Ezra Levante celebrates a landmark Alberta Court of Appeal ruling suspending Judge Adam Jermaine’s extreme penalties—including a travel ban and compelled speech orders—against Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky, David Pavlovsky, and Chris Scott for November 26, calling it a first step against pandemic overreach. Rebel News crowdfunded their legal defense, as no other groups supported them, while Belleville Wild Wings owner Jackie faces 21 fines and a suspended liquor license after refusing vaccine mandates, despite surging customer loyalty. Legal battles continue, but these victories signal growing resistance to government-imposed restrictions, offering hope for small businesses and free speech in Canada’s evolving fight against compelled compliance. [Automatically generated summary]
Let me invite you to watch today's podcast and by watch it I mean get the video version of it.
I'm going to be talking about the great victory yesterday in the Alberta Court of Appeal.
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right here's today's podcast tonight I have some new hope and I'd like to tell you why It's November 26th, and this is the Answer Levance Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you don't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish this is because it's my bloody right to do so.
We had a huge win in court yesterday, a senior court, the Alberta Court of Appeal, that's the highest court in Alberta.
Maybe you saw my quick video update about it yesterday, and please watch Sheila Gunread's video on the subject too.
Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky, his brother David, and a small businessman named Chris Scott.
They were all appealing an atrocious sentence that was handed down by a lockdownist judge named Adam Jermaine.
And the good guys won.
Absolutely won.
Justice Joanne Strachoff of the Court of Appeal heard an application by these three men, all with lawyers crowdfunded by us, to stay the sentence that had been meted out against them.
That is to freeze their sentence, to suspend it on an emergency basis until a full proper appeal can be heard by the Court of Appeal next year.
As in, there will be a longer hearing at the Court of Appeal, probably with three judges, but that won't happen until June.
So Justice Strachoff made an urgent ruling yesterday that effective immediately, the most atrocious aspects of the sentence against these men are suspended.
They don't have to live under that sentence while they wait for the appeal in June.
Let me tell you, to get a stay, as it's called, is not easy.
You have to prove irreparable harm and a likelihood of the success of your appeal.
So the fact that the three men won yesterday is not only a great victory in itself, but it is a signal, I believe, that this atrocious sentence will be properly torn to ribbons in June by the full Court of Appeal.
This was a quick case.
The judge yesterday pronounced her ruling the same day, orally.
She wouldn't wait.
She'll put out a written statement later, but she literally wouldn't wait an hour before freeing the men.
If I were the Alberta government, the prosecutors, the thuggish lower court judge who made this outrageous sentence in the first place, I wouldn't be feeling very optimistic right now.
Just some quick background in case you forgot some of the details.
You remember Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky?
the viral international sensation when he hollered, get out at police who had the audacity and the grossness to come into his church physically in the middle of a church service.
Well, the cops didn't like that video going viral.
So, you know, they returned the favor.
Three days in maximum security prison for him and his brother.
Why did they have that SWAT team style takedown?
Was he dangerous?
The third man who was jailed and sentenced was Chris Scott.
He runs really the only store in the tiny town of Mirror, Alberta.
It's got a gas station, general store.
They have some tables for lunch.
Everyone in town knows the whistle stop.
Everyone knows Chris Scott.
The town he's in is smaller than my old high school.
There's no mystery in Mirror, Alberta.
There's no unknown people.
You either kept going to the restaurant, which I think most normal people in the town did, or you followed Teresa Tam's advice from out in Ottawa and you stayed at home and you lived in fear.
You would think Alberta's cops would leave things alone, but they had a great vengeance against Chris Scott.
They put him behind bars as well.
There's something really wrong with Alberta these days.
So anyways, these three men, the two Pavlovskys and Chris Scott, were sentenced for contempt of court at the same time by the same judge.
But this bizarre lower court judge I'm telling you about, Adam Germain, he not only fined them, but he ordered them not to leave the province of Alberta for more than a year.
What?
What does it have to do with opening their church or a restaurant during the lockdown?
Why are they forbidden to leave the province?
Well, this bitter judge made it clear in his sentencing.
He was personally furious that Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky had gone to the United States on a speaking tour about civil liberties and churches.
