Canada's Convoy, Part 2. Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse

The Convoy were misinformed about the law. Then it gets weirder.

It is said that “Ignorance of the law is no excuse”, but for a lawyer - and the founder of the “Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms” (JCCF) to hire a private investigator to follow a judge is extraordinary.

That’s what happened in Manitoba.

The JCCF were representing Manitoba churches who challenged public health orders. The case was being heard before Justice Glenn Joyal, and it was discovered a private investigator had been following him - and that the founder and president of the JCCF - a lawyer, John Carpay, had hired the PI.

As a result, Carpay is facing criminal charges of obstruction of justice and intimidation of a justice system participant.

In addition, in August, 2023, Carpay and his fellow lawyer, Jay Cameron, were barred for life from practising law in the province of Manitoba.

“Ayli Klein, the law society's counsel, told a panel at the disciplinary hearing Monday that Carpay's and Cameron's actions brought the administration of justice into disrepute and that banning them from practising was the most serious penalty available.

"Their misconduct is truly shocking," she said. "It's crucial the panel sends an unequivocal message … what they did was unprofessional."

Both Carpay and Cameron agreed to the law society's recommendations. Carpay pleaded guilty to breach of integrity, while Cameron admitted to professional misconduct.”

John Carpay is - as mentioned above - the founder and president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which claims to be strictly non-partisan. Carpay was previously President of the Alberta branch of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation.

In 2018, Carpay spoke at a Rebel Media event where he said “whether it's a hammer and sickle for communism, or whether it's the swastika for Nazi Germany or whether it's a rainbow flag, the underlying thing is a hostility to individual freedoms.”

This led to Jason Kenney withdrawing his praise for Carpay. In 2017, speaking at a JCCF Kenney compared Carpay's work to that of civil-rights activist Rosa Parks, who challenged segregation in the U.S.

The JCCF continues to have on its website the claim that “The current violations of our Charter rights and freedoms is unprecedented in Canadian history,” a claim that the courts ruled decisively against. That document minimized the threat of Covid, and treats mortality as the only issue - and not the fact that the more people who catch Covid, the more die of it.

As was determined by Manitoba Courts, and reaffirmed by the Manitoba Court of Appeal, there was no basis in fact to the claim that people’s rights were being violated.

Manitoba Courts twice ruled that public health orders were legal and constitutional.

I’ll get into the details of the legal issues in a moment, but first I’d like to make a point.

When it comes to taking legal advice about the constitution, check and see whether your lawyer has ever been arrested for hiring a private investigator to tail a judge who is hearing the case you’re working on. Because you may want to get a second opinion.

Canada operates on the principle of “Peace, Order and Good Government” Our government - both elected and its judicial branch - need to be able to respond to defend themselves against assaults that challenge both democracy and the rule of law.

In times of crisis - in times of emergency - mistaken beliefs that drive bad actions can result in calamity and death. If a building or a bridge is unsafe, it can be fenced off.

States of Emergency must allow governments special powers, in part because in an emergency or disaster - a natural disaster, extreme weather event, fire, flood, earthquake war or pandemic - routine behaviours suddenly carry new and unexpected risks to themselves and others, including the risks of sickness, disability and death.

If a building filled with a deadly gas like carbon monoxide, whether it is a hall or a church, authorities are legally justified in preventing people from gathering there.

In the case of Covid, a virus that was highly infectious was spreading. It was deadly, easy to catch, easy to spread, and it was new.

This is a brief - and very accurate - video, from March, 2020, that predicted what would happen.

The fact that it was new virus meant scientists just didn’t have the data they needed. They had to do all the research on the fly, and were learning as it happened. That is what you are supposed to do in an emergency - adapt and learn.

As new information came in, people changed tack. For skeptics, this was seen as inconsistency, but it’s really adapting to a rapidly changing situation where the only information has to come in from the field.

But it was clear from waves of nursing home deaths in the spring of 2020 in Ontario and Quebec, that if allowed to spread unchecked, our health care system would collapse, leaving us unable to care for almost anyone but those with covid. It did.

