Ezra Levant and Keith Wilson’s lawsuit against Canada’s government over the Freedom Convoy protests reveals how the Emergencies Act (February 2022) triggered $6B+ in financial chaos, freezing accounts—including Citibank and Wells Fargo—without evidence, canceling insurance policies, and surveilling transactions via RCMP and CESIS. Justice Mosley called it unconstitutional, comparing tactics to Soviet-era spying, while plaintiffs like Tamara Leach (49-day solitary detention) seek $2.375M each for Charter violations, economic sabotage, and punitive damages. The case exposes systemic overreach, with banks acting as enforcers under vague orders, and may force the government to justify its unprecedented crackdown on dissent. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm going to talk at length with Keith Wilson, the lawyer who just filed a massive lawsuit against the government of Canada on behalf of victims of the Emergencies Act, the people who had their bank accounts seized and frozen.
We'll go through the lawsuit line by line.
I'd love for you to have the video version of this.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, and you can watch the video version and have the satisfaction of knowing you're supporting Rebel News.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Martin Luther King said that, and it's coming true in Canada.
It's February 14th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Hey, welcome back.
That quote I just said to you was from Martin Luther King.
I think about it a lot when justice is slow.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
That's what Martin Luther King said about racial equality in the United States.
It was a very long time, centuries even, but finally blacks had civil rights.
And I think that in Canada, when we had a mass suppression of civil rights during the pandemic lockdowns and during the crisis of the Invocation of the Emergencies Act and the suspension of civil liberties, well, it's been two full years since that, and justice has been slow to lace up its boots while the repression of our rights has run around the world several times.
But it looks to me like justice is finally coming.
I have in front of me various printouts of various lawsuits filed today.
And I'm going to take you through them.
These are lawsuits filed by Canadian citizens against the government of Canada for the false invocation of the Emergencies Act, which has been found by the federal court to have been unreasonable, unintelligible, unacceptable, and unconstitutional.
I'm going to take you through this with the lawyer who drafted it.
The lawyer is Keith Wilson of the Wilson Law Firm in St. Albert, Alberta.
And the court case we'll walk through together are two names you'll know, Tamara Leach and her husband Duane Leach.
And they're suing His Majesty the King and the Attorney General of Canada.
Joining us now via Skype is Keith Wilson who filed the lawsuit today.
Keith, great to see you again.
Thank you very much for coming on the show and thank you for sharing with us this statement of claim that was just filed hours ago.
Why don't you introduce the story and then we'll go through the lawsuit because I think our viewers want to see the details.
Sure.
Thanks for the interview, Ezra.
Well, as the world knows, the Trudeau government invoked war measures against its citizens who were exercising their charter rights of protest.
But not only did the Trudeau government do that, our prime minister and deputy prime minister, Christy Freeland, used a tool that no government's ever been able to use against its citizens before because the technology didn't exist.
They froze my clients' bank accounts.
They canceled their debit cards.
They blocked them from getting access to cash.
They canceled not only the bank cards, but the credit cards as well.
So they completely isolated them from society and put them in an incredibly precarious position that resulted in a run on the banks and international condemnation of the tyrannical behavior of the Trudeau government.
So today, on behalf of Tamara Leach and Chris Barber and Tom Morazzo and Danny Bulford and Sean Tyson and Miranda Gracer and some others, we filed lawsuits against the federal government for the illegal seizure, surveillance, harassment, abusive process, intimidation,
and charter violations that the federal government engaged in, as was recently confirmed by our federal court with Justice Mosley's decision.
That's incredible.
I'm glad you're doing this.
You, more than almost anyone else in the country, would know the facts on the ground because you were there in Ottawa during the trucker conv while you were the liaison between the truckers and the government.
You told me just before we turned the camera on that you filed, was it half a dozen of these lawsuits today?
How many have you filed and what provinces are they filed in?
We filed in four provinces in the superior courts of each of the provinces that we filed in.
We filed in Ontario.
We filed in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.
And the reason we did that is we're suing the federal government.
It is the federal government that initiated this step.
It's the federal government that ordered all of the banks and credit unions to not only seize our clients' bank accounts, but surveil their accounts and report all of their transactions to the police forces.
Is that new news or has that been out there before?
I think it's been buried out there before.
I mean, it's not new, but I understand why a lot of people wouldn't be aware of it.
Yeah, to have the banks spy on their customers, that truly is China-style social credit.
By the way, we looked very carefully at the federal court ruling that struck down the Emergencies Act and declared it, the invocation of it declared it illegal and declared the manner in which it was invoked unconstitutional.
One of the specific things that the federal court said was by attacking bank accounts, it was a sloppy, broad brush that punished people imprecisely.
Entire families would be destroyed because one person was targeted.
I mean, a lot of people have family joint bank accounts between spouses, but all of a sudden the mom can't afford groceries or school costs.
That was something specifically mentioned by the federal court.
Is that reflected in your lawsuits today?
Yes.
And so what we've done is any of the people that I represent that had joint accounts.
So one of our clients, her accounts were frozen, but she had a joint account with her adult daughter.
So we've sued on her behalf as well because they were all punished equally.
People who weren't even in Ottawa or close to Ottawa had their bank accounts frozen.
And Justice Mosley was very concerned about that.
He cited that as an example in his decision.
The idea of collective punishment is not a concept in Canadian law.
It's not a concept in Western law.
That's a barbaric form of punishment.
And that's what the government of Canada chose.
