Dave [00:00:00]:

This episode of the podcast is going to take a much more serious tone. I chatted with Katherine Christensen. She’s the lawyer at Valor Law, a law firm that deals with military and veteran based legal claims. There is a recent lawsuit that her law firm just dropped on the Canadian armed forces to the tune of $500 million for 329 members of the Calf that were seriously harmed by these COVID mandates and wrongfully dismissed. You’re going to hear some of the stories of these individuals that were wrongfully dismissed. That made my stomach turn. I cannot stress enough how important this is for not only the future of our military, but for the future of our country. In this episode, I brought up an important piece of literature, which is The Gulag Archipelago. It’s one of the most depressing yet insightful books of the 20th century. Its author, Alexander Solzer Nissan, was a survivor of the Gulags during the Soviet era. One of the quotes that I think really underpins our conversation is this if it were possible for any nation to fathom another people’s bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief it would not be the same here. Here, such things are impossible. Alas, all the evil of the 20th century is possible everywhere on earth. I hope upon listening to this episode, you’re able to ponder and reflect on what this means. We have seen egregious breaches of our own constitution. Laws that were in place to prevent this type of situation were willfully and almost gleefully trampled upon during the COVID era. The time has come now for those that stood by, faithfully to their beliefs and their principles, to be rewarded for holding the line. So this episode is dedicated to those 329 individuals that stuck to their beliefs and said no to tyranny. I hope you enjoy the episode. I’ll see you on the other side. Welcome, friends. I’m sitting here with Catherine Christensen. She’s a barrister and solicitor with the Valor Legal Action Center. This is a nonprofit organization that helps military members and veterans with legal issues. And I absolutely am so pumped to have a conversation with you, Catherine, because of all the chaos that is coming out, with the COVID mandates being deemed a human rights offense, with the lawsuit which you’re bringing against a whole bunch of individuals in the Canadian armed forces, in the government supporting the troops. And so I had to get your perspective directly and make sure that those that are listening to the podcast understand what this means, not only for them and the Canadian forces, but for the country as a whole. So, Catherine’s, real honored to be able to chat with you today. And I guess let’s start with where you’re coming from and then let’s just get into the real meat of the issue. Which is the lawsuit that you’re bringing against the Canadian Armed Forces.

Catherine Christensen [00:04:00]:

So I have always represented military members and veterans. As I finished law school, got called to the bar, I hung my own shingle, because that’s who I wanted to represent. I was told I was crazy, that there was no business, that there was going to be nothing for me to do. But I disagreed because I realized that it’s a very different life to be a member of the military. And also, there’s two sets of laws that apply. There’s the regular Canadian citizen laws, and then there’s also the military laws that apply. So that made it very unique. And within about ten days of my hanging my shingle, I was already busy. I haven’t advertised in years because they find me. And so for this particular issue, october of 2021 rolls around, and a group approaches me and says, they brought in a mandate. What can we do? And I looked at it, and I thought, I don’t know how we can possibly bring anything COVID related into our courts, because our courts were shutting it down hard. But then I started to hear the stories, and the stories were bad, and they just got worse. And I thought, Well, I have to be able to do something. I’ve got a certain skill set I can bring. And so we strategically sat down and figured it out. And basically, it comes down to, this was a perfect example of how the chain of command is abusing their power. Implementing and how they executed the directives was straight up abuse of power. And so away we went. And I ended up just recently filing a mass tort lawsuit with 329 names on it of members of veterans standing up and saying, this is not how you treat your own people.

Dave [00:06:01]:

Yeah, that’s how I ended up volunteered that. You’re going to be doing this job from now on, Catherine. That’s basically how Canada works, right? Look, there’s nobody else that’s going to do this, all right? I guess it’s me. So it takes a lot of courage.

Catherine Christensen [00:06:22]:

Because, like you said, be a constitutional lawyer.

Dave [00:06:25]:

Yeah.

Catherine Christensen [00:06:27]:

I never imagined being doing it.

Dave [00:06:31]:

Yeah, now it takes a lot of courage to be doing what you’re doing, just because, like you said, courts were just not going to listen. What you just said there really troubles me, because this is what I started to see across the planet. Anything that had any hint of, hey, wait, maybe we’re doing things wrong. Maybe we need to take a step back. Don’t we have a constitution? Wait, isn’t the point of the Constitution and the law is to be that solid foundation in times of cris so that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater? So what you’re saying basically justifies what I was thinking, in the sense that there was a real issue there. There was a crisis, and we panicked, and we said laws don’t apply. So is it just that now the overwhelming tide is starting to change and so therefore it’s a better time to bring this to trial and to lay the lawsuits now so that you can actually see justice served? Is that basically the strategy now?

