029 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 029

Air Date: November 1, 2007

Host: Bob Metz

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this program are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington):
Jefferson Smith: Well I’m not licked and I’m going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these.

Marc Emery: Oh that’s a greatly influential film. I used to cry to that film. And Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is basically the story of a rube, a country bumpkin, who just has a simple good natured good will towards his fellow man and wants to do the right thing. And he finds that doing the right thing is not possible within the democratic process and that anybody tries to do the right thing within the democratic process is going to get chewed up, spit out, discarded and wasted.

Jefferson Smith:

Somebody will listen to me. Somebody.

Marc Emery:

And then ultimately the bad guys all get up and confess because they’re overwhelmed by the dignity of such a show of goodness.

Senator Paine:

Every word of it is true, I’m not fit for all this. I’m not fit for any place in the whole old town. It’s coming.

Marc Emery: Now that rarely ever happens but I’m glad that it has happened at least a few times in the movies. The New York Times Good morning London.

Bob Metz:
It is Thursday, November the 1st. I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon. Oh no, not right wing. Just right.

Welcome to the show of this bright sunny November morning starting to feel a little bit more like the fall than the summer weather we had up until a couple weeks ago. And yes, you’re listening to CHRW 94.9 FM where you can call in to join us on the show today, 519-661-3600. And that is also the number incidentally that you can call in on the station to make your pledge to CHRW if you enjoy the alternate program and you get here on the station. This is their pledge drive week. This is the time to make it. And Ira Timothy will be very happy to take your call and take your pledge. He’s the fellow that will answer the phone whether you make a pledge or whether you’re calling to be on the show today. And of course if you want to email us, it’s justrightchrw@gmail.com. Something I haven’t mentioned either is that you know the show is also available on chrwradio.com and they keep the show up for a week after each of the broadcasts.

So if you miss it when it’s live, you can catch it after it’s been recorded and kept online for a week. Well, if you didn’t guess from the opening clip what my subject matter may be today, I guess I could call it, Citizen Marc goes to Washington, 101 things you never knew about Marc Emery and maybe you don’t even want to know. But I think you should know because I think there’s a serious issue going on here today and I’ll tell you why I’m talking about Marc Emery today. Last week on Monday I found myself engaged in an impromptu interview on another radio station about the subject of none other than my old compatriot Marc Emery, who’s pending extradition hearing to the United States, of course, has generated front page coverage in the London Free Press and who was featured in the Globe and Mail on CTV. And last week on Tuesday, CBC News World did a documentary on Marc and you will hear a brief clip from that later in the show as well. The reason I called in on the show is I was trying to respond to people who merely saw Marc Emery as a self-seeking, indulgent promoter of, well, Marc Emery, of course, and heard somebody say, yeah, he’s a shameless self-promoter and to which I would have to say, yeah, he is. He is that. Sort of like the Muhammad Ali of politics. I am the greatest, you know, but people loved it and they gathered around him.

And you might think that that’s just for entertainment and it is to some degree, but it also works in attracting people. But since Marc and I go back a long ways, I thought I’d offer a slightly more full context perspective on the Marc that most people know. And I want to let you know why I consider Marc sort of, you know, almost as close as a brother in some ways, even though we hardly talk to each other that much anymore. Last time I really talked to him personally, it was a couple months ago, maybe four months ago, talked to him on the phone from his home just to see how he was and he seemed to be okay. Our paths cross occasionally in political realm over the years, but really, you know, we don’t communicate with each other that much. And even though our history together, you know, has gone a long way and it belies as many differences between us as it does similarities and agreements, I would think. Marc and I worked side by side for many years, quite literally speaking, either at City Lights Bookshop or at the offices and production rooms that Marc had located practically next door above a store called Bel Air Music.

Both these stores are still there, I think, on the corner of King and Richmond. So, you know, from there up on his office, Emery did a lot of his political activities. He published a newspaper called The London Tribune, another week, which was a weekly paper here in the city. We’re talking around 1981 or so now. And at that time, I was still working at Canada Permanent Trust Company as an accountant. And then later in 1983, both Marc and I produced another newspaper called The London Metro Bulletin.

And then finally, of course, around 1984 Freedom Party was headquartered in the same offices that we’d already occupied for several years prior to its establishment in 1984. And during this period as well, just to give you some idea of the relationship, my wife at the time and I were totally handed over City Lights Bookshop for management purposes. Marc just sort of handed it to us and said, all I want is so many hundred bucks a week in a draw, as long as I’m getting that, I don’t want to know anything about the business, I don’t want to know about the store. And that was the deal we had. It was amazing and it kind of left him fully free to go about his political goals and aspirations while we operated the store and also helped him.

With those goals. But I’m not talking about Marc today just because I want to talk about Marc Emery or even because I want to talk about the marijuana issue per se. I will certainly touch upon them and this is about Marc in a lot of ways. He’s not a live guest on the show, though he may be in the future, but not today because otherwise I don’t think I could get a word in edgewise, okay? It’s my show and I call the shots here.

So you have Marc here. I wouldn’t be talking very much. And he does not know that I’m talking about him now, so let’s just keep that between you and me, okay? But Marc’s found himself on the precipice of a very significant issue that would have repercussions far beyond what seems to be the surface issues in question. As someone, you know, and this is all the whole issue of Marc being extradited to the United States, the whole issue of sovereignty and the kind of people that we have to decide now and do it quickly.

What kind of people are we going to be extraditing to the States to penalties that are just absurd from a Canadian viewpoint? As someone who knows Marc pretty well, I feel somewhat compelled to go on the record just for the simple sake of clarity and justice, maybe about what motivates Marc Emery. And it is a passion for justice. Despite the crooked path that I often believe he takes towards that goal, we don’t always agree on things.

