Justin Trudeau’s 2021 budget—a 700-page "great reset"—dumped $131B into ideological spending, like $30B for state-run daycare and $101B for recovery, while demonizing industries like oil sands. Police in Ontario, including the OPP, enforced pandemic restrictions with brutality, like assaulting a 12-year-old boy, but faced mass defiance elsewhere. At Alberta’s Whistle Stop diner, Chris Scott and Adam Skelly (whose Ontario restaurants lost 90% revenue under lockdowns) hosted an anti-lockdown barbecue, drawing 100+ customers despite closure orders. Their legal fight against fines—backed by go to fight the fines.com—exposes a broader rebellion against shifting regulations, with absurd cases like a Montreal man ticketed for unlocking his phone. The episode frames Trudeau’s policies and police tactics as tools of authoritarianism, while Alberta’s business defiance signals a democratic pushback. [Automatically generated summary]
It's over 700 pages long and he's more a comic book kind of guy.
Christy Freeland might have read it.
She certainly didn't write it.
And I really don't think it's a budget.
A budget implies a balance, something that's planned.
This is just everything.
It's everything they ever wanted to spend, regulate, tax.
It's really a great reset.
Things that have nothing to do with the pandemic being excused by the pandemic, like a $30 billion price tag for a state-run daycare.
It's all in there.
I take you through it a bit, and then I do some word searches.
You know how you can do that with a big document?
Find the number of occurrences of the word, let's say, Saskatchewan, and compare it to the number of the instances of the word gender.
I won't give it away, but can you guess which appears in the budget more often?
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Justin Trudeau brings in the worst budget in Canadian history, replacing his father Pierre for that dishonor.
It's April 20th, and 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.
But why I publish them?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Pierre Trudeau devastated Canada's culture.
He destroyed so much of our history and our customs.
I mean, just look at what he did to the Canadian Armed Forces.
For an obvious example, look at how he inflamed both Western and Quebec separatism.
That takes some doing.
Look at how he realigned our country away from the United States during the Cold War and towards the Soviet Union, Cuba, and even Communist China.
I think Justin Trudeau has followed his father's footsteps in all of those things.
But I think one of the most lasting legacies of Pierre Trudeau was the staggering debt and permanent tax burden, the regulatory burden, the National Energy Program being just one example.
A regulatory burden that is with us still, a perpetual permanent impoverishment of Canada as compared to our closest friends and neighbors and trading partners of the United States.
It's been more than 50 years since Trudeau went to work on us, the Trudeau senior.
But since then, we've always been poorer than Americans.
And it traces back to Trudeau.
It wasn't always that way.
I'd have to check the stats right now, and I'm sure the pandemic has skewed things a bit.
But it was recently true that Canadians on a purchasing power basis were as poor as the poorest U.S. states, like Mississippi.
That the average Canadian had the same per capita spending power as the average African American.
We mock income inequality in the U.S.
We mock how they treat their poor.
It's part of our superiority complex, but we're quite simply poorer, even though you'd think, given all of our natural resources, including oil and gas and mining and timber, that we'd be richer than anyone.
Then again, I'm sure Venezuelans would think the same thing.
Justin Trudeau aims to remake Canada in all the ways his father did.
He certainly tried to realign us away from Trump's America and towards Xi Jinping's China.
I think China just didn't take yes for an answer and they pushed too far.
Trudeau Sr. pitted English Canada against French Quebec.
He pitted the East against the West.
Trudeau Jr. kept those fault lines and added several more.
He pits men against women in the name of feminism.
He pits races against each other.
He actually accuses Canada of genocide.
I don't think even Pierre Trudeau would have said that.
I don't think Pierre Trudeau believed that.
But Justin Trudeau is not as smart as Pierre Trudeau was.
But both of them had an authoritarian dream of remaking society in their own image.
That's the communist way.
They both admired strong men like Mao and Castro.