Catherine Christensen [00:07:45]:

It’s part of the strategy. I did want to see how it was going to play out in the courts. The military had a lot of success in the United States. They led the way in the US for a lot of the cases that are being won down there. So there was that. The other piece of it was that because I was bringing it as an abuse of power lawsuit, that would open the door because it’s very rare in Canada to bring a mass tort to start with and let alone one that’s called the tort of public malfeasance. And that’s saying that you are a public actor and you’ve abused either your staff or the public that you serve with the power that you’ve been given. And so when you bring something unique to the court that captures their attention, it’s harder for them to just dismiss it outright because the lawyer in the judge’s brain gets intrigued and like, well, I’ll at least hear it. So that was part of my strategy as well. That’s my experience as a litigator. If I can bring something novel, the court’s more likely to listen to it. And then we started getting grievances back and the external grievance committee started to say exactly what I said in October 21, that everything I said he couldn’t do, he was doing. And they were backing me up. It was like perfect where we go.

Dave [00:09:18]:

Okay, now when it comes to the tort, because this is what’s been brought up with the methylquin issue here in Canada, it’s a mass tort. And I’m not quite sure difference between so for those that are listening and for myself, I don’t know the difference between a class action lawsuit and a mass tort. So if we could start there and then we’ll get into the actual lawsuit itself.

Catherine Christensen [00:09:49]:

Right? So mass tort is a tort or claim for some harm that’s been done to the specific people named in the claim. So anything we win or settle for would only be payable to the 329 people listed in the statement of claim. A class action lawsuit is brought on the behalf of example plaintiffs. So you need a plaintiff for each type of class of person that would then be able to have a claim on whatever money is settled for or won. And then it’s distributed among anyone who applies, who qualifies for that class. In this case, the plaintiffs chose to do it as a mass tort because they have put in the work, they put in the sacrifice and they felt that anything that we win or get settled in a settlement should go to them specifically. So that was their choice.

Dave [00:10:54]:

Okay, that makes sense. However, it still allows for other lawsuits to pop up down the road. It doesn’t mean that just this one case, all right, everything is done. We’ve paid out to these 329. It still leaves the door open for any other lawsuit from any other member that feels that the power was abused towards them or that their rights were infringed upon, that they can go ahead and still create their own lawsuit, if I understand correctly, right?

Catherine Christensen [00:11:24]:

Yes, they can. Yes, absolutely. And the fact if there’s been a successful one ahead sets that precedent, at least the door open to bring a massive class action for everyone else in.

Dave [00:11:35]:

The caf behind it.

Catherine Christensen [00:11:38]:

Okay, I think I read some emails and calls.

Dave [00:11:45]:

That’s great. So I want to touch on the article that was written about your lawsuit by, is it Linda Slobodian? I hope I pronounced her name correctly. That outlines a few of the things in the lawsuit, and one thing that comes to mind right now is that she mentioned tip of the spear, and this really seems to be what this is, right? This is the tip of the spear coming at the Canadian armed forces with these 329 plaintiffs. And like you said, this definitely opens the door for other lawsuits to come. So could you speak a little bit to what the plaintiffs main issues were and some of the things that are outlined in the case right now?

Catherine Christensen [00:12:43]:

So one of the big issues was the accommodations. There were very few accommodations allowed completely against Canadian law. It’s established Canadian law from our supreme court that if you have a religious belief that you will be accommodated unless it causes undue hardship. Cast got a really hard argument there on undue hardship because they’ve done religious accommodations for years for different religions. In this case, we’ve caught them saying there will be no accommodations. We’ve caught them saying that there’s only 25 recognized religions in the Canadian armed forces. That’s not law. In Canada, we’ve got priests and chaplains being told their beliefs aren’t sincere enough to get a religious accommodation. I don’t know how much more sincere you have to be. Yeah.

Dave [00:13:42]:

Wait.

Catherine Christensen [00:13:44]:

I don’t know.

Dave [00:13:44]:

A priest was told he’s not catholic enough yeah.

Catherine Christensen [00:13:50]:

That his faith is not sincere enough to have a religious accommodation.

Dave [00:13:59]:

Oh, boy.

Catherine Christensen [00:14:10]:

That’s not got to be kidding me. I’ve got spouses, one was accommodated, one wasn’t. I’ve got brothers who one was accommodated, one wasn’t. I’ve got people who were refused an accommodation for the wrong religion. That wasn’t their religion, that the template was the wrong template, which is part of the problem they ran into with the grievance committee review was templating here in Edmonton. Here in Edmonton, rutland, who’s named as a defendant, set up a board to evaluate people’s accommodation requests. And a lot of people on that board were not cleared to see private medical information or religious information. And they decided if you could be accommodated or not. And he had a conversation with the chaplain and said, nobody’s getting a religious accommodation. And I have it in writing from him telling someone that on a balance of probabilities, your religion will not be harmed by this vaccination. That’s gibberish. That makes no sense.

