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April 7, 2022 - Viva & Barnes
01:25:04
Live with the Honourable Brian Peckford! Viva Frei LIVE!
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Time Text
No intro tweet video today, people.
We have 90 minutes max for none other than the Honorable Brian Peckford.
To say I'm excited for this.
I'm excited for all interviews, all sidebars, all live streams.
I have been particularly interested in this interview, this discussion, given what's going on in Canada, given what's going on in the world.
And, you know, the times make the hero sometimes.
And Brian Peckford, for those of you who don't know, he was Premier of Newfoundland for, I think, a decade?
I mean, has had a decade in politics a lifetime ago.
Stepped away from it, went into the private sphere with that amazing experience that comes along with having been in government for...
I'm going to ask him how many years.
I think it was 17 years.
And now finds himself, I'll call it at the heart of controversy, in that he's described, and I don't like saying it like this because it's not ageism, but it really does focus on age, but he is described as the last living signatory member of parliament who drafted the very constitution,
the very charter of rights, That some people believe is not being respected by the current government.
Other people, such as myself, believe it has been absolutely desecrated, shredded, eviscerated of any meaning, of any application in law, of any import, of any guidance over the last two years and counting.
And the Honorable Peckford has recently made the news by filing a federal lawsuit Alleging charter violations to the very document that he had a hand in drafting, crafting, signing, putting into law.
Some people use the analogy, it's like having one of the founding fathers of the United States explain the Constitution.
That's what this is.
That's the import of this.
That is the honor of actually being able to do this.
I've been covering it for a long enough time now.
I've read the Charter of Rights.
As a lawyer, I studied it.
And as a Canadian citizen, I have now lived through it effectively being shredded of any meaning whatsoever.
So we have a limited time with the Honorable Peckford.
I said I'd bring him in after two or three minutes of the intro.
Everybody, you know what to do.
Now, share this around if you haven't shared it around yet.
I mean, I set up the link with fair time so that everybody could get the notification.
I know that I received the notification from YouTube.
Which is always a good sign.
So we're going to bring the Honorable Peckford in.
And just so you know, everybody, I asked for permission to refer to him as Brian throughout this stream just for flow.
Just for flow and so as not to seem like an arrogant, young, you know, cocky dude who's not showing proper respect.
And I'm going to probably not bring up as many chats and as many comments as I typically do.
But thank you all in advance for the support, the super chats, yada yada.
Okay.
Okay.
So with that said, everybody, thank you very much for this name change.
I'm going to bring in the man of the hour.
The man of the hour and a half.
The Honorable Brian Peckford.
Brian, I mean, I can't thank you enough for doing this.
And I know the Canadians watching, the people watching are going to love it.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing very well.
Thank you very much.
And thank you for inviting me on here.
Oh, my pleasure.
I just want everyone to let me know if the audio levels are not good.
I might bring up...
I'm going to bring up...
Let me see here.
Edit mic settings.
Automatically adjust.
I'll bring up Brian a little bit.
Okay.
So you're on West Coast, correct?
Yeah, West Coast.
Yeah, I'm in British Columbia.
I'm on Vancouver Island.
And of course, I'm almost as far away from my native provinces as I can get.
But the point of it all being that after I left politics, I was working all over Canada and was doing a lot of work in British Columbia and Alberta at the time and then moved here.
Some people ask me, why did you move?
And my sort of quick, slick answer is that's one way to try to keep Canada together, to go from Newfoundland Island to Vancouver Island.
Okay, well, we're gonna actually start from the beginning with you.
The beginning, beginning.
You're born and raised.
I've been to Newfoundland.
I drove around.
We went from Port-au-Basque to St. John and back because we couldn't get a ferry at Port-au-Basque and had to drive all the way back.
It's beautiful.
But if you can situate, for those who may not know what the island looks like, where you were born, where you were raised, what your childhood was like, for those who have no idea what life on Newfoundland was like back in the day.
Okay.
Well, I was born in 1942, which means anybody who knows anything about Newfoundland history, I was born a Newfoundlander, not a Canadian, and became a Canadian when Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949.
So I was seven years old when I became a Canadian by referendum of the Newfoundland people in 1949.
I was born on only 50 miles from St. John's, the capital, which is on the east part of the island.
Newfoundland is like a triangle with lots of bays and fjords, if you want, if you're of Scandinavian background, around the coastline.
And I was raised there in Pitbourne for...
The first eight or nine years of my life.
And then my father was a social worker and we moved to the south coast of Newfoundland in a place called Marystown, which was on the Bjorn Peninsula of Newfoundland.
And then later moved to Lewisport, which was in the central part of the island.
So we moved around as I was growing up.
So I did get to see a fair amount of my own native province while I was just a young man.
And my grandfather was born on another island off the island of Newfoundland called Fogo Island.
And he skipped sealing ship in St. John's when he was 16, 17 years old and stayed in St. John's.
And that's where my dad was born, in St. John's.
My grandfather was a fisherman for 50 years, fished out of St. John's and Bay Bulls for 50 years and went to the seal fishery for 49. My father was born, therefore, in the east part of St. John's.
And he wasn't a fisherman.
I don't think my grandfather wanted him to be a fisherman.
And in any case, he went to school and finished his high school.
And he became a member of the Newfoundland Ranger Force, which was the national police force before Confederation.
But at Confederation, he could have switched and became an RCMP officer and taken on the same position.
He was a staff sergeant at the time of Confederation.
But he decided to lead the police force and went back and trained as a social worker and then became a social worker in the government of Newfoundland.
But I was born just after he left the police force in 1942.
And so I was raised, born and raised in rural Newfoundland.
As the St. Johnsmen would say, and the urbanites would say, I was a first-class Bayman.
And when I went to university, we clearly, in St. John's, the capital, we clearly knew we were Bayman, because the majority of people at that time at the university were urbanites, in other words, city people, city dwellers, many of whom had never been to any part of rural Newfoundland.
And we came with an accent, which they also had in St. John's, but theirs was, in their view, a more politically correct accent and ours was a more politically incorrect accent.
So all of the Baymen, you'll be interested in this, all of the Baymen, without exception, had to take a speech course to determine whether we needed to refine our speech or not and had to do a special speech class.
For the first year that we were at university.
Now the university would be very embarrassed to hear me talk about this because it was only about five or ten years later at university that they brought in a linguistics course where they were trying to hold on to all these treasured traditional dialects and accents that we all had in various parts of Newfoundland.
Most people my age and older, if you spoke to them...
They could tell you what part of Newfoundland you came from just by your speech, what bay you came from.
And so I remember well having to take a speech test before two professors because I was a bayman.
You might get an example of my contrariness, skepticism, or otherwise stubbornness from the fact that when I went and had my test, I entered the classroom.
And two professors were sitting behind the desk, and they said, Mr. Peckford, and I said, yes.
They said, sit down.
I said, no, I don't want to sit down.
They said, well, we want you to read something.
We want to find out whether you have to take the speech course or not.
And I said, no, I'm not sitting down, and I'm not reading anything.
And they said, but you have to in order to do this test.
And I said, no.
I said, I'll stand in my place, and I'll quote Tennyson.
So I stood in my place.
And I started to quote Ulysses, a little prophet, said an idol king by this still hearth among these barren crags.
And on I went for about half of that poem, at which time one professor looked at the other, quizzically and then somewhat fearfully, and then looked at me and said, stop it, stop, stop.
