Shaun Newman Podcast - #560 - Adam Skelly

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

He is the former owner of Adamson BBQ which was shutdown during the covid lockdowns. Adam literally kicked down the door and kept serving people before he was ultimately arrested and his restaurant was shut down.  Adam's Give Send Go: https://www.givesendgo.com/bbq_rebellion Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Danielle Smith. This is Tammy Peterson. This is Alex Kraner. This is Curtis Stone. This is Tom Longo, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. How's everybody doing today?

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They deliver right to your doorstep. Caleb Taves, Renegade Acres, a little community spot here. January 11th, Ken Drysdale is going to be in Lloydminster. Yeah, you heard that right. the kids sake is live at the gold horse casino and we're going to be talking about the upcoming elections here in saskatchew and of course including our community so if that is of interest to you make sure you make it uh on the 11th 7 p.m. at the gold horse casino ken drysdale is going to be speaking

along with ken rutherford and a few others talking about uh upcoming politics in lloyd minsters so that is january 11th the deer and steer butchery it's a fast growing custom cutting and wrapping butcher located near Lloyd Minster, they focus on high quality locally sourced meets with unparalleled customer service who are proud to be from this community. They're currently seeking a dedicated and experienced butcher to join them, not as a employee, but as a partner. If that's you, reach out 780870-80-700. Now, let's get on to that tail of the tape. Actually, before we get to the tail of the tape, if I still got you, you still there? I think you're.

head over to substack we have Tucker Carlson tickets getting drawn here and there's two well there's there's three ways actually to do this so they're all getting drawn on January 10th I have five sets of two if you are a pledge on substack so sign up and then pledge it doesn't cost you anything it just means at some point in the future when we turn it on you're gonna pledge to pay X amount of dollars we worked it out it's like 31 cents an episode if if you do pledge the I think it's the $8. Regardless, the pledges have three sets of two being, we're going to have giveaways there. So you've got a really good chance to get in some Tucker Carlson tickets there.

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who we. Okay. Now let's get on that tale of the tape. He's the former owner of Adamson Barbecue. It was forced to close down during COVID, and he made headlines by kicking down the door and opening it back up. I'm talking about Adam Skelly. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Adam Skelly. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Oh, yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show. Now, I'm going to be honest, in the middle of COVID, the things I remember about you was I was trying to find it.

For life of me, I couldn't find it. And somebody will probably send it to me. But there was this amazing video of you kicking down the door to your place to like, I can't remember. Was it ACDC or something? It got like millions upon millions of views. And that's about my knowledge of Adam Skelly. So before we get into all the COVID nonsense and everything else, maybe we could just start with. who is Adam before all this went down and just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, sure. So I suppose I'll begin this in 2013 when me and my wife decided to start a catering company. And we did Central Texas style barbecue. So it started with us. I was cooking barbecue in the backyard and she'd be upset with me. You know, spend $100 bucks on a brisket to put on the smoker. She's like, what's the point of this? Fast forward three years. We're into our first restaurant. We've gone through this phase of having a

catering company that we operated out of a food truck. Very successful a few years. We grew the business to the point where we could afford to open up a restaurant, which was a real staple in Toronto. Like it was widely known as the top barbecue place in Toronto, maybe even the entire country. We serve biscuit, ribs, turkey breast chicken. We made our own sausages. A lot of cool sides. We had a bakery. We baked our own bread and buns. It's just an awesome place. People came there to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. So it's always big lineups on the weekend. We were written up in all the major Toronto publications.

We're on the front page of the Globe Mail, the Toronto Star. It was awesome. We were so successful that after the two years of having the restaurant, we were able to start looking at opening a second one. And we did in January of 2020. We started one in Aurora. And then a couple months after that, I opened up a third one in Atobico. And we were just on such a first one.

a role until, of course, the COVID lockdowns. Are you still operating a restaurant now today? No, they've been closed since the fall of 2021. Man, I tell you what, folks, I think, you know, between all these people who just had, like, redonculously successful businesses, and when you start talking about your food, I'm like, man, it just makes my stomach go, hmm, like to try some that. I just got to bring a bunch of you together and we could have a little cookoff here or something, know, so people could taste this forbidden, forbidden food, you know, that has disappeared from us.

That sounds like it was, you know, all intents of purposes, delicious. Yeah, yeah, it was a really special place, man. It was really like my life's greatest work up into that point. By the end of it, between the three restaurants, we had, you know, like over 15,000 square feet of dining area, 60 employees working for us. We were just cooking, you know, hundreds and hundreds of brisketes every week. It was immensely popular and successful. It was a really special place.

Do you think, you know, when you say it's your life's greatest work, I mean, besides the success, what was it about it that just like sticks out to you? You know, like, did you have an atmosphere you messed around with or was it like literally it was just the food? The food was just amazing. Food was incredible. It was the only counter-service style barbecue place that I was aware of like in the country. That was just like it was in Texas, right? We cooked the food. It took a really long time with the brisket.

