Justin Trudeau’s support for free speech crumbles under his push for government regulation of "destabilizing" online content, including anti-vaccine rhetoric and spoof sites, while invoking the Emergencies Act against peaceful protests like the trucker convoys. Three protesters—Alex, Marco, and George—face up to 30 years in prison after an 18-day Coutz blockade ended on February 14th, despite Williamson Law’s pro bono defense funded by TruckerDefenseFund.ca. Crown indictments escalate penalties but grant jury trials, while procedural delays—including a December 12th arraignment—fuel claims of political persecution tied to Jason Kenny’s former regime. They demand accountability, framing their fight as resistance against COVID-era overreach and systemic injustice. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I take you through what Salmon Rushdie calls the butt brigade.
People who say, I believe in free speech, but, and then have a list of exceptions.
They're not really for free speech, are they?
I'll show you an example in our own country, a very sad example.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
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That's how we stay independent.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, Justin Trudeau says he is fine with free speech, but I always ignore everything before the word but.
It's December 13th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Very exciting day today.
Our friends at the Democracy Fund are having a town hall meeting with Dr. Jordan Peterson about the state of civil liberties in Canada.
Huge event.
Almost 2,000 people signed up, most in person, some watching online.
It's being hosted at the Canada Christian College, which is about 30 minutes outside Toronto, which is a bit of a schlep, though anything in Toronto is inconvenient from anything else.
That's just how traffic is.
But I tell you about its location for two reasons to show that Jordan Peterson fans are a dedicated bunch and will go to meet him pretty much wherever he is.
And also to remind you that not everywhere is a place of free speech and discourse in this country.
You could hardly find a more august event than this one.
Peterson is a PhD, a professor, a best-selling author.
The evening is being hosted by Conrad Black, the former newspaper tycoon, author, historian, Baron.
Rex Murphy will be there too.
These are serious men of ideas, public intellectuals, but each one of them in their own way has been blacklisted, deplatformed, canceled.
In some ways, the worst of the three is what happened to Rex Murphy, whose own newsroom at the National Post newspaper had a petition signed literally by the majority of journalists there calling for him to be silenced about issues of race and multiculturalism.
It was in response to this opinion article.
Let me read the headline of it.
Canada is not a racist country, despite what the liberals say.
To any fair mind, Canada is a mature, welcoming, open-minded, and generous country.
It would be helpful if these liberals kept the full story of this country in mind when discussing racism.
So he's not denying racism.
He's just saying we're not inherently, essentially racist.
It was a wonderful article.
First of all, imagine disagreeing with Rex on that.
Second, imagine saying that he shouldn't be allowed to publish such an opinion because he's a white male.
Third, imagine that all happening in the supposedly conservative newsroom of the National Post, founded by Conrad Black, by the way.
Fourth, imagine the vast majority of signers of that censorship demand from the newsroom were white themselves.
What an utter disgrace that whole thing was.
So yeah, free speech and the threats to it.
We don't even know the half of it.
We're learning so much more about how censorship really goes on in the 2020s, though.
It's done by woke activists embedded within big companies, like yesterday's story we did on Yoel Roth, the chief censor at Twitter until Elon Musk took over the place.
What an extreme and weird activist he is.
And now we can guess why he banned conservatives, but not child pornography from the app.
It's just creepy.
I hope Elon Musk releases the Twitter files, as they're being called, about their Canadian operations, too.
I'm interested in how we at Rebel News were censored or throttled or whatnot, but I'm even more interested in who contacted Twitter to get that done to us.
Who was it?
What did they say?
What did they threaten or promise Twitter in return?
I bet they don't have to pressure too hard to get the woke Twitter staff to do what they wanted to do to us, but I bet they pressured them anyways.
That's how governments censor.
They outsource it, though.
They contract it out.
They do it quietly, sneakily.
I hope we see those documents one day.
But look at this.
This is a story, as usual, from Blacklocks, one of the few independent news sources in Canada.
Here's the headline, free speech is okay, but I really don't need to read anymore, do I?
Here's my point.
It was actually made wonderfully by Salman Rushdie, the author, as you know, of a book banned by the Ayatollahs in Iran.
Take a listen.
Now, the moment somebody says, yes, I believe in free speech, but I stop listening.
You know, I believe in free speech, but people should behave themselves.
I believe in free speech, but we shouldn't upset anybody.
I believe in free speech, but let's not go too far.
The point about it is the moment you limit free speech, it's not free speech.