And I kept going.
And I said, stop, stop.
So I finally stopped.
And they said, Mr. Peckford, You can leave now.
And I said, excuse me?
They said, you can leave now.
And they said, oh, okay, okay.
And so, what's the verdict?
Oh, we'll be recommending you don't have to do the test.
And I walked out.
And for people who don't necessarily appreciate it, the first time I went to Newfoundland, we pulled up to a Tim Hortons and we were ordering...
The accent was so unique and so distinct.
I couldn't understand what was being said through the console.
I had to go to the window.
Newfoundland has a very, very unique accent.
Not the typical, stereotypical Canadian.
Brian, I was watching some of your older interviews.
I think you had a stronger accent back in the 80s than you might have now, but I suspect that's just conditioning over time.
Clarify something for me.
I had never even thought about this.
Before 1949, before Newfoundland joined the Federation, what was it officially like?
What was your nationality?
Newfoundlander?
Yeah, we were Newfoundlanders.
And we had our own nation, if you will.
We had our own parliament in 1832 and responsible government after 1855.
And at the Treaty of Paris after the First World War, we were sitting at the table with all the other allies.
And the Canadian delegation started to complain about where we were sitting at the table because we were senior to them.
And the organizers had to point out to the Canadians at the time that, I'm sorry, but they have the same status as Canada does.
As a matter of fact, they were around, you know, with their independence before you.
So they do take the position that they do.
And that's recorded in the history books.
So, yeah.
We were a colony of England, and over time, like most colonies, they gained more and more independence, if you will, and had their own parliaments, as did Upper and Lower Canada and, you know, Quebec and Ontario and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and so on before Confederation, before Canada was formed.
And so, yeah, so Newfoundland was very much an entity.
As a matter of fact, after 1867...
We did not join Confederation when Canada was formed, and they had an election in 1869, and the main issue in that election in Newfoundland was Confederation, and it was soundly defeated at that time.
So it wasn't until 1949, through referendum, that we became another member of the Confederation.
And where are your parents from?
Like, how many generations Canadian, Newfoundlander are you?
Oh, okay.
On the Peckford side, we go back to about 70, around the time that America was formed, around late 1770s.
1776, 1778 was the first time where, in the research that I did, that you see the Peckfords turn up in the Fogo Island area, working for the Slade Company out of Poole, England.
As were most of the early English Newfoundlanders who came to Newfoundland.
They worked for a fish company and were brought over by the fish company to fish off Newfoundland.
And that's how my ancestors on the Peckford side get over in the same way on my mother's side.
So I'm three quarters English and one quarter Scotch.
Okay, very cool.
And how many siblings do you have?
I have five.
Four brothers and a sister.
And were you, I mean, we're going to skip ahead, I guess, a little bit to the politics, but were you the only one that ever made your way into politics of the family?
Yes.
All right, now...
Yeah, I do have a niece now who's a mayor in Ontario, and I have a brother who did venture into politics, but he wasn't successful.
But, yeah.
But I never grew up in a political family.
My family was not political.
We're very non-political.
My father, having been a police officer, I guess, and then later a social worker, of course, it wasn't appropriate in this wonderful country to talk about politics if you were working for the government.
And so I guess that was one of the reasons why.
But nevertheless, I grew up in a family where my father and my mother were very interested in public affairs.
We were very knowledgeable about what was going on, not only in our own country, but around the world.
People just said my video was blurry, so I'm just trying to see if it's a little better now.
Yes, I know.
I noticed that.
I didn't know it was because...
Let me see if I do that.
I'll bring my lights up a little closer.
Boy.
Okay.
That should do it.
I think I might have to...
Yeah, that should be better.
All right.
Good.
Anyhow, nobody came here to see me, so...
We came to listen to you, Brian.
So, education-wise, and how do you get into politics?
Okay, I graduated from Lewisport High School in the late 1960s, and then went to Memorial University of Newfoundland and St. John's for four years, and graduated with a BA in education.
Majors in history and English literature.
Mainly, those were my two main loves, English literature and history, besides doing the required courses for being a high school teacher.
And so I was going to go into law, and I took a year off after my first year at university, but I so enjoyed teaching that I went back and went out for a year teaching.
I went back and finished my degree in education.
But many people have always said that you should have went into law.
And I have an abiding interest in law, not only since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which I helped craft in 1981-82, but also because besides that little example that I gave you when I went to university first and the speech test.
But I've always had a skeptical streak in me, a contrarian streak in me, which brought me very quickly into legal matters.
And I think I'm the only first minister in the history of Canada to have gone to the Supreme Court of Canada three times, which will give you some idea.
And so therefore, it's not surprising when I say to you that...
I almost had a lawyer in my office every day, every week for sure.
And one of my chief advisors, policy advisors at the time, was a lawyer, but he was more on the policy side.
He did law at Queens and got his law degree from Queens, but he was also keenly interested in public policy, but he was a lawyer.
And so very early on...
I was embroiled into the world of law and the Constitution, if you will, and therefore learned it by osmosis, I guess, and have always been very interested in that aspect of governing from very early on.
When you say you went to the Supreme Court three times, this was in the context of your political life?
Yes.
Okay.
I guess we'll gloss over, not gloss over, but we'll go over quickly your time as Premier of Newfoundland, sorry, just because we want to get to the crafting of the Constitution.
But in a nutshell, if you're in an elevator pitch, what was your experience like as Premier of Newfoundland and how long, it was over a decade or it was about a decade?
Yes, it was a decade.
It was March 1979 to March 1989.
And the night I won the leadership and became Premier, I was asked by the press, "How long do you intend to stay as Premier?" And I said, "Well, that's a big question." I just got Premier by winning this leadership 15 minutes ago or half an hour ago, and you're asking me, "How long am I going to stay?" Rather strange question.
And once again, I'm very...
What shall I say?
Provocative that way.
That's just my nature.
And so it was natural for me to answer that way.
And I said, well, to try to answer your question directly, I would say a maximum of 10 years, if in fact I'm lucky enough to win the elections to get to 10 years.
And I never ever forgot that.
So 10 years was always the maximum floating in my head.
And it was.
And I tried to make it to the very day.
I was elected on Patty's Day, St. Patrick's Day, which is still a very important day.
In Newfoundland, because all of Eastern Newfoundland came from Ireland.
So that's why the Newfoundland accent is what it is.
It's a Newfoundland-Irish kind of mix, an English-Irish mix, hybrid kind of thing.
That's the sort of the traditional Newfie accent.
And so I was there from March 1979 to March 1989, and then I retired and went into the consulting business, my wife and I. I worked in our own consulting business doing work for companies in North America and Western Europe mainly.
And then I retired sort of completely in 2001.
And this year will mark my 80th birthday.
It's fantastic.
I don't like that you look amazing because it always...
I don't know.
It has a backhanded sound to it.
You're amazing and sharp and a man that the time needs right now.
The 10 years as your Premier of Newfoundland, what is the relationship that you have with the federal government?
First of all, was political life as dirty and disgusting then as it is now?
And what was the relationship, the interplay between the provinces and being a Premier and the federal government and the Prime Minister?
Well, first of all, because, as I've just mentioned, I went to the Supreme Court three times as First Minister, and they were difficult ones.
And two of them had to do with the hydroelectric power in Labrador and the power contract that the first Premier of Newfoundland, Smallwood, had signed with the province of Quebec.
