Ezra Levant exposes chambers of commerce’ silence on pandemic policies, like CFIB’s delayed opposition to mandates despite 60% of small businesses reporting sales drops. Nathaniel Pavlovsky reveals invasive university exemptions—denied initially, approved only after legal threats—contrasting with Syndicate Northcrest v. Amsalem precedents. Schools like Red Deer College prove testing works without cases, yet Pavlovsky’s appeal highlights systemic hostility toward religious freedoms. Meanwhile, Twitter’s censorship under Parag Agrawal mirrors Silicon Valley’s suppression of dissent, pushing conservatives toward DeFi and Rumble as alternatives. The episode underscores how government overreach and corporate compliance are eroding democratic values, with further threats to independent media looming. [Automatically generated summary]
In today's podcast, I talk about something I don't talk a lot about.
I usually talk about the civil rights crisis we're in.
I don't often talk about what small businesses face.
Maybe I just sort of assume you know I care, but today I ask the question, where exactly have the chambers of commerce been the last two years?
You know, the people who are supposed to stick up for businesses.
Tak got your tongue?
I'll take you through some interesting exchanges I saw on Twitter today.
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All right, here's to this show.
Tonight, where has the Chamber of Commerce been the past two years?
It's December 10th, and this is the Esra 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 to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I care about civil liberties because I care about justice.
I feel like the world is out of balance when I see something morally wrong.
I see something morally wrong every day these days.
The pandemic has brought out the worst in too many people.
But at the end of the day, I'm not actually afraid of people.
The pandemic has brought out the worst in powerful institutions, including large corporations, but mainly, I'm worried about what the pandemic has brought out in our governments, because the difference between the government and the corporation or a private person is that the government has a monopoly on violence.
It can force you to do things, force things to be done to you.
I think corporations have been atrocious during the lockdowns, but in many cases, they were acting atrociously because the government forced them to act that way.
I genuinely don't think corporations would have introduced vaccine passports on their own, for example.
It's what Elon Musk said the other day.
Government is just a corporation at its ultimate worst, bigger than anything, but it can't fail.
It really can't go bankrupt.
You can never really fight it.
And at the end of the day, it can do violence to you illegally.
He even used the word immortal for the staying power of its regulations.
This clip.
There's a general problem, not just in the U.S., but in most countries, where the rules and regulations keep increasing every year.
Rules and regulations are immortal.
They don't die.
Occasionally you see some law with a sunset provision, but really, otherwise, the vast majority of rules and regulations live forever.
A government is a corporation in the limit.
So it is the most corporate thing.
It is maximum corporation.
But it's also a monopoly.
And also it's the only one that's allowed legally to do violence.
I find that also grievous.
Here's Arthur Pavlovsky and his brother David being arrested on the highway, hunted down like dogs or like terrorists, really.
Again, a corporation can't do that to you.
An individual can't do that to you.
I mean, I guess unless it's a gangster, I suppose, but at least then you can fight back and self-defense is on your side.
You can't use self-defense against the police.
Only the government could perpetrate such an offense against you.
So that's what I really care about.
I care about the morality of it, the psychology of it, the philosophy of it, the way we're all being rewired in society.
And to be honest, I haven't talked enough about the economics of all of it.
I've raged against the merger between big tech and big government, how Amazon and Netflix and Disney and all the online stores have thrived as their in-person bricks and mortar competitors have all been hobbled by the state, except Costco and Walmart.
Those stores never closed for a minute, did they?
Do you think Amazon.com would like the pandemic to go on forever?
Of course it would.
They're in league with big governments.
There used to be a name for that.
That corporate cronyism in bed with the government was a facet of fascism.
But what about independent businesses, small businesses, mom and pop shops, restaurants, convenience stores, the trades, barbers, gyms, a little motel maybe?
The stuff that makes a community, makes a neighborhood feel like home.
The places that are the backdrop to your life.
What about them?
So many restaurants have closed forever in the lockdowns.
