Ezra Levant and John Carpay of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) critique Canada’s civil liberties erosion, from COVID-era vaccine mandates—backed by courts despite corpse-testing admissions—to pro-Hamas protests weaponizing religion while blocking streets. Carpay warns mass illiberal immigration risks undermining democratic norms, citing parallels to Gaza’s unrest and Rebel News’ past coverage of dissent suppression. Legal protections alone won’t suffice; cultural resilience and education reform are critical to preserving freedoms against both state overreach and societal shifts toward authoritarianism. [Automatically generated summary]
Civil liberties is always on our minds, not just because we use our freedoms, but because we fight for freedoms.
Well, today we talked to one of Canada's leading freedom fighters, my friend John Carpe from the Justice Center.
But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast.
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All right.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight on Christmas Eve, the state of civil liberties in Canada, a feature interview with our friend John Carpe of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, you hear me complain from time to time that there are not enough civil liberties organizations in Canada that live up to their name.
I mean, literally their name.
Where's the Canadian Association of Journalists when David Menzies gets arrested five times for doing journalism?
I suppose I put myself in that too, having been a jailbird now myself.
Where's Canadian Journalists for Free Expression fighting against Bill C-63, Trudeau's monstrous censorship bill that even pre-Elon Musk Twitter compared to North Korea?
Where's Penn Canada?
Where's Amnesty International?
Where is the Canadian Civil Liberties Association?
Alas, every one of them is like salt that has lost its saltiness.
What even is the point of those organizations?
Of course, you know me.
I love the Democracy Fund, which is a registered charity that works with different cases Rebel News highlights.
But the granddaddy of all freedom-oriented civil liberties law firms, they've been doing it for more than 10 years, and you've heard us interview their staff lawyers and talk about their cases a hundred times.
Well, those are the guys and gals at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, otherwise known as the JCCF.
And I'm delighted to say this year I was honored to receive their Freedom Fighter Award named after George Jonas, the great Hungarian journalist and freedom fighter.
So as we are drawing to the end of 2024, I thought, who better to have a sit-down with and do a state of the union in terms of civil liberties?
How is Canada faring on these questions?
From my point of view, there's lots of reasons for pessimism, but we'll talk about that and see if there are any little green shoots of hope.
And maybe even if the election down south of us and the freedom orientation of some of Donald Trump's cabinet, I mentioned Twitter, Elon Musk is sort of going to be like a kitchen cabinet member and his belief in freedom of speech.
Will some of the freedoms in America slosh over the border onto us?
Joining us now via Zoom is the boss of the Justice Center, our friend John Carpeg.
John, great to see you again.
Good to be with you.
Well, the JCCF is so important and it's been around for so long.
You really are the granddaddy of civil liberties groups.
But by another token, you're the baby because you started long after the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and some of those other groups were around.
They just stopped working.
Like, I literally cannot tell you the last time Canadian journalists for free expression did anything fighting for freedom.
They don't even put out a tweet or a statement about censorship like C63.
You know, I used to be a member of Penn Canada.
What's the point?
They never talk about censorship in Canada.
What do you think about the state of civil liberties?
Well, in a similar vein, when the governments grossly violated our freedoms of association, conscience, religion, peaceful assembly, and so on with the lockdowns and the vaccine mandates or vaccine passports, basically mandatory vaccination policies, we saw the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and other civil liberties groups basically embraced the government's narrative on lockdowns of vaccine passports,
basically supported those things.
They took issue with that some people were suffering worse harms than others.
So if you were dark-skinned, female, LGBTQ, handicapped, you're going to suffer worse from lockdowns than if you are male, light-skinned, et cetera.
That's the only thing really that they went on, but they fundamentally supported or at least did not oppose these horrific violations of our fundamental charter freedoms that dragged on for literally years.
But you know what?
It doesn't matter.
You've got lots of people watching The Rebel and I think other independent media are growing.
And that's very positive that all of these independent media outlets are growing.
And the Justice Center has received tremendous support and we're ready to enter into 2025 fighting very hard.
Well, I mean, I take your point about it doesn't matter, but I think what you mean is despite that.
I mean, because all those things matter deeply.
And I was going to talk about the civil liberties bonfire of the pandemic because, of course, that's what spurred the birth of the Democracy Fund.
And that was really the JCCF, the Justice Center's time to shine.
Unfortunately, some of the cases that you took have been ignored and downplayed.
