Brian Peckford, Newfoundland’s last premier to sign Canada’s 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, warns it was "abused unbelievably" during the pandemic—federal, provincial, and municipal governments overrode freedoms (speech, travel, equality) under Section 1 without justification. His 17-month negotiations broke Pierre Trudeau’s deadlock after the Supreme Court struck down his unilateral patriation attempt on September 28, 1981, yet bureaucratic power and $40B+ annual health transfers now undermine provincial autonomy. Peckford links this erosion to pandemic-era crackdowns like Judge Adam Germain’s compelled speech ruling against Pastor Arthur Pulawsky, comparing it to authoritarian censorship, while urging citizens to resist democratic decline through legal appeals and unity. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to have a long-form interview with the last surviving premier who signed the Charter of Rights into law 40 years ago, Sir Premier Brian Peford.
He was the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.
He now hangs his hat in Parksville, B.C. He's got a lot to say and we'll go through it with him.
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Thanks.
Here's today's show.
Tonight, a special visit with Brian Peckford, the last of the premiers who signed the Charter of Rights when it was drafted 40 years ago.
We'll talk about the pandemic, freedom, and the rule of law.
It's January 5th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
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Brian Peford was just 36 years old when he became the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador back in 1979 and was almost immediately thrust into the highest stakes interprovincial negotiation since Confederation itself, namely the repatriation of our Constitution from the UK and the drafting of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of the Constitution Act of 1982, as it later became known.
He is the last surviving premier from those negotiations.
What did those men 40 years ago have in mind for our civil liberties?
What would they think of our courts today and how they've let the pandemic lockdowns run rampant?
Does Premier Peford have any advice?
Does he feel any hope?
I spoke with him earlier today.
And joining us now via Skype from Parksville, British Columbia, is Premier Peckford.
What a pleasure to talk with you.
And to catch up, I look forward to a hearty discussion because you are, if I'm not mistaken, the sole surviving Premier who signed the Charter of Rights when it, back in 1982, you were Premier of Newfoundland.
And so your view on how the Charter has been applied in general, but also with regards to the pandemic, is very important.
It's the authentic meaning of the political leaders of the time.
Tell me, in a nutshell, how do you feel the charter has been used or not used to defend civil liberties in this pandemic?
I think it's been abused unbelievably.
I think the provisions of the charter, especially sections 2, 6, 7, and 15, which are the key ones as it relates to freedoms and rights of individuals, have been violated all over the place by every single government in Canada.
And when I say every single government, I mean all the provinces, the federal government, the territorial governments, and of course, the municipal governments who are creatures of the province.
So there's innumerable violations through these pandemic measures by all of these governments.
And they're trying their darndest to get away, to get away with it through a very nefarious mismangling of section one of the charter.
And this is where I have been arguing now for several months, both on my blog and at public meetings that I've held on Vancouver Island.
Many people on Vancouver Island, the various communities, have asked me to come to speak to them.
To explain the charter and explain the constitution to them, and I have done so.
And this this uh, i'm so glad i'm on with you today to explain what it is that the problem that the governments are doing wrong as it relates to the constitution.
And the first thing Ezra, is that everybody forgets, when we talk about the constitution, we're not talking about your normal legislation through a legislature or through the federal parliament.
Okay, constitutions are created, as you know, by being a lawyer, to enhance and protect the permanence of important values to that society.
Okay our, in our case unfortunately, it took until 1981, really 1982 until we had a written charter of rights and freedoms.
Before that it was Common British common law, customs and conventions that had built up over time.
And even the Bill Of Rights in 1960 god bless, John Done Diefenbaker was only a federal act of parliament and therefore only applied to federal jurisdiction.
In other words, it didn't apply to the whole nation, so it was limited.
That's why the charter was important in 1981.
82, because we are now applying rights and freedoms to every individual in Canada, from Bonavista to Tofino, from A Calibrate to Niagara, every individual is going to have rights and freedoms enshrined in writing in a sacred document called the constitution, where things of permanence lay.
Now, this is where the provinces and the federal government, and a couple of courts already, have gotten it all wrong, because they're more or less interpreting the constitution as just another piece of legislation, when it's not.
And, by the way, the first two concepts in the charter are, whereas this nation is founded on the principles of one, the supremacy of go-and two, the rule of law.
And after that sentence, there is a grammatical thing called a colon yeah, it's not period right, it's not a semicolon right, it's not a comma, it's a colon which means everything that comes after this right is interpreted in the context of the supremacy of god and the rule of law.
In the and the couple of decisions that have already come down on lower courts because none of the higher courts have ruled on the pandemic measures yet from a constitutional point of view these judges have completely ignored the context into which They're supposed to render their decision, the supremacy of God and the rule of law.
That's why I am so vociferous today and have been for some time now and will continue to be, because I think it's up to the body politic now and people like yourself and your program, which thousands of people all over Canada watch every day.
The best way now that we can change those lower court decisions is to influence the higher court judges who haven't ruled yet and the Supreme Court of Canada.
I say, in Canadian terms, the hockey game isn't over yet.
We're in the second period.
We're in the second period.
And so we still have a chance to change the outcome of the game.
Well, let me stop you there for a second because we're almost two years into this.
I mean, most of these states of emergency were declared, if I recall, in March of 2020.
We're in January 2022.
And I haven't seen any major matters being treated in the courts of appeal, let alone the Supreme Court of Canada.
Whereas in the United States, the Supreme Court of the United States has dealt with, for example, lockdowns in California.
There was one wonderful ruling where churches were told they couldn't have singing, but Hollywood TV shows could.
And the judges said, if you can sing on TV, you can sing on a church.
And there were some wonderful cases smacking down California, smacking down Massachusetts.
And the fact that they got to that higher level of judge, I don't think there's been a major case about the pandemic and civil liberties that's even got to the court of appeal, unless I missed one.