So two of them were attempts by me as Premier to...
Rewrite that power contract, which was heavily favored in Quebec's favor, and not ours.
And I failed in both cases, by the way.
And then I went to the Supreme Court as related to offshore oil and gas resources, which I lost in the Supreme Court, but which I won through an agreement with the Mulroney government after the Trudeau government had been defeated in 1984.
So my relationship with the federal government from day one was not a rosy one because I had been fighting when I was Minister of Mines and Energy before I became Premier on this whole offshore and hydro file because both of them were in the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
And I became Mines and Energy after being in the Cabinet with other portfolios.
And when it became vacant...
Unlike what is the tradition in British Commonwealth, you're invited into the cabinet by the First Minister, by the Premier, Prime Minister.
I was brazen enough to go to the Premier and sit down in his office and look him straight in the eye and said, I know, sir, there's a vacancy now in our cabinet.
The vacancy is in the Department of Mines and Energy, and I want it.
Which is usually not done.
And so within 24 hours he called me and said yes, the portfolio is yours.
So I was from day one almost when I was a Minister of Mines and Energy into a protracted debate with the federal government over hydropower in Labrador and over ownership of offshore oil and gas resources on the continental shelf off Newfoundland.
Therefore, and also, by the way, I took a very strong stand concerning our terms of union with Canada, whereby I was arguing for the federal government and Newfoundland to renegotiate the jurisdiction over fisheries and to make it more a shared jurisdiction like we have in the environment and like we have in agriculture, whereby the province has a significant more say, especially in our case.
Because it was the largest industry in Newfoundland at the time, both in numbers and in value at that time.
It isn't now, but it's still important.
And so that was why, and I always argued, that Newfoundland made a serious mistake when we joined Canada in negotiating that provision to be almost like 95-5 in the federal government's favor.
And I always argued that you couldn't manage.
The North Atlantic fisheries from the Rideau Canal, from Ottawa, that you needed to have, the province needed more say.
Of course, over international matters and all that, the federal government would still have sway, but we needed to have more input.
In other words, obligatory input into fisheries management, which we didn't have as a result of the way we negotiated giving it to the federal government in 1949.
My relationship with the federal government was always very difficult for the ten years that I was Premier.
Meanwhile, I did negotiate a number of significant agreements with them, and some of their ministers were very understanding of my position, although the Prime Minister, who was Trudeau most of the time, Father Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father, was very We just did not get along personality-wise or policy-wise.
We saw the country differently.
He saw it as a more centralized federation and I saw it as a looser federation where the BNA Act really mattered and it should be followed as it relates to the division of powers.
If you remember, at that time, it had already started to happen where the federal government was Infringing upon provincial jurisdiction.
And now we see it in health and education, but we're even seeing it in that time, right, in municipal affairs, like an infrastructure and so on.
And I always oppose that.
I always oppose that.
And when we did negotiate something, it meant that we were still in control of however that project was to operate.
And so I was a thorn in the side of Mr. Trudeau's.
In a different way, but the same way as René Levesque was, because he was Premier of Quebec for some time when I was Premier of Newfoundland.
And even when I was a Minister of Minds and Energy, I met Levesque at that time through his energy minister.
And so I'd known Levesque for some time.
I did get along with all the Premiers very well, especially Levesque and the Western Premiers and the Premier of PEI in particular.
We saw eye to eye on most things.
So the only thing we didn't, like Levesque and I, didn't see eye to eye on was his view of the future of the Confederation and Quebec's position in it, even though I strongly supported the Meech Lake Accord, by the way, and I was there for that.
And so, yeah, so I had a very frosty relationship with the federal government on major policy issues, even though I was able to negotiate.
Some very positive agreements for the province.
But with the provinces, I did get along with all the provinces and the premiers fairly well, I think.
And like I said, especially the Western premiers who saw what I was fighting for in Newfoundland, much the same as they were fighting for back in the 30s, because it was not until the 1930s that the power over the oil and gas in Alberta was transferred to the provinces.
So they were familiar with their history, and they knew what I was arguing about, that oil on the continental shelf should be treated the same as if it was on land.
And I finally got that through the Atlantic Accord with Brian Mulrooney.
So to make a long story short, it was a frosty relationship federal-provincial-wise, but with most of the premiers, I think it was fair to say I did get along, and they were very supportive of many of the initiatives that I took as related to fisheries, hydropower, and offshore, which were the ones.
That the Federal Government had a problem with.
All right.
And look, people are clamoring to know about the drafting, the crafting, and the signing of the Charter of Rights itself.
I guess the first question is, how do you specifically get involved in that?
By 79, you're no longer Premier.
So what's your role in government so you have a hand in crafting it?
Yeah.
And I was Premier 79, so I was only Premier.
Sort of a year and a half or so when the constitutional matter came up.
And so, therefore, I was Premier in 1981 when the negotiations began.
Okay?
In 1979 that I became Premier.
And so, as you may know from reading our history, the idea of trying to negotiate the Constitution and bringing it home from London called patriation.
It was very much a part of the dialogue of legal scholars and constitutional people and political people for a number of years before 1981.
Remember, it was 1960 that, for the first time in our history, we had a Bill of Rights, but it was a federal act, okay, brought in by Prime Minister Diefenbaker, which just covered federal jurisdiction.
But he was the first to acknowledge that we should put in writing But even before that, we have the constitution, the 1867 constitution, which doesn't specifically provide for that, which was provided for in the charter of rights.
We in from 1918, 67 to 1960, Canadians lived under an unwritten part of the Constitution which would protect their individual rights and freedoms, British common law, and customs and conventions that had built up from 1867 until the Charter came into effect in 1982.
And then in 1960, as I said, we should recognize that.
So that's how it was done.
There was nothing written in our Constitution as related to individual rights and freedoms, from 1867 to 1960.
And when it was recognized in 1960, it never covered the whole nation.
It wasn't a national act.
It was a federal act.
And given that we're a federation, it only applied to the federal government and federal government employees and so on.
So there was still a need after 1960, given what happened in the United States.
And of course, when your mouse is living next to the elephant, you're always referring to the elephant more than the elephant is referring to the mouse.
What happened in the United States in the 60s?
Well, no.
My point is that the United States had a written Bill of Rights from 1791.
They became a nation in 1776 and had a Bill of Rights, a written Charter of Rights, if you will, in 1791.
So Canadians over the years who were involved in politics always recognized that in the United States, when you heard the Americans talk about the Bill of Rights, A written thing in their constitution that we didn't have.
And so it was natural over time that there would be that impetus to try to have something similar to what the Americans had, us being the mouse, them being the elephant.
Having something written seemed to be more better than not having something written and so on.
And so during the 60s and 70s, there was a push put on by politicians to try to get our constitution home.
And become completely sovereign from London, and at the same time have a written Bill of Rights, or as we call it, a Chart of Rights and Freedoms.
So over the years, there were attempts made, and what happened was it never came off because the provinces and the federal government could never agree to an amending formula.
Okay, you bring the Constitution home, it'll be amended in Canada, we don't have to get it signed off in London anymore, but what will be our amending formula among ourselves?
What would be the amending formula among ourselves?
We could never agree.
Until 1981, when we decided we would sit down again and try again to see if we could patriate the Constitution, bring it home, and at the same time have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
And so that went on for 17 months.
People forget this didn't happen in those last three days of November 1981, the 3rd and 4th and 5th of November 1981, when it was consummated.