The JCCF was not just acting as free legal counsel to defendants. It was promoting information about the pandemic, and the state of the law, that proved not to be accurate.

It’s worth saying that Canada has its own set of democratic and legal traditions that are separate from the United States and other countries.

There’s not denying, lots of communications during the pandemic was chaotic. That’s what happens when you have a sudden, unplanned-for crisis that creates a global panic in every country in the world.

Communications needed to be better, especially about being clear about what worked, what didn’t, why, and doing more to challenge misinformation. People presenting themselves as authorities from multiple professions misled people about vaccines, masks, covid, and, critically, the law.

The Leaders & Influencers

There have been a number of sources for these conspiracies, some of them very high-profile. It also has to be said that a number of the groups involved have been making outright death threats to politicians for years.

The convoy was associated with the Maverick Party - originally the Wexit Party - whose Leader was Jay Hill, a former Member of Parliament for the Reform Party, Canadian Alliance, and the Conservative Party of Canada.

Tamara Lich and Pat King were both members of the Wexit Party, were Yellow Vest organizers and organized for the “United We Roll” Convoy in 2019.

Other Canadian “thought leaders” making claims about legality of public health orders - include:

• The Canadian Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (CCCF) made, and continues to make, claims about the law and constitutional rights and freedoms where the courts have ruled otherwise. The organization, which claims to promote freedom, was in the midst of challenging Manitoba’s public health laws as unconstitutional when it was discovered that its President, John Carpay, had hired a private investigator to follow Manitoba’s Chief Justice, Glenn Joyal. Michael Spratt described it as "an odious act that strikes at the very heart of the Canadian justice system.”

• Self-help celebrity, author and YouTuber Jordan Peterson, who promoted the erroneous views of retired politician Brian Peckford, misinforming Canadians about the constitution, and during the siege of Ottawa was directly calling on Premiers to “seize the day”. Peterson is well connected to other influencers like Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. Peterson’s expertise beyond his own discipline - on history, for example, has been questioned. Peterson was called out by a Swedish Historian who is an expert in the Holocaust for his  “Barrage of Revisionist Falsehoods About Hitler, the Holocaust and Nazism.”

• One of the conspiracy theories is the “Great Reset” - which CPC Leader Pierre Poilievre has tweeted about. The theory is based on a bogus document that is an obvious fraud that claims, among other things, that if you refuse to get a vaccine, you will be thrown in jail.

• Alex Jones of InfoWars has spread anti-vaccination misinformation online as well. Jones was successfully sued by the parents of children murdered in a school shooting after he spread the false story that the incident was staged.

Convoy 1.0: January 2019 - Yellow Vests Canada - Death Threats

It’s important to recognize that the Convoy that occupied Ottawa had a longer history. It did not start in 2022. It started in 2019 at least, with a Convoy to Ottawa, organized partly on the “yellow vests” Facebook Page, with 100,000 members.

They had to start removing death threats to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau - a year before anyone had even heard of Covid.

“While the group’s own rules encourage civility and prohibit the advocacy of violence, the page is rife with comments that wish for — and sometimes encourage — the death of the prime minister.

“Trudeau needs to be shot,” read one comment, while another said that whoever did so would become “Canada’s greatest hero.”

“He needs to eat led [sic],” read another comment.

“Just shoot him,” read yet another.

Some said he should be hanged or posted images of a noose, guillotine, electric chair and gunman.”

A former CSIS analyst said, “Anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric were common themes” and that “The YV movement in Canada is dominated by the extreme right and has the potential to spin off violent subgroups. Overall, the movement is not a threat to national security, but elements within may take violent action on their extremist ideas.”

February 2019 Yellow Vests Rebrand as United We Roll - The Rebel Supports

The Yellow Vests rebranded as “United we roll” and with the support of The Rebel, staged a protest on Parliament Hill.

While the protest was notionally about pipelines and the carbon tax, Yellow Vest groups also referred to conspiracy theories that suggested that a “global migration pact” - an agreement to try to get countries to coordinate on refugees- would mean that people who criticized Islam could go to jail.