The whole process is like a 48 hours. People would come in the morning when we opened and we would sell it until it sold out. Sometimes that would only be two hours to sell like 100 briskets at the counter. It was a really special place. People waited in line for hours. The dining room was always packed. We'd be kicking people out to free up tables for other folks to come in. Yeah, you could just look it up, Adamson Barbecue.

Well, now you have to look at the news from before. November where the story was spun into something different, but you can see anything before November of 2020, it was just rave reviews from everybody you visited. One of the highest rated restaurants in the city, actually. When you talk about, you know, like the brisket's taken 48 hours, you know, like 48 hours to like get to the point where you're selling it and everything else, you know, you look at today's society at them and like so much of it is like, I want it now. When you were initially setting off on this journey, did you already know you're like, man, we got to get away from this, this like junk food. Like, let's give them something that can absolutely hammer them in the

mouth. But that's going to take some time, you know, like, or was this something it kind of evolved? Like, who is the genius mastermind? You talk about being in the backyard with your wife and yelling about, you know, and discussing the different things. But like, was it, was it accident or was it like, know exactly what I'm doing. Well, we had taken a trip down to Texas, and that's where I got my first taste of like that real, real authentic barbecue. And then I went around in Toronto to the dozen different barbecue places that were open at that time. And none of them even came close to the atmosphere and the environment that you got down in Texas, which was nonpretentious. It wasn't about the cocktails and little appetizers and having a server come up to you.

It was like, just go up to the counter. You order the meat, say, give me a pound of this, a half pound of that, they'd slice it up for you, put it on a tray with some butcher paper, and send you on your way to eat it, like a cafeteria. And it was really cool to me because like a very humble way to serve the food. I don't like a pretentious dining experience at all. That kind of thing's not for me. And we were able to deliver that to people. So it was like real popular with a wide range of people, man, all different races and ages like to come in there.

Kids would want to come for their birthdays, just like the grandparents would. It was just something real low-key that I found served people really well, except for the people that wanted like special attention they wanted that pretentiousness they couldn't get that there they couldn't spend their way to that at my place either well walk us through then you know then covid hits as we all know in all of our stories was it uh immediate or was it a year in that things started getting uh funny for you what where does the you know you're this award winning restaurant you're you're doing like amazing things your food is just flying off the show you're off, then COVID hits. Yeah, so even before COVID, you know, landed allegedly in Ontario,

again, before Christmas of 2019, I remember I was tuned into some alternate media sources. And I heard, oh, there's a big, there's a big hoax coming. And I remember being at my wife's family dinner. And her little brother, who spent a lot of time on Reddit, he was talking about how deadly this thing was going to be. And I was on different types of things. of getting information from different sources, right? And I was like, I don't know. This seems like, this seems like it's going to be a bunch of baloney. So I was kind of tuned into it from the beginning. My staff, I had a bunch of young liberal people working there that I didn't really agree with my views and didn't want to take it on. But even like by February, March of 2020,

I was on Amazon buying a big bottle of vitamin D for all my staff and giving it out for free, just saying like, hey, I don't care if guys wear the mask. But here, take some of this. Let's get everybody hydrated. Let's get everybody eating. and healthy so that we can continue to serve people. When they did the first lockdown, I complied with it. There was just no resistance at that time. It seemed like there was no sense. We didn't really know where it was going, how long it was going to last,

that kind of thing. But we got hammered, man, because there's a big dine in place. So our sales are down 50, 60 percent. I'm laying off a bunch of my people, which is a horrible feeling as a business owner, right? You got these people. You're trying to give them employment and you can't anymore. It's awful. Anyway, they lift a lockdown.

We're coming up to November 2020, and the news is breaking that it's, you know, you can hear it ramping up again. The case counts are going up and the medical officers of health are considering doing another lockdown. And I went around, I told my staff, my friends, my family. I'm like, I'm not doing it again. There's not a chance. By this time, we had seen Ian Smith down in New Jersey open up his gym and refused to lock down. And I went good. You know, the way is starting, I'm going to get it going up here in Canada.

So I got together with a bunch of other restaurant owners from around Toronto. It was six of us. And we all agreed, like, you know, this is too much. If they lock us down again, we're all going to open up together. And we tried to get other people on board. Sure enough, they put us in a gray zone or whatever they called it in Ontario, meant that we were going to be locked down. I said, forget it.

We're opening. I put out a post on Instagram. Crazy hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people saw this thing. and we drew all the positive and negative attention. People thought we're going to kill the grandmother. And then people, you know, cheering us on for it. I think it was, yeah, November 24th or 25th of 2020. We opened.

