Azra Levant compares China’s pandemic response—mask stockpiling in January 2020, suppressing early warnings (December 2019), and WHO deception—to Nazi Germany’s aggression or apartheid South Africa’s racism, framing it as premeditated global harm. She advocates Cold War-style decoupling: defunding the WHO, recognizing Taiwan, and pressuring firms to exit China, citing Alberta’s Bill 10 (March 31, 2023) as a warning of unchecked emergency powers, where $500K fines for vague offenses risk eroding freedoms. Media failures, from activist-driven legacy outlets to citizen journalism, deepen societal distrust, suggesting accountability gaps may outlast the crisis itself. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, I take heed of a comment made by Steve Bannon, Trump's former advisor, who says, we've got to punish the Communist Party of China.
And I started thinking, well, how?
Do we treat them like we treated Nazi Germany?
Like we treated apartheid South Africa?
What's the new way of thinking about China?
I think I have a suggestion that you might find interesting.
Anyway, that's today's podcast.
Before I get out of the way, can I invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber?
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video version of the show, which I think is pretty important these days.
We have lots of visual elements.
You also get Sheila Gunn Reed's show and David Menzies' show.
So that's $8 a month.
Just get it at rebelnews.com.
And most importantly, it helps us stay strong.
That's how we pay our bills.
Okay, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, should we start treating communist China like apartheid South Africa or even like Nazi Germany?
It's April 9th, and this is the Azra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
Handcuffs and Heartache00:03:29
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 this is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've been thinking non-stop about this virus for a month, like you have, I'm sure.
And if you've been watching our show loyally, you know we've been talking about it since January.
Partly it was just noting the bizarre images emerging from China of their police state fighting both people and the invisible virus.
As far back as January, we sent reporters to airports noting how flights from China to Canada were arriving with no controls, no screening, no protection at all for us.
It's all so much to process and then, like you, to watch in horror as the news over there became the news over here and how it moves from being news about which we are passive observers from the outside to news in which we are directly affected.
And it's not news anymore.
It's our own lives.
I think it's worse in the UK as usual.
There are now ridiculous cases in Canada and the US of China stopped policing in the name of social distancing.
Look at this case from the States.
Brighton police are apparently arresting a dad.
On Sunday, I'm at the park with my wife, with my daughter.
We're playing some t-ball, not near anybody else.
The next closest person is at least 15 feet away from me and my daughter.
About 4:30, the cops show up.
It was three officers, two cruisers.
Next thing I know, they're telling my wife that the park is closed.
We have to leave.
In complete isolation in a park of about, I don't know, 30, 40 acres.
But apparently that is not allowed.
I kind of took a stand and I told them, you know, look, this is an open space.
It's perfectly allowed.
You know, you telling me to leave is a violation of my constitutional rights.
I am not leaving.
You can issue me a citation if that's what you have to do.
They then proceeded to make a threat against me saying, if you don't give us your identification, if you don't identify yourself, we're going to put you in handcuffs in front of your six-year-old daughter.
The authors put me in handcuffs.
You know, they got me to the patrol car and they left me sitting there for the next 10 to 15 minutes.
So they get me out of the patrol car.
They take the handcuffs off me.
So I was released free to go.
No citations issued.
No apologies issued.
What exactly is the health risk of a dad and his family, who all live together anyways, being in the middle of a huge empty field together?
That's abusive policing.
That's a power trip by officers.
That's the surveillance state and the public health care state.
And that's the nature of political authority.
It always grows and never shrinks.
And right now, I think we're in a key moment as free societies.
Will we be conditioned to accept such infringements on our lives as normal?
Will it be normalized just like 9-11 was the shock that normalized TSA agents physically groping millions of people, including children, humiliating all of us in the name of safety.
And by the way, it's been nearly 20 years since the TSA was formed and the Canadian version of it.
And not a single terrorist has ever been caught by the TSA.
China's Growing Influence00:10:24
There are so many angles to this pandemic.
The virus itself, the economic devastation caused by the virus, the economic devastation caused by politicians reacting poorly to the virus, and now the threat to our freedoms.
But I want to talk about today not us and how this is affecting us and how we're mismanaging it by we, I mean, our politicians, our Healthcare Deep State.
Instead, I want to talk about they, them, the people who did this to us.
Now, a virus did this to us, and I'm not even going to get into the credible allegations that this virus was engineered by China's biowarfare lab that just happens to be located in Wuhan.