Is there a restaurant or a bar or a place in your life that's much more than just where you had a meal once, but it was the setting for a major moment in your life, a happy moment in your life, a moment that made you feel a part of the place, like you belonged.
That's gone.
I drive by a restaurant near my house every day that closed because of the pandemic.
Not that I'd be allowed to go there now, even if it were open, but the sign of the restaurant is still up.
I remember going there for the first time on New Year's Eve a few years ago with my family.
I'm sad that it's gone.
Maybe I'm being sentimental, but I think you need to know the place where you're living, these little stores, these little battalions of life.
Paradoxically, our little company, Rebel News, has grown because of the crisis.
I am not happy about that.
I would prefer it if the world were normal and we were a small struggling company trying to make payroll each fortnight.
I wish we were not in a crisis of society where no one can trust the government or the other media or any institution really.
Our motto, telling the other side of the story, was meant for a time like this, though.
Our decision not to take any media bailout money was done for our own reasons, but in a time like this, it makes all the difference, don't you think?
We've grown at Rebel News.
We're twice the size of what we were a year ago because people want more of the other side of the story.
Our projects with the Democracy Fund try to give people some helpful action, not just words.
On Monday, I'll show you a shocking video about the price that our journalists pay for being independent.
It will trouble you deeply.
But today, let me focus on the question, where is the business lobby, the Chamber of Commerce?
Where is, for want of a better phrase, you know, the businessman, the business community, the people who are supposed to champion companies, the Chamber of Commerce, not Facebook and Amazon and Walmart and Costco, not the giants.
They'll do fine.
I mean, the local guys, the small guys, where are they?
Where were their lobbies last year when the two-week lockdown started to turn into a two-year lockdown?
Where were they?
Did you see them even once?
Where was the restaurant lobby?
It's a big lobby.
Where are the hotel people?
Anyone in the travel industry, where were they?
Where was the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the CFIB?
They used to be pretty good guys.
Sort of like the Taxpayers Federation, they were pro-business, but mainly small business.
Where have they been?
Where were they when Chris Scott's Whistle Stop Diner was shut down, when Adam Skelly's barbecue was shut down?
They were hiding like every other institution.
In fact, most chambers of commerce welcomed vaccine passports.
They decided it was the best way to end the lockdown.
The government told them so, by sacrificing civil liberties for themselves and their customers.
As if that would ever work.
But look at this exchange I saw today on Twitter.
The Globe and Mail wrote, happening today at 2 p.m., Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, now joined by Health Minister Christine Elliott, will announce new measures, vaccine passport stays past January 17th, and stricter process for verifying medical exemptions.
So completely predictable, a disaster for civil liberties, a disaster for normalcy, and obviously a business disaster, unless you're Amazon and Netflix.
Around 80% of Ontarians are vaccinated, by the way.
That was supposed to be the end of the lockdowns, the way out.
Obviously, the vaccines aren't working when Bill Gates says it.
Can we please say it now?
You know, we didn't have vaccines that block transmission.
We got vaccines that help you with your health, but they only slightly reduce the transmissions.
We need a new way of doing the vaccine.
But my point today is, so what does the voice of small business have to say about this extended lockdown and vaccine mandates and the continuing marathon here?
Well, here's that same Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Their boss, Dan Kelly, tweeted, regardless of one's views on vaccine passports, there is no doubt they've led to a further drop in sales for the small businesses required to use them.
Extending this policy extends the losses among hospitality and arts recreation businesses.
Oh, okay.
So nearly two years in, and the CFIB starts to timidly oppose what's going on.
But does he even?
Here's his next tweet in the series.
Over 60% of businesses required to use vaccine passports report lower sales.
As a direct result, less than 10% saw an increase.
Over half have faced abuse and or increased costs.
I hate the impact of this chart, the fact that businesses are being crushed.
I hate that.
I hate the fact that customers are unhappy.
Life is being disrupted.
Normal is being delayed.
And people are saying so, even if it's just in private, to upholster 74% in the hospitality industry, 66% in arts and recreation, so theaters, gyms, sports clubs.