And I’m certain in some respects Marc feels exactly the same way about me. But if any case is to be made, and I can’t say this any weaker, I’ve got to say it strongly, it’s that Marc’s possible extradition to the United States would be an absolute moral obscenity, pardon the language. Given that country’s very irrational and very un-American, I might add, attitude towards drugs and its drug prohibition laws. And you already know I’m pretty much and usually a big fan of the United States and you’ve heard me speak in that country’s defense on more than one occasion.

But that country’s drug laws, they can only be properly described as insane and they’re spreading the insanity around the world. I’ll get more into that issue a little bit later in the show, but let me just quickly set the stage. Just how Marc and I met. Marc basically was running City Lights Bookshop. I’d already been a customer of the store before Marc ever ran it because I was working across the street at a company called Canada Permanent.

And I’d go over on my lunch hour and peruse through the used bookstore. Then when Marc took over the store, I’d go over for lunch breaks and find myself in constant debates with Marc, which I kind of found both stimulating and very educational. And I remember how often I really found myself peeved off at him because so often he would be proved right and I’d be proved wrong and it just bugged me. How does he know so much about so many things?

How can he predict that thing from happening? Emery could think on his feet and he had this certain innocence and charm about him that made him somewhat charismatic and he still relies on that same talent today. October 22nd, going to be jumping around here a bit, 2007, just last week, London Free Press Front Page by Deborah Van Brink. Emery case rolls out in Prince of Pot documentary.

And here’s what she, here’s how the article sort of, I just picked out the key points of the article. Quote, there aren’t enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe Marc Emery. Abrasive, brash, compelling, driven.

That’s just the beginning of the alphabet. It’s not surprising then that a new documentary on Emery’s impending extradition hearing and possible life imprisonment for selling pot seeds is chock full of the kind of hyperbole that vaulted him into the headlines here when he was a London bookseller and political gadfly. In the CBC documentary by rookie director Nick Wilson, Emery compares himself with slain human rights icon Martin Luther King and South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela. It’s okay, Emery says in the hour long film, if I die in jail or get murdered or something like that, we need martyrs.

We need heroes. In the 30 years since Emery has sought and made headlines, he’s been arrested 22 times and jailed 17. Emery needs to realize that jail in the US is not a picnic. Larry Campbell, a Canadian senator says in one memorable sound bite.

They’ll bury him so deep they’ll be sending him sunshine in a can. Well, I know the media loves it when Marc is being outrageous and tends to spend a lot of its time on the packaging rather than the content and the issue. And of course, Marc knows this and he plays up to it.

So I thought I’d peel through some of the packaging and give you some idea of the very serious and focused and principal political activists that I know Marc Emery to be. And I haven’t seen that change over the years because that’s what he is. He’s a political activist and not really a drug dealer anymore than he was a Sunday shopping magnate or a tax fighter when he dealt with all those issues. And of course, that’s what the US government is fictionally painting him to be. The Marc Emery that I originally knew way back in the 80s was, I mean, as straight as the proverbial arrow, especially when it came to so-called mind altering substances.

Get this. This is from Chip Martin, London Free Press, Saturday, February 18, 1984. Okay, we’re going back a little over two decades. Headline Marc Emery, he’s against big government and thinks most people agree. And does this sound familiar?

Maybe like a little bit like the article I just read. Here’s the quote, I like myself. I really do.

It’s no secret that I adore myself, really. This is Marc Emery, never at a loss for words. And this is how he explains his non-smoking and near abstinence. Such activity, he believes, might affect his ability to be lucid and properly express his strong philosophical views.

I was born to do this. This is Emery’s explanation of why he feels compelled to spread his gospel of individualism through his political activities and as a publisher. And then the same article, the full page article in the Free Press in the A section. And they had a little box there, said dot dot dot, you know, and what he thinks of others. And remember, this is 1984 we’re talking about, and it just said, a sampling of the collected thoughts of Marc Emery, let’s say, fair capitalist philosopher-publisher, Bain of the Establishment. Quote, on London Insurance Executive Colin Brown and the National Citizens Coalition, who want more freedom through less government, Emery says, quote, they’re pseudo-socialists. Any group that concedes their government has a role to play in economic policy has led an credibility to the socialists.

They’re not capitalistic enough. Emery also complains it was this group that trod on individual liberties when during the 1970s, it launched its infamous turn in a pusher campaign. But I admire their professionalism in promoting themselves, says Emery.

Ironically, you may think he hates the NCC, but no, he worked with the NCC on cases and issues that they agreed on. On the unemployed, Emery says, and this is again, 1984, most people who are unemployed are unemployed by choice. They should develop other work skills to get through the bad periods.

Everyone has the ability to develop a skill. It’s a major mistake to consider that someone else owes you a job. On Ronald Reagan, who was president at the time, of course. His policies are good, but that deficit is just too much.

He’s done terrific things in deregulation. On society in general, I’m looking for a perfect social system, not a perfect world. People aren’t perfect and they won’t ever be perfect. On government and the law, the purpose of government is to protect us from being violated by others. I don’t regard anything two people do peacefully as a crime. On morals, it’s up to parents to instill a moral code in their children and to enforce it.

Boy, talk about sounding conservative here, eh? And on author Ayn Rand, whose book The Fountainhead he reads and rereads religiously, quote, she most clearly and succinctly epitomizes the social system I would like to see. If a person reads her work, they have a very clear decision to make.

