Ezra Levant critiques Stephen Gilbo’s "environmental equity" mantra as a vague, ideological tool—funded by Trudeau’s government via the Canadian Race Relations Foundation—to justify expropriation or subjective activism, eroding legal neutrality. Parallels drawn to COVID-era lawsuits like Ingram Scott (Alberta’s $1B+ economic harm) and Emergencies Act bank seizures (Justice Mosley’s unconstitutional ruling) fuel optimism for class action redress, with Rath and Company pushing a September certification hearing. Trudeau’s overreach—from firearms bans to gas-powered vehicle restrictions—threatens Alberta’s economy, prompting calls for a "Marshall Plan" settlement via transfer payment deductions, while his NDP allies’ anti-fossil fuel stance clashes with rural realities like Northern Ontario’s dependence on them. The episode frames these policies as part of a broader institutional weakening under "woke" governance. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my friends, new Marxist campaign just dropped.
Stephen Gilbo, very excited about it.
It's called environmental equity.
And yes, it's a new form of Marxism.
I'll tell you what the government's thinking and how they deliberately don't define the terms.
That's next.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That is the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, which I think is a bargain.
But it's actually a lot of money to us because it really adds up.
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Half our payroll here is really from the subscriptions to this show.
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Please help us out by going to RebelNewsPlus.com and clicking subscribe.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, Stephen Gilbeau announces a new government ideology, environmental equity.
It's February 8th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
There are some true liberals left in the Liberal Party, not too many these days.
There's some people who are completely devoid of ideology.
They're just there to win or to cash in somehow.
And then there are the true radicals, mostly Marxists.
I know that sounds like a dramatic flourish to accuse someone of being a communist in 2024, but it's not an accusation.
It's a description.
Or in this case, it's pretty much what they call themselves.
Look at this from Stephen Gilbeau, the convicted criminal who serves as Trudeau's environment minister.
It was a tweet that I now have access to since he's unblocked me by court order.
He says, we are committed to advancing environmental justice because every individual in Canada has a right to a healthy environment.
We want to hear from you, share your experiences to help shape policy and advance environmental equity in Canada here.
And then there's a link, which I'll get to in a moment.
So when I was a kid, the environment was clean air, clean soil, clean water.
Pretty easy to understand.
Global warming, not so much.
You can't see it.
You have to take someone's word for it.
Greenhouse gases, the number one of which is simply water vapor, they're all invisible and harmless.
I mean, carbon dioxide, which is the one that the government obsesses over, it's harmless.
Humans and animals exhale it.
Plants breathe it in.
Like I say, not really anything to do with clean air, clean water, and clean soil.
But at least they were pretending it was about the environment, although I think most of us see through that now.
But look at this new thing, environmental justice, or environmental equity, as they're also calling it.
That link continues to an official Government of Canada page, and I clicked on it.
It says, welcome to Advancing Environmental Equity, Environment, and Climate Change Canada.
It is engaging with a broad range of voices from across the country to help inform policies and initiatives that could advance environmental equity.
Advancing environmental equity means no single group or community is at a disadvantage in dealing with hazardous environmental exposures, pollution, or national disasters, regardless of their social position.
It involves identifying inequities and providing those affected with the support needed to achieve a position of equity.
We invite you to visit regularly to learn more about our consultation and engagement activities, how you can get involved, and to have your say.
And then there's that register button.
And I clicked register and I clicked on set up a new account and I entered my info and it asked me to set up a password, but I tried about five times and it wouldn't work.
It gave me a false error message that I didn't have enough characters in my password, but I did.
It just wouldn't work.
Seriously, what a perfect illustration of this Trudeau government.
Weird ideological obsessions, but no ability to actually do anything in the real world.
I wonder how many millions of dollars they spent on that website and which liberal got the contract.
But here's what wasn't broken on the page.
Here's the first link.
Let's look at it for a bit on the EnviroEquity.ca page.
Advancing environmental justice.
I'll read a bit.
In December 2021, the mandate letter for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change included a commitment to introduce legislation to require the development of an environmental justice strategy.
In February 2022, the government supported the private members bill C226, an act respecting the development of a national strategy to assess, prevent, and address environmental racism and to advance environmental justice in parliament.
So it's got nothing to do with clean air, clean soil, clean water.
It's about queering the environment, about radicalizing it, about genderizing it, about transgenderizing it, about turning it into the next Marxist battleground.
Here, I'll read more.