This poll specifically asked about vaccine passports, demanding proof of vaccination.
Now, you wouldn't know it given that 100% of the media loves the lockdowns.
It's sad, but I see some hope in those stats that ordinary people, ordinary customers, ordinary businesses are not happy about this new biomedical security state that we're being told to live in.
People aren't happy about being treated like prisoners in a prison.
People aren't happy about being deputized to be prison wardens.
Do you see that one line?
62% of restaurants and 55% of gyms say they've had, quote, abuse or negative activity because of the vaccine mandate.
Now, I don't want people to abuse each other.
They conflate the word abuse with the word negative.
I don't want shopkeepers or workers to be harmed, but telling them negative things is fine.
That's freedom.
That's listening to your customer.
That's customer feedback.
And that's hopeful.
Don't you think that people are letting it be known they are not happy?
But here's what gets me about the chambers of commerce, even the so-called business-friendly CFIB that's supposed to be for the little guy.
Here's another tweet by Dan Kelly.
He says, CFP is waiting to learn if the Ontario government will offer any support to those businesses required to use the system even longer.
Alberta and PEI have offered some financial help, but not forward nation.
And this is such a bad time for the feds to dramatically cut small biz support programs.
So that's your demand for bailouts or handouts or grants, financial help.
You can't bring yourself to call for an end to this punishment, an end to the emergencies, an end to the law.
You just want a few trinkets in compensation.
That'll be coming out of your taxes or dead anyways.
The government doesn't come up with the money.
It's being wrung out of you.
You can't bring yourself to call for freedom.
You're called the Canadian Federation of Independence.
You just can't say it.
With the changes, the federal government has proposed in C2.
Only one of five small businesses in need of help will qualify for wage or rent help in the very lean months ahead.
Join our call to fix the problem and then a link.
Wage or rent help?
For how long, mate?
Another two years?
Maybe another 20 years.
I clicked on the petition that they linked to.
There, I looked at it.
They have five bullet point demands.
Do you see that?
All of them are for more money, more handouts.
None of them are for freedom or just removing this emergency.
Or how's this for a crazy idea?
Silicon Valley's Global Compliance Conundrum00:15:20
Letting every business choose their own fear level.
You can have the quadruple mask, quintuple vax store for all the terrified people up there, and you can have the easy peasy store for others.
How about let businesses you didn't think of that, did you?
And these are the capitalists, really?
Of course, they're crony capitalists now, just like Amazon and Netflix are.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
That's a disgrace.
Stay with us for more.
Well, better the devil you know, they say, and there's a reason for that because, phrased in other ways, things can always get worse.
And these days, if they can, they often will.
Jack Dorsey was the Rasputin-like CEO and founder of Twitter that has become the digital public square for a lot of political worlds, certainly in the United States, Canada, UK, Australia.
Twitter's banned in China itself, but there are hundreds of Chinese agents on Twitter for the government, diplomats, military voices, all propagandizing against the West.
That's allowed on Twitter, but Jack Dorsey banned Donald Trump, the sitting president of the United States.
However bad Jack Dorsey was, though, it looks like it's getting worse.
He is succeeded in his position by someone named Parag Agrawal.
And you can see the changes already.
Joining us now via Skype from Austin, Texas, is our friend Alan Bokari, senior tech correspondent of Breitbart.com.
Alan, great to see you again.
It's hard to imagine saying, I long for the days of Jack Dorsey.
He was the censor who suspended the New York Post's Twitter account when they broke the news in the 2020 election about Hunter Biden's laptop.
It's hard to think he could be the better than a better and in a better and worse diptych, but he was, wasn't he?
That's absolutely right.
Now, I have a rule when Silicon Valley CEOs are replaced.
You know, however bad the previous CEO was, the replacement is almost certainly going to be worse.
That's because the political climate in corporate America now is just so left-wing that they're constantly moving to the left.
And, you know, the replacement of a CEO is always an opportunity to find someone more woke, more radical, more extremist.
And this is what we're seeing now with the new CEO of Twitter.
He's barely been in his position for a week.