I'd like to walk through the lawsuit because our viewers, although many of them are, most of them are not lawyers, I think they're familiar with lawsuits and they understand that lawsuits are a tool that you need sometimes to correct outrageous acts of public policy.
I would like to now walk through the filed lawsuit that was filed this morning in Alberta on behalf of Tamara Leach and her husband Dwayne.
So we're going to show this on the screen.
You can see the stamp in the top right-hand corner, Tamara Leach and Dwayne Leach.
And I'll just skip over some of those preamble, and then I'll just come to the party.
So I'm just going to read, I'll read a paragraph, or I might skip over some of the more administrative ones, and then I'll ask you to give some expansion of these because I think it's very interesting to see the primary documents.
And by the way, I don't know if the regime media, if the CBC, are going to cover these things fairly.
They might, by the way.
I don't want to prejudge, but I don't know if they will.
So let's just jump right in.
The parties.
The plaintiff, Tamara Lee Leach, is an individual, Canadian citizen, and a resident of the city of Medicine Hat in Alberta.
The plaintiff, Dwayne Leach, is an individual, Canadian citizen, and a resident of the city of Madison Hat in Alberta, and is the spouse of the plaintiff, Tamara Leach, hereinafter collectively referred to as the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs have five children and four grandchildren.
So you're just describing who they are.
I think that's sort of obvious.
The defendants are.
But the reason that's important, I'm going to stop you right there because that's critically important.
I won't stop you on every one.
Is those are the people they needed to care for.
Right, right, right.
Those are the people that they could not care for.
Wow.
So Tom Morazzo has a son, and this is in his lawsuit, and it's explained.
And Tom has spoken publicly about this, so I know that he will be okay with me telling you and your viewers this.
His son has a severe genetic-based heart issue.
And during this period of time where his account was frozen, he needed on an emergency basis to get a prescription filled for his son's heart.
Wow.
He couldn't.
Wow.
Well, thank you for that interruption.
That was a very useful.
I mean, that's why it's relevant.
You've got five kids and four grandkids.
It's very relevant because they were the punching bag for this government, too.
That was the fear of my clients: they felt so isolated, so overwhelmed.
It's like, oh, my God, what's going to happen to our mortgage, our car payment, our insurance payment?
We can't get gas.
We can't buy food.
We can't even move.
We can't move.
Like move as in terms of physically transport ourselves.
Yeah.
Now, paragraph three is a little bit technical, but I'll read it anyways.
The defendants are His Majesty the King and the Attorney General of Canada being the statutory nominee of His Majesty, who proceedings against the Crown may be taken in the name of, pursuant to Section 23.1 of the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act.
So that's basic when you're suing the government, you say you're suing the king.
Obviously, it's got nothing to do with King Charles.
But you can sue the government for wrongdoing.
And we have the proof of the wrongdoing in the form of the federal court.
So this is how you go about suing the feds, basically, is what this paragraph is, right?
That's correct.
Okay.
Background.
On or about February 15th, 2022, at the request of the government of Canada, all of the plaintiffs' personal accounts at the Toronto Dominion Bank, including related debt cards, ATM access, and credit card services, were frozen without notice.
The plaintiffs were unable to withdraw or deposit money from the frozen accounts or make credit card purchases.
And any automatic payments associated with the frozen accounts were canceled.
That's terrifying that automatic payments, like a lot of people set up their phone bills or their utility bills or even their mortgage on an automatic payment.
That's frozen too, eh?
Everything.
And they couldn't get paid.
They couldn't get paid.
You know what?
I dare say that most people, if their bank account was frozen, within two weeks, they would be in a crisis of some sort.
They would miss a mortgage payment.
They would miss a payment.
things would be starting to shut down in their lives.
But before I move on to the next paragraph, this was February 15th, and it's no coincidence that today is the last day for the two-year period because in law, there's certain limitations.
You have to move quickly on your rights.
And today is basically the last day to sue the government to be sure you're within the two-year window.
There may be some arguments that you could do so a little bit later because the damage is continued later, etc.
But by suing today, a day before the second anniversary, you are ensuring that you're within the two-year time period, right?
That's right.
I mean, there's a good argument, Ezra.
And last time you interviewed me on the federal court decision on the EA, I mentioned that you could argue that the limitation period starts to run from when Justice Mosley released his decision.
However, as an experienced litigator, you want to avoid issues.
So if you can file before the earliest conceivable possible limitation period, then you don't have to waste time on the other side.
And the government, when you're fighting the federal government, they have unlimited resources.
So even if they have a 5% chance on knocking you on a limitation argument, they're going to run it.
And they're going to make you spend money for your clients.
And I don't want to dissuade other people from taking legal action because I think it could easily be argued that pain and damages and punishments continued.
It wasn't just Feb 15.
It was Feb 16, Feb 17, Feb 18.
I forget exactly how long it was.
So obviously it's not over yet, but do not sit on your rights.
Okay, I'll keep reading.
The plaintiffs were not notified of the freeze on the frozen accounts, the reason for the freeze, or how long the freeze period would last.
They first realized the frozen accounts were frozen when their debit cards and credit cards were declined and payments were rejected.
How do you eat?
So many people don't even carry cash anymore.
They just beep with their Google Pay or Apple Pay or just tap with a card.
Like, I mean, I used to walk around with, you know, $100 in my pocket.
You never know what for, a cab or a meal.
I think a lot of people go out with any cash, without any cash at all.