This bill includes the requirement to have a strategy to promote efforts across Canada to advance environmental justice and to assess, prevent, and address environmental racism.
What?
This includes a study looking at the links between race, socioeconomic status, and environmental risks.
The strategy will include these findings and measures to advance environmental justice, such as possible amendments to federal laws, policies, and programs.
It's like when Trudeau brought in gender analysis to new pipeline projects.
Seriously, remember that?
As a government body, looking at how every different decision can have an impact on women in a positive or a negative way.
Even big infrastructure projects, you might not say, oh, what does a gender lens have to do with building this new highway or this new pipeline or something?
Well, there are gender impacts.
When you bring construction workers into a rural area, there are social impacts because they're mostly male construction workers.
How are you adjusting and adapting to those?
That's what the gender lens in GBA plus budgeting is all about.
These are all things that we've been doing, not to be nice or to be better or to be moral, but to be smart about getting the very best out of all of our citizens and making the very best out of our economy.
Basically, big construction projects like mines, they usually hire a lot of men, so they're obviously sexist and have to be stopped.
I wish I were kidding.
Now they're going to apply that to the environment.
Here, I'll read more.
Environmental justice and environmental racism are broad concepts that can be applied in various contexts.
While environmental racism and justice is a new area of work for the government of Canada, grassroots organizations have significant knowledge and experience in advocating for communities and raising awareness on these issues.
The government of Canada aims to work with these organizations, affected communities, and those with lived experiences to inform the development of a national strategy.
So they're going to get little radical groups out there to find this kooky ideological BS.
And of course, they're all paid for by the government anyways.
They'll get government grants.
Don't think for a second they don't.
This whole thing's made up.
So they can make it stand for anything.
Like I say, nothing to do with clean air, clean water, clean soil, all of which I like, by the way.
Everything to do with pitting us against each other based on race and gender, pure cultural Marxism.
I've just got to read this next part to you.
Frequently asked questions.
What is environmental justice?
That's a good question.
Here's their answer.
In Canada, there is no definition of environmental justice that is accepted by everyone.
Instead, environmental justice is considered a concept that can be applied in various contexts.
Environmental justice is a movement, oh, seeking to ensure fair and meaningful inclusion of affected peoples and equal sharing of benefits and costs when making decisions about the environment.
Equal sharing, eh?
That's a tip off.
When making these decisions, environmental justice aims to recognize and seek to address the existing inequalities faced by indigenous, racialized, or otherwise marginalized communities.
Do you know what that means?
Of course you don't, and neither do they.
And you might be thinking, well, shouldn't the government know what it's talking about when it's going to do something like this?
And that's where you'd be wrong because you're thinking about this wrong.
The whole point is for environmental justice, environmental equity to be so vague that it literally can be used to do anything to anyone for any reason.
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
So you could expropriate someone's business, theoretically.
You could block a mega project or let another one through.
It's magic, really.
There's not right or wrong.
It's not like math where 2 plus 2 equals 4.
It's whatever the activists say.
They'll listen to the street teams.
You've heard of justice, of course.
We know what justice means.
The word is literally thousands of years old.
It was the name of Roman emperors, Justinian.
And it was about the law and justice.
Justinian wrote the corpus juris civilis, which means the body of civil law.
He did that 1500 years ago.
Here's a printing of it 500 years ago.
It's such an important building block of the West.
Everyone knows what the law is and its importance.
And everyone knows that one of the most important things about a law is you get judges and justice that's blind.
Justice judges on the merits, not on your last name or your race or your gender or your background.
The rule of law means everyone is the same before justice.
That's what that blindfold is about.
But if you add an adjective to justice, then immediately you've changed it, haven't you?
You've taken the blindfold off because you're going to favor certain things.
It's like the difference between a journalist and a government journalist, right?
That's the difference between justice and social justice, isn't it?
Social justice was just a battering ram to smash through real justice in the name of race and sex or other socialism.
Well, this is adding a new front, environmental justice.
Of course, they don't know what it means, or if they know, they're not going to tell you because that would be too right-wing to have a fixed definition.
They'll leave it up to activists to determine just what they're going to do with this power.
But let me tell you, it all has to do with removing the blindfolds of justice.
They talk about environmental racism.
I'll read their note on that in a moment, but let me end the suspense.
You are surely an environmental racist.
That's what this law is about.
Okay, here's what they say officially.
What is environmental racism?
Like environmental justice, there is no definition of environmental racism accepted by everyone, and it has not yet been defined by the government of Canada.