Why is our system so slow?
Well, you raise a really, really good point.
And unfortunately, that's the way it is in Canada right now, that it has to go through these procedures to get to the appeal court.
In other words, it has to go to the trial division of the Supreme Court of a province before it goes to the appeal court.
Now, there's a couple outstanding.
The decisions both out of BC and Manitoba, I think, are going to be appealed to the appeal court of those provinces.
So we're quickly getting there.
But the United States system is different than ours.
Their culture of individual rights and freedoms is far more embedded.
Their Bill of Rights began in 1791, 1791.
Ours began in 1981.
So the whole culture of jurisprudence in the United States, as well as the way the states of the United States protect their rights, is much different than it is in Canada, especially individual rights.
I think that's one of the reasons for it, because the courts are automatically seized with the importance of this.
They view this as very like they do the right to bear arms.
These are very fundamental rights for America.
Johnny come lately's when it comes to writing something in a constitution.
Ours whole tradition was based upon British common law and customs and conventions, as I said earlier.
So I think that's the difference.
It's two different nations, two different evolutions of both our societies and our jurisprudence.
You know, that's very, that's very interesting.
Now, earlier in our conversation, you mentioned particular sections of the Constitution, 2, 6, 7, and 15.
Now, I went to law school and I happen to know those sections, section 2.
Those are the fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of association, things like that.
But for many of our viewers, they would know those sections by what they actually say.
Do you want to take us through?
Because you said, yeah, I agree with you.
Americans love individual liberty.
Like one of their early mottos was, don't tread on me.
And it was a picture of a foot on a snake, and this snake is saying, don't tread on me.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I think that Canadians don't realize that our constitution has some pretty good stuff in it.
You mentioned the preamble, like section two, section six, seven, fifteen.
There's some good stuff there that should be helping us now.
Absolutely.
I'm so glad you put it that way.
And they got to help us.
We've got to, as citizens, ensure that what is written in this sacred document gets honored by the courts.
And like you said, section two says freedom of speech, right?
Freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom.
Freedom of conscience, freedom of religion.
That's in section two.
And then the freedom to assemble and the freedom to associate.
They're being broken all over the place right now by the governments of this land.
I mean, it is ridiculous.
And by the way, we'll come to section one again in a minute, but let's just do the other section first.
Then we go on to section six.
Section six, six is the mobility section, okay?
Mobility.
In other words, the right of a Canadian, every Canadian, no matter where they live, what?
To move across Canada as they see fit, to travel across Canada or to leave Canada.
That's there in that Section 6 as well.
And then what's so, so important today, not only the travel one, but the right to pursue a living anywhere in Canada.
And here we have governments laying people off, right, left, and center, based upon a fictitious notion that somehow the country is in peril when the country is not in peril at all.
Then we go on to section, I love beautiful section, section seven, right?
The right to life, liberty, right?
And the security of the person.
And the security of the person comes directly to the jazz, right?
It's the right of a person.
A person has a right over their own person.
And the government has no right to coerce or force people to get one of these injections.
It is a violation of that section of the charter.
And then, if those three sections weren't sufficient, how about section 15?
Equality before the law.
Every individual in Canada is equal before the law.
Now, right now, here in Parksville, British Columbia, where I live right now, I am not equal before the law.
I am not allowed to go certain places in this city that other people are allowed to go to because of my medical status.
Okay, so my rights are being violated under Section 15 as we speak.
So these are precious rights that only became written in a constitution 40 years ago.
And they weren't put there lightly by me and the other first ministers at the time.
And it was our proposal, by the way, Newfoundland's proposal that broke the deadlock on the night of the 4th of November 1981 that led to the agreement the next day when all the first ministers met.
You know, I'm pretty familiar with this.
And these proposals of mine are in my book that I published in 2012 called Someday the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More.
All of the proposals are for the first time were made public by me in 2012.
So I know a little bit about what I'm talking about here because it was my proposal and the Newfoundland proposal that broke the deadlock that led to the agreement that we have today.
These things weren't done on a spur of the moment.
That was a 17-month negotiation, this whole thing.
And we knew we were talking about the Constitution.
We knew we weren't talking about an act.
Why it's very important for me now, as the only first minister left to appear before some of these courts, which I think I will be able to do through affidavits that different law firms are preparing for me right now.
Where I want to look the judge in the face and quite luckily be on a Zoom like it is today or a Skype, whatever it is, it makes no difference.
I want to look the judges of the Supreme Court or the appeal court of any of the provinces in the face and say, Your Honor, with due respect, when Section 1 was written, whereby provinces or federal government could override this charter, it was done in the context of the nation was in peril.
17-Month Constitution Negotiation00:15:22
The nation was subject to insurrection.
The nation was subject to war.
That's why it's in the Constitution.
Constitution means permanence.
It doesn't mean fickle acts of emergency declared by a province or the federal government over a virus from which 99% of the population recover and the fatality rate of less than 1%.
That's not insurrection.
That's not war.
That's not a state in peril.
And so constitutions are written for permanence, continuity, and sustainability.
And using Section 1 to try to get around doing these things is unconstitutional, my view, and not what the founders meant.
Just one more minute of that for folks who are not lawyers.
So we have all these enumerated rights: freedom of conscience, belief, religion, speech, assembly, association, mobility rights, security of the person, equality rights.
But then there's this wiggle room factor, Section 1, that says that they can be infringed only if it's demonstrably justifiable in a manner of a free and democratic society.
So the government has to really, really prove it.
And what I'm saying is it doesn't even apply.
Right.
Because the intent of it was in a state of peril, and we're not in a state of peril.
Then I go on to say, in the stuff that I have written, let's, for argument's sake, as you're saying here now, it does apply.
Let's say Section 1 does apply.
Ha ha ha ha.
Sorry, governments.