And already we're seeing mass suspensions, mass ban, you know, accounts with tens of thousands of followers, hundreds of thousands in some cases, being taken down witty-nilly without even any explanation.
So, you know, we're moving towards even more censorship on Twitter than we've seen in the past.
Yeah, I mean, it's not just hate speech, which, of course, is a code for conservative speech.
In the last week, two very surprising but very telling Twitter accounts have been nuked.
And I see this in your latest article, Breitbart.com, called Twitter Blacklists account providing updates on Ghillen Maxwell trial.
That's Jeffrey Epstein's procurer who helped him run his pedophile ring, Guillene Maxwell or Ghislin, as some people pronounce it.
All it did was spread information about the trial.
There was no, at least as far as I know, there was nothing nefarious about it.
It was literally magnifying what was going on in that courtroom.
Deleted.
Another one called Nancy Pelosi Portfolio Tracker, which just, hey, here's what Nancy Pelosi is investing in.
Public information in the public interest, deleted, deleted.
That can't be a coincidence.
It can't be.
And, you know, both of those accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers.
So whoever ran them, I took probably years of work, you know, certainly many, many hours of work into building out those accounts.
And then Twitter just takes it away overnight.
But yeah, those two accounts are interesting because it shows that on the one hand, they're not going to allow anyone to report on the wrongdoing of the elites who isn't part of the elites themselves.
So, you know, CNN is going to be allowed to report on the Ghislaine Maxwell trial.
But if you're an ordinary person with a Twitter account, then it's going to be a lot more difficult for you.
You might even get banned.
And then you have the Nancy Pelosi portfolio tracker, which was a fantastic account.
It drew attention to the fact that the investments of Nancy Pelosi have been surprisingly successful over her long career in Congress.
I remember that account tweeting that Nancy Pelosi must be the next Warren Buffett, given how successful her investments are.
Obviously, the underlying theme here is there's some suspicion, at least, of insider trading going on.
And Pelosi has faced those allegations in the past.
But that account has gone down to hundreds of thousands of followers.
In the past week, we've seen numerous right-wing accounts go down, various conservative bloggers, and Barry's story.
They've been taken down as well.
So what I think is going on here is Twitter is deploying some sort of network analysis tool.
And what network analysis is, is I've written about this at length in my book, Deleted on Tech Censorship.
Network analysis is analyzing who follows who on social media.
So if you want to identify a political movement or a social movement or some group of like-minded people on a social network, you want to look at who's following who.
And social networks do this all the time to identify, for example, certain groups of consumers, like people who buy Nike sneakers or people who buy Apple products.
They'll use network analysis to find out who those people are.
But you can also determine who are members of a particular political movement using the same tool.
And I think they've used that for shadow banning in the past, and they're now using that for full-scale permanent bans to ban an entire movement at once.
Yeah, I find it troubling.
I did a show when Parag Agarwal took over, and I quoted the same interview that you quote in your latest article in Breitbart.
It was a comment he made to MIT Technology Review.
I think it was at a conference.
And I'm just going to read this.
You quoted in your article in Breitbart.
This is the new Twitter CEO.
Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to survey healthy public conversation.
And our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.
And he goes on to talk about speech is unlimited, but attention is limited.
And he wants to use the algorithm to divert attention away from the things that are unhealthy and make people pay attention to the things that are healthy.
But of course, he's the judge of what's healthy and unhealthy.
And the fact that he says so so blatantly shows that that's considered normal in Silicon Valley.
I find this shocking, but he said it out loud at a conference.
He clearly wasn't shy about it.
Yeah, I remember a few years ago in 2018, I published this document from inside Google called The Good Censor.
And it was essentially admitting to censorship on the part of Silicon Valley, then moving away from their ideals of free speech.
And this was like a big story at the time because they were hiding it.
This was a report that was not available to the public.
But what I've noticed increasingly is that the most Orwellian things you can imagine these days, tech companies simply admit to them openly.
It's become the norm in Silicon Valley, as you said, that they're going to censor.