The point about it is that it's free.
The butt brigade.
You knew that Justin Trudeau would be a free speech kind of guy, but, right?
Free speech, but.
You just knew it, didn't you?
What's so sad is that 90% of the media is that way now, too.
They're for free speech, but.
I remember when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in the Western Standard magazine a decade and a half ago.
I was interviewed maybe 100 times about it.
98 of those interviewers supported me, which was surprising.
Even at the CBC, they supported me, even them.
A polling company called Compass interviewed dozens of working journalists for a special survey about that case.
I remember that 70% of working journalists back then said that not only was I right to publish those cartoons, but they said that every media in the country ought to have published them also.
To stand with me and to stand against terrorists.
That was just 17 years ago, to be precise.
We're in a different world now, aren't we?
The journalists are the censors now.
No need to blow up editorial cartoonists to silence your critics.
The editorial cartoonists will silence your critics for you.
Here's a story in Blacklocks, to which I refer.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes in free speech, but is upset by social media content that is, quote, difficult to counter, he said.
Trudeau's remarks follow a proposal to regulate legal internet content deemed hurtful.
Listen to Rushdie.
Remember, ignore everything before the word but.
The remarks are detailed in an interview summary of a September 9th meeting between Trudeau and six lawyers with the Public Order Emergency Commission.
The summary said, Trudeau was upset by unregulated internet content.
The poor dear, he's upset.
The prime minister emphasized the need for governments to take online rhetoric seriously, read minutes of the interview.
He noted we are living in a very difficult time right now, said the summary, adding, the problem arises when disagreements are built on falsehoods or wrong facts, because then it becomes difficult to have a real debate and genuine exchange of ideas.
You know, I'm so glad that Trudeau is going to relieve you and me of the burden of distinguishing between the right facts and the wrong facts.
I'm so glad he'll do that for us because he's never wrong and his critics are never right.
And don't you know that's the reason there is no real debate.
That's the only reason.
He's the guy who bans reporters he doesn't like from attending his press conferences, and he bans us from the leaders' debates in this country, speaking of debates.
But trust him, he really would like a real debate, just not with liars or people who are wrong.
They're the worst people to debate.
He'll absolutely debate with people who agree with him and who are right.
Though that's not really much of a debate, then is it?
Which is how he likes it.
The government believes in free speech, said Trudeau.
But with social media, there is a new way to foment anger and hate that is different from anything we have seen before, difficult to counter and is destabilizing our democracy.
He raised the examples of spoof websites that look real.
Yeah, those spoof websites that look real, those really pull us apart as a society, pit us versus them.
Not like our Prime Minister, who is factually right and definitely not divisive.
But there are also people who are farouchement opposed to vaccination.
Who are extremists.
Who don't believe in science, who are often misogynes, often racist.
It's a small group, but who takes place.
And then, we have to make a choice as a leader, as a country.
Do we tolerate?
Yeah, I mean, he is factually right, and he's not dividing us.
You deserve a government that's going to continue to say, get vaccinated.
And you know what?
If you don't want to get vaccinated, that's your choice.
But don't think you can get on a plane or a train besides vaccinated people and put them at risk.
Yeah, those spoof websites, they've really hurt our democracy these past years.
Not Trudeau invoking martial law and not him rolling out riot police against his enemies, not him demonizing those who made a different medical choice than them, but those bloody spoof websites.
It's always those spoof websites, you know.
The prime minister noted since the invocation of the emergencies act, there have been people spreading the message.
The government suspended civil liberties, used violence against peaceful protesters, and suspended democracy, which did not happen, said the minutes.
There are those who take this message as confirmation the government is illegitimate or treasonous.
Did you get that?
He seized bank accounts.
Remember that?
He deployed riot police.
He stomped on people, unarmed people, peaceful people.
He literally invoked the Emergencies Act, something not even done on 9-11.
And then he looks you in the eye and blames you for claiming he suspended civil liberties while he is suspending your civil liberties.
While he's in a public inquiry into why he suspended your civil liberties, there you go with your wrong facts again.
Why can't you just be right and say what he says and wants you to say he will gaslight you until you do?
The document reviewed by Blacklocks today is not a secret document.
It, in fact, was published by the Emergencies Act Commission of Inquiry a couple of weeks ago.
The fact that it was not front page of every newspaper in the country tells you a lot now, doesn't it?
Let me quote just one more extract from this statement to show you what a madman leads us.