The judge specifically mentioned that.
He specifically condemned that.
He specifically referred to Arthur taking a selfie with a U.S. politician.
What's that got to do with anything?
Specifically raging at the fact that Arthur went on Fox News.
What's that got to do with anything?
None of this had anything to do with his alleged offense of keeping his church open for one hour.
But to stop him from talking about it, he banned Arthur from leaving the province.
So no more speaking tours.
And he did the most atrocious thing, a deep embarrassment to the court system, truly bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.
Justice Germain actually ordered that from that moment on, whenever these three men ever criticized the government on Facebook, in a speech, in a church sermon, in a media interview, they had to immediately then take out a little speech that the judge himself wrote and read it, essentially renouncing and denouncing themselves.
Sorry, that's compelled speech.
That's a Maoist struggle session.
That's what communists do.
This disgraceful judge, Adam Germain, who's only a judge because he ran and failed as a liberal politician, so Jean-Cretchen put him on the court as a loot bag, as a consolation prize.
Adam Germain wrote a little homemade speech that he ordered these three men to say whenever they felt like saying their own political thoughts, they had to say his.
What does any of this have to do with, you know, their alleged offenses?
Refusing to close their church, refusing to apologize for opening their church in their store.
And since when do Canadian judges get to violate your charter rights like that just because they're political hacks like Adam Germain?
So awful, so abusive, but really, why not?
I've been paying attention to the laws and orders and trials and punishments since this pandemic started.
As you know, we represent over 2,000 people who have had lockdown tickets and fines.
That's our Fight the Fines project, and now we're getting involved in bigger battles over vaccine passports.
I've seen cases in many provinces, in different courts, at different levels.
We've crowdfunded for many of them, and they all have one thing in common.
No judge has ever struck down a pandemic law.
Every case is lost.
Now, our Fight the Fines cases are winning, but those are small tickets.
But the bigger cases, the constitutional time, they've all lost.
No matter what the plaintiff looks like, loud people like Pastor Arthur, quiet people like Pastor James Coates, rude people, polite people, religious people, non-religious people, people of every and any background, people with great lawyers, people with not so great lawyers, people with no lawyers.
Everyone has lost in any substantial challenge to the laws.
I think the absolute strongest case so far was earlier this year when our own reporter at the time, Kian Becksty, was detained at the Calgary Airport Hotel quarantine when he flew into Calgary from the United States.
Now, he had parked his car at the airport, and he wanted to just go straight into his car and straight home to quarantine the home, but the government forced him to pay outrageous fees to stay at the airport quarantine hotel.
And he counted he actually had interactions with 14 different people at that hotel as opposed to just heading straight home in his own car.
So I thought that was a powerful case.
There were some other plaintiffs in the same hearing, other lawyers too, some good lawyers.
The facts were so strong.
This was a three-day detention of healthy people, of innocent people, at great expense.
And there was absolutely no health reason to do so.
None.
Like I say, how is quarantining in a public hotel safer than in your private home?
It just doesn't make sense.
Well, here's how that case ended.
The federal court not only upheld the legality of the jails, but they ruled that it didn't even violate the charter.
They said it didn't even count as a detention.
You were literally detained by force of law for three days, and the federal court wouldn't even concede that it was a detention.
They didn't say it's a detention, but it's justified because of blah, blah, blah.
They literally just said, no, no, no, no.
There's nothing wrong here.
We don't even have to justify anything because it's not even a detention.
Really?
Yeah.
So the judge said, so much for our democracy's supposed checks and balances.
I'll admit it, I have been pessimistic.
I have not been hopeless, but I've been close.
There's a difference between optimism and hope.
I think hope is when you believe in your heart that things could get better.
I think optimism is when you think with your brain that they will get better.
I don't know.
One's sort of faith and one is reason.
Is that that's my attempt at distinguishing between the two words, optimism and hope.
You tell me.
So I have been pessimistic, even very pessimistic, because when I use my brain, I see every force in society in league with the lockdown, every government in Canada and every opposition in Canada and every corporate media outlet and every big business and small business and every chamber of commerce and every traditional civil liberties group, every university, every pundit and every judge.
