeau's government actively deceived the judge.
Because, of course.
Because this was about punishing Mark Norman.
Not for breach of trust.
He was actually the only trustworthy guy around, wasn't he?
But this was about punishing someone in the system who didn't bend the knee to Justin Trudeau.
You know, back in the year 2000, it was Rose Knight, the young female reporter in Creston, B.C., who didn't get with the program when Trudeau sexually assaulted her.
She didn't understand.
You have to do what Trudeau wants you to do.
Jodie Wilson-Raybold didn't get with the program, so she was fired.
Same with Mark Norman.
What are you going to do?
Complain?
Who are you going to complain to?
I should mention in passing that Jodie Wilson-Raybold has been asked about the Mark Norman case.
After all, she was the attorney general when the prosecution was started.
I think she wants to talk about it.
But she has not been relieved of her cabinet and other confidentiality obligations by Trudeau.
He won't let her talk about it.
They don't want her to talk about it.
I wonder why.
Well, Henane kept pushing.
I thought it was getting really interesting, so I decided last week to go to Ottawa yesterday to live tweet from the trial.
But the night before yesterday's hearing, the prosecutor herself put out a letter to the public saying there would be an important announcement yesterday.
And indeed there was.
Let me quote from the statement from the prosecution.
After reviewing further evidence provided to the prosecution, some from applications for records that were not part of the investigation, third-party records, and some volunteered by the defense, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada is no longer of the view that a reasonable prospect of conviction exists.
In particular, the Crown has concluded that we'll not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Norman's conduct in this case amounted to a serious and marked departure from the standards expected of a person in his position of trust.
So that's what the prosecutor told the judge yesterday morning, and the charges were dropped after two years of him being wrung out.
So let me translate that statement from the prosecutor into English.
The Trudeau government refused to give over information to Mark Norman or his lawyer, Marie Henane.
They just refused.
Not just that, they were actively deceiving the court by claiming they had no records or by deliberately using coded words so as not to use Norman's name.
Like I say, only organized crime behaves that way.
So Marie Henane herself was able to find records that apparently exonerated Mark Norman.
She found them herself somehow and gave them to the prosecutor.
And the prosecutor looked at it and said, oh my God, you're right.
The last two years of this prosecution has been a fraud.
Okay, I don't know exactly what she thought.
How would I know what she thought?
But that's the effect of it because the prosecutor dropped the charges.
They would have prosecuted and perhaps convicted an innocent man had Trudeau had his way.
Let that sink in.
Now, the prosecutor came out of the court and said this, and I was right there.
And believe me, I was steaming mad about this injustice.
How on earth could the Crown Prosecutor not have had the facts?
The Justice Department, it's like the largest law firm in the country, thousands of lawyers.
They have endless resources, unlimited resources.
They have all the facts, all the information.
It's the government.
Norman was crowdfunding his defense in five and $10 increments, and the prosecution didn't have this important information, but Marie Hinane did.
That's an outrage.
And a good man was smeared for two years because of it.
Here, listen to me get really mad at this prosecutor.
Did the government not give you exculpatory evidence before you prosecuted?
Who withheld that information from you?
There's no such thing as this one piece of exculpatory evidence in a case like this.
How did you not have it?
That's a complex breach of it.
How did you not have it?
We did have it eventually.
Did you not have the resources to find it in the first place?
Did you speak French man?
Can you say a few words sufficiently?
What are documents coming from, PMO?
So is it over on me?
Why did you not explain what the exculpatory evidence was since you smeared him publicly?
I mean, his name has been blackened in public.
Why will you not tell us what information has caused you to drop this?
You were happy to throw mud.
Why don't you tell us what the detergent was?
Sir, the defense counsel has provided the information on certain conditions.
And I can't discuss it.
Right, but you're the one who smeared him in public with this two-year ordeal.
Why will you not tell us why he's free to go?
Don't you feel an obligation to his reputation?
I tried to explain that in court as well as I could.
Has your office had any contact whatsoever with the PMO?
Well, really, don't you think you owe a little bit more to Mr. Norman?
Do you feel any personal feelings about this case?
Do you feel like maybe you were used a bit?
No, don't you think you were used a bit?
We did our job, sir.
All right, I was mad.
But don't you think my point is right?
Why can't we know how and why Mark Norman was exonerated?
Would it embarrass some politician somewhere?
Who cares?
How can this prosecutor, who eventually did the right thing after doing the wrong thing for two years, how does she feel?
She was part of a false accusation against him.
