Ezra Levant’s Fight The Fines project now handles 1,834+ cases in Canada after 2,000+ submissions, with 91 resolved—including 50 withdrawn by prosecutors due to weak charges or police overreach. Funded solely by the Democracy Fund (donations tax-credited), it employs 15–20 lawyers like Leighton Gray and Chad Williamson, plus paralegals Jenna Little and Caitlin, to challenge fines from $1,000 to $10K per case, risking up to $2M in legal costs. Targeting punitive provinces (Manitoba, New Brunswick, Quebec), the project frames lockdown enforcement as a tool for control, not health, while vowing to fight all cases until resources deplete. [Automatically generated summary]
We now have more than 1,800 cases, 1,800 clients that we're taking through our FightTheFines.com project.
Can you believe it?
Nearly 2,000.
So I'll give you a bit of an update on the project, and then we'll have a lengthy interview with the lawyer who is managing the project, Victoria Solomon.
She'll talk about the paralegals and the other lawyers we have on the project, the fundraising, the fund spending, the dozens of victories we've had already.
So this is a really super duper update special on this one subject.
And I think you'll enjoy it.
So please do sit back and listen to our Fight the Fines, I'd call it an annual report, actually.
If you want the video version of this, just sign up to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
It's eight bucks a month.
That's nothing.
In addition to getting the video version of this podcast, you get video podcasts from Sheila Gunri, David Menzies, Andrew Chapatos, and the satisfaction of knowing that you help keep Rebel News strong and independent.
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Okay, here's today's show.
Tonight, we now have more than 1,800 Fight the Fines clients.
We'll give you an update on the project.
It's June 22nd, 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 will want to publish it just because it's my bloody right to do so.
Masked Control00:07:04
The lockdown started in March of 2020.
Two weeks to flatten the curve, they said.
The idea being you can't stop a virus from spreading, but maybe if the rate of spread can be slowed down, our hospitals wouldn't be overwhelmed.
That's what that meant, flatten the curve so that we don't all get sick at once.
You'll recall President Donald Trump sent two massive Navy hospital ships to help, one to Los Angeles, one to New York to help take the overflow in case they couldn't flatten the curve.
Except those two ships were never needed.
They were never used.
No hospitals were overwhelmed.
In fact, public health officials had canceled so many other procedures and exams and non-emergency health care, hospitals were pretty much empty.
So bored staff spent their days making cringeworthy music karaoke videos on TikTok.
So the curve was flat from the beginning, but the lockdowns were not lifted.
You can't give autocrats that kind of power and expect them to relinquish it easily.
In fact, things progressively got worse.
Not for the disease, I mean, for the lockdowns.
There were no mask laws for the first six months of the pandemic.
Do you remember that?
Because if you recall, China had bought up the entire world's mask supply.
It took six months for them to be replenished, and having spent billions of dollars on those replenishments, of course, our politicians had to command people to wear them to justify the expenditure, even if it meant that people like Teresa Tam had to explain why she suddenly changed her scientific opinion that masks were dangerous to her scientific opinion that masks were essential.
Masks have become the flag of lockdownism, the proof that you are a true believer.
Even though every single high priest of the new science takes off their mask as soon as they think the cameras are off, they put their masks on for the cameras and they take them off as soon as they think no one is looking.
It's fake, but it's the symbol.
It's the in-group.
It's incredible reading stories about leftists who are vaccinated or whatever, who no longer live under mask mandates, but who choose to wear them.
Not for scientific reasons, but for political identity reasons.
They don't want people to think that they're Republicans or conservatives or whatever.
It really is about that, about submission to an ideology and proof that you're a fancy person.
Of course, there are other nonsensical rules too, like the 14-day quarantine for people coming home to Canada from the U.S., even if they repeatedly test negative for the virus, even if, I should say, accept if you're a friend of someone powerful.
So NHL millionaire players and their NHL billionaire owners are exempt from all that quarantine nonsense.
And the CBC president is too.
I don't know how that works.
She lives in New York and she flies back and forth from her New York home to her work in Toronto every week without quarantining.
It's not about health.
It's about control and favors for friends.
I showed this next video on one of my noontime live streams.
It's one of a dozen videos I could have chosen from.
They're all the same.
It's some man wearing a mask or maybe two masks at some public mall, in this case in Toronto.
And he spots a woman in the distance who isn't wearing her mask.
And he goes up to her, he rages at her.
Listen to it.
It's pretty much the same script every time.
Listen to what he's saying, but also what he's not saying.
Watch what he's doing, but what he's also not doing, he's not truly afraid of this woman.
If he was really afraid of her, he'd be walking away from her.
If he thought she had Ebola, he wouldn't be walking towards her.
He never once makes a health argument here.
He obviously just doesn't believe that she's a threat to either herself or anyone else, unlike, let's say, an Ebola person walking through the mall.
It takes him a moment to get to the point.
He really just thinks it's unfair that she isn't wearing one, but he is.
That's really what he's mad about.
He has conditioned himself to accept this as the new normal.
He has surrendered his freedom.
He's wearing a muzzle and dehumanizing himself and his interactions with other people.
Imagine his rage at finding a woman, no less, who's more of a man than he is.
Take a look.
You're not allowed.
That's a security thing.
Well, is children here and everything?
You're not special.
I just come to the mall.
I don't need a person like you being beside me without a mask.
Well, you might want to talk to the security.
You might want to talk to the security.
This lady here is in the mall without a mask.
Yep, got you.
Yeah, that's okay.
Yeah, it's okay.
You don't have a mask on.
What is the who are you?
I've just come to the mall to pick up the money.
Okay, yeah, sure.
And you are a threat.
What is the guy at the mall?
She can't wear a mask.
It is my business.
She's right here.
No, it's not me.
Put your mask on.
Put your mask on.
This lady, guys, on YouTube, she's causing trouble.
She has no mask on.
It's okay.
She shouldn't be in the mall.
She is exempt.
No, she is not exempt.
Did you see the paper?
She's a liar.
I don't care.
Sir, everybody's complaining about her with no mask on.
Everybody's got a mask, sir.
She's examination.
Where are you?
She told you, you believe what she says?
No, no, I don't.
The police needs to come, bro.