Had a great day. Tons of people showed up. It was like a big rally. People were down there waving flags and cheering and some cops showed up and they gave me some tickets, but they let it continue. So I'm collecting these tickets the first day. And they didn't charge me under the Ontario emergency order. So I'm like, that's the,

ticket that I wanted to fight because that's where you'd have an end to get into court, right, if you're charged under that. They wouldn't give it to me. I asked the cops. I was like, issue the ticket. Come on. They didn't do it. So I'm like, okay, we're opening up the next day.

They issued a closure order from Toronto Public Health. And they had some jurisdiction to like placard my restaurant and take away their approval of me serving food. But they didn't gain access to my building or anything. So we came back to second day, served food again. I took those tickets. I was in violation of their closure order. Everybody ate. It was a good day. Peaceful. The cops were kind of swarming around, but they let us do our thing. And I guess by the third day, now we're getting a lot of attention. People are wondering what's going to happen. And Eileen DeVilla, who's the chief medical officer of health for Toronto, she signs this order claiming to be the occupant of my building. Now this is really interesting because I'm obviously. the occupant because I'm the one paying the bills in there and I hold the lease. But she said that because she issued this closure order that she has control of who can enter

and leave the premises so that she can invoke the federal trespass to property act. And that's what took it out of provincial jurisdiction, which is just like, you know, they can come and issue you summons and fines and try to take you to court. I brought it into federal jurisdiction and gave her basically criminal law powers. to arrest me for being there. So they they seize the building, they change the locks, they block me from accessing it. But this building, we had to split it into two parts

because we couldn't get the zoning permission to operate the whole building as a restaurant. So I had this back unit. And I guess they didn't get the seizure order for that back unit. So I accessed the back. And with the help of some people who showed up there that morning to help me out, we cut a hole in the drywall from the back unit into the restaurant.

And then when it came, oh, and then the, The police closed down the streets, we couldn't get any food in. So we had protesters carrying our boxes of food from our other restaurant to this one so that we could serve. Carried it like a kilometer down the street because we couldn't drive in. We loaded it all in through the back. We busted down the drywall between these units. We got our whole line ready to start serving. And then we had to bust open the doors from the inside because they were locked from the outside.

And by this time, the entire building was surrounded by police. There's a great video on Instagram of it. It's like 100 cops shoulder to shoulder around this big warehouse building. And we kicked out the door from the inside into the line of cops. There's like a big skirmish. That's probably that video that you saw. The people came in like rushed the restaurant. I'm in there just like, oh, panicking, serving brisket to people.

We went back out the back way to open up the back door to let more people in because a lot of cops were coming in that way. and one cop ran in front of me. He got in front of the opening and the door that we had opened. He said, hey, if you stepped through here, I'm going to arrest you. And that's how the day was going down. Like, I wasn't going to back down. I had to go all the way. And then the enforcement had to go all the way.

So I pushed through the guy. He arrested me for obstructing police. Drag me away in cops. Made me do a perp walk up the street, a couple hundred yards to a cruiser. Took me to jail. I spent two days there. the guys were some of the guys were nice some of them i don't know if they were ordered to or what it's like every time i was about to fall asleep they'd come by rattling on the doors so i never

slapped and they only they gave me like four pizza pockets a day so i'm like two days later i'm malnourished i haven't slept i'm like get me out of here i sign these bail conditions i need to get out i got my wife and kids at home i signed these bail conditions saying that i won't post or communicate on social media at all And I won't go within 200 meters of any of my restaurants. And if I do, I'm in violation of a court order. It's a federal offense. It's like straight back to jail.

So that was the beginning of the end for my restaurants because we didn't get a lot of support after that because a lot of people thought we were crazy. This was still pretty early, right? November 2020, a lot of people hadn't really figured out what was happening. It was before the vaccine mandates anything. Yeah, my staff were a lot of the ones, A lot of them were really not on side. So now we've got these crazy freedom loving people showing up at the restaurant.

Now we're in mass. My staff are still scared. They're like, this is all crazy. So they're not giving the service that's needed to these new customers that are coming in. My old customers stop coming in. I can't physically go to the restaurants or else I'll be arrested. So the whole thing imploded from there. Sales dropped the way off.

And I managed to keep the restaurant going until like the week before the, vaccine passports. And by that point, I was down to like eight people left working for me at a 60. Sales just 90% down. Nobody can eat in at our places. Nobody's getting served properly. I just shut it down. There was no more paying the bills. I wouldn't have made another payroll. So we closed down in the fall of 2021. When you look back on it, would you have done anything different? Yeah, but hindsight's always 2020, right? So I've been studying law because I've had all these charges to contend with. A lot more than just those criminal charges.

There's a whole slew of other stuff. And I'm just learning different things. I won't go into it too much. But the nature of the legal system seems to be for volunteers. We volunteered to act in a certain capacity. I'll just leave it at that. I probably shouldn't go into too much more about that. Why is that?

Well, it's kind of sensitive and I'm still testing some theories and it's a little, the information is just a little sensitive. I'm not even sure if it should all go out there to the public. Not confident on that yet. But with what I know now, I do things a little different. Like I have a private member association, my new business out here. I'm in Alberta. I run a farm. So I have a PMA that all my customers are under.