It is a broad concept that can be applied in various contexts.
Environmental racism is a form of systemic racism.
Oh, okay.
When it comes to the environment, environmental racism is when environmental decision-making policies and practices overly disadvantage some people due to their race.
This outcome can be intentional or unintentional.
Got it.
So you can be an unintentional environmental racist.
It's hidden.
You don't even know how environmentally racist you are.
The government will tell you, though.
Can you imagine weaponizing this idea?
I love this next part.
The Canadian Race Relations Foundation defines environmental racism as, quote, A systemic form of racism in which toxic wastes are introduced into or near marginalized communities.
People of color, Indigenous peoples, working class, and poor communities suffer disproportionately from environmental hazards and the location of dangerous toxic facilities such as incinerators and toxic waste dumps.
Pollution of lands, air, and waterways often cause chronic illness to the inhabitants and change in their lifestyle.
Of course, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation is funded, and their leader was handpicked by Justin Trudeau.
So it's like the left sock puppet citing the left, the right sock puppet here.
They're both working for the same Trudeau.
Now, by the way, there's probably some truth to the fact that people who are poor live closer to, say, factories than people who are rich who probably live closer to, say, parks or golf courses.
Although modern zoning pretty much keeps factories away from housing, we believe in a world where people can better themselves, though, and work their way up.
People can start in a lower-cost neighborhood that's typically poorer because it's lower cost.
And as they work up, they can move and buy more expensive houses.
Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Or it should in a country where housing is affordable, at least don't, isn't the idea that you move up in life as you grow and learn and earn more?
But what do you think this all might mean in 2024 under Justin Trudeau?
Well, just brainstorming for a moment, I see all the people living in these new tent cities that have popped up across Canada, partly filled with Canadians who can no longer afford housing, partly filled with foreign migrants with nowhere to go.
Well, welcome to the people you are obviously environmentally racist against.
So get ready to have them move into your kids' school gym.
That's happened in New York City.
Your neighborhood park that's already happening in Canada.
Your golf course, your own backyard, your own spare bedroom.
Lawsuits Against Lockdown Orders00:12:57
Think that's too crazy?
If you think so, I think you're missing the whole point of environmental Marxism.
It's not about fixing the environment.
It's about fixing you.
Stay with us for more.
Well, Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
And I think what he meant by that is that justice will come eventually, even if it feels slow.
And it's been four years since Canada and the world was thrown into an authoritarian dystopia of lockdowns and brutal public health orders that were really nothing to do with public health, but a lot to do about orders.
People were jailed.
Families were broken up for various reasons.
You weren't allowed to gather for weddings or funerals.
You weren't allowed to fly or get on a train.
It was terrible.
We pit each other against each other, and so many people complied.
But I feel like the pendulum is finally swinging back.
I think it was an enormous breakthrough when the Federal Court of Canada a few weeks ago ruled that the Emergencies Act was unlawful, illegal, unreasonable, unintelligible, and unconstitutional.
What a vindication for those who peacefully protested with the truckers.
And what a rebuke of the political sham hearings led by Justice Rollo.
Remember this moment when our friend Ava Chipiuk cross-examined the Prime Minister?
Take a look.
Minister Blair, Public Safety Minister, Minister Mendicino, National Security Intelligence Advisor Jody Thomas, and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucky.
And today you testified that the federal government was committed to exhausting all alternatives to a resolution prior to making a decision to invoke the extraordinary powers of the Emergencies Act.
Do you agree that that accurately describes your government's position?
That the invocation of the Emergencies Act was a measure of last resort, was not something to be taken lightly.
Thank you.
And something to do when other options were not effective.
And you are aware that the OPP, along with others, developed an engagement proposal and you were advised of that proposal at the IRG meeting on February 12th, correct?
It was a proposal, but we had, and it was presented to us.
We had more questions about how it would actually work.
It was not a complete proposal.
My last question, Mr. Prime Minister.
When did you and your government start to become so afraid of your own citizens?
That's a very, and we are not.
Those are my questions.
Well, the Prime Minister has more than egg on his face.
He's now responsible for the greatest violation of civil liberties in a generation in Canada.
So too, in the province of Alberta, whose motto is strong and free, it was neither of those things during the lockdown.
In fact, we later learned that the public health orders were ultra-veras, were unconstitutional, were beyond the power of the government to issue.
So what does it mean for people who were violated by illegal laws?
In the case of the Emergencies Act, what about the hundreds of families who illegally had their bank accounts seized?