This is not fair.
You might get arrested, sir.
No, that you will.
Yeah, I'm complimenting.
I'm living, but he's hunting.
I want the police to come.
Yeah, I'll show you the paper.
I'll show you the paper, but I need to stay.
It's psychologically slightly different for women mask scolds.
The arguments are usually different, but every time I see a male mask extremist, mask snitch, mask scold, especially if he's criticizing a woman, it always comes out at the end.
What he was really furious about wasn't any health risk, but that a woman has more courage than he does and dissents.
And so he wants the force of the law to be brought down on her because that's what he was really afraid of the whole time.
The force of the law or whatever or being scolded.
So he needs to see that imaginary, that thing he was afraid of, that pain inflicted on this woman, because if it won't be, it proves that he was afraid for nothing.
And he's really just being a coward the whole time.
But enough amateur psychology on my part.
City Hassles and Forced Law00:02:50
But wow, have we ever been ripped up as a society by this, eh?
Not by the virus, not by the disease itself.
That has done damage to our seniors' homes in particular, but statistically, it has not exceeded the annual flu for people under 60 in terms of death count.
It just hasn't.
I'm sorry.
And I'm glad, actually, I'm not sorry.
But boy, it's pitted us against each other.
Can you imagine that guy in the mall?
Can you imagine us acting that way in the before times so commonly?
We saw these trends early here at Rebel News.
We had no special knowledge about the disease, but a month into the apocalypse that never materialized, we realized that it was like another invisible threat that's hyped up by the media and the government to justify massive regulation of our lives, the theory of man-made global warming, something else you can't see, but just trust us, it's really bad.
And trusts us, we're all about to die from that unless we, in that case, stop using so much energy and pay more taxes.
Except for the exempt class, right?
Like Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio and everyone else who flies in private jets but tells the rest of us to pay a carbon tax.
So it was that video.
Sorry, it was not that video.
It was another video that I saw just over a year ago that convinced me to do something about all this.
More than just complaining.
I complain.
That's what a pundit is, really, a complainer.
But it was this video of a pastor in Calgary named Archer Pavlovsky, who for many years has fed the homeless on the streets of Calgary.
The city always gives him a hassle about it for some reason.
They say he doesn't have a restaurant license.
They give him tickets.
The city's intolerant.
Mayor Nahid Nancy just hates this guy.
I really don't know why.
Maybe because he shames the city by showing the homelessness there that they prefer was kept in the shadows.
Anyways, there was Arthur and his small little team from his church feeding the cold and the hungry.
It was actually snowing.
And then a bunch of bullies from the Calgary police come up and literally start pushing these Christians around and giving them enormous tickets.
But this time they used the pandemic lockdown as their excuse.
This is an illegal gathering.
Take a look.
This was the video that did it for me about 14 months ago.
This is not events.
This is not your picnic in a neighborhood for the fun of it.
We are providing necessities of life to those that you and your bosses refuse to provide.
You got all kinds of events happening like that.
And yet the Calvinist finest are not bothering their churches for you.
This is the hypocrisy of this city.
This is the keyboard receipt of our wonderful fearless leaders.
What is Nahatninshe?
The mayor of this city.
Violent Arrests Near Us00:12:04
Can you guys use that?
Who's the last one?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Only eight feet.
Stand back.
Okay?
Or what?
Stand back and threaten you.
Hey, guys.
Do not tell him not to cut away.
Six feet away for everybody.
That's for everybody.
I was so mad when I saw that.
This was very early days.
So I decided to start a project called Fight the Fines, and we set up the website fightethefines.com.
Not to pay the fines for people.
I don't have that kind of money, and I don't want to pay them.
I want to fight them.
We decided we were going to crowdfund lawyers to fight egregious cases like Arthur's.
And Arthur became our very first client.
Soon we started hearing about other crazy cases across Canada, like Walter Matheson in New Brunswick, who got a lockdown fine for literally sitting in his car, windows rolled up, by himself in a Tim Hortons parking lot, drinking a coffee.
Remember that?
Not too bad.
Good.
Good.
Tim Hortons has asked me to move people from the parking lot here.
Really?
I know you're by yourself and all that, but what it does is it's letting the teens see what happens and then they all start hanging out here later on.
And Tim Hortons, pardon me?
I don't believe that.
You don't believe the teens will do that?
That's their opinion.
No, that's true, but they have asked, and it is up to them to do it.
This country is still a free country.
Okay, if you don't move, I'm going to give you a $292 ticket.
Is that right?
Yes.
For doing what?
For not moving in compliance to what I'm saying.
I'm trying to be nice to you.
License, please.
License, please.
Oh, then leave now.
Okay.
I was nice to you.
I gave you a chance.
Get out.
If I catch you back here, it will be a $292.
What's your name, sir?
Constable John Thompson.
Okay, thank you, John.
Okay.
I would still like to see your driver's license, though.
Well, I'm okay.
No, I would like to see it, sir.
Stop right there.
Driver's license.
Just a minute, I'll back up.
Doesn't matter.
You don't have to.
You stop right where you are.
How long is this going to go on?
I have no idea.
No idea.
I don't like it any more than you do, but I'm doing a job.
I'll be right back.
Hey, sir, I was nice to you.
I asked you to leave.
You gave me a hard time.
So now you're getting a ticket.
I didn't give it away.
Under the failure to comply with the directions of the Emergency Measures Act.
Yes, you did, sir.
Okay.
You didn't want to leave.
Don't try arguing now.
If you want to take it up with someone, you take it up with the sergeant at the office.
I'm not dealing with you.
Or you can go to court and you can contest it.
Okay?
$292.50.
You can pay it at any service in New Brunswick.
You can pay it online.
Okay.
Do you want it on court?
Do you want to go to court in English or in French?
I'm English.
Do you want it in English?
Of course I do.
Okay.
You have a driver's license back.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to give you a sign here.
It's not admitting guilt.
Just have explained it to you.
I'm not going to sign it.
Refuse to sign.
It still stands, even if you don't sign it.
Okay?
If you come back here, you will now be trespassing.
Excuse me.
If you come back, you will now be trespassing.
Does that include every Tim Hortons in town?
No, that's just one here in Hampton.
