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June 9, 2021 - Viva & Barnes

01:59:31

Sidebar with Firearm & Criminal Attorney Ian Runkle - Viva & Barnes

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Time	Text
	Went live one second early tonight.
	People, good evening.
	I hope everyone is doing well.
	Let's just wait for the standard F in the chat to let me know that my audio is working well.
	Bring it up here.
	Oh yeah, let me stretch my boomer moment.
	Okay, there we go.
	Sorry.
	Just wanted to make sure that the stream was live on my phone.
	Okay, this is going to be another interesting sidebar.
	The thing I love about the internet...
	It's a big, big world out there.
	And even though we're in a relatively small niche of the YouTube interwebs-verse, I don't know all the lawyers out there.
	You know some of the lawyers who have started newer channels.
	And you make some friends, you make your community.
	But you don't know everybody out there.
	And I had not known of Ian Runkle until his name started popping up in chats.
	And everyone's like, you gotta do a stream with Ian Runkle.
	I think it had to do with the video I did last year now on Justin Trudeau's firearm ban, where I know the limits of my own knowledge and understanding on certain subjects.
	And that was pushing my limits.
	It was then that I decided I was going to go do the firearm safety course in Quebec to...
	Understand a little better, and I think I understand a little better than I did then.
	And then a year later, talking Second Amendment issues with Robert Barnes, covering American lawsuits.
	I've learned a lot, but I'm still the newbie trying to play catch-up with people who know a lot more than me and who let me know that every time I put a video out on the subject.
	So, we have Ian Runkle on tonight.
	Runkle of the Bailey.
	And if anybody doesn't get the reference, we'll talk about it.
	But there was one of the first books I remember my father making me read, Rumpel of the Bailey, which were short stories of this British lawyer, Rumpel of the Bailey.
	That's pretty much all I remember from the book.
	But that is undoubtedly where Ian Runkle's channel name comes from.
	While everyone comes in, and YouTube is a little slow for notifications, so if you all share the links...
	On the Twitters and interwebs of the Facebooks.
	I forgot to send it out on Facebook.
	Standard disclaimers as for every stream.
	Superchats, thank you for the support in advance.
	You should know YouTube takes 30% of a Superchat, so if you don't want to feed YouTube, and I can understand that, there are other ways of supporting this channel, supporting me in these ventures.
	Merch, but merch is whatever.
	Robert Barnes and I are on Locals, vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
	I've got Patreon and Subscribestar, but I don't really do much for that.
	Members of the channel get sneak peeks of everything.
	That's the one small perk we can do, and Locals gets a lot of exclusive content.
	Second disclaimer, if I don't get to your Super Chat, and I don't read it, and I don't bring it up for whatever the reason, and you're going to be miffed, don't give the Super Chat.
	I don't like people feeling bad, and I don't want to have that sentiment among creator and viewer.
	Third thing, no legal advice.
	None of this is legal advice.
	It's edumacational.
	So take it for what it's worth.
	If you ever have any legal questions and you can find information on the internet, but if you're seeking legal advice via the internet, don't.
	Go find a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
	Facts are critical.
	Details are critical.
	Applicable law is critical.
	Get legal advice from a trained professional in your jurisdiction.
	We are also...
	Simultaneously streaming on Rumble.
	There are a number of other platforms out there.
	I know people have their preferences for alternative platforms.
	I like Rumble.
	I've grown to know the CEO, Chris Pawlowski.
	I like the platform.
	I like what it's doing.
	Live streaming simultaneously on Rumble.
	And there is chat on Rumble as well.
	Apparently there's no moderators on the Rumble chat.
	And I haven't actually followed the chat on Rumble, but that's that.
	Okay.
	Speaking of Super Chats.
	Let me see, because I see something yellow here coming from a red avatar with an R. It says, Viva, you need to do a sidebar with Critical Drinker.
	I can do that.
	I'm going to go look him up before I say anything, and then we're going to do, you know, welcome to any suggestion.
	To the person asked, yes, nice haircut.
	Damps, Montreal.
	Look at that.
	You know what's amazing?
	You can fully appreciate how much of a tan my scalp actually needs.
	So I'm getting the sunlight on a part of my body that I don't typically get sun on.
	Yeah, I love a skin fade.
	When you feel in the back, it feels like, I wouldn't say a butt, but it feels like tight, firm skin, like leather, like basically wet, moist leather, which I guess is exactly what skin is in general.
	I recommend a sidebar with Payback Scammer.
	Oh, you know what?
	I would be nervous about doing it with Payback Scammer because once upon a time, I got a scam call.
	I recorded the entire thing.
	I'm just taking screenshots so I can remember these recommendations.
	I recorded the conversation I had with them, and I wanted to release it, but I don't want to start fights with spammers and men, or scammers, I should say.
	And I know if it's the same person I'm thinking of, I know what he does.
	Yeah, I wouldn't want to do it, but my goodness, the world needs all sorts of people, including people, to scam the scammers.
	Edumacational, nice Simpsons reference.
	Thank you very much, Longreach Jones.
	And this remains true.
	Two things every man will need at some point in his life, a pickup truck and a lawyer.
	I have thus far in my life have never needed a pickup truck.
	Ford once lent us one for a week and I filled the backup with a tarp and then filled it with water when we made a carpool.
	Carpool?
	Made a great video about that also.
	Okay, so with that said, Robert is going to be in the house shortly.
	Let me just see if I can get one more super chat before I bring in Ian.
	If you're going to run for office, you will have to get used to offending some people and not just for skipping my super chat.
	No, I don't mind offending people for something I believe in and for something I meant to say.
	I do fear offending people accidentally or by something I did not mean to say or by something that I said and really didn't mean and regret saying it, but that doesn't happen very often.
	And just a funny anecdote, actually, talking about spammers and scammers and offending people, I was getting repeated calls, and I still get them, but I was getting repeated calls from these companies who want to help me get...
	You know, front page SEO optimization on YouTube.
	I don't know how they get my number.
	I suspect they go through a database and whatever.
	And they called over and over and over again.
	And at one point, one of them called three times in a row within a span of five minutes.
	And the fourth time, I picked up and didn't wait for them to say, I said, why do you keep calling me?
	And then it was a dead silence on the phone.
	And then it's the person who said, you asked me to call you at two o 'clock.
	And I didn't realize I had scheduled.
	A meeting at the time.
	And then I had, you know, impatiently asked, why are you calling me to the person who I, you know, asked to call me?
	Very embarrassing.
	I felt bad because I did not mean to make that person feel bad in that split second.
	Okay.
	Anecdote over.
	Let us bring in the star of the evening, Ian Runkle, Runkle of the Bailey.
	I had him on earlier before to make sure connection was good.
	And I had questions I wanted to ask, but I said I was going to wait.
	Ian, we're going to go with this.
	Oh, you know what?
	Never mind.
	I told you which way we were going to...
	Hold on.
	Let me go back to the original.
	There we go.
	And when Robert gets in, we'll format this.
	And Ian Runkle is a gangster.
	Well, let us find out who Ian is.
	Ian, before I delve into the questions that I always do with everybody, tell us, elevator pitch for those who don't know you, who are you?
	Well, I do criminal defense and firearm law, and I also have started a YouTube channel largely by accident.
	And I am a guy who, when I call the chief firearms officer, there's this moment when I can tell that they've pulled up my file because there's just this quiet on the other end of the line.
	And I know that there's some note that they read because suddenly they get super cautious.
	And that didn't used to happen.
	So I'm a guy that they know my name at that office.
	Basically, I aim to be trouble to certain bureaucracies.
	We're going to get into that.
	And actually, I want to get up.
	Monkey Grobarange says, Oh my God, isn't that Julian Assange?
	You do have, when you let your hair grow, and you definitely have a Julian Assange feel to you, which I'm sure you get more, you know, it's not the first time you've heard that.
	No, it's not.
	I sort of, it started out with just the COVID haircut because they shut everything down.
	And then I went, eh, what?
	I'm going to run with this for a while.
	I like it.
	It looks good.
	And now I see Robert in the house.
	So I'm going to do this before anyone gets too append to the layout.
	This is the layout we like.
	Robert, first of all, how are you doing, Robert?
	Good, good.
	All right.
	Awesome.
	So we are all in the house now.
	And Ian, we're going to get into your channel because it's a relatively young channel.
	You're doing extremely well.
	And we're going to get into how you started that channel because I think I know, but I'm not sure that I do.
	But let's go way back to the beginning.
	Where are you from?
	How many siblings?
	What did your parents do?
	Childhood-ish, and let's get to the present after that.
	So, grew up in Vancouver.
	One brother, he's off now in Kelowna.
	He's an anesthesiologist, so he made the smart career decisions out of the two of us.
	Came here, basically did university, and was looking for a law school.
	And my wife was out here, so I was inclined to follow her, but also I was looking at...
	So I got approval at multiple law schools, and I was looking at sort of the specializations.
	U of A was, you know, constitutional law, that sort of thing.
	And UBC, which was the other contender, because that's sort of where I'm from, was sort of, I was less impressed.
	It was Pacific Rim issues and that sort of thing.
	And I was like, nope, let's go to UBC.
	I'm going to, or sorry, U of A. So I followed my wife out here, went through law school, and Have never left.
	And I mean, for my own benefit, what did your parents do?
	Were either of them lawyers?
	Are you following in footsteps or first lawyer of a family?
	Well, if you get far enough out, I think there's lawyers.
	But in terms of dad was an electrician, mom was an instrumentation technologist.
	So, you know, both sort of blue collar workers, not...
	No lawyers in that family.
	Me and my brother sort of worked and went sort of to what we like.
	A lot of people who knew me in childhood who sort of reconnected with me have said, hey, you know what?
	We always thought you might make a good lawyer.
	You were always sort of that kind of mindset.
	And I didn't realize that until later myself.
	I actually started out planning on going into psychology.
	But I went into forensic psychology.
	And that started to fascinate me.
	All of the stuff about eyewitnesses and how they go bad.
	Juries and how juries think.
	Or how they don't think.
	Because sometimes juries are swayed by things that maybe they shouldn't be.
	And so that sort of led me towards law.
	And I love it.
	I don't think there's any other career for me.
	Law is really...
	If I couldn't do law for work, I'd be doing law just as a side practice.
	I saw Rakita on last week saying that YouTube is his primary business, but he runs stuff pro bono, and I could see doing that.
	Just saying, hey, let's pick some files that need to be run, whether or not this guy's got money.
	This has got to go into a court, because there's far too many people who are deserving of somebody standing up in their corner who can't get that.
	Curious, because I've heard Viva use the same phrase of files.
	Is that a common Canadian, like in the States, we'll say cases or clients, generally cases.
	Until Viva, I hadn't heard many references to files, but you made the same reference.
	Is that a Canadian colloquialism?
	I suspect so.
	It's everybody sort of in the criminal bar here at least says, you know, I've got so many files on the go.
	Let's talk about this file.
	Case, not so much.
	Well, case we technically refer...
	I think we reserve that for when you go to court, I think.
	But file is definitely, as far as I recall, was in our old Code of Civil Procedure where they said the lawyers are the masters of their files.
	I don't think we said...
	We definitely did not use cases, as far as I remember.
	But now, Ian, you're sworn in in 2013?
	I think it was 2012, but I always have to check.
	I always actually have to go and look myself up in order to remember when I was called.
	Close enough.
	So you're sworn in 2012.
	Did you start off in criminal law?
	Did you do any commercial litigation family, or did you jump right into criminal law?
	Criminal law has always been what I wanted to do.
	When I was articling, they make you do a bunch of other stuff.
	What is that, articling?
	So, here, in order to become a lawyer, you've got to do, like, a sort of training wheels lawyering.