Like, I can't believe, for example, one of the most shocking violations of civil liberties in recent memory in Canada, when if you were not jabbed, you could not get on a plane or a train or a ferry in this country, second largest country in the world, cold country.
You can't just drive across Canada in the winter.
I mean, from coast to coast.
The airlines didn't want that policy.
There was no medical basis for that policy.
They didn't respect exemptions for religious or health reasons.
They didn't give you credit if you had got the virus and recovered naturally and thus had strong natural immunity.
You and a number of very interesting plaintiffs put together a very meticulous lawsuit.
You deposed government bureaucrats and got astonishing admissions.
And yet the courts in this country said, it's over, so it's moot.
So we're not going to trouble your pretty little minds with this.
It's not of interest to the public.
We're not going to hear the case because it's all over.
That's basically what they said, didn't they?
Yes.
It's the silver lining on the cloud is that because of the court actions, we got admissions from government officials saying under oath that there was no medical or scientific basis to support these travel mandates.
That's an admission we would have never received from the prime minister or any cabinet minister or any provincial premier at a news conference.
But it was through the court action, through one of our court actions in Saskatchewan.
We had an admission from a government official under oath that if somebody died in a car crash, when he's brought to the hospital, they run a COVID test on the corpse.
And if they, through PCR testing, if it's a positive test, they list that as a COVID death.
We got that through litigation.
So it's been, on the one level, it's been very discouraging.
On another level, it's been a good tool for getting at the truth and showing just how pathetic and miserable and weak the government's evidence is in these court challenges to lockdowns.
I take your point.
So on one hand, we learned the awful truth about our government, but on the other hand, they learned they can get away with it.
So many of the precedent-setting cases that I would have thought would have been slam dunks for freedom, the courts found some excuse to let it slouch by.
It was almost like they found a pandemic exemption in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that the judges went out of their way to find some angle to permit the greatest infringement of civil liberties in a generation.
I think while you and I may have learned something about the nature of government, government learned something about the nature of checks and balances on them, which is they really, I mean, the Emergencies Act, finally, it was found to be unconstitutional legal by the federal court more than a year later, by the way, but a year later, that is.
But other than that, I can't think of a single important case that the Civil Liberties Side won.
Can you, like a single substantive case about a labor union agreement or a mask bylaw or these insane ArriveCan lawsuits?
I cannot think of an important blow for liberty.
All the bad stuff was rubber-stamped.
Am I missing?
Was there some case other than the Emergencies Act?
Did I miss something where the bad guys might have lost for once?
We've had minor and partial victories here and there, but unfortunately, I have to agree with you.
Substantively, the court rulings the last two or three years in regards to the lockdowns of vaccine passports have been atrocious.
I'm addressing this by way of a book, which you and I have had a few discussions about.
It's called Corrupted by Fear, How the Charter Was Betrayed and What Canadians Can Do About It.
It's going to be available January 15th.
And I am criticizing, going through what was the evidence that was put before the courts and how the courts have, in many cases, they've ignored the evidence that was placed before them.
Judges have made assertions in their ruling that are just repeating what they heard on the six o'clock news.
And we've had court rulings where the judge says, well, the government's evidence is more persuasive, but they don't say how or why they believe the government's evidence to be more persuasive, which makes for a very poor judgment.
Because if you're going to accept one side's evidence as stronger, better, more persuasive than the other, regardless of which side, but you owe it to justice and you owe it to the people, to citizens, to explain how you arrived at that conclusion.
And it's rather ominous and dangerous when you've got court rulings that say, well, you know, we think the government's evidence is more persuasive.
And there's not a sentence in the court judgment explaining why or how the government's evidence is more persuasive.
So this book is part of an effort.
It's part of an already in existence, widespread effort to hold the judiciary to account over betraying the charter.
And with that public awareness, that is, over the long run, it's going to trickle up towards the appointment of better judges, as we've seen south of the border in recent decades.
Very slow, very gradual trend towards appointing judges that have a greater appreciation for freedom.
Well, I hope that happens in Canada, too.
In Donald Trump's first term, there were some mistakes and some missed opportunities.
But I think a lot of people would agree by working with the Federalist Society, which is a freedom-oriented fraternity of lawyers, they managed to make such outstanding appointments.
Obviously, the Supreme Court appointments are the most important, but I think that's a terrible contrast to Canada, where Stephen Harper, when he was PM, he really had the chance to remake the Supreme Court forever.