You have four tests to meet.
Even if it does apply, which I argue is it doesn't apply.
And the four tests are, as you just said, the first one is you have to demonstrably justify.
I remember when these phrases were talked about, and we were talking about justify, and quite a few of the first ministers at the time wanted to make it stronger, demonstrably justify.
So we put that additional adjective descriptive word in there.
So demonstrably justify, number one.
Number two, by law.
And my view on that would be: if it's so exceptional as the government so described, then it should be a new law.
Okay, not existing law.
Number three, it should be done within reasonable limits.
Where's the reasonable limits today when the governments are every second week or every second month passing another edict?
Okay.
And by the way, demonstrably justify in terms of public policy, as you would well know, and many Canadians would well know, means if you've got to demonstrably justify a new public policy, it's usually a cost-benefit analysis or some similar kind of report to demonstrate that what you're doing has more positives than negatives.
And then the fourth test was all of these three tests have to be within the context of what?
A free and democratic society.
Well, a free and democratic society, in my view, means that the parliaments, all 14 of them, should be open and overseeing what is going on in the nation as a result of these pandemic measures.
How can you have a free and democratic society if the parliaments are only open long enough to give them another edict or give them another something?
There should be a parliamentary committee in every province.
There should be a parliamentary committee in every territory, which is overseeing on behalf of the people what the government is saying they want to do.
So it's worth both counts.
Yeah, on both counts.
Section one, in fact, in my view, as one of the founders of it and one of the creators of it, it doesn't even apply.
But if for argument's sake you wanted to make it apply, then you have four tests to me and they have not met any of the four.
Or it's even worse than you say because it's when you say parliaments are reconvened just quickly enough to issue an edict, in most cases, those edicts are being issued by bureaucrats that no one's even heard of before, sometimes even contradicting what the elected leaders say here in Ontario.
If Doug Ford, the premier, even suggests liberalizing the lockdowns, you'll have some chief health officer from some district.
No one's heard of the guy before.
He's never been elected.
He has no oversight or accountability democratically.
And he just says, no, I'm issuing an order.
And so it's not even the parliament, the parliament isn't even touching these.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And that's the other problem we have: is that the parliaments, through their premiers and ministers of health, have given additional powers under these acts to the public health officers, which should never have been done.
The public health officer doesn't report to you and me.
Public health officer reports to the minister and the premier.
And it's the minister and the premier who report to you and me through their parliament, which should be open overseeing this so-called emergency.
Okay, that's what should be happening.
So that free and democratic society provision tests number four.
That's the other thing that hopefully I'll be able to argue before the appeal courts or the Supreme Court of Canada is that even if this Section 1 did apply, and I argue vehemently it doesn't, I remember well.
I remember well, because we were talking, we were very cognizant of the time we were talking about a constitution, not a federal act, not a provincial act.
This was a sacred document.
We were putting sacred rights into a sacred document for permanent sake.
That's why it wasn't like the Bill of Rights in 1960, because it was only a federal act.
It didn't have the same power.
So we knew that at the time.
This was not new to us.
We knew that.
And so even, but then again, like you say, even if it did apply, Section 1, just for argument's sake, none of the governments have met those four tests.
So everything they're doing, therefore, is completely and unadulteratedly unconstitutional.
Well, now let me ask you a question because I would never ask you to try and speak for other premiers who were deceased and who many of which I'm sure you haven't talked to in decades.
But instead of that, perhaps you could just share with us some of the spirit of the times, what some of the premiers or even the prime minister and the federal justice minister, because, I mean, I have many quarrels with the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's dad, but I think he occasionally showed a flash of civil liberties.
I mean, he brought in the War Measures Act and all, but I think this charter, he was trying to enshrine real civil liberties.
And I don't know if his son cares about that.
Can you tell us, I'm not asking you to speak for them in today's court.
No, I understand what you're saying.
Was there something back then that this premier said or that justice minister said that if people today heard, they say, yikes, we've fallen far from the intent of the original drafters of this legislation.
Okay, but let's just get the historical context correct.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau's version of the Charter and of the Constitution Act failed.
We came together as first ministers to see if we could patriate the Constitution, bring it home to Canada, no more have to go back to London for amendments.
We were a complete and utter sovereign nation.
That's part of what's in the Constitution Act 1982 and the Charter.
And so we sat down and started to negotiate in 1980.
But halfway through, the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau's father, and this is not promulgated very much anymore.
And every time I mention it in the speeches I give, the community halls that I go to and give these speeches, there's a hush in the room.
Nobody remembers, nobody has been told that the Prime Minister of Canada at the time left the table halfway through and said, I can't negotiate with you guys.
You're too difficult.
And so he left the table.
And a number of us, by the way, in the room at the time, including Rennie Levesque, by the way, had said, Trudeau won't stay at this table.
Trudeau won't stay at this table.
I said he would.
And a number of others said he would.
We were wrong.
I think Sterling Lyons said he wouldn't stay.
I think Peter Lawheed had some questions about it.
Okay.
So I want to give you the sense here.
So he left the table.
We thought he would return to the table a few weeks later, whatever.
What did he do?
He initiated an act through the House of Commons unilaterally to patriate the Constitution and his version of the Charter.
He figured he could do it on his own.
We took him to court.
Three court actions happened, one in Newfoundland, one in Manitoba, and one in Quebec, challenging his constitutional authority to do what he did through the House of Commons.
At the same time, the Conservatives were agitating that they didn't think the Prime Minister could do this, as so were some of his MPs, quietly saying this.
Anyway, to make a long story short, on September the 28th, 1981, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that what the Prime Minister of Canada was doing was unconstitutional.
He could not do it without the provinces.
He needed so many of the provinces in order to be able to do this.
So his version of the Charter, his version of patriotism went up in smoke.
And he was forced back to the table.