	So, you're done law school, you don't have full lawyer powers, but you can appear on some stuff.
	Basically, they let you appear on anything that you can't screw up so badly it can't be fixed.
	That's sort of a rough way.
	That's actually what I was taught when I was articling, as to knowing the edges of your limits.
	But basically, you can run trials as an articling student, and you're expected as well to take courses to expand your knowledge.
	A lot of them weren't necessarily super useful, but here in Alberta, we don't have a bar exam.
	You just have to complete what they call CPLED, which is training courses.
	And then after that, you get called to the bar, and you're a full lawyer, and you can...
	Screw up as big as you want.
	So, Robert, I think the equivalent is internships in the States where you have to do like a six months as an underling.
	You do have internships?
	Nope.
	So you pass the bar and you can practice right away?
	Oh, yes.
	Oh, my goodness.
	So in Quebec, for anybody who's interested, we have a bar system which back when I did it, you know, you study for six months, you take two exams or three exams and you have cumulative exams.
	And if you fail...
	And 60 and up is a pass and 59 and under is a fail.
	You have to redo the entire thing.
	And it could be six months or a year.
	I don't know if they've changed the procedure.
	So you could study for six months or a year, take the exams.
	If you fail, you've got to do it all again for a year.
	And if you pass, then you...
	This is after you've done six months intern.
	And so sometimes it happens where people just continually fail the exams and never get to practice because you never get sworn in.
	You mean you have Kamala Harris's in Canada too?
	Well, I don't know.
	We did have Kamala Harris in the school up the street from me, actually, in her childhood.
	And we had a tough bar system in Quebec, so I don't know.
	I didn't know you had no bar in Alberta.
	That's phenomenal.
	And so you started in criminal law from the beginning.
	Yeah.
	No, that was always, like, even in law school, I sort of was sitting there looking at the case law in civil and going, okay, so company one has a fight with company two.
	Over $100,000 and their income each year is in the millions.
	I would just want to die doing that.
	Or family law where it's like, you know, these big, ugly fights over sometimes nothing.
	So I'm just sitting there going, no, criminal law is always, you know, there's always skin in the game.
	It's always something that is, you know, the biggest deal to at least this person.
	And no matter what you're doing, the, you know, in criminal defense, Lots of people ask me, oh, how could you defend criminals?
	Well, I don't defend criminals per se.
	Like, what I do most of the time is I hold the state to account.
	You want to throw a guy in jail?
	Cool.
	Maybe he deserves to be.
	Maybe he doesn't.
	Prove it.
	And so holding the state to its burden is, in my mind, a noble pursuit.
	And so I'm never sort of stuck with that thing where I go, who cares about this file?
	Somebody cares.
	The client will call up crying in the middle of the night saying, this is the worst thing that's happened to me.
	And while that might not be the most fun to get a call at 3am, you still know that it's important.
	There's a lot of weight to it.
	And that's why I just can't see really doing anything else.
	And the issues are always fascinating.
	It's not so much like...
	Hey, my neighbor built his fence here, and if it's two inches this way, then we have to split the cost of the fence.
	It's, you know, wild stories.
	What did this guy who's on meth do?
	And, you know, it's amazing.
	I went briefly to look up a few judgments to see what you had been involved in, and also to get a better feel for your fight with the...
	Commissioner of Firearms, which we're going to get to.
	And one of the cases that I saw was you're defending someone who was accused of some form of assault.
	And the question was, were his constitutional rights violated when he was interrogated without having recourse to a lawyer?
	It sounds by the judgment that the individual was probably guilty, or at the very least, he was definitely found to be guilty, but there was the constitutional challenge, which I think he ultimately...
	But when you say, yeah, it's not about defending the guilty, it's about holding the state to account, and you do it, and I guess in a way it's a win-win in that even if you failed, you've held the state to account and you have had them highlight the importance of respecting Miranda rights, constitutional rights, of the right to representation.
	But do you ever, I asked Dershowitz this question, I'm going to ask you, do you ever feel bad about...
	Either having successfully or remotely successfully defended a client?
	No, I don't really think so.
	Because ultimately, if I win, I'm the guy who did his job.
	You know, the problem is that the other guy didn't do his.
	And that might be the police, that might be the Crown.
	But it's not my job to be the prosecutor.
	And it's not my job to be the judge.
	People ask me, well, how do you defend the guilty?
	And I say, well, he's not guilty yet.
	You know, we have a presumption of innocence.
	He's not guilty until the guy in the big chair says he's guilty.
	So until then, and I've had files where I went in sure, like 100% sure that the guy had done it.
	And by the time, you know, and I'm just like, he deserves a fair hearing.
	We're going to run the heck out of this.
	And by the time I'm done, I walk out and I'm 100% sure that he hasn't done it.
	You know, you think, oh, his explanation is ridiculous, couldn't hold up.
	And then you see the pieces start coming together when you get to put this to witnesses.
	Sometimes you can watch the witness just start to get that squirrely look in them and you're like, okay, there's something to this.
	Let's get digging.
	That case you mentioned was kind of a big deal because what was going on, and I won that one actually at the Supreme Court.
	What they were doing is basically, so somebody says, I want to talk to a lawyer.
	And the police here are supposed to, at that point, stop asking you questions until you have a chance to talk to a lawyer.
	Now, Canada is different from the States.
	Once you get a chance to talk to a lawyer, they won't invite that lawyer into the room.
	You don't get to have that lawyer with you.
	They bring you into a room and it's you and the cop.
	And that's it.
	And they can grill you for a long time.
	So it's really important that they have to hold off between you saying, I want to talk to a lawyer and you actually getting that chance.
	And so what was happening, and this was happening all the time, is they'd say, do you want to talk to a lawyer?
	And the guy says, yes, I do.
	And then they say, okay, do you have anything else you want to tell me?
	And what they were arguing is saying, oh, well, we're just trying to see if maybe he needs medical attention, maybe he needs whatever.
	But what people were saying all the time is, Well, I couldn't have done it because, you know, I was just there with my axe and, you know, I was, you know, I was just taking my axe for a walk and I happened to go into the bank and make a withdrawal.
	Of course, at this point, they've admitted seven different critical things and all of that was going in at trials.
	And so this case basically said, no, you can't ask that question.
	Once they say they want to talk to a lawyer, stop asking things.
	Or if you do have to ask a question, they have to be very specific questions that aren't designed to elicit evidence and aren't likely to.
	Do you need medical assistance?
	Are you having chest pains, heart palpitations, specific in that sense?
	Exactly.
	Things where somebody isn't, you know, and if you say, do you need medical attention?
	And the guy said, I only hit her twice.
	At that point, that's on him, right?
	He's made his mistake.
	But when you give him this open-ended question, of course he's going to try to offer a defense to himself.
	And so it's this case that seems like not a big deal, but across Canada, they actually had...
	So the police have these little notebooks where they write everything down.
	And those notebooks also include some cheat sheets as to what they should read to accused and so forth.
	So for a while, in disclosure packages where they have to provide all their evidence...
	You'd get a copy of the cheat sheet and you'd see that they'd sharpied out that question.
	And it's like, well, I've had an impact.
	I made them put that sharpie there.
	Now, do you have a right against self-incrimination in Canada?
	You do, but it's different than in the States.
	So in the States, you see people in trials saying, you know, I don't want to answer that question, which you can't do here in Canada.
	You have a choice as to if you're the accused.
	You have a choice as to whether you want to testify or not.
	But once you testify, like once you get up on the stand, everything is open.
	That might incriminate you?
	Tough.
	Your choice was get on the stand or not.
	It actually applies a little differently if you're not the accused.
	Because if you're not the accused, you don't have a right not to testify.
	So let's say they've charged two people in a car separately for possession of a gun.
	Because it's separate trials, they can go after guy number one on guy number two's trial.
	They can bring him in and make him testify.
	And he might have to testify and say, this was my gun, if that's the truth.
	But then they want to turn around and charge him.
	They can't actually use his testimony where it was compelled like that against him.
	So he enjoys a protection in terms of the use of that testimony.
	Of course, that might still destroy him publicly if he, you know.
	You've been on the news now for having testified as to something, and it's compelled, but yeah, it creates some interesting legal situations.
	And also, just practically speaking, how that works, once that information is out there, you're not allowed to use it, but the question is, does it factor in to the extent that it's known in this separate trial where the person cannot be compelled, where they were compelled in another trial to testify?
	Oh, for sure.
	And there might be situations, for instance, where that might lead the police to...
	And then what do you do with that?
	If you say, oh, well, this is what happened, and then the police decide to go and retrace the scene and find bits of evidence, that would raise its own sort of questions.
	So all of these are sort of legal nerd questions that criminal law is full of, and that's why it's so exciting and so interesting.
	Now, how do you enter criminal defense practice in Canada?
	Well, in...
	There's sort of different paths, but the easiest way is just you sign up to article at a criminal defense firm, and that'll be the work they give you.
	And so, you know, you put out your name as somebody who does criminal defense, and we've also got a system here where in Alberta, they sort of send files for people who are low income to lawyers and basically say, we'll pay X rate.
	And so...
	You get yourself on that list and they'll send you files that way.
	But largely it's just by doing it.
	How do you get your name out there?
	Well, one way, and I think it's less of a thing now, but one way is actually calling up the police stations and getting them to put something up in their phone rooms so that while in the phone room they might see your name and decide to call you.
	The internet is now a bigger and bigger thing because...
	What often happens is you've got somebody's in custody, and they reach out to everyone they know.
	They start calling their brother, their mom, and say, I need help.
	And that person used to go to the phone book, and now they go online and look things up.
	And word of mouth.
	People end up at the Remand Center, which is sort of the local jail, and they go in there and they ask their friends, who's a good lawyer?
	So sometimes...
	Sometimes you'll have something where you win a case, and then suddenly there's 10 guys calling you.
	And they all want you, and it's like, oh, right, somebody was talking me up in the remand.
	The amazing thing I remember from the practice is an easy way, but it could lead to problems depending on the types of clients you would get, was literally sit at court, and when you go up to present whatever you're there for, people who are there without counsel...
	If you're friendly enough and you look nice enough, we'll approach you afterwards and say, you know, I don't have a lawyer.
	And then you can sort of assess whether or not you want to get involved or refer them to wherever else they might get assistance.
	But literally, the more time you spend at the courthouse, the more time you end up being seen by colleagues and being seen by potential clients.
	Yeah, I actually got a famous client that way.
	I was there in court representing another famous client and was the equivalent of screaming at the judge.
	And he liked the fact that I was screaming at the judge and the prosecutor, and so he hired me after that.
	Otherwise, he had no idea who I was, so I can understand that sentiment.
	Now, in Canada, does anybody wear the wigs like they do in Britain?
	No, we don't do the wigs, thankfully.
	Although we do do the robe for Queen's Bench, and those robes are ridiculous because they cost like two, three grand for the set, and you can't do anything else with them.
	It's actually considered a little gauche to wear them outside of the courthouse.
	And they're uncomfortable.
	They're ridiculous.
	They just...
	They're bizarre, but...
	They don't breathe.
	If anyone's interested in the history, this was to not democratize, but rather...
	Render everyone equal.
	If one lawyer has a $6,000 Hugo Boss suit and the other one's wearing a Simon's $300 suit, that could give an impression of inequality in the courtroom.
	So they had you put these things on.
	The irony is that those gowns cost...
	Mine cost $700, but it might have been a provincial thing.
	They cost like $700.
	And you could still get really expensive gowns.
	So it didn't even eliminate the problem it sought to eliminate.
	It just transposed it into a different...
	Uh, uniform, so to speak.
	They don't breathe.