We interviewed an Epoch Times journalist yesterday who made credible allegations about that, and we have secured the rights for tomorrow's show to show you that whole movie.
So I hope you tune in.
But as I've always said, what we know without a shadow of a doubt is that however the virus did come about, China's Communist Party deliberately hid the news, arrested doctors who were trying to warn about the news, lied to the world, including to the World Health Organization, which in turn they got to radiate their lives, and engaged in outrageous bad faith conduct.
The Chinese Communist Party vacuuming up the world's medical health supplies, masks, gowns, for two months while pretending everything was fine.
China continues to lie, continues to endanger us, and too many of us are still sleepwalking through all this, Trudeau being the obvious example.
But listen to this.
This is Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former campaign manager and the architect for a lot of Trump's thinking about China, China, especially on trade.
Listen to this.
But the Chinese Communist Party and their culpability in this is really what has to be addressed.
Yeah, how will that be addressed?
I mean, Steve, you and I talked on Sunday about the fact that they cornered the market for protective equipment in January while they were downplaying the coronavirus.
They actually acquired 2.02 billion masks, 25 million pieces of protective clothing.
They already make half of the capacity of all masks in the world.
Why do they need to buy another 2 billion in January while they were playing down the coronavirus?
Not just playing down, they were lying to people about the human-to-human transmission.
They knew they had it.
They vacuumed up all the PPE protective equipment in Europe, the United States, and Brazil.
So later on, they could use it as a strategic advantage to give back to countries to kind of bleed it out like they did with Governor Cuomo.
It's unacceptable.
This will be proven, and this shows you it's premeditated murder of those doctors and nurses from Italy to South Africa to the United States that died in service to their fellow citizens in their country.
The blood is on the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Chinese Communist Party knew about human-to-human transmission in December.
All of this could have been stopped.
The city of Wuhan and the decent, hardworking Chinese citizens did not have to be destroyed.
Hubei province did not have to be destroyed.
Italy, Spain, South Africa, the United States.
All of this is at the doorsteps of the Chinese Communist Party.
They are the big, the victims, the Chinese people are the biggest victims.
This is a murderous group of gangsters, and they've got to be held accountable by the world.
The American people, the people throughout the world, and the Chinese people want to hold accountable the Chinese Communist Party.
What did they know?
When did they know it?
And what actions did they take in December, mid-December of 2019?
If they had done what a legitimate government would have done, which is get on top of this and not let it become their biological Chernobyl, all of the suffering, all of the economic destruction, all the destruction of pension funds, all the unemployment, all the death would have been avoided.
It's pretty straightforward what happened.
It's pretty straightforward that the Chinese Communist Party terrorized their own citizens, and now they're a threat, as this pandemic showed, to all mankind.
The Chinese Communist Party, we have to bring the nation together to address this.
We have to hold the Chinese Communist Party and their leaders have to be held accountable for what happened in December of 2019 in Wuhan.
They have to be held accountable.
The whole country has to come together.
We don't need investigations.
We don't need another witch hunt.
We don't need another impeachment investigation.
We need to bring the nation together to focus on what the problem is.
The problem emanates from Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party, what they've done to their own people, and therefore what they did to the entire world.
This has got to be very simple.
We've got to broom out all the noise and focus on the signal.
The signal is the Chinese Communist Party.
I find that compelling.
And as I said on my noon-hour live stream show, I hope you're turning into those, by the way, each weekday at 12 noon Eastern Time on YouTube.
I think we need to start thinking about China no more as a trading partner.
It's not really a partnership when we buy all of their stuff and they don't let our stuff in.
That's not a partner.
And it's certainly, they're not an ally.
They are in no way our allies.
They're much more than just a competitor, as their illegal trade practices constantly show and their industrial espionage shows, lest we forget we had a world-leading high-tech company in Canada about 15 years ago called Nortel until China hacked it, stole its intellectual property, and basically built Huawei out of it.
So, yeah, not a business partner, but something different.
I mean, we do buy things from enemies sometimes.
For decades, we've bought oil from OPEC dictatorships, but no one pretends they are dear friends and partners and allies, I don't think.
But I think there's other analogies that are better.
Apartheid South Africa, how the world denormalized, demonized, put sanctions on South Africa for its policies of apartheid.