And he came back to the table for those last three days, November 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
And it was a proposal from the provinces, from yours truly, on behalf of the provinces over the night of December the 4th into the morning of December, of November the 5th, that led to what we have today.
It wasn't Trudeau's proposal.
Trudeau's proposal was defeated by his own court, the Supreme Court of Canada.
Everybody forgets that.
And it's muted.
When you go to the encyclopedias and you go to the various books on the patriation of the time, this is muted.
As if because so many people want to elevate Pierre Elliott Trudeau to be this great scholar and this great genius as related to the Constitution.
Well, sorry, folks, it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau's proposal that failed.
And it was the province's proposal that won the day with the Prime Minister on side because, of course, he just got defeated a few months ago before that in the Supreme Court of Canada.
So it's into that context.
As it relates to the premiers, let me say that the premiers who were very strong in favor of the charter of rights and freedoms were British Columbia, Bill Bennett, and his constitutional advisor, Mel Smith, and his minister Gurney Garnum at the time, intergovernmental affairs minister.
But the British Columbia, and especially through their minister and their advisors, were very strongly in favor.
If it could be done properly, that the charter should be enshrined in the Constitution.
Okay.
Peter Lahy, same way.
With reservations, because we were scared at the, when we got really scared after the prime minister left and then lost in the Supreme Court, because now he wasn't trustworthy.
That notwithstanding clause, for example, that everybody tries to talk about now and shouldn't be in and there and all the rest of it was put there primarily because nobody trusted the prime minister of Canada.
And what reason did they have to trust the prime minister of Canada?
He had left the table and tried to get his own version of what Canada was going to look like through the Supreme Court on his own, completely defying all the conventions and all the customs of Canada since we were formed in 1867.
Now, Saskatchewan, Alan Blakeney, no question, he was also very supportive, also though, with reservations in the sense that they not impinge upon provincial rights.
For example, the natural resource provision, which was strengthened in that same act, by the way.
And in York, in my case, yours truly, we put a document on the table a year before supporting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, okay?
But we wanted it to be done in a balanced way, ensuring that, for example, equalization became a part of the Constitution, which we insisted upon, and other have-not provinces, and it's in there as well.
So the whole business of the Constitution Act 1982 was complex.
Minority language rights was another key issue in that whole debate, right?
And so, and Agnes Maclean, who was then the Prime Premier of Prince Edward Island, was strongly supportive and a very wise old gentleman, elderly gentleman at the time.
He was a veteran.
He had been a veterans affairs minister in Diefenbaker's government, as a matter of fact.
Well, Agnes McLean was a very strong supporter of the Charter.
Sterling Lyon of Manitoba was concerned that what would happen, and he predicted this, he predicted what's happening now would happen.
Really?
That the government of Manitoba, what did he say?
Sterling Lyon was one of the skeptics.
He went along with it.
What would he think today?
Well, I'm not going to put words in this moment, but what did he say back then that would make you think he would be upset today?
He said the same thing that the prime minister just tried to do and didn't succeed on, in the decades hence, they will find a way.
They will always find a way to usurp individual rights and freedoms.
He was strongly in favor of individual rights and freedoms, but he didn't see this as being a necessary final tool.
He reluctantly came round to it because we persuaded him about Section 1 and about the notwithstanding clause and other things.
And he became a supporter of it, as did his Attorney General.
But when you ask me now, New Brunswick and Ontario, sadly speaking, stayed with the Prime Minister all the way through the time when he was doing this unilaterally and lost in the courts.
So we were called at the time the gang of eight, when we really weren't the gang of eight, but was the group of eight, the group of eight of us who opposed what the prime minister was doing because it flew in the face of every constitutional convention since 1867.
And that's what the Supreme Court of Canada said.
So, and we weren't the gang of eight either, because there is a myth out there, which I tried to dispel in my book, which is still in a lot of the history books, about the gang of eight or the knight of the long knives.
Group of Eight Opposition00:08:42
There was no knight of the long knives.
That's a lie.
That's a myth.
That's a lie.
That's a myth.
I'll say it over and over again.
Quebec, we couldn't find Quebec that night to go over that proposal with them on the 4th, November the 4th.
They were in Hull having a late dinner, but they did see the proposal the next morning before it became presented to all the first ministers.
So it wasn't a check.
We weren't trying to go around anybody.
Now, Quebec, of course, was always attentive to its own cultural and linguistic issues.
And let's put that aside for a minute.
But tell me what the Quebec view was about civil liberties.
Because, I mean, again, Quebec and its French history, I can see both sides.
I can see a love for civil liberties that goes back centuries, but I can also see sort of an authoritarian, you know, Napoleon, you know, there's a bit of a Gaullist character there.
What was Quebec's view about freedoms and the individual back in these constitutional negotiations?
Levesque was very strongly in favor of freedom.
René Levesque, yeah, of freedoms.
Absolutely no question about it.
I knew René Levesque very well on a personal basis, as well as in politics.
And we fought about his vision of Canada versus mine or what or others.
And every premier of Canada, by the way, had a really good relationship with Rennie, notwithstanding his view of where Quebec placed in Canada and all of that.
But I think you're right.
You hit the nail right on the head when you said there is a ambivalence in the Quebec, in the French character when it comes to, on the one hand, very strong in favor of civil liberties.
On the other hand, there is this more authority streak in them as it relates to kings and people like Napoleon and the Gaulle and so on.
And so I think they've always been, you know, what shall I say, ambivalent towards how to treat this.
And we could see that through the talks that we had with the Quebec people, because the Quebec people were part of the group of eight when we opposed what Trudeau was trying to do unilaterally.
But both Claude Morin and Jacques Parizzot, who were big advisors of Levesque at the time, I think especially Mr. Parisot would be more on the authority side.
Moran might be in the middle and Levesque would have been more on the civil liberties side.
I think that's where it came down.