That hotel case made me pessimistic.
If that's not going to win, what would?
Earlier I said every small business, no, let me change that.
A lot of small businesses did try and fight, but they were almost alone.
Every Human Rights Commission refused to uphold human rights.
Every college of physicians and surgeons launched inquisitions against doctors who stand with their patients.
The college is siding with politicians against doctors and their patients.
Just yesterday, a police raid on a doctor's office in Calgary.
Yeah, that's pessimistic.
But this news from the case of Arthur and David Pavlovsky and Chris Scott, it gave me hope.
Hope that maybe the smarter, more senior, more serious, more grown-up judges in the country are about to weigh in and reset the balance.
I don't know.
Maybe the grown-ups have realized this is going too far.
That's my hope.
You know, the same Justice Strekhow that ruled against Justice Germaine and upheld the rights of the Pavlovskys just last week was on the Court of Appeal that ruled against Rebel News on a billboard free speech case.
We're seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on that.
But I mentioned that to show that Justice Strekow, the good judge who stayed the abusive sentence against these three men, she's ruled against us before just recently.
So this must have been a really egregious case for her.
These three men, the Pavlovskys and Chris God, I am pleased.
I am hopeful.
And I know this, this wouldn't happen without our little system.
And by that, I mean our outstanding lawyers who were there in court.
We were crowdfunding the lawyers for all three men.
I don't have the legal bills in front of me, but I am certain we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars between these three men over the last year.
Against the unlimited resources of the state, we had excellent lawyers and we won yesterday.
Now, those lawyers would not have been possible without our rebel news viewers chipping in.
There's just no way that an ordinary pastor or a diner owner in Mirror Alberta could muster that kind of dough.
There's just no way at all.
And even finding the best lawyers around, that matters too.
And appealing every single loss aggressively, even against all odds, refusing to say die, refusing to give up.
That's what did it.
That's only possible because of our rebel news viewers and donors.
And that's what's so sad and so scary is that it was just us there.
No one else was in court with us for these men.
No civil liberties group, no chamber of commerce for the restaurateur, no religious group chipping in for the pastors.
Were it not for our lawyers and were not for our funders, and by that I mean you, this atrocious sentence would still be the law.
And it would be the new precedent that you could order people to denounce themselves.
Compelled speech.
Think about that.
We not only set aside the sentence that was abusing these three men, we not only freed these three men, but we now have a judge, Adam Germaine, who was seriously rebuked for the idea of compelled speech.
And that would have been an awful precedent to let stand.
If we weren't there in court, who would have been?
I salute the three men for fighting.
Justice Germain Sanctioned00:13:57
I salute the lawyers for their smarts and their energy.
But it is our rebel news viewers who paid for it.
I hope you feel pride and satisfaction.
And I hope you feel just a little bit hopeful again.
I do.
The battle is not over.
It's going to get worse yet before it gets better.
But today, for the first time in nearly two years, I can say that I truly believe in my heart that we can win.
I don't know if we will win, but I again believe that it is possible.
Thank you for being a part of this.
And thanks to our great reporters on the ground in Alberta, Sheila Gunread, Adam Sos, Kian Simone, the rest of our team, for telling the story of these men too.
Thanks for being part of it.
Stay with us for more.
Well, this news of the victory in the Court of Appeal of Alberta yesterday, staying the worst parts of the sentence against Arthur Pawlowski's brother David and Chris Scott has just been ricocheting around in my mind like a pinball.
I'm thrilled with the result, but it's done more than just give me some hope for the particular clients.
It's given me a hope that in general, maybe we will see some return to rationality and the concept of checks and balances.
You know, the idea that the different branches of government hold each other to account, that the judiciary can limit the excesses of the executive in the legislature.
It's given me a little bit of hope, but I have only heard about it through Sheila Gunread, who was live tweeting the court.
She was watching online, as court cases are these days, and was live tweeting it.
She was there, and I'm delighted to call her in now to join us with a personal update.
Sheila, it's great to see you.
I am so hopeful about this case.
Yeah, me too.
I mean, we've seen a lot of victories.