Dave [00:15:29]:

Okay? That priest thing has got me. It’s like, how many other religions would you have to have a purity who’s the arbiter of the purity test? If there’s a rabbi, it’s like, well, if you say you’re Jewish, are you circumcised? Okay, show me. How ridiculous does it have to get for us to say, wait, hold on a SEC timeout. Okay, we’ve gone into the crazy, but I mean okay, so I’m going to veer off a little bit here. I’ve read The Gulag Archipelago by Schulzer Nissan. I found it one of the hardest reads I’ve ever done in my life. But it was required for me to do it because it shed a light into the Soviet era, which seemed like pure madness because everybody knew everybody was lying, but everybody had to believe the lies or they feared death being sent to the gulag. Whatever. And when I hear stories like this where you have to know that what you’re doing is insane, but you do it anyways because you’re like, well, it’s an order, so I’m just following orders. And I think we’ve heard that before in history. So when I hear it happening here, this gives me a really uneasy feeling in my stomach. And we’re joking about it and laughing like, oh, it’s cal. But that means that it was so easy to get half leadership from the top all the way down, to get on board with literally breaking Canadian law, and not just the human rights law, which is enshrined in our constitution, just like that, and just making up stuff as they went along to suit their own. I don’t know the thing. I don’t know what the agenda was because I think at a certain point, you don’t care. You’re just like these people out, not human anymore. Get them out. They’re going to hurt me, so get them out. And that’s all I can think of. And that is not only sad, but very troubling from my point of view. Even though I’m not in force for.

Catherine Christensen [00:17:32]:

Them to be told they’re morally weak. Yes, you’re morally weak because your religious faith wouldn’t allow you to take this medical treatment. I don’t know. So these people that these 329 standing behind me, some of the most morally strong people I know, they stood by their morals.

Dave [00:18:02]:

Now, some of the things that I’ve read in the reporting in this article in the Western Standard made me.

Catherine Christensen [00:18:13]:

It.

Dave [00:18:13]:

Was just fucking disgusting. We talked about this before we went online or before we went live. The case that’s written here about the troop that was meant to stand outside in a cold, it actually angers me to read that. And I’m sure that’s not it’s just a paragraph. I’m sure there’s more to that story, and I can’t think of another way to describe it other than torture and the fact that that happened here in our military and the fact that it’s written about and it’s documented and it happened to one of our troops by our own troops. Where do we go from here? How is something like this resolved in the judicial process? Who gets held accountable? The entire framework? The individual? Because if that captain, if that commanding officer allowed that to happen in any other time in history, if I did it as an Lt, I would not have a job. I would have been kicked out of the military. I guarantee it. I would have been court martialed. So what about now?

Catherine Christensen [00:19:23]:

Well, it was a major, and the RSM backed her up. And he not only stood outside every single day, he had to be there early so that everyone working would pass by him in the morning. He’d stay outside. He would be charged with cleaning the ledges. Now, this is when deep winter this is during the trucker convoy, so we all know how cold it was. He was assigned to clean the ledges while everyone taunted him from inside. And as they go by, they tell him he was stupid and why didn’t he do this? This kid lasted three months. He lost 20 pounds of muscle mass. I don’t know about you, but that’s the kid I want in the trenches with me, because he stood there to his belief until he couldn’t do it anymore, and he left. And add on top of that, he was going through personal problems because he had been deployed and his military spouse had been unfaithful to him when he was gone. So he’s already mentally suffering, and they know about it, and then they physically torture this kid outside. And he’s recovering. But it’s been a long, hard road. Thankfully, I have a lot of really senior people who are near him. And we went looking for him as soon as somebody sent me a picture, we went looking for him to find him, make sure he had support, bring him in. And of all the things that have happened to all these hundreds of people, he’s the one that they put forward as the worst example in their minds. So even some of the people that have been through some really bad stuff over this whole mandate thing see his story as the worst. And this major, if she would do this to her own troop, what would she do to a prisoner of war? Because she’d be in The Hague for a war crime. If it was wartime and it was a prisoner of war, he’s responsible.

Dave [00:21:27]:

And that is Leadership 101. To issue an illegal order, as an officer, you have an obligation to say no, because if you follow an illegal order, you are now complicit in that illegal order, that is your get out of jail free card. As an officer, you know that that is part of your duty, because we know that there is the possibility that somebody does have nefarious or unjust or bad intentions and could be your commanding officer. And you know, sir, I’m not fulfilling that order because it’s illegal. You can absolutely do that. But it seemed like nobody had the balls to do it because we are a nation of do gooders.