	They are uncomfortable.
	They look, they do look sort of, you look like you're wearing a blanket.
	At least ours are just big black blankets with a little white collar that goes down.
	Yeah.
	But, um, yeah, that's it.
	And if you, and if you don't show up, you don't have to wear them all the time, but if there's witnesses or it is a trial or you're in commercial division, you have to wear the gown all the time, but it is to not try to impress people with fancy clothes.
	It's Queen's Bench here, whereas provincial court, where a lot of criminal stuff happens, you can just go in in a suit and you're a lot more comfortable.
	But the other thing, it really messes with young lawyers.
	Because let's say you've done your articles, you've decided you're going to start out on your own.
	That cost for a set of robes is actually a big deal when you're just trying to scrape things together.
	So we've got programs here, like there's a robe sort of bank that's been set up at the courthouse.
	But I just go, why can't we just eliminate this entirely?
	This is silly.
	This is archaic.
	Send it into the same bin we sent the wigs in.
	Especially in the summertime, they typically do not require it any longer because it's so hot in the courthouse that they just say, okay, fine, no gowns.
	Ian, this I think is going to bring us into one of the major issues, which I think is how you got your YouTube channel started.
	Ian, long-time fan, share the RCMP blackmail story or why someone's wife, who doesn't have a pal, which is a...
	The small arm license, I believe, should not open the gun safe when the RCMP asks.
	So here's this thing that's happened, and I've seen this way too many times.
	So you've got a guy, and it's typically the guy, but sometimes it's the reverse, who's got a firearms license and their spouse does not.
	And so what ends up happening is the police come for whatever reason, and they say, hey, we need to have a look in the gun safe.
	Can you show us into the gun safe?
	And maybe this guy has been pulled over for some sort of criminal offense or whatever.
	And wanting to be helpful, they say, yes, I'll show you into the gun safe.
	And they unlock the gun safe.
	So then the police then turn around and they charge her with possession of the firearms because she can access them and she doesn't have a license.
	Oh my God.
	So what they want to do is they want to go after him, but they charge her.
	And then they turn around and they make an offer.
	There's a place for Crown and prosecutor dealings, but this offer has always just seemed really ugly to me because they'll say to the guy, if you plead guilty, we'll drop the charges against her.
	And I guarantee you, you go home and your wife has just been charged for possession of your guns, she no longer wants you to have guns.
	She is no longer on your side on that one.
	And she wants anything.
	More than anything, to make this go away.
	And she'll put pressure on you like the Crown can't.
	And so, you know, often this deal is, listen, we don't want any jail time.
	All we want is to ban you from having guns.
	And people take that deal.
	And the way to prevent that is you either A, make sure your wife can't get in there, or B, make sure your wife is educated enough to know that when the police say, hey, can we see the gun safe?
	She says, Show me whatever warrant you got and do what you gotta do, but I'm not helping and I'm not, you know, if you gotta get into the gun safe, I hope you brought your crowbars.
	So that's B. Or C, if she's, you know, got a license of her own, if she can't get in, if she has a license or if she just won't get in, then you're protected.
	But that sort of trick, that move, is one that I've seen far too often.
	So that's why I say, if you've got your gun license, your spouse, your adult children should also get their gun license.
	Even if they don't want to have a gun.
	My wife has no interest.
	Just none.
	But she's got her license.
	And I mean, we've got a gun safe, right?
	So it means it's also a place where if we have important documents, we can tuck those in there as well.
	You know, it's just a safe at that point.
	Yeah, this is the sort of thing that gun owners don't necessarily realize, and they don't teach in the courses that can really trip people up.
	Just explain what the PAL license is in a second, and I'm just going to interject this.
	When I took the firearm safety course, the first thing I thought when we were reading through the sanctions, the requirements, the penalties, I said this is not intended to regulate gun ownership.
	This is intended to deter gun ownership, because the penalties for not following...
	What they've implemented as rules, at least in Quebec, is so serious and federally.
	I mean, it's so serious.
	No one's going to take the chance.
	That was my observation.
	True or not?
	And what is a PAL license for Americans who I don't think fully appreciate what that is?
	So in order to have a gun in Canada, you need to go and take a course and apply and get a license.
	And there's a background check process.
	The U.S. has background check systems, but they actually tend, from my understanding, to happen at point of purchase.
	You go and you buy the gun.
	That's one advantage to the PAL system, which is that the background check is front-loaded.
	So I have a firearms license.
	I can walk into a sporting goods store and walk out with a shotgun.
	Same day.
	They don't have to do anything other than just run the license.
	However, you're not wrong about it being incredibly complicated.
	And that's actually how I got into firearm law as a thing.
	I was in law school and I was not really a big gun guy at that point.
	But law school is stressful and mostly, you know, you've got to find a way to get rid of that stress.
	And I was finding that the most popular way to do that was drinking.
	So I needed a hobby that wasn't just advanced alcoholism.
	And I remembered I'd gone target shooting with my dad as a kid, and I enjoyed that.
	So I thought, I will try that.
	I'm going to go get my firearms license.
	But we also had, so when we were covering sort of professional responsibility, there's this case of a guy who was an articling student, and he got an impaired driving charge.
	And he basically threw himself on the mercy of the court and said, listen, I'm an articling student.
	I've blown up my whole career here.
	Please have mercy.
	And they said, No, we're going to do the opposite of that.
	You should have known better.
	And they actually really punished this guy over and above the loss of his career.
	So I went, holy crap, I don't want to be that guy.
	So I thought, I need to go through and look through the firearm laws and make sure I understand them inside and out so that I don't screw up.
	And the first thing I thought is, I must be the dumbest person alive as I'm reading all of these firearm laws because I was like, this makes no sense.
	So I kept reading.
	Like, I gotta crack this puzzle.
	And eventually it's, I'm not misunderstanding this.
	It just really is dumb.
	And the number of traps that exist for gun owners in Canada is just unreal.
	One of them that comes up, and people argue about this one online all the time, but it actually is a trap, which is, let's say I order a handgun from somebody across the country.
	They'll ship it to me, And it, you know, might end up at my door, but let's say I'm not at the door.
	They have to be sent requiring a signature.
	So then it ends up at the post office.
	Now, I technically need an authorization of transport to take it home from the post office.
	But not only do I need to do that.
	So for shipping, it only needs to be in sort of a nondescript box, and it has to be unloaded.
	But for transport home, it's got to be with a trigger lock, unloaded.
	And then in a locked case.
	So technically speaking, what you have to do is take this package at the post office, open it up, pull out the handgun, put a lock on it, put it in a locked case, and I guarantee you a tactical team is going to be taking you down if you do this in downtown Edmonton or downtown Montreal, because nobody wants you pulling out a handgun in the post office.
	So there isn't really a way to do this that both complies with the law and doesn't actually get you in trouble with the law.
	Because at the point where they've sent guys for a gun call at the post office, they're going to find something to charge you with.
	We had to roll out eight guys in three cars.
	We're going to figure out what you did after the fact.
	So, you know, I can't, it's a position where people call me and they say, what do you do?
	And I say, I can't actually advise you one way or the other, because no matter what advice I give you on this one, you know, you're going to get in trouble, and I could get in trouble with the Law Society if I say something like, well, just drive it home.
	But, yeah, it's, there's all, another really common one that people aren't getting prosecuted for, but they could.
	Let's say somebody gets a domestic violence charge, and it might be a minor, you know, pushing, shoving, you know, whatever.
	They'll impose a firearms ban.
	Now, there's different categories of gun in Canada.
	If you've got the sort of standard, you know, your 9mm handgun, that's a sort of full firearm that you need a license for.
	But any barreled item that fires a projectile that can puncture an eyeball will actually count as a firearm.
	But many of them don't need a license, which means nail guns are this sort of second-tier firearm, and they're covered under firearms bans.
	So you get this guy who gets this charge, and now technically he can't own a nail gun, which sounds like maybe not such a big deal unless he's a roofer or a carpenter.
	So all of these things I don't think were intended as part of the law.
	They're just these legal accidents because so much of it is done by people who had no clue about any of this.
	You know, people who don't like guns and consider it a badge of moral virtue that they've never held one and never touched one and never thought much about it.
	And they're the people pushing these laws through.
	We've got the recent order in council where they banned a whole bunch of guns and there's an issue where they said...
	We're banning anything with a bore diameter of greater than 20 millimeters.
	And they picked that number because they actually looked up in catalogs to make sure that they didn't cover 10 and 12 gauge shotguns.
	The problem is that if you've got a hunting shotgun, it might well have a removable choke.
	And to make that removable choke, the end is a little wider.
	And so now you end up with a question as to whether that bore diameter is measured in the middle of the shotgun bore or at the end where you've got that removable choke that can be pulled out.
	So they've gone on Twitter and they've gone and said, oh no, no, no, this is measured from the inside.
	But the problem is that once they've passed the order in council that doesn't include any of those things, it's the court that gets to make that call.
	And the court cases...
	The way they've ruled in the past, it's going to be very difficult for them to escape the notion that it's got to be measured at the widest point.
	So, we've got this thing where they may have accidentally banned 12-gauge shotguns in Canada, except, ironically, just 12-gauge shotguns that are designed for hunting purposes.
	Because if you've got a combat bore on this thing, it's not going to have a removable choke, it's just going to have a straight tube, and you're safe.
	So we may actually end up seeing more combat shotgun models being sold in Canada because the duck hunters can't use their standard...
	All of this is just...
	It's a headache, but it's a privilege to be able to fight against this and say, let's try to push back.
	Let's try to make sure people's rights are respected.
	Now, I know there's no Second Amendment in Canada.
	To what extent are gun rights protected in Canada?
	Almost none.
	The court has specifically said, basically, you don't have a right to firearms.
	You don't typically have the ability to even carry a weapon in Canada.
	There's a charge, possession of weapon for purposes dangerous to the public peace.
	So if you're walking around with a weapon, they will typically charge you with that.
	The court has said that's a purpose dangerous to the public peace unless there's some specific and immediate need for a weapon.
	So that might be, you know, if somebody's chasing you and they're intending to do you harm and you, you know, pick up a bat, that's probably not going to be a purpose dangerous to the public peace.
	But they've banned all sorts of things that normally...
	Women use to protect themselves.
	And I say women because they are designed in that sense.
	And these are typically who gets charged for it.
	If you've got pepper spray that's designed for people, that's a prohibited weapon.
	If you've got a taser, that's a prohibited weapon.
	I see women get charged for having stun guns all the time because they go online and they order them from the states and they get shipped and nobody opens them at the border.
	I mean, they...
	The border guards open some stuff, but they can't open every package.
	And then they end up getting charged because they're like, what do you mean this is illegal?
	You know, I just ordered this online.
	It's really kind of terrifying sometimes because one example that I always like to bring up because it's just so messed up is here in Edmonton at one point, they were actually advising that there was a guy attacking women.
	And so they were giving warnings about don't go in this area and, you know, go with friends and all of this.
	But the warning also included don't carry a weapon to defend yourself because we'll charge you.
	And that's one of those...
	It's clown world where literally it's the avatar.
	Oh, I hear an echo on somebody's side.
	Oh, that might be mine.
	If it gets bad, I can throw on headset.
	If you could.
	And I'll give the anecdote while we...
	It's not an anecdote, but rather I'll just illustrate the absurdity.
	It is literally they have banned...
	You're not allowed carrying tasers, pepper spray.
	Someone made a joke about bear spray because you do have bear spray or dog spray, dog mace.
	But walking around with that, if you're not going camping or you're not walking dogs or in a dog run, self-defense has been criminalized in Canada.
	People don't appreciate that.
	And I learned this during my course.