It was a racist system to be sure, but South Africa didn't go around the world killing thousands of people like the virus has.
Still, sanctions, and more importantly, turning them into a pariah state.
Can we learn from that?
I mean, isn't China a pariah state?
Oh, and the Communist Party is, by the way, heartily racist in their words and deeds.
Ethnic cleansing in Tibet, imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims, murders of Falun Gong, abuse of Christians, just to name a few.
Shouldn't we treat them like South Africa?
Should we even treat them like Nazis?
I mean, Mao Zedong did kill between 50 and 80 million souls.
I've seen estimates as high as 85 million dead.
That's more than Hitler killed.
But Hitler attacked the world.
Mao murdered his own people mainly.
No, I don't think going to war is the answer.
I think the best stance is to take a Cold War approach.
China, like the old Soviet Union, is large and nuclear-armed.
You can't attack it.
You can't ignore it, but you can denormalize it, speak truth to power about it, and make sure you are never dependent on it.
We can undo favors to it.
We can recognize Taiwan as an independent country, something to our deep discredit that hasn't been done by the free world in a generation.
We can encourage our companies to leave China, preferably to come back home, but at least somewhere else.
Japan is even offering to pay its companies to get out.
That's a good idea.
It's cheaper than the alternative, isn't it?
And address the reasons why companies went there in the first place.
A factory is a factory.
It's capital-intensive high-tech machines.
Was it something else that drove factories to China besides just cheap labor?
Maybe too much red tape here at home, too much hassle.
I don't know, but let's bring our factories home with carrots, as possible, like Japan is doing, but with sticks too, tariffs on anything made in China, and use that money from the tariffs to help pay for the reshoring of companies that do come back.
Do you really like the fact that we are held hostage by China for most of our medicines?
It's made in China.
For medical equipment, I don't like that one bit.
I think we have to clean out China's influence in global institutions too, or since that is likely impossible, simply create new institutions for democracies only.
Why does China have a veto at the UN Security Council?
Why is China on the UN's Human Rights Commission and other commissions like that?
Why does China, the virus infector, run the World Health Organization?
Why ask why?
Why not just do what Trump is musing about doing and just defund them?
We want to look into a World Health Organization because they really are.
They called it wrong.
They call it wrong.
They really, they missed the call.
They could have called it months earlier.
They would have known.
And they should have known.
And they probably did know.
So we'll be looking into that very carefully.
And we're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO.
We're going to put a very powerful hold on it.
And we're going to see.
It's a great thing if it works, but when they call every shot wrong, that's no good.
Defund them.
And how about starting new institutions for liberal democracies?
Not useless talk shops that simply demonize democracies and run cover for dictatorships.
Let the UN move its headquarters to Wuhan and give a new democratic institution its office space in New York.
And let's do what Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II did to the Soviet Union.
Let's speak truth to power.
Let's call them out all the time.
Let's denormalize them.
And let's quietly support dissonance.
Reagan and the West supported the Polish solidarity labor union that helped undo the Soviet Union, Lach Walenza.
Obviously, the Pope himself visited Poland and had a massive outdoor mass, more than a million Poles, and he told them, be not afraid.
And so they weren't afraid anymore.
Let's do that sort of thing to China.
Let's unhook ourselves from China industrially, financially.
Let's root them out.
Let's send home many of the 100,000 Chinese nationals at our Canadian universities.
Let Canadian kids into those college spaces and stop the massive technology transfer and outright industrial espionage conducted by some of that group.
But not all of those Chinese students are bad people.
Of course not.
Again, this isn't a war against the Chinese people.
But the 100,000 Chinese elites who are going to our schools, they're not regular random Chinese people.
They're the sons and daughters of privilege, the children of Communist Party officials in many cases.
Why are they here anymore?
As we've shown you, too many of these students have in fact stolen Canadian industrial secrets, including virus secrets, as happened just last year.
Emergency Powers Explained00:15:59
The police had to get involved.
Sorry, this is hard to do because we've gone so far the wrong way.
So much of our lives is made in China.
Our computers are made in China.
Our cell phones are made in China.
Half the junk at Walmart and Canadian tire is made in China.
Our medicines are made in China.
But you know, our pandemic was made in China too, and so was the cover-up.
It was made in China.
The danger still comes from China.
Let's at least start acting like it.
And maybe one day, like Poland, the Chinese people will be free.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, the other day we had an interesting interview with Sam Goldstein.
