Toby Young’s Lockdown Skeptics and Free Speech Union challenge UK vaccine passports, warning they’d turn citizens into state-conditioned "puppies" like Nazi or Soviet systems. Matthew Lynn’s London Telegraph piece outlines potential NHS cards, apps, or microchips, while Alberta’s Whistle Stop Diner owner Chris Scott dodges fines after legal backlash—contrasting with a jailed Edmonton pastor. The End the Lockdown Caucus (Hillier, Bernier, Pitt, Barnes) faces silent official support despite public fear of backlash, leaving grassroots resistance like fightthefines.com as the last line of defense against a permission-based society eroding freedoms and mental health, especially for youth. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the United Kingdom considers vaccine passports.
Do you doubt they're coming here too?
It's February 25th, 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 is government a lot of publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I'm a regular reader and a small financial supporter of a very smart website in the UK called lockdownskeptics.org.
Skeptics about with a C.
It's updated all the time.
It's really well laid out.
It's like a blog, really, with short commentaries and analyses.
But the most interesting part of it, to me at least, is that it's a clearinghouse for skepticism about lockdowns everywhere.
They really do scan the world's media, not just in the UK, for interesting and authoritative news.
And that's another thing I like about it.
I find it trustworthy.
It has strong opinions, but those opinions seem to me to be based on strong facts.
It really is a good site, and it's another great project involving Toby Young, who also helped found the Free Speech Union in the UK, which helps people caught by cancel culture.
They do petitions and they hire lawyers and they actually managed to un-cancel people in the UK.
I wish we had something like that here in Canada.
Anyways, about the Lockdown Skeptic site, you might remember a few months ago I showed you a fun project of theirs.
They're singles ads.
They're dating ads.
They call it Love in the Time of COVID, which is great.
It's for people who can't stand the scolding lockdown culture and those terrified by it and those obedient to it.
I like the idea that people want to meet other normal people.
I think that's a great idea.
Anyways, it was from Lockdown Skeptics that I saw this article in the London Telegraph by Matthew Lynn, who's a business reporter, really.
So it's not coming from the point of view of a civil liberties activist like Toby Young or a single-issue lockdown skeptic.
The Telegraph describes the author this way.
A financial columnist and author, he writes for Wall Street Journal Market Watch, The Spectator, and Money Week, as well as The Telegraph, and has worked as a columnist for the Sunday Times and Bloomberg.
His books include Bust, Grease the Euro, and The Sovereign Debt Crisis, etc.
So, as you can see, he's a business writer, really.
But this column is more than just business.
He was writing in reaction to this news.
COVID vaccine passports could be introduced to reopen economy.
Boris Johnson has not ruled out possibility of vaccination certificates for work or visiting cultural venues, culture venues.
Here, I'll read a little bit from this original story.
Vaccine certificates could be introduced to open parts of the economy to those who have had the jab as a government review is launched.
The review will investigate how testing and or vaccination could be used to establish whether people have a lower risk of COVID transmission.
Boris Johnson has previously not ruled out the possibility of vaccine certificates for work or visiting venues such as theaters or cinemas, but has suggested he favors negative COVID tests as a way to open up the toughest nuts of the economy.
So obviously it's going to happen.
I mean, of course it will.
This is the so-called Conservative Party in the UK.
You can only imagine that the Socialist Labour Party wants this kind of total control even more.
A passport, even just to walk out of your house, it's like how it was in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
Some secret policeman would come up to you and say, where's your papers?
Show me your papers.
So here's what Matthew Lynn said about that article.
He wrote a column.
I'd never heard of him until I read this, and it made me encouraged that he wrote it and sad that he had to write it and terrified because it's probably going to happen.
I don't know, wistful is the word a little bit, and I'm certain that we'll follow every bad example in the world too here in Canada.
So here's the column that caught my eye in Lockdown Skeptics today.
Vaccine passports would crush Britain's can-do culture.
Don't be fooled, vaccine passports are no gateway to freedom.
So right away, he's focused on enterprise and can-do, which is a sort of liberty.
But he's speaking as a businessman, isn't he?
By the way, NHS, in this article, obviously refers to their National Health Service.