I would have done something like that. but at the time I didn't know, and I wouldn't have learned about all this stuff to do with law if I hadn't done everything you did. Yeah. So if I go back in time with what I had known now, yeah, of course, but I can't. So I'm really grateful for everything that happened. It's been a real learning experience. I learned about a lot of other stuff, too, like the nature of our food that we're eating.

Man, a lot of it's poison. We're literally poisoning people constantly. And almost everything that I served at that restaurant was poison. Like we're serving seed oils and all of the stuff. salads and we're serving conventionally raised meat that's just like pack full of glyphosate grain. And it's just, it's a nice experience for people to eat, but it's not healthy.

I'm trying to do something a little different on my farm here. But anyway, that's another. So, you know, not to come full circle, but where are you at now then? Like,

not physical location. I'm not saying you got to share that out. But like, you know, you talk off the very, very top, like my life's greatest work was these restaurants. And you move out to Alberta, I assume, because like everyone else, I mean, you're watching

one's going down here and you go, man, in Canada, the place to go is probably Alberta. So you come here and instead of starting your restaurants back up, which is your life's greatest work, you go to farming. So what on earth happens from the fall of 2021 to now, you know, Christmas, 2023? Well, anybody who was sort of attuned to what was happening with COVID was also started to wake up to what's going on with the food. And I just wanted to give my family good food. I think there was a lot more concern back at that point about food security as well, which may still become an issue in the future, but I wanted to solve that issue for my family. Now at this point, I've got three children,

and I'm trying to not feed them poisonous food. And I'm looking around to see where to buy that. It's hardly available. So we get on some land. You know, I owned a house in Toronto at that time. and, you know, I sold it and I bought a farm that was like 25% cheaper, so it gave us a little bit of flexibility. And the first couple years is we got the farm established. We got our first milk cow and we got our kids on like organic raw Jersey milk. They're all thriving. We start raising our own beef, finishing it on grass, harvesting our own meat. Awesome.

It's got hens out on pasture, eating organic food from the neighbors, like organically grown grains. It's just great. Like you can feel good about serving people that. Not only is it delicious, you know this is like providing some of the optimal nutrition for people. So I just sort of took that and ran with it. And everybody wanted the milk. So we got this. That's all in private.

So I'll discuss any of that. But everybody can reach that to me and talk about that stuff privately. But yeah, we started with one Jersey cow and a couple cows out on the pasture. And now I got a whole whack of them and tons of birds and turkeys and pigs in the woods. How old are your kids, Adam? My oldest is six, my son Riley, my daughter Willow's four, and my youngest son Charlie is too. Oh, yeah, so you're right where we are. We've got seven, six, and four.

We're just smidge further along from you. You know, you've, like, were you originally from Ontario? Yeah, yeah, born and raised in Trump. Born and raised. So you've really, you know, I think of like you identified a problem. Well, I mean, you stood up to the problem to begin with. Then got lamb-based it throughout all the media and everything else. When you talk about, you know, like hundreds of cops, that's the video I'm talking about.

I got to go search it out on Instagram because I'm like, this is, I remember watching that. This is insane. Like this is straight on Gestapo. And you've moved your entire family out from Ontario to Alberta then. What is the, you know, I'm sure there's a little bit of, I don't know, nerves, but exhilaration all at the same time. What has the change been like? I mean, you talk about just the food, but I'm assuming the lifestyle change has been, as a parent, been pretty cool. Oh, yeah, you go from like living downtown Toronto.

Well, not quite downtown. I was in East York, but, you know, a fire station was around the corner. Like, you hear gunshots at night and people burning their tires out. sirens wail and a car's honk and it's just not peaceful. I'm an hour northwest of Calgary in the foothills before the mountains and it's just, I'm on dirt road. You don't hear a lot. It's peaceful.

The most noisy you hear around here is from my animals when they're, you know, water is empty or whatever. It's really peaceful, man. There's not a lot of distraction out here. We're homeschooling the kids. The neighbors are all on the same page. Real Christian backbone of this area that I'm in here, rural Alberta. It's got lots of good people who are generous. hospitable, non-judgmental.

Whereas in Toronto, man, my own neighbors, after that went down at the restaurant, like crossing the street when I was walking down the road with my dog. We took the kids to the park two days after that pro, after I got out of jail. And like, I was getting cut eye. My wife was getting messages from people. Like your husband should die. You know, he should be someone, someone sent her a message and said,

he should be dragged out in the street like a dog, dragged out into the street, shot like a dog and fed to the rats. It's like, really? It's like the people who are just insane. Like it was in this vicious mom. And we came out here and it was like, you know, the stance was obviously appreciated by people out here. There was a lot more resistance.