It was 17 months that went on before that.
But not only was there 17 months, a little over halfway through that, one of the players in those negotiations abruptly left the table.
And this was the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
He found us too difficult to deal with.
And so he left the table and said, pox on all your houses, I'm going to do this on my own.
I don't need you guys.
So this is not written up enough in our Canadian history, primarily because controlling the narrative overall has been the federal government, and therefore they're not eager to show and to record that the provinces defeated the federal government on something.
And that something was...
The Pierre Elliott Trudeau's attempt to unilaterally patriate the Constitution, unilaterally bring home or have create a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
So the provinces split eight to two.
Eight provinces said, you can't do this, Prime Minister.
You might have left the table, but you can't do this on your own.
We're a federation.
We're not a unitary state like France and England.
We're a federation where powers are shared.
And in that charter that you're trying to bring home, you're going to be affecting...
The powers of the provinces, and therefore you need them involved.
And that's what our unwritten constitution says from 1867 onwards.
Every time there was any attempt to impact the provinces' powers, everybody had to sit down and talk about it.
You couldn't do it unilaterally, the federal government.
So eight provinces said you couldn't do it.
Two provinces stayed with the federal government at the time, Ontario and New Brunswick.
Premier Davis and Premier Hatfield at the time were more centrists and federalists than they were provincialists, and they supported the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister went to the House of Commons, passed a law, had it approved by all of Parliament, and he was going to proceed on his own.
The other eight provinces took the federal government to court.
And we chose three provinces to do it in our highest courts, the courts of appeal.
Newfoundland, Quebec, and Manitoba.
And so we fought the federal government.
So that 17 months, you know, was a turbulent time because we were partly negotiating and we were partly litigating against the prime minister who left the table.
And then...
If I could interrupt you just for a second.
And when Trudeau Sr. goes out and says, I'm doing this on my own.
I'm going to pass my own constitution.
What was in his draft or what he was trying to push forward?
That the specific provinces disagreed with?
Like, what powers were the federal trying to take that the provinces weren't ready to give that they wanted inserted in the final version?
Well, number one, fundamentally, it was unconstitutional.
That was our main argument.
If you allow one of the 11 governments to suddenly do what they wanted...
Well, then that was going to set a precedent so that in the future we would have less and less power as provinces.
So that was unconstitutional, and we wanted to challenge the constitutionality of it.
The other thing was, as you see the Charter of the Rights of Freedoms today, it's different than what Mr. Trudeau was doing as it related to minority language rights, as it relates to a range of other things, including the notwithstanding clause that's in it, right, which a number of provinces have used sparingly.
But it's still there because, and the reason why that notwithstanding clause really got in there is because Trudeau left the table.
If Trudeau hadn't left the table and negotiated out, the likelihood of having notwithstanding clause would not be as great because we would have trusted the federal government.
But when he left the table, after agreeing to come to the table and stay there until we had something, we weren't trusting the federal government like we were earlier.
Even though now even some provinces like Quebec, like Rene Levesque, And a couple of the Western provinces, they never did trust the federal government that much.
But the majority of provinces did, including me at the time.
I was naive enough to think that he wouldn't leave the table even, for example.
But when he left, of course, I became very suspicious of him as well.
And so the provisions that were in the charter were ones that were going to affect the provinces without us having any say.
That was the key.
That was the key to it.
And like I say, besides which, you have to understand that we weren't only negotiating a patriation.
We weren't only negotiating the Charter Rights and Freedoms.
The Constitutional Act of 1982 has seven sections to it.
One of the sections is the Charter.
The beginning of it in the Canada Act 1982, which is a preface to Constitutional Act 1982, talks about the patriation.
Okay?
And that in future, we don't have to go back to England and get anything done.
Then you have part one, which is the charter.
Then we have other parts, like indigenous rights, like equalization, like natural resources, right?
Renewable resources.
All part of that, making up the seven items in the Constitution Act 1982.
That's what a lot of people don't understand.
When you're negotiating a constitution, There's a lot of things on the table because there are a lot of parties who have concerns, right, or have things that they want amended.
And so, like, for example, the Western provinces and myself at the time wanted to strengthen the non-renewable resource section of the Constitution, which we did, right?
We wanted that.
Have not provinces wanted a provision in there as related to equalization.
Then there was the issue of minority language rights.
The issue of Indigenous rights.
Because through that 17 months and before, the First Nations of this country became far more articulate and far more effective in arguing for their rights as First Nations.
And so therefore, Section 35 is in the Constitution Act of 1982.
So Canadians have to understand.
And this is why when people say to me, Brian, let's open it and change that and then close it again.
That's a naive view of how constitutions are made.
You can never open our constitution and have one thing negotiated and then close it again.
Once it's opened, the interest groups around the country, plus the ten provinces, plus the three territories, will have a litany of subject matter that they want refined, changed, corrected, subtracted, added to in any constitution.
So it becomes a real bargain.
So the bargain of 1982 was a bargain not only of getting a recreation and therefore being completely sovereign as a nation and the Charter Rights and Freedoms, right?
There were six other items in there which were reduced from 12, right?
For example, one of the other items that I gave up, which I never make mention of very much, we all gave up something.
This is all a compromise.
That fisheries issue I mentioned earlier, that was on the table right up to the end.
Where I wanted a more balanced, right, sharing of powers between the fellow.
I gave it up completely for the sake of getting the deal, for example.
I gave it up completely.
Something that I had fought for ever since I was in politics.
But in the sake of getting the deal, getting the patriation, getting the charter, getting the other things that we got, like the natural, the non-renewable natural resources, I gave up the fisheries, which, you know, I'm still...
Sad about the day that I had to do that.
For the sake of the country and compromise, I did, okay?
So I think that's the one thing that in all my talks, by the way, and this is over 100 now that I've done on this, okay?
There's over 100 that I've done either in person or on Zoom, most of them on Zoom or some form of platform, internet platform.
And I have not, for the most part, emphasized that point.
Most people think that we had brought the Constitution home, got the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, end of story.
No, it's not that simple, even for two items.
It's much larger than that and very difficult to get, and it is a bargain, and it is a compromise.
However, given our present circumstance, and given what's happened in the last two years, the area of the Constitution Act of 1982, which has taken prominence, and rightly so, is...
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, especially sections 2, 6, 7, and 15, which are the areas of freedoms and rights that most people argue, like me, have been violated by all the governments of Canada.
But it's necessary, I think, for a full understanding and to give it some context to go through.
What I've just done.
So Canadians will understand that in getting...
This is why I'm so adamant today.
This is why I've spoken up.
And I don't know why the other prime ministers have them who are still alive.
I don't know why the other...
There's no first ministers alive who were there with me.
They're all passed away.
But there are other first ministers who were around, both who are now first ministers or who were first ministers who know about the charter rights and freedoms and have remained silent.
But I've spoken up because I know how difficult this procedure was and to gain those four areas of freedoms and rights written in a constitution, not a federal act, not a provincial act, not a bylaw of a municipality, but written in the glue of our country, in the sacred documents of our country, that I had no choice as a person who still was alive.
To speak up when I saw what the governments were doing from St. John's to Victoria, from Iqaluit to Niagara, I had to speak up and say what's happening here, what you are doing to our sacred document, is something that cannot be allowed to go without somebody who was there, who's still alive, arguing that what you're doing is wrong, right?
And so that's why I got involved.