	If you go into the firearm safety course for hunting and even give the slightest indication that the reason you want it is for self-defense at home, you'll get refused.
	And I saw on some boards, message boards, people were like, where do I keep a hunting rifle if I want to use it for self-defense?
	And someone says, don't even post this comment on boards because you'll get people, you'll get...
	You'll get authorities looking at this question and coming after you to see if you're actually doing this.
	But Canada is basically criminalized self-defense.
	And I don't think Americans watching my channel in particular fully appreciate this.
	But go on and illustrate it some more, Ian.
	Well, it's just ridiculous sometimes.
	One thing or one line I've used several times in my videos is that they need to pick a team.
	Because what ends up happening sometimes is...
	Somebody will go and say, listen, I fought off a mugger.
	Somebody came, they wanted my wallet, and I fought them off, and the police will say, really?
	What did you fight them off with?
	And they'll say, oh, well, I carry a pocket knife.
	Now, they can't find the mugger.
	The mugger's gone.
	But now they've got somebody who's admitted that they've used this weapon for self-defense, and they get charged.
	And I go, did you guys stop and think about what side you're on on this one?
	I've got a video with a woman who defended herself from a very serious...
	The guy's got clear prison tattoos on his face.
	He was, in the course of strangling her, probably to death, he'd slammed her face into the concrete repeatedly.
	She was so badly injured that when she went to the neighbors for help, they actually thought it was a Halloween costume because they didn't think one person could be covered in that much blood.
	Basically, when he started grabbing her and assaulting her, she managed to grab a knife in that house.
	And in the course of him choking her, she manages to get that knife and stick it into his leg.
	Now, legs have major arteries and he dies.
	But she gets taken to the hospital so that they can deal with her broken ribs and punctured lung and all of this stuff.
	And as soon as she's out, she goes from there into a cell.
	And it takes her a month to get bail.
	Ultimately, the Crown, you know, they said, oh, well, this is the clearest of self-defense cases.
	And I go, well, she spent a month in jail that you just can't give back to her.
	And not only that, but she's just come out of the hospital.
	Like, she's suffered the worst injuries that she's probably ever going to suffer.
	You know, we hope.
	And she's got to do her recovery in a jail cell.
	Possibly with friends of this guy.
	Now, what rights to self-defense do you have?
	I mean, clearly you don't have it if it involves a weapon.
	But what other rights, what's the general law of self-defense in Canada?
	It's actually weird because the self-defense case law is actually pretty good in the moment.
	And it's just, you can't carry the weapon for self-defense.
	But if in that moment you need it, like, that woman could never have been convicted at trial.
	It's just...
	This is one of those things where you, you know, I could nap through that trial and still win it.
	But they still charge her, and so the process itself is a bit of the punishment.
	But when you see, we've actually got case law where, for instance, one gangster shoots at another gangster, and they convict him for having the gun, but not for the use of force.
	And so in that moment where somebody's coming after you...
	You've actually got a wide flexibility in Canada.
	If you happen to come across a flamethrower, you'd probably be okay if somebody's chasing you with a knife.
	But you just can't have it in the first place.
	And people don't really stop to think about what that does to society.
	Because a lot of the people who push this are very much sort of the left wing, let's look after the disabled, look after the vulnerable.
	But that's exactly who's harmed by not having access to weapons.
	You know, I weigh a buck forty.
	So I am not exactly going to be winning a whole lot of fistfights.
	I've got asthma.
	I'm not really going to be running away from a...
	You know, if somebody wants to run me down, I got maybe three blocks in me.
	And then that's it.
	I'm done.
	And I can't fight at that point.
	So, you know, if you've got somebody in a wheelchair...
	We say you've got a right to self-defense in the wheelchair, but how do they exercise it?
	I have a friend in the States who had a stroke at an early age and walks with a four-post cane because she's got no muscle tone on one side of her body.
	And she was accosted at one point and was able to repel several people, not by shooting anybody, but simply by producing a handgun and saying, How much is this worth to you, essentially?
	Here in Canada, we say you can't have the handgun, but if they were attacking you, it would still be legal to shoot them.
	And I go, all it does is it really privileges strength.
	You know, if you are a big, tough person, then you can exercise your right to self-defense.
	But if you're a small, slight person, or if you have physical disabilities...
	That right to defend yourself that's written into the criminal code, it's arguably part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms under protection of life, liberty, security of the person.
	It doesn't mean a whole lot.
	Was it Sweden where there was a young woman who was being assaulted and used a taser and then subsequently got charged by the police with a taser?
	Chat, comment section, let me know.
	I think it was Sweden.
	And I remember thinking how backwards Sweden was.
	This was within the last five years.
	And then, lo and behold, I learn that this is the situation in Canada.
	And it doesn't just...
	Ian, it's a good point.
	It privileges the strong.
	It privileges the criminals who are not going to ever abide.
	They don't have the concern to abide by the laws.
	They'll carry whatever they want.
	And then, meanwhile, you're left calling the police and hoping they come in time where you are not just deprived of firearms, of any meaningful self-defense subject...
	You know, failing which you may successfully defend yourself and then face charges afterwards.
	Have you ever had a particular case like that?
	I've had situations where people have defended themselves and been charged.
	I've had situations where people were badly injured and had been charged over, you know, you had a weapon.
	You shouldn't have had a weapon.
	We're going to charge you.
	Often what ends up happening is that sort of team thinking where the police sort of pick a side.
	And they'll often pick a side where somebody is most injured is one way they'll decide it.
	But the most injured person isn't necessarily the person who is righteous in the first place.
	You know, somebody who comes up to you and says, give me your wallet, I've got a knife.
	If you happen to, you know, to gain the upper hand and, you know, lay a beating on them or, you know, grab for the knife in that and manage to turn it against them, that's, you know, they might be the more injured person.
	They're the wrong, like, they're the bad guys still.
	And so we've seen also situations where homeowners have defended themselves with a firearm, and sometimes this will be things like, you know, somebody's out there stealing their truck, and they fire a warning shot into the air, and they get charged.
	There's a very famous case here, Ian Thompson, and they charged both sides in this, but what was happening there is Mr. Thompson lived next to some neighbors who were very bad people.
	They were involved in crime, and Mr. Thompson himself has a firearms license, which suggests he doesn't have a criminal record, or at least not much of one.
	And I don't know his record or lack.
	I suspect it's no record, but they're having a dispute.
	He doesn't like these neighbors.
	They don't like him.
	So one day they decide that they are going to show up at his house, and they start throwing firebombs.
	And these are actually being targeted.
	You can see them hitting the doors and windows.
	They're basically trying to set up a conflagration that he can't escape so that he burns to death in his house.
	But he's a firearm safety instructor.
	He goes to his safe, because it's gotta be in a safe, pulls out a revolver, loads it, hops out a window, and fires a couple of shots into the air.
	And they charged him with everything they could think of.
	And I'm going, I wouldn't have wanted to charge this guy even if he'd been shooting at the people firebombing his house.
	I just say, you know what?
	I'm okay with that.
	I'm far more concerned about police use of force than I usually am about defensive use of force, because I'm always concerned about restraining the state, but people should be able to defend themselves in that moment, right?
	And when you actually break it down and look at the studies, defensive uses of force actually tend to be much better overall.
	You know, you don't ever accidentally shoot the wrong guy when you're being mugged.
	You know who's mugging you.
	Whereas sometimes the police do make that mistake because they hear that the mugger is, you know, six foot tall, brown hair, and a blue shirt.
	And they run around and they find a guy who's that, and it might be the wrong guy.
	This doesn't typically happen in defense of uses of force.
	And, I mean, I just look at the numbers from the states, you know.
	The states has social problems, and it has some social problems around firearms.
	But so does Canada.
	And here in Canada, we see the breakdown between licensed and unlicensed, right?
	That's one thing that the states doesn't have in terms of numbers.
	And so it provides a very clear delineation of, like, this is somebody who's following the law, and this is somebody who's not.
	Almost all of the firearm violence here is people who never bothered to get a license.
	And in many cases, people who are...
	Banned three times.
	Like, they have three separate firearm ban orders, and they're still walking around with a handgun.
	People would be shocked to know how many handguns are being carried around on the streets.
	Not one of them legally.
	And we say, oh, well, we've made society better.
	All we've done is just decide who gets to have them, and it's not the innocent people, it's not the sort of honorable or...
	Law-abiding people.
	Well, Ian, I'm going to bring this up.
	It's going to cover your face.
	But it was Gabriel Wortman was the Nova Scotia mass murderer.
	Didn't have a pal.
	Acquired all firearms illegally.
	Would have been charged with 100 plus crimes and 400 years in jail.
	He didn't care.
	Words on paper only serve as a deterrent to the law-abiding.
	More words on paper won't fix that.
	And 100% true.
	I mean, there's one more here that is Viva.
	And this, Ian, you might be better off.
	I think I know the answer, but not really.
	Are these strange laws that hamper self-defense peculiar to Canada, or are they typical throughout the Commonwealth?
	Different countries in the Commonwealth have had different, although typically they have been more restrictive on weapons, but I don't know that it's helped.
	I mean, you look at Britain where they have ever-increasing knife bans, and what that's caused is a rise in acid attacks.
	Because, you know, people, you can't, Bans somebody into being a good person.
	And, you know, if somebody's carrying around a weapon to do harm to other people, you're not going to say, oh, there's a ban.
	I'm just not going to do anything.
	If they can't get a gun, they'll get an alternative that's equally lethal or horrific.
	You know, the acid attacks might not be lethal all the time, but they have incredible deterrent effect because they have permanent scarring, permanent injury.
	And I'm going...
	Did we really win anything here?
	Here in Canada, there was this big instance with lots of people were getting pepper sprayed.
	There was a wave of people getting pepper sprayed in robberies.
	So they banned pepper spray.
	And pepper spray robberies went down.
	Handgun and knife robberies went up.
	Have we won anything there?
	If I'm the clerk of a store, I'd much rather have somebody pepper spray me than stab me.
	We're going to see it again here in Canada because they're trying to push to ban airsoft.
	And they want to ban the import of realistic-looking airsoft guns.
	And what you're going to see is people are going to stop carrying airsoft guns for criminal purposes, which does happen from time to time, and they're going to get a real one.
	And we're going to call this a big win.
	We've solved the airsoft crime problem because now people are getting shot instead.
	I get frustrated at these sort of...
	Partial solutions, and really we need to get at the underlying problems, but they never want to do that because those are hard problems.
	You're not going to win an election running on, we're going to solve these difficult problems or even work on them.
	You're not going to win an election by saying we're going to revisit the gun laws because people in society, and myself included, I know what I thought going into that firearm safety course.
	People in society think it's the ultimate of evil.
	With no practical purpose, that you only need a gun for hunting, like one of the cats I brought up.
	And so you'll never win.
	I doubt you'll win an election by suggesting that you're going to revisit some of these gun laws.
	So you're right.
	Robert, you look like you had a question, and I think I interrupted before.
	Yeah, I forgot what it was.
	When it comes back, get to it.
	Someone else in the chat asked, Ian, what do juries think about...
	I mean, those are...
	So, Canada has far fewer jury trials than the States.
	Like, when I look at the States, it seems like everything's being run as a jury trial.
	A guy stole a candy bar, put it in front of a jury.
	And I'm going, you know, here in Canada, for a lot of that stuff, you may not have a right to a jury.
	But for serious stuff, it may be that it has to go in front of a jury, but a lot of stuff, it's actually the accused's choice.
	And so you end up with a lot of situations where you might be saying, do I want to run this in front of a jury or not?
	And so you have to think about how sympathetic your accused is, because juries tend to think right from the outset that if you're sitting next to defense counsel, you're guilty.