They're going to choose, you don't choose what you see, they choose what you see.
And, you know, they use all this Orwellian terminology, like healthy public conversations.
And, of course, they define what's healthy and unhealthy.
Yeah.
You know, I can't help but think of it.
Sergei Brin, one of the brains behind Google, he came over from the former Soviet Union, and I think he had a memory of what Soviet totalitarianism was like.
I don't know why over time he sort of lost that.
Maybe being a gazillionaire does that to you.
Maybe the power went to his head.
I don't know why.
But there was a while there.
I truly believe where that helped shaped his thinking.
Parag Agarwal came to the United States as an adult, really to seek his fortune.
And that's wonderful.
A lot of people do.
But I don't know if he has in his bones the First Amendment.
And there's many wonderful immigrants to the United States from India.
You and I both have an incredible friend, Harmeet Dylan, America's leading freedom of speech advocate of Indian descent.
I just think that this guy came to America to get rich.
It would be like if someone from China came to America to get rich and said, oh, yeah, I sort of like the freedom because it lets me get rich.
But he doesn't really care in his bones about the First Amendment.
He just doesn't care.
And it sort of gets in the way of getting rich.
I'm worried about that.
I'm not really picking on the fact that he's from India.
I think some of the worst censors are American born and bred.
Some of the worst America haters are born in America.
I just wish there was someone in any of these creative industries who loved freedom as an ideal.
And I think Jack had about like a drop of that in his blood.
This fellow doesn't even care.
I don't think he does.
I think it's perfectly valid to say, you know, some cultures value freedom more than others, particularly, I say, the post-Soviet countries, because they remember what tyranny was like.
I think actually the post-Soviet countries probably, the people who live there value freedom maybe more than perhaps anyone else in the world right now, including the West, because the West has never experienced that kind of Soviet communist tyranny.
And this Angerwald guy, it's very clear to me what he's doing.
He has just been made CEO.
He knows what he needs to do to win the favor of the press, to get good press to Twitter.
It's all about gaining status with the press, with the media, with the people who run the show in America.
And he knows that the way to do that is to do a lot of bans early on to signal exactly what his new regime of Twitter is going to be like.
You know, one of the things that I've learned in the pandemic is a lot of the technologies that are being deployed in vaccine passports, in lockdowns, in app technology, they were tested out in communist China.
For example, in the weaker province of Xinjiang, they have omni-surveillance apps that you need to show to travel around.
This is on cell phones.
We know this.
We received confidential Canadian military documents describing this.
And it troubles me that a lot of the social credit, so to speak, style surveillance in China is being brought here.
And it makes me wonder if maybe Parag Aguawal's big score is to make Twitter China compliant, to start gagging voices on Twitter so that he can say, hey, China, we're going to have the pipeline flow the other way.
We used to take censorship tools from China to America.
Now we've practiced how to manage wild conversations in America.
Can you let us into China, please?
I don't know.
Maybe that's a crazy idea, but he really is trying out China-style conversation moderation in America.
I'm just sad to see it.
Alam, I don't know what to make of it other than to say I'm sad.
It's certainly possible, your theory.
I mean, we've seen this before from Silicon Valley companies.
Google tried at one point to make a censored search engine for the Chinese market.
They eventually backed down on the heavy bipartisan pressure.
I actually think that suppressing political dissidents in America is more acceptable to American elites than the Chinese suppressing dissidents in Shenzhen or in Hong Kong, because you'll often see both Republican and Democrat politicians, very prominent ones, criticizing China, criticizing China for cracking down on dissidents in Hong Kong.
But those same people are completely silent when, for example, people are locked up for months on end for trespassing in a federal building, or when every single Silicon Valley company joins forces to make certain American citizens second class, because that's exactly what they've done, or when they came up to build the American equivalent of a social credit school.
If you say enough of the wrong things, if you have enough wrong thoughts, then you won't have a bank account, you won't have a PayPal account, you won't have access to social media, you won't have access to the public square.
And many of the politicians who criticize who critically attack China, who are China hawks, say very little about this.
