(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon speaks with Canadian religious freedom lawyer James Kitchen about the terrible state of Canada’s judiciary, what direction the country might be headed in, and more.
Kitchen begins the episode by briefly describing his work representing clients who are discriminated against, such as Christians, pro-life activists, and medical freedom advocates. Jonathon then asked him why these people’s freedoms have been rapidly shrinking in Canada, especially in the last decade.
Kitchen emphasized that Canadians generally became complacent and “checked out” of the news cycle over the past quarter decade.
“Over the last 25 years, the consequence of checking out means that a lot of very sort of Marxist-oriented administrative state, big government-oriented people got appointed to be the judges and the tribunal members of all of our adjudicated bodies across the country,” Kitchen said.
He added that these big government-oriented judges aren’t just Trudeau’s judicial appointees but also those of his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, and they generally favor Canada’s institutions over people’s individual freedoms.
“For [the judges] significantly limiting free expression, or free speech, or ability to practice, ability to choose your healthcare, or ability to manifest your religion – all these things are in the way, they’re annoyances, they’re inconveniences … they’re privileges. That’s fundamentally how they see it from their sort of ideological or political worldview, and they can’t help but manifest that worldview in making their decisions and in creating and making new law,” Kitchen said.
The lawyer then stressed that Canadians need to realize that judges and justices appointed to the bench will have a much bigger say on their rights than any elected politician.
“Until we figure that out and start demanding that whoever we put in, if it’s [Pierre] Poilievre, for example, next year that they start putting freedom-oriented, rights-upholding justices on the bench. Until we figure that out, we’re going to continue to languish as a nation [that] is regressing back to a totalitarian state,” he said.
Jonathon then circled back to Kitchen’s comment about Harper’s judicial appointments being just as bad for individual liberties and social conservatism as Trudeau’s, underscoring that it was the Harper Supreme Court that gave us euthanasia, overturned many religious liberties, and Harper’s own agenda. The host then asked Kitchen how social conservatives could reshape the judicial landscape.
Kitchen highlighted that conservatives need to play the long game, which necessarily won’t be an easy process.
“You don’t fix the judicial system and who our judges are quickly. That’s not a ‘years’ thing; that’s a ‘decades’ thing, and that’s tough to get people motivated and hopeful about that,” Kitchen said.
“One of the things you need to be looking at over the next few years is how do we change the culture amongst conservatives who will probably win the next election? … How do we change the culture there where they start to say, ‘Enough of this, we’re going to find the few remaining pro-freedom lawyers, and we’re going to put them on the bench. And we don’t care how much the liberals cry, or the NDP cry, or all the left-wing media lights their hair on fire. We’re going to find them, and we’re going to put them on the bench,’” he added.
To hear more from James Kitchen, tune in to this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show.
The Van Maren Show is hosted on numerous platforms, including Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play.
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