	That's your starting point.
	It's not what the law tells them, but it's what they bring in.
	And so you have to kind of think and say, is my client sympathetic?
	But sometimes you've got these clients who are just so sympathetic that you have to put it in front of a jury.
	I've had situations where people are just really...
	It's so obvious that the police picked the wrong side.
	And just telling the Crown, listen, I'm putting this in front of a jury, was enough to get them to say, we're not running it anymore.
	Like, we would have run this in front of a judge.
	We think that maybe a judge would have convicted.
	But a jury won't.
	And, I mean, that's part of the magic of juries and part of why we have juries is that sometimes, and I, you know, here in Canada, jury nullification is sort of specifically forbidden.
	But you can't stop them.
	And, you know, juries will refuse to do things that offend their senses of morality.
	If they just can't get there and feel like they're going to be able to go home and sleep at night, they'll say, no, we don't think the guy did it.
	And so you can have situations where people should absolutely, by the law, be convicted on something, because the law sometimes says that we should reach stupid outcomes.
	And a jury will just say, nope.
	And you can walk out of there going, there's no way that jury should have been able to get there.
	So in what cases do you have a jury trial right?
	How big is the jury?
	And does the jury get to determine sentencing ever in Canada?
	They never get to touch sentencing.
	That's always the judge.
	In terms of the size, it depends on the seriousness of the offense.
	And in terms of when you get to have it, there's a whole...
	Basically, they go through the criminal code and they say these sections are mandatory that they have to go in front of a jury.
	Now, mandatory unless...
	So, for instance, murder has to go in front of a jury.
	Unless people agree not to.
	And there's plenty of times when both sides say, this would be better in front of a judge.
	Especially if you're arguing a lot of technical legal points, because the jury is the decider of fact, whereas the judge is the decider of law.
	And so if it all comes down to whether or not the evidence is going in or not because of charter violations, which is our sort of constitutional rights violation issues, then why bother with the jury, right?
	A jury's expensive, they're a pain.
	There's all sorts of procedures that are a hassle.
	So if the issue is only legal, just go with the judge alone.
	But anything that is an indictable offense, you have an election, so you get to decide.
	Indictable offenses are kind of this complicated thing because they're like a misdemeanor felony division.
	Except that in Canada, they've decided that everything almost is hybrid offenses.
	And hybrid offenses can be either or.
	The Crown gets to choose.
	And until they decide, it's treated as indictable.
	But when they're just...
	So you've got these things where the Crown might say, okay, this one we think is less serious, this one we think is more serious.
	It changes the procedure, it changes the punishment.
	And so you get...
	Our system is complicated unnecessarily, but legal systems tend to grow organically in ways that, you know, it's the difference between a planned city and cities like European cities, where you see they've grown over time, and, you know, you get weird back alleys that go nowhere, that kind of thing.
	Now, how do prosecutors and judges get to their positions in Canada?
	So if you want to be a Crown, you just apply at the Crown's office.
	And so it's not elected.
	It's a, you go and you just, it's applying like at any firm.
	The Crown Prosecution Office is basically a firm.
	And judges are appointed.
	And so there's no elections.
	There's actually protections.
	So in the States, you know, if you've got a judge who people don't like, they can vote them out.
	And here in Canada, you can't vote a judge out.
	There's actually a process for removing a judge who is bad enough, but it takes really bad for that to happen.
	And they're actually immunized from political interference to the degree that the government actually doesn't have direct control over their paychecks.
	So it's actually that their paychecks are set by the Canadian Judicial Council, who then says, This is what we think judges ought to be paid, and this is what we think is reasonable.
	But it's not a system where...
	And that's to protect judges from being punished.
	If the government doesn't like a judge's decision, their recourse is tough.
	Move on.
	It actually works fairly well.
	People do complain about, you know, oh, well, we should have elected judges.
	but I like it that judges aren't worried about decisions being popular.
	I can think of some of my cases where the judge's decision might, if it had made the news, have been very unpopular, you know, but reasonable doubt is never, The public doesn't tend to respect the rule of law in these ways.
	They say, oh, well, you found drugs in the trunk of his car.
	He should be convicted.
	It's like, well, no, they found drugs in the trunk of his car only because they searched him when they had no grounds to do so.
	That's got to be thrown out so that they don't search everybody's car.
	I like that we have judges who can actually stand up for that without having to worry about the recourse.
	Although I will say, the media is changing that equation.
	Judges are in a very vulnerable spot.
	Relates to dealing with the media.
	Because judges aren't allowed to get up and defend themselves.
	If a judge makes a call that's unpopular, the media can excoriate them.
	They can be trashed on Twitter.
	And we can have government ministers trashing them and saying, this is a terrible decision.
	And they can't even get up to say, no, this is why I made the decision.
	The law requires it.
	There have been some judges who just get absolutely destroyed to a degree where I think it would be hard for some of these judges to go for coffee.
	Because when we talk about cancellation, they're not being cancelled because they can't be fired.
	But just the social impact of somebody going, oh, this judge is pro-rapist.
	You know, it's a comment that's been thrown around about a number of judges.
	And then later, the review board says, actually, he was just correctly articulating the law.
	Period.
	I'm going to bring this up, but I'm not going to read it all the way through.
	Having grown up in rural Oregon, I would rather neuter myself with blunt rocks than give up my...
	Okay, I've read it all the way through.
	Sorry, Vivo.
	Yeah, I mean, Robert and I, we've been seeing some of the cancellation and going after the judges in the states, the lawyers in the states.
	I mean, I think that is an international phenomenon at this point, or at least a Western phenomenon, North American.
	But Ian, I think this question might segue into your personal file.
	Someone had asked, when did the law change?
	Because they remember back in the 80s in Laval, everyone owned firearms.
	I remember it was in the, I think in the 90s, this massive reform that really, really...
	They criminalized gun ownership and created these new rules.
	I don't remember exactly when, though.
	Do you know?
	It predates me, but they basically redid everything.
	They changed it from...
	So the old system was a firearm acquisition certificate, which meant you had a license to buy guns, but you didn't actually need that license to possess them.
	So what you could theoretically do was you'd go down to your...
	It was at the time you might go down to your police station and you get this...
	You go buy a couple of shotguns, and then you can let it expire.
	So long as you don't need to buy more shotguns, you don't need it.
	But then they changed it to a possession and acquisition system.
	They changed the law so there's now more than half a dozen different ways you can lose your firearms license or be banned from having guns.
	There's all these provisions.
	It's kind of this smorgasbord of how to ban you from having guns that's written into our laws.
	And they started banning things that scared them.
	And so a lot of our bans just make no sense.
	For example, we have banned firearms that never went into production.
	So there's like six prototypes of a gun out there in existence and we've banned them here in Canada.
	Well, nobody's going to use this prototype gun So, you know, but they said, oh, we got to ban this.
	And the rumor is that they just basically flipped through a catalog, like a gun magazine, and started circling things that they thought were scary looking.
	So, they also restricted the AR-15 initially.
	Notwithstanding the fact that the AR-15, in terms of its function, is equivalent to many other firearms.
	Now they've gone a further step, and they've banned it entirely.
	So I've got a gun that's actually my own personal kind of tragedy on that one.
	So I buy this gun just before they shut everything down because of COVID.
	Couldn't go to the ranges.
	I just got this gun.
	I was like...
	All right, well, this will pass, and then I will be able to take this gun and, you know, go to the range.
	And then they banned it.
	So I can't do anything with it.
	Right now, I'm still allowed to possess it, but I can't take it to the range.
	I can't anything.
	But sort of to segue to my current challenge, what happens with firearms is you've got to have your license, but for restricted firearms, you also need something like this, which is a registration certificate.
	And I'm sort of covering up serial numbers here, They've got sort of four boxes.
	This is for a Luger.
	And they've said, okay, we have decided that because of this ban, the registration certificates for these things that we think are covered by the ban are now nullified.
	So they sent out letters to everyone saying, hey, your registration certificates are cancelled.
	Now, for a restricted firearm, if you want to do something with it, You need the registration certificate and the license and a whole bunch of other things.
	So the problem is, what if they're wrong?
	So if they ban something that's not covered, why is this cancelled?
	So what they've said is that this isn't a decision, but the problem that they run into is that the law actually only allows for one way for a registration...
	Well, actually not true.
	They allow for several ways for registration certificates to be cancelled, but they're...
	All specifically set out in the law.
	But those ways are inconvenient because what they'd have to do is send every person a letter saying, here is why we decided to revoke this registration certificate.
	They didn't want to do that.
	That's expensive.
	That's time-consuming.
	And they don't want people being able to challenge this in court.
	So instead, they invented this new idea.
	It's been automatically nullified, and that's not written into the law anywhere.
	So they instead sent everyone out these letters saying that they've been automatically nullified.
	So I'm saying that is BS.
	You can't do that.
	You've got to follow the law.
	You know, we have tons of laws that we have to follow.
	You guys have a really small number.
	Can you at least follow those laws that provide us with some procedural protection?
	And so now we're locked in this court battle where they say we didn't actually revoke your license.
	It's just this new thing that we made up.
	And it's going to be a major thing.
	There's decisions going in different directions all across Canada.
	And this is going to end up in the Supreme Court.
	Kind of ironically, one of the major cases on this point is actually Runkle v.
	Canada because of the last time I fought them.
	And I would have brought it out for the stream, except YouTube has very particular rules about what you can and can't do on livestream.
	But the last time I won the case, and they had to pay me some money as a result of that.
	So I turned around and bought a handgun with it and had it engraved with paid for by the chief firearms officer.
	You got a sense of humor also, Ian.
	Sometimes you got to do a victory lap.
	What is the conviction rate in Canada?
	I don't actually know.
	The law society here actually has very sort of...
	Particular rules about your advertising in terms of your own success rate.
	They say don't.
	And that's because they're worried that you're going to cherry pick cases that are winners.
	And they're worried that you're going to mislead people because if you've got a 99% acquittal rate when you're defending people, that probably doesn't mean that you're a great lawyer.
	It probably means that you're only taking cases that are just easy wins.
	You know, the greatest lawyers, some of the greatest lawyers I know have seriously low rates of winning because they take all the files that nobody else wants to touch because they're just so brutal.
	And, you know, some of those you're like, you won one out of 10 of those?
	You are fantastic.
	I remember as an articling student, I got sent off to run a bunch of hearings and I came back and I was feeling crushed because I won only a small percentage of them.
	And I said, like, hey, I sucked today.
	I got everything, you know, I got my butt handed to me.
	And they said, you do realize we expected you to lose 100% of those, right?
	And I went, what?
	And they're like, we gave you all losers.
	You won a couple of them.
	That's fantastic.
	Like, let's go celebrate.
	No, but Ian, what Robert's question, I think more is of the line along the lines of what's like the federal prosecution conviction rate?
	Are we at, Robert, what is it in the states like 90 plus percent conviction rate in federal prosecutions?
	Yeah, it depends on the nature of it, but anywhere from 85 to 95 percent.
	I don't know for certain, but it really would depend on whether you're including trial.
	I'm just looking it up here, and they say 62%.
	Yeah, well, that's it.
	I pulled up Ethan Rice's comic, and this is not...
	If this is wrong, people don't accuse me of propagating inaccurate information.
	This is a chat.
	It says, Viva, in Canada we have 62% conviction rate in adult court.
	And in other places I'm seeing 97%.
	And it really depends, I think, on how you calculate it.
	Because what ends up happening is huge numbers of people plead guilty.
	Including the stuff that they shouldn't.
	Especially if they get denied bail.
	Because, you know, you've got a guy, he's accused of shoplifting.