So in a way, I think we're seeing something even scarier than American elites posing up to China.
We're seeing American elites more concerned by dissidents in foreign countries than they are by the treatment of dissidents here in America.
You know, I think you're right on that.
Let me ask you one last question because I want to leave on maybe a hopeful note.
Rumble, the video platform that sees itself as a neutral, politically neutral alternative to YouTube.
And it used to be a home of conservatives, but they've gone out of the way to recruit progressive liberals like Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard and Russell Brand from the UK, like people who are certainly not right-wing.
You know, they're growing.
Their viewership is growing.
They've had some investment rounds.
I should disclose I have like a sliver of a fraction of a percent of a millimeter stake in it.
Does it have any chance?
Or if it gets big enough, will it just be killed through some larger creature in the internet infrastructure?
I think it definitely has a chance.
I also think it's a good thing that they're recruiting liberals because what you don't want with these new platforms is them to be ghettos.
The really good thing about social media is that you can, well, it used to be the case, you can naturally persuade people.
You could get the message to people who aren't conservatives, to people who are on the fence, and maybe change their views in some way.
Religious Exemptions Debate00:14:16
Whereas if you have a platform that's 99% conservative, it's good in some ways, but you don't get that exchange of views.
I think Rumble has a really good chance, actually.
I'm going to wait and see how it develops, because as you said, all of these platforms are dependent on other entities.
So, you know, they probably want to maintain their access to the Google Play Store, to the Apple App Store.
You know, we've seen other platforms like Parla and Gab get kicked off of those.
They also want to, you know, not get deplatformed by banks and payment processes, which has happened before, again, to Gab.
So these are all risks for any social media that's committed to political neutrality.
But yeah, we'll see where it goes.
I am optimistic about Rumble and the broader alternative tech ecosphere at the moment, though.
Well, I hope you're right.
I mean, we got a real scare earlier this year when YouTube completely demonetized us, banned us from accepting super chats at their call when people make little donations, gave us a strike.
We feel like we're on borrowed time on Twitter, sorry, on YouTube.
So that moment we started publishing on a multiple of platforms, Rumble, Odyssey, a Canadian free speech startup called SuperU.net.
On payment processing, you know what I'll say?
Like every conservative should learn how to use DeFi, decentralized finance, cryptocurrencies, because that's a system of exchanging value and making payments that really can't be censored.
Like genuinely can't.
There are some cryptocurrency exchanges that are centrally run, but the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem, you know, genuinely is open to everyone, makes a very radical tool.
You know, that's a very important point because, of course, we've had our battles with PayPal deplatforming us too.
Alan Bokari, it's so good to catch up with you.
You really are ahead of the curve on all these issues.
What you talk about in 2018 comes true in 2021.
You're definitely the early warning system on that stuff.
Great to see you.
Thanks for your time.
Good to see you, Ezra.
There you have it.
Alan Bokari, Senior Tech Editor and Correspondent at Breitbart.com.
Stay with us more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Jillian Davis says, the hospitals will be overwhelmed, yet we can afford to drum medical professionals out of service.
I just moved to Ontario and have been told it could take as long as six years to get a GP, but we're preventing doctors from graduating.
Just another day in Clown World, I guess.
Oh, we will feel the echoes of these atrocious policy decisions for decades.
And I'm not even talking about what we don't know about the vaccine's long-term effects.
It's just the worst.
I really think it's the worst civil liberties crisis ever in Canada.
Definitely the worst public health crisis.
And I'm not talking about the virus.
I'm talking about the politicians who, as you saw in Ontario, are just even digging in harder.
Well, that's our show for this week and for today, of course.
I look forward to seeing you again on Monday.
We have some bad news to share with you then.
I'm not trying to tease you or depress you.
I just want to tell you that we've fighting for freedom and being an independent media company in Canada is difficult and it's getting more difficult.
And we'll tell you the background to that on Monday.
But let me leave you with two things.
First of all, an invitation to ask me anything.
We're going to try that.
We're going to have a show.