When asked, the prime minister advised that the situation that was unfolding in the Ukraine at the same time did not have a direct bearing on the government response to the convoy situation.
He reflected, however, that there were many commonalities between the two events, such as the role of misinformation and disinformation, the amplification of rhetoric through social media, and the exploitation of division.
Got it, got it, got it.
So the truckers are comparable to a brutal military invasion that's killed tens of thousands.
Got it.
And both situations were based on wrong facts.
Yeah, those spoof websites caused the invasion of Ukraine.
Got it.
And for him, the should we even tolerate them guy, for him to say that others exploit division, that is quite something.
So yeah, Trudeau, he's not even part of Rushdie's butt brigade.
See, the butt brigade at least pretends to care about free speech.
They say it first and then pull back from it with a butt.
I don't think Trudeau even pretends.
I mean, seriously, have you ever, ever heard him even mention the concept of freedom of speech proactively, positively, ever?
Gender Issues in Sports00:15:22
He never thinks about it.
He never talks about it because he doesn't believe in it.
He just doesn't.
What we do over here.
And we're not going to be gaslighted by him.
Stay with us for more.
Well, millions of parents in Canada have kids who play hockey.
And up to a certain age, girls can play on boys' teams before they go through puberty, before they change.
You often see an excellent girl keeping up with the boys, skating just as hard.
And there really is no difference.
You wouldn't know it was a girl, but for the long hair sometimes sticking out from underneath the helmet.
But things change.
Oh, I don't know.
Early teens, and suddenly it's no fun for girls to play with the boys.
In fact, it's a little bit dangerous as the boys suddenly get stronger, faster, harder.
And body checking is not just for fun.
It can injure someone.
And that's when the sexes are segregated.
It's not discrimination.
It's just common sense.
It's the reason why we have different weight classes in boxing.
You don't put a flyweight up against a super heavyweight.
And so I was sort of surprised when I saw a tweet from the National Hockey League a few weeks ago.
Just apropos of nothing, trans women are women.
Trans men are men.
Non-binary identity is real.
It's a bit of a weird thing for a hockey league to say, but I guess they're part of this whole woke world we're in, and you've got to fly the rainbow flag or whatever colors are in it today.
Except I didn't know this.
There is an NHL-supported trans hockey league just for trans folks.
And my first reaction, frankly, was, well, that's a good idea.
So if that's men who identify as women, let them play against each other rather than cracking skulls of actual biological women.
But then I learned that, in fact, it was trans men and trans women all playing together.
And actually, it was a lot more dangerous than the NHL let on.
Joining us now via Skype from Edmonton to talk about this and other things about trans in sports is our friend Linda Blade.
And she is the co-author of Unsporting, a book that we published a few months ago about how trans ideology is colonizing women's sport.
Linda, great to see you again.
Thanks for taking the time.
Thank you, Ezra.
Great to be here.
Well, I was shocked.
I saw that tweet and I didn't really understand.
I just thought, okay, it's like, you know, every once in a while, Canadian banks change their logos to the rainbow and they, you know, then they'll change it to the Ukraine flag and then they'll do something else.
It's just part of virtue signaling.
I thought that's all that was going on with the NHL.
But they actually have this trans hockey league.
What can you tell us about that?
Well, I only heard about it when I was reading it on Twitter, more or less like everybody else did.
I didn't realize the NHL was supporting a trans hockey league.
And I think it's sort of just an idea and principle that they seem to be trying.
But this is like a tournament where you get a bunch of your friends together and then you pick teams.
And what they did was apparently, from what I've read, was they just mixed the trans men and trans women.
And we can talk about what that means, but they've mixed basically people identifying as trans, no matter whether you actually were born female or male, and they mixed them all into one big group and then they picked teams.
And so teams were, you know, it's very possible in that particular tournament that there could have been male bodies colliding with female bodies.
Well, and that's the thing.
I mean, I can understand if there was a different category, just like there's different weight classes in boxing, as I alluded to.
If you had a category of men to women transgender and they were all competing against each other, I would think that there's a sort of fairness there that there isn't if they're competing against men or women without qualifiers or adjectives.
But if you're combining women transitioning to men with men transitioning to women, you are not categorizing them by strength and power.
And it turns out, I'm reading in this article by Jonathan Kay, published in Quillette, that there were some injuries because some of these teams, they picked just male to female trans athletes.
So obviously they were bigger, stronger, tougher.
