Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions—like Alberta’s proposed surveillance drones and $14K–$100K fines against pastors like Arthur Pavlovsky (Calgary) and Vernon Temple (Saskatchewan)—contrast sharply with Texas/Florida’s zero-death, zero-lockdown policies by May 19th. Newfoundland and remote areas report no cases, yet churches aiding marginalized groups face disproportionate crackdowns, with legal victories like Sarah Miller’s overturning fines against Calgary’s Full Gospel Outreach Center. The Fight the Fines project, spanning 14 months and 1,200 cases, reveals systemic abuse of power under "police statism," while conservative parties remain silent, exposing a broader pattern of authoritarian overreach masquerading as public health. [Automatically generated summary]
I want to show you what's going on in Texas and Florida.
Those are very big states, and they have big cities and also rural parts.
And there's just like they're almost little countries.
Like Texas is really a country in itself.
And Florida could make the case too.
And yet these places are so done with the lockdown because they're so done with the disease.
They're getting back to normal.
Why aren't we?
And I'm going to show you some stats that you probably haven't seen before.
Did you know that the death counts in every single province and territory except for New Brunswick are plunging in Canada?
Like I'm talking 80, 90, 95% dropping.
Why are we still in a lockdown?
I'll take you through this today.
I really want you to see it, though.
I take you through every province graph by graph, and I'll verbally say that.
You can get that in the podcast.
But this is one of those examples where I wish you could see the charts because I'm going to take you through Teresa Tam's own charts and show you that the death count is plunging all across Canada.
You can see that in the video version of this podcast.
Go to RebelNews.com, click subscribe.
It's part of what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version.
I do a video of my podcast every day.
Sheila Gunner, David Mency, and Andrew Chapatos do weekly videos too.
And it's only eight bucks a month, which goes to help keep us independent.
So I'd really like to invite you to become a subscriber.
By the way, it's very important for our success to have subscribers because we don't take any government money.
It's eight bucks a month.
I mean, come on.
All right.
You can do that at RebelNews.com.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, the lockdowns are ending in America and the UK.
Why is Canada getting stricter?
It's May 19th, 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.
But why?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Look at this tweet from the governor of Texas.
This was on March 2nd, two and a half months ago.
He said, Texas is open 100%.
Everything.
I also ended the statewide mask mandate.
Now, I'm not sure if you can see it, but 330,000 people took the time to like that tweet.
That's a lot for Twitter.
I bet that was the most popular thing that the governor has ever said on Twitter.
I think he spoke for millions, maybe tens of millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions.
But not everyone.
Look at this reply from a Democrat in Texas, Beto O'Rourke.
A death warrant for Texans.
Add them to the 44,000 plus killed as he failed to confront the pandemic and botched the vaccine rollout.
He continues, and those who froze to death because he cares more about energy companies' profits than keeping Texans alive.
Abbott is killing the people of Texas.
So right after that, he was accused of signing a death warrant.
He cares more about companies and people.
He's killing people, not the virus, he is.
Well, Trudeau, CBC State Broadcaster, which we pay $1.5 billion to every year for Canadian content we can't find elsewhere, they were obsessed by this tweet by the Texas governor.
They were doing stories about it.
I'm not sure why.
It really doesn't have anything to do with Canada except one thing.
I'll tell you in a minute.
This is their story.
Texas ends pandemic mask mandate despite warnings from medical experts.
Doesn't he know?
Several businesses say they will maintain a mask on policy despite the governor's move.
I'm just going to read two paragraphs.
This is what Trudeau wants you to know about this Texas decision.
So it's very important.
It had to be in the state broadcaster in Canada.
The Republican governor has faced sharp criticism from his party over the mandate, which was imposed eight months ago amid other COVID-19 restrictions.
It was only ever lightly enforced, even during the worst outbreaks of the pandemic.
Texas will also do away with limits on the number of diners that businesses can serve indoors, said Abbott, who made the announcement at a restaurant in Lubbock.
He said the new rules would take effect March 10th.
Boy, the CBC are mad about it, aren't they?
And no one knows Texas Republican politics better than the CBC.
So they said that this was very unpopular with Republicans, they said.
I think it's safe to conclude that the reason they went so heavy on this story is they didn't want anyone in Canada getting big ideas about freedom, did they?