I would definitely call them victories along the fight the fines case pipeline.
We've seen those.
But what's happening with those is the Crown is withdrawing the expensive tickets before we get to a place in the process where we can set legal precedent by fighting the ticket and winning the ticket.
The Crown says, we're just going to withdraw.
We don't want to get to that point.
What happened here is totally different.
We went all the way and we got to the sanctions portion and we appealed the sanctions while we appeal everything else.
And what Justice Strekoff ruled yesterday was a complete and total rebuke of Justice Adam Germain, who ruled that not only are Chris Scott and the Peloski brothers prohibited from traveling around the country and telling people what is exactly happening here in Alberta on the ground,
but they have to preface every single public statement, not with just the government's line, but the more and more I think about it, it's really Justice Adam Germain's words that he ordered be put in the mouths of these men before they make any statement critical of lockdowns, vaccines, and government restrictions.
You know, it's truly incredible.
And I know that every judge is appointed by a politician, but some judges, before they sit on the bench, have a stellar career in the law.
They're skilled litigators who are outstanding experts in contract law or constitutional law.
And they really are so smart that people of any stripe say, wow, that girl's so smart, we've got to get him on the bench because they're going to help improve our country.
That was not the way Adam Germain got on the court.
He was a failed liberal politician.
And Jean Cretchen has two big gifts for guys like that.
Put him in the Senate or put him on the bench.
Both are appointments to age 75.
And unfortunately for the country, he put Adam Germain, liberal, failed politician, on the bench.
And who knows how many bizarre judgments he's dealt out over the years, but he's been exposed, I think, by this case.
And his raw fury, and I think bigotry against the Pavlovskys, very disheartening when it happened.
But wow, I feel good that the Court of Appeal has slapped him down.
Yeah, I mean, it's really something to see because if this judgment were just left hanging there, this would be something that could be used against other lockdown critics going forward, people who find themselves on the wrong side of a secretly obtained court order, as was the case here.
This could have been just a precedent.
I sat in on all these court hearings where the lawyers were referencing other cases of lockdowners receiving large fines just to put into context for the judge what should have been done here.
So this would have been out there as a comparable case for other people by which to ask a judge for these sort of similar sanctions.
But we should note that Alberta Health Services, as out of control as they are, as wild and crazy as they are, as sinister as they are, getting this court order secretly obtained ex parte without letting the Peloski's lawyer Sarah Miller know or Chad Williamson's or Chad Williamson, who's the lawyer for Chris Scott.
Alberta Health Services never asked for the travel ban that was levied against these men.
Alberta Health Services never asked for the compelled speech order either.
That is something that Justice Adam Germain just cooked up in his own head.
Alberta Health Services knew that this would look pretty gross if they asked for anything beyond expecting the men to comply with the public health orders of the day because for Alberta Health Services, so they say this was always about keeping the community safe.
I'm not so sure about that.
Feels like it was about teaching everybody a lesson.
And they wanted fines and community service and court costs.
They got all that, but Judge Germain cooked up this other stuff that nobody asked for.
On the flip side, though, Alberta Health Services, they sure didn't object when Jermaine ordered these things into the judgment.
And they were there yesterday fighting to keep them in.
So while they didn't ask for them, they were more than happy to have found out that Jermaine just went off script and did his own thing.
Yeah.
You know, I was watching part of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in the United States.
And one of the instructions to jury members is not to do any research of your own, not to look at the news, not to Google things.
And the reason for that is you may think you found something really on point, but maybe it's wrong.
Maybe it's misleading.
And both sides haven't had a chance to sort of deal with it.
So even if you think you have just a very simple question you need to answer, the judges say to the jury members, don't use any facts or information other than what you've heard in the trial.
And it's a very important point.
And it also, in a way, applies to a judge, except for you normally don't have to tell a judge that.
And the reason I mention that is there was nothing in the court cases against the Pavlovskys or Chris Scott that had to do with fake news or junk signs or conspiracy theories or whatever.
Like all these things that the media have smeared these men with.
It just simply wasn't part of the case against them.
The case was very simple.
They kept their church open during the lockdown and Chris Scott kept his diner open during the lockdown.