And they just smashed to pieces the female to male trans athletes.
Let me read a little bit from Jonathan Kay's article here.
As the Vice crew continued to film, so I guess Vice magazine was there because, of course, they're very progressive.
Players clustered around the seemingly knocked out number 91.
Shortly thereafter, a panicky voice booms out from amid the scrum, get a stretcher, get a medic.
And the audience, which had formerly been burbling enthusiastically in response to the arena announcer's trans positive pattern, fell silent.
It would take more than 17 minutes for the head injured player to be placed on a stretcher and wheeled off the ice.
When the game eventually restarted, a subdued mood persisted till the final buzzer.
So I think that what was designed to show that trans athletes could play and it was actually was a terrible, horrible experiment that proved the opposite.
I take absolutely no joy in reading this.
I'm shocked that they would allow that to happen.
If the idea was to have a safe place, it doesn't just have to be an emotionally safe place.
It has to be a physically safe place.
And having someone born female rush up against someone born male is not a safe thing to do.
Well, that's very true.
And in particular, if they're both, if they're all adults, what we see sometimes is Team Canada hockey, the winners hockey, sometimes plays male teams that are sort of the midget level or something.
And then they take it easy on the contact and they're careful.
And so they don't want to injure anybody.
But when it's outright adults, adult females, no matter how you identify, going up against high speed, you know, on the ice adult males, no matter how they identify, you're really asking for trouble.
When World Rugby did their analysis back in about two years ago, they actually found that even just with running speed, the chance of injury, if there's even one male-born hockey, sorry, rugby player on the pitch with female teams, the chance of head and neck and back injury to the female players will go up 30% or more.
And you can imagine what that number is going to be like when you're skating around on a hockey skate, which is a lot faster.
Yeah, it's incredible.
Are there sports that are pushing back against this?
It sounds like the NHL is, like, I mean, I see their ads on TV.
They're extremely woke.
You know, I'm all for people of all backgrounds enjoying skating.
Absolutely.
Doesn't care what your race, gender, et cetera.
All of that's irrelevant to having fun playing hockey.
I get it.
But There's something extremely different when you're comparing, well, a black person and an aboriginal person and a Chinese person by ethnicity can all play hockey.
Well, of course, none of that affects hockey playing ability.
None of those things are relevant to playing the game.
Of course, we should look past that.
And I really don't think that, I mean, maybe that's a hidden problem in Canada of which I'm unaware.
But here, at least in Toronto, a very multiracial city, you look at the kids' hockey leagues, they're as diverse as the city.
I just don't even, you know, I think they're 30 years behind the scenes in terms of solving a problem that I don't detect.
Maybe I'm wrong.
But when you say, let people born genetically female play against people born genetically male, that's not an irrelevant classification.
That's not unfair discrimination any more than protecting 110-pound guy from Tyson Fury is unfair discrimination.
It's not even sport, as that victim of that trans hockey league shows.
I just find it creepy.
Has any sport pushed back against this coach blade?
Yes, well, it has begun because we would say these big sports, starting with the International Olympic Committee, for a while were kind of fooled into believing that it didn't matter and a man should be able to self-identify, a male person should be able to self-identify into female sports.
And so, what happened is these sorts of injuries have accumulated unhappiness.
It's in the women's ranks.
And, you know, frankly, last year in 2021, the IOC finally relented and said, well, it's up to each individual world sport to figure out what their policy is.
And so now we're all over the place.
So you have like world swimming that allows that says zero males, you know, after the Leah Thomas affair, zero male-born athletes in women's elite competition, but it's okay to do it at the kids' level.
And then you have British volleyball saying only, you know, female-only games and leagues.
And then in world athletics, we're waiting for the world track and field to update a new policy and they've had to change their testosterone levels.
I mean, every sport governing body right now in the world has its own unique approach and the policies are all over the place.
So we're in this transition period, for want of a better word, where all the sports are pushing back in different ways, but some more extreme are more strict than others.
Well, it sounds like maybe the pendulum is swinging back because at least you're allowed to talk about it now.
Whereas before you even mentioned the issue and you're deplatformed, I think, by the way, social media was part of the problem.
We're learning now just how insane the censorship was on Twitter.
I think that that deliberately flowed into all aspects of life.
You know, it's funny because I wanted to talk with you about something else that you brought to our attention.
There is a committee, and in fact, a cabinet minister in this country in charge of the status of women.