She was part of a false prosecution against him, of an innocent man.
Could you imagine if she had succeeded?
For two years, she led the fight against Mark Norman.
Is it really enough for her to say, as she told me at the end there, I was just doing my job?
False Prosecution Revelations00:07:28
I was just doing my job.
Well, maybe.
And maybe she truly didn't know about this until just recently, about the exculpatory information, whatever that information was.
But surely she knew for months, maybe years, that her client, the Trudeau government, was withholding information, was hiding, was lying.
We all knew that.
She knew that.
And she went along with it.
And she has nothing to say now other than, I was just doing my job.
And what about Justin Trudeau?
Well, that coward skipped question period on Wednesday.
And again today, here's his official schedule.
He's busy.
You see, he's getting ready for a Ramadan celebration tonight.
I'm not kidding.
That's actually what his schedule says he's doing tonight.
The coward, not just a coward, a corrupter of justice.
You know, Justin Trudeau loves making apologies all the time.
But he only apologizes for what other people have done, never for what he does.
He loves apologizing, especially for things done many years, sometimes decades ago, because that allows him to play the great moral hero.
When he apologizes for something that he never did, but someone else did, it's Trudeau's way of complimenting himself, of saying, I'm so much better than these people I'm apologizing for, aren't I?
Great.
Sometimes I think he just loves to shower praise and money on terrible people, like Omar Cotter, to whom he gave $10.5 million and a public apology to a convicted murderer.
But none for his mistreatment of Mark Norman.
Not even the word sorry.
No way, are you kidding?
In fact, until yesterday, the government wouldn't even pay his legal defense, which is standard operating procedure.
Trudeau hates Mark Norman.
I think he would have hated the trial much more, frankly.
I think yesterday's dropping the charges was actually the best outcome for Trudeau this deep into things.
A trial would have shown the deep corruption of Trudeau in a way nothing else has yet.
But Trudeau can't say sorry because he's not sorry.
Because his entire life is one of entitlement.
And of course he should have the right to give shipbuilding contracts to his friends who are liberal.
I mean, to him, that's what's most important.
Ask the people dying of mercury poisoning in the Grassy Narrows Reserve.
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thank you.
People like Gassy Garrett are celebrating their mercury poisoning.
You see it?
You're addressing this question.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you very much for your donation tonight.
I really appreciate the donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.
And as we know, the Liberal Party is filled with different perspectives and different opinions, and we respect them all.
And our commitment to reconciliation continues to be strong and committed.
And we will continue to engage.
Thank you, sir, for your donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.
I really appreciate you being here tonight.
Thank you for being here.
That is why we are moving forward on reconciliation in a real and tangible way.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thank you for highlighting how important reconciliation is.
Thank you for being here tonight, sir.
Thank you very much for your donation to the Liberal Party.
Yeah, I mean, thank you for your donation.
So after I scrummed the prosecutor outside the Ottawa Courthouse, I went to the press conference with Marie Hinnane and Mark Norman.
I'd like to play for you a fair chunk of it.
Is that okay?
Now, I know I put this up on YouTube yesterday, but I just want to put this in my commentary today.
I think it's self-explanatory.
I want you to see as much of this as you have patience for.
Can you please watch a few minutes of this?
I know you won't see this anywhere else, so please watch and come back because I want to tell you how it felt to be in that room with Mark Norman and Marie Hinane, to be surrounded by the media party.
I was sitting right next to CBCCTV, Global.
They were all there, Global Mail and the Trump Star.
I want to tell you how I think they felt about the whole thing.
So watch for a bit and then come right back, okay?
Ultimately, I look forward to my immediate reinstatement and a return to serve in Canada.
Something that I have done unfailingly for the last 38 years.
Something that Canadians should expect and demand.
In closing, I want to speak directly to the thousands of Canadians who stood by me, who supported me and my family, both spiritually and financially.
We would simply have never made it here without your generosity and help.
Thank you.
And just before we begin, I do want to introduce again the old female team that represented Vice Admiral Markland Sidney Hopkins at the end, Maya Barroa, and my co-counsel, Christine Manville.
Fortunately, Vice Admiral Norman didn't fire the females that he hired.
So we're ready to take questions in the end.
For two years or more, you've had this stigma of these criminal charges against you, but the exculpatory information is not known.
Why should it be known?
How can we find out what it was that set you free?
Well, that's in the hands of the prosecution.
And as you know, there is another prosecution that is outstanding.
So the Crown has all sorts of obligations in respect of that.
It is sitting with them.