That's the case.
And so what happened is Judge Jermaine read the news on his own that was not disputed or debated in his courtroom and he meted out a punishment for the stuff he read in the news that wasn't tested in court.
So that's where his ban on travel came from because he hated the fact that he saw Arthur Pavlovsky taking a selfie with an American politician.
That's where the travel ban came from.
That's where the self-denunciation came from.
It had nothing to do with the case in front of the court.
So that judge, Jermaine, made the mistake that amateur jury members are instructed not to make, which is sorry, you can't do your own thing.
You can't scratch your own personal itches.
And I just want to say, Sheila, last I checked, our petition to take Justice Jermaine to the Canadian Judicial Council to have him investigated had well over 25,000 signatures.
And folks, if you hadn't put your name to it yet, please consider doing so.
Go to firethejudge.com.
It's rare that a judge is fired in Canada, but it does happen.
And this judge is so out of control.
And I'm not saying that it was just the wrong decision.
Judges can get it wrong.
And that's fine.
The Court of Appeal fixes it.
But this judge was abusive towards the brothers, used his own grudges and his own fake information.
And this judge should never have been in the court in the first place.
So please go to firethejudge.com and we'll see what can happen.
Anyways, don't mind me ranting a bit, Sheila.
I'm feeling pretty good, actually.
Yeah, and people at that special website, firethejudge.com, there's a special link there where you can click on and send a personalized message to the Canadian Judicial Council to just, I'm sure they get maybe five emails a month.
Send them as many as you can to let them know how seriously we're taking this because it was pretty clear that the judge let his own prejudice against lockdown objectors seep in.
Because as you rightly point out, there was no, the only thing that they really did wrong here was it's not like they were out pamphleting anti-vaccine information or selling fake COVID cures.
It wasn't any of that.
Chris Scott refused to go broke quietly.
And then when the government seized his property, he wanted to hold a protest of that which the government has just done to them.
The Peloskis just wanted to open church because they see themselves as frontline workers.
Just like police and EMS, they minister and take care of the immediate needs of the poor in Calgary.
That's all they wanted to do.
But Justice Strekoff yesterday said to an Alberta Health Services lawyer, and her question garnered about 20 minutes of stunned, confused silence from a government lawyer, which usually they just like to hear themselves talk.
She asked the government lawyer, if this compelled speech sanction does not qualify as irreparable harm against these men, can you please tell me what does?
And he couldn't.
He couldn't answer her because it does, when you are violating somebody's charter rights to not speak what's on their heart about the things that which the government is directly doing to them, that's irreparable harm.
You're forcing someone to, especially somebody like Art, who, you know, for him, he takes his moral convictions very seriously.
For him, this is a matter of his soul, his eternity, if he violates his conscience.
And that is what Justice Adam Germain, in his anti-Christian bigotry, those are my words, not any of the lawyers, but that's what I think is at play here.
Yeah.
Well, I feel like this is a flicker of hope that when the more senior judges, the calmer judges, the judges that are perhaps more sober-minded, more public-minded, calmer, you know, if you're on the court of appeal, you may have gotten your toe in the door in court through patronage like Adam Germain, but you're probably not getting on the court of appeal until you've really proven you're a great judge.
Like any secondhand, third-rate lawyer can get on the bench if you donate enough to a prime minister.
That's Adam Jermaine.
But to move from regular judge to one of the handful of Court of Appeal judges, I don't care what your ideology is.
You're probably smart and accomplished, and you're probably a good judge, just from like you're not going to get bumped up out of patronage as you got bumped in out of patronage.
So I'm glad that as we get to the court of appeal level in so many of these cases, we're going to have those smarter, more careful, less wild judges.
And hopefully the pendulum will start swinging back.
And Sheila, as I said in my monologue, if we hadn't been there, no one would have been.
There was no one else who was going to stand up against this compelled speech.
And by we, I mean lawyers that were crowdfunded by Rebel News viewers, lawyers to represent all three of those men.
And I shudder to think what would happen if that sentence had become the precedent.
Last word to you.