You might not even be able to eat that day if your credit cards are all frozen.
And the next thing you're going to do is look at your gas gauge.
Right.
Right.
And you're going to hope it's close to a full tank because you're not getting fuel.
Right.
Okay, I'll keep going.
The government of Canada's freezing the plaintiff's accounts caused immediate financial instability and fear.
I bet you.
And I think that's one of the reasons they did it, a psyop, to terrify people.
There was a lot of that going on during the lockdowns, that outrageous interim police chief in Ottawa who threatened any donor, we're going to track you down.
A lot of the abuse was theatrical to terrify people.
I think it was a form of terrorizing others so they don't step on the line.
Let me keep reading your lawsuit.
The plaintiffs were unable to access funds necessary for daily living expenses, purchase food, fuel, medicines, bill payments, and other essential services.
Embarrassment Over De-Banked Accounts00:04:52
This disruption deprived the plaintiffs of the ability to conduct basic financial transactions and live normal lives, leading to severe inconvenience, hardship, embarrassment.
That's another thing, too.
I mean, it's embarrassing when you can't pay a bill.
You're embarrassed to the person, you know, you go to a restaurant, your credit cards decline.
That's an abominable embarrassment.
Or the lineup at the grocery store with the kids and the carts, the carts loaded with the bagged groceries.
Oh, my God.
And everybody's getting impatient because the calls I was getting in Ottawa at the time from spouses back home was they would try their credit card number one, their credit card number two.
Oh, God.
And then their debit card.
Yeah.
And every time they try it, then the cashier would grab it and rub it on their sleeve.
And there would be a whole thing.
And having to leave with the kids with no groceries.
Oh, boy.
You know, and I'll finish the sentence in your lawsuit leading to severe inconvenience, hardship, embarrassment, exclusion from modern society, and damaged personal and business relationships.
I can only imagine, I mean, it doesn't happen to me often, but every once in a while a credit card I use has declined, and I am deeply embarrassed.
I'm embarrassed for myself.
I'm embarrassed that I put the other person through this.
And I can imagine if I was shut down in every single way and you can't go to an ATM.
Like, you would be scared.
I mean, I guess you would call your closest friend and say, can I borrow some cash?
But, you know, it's, but even that, okay, I'll keep going.
Paragraph eight, the plaintiffs also suffered and experienced fear and anxiety due to the anticipated loss of income due to the freezes as salary, wage, and payments were directed to the frozen accounts, causing delays in meeting financial obligations such as rent, mortgage payments, and loan repayments.
Additionally, the freeze resulted in accrued fees.
Yeah, of course, penalties and interest charges on outstanding balances, exacerbating the financial strain.
Well, I think that speaks for itself.
Do you have anything to add there or should I keep going?
Keep going.
Okay.
You know what?
And I'm not going to read every word of this because some of it is a little bit technical, but I think that this is a good reminder of what it was like.
And it's been two years and most people don't wear masks anymore.
And I don't think people follow the six feet of separation rule anymore.
And no one's banned from flying on planes anymore because they're unjab.
So a lot of us has moved on.
And the body heals, the mind heals.
And we forget what it was like.
But at the time, it was a crisis.
It felt terrifying.
And I can only imagine.
And by the way, we didn't know if it was going to get worse or better.
We didn't know how long the Emergencies Act would be in effect.
And was this just the first step?
By the way, I remember the media party wanted more.
They wanted the government to go harder, by the way.
Okay, let me get back to your lawsuit.
The plaintiffs state that the government of Canada initiated the freezing of bank accounts and credit cards for the improper purpose of dissuading and punishing the plaintiffs for their exercising of fundamental charter rights in the form of protesting government COVID-19 mandates and restrictions.
The plaintiffs continue to suffer negative effects from the frozen account, really, to this day, including rejection of business funding applications.
I bet, because of course you've got all these black marks in your credit now.
Rejection of business funding applications and the necessity to secure a loan through a lease company at a high interest rate with full collection.
So that's still going on.
Representatives for the banks have stated that plaintiffs' bank accounts will be marked indefinitely into the future, affecting their ability to conduct normal banking and financing.
And banks, you know, once they have something on you, you're never purging that from their files.
I mean, and banks are tough to deal with at the best of times.
On March 7th, 2022, the senior vice president and general counsel for the Canadian Bankers Association testified before the House of Commons Committee on Finance.
And she was asked this a number of times.
And she volunteered because she was asked by some of the members of parliament on that committee as to whether there would be any lasting effect to those Canadians, including my clients, who had their bank accounts frozen.
And she said, yes, the accounts will be marked for life.
You know, I heard a lot of people.
Her words, not mine.
Yeah.
I know a little bit about being de-banked.
I don't know if you remember the story a couple years ago, Reb News applied for a mortgage at the Royal Bank, and they were thrilled to give it to us.
They told us that on the phone, but then they checked with their headquarters and for political reasons, they denied us.
And that was painful to me, but it was just an idea for an office.
And I mean, I guess I got over it.
But I was still very mad at them.
But that's the best of times.
And if you've got this mark on you that the finance minister called the bank and said, you this is a bad dude, you're never getting that mark of cane off of you.
Ways Totalitarian Regimes Monitored00:02:38
You know, I want to read the next paragraph here because I just glanced ahead.
Sure do.
In addition, the government of Canada also announced publicly in early February 2022 that it had ordered the banks to conduct surveillance.