And he never thought about it.
I think that was probably the greatest missed opportunity of his prime ministership.
Hopefully, if Pierre Paulde becomes PM next year, he'll take a different approach.
He'll realize that that is the greatest opposition to any freedom-oriented government.
Not the opposition, not the media, but the courts.
Anyways, listen, I don't want to spend too much time talking about the COVID pandemic because you and I have talked about that many times before.
And I know we've chewed these things over with our viewers.
The JCCF has a lot of work to do post-pandemic, too, just like the Democracy Fund does.
And I want to talk about some of those cases.
I printed off a few different stories from your website before I sat down here.
Here's one.
And I'd like your help on this because I haven't spent a lot of time on the subject.
Danielle Smith, who I know has come to a lot of Justice Center events, so she's certainly sympathetic.
She has introduced something she calls the Alberta Bill of Rights, or maybe she's reintroduced it.
And your headline is steps forward, steps backward in Bill 24 changes to the Alberta Bill of Rights.
Let me ask you, what does the Bill of Rights, proposed Alberta Bill of Rights, say?
Why did the Premier bring it in?
And how can it be improved if there are flaws to it?
Okay.
Premier's Push for Bill 2400:05:05
So the Alberta Bill of Rights has been the law in the province of Alberta for several decades.
In recent times, it's clearly being ignored by the courts.
So it's similar to the Charter.
It says every Albertan has the fundamental right, free speech, freedom of conscience, religion, association, assembly, so on and so forth.
And it says that every law in Alberta must be interpreted and applied in a way that respects these fundamental freedoms.
So it's good to have in place, but the courts ignored it.
In the case of Sheila and Annette Lewis, they said, well, we're just going to do a charter analysis.
We're not going to pay attention to the Alberta Bill of Rights.
Very similar outcome in the Ingram decision, which was one of the Justice Center's cases where the court ended up invalidating Alberta's lockdown measures.
So the background is the courts were ignoring the Alberta Bill of Rights.
Danielle Smith's UCP government brought in Bill 24 to improve it.
The first draft of Bill 24, we said it's not great because you've got this language in there that's just like the charter that says that these rights can be limited, subject to reasonable limits as can be demonstrably justified in a free society.
So we pushed back on that and said, well, at least change that language to get requirement for evidence, which we didn't see much with all the charter rulings regarding lockdowns.
So Bill 24 was amended to get some better language in there.
At the end of the day, I always go back to what really matters more than the wording of the charter or the wording of the Bill of Rights is our culture.
Do we have a freedom-loving culture?
If yes, that's going to trickle up to the politicians, the lawyers, the judges.
And so we think the Bill 24 was a small step forward.
However, in the bigger context, what really matters is that we educate Canadians of all ages, especially the younger ones, but Canadians of all ages, we need to really appreciate our charter rights and freedoms and the free society.
If we don't, then it doesn't matter what the wording is of the Alberta Bill of Rights or the Canadian Bill of Rights or the Charter.
You know, I'm just thinking to myself, I actually did go to law school in Alberta 20 plus years ago, and I forgot that there's an Alberta Bill of Rights.
And the reason is because it's like an appendix in the body.
It really is not used.
No one talks about it.
I guess an appendix, if you have appendicitis, you talk about it.
But the fact that this law has been there, dormant, not really used, tells us a lot.
How do you move a law from a regular statute, one of hundreds on the books, to give it the power that it is any other laws, if they contradict the Alberta Bill of Rights, are to that degree of no use or effect?
Like, how is it that the Charter of Rights is the supreme law for Canada, but the Alberta Bill of Rights is not the supreme law for Alberta?
And how could that be changed?
Because if you had a freer Constitution of Alberta than you have the Constitution of Canada, if you have Alberta the freest place, and if you have that enshrined in the law, how do you make sure that that law really is the determining factor as opposed to just something that judges say, yeah, yeah, that doesn't really mean anything.
That's just for show.
Well, and I think that's probably, you know, and I've not spoken to Danielle Smith about this, and I can only speculate as to what her reasons are.
But we had a situation in Alberta where courts were blatantly, very blatantly, with the Sheila Annette Lewis case, which, for the benefit of those who hadn't heard, a lady, courageous lady, who had had COVID and had recovered from COVID.
She was pressured to get injected with COVID vaccine.