Yes, that's one.
Just this one.
So if you come back, you're trespassing.
There's your ticket.
Leave the parking lot now, sir.
Let's get another one.
Next one goes up to $1,000.
Really?
Yes.
You can get up to $10,000.
How many of you give it out today?
You're the first.
Well, I feel so good about you.
You're lucky.
You're the first.
You're the first out for all of that.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, was that really about public health?
No, it was not.
It was about abuse and force and compliance and submission.
The very things that are so terrifying to that scolding mask guy in the Toronto Mall.
Do you see the police don't have to threaten millions of Canadians?
They can just threaten hundreds or maybe thousands.
And the rest of Canadians will see and get the message and become scared and compliant like the guy in the mall.
In fact, they'll become little enforcers, little snitches like that guy in the mall, just so the cops don't come down.
Please don't come for me.
I'll be your volunteer enforcer.
Don't enforce on me, please.
So, we started taking cases across Canada, and we actually started taking cases in the UK and Australia, too.
I think some of the worst cases in the world were from Australia.
This one, a homeless man sleeping in his car, trying to save up money to get back into an apartment.
He got a massive police ticket for breaking the curfew.
He doesn't have a home, and he got ticketed for that.
Remember this?
They got out of the car and then started asking me why am I out of my house after curfew.
Like I explained to them, this is my house.
I'm living here.
I don't understand what they mean.
How am I out of my house?
That's the only place that I have got to stay.
Besides that, like on a park bench, but a car is much safer, warmer.
You know, at least you've got doors to lock so no one can really attack you.
They could throw stuff at your car, but that's about it.
There's not much you can really do if you're in a car.
So I don't think they should be giving fines, they should be helping.
That's what the police are meant to be there for, to help people, not to harass.
Just absurd.
And I think the most heartbreaking case we've taken anywhere in the world is from Australia too.
It's a mum who was on the street.
She was carrying a sign opposing the lockdown.
But I want you to know she was not at a rally, it was not a gathering.
She was just on the street just with that little cardboard sign.
And police seized her, threw her in the back of a police truck, separated her from her screaming child.
Take a look.
My son's with me.
I am not under arrest for anything.
You are?
No.
Yes, you are.
You meant to get your hands off me.
I do not see him.
Remove your hands from me now.
Come on.
No, this is not going to share anything.
You can't be there.
No, no, stop this, this is not okay, what are you doing, it's wrong.
No.
Levi!
Leave me alone!
Let me not lie!
Let me not die!
Leave me!
I hate that video so much.
I hate watching it.
We've taken her case too.
I swear, Australia's police are awful.
Remember this guy from just last month.
Record this picture.
What are you doing?
Do not touch my neck, bro.
Come out of the car.
Come out of the car.
It's spinal surgery and I sue the shit out of them.
They're forcing somebody out of their vehicle now.
I've done nothing wrong.
I've done nothing wrong.
Yep, this is going nowhere.
You're weak as f now.
Major, she's recording.
Look at what you're doing to my son.
Major, sit back.
You're all right.
Leave me the f alone, bro.
I've done nothing wrong.
Just the worst.
Of course, the police hate us for reporting on these things.
They repeatedly arrest our reporter in Australia, Abiyamini.
Remember this?
It was quite peaceful until this guy who's going to be placed under arrest right now.
I'm under arrest.
I am here.
I need that.
I've got my permit in my pocket.
My permit is in my pocket.
I'm gone.
I'm gone.
For recording devices because you don't want to be recorded.
You remember how that happened?
Thank you.
Guys, I don't want to go, so they're going to have to physically take me.
You can see here, it's against my will.
You can see here, guys, it's against my will.
As you can see here, I'm getting forced, I'm pushing them down.
They've done that to us in Canada too, not quite as dramatically.
The Toronto police are the most violent towards us.
Oh no.
Just a disgrace.
We're suing them.
Montreal's police are really creepy too.
They found our Airbnb where our staff were staying in Montreal.
They wanted to raid it and search our rooms without a search warrant for no reason.
They just wanted to.
They arrested our reporter, David Menzies, and took him to jail.
And on other occasions, they've roughed up several of our other reporters just for reporting.
Oh, my goodness, the affirmative action hire.
Are you seeing like the honor?
Hey, you don't touch our people.
Go cover Menzies.
Did you touch him?
Did you touch him?
Why did you touch him?
Because he wasn't getting to the table.
He throwing to me.
Are you hiding your name?
Keep your distance.
Hey!
Wanna get arrested for this?
Here are the bugs!
Here are the thugs.
Get rid of the thugs.
Shame.
Shame.
You see my point?
This stopped being about the virus a very long time ago.
This stopped being about flattening the curve a very long time ago.
It's instead being about flattening our civil liberties for a long time because we're here at Rebel News.
We're one of the few news networks that has been covering the lockdown from the people's point of view, as opposed to cheering it on from the politicians' point of view.
Because that would be being roughed up a bit.
I think the stupidest response to us was from Doug Ford's Justice Department.
I don't know if you remember, they sent two letters to threaten to sue us because we used this stock photo of an Ontario provincial police uniform, not even a cop's face, on our Fight the Fiance website.
They threatened us with four lawsuits over that image.
How pitiful they are.
But this whole thing has confirmed for me the importance of our Fight the Fiance project that we launched back in April of 2020, more than 14 months ago.
The importance to the individual people were helping, of course.
The importance of someone or someone fighting back for you, because the left-wing Canadian Civil Liberties Association hasn't lifted a finger.
Our allies at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms have done a great job, a lot of important cases.
I give them unlimited credit for that, but no one on the left.
It's important that we do this, and I'm here to tell you that as of yesterday, we've taken 1,834 fight defiance cases in Canada alone.
Taken a couple dozen in the UK and Australia, but 1,834 in Canada.
I can't even believe it.
In fact, every single day we get 10 to 20 people asking for help.
Some people get a pretty basic ticket.
Some people get a more complicated ticket.
Some people have literally received criminal prosecutions of one kind or another.
And Pastor Pavlovsky, well, he wasn't just our first client.
He's been our repeat client.
It won't surprise you to learn that he has received many more tickets since that first one.