All right, so that was March 2nd.
It's almost June, actually.
So how's that all working out?
Well, here's a summary of their latest statistics illustrated in this tweet by a jam-packed baseball stadium down there.
Let me read the facts that were announced yesterday.
Zero COVID-related deaths in the whole state.
Fewest COVID cases in over 13 months.
Lowest seven-day COVID new case rate.
Lowest COVID hospitalizations in 11 months.
They're just done.
In fact, they're not locking down citizens anymore, bullying people with big fines or snitch lines.
They're actually doing the opposite.
The governor is now threatening any officials who still want a party like it's 2020, who love the lockdown.
The governor is declaring war on them.
The Karens, as the unfortunate nickname went, I know there's a lot of viewers named Karen who don't like that.
He's declaring war on the scolds, on the snitches, on the punishers.
Look at this tweet by Greg Abbott, the governor.
Texas is prohibiting mask mandates by government entities.
Starting May 21st, local governments attempting to impose mask mandates can be fined up to $1,000.
We're also prohibiting public schools from mandating masks after June 4th.
Texans, not governments, should decide their best health practices.
So no government officials can tell you to wear a mask anymore.
If they do, the government officials will be fined.
No schools can make you do it either, at least not the public schools.
That was all junk science anyways.
It was all politics.
It's all fear.
And they're done with it in Texas.
Same in Florida, too.
Those are two of the three biggest states, you know.
In Florida, I think I might have showed you this the other day.
Their governor, Ron DeSantis, who I hope runs for president in 2024, he just declared that every single charge against every single person in Florida for a COVID violation like our Fight the Fines project here in Canada, he just said they're all pardoned.
Just all of them.
Did you see that?
Well, it's a total overreach, Laura.
This is exactly what we ordered against last summer, many, many months ago.
And so I was actually just recently briefed on this case, and we looked at it.
And so I'm glad you have Mike and Jillian on.
And I'm also glad to be on to be able to say that effective tomorrow morning I'm going to sign a reprieve under my constitutional authority.
So that'll delay the case for 60 days against both of them.
And then when our clemency board meets in the coming weeks, we'll issue pardons, not only for Mike and Jillian, but for any Floridian that may have outstanding infractions for things like masks and social distancing.
He did the same thing on the masks in schools.
I think he was a little bit ahead of the Texas governor.
Do you see that one?
These kids do not need to be wearing these masks, okay?
I'm sorry, they don't.
We need to be able to let them be kids and let them act normally.
And that's what should be the case in the fall throughout the school year.
So that's some of the biggest states in America.
And here's our reporter, Lincoln J.
We sent him to London in the United Kingdom.
They've opened up the pubs now.
It's pretty much normal there now.
Not 100% normal, but getting there, Lincoln tells me that he sees some people with masks, some people without them, but there's none of this vicious scolding and finger pointing and snitching we have in most places in Canada.
In fact, I thought this was interesting.
He said he was on the tube, that's a subway in London, and the public announcements positively caution people against assuming that someone without a mask is breaking the rules and positively reminding people that you may have an exemption for the mask.
And the reason might not be visually apparent.
You know, the person might have asthma.
So you might not see the reason for the exemption.
But the announcement in the tube says don't assume they don't have an exemption.
My point is, even the scolding announcements in the UK, says Lincoln, take pains to say, hey, don't pick on this guy for not wearing a mask.
How different from our own East Germany-style civic culture here in Canada.
Yesterday I showed you a story about the Alberta government's plan to hire private mercenaries to fly surveillance drones hunting down campers and backpackers out in Alberta's wonderful backcountry parks.
Now you might think I'm being dramatic by using the language mercenaries, but I don't think I am.
It was a military style operation.
Infrared sensors, that's for use at night, daily operational reports, spying on people.
I'm sorry, that's a military-style operation, but instead of against terrorists, it's against our own citizens.
Vaccines: Forever or Just in Case?00:07:29
That was aborted when it became public, but why was that even proposed?
In recent weeks, three pastors have been arrested and jailed in Alberta.
An entire church was expropriated up in Edmonton a couple months ago.
In Calgary, Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky was arrested in this dramatic highway takedown, dragged into the middle of the street, hands on his head, like he was some drug kingpin or terrorist, and he was jailed.