She said she didn't want to get injected.
She was kicked off of a waiting list for life-saving organ transplant, just a disgrace.
And shame on the Alberta doctors who did that.
We provided lawyers for Sheila and At Lewis, went to court, lost in the first level Court of Appeals.
Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear it.
But this is an example where the judges completely ignored the Bill of Rights.
So I think the reason why it was, I think the reason why Premier Smith brought in Bill 24 is to put in some different language to force the judges to really take a look at it and change the status quo of judges simply ignoring it.
Understanding Brazil's Rally00:06:33
So I think that's one of the positives.
Potentially, we'll have to wait and see what the courts do with it.
But the amendments to the Bill of Rights were there so that the courts are no longer going to feel quite as comfortable in just ignoring it as they have been.
You know, a few months ago, I went down to Sao Paulo, Brazil, first time I've ever been in South America, because I heard there was a huge rally for freedom of the press and freedom of speech because a judge there, Alexandra de Moraj, had banned the entire Twitter app.
And Elon Musk was in a very public dispute with this judge, who, by the way, one of the things he would do is he would ban critics of the government on Twitter and then tell Twitter to delete their account, but tell Twitter not to say who did it.
Like this judge was saying to Twitter, suspend that account.
I order you to, but you can't tell anyone I ordered you to.
And they can't, you know, you have to keep this whole thing secret.
And Elon Musk basically said, you're asking us to break the law.
We're not going to do that.
They had this huge fight.
Well, DeMorés, since Musk wouldn't ban a handful of critics, Moraj banned the entire app from everyone in Brazil.
You had to get a VPN to use them.
So I went down to Sao Paulo.
I wanted to see how big a free speech rally is in, I'm not going to call Brazil the third world, but it's a developing country.
Do they care about freedom?
And John, I don't know if you know, but there were 200,000 people there.
And obviously not all of them spoke English.
But my question was, why are you here?
They all said freedom of speech.
They all said Elon Musk and Twitter.
Like it wasn't just a partisan rally.
They really knew why they were there.
Here's a quick clip of my trip to Sao Paulo.
It was incredible to see the different races and the different ages.
It felt sort of wonderful to see this, it was like one of those old Benetton ads, people of every background, but unified for the belief in freedom.
Here, take a look.
Why did you come to the Bolsonaro rally today?
I come here because I'm here to defend the free of Brazil because Chandong is freedom speech.
He's closing our mouths.
Oh, really?
Lula is doing that?
Or Moraes?
Moraes.
Moraes is, um...
That's the judge.
He's a judge.
Lula is just a toy for him.
He's just a toy.
This Alexandro de Moraes, he actually shut up 22 million people that use X or the next Twitter here in Brazil.
So 22 million.
It's a lot.
It's a lot.
22 million.
I think in the United States, what they're doing to Donald Trump, trying to censor him, trying to take legal action against him.
I feel like they're doing the same thing here as well.
And this Alexander de Moraj, I think he's a radical judge.
Does it look likely that he'll be impeached, or do you think he's going to continue doing what he's doing?
I think he is unfortunately going to keep doing what he's doing, which is a shame for us, Brazilian, because he doesn't represent us.
But I hope one day it will stop.
They're going to be one impeachment.
They're going to ask for impeachment.
It's time to have a lot of power.
The judge Alexandre de Moraj?
Yeah, yeah.
Then they're going to be a lot of power.
This impeachment for nice.
I hope so.
You win.
John, it was an amazing rally, and I sometimes wonder if we could muster even 2,000 people or even 20,000 people for free speech in Canada.
And I worry that we can't.
Once there was a 50,000-person rally for free speech in Ottawa, by the way, when they tried to shut down the radio station in Quebec called Schwa FM.
So there was a moment in Canada where we had a rally of that size.
But my point, and I'm sorry I'm taking so long to get to it, is Alexandre de Moraise is a judge.
He was using the statutes of Brazil.
He was just abusing them.
And you know those old sayings, show me the man, I'll find you the crime.
That was Lavrentiberia, the predecessor to the KGB.
Or, you know, the other saying, the more laws, the more corruption.
Like, you and I believe in the law as a tool for freedom, but other people use the law to suppress, even to pervert the law.
How do you stop the Alexandre de Moraises from putting roots in Canada?
How do you stop left-wing activists from colonizing our laws?
Part of that's like a many-part response, but I'll mention a few components because that could be a very long answer.