Either a man is to be free and left to make responsible decisions for himself, or a man is enslaved to the state which will make those decisions for him, end quote. So that was pretty much the Marc Emery I knew in 1984. And, you know, there were a lot of inconsistencies in his ideas, as far as I was concerned in many ways. But moving ahead now later to the late 1980s, just to give you some idea of why Marc and I sort of went our separate ways and perhaps what led up to it. It was, interestingly enough, it was a project we worked together, and I’m not saying that alone was it. It was maybe a catalyst, maybe just a symbol of what was going on. But in the late 1980s, Marc began researching the history of individual freedom for a calendar project, like just a wall calendar that you put up on your wall, and it was intended to highlight bright days and dark days in the history of freedom.

So as he’s doing his research, something very disturbing begins to surface. It seems that almost every time a historic event moved towards freedom, it was never initiated by any democratic process, but rather by somebody breaking the law. From slavery to religious prohibitions to sexual prohibitions to laws on abortion, high taxes, restrictions on trade, someone had to break the law before the law was changed. You could apply this to women’s rights, who were not considered persons by the way in Canada until 1929, and that was also featured in Marc’s calendar as a good day, of course, to Sunday shopping laws in Ontario, to alcohol prohibition under which millions broke the law, and you’re seeing some of the same tactics used by the Aboriginal community in North America today, and other groups who feel that they are being done in injustice in some way, shape, or form.

Interestingly, to give you an idea of some of the people that Marc admired and the people that he put in the calendar, by the way, there’s an American and a Canadian version, so there’s a little more than 12 of them here, but among them, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Walter Block, Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Josiah Warren, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Jefferson, Murray Rothbard, Walter Williams, who by the way I have a lot of clips from on the show here, Maria Montessori, Clarence Darrow, William Lyon Mackenzie, Margaret Thatcher, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Aristotle of all people, Thomas Sowell, Colin Brown, and Nat Hentoff, that Marc would even know about these people was always like a source of amazement for me. But Marc and I, we went our separate ways in 1990, quote Marc Emery Abandons Freedom Party read the December 20, 1990 London Free Press headline, and they quoted Emery thusly, quote, I oppose the whole democratic process and the way we make changes in this country. Emery said, I don’t believe we have a right to vote on what happens in the lives of others. He had no problems with Freedom Party, but found his beliefs had evolved to a point where his principles would not allow him to be part of any political party. So as part of his end quote, that was just in the paper of that time. So as part of his new personal agenda of civil disobedience, which he kind of thought was the way of getting things done, Emery had already gained international attention through his personal campaign against censorship when he was charged by police for selling and distributing the band Two Live Crew record album, Nasty as they want to be, which was also one of the reasons when Marc was here at CHRW, actually, that they had to split their separate ways.

You’ll be hearing a little bit about that in the future too. But as time went by, some of the fundamental differences between us began to surface, though these differences would rarely be visible to anyone besides me and Marc. We always had more agreements on issues than disagreements, and whatever our differences, a handshake was always as good as gold with Marc. But if the truth be known, I think Marc has some truly anarchistic leanings that I personally do not share. At times, I think his indulgent media persona may be detrimental to his cause, although I’ve often seen Marc at his polished best, you know, suit and tie in the whole earth catalog, and all that kind of thing.

And sometimes I just outright disagree with Marc on some issues. One of the first was during the Gulf War in 1991, where Marc was out protesting and making it a largely anti-American issue, which maybe has something to do with the way the Americans are looking at him today. And suddenly I saw Marc associating with people that I kind of tended to regard as left wing. And although I later came to understand Marc had a sort of strategy behind that association, and of course publicly protesting the U.S. involvement in Kuwait.

For my part, I had published an article, and had an article published in the London Free Press in 1991, the quarter page too. And it basically said, protesters backing a bully, and I basically argued that, you know, nobody supports war. The real issue is whether, you know, you support the right to take collective action against armed physical aggression, because unless you support such a right, your ability to peacefully govern yourself would be lost. And that leaves, you know, the people who use force against others in perpetual control, eliminating the possibility of peace altogether. So like, if you’re not allowed to strike back at someone who’s hitting you or your friend, then you just don’t have any rights at all, and the bully wins every time. And, you know, I don’t know that Marc would totally support my argument that I just made, although he might agree with some small parts of it.

But it’s a debate we never really resolved between us, and never really let it get between us, as is the case with some of the other differences I’ve mentioned. But the issue of Marc’s anarchistic leanings and his outright contempt for any world leader engaged in sort of military activities was demonstrated to me in the next upcoming clip that we’ll be playing in a second. And I recorded right here at the University of Western Ontario in the year 2000, which was already 10 years after Marc and I had split up. And here at the University, the Society of Individual Liberty, the International Society of Individual Liberty, held a week-long conference of which I was part. And so were a lot of very well-known people from Karen Selick, lawyer Karen Selick, editor Terrence Corcoran, Marc Emery himself, of course, Barbara Branden, author of The Passion of Ayn Rand and a host of other speakers and experts who had basically a common interest in individual freedom. And among the speakers was author and columnist George Jonas, whose columns appear regularly in the pages of the National Post. I was already familiar with Jonas in my early days of getting involved with politics, and at that time he was married to Barbara Amiel, believe it or not, who is currently married to Conrad Black. And George, of course, still writes for the National Post today. Well, here he was, here at the University of Western Ontario, had just finished a presentation on the subject of war crimes and international courts, which he likened to, quote, Al Capone sitting in judgment over Jack the Ripper, end quote. And then came the question period, and the first hand up, of course, was Marc Emery, and it went something like this.

Clip (International Society of Individual Liberty Conference, University of Western Ontario, 2000):
Marc Emery: It sounds like everything you described is in fact a crime against humanity. I think gushing billions of gallons or millions of gallons of oil into the sea is a crime against humanity.