What action do they have against the government?
Or in the case of Alberta, what about everyone who labored under those illegal public health orders?
Can there be some sort of class action to hold the government to account?
I'm asked this often, and I'm not an expert in class actions, but imagine my delight when I saw a press release today.
Let me read it to you.
Rath and Company launches class action lawsuit against Alberta government for COVID-19 business restrictions.
I'll just read a little bit.
Rath and Company has launched a class action lawsuit against the province of Alberta on behalf of business owners in Alberta who faced operational restrictions due to now deemed illegal public health orders.
This lawsuit follows the recent Ingram decision by the Calgary Court of King's Bench, which declared all of Dr. Hinchaw's public health orders were ultra-virus.
That's Latin for not lawfully enacted beyond the power of the law.
Joining us now is the boss of Rath law firm, Jeff Rath, and his teammate, who you just saw in action against the PM, our favorite Ava Chipiuk.
I can't believe the dream team that has come together to get a little bit of justice in Alberta.
Welcome to both of you guys.
Well, thank you very much, Ezra.
It's a real pleasure to be here.
Thank you.
You know, Jeff, last time I saw you, you were speaking at Rebel News Live, which is our big gathering that we do once a year in Calgary and once a year in Toronto.
Tell us the thinking behind a class action lawsuit.
I think most of our viewers have heard of that, but basically, you invite people to join the class, right?
So you don't have to, so people can join in and say, Oh, I suffered too.
Tell me, tell me how it works.
Sure.
The way the law works in Alberta is that everybody is presumed to be a member of the class unless they opt out of the class.
Oh, okay.
As now stand in Alberta up through certification.
We're currently, our firm is currently proud to represent every single business owner in the province of Alberta or individual whose private interests were affected in an economic sense by all of Deana Hinshaw's completely ridiculous lockdown orders, which, aside from the fact there was never any evidence that they did anything to ameliorate the spread of that Chinese cold bug known as COVID-19, not only did those lockdowns do nothing to ameliorate it,
but the lockdowns themselves have been determined to be illegal.
So, in a legal sense, all of the economic losses that flow from those illegal orders are actionable, and we'll be seeking compensation from the government of Alberta on behalf of every business owner that was illegally affected by the Jason Kenney Dina Hinshaw orders.
And as a result, and just quickly, as a result of the Ingram decision, and all of those orders being declared illegal, that's why all the provincial offenses against the churches, you know, against individual business owners like Chris Scott that were charged for violating the Public Health Act have been withdrawn and thrown out of court.
Because how can you prosecute somebody for an illegal order?
So, obviously, we're very, as a firm, we're very proud of the fact that it was our arguments on ultraviolet that resulted in freeing all of our fellow citizens from that tyranny.
And we're now going to be seeking redress on their behalf from an economic perspective.
You know, I'm so glad that's happening.
And I know Chris Scott a little bit.
He's the proprietor of the Whistle Stop Cafe in Mirror, Alberta.
By the way, amazing hamburgers.
I've been there myself.
But Chris was put through hell.
He was literally jailed.
He was put through years of illegal prosecution.
And at the end of the day, they just dropped him like a sack of potatoes and said, Oh, sorry, I guess that was.
But he wasn't brought back to even.
He was not compensated either for the disastrous prosecution of him or what they did to his company.
They just sort of said, Oh, we're not going to prosecute you anymore.
So I'm so glad that this is what I mean about the arc of justice.
It's, you know, it bends, the arc of history bends towards justice, but it takes a while.
Ava, you have been in the thick of the freedom movement since early days.
You were there in Ottawa with the truckers.
You were there at the Public Order Inquiry Commission that was the ROLO commission that was sort of a, you know, I'm not going to call it a sham.
There were some useful things that were revealed, but it certainly wasn't an independent court hearing like we had two weeks ago.
Tell me what your involvement will be.
Obviously, you're a lawyer, but I think you've got connections in the freedom community.
Does that help here at all?
Does it help to have people sign on?
Or like Jeff says, is sort of everyone deemed to be part of the class action from the beginning?
Yeah, no, it's everyone's already in the class action.
So only those that want to opt out will be opting out and contacting us.
But I think what's helpful, given that I've been involved in the freedom movement, as you say, is that we're able to get the message out.
Even today, it's clearly getting a lot of attention, which is great.
So that people understand and start to appreciate that there's somebody that's trying to do something for all of the harms that have occurred over the last few years.