As you know, he's a bencher, which is a very senior lawyer in Ontario.
He's a civil libertarian and he's a criminal lawyer by profession.
And he took us through some of the emergency powers that both the federal government, provincial governments, and even city governments have in dealing with the pandemic.
One of the things that I found slightly reassuring from that conversation, it felt like a professorial class in university.
Sam was a very good explicator of things.
One of the things I found reassuring was that in the various emergency provisions we talked about, there were time limits.
There were mechanisms by which even opposition MPs or senators could force parliament to return to reconsider things.
There were also oversight provisions for the governor general or the lieutenant governors of provinces.
And finally, there was a reporting requirement that after a state of emergency, the government had to sort of justify its actions.
Now, of course, all of those things don't stop abuses.
And one of the things that Sam emphasized was that if there is an abuse, it would likely only be remedied later on, not in the emergency itself.
But still, he gave me some reassurance in our conversation.
So it was with great interest that I took a phone call from our friend John Carpe of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, who told me that he was alarmed by emergency powers proposed by the government of Alberta, led by Jason Kenney, who of course is conservative in nature and from what I know of Jason, a respecter of civil liberties in general.
I think it's also fair to say that Alberta has had one of the better responses to the pandemic, or at least more effective.
But I said to John, let's come on the show and let's talk about your concerns about Alberta's Bill 10.
You can see on the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms website, the headline given to the bill by John's team is, Alberta government gives itself sweeping new powers to create new laws without Legislative Assembly approval.
And joining us now via Skype from Calgary is our friend John Carpe.
John, great to see you again.
Tell me some of the details about Bill 10.
What are the elements of it that you find troublesome from a democratic or civil liberties point of view?
Well, it was rushed through the legislature in less than 48 hours.
It was introduced by Health Minister Tyler Chandrow on March 31st.
And by April the 2nd, it had passed second reading and third reading and is now in force.
And the provision that's most concerning is a new power given to cabinet ministers to create laws, write laws, without consultation, without the approval or even the debate or the input of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.
Now, this adds to, there was previously already under the Public Health Act, the ministers had power to suspend laws, which is, you know, pretty drastic, but, you know, could be necessary.
For example, if you had a Motor Vehicles Act provision that said you cannot have a bunch of large trucks that are hogging the highway in an emergency, you could say, well, we're going to suspend that provision of the Motor Vehicle Act, and we're going to allow a bunch of large trucks to drive side by side and monopolize the highway.
So you could suspend certain provisions of certain laws.
What Jason Kenney's government did March 31st to April 2nd was to add onto that a new power to create laws that cabinet ministers now have during the public health emergency.
Okay, so let's be clear here.
I don't have the text of the law in front of me, and maybe you could refer to actual wording that caused you concern.
One of the things that Sam Gold, and I'm using him as the baseline, because I felt like he gave sort of an overview of emergency powers that were temporary in nature.
And he started by saying that this is ancient, even ancient Rome, put in power someone they called the tyrant who could rule.
And they were lucky in that after the tyrant ruled for two years, he said, all right, I'm done.
I'm going to go back to being a farmer and you, you know, the Senate can take over.
Are the laws you referred to, not just the suspension of existing laws, but the creation of new laws, are they temporary in nature?
So when you say a new law, like there's dozens of laws, you mentioned the Highway Traffic Act.
Those laws are enduring, and during an emergency, they can be suspended, but then after the emergency, they revert back.
Are these laws that you say can be created unilaterally by Fiat, are they also time-limited in nature, or do they endure beyond the emergency?
Yes, they are time-limited, which is good.
The orders would expire, the laws would expire, depending on whether it was a public health emergency or a pandemic influenza.
These powers would expire after 30 or 60 days, and they can be renewed by the provincial cabinet, but that's also time-limited.
Where the challenge is, is that the law does not stop the government from renewing the public health emergency on and on and on.
So a public health emergency is supposed to be 30 days, and then we're back to normal.
But the government could renew that 30-day period over and over and over and over and over again, because there's nothing in the legislation that stops the government from doing that.
So that's a concern.
Right.
And again, I don't mean to, it would have been interesting to have Sam Goldstein in on this conversation because he really has gone deep on this subject.
And that was one of the things that we talked about.
I'm sorry to sort of try and echo what he said.
I'm obviously not as well briefed on it as he is.