I didn't know this of all the plaintiffs' personal and business transactions and to report that confidential financial information to the RCMP, CESIS, and the Government of Canada's Financial Intelligence Agency for anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist FinTrack.
We got Hamas protesters in the street flying the literal flags of terrorists, but the RCMP and FinTrack are chasing down moms and dads who sent 50 bucks to the truckers.
Insane.
Yeah, and that's an abusive process.
It's a clear violation of charter rights.
And that's something that Justice Mosley with the federal court was very concerned about was the collection of that information without any process, without clear authority to do so.
So yeah, it's another layering of the egregious activity that this government engaged in that we don't recognize as a Canadian thing to do that we associate with a communist or a total authoritarian regime.
Yeah.
Unbelievable.
But completely believable.
You know, it's funny, I read the book 1984 more often now than I did before, especially since the Rebel News republished it in our own version.
And I listen to people who experienced tyranny in the Eastern Bloc, in the Soviet bloc, people from Poland, people from Romania.
And the way they describe it is one thing.
And I've been to the House of Horrors in Budapest, Hungary, which is a museum both to the Nazi and the communist repression.
By the way, the Secret Service of both the Nazis and the Communists used the same headquarters, which I think shows you a lot.
And of course, what they did was horrific and they engaged in murder and things like that.
But let me say this.
There wasn't the total surveillance state back then.
They didn't track your credit.
There weren't credit cards back then in any way that like the tracking of money and the surveillance was, I'm not going to say lighter because it had a much bloodier hand.
But they didn't have this panopticon scrutinizing your entire life.
They didn't have the same surveillance tools then that we have now.
In some ways, you could have avoided it more easily back then, even though they were totalitarian regimes.
American Influence on Orders00:07:56
At least that's how I take it here.
I want to skip ahead a little bit because there's some technical, you have a section two called Claim of the Plaintiffs, where you describe how the Emergencies Act was invoked and the February 15th orders.
I'm actually going to skip over that because you're just retelling the history of it.
What I'm going to do, though, Keith, is I'm going to put this PDF on our website for people to click in and read at their leisure, to read it slowly.
And some of it they're going to, you know, you're talking about special order, you know, ordering counsel.
You just skip that if it's gobbledygook to you.
But that's just describing how these orders came into force.
I'm going to read section 18, though, even though it's a little bit complicated, because I'm going to ask you a question in a minute.
So let me read this.
Sure.
Section 2.1 of the February 15th economic order.
So, this was one of the orders under the Emergency Act, required that the following entities freeze accounts and access to assets belonging to anyone that owns, holds, or controls on behalf of any designated person, banks, including foreign banks as per the Bank Act, cooperative credit societies, et cetera, et cetera, and then insurance companies.
So, I remember reading that, and I looked up the list of foreign banks because there's an official government of Canada, a list of foreign banks that are allowed to do business in Canada.
There's the Canadian banks that we all know, but then there's foreign banks like Citibank, you know, Wells Fargo, the bigger American banks have some branches in Toronto and maybe Vancouver and Calgary.
Same with some European banks.
At least I read the American banks.
And what was incredible to me is that this emergency order applied to them too.
And my first thought was: okay, a Canadian bank that is totally within the laws of Canada and that has to deal with Christie Freeland, who I think was finance minister at the time, they're going to do exactly what Christie Freeland says.
But what about a foreign bank, especially an American bank, that their main concern is U.S. law, including privacy law, including the First Amendment, which protects Americans to some extent for their politics.
So you're an American bank.
You have to follow American law.
You better not mess around.
But you've got maybe five branches in Canada, and Canada has gone full Venezuela now.
Canada is asking you to spy on customers that probably have certain legal rights against you because you're an American bank.
And so I don't know, and maybe you know, I don't know if any American banks complied with this.
I imagine they were in a terrible pickle because on the one hand, break Canadian law and you in trouble in Canada.
On the other hand, follow Canadian law and maybe break American law.
Now you're in deep trouble.
This is the kind of moment that a foreign bank probably calls up the finance minister and says, you know, if you make us go through this, we're going to have to shut down our branches in Canada and you want to see a run on the banks.
Imagine if every U.S. bank pulled out of Canada saying it's no longer a reliable jurisdiction.
So that was something that was always on my mind.
One of my thoughts was that maybe it was American banks who got on the phone to the government and said, you've got to end this, or we're going to do something that will truly embarrass your country and being wrong in the banks.
That was my speculation.
Do you, Keith, have any knowledge or information about how, whether or not any foreign banks actually implemented these draconian rules on their own clients?
I do.
I've seen no evidence that any foreign bank did.
That was one sector that decided this was a bridge too far.
They were not going to go there.
Another was the insurance companies.
They were told to cancel all of the insurance policies.
If you read the economic order, February 15th, 2022, it instructs the banks to stop providing financial services, credit cards, debit cards, access to bank accounts, mortgages, credit lines, lines of credit, et cetera, credit facilities.
It instructed the insurance companies to cease providing all forms of insurance, automobile insurance, home insurance, life insurance.
And it also instructed the financial investment firms, RBC, Desmond Securities, Scotia McLeod, all those to somehow cancel people's RRSPs and all these other things.
Well, the latter two didn't play.
The insurance companies didn't do it.
And the investment firms were like, well, what are we supposed to do?
Sell their stocks?
Like, how are we going to do it?
So they didn't act.