	The case might be garbage, but if he's denied bail and he's looking at, you know, he's looking at a sentence at conviction of 30 days and his trial date is two years out, he's not, you know, he's going to take whatever plea deal.
	It's very rare that I've seen people be willing.
	I can think of like one guy who he basically said, I didn't do it.
	I know I'm in jail.
	I know the Crown's offering 30 days.
	I know I've been in here for four months now.
	Let's run this to trial.
	And he was absolutely vindicated.
	We went to trial and they were flattened.
	But it takes a lot to be willing to say, I'm going to stay here in jail for...
	He ended up doing something like nine months, which was way more than what the Crown was asking for.
	Do you have a right to bail in Canada?
	You have a right to reasonable bail.
	So what reasonable bail ends up meaning depends on circumstances.
	So you don't necessarily have a right to get granted bail, but you certainly have a right to argue for it.
	And the starting place for most people is that you get bail.
	Now, the exception to that is if you've already breached a bail, it might flip that you have to justify why you should be released.
	And if you...
	For certain offenses, you might have to start out by justifying why you should be released instead of the other side.
	But the presumption is basically that you get bail, and it's actually that you should be getting bail on the least restrictive terms possible.
	We also have a system where we ban bail bondsmen.
	That's out.
	You can't do that.
	It's actually an obstruction of justice issue.
	So what that means is that bails are much lower here.
	You'll see people released on, like, you know, a lot of no financial obligation, which means if you breach, you get arrested and recharged, but you're not out any money.
	Or promise to pay releases, which you don't put up any money, but it's got a dollar amount attached to it as a threat.
	If you screw up, we'll come after you for $2,000.
	But, like, for cash bail, a $5,000 cash bail is a really big cash bail.
	As compared to...
	You know, I see in the States where you've got people out on millions of dollars of bail, and I'm just going like, what?
	Frankly, Power says, if you are found not guilty, is there any redress?
	I think the answer is a no.
	I think there's one jurisdiction where you'll get paid if you're found innocent a certain amount for days in jail.
	We don't have anything like that in Canada.
	No.
	People say, oh, well, I should sue.
	And there are times when you might be able to sue, but the threshold is so high that it's basically impossible.
	You basically have to be able to show that the prosecution did it out of specific malice towards you personally.
	But, I mean, how do you show that, right?
	Even if the Crown screws up, even if this case is such an obvious, you know, that it was obvious to everybody that this guy was not guilty, so long as there's even the thinnest shred.
	They'll say, we're not going to find civil liability there.
	They don't want to discourage prosecutors from pursuing cases.
	But the flip side of that is some of those cases maybe should be discouraged.
	How would you describe the ethical probity or propensity for honesty of prosecutors, crown prosecutors, and police officers, law enforcement officers in Canada?
	Pretty good.
	There are some police officers who have some test-allying problems.
	There are some police officers.
	I remember one particular file where the officer got up and testified very conclusively about what had happened.
	And I pulled the prosecutor aside and said, by the way, you don't know this, but I've got video.
	He thinks he smashed this camera because he'd actually physically punched a bystander in the face.
	You know, basically the camera had fallen and broken, but we were able to take that to a shop and they were able to pull components, put them in a new phone so that we were able to recover things.
	But, you know, so the prosecutor didn't realize I had this video and when I showed it to him after the officer was testifying, he was like, we're not going ahead.
	Like, I have, you know, we're done here.
	But...
	I've also seen things where the officer gets up and I'm thinking of a file where the officer was testifying that a vehicle was swerving all over the road and all four wheels were crossing the center line.
	And I say, and you got that on tape, right?
	Because you've got a camera in your car.
	And he says, yeah, it's on tape.
	And I said, let's roll that tape.
	And the guy's just driving and there's like maybe a little tiny bit of weave.
	And I'm going, show me when he crosses the center line.
	And the problem is that...
	Police officers tend to get away with this because judges don't call them on it.
	At the end of it, they're like, oh, well, the officer clearly misremembered.
	I'm like, did he?
	Would you let me get away with that if I'd made that kind of representation?
	Prosecutors, at least in my area, almost without exception, I think, follow a very high standard of ethics.
	I've had prosecutors, for instance, tell me, listen, We discovered some new evidence on your file.
	The police didn't give it to us beforehand.
	And I'm not proceeding on this file based on, I think this evidence doesn't help your client, but you should have had it months ago.
	And I think because of that rights violation, I'm going to walk away from this.
	There's a moment where, so a woman who had been the victim of a very serious...
	Serious crime against her personally had developed a shoplifting habit to deal with that.
	That's something that sometimes happens.
	And we were going into court and seeking a relatively minimal punishment, essentially telling the court not to hammer this woman because she's still dealing with it.
	And the prosecutor was saying, listen, she's had too many chances.
	Too far, we've got to proceed.
	But the judge actually started abusing this woman in court.
	He was treating her very badly.
	And the Crown prosecutor got up and said, sorry, I am directing a stay of proceedings on this file, which is a power that prosecutors have here.
	I don't know if anything similar exists in the States, but it kills the file, and it kills the file regardless of what the judge wants.
	If the judge says, I want this file to keep going...
	They don't have that power.
	The stay of proceedings just flattens it.
	So that's an example of a prosecutor living up to the highest standards of ethics to step in and fight the judge.
	And I've had prosecutors, when the judge is actually giving them a verdict in their favor, I had a prosecutor at one point stand up and say, Your Honor, you've misapprehended the facts.
	I know you're here to convict, but if you're going to convict, you need to convict on the actual And then once the judge had that explained, they said, oh, well, then I'm not convicting.
	And, you know, that I consider to be a...
	So moments like that I consider to be very high standards of ethics.
	I have few moments where I've seen prosecutors especially sort of do something else.
	And here they really drill into the prosecutors that their responsibility isn't to get a conviction.
	It's to uphold justice, which may in some cases mean this file doesn't go any further.
	It may mean, you know, on sentence, we need to ask for a lesser sentence than what the judge is thinking.
	I've had circumstances where the prosecutor and I are both fighting the judge saying, this guy should not be in jail.
	This guy should be in a treatment facility or something along those lines.
	So I think it's a different culture.
	I'm not in the U.S. culture, right?
	You get a different view of things consuming media than you do being in the trenches.
	And I've had the experience where you see your own case reported in the media and I didn't recognize it until they mentioned the accused name because the facts were so distorted.
	But I see examples in the States where you've got wrongful convictions where prosecutors knew there was exculpatory evidence and hid it.
	And I don't see that much here.
	So, it's hard to say.
	We've talked about that with Robert also.
	The courts seem to be much less politicized here, although there's still politics at play, but nothing like the Flynn's, nothing like the McCloskey's, nothing like the Rittenhouse's, but it's a different culture here.
	And I just want to read two chats, because this one, per usual, great chat at vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
	Question, does Canada have a version of qualified immunity for agents of the government?
	And the other chat just disappeared.
	I took a picture of it.
	I'll get to it afterwards.
	Well, I mean, don't you guys have the original sovereign immunity?
	Well, for police, it is possible to sue police.
	It's just difficult.
	And not a lot of lawyers want to do that sort of line of work.
	I personally don't because it's civil law.
	And I hate everything about civil law.
	You know, you start a case and it's going to get finished in five years.
	And by that point, you know...
	And everything about civil law seems like it's obstructionist, where you're just trying to throw up roadblocks and make everything more expensive for the other side, especially if you're up against the government, because they've got a virtually unlimited pocketbook.
	And so if they can run your client out of money, they win.
	Or run your client out of patience, too.
	So I don't like civil law.
	But lots of people don't really want to take on the government.
	There's a few lawyers who do it, and I hold them in the highest esteem because it's a function that needs to be done.
	The problem with that here is that Canada has a very different civil law system.
	So in the States, you see these big damage awards, whereas Canada basically says that your award should, in most cases, just put you back to where you would have been.
	And we also don't have these massive healthcare costs because we've got a socialized healthcare system.
	So you've got somebody who, you know, let's say a police officer hits them with a baton and breaks their leg and they're off work for six weeks.
	Well, that's six weeks of wages, but you don't have, you know, the hospital bills.
	You don't have all of this.
	And it ends up being like, okay, you get, you know, $40,000 or something.
	Or maybe your client is a...
	Person whose occupation is illegal activity, in which case the court is not going to recompense them for their lost drug dealing time.
	And they'll just say, okay, well, for pain and suffering, you get $1,000.
	Did you really want to run a five-year lawsuit for a grand or five grand?
	The civil cases, the awards that are granted, or the damages that are awarded, sorry, I should say.
	They'll shock Americans because you have situations where someone loses an eye and they get $15,000, $20,000.
	I forget what the amount was, but this kid got stuck on a chairlift at a ski hill and had to jump down and shattered his legs.
	I mean, hundreds of thousands, I think.
	It might have been under $100,000, but these are things where in the States, you'd get millions.
	It would be life-changing money.
	In Canada, it's barely...
	Compensatory, certainly not punitive.
	And even when it's punitive, the standard for punitive in Canada is just a different standard.
	And do you get, are there any fee shifting?
	Now, I thought, I know UK, there's always fee shifting provisions.
	Are there fee shifting provisions if you sue the government in Canada?
	So you can get costs, which is what we call, but there's different sort of standards of costs.
	And so you get typically costs on the schedule.
	Which means basically they look up on this table of what your cost...
	Now, they're not actually anywhere near your actual costs.
	So, you know, you get costs and they're like, okay, you get $300 for this motions appearance where you got costs because you won.
	But you actually paid your lawyer like $10,000 to run that, you know, appearance.
	And so in rare circumstances, you can get costs on a solicitor-client basis.
	Which is basically your lawyer sends the bills and that's what you get.
	But in order to open that door, the conduct has to be really egregious.
	I think there's fee-shifting provisions in copyright law, sometimes in federal court on certain specific issues like with prejudice settlements type thing.
	But at least in the province of Quebec, there's no fee-shifting provision.
	You can make a claim for reimbursement of legal fees, but it has to be evidence of the most egregious, abusive, dilatory conduct on earth.
	I've made the request multiple times, never succeeded on it, and it almost pisses the judges off when you make it because everybody makes the request and it's so high a bar in the province that judges look at lawyers who make the request as opportunists who just want to make the claim for the sake of it.
	And I suspect it's the same out in Alberta.
	The times when you see people succeed on that are times when, A, it's not just that somebody has done it wrong.
	It's that they're an actual bad actor.
	And they've specifically done things to rack up your costs.
	So there was an example of somebody where they specifically went around to every divorce lawyer in this giant radius in order to conflict them out.
	And because of that, this person had...
	Enhanced costs because they had to get lawyers from out of town.
	And also they were just like this real black-hearted individual.
	They'd done all sorts of ugly things in the course of this divorce.
	And the courts went, yeah, we're going to open that door here.
	But it's so rare.
	As Viva says, it's basically you ask the court for it and it's like you ask the judge to wash your car.
	In the chat that disappeared, it was Luke Blanche, who said, In Alberta, my business partner had a father that collected guns.
	All registered, licensed, he passed away, and the government confiscated and destroyed them.
	All because my buddy got his license after he died.
	Sucked.
	Now, Ian, I was shocked by the sanctions, the penalties.
	Let's just, if you could give us a few examples, just one concrete one all throughout.
	What is the maximum sentence for...
	What is the word?
	For having a loaded firearm in your residence.
	Well, the problem with that is that there's all sorts of different provisions that they can charge you under for that.
	There's so many different firearm offenses, and I actually always have to look it up on sentencing, because sentencing is such a nightmare.
	I was just flabbergasted.
	This is not regulation.
	This is...
	Do not own a gun, because if you do, you could go to jail for two years if you forget something or whatever.