It's their kind of government-run healthcare.
So let me read.
It could be a simple national healthcare service card.
It could be an app on your phone.
Heck, it could even be a full-blown embossed booklet with the union flag on the cover, or for the conspiracy theorists, a microchip embedded at birth.
It doesn't really matter what form a vaccine passport takes, whichever version we go for, it will still be a step on a dangerous path, one that takes us towards a permission-based society where mavericks are criminalized, individuality is crushed, and we lose the competitive advantage that liberty has always given us.
See, he's bringing it back to the competitive advantage.
Sure, I value that too, but I just value being free even more.
Being free for me is the goal itself.
It's not just the means to another goal like a competitive advantage.
But that's fine.
He's a business guy.
That's who he's writing to in the London Telegraph.
I'll read some more.
As the vaccines keep rolling out and with a roadmap out of lockdown in place, attention is turning to what a normal society would look like.
Our government, along with most others, has started examining vaccine passports.
The premise is simple.
Carry proof that you had the jab or a recent COVID test, and you can go to the pub, visit a gallery, or hop on an EasyJet flight for a weekend in Budapest.
They could, as passports are meant to be, turn into a gateway to freedom.
After all, if you are not carrying the virus, why should your life be restricted?
The case for vaccine passports almost makes itself, and they may be hard to resist simply because so many companies will demand them, regardless of what the government says.
Airlines are already discussing requiring certificates before you fly.
It may be the only practical way to get back into business again.
Here's the problem, however.
We will be surrendering a far larger freedom than simply the choice of whether we get a jab for COVID-19.
Vaccine passports would institutionalize the idea that liberty is not a natural right, but conditional.
That's the thing, isn't it?
They take away your freedom, then they tease you with it, give you a little bit, then take it away again, then they tease you with it.
They're conditioning you.
You know, we bought a puppy for the kids during the lockdown.
Training a puppy is quite an exercise, but they do get trained.
How do you scold a puppy when it's doing something wrong?
How do you reward a puppy when it's doing something right?
Hey, guys, if you do what you're told, maybe we'll let the children of the community go back to school.
But with masks on, including on the playground, hey, you should be grateful that we're allowing you to do even that.
You're grateful, right?
Sure, we'll let the kids be kids.
They just have to live in these little pods for band practice.
Funny, how in every single country, it seems like it's friends and insiders of the political parties in power who get the massive contracts for all the bizarre solutions to this crisis, like these pods in this band camp.
And here's a former Liberal MP in Canada who just happened to get a quarter billion dollar contract from Justin Trudeau for ventilators.
That's just by coincidence, guys.
All right, back to the article in the Telegraph.
In Britain, the common law tradition holds that everything is permitted unless it is specifically outlawed.
Civil code countries such as France flip that around.
Everything is forbidden unless it is specifically permitted.
It may seem like a matter of semantics, but there's a huge difference between the two.
The history books tell us clearly that common law countries have far higher rates of inventiveness, innovation, and openness than civil code nations.
It's not hard to understand why.
In France, you have to go on a course before you can open many different types of business.
There's less of a culture of risk-taking in business or beyond.
Again, I get it.
It's why we're all so irritated when some kids set up a lemonade stand on the street and then some grouchy person calls the cops on them because they don't have a business license or something.
But when I say we're also irritated by that, obviously we're not all irritated by that because someone did snitch to the police, right?
And the police did actually come right.
So there is indeed an impulse, even in a free society, to regulate and crush.
In the UK, they've really gone down that road far already.
It's the joke, oi, mate, where's your license?
You know, like when that Scottish YouTuber, Count Dankula, was convicted of a crime for a joke.
Oi, what is a joking license, mate?
All those bad instincts have been strengthened in recent years.
Let me read some more from the story.
Vaccine passports are yet another treacherous step on the road to a licensed, permission-based society.
We won't be able to travel, work in an office, or meet up with friends unless some official somewhere has stamped on papers.
Worse, the risk is cultural as much as legalistic.
It was already going to be a struggle to unwind the impact of nearly a year of lockdown, where people have the most intimate areas of their lives micromanaged by the state.
The danger was always that this state of mind would become entrenched, that we would become used to waiting until we were told what to do before we did it.