Trudeau doesn't quite have the motivation or the brains of his dad.
He doesn't have the work ethic or the vision.
But he's happy to put himself to the service of others who do, who can fill in those gaps for him and make him just the public face of things.
He's always been more of a mascot than a leader.
Like when Justin Trudeau first took office, and he bizarrely outsourced Canada's immigration policy to George Soros' Open Societies Foundation.
Soros has no connection to Canada.
He's based in New York.
Why would the Canadian government outsource our immigration policy to an activist lobby group in a foreign country instead of our own civil service?
That's weird.
It's not a conspiracy theory.
They co-hosted a conference with the Canadian government about it.
One of his first meetings after becoming prime minister was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
You know the people who talk about how you'll own nothing, you'll have no privacy, and you'll love it.
You know that weirdness?
Here's a photograph taken by Trudeau's own staff of Trudeau, George Soros and Christy Freeland, who was George Soros' official biographer.
That's the thing.
Pierre Trudeau was a radical in his own right.
He was a leader.
Justin Trudeau doesn't really know what to do, but he'll take instructions, and there are plenty of people willing to instruct him.
Pandemic's Political Opportunity00:05:40
Look at this.
This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset.
This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to reimagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change.
That's from a few months ago, but there it is.
Using the pandemic as an excuse to change the country, to reset everything, the economy, the culture, forever.
And he decided that the UN was the best place to make that announcement, not some speech to mere Canadian citizens.
And here's Christy Freeland on the same point just a few days ago, actually.
I really believe COVID has created a window of political opportunity and maybe an epiphany.
So they're doing it.
The largest debt ever racked up, more than every previous government combined, in their budget.
The headlines on the CBC State Broadcaster show you a bit of what's going on, but only a bit.
The pandemic as an excuse, as a crisis to be milked.
If you're wondering why you'll never get out of this lockdown, why it'll always be extended, new variants, whatever, this is why.
They need a permanent crisis, a permanent emergency, to justify their emergency spending and regulating and terrifying you.
If you're being told that you are in a crisis, maybe you'll put up with things that you would normally not accept.
spending, policing, taxing, regulating.
Look at this laundry list of socialist dreams that are being stowed away in the name of the crisis.
Highlights of budget 2021, billions for green economic growth, healthier indigenous communities.
Federal spending plan includes more than $101 billion to kickstart post-pandemic economy.
Kickstart the post-pandemic economy?
How about just take the handcuffs off it?
How about just let people work?
Let people travel.
Let people go outside.
Go to the restaurant.
How would $101 billion help the restaurant industry kickstart or help the travel and tourism industry kickstart if the government still bans those industries?
You don't need to stimulate them with cash.
Just let them live.
I'll read some more from the state broadcaster.
$30 billion over five years and $8.3 billion per year after that to create and sustain a national child care program.
Goal is a $10 a day child care service by 2025.
Just out of the blue.
Just unconnected to the pandemic, just a $30 billion nationalization of health care, sorry, of child care, which means transferring money from stay-at-home moms to working moms who needed daycare.
Listen, I'm pro-mom, whatever the mom is, but I don't think the state should prefer moms who use daycares over moms who stay home.
$17.6 billion for a green recovery to conserve 25% of lands and oceans by 2025 and put Canada on course to exceed climate change targets by cutting emissions to 36% below 2005 levels by 2030.
What does that mean?
Conserve land and oceans?
What does that mean?
Ban fishing, ban logging, ban mining?
It obviously means ban oil sands.
I'll read more.
Extension of pandemic business and income support measures such as wage and rent subsidies through the fall.
But again, you wouldn't need pandemic welfare if you simply let people work, would you?
I went through the monstrous budget document itself.
I didn't just trust the CBC state broadcaster.
It's the longest ever published as a budget.
Of course, you need all those pages for all of that spending they came up with.
It's hard to swallow a 724-page budget.
I don't think Christia Freeland herself even read it all.