But it's very important for people to understand that this is a complex political equation As a nation that we're involved in, and what we were able to succeed at in 1982, at that last meeting, by the way, the Prime Minister lost in court, right?
The Supreme Court, all the court actions went to court.
Eight of us said he couldn't do it.
Two said he could, and he said he could.
It ended up in the Supreme Court of Canada, and on September the 28th, 1981, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, and this is really important for people to understand, because There's a great contrast here, as you can see.
In 1981, the members of the Supreme Court were friends of the law first, friends of the Prime Minister second.
Friends of the law first, friends of the Prime Minister and politicians second.
And they ruled that what the Prime Minister, their friend, and their so-called constitutional scholar was doing was unconstitutional.
And you can only do this if you sit down with the provinces and work this out with the provinces because you're affecting their powers.
And all of the precedents from 1867 right up to 1982 were done consistent with the provinces being involved.
And so we won the day.
And he came back to the table because that's the only way we could solve it for three last days.
November 3rd, 4th, and 5th of 1981, only two months later.
And it was a make-or-break session.
And we all agreed it was a make-or-break session.
It happened in those three days, or we'd go back to square one, and we wouldn't have a written Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We wouldn't have patriation, and we'd be the same as we'd always been.
Okay?
And so, and contrary to what you'll read in the history books, right to this day, the measure that broke the impasse, impasse on the third.
Impasse on the 4th.
One day to go, and myself and my delegation prepared a proposal in writing, which is still available for people to see, in writing, and went to three or four of the provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and BC, at the Saskatchewan Suite and the Chateau Laurier on the night of the 4th of November, 1981, and said, what do you think?
Do you think this can fly?
From everything that we talked about the last two days, here's something sort of in the middle.
Will this fly?
And these people said, of these three provinces, said, you know what?
We think this has a chance.
Then we brought in the rest of the provinces, either premiers or representatives who were talking on the phone to the premiers, into that suite.
Quebec wasn't there.
And this is this great myth of the night of the long knives, where we stuck the knife into the back of Quebec.
Problem with it, it's a lie.
Quebec were in Hull having a late supper.
There was nobody in their rooms.
We knocked on their doors and phoned their phone numbers.
There was nobody home.
And so the rest of us, the other seven, finished off that night based upon the Newfoundland proposal, retyped it around 1 or 2 in the morning, presented it the next morning at an already scheduled group of eight meeting at which Quebec attended.
And the Premier.
And they were given a copy of it before they had heard about it when they got back to the hotel that we were negotiating through most of the night.
And then we had a vote.
And the seven provinces stayed with no change.
And Mr. Peckford, you presented at the meeting of all the First Ministers later that day, that final meeting.
Okay?
So I presented it later that day without Quebec's approval.
Quebec was the only one who said no.
And we presented it, and then the federal government and the other two governments agreed to it with some additional amendments, which became the Patriation Agreement of 1981, the Constitution Act of 1982, the next year, in which the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is located.
Okay, that's fantastic, and that's going to be a mouthful for people to digest, but we'll go back and re-watch it, and people can appreciate it with the detail that was in there.
But you mentioned earlier, well, the first thing we're going to get back to, the courts being the servants of the law and not the politicians, whether or not that's still true.
But you said the mouse and the elephant.
The Charter of Rights, when I read it and when I studied it, I said it looks exactly like the Constitution of the United States of America.
It has the same rights.
It's structured in similar patterns.
It starts off with the supremacy of God and the rule of law.
When it was drafted, And the first, the notwithstanding clause I've talked about, everybody knows it, it's that, you know, provinces can enact legislation that specifically violates certain charter rights if it's provided for in the law, can only last five years or shorter if stipulated.
And that workaround, I mean, do you want to explain why that workaround was included in the charter?
But that is, and that's not applicable right now.
Nobody's using the notwithstanding clause in this present dispute.
So I say to people...
When I have questions and answers at my public meetings, yes, the notwithstanding clause is there, I can explain it, but it's not operative for the dispute that we're presently in because all provinces exercise the notwithstanding clause, right?
What we're doing is arguing what the Prime Minister is doing and what all the premiers are doing is abusing sections 2, 6, 7, and 15 of the Constitution, which is our rights and freedoms.
But the notwithstanding clause was put in there, and it wouldn't have passed without it.
That's the other thing people got to understand.
We wouldn't have a charter at all.
We wouldn't be 100% sovereign without that notwithstanding.
That was a make or break.
That was a red line for the provinces.
We'd already been through with the Prime Minister.
In good faith, we sat down with him to negotiate this constitution and he left the table and undermined us completely and went all the way to not only just leaving the table.
He delivered on his promise.
I'm going to do this on my own.
And he passed a federal law.
And the federal parliament went along with it.
So we weren't in the mood to negotiate a charter of rights and freedoms where we didn't have certain options.
And I'll give you a really good example.
The rights of people in Newfoundland were affected.
Through a manpower training program earlier, we all have our examples, okay, in all the provinces, especially the smaller provinces, where it could easily be tread on, okay, where when the federal government started to get involved more in the economy and in training, they had a, you know, manpower and training department or whatever it was called, manpower and immigration, I think.
And they introduced this new national training program to help out all the tradesmen in the country.
Where we were getting new trades coming up, right?
And therefore, we needed to make sure we had our people trained into these various fields.
Well, guess what?
They left out the fish plant workers of Newfoundland.
Their rights to be trained under the national program were being infringed upon because we weren't included.
This happened many times on other items as well.
Now, a lot of premiers are like me.
I mean, that's a red flag to me, right?
That's almost constitutional to me.
When you treat me unfairly, biggest word since I was five years old, six years old, is fairness, okay?
That's my biggest word.
When I played soccer and baseball with my friends and we lined up and made a makeshift goalie and all the rest of it and did all of our things, and then somebody was trying to put the goal or do something that was unfair.
The one on the field would kick up the most fuss, would be yours truly, because it was unfair.
You were being unfair, okay?
And so I went to Ottawa on that score, and I got that changed and got the manpower program to apply to fish plant workers for training, just the same as it applied to workers in BC or auto workers in Ontario or whatever, right?
And they couldn't give me an argument when they went up.
By the way, I couldn't see anybody.
They completely shut me out, as they do now.
They shut me out back then.
And I had to wait three or four days.
And guess what I had to do?
Canadians don't understand that this happened, even back then.
They didn't understand that this happened.
The minister wouldn't see me.
He was always busy, right?
Couldn't see me.
I found out from one of his staff, who was sympathetic to what I was doing, what I was saying, leaked to me that the minister would be in his office on Parliament Hill In one of the buildings to the side of the main building.
East block, west block, whatever.
On Sunday morning at 11 o 'clock.
So I left my hotel room by myself.
Walked up to that building.
Knew exactly where to go in the building to get to his office.
Boom!
He had no choice but to see me.
He couldn't get out without passing by me.
He couldn't get out of his office.
He had to come through his secretary's office into the hallway to the entrance that I came in through.
He was forced to see me.
He saw me.
And I laid out my case and said, "Why are you doing this?" And so I got in shape.
So the notwithstanding clause was put in there because we as provinces, having powers under the Constitution, recognize that there might be circumstances in the future over which we would need to do something at least.
On a basis for perhaps five years and no longer, or it could be renewed.
But in each case, by the way, you've got to go to your parliament to get approval.
Your government just can't put it on their own.