Met some good people like Jesse from Without Paper's Pizza and Chris at the whistle stop. There's just a lot more people on the same wave like that here. So just I'd do that again, 10 times out of 10. It was a fantastic move. We're much more aligned with the people out here. It is cold, though. Yeah, it's cold here. I tell you what, it's been a nice winter.

I'm actually quite happy with the winter we've been having. I mean, you wait, sir, for another year or two. Well, I guess you've already been here. You already experienced the minus 40 from a year ago. when it's just like the darkness will not relent and it's minus 40 and you're like this sucks why do I live here again yeah and go come outside and milk some cows with me in that weather man holy smokes you know when you talk about you go back to um the start of our conversation you were talking about you know being at the family supper table and you were in certain chats and

you know some other guys are in different chats and you're reading two different things what's one of the things you know like uh one of the one of the i don't know i keep saying this to myself i don't know if it's a bang on true but i look at 2024 and i see like i see things getting worse honestly i just like i don't i don't like all of a sudden we're going to all be yippy cayet things are so great and so i've been i've been trying to um prepare the listener and myself for maybe um talking about a whole bunch of things that i think are coming down the point of pipe or at least things that are going to be consequences of things that are happening in different parts. What are some of the things you stare at them or do you even pay attention to it anymore?

You're on the farm, homeschooling, life's good. Do you go, oh no, there's things coming and we got to pay attention? A lot less than I did before. I moved out to the country. I'll tell you that. A far a lot less. The stuff that, you know, I'm like a 2020 truth. It's when I started realizing everything. So everything hits really hard. You're looking at a lot of information. it seems like a like everything is progressing so fast but I think that's as a result of all the information we're taken in and a lot of these systems have been a place for a lot longer than just now so yeah you can see it looks like you know there's world power trying to ramp up for another world war doesn't look like anybody's buying it um I guess they didn't buy attack in Germany

in World War two either but that still ended up happening so we'll see but I don't know I'm so attuned to the I don't know if you want to call it truth or like narrative online that kind of cuts through all the all the BS I'm not buying it a lot of most of the

people that I associate with are not buying it some stuff may happen I mean I feel good I feel secure I got it looks like they're trying to ramp up this World War III a lot of people aren't buying it the food

security issue. People have been talking about that a lot, but from where I'm positioned, and now networking with a lot of it. You know, certainly like the war thing is, is, is there. I don't know how much any of us can really do about that, right? Obviously, you know, I go back to the conversations I'd had with a guy about, you know, his red pill moment. And he said 9-11. I was like, okay, expecting to hear kind of the standard, like, you know, building seven, on and on it went. But what he said was, it actually was the emotion that made me feel. And I'm like, oh, what do you mean? He's like, I was ready to kill anyone. Like, just point me in the direction. Let's go fight these guys. And he said, I took a little full stock of that and was like,

wow, like, how did I get from zero to a hundred, right? And maybe it's more like a zero to a thousand. And so I was really interested by that because like, obviously, okay, when we talk war, it's like, well, how much can we really do about that? Well, one, you can monitor your emotions, I guess and really like what they're telling you and how they're telling you it and everything else. But I actually look at, you know, just when you're talking the, you know, fiat currency, whether it's gold, silver, Bitcoin, different things like that. Because, you know, people's mortgages, how they're dealing with the increases there, you know, going to the grocery store, food supply, energy security, all these different things, I guess. I, um, more so than, then, I don't know, more so than like World War III, I'm like, if World War three comes, don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not paying attention, it's just that I'm like,

I don't know, they've been trying to suck us into World War III now for what, like a full on year, if not longer than that, and nobody's biting. Yeah, well, you're not going to send your kids to die for Israel? Um, no, and I'm not going to send my kids to die for Ukraine either. I look at it and I you go well you know in one breath you know Adam you'd go well people are dying over there it's like absolutely people are dying over there but once again I don't know what rushing in there and losing a bunch of our children does to that right now you need grownups to be grownups and stop fighting one another but I mean that leads you down some paths of like well why is what's happening going on and I mean that's where you can go as far as far as you can go as far as you can go as far as you as you want or just peer into that rabbit hole. Yeah, I don't, frankly, running a farm is a huge investment of your time and energy. Like from the time the sun goes up until the time it's down, man.

I'm outside working with the exception of doing talks like this every once in a while. So I hardly have any time or energy left to expend on anything else. And the people that I'm aligned with out here, they're all just working on better systems, right? different ways of doing business and commerce, learning how to control our legal persons, so we're not at the whims of the next bunch of legislation that would impact us in a negative way or try to steal the nation's wealth. There's movements happening in law, in food, in commerce, in medicine, and health, many other industries where people are starting to see what's going on and check out

and try to make something better. From my perspective, having the opportunity to do that, I'd say that's where my energy is most effective. That's interesting. One of the, I guess I'm going to unveil the idea with you. I'm working on an idea called S&P presents ungovernable. And basically, you know, ungovernable means unable to control or govern, essentially. And I don't mean that as in overthrowing the government. I mean it is in like, we've gotten ourselves built into the system so much that you rely on everything, right?