This conspiracy theory was one of several referenced by Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer as well as now-Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

• The event was notable because of the high-profile support of Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, PPC leader Maxime Bernier, and Conservative Senator David Tkachuk said to “Roll over every liberal left in the country.”

• Pat King, who has made multiple videos threatening violence, was a driver and organizer, and so was Tamara Lich. Both were arrested for their role in the Convoy Occupation of Ottawa.

• Keean Bexte, a Rebel News Reporter who has worked for CPC MPs and ran a website selling Rhodesian military paraphernalia, covered the event and fundraised from it as well.

• Faith Goldy, a Rebel News Reporter who broadcast from a white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in which protestors were murdered, then went on to appear on a “Stormfront” podcast.   

The Role of The Rebel in Spreading Misinformation Through Far-Right and Conservative Networks

For years, The Rebel has been weaponizing and inciting division for profit and political gain. It is a global source of radical right-wing views, and its ties with conservative politicians across Canada are deep and long-standing.

It was founded by Ezra Levant, a former Sun Media personality, and Hamish Marshall, who worked as consultant to Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer and the Manitoba PCs in 2016, as well as the 2019 CPC Campaign. Marshall’s wife, Kathryn Marshall worked together with Ezra Levant on Ethical Oil, while Hamish worked in Harper’s PMO.

Rebel News has had a revolving door between Sun Media, the Proud Boys, far-right white nationalists, and advisors and members of Canada’s Conservative and PC Parties.

From 2015 to 2017, Hamish Marshall was one of 3 board members for The Rebel.

The Rebel’s correspondents have included: Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016, a far-right militia group that has been part of running street violence in the U.S. McInnes grew up in Ottawa & founded Vice Magazine with a government grant. McInnes left Vice in 2008. After an un successful attempt at shock comedy, McInnes was correspondent for a series of right-wing outlets. As a Rebel Media correspondent, McInnes posted a video called “Ten things I hate about Jews.”

McInnes was at the storming of the U.S. Capitol. Proud Boys in Washington, DC were wearing shirts that read “6MWE” - Six Million Wasn’t Enough, suggesting that even more Jews should have been killed in the Holocaust.

Keean Bexte promoted the “Yellow Vests Convoy” in Ottawa. Bexte was a recruiter for the Manning Centre for Democracy & staffer for a CPC Alberta MP,  & called for ending birthright citizenship in Canada at a CPC policy convention. Bexte ran “FireForce Ventures” a website that sold Rhodesian military paraphernalia from a time when Zimbabwe was ruled by a white supremacist government.

Bexte’s FireForce partners included Canadian Military & another CPC staffer, Adam Strashok. Strashok ran Jason Kenney’s call centre during his United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership run.

Other Rebel correspondents include Katie Hopkins, banned by multiple platforms for hate, but hired by The Rebel; Tommy Robinson, a far-right convicted criminal from the UK.

The Rebel’s conservative connections are deep.  In the 1990s and 2000s, Ezra Levant worked with a who’s-who of conservatives: Preston Manning, David Frum, Stockwell Day. Levant gave up his nomination bid for a by-election in 2002 so Stephen Harper could run.

Levant was successfully sued on a number of occasions. He had to apologize for defaming George Soros in a column for the Sun newspapers; in another case, a court found that Levant “spoke in reckless disregard of the truth.”

Levant also went on an extended rant against Roma on Sun TV for which he had to apologize.

It’s also worth noting that the anti-semitic attacks on George Soros all began in an election in Hungary, where Viktor Orban raised the spectre of anti-semitic tropes against Soros. There was also a partnership between the Harper Conservative Government and Hungary to portray Roma refugees as a problem.