And maybe it'll entice people in other provinces to do the same as well.
So I hope that helps at least.
I'm very eager to get to be involved in this and happy to be working with Jeff on this because you could really see how those mandates affected businesses.
And they were kind of targeted and took on this massive financial burden for the benefit of public in general.
And nobody really thought too much about them.
And so we're bringing some attention to that now.
And obviously, as with regard to this lawsuit, we've been planning this since we first filed on behalf of Rebecca Ingram way back in 2020 when they came down with the silly, the ridiculous lockdown orders telling us how many friends that we could have in our homes for Christmas at Hanukkah.
If you recall those silly orders, you were allowed, you know, married couples were allowed to have two friends, single people could have two friends, you know, all that silliness that came out of Hinshaw early in the pandemic.
We've been in court for Rebecca Ingram since the fall of 2020.
And of course, the big victory for us in the Ingram case is we planned from the outset to argue the ultraviolet point and needed to win on the ultraviolet point, not the charter points.
Because in finding that the orders themselves were ultra-virus or outside of the scope of the Public Health Act, there's a section of the Public Health Act, believe it or not, that we say should be repealed that prevents lawsuits against public health officials and the Alberta government in the event that they pass lawful public health orders that cause massive damages and economic losses to people that are,
you know, that are in effect being asked to, you know, or told, not last, they're being told to lock up their businesses for the benefit of everybody else.
In effect, having their property expropriated without compensation is the way that the Public Health Act is structured.
But because the court at King's Bench ruled that the orders were ultra-virides, the Public Health Act, are outside of the scope of the Public Health Act, that Section 66.1 protection no longer applies.
And we have a clear statement of liability from the Court of King's Bench.
And we're going straight at the Alberta government for business losses of the people that suffered these horrendous illegal orders.
Let me just check to make sure I understand what you're saying.
The law in Alberta says if the government makes a public health order and it causes some harm, they're immune to prosecution.
But that only applies if it's a lawful order.
So if it's an unlawful order that they didn't have the legal power to do, they are subject to litigation.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, but I mean, the point's a little bit more subtle than that.
Because of the finding of ultra-viries, and that was a very important finding, on its face, the orders were not issued under the Public Health Act.
They were, you know, they're outside the scope of the Public Health Act, so they wouldn't attract any Public Health Act protection, which was a huge win for us.
And what we were, you know, I have to say, plotting from the beginning because we wanted to be able to sue at the end of the day to recover damages on everybody's behalf who was shut down under these lawful orders.
I mean, people committed suicide over these orders.
It's just, I mean, it's just heartbreaking.
And of course, when I was cross-examining Dina Hinshaw and I asked her if she knew how many people committed suicide because of her evil public health orders, her answer was, oh, I wouldn't know the answer to that question.
You'll have to ask the chief medical examiner of the province of Alberta.
So then my next question was, okay, Dr. Hinshaw, did you ever ask the chief medical examiner of the province of Alberta how many people committed suicide as a result of your orders?
Lawsuits And Class Actions00:09:42
Her answer was shocking.
It was no.
You know, so I mean, just this lack of care, lack of thought, lack of empathy, lack of feeling for the fact that you've devastated families.
You've basically expropriated their life savings.
These people that had to keep pouring their personal savings and retirement funds into keeping their businesses alive, while Dina Hinshaw, at a whim, you know, would come up with it seemed like a new stupid restriction every single day on our rights of rights and liberties.
Yeah, Jeff, you're bringing back a lot of bad memories.
I've tried in some ways to forget what life was like back then.
I mean, we at Rebel News fought very hard.
We had the Fight the Fines project where we tried to help people big and small fight against it.
That's where we met your client, Chris Scott.
But I forgot about how atrocious it was.
Hey, Ava, I got a question for you.
Again, I'm a former lawyer, but I haven't practiced a law in a while and I've never done any class actions.
I understand you guys were in court yesterday before a judge seeking certification of a class action.
Am I right on that?
And what does it mean for the class to be certified?
And correct my terminology if I got it wrong.
I'm just not that familiar with class action lawsuits.
Well, I'm getting to know them as well.
So it's a learning experience for me.
But it was a case management meeting yesterday.
So it wasn't the certification hearing yet.
That's going to come up likely in September.
So that's going to take a little bit of time.
In the case management yesterday, it was really to find out whether or not, or what the province's release is that the province made it known to us that they were going to be challenging the certification.