As you know, we were in the midst of a third party viewing them.
We've been on month five or six of that exercise.
And as this matter ends today, that means our involvement in the process, as well as our ability to compel production, ends with it as well.
So it is now in the hands of the people who are the holder of those records.
Ms. Hannah, do you believe that you have any evidence that this prosecution initially, or at least the decision to stay it, was politically motivated in any way?
Well, there are a number of questions here, so let me break it out for a moment.
The decision to stay this prosecution was discretion exercised by the prosecutors and the DPP, unimpacted by any political considerations, as it should be.
That is, in fact, how things are supposed to work.
Politics are supposed to stay out of the prosecutorial process.
But I would remind you that in this case, the government has been at the table, and they've been at the table.
They've been represented by seven or eight lawyers in court at the Department of Justice.
So these charges were referred by the PCO, the Privy Council office.
The PCO has been the holder of the records that we've now spent six months trying to get.
And to this day, Vice Admiral Norman, because of the position taken by the PMO and PCO's office, has not had access to his own records.
And we were continuing in this fight.
So they have had a seat at the table.
They have been participants in the process.
They have been represented.
So much so that they are not only the people who decided whether or not to assert cabinet confidence and then a last-minute switch to public interest privilege and are not only the holders of the documents, but were also counseling witnesses as to what they could and could not say.
And I want to make it very clear that we, the defense, had to bring this motion at great expense to Vice Admiral Norman to get at those records.
Neither we, and here's the important part, nor the prosecution were given access to those documents.
Participants at the Table00:03:24
And the people that were standing in the way of that full disclosure is obviously the government who had access to them, had those third-party records, and was taking the positions that you all heard they were taking in court.
I want to tell you how it felt to be in that room.
The people in that room in the last election would have voted about 80% for Justin Trudeau and probably 20% for Thomas Mulcair.
Except the cameramen, who probably voted 50% for Harper.
I'm serious.
I had a camera guy for a rival network, I won't say who, who asked me if I could lean in and he could get a selfie with me.
They're normal people, the cameramen.
It's the on-air talent who are the hardcore lefties.
Everyone was there.
I mean, Glenn McGregor of CTV was there.
Tonda McCharles of the Star was there.
Christy Blatchford, who's pretty good, from Postmedia was there.
Everyone was there from Parliament Hill's elite media.
This is just a small sample.
Later on in the press conference, it was packed.
Packed.
There were three times as many people as that.
I should tell you that every single person in that room in the Naval Mess Hall, including the 80% who voted for Trudeau in 2015.
I can tell you that every single one of them was on the side of Mark Norman and just as much on the side of his lawyer.
They revere that lawyer, Marie Hannan.
She's smart and tough and sort of cool.
And she actually started with the joke that her team was all female, which Justin Trudeau would have fired.
Ouch.
And no one in the room blinked at that because they know it's true, because they all know that Trudeau is an imposter on everything.
He's an imposter on feminism and Aboriginal affairs, of course.
But on his whole sunny ways shtick, he's so deeply corrupt, he's worse than anyone they can recall.
Stephen Harper never did anything like this.
The opposite.
He's the one who set up this independent prosecution service that has twice refused Trudeau what he wants.
What I saw in that room at the naval mass watching Mark Norman and Marie Rain and was disillusionment in Trudeau.
No one loves him anymore, or at least is in love with him.
No one is inspired by him.
No one would say he's cool.
I think when Trudeau went to India and acted like a jackass, he was starting to make his allies cringe.
But they were still, look at that, oh my God.
But they were still his allies.
Now, I don't think so.
I think most of them will probably still vote liberal, just because they don't like conservatives like Andrew Scheer.
But I think the days of the media party slavishly parroting the narrative, that Trudeau is fresh and new and clean and cool and sunny, that felt totally detonated in that room yesterday.
And not just that room.
Look in the by-election in the Naimo BC, 11% for the Liberals.
I think people hate Trudeau, actually.
I can guarantee you, there's not a single prosecutor in Canada who is a Trudeau lover.
This is twice he has come to destroy the honor of their profession.
That prosecutor I scrummed on the street, she knows who her enemy is.
And it's not Stephen Harper or Andrew Scheer.
Mark Norman has a few more moves left in him.
I think he's going to tell his story.
He said as much.
I think he must tell his story.
I think he has also got to sue for abuse of process and abuse of office.
Smoke out all those internal documents that way, the documents that would have come out at trial.
Put Michael Wernick and Scott Bryson and Gerald Butts on the stand.