The People's House has to agree with the Premier.
The People's House has to agree with the government in order for this to be done in the beginning.
So that was the reason for the notwithstanding clause, because we knew that there could be examples into the future that if something like this wasn't put in there, that the rights of various...
The rights and privileges of various Canadians in various parties and provinces could be impacted negatively.
And your point is not just well taken, but people have to appreciate.
The issue in your lawsuit, which we're going to jump into now, is nothing revolves around the notwithstanding clause, because it's not like any province has invoked the notwithstanding clause for mask mandates, for curfews, for vaccine passports.
They just went straight ahead and did it through...
I mean, they did it through means...
Brian, you'll correct me if I'm wrong in this.
You know, there's the Section 1 of the Charter.
God-given rights, they can't be violated except, you know, as justified in a free and democratic society, as prescribed by law.
And so my question, my first question is, all of these restrictions, all of these masks, curfews, mandates, vaccine passports, they never even went through the legislative process.
Have they even been prescribed by law to be subject to the exception under Section 1?
Right.
But before even that...
The intent of Section 1, the intent, and by the law, as you know as a lawyer, and I've spent some time reading some of the judgments of the Supreme Court to make sure I'm on safe ground here, jurisprudence considers intent in making determinations of law, all right, whether it's lawful or not.
I can quote you chapter and verse even from that Supreme Court decision of September 1981.
Okay, where they talk about intent.
The intent of Section 1 was for it to apply only in very dire circumstances where the state was being threatened as a state, like war and insurrection.
It was not to be meant to be used, excuse me, my throat is so bad this morning, in a situation like a virus where people recover over 99%.
And where the fatality rate is less than 1%, that's not a dire...
The state was not in peril at any time during the last two years.
So the intent was not for Section 1 to apply at all.
So it was unconstitutional because it's not applicable in this particular case.
I go on to argue.
I was a debater one time.
I go on to argue.
All right, Mr. Chairman.
All right, audience.
We're in this big debate.
All right.
For argument's sake, for argument's sake, we'll say Section 1 applies.
And even in war and insurrection, even if the state was in peril, you have to pass four tests in order to use Section 1 to demonstrably justify reasonable limits in law.
In the context of a free and democratic society.
And they have not met, not one of the 14 governments, three territories, 10 provinces, federal government, have met those tests.
And then I take it one step further.
I'll concede that there might be an argument over reasonable limits.
I concede there might be an argument over law.
But I cannot concede because there's no way to, in logic or intellect or reason, To concede the other two tests, they have not demonstrably justified that what they did had more benefit than cost, nor have they done it through the parliaments of Canada, through a free democratic society, because if anything, those words in Canada mean parliamentary democracy.
They mean the parliaments being open.
They mean...
Select committees of the various parliaments overseeing what the government is doing, bringing in not only the public health officer, but contrary scientific evidence that was readily available to everybody.
They did not do that.
There was no cost-benefit analysis, for example.
When I was premier, back in 1979 to '80, every time we introduced something new that had some kind of an impact that we knew, both positive and negative, it was automatic.
That within that department, where that law was going to come from, that you would do a cost-benefit analysis, either internally and to make it public, or do it publicly and have somebody from outside government do that cost-benefit analysis.
And based on that, you would proceed or you wouldn't proceed.
And so this cost-benefit analysis is nothing new.
The other thing that everybody forgets outside of those four tests is that...
Ten provinces have ten emergency measures organizations.
And guess what happened during the pandemic?
Not one of them were used.
And David Redmond, Lieutenant Colonel David Redmond, who you might have heard of, out of Alberta, who retired from the military and became head of the emergency measures organization in Alberta, rewrote the law there.
And he has been, ever since this pandemic started, one of the most articulate voices in showing that all of these emergency measures organizations from St. John's of Victoria had things in place, policies in place, in how to deal with all kinds of emergencies, including a virus.
Yep, I mean, we are in agreement on all of these things.
I mean, they...
But, I mean, Brian, my question to you is, before you filed your suit, and we'll get there in 30 seconds, there were other lawsuits filed.
You had the federal challenge to the quarantine hotels.
You had provincial challenges to curfew.
You had provincial challenges to the mask mandates.
Yeah, and a lot of them are still ongoing.
Yeah, but the one that I found shocking, I still find it shocking, was the quarantine hotels that went to the federal court.
Yes, it might get overturned on the merits in several years' time when people have forgotten, when the rage has subsided.
But the federal court in that case did not come to the conclusion that there was a charter violation, but it was justified under the Oaks test, which is Section 1. The judge came to the conclusion that being forcibly detained in a hotel designated by the government as a quarantine hotel...
Did not violate charter rights.
That's shocking.
I hope that's been appealed to the Supreme Court.
That's shocking.
And I remember that, too, very well, as I do some of the other provincial court ones.
The other thing that the courts have done, well, you know as well as I do, I don't know where to start on this, where in the last 40 or 50 years, the law faculties of Canada in the various universities Have resorted to a new theory of how to interpret the Constitution.
And it's the living tree theory that you have heard of many times before and may have been a part of when you went to law school.
And so these law professors and others have suddenly...
And Beverly McLaughlin, who was the Chief Justice of Canada for quite a...
I think she was the longest serving Chief Justice in Canadian history.
She was very much a devotee of that theory of jurisprudence or how to interpret the Constitution.
In other words, the unelected judges have the right to, as the values and mores change in a society, to reflect that in interpreting the law, even if the Constitution said the opposite in words.
And so what we've had over the last 40 or 50 years is a complete attack by the lawyers and law schools themselves on how to interpret a constitution.
I am, like Ted Cruz in the United States, the senator, an originalist.
In other words, as the words are written and as they are meant in normal conversation and reason, that's how they're being to be interpreted.
If you want to change them...
There is an amending formula for changing them by the elected, not by the unelected.
It's not like we don't have a way to change the Constitution.
We do.
But the easy way out is to bring in this new theory of living tree whereby the judges have the power to change how we're going to interpret the Constitution different from what was meant when it was written.
And I object to that.
Well, and you mentioned it earlier where you said, you know, at one point back in 81, the judges were, I'm misphrasing it, servants of the law, not of their political friends.
Do you get the impression today that the script is flipped, so to speak, and it's no longer the case that they're serving the law first?
No question that the whole script has changed with that whole theory of the living tree entering the lexicon and the thinking process of most lawyers and judges in the country.
And that it has become far more political than the courts have.
That's why I've said recently that it might come down to 24 individuals, unelected individuals, as to whether the charter survives or not, as having really any meaning.
Because it's highly likely that these litigations that are underway now in the provinces, and the one that I've taken, we'll come to in a minute, will be decided like...
Quite likely to be no more than five provinces, right, that'll go to their courts of appeal.
Let's say, for argument's sake, it's a maximum of five provinces.
It might only be three, but let's say it's five.
And let's say in those five provinces, the chief judge appoints three to hear these cases, okay?
Five provinces, three judges in each case, 15 people.
Nine on the Supreme Court of Canada, because they'll all get appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Nine in 15, 24. So it's highly likely that at the end of the day, within two or three years from now, there will be 24 people maximum who are going to decide the fate of a brilliant, in my view, and one of the most important parts of our Constitution that we brought in in 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
And that is, you know, that is scary when you look at it that way, that 24 unelected people, most of whom quite likely are in the theory of the living tree.
I am, though, one of those who still believes that if there's any chance of us saving the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it's through the appeal courts.