But one last point on this, because it goes to what you're wondering about, is Krista Freeland has said a number of times in the last year, and her notes to this effect around this Banana Republic issue, this banana republic comment were put in evidence at the POEC, the public inquiry into the Emergencies Act invocation that occurred in the fall of 2022.
And Freeland says that she had investors and bankers calling her from the US saying, Canada's a banana republic because of the protest.
But if you actually look at what it said in the notes, it was, I'm concerned Canada's become a banana republic because what you've done with freezing protesters' bank accounts.
So yes, they did have a strong reaction.
And I think it was a part of the strong impetus for them to so quickly revoke the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
But the freezings of the bank accounts lingered for many months for a number of my clients.
I did not know that.
Now, I'm going to, you said something, but you said it, I think, sort of quickly.
And I just want to make sure I heard you correctly.
Sure.
Did you say that the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the orders that flowed therefrom required insurance companies to cancel life insurance for these?
Required them to cancel all insurance.
It ordered them not to provide any insurance services to any Canadians.
That's insane.
That's crazy.
And by the way, life insurance, if, you know, I have life insurance, it doesn't benefit me.
God forbid when I die, I mean, we're all going to die.
It goes to my family.
So you're not even hurting the guy who's got the insurance.
You're hurting the beneficiaries, the to come widow and orphans.
Let me describe something, Ezra, that no one's asked me to describe before.
So we knew on the Sunday evening, the 13th, that we heard rumors that the IRC and the Committee of Cabinet were meeting over at the Parliament and the Executive Office and that they were likely to decide to invoke the Emergencies Act.
We were tipped off about that.
That was simultaneous while we had a meeting going on at City Hall with the police and the emergency services and the trucker leadership on the coordination of moving all the trucks out of the downtown residential area starting the next morning.
On the Monday, Valentine's Day, two years ago today, was when the federal government officially announced the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
And then it was the next day, the Tuesday of that week, so the 15th of February, 2022, where we actually got to see the emergency order and the economic measures order.
So all of the leadership of the convoy assembled in a big boardroom at the top of the Sheridan Hotel.
And I sat at the head table with Tamara and I was asked to explain to them what this meant.
And at that point, they were all learning that through phone calls in real time from spouses and others that their bank accounts were frozen.
And I had to explain to them that not only can they freeze your bank accounts, this order says that you're supposed to have all your insurance policies canceled.
Positive Duty to Seize00:08:36
Could you imagine the reaction?
But you know what was interesting?
The reaction around the room was strength.
Wow.
They didn't buckle and cry.
They understood that the tyrant was desperate.
Wow.
Wow.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I don't know if you know this, Keith, but when they started seizing bank accounts here at Rebel News, I thought we're not truckers, but we're trucker adjacent, if I can make up a word.
You know, we were covering the truckers, we were checking the truckers.
We even crowdfunded for different legals, as you know.
Yeah.
And so I thought to myself, you know, we didn't actually protest at Rebel News.
It might have sort of felt like it, but we were covering the protests really close up.
We were sort of embedded with them.
And by the way, we had nine, we had two guys down at the Coots blockade right in the saloon.
And so I thought, you know, because we didn't know how bad it was going to get.
Was this the first step down to a deeper basement or was this a blip?
We didn't know.
How would we know?
How would we know it would last this many days or that many days?
So I thought, you know, just the same way, there instantly was a domino effect, a cascading effect of bad things when your credit cards are gone.
I forgot.
Question one is, how do I eat?
Question two is my gas tank.
Like, I just imagine all the things that happened.
So I thought it would be very easy for either Christian Freeland herself or just some highly partisan staffer in her office to give a call to our bank and say, hey, seize Rebel News.
Is that paranoia?
I don't think it's particularly paranoid to say that because they hated Rebel News.
So we prepaid our entire staff a month's salary.
We prepared it.
We paid off every bill we had.
Like, you know, sometimes you wait 15 days or 30 days to pay bills.
We paid all our accounts payable down to zero and we prepaid the entire staff a month.
And I said to people, that's not a bonus.
That's not extra money.
That's your next month's money.
Because I thought the same thing.
If they cut us off, you know, how many of our staff would be able to wait around two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks?
They wouldn't.
They would have had to quit.
So I was very scared.
And it sounds like I had reason to be scared.
Now, thank God they didn't come for us, but I felt like we were paper-thin away from it.
I don't mean to talk about ourselves, but I remember how I felt.
I was very scared about that very scenario because there's no way a bank would have stood up for us.
We're nothing to a bank.
They don't even like us.
Okay, let me move forward.
There's a lot here.
There's no way I can read it all.
I want to encourage people to read the whole document, which we're going to post on the website.
I'm just going to pick and choose a few paragraphs because I'm cognizant of the time.
Paragraph 20: Section 5 of the economic order compelled all financial service entities to immediately disclose to the commissioner of the RCMP or the director of CESAS any information with regards to transactions and property owned, held or controlled on behalf of a designated person.
And any look, so all of a sudden, your property, what does that got to do with it?
Your property deceases to the RCMP.
Do you have a word on that other than how crazy it is?
Well, I mean, can you believe you're even hearing this happened in Canada?
Yeah.
Like, that's how bad things have become in our country under this government.
These are the tyrannical.
And remember in your mind, and maybe you can find the clip at some point, the next day when Freeland held the press conference to announce these measures and how she was particularly, well, her normal degree of extreme twitching.
Yeah.
But she was giddy.
Yeah.
She was laughing.