Catherine Christensen [00:22:12]:

There were a few.

Dave [00:22:14]:

Okay, good. There we go.

Catherine Christensen [00:22:17]:

Okay, here’s some juicy stuff. So I point out to you that General Vance said no to a mandate. What happened to General Vance?

Dave [00:22:32]:

Admiral McDonald refresh my memory.

Catherine Christensen [00:22:37]:

Admiral McDonald comes in, I have the briefing note that was given to Admiral McDonald. He was told you couldn’t do this legally, medically, morally, ethically, blah, blah, blah. So he said, no, I won’t do it. Sexual misconduct. General Forton in charge of the rollout for your civilians. He said no mandate. Sexual misconduct.

Dave [00:23:00]:

Oh, shit.

Catherine Christensen [00:23:01]:

Air comes in. Air comes in, gets a briefing note, says you can’t do what he did, and it’s written by General Cadue, and we all know what happened. General Cadue sexual misconduct. Allegation oh, shit. Coincidence.

Dave [00:23:20]:

Catherine, you’re blowing my mind. No, but wait.

Catherine Christensen [00:23:27]:

I just did this episode with speaking to those four gentlemen under oath because.

Dave [00:23:35]:

Air said no initially, and then I can’t find the next conversation or briefing note where he said no basically twice, and then all of a sudden, it’s yes. Hammer them. And I’m like, as a military officer, it is so frowned upon to flip flop. It’s so frowned upon, especially here in Canada. The whole idea of flip flopping is just almost antithetical to me, even though it’s like, hey, this is a better idea. I screwed up. I should not be using this idea. It just rarely happens. So for him to go from no to yes, something big must have happened for him to go, oh, yeah, you know what? I was told it was illegal. I know it’s illegal, but I’m still going to go ahead with it must have be something. And it’s got to come out in the wash at some point.

Catherine Christensen [00:24:23]:

Yeah, I can tell you what it is.

Dave [00:24:26]:

No.

Catherine Christensen [00:24:26]:

He went from after CDs to full CDs. Yes. A couple of weeks after he brought in the mandate, in October, he got promoted.

Dave [00:24:59]:

That’s it.

Catherine Christensen [00:25:02]:

I’m happy to say he sold out his military to get the seat in the chair. Get his butt in the chair permanently.

Dave [00:25:12]:

Oh, my God. You know what?

Catherine Christensen [00:25:18]:

Did he get promoted?

Dave [00:25:22]:

I was like, it can’t be just if I am suspicious that you sold everybody down the river and violated every member of your armed forces, human rights, a part of me is like, it better be for a badass reason. It better be like, he cut a deal with the Chinese not just promotion to CDs, not just for something frivolous as a promotion. Come on, man. Is that messed up for me to say? It should be for something bigger.

Catherine Christensen [00:25:56]:

Well, what happens when he falls on his sword for this? Probably a nice job with NATO, a nice retirement. Of course, he’s made no secret, even as a junior officer, that he is a tried and true liberal. That’s no secret. He was very vocal about it from the time he was a young officer. So the interesting thing is if he says that he was ordered from above him, but in Canadian law, that better have been the King or the Governor General, because if he can’t take an order from the Prime Minister’s office no.

Dave [00:26:37]:

I mean, that’s very clear, like I mentioned. No, when we first started chatting, who do you swear an oath to, right? The sovereign king or Queen and whoever that is at the time, that is a quirky little fact about being Canadian compared to being Americans. Americans are blown away. They’re like the king. How are you talking about the King? Yeah, we swear. We swear. Note to the King, our head of state is the Governor General. It’s not the prime minister. We have a constitutional government, parliamentary government, where the Prime Minister, the goal of the Prime Minister, if I understand correctly, because I’m starting to get an education in our entire political system, is not like a president because he’s not the Commander in chief. I didn’t salute him because he’s not in my chain of command. So therefore he’s just there as a minister to help govern as best as he can with his sub ministers so that they can get out of the way and let the commoners do their thing. He’s not supposed to be the ruler. Hence the reason why we have our ruler is the King. The King could be like, hey, you got to do this, Prime Minister, get this sorted. Not that that’s really going to happen, but it seems like that got lost. What you’re just telling me is cuckoo bananas.