I think a lot of what you cited, and I’m not sure your point, they’re all bad people. And I’ve been to trial 15 or 20 times, and I don’t fear my accusers, and I don’t know why they should. If they’ve got nothing to hide, then they should go to court. I’m thinking Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher should go to trial for what they did. They need to be brought to justice by somebody, or at least to account for what they did. They killed people, lots of people. They destroyed lots of land. They’re all bad people. The Croatian general is a bad guy. Anyway, we can get him to have to answer in some way for what they’ve done is a good thing. I don’t get your point. Every one of the incidences you cited would be worthy of bringing to trial.

George Jonas: Who’s going to try them?

Marc Emery: It doesn’t really matter. The theory is, no, it doesn’t, because the thing is, is the western media will be there, and if we have any faith in our so-called free institutions, we’ll just have to get the information in judgment.

George Jonas: It may not work that way, much as I sympathize with, much, I genuinely see your point, but unfortunately there are hindrances, and that is not going to happen. You see, if there was the slightest hope, silly as it is, that what you suggest would actually come about, and people from Castro to Pinochet to whoever would be automatically tried, two things would happen.

First, you could not possibly run a country. You may have to rearrange the entire world in some system that we have not yet seen. This may be a good thing. The best thing that would immediately occur is that the people who hold that court, who have that power to arrange, who run your theater, who run your guerrilla theater, will select a place. They will select the show that is being put on. It will not be the show that you now describe, but it will be a selected, managed show. And that’s why we have to, I believe, think about it very carefully.

Clip (Prince of Pot: The U.S. vs. Marc Emery):
Narrator: In the late summer of 1990, Emery was offered the Thursday afternoon drive-home slot on CHRW, the radio station of the University of Western Ontario. The program, called Radio Free Speech, would help to vault Emery into international headlines.

Marc Emery: It’s Kill for Peace, and that’s what we want, don’t we? More of that.

Musical Clip (Kill for Peace by The Fugs): Kill, kill, kill for peace. Kill, kill, kill for peace.

Clip (Prince of Pot: The U.S. vs. Marc Emery):
Narrator: What was supposed to be, as I mentioned, an open-format music program concentrating on music, new and Canadian, suddenly became a commentary type of program where he would play a song or two and then five or ten minutes of commentary and then maybe a couple more songs, two more commentary.

Marc Emery: See, what happened when they gave me a show? I was a nice guy, and as I learned more about the power of the media, I decided that we were going to really make a statement on this show. So I criticized everything. I routinely criticize all the media in London as the layabouts they are. Lazy, decadent, uninformed and rather uncaring journalists who are just making a paycheck and giving people as inoffensive and unstimulating material as possible. And I would criticize everybody. I would criticize the Gulf War. I mean, I was vicious. It was a vicious show.

Bob Metz: It certainly was. And you can blame Marc Emery if you want for my own presence here on CHRW today, because I think had he and I never met, I don’t think I’d ever have gotten interested in politics, at least certainly not in the level that I am today. It was Marc who handed me a copy of a book by Ayn Rand whom I’d never heard of before. It was Marc who initially put me on his payroll to basically, you know, fund my own political career once I’d caught the bug. And it was Marc who took the greatest risks, both legally and politically on the front lines and who always put his money not only where his mouth was, but also behind the voices of those who supported his causes in their own ways.

You’re listening to Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM where 519-661-3600 is the number you can call in either to make a comment or to make a pledge to the station this week. And of course we’ll be here with you myself right till noon talking about the subject of Marc Emery.

You know, I’ve heard critics of Marc who in their criticism of Marc often reveal a little bit about themselves. You know, they’re kind of almost incapable of conceiving that anyone would act beyond their own limited self-interest. They all see Marc as a self-interested guy when he’s almost exactly the opposite of that. You know, I mean how many people do you know who would give every cent of their fortune away to needy worthy causes and causes that he believes in? For a lot of people it’s just too fairy tale. They almost don’t believe it that it’s possible, but that’s exactly who Marc Emery is.

I’ve seen him do it for decades. What you see is what you get. But of course the problem often is you don’t often get to see the full context in the media. And surprisingly, you know, it’s been a while since Marc’s been in the city here and people have forgotten a lot of his history and there’s a lot of new people in the city who say Marc who was he part of the city? Yeah, he was born here and raised here. So just to give you an idea, one of the first issues he ever got involved with here in the city of London. And it was all about a bid that the city had made. This is again in the early 80s, but it was about the 1991 Pan Am Games bid. And London Free Press headline from July 24th, 1984, Pamphlet campaign aims to sink Pan Am bid.

And quote, Emery delivered 20,000 pamphlets to residents of London’s Ward 3 where he intends to run for Alderman in 95 and in Ward 2 and 6. And the pamphlet says, say no to the city council bid for the 1991 Pan Am Games because of course Marc was opposed to the city spending 110 million of your tax dollars to host a two week event in the city. Of course being justified by the building of facilities and stuff. And on the other side of that debate was none other than Gordon Hume who’s still doing the same thing today wanting to build art galleries and all sorts of entertainment centers. And this is what Marc wrote to his neighbors in the letter that he distributed. Quote, as one of your neighbors in this area, I’m very concerned about the potential financial disaster and or that this expensive project presents a project that will considerably increase household and business taxes by the late 1980s and early to middle 1990s. Many Londoners still have very little information on the implications of bringing the games to London. Increased taxes, fewer jobs, fewer resources for legitimate charities, etc.

All for the sake of having luxury sports facilities where no legitimate demand exists for them. And, quote, now when his media release announcing his activity was issued the following week, I was just stunned at the reaction. It was just instantaneous.

By noon of the same day, the release was delivered. Emery’s campaign was a top news item on every radio station, you know, in the London area. Evening TV coverage also accompanied the event. And interestingly, a survey conducted on air at the end of a two-hour radio debate on, at that time, CFPL on the Wayne McClain show between Marc Emery and then Alderman Joe Fontana, it revealed an incredible rate of support locally for Marc Emery.