We've got to educate our children, our grandchildren.
The Justice Center is largely developed and will be completing in 2025 a charter curriculum for high school students that's available on our website.
People of all ages can read that and use that.
But if you have a Canadian public where Canadians understand freedoms, we understand it in our minds, we cherish it in our hearts.
And if you have citizens who really demand the rule of law and that we are governed by laws, not by the whim of the mob or the whim of the king or the prime minister, if we have citizens who demand that our freedoms of expression, conscience, religion, peaceful assembly, association, and so on be supported, that's going to trickle up.
You're going to have politicians and eventually judges as well that are going to have that.
So it starts and it ends with the culture.
If you have a culture of freedom-loving people, it's highly unlikely that you're going to get some tyrannical judge that's just going to take away freedoms contrary to what everybody in society knows and appreciates and understands to be true.
You know, it's not just the courts.
Parents Jailed for Civil Disobedience00:03:20
I mean, as you may know, John, and I didn't call you from jail, but I was arrested a few weeks ago in a kind of civil disobedience, but not even really.
I wasn't actually trying to be disobedient.
So I take that back.
It wasn't civil disobedience.
There was a pro-Hamas demonstration near my house that I think probably violated some hate crime law, although I'm not a big fan of hate crime laws.
I think there are other laws that should be prosecuted from trespass, nuisance, uttering threats, assault, supporting a banned terrorist group.
Those are all laws that I can get behind.
But this astonishing hate crime, like reenactment of a terrorist leader, was nuts.
And I went to photograph it and the police arrested me saying my presence was inciting the pro-Hamas people to breach the peace.
Now, I know that that was unlawful, but I felt like I had to stand my ground.
I was arrested and jailed for a few hours.
I saw the video clip.
Yeah, I'm glad it was only a few hours because it sucks to be in jail.
I spent 23 hours there myself and to Mara Leach 49 days, but I'm sorry you had to spend even a few hours.
It was disgraceful.
Well, thank you for that.
But even that, no one, I mean, these cops were telling law-abiding Canadians to back off because that was a path of least resistance.
And I know that's not normal because, John, I was recently at the riots in Amsterdam, and I go to Davos every year in Switzerland where all these super important VVIPs are there.
And the Dutch police and the Swiss police would never think of stopping a journalist.
In fact, I was shocked by how helpful they were.
Even in Amsterdam, there was an actual police action when I was there.
And they just said, who are you with?
I said, we're with the media.
They said, okay.
And then they went on to, like, in Canada, it's not just the judges.
I think it's every element.
You have partisan prosecutors.
Judges are being taught to use pronouns.
And if you don't use, if you misgender someone, you could throw a whole case.
And police, I think, have downloaded that authoritarian nature.
I can't believe how light touch the cops in Davos are every year when we're standing next to super important political leaders.
In Canada, we get arrested routinely.
It's not just the judges, is what I'm saying.
It's the entire culture.
I feel like that's changed over the course of the last 10 years.
Well, sadly, I have to agree with you.
This is why we've got our work cut out for us.
And a big part of it is with the school system.
I tell parents, if you are able to, and I know some parents cannot because of financial reasons or scheduling or whatever, but if you're able to, take your kids out of the public schools, put them in private school, homeschool them.
If you're a grandparent, tell your kids that you will help them and support them, whether financially or otherwise, to get their kids out of these toxic places where they are obviously not learning.
They're being taught what to think.
Blockading Downtown Intersections00:06:44
They're not being taught how to think.
And we see this, I've been seeing this for decades on university campuses.
The people graduate from grade 12, they go to university.
They can't think, they can't reason, they can't debate, they can't argue.
All they can do is just get very angry when somebody says something that they disagree with and they can't even articulate.
They're not even capable of debate.
So we need that change in the education.
That's a big part of it.
It's going to take time.
We're not going to change that in weeks or months.
It's going to take years and decades.
And we ought to reclaim our freedoms because as Jordan Peterson once said, one of his talks a year and a half ago, I can't remember when it was, but he said, slaves look to tyrants to give them meaning and purpose in life and direction and how to live and what to think.
And tyrants look to slaves to be empowered.
But if you have educated, awake, responsible adults as citizens, it's very hard for tyranny to take root.
You know, I saw Francois Legault, the premier of Quebec, a few weeks ago, react to a scene where a lot of pro-Hamas protesters were taking over a public street.