You rely on government to do a lot of things, whether it's from kids all the way, you know, just to like the grocery store, right? Whereas like 100 years ago, maybe less, probably less, that wasn't the case. Like a lot of that wasn't there. And when I hear you talking about the legal system, I'm like, yeah, that's people need to understand how the law works. I need to understand how the law works and how to, uh, um, navigate that because that's a you know like devil's in the details they say and certainly if you're staring into that abyss uh a my hat's off to you because that that can't be exactly riveting work um i'm sure that's a lot of tireless nights combing through um legalities yeah yeah and i'm

in the midst of all of that so i've had an interesting opportunity to learn a lot because i'm involved in a number of different courts, Ontario Superior Court, Ontario Court of Justice, Alberta Court of Justice. I was, you know, charged criminally with these three or four criminal charges. I was sued for $187,000. When all those cops showed up that day at my restaurant, it wasn't by, like, police mandates. Those cops were hired that day as private security for trauma public health. And they hired them to secure. that building that they seize possession of, right? It's like a private property protection. And the city of Toronto suing me for $187,000 to recoup the cost of that enforcement.

It doesn't happen very often, that kind of thing. Somebody being charged with enforcement, like crazy. The city also came after me for a bunch of zoning and licensing issues that were minor to them at the time, the ongoing since 2016. I'd get charged 100 or 200 bucks a year for these little issues that we had with the zoning and licensing. That all became a big issue after I had my protest. The city came down on me, sent enforcement agents over every day to all of my restaurants, even the ones that were totally in compliance that were protesting. They want $60,000 to $80,000 for me on that.

It's just wild. So three, four different cases that I was involved with here. And we've got this constitutional challenge that we've mounted against the Ontario government. That's kind of why I'm doing these begrudgingly doing these media appearances these days because we're looking for crowdfunding support for that. The first three things I mentioned, I'm self-representing all of those. There's a big go-finding me at the beginning that somebody set up. I got taken advantage of by a bunch of lawyers. We went really far down the road on this constitutional question.

The whole thing ended up, it's already cost 400 grand, all the legal fees. Now I've abandoned the idea of using lawyers for any of my personal stuff, like the criminal charges, that lawsuit from the city. for 187,000 and all the licensing charges. I'm self-representing on those, and that's where I'm trying to just get a better understanding of my relationship between me and my legal person that is under the jurisdiction of the Crown and those lower courts, like the Ontario Court of Justice,

seems to be like an internal government, I guess you could call it a court, but it's kind of like an internal tribunal for government employees it appears to be because they only recognize charter rights, not any other human rights. So I'm trying to figure out what am I even doing in there? You know, my government employee, I do a function of government. Is that what Section 32 of the charter is all about?

I'll stop there. We've also got this constitutional challenge that we've had in the work since 2020. We have, I've been told it's the best, the best charter challenge. to date in the country. We have six PhD experts who are applying on a whole slew of things from the efficacy of the PCR tests, efficacy of lockdowns, cost-benefit analysis on all the public health measures, reasonable alternatives to vaccinations. Because you know, this whole thing is toast. The whole narrative is toast if we can prove that there was reasonable alternatives, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, Ivermectin. Ivermectin.

So we got experts. got we got experts opining on all of this. We brought this all the way through to a trial in 2021 to a hearing for the constitutional question. And the lawyer that I used, he charged me over 100,000. He didn't file a notice of application. He filed this notice of constitutional question in response to an injunctive order that the court had on me. And when we got to the hearing, after like it's eight months, you know, cross-examining the experts and submitting our evidence and the Crown having a chance to submit theirs and going back and forth. We get right up to the hearing and the judge is like, I don't have jurisdiction.

There's no paperwork. She boots it out of the court. Sticks me with $30,000 in court fines to pay for the Crown's cost because we lost. It took us like a year to raise that money. We refiled. And this was in in September of this year, we get a hearing booked. And my lawyer calls, he's like, oh, yeah, we got a hearing book for October. I'm like, yay.

This is 2024. We were like, oh, another 13, 14 months out. So this trials booked for October 2024, or the hearing, I should say, for the constitutional question. And then the Crown files a motion for security for costs, saying that because it's unlikely that we're going to win, I need to pay their costs in advance of the judgment. We have until mid-January to raise $32,000 for a hearing in October. It's like crazy. So we've started the fundraising. I've been on a bunch of these, you know, different podcasts and stuff trying to get some public support.

It's been pretty good. We raised $9,500, I think, so far. I think we'll get it. For anybody who's interested in or who thinks it's beneficial to have this constitutional challenge happen, you can find out on GiveSeng Go under Adamson Barbecue or my name, Adam. Why don't you, why don't we do this, Adam? Why don't you send me the link? We'll put it in the show notes. It'll be way easier than people trying to rattle it off because that's totally easy.