Catherine Christensen [00:27:53]:

I mean, as an officer of the court, I swear an oath to the king, right? Or the monarch. I swear an oath is almost identical to the oath that our people in the armed forces swear. And that is because we’re supposed to be independent of our government and we’re there to hold the government to account. As a lawyer, I’m there to challenge them. Our courts are supposed to challenge our government on laws that should not be or should be changed. And the armed forces are there that, if necessary, the King call in the armed forces to remove our parliament and deal with our police forces. That’s what you’re there for, if necessary, to protect the people from the government, so the government can’t give that order because they can’t give an order against themselves. And it goes back to the civil war in England when they brought in Charles second Cromwell. So then when Cromwell was defeated, they bring in Charles II. That’s part of the deal. That was part of the deal. So that the government couldn’t turn on its own people. The king retained the power to turn the military on the parliament if necessary. Now, would it happen? I don’t think so under a current king. But that’s why he cannot take an order from the prime Minister’s office. So I can’t wait to ask him under oath, who’d you take that order from, General? When Trudeau got on the news and said that he gave the order to shoot down the balloon. No, he didn’t.

Dave [00:29:33]:

No, he didn’t. Yeah, I do that. Yeah. Okay. This is wild. We don’t allow cameras in the courts here in Canada, if I understand correctly. So therefore a trial like this will be reported on, I’m pretty sure, right? Or is it likely there to be a publication ban? Is that something that because that seems to be something that we do a lot here in Canada. Like, I know fellows that have been involved in stuff, and they all get publication bans. Like, no, can’t talk about anything. It’s locked down, it doesn’t get out. Is that likely to be the case for this type of thing because it’s so damaging to the government?

Catherine Christensen [00:30:23]:

They can try. I would argue against it because our courts are supposed to be open so that people can see justice being served. The only time I’ve seen publication bans is when it involves children, which the criminal code, for instance, limits. You are not allowed to identify children that have been victims of crime or witnesses to a crime. There is nothing in the 150,000 pages of evidence I have. There’s nothing there that is national security level. There’s nothing in there that the Chinese and the Russians don’t already know. So if they try to do it on a national security front, not going to work. If they want to keep it quiet, they’re going to have to settle.

Dave [00:31:18]:

And.

Catherine Christensen [00:31:18]:

Put in an NDA.

Dave [00:31:19]:

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that seems to be the way things go, at least from the experience. Not personally I’ve had, but with individuals I know that have gone that route with false allegations for sexual misconduct. They’ve said, okay, yeah, we ruined your life. Here’s your money, sign the NDA and have a good rest of your life. So I don’t know if this is going to be something they could do for half a billion dollar lawsuit. My next question is the individuals that are mentioned in the lawsuit. So I believe you have the Minister of National Defense. You have the Chief of Defense Staff, you have the Surgeon General. Those individuals. The Chief of Defense Staff, the Minister of National Defense. It’s not a personal lawsuit, right? It is the institution, if I understand correctly. So they’re not going to be personally liable, but they would represent the institution. So therefore they have to show up and testify, if I understand correctly.

Catherine Christensen [00:32:28]:

Right. So if they are acting in their capacity at their public office, then they are covered by the department of justice. They’ll be provided with lawyers for it, but they are named personally and the court what happens is if a settlement is done, all the defendants are liable for whatever. Or if we win in a courtroom, all the defendants are equally liable. But because it’s pursuing the government or the king, which is who you sue in Canada, the government’s going to pay it out. The person with the biggest person is going to be the one that pays it out. Where they get into trouble is if they retire and then they’re private citizens. Even air doesn’t have a pension big enough to pay for a lawyer to go through 150,000 pages of evidence and question 329 people.

Dave [00:33:24]:

Oh, jeez. Okay. Now, I know your case isn’t part of the human rights decision that came down through the MGRC decision that was determined that there was an actual human rights breach for all these individuals. So when you like, I need clarification clarification on this because I’m not too sure about how our constitution works. A human rights infringement because it is written into our constitution. It’s not like the Americans, where it’s a bill of rights. It’s part of the constitution. Why is it not deemed to be something that requires some sort of punitive action if you break somebody’s human? Right, like, I’m not quite sure how that works. Like these individuals had their human rights infringed upon that was determined by an organization. Okay, cool. Now what is it just the individuals that had their rights infringed can now go, well, I can sue now because you broke my human rights, and it’s only monetary punitive damages that you can get in return. There’s no individual that goes to jail, from what I understand, for breaking somebody’s human rights, if I understand correctly. For me, that seems weird, like you’re breaking a law, but there’s no true consequence unless you go and sue them for money. Did I get that right?

Catherine Christensen [00:34:59]:

Right. Yeah. So it’s not a criminal offense to just to breach the charter rights of freedoms, but the only way the court has to make you whole for damages done or harms done to you is money. We’ve asked for a bunch of other things as well as money. One of them being that general air or the CDs is not the final authority for grievances for an order that he issued, because right now he is so.