And there was another jailing of another pastor in Calgary just this weekend.
What's going on?
And it's not just Alberta.
Alberta's the worst, but police barging into a church in Aylmer, Ontario, breaking it up mid-church service.
Why?
What's causing this?
I mean, none of these things are scientific.
You don't get the virus while hiking outdoors.
It's pretty much the safest thing to do, safest place to be.
There have been no outbreaks in the churches in question here.
So what's going on?
Can I show you something?
I go to this chart from time to time.
This is Teresa Tam's page on the government of Canada website.
This is a map of all the provinces.
And you can toggle different things.
In this case, I want to show you the count, that's the number of deaths over the last 14 days, province by province.
So you can just toggle.
You can do this yourself.
It's pretty easy to find.
So let's slowly look province by province.
As you put your mouse over each province, on the right-hand side there, you can see a little graph pop up.
You can do this yourself.
You can see that graph show you the stats for the province.
So let's start on the west coast.
Let's start with British Columbia.
The death rate from this virus is down about 80% from the flu season.
Alberta's down about the same.
Saskatchewan's down about 70%.
Manitoba, I'm just rough numbers here, down about 90%.
Ontario down about 60%.
Quebec, almost down to nothing.
I mean, it's down 95%.
And literally, there are no deaths from COVID in the far north, thank goodness.
In the very small population provinces in the Atlantic, there's no deaths in Newfoundland.
There are three deaths in New Brunswick.
So the graph looks big because there's so few to begin with, that three makes it look dramatic.
Notice that Nova Scotia is down about 95% too, but they are bringing in shocking new restrictions, including traveling within Nova Scotia itself.
They're being brutal towards the churches, even though their death rate is down almost to zero.
So I've just taken you through every province and territory in Canada.
To state the obvious, none of these solutions they propose, none of these lockdowns, none of these prosecutions, some of these drones, none of these church arrests, none of them are connected to science or to the virus.
Walking down churches while keeping Costco and Walmart open.
It's not about science, but these latest extremes.
Why?
I just took you through the entire country and the death count has been plunging.
I mean, ever since we got out of the flu season, it was just flu season.
It's gone now.
It's got nothing to do with these experimental vaccines that have been hastily authorized for emergency use.
Remember that language?
None of the vaccines have been approved yet.
They're all still being tested.
They're just authorized for emergency use.
That's the language.
I've gone to the drug company's own websites.
As soon as the emergency is over, by the way, they can't be used anymore because they're only authorized during the emergency.
They're not approved yet.
Which might help explain why we can't seem to get out of that emergency because if you end the emergency, well, now these drug companies, they're not able to sell their experimental drugs anymore.
But you see my point about how there just isn't a spike in deaths.
I mean, Texas is down to zero, but Canada, even Canada is getting down pretty quick too.
And this decline, as you can see, is not related to vaccines in Canada because these death counts were plunging since Christmas.
And all these terrible variants we hear about, the Indian variant, the Brazilian variant, they're just designed to make you scared because the death rates sure won't.
There's 200 countries in the world expect to hear about 200 different variants.
Look, America is getting out of this.
Even the blue states are sick of it.
Even California, their awful governor Gavin Newsom, he's being recalled in large part because of his handling of the lockdowns.
He's so awful.
And now he's panicking a bit because of the recall, and he's opening up his state.
And he's saying, oh, I'm not really obsessed with masks now that he's seeing some democratic accountability.
But look at this from the lockdown-loving New York Times.
Look at this.
This is a weird story.
They're vaccinated and keeping their masks on, maybe forever.
What?
Face coverings have been a political flashpoint for more than a year, but now the backlash is directed at people who don't plan to take them off.
What?
I thought the New York Times was all in favor of shaming anyone without a mask.
Now they seem to be on the other side of that.
I guess with Joe Biden in the White House now, they've decided to change their mind.
I just got to read the first few paragraphs of the story.
She's a big story.
I'm not going to read it.
I'll just read a little bit.
Whenever Joe Glickman heads out for groceries, he places an N95 mask over his face and tugs a cloth mask on top of it.
He then pulls on a pair of goggles.
Why?
He has used this safety protocol.
I think you should put safety protocol in quotation marks there, mate.
He has used this safety protocol.