But they were very powerful intellectuals in the government and the leadership and the decision making of Quebec at the time.
And Levesque did respect them and look up to them.
So I always argued, by the way, that if Moran and Parisot had not been there in those last few days, we would have had Quebec on board.
Let me ask you about today.
I mean, I've learned a lot about the history of the negotiation behind the Charter of Rights and the Constitution in general.
I didn't know many of those details.
But here we are today.
And I feel like every institution in society that was meant to be a check and a balance on runaway governments and even tyranny, if I can use the word, they've all failed.
The official opposition is not opposing either federally or at any provincial level.
All the parties seem to agree, and the odd skeptic who pops up is immediately sacked.
Just the other day, a cabinet minister in Manitoba.
The media in general, if anything, is hyping it up.
And if a politician goes soft, the media shames them.
The colleges of physicians and surgeons are smacking down any doctors who have a second opinion, which used to be a big part of being a doctor.
I'd like a second opinion.
The chambers of commerce at most have asked for subsidies or bailouts.
I haven't seen a chamber of commerce or even an independent business group call for an end to the lockdowns.
Every single niche in society that they've all failed simultaneously.
So, I mean, the analogy I use is like a fishing net when all the knots on the net break at once.
If you have one or two knots break, you're still going to catch some fish.
But when every single knot fails at the same time, you've just got a bunch of string there.
A very good way of putting it.
I'm putting up before you right now.
You may remember this book.
It's not very old.
It's by Donald Savois.
Right.
Democracy in Canada: the disintegration of our institutions.
Okay.
Donald Savois is a scholar at the University of Moncton.
This is, in my view, perhaps the definitive book on explaining what you just asked.
Okay.
It started around the Pierre Elliott Trudeau time when suddenly the Parliament of Canada began to diminish in its importance.
The parliamentary committees began to diminish in its importance.
It started to move away from the parliament to the cabinet and cabinet ministers.
And if we remember, I think you're old enough to remember there were strong regional ministers one time.
Alan McKecken came from Cape Breton Island, very strong, strong minister.
There were strong ministers from the West.
Donald Mazinkowski comes to mind right away, right?
There were some Otto Lang, I think, was from the West as well.
There were strong regional ministers.
But gradually over time, the minister's power started to diminish, and the power moved from the cabinet to the Privy Council office and the prime minister's office.
And today, there's over 16 or 1700 people just working in the Privy Council office and the Prime Minister's office.
Nothing happens now without some bureaucrat in one of those offices having put their stamp on it with the prime minister being involved.
And so ministers now are not powerful ministers like they were before, influencing public policy.
Parliamentary committees get shut down during the Judy Raybox affair, for example.
SNC Lavalin, the parliamentary committee, got closed down, even though the former minister had more that she wanted to release about what was going on at the time when the government tried to obstruct justice in our country.
And so we have seen an MP become a social worker, a glorified social worker, and that the parliament has by stealth without a shot being fired.
And this is what Donald Savois is saying in his book.
So it's been a gradual erosion over time, but the pandemic sort of crystallized it all.
It all came together during the pandemic.
It all came together during the pandemic and made possible what you just talked about.
Remember now, the government of Canada is so involved in health that there's over 40 billion every year that goes to the provinces, right, under the Canada Health Transfer.
There's another 15 billion that goes to the provinces under the social transfer.
So, the provinces are not as independent anymore as they used to be because they're so beholden to the federal government.
And the federal government itself has all these parliamentary secretaries.
So, how many ministers are there?
31, 32 ministers?
That means there's 31 or 32 MPs that got extra jobs.
Then you got the parliamentary committees, all chair people from the Liberal Party.
Okay, how many of them are there?
So, when the prime minister wakes up every morning, he's almost got everything sold up before he has his breakfast.
He knows he has all of these people in his pocket.
And nationally, he has most of the provinces in his pocket because, besides getting these billions of dollars in health transfers and social transfers, five provinces get equalization on top of the Canada health transfer, on top of the Canada social transfer.
So, what has happened has, without a shot being fired, de facto, the Prime Minister of Canada is really the President of Canada or a monarch of Canada.
And all of these serfs that are now cabinet ministers, and this is what Savoy is saying in his book: all of our institutions have failed, and so we are de facto without having the messy situation that the Americans get themselves into, which helps to save their democracy.
Prime Minister's Authority Questioned00:03:21
We have nothing to save ours.
The judiciary now, we're going to have to fight hard to get them to rule properly on the charter.
And we don't have the kind of what shall I say, activism amongst our courts or amongst, like you said, the chambers of commerce or the ordinary people to stand up in civil disobedience and say this has gone too far, that our parliamentary democracy has been stolen from us by stealth and we want it back.
Wow.
You know what's interesting is, even though the entire establishment, every institution you can think of, is in the tank for the lockdown, it's almost as if the more compliance there is, like it's 80%, 90%, that the shrillness of Trudeau and the other messaging goes up.
I mean, just the other day, he said in French that if you are not for a vaccine mandate, you are most likely an extremist, a racist, and a misogynist.
Here's a clip of that in French.
Est-ce qu'on tolère?
these jean-looks, more people, because we're vaccinated, we're going to block that shocking language, but it mirrors what he said in the last election campaign.
Those people, we see in other countries, Emmanuel Macron saying similar things about I'm going to try and irritate them.
We've seen like a strange demonization that certainly not sunny ways, Justin Trudeau of 2016.
I'm worried that it's that as what they're trying isn't working and they're going to try harder and harder, harder lockdowns, more bans, more punishments, crazy public denunciations.
I'm worried that he's going to try and flatten what remaining resistance there is.
And I'm speaking selfishly because I think that he's going to try and censor online critics like us.
I think he's going to try and punish those few voices.
Like I think of Maxime Bernier in the People's Party of Canada.
And you can like him or not.