Dave [00:35:34]:

Backwards.

Catherine Christensen [00:35:35]:

I want to course answer that question. So he’s going to say no to his own, oh, I broke my own order. What happened if he didn’t get vaccinated? Well, it’s his order. Can he break his own order? Yeah. The other thing is he didn’t use the NDA 126, which he could have ordered vaccination under that, but then. People would have had to been court martial under a charge. And if they could show that they had a valid reason, such as sincere religious belief, they would be acquitted. They couldn’t risk that finding in court because that would have made the Kipling case for the anthrax even more solid law. The other reality is our Jag Corps is so small, they couldn’t have done 3000 courts martial because that’s what they were looking at. Okay, why didn’t he use 126? He had the power. That’s another question for him to answer.

Dave [00:36:53]:

Okay, so the allegations are at face value. It’s like, okay, these troops have a very solid case that they had their human rights infringed and they were wrongfully dismissed. Okay. But at a much deeper level. The Chief of Defense Staff issued, and I can’t call it an order, is a directive right to his troops. That has been that’s the other thing yeah. That has been deemed to be illegal, if you want to call it that term. I don’t know if there’s a better way or invalid. What message does that send to the entire soul of the military? If your top general knew he was issuing an illegal directive, still went ahead with it and hasn’t said, you know what? I was wrong, I have to step down. And two, I see. Take over. What happens?

Catherine Christensen [00:37:58]:

Well, that’s a good question. Has he demoralized the Canadian armed forces? Absolutely. The trust in the chain of command, what little was there is completely shattered. Completely shattered. And, yeah, I don’t think even his resignation is going to fix this. We’re at 40% of the numbers we should have. The information I’m getting is we’re below 40,000 now. We should have 98. He goes down in history as the CDs destroyed the Canadian military. And maybe it needed needs to be maybe we need to start over in the ashes. I mean, maybe that’s where this is going in the end.

Dave [00:38:43]:

Well, you raise a very good point here. I always ask the question key bono, because at a certain point, you can only be so incompetent for so long. In my opinion, incompetence eventually writes itself because you feel shame. There’s other people that say, hey, this is really fucked up. We need to change this. And they step up and they remove the, hey, dude, move over to the side. We got this. At least that’s my experience with leadership. And obviously, it’s not at the national level, much lower level than that, but it writes the ship. And whenever I’ve done something that wasn’t correct, I felt bad because my intent was to not do a shitty job. But when I did do a shitty job, I was like, Shit, I fucked up. I got to step away, or somebody’s got like, your ego just gets crushed. But in this case, because so many things keep on happening that keep on compromising the integrity and the soul of the military, I got to ask the question. This is not a bug, but the actual feature. And if I’m looking at it from a national security point of view, the best way to erode and destroy a country is from within and to make people believe that what they’re doing is actually the right thing. They have no interaction with the outside actors that are manipulating the strings, but they actively go ahead and cause a cancer. And so the way I see it is that this is I fought a counterinsurgency war, so I spent a lot of time learning it. Sure, I didn’t learn it from the massive strategic point of view, but I was on the ground and we sucked at it. We failed the insurgents, they applied a lot of kinetic activities, bombs and suicide attacks and psychological warfare. Makes sense. That’s what they had at their disposal. In this case, it is in my opinion, this is a political insurgency. What has happened here. You can’t just have your defense of your country at the mercy of some it seems like Demigod, in this case, general error. Issuing commands that are completely illegal, knowing that they’re completely illegal and not think, hey, this might have long lasting, decades long implications for our military when we’re trying to rebuild and defend against foreign threats from the Chinese, the Russians. I can’t wrap my head around it as being incompetence. And I don’t know if this case is going to bring to light a lot of things that have been rotting inside the military. But like what you said, I think it’s like a phoenix rising from the ashes. How do you get rid of this rot now? Because it wasn’t just him. Everybody in their chain decided, hey, you know what? Yeah, let’s get on board and let’s hammer these unwanted like dirty vaxers. We’re the same team. We’re supposed to be the calf family. And as soon as they had an opportunity, send the guy outside in the cold. Get that mom who’s pregnant. Jabbed up or she’s out. What happened? Is this where we have to go now?