Why don't you put on a 10 tinfile hat too and call that a safety protocol?
He's used this safety protocol for the last 14 months.
He's a kook.
It did not change after he contracted the coronavirus last November.
But how?
He was wearing this tinfoil hat.
It didn't budge when earlier this month he became fully vaccinated.
Hang on, so wasn't he naturally immune because he had it?
But still he got vaccinated.
And even though President Biden said on Thursday that fully vaccinated people do not have to wear a mask, Mr. Glickman said he planned to stay the course.
Because, you know, Dr. Joseph Biden is really who I set my compass by.
I'm sorry, I just can't help but give you my thoughts as I go through it.
In fact, he said he plans to do his grocery run double masked and goggled for at least the next five years.
Even as a combination of evolving public health recommendations and pandemic fatigue lead more Americans to toss the masks they've worn for more than a year, Mr. Glickman is among those who say they plan to keep their faces covered in public indefinitely.
That's crazy.
And I mean crazy in the colorful sense, but also in the mentally ill sense.
They also interview a guy just 41 years old.
So way, way, way below the age where you should be worried about a statistically substantial chance of getting the virus.
But this 41-year-old just loves the mask.
Barry J. Neely, 41, a composer from Los Angeles, fell ill with the coronavirus in March 2020 and battled symptoms for months.
He has also struggled with guilt over whether he had inadvertently infected people he came in contact with before his diagnosis, which came at a time when the government discouraged mask use.
He now plans to wear a mask whenever he feels under the weather in perpetuity.
In perpetuity, that means forever.
Now, he had the virus.
He's better now.
He's immune now.
He's wearing a mask now forever.
That's not medicine.
Masked Guilt00:15:59
That's not even politics anymore.
That's mental illness.
I mean, that sort of suggests that he does it as some sort of guilt, expurgation of guilt.
That's Stockholm syndrome, maybe.
Or maybe that's just one of these bizarre psychological illnesses where people love their disabilities, sort of like a hypochondriac.
But there are even more bizarre and obscure mental illnesses where people actually, I hate to say it so gross, where people actually want to become amputees as some sort of mental problem.
Why would you want to wear a mask forever?
Even the New York Times is starting to point out that these people are corray cray.
But in Canada, that's not a wacky outlier.
That's the center of public opinion.
That's the heart, at least, of our politics and our media and our lawyers and our judges and our professors, the official people.
And like I said, the enforcement in Canada is more brutal than ever.
It's actually ramping up, even though the deaths are plunging and have been since flu season.
And go to that Teresa Tam chart yourself if you doubt it.
And yet, not one political party is against these lockdowns.
Not one.
Okay, the People's Party is, but they have no seats.
Not one party that's in power.
Not one party that's in opposition.
Not one premier, not one leader of the opposition, not the so-called conservatives federally or provincially.
There's something deeply wrong with our country.
My only question is, is it just the political media industrial complex?
Or is this the Canadian people too?
Stay with us for more.
Well, I took you through Teresa Tam's official charts.
And by the way, you can find that chart.
It's YouTube and Google boost it on the search results.
They really want you to check it out.
Just type in Canada COVID stats.
And I really think it's the first link you'll get.
And then just go in and poke around in the different provinces.
I selected deaths in the last two weeks, count, that means the actual numbers, and by province.
And if you scroll your mouse over it, you will see that every single province and territory in Canada, except for New Brunswick, which has such a small population and they had three deaths, so it's sort of, you know, the numbers are so small.
The death rate, the death count rather, from COVID is down 80, 90, 95% from flu season.
It's almost completely gone away.
And you can see that the death counts predate any vaccine dosage.
This is the flu season.
And so I ask, why is the enforcement becoming more brutal when the threat from the virus itself is now negligible?
I'm not saying it's zero.
But if you're under 70 and healthy, it's pretty close to zero.
So why are they going after churches so viciously?
Why are they requesting drone reconnaissance?
Why are they, I don't know, I just, I think it's because they have to keep appearances up.
They have to make you scared since the facts themselves don't.
Well, I want to tell you that while we do our journalism, in the background, our lawyers are doing their lawyering.
And you know, we now have about 1,200 cases.
In fact, we've made about 150 videos.
So we haven't even told you, we barely told you one out of 10 stories.
