Oct. 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
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| Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid, the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world with well over 600 million views and downloads. | |
| Please check us out at freedomain.com and like and share and subscribe to the information on this channel. | |
| So this is part two in my ongoing series, The Truth About Canada's 2019 Election, an election that is really the most significant in Canada's history. | |
| Part one was about immigration. | |
| I will link to that and the sources and other presentations I refer to in this presentation below. | |
| So this is about the rule of law. | |
| Now, the rule of law is a very powerful but subtle concept in a free society. | |
| A free society can only function if people respect the rule of law. | |
| In other words, if they believe that the rule of law is objectively applied at a moral Now, the first place that people look for their respect for the rule of law is to the elites, to the powerful, to the politicians, to the heads of state, to the heads of industry, and see if the rule of law applies to those people. | |
| Now, if it does in general apply to those people, then people will say, the general population will say, okay, well, it's going to be imperfectly applied, but at least it's moral and at least it's universal. | |
| However, if The people in power regularly skate free of the rule of law. | |
| In other words, if the rule of law is a curious kind of net that catches only the small fish and lets the big fish swim free... | |
| Then people lose respect for the rule of law. | |
| And then they don't internalize its values and then they simply do what they can get away with. | |
| It becomes a cost-benefit calculation. | |
| And the more people do that, the fewer criminals get caught. | |
| The more people who break the law because they don't respect it anymore, well, freedoms in society crumble and governments become more tyrannical and the rule of law further erodes or respect erodes. | |
| And in general, I make the case here, conservatives are better at maintaining and respecting the rule of law. | |
| Because conservatives generally come from a Christian moral tradition of ethical universality, whereas people on the left are generally more amoral, power seekers, Darwinian, Nietzschean, will-to-power entities who use moral language only as a way of achieving power rather than having any foundational moral commitment to those ethics. | |
| So we'll see how this plays out, what is going on at the moment in Canada with the rule of law. | |
| Let's talk about SNC-Lavalin. | |
| You might have heard about it. It's been floating around. | |
| It's really, really important. | |
| I've got a whole presentation on this. | |
| I'll link to it below. So very, very briefly, SNC-Lavalin is a giant Montreal construction firm, and it was accused of two major crimes based on its association with the Gaddafi regime. | |
| The first was paying $48 million in brides to Libyan government officials, and the second was defrauding The Libyan government and other entities of, quote, property, money or valuable security or service, end quote, worth $130 million. | |
| So we're not talking chump change here. | |
| This is a lot. | |
| Now, Trudeau's liberal government introduced deferred prosecution agreements in which companies won't be pursued criminally if they agree to reform and change their ways and so on. | |
| And it's basically a non-prosecution agreement if you pay fines and reform. | |
| and this was held over SNC-Lavalin. | |
| The head of Canada's Justice Department was pursuing this, this woman, Wilson-Raybould. | |
| She was pursuing SNC-Lavalin with this, and Justin Trudeau wanted her to, instead of criminally pursuing SNC-Lavalin, to give them a deferred prosecution agreement. | |
| And in the leaders' debate, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer accused Justin Trudeau of lying to Canadians when the SNC-Lavalin allegations first surfaced. | |
| He said, you looked Canadians in the eye and told Canadians that the allegations in the Globe and Mail were false, he said to Trudeau. | |
| Trudeau replied, they were false. | |
| This will surprise everyone. Canada's ethics commissioner who ruled otherwise. | |
| So, in the rather sleepy mid-August summer of politics, ethics commissioner Mario Dion dropped a 63-page report, which had in it the conclusion that Trudeau, in fact, broke the country's conflict of interest laws. | |
| Which is actually the second time since 2015 that Trudeau has done so. | |
| The first was his visit to the Aga Khan's private island. | |
| So, seems like he's still lying. | |
| That would be Trudeau. | |
| So, Trudeau allegedly pushed out his Justice Minister and Attorney General after she refused to offer a non-prosecution agreement to this engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin. | |
| Why? Well, because Trudeau was terrified that if the prosecution occurred or continued, and the firm was forced to close its doors or reduce its workforce, he might lose critical electoral and political support in his home district. | |
| Also, if they were found guilty of criminal malfeasance, then they would be barred from bidding on federal contracts somewhat of their economic lifeblood for quite a period of time. | |