Supreme Court Pride00:10:41
You bet, yeah, you bet.
Sue for, oh, I don't know, $10.5 million.
That's what Omar Cotter got from Trudeau.
Trudeau was willing to put Mark Norman in prison for a crime he did not commit.
That's got to be worth $10.5 million.
The story isn't over.
In fact, maybe it's just beginning.
Stay with us for more.
Today's decision is a win for Canadians and for future generations.
It cannot be free to pollute in Canada.
This decision confirms that putting a price on carbon pollution and returning the revenues to Canadians through the Climate Action Incentive Rebate is not only constitutional, it is an effective and essential part of any serious response to the global challenge of climate change.
The court also recognized, as do most Canadians, that climate change is man-made and one of the great existential issues of our time.
But is that true?
That's Catherine McKenna talking about a 3-2 decision at the Saskatchewan court about the constitutionality of her proposed national carbon tax.
Well, joining us now, Viaski is a man who follows this file closer than most and in fact was in Ontario as the matter was duked out in that courtroom too.
And I'm talking about our friend, Andrew Lawton.
Andrew, great to see you again.
Hey, great to be with you, Ezra.
Thank you.
Well, I mean, I have not read the dense details of the legal decision in Saskatchewan, but the summary I read said it wasn't really the great victory Catherine McKenna makes it out to be.
And in fact, there were certain arguments by the federal government that were rejected by all five out of five judges.
I know you've been paying very close attention to this.
What's your takeaway from A, the Saskatchewan court ruling, and B, Catherine McKenna's response to it?
Yeah, so I actually did read the Saskatchewan court ruling, and I also listened to Catherine McKenna, and both are pretty dense, as a matter of fact.
And when Catherine McKenna speaks out and says that the court ruled that a carbon tax is an effective means to combat climate change, that proves that she didn't even read to page two of the decision.
And if I may, I'd like to read paragraph six from page two of the decision, which says the issue is not whether greenhouse gas pricing should or should not be adopted or whether the act is effective or fair.
So she says that the effectiveness of this carbon tax has been vindicated by the court when the court said, that's not even our problem.
We aren't even looking at whether it's effective.
And this proves that the government is trying to find some political support from the court instead of dealing with the actual matters at hand in these cases, which was strictly the constitutionality.
Now, look, the federal government did win on the constitutionality side, but it was not given the green light to proceed as a matter of policy like Catherine McKenna is trying to pretend.
Yeah.
I mean, I just knew when she said the court says this is an existential challenge to Canada.
I thought, that can't be right.
That's not right.
And she's counting on the fact that 99.999% of Canadians will not read an incredibly dense judicial ruling with a very lengthy dissent.
In fact, I think the dissent is actually longer in terms of page count than the main ruling.
Well, this is obviously going to go all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Supreme Court of Canada has a troubling tradition, in my view, of being legislators from the bench.
And the biggest policy changes in recent Canadian history, I think, have come from that court.
And I'm nervous that that court will be activist and will just go along with this because it's politically fashionable.
That's just speculation on my part.
But who knows?
Maybe the pendulum is swinging back.
If you had to look ahead at the Supreme Court of Canada case on this, what do you think they would, how do you think they would approach it?
I have concerns about that, quite frankly.
You know, I look at a comment made by former Chief Justice Beverly McLaughlin, who's no longer on the court, but I fear the sentiment is still there.
And she had said in an interview when describing her job that my job is to take a step back and look at the facts and decide what's best for Canadian society and then make a decision about that.
So the Supreme Court of Canada has taken it as somewhat of a point of pride that its job is to make societal determinations rather than strict constitutional legal analyses.
And that's an issue that Canadians have to be very wary of.
And it's not about partisanship because six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Stephen Harper, yet key conservative policies have still been overturned and liberal policies have been upheld routinely over the past several years.
So I'm not optimistic about the Supreme Court on the best of times, which is why the lower court rulings, I do think, are good in the way they set the stage.
And the Ontario case does not yet have a decision.
The Alberta case that Jason Kenney has promised to file has not yet been filed.
And the Saskatchewan case, we see in the decision a little bit about how the court tends to view these things.
And despite the fact that the anti-carbon tax side lost in a technical sense, what was noteworthy is how strong the dissent was.
The judges who dissented, the two of the five, didn't just find that the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act was unconstitutional.
They found it was wholly unconstitutional.
And that is a very significant determination when they laid out their rationale, because a lot of the arguments that they cited were arguments that were very fervently fought for by the Ontario government in that province's case just a few weeks ago.
