John Carpay, Canada’s leading civil liberties lawyer and JCCF executive director, exposes pandemic-related germaphobia as irrational fear fueled by discredited models like Neil Ferguson’s inflated death predictions. Ontario and Alberta data contradicted estimates (e.g., Hinshaw’s 32,000-death projection for Alberta), while lockdown harms—delayed surgeries, opioid overdoses, child suicides—surpassed COVID-19 risks, especially in BC where opioid deaths doubled. Carpay criticizes Quebec’s assisted-dying policies as a potential factor in skewed case/death stats and warns of creeping authoritarianism, citing mask bylaws (Edmonton), indefinite detentions (Australia/NZ), and censorship attempts (SHWA-FM). JCCF’s court challenges aim to dismantle unjustified lockdowns, revealing Canada’s slide toward permanent normalcy under pandemic pretexts. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, here at Rebel News, we like to tell you the news, we like to give you our opinions.
But one of our favorite things is to actually become activists and fix a problem.
These days, it's civil liberties and the pandemic.
And I look around and I say, where are the civil libertarians?
Where's the Canadian Civil Liberties Association?
Where's everyone else?
Too often it's just us.
But today I have the pleasure of an extended in-depth interview with really Canada's leading civil libertarian.
Really the only one, so he's obviously leading.
I'm joking around, he's the best.
His name is John Carpe.
And I hope you enjoy my conversation with him.
Before I get out of the way, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
Just go to RebelNews.com and click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month or 80 for the whole year.
And you get the video version of these podcasts, which is good, but it's also important because that money is what we pay our bills with because we don't take any money from Trudeau.
All right, here's my interview with John Carpe.
Tonight, a feature interview with John Carpe, Canada's only real civil liberties lawyer.
It's October 2nd.
This is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a 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 is government about why I published it.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Seniors' Homes Crisis00:11:40
Do you know germaphobia is a thing we all used to sort of make fun of people who would wipe down every surface and you know they were a little bit over the top.
I mean it's good to be clean and hygienic.
Cleanliness is next to godliness, but this whole pandemic panic has turned into a psychological disorder according to a column by our next guest, John Carpe, the executive director of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
Germaphobia is actually a medical condition itself.
John, great to see you.
Welcome to our world headquarters here in Toronto.
Good to see you, Ezra.
I was reading your essay, and I didn't think about it this way, but we used to sort of make fun of, if it was a light case of germaphobia, but that's actually a medical condition, and some people could be actually crazy about it.
They would be afraid to go out of their homes.
They would not use a public bathroom.
Yeah, I would.
Wipe down a chair before you sit on it.
You remember Niles Crane, the character on the Fraser series?
Frasier was that popular sitcom with the talk show psychiatrist, radio psychiatrist.
And so he had a younger brother, Niles Crane, was always wiping everything down and didn't want to touch anybody, didn't want to shake hands.
And under the DM, the DM5, it is a recognized psychiatric illness, germophobia.
Yeah.
I mean, it's always good to be somewhat afraid of germs.
Our gag reflex, I think, is an instinctive reaction, a rejection to things that are rotten.
Don't eat that maggot-covered meat that makes you want to throw up.
That's your body's way of saying, we've been practicing eating strange things for 100,000 years.
Don't eat that.
So it's good to be germaphobic.
It's good to wash hands.
Washing hands and penicillin and antibiotics.
Those are great developments.
But to be so terrified of the world that you're like the boy in the bubble, that is a mental condition.
And I think it has been inflicted on millions of people who are genuinely afraid to leave their homes.
I think that there are people, especially seniors who have been terrified by this, who will never leave their homes again.
And I don't mean ever, ever.
They'll go and get the groceries.
They'll go and get the mail maybe.
But they're never going to go to a restaurant, a theater.
They're never going to go to a family reunion.
They'll never travel again, never go on a vacation.
They're just going to sit in their homes until they die as a form of mass germaphobia.