Catherine Christensen [00:42:00]:

I think so. They purged a lot of the best people they had. These people that were some of them had over 35 years of experience, were only a few months weeks away from full retirement, not a single blemish on their record and being tossed aside like garbage. I mean, that’s got to have an impact. It’s got to have an impact on the people around them. Even if they were treating them as contaminated, not welcome. It has to do something to your brain that if they’ll do that to that person, what are they going to do to me? It’s got to go through your head. I don’t care who you are. And now, yet on top of that, the very woke agenda of the Department of National Defense. Apparently our military is not for war fighting anymore. It’s for leading by example. That’s not who was walking into recruiting centers to defend our country. If you look at it from a business perspective, who’s your target market. And it wasn’t who they’re trying to recruit now, because we have a voluntary military. If they wanted to serve, they’d already be serving because there was nothing stopping them from walking into a recruiting center and saying, sign me up. Honestly, and this is my opinion, we need to need to withdraw from NATO diplomatically, say we need to rebuild our military. Maybe you’ll let us come back later, because right now there’s no way we could fulfill any obligation from a NATO point of view. I used to hear jokes that if anything happened, that we would just go to the mountains with what equipment we could grab and wait for the Americans to show up. Well, that’s more true than ever.

Dave [00:44:15]:

Yeah. The sad reality here is, I think, coming to grips with the fact that the country that at least I thought I was a part of and that I went to go fight for, is not the country that exists now. And it happened seemingly overnight, but it’s definitely been something that has been in the works for decades. And you get the eye off the prize for a little bit, the comfort and the good times and the booming economies and everything else that gets tied up into being a liberal Western democracy. You take it all for granted because it’s good times. And now we’re seeing the repercussions of not being civically engaged, not taking our politics seriously at a civic level, at an individual level, not taking care of ourselves, not being socially responsible. And now it’s just turning into this toxic soup. And even amongst our own community, the veteran community, there’s a lot of hatred, and it’s directed inwards at each other. It’s almost like a viper’s nest, because to convince a man is one thing, but to convince a man that he’s been duped is like, the hardest thing you could ever do. Because imagine I had to come to that realization that, oh, wait, I’ve been duped. And I was pro government. I was a JT supporter from the start. I was like, hey, man, this guy’s young. He’s from Montreal. I even went to school with him. McGill I’m like, hey, man, he’s young and fresh. This is going to be good. And then things started to get a little wonky, and it’s like, that’s weird. Sure be fine. And then all of a sudden, COVID hits. And I’m a trained student of biochemistry. I like to think that I know a little bit more than just the average. And I was a science teacher for years. So the way I saw it was, hey, the government has our best interest in mind. It’s going to be fine. We’re going to take care of each other in bad times. That’s what Canadians do. And then I saw the narrative just and then that turned something at me. And then when my family there was members of my family that started really expressing their true beliefs as to what to be done with the unvaccinated. And then I realized, oh, we’re dealing with a monster here. We’re dealing with a monster that we read about in the history books. We’re dealing with the monster that we were taught by our teachers, by our grandparents, to never let out of the box. And it got out, and thankfully, it didn’t keep on going, but it’s still there. It didn’t get resolved. And that’s why I’m so happy that there’s folks like yourself that are leading the charge on the legal front. And it’s really up to us, the individual citizens, to realize we got to wake up and we got to be able to talk to each other and figure this stuff out at a calf level. I know I can’t fix it, and I don’t know who can, but this is going to be a real kick in the face, I think, this lawsuit. And I hope it rattles a lot of cages, and it makes people wake up to the fact that, hey, the Canadian way of shut your mouth and do your duty, we’ve got this. And I love you quoted Napoleon. Like la tamois. That’s Napoleon, I believe. Right? That’s kind of where we’re at now. And I can’t believe that history is actually repeating itself here in this country, because it just seemed like it would never come. Things tyranny wouldn’t come here. It’s Canada. We play hockey and drink Timmy Hoes all day, and I just don’t know where we go from there.

Catherine Christensen [00:48:10]:

Well, and I knew the day that the Emergencies Act was enacted that we had crossed a line that is going to be really hard to come back from. Canadians did not realize what happened in that moment. In those few days, we were stripped of everything. We had no rights whatsoever. They could have done whatever they wanted to do to us in those days. And I was really well, they sort of worked. I was thinking, here’s a chance for our Senate to show what they’re for, to stop our parliament from doing such things. And I think they got a little worried. That’s why they rescinded the Emergencies Act when they did. And I was so proud of the Trekkers, so proud of them to show that ordinary people had power. That was a big message that needed to get out. And I was pretty proud of them that they look, ordinary people can make a difference. And, yeah, we need to be a lot more involved in our society to decide what kind of Canada we want to live in, because this is not the Canada that I grew up in. It’s not the Canada that I studied in law school. It’s not the Canada I raised my son in. Can we go back? I don’t know. But it worried me when I saw this coming down. I’m just following orders. Was supposed to die after World War II, and the Canadian chain of command went right along with it, and they’re all worried. I hear there’s a lot of tight chests in the chain of command right now because they’re realizing that they followed an unlawful order perspective. That was an unlawful order?