But, you know, it is a fact that sometimes emergencies do last longer than 30 days or 60 days.
One of the things I found, as I mentioned, reassuring in his description of at least, I think it was the federal emergency power, was that if you had, I think it was 10 senators or 20 MPs or maybe it was the low number like that of opposition MPs,
they could at least force a review, a gut check, which I found somewhat comforting because even if the loyalists around the prime minister said, no, this is fine, the opposition still had that special power.
Is that there in the provincial legislation?
Because, look, I am as alert to civil liberties issues as you are, I think.
Maybe not quite, because it's all you do for a living.
But if there was a way that even, let's say, Rachel Notley, the socialist NDP opposition leader in Alberta, with whom I disagree on nearly everything, if I knew that she had a similar power to at least once in a while pull the legislature back to have a vote or an affirmation that, yeah, the emergency continues, I would find that somewhat reassuring.
Does that exist provincially here?
Not to my knowledge, but I do need to double check whether we have those provisions provincially.
So I'd like to look into that and get back to you if I can.
Sure.
And again, I'm not trying to put you on the spot.
We're all learning about these rarely used powers together.
Sam was telling us about how some of these powers have only been used three times in Canadian history, both world wars and the FLQ crisis, pretty much almost 50 years ago in Quebec.
So these are not normal times and normal laws.
I think you're wise to be alert to these things, John, because it's in these times of crisis that by nature, politicians, bureaucrats, police seize ground that they could not get in normal times.
And it's often a ratchet effect.
That is, once these infringements are there, you never get rid of them.
I mean, the income tax itself was just till we get through this great war while it's been more than a century.
Tell me if there's been any use of this power.
Well, I guess it's still a bill.
Has there been any when there was the debate in the legislature to rush this through, was there any suggestion by the government of what they might use this power to do?
No, and that's disconcerting.
Now, so far, to my knowledge, the government has not used these new powers yet.
But the only thing that was stated by, you know, first by the health minister, Tyler Chandroux, and I read through the Hansard, as well as another cabinet minister, was, you know, this is to better look after the health and safety, this is to better protect Albertans and protect the health and safety of Albertans.
Just those platitudes were the only justification that was put forward.
I would actually have more confidence in Jason Kenney's government in pushing this bill through if they said, well, look, here's an example or two or three examples of why or how a cabinet minister might need to create a new law on the fly or create a new offense.
That's the other thing.
A cabinet minister can single-handedly, without any legislative review by the Legislative Assembly, can create new offenses.
Now, they cannot be retroactive, but he can say, well, it's an offense to walk outside unless you're on a special government-approved list of people who are allowed to go outside.
The fines and penalties are draconian as well.
They were already a maximum fine of $2,000 for first offense for disobeying the Public Health Act.
That's been jumped up to $100,000 that you can be fined for disobeying the Public Health Act.
And on a subsequent offense, $500,000 fines.
So that's pretty serious as well.
Yeah, and again, I don't want to continuously reach back to what Sam Goldstein told us last week, but it is my only source of knowledge on this subject, John.
So forgive me for doing that.
And I'm sure that Sam, if he would be watching this, would cringe that I'm not getting it just perfectly.
But one of the things he told me is that even in these emergency laws, while you're obviously correct in this bill clearly, the way you describe it clearly says the democratic machinery is eliminated.
The laws just come into existence without the typical first reading, second reading, committee hearings, third reading vote, et cetera.
So the laws are created undemocratically, at least in contrast to our normal processes.
They still must be implemented in accordance with the Charter of Rights principles.
So you mentioned banning people from walking on the street, and I think that is something that we probably will see in some form.
But there would be some requirement that it be the least intrusive measure that makes sense, that it does make sense, that there's some pressing need, and that while perhaps some rule against reopening a theater might survive that test, some rule against walking by yourself in the countryside might not meet the test.
Again, I'm certainly not presenting myself as a defender of Bill 10.
I actually haven't even read the bill.
And I'm not certainly defending my, putting myself forward as a defender of Jason Kenney's government.
I'm just trying to find out the four corners of what's going on here and if this is in fact just the Alberta example of what's being done in every province, territory, and the federal government, because I think the whole country is acting under some sort of emergency legislation right now.
Well, the charter does apply, which is good.
And the courts are largely shut down, but they supposedly are entertaining emergency applications.