It's very sad, the fear that we have been put into as a society with the politicians basically running with the Neil Ferguson, Imperial College predictions from March that millions of people around the world would die.
And this Neil Ferguson, he has been spectacularly wrong on BSC, mad cow disease, the bird flu.
Every pandemic, every pandemic, he is out by thousands of percentage points, and yet people were still listening to him.
The irony is, I mean, I remember reading headlines about his study.
Obviously, I didn't go deep into it.
And I thought, oh, this is cause for concern.
I myself propagated, I mean, Imperial College sounds very authoritative.
It was a pack of lies.
The thing about him is that not only did he produce the seminal propaganda document that everyone followed, but even he didn't believe it in his own life.
He's the one who broke the lockdown rules and ran around town sleeping with his married mistress breaking the rules.
And I mention that only because, I mean, not that I think that's relevant to his science, but it's relevant to the fact that even he obviously doesn't believe what he's saying if he's arranging trysts, you know, illicit trysts when we're all supposed to be in lockdown.
He didn't believe it himself, but he loves seeing other people dance to his tunes.
He also recanted in part, and this got very little publicity, but he did speak publicly before parliamentary committee a few weeks later, and he said his numbers were way out, and he also said most of these people would have died anyway, making a reference to the fact that the COVID is a deadly killer for people that are in their 80s.
They're already very sick with cancer or emphysema or heart disease or diabetes or any number of things.
And so Neil Ferguson said these people would have died anyway.
And his numbers were out.
But by then, the panic train had left the station.
Oh, yeah, and then people didn't want to hear him.
And people didn't want to, but he did retract it.
And what's so sad now, though, is, like, I feel kind of conned and tricked because I didn't oppose these lockdowns in March.
I thought, well, if there's millions of people who are going to die, we should take some decisive action.
But now we're into October.
We're six months, seven months past.
We know, looking at government data, I'm not talking about getting data off of some right-wing conspiracy website or something.
Government data, Ontario government, Alberta government, Italian government, Center for Disease Control in the U.S., government data tells us that this is not an unusually deadly killer.
And the death numbers are closer to an annual flu than to a real pandemic, like the 1968, 1957, 1918.
I've seen stats now in the United Kingdom that more people are dying from the regular flu than from this virus.
And look at this just for a second.
These are statistics from the government of Ontario.
This is their latest modeling.
They just rolled this out days ago.
You can see they have their best case scenario, middle case and worst case scenario.
Already, the facts are better than their best case scenario.
So we see already that their modeling is still way, way, way off.
And they're still proceeding with their crazy lockdowns.
These models have been discredited entirely, and yet they continue to form the basis for public policy.
In Alberta, Premier Hinshaw and her lovely assistant, Jason, predicted back in April that there would be 32,000 deaths, even with lockdown measures in place.
32,000 Albertans would die.
Do they know that in Alberta there are 27,000 people that die every year from all causes, you know, cancer, heart disease, everything.
It's 27,000 people die every year.
COVID deaths are at 250 compared to 27,000.
And they predicted 32,000 people would die.
So it was more, they were, it was less than 1% of what they thought.
I know that Justin Trudeau and Teresa Tam predicted up to 350,000 deaths.
The number is about 9,200.
9,200.
And the total annual deaths in Canada from all causes, cancer, suicide, car accidents, everything, total annual deaths in Canada is 275,000.
You know, I learned something from one of your papers on Saskatchewan.
You were quoting the public health officer.
I didn't know there were so many public health officers in this country.
Every province, every city, every region.
And these folks are making $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 a year.
There's probably 100 of them in Canada.
And they all just repeat the talking points from the World Health Organization.
I don't even know why we have 100 of them.
They're just sort of repeating what the lead mouthpiece says.
It's very strange to me.
He said in Saskatchewan that the virus doesn't discriminate.
Young, old, male, female, any race.