But we have so many lawyers fighting against these lockdowns that we just sometimes don't even hear for a while about victories along the way.
But I was chatting with our chief reporter, Sheila Gunread this morning.
We were just talking about something else.
And she told me that she was talking to one of our lawyers in Calgary named Sarah Miller, who's been our point person on the Arthur Pavlovsky case.
And just by the way, Sarah mentioned, oh, we won that one.
Oh, we won that one.
Really?
I said, Sheila, you got to come on the show.
I didn't even know that.
We're winning incredibly important cases, but we're so busy we didn't even stop and notice.
So joining me now from her studio in Northern Alberta is our chief reporter, Sheila Gunread.
Sheila, good to see you again.
Hey, Ezra, thanks for having me on the show.
Yeah, it's very good news that I got from Sarah Miller this morning.
And, you know, she's just been working so hard for the churches, for everybody.
But in particular, she's winning a lot of these cases for churches and pastors.
Yeah, and you know what?
I talk to Sarah from time to time, but she's so busy, I generally don't like to interrupt her.
Like she's going full-tilt.
In fact, I talked to their firm.
They think they need to hire more lawyers.
There's so many civil liberties fights.
I've been paying, like, look, I can't pay attention to 1,200 cases.
No human person can do that.
I follow some of the crazy ones like Arthur Pavlovsky.
But you went to a northern Saskatchewan church that for a long time there had the unhappy record of having the largest COVID lockdown fine in Canada, a $14,000 fine for this very poor church that focuses on helping Aboriginal folks.
They were hit by an abusive police department, $14,000 fine.
We lawyered up for them, and you just told me this morning that we won that case.
Tell me what you heard from Sarah.
We sure did.
Yeah, I was talking to Sarah and she said, you know, we've got really great news.
She was able to get that $14,000 ticket kicked out of court.
Now, the church in question here, the Full Gospel Outreach Center in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan is, I mean, if you want to say that a church is doing the Lord's work, it is Pastor Vernon Temple and the Full Gospel Outreach Center.
They feed, they clothe, they minister to the homeless in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
And by and large, mostly Indigenous people, they also do outreach to some of the Indian reserves around the area.
And so he's really helping the people who are sort of forgotten by society.
And he received a $14,000 lockdown ticket at the time, like you say, the highest fine in the country at the time.
Now we've seen, you know, fines in the neighborhood of $100,000 to some churches.
But this was money that would be taken out of Pastor Vern's outreach to people who truly need it.
This is not a rich church.
I went there.
I visited.
I've been to northern Iraq.
I've seen bombed out churches.
The scale of the poverty of the people that Pastor Vern works with, it's comparable.
The church had recently experienced a flood.
They were trying to round up donations to deal with that.
And along comes a very vindictive mayor in Prince Albert, who seems to have a bit of a grudge against Pastor Vern because he ministers to homeless and drug-addicted people.
The mayor in Prince Albert saw his church as like a black hole, like a place where criminality happens, as opposed to it happens to be in a place where people need the church.
And so it felt pretty vindictive.
I went there, I visited, I saw how heartfelt Pastor Vern was and how he's really compelled to help the people in his community.
So we lawyered him up.
We got Sarah involved.
She's worked very, very hard for six, seven, eight months now already.
And she was able to have that $14,000 ticket kicked out for Vern Temple and the Full Gospel Outreach Center.
And, you know, I couldn't be happier.
She worked so hard.
And she really is helping people who are helping the least of our brothers and sisters.
Yeah.
Now, I know that you just had a fairly brief phone call with Sarah and you didn't get very technical, but just to confirm, it wasn't a trial.
So we didn't have a full hearing about it.
Our lawyer, Sarah, managed to get the crown prosecutor to drop the case.
Is that what happened?
That's exactly it.
So it never went to trial.
She was able to present evidence to the crown where they both agreed that this case should not go forward.
So I guess that's Sarah saving money for us by working hard to deal with these things before they get to an expensive trial.
Well, you know, and that's one way to look at it, saving money.
Obviously, we're doing this for the moral purpose.
I take your point that they, you know, to help more people.
Yeah, no, I know your point.
I take your point.
You're exactly right.
But it also shows something very interesting.
I mean, I know a little bit about crown prosecutors.