He can be your cup of tea or not, but at least he's a different sort of opinion.
I see attempts to almost criminalize him.
He actually was arrested when he went to Manitoba for a political rally.
I feel like we're actually teetering on some authoritarian police state tactics.
And I don't want to be too dramatic, but I really do see it.
I wouldn't have agreed with your statements a month ago or two months ago.
I was still holding out.
But as each day goes by, by the way, I don't know if you read the articles by David Solway.
David Solway's Essay00:02:44
He's a very, very incisive Canadian poet out of Quebec, but has lived quite some time in the United States.
And I think he's traveled around Canada quite a bit.
And I think his wife has been a university teacher.
So on Solway, he's also a poet as well as an essayist.
He writes a lot in the PJ media in the United States under that.
And he's got a new one in there, an essay, I think, just 24 hours old.
I really recommend it to you because he's coming to the same conclusion as that you and I are coming to.
What I say in my speeches, and by the way, I'd like you to know, like right now, I've done quite a few town hall meetings.
And the one thing I've noticed that you would really appreciate is that there is a sense, there is a sense among the body politic, among the ordinary class, that something is wrong.
And it's in their belly.
I went to a church down in the suburb of Victoria in December.
And the people who asked me to come down, I was going down to another event on the legislature steps.
And they persuaded me to come down.
They said, Brian, we want you to come down.
We want you to explain the Constitution to us.
And we think you can do that to us.
And they rented this church.
And they promised me 150 people would turn up.
They had 150 people in a new group, a libertary group.
When I turned up on the steps of the church, quarter to seven for seven o'clock, there were 400 people trying to get church.
They had to open the top part of the church in the bottom part of the church and bring in audiovisual equipment.
And I spoke in the middle part of the church so that everybody could hear and see me as I was explaining it.
I gave a speech like I'm giving today, kind of thing, for about 40 minutes.
The question and answers were over two hours.
Wow.
And there was a sense of electricity in that room that I had never felt for a long, long time.
And it was one of extreme, deep concern for their nation.
They see it falling apart.
They see their rights being eroded.
So you are correct, Ezra, right from the ground, right from the ordinary people.
I've got a meeting coming up just south of Duncan and Cobble Hill on Saturday night, weather permitting, where again, the people are asking me to come and speak to them and do the same thing as that I did only 30 or 40 miles away in Victoria back in December because they had heard about that speech and some of their friends had attended it.
So I point this out.
People Seeing Rights Eroded00:09:54
And David Salway in his latest essay talks about this.
And one of the other things I talk about in my speeches is democracy is a minority governed system on this planet.
Always was, quite likely always will be.
It's an unbelievable, as Churchill talked about it, it's a very fragile concept, very hard to sustain.
And as civil involvement decreases, so does democracy.
And that's what's happened in Canada.
Civil involvement has decreased.
Citizens have left it up to their MPs and their MLAs to do everything and have ignored what was happening, that the MLAs and the MPs were having no more power, right?
And suddenly now, after 44 decades, it's happened or five decades, it's happened.
And so there's an unease in the country at the local average citizen.
and they don't know what to do about it.
You know, and when you're not allowed to gather and when you don't gather in your traditional gathering places, your churches, your parliaments, your town halls, your clubs, your gyms, your theaters, your restaurants, your diners, well, then you have to meet electronically online.
But then there's a whole level of censorship there.
You can't say things on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube if they change the narrative.
So by forcing people to live online, they're forcing them to live in a filtered world.
And sometimes you don't even know that you're being filtered because a voice just one day disappears.
And it's not a happy future.
Remember, remember, the Trusted News Initiative was signed back in December 2020.
CDC is part of that.
You know, that $1.2 billion corporation that you always talk about.
And rightly so, and rightly so, and rightly so.
They're part of it.
And so are the other major media outlets in Canada.
And what does the Trusted News Initiative say?
And this goes for all the main news operations in the world.
We're not going to carry anything negative about the vaccine or the pandemic or the virus.
We're not going to carry anything negative.
So like you say, everything is blocked off.
It's only, you know, thank God for vehicles like yours, which my wife and I support because we believe in the freedom of speech.
And that's what you stand for.
Thank you.
I mean, you made me think they're trusted, all right, trusted by Justin Trudeau that they won't say the wrong thing.
Exactly.
You know, I feel like things are getting darker in some ways, but I do acknowledge what you say, that ordinary folks are starting to say this isn't right, including people who said, all right, I'll get the jab.
If that's all you're asking for me, I'll get the jab and then we'll get back to normal.
Now they're saying, hey, you said it was back to normal, not an endless series of jabs.
You just took away all my rights.
And hey, you said the vaccine meant I wouldn't get sick again, but I did get.
So a lot of people who I wouldn't call political, who I would say are quite agreeable and went along with it, I think they're starting to have second thoughts.
And I see some hope there, but I also see more viciousness on the part of the enforcers.
Can you give me some reason for optimism?
I mean, we've talked about the charter that you helped create.
And so far, the courts have not weighed in.
Are you hopeful that if this gets to the right court of appeal or even to the Supreme Court, that we'll see some relief?
Because I'm not hopeful.
No, I know you're not.
And I know others who are not.
But like I said earlier at the beginning of this interview, it's still a second period.
And though I understand that the period and a half to go is full of people who are not necessarily sympathetic to what the charter really actually says and means.
And that there's, I agree, it's an uphill fight, but the fight is not over.
And I think if people like you and me and many others across the country can start saying the following, we Canadians want the appeal court judges and the Supreme Court judges to rule on the pandemic measures in the context of the charter as it was written and as the words mean in 1981 and 82.
You must. interpret it under the context of the supremacy of God and the rule of law, because that's how the charter starts.
Those words have not been changed.
Those freedoms have not been changed.
Those words mean what they say.
There's no been change in those words, in those definitions.
