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On Tuesday, April 21, 1987, Freedom Party hosted a dinner in support of Toronto furrier Paul Magder. Magder was continually charged under Ontario’s Retail Business Holiday’s Act for opening his fur store on Sundays. On April 20, 1987, CBC’s Radio Noon interviewed Freedom Party president Robert Metz about the party’s dinner, and about the party’s nature.
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On February 25, 1987, Freedom Party’s Marc Emery (Action Director) and Robert Metz (President) made separate submissions to the London meeting of a Select Committee on Sunday Shopping. Emery’s submission in part blamed organized religions for the Retail Business Holidays Act‘s ban on opening a retain store on Sundays. That statement got him national attention, including this interview on CBC radio.
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On September 14, 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan called upon Americans, in a televised address, to support him in an “all out war” on illegal drugs. Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney thereafter deviated from a prepared speech to declare that “drug abuse has become an epidemic that undermines our economic as well as our social fabric”. So, on September 16, 1986, AM 980’s Wayne McLean asked listeners to call in to his show to tell him whether or not they believe that there is an illegal drug epidemic. Freedom Party Action Director Marc Emery called in with his views.
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On September 2, 1986, Ontario’s provincial Advisory Committee on Liquor Regulations – which had been put together by Liberal Consumer Minister Monte Kwinter to consider revisions to Ontario’s drinking laws – commenced hearings. On the first day of the hearings, Ontario’s socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) issued a policy statement calling for a ban on the advertising of beer, wine, and liquor both on TV and radio, and in printed media. The NDP said that, after unemployment, excessive alcohol consumption was “the number one social problem in society”.
As a result of the NDP’s pro-censorship proposal, on September 9, 1986, Wayne McLean, host of AM980’s Hotline talk show asked his listeners: Should there be a ban on alcohol advertising, and does advertising cause an increase in consumption?
Freedom Party president Robert Metz called in, followed – during a rapid-fire poll – by Freedom Party member Gord Mood. Both opposed censorship, and advocated individual freedom.
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These two recordings were found, back to back, on a cassette tape, sandwiched between a recording dated August 13, 1986, and another dated September 8, 1986. Only the two excerpts were recorded, so we cannot know the specific topic being discussed, but it appears the question under discussion was whether Canada should be open to immigration. Freedom Party member Gord Mood and Freedom Party president Robert Metz each given an emphatic “yes”, and point out that a lot of the racism and anti-immigration sentiment is actually caused by bad government policy in respect of social programs.
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On August 13, 1986, Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader Larry Grossman was the guest of the Wayne McLean show. Grossman fielded calls from listeners, including Freedom Party president Robert Metz who challenged Grossman to clarify his position on the injustice or justice of a law that punishes a person for opening his or her retail store on a Sunday. Grossman was in favour of the law as a matter of tradition, but also said he was in favour of making exceptions based upon race (e.g., Chinatown, which laid within his own electoral district), business type (Grossman said he would exempt bookstores, and arguably he did so because the constitutionality of Ontario’s Retail Business Holiday’s Act was being challenged by a Toronto bookseller Edward’s Books and by Toronto furrier Paul Magder, whose fur business was located in Chinatown, in Toronto), and other completely arbitrary things. When Grossman says he doesn’t know how to solve the apparent injustice of allowing store owners in Chinatown to open their stores while other store owners are charged and lose their business to competitors, Metz argues that market forces, not government force, provide the solution.
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In the summer of 1986, the City of London was considering making a bid to host the 1994 Commonwealth Games. Marc Emery and the Freedom Party of Ontario had already successfully campaigned – alone – against London’s bid to host the 1991 Pan Am Games (a bid that would have stuck taxpayers with a tab for hundreds of millions of dollars). So, when London Mayor Tom Gosnell was the guest of Wayne McLean’s London-based radio show, to speak about the Commonwealth Games bid, Marc Emery called in to oppose taxpayer funding for the bid, and a bit of an exchange between himself and the mayor ensued. At the end of the program, McLean held a rapid-fire yes/no poll about whether London should bid for the 1994 Commonwealth Games, and Freedom Party’s Robert Metz – knowing that the bid would again stick taxpayers with a tab to pay land developers and others for the building of white elephants – called in to say “no”. The “no” side won the poll.
NOTE: Ultimately, BC taxpayers were the ones who got stuck with the $142M bill for the 1994 Commonwealth Games, which were held in Victoria.
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FPO’s President Robert Metz calls into the Wayne McLean radio talk show and asks the show’s guest – anti-capitalist poverty activist John Clarke – how jobs are made. Metz also asks Clarke to describe what he thinks is “the better system”. His answer, without naming it: communism.
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On July 14, 1986, Mr. Justice Dennis O’Leary of the Ontario Divisional Court issued his decision with respect to an Ontario regulation that required government funded schools to open or close each school day with religious exercises consisting of the reading of the Scriptures or other suitable readings and the repeating of the Lord’s Prayer or other suitable prayers. Five families in Sudbury, Ontario, had challenged the constitutionality of the provision under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which had been adopted only 4 years earlier. Having lost at trial, the families appealed to the Divisional Court. Divisional Court Justice O’Leary dismissed the appeal. He held that (to quote Ontario’s Court of Appeal):
“…the religious exercises prescribed by s. 28(1) did not infringe the guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion provided by s. 2(a) of the Charter. Alternatively, he held that, if the Charter freedom was infringed, the infringement was justifiable under s. 1 of the Charter which provides:
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
He was of the view that the inculcation of morality was a proper educational object and that morality and religion were intertwined. If this resulted in any infringement on minority religious beliefs, it was not substantial. He pointed out that the religious exercises did not have to be Christian and, except in the case of non-believers, could be consistent with the Charter which, in its preamble, recognizes “the supremacy of God and the rule of law”.
London, Ontario’s AM980 news reported that Justice O’Leary’s decision essentially meant that the Charter’s power to defend the rights and freedoms that it lists were largely meaningless.
NOTE 1: The families later appealed the Divisional Court’s decision to Ontario’s Court of Appeal. On September 23, 1988, Ontario’s Court of Appeal granted the appeal, finding the regulation to be unconstitutional. From the decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario:
On its face, s. 28(1) of the regulations infringes the freedom of conscience and religion guaranteed by s. 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, which is a Christian prayer, and the reading of the Scriptures from the Christian Bible imposes Christian observances upon non-Christian pupils and religious observances on non-believers. The right to claim exemption from religious exercises conferred by s. 28(10), (11) and (12) does not save the regulation. Section 28 imposes on religious minorities a compulsion to conform to the practices of the majority, and the evidence in this case supports this view. Moreover, the exemption provisions discriminate against religious minorities. Harm to individual pupils need not be proved by those who object to s. 28(1). The denigration of minorities’ freedom of religion and conscience by the operation of s. 28(1) constitutes an infringement of s. 2(a) of the Charter which is not insubstantial or trivial.
The regulation is not justified under s. 1 of the Charter, as the purpose of s. 28(1) is religious. Even if s. 1 applied, the Charter infringement cannot be justified, because s. 28(1) fails to impair the appellants’ freedom under s. 2(a) as little as possible. There are less intrusive ways of imparting educational and moral values than those provided in s. 28.
NOTE 2: This recording includes two reports from AM980 that occurred on the same day. For the purposes of dating this archive entry, it is assumed that Metz’s comment was reported one day after the decision was rendered.
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FPO’s President Robert Metz calls into the Wayne McLean radio talk show to tell the show’s guest – Bishop John Sherlock – about his concern for a an anti-capitalist statement on the economy.
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