The Courts of Appeal of the province and the Supreme Court of Canada.
Now, what do I put the chances?
I don't know.
You know, 50-50, 55-45, it is pretty close.
But I still hold out the hope.
And I know that because I'm so public on this now that I cannot rest until every lever under the existing system is used.
Because if I start proposing tomorrow that we've got to really change the Constitution, we've got to start from scratch and start all over again, people say, but you haven't exhausted the present system yet.
You haven't gone to the Courts of Appeal.
You haven't gone to the Supreme Court of Canada.
And that's one of the reasons why I've taken out my own lawsuit on this matter, is because...
I think it's important for me not to only talk the talk.
I must walk the walk.
And I don't want to get up in a public meeting and people say, Peckford, boy, oh boy, you're quite articulate.
You know, you're one of those Newfoundlanders and get up and talk just like you can go on forever.
And sure, you make a lot of sense.
You were there.
You know all about it.
But you're only talking the talk.
And I didn't want to be in a position to say, well, you're right on that.
I wanted to be in a position to say, but I'm also now walking.
So that was one of the reasons why I took out the lawsuit.
The other reason was that I thought the federal mandate for travel was very, very significant in the sense that every Canadian, either directly or indirectly, is affected by that travel mandate.
This country was built on travel.
This country was built on rivers.
This country was built on the railway.
This country was built on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
This country was built on travel.
And here, this is what the federal government does as a mandate.
Prevent somebody who's not vaccinated from travel.
So I thought that right away, this lawsuit, people could understand it right away because everybody's affected.
They have family in another province.
They have a business in another province.
They like to travel, as all Canadians have done.
Our whole history is one based on travel.
And the other reason that I also knew is that I would get directly to a federal court.
This goes directly to the federal court and not the two levels in the province that would have to go if it was a provincial mandate.
And so hopefully they'll be able to get a decision on it quicker than if I had gone through a provincial mandate where we would have had to do two levels of the province before it got to the federal government.
And my experience the last time I was in court, federal moves quicker, federal is a little bit more efficient, a little less backlogged than provincial, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore.
I think it is.
So you file the federal suit, you're challenging the vaccine passport, the travel restrictions, section 2B, section 2 of the charter.
I mean, look, how long does it take you to make this decision?
You're living, you're out west while this is going on, so not, I mean, everyone had their bubbles, but what has to go through your mind?
What life experience do you have to go through during the two years to finally say, I'm going to do this?
Well, early on, early on, I was, you know, like most people, I thought, well, okay, we have a virus, we have a problem, right?
We've had others before, swine, this and that and something else, the regular flu and all the rest of it.
And that, you know, that the health departments and so on will all get together and work out a way of mitigating against this.
And then suddenly, you know, I was faced with the...
Realization.
I have a blog.
I write every day.
I'm reading crazy every day, right?
And so, you know, I'm familiar with what's going on around the world.
I was raised that way, and I'm like it today, 80 years later.
So then all of a sudden I realized, in reading, of course, and writing on my blog, that this was an experimental thing.
Then I realized...
That all of these people who were creating these things, these so-called vaccines that the governments were getting really excited about and giving money to, billions of dollars to, they had immunity themselves.
You couldn't mitigate against them if something went wrong with their product.
And now today, as you know, like the television I have right here, the iPad that I'm on right now, all the way down to my books or whatever, there's a warranty, right?
I mean, if something goes wrong, if I buy a car, if something goes wrong...
The people who made the car stand behind certain parts of it over a certain period of time.
And so you have some recourse if something goes wrong.
In this case, you didn't.
Well, these two things really started to get me down.
And so I start writing about that and saying, this is strange, this is weird.
And then some of the doctors got in trouble.
Dr. Hoff out here in Lytton, B.C. was suddenly, what shall I say, intimidated by...
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC, right?
And was going to be threatened with his license and so on and lost his privileges at the hospital.
I called up him and found out that it was true.
So, you know, these things that happened as I studied it.
And then, of course, around the same time, the government started to bring in these...
These measures, which were over the top, right?
I couldn't believe it.
And then I started reading David Redman's stuff, and I remembered about the Emergency Measures Organization in my own province when I was Premier.
So it was a confluence of events that happened, all of which didn't make any sense to me.
And so then the one that broke the, you know, the strata broke the camel's back was the whole idea.
Of starting restricting our rights and freedoms as Canadians, you know, and churches and Christians not being able to worship and other religions not being able to worship freely.
I mean, I thought this was a complete and utter infringement on basic rights and you've got to trade off.
There's no need to trade that off.
And then, of course, we heard about the early treatments that were available that were completely fool-palled by everybody.
And I said, oh, enough of this.
You know, I've got to speak up on this.
And, you know, so that's how it happened with me.
I mean, it's phenomenal.
I've covered your lawsuit.
I don't think there's been many developments.
What is the status now of your lawsuit?
Well, right now, as you would know and others, and I'm glad you asked it because I like to explain it.
It was filed the latter couple of days in January.
January 26th, 28th or something was actually filed.
And then, of course, the court has to accept it if it's filed properly.
And then they have to determine.
Who was against federal government?
Okay, they had to appoint their lawyers, right?
The judge has to be appointed and so on.
So it's in case management, as you would know now, where both sides are presenting their arguments and presenting their documentation.
Both sides have the opportunity to challenge the other side's documentation.
That will all be over by July or August, and then there's supposed to be the hearing of three or four days in September.
The hearing on the merits or a hearing on an interim?
No, a hearing on the merits.
Okay.
So I think it's in case management, but that just means you have a judge assigned to it and you've established a schedule, a protocol, and you're...
Okay.
And has the Crown filed a defense or a written contestation yet?
Not completely.
Okay.
That I will...
I didn't think they had, because when they do, I think I'm going to get a copy of it and definitely review it.
Because I'm curious to know...
What their response is going to be, how they justify this, what evidence and science they relied on in order to justify this policy.
And between you, me, and the 5,000 people watching now, Brian, are you not surprised and shocked that the federal government, it won't make your lawsuit moot, but are you not shocked that they haven't rescinded the travel restrictions?
Totally.
We're the only country in the world now.
The only country on the planet.
It still has these these kinds of travel mandates like we have.
Yeah, I'm totally shocked.
I'm beyond being shocked.
I don't know what to say.
The other thing is we have to say before we close this off, which is really important to me, is when we talk about how the lawyers and law schools have changed, you know, how they interpret the Constitution and they don't interpret the words as they're written, which, you know, I find crazy anyway.
The other thing is they've ignored.
Some of the judges who've already decided at the provincial Supreme Court level in their decisions ignored completely parts of the Constitution that are relevant.
For example, that you've already mentioned, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins with, whereas this country is founded on the principles of the supremacy of God and the rule of law.
And there are decisions already made by judges.
Who completely ignored that as if it wasn't in the Charter of Rights of Freedom to start with.
I didn't know that a judge had the right to ignore parts of the Act or the Constitution that he's supposed to rule on that are relevant to the case.
I didn't know that that could happen.
And hopefully a Court of Appeal or Supreme Court of Canada is going to chastise that judge and say you were wrong.
You have to consider.
All of the cases which challenged the charter in the context of how the charter begins.
And I'd like to point out to people, as a former English teacher, by the way, I remember this very well.
That's why I'd love to get before a judge.
I remember this very well.
I've got a good memory.