I remember that.
Oh, she was so chilling.
That was a great question.
She was so excited.
As of today, a bank or other financial service provider will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order.
In doing so, they will be protected against civil liability for actions taken in good faith.
Federal government institutions will have a new broad authority to share relevant information with banks and other financial service providers to ensure that we can all work together to put a stop to the funding of these illegal blockades.
This is about following the money.
This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades.
We are today serving notice.
If your truck is being used in these illegal blockades, your corporate accounts will be frozen.
The insurance on your vehicle will be suspended.
Send your semi-trailers home.
The Canadian economy needs them to be doing legitimate work, not to be illegally making us all poorer.
You're so right.
And here's something that I remember Judge Mosley of the federal court pointed out.
These are insane orders, just absolutely insane.
But here, this next one's important.
Paragraph 21, neither the February 15 emergency order or the economic order specified a procedure through which financial service providers would identify individuals or entities that met the definition of a designated person or their surveilled personal financial information.
So they're just saying to the banks, I'm no fan of the banks, but the banks are not used to working as spies.
I mean, they sort of do.
They keep an eye.
You know, there's no your customer rules.
And if there's a huge cash deposit, maybe the banks, you know, a light goes on and they check, is this money laundering?
Okay.
So they do sort of keep an eye on things.
But to start building enemies lists, to start making lists of, like, I don't think the banks were built for that.
And so I can only imagine the haphazard, bizarre ways that they tried to fulfill this order.
I'm glad to hear the foreign banks did it, but I wonder, do you have any information about the ways in which banks tried to follow these laws?
Well, first there was the list.
And I remember I revealed that list to you first on an interview I did with you because I just received it.
I think I was back from Ottawa at that point.
Yeah, I would have been back here just a few days from the crackdown on the protest.
But the other thing that they did was they instructed, so some of my clients who I've sued for today were not on the list.
And at first I was puzzled by this, but Justice Mosley talks about this.
The banks were instructed to be on the lookout for anybody they thought.
So apparently Farm Credit Corporation was caught and it was been documented.
You can, people can Google this, reporting any customer that came into their branch office and they had a pickup truck with a Canadian flag on it.
Oh my God.
So they were looking for people coming in with any signs that that is true third world.
That's exactly what happened.
And they were searching social media and the legacy media because it placed the banks under two positive duties initially, like in the first instance of the process.
One was to respond to the list from the RCMP, which we know from that interview I did with you years ago, was made up of some RCMP officer searching and finding who's who in the Freedom Convoy on CTV News website, which was just ridiculous.
But then the second thing they were supposed to do was, regardless of the list, they were to look for signs that their customers were freedom fighters or were protesting government COVID mandates.
And that was enough, their suspicion.
They were then under a positive legal duty to do it.
And a couple of my clients were not on any list, but they were self-caught by, and then they were using the rumor mill.
And, you know, I talked to Gertrude and she said that Bob was in Ottawa last week.
Oh, there you go.
Freeze's bank account.
That's literally what happened.
And that, you know what?
If for those who study the Soviet bloc and those who study the Nazis, the gossip, the informants, the snitches, I mean, how many people were KGB informants or Stasi informants?
That's exactly.
And you know, I often say that, you know, we're genetically the same as the people who were in the Soviet Union and the Nazis.
Government Abuse of Power00:14:25
In fact, I would say we're morally the same.
In fact, I think we're weaker morally than people were 80 or 100 years ago.
And there are those amongst us who, in a society built on tyranny and fear, that would be their moment.
There were people who were terrified and outraged by this Emergencies Act, but then there were people who were positively erotic about the new world and their place in it.
And they wanted to be in forces and they wanted to be snitches and they wanted to be on the side of the tyrant.
And don't think for a second that there weren't people who were thrilled to be ratting out friends and even family.
I want to whip through this because there's no way to go through this entire document in less than like three hours, especially if we're chatting about it.
Sure.
I'm going to read what's called cause of action, which I think is legal speak for the reason you're suing or summarizing the grievance.
So I'm going to read these in a row.
And I shall read them one at a time.
And maybe you can give me a sentence or two rather than having me read the page, just because we're short of time.
Yeah, I can do that, Ezra.
Cause of action number one, the government of Canada violated the plaintiff's rights protected by section eight of the charter, and damages for said violation under section 24 are appropriate.
What's section 8 of the charter?
Well, section 8 is the charter, is the section that protects you against unreasonable search and seizure by government and police.
But section 24 is really important, and it's the basis for this lawsuit because a lot of people don't understand this because people have been frustrated.
I see this online and elsewhere.
Well, how come the prime minister hasn't been arrested?
The federal court Justice Mosley said what he did was illegal.
Well, you only get arrested if you engage in criminal or statutory breaches of law, not other extra judicial or rather an act where you exceeded your legal jurisdiction, which is the case here with the Emergencies Act.
However, under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 24 exists to say if the government violates your rights as a citizen, you have the right to sue the government for damages, and the government has to pay you compensation.
And the reason is to create accountability.
Accountability.
And we all know that we have lived through a time of a complete absence of accountability by this government for everything from Arrive Can scam to his travel nonsense to I'd be here for an hour just listing off the scandals.
So Section 24 is a mechanism baked into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
It's made of steel, legal steel.
And it says if the government breaches your rights, they're going to pay.
And the reason it's there, and the Supreme Court of Canada has made this clear, is to show that the charter rights mean something.