| I think it was about 10 years. So the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, were reportedly investigating serious claims that Trudeau obstructed justice, right? | |
| So if there's allegations of criminal behavior and you're pressuring your justice minister and attorney general to not pursue those, then you are, I believe, obstructing justice. | |
| According to the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail... | |
| What happened? Trudeau's Liberal government has blocked attempts by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate possible obstruction of justice in this S&C Lavalin affair. | |
| Trudeau refused to lift cabinet confidentiality for all witnesses crippling the ability of the RCMP to conduct an investigation. | |
| This is not good at all. | |
| So some Globe and Mail sources said they were instructed to not discuss issues related to the scandal. | |
| With police officials, and of course earlier in the current year, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion reportedly faced similar stonewalling during his own independent inquiry into this. | |
| I mean, I think it's more than a scandal if there are serious and credible allegations of the criminal offense of obstruction of justice, right? | |
| One former RCMP commissioner reported that the investigation was trapped in a difficult position because privilege at the cabinet level is pretty strong. | |
| Now, if you can compare this to Stephen Hopper, the conservative leader, Stephen Hopper completely and totally waived any and all cabinet confidences relating to his government when there was this Norman affair, which again I have a presentation on below. | |
| And so he waved. | |
| He said, hey man, you want to investigate? | |
| All cabinet confidences are waived, whereas Trudeau not only refused to do it, but also claimed that Hoppe had not waived his privilege either. | |
| So Trudeau can waive cabinet confidentiality relating to SNC-Lavalin and have the investigation continue, but he's refused to do so. | |
| Former commissioner of the RCMP, Bob Paulson, said, quote, if the RCMP was serious enough, they would probably get a search warrant, but that would probably be shut down by the courts. | |
| The privilege is pretty strong at the cabinet level. | |
| So this is the normal thing, right? | |
| I mean, leftists make one promise and then usually do the opposite. | |
| Trudeau, of course, promised to reduce deficits, has increased them, and he promised a transparent government, and now he's stonewalling an investigation that could get him charged or even convicted in some theoretical universe with a crime. | |
| In a report published recently, the Ethics Commissioner asserted that Trudeau used his position of authority over Jody Wilson-Raybould to try and convince her to halt this criminal prosecution of S&C Lavellon. | |
| According to this report from the Ethics Commissioner, Trudeau violated Canada's Federal Conflict of Interest Act. | |
| Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet alleged that Trudeau, as well as several members of his inner circle, had tried to pressure her into dropping criminal charges against SNC-Lavalin. | |
| Canadian Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion has ruled that in doing so, Trudeau violated a section of the Conflict of Interest Act, and I quote,"...the Prime Minister directly and through his senior officials used various means to exert influence over Miss Wilson-Raybould." The authority of the Prime Minister and his office was used to circumvent, undermine, and ultimately attempt to discredit the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions as well as the authority of Mr. | |
| Wilson-Raybould as the Crown's Chief Law Officer. | |
| So this is bad. | |
| Very bad indeed. Because everyone is looking at this and saying, ooh, wait a minute. | |
| So if you're a conservative, you're going to end up waiving Cabinet privilege and being subject to the rule of law. | |
| But if you're a liberal... You can just rise above it, shut it all down, be completely opaque, stymie investigations into potentially criminal behavior. | |
| Which means, of course, if you're an honest person, you're going to drift towards, well, you're going to make a beeline towards the conservatives, and if you're not, where are you going to go, right? | |
| Where are you going to go? It's repulsive. | |
| Former Treasury Board Minister Jane Philpott, after resigning from Trudeau's cabinet to protest this scandal, has demanded that the Speaker of Canada's House of Commons rule that Trudeau violated Canadian law when he unilaterally expelled her and former Justice Minister and AG Jody Wilson-Raybould from the Liberal Party caucus. | |
| And I quote, So you understand, it's a circumvention of democracy to simply fire MPs. | |
| I mean, what does he care? This is the guy who, Justin Trudeau, was a guy who claimed to really like China's basic dictatorship. | |
| Now, that should be disqualifying enough, but people want lots of immigration and free money, right? | |
| And, of course, the media is getting $600 million free from the Liberal government, so... | |
| All right, so let's talk about free speech. | |
| To be perfectly honest, it's kind of an important topic for me because I've been occasionally known to say the odd thing, factual and rational, that people find upsetting. | |
| So, May 2019, Canada's Liberal government launched the so-called digital charter meant to promote trust in a digital world. | |