Fighting Compelled Speech00:02:56
Well, I just want to thank everybody at home for their generous donations to savearter.com and to fight the fines.com.
I saw the impact of your donations play out in real time yesterday.
There's absolutely no way the Peloskis could have fought this the way that they have.
There's absolutely no way that Chris Scott could have fought for his own free speech the way that donations were able to enable for him.
And so I'm just so very grateful that we have this opportunity to be the vehicle to provide support to these frontline freedom fighters in the interests of free speech.
So thank you to everybody at home.
None of this is possible without you.
Yeah, it's a good feeling to see that finally pay off.
And we've been helping Arthur since April of 2020, if you can believe it, when you think about it, that's quite a battle.
I mean, we're not done yet.
The Court of Appeal full hearing is in June, but I am pretty, pretty pleased with how it's going.
Sheila, thanks.
And you've been on the Fight the Fines project and the FightVaccinePassports.com project for two years yourself.
So you have, I think, done the lion's share of our reporting on these subjects.
And I think it's very important, very important.
So thank you for the work you've done as our chief reporter.
Well, it sure keeps my tank full when I need this sort of inspiration to go out there and tackle the day's news.
It's good to see the people that we're able to help and interact with them all the time.
You know, in a time where all the news is bad, I get to hear about how we're able to help people and make the day a little bit better for their families.
So again, all of that possible through our donors at home.
Right on.
Thanks, Sheila.
Thanks, Ezra.
Cheers.
There's Sheila Gunread, our chief reporter.
Stay with us.
Your views are next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Ken Barrett77 says, if your mRNA treatment is so effective, then why do you cling to your no liability so tightly?
Exactly.
The whole concept of product liability, it's actually centuries old.
Now, I understand people taking something out of desperation.
They say, I don't care what the risk is.
I need it so badly.
Let me take it.
I support people's right to do that, actually, if they know the risks, but they're so it's it's like if someone runs out of medical solutions to God forbid cancer.
I would support their right to choose alternative treatments, even if they're not proven, if you're dying anyways.
Let someone make the choice.
But we have the exact opposite situation here.
Losing Wings, Showing Support00:03:41
You're being forced on pain of losing your job, losing your access to public life.
You're being forced to take something you don't want to take, and there's no legal liability there.
That is, that's the worst case.
Luke Doe, DT, says we should have a choice if we want to pay for certain services these liberals provide, tired of paying for his holidays and royal living.
You know, you could be talking about so many different people, but you know, I just assume you're talking about Justin Trudeau and his endless days off.
He skipped parliament already, if you can believe it.
Daniel Baer said, What?
The courts actually acted with some level of real justice?
Thank God for small mercies.
At this stage of the game, I'll take any good news.
Let's keep this going.
Thanks, I'm sure you're writing about the case of Arthur Pavlovsky, his brother, and Chris Scott.
I just want to say again, and I said this in our staff meeting this morning: if Rebel News viewers had not crowdfunded those talented lawyers who won in court yesterday, there's no way that these plaintiffs, Arthur Pavlovsky's brother, David and Chris, there's just no way they would have been able to afford top lawyers.
I'm sorry, they just don't have an extra 200 grand kicking around or whatever the total cost over the last year has been.
And no one else was in there.
The Civil Liberties Association was not in there.
There was no religious charity fighting for the pastors.
There was no business group like the Chamber of Commerce fighting for the restaurateur.
They wouldn't have even been to court.
They wouldn't have been able to appeal.
And so the sentence meted out, this compelled speech sentence, that would now be Canadian precedence.
Can you believe that?
It's a miracle to me that Rebel News viewers fill the gap.
And I thank you for it.
And I want to tell you, it's put me in a positive mood.
I was, I won't lie, I was getting a little down in the dumps.
But I feel like there's a little bit of hope out there now.
I hope you feel the same way.
Let me close by showing you the video of the day, as we call it, our friend Tamara Ugalini at the Belleville Wild Wings, still fighting vaccine passports.
I'll say goodbye to you now.
Until next time, keep fighting for freedom.
And look at Tamara, a great freedom fighter herself.
Take a look.
How do they expect businesses who don't have background in law?
We're not lawyers, we're business owners.