She certainly didn't write it all.
I don't think Justin Trudeau even cares what's in it.
I mean, that's what lobbyists are for, right?
Cheryl Butz will explain the hard parts to them.
But I like doing word searches sometimes on big documents to sort of get the feeling for what a document is about, for what the government cares about.
I mentioned that one question, what does it mean to knock 25% of the country off of development?
So I typed in the word forestry, for example.
The word forestry appears six times, half of which are in a gender analysis on the industry.
Apparently, a forestry is a little bit too pro-male for the liberals.
Same thing with the word mining, industry that built Canada, especially Ontario, 11 times, mainly again to show how unfeminine it is.
What do they hate more than logging and mining?
Of course, I don't know, Saskatchewan, eight times, mainly to talk about how the carbon tax is going to wring it out.
But look at the words they love.
Gender.
727 times.
727 times the word gender is in a budget.
Do you see that?
Racialized.
That's such a weird word, isn't it?
That's a new way of saying visible minorities, I think.
114 times in there, plus 43 more times for racist and racism.
You see that?
It's pretty clear what the liberals think of you, eh?
Oh, they're not talking about Trudeau's blackface, I can assure you that.
Look, this is not a budget.
A budget implies a balance, your family budget, your expense budget.
You earn something, you spend something, you try and keep things under control.
This is on a budget.
This isn't even a wish list.
This is the great reset, using the pandemic as an excuse to nationalize swaths of the economy, to demonize and eradicate other industries, and to divide us based on things like race and sex.
OPP's Stop and Frisk Practices00:13:28
So, yeah, that's your great reset right there.
Even worse than anything Pierre Trudeau could do.
Stay with us for more.
See Fridays!
He's 12 years old here.
A beautiful spring day, kids outside exercising, finally putting down their cell phones, turning off the Netflix, going to get some fresh air and exercise.
There was a 12-year-old boy there, and apparently an OPP, Ontario Provincial Police Officer, didn't like the cut of his jib.
From what I can read, the child did not properly and speedily enough identify himself as if a 12-year-old has a driver's license or is even equipped to interact with a big bully cop.
So what did the cop do?
The cop with the gun in his holster, he lost control of himself.
He pushed the child down.
He flattened him.
And you could hear the other children saying, What are you doing?
He's only 12 years old.
What are you doing?
Shocking video, but it shouldn't be surprising because haven't politicians turned police into their pandemic order enforcers?
That kid was committing no crime, and yet you send a crime fighter with a gun to, what, ask him why he's not wearing a face mask in a park while he's exercising.
What an unbelievable situation.
I learned from Joe Warmington at the Toronto Sun that that officer has been identified and put on administrative leave while a neighboring police force, the Peel Police Force, Peel Regional Police, investigate the misconduct.
Obviously, he'll get a slap on the wrist because really, was he not just doing what the province ordered him to do?
Here's a quick reminder of what Doug Ford's cabinet ordered every police department in the province to do.
Here's a clip of that.
We have made the deliberate decision to temporarily enhance police officers' authority for the duration of the stay-at-home order.
Moving forward, police will have the authority to require any individual who is not in a place of residence to first provide their purpose for not being at home and provide their home address.
Police will also have the authority to stop a vehicle to inquire about an individual's reason for leaving their residence.
How is that cop not doing exactly what Doug and the thugs have told her to do?
Well, our friend Andrew Lawton did something interesting.
He contacted all 45 of Ontario's provincially mandated police forces.
So not the RCMP, but all the municipal and regional police forces, the Toronto Police Service, and the OPP, which is a province-wide force.
And he asked them if they were going to enforce the Police state style demand of any citizen minding their own business to show their papers and explain themselves.
And very interesting results.
Joining us now via Skype is our friend Andrew Lawton.
Andrew, great to see you again.
Sorry for the long opening there.
I just wanted to show how the OPP is enforcing the stop and frisk carding order against a minor child.