Settling Legal Backlogs00:17:11
And then he went viral with this video a few months ago from his church when some cops were trying to interrupt.
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.
Out!
Ouch!
Ouch!
Out of this property!
Immediately out!
Immediately go out and don't come back.
I don't want to talk to you.
Not a word.
Out of this pro.
Out of this property, immediately out.
Wow, that went super viral around the world, and it politically embarrassed the awful Calgary police and their mayor, who decided to crack down on this turbulent priest.
And so one day after church, when he was on his way home just driving, police swarmed his vehicle like he was a drug kingpin in a getaway or something, like he was a terrorist.
They dragged him out of his car onto the middle of a busy highway, cars whizzing by, made him kneel down on the middle of the street.
Yeah, so we've been busy.
Arthur is famous, and some of our other cases are too, but most of them aren't.
Most are just severely normal people.
I checked our video playlist, which you can see here.
We now have 166 stories that we've told, 166 videos we've told about the different families we're helping.
And that's the thing for some families, especially targeted by the lockdown laws.
$1,000 or $1,500 fine can be devastating.
I mean, that's a huge pill for anyone to swallow.
I don't care if you're a millionaire, if you get a $1,500 fine, you're going to be upset about it for days.
But what if you're someone targeted by the political lockdown, a working-class person, someone who can't do their job by Zoom?
You're not in a government union.
You're not a banker or a lawyer.
You may be a waiter or a waitress or a bartender.
You were working in a retail store and you were shut down, but Amazon wasn't.
And you're outside because you don't have a backyard, let alone a country home.
And some busybody cop comes to kick you out of a park somewhere.
So you get a $1,500 fine.
That's going to destroy you, make you miss your rent, make you, I don't know, cause such a big problem in your life.
You're already stressed.
You're already unemployed.
$1,500 fine is the kind of thing that could break up a marriage, you know.
Our lawyers tell us that most of our clients are working class people.
Of course they are.
The lockdown class, the politicians, the journalists, the lawyers, those types.
They're not the ones getting ticketed for doing illegal haircuts or trying to earn a living or going to the park.
They've already got their fancy backyard pools or getaways in the country.
So we now have more than 1,800 clients.
And a couple of months ago, we had a huge breakthrough.
We are now working with the CRA-compliant charity called the Democracy Fund, which gives charitable tax receipts for donations.
So unlike donations to Rebel News, which isn't charitable, donations to the Fight the Fines Project, they are charitable and you'll get a receipt from the Democracy Fund.
You can use it tax time.
We've also learned a lot about how to manage costs.
I mean, 1,800-plus cases, that's like a very large national law firm, which I guess we are now.
We have lawyers in many provinces, and now we have a full-time in-house lawyer.
We have two full-time paralegals working directly for Fight the Fines Project, helping to coordinate all the clients and all the lawyers.
But even with smart steps like that and after a year of improving our systems, well, there's just no way around it.
1,800 cases costs a lot of money on top of the full-time staff we have.
We have to have lawyers in the field ready to theoretically run 1,800 trials.
And some of them are going to be quite complicated.
Some of them are actually criminal cases, very serious.
So we're approaching the point where we have a question of is there a limit to the number of clients we can take.
It's one of the questions we'll discuss next with our full-time Fight the Fiance legal coordinator, Victoria Solomon.
with us for that.
And joining me now in studio is Victoria Solomon, a lawyer, our legal coordinator for the FightTheFines.com project.
Victoria, it's great to see you.
Thank you for being here today.
I thought we would give our viewers an update on how the whole project is going.
You told me just before we turned the cameras on that we have 1,834 cases that we've dealt with, of which almost 100 have been resolved, most of which were withdrawn by prosecutors just when we lawyered up.
Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
Yeah, we've had a tremendous success, I think, in this project to date, and we continue to fight.
Well, you're on staff, and we have two paralegals who are working full-time.
In addition to you and the two legal eagles, paralegals, we have lawyers across the country now.
This started out just a few places, but this is like a national law firm.
Yes, we've spread out coast to coast and we have lawyers all over Canada and it's not only one lawyer, it's law firms.
So there are multiple lawyers, there are paralegals, there is staff that are working tirelessly for our clients, literally around the clock.
Yeah, I mean, we have the website and I see when people fill out the form, I get a little ping and I just take a glance.
You, the first thing that happens is people fill out the form, you look at it, and you, you know, if there's something that's really crazy or just junk, you throw it out.
But then you assign it to, like, you look at it.
Is it a ticket?
Is it a criminal charge?
So you sort of sort it out.
And you're like the air traffic controller or like you say, okay, you take this, you take this.
Is that how it works?
That's how it works.
We have clients with many matters.
Some are criminal, some are civil, such as closure orders, and some are tickets.
So a closure order, that would be for a business.
For businesses.
And a ticket, that's what most of them are.
Most of them are tickets or summons, and that's where the fines come from.
And then a few of them are more serious criminal matters.
That's right.
How many out of 1,834 cases, how many are those most serious criminal matters?
So those are 16.
16.
And they're spread out across Canada.
And I'm actually very excited about them because we just hired the senior counsel, Mohamed El-Rashiri, who has retained clients and will represent them in court.
So he can represent them anywhere in the country?
Anywhere.
Yeah.
And that's something that in the olden days you couldn't practice everywhere in the country.
But now the law societies have agreements with each other that they can practice a certain amount of days in different provinces.
That's right, except for Yukon and Northwest Territories.
Those are the exceptions.
Now we have some cases up in the far north, like just a few, and we're doing our best to cover those.
We have a lawyer, Leighton Gray.
Oh, we know Leighton.
Yeah, he is.
He's amazing, and he is senior counsel.
And not only is he senior counsel, he is Queen's Counsel.
Oh, he's a QC.
That's pretty fancy.
That's a very prestigious designation.
So we're working on having him become a member of the Yukon and Northwest Territory.
Just to take these cases for he can take those cases.
Got it.
So all the provinces can, a lawyer can work in different provinces, but in those northern territories, you have to apply.
You have to be a member of the bar.
And so Leighton Gray, who's based in Alberta, if I'm not mistaken, he's applying so that he can represent our northern cases.
Mohamed El-Rashidi, some people may know him from his CBC work.