And I think nothing has eroded the status of women more in the last decade than adding an adjective in front of the word women, trans women.
Like either you're a woman or you're not a woman.
And this degradation and this watering down of what it means to be a woman, that is an absolute attack on what it means to be a woman.
In the very literal sense of it.
So let me just read a press release put out by our government just a few weeks ago.
Status of women committee invites the public to submit written briefs for its study on the participation of women and girls in sport.
Well, could there be a more acute and topical issue than what we've just been talking about?
Let me read just the first paragraph of the release.
As part of its study, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women will be examining the factors that affect the physical and emotional health of women and girls in sport, as well as their safety.
The objective of the study is to identify ways to ensure a safe and inclusive sport environment and to encourage women and girls to participate in sport in Canada.
There is literally nothing else on the radar, on the horizon, in the environment that comes close to it.
It's not just the violence and the threat of harm that you've described, but it's just not fun anymore.
If the loser from the male team comes over and says, I'm a girl now, and you know, comes in sluggish for a man, but good enough to beat the women physically, it just takes all the fun out of it.
There's nothing more relevant, and yet when you applied to submit a brief, I'm just shocked by this.
The committee clerk, Alexi LaBelle, of course, her pronouns are in her signature, she, her, L.
I just want to read this.
This is incredible to me.
And then I'll ask for your response.
Good morning, Dr. Blade.
On behalf of the Standing Committee of the Status of Women, I thank you for your interest in the committee's work.
The committee study on women and girls in sport seeks to examine the physical, emotional health, and safety of women and girls in sport and invites the public.
Yes, we know all that.
Unfortunately, and following consultation with the committee, I cannot accept your brief as it falls outside the scope of the study.
Once again, thank you for your interest in the committee's work.
So they would not accept you, a Canadian citizen, former coach, you know, history in this.
They just would not accept your point of view.
They just refused it.
You're a citizen.
They're the parliament.
They work for you.
They're having consultations and they simply refuse to hear what you're saying.
And I'm also the president of a provincial sports association in Alberta.
I'm a professional coach, and I spoke specifically to this kind of danger that you're talking about in hockey: about male bodies colliding with female bodies, about like in track and field, a man hurling a spear, a woman's weighted spear, and it could go way beyond the bounds of the field and impale somebody.
I was actually talking about these issues, and they said it falls outside the scope of their study.
And so they refused my brief.
Well, I mean, a committee has members typically of every political party, if the parties have any size.
So you're going to have more liberal MPs than conservative MPs, but not too many more.
You're going to have NDP MPs, and you might have, you know, I don't know if you would have a block MP on there or not, but you're going to have conservatives on every single committee.
In fact, the vice chair of most committees would be a conservative.
Did the conservative members of this House of Commons committee have any dissent?
Were they open to it, or did they say, no, no, we don't want to hear from Linda Blade either?
Here's what happens: the clerk that's unelected, unknown, sits at the desk and actually screens, does the gatekeeping.
So the MPs don't even see my brief.
So what we have is some awoke individual who went through and got gender ideology status.
And now they're the screen.
So they don't let the MPs see what the sports experts in women's sports on safety and emotional healthy are not letting that through if it has anything to do with transgender.
Well, but this clerk specifically said, unfortunately, and following consultation with the committee, that implies that she checked with the MPs.
Mainstream Media Silence00:03:03
Like if she just said, I won't accept it, or I cannot accept it, but she prefaced that by saying, following consultation with the committee, I cannot accept your brief.
Have you followed up with at least the conservative MPs?
Because I think you should.
Because I would very much like to know if members of Pierre Polyev's Conservative Party of Canada refuse to even hear the other side of the story on transgender athletes in women's sport.
And if that's the case, I'm shocked.
And if it's the case, we have a problem.
And if it's not the case, then we have another problem.
We have a clerk who's out of control.
Either way, we've got a problem, Linda.
Big problem.
And I've actually sent emails twice now to members of that committee, have had no response.
And they're including the conservative ones.
Well, I mean, I'm not surprised by that, but I'm very disappointed if those conservatives on the committee are going along with this.
Well, I'm glad you're keeping up the fight.
And I'm glad that there are some journalists who talk about this.
Your co-author of Unsporting, Linda, pardon me, Barbara Kaye, just does a great job of this.
Her son, Jonathan Kay, wrote this article in Quillette about the Trans Hockey League.
There are, you know, this is what Mickey Kaus calls the undernews, which is it's the news that people are talking about, you know, water coolers and over coffee that's underneath the mainstream media.