And it forced a very reluctant London City Council to hold public meetings on the event. You know, I could spend the whole show just talking about that one campaign of Marc’s. And I could practically on everyone.

And after the next break, I’ll be going through just a list of things that Marc has done. But, you know, basically the whole Pan Am games, and he won by the way. It was a definite power struggle between himself and Gordon Hume. The whole thing was covered in Chris Doty’s documentary, by the way, Messing Up the System, which interestingly also Gordon Hume had removed from the London Public Library System. And under the guise of the fact that Marc swore once in it, and of course you can’t have any swear words under, you know, in the London Public Library. But nevertheless, the whole campaign, it generated editorial cartoons in the paper. And Marc reprinted his, he would hire editorial cartoonists and do his own. We put out a newsletter, Marc and I together, called No Tax for Pan Am.

And it actually got 1,100 subscribers and supporters within weeks. And I remember one time during a mail strike, it was our victory issue, and we wanted to get it out quickly. And it was a mail strike.

Marc and I went around town and delivered all 1,100 newsletters to people in their mailbox, locally without the help of Canada Post. And of course, in those early days, Marc’s name was very synonymous with tax cuts and with responsible spending and city government. And he used this association to launch his attempt to win a seat in city council, which was unsuccessful for him. I think he tried twice, but he came very, very close.

And I’m convinced that the next time had he stayed and run, he would have gotten that, won that seat. But, you know, I think Marc discovered that being in favor of basic services and wanting to look after sewers and the infrastructure just weren’t the sexy kind of issues that drew attention to him or got the kind of support he wanted. So, when we come back after this break, I’ll be going through just a small list of some of the political activities that Marc was involved with over the years. We’ll be back right after this.

Clip (International Society of Individual Liberty Conference, University of Western Ontario, 2000):
Marc Emery: $300,000 Canadian, we have given away to the movement in the last year, and that would be libertarian and cannabis activist groups. And some people here have possibly gotten money from me. In fact, most of it gets sent to the United States, because Canada, by comparison, is such a paradise of freedom when it comes to the drug war that, you know, the real disasters, the real help, the real, the real, they really need to Howard Roark in the United States when it comes to the drug war. There’s a Holocaust going on there with hundreds of thousands of people being rounded up, having all their assets taken, all their homes, children being taken away from them. That happens here in Canada too, but I call Canada friendly fascism. Here they don’t really want to destroy your whole existence, they just want to make life really inconvenient, which you can deal with a lot better.

Like, for example, I’m happy to be Canadian, more happy to be Canadian than you can imagine, and I’ve been arrested numerous times and lost $800,000. That’s how much I’ve had forfeited, $800,000 worth of stuff forfeited. And yet I am so grateful to be in Canada.

And I’m going to get back to all what I do, but one of the things that Barbara Amiel once said long, long ago, was that it’s a good thing Gandhi was in British India, I’ll tell you, instead of like Portuguese Angola or Spanish Mozambique, because they’d had just killed him in those countries, you only protest, you’re a dead man.

And the great thing about being in Canada is being friendly fascism is that you can do what I can do. And I’ve even had the last time I got convicted, which was in my 20th, 23rd count. I’ve been convicted of everything, and I’ve never won in court by the way, I’ve been convicted of every single charge, so it’s 23 different counts I’ve been convicted of in three and a half years and lost all this money, and I can still say I am so glad to be a Canadian, because I’ve never even been put on probation.

What I do with undoubtedly, in fact, I could get the death penalty if I did this in the United States, well I wouldn’t be permitted to do it, but if I were to try and get away with doing it, I’ve had over a quarter million seeds seized on these various times too. A quarter million seeds, well in the United States each seed represents a plant, and over 60,000 seeds of plants, the death penalty, you become a drug kingpin at that point.

So you become a drug kingpin, and yet the last time I got convicted, a judge gave a nice speech on my behalf, saying that if everybody, we have a particularly bad skid row called Hastings and Main in Vancouver, and he said it, and the courthouse is right there, which is a very strange irony, and he said that if everybody were smoking what Mr. Emery smokes, I can’t see this community being any different from Whistler, as it turns out he mentioned, or any other community in Canada.

He said I don’t think marijuana is harmful, but since the law is the law, and he fined me, I think, $2,000, which I get in the mail in about an hour.

Clip (Prince of Pot: The U.S. vs. Marc Emery):
Narrator: I had to wonder, what really makes Marc Emery such a high priority for the U.S. government? A clue can be found in that press release. DEA head Karen Tandy stated that Emery’s arrest is a blow to the marijuana legalization movement, and legalization groups active in the United States. In fact, the statement does not discuss Emery’s crime, but the nature of Emery’s political activities.

Speaker: I am the decision maker on his arrest, and I can assure you that there was absolutely no political motivation in that.

Narrator: But if there was proof of political motivation, it would mean Emery’s salvation. Under Canada’s Extradition Treaty with the United States, it is illegal to extradite a person in order to punish them for political activities.

Speaker: The question is, will there be sufficient evidence to convince the court of law that this is a politically inspired extradition request?

Speaker: Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery’s illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on. This entire statement is a political manifesto. It’s an admission that they’re after the guy for his political activities and not for his seed selling.

Bob Metz:
And you can bet that’s exactly what’s going on, because there’s all kinds of people in Canada who are selling seeds on the Internet and aren’t being bothered by the United States government. And if it requires some kind of proof that this whole thing is being politically motivated, maybe that’s part of what I’m doing on this show today. To make it clear that Marc is a politically motivated animal, he’s not motivated by any of the particular issues that he gets involved with, and I guarantee you if Pot was legalized tomorrow, Marc would be on to the next issue. He’d be doing the same kind of thing, the breaking laws and whatever he felt was the next issue that was violating individual rights. Marc does not believe in any sort of violence, never carries guns, doesn’t do any of that kind of stuff.