But that's actually not true.
As you indicated, I mean, I've studied the numbers in various jurisdictions.
The average age of death is between 83 and 86, depending which province you're at in this country, which is, by the way, older than life expectancy in Canada.
And I'm not happy that anyone is dying at 83, 80, 45.
But we have to look at reality.
Well, but just don't say that this virus doesn't discriminate.
The virus does discriminate, and that's useful information.
That means you don't have to shut down summer camps for kids, schools for kids, restaurants where waiters and waitresses are in their teens and 20s.
I want to throw something at you.
I've been puzzling over Quebec.
Quebec has about 23, 24% of the population, but they have a majority of the cases and a huge majority of the deaths.
Why is that?
Do they not have good hospitals?
The answer is most of them are in seniors' homes.
Okay, but there's seniors' homes in Ontario.
Now, it's true, 82% of the deaths have been in seniors' homes.
That's across Canada.
So it's not actually a disease that targets the elderly.
It does not.
It targets the elderly in seniors' homes.
And Quebec, especially in the last year, has been the most pro-assisted dying, euthanasia, do not revive jurisdiction in Canada.
They're obsessed with it.
My theory, and I don't yet have the proof in hand other than what makes Quebec different than Ontario, their obsession with do not revive euthanasia.
And so my theory, not yet proven, but something I want to look into, is that these are folks that kids or grandkids said, you know, Gramps, we're going to send you to the home and doctor, do not revive him.
And the doctor says, okay, we won't.
And the healthcare system, happy not to expend $20,030, $40,050,000 in the last month of life.
So it is, and the same thing in New York State with Governor Cuomo.
They thought, oh, you know what?
We got people who are in their 80s, 90s, and 100s.
They're not going to be around for much longer.
I'm trying to get into the mind of a Cuomo or a Lago.
And they're saying, well, and the kids don't want to spend money keeping them around.
Just put them all in these seniors' homes and put them on the ice flow and sail them out to sea.
That's a terrifying and terrible speculation.
But that is the law in Quebec more than anywhere else in Canada.
It is a pro-assisted dying jurisdiction.
There's no two ways about it.
I think that that's what happened in Quebec.
Well, you know, whether that's intentional or unintentional, one thing that's certain is that the cruelty that has been inflicted on people in nursing homes is astounding.
The Justice Center has commenced a court action in Ontario for two women, each of whom was not allowed to see their own mother.
And this has been repeated across the country thousands, tens of thousands of times.
People cannot go in to provide the love and attention and care and affection and just practical help with feeding and dressing and so on.
The family members are prevented from taking care of the seniors because they depend, many of them, on their kids and grandkids coming in to help out.
And they've closed it off.
And at the same time, but the staff are allowed in, right?
But the family visitors are not.
So that's the opposite case of what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about cases where everyone's happy to let Granny go out on the ice.
Well, you probably have both sides of the state.
Yeah, you have loving family members, and you probably also have some callous people that maybe want their relative to die as soon as possible.
You know, I was on the phone today with someone from the United Kingdom who works in seniors' homes and says that the chief worry for them is actually malnutrition and loneliness.
You've got these people in their 80s who, I was surprised to hear malnutrition is a concern.
But it is a fact that the deaths are so low now in Canada, even though the cases are high, that suicides are higher, opioid deaths are going to be.
Child suicide rates are going up.
Lives Behind Masks00:13:37
And I detected something in Toronto.
We're following up on it.
I used to go to the Toronto statistics page every day because it was actually very, there's a lot of statistics there.
And I started to notice that no one was, in fact, no one died in the entire month of September.
I think until like the very, I think there was like one death.
Of corona.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
In the whole, and I thought, wow, that's, and I think there was only like two or three in August.
That's very, very, very low.
But the wave has come and gone.
I mean, it peaked and the deaths peaked in March, April, May.
Yeah, April, May.