And that's something that's frustrated a lot of us, lawyers and non-lawyers alike.
What happened to the Charter during the last three, four years?
Number two is if you've suffered harm through your breach, you're to get compensated.
And the third one, get this, the purpose of Section 24 is to deter the government and future governments from stepping on Canadians' rights.
So that's why we've sued and its fundamental foundation is Section 24 of the Charter.
You're right.
And let me take a crack at this, explaining it from another perspective.
And you correct me if I'm wrong.
So if you're in a car accident, you know, the courts will assess, well, how much have you actually been damaged?
Well, your car was worth 10 grand and you broke your leg and we think that's worth 20 grand.
So they do the math based on the loss that you had.
Can you quantify it?
If you have a breach of a contract, well, how much did you lose?
Maybe you can prove it.
But if someone breaches your rights, how do you quantify that?
It's not the same as a normal tort or a normal contract dispute or a property dispute.
So is it correct to say that what Section 24 does is it basically says when you violate freedom of speech or freedom of the press or freedom of association or freedom from warrantless search and seizures, which is one of the issues here, you can't, it's not just a verbal rebuke from the court.
You will pay someone because these are valuable, tangible things, even though they're sort of an intangible right, it's worth something and you got to pay up.
Am I thinking about it the right way here?
It's giving.
Precisely.
Yeah, okay, I thought so.
Because that's what's been missing the last two years.
And that's why I launched these lawsuits today.
Okay, I want to rip through this because we're coming up on an hour here.
Cause of action number two, the government of Canada committed the tort of interference with an economic interest of the plaintiffs.
So that's not necessarily relying on the charter.
That's actually you can quantify how much you've been damaged financially by this, obviously, right?
That's right.
And there's also what we call general damages, which are the intangible things that you can't, you know, an accountant can't calculate for you because of the conduct being so egregious and so deliberate that it should attract award of damages.
This litigation will be studied in law schools, I tell you that, because the number of torts, the number of charter violations by the greatest violation of our civil liberties in the generation, that's what it is.
I don't think it's dramatic to say that invoking the Marshall, the new version of the War Measures Act is the greatest abridgment of our civil liberties in the generation.
In fact, it wasn't even used during 9-11.
So I don't think it's dramatic to say that.
And so obviously if you're someone who was abused by it, if it was imposed illegally, which the court has said, obviously you're going to have a festival of causes of action.
Next one, the government of Canada committed a tort of abuse of process against the plaintiffs.
I think that speaks for itself.
Give me one sentence on that.
By not establishing criteria, by telling banks to look out for anybody wearing a Canadian flag, for telling the banks to collect all the information about your transactions and send it to CSIS and FinTrack and the RCMP.
Yeah.
Cause of action number four, and I think of that interim Ottawa police chief Bell, who tried to scare people.
Remember that?
Here's a clip of him basically threatening to hunt down anyone who donated 10 bucks to the truckers.
Here's a clip of this odious man.
Take a look.
As I indicated earlier, we will have the opportunity to review all of those files.
There are complaint mechanisms for people to enter into if they feel that there is excessive use of force by members of our police service.
What I will also say is we have been here for three weeks.
I have been at this podium for the last five days imploring people to leave, asking them to get out of our streets.
This occupation is over.
We have advised them that if they peacefully leave, they may go home.
That still exists.
We also indicated that we would escalate and forcefully remove people from the streets if they did not comply.
Some of that is what you're seeing.
So I will stand here today again and say this demonstration is over.
Go home.
If you don't go home, we will remove you from the streets.
If you are involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges.
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's not policing.
That's something, but that ain't policing.
And I thought of it because I'm looking at cause of action number four.
The government of Canada committed the tort of intimidation against the plaintiff's fundamental freedoms under the charter.
Give me a line on that.
This one's really important, and I'm going to steal a couple extra lines, sentences if I can, because it links to other charter rights, which is.
Right, right, right.
I mean, it seems kind of obvious, but I need to say it.
You know, and go back to that clip we watched of giddy, twitchy Deputy Prime Minister Freeland.
They wanted to scare the leadership of the Freedom Convoy out of the downtown.
They wanted to scare them away.
They wanted to intimidate them into ceasing the exercise of their Section 2 charter rights of freedom of expression, of assembly, of political dissent.
So they were using this tyrannical tool to wipe my clients out from civil society and put the fear of God into them for their ability to provide for themselves and their children and their loved ones and their businesses for the purpose, the improper purpose of causing them to surrender their charter rights, their charter right of freedom of expression, political dissent, and peaceful assembly.
So that's a really important one.
And it exists outside of any charter context because it's an old common law tort.
And it's used rarely because you're so rarely going to get these facts, but it fits here.
Yeah.
Huh.
Isn't that interesting?
Well, I think so much of the pandemic policy was specifically designed to be as scary as possible.
And I mean, I think of the hotel, the airport quarantine hotels, which were so atrocious.
And I thought, this can't be, this can't be.
And a senior lawyer said, no, no, no.
It's designed to be as abusive and outrageous so that people squawk about it and people tell 100 friends about it.
And those 100 people are deterred from getting on a plane.
So the very abusive nature isn't a bug.
It's a feature.
They made everything here abusive, invasive, punitive, embarrassing, on purpose for the reason you suggested to intimidate, to intimidate.
And add one more thing.
Two days after they did this, February 15th, two days after February 15th, February 17th, they arrested Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.
Right, right.