Tell me what you found when you contacted all 45 police forces.
What do the other police forces say?
Thanks, Ezra.
And I should say that I actually started doing this tracking project on the weekend or on Friday night when some police forces themselves started proactively saying to the community that they had no intention of doing this arbitrary stopping and questioning.
And I actually said detention and interrogation, which is what it is.
If you are being stopped from going about your day by police, that is being detained.
That is a detention.
And the first, I think, was the Waterloo Regional Police, which is a fairly large police department in southern Ontario.
There were a couple of others.
And I started really amassing this list of police agencies.
And I was wondering, okay, how many are there?
And you're right in your intro to point out there are 44 municipal and regional forces plus the OPP.
And when all is said and done, by Saturday evening, when the province had backtracked on this, 43 of the 45, or I should say 42 of the 45, had said they were not going to enforce this.
Of the three remaining, two were smaller rural forces that hadn't yet responded, one in eastern Ontario and one in southwestern Ontario.
And the 45th was the OPP, which enthusiastically said, yes, it would be enforcing this.
And the next day, the remaining two, the Chatham-Kent Police and the Deep River Police, said they would not be doing any random stops.
So just to understand the magnitude of this, with the exception of the OPP, every single police force in Ontario told the province it had no interest in availing itself of these so-called special authorities that were granted.
And the one asterisk I would put beside the OPP, I heard from a number of OPP officers in local detachments who said they wanted nothing to do with this.
So there was even within the OPP a divide between the brass sitting at their desks in Toronto and Aurelia and the actual officers operating in various communities around Ontario.
Yeah, you know, you got to shake your head.
What kind of cop would go up to a 12-year-old child?
I'm sorry, 12-year-old is a child.
You can argue 14, you know, that's teenager, 16.
You can do a lot of things at 16, 18, for sure, you're an adult.
But a 12-year-old child to push him off his scooter or his skateboard, shove him down because he's not quickly identifying himself because he's not wearing a mask when he's outside doing sports.
What kind of cop is that?
Well, the answer is an OPP cop.
And maybe he was a little bit excited about being the bouncer for Doug Ford.
I don't know.
I'm just so angry about it.
I take your point that all these police forces saw that grotesque demand of them by the Doug Ford government and rejected it.
But I have to say, Andrew, I have observed police in Toronto, police in Peel, in York, all these areas in Ontario, and police across the country.
And although they're saying that they're not part of Doug Ford's detention and interrogation strategy, I've seen them assault protesters.
I've seen them handcuff people for not wearing masks.
I've seen them throw people in the back of police cars just for standing on the sidewalk and not moving on.
So I have to tell you, I take with a grain of salt this newfound belief in civil liberties.
Here at Rebel News, we're actually suing the Toronto Police Service for assaulting our reporters downtown.
So, I'm glad they're maybe finally joining the Civil Liberties Chorus, but I'm not going to give them a pass for the last 14 months of their misconduct.
You know, the thing that I would add to this is that in some cases, it may be a civil liberties mindset.
In other cases, it may be a decision that police agencies are reaching when they take stock of the esteem in which they're held in their communities and saying, Listen, we've been told for the last however many years that we need to be mindful of how we're interacting with minorities in our cities and how we're doing this.
And all of these people that railed against us for carding are now saying that we have to start doing random spot checks of citizens.
And I think there were a lot of police departments that were very uncomfortable with what it would mean to their legitimacy in communities if they were forced to do this.
And I will say in the OPP's defense here, I mean, I'm always reticent when I see videos that start midway through an altercation.
And this is not to justify what happened in any way.
It's just to say that I don't know what happened in these situations.
I can't imagine what a 12-year-old was doing that put himself in a position that was deemed to be a threat that justified pushing them over.
And I think it looked like grabbing the scooter or something.
But I will say that I heard from a number of individual police officers, including in the OBP, throughout the course of these lockdowns, that have said that they want nothing to do with this.