He used to appear on CBC, so he's telegenic.
He's taking the criminal cases.
Tell us about some of the other interesting lawyers.
I think some of our viewers are familiar with Chad Williamson in Calgary.
He's a little bit of a cowboy.
Yes, he's just great, just super innovative.
He's a fighter, and just a pleasure working with him.
He's a hoot.
We have a whole law firm in Quebec that helps people in English or French.
And we set up a French language website, Conteste les Concrevincians point, if I'm pronouncing it right.
Terrible pronunciation.
How are they doing?
How many cases do we have in Quebec, approximately?
They have over 200 cases.
And the law firm is called Ticket Aid.
Christina Mucari is taking care of most of our clients there.
She's an excellent lawyer.
I think they're doing well.
That province is difficult.
The prosecutors are very aggressive and they're proceeding quickly.
So she's got a lot.
Isn't that interesting?
You know, I'm glad we've got a firm with some capacity.
Like that firm is used to handling lots of clients because normally they help with traffic cases.
So they can do a lot of stuff.
I'm glad we teamed up with them.
What's interesting is that a lot of the cases, there's a religious Jewish community in Montreal.
And for some reason, I would say some of it is just miscommunication, but I think some of it, there's a little bit of animosity from the police towards this community because we have a friend there, Yankee Pollock, one of our staff, and they've been really weird toward him.
They called him Jew Media and they've given Yankee a bunch of tickets.
So we've had members of that community.
And I actually did a video in Yiddish.
I don't know if you remember that.
But we help people en français.
Like we help people who don't speak any English.
We help every Canadian of every background.
That's right.
In fact, I see the names.
There's a lot of new Canadians, a lot of minorities.
We really are helping people from every walk of life.
That's right.
I don't think it's a matter of color or religion or even left or right.
It's a matter of civil liberties and we don't discriminate.
I onboard any client that has a ticket.
So I don't even look at the merits of the case.
We fight every case that comes across our way.
And that's our style.
It's not called pay the fines.
It's not called settle the fines.
It's called fight the fines.
And I had a great chat with Mohamed El-Rashidi.
And we may have some political differences, but we agreed we're both civil liberties people.
And I felt really good about that.
Leighton Gray, we know he loves civil liberties.
He's helped with some important matters already.
You just work with a new lawyer representing our clients in New Brunswick.
Yes.
Because they've had a really brutal lockdown out there.
Tell us about the lawyer in New Brunswick.
I haven't met him yet, but you talked to him on the phone.
I did.
His name is Nathan Gorham.
He's a very experienced criminal lawyer, and he deals with very serious criminal offenses.
So I think we're very lucky to have him join us.
And you were saying he's a professor also?
He is.
Well, I mean, these are some serious counsel.
I mean, we have some youngsters too, and that's great.
I like the young guys and gals.
They fight really hard.
Tell us about some.
I mean, I'm not asking you to list them on.
I'm just trying to keep track of them.
But I think it helps tell the story of what we've created.
And you've been the full-time, everyday, hands-on legal coordinator.
You've really built this.
I mean, we started with that one case of Arthur Pavlovsky.
I would never have guessed that we would be sitting here with 1,834 cases now.
When I started with this project in January, I think we had 100 or maybe 150 clients.
And now we've had over 2,000 submissions, and we've taken up to 1,834 clients, and we still have more waiting on queue.
Now, every day I get these little emails, and I don't look at them closely because I know that you're taking care of them.
So we still get, what, five or ten a day?
More than that.
That's a slow day.
I don't think we've ever had less than 10 and some days up to 30.
But I would say 15 to 20 new clients daily is regular.
So you take them, you work with our two paralegals.
In fact, one of those paralegals, Jenna, has been on some of the fight defines cases.
I was looking, and we now have 166 little videos we've done.
And that sounds like a staggering number, but that's not even one out of 10.
Like if we have 1,834 cases and only 166 videos, for every case we're telling you about, we're fighting 10 or 11 that we haven't.
Now, I don't think we've had a full trial.
We haven't had a trial, but our successes have been withdrawals.
So just to explain for the laypeople who may not be familiar with civil procedure or even criminal procedure, some of these are, there's different kinds of offenses we're dealing with here.
Just because a cop gives a ticket doesn't mean anything other than that cop gave the ticket.
That's right.
It then, in most cases, goes to a prosecutor who would look at it and say, I have a reasonable chance of conviction, and this is in the public interest.
And if those tests aren't met, the prosecutor does not have to proceed.
Is that right?
So we do try to settle this case and settle cases.
And by settle, we don't mean settle.
We mean get matter withdrawn.
So this is the goal.
And if this doesn't happen at early stages, then it proceeds to trial if the client chooses to proceed.
Got it.
So, for example, the very first case, again, the one that got this whole thing started, April, we took him on April 2020.
Arthur Pavlovsky, I think it was a $1,200 ticket for feeding the homeless outside.
Just insane.
The police called that an illegal gathering.
They pushed Arthur's people around.
Frankly, he should have sued them.
That's just my own personal opinion.
So he got these crazy tickets.
The prosecutor looked at these, and this was a case I think that Sarah Miller.
Yeah, Sarah Miller.
So the prosecutor said, I'm just not prosecuting this.
Yeah, and we see that all the time.
So I think it's a matter of fighting.
Sometimes you just show up with a lawyer and the other side said, oh, it's not going to be easy.
It could be.
And there are also procedural irregularities and administrative errors that allow us to have this ticket withdrawn.
So before anything proceeds to trial, we try hard to find a way to have the tickets withdrawn and we have succeeded in many cases.
So I think you were telling me just before that we've had about 91 that are dealt with and 50 were withdrawn by the crown when they were just presented with an irregularity or the case was just so ridiculous the cops should never have done that.
Yes.
Well that's pretty good considering not a single trial.
Now I don't want to give away any legal strategy and we're not.
I haven't been briefed on any of the particular cases and we have probably 10 lawyers.
Probably more.
Probably more than 10 lawyers.
I mean I've talked to a couple of them.
They seem to be good guys and gals.
I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that if our first tickets came aboard in April 2020 and it's now June 2021.
Time is passing.