And they came down, and then May, June, July, August, they came down, down, down, down.
Every day, I do a live stream every day in New York.
So every day I would go to the page, and Justin, our producer, would call up that stat and we would say, okay, there was zero deaths today or two deaths or whatever.
And we would go to the stats and we would pull out, we would ignore the stats that are there just to wow you, this many people had cases.
And then suddenly we went to that website and it was gone.
Well, the website's still there, but those easy to find stats of when people died and how often they, that was just gone.
And now you can get the raw data, but it's not in chart form and you have to be a whiz at data manipulation.
This is news I haven't mentioned before.
So we put in an access to information request to the city saying, how come you change, like this website was the same for six months?
The city or the province?
City, Toronto.
The city of Toronto.
This website was the same for six months.
Why didn't you suddenly change it to make it hard to understand?
And for six months, it worked just fine.
And they wrote back and said, instead of giving you an access to information that shows the, can we just give you an explanation?
And it's, oh, we think there was too much clutter there.
And we wrote back and said, no, actually, we don't want your explanation.
Can you give us the background documents that shows what you really, and they're fighting with us.
And now they're saying, oh, because of the pandemic, we can't show you the emails.
I think, and again, I'm sounding like a bit of a conspiracy theorist here, but why is it that after six months they've changed how they show the data?
And when we ask for the documents, which is our right under the access to information law, they say, oh, no, no, no, no, you don't want to see it.
Can we just give you a verbal explanation?
Oh, you really insist on seeing it?
We're too busy because of the virus.
I think that Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is they actually don't want people to see that we're pretty much in the clear and that we don't need to panic.
And bringing in all these mask bylaws in August and September was about six months too late in the middle of the year.
A shutdown in Quebec in October.
These devastated, crippled restaurants and bars and pubs and other places.
And now for the effect of October 1st, the lockdowns are back in Greater Montreal.
And some of these businesses, they're on the verge of death.
Montreal used to destroy the wonderful restaurant scene.
I just read the story yesterday.
In Montreal, not a single outbreak was traced to the restaurant industry.
So why are you shutting down the restaurant industry?
Not a single outbreak.
Why are you punishing them?
And there are no deaths.
So I don't know what's going on, but I can tell you whatever's going on is very, very bad because the lockdown harms are killing people, even worse in the third world, but bad enough in Canada.
We've got canceled surgeries, people not getting their cancer diagnosis, people driven into unemployment and poverty and despair and suicide.
We've got opioid deaths, twice as many people in Alberta and British Columbia for sure, and probably in other provinces, twice as many people dying from opioid overdoses than from coronavirus.
And those numbers are way up over last year.
Why is that?
Well, despair.
You get unemployment and you destroy livelihoods.
And then add in quick cash from Justin Schrödinger.
And quick cash and unemployment.
So the whole thing is these policies are causing way more damage as compared to any lives that may have been saved.
And I have yet to see the evidence on that.
You know, there's 50 states in the United States, and each one of them has a lot of authority over their own affairs.
You can see disastrous decisions done in New York State.
More diversity than Canadian provinces.
Because you can go from New York and California, very severe lockdowns, very high death rates.
South Dakota never locked down.
And Florida, that just announced, not only are they removing any lockdown, but the governor of Florida is passing a law superseding any towns and saying you may not have a mask bylaw.
Good.
So not only is saying I'm not putting anything on you, but I am removing the power of towns.
So you see 50 different competitive approaches to it.
And in Canada, theoretically, you could have 10 provinces and three territories.
But I think they're walking in lockstep.
They're all terrified.
I don't see any opposition.
In the States, there's sort of a bifurcation of Republicans and Democrats.
In Canada, I can't name a single... Elective representative.
Now, Jason Kenney, and I accept the fact that you're challenging his...
Bill Tenney is a dangerous authoritarian.
What I would say to you is every other jurisdiction is worse.
But I see no courage To dissent from this pandemic panic.