Yeah, you know, it's incredible.
I've filled up my car with gas twice in the last two days because I was driving to Ottawa and back, and $100 won't even fill up my tank.
I got to put in more than $100.
And that is so much money.
It's staggering.
And I'm not poor.
I'm not rich, but I'm not poor.
If you are a working person who needs to drive for your work, or if you are low-income, you can't drive anymore.
And that's by design.
Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna said, make better choices.
But the other side of that is, Ian Hanna Mansing, a CBC commentator, tweeted the other day that it's no big deal, and he likes to fill up with premium gas.
And I thought, and here's why I mention this: because the Supreme Court justices are not just one percenters, they're one-tenth of one percenters.
They're so wealthy, they have so many perks, they make as much money as the prime minister.
They're so elite that I'm sure they think paying a buck 75, a buck 90 for premium gas is fine, and that's their doing their part for the world.
And like you say, Beverly Maleen McLaughlin sitting back like she's some high priest saying, what's best for society?
And I'm worried that they are so out of touch with real life in this country that they'll be swayed by this green BS that we hear from Catherine McKenna.
But if they uphold the constitutionality of this tax, here's my hope, Andrew, and I wouldn't mind your thoughts on this, is that perhaps it sparks the end of the unfortunate Canadian deference to our courts.
There's something about Canadians that when a court says something, we say, oh, wow, that's the end of that.
We can't question it.
Whereas in the United States, they hate their judges just as much as they hate the other branches of government.
And they admit it's partisan.
You should see the confirmation hearings down there.
Half the people hate half the judges, and the other half hate the other half.
And I think if this elitist court upholds an elitist carbon tax, maybe that'll break Canadians out of our trance that we're so submissive to the courts.
Well, I think submissive is a part of it, but also indifferent.
I'm guessing that most Canadians could tell you all about Ruth Vader Ginsburg and Brett Kavanaugh and all of these other American justices.
But I would actually challenge people, not to their face in a way that embarrasses them, but to name one or two Supreme Court justices, especially now that Beverly McLaughlin's retired.
I mean, how many people can name the Chief Justice or any one of the queen A judges?
Or how many people can say what a queen A judge is or spell queen A for that matter?
Canadians do not give this body the attention it deserves, which is why after 10 years of a conservative government, conservatives are still losing because we have not paid attention to this institution that does, as you note, tend to legislate.
And, you know, the Ontario case back in April was very illuminating because one of the justices took a very strictly constitutional view of these things and was very, I'd say, aggressive in a good way at putting it to the federal government's lawyer and saying, look, you're saying this, this, this.
How are you not asking the court to let the federal government open the floodgates to trample on provincial jurisdiction?
And her answer was, well, the federal government will put legislation forward that limits its own power in the future.
And there was a disbelief in the courtroom and from the judge, Justice Huscroft at that point, to that answer, that the federal government wants to basically be able to do what Nancy Felosi had talked about a few years back, of you have to pass the bill to find out what's in it.
They want to just, you know, give the government the right to do what it wants, and then it will figure out a way to make it constitutional moving forward, which is not how the law is supposed to work.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
The other day I saw a startling piece of news that a Canadian Supreme Court judge had literally gone missing and no one knew where he was.
Covering Tommy Robinson's Retrial00:04:48
He was later found, like days later, found in the hospital.
Now, that's a personal challenge, and I'm not making light of it, and I hope everything's fine.
But the idea that a Supreme Court judge could go missing, and that's not in the States, that would be insane front page news.
That goes to your point about how we the judiciary is like a black box and we don't look into it.
I just think we need to bring some political accountability to it.
Now, you just ended with an anecdote that there was a judge asking good questions in Ontario, and that's good.
And I'm not saying throw out all the judges, but I think that more and more, as there's a disconnect between the elites and the people, we have to scrutinize that last branch of government that is the most elite and the least accountable.
Anyway, Andrew, there's a fascinating stuff, and I really appreciate you covering it.
And I appreciate you slogging through the legal minutiae of it.
But let me switch gears a bit to something completely different.
Next week, you are one of the real reporters that is going to London to cover Tommy Robinson's retrial for contempt of court.
Give me one minute on that.
I'm glad you're coming back.
Thank you.
Give me some reflections on what you did last time and what you hope to do this time and why you think it's important to fly halfway across the world.
Well, look, when I went last time, and I'm very grateful to your viewers and donors for helping make that happen, it was really because of the judicial accountability that we were talking about.