Dave [00:50:09]:

Yeah. If LinkedIn is any judge of the amount of ass puckering that’s happening right now. Typically, I get quite a few likes and comments on posts on health related stuff, testosterone being healthy and fit when it comes to hey, I think our chief of defense staff issued an illegal order and committed a massive human rights infringement on all of its troops. I’m not getting any comments or any likes, which is interesting because I guess nobody wants to be seen as liking a post because God forbid, big bad CDs might notice, hey, I know that guy. He’s in my chain of command gone. So it’s interesting. It’s interesting to see how this plays out and to touch base on the trucker convoy. I was there. I thought it was one of the best moments for Canadian democracy. There’s a lot of people that disagree with me, and they weren’t there. There’s a lot of people that still think that this was some redneck, right wing, Nazi led rally. And my comments always like, were you there? Where did you get your information from? I was there. My kids were there. The natives were there, leading o Canada. There was every group of Canadian that I’ve ever encountered across this entire country, from Sikhs to Jamaicans to you name it. Everybody in this country. Separatists and Albertans dancing together. And I was like, something’s happening here. This is a first. There is something that the political establishment is going to shit their pants on because they’re seeing a unification of something that should never have happened. Albertans and Quebecrs, separatists coming together. Hold on a SEC. We just created some kind of alchemy here. Not in our favor. And I was just blown away at the unification that this could bring. And I was like, this is the new thing. And my buddy said it perfectly. He’s a veteran and a police officer as well. He goes in context, he’s black. So he’s like, hey, man. He’s like, you know what? I love what Martin Luther King did for the black community in the states and the civil rights movement, but we often forget how awful it was and how everybody that followed that movement were derided and humiliated and mocked and thrown in jail. And now what is he? He’s a hero, right? And he’s like, there’s moments like this in history that happen, and then 50, 60 years down the line, he’s like, I guarantee you, some of those trucks, they’re all signed. He’s like, they’re going to be in a museum somewhere as one of our shining lights of democracy. But he’s like, it’s going to take time. So for the time being, just keep on holding the line and keep on fighting. And he’s like, this is going to be something that we’re going to cherish in the next 50 or 60 years. I was like, that’s very optimistic. And I hope that’s the case. I truly do. I truly hope that because of your actions and others like you that are going to push to make sure the truth comes out, we get to see that day and my kids get to see that day. So, Catherine, before we wrap up here, what’s the best means to support this effort, to support you’re obviously, a nonprofit, so there must be some way to support your nonprofit so that we can ensure that those that are involved in the case see justice served.

Catherine Christensen [00:53:32]:

So people can reach out to Valorlegalactioncenter.org, which is our website. Donations can be made there. There’s also a contact form on there or they can reach out to inquiries@valorlegalactioncenter.org. That’s an email address that’s monitored. And we do have a waiting list for we call it Op Valor, this big lawsuit. So Op Valor 2.0, we’ve got a waitlist. We also have a waitlist developing for vaccine injuries because there are a lot of vaccine injuries there’s. There have been some deaths as well. So I can tell you officially that COVID Vaccination killed more people in the Cap than COVID did. There were zero deaths from COVID in the Canadian armed forces. So those lawsuits are taking names to proceed. Follow along on this one. Donations are welcome because we are doing this. We’ve got other veteran and military member related lawsuits in the works as well. That’s all we do is the law for this particular group of people.

Dave [00:54:47]:

I love it.

Catherine Christensen [00:54:49]:

Well, somebody told me that I couldn’t do it, so now I got to do it.

Dave [00:54:56]:

That’s great, Catherine. That’s awesome. Catherine, any last don’t tell me, any last words?

Catherine Christensen [00:55:02]:

Nothing. Just that thank you for having me on. Thank you for helping me spread the word that there’s this group of military members and veterans who are going to stand up for Canada and bring the first charter claim that actually looks like there’s a chance of succeeding. And we look forward to maybe changing some laws here in Canada and making things fair again.

Dave [00:55:36]:

I love it. That’s a great message. Great message, I hope. And yeah, I wish you all a success in the future and obviously you’re welcome at any time to give the community an update as to where the process is at and what support you need in the future. So, Katherine, thanks so much for having a chat with me and discussing your case against the Canadian armed forces. And folks, don’t forget, train hard, fight easy. We’ll see you on the next one. Peace. I hate T shirts that get floppy in the arms after ten washes. So that’s why I created a bunch of T shirts with high quality cotton just for you, so that you can go to the gym and look fresh, sport some philosophy and smash those PRS looking good. So you need to head to Davemorell Net Merch. Grab yourself a hat, grab yourself a T shirt, grab yourself a sweater and support the cause today.