Viva Frei on the downfall of civil liberties: 'It's a world gone upside down.'

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Tonight, a heart-to-heart with one of the country's leading civil liberties advocates, a lawyer by trade, who is in exile because of the pandemic.

There are not a lot of lawyers left who care about liberty. For most, it's just a job. They have to pay the bills. Frankly, many lawyers don't want to take cases that are too spicy because it might disqualify them from a government contract. Certainly, they would lose the opportunity to be appointed to the bench and serve as a judge.

Because of this, in the early days of the pandemic, many Canadian lawyers were averse to representing an unvaccinated person or someone who was defying the lockdowns, which makes it an even greater pleasure to discover or rediscover the lawyers who do care deeply about civil liberties and are as troubled by the world as the rest of us.

One such lawyer, turned video blogger, has his roots in Montreal — perhaps the most locked-down city in all of Canada. From 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. was its typical curfew, whether you were vaxxed or not, whether you were sick or not.

The civil liberties inferno was outrageous and too few lawyers cared. But this lawyer, David Freiheit, known online as Viva Frei, was pained deeply by it all. He joins Ezra tonight from Florida, his current residence after his refusal to abide by lockdown orders forced him to abandon his position at the bar in Quebec and depart from Canada altogether.

His licence to practice law is one of the many things he's had to sacrifice but his passion for liberty has not diminished: "I've gone from being a lawyer to just being an internet legal critic, loudmouth guy who screams to the clouds at what I think are the most outrageous injustices I've seen, at least in my lifetime."

GUEST: Viva Frei, Canadian lawyer and political content creator.