So it’s a very different kind of person that they have here. But if I just wanted to list some of the things, and I did bring a list, it’s actually pages long, just one line to each issue that Marc dealt with. And I could spend on each of those lines two shows just getting into the details of all the myriad of issues and conflicts and things that went on with them. But just go over some of these, a few of Marc’s campaigns.

We can call this Exhibit A and spell that EH, since it has to be delivered to the United States or something. But of course, I already told you about the Pan Am Games, no tax for the 1991 Pan Am Games, which saved London taxpayers over $110 million, because Marc won it. He also published a newspaper in 1980 to 81 period, and I remember his first editorial as publisher was titled, This is No Proper Constitutional Debate, in which he criticized then Prime Minister Trudeau, and the method by which he was patriating Canada’s new constitution, which hadn’t quite come to the country yet. He published another newspaper called The London Metro Bulletin in 1983, and I remember in that he once published a nuclear survival supplement. And it was literally a survival kit for people made for London, Ontario, in case the city was hit with a nuclear blast. And the reason that he did this was because the city had recently taken a referendum or a plebiscite on declaring the city nuclear free. So I guess that would stop the Russians from dropping bombs on us. But nevertheless, another thing he would go to the trouble of doing, I remember just for one picture in his scenario, he wanted to give people an idea of what London would look like if it was hit by a bomb.

And he actually had models built for aerial photos made out of, you know, salt and flour sets and all that stuff, and had professional people in the make them, and then they took pictures of that stuff to make it look pretty real for the paper. And of course, he co-founded and financially supported the Freedom Party of Ontario in 1984. He led and won dozens of anti-BIA municipal tax fights across Ontario. BIAs are those things called business improvement areas or downtown associations. They’re really tax funded.

They’re not run by the business people, and they’re just spending tax money. And they can be stopped if you know how to stop them, and he won dozens of them. That was when I learned that you could fight City Hall and win. He fought and beat Ontario Sunday shopping laws and subsequently served time in jail here at the London Middlesex Detention Center for, forget this, for employing too many people on a Sunday. Because after they loosened the laws up, the NDP was in, they figured, oh, we still got to keep things tough on a Sunday, so they made it against the law to have more than three people in the store.

Well, that’s how the whole world would look if the NDP ran it. But anyways, Marc was the third person in his store or the person that was over, and the police charged him, and he went to jail for that. I actually went and paid his fine to get him out early one morning. And of course, he unsuccessfully ran for London Municipal Council twice on the campaign slogan, responsibility, and government. And his major issues were always concerned with municipal taxes and infrastructure. He ran as a candidate for the Libertarian Party in the 70s, for the Freedom Party in the 80s, for the Marijuana Party in the 90s. And for Marc, it wasn’t about getting elected. It was for him it was always to get that platform, like he used to like to say, to shame the other candidates and parties for their activities and policies. He’d always been a strong enemy of censorship. And he, you know, he began by addressing the Fraser Committee on Pornography and Prostitution back in the early 80s. He fought Bill C. 169 in 1984, which was designed to censor non-partisan political opinions from being expressed during elections. They still try to do that today. He, of course, distributed thousands of copies of a publication called Censorship Alert, which was put out through Freedom Party and is still online today.

And of course, after my association with him, there was a two-live crew in the high times situations. I remember Marc and I visited the censor board in 1986 and interviewed its chairman, Mary Brown. And we were forced to view outtakes of all these gross films, including the infamous movie Snuff. And Marc was just this complete wimp, and he couldn’t even look at the screen, putting his hands over his eyes while I remained rather outraged that we were being forced to view this stuff as a condition getting our interview with Miss Brown.

But just some of the things we did together. Marc even saw some Eaton’s employees once in a picket outside of Eaton’s, and he thought they were union people when they were actually non-union people who didn’t want to unionize. So he helped them, and he did their literature, and they beat the Union certification drive coast to coast, thanks to Marc. And yes, Marc actually defended London police for their handling of the Gatewood October 19th Homecoming Party back in the early 1984, in which over 1,500 drunken drug students were rioting in the streets and destroying private property of homeowners on Gatewood.

He also contributed to the brief, or made a brief, to the Shapiro Commission on private school funding and private schools. He campaigned against rent controls. One time he got in a huge, huge problem with putting posters up in the store, you know, against the feminazis. I heard that term from Marc long before I ever heard Rush Limbaugh use the term. And basically feminists that he thought who were out to ban and censor all sorts of sexually explicit material or were in favor of, you know, political correctness to the point of silliness. Marc organized and presented the largest petition, and it’s still the case today in London’s history to City Council. This was, again, back in the early 80s, and it was to protest the self-awarded 32.6% pay increase for Alderman and a 43% pay increase for PUC commissioners at the time. I couldn’t believe it. Within weeks, Marc had over 5,000 signatures on this petition, and he and I handed it in together at City Hall. And we got the meanest looks from Joe Fontana. He protested a London garbage strike back then, and we did that through Freedom Party.

And how did he do it? Not by protesting, but by renting private garbage trucks and arranging the pickup people’s garbage for free and deliver it to a private dump during a strike. Because Marc just thought protests in general were rather non-productive.

He might as well do something productive while you’re protesting. He campaigned on his own against the folly of unprincipled majority rule and the danger of referendums, how they might be erode the tyranny. And he spoke at high schools and auditoriums all around the province on these issues. And he was always invited into the schools too, and always had something to say. He, of course, researched and published Freedom Party’s Calendar of Individual Freedom, and when that came out, it just drew written praises and reviews from the likes of Milton Friedman.