So I do think we are still seeing a divide between the people that are making the decisions and giving the directions to these and the actual people on the front lines in these departments across Ontario.
Yeah, I know that no one hates a bad cop more than a good cop, but also bad cops drive out the good cops.
And there's almost a self-selection.
I mean, if you like cracking down on peaceful protesters, if you like bullying people for tiny social interactions, as opposed to, say, chasing murderers and rapists and robbers, then you're going to be thriving now.
If you don't like the idea of storming into churches, you're probably asking to be reassigned, or maybe you're looking at retiring early.
Let me show you a quick clip.
Here's some police outside a church service at Grayslave Church.
This is when the church service was on.
Here's some armed cops saying, why can't I go in and interrupt the service?
Here's a quick clip of that.
We are saying that the public health orders override criminal code.
But that's why we can't let you in then, because Code 176 makes it illegal for you to interrupt a worship service.
And our worship service has begun.
And we're stating that to you very clearly: that your presence in this building will be interrupting our worship service.
Also.
Because your presence intimidates our people.
That's your perception.
Like I said, it's not that we're here to interrupt anything.
But you will.
And it's not an interpretation.
You will be.
It's a fact.
You will be interrupting.
We are standing firm on the criminal code 176 that protects these rights.
So at the end of the day, the public health doc says we have access to go in the building.
If you don't want us to go in the building, that's fine, but you're accepting the fact you're denying us access to the building.
And of course, the very famous video that went viral around the world is when five people, including police, sheriffs, by law enforcement, five or six of them, attempted to go into a church on Easter weekend in Calgary.
Take a look at this.
Please get out.
Get out of this property immediately.
Get out.
Get out of this property immediately.
Out.
I don't want to hear anything out of this property immediately.
I don't want to hear a word.
Ouch!
Ouch!
Out of this property immediately until you come back with a warrant.
Ouch!
Ouch!
So that's Alberta, whose motto is strong and free.
I don't know.
I just find it incredible and incredibly demoralizing.
Listen, I want to hope for the best.
For the vast majority of my life, I've been a super booster of cops.
I have not been able to be that for the last year.
I have not changed, Andrew.
It's the cops who have changed.
If there's any way forward, what is it?
How do these police forces pull back from the authoritarianism they've embraced?
How do they regain the trust, respect, and even the love of their communities?
Because by the way, They're gonna the reputation they're earning will last them for decades.
That kid, pushed off his scooter, will always remember what the OPP mean to him.
How do these cops pull back from the brink?
Well, I think you touched on something important there, which is that police have been saying throughout the course of the pandemic that their goal is to make enforcement the last resort.
And this was something that I was getting from police services when I was doing my roundup over the weekend, is they have these four E's educations there, and enforcement is the last one.
They're saying on the surface, they don't want to be laying tickets for these restrictions.
And the problem that we have is that politicians are enforcing or imposing rather this culture of enforcement.
You played a clip from Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones earlier.
In that same press conference, she made a comment that was egregious in nature.
She was asked by a reporter whether people should basically be snitching on their neighbors.
And her only concern with that was that we might overburden government phone lines.
This was it.
The only issue she raised was that, well, you know what, it might overburden emergency services, but if you can save a life, you have to wonder about your social responsibility or something to that effect.
And this is now a snitch culture that the government is heaping on its citizens.
And there's no coming back from that.
I mean, this is the culture that drives things in former Soviet bloc countries, where the word snitch means something very real to people.
And what the government is doing in Ontario is actually encouraging that.
Snitch Culture Rebellion00:15:41
Yeah, you're so right.
And to see a certain segment of society absolutely thrilled to be part of snitch culture.
I mean, early, in the pandemic, the joke was the Karens, people who were nagging and scolding.
And then they would catch you on video and upload the video.
There is a depressingly large chunk of society that loves snitch culture, that loves peeping through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing, that would love to phone authorities if you had an extra person in your house.