| And what that means, of course, is they don't trust you. | |
| They don't trust you to evaluate information. | |
| After 12 years of compulsory government education, they don't trust you to be able to evaluate arguments and evidence on your own. | |
| They've got to take care of you, because apparently 12 years of government education, well, maybe 13 or 14 years would be enough to teach you to think critically, but it sure hasn't happened in 12 years. | |
| So the Charter, Digital Charter, contained 10 principles, three of which focus on hate speech and disinformation. | |
| Now, I could do a whole presentation about hate speech, but I'll just touch on it as we go forward here. | |
| Naturally, of course, this charter contains no definition of what constitutes hate, which turns it, of course, into a flexible weapon of law to be used against whatever and whomever the Canadian government deems politically troublesome. | |
| It's a way of shutting down topics and shutting down speech because people are like, well, I don't know if I can say this or not. | |
| There's no objective definition and I don't want to get hold before some court, so I'll just shut up about it. | |
| It's a form of soft censorship that is crippling, absolutely crippling to democracy. | |
| Now, remember I was saying that the conservative is pretty good on the rule of law. | |
| The conservative members of the committee recommended that punishments regarding hate crimes online or offline should be dealt with under the existing appropriate sections of the criminal code. | |
| Which we'll get into in a sec. | |
| The Conservatives also recommended that, quote, the definition of hate under the Criminal Code be limited to where a threat of violence or incitement of violence is directed against an identifiable group. | |
| And that, quote, rather than attempting to control speech and ideas, the government explore appropriate security measures to address all three elements of a threat, intent, capability, and opportunity. | |
| Right, so here we have the Conservatives nobly attempting to define... | |
| What is legal and what is illegal? | |
| Because, of course, dictatorships are not where you have very strict laws. | |
| Dictatorships are where you have no law. | |
| That the government can just use loosey-goosey guidelines to attack their political enemies. | |
| And the conservatives are trying to say, look, intent, capability, and opportunity is how we should define these kinds of things, as opposed to this amorphous term, hate, which is subjective and meaningless, which is kind of what you want if you're the government and you want to attack people you disagree with. | |
| Conservative Party dissenting opinion in taking action to end online hate. | |
| And they said, and I quote, The Charter, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will target fake news and hate speech. | |
| Yeah, see these are epistemological questions. | |
| What is true? What is false? | |
| What is real? What is fake? | |
| And what is hate speech and what is speech that you just happen to hate? | |
| I hate Marxism. | |
| I hate National Socialism. | |
| I hate socialism as a whole, but that doesn't mean that people who are Marxists and National Socialists and Socialists should not be able to speak, because bad ideologies should be dragged out into the light and dissected in full view of everyone. | |
| The solution to hate speech is more speech, not less speech. | |
| And of course, you can contrast this, right? | |
| So if you look at the liberal commitment to something like, oh, I don't know, having borders and not allowing people into the country illegally, well, Justin Trudeau is like, hey, come on in. | |
| Come on in. You can break the law, says the prime minister. | |
| Just walk over the border. | |
| We'll have the police carry your bags and take you to a hotel, right? | |
| So that's the law that they're willing to break. | |
| But these laws, let's see what their relationship is to hate speech laws. | |
| So he said the platforms are failing their users and they're failing our citizens. | |
| They have to step up in a major way to counter disinformation. | |
| And if they don't, we will hold them to account and there will be meaningful financial consequences. | |
| According to the Charter, quote,"...the government of Canada will defend freedom of expression and protect against online threats and disinformation designed to undermine the integrity of elections in democratic institutions." Canadians can expect that digital platforms will not foster or disseminate hate, violent extremism, or criminal content. | |
| So you understand then, the government, not the people, the government is now the arbiter of what is nice and what is not nice, of what is true and what is false, of what is right and what is wrong, of what is hate and what is love. | |
| The government, in all of its infinite wisdom, with no possibility being corrupted, By having the power to punish political enemies is now the philosophical, epistemological, perhaps even metaphysical, or the nature of reality, arbiter in the public square. | |
| The referees are not just playing the game, they're in charge of the game. | |
| And that's terrible. | |
| We need to have robust and challenging discussions in the public square. | |
| The truth is a very slippery thing to get a hold of. | |