They just scroll down folks and if you want to help add them out, click on it. Where you go, give send go. Nice and easy. Yeah, and I'd like to, you know, there's some people because there was a big go fund me before. Keep on, I never started it. I never asked people to donate. It was all hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And by the time I got out of jail, I didn't even know it was open. I did my best. Look, I was a restaurateur. I don't know about hiring lawyers and stuff. I tried. These guys seemed like they were legit. I got hosed. I'm suing three of the lawyers who took, you know, for over $300,000 for all the inefficacy of all their work that they did.

So I'm trying to get that money back. On all my personal stuff, I'm self-representing on all of it. I'm good. I'm taking full responsibility for what I did. There'll be some consequences for me going up against the state. That's understandable. I begrudgingly ask for assistance with this constitutional challenge because it is, it does affect more than just me. if they find a charter violation that affects all the citizens of Canada because the case law will go across provinces.

It will open up a path to remedy for other people who have been negatively impacted by the emergency orders. You might know about the ruling out here in Alberta, the Ingram case, that found a constitutional violation. What we wanted because it wasn't on the evidence, but wins a win. They found that all the emergency orders were illegal. So anybody charged under the Alberta health orders, all the fines will be. reversed. All the charges were dropped, including mine, I was acquitted because I was up at the whistle stop. I got charged up there one day when we were served of food. My charges got acquitted

too. And then a bunch of the guys who were affected that have now started a class action lawsuit against the government of Alberta or the province of Alberta, whatever. And they'll probably be successful with that. There'll probably be some remedy found. So the same thing could happen if this charter challenge is successful. And that's important for, you know, people who operate as citizens of Ontario, So if anybody think that that's valuable, you can also, I don't even get the money. It's all going to this nonprofit group called Concern Constituents of Canada. Jody Ledgerwood is on the board there. She got a lot of attention for her coverage of the convoy in Ottawa.

Chris Weisdorf, who's been helping me with this lawsuit from the beginning, and there's a bunch of other people on there. Money goes to them to send her another account. I'm not on the board of that group. They basically have a carriage of the entire case right now. So they're the ones pushing it forward and they have to do like a public accounting for all the money because it is a registered nonprofit. So I think they're looking for a hundred that would get this cost order paid. We owe our lawyer Ian Perry. He's been very gracious with us.

We own about 20 grand and then the rest would go to finish the cost of the hearing and all the rest of the paperwork and everything like that. But if we just get the 30 grand, we get that paid by mid-January, then we get to keep that hearing date, which is huge. and then we can have this charter challenge in October. If you win that case, you've got to pay you back, I assume. I'm going for damages. Yeah, of course. But I mean, you have to pay, so I heard that correct, I want to make sure I got this right.

You have to pay their lawyers before you walk into court. If you win, they have to give the money right back, wouldn't they? Yeah, that's right. And if any big donor wants to get in and have some kind of a separate deal like if you're going to donate 50 bucks hey i really appreciate it i'm probably not going to pay back everybody donate 50 bucks although hey if you want to make it a condition uh you want to donate directly to concerned constituents of canada we could probably make that happen if we got some hero donor out there wants to sign a contract and wants to come in huge for us and help rescue

this thing uh yeah we can we can do a whole thing if we win we'll pay back um before i let you out here I'm just you're like it's funny this world I run into more and more people who are self-representing because they're like these freaking lawyers just you know shysters essentially and I had I say that and I should remind myself I do have lawyers who are friends who aren't shysters at least I don't think they are what have you learned what have you learned at them you know like because you know I'm like self-representation hmm that seems like a big mountain to climb. Is it as big as I think, or have you been surprised by, you know, standing there representing yourself? Well, I'll tell you, going in and standing in for myself at court

is way scarier than opening my restaurant in the face of all those courts. Going and just being seen as you in front of those people and talking, you know, trying to talk like you know what you're talking about is extremely challenging. That's been such a challenge for me, but very, very awesome. And I can't wait to keep doing it. I'm super excited because they're kicking my ass in there, but I'm learning a lot. And I am making more headway on some of these charges than I was before. You get to learn a lot of what's going on as contracts and we're dealing with those people and negotiating. And I'm finding it very useful. And I'm holding my tongue on this so much. because there's a lot of fascinating things about the law that I'm learning.

But it's just, it would be very irresponsible of me to be putting that out in the public just yet until I know more. And I found remedy. But there is a lot more to it than we think about the different capacities that we can be involved in. trust rules um commerce it's commerce happening in the courts are there securities instruments being created in those courts

bonds there's a lot more to it than we think and I'm in no way a teacher on it I'm a student so I won't try to teach about it well how would I ask this if somebody's going Adam you're you're basically giving me a carrot but you're not really where would they start where would they go to

or who would you start watching maybe? If you're like, if you want to dabble into this, where would they go? Just, you know, get like a law dictionary, like people look at like Black's Law. You just start clearing up these words that you're using. You know, start with person.