Those are basically lawyers, usually working for the Justice Department, although sometimes a private lawyer can be hired on a special basis.
They have the duty to prosecute, but only if it's in the public interest and only if there's a reasonable chance of a conviction.
So they have a duty to be fair-minded and careful.
They can't be vindictive.
They can't be extremist.
They can't say, well, we got a one in a million shot.
Let's put the church through it.
So the fact that the crown prosecutor, and again, I'm just going on what you have reported that Sarah told you.
The fact that the police and the health authority and the mayor have a raging vendetta against this church and are issuing tickets like confetti.
Well, that's their opinion.
But when a crown prosecutor who has a duty as a professional, duty to the court, duty to the public, says, you know what?
I don't think this is in the public interest.
I don't think I've got a reasonable chance of conviction.
I just don't think this is the right thing for the province to do.
I will not take this junk case to trial.
Now, that's my own language, but it's actually very, very powerful.
And it's a rebuke of the police and the health authorities.
And I said this to you this morning.
In some ways, had the Crown proceeded, you'd say, okay, well, maybe they actually really have a case and maybe the church was wrong in some way.
But for the Crown to say, I'm not taking this mess to court.
I'm not using taxpayers' money for this vendetta.
I'm not going to a judge.
And I mean, I have a reputation as a lawyer.
I'm not going to say, judge, I think you should convict this pastor.
Like, it's a hell of a rebuke of the police.
And the reason I'm emphasizing this, Sheila, is I want to say to anyone watching this program, just because you get a ticket from some angry cop, some cop who doesn't know the rules, some cop who has a vendetta, some cop who has a quota, doesn't mean you did something wrong.
It's just an accusation.
If you go to fightthefines.com and we'll lawyer up and let a second pair of eyes see that ticket, and I have to say that we have won, I think, more than a dozen cases now without even standing for it in court.
Because so many of these cases are such junk.
The prosecutors say, I'm not touching that.
I don't know what was in the cop's mind when he did that, but I'm not touching that.
Thanks for letting me make that point, Sheila.
Tell me some more stories you heard this morning.
So in other news about Christian pastors being ticketed for doing the good work of helping the downtrodden, Derek Reimer, he's a street pastor in Calgary with Mission 7 ministries.
He was ticketed very early on in the pandemic back in April, sort of side by side at the same time as Art Poloski received his first batch of tickets.
And I say batch because Art's just getting them and Sarah's getting them kicked out the other side all the time.
But Derek Reimer was ticketed in April and then he was ticketed, I believe it was in November or December for an illegal public gathering.
And of course, in Calgary, that means feeding the homeless for some reason.
Sarah worked really hard and got both of those tickets withdrawn by the Crown.
And so that's yet another pastor that Sarah Miller from JSS Barristers has helped spare these good men from these tickets so that they can spend their time and money helping the homeless and the downtrodden in their community.
Yeah, it's so weird.
I mean, why are the police focused on, like, there's a lot of different churches out there of different styles, different, you know, denominations, different focuses.
These particular churches that we've just been describing, the one in northern Saskatchewan, the one you've just described, I think Mission 7, I think you said, Arthur Pavlovsky, the commonality amongst them is they really get out into the streets and alleys and gutters.
They go to the lowest of the low.
And this is a point Arthur Pavlovsky makes.
There are some people below even homeless shelters, below even soup kitchens, because they're maybe they're violent, maybe they're drunk, maybe they're high on drugs, maybe they're breaking some rule.
There are some rules that if you break, you won't be allowed in the homeless shelter.
And of course, because of the pandemic, they've emptied it.
So these are the lowest of the low.
And it's truly a Mother Teresa mindset that would say, I'm going to leave my comfortable home and I'm going to go out with people in the dirty street.
And what kind of a cop says, I'm going after that guy?
Like, I mean, I don't think a cop should go after anyway, but there's a commonality in the three things we've just talked about, Arthur Pavlovsky, the Prince Albert Church, and Mission 7.
Why are the police targeting them?
I don't know.
But boy, am I glad that this Fight the Fines is focusing on that.
And I was so, anyhow, I'm talking too much.
But Sheila, I was so happy when you told me on the phone today that we had these wins that I didn't even know about.
I didn't even know about them.