As an article in Business Insider noted:

“Soros is nevertheless portrayed as a Hungarian who would betray Hungary, a financier rich with dirty money, an American, and, critically, a Jew. Soros’s face has been plastered in profile at bus stops along with the tagline “Stop Soros,” as part of a government campaign. His mug is on ads for the national consultation in a variety of Hungarian papers. On Monday, parliamentarian Andras Aradszki delivered an address titled, “The Christian duty to fight against the Satan/Soros Plan.””

The 2011 CPC platform pledged to strip out hate speech provisions of Canada’s Human Rights Code, and a private member’s bill did that.

Levant worked for Sun TV, which was headed up by Korey Teneycke - Stephen Harper’s Director of Communications. Teneycke maintained close contacts with Levant, mediating a dispute between Levant and a UK correspondent.

Levant was also a guest a number of times on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News in 2021.   

All of this media and “protest” apparatus were already in place months and years before the convoy and its occupation of Ottawa.

A broad network for spreading misinformation

And what the JCCF, Jordan Peterson and the Rebel all have in common is that they they spread a message that helped motivate the convoy and supporters - the inaccurate message that public health orders violate people’s rights.

Though courts determined public health orders were legal and within the constitution, “influencers” kept saying that they weren’t.

It’s the courts and judges in our country who make these decisions. Not politicians, not protestors, and not the JCCF, and not commenters.

And to return to the point - especially about what is legal, and what isn’t.

Part of what drove the intensity of the convoy was that people were told they were right and the government measures were unlawful - when they weren’t.

They believed that their protests were justified - and even politically necessary, and that view was given backup by high profile individuals, who were *wrongly* claiming it was unconstitutional.

And as a reminder,

• The Manitoba Court and the Court of Appeal have ruled that public health orders are constitutional. Because they are. That’s the law.

• The Public health orders, lockdowns, as well as vaccine and mask mandates were put in place by provincial governments, mostly conservative.

• The convoy was being planned months ahead - at least 8 months, according to one media report. That suggests Convoy planning started around June, 2021.

• That is well before the issue of vaccine mandates at the federal level became an issue.

However, from the beginning of the pandemic, people were blaming provincial measures on the federal government.

These are measures that government have the power to enact, because governments sometimes have to evoke acts in event that are states of emergency, whether it’s a tsunami, an earthquake, a fire, flood, or a deadly pandemic. Pandemics and plagues used to regularly kill tens of thousands to tens of millions of people, before we figured out modern vaccines. (We’ve been using vaccines for centuries, by the way. They work.)

So, the decisions that were being made by governments and public health authorities were not political or partisan - and they were absolutely legal, and have been for decades.

It’s also the case that no one started out proposing mandatory vaccination. It was something people said had to happen, because if you hadn’t been vaccinated, you could more easily get and spread an infection than if you had been.

This is a reasonable thing for another country to do - and it is exactly what the US was trying to do. They didn’t want truckers from Canada bringing new cases of Covid and spreading it throughout the States.

If there was a disease that was spreading in the U.S., Canada would be within its rights to do what it could to reduce the risk of it coming to Canada.

That is what an exercise in national sovereignty looks like.

This is important. Countries must be allowed to place conditions on people and goods coming across our borders, to make sure that they don’t bring in things we don’t want into our country and our communities - whether it is drugs, weapons, contraband, or an infectious disease.

That is an exercise in national sovereignty. It wasn’t the World Health Organization that wanted to undermine the principle of national sovereignty in a global public health disaster, it was the convoy, and its political cheerleaders.

The fact that what was happening was legal, meant that the Federal Government was not operating outside the constitution. That means that the claims of “tyranny” that were fuelling the intensity and righteous outrage on the part of the convoy were not legally justified.

The public health measures weren’t political. They were motivated by necessity of limiting human contacts to reduce the spread of a disease that, unless contained, could make so many people sick that our health care system would be overrun, and that people would die for lack of people and equipment to care for them.

The JCCF and others wanted to make it political: and the way they described the law actually turned the law on its head.

They were accusing the government, which was following the law, of breaking it.

They were suggesting that people who were breaking the law were in the right.

That fuelled division, distrust, and gave people a moral purpose, because they weren’t just having their lives disrupted. As far as they were concerned, they were being wronged - targeted, for their beliefs.