And put them in solitary confinement on a concrete slab.
Yeah.
You know, I've had a chance to get to know Tamara Leach a little bit over the last year.
We published her book and we're helping to crowdfund through the Democracy Fund her legal bills.
And I have to say that what she was put through is absolutely dictionary definition political prisoner.
Absolutely.
And even the way they're proceeding on the trial, that trial shouldn't have even proceeded.
If it did proceed, it's a half-day trial.
The fact that they're stretching it months and months, they're still abusing process.
They are still abusing the process.
And I certainly hope that her judge sees through it.
And I have an optimistic feeling in my bones.
Let me get back to your lawsuit.
Cause of action number five, the government of Canada, via its public officials, committed the tort of misfeasance of public office.
Now, that sounds old-timey.
That sounds like an old-time common law tort.
Misfeasance is a word you don't hear that often.
What does that mean?
It's when a government official, elected or otherwise, uses their powers for an improper purpose, where they almost gloatingly take advantage of their power.
They use it in an abusive way with a harmful and malignant intent.
And it's pretty rare.
Duplessis was the classic case we learned Ezra in law school and administrative law about abuse of power.
Right.
And this is it.
This is it.
This, the facts of the conduct of the government of Canada towards its citizens exercising their charter rights of peaceful process and civil disobedience is just so off the scale that these rare torts that we studied in law school 30 years ago fit.
Yeah.
You know, that's that you're so right.
I remember that case you mentioned.
Duplessis was the name of the premier of Quebec.
The case was called Ron Corelli versus Duplessis.
Ron Corelli, if I recall, was a local tavern owner who really frustrated.
Was Duplessis the mayor of Montreal, not the Premier at the time?
I think it was.
Oh, you know what?
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
That's okay.
It's 30 years.
That's why you're a better lawyer than I was.
He was frustrated because this guy, Ron Corelli, kept providing bail money for, if I recall, it was Jehovah's Witnesses.
And he didn't like the JWs one bit.
But he was frustrated that this guy, Ron Corelli, was giving them the dough.
And so if I recall, and you correct me again, because I'm worried now that I'm not remembering the case properly, that Duplessis said, well, you're not getting a liquor license for your tavern anymore.
And it was obviously for this political reason.
And the case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
And again, I'm relying on you to correct my errors.
And the Supreme Court said, no, you cannot use the powers of the government for a collateral purpose.
You just can't do that.
You can't make a decision on his liquor license because you don't like Jehovah's Witnesses.
And I think of that case a lot because I think that too often government decisions are made for punitive reasons.
I feel Rebel News is frankly being targeted a little bit that way.
But absolutely, we saw at the Public Order Inquiry Commission the desperate express attempts by politicians to condemn and demonize and just get the result we need.
We need to hurt these people.
It was so obvious.
Anyhow, I look forward to the misfeasance tort being revived.
I got to skip ahead to the end.
Sure.
Remedies sought by the plaintiffs against the government of Canada.
Judgment against the government of Canada in favor of each of the plaintiffs, plus such further or other amounts as may be proven at trial of this matter, including damages for the violation of their Section 8 Charter of Rights, $275,000.
Looking Forward To Revival00:03:00
General damages for their economic interference, $100,000.
General damages for abuse of process, $200,000.
For intimidation, $300,000.
For misfeasance in public office, $200,000.
Aggravated and exemplary damages, as in to make an example, $300,000.
Punitive damages for any all or a combination of causes herein, $1 million.
And I added this up just on the back of a napkin, $2.375 million per plaintiff.
Correct.
And my first reaction is, if Omar Cotter can get $10.5 million, $2.375 million for the way Tamara Leach was treated may sound like a large number, but frankly, I don't think it's a large number.
For someone to be arrested, humiliated, jailed for 49 days, put through the outrages that she has, let alone all the things documented in this lawsuit, I think $2.375 million is not outrageous.
And I look forward to this matter proceeding.
I look forward to the documents that this lawsuit elicits in the discovery process.
I look forward to whatever testimony is compelled, if possible, in this.
I look forward to not only the result of this litigation, I look forward to the process of this litigation.
And maybe the table is turned, and maybe now the government must be put through an excruciating process to explain themselves.
I look forward to this lawsuit, and I'm delighted that you've drafted it.
I'm so glad Tamara Leach and her husband Dwayne are amongst some plaintiffs.
And I'm glad it was done before the two-year limit.
And I'm glad it was done in a multiple of provinces.
And I think this is an excellent lawsuit, and I invite our viewers to look through it.
And I'm glad you're doing it, Keith.
Well, thank you, Ezra.
This is an important step for Canadians to start one step at a time, taking our country back.
Well, I have enjoyed this very much.
Maybe it's because I'm a former lawyer myself.
And I remember learning in torts class some of these more obscure cases like Ron Corellian Duplicis, which you don't hear about a lot because you like to think those bad old days of corruption are gone.
But we saw the worst of it two years ago.
Our guest this past hour has been Keith Wilson, KC.
That's King's Counsel, a lawyer in Northern Alberta who is the lawyer for plaintiffs in, if I heard him right, four different provinces.
Is that right?
Four provinces.
And I'm glad about it.
Let's see what judges across the country think of this.
Keith, good luck.
And please let us know when next phases of this lawsuit happen, when the government files a statement of defense, when you get disclosure of documents, if you're at liberty to share them publicly.
I think we'd like to follow this every step of the way as we followed some of your other litigation over the last two years.