And there were also other scenes of taking over other public places, including actually outside the Notre Dame Basilica, which is the major cathedral in that city.
And I've seen similar things in my city of Toronto.
I see the pro-Hamas people block very important roads.
One's called the Gardner Expressway.
They often block downtown intersections.
And one of the things they do is they then have a little prayer.
They have an Islamic-style prayer right on the street.
They just sort of bend down and kneel and bow down and say, we're praying now.
Don't you dare move us.
And to me, that's an act of domination.
There's 100 mosques in the Toronto area.
Feel free to pray all you want on the mosque.
Pray even in the park, I suppose.
I mean, if you're not bugging anyone, but to block a street, and I can imagine how frustrating that was.
And Legault had these comments to make when he saw some of this.
Take a look.
I think he was reacting to something that he didn't like, which I don't like either.
I think it's the domination of public space and the violation of various laws.
But I think he reached for the wrong tool there.
I think the problem, I think what these pro-Hamas people are doing is weaponizing their religion, daring you to move them for the offense.
It might be a bylaw offense.
You can't block a street.
You can't do something religious while you're blocking a street to make it lawful suddenly.
So I think Legaugh realized that they were being cheeky and taking advantage and sort of playing the race card there.
And he wanted to stop that.
But instead of insisting that they just clear the street, he was going after the religious aspect.
And I agree that they're doing it for political purposes.
They're infusing their law breaking with religion to sort of dare you to arrest them for it.
And then they'll claim discrimination.
So what they're doing is odious.
But I think that Legault, if he was serious about stopping that, he would have over the last 14 months gone after them for trespass, nuisance, mischief, vandalism, uttering threats.
You know, there's some cases where you're wearing a mask while committing a crime.
That's an offense additionally.
Tell me what your thoughts are, because I know that the Justice Center recently sent a demand letter to Premier Legault.
What's your take on things regarding these mass protests in the streets?
So freedom of expression does not authorize you to block traffic.
Does not, in my view, authorize you to close borders.
When the Coutz protests in Alberta and the Windsor one, the Justice Center didn't speak out and say, yeah, you can stop economic activity.
You know, you cannot prevent people from going to work.
You cannot prevent people from going, you know, entering into and leaving their buildings where they work.
You cannot obstruct streets.
And so as a passionate defender of campus free speech, when the Justice Center first started in 2010, I'd say close to half of our cases were campus free speech cases.
We still do a lot of this work, but now it's not half.
Now it's you know it's down to a tenth just because we've grown and taken on so much other stuff.
So I'm a passionate believer in campus free speech.
I also applauded the dismantling of these tent cities.
Your freedom of speech does not extend to putting up a permanent or quasi-permanent something that goes on for days or weeks or months and you have your tent city.
No, it's quite reasonable for the university to say you can put up your display from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., whatever, but you got to take it down.
And that space is a public space that other people can use.
So what you need to do is crack down hard on enforce the existing laws.
So if you are shutting down traffic, even there's criminal code provision as well that can be applicable.
It's certainly against Ontario's provincial legislation to block traffic.
Guaranteed.
Enforce the law and arrest these people.
If it's a provincial offense, give them a ticket.
If it's criminal, handcuff them, take them off to Chill and so on.
Enforce the existing laws and then also leave the space for law-abiding, peaceful expression, like on a public sidewalk where you can stand there with your sign no matter how hateful it is or is perceived to be.
My one problem, I mean, I've always considered myself a very strong free speecher.
But what happens if you bring into Canada not just thousands or hundreds of thousands, but literally millions of people who do not value free speech, who do not value the peaceful exchange of ideas, a meritocratic nonviolent solution to problem solving.
Cultural Response Needed00:04:52
You're describing Islamists as well as woke equity, diversity, inclusion.
You got two groups here that are a threat to our free and democratic society.
Right.
And there's got to be this cultural response.
Sir, it interrupts.
No, you're so right.
There's threats from both of those groups.
And they're fundamentally similar in those ways.
They hate the fundamental freedoms.
They hate democracy and Western civilization and fundamental freedoms.
Both the woke progressives and some Muslims, not all Muslims, but some Muslims are just like the woke people.
They want to shut you up and they want to control your speech.
And they think they're entitled to control somebody else's vocal cords.
Yeah.