There is no question people were going through real distress - financial, health, anxiety, depression, anger, frustration. It was an incredibly hard time.

But the rules - and the law - applies to everyone. That’s what everyone was asking - for everyone to just follow the rules and follow the law, so we could all get through it faster.

And people didn’t want to do it. They didn’t want to be told what to do. Who does?

They were convinced by organizations, including the JCCF, that the government was in the wrong, and they were legally in the right. But the JCCF was the one in the wrong.

And this all goes back to the title of this article - it’s an old saying, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” but it’s a real legal principle, with some really important implications.

You can’t escape responsibility by arguing you didn’t know something was against the law. If you try that as a defence, it won’t work. What matters is the whether you did the bad act, and whether you intended to do it - whether you have a guilty mind.

The law has to matter. And it has to be the same for everyone.

And as just one example of where it can be argued a crime was committed, it is a crime under the Canadian criminal code to park your car on a highway.

“No one has the right to block or disrupt traffic on public highways: Criminal Code, section 423 (1) (g)” See also the highway traffic act.”

Trucks and farmers were using highways as parking lots in multiple provinces, including major border blockades in Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario.

And here’s the thing - these protestors are people who certainly think of themselves as law-abiding, law-and-order folks.

They would only do this if they thought it was legal, and that they wouldn’t get arrested.

And that is part of what might be a couple of important psychological and emotional aspects to people’s rejection of public health orders.

One is that, of course, most people think they are good, basically law-abiding people, because they are.

Because of that, people may think of the law as something for bad people, and they don’t think of themselves as bad people. So being accused of breaking the law is a shock, and even an insult. That feeling you get when someone blames you for something you didn’t do? Well, you can get that same feeling even when you did, because you can’t see that you could possibly have done wrong. It’s what would once have been known as the sin of Pride.

And that is the other critical part, of the fact that “not knowing the law is no excuse,” is that it doesn’t matter whether or not you conform to your own or someone else’s stereotype of a “bad guy”: you can still break the law.

All of this matters, not just for the Convoy, or the pandemic, but to maintain basic social order.

People always struggle when someone perceived as somehow “good” or likeable, or sympathetic commits a crime or breaks the law. They want them to be a someone we despise. When it’s someone we idolize - we may struggle to reconcile their off-screen brutality with how their performance makes you feel. The glamour of celebrity goes back to the original meaning of the word - that “glamour” is to cast a spell from a distance - a source of uncomplicated joy.

Struggling to reconcile betrayal by an idol is part of the human condition. We are all fallible and we can all make mistakes, and we can all do deliberate harm.

When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote “There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable,” what I think he meant is that he recognized the capacity in himself that he saw in all human beings - the capacity for evil. Goethe, in recognizing that, will at least know better, than someone who denies they are ever capable of wrongdoing. Every one is fallible. Every one.

People are not perfect, so the law and the justice system and government are not perfect. All human systems - all human systems - need continual effort to keep holding them together so they work properly and to keep them from falling apart.

But understanding how laws work (and how they don’t) is essential for order to be maintained and for the possibility of justice to be done.

Canada’s laws are unique and different from the U.S., but we often hear people making U.S. arguments for rights and laws that do not apply in Canada. The First Amendment, the Second Amendment, States’ Rights.

The differences between Canada and the U.S. are, quite literally, foundational. Canada was founded and operates on different legal principles, with a different parliamentary system, and a different constitution, and different founding principles: . “Peace, order and good government,” which is a common principle around the Commonwealth.

Because it has become politicized, people will not be willing to back down, because they feel that they are conceding a loss to a political opponent. The courts - our independent legal system - have determined that they were in the wrong. The argument has been settled. We should be able to let it go and move on, but we have to do it with some kind of shared understanding.

Really, for the sake of our country, our democracy, and our legal system, it should be around the law.

This matters to democracy, and it matters to the rule of law - and the misinformation and disinformation around the law is a threat to both.