So how are we supposed to honor and walk within the law when it is very confusing right now?
This court case could potentially set a precedent and it's important for all Canadians.
It's important for the future of our children.
It's important for the freedoms that we believe we have now to continue.
With Rebel News, I'm Tamara Ugalini back in Belleville, Ontario, with owner Jackie Bannis at Wild Wings, her establishment, where you came into the Rebel through our We Won't Ask campaign.
That's the campaign geared towards small businesses who think that it's none of their business whether or not people divulge their personal medical information in order to dine in or frequent your establishment.
So since the time of that interview, I guess we're going on about a month later now.
What has the support or what has the atmosphere look like for you here at Wild Wings?
So it's actually been phenomenal.
The support that we receive here is outstanding.
And I just want to thank everyone.
You guys have been incredible.
Supportive Community Response00:06:52
New people that we've never seen dine here before.
People are driving great distances to come and support us.
And then the locals are showing up more frequently than they had previously just to really show support.
So we've found, I've actually like normally on a Friday night before any of this started, we would need maybe four staff.
We now needed seven on a Friday night to get through the kind of busy rush that we had.
And now we have multiple rushes back to back.
So just seeing the amount of support, it's funny.
The people that we have conversations and we sort of like, there's multiple people just in tears.
The conversations that people are having now seem to be really authentic and connecting.
So it's just really nice to see people so grateful and happy and appreciative and supportive of us and grateful for the support we are giving them.
And it's almost like you know building a community when that's been so degraded over the last almost two years.
How does that compare with what you're hearing from other businesses who have decided to enforce what may be an unconstitutional law?
Yeah, so I don't know.
I haven't spoken to a lot of other business owners, but I have spoken to other people who are either frequenting other businesses or work at them because the way the regulations are written that people can work at other restaurants don't need to be vaccinated, but then they're not even allowed to dine at their own restaurant they work at.
And so I know it's funny.
But so we do have some local servers that are working at other restaurants and they come here for meals.
And then they also do say that they've noticed the business has slowed down dramatically at some of the other restaurants.
I've noticed if I've gone for takeout somewhere, because I'm still trying to support every business in town the best I can, restaurants especially.
So we try to get some takeout frequently from different places.
And even when I go there, if they are offering dine-in options, there's maybe only one table or two tables on a Friday, Saturday night, which we're packed, every table, you know.
So the people are clearly standing here with you.
The hammer has essentially come down on you since our last report.
Tell us where you're at with the health unit and what's happened.
So I think I had received 21 fines the last time you were here, but if not, we're up to 21.
And then the health unit contacted the liquor board, the AGCO, and advised them that because of the fines that they had issued, they were all sort of of the opinion I was no longer in good standing with the health unit.
Even though at this moment in time, I have chosen to plead not guilty on all of those fines and send them to the courts for an actual trial.
Right now, the AGCO has suspended my liquor license.
So they are right now treating me as guilty, being needing to prove my innocence versus the way Canadian law really should be innocent until proven guilty.
But so, which I believe is why they've only suspended it.
They're trying to take some actions, but they haven't revoked it completely.
So I guess that's kind of where they're in that gray area of still trying to treat me somewhat innocent versus all guilty all the way.
But so then last week, the AGCO, after several conversations with them and they got information from the health department, they did decide to suspend us.
So last week they suspended us.
And then somehow, I'm not sure, but somehow then I don't know if the AGCO contacted some news outlets.
But on Friday, I got a lot of information, different people contacting me, different news outlets contacting me, like CTV, CP24, like big ones, you know, down in Toronto.
And so there was a lot of articles put out.
I did do some interviews, radio interviews, just explaining the position of the AGCO.
And then I've also received a letter from the health unit.
They've now taken a court action against me.
So they've brought an application under Section 9 of the ROA.
And so that will be happening on Thursday where we're going to be defending that.
And so you've hired a legal team and you are working within the law to push back against this.
How can our viewers or the general public support you?
So yeah, we've decided that the best way to try to fight this, we're hoping, is to use the law and stay within the law.
We're not trying to just break all laws.
