An anti-freedom attitude in Canadian courts and people could give way if enough people speak up, a public panel discussion concluded. Four lawyers said so in an online panel on Friday hosted by the National Citizens Inquiry on COVID-19..Queen’s University law professor Bruce Pardy said the overreach of governments and the failure of courts concern him less than the public approval Canadians offered for such actions..“It was not a case where governments were running wild doing things that the population objected to in a kind of dictatorship. That's not the case at all. The government was doing things that an awful lot of people approved of,” Pardy said..“To really fix this, you've got to change things that are very deeply embedded now, and I don't know exactly how you do that.”.Lawyer Leighton Grey agreed wholeheartedly and said opinion polls always encouraged governments to maintain their heavy hand..“What people were saying is, yeah, give us more. Give us more lockdowns and just give us more mask mandates. And the only thing that ultimately changed the picture was that freedom convoy. God bless the truckers. Without that, where would we be right now?” asked Grey..What Grey wondered was whether convoy leaders would be treated fairly by judges..“What sort of trial is a Chris Barber or Tamara Lich going to receive in this country? Art Pawlowski, he's going to be sentenced soon.”.Pardy said he was encouraged when superior court judges allowed Lich to get out on bail and that everyone should cross their fingers that she gets a fair trial..Grey said the class action lawsuit by Ottawa residents against truckers was “mean…and perhaps intended to be a very strong discouragement, or indeed punishment, of people who would have the temerity to try this again.”.Lawyer Shawn Buckley, who asked questions during NCI hearings, said only in a “crazy world” could this be happening..“If you're going to stand up for freedom and stand up for what you believe in, you have to understand you're going to be totally financially destroyed,” he said..“At all levels of government, I don't hear a peep out of anyone for any of this madness. It's like this ever-tightening control grid. I mean, we've been joking about maybe losing our rights to practice [law], but even the fact that we joke about it means that it's at the back of our minds.”.Grey said he was glad no one tried to file an injunction to stop the NCI. Pardy suggested there was silent sympathy from the legal community..“There are an awful lot of people out there, including lawyers, who, although they don't want to say anything out loud, in the privacy of their own thought, actually don't agree with the place we're getting to…people who understand and can see what's happening. On the other hand, it means that not many people who see it are willing to actually stand up and say so.”.Kitchen voiced his agreement..“I certainly hear it a lot. ‘Thank you, Mr. Kitchen, you're saying all the things that I don't feel I can say’..People like us are the tip of an iceberg. That iceberg is fairly small. But the trouble is that, how are we going to grow that iceberg to make it the majority?” he asked..“Amongst the 2000 lawyers in the country who agree with us, there's what–200 that are going to speak out and take the cases and do what we're doing here today? That's a problem. How are we supposed to change the culture, which we have to do, over the next 20, 30, 40 years?”.Kitchen said people need to speak out, but increasing censorship will limit the reach of each individual..“We need way more people like us, and it doesn't have to be lawyers…more people like us spread out, using those hard, difficult to censor platforms to train or influence culture in order to change people's thinking.”.Leighton Grey said his travels and public speaking have given him the “mind bending” notion that the ideas of freedom are catching on with some youth, something he also noticed at a Jordan Petersen lecture..“To see how many young people were there at that event–to me, that's encouraging. That shows me that there is a hunger, there is a yearning in our country for truth,” Grey said..“The idea of freedom, a culture of freedom is becoming a cult, a counterculture. When you look back through history, young people…seize upon counterculture. And if we do…things can change very, very quickly.”