| And we all need to be talking about the truth in order to bring best policies, best facts, best evidence, best arguments to the public square. | |
| The government, of course, you know, if you're out there threatening people and threatening to kill people and so on, yeah, that's a threat and that should be illegal and it is, even in the United States, which has the most robust protection of free speech in the Western world, in the world as a whole. | |
| But this idea... | |
| That the government can determine what is true and what is false and what is right and what is wrong outside of any criminal intent. | |
| It took thousands of years for the West to develop free speech, but it can vanish like that. | |
| Trudeau said, there will be clear, meaningful penalties for violations of the laws and regulations that support these principles. | |
| But not if you cross the border illegally. | |
| But if you say something the government doesn't like... | |
| Now, of course, Canada already has hate speech laws in its criminal code. | |
| So anyone who publicly, quote, incites or willfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group commits an indictable offense. | |
| The, quote, identifiable group, end quote, includes, and I quote, any section of the public distinguished by color, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability. | |
| Section 318 prohibits advocating or promoting genocide. | |
| Of course, we all know that you can talk about white privilege and white racism all day, that this is not an objectively applied law. | |
| In June, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights released a report titled, quote, Because, you know, you can ban an emotion. | |
| Because that's how powerful the government is. | |
| Now, this... Report recommended that the Canadian government establish a, quote, civil remedy, end quote, for people who claim that their human rights have been violated, that they're upset or angry about something someone has said or written. | |
| After hearing from witnesses, the majority of the committee suggested that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act or something similar to it be reinstated. | |
| Now, this was very, very controversial. | |
| I think this was the basis under which Maclean and Mark Stein were legally attacked for a long time. | |
| This Section 13 was repealed in 2013 under the Harper government after being justly criticized by free speech advocates for its role in enabling censorship on the Internet. | |
| So again, liberals want to control your speech and the conservatives will let you speak. | |
| So this formal law, section 13, stated that it was discriminatory for people to communicate via computer or on the internet, quote, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that the person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. | |
| Likely to expose a person to hatred? | |
| I mean, what... That's so... | |
| And you see, it doesn't have anything to do with facts. | |
| It doesn't have anything to do with facts. | |
| Is what is being said true or false? | |
| Nothing to do with facts. It's all about the feelings. | |
| Does somebody feel offended? | |
| Does somebody feel upset? | |
| That you now have, or could have, a human right to not be upset by things posted on the internet. | |
| Where does that end? | |
| Well, of course, the whole point is it doesn't. | |
| Let's talk about gun bans. | |
| It's a strange but nearly universal phenomenon that with diversity and multiculturalism comes gun control, gun restrictions. | |
| The Daily Call is Ottawa Bureau Chief David Creighton reports that the Trudeau government is heading towards a total ban on handguns and assault weapons in Canada. | |
| CBC News has reported that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has sent a letter of mandate to Border Security Minister Bill Blair which makes it clear the direction the Liberal government wishes to take, and I quote, You should lead an examination of a full ban on handguns and assault weapons in Canada while not impeding the lawful use of firearms by Canadians. | |
| So if you could just go north and south at the same time, Bill, that would be just excellent. | |
| Trudeau has also reminded his newest minister about how to deal with illegal immigration, although, of course, he refers to the phenomenon as irregular migration. | |
| So you see clear law-breaking coming into the country without legal permission to do so, well, that's just irregular. | |
| But talking about things that might upset people on the internet, well, that's clearly illegal. | |
| So you may remember at the beginning of this presentation, I made the perhaps startling claim that this was the most important election in Canadian history. | |
| The reason for that, of course, is that Canada is in grave, grave danger of losing gun rights, of losing free speech, and of losing respect for the rule of law. | |
| This, of course, is not What was promised with diversity, with multiculturalism, with mass immigration was supposed to be a strength. | |
| It was supposed to make us more prosperous, more free, with greater liberties and greater rights. | |
| Unfortunately, quite the opposite seems to be happening. | |
| Our only chance is to maintain democracy. | |
| The vestiges of free speech to the point where we can have rational discussions about the future of this country. |
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