I think that what the last 14 months has revealed to me, Andrew, is that we may think we're so much morally superior to the societies that allowed communism or Nazism or other authoritarian regimes to take over, but it is a thin, thin line, and too many people would embrace that society.
Andrew, you're one of the few good guys who's fighting for freedom every day.
I think it's partly because you and True North do not take government money, so you can speak honestly and from the heart.
Thanks for being here today.
Give us 30 seconds to tell us what you're cooking on the Andrew Lawton Show.
Give us a quick update of what you're working on.
Well, we're going to be talking about the weekend that the police fought back in Ontario, but also delving into some of these issues a bit more on an episode that is coming out tonight.
Tyke, taking a look at what's happening in Ontario and why on earth Doug Ford, who is supposed to be the savior of the Canadian conservative movement, is going down this road.
So that'll be on the Andrew Lawton show tonight.
Well, that's great.
Thank you very much.
We love the Andrew Lawton Show.
For folks who don't know, Andrew has a podcast.
Of course, he's with TNC.news.
That's TrueNorth.
A lot of great talent over there, including, of course, Candace Malcolm.
They are one of the good guys.
And if you're not already a subscriber, I would ask you to consider joining them.
And if you can, supporting them financially, you know, you can count on one hand's fingers the number of independent journalists in Canada.
And if you want Andrew and Spencer Fernando and the new Western Standard Online and groups like that to stay strong, if you don't want them to have to take that Trudeau money, then if you can pony up a few bucks yourself, please do.
And I say that, I know I'm always asking for support, but we got to support Andrew.
Thanks, my friend.
Great to see you again.
Anytime, Ezra, thanks for having me.
My pleasure to have it, Andrew Lawrence.
Stay with us.
Hey, welcome back.
You know, the Rebel is a living, breathing organism.
People come and go, and we have alumni, and we're always looking for new talent.
Let me show you a new reporter who just joined our team from Calgary.
His name is Adam Sos, and his very first assignment was to go up to Mirror, Alberta, where the Whistle Stop diner had a guest from out of town, Adam Skelly, of Adamson Barbecue from Toronto.
So here's a little bit of our newest recruit, Adam Sos, at an interesting anti-lockdown beef protest.
I'll say goodbye to you now, but enjoy Adam Sos.
So my business is down over 90%.
We've gone from 60 employees down to six.
It's terrible what's happened.
The whole business has been destroyed over this.
I should save you some time.
I know you can.
Go ahead.
We're not spaces.
There's no, there's nothing in your order besides the original health procedures that you call for you.
Okay, well, I'd like to take a look at the picture.
Because you know you're not dying in.
And that's what this order is.
I'll make you out.
Oh, hey, guys, thanks for watching this video.
However, I don't know how long you'll be able to do that.
You see, Rebel News is in an emergency, and I'm not exaggerating.
Time is running out for us on YouTube.
Could be today, could be tomorrow, could be two weeks from now, but we will be completely disappeared from YouTube and cut off from our nearly 1.5 million subscribers, which is exactly what big tech wants to cut us off from you.
Can you do us a favor?
We want to be able to let you know where we've gone when YouTube completely deplatforms us.
Please go to afteryoutube.com.
Just give us a little bit of information about you so that we can stay in touch and let you know what YouTube has done to us and, of course, where we've gone so that we can keep on fighting for freedom.
Thanks again.
We are joining you today from the Whistle Stop Cafe in Mirror, Alberta, where despite government orders to shut down, the Whistle Stop remains open.
You may remember owner Chris Scott has received quite a bit of attention from AHS and the government of Alberta because of his opposition to these lockdown measures.
He's joined today by special guest Adam Skelly.
You may recall Adam Skelly from Adamson Barbecue in Ontario, Toronto.
Unlike Alberta, where we had a significant movement of restaurants and businesses refusing to shut down, Adam Skelly and Adamson Barbecue virtually stood alone in their resistance to government protocols.