And one of the constitutional protections we have in the Charter of Rights, but it predates that.
I mean, the right to a speedy trial, the right to a speedy trial.
Because as time passes, memories fade, evidence evines, and there's the stigma hanging over you.
There's the stress hanging over you.
You were charged with something, and it bothers you, and you think about it, and you're embarrassed by it, maybe, if someone else knows about it, and you're worried about it.
So there's a lot of good moral reasons why if the government says you've done something wrong, well, then come to court and prove it.
And we're coming up on a year and a half now.
And I know that in Canada, a year and a half is that point where the judges say, this is the government, pandemic or not, you had a chance to move on this and you just simply didn't.
Yes, and I think we are waiting to see how the courts are going to deal with this when they reopen.
In a lot of jurisdictions, there is a backlog.
And then some, they don't have enough resources to prosecute these cases.
And that's one of the reasons why many tickets are getting withdrawn.
So when courts reopen and matters come up for trial, it remains to be seen how they will deal with this matter of charter right to a trial within a reasonable time.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
I think here's my theory.
And I think this is absolutely true, at least in some cases, that police are over-ticketing, and politicians like that because they want to scare everybody into compliance.
If someone is so scared that they pay their ticket or so rich that they pay their ticket, well, that's just free money for the government.
And I think that in certain jurisdictions, they're just going to wipe out en masse.
Police Over-Ticketing Crisis00:07:28
Like, I have no insight.
I have no, I'm not looking into my crystal ball.
But if you have thousands and thousands of tickets that are constitutionally dubious, that were handed out just as some political war against people, it's probably served its purpose.
And do you really want to take 100 prosecutors and 100 courtrooms and say, we're going to now litigate this at the cost of millions of dollars?
I don't think that some of the governments will.
Some are very punitive.
I think Manitoba and New Brunswick are the most punitive.
Is that right?
And you were saying Quebec's aggressive?
I think so, yes.
Yes, it remains to be seen, but it is my personal hope that this will happen.
And I guess we'll see.
Yeah.
And again, I have no inside knowledge on any of these things, nor do I know the particular legal strategy of any of our cases.
But I've observed that in the United Kingdom and Australia, tens of thousands of tickets were thrown out just because they were improper for some underlying reason.
So that's a reason I would say to anyone out there who's got a ticket, do not pay it.
Don't pay it.
It's probably flawed.
Even if it's not flawed, if the prosecution doesn't move, you may have the ticket thrown out for want of prosecution.
And finally, you just might win.
What's the downside?
So go to fightethefines.com.
We did some of these in the UK and Australia.
We did a few dozen, but we've sort of wrapped things up in the UK because there's not a lot of fines anymore.
They've really eased the lockdown.
We still take a couple of cases in Australia.
But again, same thing.
They've really lifted the lockdown.
It's crazy.
Canada has the strictest lockdowns, I think, in the world right now.
I think so.
So it seems.
Yeah.
Well, I want to say that we had, besides you and the paralegals, including Jenna, who's on TV for us sometimes, that was an important thing to have that in-house.
Oh, yes.
They're just wonderful.
They're very serious, sorry, senior paralegals, and they're doing amazing work.
Only yesterday I was on the phone with Jenna and she advised she got six tickets withdrawn.
That's incredible.
proceeding aggressively and she's just wonderful to deal with and Caitlin is a very senior paralegal as well and they're assisting us in Ontario.
I've had the pleasure of talking with both of those women and they are very sharp, very clever.
In fact when I first met Jetta she was Jenna she was so she had such a comprehensive knowledge.
I assumed she was a lawyer because she has I think probably more actual working experience with the laws than most lawyers.
Yes, and she has developed strategies for dealing with these tickets en masse going forward.
She's a true believer also.
I've seen some of her videos.
One of the things besides having this in-house team that's made a difference is the advent of the Democracy Fund.
And that's a registered CRA compliant charity one of whose missions is supporting civil liberties litigation.
And so for the last two months or so, any donations to the Fight the Fines project, they actually go directly to the Democracy Fund.
They don't even touch Rebel News.
They just go straight over there.
And the Democracy Fund pays the lawyers.
So all the money, there's no overhead of the Democracy Fund.
100% goes to lawyers.
But the benefit is our donors get the tax credit.
So it depends on what province you're in.
But if you give $100, maybe it only costs you $75 now because you get $25 back in tax time.
If you give $1,000, the amount you keep is even larger.
I don't want to guess offhand the exact amount.
It's slightly different for every province.
But that has allowed people to give more than they normally would.
And what I say to folks is, look, it's a tax time.
Would you rather give an extra $200 to Justin Trudeau or have that money go to fight the fines?
I mean, to me, it's a no-brainer.
That said, if we have 1,834 cases and we're getting 10 new ones a day, and you say it's even more sometimes.
Now, we've had 91 dealt with.
So let's say we've got, I think you were telling me we have 1,743 cases that are still going on.
That's right.
1,743.
But every day we're getting...
We're getting more people.
Yeah.
And that's the thing.
Like some provinces, they're actually getting more brutal.
Yeah, and the number of this will proceed to trial.
There is no question about it.
Yeah, like all the criminal ones are going to trial.
Criminal and the tickets also.
And I think that's the great thing about having this democracy fund.
It eased the burden.
I feel like we are really the official opposition in this country right now.
And the government has almost unlimited resources.
And what we have is the generosity of our donors.
And we have to be sure that we can pay our lawyers.
And we don't want to stop.
We want to keep taking on more clients.
I feel like we've already done a few important things.
We've signaled to the world that not everyone's going along with this.
We've given help to nearly 2,000 people.
We've got 91 folks out of this mess completely.
We've shown prosecutors that they're going to be up against serious people, not just our paralegals, but Leighton Gray, QC, this new professor lawyer in New Brunswick, probably one of the top lawyers in New Brunswick.
So we're showing the government it's not going to be a cakewalk for them.
And I think we've given psychological stress relief to everyone in these families.
Yes, and it's not just a matter of legal assistance.
I think it's a matter of moral assistance.
I speak to people on the phone.
I email with them and I see how stressed they are.
And I think just the fact that they're not alone helps them to go through this process because I'd say for the majority of these people, they've never had any contact with the justice system.