We want you to save our constitution and thereby save our country as a democracy, appeal court judge and Supreme Court judge.
And so I think we got to get very specific and very direct.
Our last hope is our appeal court judges in the provinces and Supreme Court judges in Ottawa.
That's our last hope.
The clock is ticking.
The second period is starting to wind down and we only have one period left.
But if we can mobilize enough individuals to say what I just said and to start speaking out, writing letters, even to the judges themselves, writing letters to the judiciary themselves and saying, you are not defending our Constitution as written, and you have an obligation to interpret it as it was written in 1981 and put into law in 1982.
These words have not changed.
Then I think we have an opportunity.
If we don't, I've written this many, many times in the last month.
If we don't, then our democracy will fail.
We will exist as a country, but it will not be a democratic nation at all.
It will be a country that we do not recognize.
Wow.
Well, that's as good a point as any as to close our conversation for today.
I learned a lot about the history of the Charter of Rights.
It's a pleasure to catch up with you and to hear your interpretation of those words that you helped draft, that you helped write.
You're the last remaining surviving Premier from those high-stakes negotiations 40 years ago.
Premier Brian Peckford, what a pleasure to spend some time with you.
Thank you.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Stephen Within S says, what a devastating blow it would be to get her on board with Rebel News.
It's exactly what we need.
Max would throw CBC in the garbage where it belongs now.
Up to about 10 years ago, I liked CBC.
You know, I think the CBC, right from the very beginning, was uncompetitive, anti-competitive.
I think of all the money that crowds out organic competition, how all the money sops up the talent.
So I think it's almost impossible to have a large counterweight to the CBC when it gets such subsidies.
It's sort of like when Air Canada was a crown corporation.
How could you possibly run an airline against it when Air Canada was allowed to lose so much money?
But it's not just the money and the competition of the CBC.
As you can see, it's the ideological training.
When a woman who describes herself as the most left-wing producer in the room says she's now on the right because they're just on purpose recruiting for wokeism, I think that's the worst effect.
It's not just that the CBC is probably responsible for half of this country's debt up until the pandemic.
I know you think that sounds crazy, but 75 years, basically blowing a billion dollars or more in today's dollars, I'd say a quarter of our national debts from the CBC.
And it's funny because less than 1% of Canadians watch CBC News on any given night.
Gene Trusper says, makes me wonder if there is any sort of connection between the CBC, which I grew up with, and black rocker Larry Fink.
Seems that Larry Old Boy is the one largely responsible for the spread of wokeness in the financial corporate realm.
No, I just don't think it has any connection to it.
I think that that is natural, homegrown leftism.
Sure, they bend the knee to woke and to globalism and political correctness.
And sure, they sign on to all the usual climate change and all the ideas from the World Economic Forum.
But this is not engineered by some outside force.
This has been how the CBC has been my entire life.
Bruce Atchison says, it speaks volumes when a liberal quits the CBC.
Thanks for reading her letter to us.
We'd never have heard it otherwise.
Matt Brebner's song hits the nail for sure.
No wonder the powers want it banned.
Yeah, I think you're right on that.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't listen to the CBC a lot.
I haven't tuned into their radio, but something tells me they're not debating that email, even though most other media in the country have at least given it notice.
Some, like the National Post, reprinted the letter in full.
Well, that's our show for today.
Pastor Arthur's Mighty Stand00:05:32
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with a video of the day by Sidney Fizzard at church with Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky just hours before he was arrested on New Year's Day.
Good night, everybody.
Do what you want to do at City Hall.
Do what you want to do at the Capitol.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Amen.
You know, I believe that we have been defending ourselves for the past two years.
I believe it's time for the villains to start defending themselves.
And I'm not talking about violence.
I'm talking about non-compliance, peaceful, resistance, civil rights type of movement where we finally come to a point together in unity, in solidarity, if you will, and we will say to them, enough, it's enough.
I mean, you're pushing.
We're going to push even harder right now.
You see, the cave of Abdul is a story of miscarriage.
Those that were running away from corrupted authorities.
Those that were in distress, in debt, and they came together to the stronghold called the Cave of Abdulim to form the mighty men of David.
Unbeatable army that to this day, thousands of years later, we learn about those heroes of faith that would stand in the middle of the field.
And one guy would kill almost a thousand warriors.
Another would stop the entire army in the middle of the field, even though everybody else was running away.
Let's be those heroes.
The Bible calls them the mighty men of valor.
A man of a different spirit.
A man and woman, of course.
When you see an evil approaching, when you are the true shepherd of God's people, and you see hyenas and wolves approaching, you cannot back.
You cannot help it, but stand up and say, get out, get out and do not come back or else.
When I went to Pastor Arthur's service this past Saturday, I did not realize, nor did any of us, that later that day he would be arrested again, as we've seen in the past.
I wish I could say this was an isolated incident.
However, for the past two years, our great dominion has been under attack.
From coast to coast, pastors are now facing the wrath of politicians who say they're trying to control a virus, fail in their pursuits, and then blame everyday Canadians for that same failure.
Instead of attempting to represent the people they claim to serve, they now assault those who continue living their lives without the stamp of approval from bureaucrats claiming to advocate for public health.
This would be understandable if the state were going after pedophiles and murderers.
However, they've now turned their gaze to those who feed the homeless or give refuge to the marginalized.
Pastor Arthur is no exception, who, along with Pastor Tobias, was in attendance the day I went to the church of Adulam.
Both had been arrested recently and both have been given conditions which they're told to abide by.
Even still, it was not anticipated that later that same day, Pastor Arthur would be in bondage courtesy of Calgary police yet again.
We will provide you an update soon on the arrest and the release of the two Pulauskis soon that'll come in an interview shortly from Adam Sos with Archer's lawyer Sarah Miller, who's had their back via saveartor.com, a donation portal dedicated to Arthur's legal fight, which aids Sarah in fending off these vindictive authorities who keep going after the Pulawskis.