So one thing of note for yourself and your audience is generally certification, that step from my understanding, is that it's not the most difficult test.
It's not whether or not the lawsuit is valid per se, but whether or not it makes sense for the court and the court system to put everyone together.
So there's not 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 lawsuits.
It makes sense to put everyone together in the efficiency of the judicial system and all of that.
So the question that we're going to be posing to the court in September, unless the province, of course, changes its opinion on this, is whether or not it's going to be certified and all businesses can come together under this one lawsuit.
And I think that's an important point, Ezra, that I'd like to get your listeners to internalize.
We need to bring as much political pressure to bear as we can on the Alberta government.
It's not even clear from talking to the Alberta government lawyers whether Premier Smith is even aware of the fact that they're opposing certification in this matter.
I mean, needless to say, Danielle Smith is an MLA, has hundreds, if not thousands of constituents in her home riding whose businesses were destroyed as a result of these lockdown orders.
Needless to say, the tens of thousands of people that all came together to elect Danielle Smith, the leader of the Progressive Conservative, or I'm sorry, the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta, would not expect her to be opposing the compensation of business owners whose lives and property were destroyed by illegal government orders.
So, you know, this Alberta government stance on certification might just be, you know, from our perspective, might just be the knee-jerk reaction of Alberta government lawyers to suits that are filed.
But I think everybody that's watching and listening to this program, you know, needs to be writing their MLAs, writing to Danielle Smith, and encouraging them to settle this case sooner rather than later, rather than delaying for years the compensation of all these businesses and Albertans whose lives were destroyed by orders that the court of King's Bench has clearly found to be illegal.
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
Is obviously class action lawsuits have to have the staying power to go the distance against a really big defendant.
I think some of the most famous class action lawsuits are against automobile manufacturers, against tobacco companies, against, I mean, for example, sometimes big tech companies or banks.
So you have this massive, rich defendant who is going to fight like hell with the top lawyers.
But at a certain point in time, they often settle, certainly on the tobacco side in other cases.
And it would be interesting to me if the province of Alberta, who, as you point out, is led by a premier who I think was one of the most pro-freedom commentators out there.
And I remember very early, she apologized.
I think this was when she was the candidate for running for premier.
She apologized to Albertans for the mandates and for the brutality of it.
So I think it would be very, I think there's a real chance that if Danielle Smith and her brain trust really think about this, that instead of fighting it like hell, they say, well, let's come up with a thoughtful settlement that actually ameliorates some of the damage that this government illegally did.
Hey, Abe, I got a question for you.
We just talked about the Emergencies Act because, I mean, we've been talking about it for two weeks, really.
In that case, I don't know if there were hundreds of thousands of businesses that were hurt, but I know there were hundreds of bank accounts that were seized.
Have you guys thought at all?
And look at me giving you work to do.
Have you guys thought at all about a class action for the Federal Emergencies Act?
It looks like the feds are going to appeal the ruling by Justice Mosley that said it was unconstitutional.
But there you'd have a smaller class action, I think, probably just 300 people.
But I would think that is a very powerful class action.
Is that something that's on your mind or you're keeping that rabbit in the hat for now?
It certainly has.
Oh, I have to speak to the question.
I'd say stay tuned for more.
But on the point of the appeal, I would bet that the feds are not going to appeal it.
It's such a good, well-written decision.
If they did, it would be more for political purposes, not for legal purposes.
They also have to consider if they do appeal and then the Court of Appeal reinforces that decision.
In the case of the Ingram one we're talking about here, the province decided not to appeal it, which I think was the right step to do, not to continue with taxpayers' money on appealing these decisions that clearly were illegal.
So on that point, I wanted just to make that note.
But I think there's going to be a few lawsuits coming out of this.
There's a lot of buzz around that.
So stay tuned for that.
Yeah, we wouldn't be giving away solicitor client privilege secrets by telling you that our office is being inundated by emails from people who suffered business losses as a result of their bank accounts being seized and mistreatment by the, you know, by the authoritarian Trudeau junta in Ottawa.
Yeah.
Well, and that was one of the things that Justice Mosley really focused on is that the broad brush approach of seizing family.
I mean, a lot of families have a joint bank account, mom and dad, and that same bank account is for groceries, is for medical needs, is for school, is for rent.
So you're tagging maybe dad who's at the protest, but you've punished mom and kids.
Like, holy cow, does that cry out for some compensation, especially given the harsh rebuke of the federal court?
So I hope and I look forward to, I'm sure there will be class action litigation emanating from that.