Vaccine passports would help to institutionalize that mindset at tremendous cost to freedom and much else.
He's right.
It's like the puppy were being trained.
Ask permission.
Check with politicians first.
Check with bureaucrats first.
Check with police first.
Uh-oh.
What if the neighbors see that I'm not wearing a mask?
What if the neighbors see that I'm having a 90-year-old relative over?
I'm scared, not of the virus, but I'm scared of the virus cops.
I'm scared of authority because I obey them now.
Here's how this journalist ends his column in the Telegraph.
There's a far better solution.
Once vaccines are available to everyone, it's up to you whether you want to get a jab or not.
If you don't, then clearly you are taking the risk, and that's up to you.
Other than that, you should be able to live your life as you please.
We need to be working out how to reduce the massive increase in state power witnessed over 12 painful months, not finding new ways to permanently increase it.
So it's obviously going to happen in the UK.
I mean, are you in any doubt?
But what about here in Canada?
Have you had your COVID-19 vaccine?
Ontario will give you a card to prove it.
Got it.
So you'll have a card, and you'll be punished if you don't have one.
So yeah, what's that other than a passport?
Here's a story that around the same time, Ontarians could face restrictions if they refuse to get COVID-19 vaccine.
Health Minister says, let me quote from the story.
There may be some restrictions placed on people that don't have vaccines for travel purposes to be able to go to theaters and other places, Elliott said.
That's the health minister, Christine Elliott, at Queen's Park on Tuesday.
That will be up to the individual person to decide whether they want to receive the vaccine to be able to do these things or not.
Okay, got it.
Hey, guys, it's totally not mandatory.
It's totally not a passport.
You just won't be able to do anything in life without it, but your choice.
Look at this story.
No plans for divisive vaccine passports for Canadian, Trudeau says.
Yeah, but the thing is with Trudeau, you need to be careful.
Saying he has no plans for something isn't the same thing as saying it's not going to happen or he's not going to do it.
I think it's an interesting idea, but I think it's also fraught with challenges.
We are certainly encouraging and motivating people to get vaccinated as quickly as possible.
But we always know there are people who won't get vaccinated and not necessarily through a personal or political choice.
Okay, so I'm not sure what that means other than he's interested.
And you know that because government-funded think tanks in Canada are now promoting the idea for him, shaping the battlefield of ideas for him.
They're not just studying public opinion on getting vaccines, but on having a vaccine passport, having a vaccine database, as if China wouldn't hack it.
I bet Trudeau would actually store the whole database on Chinese servers.
He'd probably hire Huawei to do it.
Government Think Tanks Shaping Battlefields00:15:36
You know, I visited Tommy Robinson a few times at Belmarsh Prison in the United Kingdom, the highest security prison in that country, like there, Guantanamo Bay.
Obviously, I was just a visitor, just there for an hour or so at a time.
Obviously, nothing more.
But even in my short visits there, I saw how life is conditioned, everything in a prison, to move from one place to another within the prison.
You have to press a button and wait for a guard.
Maybe they'll come right away or maybe they won't.
Depends on if they want to jerk you around a little bit.
Maybe they'll let you go or maybe they'll search you first, invasive searches.
They searched even in people's mouths.
Everything was spied on.
Everything was controlled.
Any privileges at the whim of the authorities, they might give the privilege to you.
They might take it away.
No privacy, no choices.
I'm not comparing Canada or the United Kingdom to Belmarsh Prison.
I'm talking about the trappings of a permission-based, control-based, authoritarian, all-seeing life like a prisoner has.
The prison's the most pure example of it, but besides looking at the machinery of a prison, at Belmarsh, they scanned your fingerprints to move from place to place, even as a guest.
The waiting, the whimsical guards watching what it did, watching how this being a prisoner, what it worked on the minds of the people inside.
It turned them, at least some of them, into grateful beggars, grateful for the littlest crumbs.
Please, sir, can I have three visitors, not two?
Please, sir, can I have an hour's visit instead of 15 minutes?
Please, can I have some more food?
Please, can I go out for exercise?
Please, thank you.
Thank you.
You are most kind, sir.