The mainstream media won't talk about it, but real people want to talk about it.
They're interested in it.
Moms and dads whose daughters play sports are very extremely interested in it.
And just because the Toronto Star and the CBC are thrilled with this new trans hockey league, the undernews, the undercurrents, people are furious, terrified, scared, and repulsed, not for a sexual reason, but for a safety reason.
And by trying to cast critics as bigots, they only show that they're not acting in good faith.
It's not bigoted to say, I don't want my daughter to be smashed up by a 200-pound teenage boy who just wants an easy win.
That's not bigotry.
That's, in fact, to deny the threat to women is bigotry.
Last word to you, Coach Blade.
Yeah, we're just asking for the conversation and to actually listen to the constituency that is probably 80% of the public, because that's what we find all the time.
We have about 80% support of people who just want sex-based guidelines.
We don't care.
Like, we don't pick athletes on the basis of religion or ideology.
We've never asked somebody their religion when they come to our sport.
Why would we ask them how they see themselves or whatever?
You compete on the basis of your biological sex because you're competing with your body.
The more that we can say that respectfully and then respect identities within the sex-based boundaries, the safer we're going to be.
Yeah, just incredible.
I was just glancing at that story about this trans hockey league.
Albertans' Peaceful Protest Movement00:03:47
In time, I don't know if it'll be two years, five years, or 50 years, people will look back at it and marvel at the insanity that we accepted, not just accepted, that we obeyed.
Coach Linda Blade, great to catch up with you.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you, Ezra.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
Stay with us.
ahead.
You know, we did a great job of covering the Trucker Commission here at Rebel News.
You can go to truckercommission.com and see our work.
I think there's still more work to do.
My monologue today was about a document that I had not really tucked into before.
It was the Prime Minister's summary of things he told lawyers before his actual testimony.
Just incredible there.
Incredible, but not surprising that other media have basically ignored it.
The Prime Minister is saying, sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, free speech, but.
And then pages of but this, but that.
I'm a bit worried about it, you know.
I think that's going to be the big civil liberties battle of 2023.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
We're here for all Albertans.
Canadians, we're here fighting for the freedoms of not us, but our kids, our grandkids, the future of this province, this country.
Three Albertans could now face a collective 30 years behind bars for their alleged involvement in the unwaveringly peaceful Coutz blockade.
This demonstration was part of a decentralized movement across Canada against COVID health regulations and vaccine mandates from all levels of government.
Couts blockade events saw COVID restrictions lift in Alberta and catalyzed former Premier Jason Kenney's stepping down as the province's United Conservative Party's leader.
This movement forever altered the course of politics here in Alberta and showed the importance of peaceful demonstrations against government overreach.
Months later, the RCMP alleged three individuals, Alex, Marco and George, to have been key participants of the blockade.
All three were consequently charged with mischief over $5,000.
And each could now face 10 years behind bars, separating them from their families for what could be a decade.
And we think there's something not right about these men potentially having to face this life-altering sentence.
That's why we're doing everything we can at Rebel News to help.
At no cost to them, we have Williamson Law fighting for these men tirelessly in the courts, made possible because of your donations at truckerdefensefund.ca.
If you'd like to help offset the massive legal undertaking these men now face, I encourage you to go to truckerdefensefund.ca.
Tens of thousands of Albertans and even more Canadians across the country stood up over the last two years to voice their concerns of health regulations gone too far.
Still, out of spite, the government continues to punish those who saw faults with their draconian health measures.
On February 14th, after 18 days in Coutz, demonstrators decidedly ended the blockade to emphatically express that this was a peaceful movement.
After the events of yesterday and the news released that the RCMP made arrests and come forward with and the arrests resulted in long arm, firearms, handguns, and protective equipment being unearthed, we as the Coots Envoy have decided that as a peaceful protest and to maintain that narrative, we will be rolling out tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.
Jury's Role in Accountability00:06:38
At their last court appearance on November 4th, we spoke with Alex, Marco and George directly to find out how they felt about this situation they've now been thrown into.
We also spoke with Chad Williamson of Williamson Law, who is being crowdfunded through TruckerDefensefund.ca.
He gave us a little more insight into the case that lays ahead.
So the prosecutors have decided to proceed by indictment which gives Mr. Van Kirk, Mr. Jansen, and Master Hugo Boss the right to be tried by a jury of their peers.