From the Heartland Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, the National Citizens Coalition, Walter Williams. Like, we got letters from all these people. And even Helen Connell, who was at the Free Press at the time and featured Marc’s calendar on a one-third page article in the London Free Press. So, you know, Marc could get headlines even just for printing a wall calendar. So whenever, you know, almost anything Marc did, that got in the news. He wrote innumerable articles and editorials ranging on subjects as serious as war and peace to subjects as light as his visit to Disney World. I used to edit many of his articles that he had published during our years of association, and by editing sometimes he’d let me add a few paragraphs here and there, or take a few out.

But that was the kind of relationship we had. He even organized a counter-strike against the Canada Postal Strike that they were having, rotating strikes in 1987. And apparently they had gotten quite out of hand, and there was violence and property damage. So when the rotating strikes, when the postal workers were back to work, we put strike more pickets out in front of the postal union while they were working.

And that really surprised a lot of people. It was a different way of conducting a protest. And believe it or not, he even protested right here on campus against the campus MDP and monopoly food services at the University of Western Ontario right here in 1987.

I remember being away on vacation at the time and coming back and finding Marc involved in all these campaigns on campus and off campus. He’s also advocated private policing and patrolling downtown streets and businesses. That was one of his big issues, and he was always into reforming the whole prison system and the way our justice system worked.

But interestingly enough, a couple of the things he did that were really non-political that some people don’t know about. Marc used to rent and operate London’s downtown kiosks along Dundas Street when they were still up there. And he was a huge, an ardent enemy of graffiti and vandalism of property. Apparently what he did was he rented these kiosks for a buck a year because they couldn’t afford to keep them up. And he rented them out, kept them up and charged advertising for them and made money. And he didn’t even have to do it himself.

He hired other people to do it. There was also a case once where Marc spent literally, and I’m thinking around 50,000 bucks, on putting together an index for Life Magazine. Because he found when he was working at his bookstore that there were indexes for Time Magazine and things like that, but nothing for life. So that was the, for those who don’t know, Life Magazine was one of the great news magazines of the early century, and particularly for its large size and photos. So he hired a guy, sent him down to the London Library to literally catalog every article in life, every photograph, every photographer, every advertisement, who photographed the advertisement, put it on a sheet, had those sheets taken to another person who input them on a computer. And lo and behold, he never went anywhere with that project. I think I still got it sitting in my office somewhere on five and a quarter inch floppies on this obsolete technology.

I don’t even know if we’d ever be able to get them back. But that’s one of the many projects he’d do. And he also personally indexed and mapped every parking location in downtown London. But these are just some of the things Marc gets involved in.

So we’ve got a break now. We’re going to hear a little bit more about Marc’s current problem and some of my comments following right after this.

Clip (60 Minutes, March 2006):
Narrator: Much of the marijuana crossing the border is smuggled by Asian and motorcycle gangs. But the U.S. government says Marc Emery is responsible for more marijuana in the United States than any known gang. Larry Campbell, a Canadian senator who formerly served on the drug squad of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is well aware of Marc Emery.

The United States considers him a major drug trafficker.

Larry Campbell: Well, if they consider that, then they got bigger problems than I can even imagine. There’s simply no way that he’s a major, major anything.

Narrator: What would the public reaction be here if Marc Emery is extradited to the States?

I think that there’d be outrage.

Narrator: Outrage that the long arm of the U.S. law reached up into Canada to press charges against someone many Canadians consider harmless.

USDA officer: Do you think you’re going to extradite him? Yes, I do.

Narrator: Do you realize what a political issue it’s going to be in Canada?

USDA officer: We have full respect for the laws of Canada, for the sovereignty of Canada. We respect their laws and they respect our laws and he’s violated our laws.

Narrator: Is everything in the indictment against you true?

Marc Emery: Everything that I could possibly verify is true. They have our customers, they have my methods and may have copies of my website even in there and those are all quite correct.

Narrator: He says to us that nothing in the indictment is false. Everything in the indictment is true. He admits that on camera.

USDA officer: Right. Well, we expect to prove that with his help to a jury in the United States and we expect to send him to prison for it. Prison, how long? Well, he faces conceivably up to life in prison. He has moved huge amounts of marijuana. The seeds are considered under U.S. law to be the same as marijuana plants and marijuana itself.

Narrator: He could get life.

USDA officer: He could get life.

Narrator: If you were convicted for the same crime in Canada, what would he get?

USDA officer: I have no idea.

Narrator: A lot less.

USDA officer: He’d probably get a lot less in Canada.

Marc Emery: Well, no one’s ever gone to jail for selling seeds in Canada and only two people in 35 years have even been charged. The most recent person fined for selling seeds in the year 2000 received a $200 fine.

Bob Metz: Yes. Isn’t that an amazing difference in consequences for the same act between two countries? Well, I found very interesting in the comment. By the way, those two clips you just heard were both from a 60 minutes broadcast, which was aired in March of 2006. So if you hear some of the stats and some of the clips being a little bit out of whack with each other, it could be because of the timing of them. And by the way, that also the previous clip you heard Marc talking here was also at the University of Western Ontario.

But interesting that the guy who made the decision to go after Marc in the States claims that Marc has violated, quote, our laws, meaning American laws.

But Marc wasn’t in the United States. He was here in Canada. So you realize what this means, folks? This means that you don’t even have to be abroad and you can be violating some laws in a foreign country and maybe they can just come and get you. Is that how it’s going to work?

You know, on any moral or rational grounds, Marc Emery simply does not warrant extradition to the United States. So, you know, if he violated our laws, as the USDA officer said, I’ll bet a lot of us have violated their laws in some respect, especially since a lot of American laws aren’t really any different from a lot of Canadian laws. Just the consequences might be to some degree. But what is different, of course, is how each jurisdiction in each country and even in each state and between provinces, it’s how they enforce their laws, there might be major differences. And as soon as you get governments talking about, well, you’re all going to do it the same way, I start to wonder about that. Many U.S. states, in fact, have decriminalized marijuana.