And add to that the mental destruction that comes with solitary confinement in the prison, which is really what so many of us are going through now.
You start to hate freedom sometimes.
You start to love your cell.
You start to crave the order and security and familiarity.
There are tales of men who have spent 20 years in prison, and when they're released, they can't stand the chaos and stress of freedom.
There are stories of men committing crimes simply to get back into the prison.
The structure and the order it gave them.
They learned to love it.
Some men don't want to be free, but most men can have the freedom trained and conditioned out of them.
I see that now already.
I see the people who love the chains we're in, who want it to go on forever, who want more, harsher lockdowns.
But mostly I see the great majority of people who couldn't be bothered to speak up or say no.
They'll just go along to get along.
Oh, we will get vaccine passports.
Just watch.
Stay with us for a minute.
Well, over the last week, we have brought you news about a church rebellion in the province of Alberta, Grace Life Church, just west of Edmonton.
Their pastor's been in prison, maximum security, for more than a week because he will not shut down his church.
The church rebellion is spreading.
A church in Calgary opened up its doors to its members last weekend.
And I hear other churches in Alberta are following suit this weekend.
Well, the church rebellion was preceded by the diner rebellion.
Small town Alberta diners, where everyone knows everyone and people aren't as panicky as the city folk who have embraced the lockdowns.
These small towns and places like Mirror, Alberta have said, you know what?
We're done with lockdown.
We're going to open up.
And Chris Scott of the Whistle Stop Diner in Mirror, Alberta led the diner rebellion.
Sheila Gonreid covered that story very well.
We actually crowdfunded a lawyer for the whistle-stop.
And incredibly, Alberta Health Services, the punitive arm of the lockdown, the lockdown cops, suddenly abandoned their legal action against the whistle stop.
An enormous victory.
Credit, of course, to Chris Scott, the brave owner.
And thanks also in part to our own Sheila Gun Reid, who helped spread the word and I think helped the staring contest with Alberta Health Services.
Joining me now via Skype from his restaurant is Chris Scott, the brave restaurateur.
Chris, congratulations.
And what a vindication of your risk to put yourself at physical and commercial risk.
You could have been jailed like the pastor, but in the end, the government blinked.
Yeah, thanks, Ezra.
That was pretty cool to see that.
And I didn't see it at first either as a bunch of people ended up phoning and texting and they said, you got to turn on the news.
Look what's going on.
And I was really surprised CAHS made a statement like that.
Now, why do you think that happened?
I haven't had a chance to talk to your lawyer, Chad Williamson.
He fought like a tiger for you.
He gave us a report after he went to court.
He was demanding to cross-examine the government and look at their science.
He fought like I don't think any lawyer in Canada has fought.
Why do you think the government blinked and just dropped its case against you all altogether?
Now, I understand there's still some possible summonses out against you, so you're not 100% in the clear.
But why do you think Alberta Health Services just suddenly walked away?
I thought they wanted to make an example out of you.
Why do you think they blinked?
Well, I don't want to speculate too much, but in my opinion, if you're going to go to court and you don't have any, you don't have any grounds to do what you've done, then why would you want to continue?
Now, let me ask you, why do you think they're cracking down so hard on that Christian pastor up there in west of Edmonton?
And I know it's a different situation.
You probably don't have any connection at all, but just as a layman watching the news like I am, I've never spoken to that pastor either.
I'm just watching it.
Why do you think they're actually jailing him, but not you?
And by the way, I'm glad they're not jailing you.
I think it's wonderful that they caved in.
Why do you think they're going so hardline?
It's the same Alberta Health Services, by the way, that are going after him that went after you.
And I don't want them to go after anyone, but I'm trying to make sense of the fact that there's a guy sitting in prison now for more than a week.
Why do you think they're going so heavy on him?
I think it's a power play.
I think it's about intimidation.
And we heard Jason Kenny talk about how he wasn't happy with what's going on and he was going to look at tougher enforcement actions and maybe even incarceration.
So I think they're just trying to, they're trying to scare people and get them to fall in the line.
Tell me about the town of Mirror.
I got to know some of the people in town just by watching Sheila's video.
She interviewed so many people who came through your store.