Ask me anything.
Just send your thoughts to letters to Ezra.ca, whatever you want to ask.
We'll do a show of your questions and I'll answer them.
Try something new.
Have some fun.
And let me leave you with what we call the video of the name, just chosen somewhat randomly from our videos that are elsewhere on Rebel News.
And this is an interview with Nathaniel Pavlovsky.
If that last name rings a bell, it should.
You'll see why.
I'll leave you with that video as I say to you, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
The procedure itself, both the initial exemption procedure and the appeal was very intimate, very invasive and personal.
And it's interesting because there's a Supreme Court case called Syndicate Northcrest v. Amsalem, where the court outlines the test for determining whether a law or a policy is infringement of someone's religious beliefs.
But what I've noticed is that the university and employers are ignoring that legal standard and they're implementing their own.
Don't give up.
You know, just keep appealing the decision.
Meet with whoever is responsible for this.
Tell them that if your religious beliefs aren't going to be upheld like the Constitution and the Alberta Human Rights Act tells us that it should be, threaten them with legal action.
Tell them that you'll file a human rights complaint.
Tell them you'll file small claims.
You'll take this as far as it needs to go because we feel like we're being discriminated against.
Warning.
Censorship.
Warning.
Censorship.
Adam Sos here for Rebel News.
And I'm now joined by Nathaniel Povlowski, son of Pastor Arthur Pavlowski, who, as you know, was sent to jail for daring to open his church throughout COVID restrictions.
We were here just a few weeks ago, and you yourself were part of the protest for students advocating for, among other things, religious exemptions from vaccine mandates.
On one front, we do have some good news because you yourself, despite some invasive procedures, obviously managed to attain that.
If you can tell us about what the process looked like and how you managed to obtain the religious exemption.
Yeah, so my name is Nathaniel Arthur's son.
I'm in my last year of studies here at Mount Royal.
My initial religious exemption was denied and I appealed it and miraculously it was accepted because from what I've heard of, I was the only one who's been accepted so far.
Definitely at least a Christian exemption.
I've been the only one.
The procedure itself, both the initial exemption procedure and the appeal was very intimate, very invasive and personal.
And it's interesting because there's a Supreme Court case called Syndicate Northcrest v. Amsalem where the court outlines the test for determining whether a law or a policy is infringement of someone's religious beliefs.
The first part of that is establishing whether the person has a genuine nexus with an established religion.
But it's a subjective test and you don't have to go into much detail.
The second part of that is determining whether the actual law or policy is an infringement of that person's religious beliefs and violates their ability to live in accordance with their beliefs.
But what I've noticed is that the university and employers are ignoring that legal standard and they're implementing their own, which leaves a lot of room for problems.
My procedure was very invasive.
I felt like it violated my privacy.
They demanded that I, in my initial denial, they basically claimed that my beliefs were invalid.
So for the appeal process, they made me go into detail of how my beliefs apply in every aspect of my life, going into crazy detail, very personal details.
And it just, it's a small indication for how our core values, like privacy, privacy is one of the core values of democracy, especially here in Canada.
And it just, it's a small indication for how our values, our core Canadian values are being superseded by these un-Canadian governance and mandates.
Well, it goes to show that you're studying criminal justice, so that's great.
The Anselm case, the interesting thing there is that that is functionally for most considered to be the precedent-setting case.
And one of the conclusions was that a strictly individually held belief that can be affirmed is sufficient for a religious exemption.
So we've seen lots of schools saying, for example, for Catholics, well, the bishops don't say that it's automatically a grounds for exemption, or other religious groups saying that vaccination isn't necessarily a violation, but that doesn't, per the precedent of the law, violate your personal convictions.
Of the people that you've spoken with on this issue, there was a significant group of people.
I think some of you are connected in standing opposed to this.
From that group, is there anyone that you've heard of at all who's received successfully a religious exemption other than yourself?
No, so I'm the only person who's received one that I know of, and we are all connected.
There's a large group of us here at this university.
I've heard of a few students at U of C, but Mount Royal has been denying them all.