And, you know, if someone like Marc Emery can be extradited to the United States, then trust me, any one of us can. Did you break an American law yesterday? Do you know?

Would you like to find out the hard way? Because, you know, some laws even are against speaking out against marijuana laws. I could be breaking an American law right now and putting myself on record for it and maybe they’ll come and get me because I’m saying this right now. And all they have to do is plant a seed on me and I’m done.

You know, you’ve heard me talk about this before. I think the DEA is just a ruthless, immoral and unjust organization and its prosecution of drug offenders and Americans are the biggest victims themselves. Not just a taxpayer and all the people that are spending billions on a problem that shouldn’t even be there, but consider the California man who was sentenced to 20 years in the United States for working for the California government in growing pot plants. But the federal jury in the drug case was not permitted to know that pertinent fact during the prosecution. And I remember watching CNN and they featured many of the irate jury members who said they would never have convicted that poor fellow had they known the facts that he was actually working for a state government.

So I can’t see why it would be any different for Marc Emery. I mean if the DEA can do such great injustices to their own citizens, what chances a Canadian have? There are all kinds of people today selling pot seeds on the internet here in Canada. You know, Emery’s crime I think as far as the DEA is concerned is for daring to associate with Americans.

You know, like if you’re saying well Americans, we’re not responsible for our own actions, it’s Marc’s problem because he sells us this stuff and we buy it. You know, everything in the make believe world of drug prohibition is deemed to be something that it is not. Marijuana is deemed to be a narcotic even though it’s not.

A state government worker is deemed to be a drug pusher even though he is not. A seed is deemed to be a full grown plant even though it is not. And I mean if a seed can be a plant, why isn’t a plant deemed to be a million seeds?

And then each seed could be deemed to be a million plants who in turn could be deemed to produce million million seeds. I mean, just who cares anymore, right? And why they’re at it? Why don’t they just deem Marc Emery to be guilty of any deemed crime they may wish to create?

Because that’s exactly what they’re doing anyway. The DEA does not operate on the fundamental principles of just law and order. It’s nothing but anarchy and subjectivism. It’s systemically corrupt and it’s evil. And if you watched the CBC documentary last week, they were portrayed in a very deservingly, I think, sinister and devious light.

They just totally ignore the facts. Now as I understand it, the courts in Canada are expected to routinely rubber stamp the extradition request on Emery. The only person able to intervene, as I understand it, is the Minister of Justice. And I think that this will be a test for the Harper government, possibly to reposition itself within the Canadian political spectrum. This is a chance for the Harper government to demonstrate to Canadians and Americans alike that Canada is its own boss and that some Canadian laws are on a relative scale at least, far more just than American laws.

And if we get around extraditing political activists, especially Canadian ones, you know, you’ve got to think it’s got to be kind of tempting to a government that doesn’t want its own citizens criticizing it, because let’s face it, Marc criticizes the Canadian government a lot, so maybe they’ve got an incentive to want to get rid of them. But that’s my whole view. I didn’t want to get into the drug issue because that’s a separate issue really in and of itself.

And it’s really not the issue that this has now turned out to be. So finally, by way of both criticism and concern, you know, I sincerely question Marc’s self-sacrificing complex and the supposed value of his being a martyr to the cause. You know, by his own admission right here at the university on that clip that I played earlier, you heard how he was grateful that many protesters and revolutionaries in the past were spared the sword, thanks only to the benevolence of the jurisdiction in which they operated. Canadians are the friendly fascists, if you’ll recall. So this tells me that it’s the greater political and social environment that’s the determining factor in accommodating change, not the individual narrow issues that from time to time come up to the surface. Somehow I think that Marc’s personal notions of being remembered as a martyr are a little overly romanticized, almost two comic book fairy tale, and yet I understand the power of symbolism and heroic representation, and I do agree with its importance. It’s just that this ain’t the hill to fight that battle on.

Is the price worth the benefit? I mean, Marc, there’s a lot of other laws to break out there, and if you’re in jail, you can’t be breaking them. But I’m not the guy on the front lines on this one, so it’s Marc’s call. But what the rest of us have to remember and never forget, whether you love or hate people like Marc Emery, the freedoms we so often take for granted are more the consequence of people like Marc than of people like you and me, unfortunately. And maybe that’s the real reason Marc causes so many of us to feel so uncomfortable. But Marc needs our help. But Marc needs our help. He can’t do it all alone, and I think the rest has got to be up to us.

We’ve got to tell the government what we think and say this is not one guy to be sending to the United States, even tossing him in jail would be an injustice. But that’s where I’m going to leave it for this week, folks. And next week, when we return, we hope you will join us again when we will continue our journey in the right direction. Until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right, and think right. Take care. See you next week.

Clip (Prince of Pot: The U.S. vs. Marc Emery):
Narrator: But Emery was interested in more than making money. Like many young boys, he found adventure in comic books. Dick Tracy was an early favorite, and the square jaw detective would make an impression on him.

Marc Emery: Justice is a very key thread that runs through a lot of my early influences, in the same way that I was interested in the Dick Tracy comics, when I began to get into the comic book business when I was 11, 12, and 13, I came across old Dick Tracy strips, and Dick Tracy was an incorruptible person pursuing with an incredible zeal the pursuit of justice.

The concepts of law and order there, when I was young, were synonymous with justice. I believe that Dick Tracy went against the contemporary of his time. He had corrupt politicians, gangsters killing people in the streets. He used the aegis of law and order, but what he really saw was justice.