They were showing some courage too, because each of them could theoretically have been fined or ticketed in some way too.
How have they been?
I mean, they were very brave and they seem to be wonderfully supportive.
What do they have to say about the whole thing now that it's a few weeks later?
Well, it's mixed reviews, just like anything else.
There's a group of people that are really happy, and there's a group of people that are, you know, they're not so happy with what I did because I broke a rule.
So they don't like that.
Apparently, nobody lives in a glass house and they can throw stones or something.
But for the most part, people have been really, really supportive.
There's a ton of support from all over Alberta.
We've had people travel here from BC, from Saskatchewan.
We've had people from Ontario here just, you know, they're in the province for one reason or another, and they make the trip to the Whistle Stop Cafe in Mirror to have a burger and say thank you for what we're doing.
So the amount of support that we've received is absolutely overwhelming.
Yeah, I thought it was very exciting when three helicopters made the journey.
The guys sat down and come in for lunch.
I just thought that was pretty cool.
That was sort of a Hollywood moment.
Hey, let me ask you this, and you don't have to answer me on the air because I know the last time we had a conversation, you were talking about not letting this spirit of freedom go.
And I don't know if you're ready to say anything publicly or if you want to just cogitate on it more privately or consult with folks, but do you think that there's more work that needs to be done either in Alberta or in the restaurant industry?
I mean, out here in Toronto, I got to tell you, restaurants are completely closed, have been for months.
Like the lockdown is still really harsh in some parts of this country.
Small business associations, pretty quiet.
Restaurant associations.
I don't know.
Sometimes it seems to me like they're being co-opted by the people they're supposed to lobby.
Like you'd think the restaurant people would be fighting like hell against politicians.
I haven't seen it.
I haven't seen the class action lawsuits.
I haven't seen the PR campaign.
Do you feel like you have a larger political role?
Are you just going to catch your breath and get back to life in Mirror running the whistle stop?
And you don't have to, if you're still thinking these things or if there's still confidential things, don't feel the need to say them publicly.
But just what's your mood right now, really?
Well, unfortunately, the reality is there's no going back to regular life through this.
This isn't about restaurants.
It's not about gyms.
It's not about churches.
What this is about is if you dig deep and you find out why this is even allowed to happen in a country like Canada, we've got some major constitutional issue.
We have since 1982 when it was signed.
And I think I'm hoping that people will open their eyes and get past the masks and the physical distancing and all these rules and try to understand why these restrictions were allowed to be forced on us in the first place.
That's to me, it's just, it's so much bigger than my restaurant.
So yeah, there's no going back to normal now.
When you see something like that and you realize the implications that it could have in the future to every Canadian, that's a really scary thing.
And you look right now what's happening to the country.
People are paralyzed with fear, and it's not a justified fear.
Or sorry, it's a justified fear because it's been shoved down everybody's throats over the last year and a bit.
We've seen all sorts of fraudulent information, fraudulent videos shown on the mainstream media.
And these things, they're absolutely paralyzing people to the point where they won't go visit their 90-year-old mother, who may be dying in the next three or six months anyway, because they're scared of a virus.
So, yeah, it's a lot bigger than just me for sure.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Hey, let me ask you one last question.
We've talked a little bit about the grassroots support you've received both in Mirror Alberta and even across the country.
A couple of weeks ago, there was something called an end the lockdown caucus or a freedom caucus or something like that.
It was politicians, Randy Hillier out in Ontario, Maxime Bernier, saying we got to ease off these lockdowns.
And to my surprise, two government MLAs from Alberta joined, at least in name, Angela Pitt and Drew Barnes.
And Pitt, I think, is the deputy speaker.
So she's not just a backbencher.
She has some clout.
I found that interesting.
Did they ever express any support?
Did you ever get political people with skin in the game to stand with you?
Were they too afraid?
Like Pitt and Barnes joined this group, but did they ever write to you or phone you?
Did your local mayor or MLA or MP ever support you?
Did anyone in any position of power support you?
So at the risk of offending anyone, because I may have missed messages.
I mean, we get probably close to 400 or 500 messages a day.
It's entirely possible that Drew Barnes or Angela Pitt have reached out.