Some of them probably never even got a parking ticket.
So they're very stressed.
They don't know what's going on.
And I guess I'm glad we're here to support them.
Yeah, I mean, that's on your part.
That's a heavy burden for you to relieve their stress.
But on the other hand, what a pleasure in a way to say, hey, guys, it's going to be okay.
We've got a lawyer for you and you don't have to pay.
So on the one hand, I wouldn't want your job because you're dealing with tough people, probably even some people crying.
No, I haven't had me crying at all.
Actually, I did.
I did.
I mean, I'm not making fun.
I'm just saying I know there's stress out there.
It's very stressful.
So I mean, I'm not built for that.
But on the other hand, for you to be able to say we've got Leighton Gray, we've got Chad Williamson.
We've got Ticket Aid.
We've got like that.
To be the person who says it's going to be okay.
But like you said so wisely earlier, it's our viewers who did this.
One of the things you and I talk about every few weeks is the money.
Because we don't want to make promises to clients that we can't keep.
And lawyers, they demand to be paid.
And I don't believe in pro bono lawyers.
We've had this conversation before.
I think that you want an expert.
And if there's some real estate lawyer, I'm sure he's very nice.
But if he says, I'll work pro bono, well, you don't know criminal law.
You're not an expert in these things.
Need Expert Legal Help00:14:00
Thank you so much for offering to help.
But we actually need a pro.
Like Mohamed Al-Rashidi, he's a criminal law pro.
We want that.
Chad Williamson, he's a born litigator.
So I believe in paying for lawyers.
I know people are probably saying, oh, you're spending too much.
Well, we are spending money.
But I have a motto, there's nothing more expensive than a cheap lawyer.
And if you have a lawyer that doesn't know what they're doing, it's a placebo.
You're going to get in trouble.
So our discussions and what I've observed and the people we brought aboard, these are serious lawyers who are going to win.
Or if they can't win, it's because the facts are impossible, the law is impossible.
We are not sending in second raters.
No, they're all senior criminal counsel.
They know what they're doing.
And they're all extremely hardworking and dedicated people.
So we don't stop because it's, you know, it's a Saturday or a Sunday or it's an evening.
We're working around the clock.
And in addition to this, criminal lawyers in Ontario, for example, we have a team of extremely professional civil lawyers, which is Amanda Armstrong and Armala Armstrong, who have actually recently succeeded on a number of closure orders against businesses.
So they've saved businesses from lockdowns.
And you and I have been talking about a very special lawsuit they might start on behalf, and we won't announce it now.
We'll wait till everything's ready.
A very special lawsuit on behalf of a class of people who we think have been discriminated against under the lockdowns.
So I was looking at the very creative ideas from that.
That's a mother-daughter team, right?
That's right.
That's pretty cool.
And Jenna Little is the one that came up with the idea.
Together with the client, we have some really amazing clients.
Yeah, they're turning into fighters, aren't they?
That's great.
Well, that's wonderful.
I mean, and that's what I mean, to meet those people.
I mean, some of the people who are getting these tickets, they're just regular folks who stepped over a line.
Some of them are just sort of intransigent rabble routes as I would be under that category.
Our own staff, some of them got tickets, but some of them are just great people who are in extraordinary times and they decided to show some courage and push back.
And we have met some wonderful people, people from different walks of life.
I mean, a year and a half ago, your typical Rebel News viewer, typical Rebel News fan, was probably different than today.
I think we've very much become a helper of the working class, helper.
I mean, when I think of who's being punished in the lockdown, I think waiters, waitresses, hairstylists, barbers, restaurateurs, like really working people.
I'm not talking about fancy people.
Well, we like people of all backgrounds, but who has been hurt?
And I feel like, I mean, we are a business and the Democracy Funds a charity, but I believe that what we're doing here is filling an important social vacuum left by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which has been absent without leave, left by opposition parties who are meek.
Who's helping people?
And I feel like the fight the flies, I think, I mean, I love our friends at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom, John Carpe, what a good guy.
He's one of our favorite people.
But I think with 1,834 cases, I think we are Canada's largest civil liberties organization.
I think without a question.
I mean, who could be bigger than that?
Yeah, this is a project of astounding scale.
Yeah, well, listen, so much of the credit goes to you, and I thank you for that hard work.
Let me close by saying what you and I talked about just the other day.
I said, how much money are we on the hook for?
I mean, don't say the number out loud, but when you've got, well, if you add it all up, 15 or 20 lawyers at least, right?
Like Ticket 8 has several and all these, these are law firms, as you say.
Let's say we got 20 lawyers.
Some of these cases might only cost a grand to dispatch.
Some of them are going to cost 10 grand.
You got 1,834 clients and you're getting 10 more every day.
You're coming up on 2,000 pretty soon.
Even if you can resolve them for $1,000 each, well, that's $2 million.
And this is not taking into consideration constitutional challenges, which we do plan to launch.
Yeah.
So here's what I said to you, and here's what I said at a staff meeting the other day.
I said, my job as president of Rebel is to make sure the company lives and everyone here, we can make payroll and stuff.
So I will never go so far down this road that we jeopardize Rebel News.
It would be irresponsible to do that.
But it's also my job to get the dough.
So how do we do that?
I mean, I've made my own contribution to the Democracy Fund.
As a point of pride, I was one of the very first donors.
Someone beat me to it, but I was one of the very first.
But I do not want to stop just because we hit some arbitrary number of 2,000.
If more people need help, the idea of turning someone away is very unpleasant to me.
So what I've promised the world, I guess, is that I will keep on asking people to go to fightthefines.com and chip in as long as we have the need.
And the metaphor I use is like we're a lifeboat.
We started by bringing one guy into the lifeboat, Arthur Pavlovsky.
Then another guy.
Then another, and another, another, another.
And now there's 1,834 people in the lifeboat.
It's like a cruise ship.
And more waiting.
Yeah.
So as long as the lifeboat is strong enough, we'll keep bringing more, but I don't want to sink the lifeboat.
If we get beyond our means, that would be, in the metaphor, sinking the lifeboat.
So I never want to sail away from anyone and say, sorry, no room in the lifeboat.
That would be very hard on my heart.
So I don't want to do that.