I mean, the freedom of Tommy Robinson, who may be a raconteur, but he still was approaching this case of the sex grooming gangs from a place of journalistic inquiry and his ability to do that without the court slamming the brakes on it and saying, you can't do that.
And I think that story is still alive and well.
This will be the third time that he's facing a court date to deal with this allegation of contempt of court.
There was the time they threw him in jail, the time in October where they avoided actually having the hearing, and then this one now where they'll redo the thing.
But the other aspect of it is the media's biased reporting of it, because my position on this has always been that I'm not a cheerleader of Tommy.
I'm a cheerleader of due process.
And I think that there's a lot of good, and I think there's a lot of stuff that I've asked questions about when it comes to Tommy Robinson.
And you can only get those answers when you're prepared to do the story and do it honestly.
And when I was in London in October, I found that the media in Britain was not only unwilling to cover it honestly, but willing to deceptively lie about Tommy and about the case.
And I think that it's unfortunate for the people in the UK that you have to import someone from Canada to cover the facts.
But if that's the way things are, I'm happy to go there.
Yeah, well, we're thrilled that you're coming back and you bring that independence.
And that's the thing with you and Cassandra Fairbanks of Gateway Pundit and Pardes Saleh, formerly of MediaIte.
And we've got Jordan James from Political Ice Sorry.
We've got Avi Yamini from Australia.
I'm just trying to list.
I think, and we're bringing two cameramen.
I think our total crew is nine plus me.
And I'm thrilled because, and we're not reviewing, oh, and Jessica Sviachanowski from The Rebel.
So we're having a whole cohort of people, and other than Jessica, who works for The Rebel, everyone else is independent.
I don't review what you say before you publish it.
I don't review what Cassandra Fairbanks or Pardee-Saled do, because I just know you're fair enough that you will call it like you see it, and that is miles better than any of the British media is doing.
I don't care what you say as long as you say something, because I know you're going to be more honest than these British media party types.
I'm thrilled you're coming.
Thank you for doing that.
Well, thank you.
I'm looking forward to it.
All right.
Well, folks, if you want to learn more about our program to bring nine journalists to London to help cover Tommy's trial, and like I say, they're independent.
I have no input in what Andrew Lawton or the other journalists say.
Go to realreporters.uk and you can help us crowdfund the flights, economy class airfare, three-star or less hotels.
So it's not a luxury trip, I'll tell you that.
But we're getting these journalists to London for Tommy's trial on May 14th.
I'll be there too.
And you can help us at realreporters.uk.
All right, Andrew, we'll see you in London.
Have a safe journey.
Remember your passport and we'll do our best to cover freedom of speech over there too.
Absolutely.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right.
Take care, my friend.
Well, there you have it.
Stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Brainwashing Kids About Global Warming00:02:03
Hey, welcome back on my monologue about Greta Thunberg and brainwashing kids to panic about global warming.
Bruce writes, I totally think that this is child abuse.
It's just like how Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews.
You are exactly right.
And I was thinking of that in my mind.
I didn't write that because, of course, teaching kids to blow themselves up as suicide bombers is so many degrees crazier than just to be death climate panickers.
But it is the same thing.
Why don't you let kids be kids?
How about don't scare the hell out of them?
A kid believes you when you say we've got 11 years left to live.
A kid would believe a grown-up.
How about don't tell them that?
John writes, I wish the best for Greta and hope she can free herself from her parents' manipulations.
Yeah, wouldn't that be great?
Although I don't see how she possibly could.
Every single force in her life is emphasizing and deepening and encouraging this bad path she's on.
Stephen writes, the point is power.
Train the young to accept the liberal way.
Then you have hundreds of thousands of young adults trained in liberal ideology and they will vote liberal with no need to campaign.
Yeah, I think we see this already.
You know, we have a series that we do on our YouTube.
We call it Generation Trudeau.
And it's just, you know, for the longest time, David Menzies would go downtown and just talk to the kids either on campus or frankly coming out of the bars.
And, you know, if you've taught someone since kindergarten about global warming and carbon taxes, even if they weren't really paying attention in school, even if they're not political at all, by the time they graduate, they just repeat that stuff.
And they don't even think it's ideological.
It's like saying, yeah, man, don't litter.
Don't litter.
So pay a carbon taxes as normal.
They say, of course, don't litter.
It's not nice to litter.
Of course, pay the carbon tax.
Of course, global is warming.
It's not even political.
When you teach it from when these kids are children of tender years, of course they believe it when they're time to vote.
That's the teachers' unions for you.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.