Well, I'm very excited to see this.
And I know both of you a little bit personally.
And of course, I know you by reputation, you're both freedom fighters and you're lawyers.
And I wish there were more freedom fighting lawyers.
I just want to give out your website one more time for folks who want to be in touch with you.
It's Wrath and Company, and Wrath is spelled R-A-T-H.
Jeff, last word to you.
You've had some success.
I mean, we've seen you argue in a bunch of cases.
I think you were a lawyer for the hotel quarantine case, if I remember correctly.
I think you were involved in that matter, the Ingram case, and this.
What's the future for freedom law?
Some people have given up.
They say the courts are overtaken by woke judges.
The law is against us.
It's hopeless.
It's an uphill battle.
What would you say to people who are sort of black pills like that and are fatalistic?
Well, my view is we don't take cases to court unless we think there's a reasonable prospect of success.
So, you know, that's the first point.
The second point is with regard to this case, the Ingram Scott class action case in particular, everybody's got to remember that liability has already been determined in this case.
So we have, you know, Justice Romain of the Court of King's Bench, who was very skeptical throughout of all of the arguments that we were putting forward, found herself bound to find that these orders were patently unlawful at the end of the day, even though she would have found them to be constitutional had she been able to do that if the orders weren't patently illegal, right?
So we have a very strong finding of liability in our favor going forward.
And again, I would urge all of your viewers and all of your listeners to reach out to their MLAs and reach out to Danielle Smith.
She listens.
She probably watches this show.
Settle the Lawsuit?00:04:38
And I think she needs to understand what a boon it would be for Alberta to settle this lawsuit and settle it in a way that we could deduct the damages from any transfer payments leaving this province.
It would be a two-fer for her.
It would resolve the issue of her needing to act strongly on the referendum on transfer payments, where Albertans overwhelmingly voted to end transfer payments out of Alberta.
And it would allow her to, in effect, create her own Marshall Plan for the reinvigoration of the Alberta economy by promptly, as quickly as possible, paying out the billions of dollars in damages that are owed to Alberta businesses in what amounted to the largest expropriation of personal property in Alberta history under the guise of these ridiculous Kenny Hinshaw orders.
You know, that's true.
I remember in college reading a book called Takings by Professor Epstein, who talked about the different ways the government destroys and commandeers and colonizes private property.
It was a terrifying book.
I remember it 30 years later.
And that's really what the lockdowns were.
It was an expropriation of property.
One of the chief bundles of rights, property is a bundle of rights, the ability to use your property, to have people enjoy your property.
All of that was it was effectively a seizure of half the province.
Go ahead, Jeff.
You were going to say something.
No, I was going to say, Danielle Smith needs to stand up firmly as the property Rights premier of Alberta, because we have far too much federal encroachment into property and civil rights in the province, which are in the exclusive jurisdiction of the province under section 9213 of the 1867 Constitution Act.
You know, we have Trudeau arbitrarily classifying huge classes of firearms, you know, as now being prohibited.
Their owners can continue to own them and lock them up in a safe, but they're not allowed to target shoot with them on their own ranches anymore.
You know, we have Trudeau coming in and the gibbering Gibot telling us that in 2035, we're not going to be allowed to buy gas-powered vehicles anymore, which, as we saw, and I said it was my own version of Alberta Schadenfreude, which was laughing your ass off at a liberal standing next to their frozen Tesla at minus 42, right?
But you know, we're being told in Alberta that Alberta businesses are going to have to learn to operate with vehicles that only have a hundred kilometer range in minus 42 degree weather because Trudeau and Gibot have said so.
I love that line, gibbering Gibot.
I'm going to have to use that a bit myself.
Jeff, I think you need a show on Rebel News.
You've got a lot of pepper in your pants.
Listen, I love your fighting spirit.
I think you've got that Alberta style.
And I think if this lawsuit is going to work anywhere, because of the Ingram decision that you referenced, because of the premier and her libertarian ideology, and because of the legal talent I'm looking at right now on my screen, I think this has a real chance.
It's a pleasure to catch up with you.
Thanks very much for making time.
I know that you've really just broken this big news today.
So it's great to have you on the show.
And hopefully we can check in with you from time to time.
I hear what you're saying is that this is not going to move at light speed, but perhaps the politics of it will move faster than the legals here.
But I want to say, and I mean, I want to commend Justice Beesby, the case management judge that we have on this case.
He is moving it at light.