	Oh, I mean, there's offenses where, like the mandatory minimum penalties, a lot of those have been struck down.
	It used to be that the mandatory minimum penalty for possession of a restricted firearm with ammunition, if the Crown proceeded by indictment, was three years.
	And the Supreme Court of Canada actually said, we're going to strike this down because of...
	You know, they sort of adopted the reasonable hypothetical standard, which is basically, we can think of a situation where this is messed up, and the situation is basically, if you forget to renew your license, on the day of your expiry of the license, it could be that now you're in possession of a restricted firearm, and of course you have ammunition, because everybody, you know, if you've got a gun, of course you've got ammunition for it.
	You know, three years for somebody who just forgets to renew their license?
	Is ridiculous.
	And, you know, what you end up with with those kinds of penalties is you end up with something where the Crown might say, listen, if you go to trial, we're proceeding by indictment, but we'll take a plea on summary conviction.
	So we'll take that mandatory minimum off the table if you're willing to plead out.
	And the guy might have a perfectly good defense, but if you're sitting there looking at the difference between, say, three months or three years...
	Not a lot of people have the stones to stand in the face of that particular gun and say, you know, let's do it.
	And yeah, somebody was asking in your private residence, absolutely.
	I don't think, I think I'm seeing a lot of comments in the chat saying they're never coming to Canada.
	That was never my intention.
	But sensitizing and educating, I don't think Canadians know all of this.
	I mean, I know, I consider myself reasonably informed.
	I didn't know all of this until taking the course.
	I suspect a lot of other Canadians don't, and I suspect Americans watching this are flabbergasted and are saying...
	One thing that happens all the time is Americans coming up...
	A lot of people want to take their camper up to Alaska, and so they have a handgun there because either self-protection against people or against bears, they don't think it's a big deal.
	You get the border guys going, saying, do you have any guns?
	And, you know, they might say, well, no.
	Because they just don't really think about it.
	There's, oh yeah, I guess there is a gun in here.
	You know, they think after the fact, once they're searching there, because they say, well, we're going to have a look around.
	And they find a gun.
	And people get turned around.
	People get charged.
	People end up, you know, with permanent bans on entering Canada.
	And if you're somebody who every year you go down to Alaska in your camper, that's a family thing.
	And now they say, hey, you're permanently inadmissible to Canada because you tried to smuggle a gun in.
	People are just astounded by that.
	I had somebody, they'd flown in with a suppressor.
	Now, Canada thinks suppressors are a huge deal.
	You can't have one for any reason.
	You know, they're just prohibited.
	But of course, in the States, you can get tax stamps and all of that.
	They didn't think it was a big deal.
	They were going to a range and they asked their buddies, hey, do you have a suppressor?
	And their buddies are like, of course we don't.
	And they thought, well, I want to make sure I protect my hearing when I go to the range.
	Canadian Border Services was not impressed.
	And it takes a lot to convince the prosecution, maybe we don't need to hammer this guy quite so hard.
	The other thing is...
	I don't see gang members carrying around suppressors.
	Like, you know, gang members really like the short, you know, they like handguns.
	When they get a shotgun, they're typically sawing it off to make it as small as possible.
	The last thing they want to do is add eight inches to the front of it.
	It's another sort of TV-driven, media-driven...
	It's one of the unique spaces where something is regulated by people who have no experience with what they're regulating.
	The so-called experts have no expertise at all in guns that are regulating guns.
	I see Canada as where the U.S. could go if certain political individuals had their will.
	One of the utilities of all this was to see what this looks like.
	Another example was, what exactly is sort of privacy property protection in Canada?
	Because you had a video about these cops came up on a wellness test and changed the cameras, the homeowner's cameras, so that the homeowner couldn't see and there would be no filming of whatever the cops were about to.
	Is that illegal?
	So that's probably illegal for the police to do it because...
	That's mischief to property.
	Now, I say probably because one of the things I cover is that there might be situations where you just have to.
	You know, if this is a drug house, you've got a whole bunch of heavily armed people, you're going in on a tactical raid?
	Absolutely, if they're blinding the cameras, I got no beef with that.
	Like, that makes sense.
	That's just tactical precaution.
	But this is just somebody, you know, a wellness check is just, is this person okay?
	Maybe we haven't heard from them in a while, and we're worried.
	Maybe they said something kind of depressed, and we want to go check on them.
	They actually tried to kick in this person's door, apparently, and that's also probably not okay.
	But there's all sorts of things that can open the door to the police searching your house.
	One of the common ones is that people make a 911 call, and they freak out because they've called 911, and so they hang up the phone.
	And now the police come and kick down their door to make sure everyone's okay.
	And they do a sweep of the house to make sure there's no injured people.
	Well, you know, that means going into every closet, looking under every bed.
	And, you know, that's getting into your business in a big way.
	You also get situations where one of the things that happens is if you have too many guns, the police can do an inspection of your firearms in your home.
	And they're supposed to basically give you advance notice unless they think you won't give them permission.
	In which case, they can just go and apply for a warrant.
	And they're only supposed to look at anywhere where your guns might be stored.
	Well, you know, you tell them all the guns are in the gun safe.
	Are they really going to believe you, or are they going to start opening drawers?
	And now, Ian, I mean, that's another good one.
	I think I recall that being that if you...
	First of all, everyone, when you have a gun, they are registered, Ian.
	Is it Long Arms Registry?
	We used to have the long guns registry.
	They abolished that, thankfully.
	Except in Quebec.
	Except in Quebec.
	Quebec decided that they wanted to keep that because Quebec is Quebec.
	There is no long arm registry throughout the rest of Canada, but for small arms, handguns, there is.
	So basically, once you have one in your home, your register, the authorities know, and they can conduct an inspection.
	If they receive a complaint from a concerned neighbor, spouse, girlfriend, etc.?
	What I've seen is not just inspections, but I've seen people get raided over this sort of thing.
	So one thing that happens really commonly, you've got guys with military experience, and they might have some PTSD, and they're struggling through it.
	And they call a buddy and they say, I'm having a real rough day.
	Can you talk me through it?
	And the buddy talks him through it.
	They get everything calm, but the buddy's like, You know, I'm kind of worried.
	He was having a real rough day.
	And then the buddy makes a mistake.
	He thinks that the police are going to help.
	Because what that situation needs is never more police.
	So they call the police and they say, my buddy, he's with me in the military.
	He's got some PTSD.
	Can you go check on him?
	And what the police hear is, this guy has military experience.
	He's got mental illness.
	And he's got guns.
	And they roll up the tactical team.
	They surround the house.
	They drag the guy out onto the front lawn and have a gun pointed at the back of his head while he's laying in the front yard.
	His kids are screaming.
	I've seen far too many videos of this where the guy's wife is screaming, his kids are screaming, and he doesn't know what's going on because he figures everything is...
	And they take all his guns.
	They will go through his house, search, and everything goes.
	And then they'll apply to ban him from having guns.
	And what this does is it teaches that guy and everyone who hears about the story not to reach out to a friend if you've got mental health issues, not to reach out to a mental health professional.
	Bill C-21 that they're trying to push through actually wants to create an exception to allow your mental health professional to report you to the police if they...
	So even if they do it wrongfully, they're still going to be protected.
	So why would you want to tell your mental health professional anything at that point?
	Why would you want to go and get treatment for depression if that might result in a tactical team?
	I think this is the case even with mental health professionals.
	They already have an exemption of sorts if there's an immediate, credible, direct threat.
	They still have that out.
	We already have a law for that, why you need to go create a broader exception, which can only lead to worse things.
	Effectively, yes, like you're saying, more crippling in terms of someone's willingness or ability to go and get treatment.
	We already have the law.
	A more strict law is not going to solve any problem that needs solving.
	The thing that keeps coming up is when we look at workmen and other situations, what we always seem to find is that the police We're aware of these people long before.
	They had all the tools that they needed to go after Wirtman.
	They're just using them against the guy with PTSD like the military vet.
	The guy who's a war hero.
	They're going after him.
	But they get report after report that Wirtman's got this stockpile of illegal guns and that he's dangerous.
	He's planning serious stuff.
	He's got past criminal history.
	And what do they do?
	Nothing.
	And when that blows up, they say, oh, well, the problem is we don't have enough power.
	You need to give us all of these things that are on our wish list because we screwed up.
	They already had the power to solve it.
	It's something I said time and time again is that the government is the only entity that gives itself a raise and expanded powers every time it screws up or nearly get fired.
	Sorry, Robert.
	I mean, yeah, I mean, it sounds like, I mean, so you guys basically have gun control laws, the equivalent of, you have gun registry laws, the equivalent of red flag laws, kind of like what you're describing.
	In the context of privacy, do you have the same robust Fourth Amendment type rights that there has to be?
	It sounds like there doesn't have to be probable cause of a crime and particularity in the search.
	So it depends.
	You've actually got better rights if they're thinking that you have a drug house.
	Than if they think you have 10 guns.
	Because, you know, they can't get a warrant to just...
	Because an inspection of your gun storage is basically, we think you might be committing a crime, maybe.
	And we just want to go in and have a look.
	We don't have any actual basis to think it's happening.
	We would just really like to go into your house and have a look-see.
	But you can have somebody who's running a meth house, and the police can really think that the guy's having a meth house.
	And they still have to get, you know, credible evidence that they can present and get a warrant for.
	It's this weird set of double standards where it's all this enforcement against people who have done everything to signal, I am law-abiding, I, you know, you can't actually get a firearms license without either your spouse signing off or recent exes, or if they don't sign off, they'll get interviewed and they'll say, like, what do you think about this guy having a gun?
	They can kibosh it effectively.
	Ian, you sound like you have a big German shepherd.
	That is a...
	So, St. Bernard slash...
	Yeah, rescue pup.
	Close enough.
	Now, on the issue about your spouse signing off, they have to sign off every five years.
	So, if they signed off in the first time, if you get divorced in the meantime or you start having marital problems, they don't have to sign off the second time and you've got to renew your license every five years, right?
	Well, and not only that, there's a tip line where they can call up and say, hey, I don't think that my ex should have guns anymore.
	One of the things I always tell people when they're going through a rough divorce is get the guns out of the house.
	Find a buddy, store them with them.
	Because the other thing that happens sometimes is people in rough divorces do stupid things.
	And sometimes those stupid things include making false complaints to the police.
	So I've had a few files where somebody comes to me and says, I'm in a rough divorce.
	I got a family lawyer.
	You know, they're good.
	I just need to know about how to protect my gun stuff.
	And I say, get it all out of the house.
	And so what I'm thinking of, the guy took everything and he actually had to police store it.
	And so the police have all his guns.
	He's got a receipt for it.
	That's it.
	So he then gets a knock on his door.
	He opens the door and a great big guy grabs him and throws him to the ground.
	Puts a boot in his back.
	And he's sitting there going, what the hell?
	And he hears on the radio, stand down, stand down.
	We have the guns.
	And what had happened is that she'd gone to the police and she had said, he pointed a gun at me.
	And she described it very specifically because she knows his guns.
	But the police, because he'd gone and gotten them stored, the police already knew that they, you know, where the gun was.
	And it was clear that it was a false report.
	But he still got, you know, tackled to the ground first.
	The only thing that saved him is that he didn't have those guns.
	If he'd had those guns, he'd have eaten a whole world of charges.
	Now, we're running short on time.
	I think there's two things we want you to talk about.
	The first one is, what is the biggest current firearms case going on in Canada?
	And the second question I'm asking is, does it make a difference anymore?
	Because it sounds like...
	To anybody who's learning this for the first time, it's a fait accompli.
	It's only a matter of time before it's all effectively criminalized.
	But what is the biggest current lawsuit relating to firearms pending in Canada now?