I was the first person that I've heard of to be accepted.
And what was the process?
I know lots of people out there are just feeling deflated.
I know people who are deeply bound by their convictions, and that is their reason for not being vaccinated.
They've been denied at schools.
What did you do?
How did you stand up for yourself and secure that religious exemption?
So I had a meeting with the person who's responsible for these exemptions here at the university.
I basically went over my denial letter, how I felt that it was wrong that I was denied, that my religious beliefs were essentially spat on.
And basically, I also said that if I feel like I'm being discriminated, like my religious beliefs are being undermined, I'm going to take legal action.
I'm going to file a human rights complaint and I'm probably going to file small claims because I have been dealt damages here.
So I had a meeting with a person and he kind of went over what they expect from a religious exemption, but they never told anyone this.
There's no like set principle for what they standard, there's no standard that they give.
So he kind of outlined what they're looking for.
But even then, he said it's very difficult to obtain one and this and that.
So it was a really strenuous procedure to get it accepted.
But it's possible.
And it seems like there is from many of the stories I've heard, some of them flat out horror stories of people being yelled at and called villains, people we've spoken to, for daring to not want to get vaccinated.
There is among administrations, it would seem, and we'll certainly reach out to Mount Royal for commentary, but an ideological support for vaccines and an attempt to undermine any efforts for religious exemption.
Would you echo that sentiment?
Yeah, absolutely.
Their official stance is that they're not forcing anyone.
Of course they're not, but they're coercing us.
They're telling us that there's no other options.
You have to get it or you don't get to continue our education.
But you see with colleges like in Red Deer, they reversed their mandate.
So now they're going to continue with rapid testing and no student is going to be discriminated against.
So I don't see why Mount Royal and University of Calgary and all Albertan universities can't echo what Red Deer College did and do the same thing.
And another question, this is more on the science, I suppose, of the matter, but I've had to be tested to attend some events for the sake of reporting.
And the reality of the situation is if a school implements, let's say, testing, we know that people who have the vaccine aren't exempt from spreading.
Someone who's been tested frequently, we know they don't have a test and they will not spread.
What is the opposition to the far more logical implementation of testing programs that would ensure people's rights aren't violated and they aren't being forced to be vaccinated?
Why are people so opposed to that rational alternative?
It's a great question and they have no answer to that because I asked, I posed that same question myself.
They say it's expensive, which doesn't make sense because we're paying for our own tests now.
They're not provided by the university anymore.
And it's an automated procedure that replies to our tests.
So it scans it, makes sure everything is in order.
But to claim that it's too expensive is ridiculous.
It's just an excuse.
The science behind it, nobody has tested positive that I know of who is part of the rapid testing program right now.
So it's obviously a safe alternative, and I don't understand why they're not continuing with it.
And finally, perhaps a word of encouragement for students out there who are in the same situation or maybe have been denied.
And any thoughts for those people?
Yeah, don't give up.
You know, just keep appealing the decision.
Meet with whoever is responsible for this.
Tell them that if your religious beliefs aren't going to be upheld, like the Constitution and the Alberta Human Rights Act tells us that it should be, threaten them with legal action.
Tell them that you'll file a human rights complaint.
Tell them you'll file a small claim.
You'll take this as far as it needs to go because we feel like we're being discriminated against.
Well, Nathaniel, thanks for your brave stance.
Thanks for sharing this update with us.
For students out there who are in the same situation, do not hesitate to reach out to us.
FightvaccinePassports.com is the place to go to share your stories.
We are waging a number of fights against these discriminatory measures across this country.
We aired some of Nathaniel Pavlovsky's concerns with Mount Royal University, who provided the following response.
They said that Mount Royal University's position on COVID-19 is contained here and they provided a link.
They said that it outlines how individuals at MRU may apply for an accommodation under protected grounds as enumerated by the Human Rights Act.
Mount Royal University did not specifically reply to the concerns aired by Nathaniel Povlowski, aside from what's provided on their website.
I want to thank you all for tuning in for Rebel News.