Yeah, I mean, it's really been very gratifying to help these men who, you know, they're not wealthy.
They're not fancy.
And in Pastor Art's case, the day he received his first ticket, it was bitterly cold.
I think it was below minus 20 in Calgary that day.
And Pastor Arts out in downtown Calgary, he's wearing, you know, full snowsuit, top to bottom, furry Shanka.
He's trying to stay warm.
And you realize that art is freezing while he's trying to feed people who are far less equipped to deal with the cold than he is.
And along come the Calgary police and ticket him for that.
I mean, and I think in both cases with Prince Albert and in Calgary, I think there's a problem with the mayors there.
And the mayors are using the police forces to carry out their personal grudges against these Christian pastors.
Yeah, that's very true.
I saw this atrocious statement by the Calgary chief of police.
Walter On Protests And Cases00:09:41
Take a quick look at this.
He basically says, I'll decide what's political and what's not.
I'll decide what we ticket or whatnot.
And you have to meet my political test.
Take a quick look at this.
So gross.
We've seen a number of anti-mask protests in the streets of Calgary over the past 14 months, more recently demonstrations, as well as raising awareness about the Middle East conflict in between Israel and Palestine there.
Are those gatherings treated differently?
Are they treated the same?
How do police go about keeping an eye on those?
Yeah, so it's very similar, but I think one of the key differences that's important for Calgarians to understand is that protests aren't unlawful.
So legitimate protests can go ahead.
And we find that the majority of the organizers try to work with police and public health to do that in a way that actually minimizes the spread of COVID-19.
What we're seeing on the other side of that is basically outdoor social gatherings that are really masked as protests.
So we've seen in other parts of the province where we've seen rodeo slash protest.
I saw on social media this morning outdoor music festival that was being planned slash protest.
Those things are not protests or demonstrations.
They're outdoor social gatherings and they're subject to the public health restrictions for sure.
Yeah, it's incredible.
You know what?
It's great to catch up on these things.
I should interview Sarah again.
I mean, I know her.
She's been doing some great work, working so hard.
And she's also involved in our constitutional challenges, by the way, both on the Saskatchewan anti-gathering rule and on the COVID jails.
So I don't know how she's got all the time to do all this work, but she's doing great work.
You know, let me just close on this note.
I mean, the Lord moves in mysterious ways.
I want to tell you, Sheila, that it was when Arthur was arrested, Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky, that I said, let's take a chance.
Let's set up fightethefines.com.
We bought that website.
He was our very first client.
And he became a repeat client, too.
He's a recidivant.
Yeah, that's true.
He just won't stop.
And who knew that later on his case would have such international attention?
And now I look back, 1,200 cases later.
I did not know then, Sheila, how big this would be.
And it was the egregiousness of his case that caused me and our team and you to say we have to find.
And you did a great case with Walter Matheson, thank you in New Brunswick.
And we just started slow.
We started slow, a case here and a case there.
And now we're actually getting about 10 new cases every day.
But I think it's making a real difference in this country.
And I'm not just saying that to make myself feel better, because I need to feel better in these dark times, but I actually think that 1,200 families have been helped.
That makes a dent.
And Sheila, you've been leading on so many of these Fight the Fines cases, and we've met some interesting lawyers.
I think we've helped build a generation.
We've helped train a generation of civil liberties lawyers in a way.
I mean, I'm not taking credit for Sarah Miller, but I'm saying Sarah Chad Williamson from Calgary.
We have lawyers out here in Ontario.
We have a lawyer in Vancouver.
We have provided the funds through our viewers to really get a team of lawyers experienced, smart on this stuff.
I don't know.
I'm not saying this to praise us.
I'm just saying I look back 14 months later, it's made a difference.
And it's our viewers who did it because I didn't have a million bucks laying around.
And that's about the cost we've put into this project.
So that's our viewers.
So I would say thanks to all the different people involved.
Now, I sound like it's done.
It is not done.
It is not done.
But we'll keep out of it.
Listen, why don't you wrap up, Sheila?
I've been talking way too much.
I've been just sort of reminiscing on the last 14 months that have whizzed by.
Give me your thoughts on the whole Fight the Fines project and what's next.
You know, at the beginning of Fight the Fines, I think, you know, and I'll credit you for this.