	It's kind of a toss-up between either my case that's currently ongoing, which may affect the rights, and Section 74, which is the review process for challenging the government.
	They really want to make that go away.
	It's a real thorn in their side because it provides for a very effective way for people to fight when they say, we want to take your guns away.
	So that's what's at stake in mind is I want to keep that as a real procedural right.
	I want to prevent them from just being able to make things up to make it go away.
	You know, we're not revoking your license.
	We've just canceled it or nullified it or, you know, which sounds like Freeman on the land stuff where they just, you know, say, oh.
	I'm not so-and-so.
	I'm not the corporation behind that.
	But this is the government doing that.
	The other big one is the...
	So several parties are fighting the government on the order and counsel.
	So that's the ban itself.
	And basically, because the law says that before the ban can be implemented, the government has to have convinced itself that these things have no reasonable sporting or hunting use.
	And so the question is, did they actually do those steps?
	Did they actually...
	Because the AR-15 is the most popular sporting rifle both in Canada and the States.
	Well, not now, but if you used to go to 3-gun, everybody had an AR-50.
	Absolutely.
	So, and if that one is successful, it might push back or flip that order in council, which at the very least reverses, you know, these bans for right now.
	There's going to be a big one coming up in future because they're trying to push through C21, which provides for municipal handgun bans.
	And that's actually a major constitutional issue.
	Canada's got a complex division of powers between the provinces and the federal government.
	And municipalities are basically supposed to get their power from the provinces.
	They're subordinate.
	But the federal government wants to give municipalities criminal power, which the, which basically the.
	They want to give them this power even if the province says no.
	So that is a major upheaval and attack on, you know, usually when we say, you know, my constitutional rights are being violated, we're talking about things like, you know, freedom of speech and so forth.
	This gets to a deeper level, the actual architecture of what makes Canada a country.
	And so, attacking that is a really huge issue.
	And this is why Quebec, for instance, has said, we don't like that provision.
	Because Quebec, historically, does not want the federal government interfering in its business.
	It's very strongly, you know, Quebec is unique.
	We want to govern our own things.
	So they don't like this notion that the federal government is going to do an end run around the province.
	When that ends up turning into its own case, if that gets passed, that's going to be an even bigger case.
	That one, expect to see...
	You may see submissions from all the provinces on that one saying, here's our position on it.
	That one, if it goes through, will end up getting taught in constitutional law classes afterwards.
	Now, in terms of sort of legal influence, any cinematic or literary legal mentors that inspired you into the practice of law, either before or during?
	Obviously, Rumpel of the Bailey.
	I really like that one in terms of the criminal aspect of things, because it really...
	So there's this thing that we see in popular culture that I hate.
	And that is that, you know, the sort of virtuous criminal defense lawyer who only takes innocent clients.
	And I'm like, A, you don't know.
	B, it's inappropriate for you to be making that call in a lot of cases, because that's the judge's job, not yours.
	And C, you know, it's just not what the practice is about.
	But it shows that there is a nobility in defending it.
	The other one that I really like is My Cousin Vinny, which I know is covered in a lot of law schools and so forth.
	But it really illustrates how you can have this really ironclad case.
	And I would love to recut that movie just to show people, because at this point it's a somewhat dated movie.
	But if I wanted to show somebody what Criminal Defense is about, I would recut that movie to remove the entire intro, where you see that these guys haven't done it.
	I'd recut it to suggest that, yeah, maybe they did.
	And then show them, here's the problems.
	So these guys say, I want to see that where they're saying, oh, I'm innocent.
	And the viewer is kind of going, sure you are.
	Because that, to me, is really the heart of...
	Those are the files where you just say, this justifies all of the hassles in law.
	And there's tons of hassles, right?
	You get people...
	Clients who call you up at 3am.
	You get, you know, judges who yell at you.
	You get the party question where everybody at a party wants to come up to you and go, how do you defend bad people?
	You know, it's like those moments where you're just able to, you know, sometimes where you just walk out and everybody is convinced now that your client didn't do it.
	Yeah, but those are the moments that are...
	I always have an easy answer if people ask me, how do I get by representing bad people?
	I explain I've never represented the government, so I've never had that problem.
	But the second issue is, have you ever had a My Cousin Vinny kind of moment in a trial?
	I've had a couple of the sort of Matlock moments.
	There was one woman is up on the stand, and she's testifying that my client has breached a no contact.
	And she has all of this stuff, and she testifies basically that she knew that he'd just gotten out of jail and just driven over to see her.
	But she also, at a later point, testified that normally she gets a phone call to say when this guy's getting out of jail, and she didn't this time.
	And just being able to take those two...
	Sort of, they watch a movie and, you know, the trial takes place in two hours.
	This was a full day trial.
	Like, these comments are like four hours apart.
	But being able to take those two comments and put them to her and say, how is this true and this is true?
	And just the moment where, you know, that sort of deer in the headlights look as a witness realizes that they've been busted in a lie.
	And that's sort of the moment where you can just see the crown look over and go...
	I've had them several times with gun files where they've charged somebody improperly because somebody didn't understand the law.
	So one file, they're there, and they've got this magazine.
	Clip, if people prefer that language.
	And Canada has magazine capacity limits.
	So you can only have so many cartridges going in the magazine.
	And this guy's got a magazine, and it's clearly...
	You can actually modify the magazines to make them legal.
	That's because we get all of our firearm stuff from the States, and the States isn't going to adapt to Canadian law.
	You know, they make 18-round magazines because that's what fits in the gun.
	So we get a pin and put it in.
	So they've got this magazine, and I can see the pin in it.
	And they're saying, well, the pin is through...
	At the back of this magazine, there's little holes so that you can see how many cartridges are in it.
	And they put the pin through the 13 hole.
	And they say, okay, well, that means it can hold 13 cartridges, which is three too many for Canadian law.
	So I go, well, wait a second here.
	Clearly a cartridge can't fit behind that hole because that's where the pin is.
	And the officer's like, yes, I agree.
	Okay, and do you know what a follower is?
	And the officer's like, I don't.
	So, you know, I have to explain to him, you know, this part here is the follower, and clearly that has some thickness, right?
	Some sort of...
	It's not a piece of paper.
	I guess.
	And so when you push that follower down, it's going to be blocked by the pin, right?
	I guess.
	Okay.
	How many cartridges can you put in once the follower is all the way down?
	I don't know.
	Exactly.
	You don't know.
	So we went through several officers of this with me writing this point.
	And finally, they bring in their hired gun.
	Like, they've got their firearm expert.
	This is a guy who actually knows guns.
	And he looks at the magazine and the...
	Crown asks him, how many cartridges can this have in it?
	And he looks at it and says, well, I don't know because I don't have cartridges to put in it and I don't suggest you give me any because we're in a courtroom.
	But looking at this just roughly, this looks like somebody pinned it down to 10 and this is probably legal.
	And the prosecutor leans over and says, I'm not going to be proceeding on that charge.
	Oh, and Ian, if you could, what was the maximum penalty for that particular charge?
	I always have to look up maximum penalties, but I think it's five?
	Five years in jail.
	It's not a $5,000 fine.
	It's prison time.
	Yeah, no, it's serious business for having that sort of thing.
	Yeah, no, it's...
	It's amazing.
	I mean, I know my audience is 62% American, and I think a lot of them now are going to be, first of all, impressed with you because you can answer the firearm questions that I...
	I don't know even what the terms you're using are, but they're just going to be flabbergasted.
	I mean, they are.
	One person, we don't have much time left here.
	I want to bring this up.
	What are his thoughts on the couple from St. Louis Viva, the McCloskeys?
	Do you follow these U.S. cases?
	Somewhat.
	I mean, the thing is, whenever people ask me to comment on U.S. law, I'm always super cautious because U.S. law is a complicated disaster.
	And I say that very, you know, the thing is that in Canada, we've got our federal criminal law, and that's the same across the country.
	In the U.S., you've got to break it down to individual states.
	And I am not going to pretend I am any sort of expert on individual states law.
	With Rittenhouse, I did some looking into it, but I'm not going to pretend I can comment intelligently on what's going to happen.
	I think he'd be acquitted here in Canada, but I don't know about in the States.
	But looking at that here in Canada, they would absolutely charge them with a raft of offenses, pointing a firearm.
	They'd charge them with possession of the firearm outside of their house without an authorization of transport because they've got a handgun in that.
	So they'd say, you don't have approval to take that gun outside of your house, and therefore you're going to get charged.
	And the penalties on that would potentially be really high.
	Yeah, it's the sort of thing that if you did that in Canada, you would be lucky to walk away with just a firearm prohibition, where you're banned from having guns for a while.
	All right, and now, Ian, I want to save some content so we can do this again, because I love this, and we should do this periodically to go over what's newly developing in Canada as relates to gun laws, and especially the order and council lawsuits, because I know that some have been filed, and I just say, I know the limitations of what I can do justice to, pun intended.
	So let's save some content for the next time.
	Where can everyone find you on social media?
	So I have a Facebook page, but it's not really my primary thing.
	I'm on Twitter, but the main thing is on YouTube at Runkle of the Bailey.
	So if you plug Runkle of the Bailey, if you plug it into Google, that'll find me too.
	For a while, I was competing with a hat.
	There was a hat called the Runkle Bailey hat, and that was the top entry on Google for a while.
	But that was a major achievement in my early YouTube careers, was the day I beat the hat on Google search engine.
	Sorry, I just went to your channel because I'm going to share the link right now.
	And I've got to...
	I'm still figuring all this out.
	I've got to diversify.
	I'm looking at Rumble.
	I'm looking at some of these other platforms because I recognize that if you put all your eggs in the YouTube basket, you're vulnerable, especially if you want to talk about things like guns and the government screwing up and that kind of thing.
	I already had a rash of...
	Somebody sent some complaints in as they didn't like one of my videos because I tested out household sprays on cow eyes that I got from a butcher.
	And not only did they send a report into YouTube, but they also sent me a death threat over that because they didn't watch the video, but they thought I was spraying cows in a field.
	They just heard that I was going to test it on cow eyes, so that's what they assumed.
	But yeah, I mean, if YouTube decides they don't like me anymore, I've got to figure out other plans.
	I'll send you a link afterwards.
	Robert and I...
	Robert was ahead of the curve on Locals.
	It's proved to be an amazing place to create and support a community where you don't have these restrictions, and you are on...
	Your subject matter, your dedicated subject matter, or at least your most common subject matter is...
	It's a big one on YouTube.
	They don't like it.
	So it's almost as bad as other subjects, which I won't mention.
	I'll send you some links afterwards.
	So Runkle of the Bailey, I put in the link in the chat.
	I'm going to put it in the pinned comments.
	Everyone can find you.
	And that's it.
	We will save some material for later, and maybe we'll switch platforms for the next time.
	But Ian, Robert, everyone in the chat, thank you very much for tuning in.
	This was Ian.
	I'll be at a live chat after party at Locals.com And I try not to make a face when Robert does that so I can use that clip in one of my vlogs.
	Everyone in the chat, thank you very much.
	I hope you learned something.
	Share this around because this is information that is useful for Canadians and shocking for Americans.
	So it'll get a reaction one way or the other.
	And it's amazing.
	So everyone in the chat, thank you.
	Robert, Ian, stick around for our proper goodbyes afterwards.
	And let me just make sure I didn't forget anything.
	I see some...
	Viva Barnes!
	Okay, here we go.
	Thank you all for tuning in.
	This was amazing.
	Ian, thank you.
	Everyone, check him out.
	And if you want straight-up Canadian content, or at least majority, Ian is the man.
	And JJ McCullough, two great Canadian content creators.
	So enjoy the evening, everyone.

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