We believe that 12 randomly chosen representative jurors reflect the common sense, the values, and the conscience of this community and are very important in this case.
Once disclosure has been properly received, we'll proceed to trial by jury immediately.
There will be no deals and no concessions of any kind.
You were just inside the courthouse.
What was your takeaway from today's events?
Well, I mean, it was very straightforward.
There's not much that was discussed, but I mean, it's just one further step to going further in the whole jury trial.
Because they didn't have the disclosure available for us to look at, so we weren't able to plea, they had to do an arraignment to postpone it to December 12th.
When you tie up logistics assets and things like that for technical and procedural things to this extent, I think, what's the point?
Can we just get on with this?
We're not nobody's, nobody's saying we're not looking to go to trial, et cetera.
But the back and forth is employing tens and tens of individuals on both sides of these charges.
And to me, that's completely unnecessary.
When it comes to Williamson Law, are they doing their due diligence in helping you?
Absolutely.
We're very thankful for the support that we're getting from them.
I don't know who else I would trust other than Chad and his team there, for sure.
Yes, 100%.
Joev represents me.
He's on the ball.
He is the lawyer that I need.
I'm involved.
I'm going to be looking over his shoulder.
And he is that kind of lawyer.
We've connected big time.
And there's nothing that I have questions on that doesn't get answered.
There's no misunderstandings.
Oh, 100%.
Williamson Law has been 100% backing us on everything we've asked.
They're fighting hard for us.
And I believe the Crown that's dealing with this case has definitely been a little hard to deal with.
But they've also added an additional amount of evidence, they claim, to the disclosure.
So they've got more evidence coming against us.
More evidence.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like, I thought they had enough.
And the reason for this prosecution is not law.
It's politics.
It's vengeance.
It's punishment.
This was done under the former regime, Jason Kenny.
He took an extreme approach to lockdowns.
He's the one who has Sir Arthur Pavlovsky in prison 350 days.
The prosecutor, Stephen Johnson, who was involved in that prosecution of Arthur Pavlovsky.
That must be undone.
There's a presumption of innocence in this country, which is fundamental to the natural sense of justice and is fundamental to our democracy.
Obviously, these folks need to be presumed innocent until the Crown does their work to attempt to prove that they're guilty.
We think they're going to have an uphill battle in that regard, but again, we're at the very early outsets of this matter.
The Crown is essentially, as you know, elected to have this heard by indictment rather than summary proceedings, which means that it gets elevated to the Court of King's Bench.
Now, obviously, that can carry more serious penalties, but it also gives these fellows the right to be tried by a jury of their peers.
So today, on the record, we entered our election on behalf of our clients to have this tried by a jury.
And we feel that the common sense, the integrity, and the overall reasonableness of a jury of their peers could bring maybe some semblance of sanity to these proceedings.
So on December 12th, we're elevating this to the Court of King's Bench, and what's called an arraignment will take place where we essentially set the record and begin proceedings and start setting a procedure for the rest of the litigation in this matter.
So it'll be another procedural hearing, but it's going to be interesting and we'll start moving down the full course of this thing at that point.
Chad is being crowdfunded through TruckerDefensefund.ca so that these men don't have to worry about legal financing.
If you want to help them, that's where you can go to donate.
We'll follow up with Chad after December 12th to find out how this case is unfolding.
And lastly, I'll leave you with a message from Alex, Marco, and George from when we last spoke in November.
For Rebel News, Sydney Fizard.
Don't be afraid.
Stand up for truth.
Do what's right.
It's what we were made for.
You know, for an example, for our children, the future of other Canadians, or across the world as well.
Stand for truth.
This is a bigger fight.
This is about government overreach.
We can talk about many different avenues, but this was in relation to COVID.
Those in power made mistakes.
And it wasn't just mistakes.
There was intent.
And that has to be dealt with.
That has to be exposed.
I'm aware of a citizens' inquiry that's getting underway.
Our Premier, Daniel Smith, is pushing back against Health Act violations, etc.
The people have, their trust has been abused, their health has been abused, their freedom has been abused.
And for us to ever trust those in authority again, that has to be dealt with.
I feel an inquiry needs to happen, like an independent inquiry into what happened in the last three years, who is responsible and who is accountable.
There's got to be accountability.
We're being held to account for the alleged charges that we got charged with.
So why are they not being held to account for what was happened with them?
I mean, there's a lot of charges being dropped, so you know there were things that happened unjustly.