And what worries me is that if you bring in people in such number that they don't integrate and assimilate those Canadian values, I think it's possible for anyone from any country in the world to come to Canada and be properly absorbed and integrated and assimilated and turned into a Canadian.
But that only happens when the trickle is slow enough that we can Canadianize them rather than for them to turn us into a kind of Gazafication.
What I see on the streets of Toronto is much more culturally a fit for what they do in Gaza.
There hasn't been the kind of outright terrorist violence yet.
They're having schools shot, Molotov cocktails thrown, glass windows smashed some arsons.
So it's one step beneath what they would actually do in Gaza.
But I feel like if you bring in a sufficient number of people who are fundamentally illiberal, soon that's just going to be the cultural center of gravity.
And I think our freedom mindset relies on a certain shared view of the world and in a way, a high trust society.
What I mean by that is if you lose the game, but everyone played by the same rules, our system is built on the loser saying, okay, I had my shot.
I made my argument.
I lost.
I'll do better next time.
But if you only use democracy for the tools to win, and if you don't win, if you flip the game board up and say, I don't, like, I'm just worried that at a certain point, if we bring in too many illiberal people, that our freedom way of thinking would be fine amongst ourselves.
But if we are dealing with a mass of people who do not value freedom and who would do violence if they could, I think there's a breaking point there.
Think that mass immigration undoes the necessary cultural foundation upon which libertarianism relies.
What do you think?
I can't disagree with you, and I do not disagree with you on this general idea that if we want to maintain a healthy democracy where people respect the fundamental freedoms of conscience, religion, expression, and so on, then we do have to take a look at the immigrants that are coming in.
Bearing in mind at the same time, I'll never forget some 20-something years ago, I was running for the Reform Party.
That's when you and I met in the early 1990s.
And I was having lunch with a Reform Party supporter, Caucasian guy, married to a Chinese Canadian.
And he said that all of his Chinese in-laws were hardworking, taxpaying, pro-family, pro-freedom, whatever.
And they thought that the biggest problem in Canada was white people.
And so my point is that, yes, absolutely, we have to defend our freedoms.
That includes not allowing in people that are demonstrably hostile to our values or allowing those people in numbers where they can be properly assimilated.
But we also have to clean up our own backyard as well as cleaning up the immigration system.
Yeah, I mean, and I don't think I mentioned race at all today.
I mean, one of the most poignant moments in rebel news was when we sent some of our reporters into Hong Kong during their final last desperate battle to keep the freedom alive in that city.
And to hear these Hong Kong residents, including the students, passionately defend freedom of speech and the right to dissent and the right to challenge your government was heartwarming, but in the end, heartbreaking as China crushed them, frankly, used the Wuhan virus as an occasion to distract the world and to crush Hong Kong.
Reasons to Be Optimistic00:02:01
But to see the beautiful way that they pined for the British system of civil liberties and the rule of law was actually incredible.
You're right.
And I remember during the COVID protests, you heard a disproportionate number of voices with the East European accent who perhaps remembered what communism was like.
And I love encountering people from around the world who are angry that we would throw away our freedoms so gently.
But I'm afraid that we have.
That'll be a subject for another time and maybe for a different forum.
But it is something that I worry about.
John, it's great to catch up with you.
We love the Justice Center.
We love to interview you and your lawyers.
We interviewed James Manson just the other day about that police officer who donated 50 bucks to the truckers and had his life turned upside down.
So we love to follow the JCCF.
Thank you for giving me your award this year.
That was a real honor.
You deserve it.
Thank you.
We'll continue to shine the light on what you're doing to help get the word out.
And I myself take some pride in the fact that from time to time I chip in a few bucks at jccf.ca, and I know a lot of our viewers do too.
John, good luck in the next year.
In one sentence, give us a reason to be optimistic about 2025.
Here's my reason to be optimistic.
Truth always vanquishes the lie.
Freedom always ultimately prevails over tyranny.
Justice will triumph over injustice.
And so we need to practice the virtues of courage to speak truth to power, perseverance to keep up the fight, not give up and quit in a few weeks, a few months, but be in this for the long haul.
But we're going to win in the end, and we're going to win back all the rights and freedoms that have been lost.
Well, if you remember the God's ears, I hope that all happens.
It will be a big battle until that happens.
John, great to see you.
Keep up the good work, and we'll talk to you again soon.
Take care.
All right.
There you have it.
John Carpe, the leader of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms and a good friend of the show.