All the words that they're using in the courts. Look them all up. Do you know what? You might think you know what you're talking about, but do you really? Well, no, when you talk about a person, legal definition, obviously a human being, but the second part of that, a corporation treated as having the rights and obligations of a person. Counties and cities can be treated as a person in the same matter as a corporation.

So I don't know if that's the exact definition you're referring to, but at the end of the day, what should be eyebrow raising is the first one, you're like, oh, yeah, a human being, that makes sense. The second one's like, wait, a city and a county can be treated. the same as a person? How does that make any sense? And I assume that's what you're referring to and where you're like, you really want to start getting into it, start getting into some of the common language we use and see what it's actually meaning. Yeah. Yeah, I find myself doing that all the time now. Just take a look in a law dictionary and look, oh, what does that word really mean? Oh, it's not really what I thought. What does the court see me as? What kind of person does the court

see me as? You see the guy standing in front of them or am I just taking some? Or am I just taking some office or title or position. You know, I'm not quite sure. I'm trying to figure it out. That's interesting. Yeah. You know, you think, well, in my life, I've been in the courthouse maybe three times, never as the person's standing trial or what have you, always as an observer.

And, you know, a guy should really, in the way our world works, that's a place that we probably all should visit just a smidge more. Well, okay, I think we all realized during COVID that, you know, that these doctors, we probably gave them a little too much credit. Like, they're not, they're, are they looking out for our real health, or are they following a set of instructions from some institution? What about the teachers? Are they really focused on educating our children in the highest way?

or are they following a set of instructions from an institution? Are we going to pretend like that's not happening in law? I would agree. I think it stands to reason, right? I would agree with that. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, you want to take a thing, you want to take care of yourself,

you just have to, you know, pick up some books, read some, there's things you can do in your life to help navigate. I call it the Rocky Waters. I don't know what else to call it. And I feel like we're all, some days I feel like I'm a, dingy out in the middle of the ocean, but regardless, there's things you can do to help,

uh, you know, navigate some of the, the rocky water. And the thing is, is the more you stare at it, the more you think like this stuff happens by chance or that like it just, you know, spontaneously occurs. But where you sit, you're like, actually, no, there, you, whether I'm talking and just like watching what's going on or reading some of the world leaders, you can see where we're being led to. So you can actually see a whole bunch of the pitfalls that are going to come in the next five years, maybe it's a year, maybe it's 10 years. You're going to, you can just see it. We're being led this way.

Hmm. Okay. This is what's going to happen because this is if you do just simple deduction of like if this happens, this is an occurrence that's going to come out of it. And when it comes to law, you know, if you're going to take things more into your own hands, you best know how you're protected and how you're not. I think that's a good lesson or a good thought for most of us. Yeah, like as it pertains to, oh, and some people might appreciate the metaphor there of the boats who are kind of on the same wavelength as me.

But yeah, it's like as it comes to our rights, you know, some people from a broad picture would say that our rights are whatever we declare them to do, right? But then you look at our, oh, we have our charter of rights and freedoms, but who are the, those four and what does section 32 of the charters say about both those rights and who they apply to and you know is there more to it than the rights that were just granted by the government of Canada or the government of the United States or whatever is there more than that that we're that by the way we're acting are we diminishing ourselves and you would say yes I can't prove anything but I'm trying. Well, I tell you what, I appreciate you hopping on.

If people want to support upcoming while keeping it rolling, what's the date they have to, like, what's the final date to have the money paid? I think it's January 20th. All right. So in the show notes, folks, there's going to be a link. If you're willing or interested, want to find a little more. Click on that.

I'm sure there will be a description and everything there. and you can do that either way Adam, thanks for hopping on and doing this. Appreciate you what your guys are trying to do and continuing to do. And man, I hope someday down the road we cross past so I can try some

because I want Adam Skelly to cook for me, folks. That's what I want. I'm like, how can I have this award-winning guy sitting in Alberta without a restaurant? Come on. Like, I mean, Alberta should be begging you to start one. Maybe someday if I ever get my hands soft, of shoveling shit here on the farm.

Right on, Adam. Well, thanks again for doing this. And best of luck out on the farm and into the new year. And, well, hey, man, have fun. Have fun parenting with three young ones. That's, you know, busy days, but a lot of fun as well. Yeah, no doubt. And, Sean, thanks for giving the opportunity here to come on and blab with you. And to talk about this constitutional thing, the constitutional challenge. I do appreciate the time you've given me here.

audience you've let me speak to it's as much appreciated man well next time we'll have you in studio and uh we'll share some of that jersey milk you can bring some of that in i'd take i'd take that any day of the week you know anyways man hey thanks again for doing this and uh well we'll we'll stay in touch for sure if there's any uh any updates you need to give the audience or or just want to pass along we can always uh we can always share some of that uh throughout the year very good Thanks, Sean.