I think it's just like I said, every time.
Well, we saw an inkling of it.
I was thrilled and surprised.
Jason Kenney, a few weeks ago, I think it was in, it could have been August or September, he actually said publicly that the lockdowns are doing a lot of harms, and we have to take that into account.
I don't remember the exact words, but it was like, wow.
Okay, so like I said, Jason Kenney is...
Yeah, but is he going to follow through on that?
We're still under lockdown in Alberta, maybe not as badly as in Ontario and Quebec, but the kids are forced to wear masks in school, which perpetuates fear and perpetuates this false notion that COVID is an unusually deadly killer and is based on the false notion that children are at risk when they're not.
So it's, you know, symbols are important, and to force kids to wear masks is a problem.
We're going to have 20 years of psychological problems from this, especially kids in that awkward age, teenagers, and even kids learning how to socialize.
I mean, communication with a mask.
It's not the same.
It's crazy.
Well, let me ask you this.
I mean, we've talked about the pandemic epidemiologically and politically and jurisdictionally, but you are a lawyer and you are the boss of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, which is, in my view, really the only true civil liberties public interest law firm in canada the canadian civil liberties association has been they're good on free speech but yeah You know what?
They haven't done much at all on this lockdown.
I'm a donor to them.
They called me up thinking they could liberate more money from me.
All they wanted to talk about is Black Lives Matter.
I said to them, I can't believe I said this, John, I said to the fundraiser, he just wouldn't stop talking about Black Lives Matter.
I said, we're in the middle of a pandemic lockdown.
I said, all right, let's make a deal.
There's a street, Eglinton West, where there's about a dozen Jamaican barbershops in two blocks.
It's amazing.
They were all locked down.
I said, I'll give you $5,000 donation if you take the case of one of these black barbers.
If you're obsessed with Black Lives Matter, okay.
Let's champion a black.
Make sure that black people can earn a living and not live in poverty.
They wouldn't take the case.
No.
I mean, not that they would follow them.
They were trying to get money from me.
I said, I'll give you five large if you do that.
I think they're asleep at the switch.
I don't understand it.
Left-wing, right-wing.
Everyone's in this.
So much of the media is compliant.
The police are compliant.
I don't know where the center of opposition is, but I know you guys are really digging in on it.
Are you suing to challenge any provisions somewhere in Canada?
Well, we've taken on a few ticket cases similar to the ones that the rebel has been very generously and helpfully helping to raise money.
And we've taken on some ticket cases.
We've sued the Kenny government in Alberta over Bill 10, which gives the cabinet ministers the power to write laws on the fly without any legislative impact.
That's one of the worst parts of this whole pandemic is there's just no oversight, let alone opposition.
What we're gearing up for, we are working on a large paper that's going to document the lockdown harms in every province and different kinds of harms and number of deaths and so on.
We're gearing up for a situation where we will be in a place to have a strong foundation for a court action.
Because as you know, you don't want to just invent a court action and walk into court the next day, right?
You want to have all your ducks lined up.
So the lockdown under the charter, because these measures very clearly violate our charter freedoms to move, travel, associate, assemble, worship.
Because they violate charter freedoms, the onus is on the government to show proportionality.
Proportionality.
So more good than harm.
The government must show that there's more good coming from lockdown measures than harm.
Yeah, they can't show that now.
Well, it's worth it.
And you know what's infuriating is they're supposed to at least study it objectively.
There's not a single government in Canada that I'm aware of that has said, you know, yeah, we're actually going to take a hard look at all of the lockdown harms, and they have the resources, the manpower to do that.
Yeah, the two things on that, if I recall, the city of Edmonton brought in a mask blah blah.
They didn't even pretend there was medical science.
They said, oh, it's...
It makes people feel good.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's popular.
It's popular.
That's not.
Makes people feel safe.
It's just like, you know, in 20 years, the TSA agents at the airport have never caught a terrorist, but it's security theater.