So we will be heading in, checking out the event, hopefully talking to Chris as well as Adam, and we're looking forward to a wonderful day.
So what brought you out to Mirror Alberta today?
I'm just trying to show support for something I believe in.
Trying to make a difference, trying to say that, you know, everything matters.
People's livelihoods matter.
We can't just focus on COVID.
We have to focus on everything, jobs, mental health.
Support local businesses.
Yeah.
We just wanted to come out and support the small business and help bring light to the fact that this has got to end.
Then as soon as we stand up and say no, it ends.
So that's what we're doing here today.
And so do you have any thoughts or messages for AHS or the governments that are dealing with this crisis in your words?
I think that, you know, again, I'm not saying that COVID doesn't exist, but from a health perspective, there's people battling depression, people battling drug addiction, people battling domestic violence.
Like, take a look at all of that, not just COVID, because I believe that the numbers of all these other things exceed that of COVID, and there has to be a solution for everybody, not just one side or the other.
Okay, so I'm going to post another order for closing time.
Take a look around and see if you can talk to the event or whatever.
Table space on it.
You know, things like that.
I should save some time.
I know you can.
Go ahead.
We're not spaces.
There's nothing in your order besides the original health procedures that you involved.
Okay, well, I'd like to take it out.
Because you know you're not that guy in.
and that's what this one is.
So we want to get that piece of tape because his fingerprints are on.
All right, he's giving me the thumbs up.
So at least he's smiling to us.
I'm here with Chris Scott from the Whistle Stop Cafe.
Chris, how did this all come together?
What motivated you to have this event today?
The motivation for this was going back to phase 0.75 of the garbage restrictions.
Yeah, completely understandable.
And we have a special guest here today.
Is that right?
Can you tell us a little bit about who's joining us today?
We have a couple special guests.
We have Natalie Klein is here.
Adam Skelly's here.
Wes for Mom's Diners here.
And we got a whole bunch of really awesome musicians.
Wonderful.
That's exceptional.
So what's on the menu?
One of the questions that everyone's asking is who's got the better barbecue?
Ontario or Alberta?
Adam, hands down.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, wonderful.
Okay, that's really good to hear.
So do you have any messages for any other business owners or people who might be struggling through these times?
I've been asked that question a lot.
So the only thing I can say to other businesses is if you're going to do something like this, it's very important that you commit 100%.
And if we do, the more people that do, the easier it gets for all of us.
Everyone's been saying that if we all push back together, they can't stop us.
And that's true.
But the problem we have now is it's like the authorities are doubling down on their efforts.
They're using crazy tactics that I never would have thought would happen to us in Alberta, let alone Canada.
So yeah, you're probably going to get in trouble.
It's not going to be easy.
As you can see from me, I haven't really been sleeping very much, but it's worthwhile.
It's something worth fighting for.
So I encourage you, if you're going to do it, just go 100% and give her.
And do you have any messages directly for AHS or the government of Alberta?
Yeah, wake up.
Wake up.
We are partway through the day here at the Whistle Stop Cafe.
AHS and the RCMP have arrived.
They were very respectful.
They put up a closure order similar to that already received by the WhistleStop Cafe.
But they didn't shut the event down.
The barbecue is still going.
People are eating, having a good time.
There's music.
We'll see where things go from here.
But so far, so good.
I'm here with Adam Skelly of Adams and Barbecues hard at work because we've got a massive lineup outside.
So we're not going to take too much of his time.
Very important question I have to ask you first of all, and then we'll get into the other stuff.
But who has better barbecue, Ontario or Alberta?
Well, I would say before that was Ontario, but now that I'm here with a bunch of my crew from Adamson, Ontario, I'd say Alberta.
Awesome.
Awesome.
That's great news.
So can you tell us a little bit, how's your story coming along?
What's happening with you?
What's happening with your restaurant?