You had some foresight.
I think you saw how ridiculous this would all be, that it would be normal people getting tickets for doing completely normal things or in the instance of these Christian pastors, really good things to help their fellow man.
Like that was, I think, one of the reasons the case of Walter Matheson resonated with people.
He was just a guy eating a muffin in his car with the window rolled up in a Tim Hortons parking lot.
And an out-of-control cop who was weaponized by fear and new powers banged on his window and gave him a ticket, presenting alone in a parking lot.
And, you know, I'm really proud of the work that we're doing, especially during this pandemic, because, as you point out, these $800 fines, $1,200 fines, $2,000 fines, they can destroy a family that's teetering on the edge because of the economic fallout of the pandemic.
And so I'm really glad that our reviewers have helped us help so many people because as you do rightly point out, each one of these tickets is a family that could face destruction because of a heavy-handed law enforcement official who thought, today's the day I'm going to write some tickets.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's not called pay the fines.
It's called fight the fines.
And I think that's made a big difference.
Well, Sheila, thank you.
I was just so pleased when I heard your news this morning.
It was such a surprise to me because I had really been following that Prince Albert case because it's a $14,000 fine.
And then just to hear it went away, I mean, it caught me by surprise.
But it's because there was no trial.
Because the crown prosecutor said, I'm not taking this garbage to court.
And that is actually a far greater rebuke than for us to say it.
You know, that old saying in the media business, dog bites man.
That's not news.
Man bites dog.
That's news.
It's not news that we say pandemic tickets are over the top.
That's what we do every day.
But for a crown prosecutor to say, this is garbage.
Well, that is news because crown prosecutors usually don't say that about cases brought to them by police.
So that, more than anything you or I could say, shows the moral hollowness of these cases.
Sheila, I've been talking far too much.
I've just been, I'm overwhelmed by the situation we're in.
I feel like Canada is now the worst lockdown jurisdiction in the world.
I remember when that distinction belonged to the United Kingdom and Australia, and we were looking at them from afar.
Avi Yamini was there.
We were looking at videos from Britain.
I said, oh, wow, we're immune to that.
Well, now we've got it.
That's the real virus, and we've got it worse than anyone.
I'll let you get back to things because you're so busy.
Thanks for fighting the fight.
Thanks, Boss.
And thanks to everybody at home for making the work that we do through Fight the Fines possible.
We couldn't do it without you.
We couldn't help these families without all of your support.
Right on.
Thanks, Sheila.
All right, stay with us.
you let us your name.
Hey, welcome back on my show last night.
Lisa writes, I and many have grave concerns that we will indeed see Kenny stealthily go ahead and implement a surveillance program via drone or otherwise.
He has most definitely shown his true colors.
Yeah, I mean, you've got to be crazy to do that.
First of all, hiking outdoors, you don't catch this thing outdoors.
It's just not where you catch it.
And the people who are most susceptible are 80 years old plus with deep underlying health conditions.
They're not the folks out for a little weekend camping.
This is just some authoritarian police state wannabe who managed to talk his way through how many layers of bureaucrats and politicians.
It's super gross that this wasn't weeded out before it was announced.
Corey writes, it's not the socialists in every party, it's the globalists in every party.
Yeah, but globalism talks about a lack of democratic sovereignty, lack of borders, lack of local political accountability.
But it's not just globalism.
It's authoritarianism.
Now, the two often go hand in hand.
But it's just, it's the police statism that worries me.
I've got to tell you that we're going to continue to fight.
I said earlier in my monologue, where's the opposition?
Where are the conservatives?
I don't know the answer to that, but I'm not waiting for them.
I'm very proud of our Fight the Fines project.
I don't know if you heard me say this, but we have about 1,200 cases now.
And I think that makes us the largest civil liberties public interest law firm in Canada.
And as you may know, for the past couple of months, we've been affiliated to this project, has been affiliated with a registered Canadian charity called the Democracy Fund.
So if you donate at fightthefines.com, your money actually goes to this charity.
The charity pays the lawyers.
So you get a charitable tax receipt.
So not only are you helping fight the fines with these civil liberties lawyers, you're actually saving on your taxes.
And if you've got a choice between giving money to Justin Trudeau or giving money to fight for civil liberties, that seems like an easy choice to make.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.