I haven't seen the messages.
I haven't received any phone calls or anything yet.
Now, here's the interesting part.
I have had conversations with members of parliament and not just my own, with MLAs and other people in government positions.
I've had conversations with doctors and other positions that are in positions of influence within AHS.
And every single one of them has expressed their support for what we're doing.
And they've all said the same thing regarding what's going on: there's no reason for this.
But unfortunately, for one reason or another, nobody's willing to stand up and say it publicly.
Now, I imagine that a lot of these people, you know, the pressure unions put on people, right?
We've seen that in the past.
We saw that with the NDP government last election before UCP here.
So the fear isn't just about a virus.
The fear is about going against the status quo, being singled out and persecuted for it.
Yeah, that's a great point.
I think that's affecting a lot of people in the establishment because it's such a uniformity of opinion on that.
Well, listen, even if no big shots stand with you, sometimes you can win a battle with a lot of little shots.
An army of Davids can beat a Goliath.
And I want to say thank you to all our rebel viewers, if I may, who chipped in to help crowdfund Chad Williamson, who, from what I could tell, fought like heck for you.
And I mean, the results speak for themselves, I guess.
We'll keep supporting you.
And I can speak on behalf of, you know, Rebel News.
And I think I speak for our viewers when I say we'll keep backing you.
And I know there's other restaurateurs in the province and other churches in the province.
Anyone who gets these outrageous tickets, they can go to fightthefines.com and we'll do our best to help them.
Was that help something?
Do you think that tipped the balance for you, having a lawyer who just went full tilt?
Do you think that did that give you the courage at least or some strength?
Or how important was that?
I want to praise, if it's appropriate, I want to praise our viewers for chipping in.
Yeah, that was absolutely vital in this.
If I didn't have someone like Chad and Williamson Law and the other lawyers that have worked with me and for me through this, there's no way we would have had the results we did.
So it's very important.
What you and the Rebel have done.
Um, sticking up for the little guy through this is, it's vital for sure.
Well, i'm glad to hear it and I I, I mean I, I think Chad is one of the toughest lawyers we have.
He's, he's got that cowboy freedom mindset, which I really like and uh, we want to deploy him to help other restaurateurs and, of course, that's only possible through the support of our viewers.
So folks, if you like what Chris is saying here, if you like the fact that we helped him win in court, please consider chipping in to fight the fines.com.
Chris might still have a couple of outstanding legal matters with the RCMP.
We'll help him with those if he does, but I know there's another restaurant in Bashraw, Alberta that has a legal situation and, of course, there's the churches.
Chris, we wish you lots of strength.
Uh, always phone or email Sheila if there's another issue.
Fight Lockdowns Together00:01:45
She'll be down there, as you know, and I look forward to finally coming by Mirror one day and getting one of your patented zombie burgers.
I'll stop eating like a day in advance because I got to make room for the biggest burger I ever did see.
So I look forward to meeting you in person one day.
Congratulations on the win and thank you to our viewers who crowdfunded the lawyer that, as you heard Chris himself say, really tipped this, tip the balance in the court.
So so, congrats to you, Chris.
Thanks Ezra, right on.
Well, there you have it.
Chris Scott, the proprietor of the Whistle, Stop diner, stay with us more ahead on my show last night.
Gwen writes, tell me these polls are inaccurate.
That is painful to see how many are totally satisfied with the government and terrified of Covid.
Well, it's like I said in the monologue.
Sometimes people, just as a form of psychological coping like stockholm syndrome, start to love the lockdown.
Oh, i'm safe in it, i'm familiar with it.
The boss says i'll be fine.
Meredith writes, I feel the worst is yet to come, with restrictions and lockdown and loss of our freedoms and rights.
Not the virus, Exactly right.
The virus is, especially for anyone under 40, it's not even a blip, it's not even detectable, but actually, it's people under 40 who are the hardest hit, especially mentally.
Isn't that what the poll showed?
Paul says more people need to be fighting these lockdowns a lot more.
Well, I'm pleased to say that the rebellion is spreading at least in Alberta, but sure, other provinces are practically loving it.
I couldn't believe some of the stats out of Atlantic Canada.