I know that it might appear because we're not asking for vaccine status and we're not aggressively pushing every single patron who comes in here to make sure they have a mask on.
We're honoring the exemptions according to even what the health unit has told us.
There are exemptions.
It's against the law for us to ask what an exemption is.
So we're honoring if guests show up or if staff choose not to wear masks, we're honoring that they are claiming the exemption.
And we believe that the asking for the medical information of whether someone is vaccinated or not is violating many laws, privacy acts and human rights discrimination laws and all sorts of things.
So we're doing our best to try to work within the law when it appears to me and our staff here, it appears that some of the laws are conflicting and contradicting each other.
So we're doing our best to try to honor as much of all the laws as we can without violating any of them.
And so that's part of what will hopefully be discussed during the court case on Thursday, November 25th, is bringing light to the fact that the laws are kind of conflicting with one another.
And how do they expect businesses who don't have background in law?
We're not lawyers.
We're business owners.
So how are we supposed to honor and walk within the law when it is very confusing right now?
You're not lawyers and you're also not doctors.
You're not health professionals.
Some of your staff maybe is even not allowed to determine whether someone's of age to drink and yet they're being asked to check people's IDs for their medical status.
The whole thing seems very discombobulated.
Now, this comes at no small cost to you, Jackie, your personal cost associated with fighting against this, what you called off camera, this Goliath.
Costly Stand Against Goliath00:02:16
So how are you funding this?
And how can your patrons support you in taking this stand?
Because obviously there's massive support for you, as evidenced by how busy you are.
Yeah, actually, that's sorry.
It brings up a lot of emotion when you talk about this because I've spent a lot of time with God and learning about how money is just a tool and that a lot of people have a lot of attachment to it.
And I've worked a lot in my life to break any attachment to money.
So when God said to move forward with this because it's something that is necessary, this court case could potentially set a precedent and it's important for all Canadians.
It's important for the future of our children.
It's important for the freedoms that we believe we have now to continue.
It's important for all of that.
And so if God said, move forward, then I said, okay, but it is going to be expensive.
I personally don't have all the money that I believe it might come to.
My own lawyer fees are expensive.
And potentially, depending on what the judge rules, if the judge does not see eye to eye on us and rules against us, then I will be held liable for the other side's court costs as well.
So it potentially could get extremely expensive.
People have suggested, I don't always like asking for help, but people have suggested that I do start a crowdfunding to because the people come in here and they'll just give me cash.
People are just like, you know, how can we help?
And they'll give me a $5 bill here, just anything that helps to go towards it.
But people did suggest if I could get a crowdfunding going, that it might be able to help support financially a little bit more.
And where can people find that?
So we used the Give, Send, Go platform.
So it's www.givesendgo.com/slash Wildwing Belleville.
And of course, just coming and having a bite to eat, tipping your server while these are small things that, again, you told me off camera that help toward bettering the future of small business and freedom of choice in Canada.
It was really funny.
Helping Small Businesses Through Crowdfunding00:01:30
We actually had this one was the best.
We had a customer who lives in Windsor place an online order and in his notes he said, don't actually make the food.
I won't be there to pick it up.
I just wanted to give you some money to help.
And so he just, that was the way he knew how to do it is he placed an online order and then said, but please don't make it so we didn't waste the food.
So, you know, people are doing whatever it is they can to help and people are calling and offering support.
And there's also on that give, send, go, there's a prayer request section so you can just add your prayers to the list of everybody else praying.
Well, keep me posted how things go on Thursday.
I hope that this interview will go out before then or maybe even on Thursday.
And we'll see how the judge rules based on the use of lawyers and law in Ontario to challenge the Reopening Ontario Act.
In Belleville, Ontario, I'm Tamara Ugolini for Rebel News.
If you question whether or not asking people for their medical documents to dine in or frequent your establishment is actually within the law and some of these laws and regulations and rules seem to be conflicting with one another, then head on over to our campaign at wewon'task.com.
It's a portal for small businesses who won't be asking people to divulge their personal information in order to enter or dine in at their establishment.
You can sign up for our campaign there.
We'll send you some nifty stickers if you choose to put them up and maybe we'll even feature your business.