And I remember when we were doing that whereas.
It was clear to us.
That colon at the end was not just a grammatical term that somebody came up with, some scribe came up with in writing down what we were saying.
That was deliberate.
Whereas this country is founded on the principles of the supremacy of God and the rule of law, colon, everything comes after that.
It's not a finality with a period.
It's a colon.
In other words, you must consider decisions of this charter in the context of what?
The supremacy of God and the rule of law.
Otherwise, it means nothing.
But it's there, and therefore it must mean something.
And in my view, that's what it means.
And I don't know how anybody could argue with that argument.
Well, the one thing that has shocked me about all of these cases is not that they've said, yes, these measures violate your constitutional rights, but they're justified.
They've come to the conclusion at preliminary stages...
That they don't violate your rights.
I think in the quarantine hotel, they acknowledged that being denied representation, when they were denying counsel to the people they were whisking off to hotels, that violated their charter rights and was not justifiable.
But the compulsion to be held in a hotel was not even a charter violation because I think the judge said, effectively, you traveled knowing that this was the law, presupposing that it was constitutional in the first place.
People want to know how to help and what they can do.
To expedite the case, people, I can tell you, you can't do anything.
But if they want to help, Brian, what can Canadians do?
Okay.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which any Canadian can go in on their website.
It's called jccf.ca.
www.jccf.ca.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms are the people who are handling my case.
They've also hired an outside solicitor that you've interviewed, Keith Wilson.
He is the lead lawyer on my case, as he is for the trucker's convoy.
Okay.
And he is the lead lawyer on my lawsuit.
By the way, there are five other people involved in my lawsuit, all of whom cite examples in their testimony as to how they have been negatively impacted by the travel ban.
So it's just not me.
I have a backup of five other people that explain.
And so when people email me every day saying, I want to help you, Brian, and here's my example.
Can I use my example in your court?
It's already filed.
Sorry, but I want you to know that there are five other people who are part of my lawsuit who mimic or are the same as what you are arguing to help me out now.
So if they go to the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, they'll see a place to donate.
And you can go in there and you'll see all of the lawsuits that the Justice Center are fighting right now.
Under the Constitution.
And mine will be there.
So they can contribute directly to my lawsuit.
Because at the end of the day, if I lose, and if we lose at the federal court, we're definitely going to the Supreme Court of Canada.
So if we lose at the end of the day, the Justice Center's donations, because that's all they live by too, just donations.
They get money from no government or anything like that.
They're completely independent.
That's why I'm using them, because they're so independent.
They rely upon donations from Canadians.
If at the end of the day, the amount that's collected to serve as my lawsuit is less than what I have to pay, then I have to pay the difference, right?
I have to pay the difference.
But hopefully there'll be enough Canadians around who contribute to my lawsuit that if I have to pay any, it won't be a lot.
It won't be something that I can't handle.
So that's where that is.
So they can contribute to my lawsuit by going to the Justice Centre and contributing directly to it.
I'm going to post all of those links in the pinned comment when YouTube publishes the video.
This is probably definitely the last question, Brian.
First of all, have you lost friends over this?
Have you been surprised by the response that you've gotten?
Canadians love you.
There's thousands of them here.
But have you been surprised by people who you've known for a long time who all of a sudden, because you're taking this position now, say they want to back away, they want to write you off as something of an extremist, they want to...
They want to demonize you?
Have you run into that?
Does it surprise you?
Does it depress you?
Totally.
The degree to which it's happened, I don't mind saying publicly, because I started saying it a week or so ago, I haven't heard from anybody who's worked for me in government, either in my caucus or my cabinet, over 10 years.
Or anybody who's worked directly for me in the offices.
So that would just give you an idea.
It's been 100% silence.
And of course, same way with my wife's family and my family.
So there's, you know, 80% of my family are gone.
And the same way in my wife's situation.
So yeah, it's pretty tough.
It's pretty tough.
I do have a brother who's...
Very supportive.
One brother, and I do have a daughter who's very supportive.
But other than that, we had to make new friends.
And that's what we've done.
We've made new friends.
As a matter of fact, there's two friends we've got to meet that have been gone now for a while who left the country because of this, who've returned because of a severe sickness in the family where the father is about to die.
They've had to come back.
Yeah, so we've met all brand new circle of friends.
And luckily in the community that I'm in, very quietly, quite a few people oppose what's happening, both small businesses and individuals.
And that's been very heartening and very rewarding.
But I have to say to you, it's extremely sad that so many people who I, you know, the best part of my life was spent.
Trying to fight for my problems.
And I fought, as you know, if you look up my history, I fought hard and long.
I fought even when my caucus came to me and said, we're not with you anymore.
And I had to persuade them either to resign or stay and change their minds.
And that's what it came down to.
But you know what?
I said to my wife the other day, ever since...
I was in university.
I was sort of a bit of a loner in that sense.
I was always the outlier and always paddled my own canoe, if you will, to use a good historical analogy for our country.
And I guess that's what I'm doing now.
So nothing has really changed, except that every other time when I paddled my canoe, there would be a lot of people whom I knew who stayed with me.
In this case, a lot of those people have left me.
And you know what it is?
It's the climate.
It's the culture that has been created by the current administration.
I'm sure there's members of government who would support you, Brian, but they're afraid of getting sanctioned, punished, reprimanded, fired for speaking their minds.
And it's the culture of fear.
At some point, it'll become popular again to support freedom and to support individuality and individual thought.
Right now, too many people are living in fear, I think.
One has to understand.
One has to understand.
That democracy is a very fragile political system.
Ask Socrates in 490 BC.
Ask Cicero when Augustus and Caesar were around, when he fought for people in the Senate of Rome back in 45 BC or AD.
When you see it through when Montesquieu started to write his stuff.
On political governance or when John Stuart Mill did or when the countries came back and became nation states.
Today, how many countries are democratic?
We're a minority governance system in the world.
And I always try to point out to people that our democracy and the American democracy and the Western European democracy are only as strong as there is strong civic engagement.
When civic engagement goes down...
So goes down democracy.
When civic engagement is strong and people are involved in their communities, in their municipal councils, in their provincial governments, in their federal governments, then it's strong.
And one of the things that we have done poorly in the last five decades is that we have become lazy and we've allowed our MLAs and MPs to rule the roost with no accountability for four years.
When I say to people now, what can I do, Brian?
What can I do?
You can call up, get a group together, call up your MLA and say, I want a meeting quarterly for the next three years while you're our MLA.
And we want you to sit down with us and report to us as citizens, what did you do for me lately?
How did you defend my rights and freedoms?
How did you defend the various programs that were good?
How did you oppose the various programs that were bad?
And if you had a quarterly meeting with your MLA, the same with your MP.
In all the communities in their riding, this democracy will be a lot stronger now, and the violation of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms may not have happened at all.
Can't think of a better way to end this.
Brian, stick around.
We'll say our proper goodbyes.
If you would come back on any time in the future, please do.
Stick around.
We'll say our proper goodbyes afterwards.
Everyone in the chat out there...
Clip and snip away and share away.
I have a few mental notes of what sections I'm going to clip away and share, but please do that.
Participate.
Don't lose faith.
Spread the word and get people engaged because it's only our country and it's only our fundamental rights that are at stake.
Brian, thank you very, very much.
Everyone in the chat, thank you.
See you soon.
Brian, stick around.
We'll see you on proper good days.
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