So the only other option is to keep raising money because for the foreseeable future, there will be more tickets.
I don't see an end to tickets coming till the end of the year, at least.
Yeah, the very end for the long haul.
Because some of these cases, by the way, are going to keep on going for trial in 2022.
Yeah, so even once our clients stop getting tickets, the court matters are going to proceed.
So it will take a long time to resolve.
Well, listen, I'm very proud of this.
I think this is one of the best things we've ever done at Rebel News.
It's certainly the biggest thing we've ever done.
To say that there's a $2 million liability here, I think is fair.
We don't know because we don't know how far and how hard.
I mean, if all these were dropped tomorrow, we'd be done.
That's not going to happen.
Can we get some provinces to drop them?
Can we expect some of them to be timed out?
Yes, we can.
How much?
I don't know.
How aggressive are the prosecutors going to be?
We don't know.
Some of the provinces, they're going to be very aggressive to make a point.
So if all this came due and if we owed $2 million today, we don't have that.
But we have time and we raise money every day at fightethefines.com.
And I say again, and I think this is important to note: not one dollar from fightthefines.com goes to Rebel News.
It all goes to the Democracy Fund.
And there's no overhead there.
It's just 100% paid.
And I think we push back on lawyers and we negotiate with them.
And I think we're attentive to keeping the price down.
I think so.
And we've negotiated bulk fees with lawyers to make sure that they're compensated properly while this project still makes sense financially.
And I'll say it in one case, we took a lawyer to an assessment because we thought the bills were too high.
And I say that only to say that we are treating the money very carefully, even though it's not our money.
We want it to be spent on this real project.
So anyhow, that's the big update.
Victoria, it's great to sit down with you and thank you for all your anecdotes and your survey of the project.
It's a huge project.
I'm very proud of you and our paralegals.
I think you're doing a great job.
I think the job is not done.
Oh, no.
In fact, in some ways, it's just getting started.
These are just all onboarded.
We may have a thousand trials in the future.
And if so, we're going to rely on our viewers because I do not want to put a full sign, a no vacancy sign on the lifeboat.
I want as long as possible to take more cases.
Last word to you.
Before we came on today, we were talking about if you had any tips for viewers about how to apply for fight the fines.
There are a few things you think that maybe if there's someone who if you had some advice for people who need help, what would your advice be?
Yeah.
So first, if you intend to fight your fine, I would encourage you to contest it within the deadline set out on the ticket.
And the instructions for fighting for launching those disputes are on the ticket as well.
Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to dispute these tickets for clients in first instance.
So once you get court dates, our lawyers will take over.
But we need the clients to dispute the fines to make sure that the deadlines are not missed.
And that's the easiest thing to do.
You just sort of write and said, I dispute, like you mark an X.
So either you call the court or you fill out a form on a website provided on the ticket.
Right.
And then from there, we take over.
So it's that very first thing, and that's actually the easiest thing.
So it's not, you know, it sounds complicated, but it's just X, I will fight this.
And just because we may not be able to move quickly enough, because you have only a certain period of time, right?
And it's very important.
It's sort of like hurry up and then wait.
So it's very important not to miss those initial deadlines.
But once you dispute a fine, it may take six months to a year to even get a court date.
So in the meantime, the stress is on us.
Okay, so that's one piece of advice.
Do you have any other advice?
Yes, so that's one.
Secondly, we communicate with our clients mainly by email.
And we've been finding that a lot of those emails go in people's junk folder or spam folder and then they panic because they feel that they haven't heard back from a lawyer.
So it's very important for clients to check their phone and check their email, all folders, and to be in constant communication with us so that we could keep you informed and receive instructions.
Also, I find that a number of clients sign our form, sign up online by filling out our form multiple times.
And I understand why they do this.
I'm sure they're stressed when they feel that they haven't heard from us quickly enough.
But unfortunately, it creates an administrative backlog on our end, which we need to clear.
So if you fill out an application, we will have it.
And there is no need to sign up multiple times because it just adds to the work on our side.
Yeah, I bet that people are stressed as they are.
Yeah, I completely understand that.
Well, listen, those are good practical tips for folks who need help.
But just the instructions are there at fightthefines.com.
And you and I talked about maybe one little tweak we'll make to things to make it a little easier to understand.
The purpose of this video, Victoria, is twofold.
Number one, to give people a report to tell them the magnitude of the work that is being done.
Because I think it's surprising even to me.
When you said 1,834, I was sort of shocked because the last real update I had from you, we were at 1,200.
Yeah, I think we got so busy that I got just boggled down and sending clients to lawyers and resolving matters and fighting fires that when we did the count, yeah, it was surprising that we were almost at 2,000 people.
That's crazy.
So the first purpose of today's video is to give people as much of an update as we can without getting into individual cases.
The second thing is for me to tell folks, I love this and we're okay financially for this.
And by we, it's a pot of money at the Democracy Fund.
It's not Rebel News money.
I will, at a certain point, put up the no vacancy sign on this project.
I just will because we know, using the lifeboat metaphor, I'm not going to sink the whole lifeboat to take one more person on.
But I want that day to be as far into the future as possible.
So I am asking our viewers, if they love this project, if they think it's important on a micro level to save an individual family or a macro level to help save the country, frankly, please go to fightthefines.com.
You will get a charity receipt.
You can make a $10,000 donation, $10,000, if that's your ability.
And you'll get a very large tax credit for that.
I'm just saying that because I hope someone's considering that.
You've seen the quality of Victoria.
We've described the quality of many of our lawyers.
You've seen them in the 166 Fight the Finds videos we've made so far.
I think we're making a difference.
And as long as you're there, you are the source of the funds and the resources and the energy that we're helping 1,800 plus people.
So please keep it up.
And when, I guess, Victoria, when people say, all right, that's enough, then we'll say that's enough.
But we won't quit one second before they do.
I'm here for the long run.
Right on.
Well, Victoria, great work.
Thank you.
Keep it up.
Thank you.
Well, there you have it, folks.
A full show on our FightTheFinds.com project.
One of the proudest things I think we've ever done at Rebel News.
Victoria's great, isn't she?
And she's built this whole team, really, built a national law firm in a few months.
So that's the show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.