So, you know, our organization, the Justice Center, for example, if we felt that there was an egregious and unnecessary, unreasonable, unjustified violation of charter freedoms, we would, you know, fax file or e-file and we would hope that the courts would look at that as an emergency and choose to hear it.
But we're not, you know, we're not trigger happy.
We understand that there can be temporary violations of charter freedoms.
I mean, your mobility rights, your freedom of association, freedom of peaceful assembly, some restrictions on your freedom of religion, restrictions on your right to liberty and security of the person.
Some restrictions on a temporary basis can be justified, but we're just watching very closely to make sure that no line is crossed where it really becomes irrational, unreasonable type of a law or order.
I find it disconcerting that you hear media reports about people getting tickets for being alone in a park or they're with their own child in a park.
British Columbia is shutting down all parks over Easter.
And it's like, why can't we just do social distancing in a public park?
Why does it have to be shut down entirely?
So, you know, we have to be very vigilant.
And like the temporary income tax that's now a century old, we have to push very, very hard after this emergency is over to make sure we get all of our rights and freedoms back in full.
Vigilance In Parks00:06:06
Yeah, I mean, listen, I agree with you that we are in a dangerous time.
The city of Ottawa has banned people sitting by themselves on park benches.
What is the possible, like that, there's just no medical, there's no scientific, that's just a bully using his emergency powers for some, like sitting on a park bench by yourself.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
Maybe shutting down a dance club nightclub, hot, sweaty, everyone breathing in one small place where you would probably share a lot of germs, I get.
Everybody's speaking moistly, as our prime minister would say.
Well, listen, let me say this.
I think that what you're talking about, and I have not gone through built-in, is a version of what every province and federal government is doing.
Now, maybe what you're saying is this goes beyond the existing emergency legislation in the province, and I accept your view on that, if that's what you're saying.
The difference, if I can just interject for a sec, the difference is that we've moved in Alberta from the temporary power of cabinet ministers to suspend the operation of certain laws.
So temporarily you can say that, you know, section 27.9 of the Employment Standards Code doesn't apply, or Section 285 of the Motor Vehicle Act doesn't apply.
So temporary suspension, what's different here is that Jason Kenney's government has taken for itself a power to actually write new laws and create new offenses.
That's the distinction that makes this unique in Canada.
As far as I know, there's no other province that has passed legislation to give cabinet ministers the power to write laws on the fly on the spur of the moment.
Well, listen, and whether or not other provinces were doing it is not the test of whether or not it's right.
Every province might be making the same mistake together, although it is an indication whether or not this is, quote, normal.
Well, let me close on this, John.
I mean, you've been probably one of our most frequent guests over the years at Rebel News, and although we haven't done so in the past few months, in the past, we have worked with you to even crowdfund some legal defense for people who have been mistreated typically by the state.
If you come across a case of someone sitting on a park bench and getting a ticket, or someone out for a walking their dog getting a ticket, and if you see an abuse of the law like that, we would love to be involved in two ways.
Not only number one, what we like to do around here, crowdfund to help cover your costs, because Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom is a nonprofit, so we've got to help you out, your charity.
But number two, to shine the light of public scrutiny on it to hopefully dissuade other cops or health cops who are worse.
Like at least a cop with a gun, a lot of his training is on self-restraint because he's got the ultimate power to kill theoretically.
So a lot of police training is don't overreact.
Don't shoot someone just because they swear at you.
Don't, don't, don't.
I would frankly trust a cop with a gun to limit himself more than a public health bureaucrat who's just trying out his new powers and it's this high priestly class now that can simply issue demands and commands.
I'm actually more worried about the health cops than the cops cops.
So if you find a case like that, we would love to make an example out of it as a warning to other authorities, don't do that.
So keep your eyes peeled, John, and if you find a particular case where this comes true in a bad way, let us know.
I will let you know.
And can I just, one important piece of information.
If you get a ticket that you think is unfair, something ridiculous, like you're out in a public park, you know, with your kids and just minding your own business and getting some fresh air and you get a ticket, be sure to plead not guilty and force a trial.
And in a lot of cases, the crown prosecutors, who are trained lawyers and, you know, more maybe certainly have a better knowledge of the law than the people issuing tickets.
In a lot of cases, the crown prosecutors will withdraw the charges.
So there's some important free legal advice for listeners and viewers of the rebel is if you get a ticket that you think is unfair, don't pay it.