Well, my restaurants are basically a smoldering pile of ashes back in Ontario.
That's why I've abandoned ship, headed out to Alberta until we get some serious change happening over in Ontario.
Two of my three restaurants aren't able to operate at all.
One of them is under lockdown provisions, takeout only.
So my business is down over 90%.
We've gone from 60 employees down to six.
It's terrible what's happened.
The whole business has been destroyed over this.
So have you had a more welcome reception here in Alberta overall?
Well, I think you saw it for yourself outside.
We might get a dozen customers at our locations in Ontario.
And out here, you can see there's a lineup.
What?
We got over 100 people probably outside waiting to get food.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
So in Alberta, we had something of a restaurant rebellion.
Numerous businesses were in it together.
In Ontario, it was a bit of a different situation.
Can you tell us what it was like to face that somewhat on your own?
Well, I knew I was going to be facing it by myself.
For several months, I reached out to several business owners, including some famous chefs from Toronto, and none of them would even approach this topic.
They were too much of cowards to even speak about it over the phone or in person.
It was such a sensitive topic because you'll get destroyed by the, I don't know, the radical left in Toronto if you speak out against this narrative at all.
They just appeal to authority.
Anybody who goes against the authorities, no matter what it is, if you go against the authorities, they will try to crush you.
And out here, we don't seem to have that kind of spirit.
Maybe that's because of the experience that Alberta's suffered with bad government for the last few years.
It makes them more awake to these ideas.
I'm not quite sure.
But in Toronto, you still see not a single restaurateur has defied the orders yet in Toronto.
There's a few that are happening in the small towns.
So I hope a movement's coming.
And I hope it comes soon, man, because Toronto will be lost if they don't stand up soon.
Do you have any direct messages to business owners in Toronto?
Yeah, the $187,000 invoice that they sent me, they will never collect on.
They said if I didn't pay it by the end of December, that they would seek a court order to demand payment.
They never did because they'll never get a court order from a judge about that.
All of the fines and all the garbage that I've gone through, none of it has stuck yet.
We will be successful in the constitutional challenge, even if it takes all the way to the Supreme Court.
It's not as bad as the media has made it out to be.
And if you have any questions about that, please give me a shout.
I'd be happy to break it down with you about everything I'm experienced.
I'm here, I'm free, I'm still getting paid, so there's really nothing to fear.
So how does it feel to be among other business owners who've opened despite the lockdowns and are standing up against what can be claimed to be unjust regulations?
I think it's wonderful.
I think more businesses need to open and stand their ground and push back the government.
I mean, after we've seen the offenses go up at Grace Life Church here, I think many are rallying together to make a stand.
I mean, it's time to push back, you know, this dictatorship of government that we have.
I mean, democracy is gone here.
So I'm really happy that these restaurants are pushing back.
And Chris is a warrior since the beginning, and I fully support everything he's doing here.
Do you have any messages directly for AHS or the government of Alberta in this time?
Well, my personal opinion is Alberta Health should check their role because they are way outside their parameters.
If you'd like to help people like Natalie or other small business owners in Alberta who are just standing up, you can go to fight the finds.com and help wonderful people like this just keep their businesses afloat.
Thousands of tickets are being handed out to folks who are just trying to make ends meet.
For every whistle-stop cafe and Adamson barbecue, there are hundreds of business owners struggling and at risk of losing their lives' work due to ever-shifting lockdown rules.
Fines are being handed out for absurd so-called offenses, like the Montreal man who was fined for removing his mask in order to unlock his phone with facial ID.
Fighting Unjust Fines00:00:26
Chris and Adam are not alone in fighting these types of fines.
Countless Canadians are facing serious challenges.
And if you want to know how to help them fight these fines, we're kindly asking you to go to go to fight the fines.com.
We've hired a team of lawyers and we're going to defend the first thousand tickets, at least the first thousand tickets, from people receiving these unjust tickets.