We appeared not three weeks ago for an expedited case management date so that we could get a schedule set for the hearing of the certification motion.
He met with us yesterday.
And for a judge to find an hour's worth of time in their calendars, at this day and age, when you're booking two or three years out sometimes for special applications of a day or more, was fantastic.
And he's provided us a two-day hearing on the 25th and 26th of September on certification.
So as the courts go, this is very much on a fast track.
And we're very grateful to the Alberta Court of King's Bench for recognizing the importance of this case and working with all counsel involved in expediting this proceeding.
So, you know, thank you for having us on and thank you for your thoughtful questions today.
We're very grateful.
Well, it's great to see.
And of course, we're super fans of Ava.
And I'm sort of jealous of anyone who has a chance to cross-examine the prime minister.
I mean, that's a bucket list that very few people can check off their list.
Great to see you, Ava.
Thanks very much, Jeff.
And again, the law firm is Rath and Company, spelt R-A-T-H, and they're talking about a class action lawsuit over the illegal public health orders in Alberta.
Stay with us.
Three and a Half Days Without Oil00:04:22
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Geno's Movies says Charlie Angus should try to live with O Fossil Fuels for six months and let's see how far he's able to progress in Northern Ontario.
Remove him from his office immediately.
He's a threat to common sense.
Well, you know, Bill Whittle had a video, it's got to be 10 years old now, where he says, it's just a thought experiment.
He says, let's take 1% of our year, so three and a half days, and send people out into the wild.
I guess what he really means is no industrial civilization, no electricity, no cell phones, no TV.
Just three and a half days to remind people what a life we have courtesy of property and free market and capitalism.
I'm not doing him justice, but it was a wonderful thought experiment because if you ask people, well, where does food come from?
They say the grocery store.
Where does electricity come from?
The plug in the wall.
A lot of people are so disconnected from actual building and doing and farming and factories that they have no idea.
And, you know, it's why when the power goes out, everyone's lost.
And now they have to put down their phone after it runs out of batteries and after they actually have to human interact.
We're so disconnected from the actual means of production.
So many of us work in the services side of the world, not the farming, mining, factory side of the world, that we take it for granted.
And in fact, I think there's a snobbery and a condescension.
And I think nowhere is that more the case than in today's NDP.
I know a little bit about the history of the NDP.
Preston Manning would often talk about it.
Of course, it was called the CCF and other things before that.
It was basically farmers and factory workers who came together in a progressive movement.
It was socially, I would say it's much more conservative, but it was about the working class.
That's absolutely for sure.
I don't think the NDP has been about the working class for 20 years.
Now it's fancy Mr. Rolex, Mr. Bespoke Suit Jagmeet Singh.
And look at Charlie Angus, who sort of looks like a working class guy, but he's actually calling for the banning of any promotion of fossil fuels.
You cannot live in northern Ontario without fossil fuels.
You will die.
You will starve.
You will freeze.
But that's today's NDP.
Jay Cameron says, so does this mean the NDP hates Alberta and Saskatchewan?
The reason I ask is because a lot of us have the phrase, I love Canadian oil and gas.
It's on both my trucks.
I'm proud of it.
Liquid dinosaur is still better than just using electricity.
Well, I think, of course, they do despise Alberta and Saskatchewan, even though that's where the party was born.
The CCF, I think their founding meeting was actually in Calgary.
They really broke through in Saskatchewan.
That's where Tommy Douglas was from.
But today's NDP looks down its nose at farmers and miners and oil and gas.
They just do.
But my point is Bill Whittle's point.
I'd like to see Charlie Angus go without oil and gas and cars and planes for just three and a half days.
Just three and a half days.
Linda Goldby says, hello, Ezra.
I could not disagree with Lauren Gunter more.
You're correct in saying that wokeness is intended to weaken the military.
The same can be said about all our institutions, be it medical, educational, and even sports.
There was a reason Canadians were fired for refusing the jab.
It was meant to weed out the very best.
Just ask Dr. Trotzi.
You know, one of the reasons I love Lauren Gunter so much, besides the fact that we've been friends for 30 years, is that he has a naturally sunny disposition and he looks for the best in people and he gives people the benefit of the doubt.
And I think he's just a good person that way.
I myself, for whatever reason, am more skeptical.
And especially when it comes to this liberal government, I look for malicious and nefarious aspects because I just think I've been disabused of any naivety long ago.
I'm not sure which one of us is right, but I enjoy talking with him as I always do.