Plead not guilty and set a trial date and protect yourself that way.
You know, and my last reference to my interesting talk with Sam Goldstein the other day, he, in his own family, he had two instances.
I think his niece, he said, was accosted just for being on the sidewalk, I think looking at her phone or something.
No reason at all.
Just a cop said, what are you doing?
And Sam himself was walking his dog and some bylaw officer started pestering him.
He's a sophisticated lawyer, so he knew he didn't even have to stop and talk to this pest.
But I think the ordinary Canadian is still deferential to authority, which is probably a good thing.
We trust authority.
It's probably a good thing.
And we're all trying to figure out this pandemic together.
What are the do's and don'ts?
So I think that Canadians by nature would say, oh, sorry.
And sometimes that's the right answer, but other times you have to push back.
And I am worried that in the long term, the abuses by public health authorities will do more damage to our society than the actual virus itself.
I hope that doesn't come true, but that's a worry.
Citizen Journalists Rise00:04:32
Last word to you, John.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
So we need to watch the politicians closely and carefully.
And when there is ridiculous and unjustified government action, we need to speak up and fight back, even when there's a pandemic in place.
All right.
Well, John, we'll keep us posted if any examples of government abuse come to your attention.
Let us know, whether it's in Alberta or anywhere else in the country.
Frankly, although this bill is Albertan, it would not surprise me if the greatest abuses came from other jurisdictions that are less freedom-oriented than Alberta.
Thanks for your time, my friend.
Thank you.
All right, there you have it, John Carpe.
He's the boss of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
He joined us via Skype from Calgary.
Stay with us, boy.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about a media party poll calling for more subsidies.
Frank writes, how the National Post has fallen.
I love that under Conrad Black, if the media did good journalism, they would not need a bailout.
Think of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Stein, and yourself.
Well, thank you for including us in that list of great journalists.
There is more journalism in the world than ever right now.
Just so much of it is done by citizen journalists.
It's a joke to call journalism a profession because that implies that it's like a priesthood and you have secret codes.
No, no, no.
Journalism, look at the root of the word.
It comes from the word journal, which comes from the word jour, the day.
Did you write about the day?
Tell me about your day.
You don't need to be a professional to tell about the day.
And so each of us has become a publisher on Facebook.
Each of us has become a broadcaster on YouTube.
And you know what's so funny?
As all these legacy media companies make their talent work from home, whether it's the late night talk show hosts like Jimmy Fallon or the daytime talk show hosts like Ellen DeGeneres or newscasters like Chris Cuomo and CNN, they're broadcasting out of their own basements on a cheap camera with bad lighting too.
They don't have makeup artists.
They don't have audiences there with laugh tracks.
So really, can you tell me the difference anymore between a fancy journalist who's working from home and an unfancy journalist who's working from home?
There is no difference.
There's more journalism now than ever.
What irritates the professional journalists is that the competitors are people like you and me.
Brandon writes, journalists are basically just activists.
They talk about issues that no one cares about, like climate change and other leftist talking points.
Yeah, I think a lot of journalists are activists.
Obviously, there's an exception to this everywhere.
There are genuinely interesting journalists out there.
One recommendation I saw about a month ago that would have been so useful, especially in the Trump press conferences where it's just pure gotcha all day long, is if other media companies, instead of sending their gotcha journalists, like again, CNN's Jim Acosta, for example, what if they had sent their science writers, like someone who actually had a little bit of knowledge about science and wasn't obsessed every day with gotcha partisanship?
I think that would have been more useful.
But it just goes to show that I don't really think journalists have done a good job in covering this pandemic in Canada.
Our journalists are very complacent and haven't asked Trudeau any tough questions.
But you are correct to note that Greta Thunberg isn't exactly important anymore and gender studies isn't exactly important anymore.
When things are in extreme times, people don't care about those leftist luxuries.
Caitlin writes, Trudeau already gave the media $600 million in bailouts.
No more.
Oh yes, there will be a lot more.
And I can tell you how to time it.
The worse Trudeau does in the polls, the more he has gaffes, expect more waves of bailouts.
So if he starts to tank in the polls because of the looming recession, expect a lot more bailouts to his fan base, journalists.
All right, that's the show for today until tomorrow, where we have a special presentation of that Epoch Times investigative documentary.
From all of us here at World Headquarters, see you at home.