This is public health theater.
Theater.
Public health theater.
You know, you talk about all the resources in the government.
Not a single government worker in this entire country has lost their job.
They've lost their work.
A lot of them are working from home, getting full pay.
Layoffs have been pretty.
There have been some municipal level layoffs here and there, but by and large.
And not that I would wish anyone out of a job, but the ruling class that's bringing in the lockdowns is by and large immune.
Yes.
If judges, MPs, senators, police, the enforcers of this lockdown, bylaw officers, if they face layoffs like working people, this is a class thing.
And I'm not a Marxist.
I'm just saying, isn't it funny?
It's public sector.
The public sector and their courtiers, the media party.
Everyone who's loving, there's a big difference between a medical doctor that treats a patient and a public health doctor that regards patients as ants in an ant colony.
So you say you're putting together a documented factual basis of how there's more harm than good from these lockdowns.
I hope that's the...
And that's going to be the basis for a court action.
Yeah.
Well, listen, we...
We're going to force the government to actually have to justify itself in court.
Right now, they're just coasting along saying, you know, oh, Ezra relaxed, we've saved thousands of lives.
You should be grateful for what we've done.
And there's no evidence they've saved thousands of lives.
Well, I tell you, we will support you journalistically.
There may be a way that we can support legally crowdfunding, whatever.
Someone's got to do it.
And here's the thing.
I did my show the other day about this.
I looked to the United Kingdom.
I looked to Australia.
I looked to New Zealand.
I looked to other jurisdictions that are similar to us.
We are very similar to Australia and New Zealand.
And I see indefinite detentions of people.
Yeah.
Not who have the cough, but who just don't want to be tested.
I see that's come to Quebec now.
You don't want to be tested.
You're locked up till you do.
No judge, no appeal, just unlimited.
And yet if you were running a child prostitution ring in your basement, they'd have to go get a warrant from a judge before, you know, you'd have all these, you'd have all these mobile arrests.
Like they've got, they're trying out all sorts of new things.
I'm telling you that we are a paper-thin step away, legally, politically, police-wise, from what I see in Australia, New Zealand, UK.
There's no cultural difference.
There's no legal, very little legal difference between us and those other jurisdictions.
If we don't have some counterweight, Justin Trudeau is dumber than other world leaders, but he is just as authoritarian.
And I think the time will come when he says, ah, not only will I exercise power for its own sake, but I'll take this opportunity to whack my opponents.
You see it in Quebec City.
They're trying to censor SHWA-FM, a skeptical radio station.
All the government agencies are pulling their ad money and denouncing it because they're a public health danger.
They're using the public health excuse to shut down a radio station in Quebec.
That's got to be 10 seconds away in English Canada.
Keep The Fight Alive00:01:13
And I'm worried about that.
John, it's great to catch up with you.
jccf.ca is the website.
You issued charitable tax receipts too, so that's a bonus.
In the past, we've done some crowdfunding for you.
I really enjoyed doing that.
If there's things we can help you out with in the future, let us know.
But otherwise, folks, I encourage you to support John.
I've said this before, you've heard me say this before.
John is a true civil liberties champion in a country that lacks those.
On free speech, obviously, you're very strong on that.
But during the pandemic, there's cowardice on all the traditional civil libertarians.
And you've been generous in your praise for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
I do not share your view.
And I'm a member and a donor of theirs.
I think they've been hitting that snooze button.
They're a drowsy lifeguard when there's people drowning out there.
John, keep up the fight and keep us posted.
We're not through this by any threat.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
This is the permanent normal.
This is a permanent.
This is the new normal.
And we're not accepting the new normal.
We're going to fight it.
Yeah.
All right.
There you have it.
John Carpe, one of the good guys.
Pleasure to sit down with him and talk about this at length.
We'll keep in touch with him and his staff lawyers in the months ahead.
That's our show for today.
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home.