This defense is possible because of your donations, which would qualify you for a charitable tax receipt.
Today, however, we're going to take a look at what Pastor Arthur was doing before his arrest, just hours before when I was at the Church of Adulam.
As you'll hear, after service, he had intended on joining a peaceful vigil, or what some have called a protest, outside the home of the Minister of Health.
But before we show you that, I want to show you the sort of church service the province of Alberta has tried to obliterate, as well as the message Pastor Arthur preaches, which had already been suppressed through a ruling by a man named Adam Germain, who's considered a judge here in Alberta.
He ruled that anytime Archer was critical of the lockdown measures, vaccines, COVID, or the science of it all, he would also have to give the government stance on these same matters.
Thankfully, Sarah Miller was able to get that Chinese Communist Party style compelled speech order stayed while she appeals the rest of Pastor Archer's conditions.
You can see that story, sign our petition, and send the Judicial Council a message by going to firethejudge.com.
Now, without further delay, here's Arthur and the church service that he provides, which Adam Germain and Premier Jason Kenney are trying to suppress.
And I'm glad to be able to share that message with you today.
Defending Persecuted Voices00:06:48
I'm not surprised that people have no hope.
Like, where do I go from here?
The foundation is being pulled away from under their feet.
They're like, this is all I had in life.
My family is all I had in life and I can't visit them anymore because they took the shot and they won't have me anymore.
They won't allow me to come for Christmas.
I'll share one story with you.
There was this young man who had not taken the shot and his family had.
And his father called him up and said, you're not coming for the Christmas gathering.
This young man didn't know what to do.
And he went and killed himself.
And as the funeral director was dealing with the family, that father said, if I could just go back in time, if I could just unsay those words, I would do it.
You see, we are hearing from the corrupted, totalitarian, you know, evil, wicked politicians of today that we are in this together.
But the truth is, it's them and us.
They are enslaving and destroying, pillaging, murdering.
And then there is us.
So we have to come together.
We have to start uniting with each other.
We are in this together.
We are to be a blessing to each other.
We are to support each other.
We are to come together as a family.
And that's what happened today.
I was always this way.
I was locked and bound.
I was lost, not found, could not be free.
Jesus didn't give up, no, he didn't give up on me.
Do what you want to do at City Hall.
Do what you want to do at the Capitol.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Amen.
See how long you're going to last with your laws before you have to bend for us.
You know, shame on the government.
Shame on the police.
Shame on the RCMP.
I mean, how long this is going to continue?
Don't they see, don't they have their own families and children to think about?
I mean, totalitarian regime will never stop and needs to be stopped.
And now they're being used as the weapons, as the tools for the tyrants.
And here's my message for them.
Please stop being used by the wicked, evil people.
Please stop harassing citizens that you swore to protect.
That's your job.
And if you cannot do your job, then resign and let somebody else take over.
So this is pure harassment, in my opinion.
They are doing the same thing to me, of course, and to others like us that, you know, we dare to stand up and preach the truth.
And they don't like the liars, don't like the truth.
That's a taste of what the state wants to shut down.
And after that service, Pastor Archer and his brother David had been arrested and hauled away by Calgary police.
Right before their arrest, a peaceful vigil, or what some have called a protest, was held outside the home of the Minister of Health.
Archer and David were both in attendance, but not to trespass nor to harass, as Premier Kenny would allude to.
Instead, let me share Pastor Archer's message that he shared earlier in the day that pertained to that event.
Today at 4.30, there's going to be a special rally.
They're going to meet at a park on 42nd Street Northwest, up in the Market Mall area.
You know, I believe that we have been defending ourselves for the past two years.
I believe it's time for the villains to start defending themselves.
And I'm not talking about violence.
I'm talking about non-compliance, peaceful, resistant, civil rights type of movement where we finally come to a point together in unity, in solidarity, if you will.
And we will say to them, enough, it's enough.
I mean, you're pushing.
We're going to push even harder right now.
After the vigil was over, the Pulowskis were hauled away Gestapo style, as you've probably heard Arto say before, and made to spend the night in custody.
I'll show you a quick clip of their dramatic arrest.
Then listen to the message Tobias had about the situation.
He was on his way back to Manitoba at the time, but I reached out and I'm thankful for the video response he sent my way.
You know what his charges were?
You call that crime for opening church?
Wow, yes, yeah, wow.
Breach of public health orders there.
You get orders from corrupted politicians, corrupted leaders, and this is what you do.
So, it had been a long time since we had been together.
So, we were both excited and had a good time together, knowing little that that very day he would be arrested yet again.
And I got that news as I was traveling home and I was shocked.
I didn't want to believe it and was sad to see my brother being arrested like that.
Yet, we want Pastor Art to know that he's not alone.
We were praying for him and had his back.
We know that when one suffers, we suffer with him.
We go through it all together.
When they attack one of us, they attack all of us.
We by ourselves are very weak, but together we are strong.
And I'm thankful that Pastor Art keeps standing.
We're here for each other.
And thank you all and love you all for your support.
God bless you.
Let me say again quickly: to help Archer in his legal battle against the state, go to saveartor.com, where through our partnership with the registered Canadian charity, the Democracy Fund, donations would go straight to the legal fight he's now faced with.
And let me remind you, donations now qualify you for a charitable tax receipt.
Thanks for tuning in to the end and hearing out the message of those now being persecuted by the state because they wouldn't bow down.
For Rebel News, I'm Sidney Fizard.
We have been arrested again.
We spent 24 hours in jail and we're facing three more charges, believe it or not.
So, if you can, if you're willing, go to saveart.com and if you can chip in, please do.
We have fantastic lawyers, they saved us before, and I know they're going to do everything in their power to save us again.