8 Years Later Phil Demers is Still Being Sued by Marineland

You and I would have met eight years ago, just about to the date, in a few months. Because it will be the eight year anniversary of my being sued by Marine Land of Canada for plotting to steal a walrus, which would have been in February of 2013. It's been so long. I hardly remember how we were introduced. I can tell you the story. Please do. When I was sued by Marine Land, the headlines international were quite absurd. One of which in the said, the Kanye West of animal training gets sued for 1.5. I tweeted to you saying, dude, they're calling me the Kanye West of animal training. He's like, they're calling you the what? But straight to my DM, he said, dude, you got to come to LA and we got to talk about this. I'm like, dude, I'm on the next flight. Let's do it. Well, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for dolphins and orcas. I think we're going to look at it. I've said this before on the podcast with you, but I think we're going to look at it in the future the same way we look at slavery. I think there makes me sad just talking about it. I think I think they're as intelligent as we are. I think they're just different. And because we don't understand their language, we we think it's okay. And I think it's it's beyond fucked up. Watching your documentary made me cry, man. It made me really cry when I was watching that dolphin get force fed. God damn, that's hard. When they're holding his mouth open and shoving fish in his throat, I'm like, fucking Christ. What what is that? Imagine a person. Imagine a person. I mean, you're dealing with an animal that is a cerebral cortex. It's 40% larger than a person's. Can I tell you the story of that animal? His name was Sam. He came in an old male dolphin wild caught from Russia. And when we received him, you only had to take one look and realize this animal is going to reject captivity. He's a fucking warrior. He's got scars up and down. This is not an animal that's going to accept being told what to do by idiots like me. And you just saw he rejected captivity. We did everything we could to keep him alive. And you know, if you notice in the documentary, I was told to turn the camera off. And I said, No, no, this is important. I knew then that a lot of the documentation of the things that I was taking could prove useful in the future. I didn't have an agenda when I was there. Remember, I was a company guy. I well, you were a kid and I was a kid. It's what's crazy about your documentary, the Walrus and the whistleblower. I'm getting emotional already. I know I came to the right place, Joe, you've always been the biggest support and the fact that you answer all my calls, you're one of the last and I just know I'm in the right place. This is my safe place. And thank you for that. Well, I'm invested. I'm invested in you and your thing in this this this project and the fact that Canada stepped up and made all orca and dolphin captivity illegal. And that doesn't exist without you and I having had done this it it the backstory to that is it was an interview with you and I where the senator's son approached the senator and said, Is there any way we can help this guy? And then suddenly, private members bills was introduced. I got a call saying, Hey, we're looking to work on something here. And I was like, Absolutely. And that's how the bill got drafted. It doesn't exist without you and I haven't spoken. So in every which way I have you to thank and the world over has you to thank because the influence that you have had on the passing of this law and now it's progressing to other countries other countries are consulting with. I'm actually being witnessed in Australia. I submitted some witness testimony and whatnot to support the similar ban. And also, I'd like to take the opportunity to take this time to say that there's more laws coming in Canada. The next law that's been introduced by the same senator, Senator Murray Sinclair, who's actually retiring, but he now has introduced what's called the Jane Goodall Act, which is now going to extend animal protections and ban the capture of great apes, big cats, because there's you know, there's some places in Ontario, in Canada that are awful that they just breed these cats rapidly. And it's just, it's just not the place to have them. They're riding elephants at a place called African Lion Safari. You're next. Always laws are coming. So Joe, in every which way that I get attributed with having done all this stuff, I attribute it right back to you. That's the influence of this show. I knew something eight years ago when I was desperate and looking for a place to where I can speak unimpeded. The media doesn't allow me that with the lawsuits and everything on me. A lot of places won't talk to me because they get threatened to be sued. You kept talking to me. And so we're here today in celebration of every which way that you have influenced both my life and the way that we can continue to influence the state of the fucking planet for these majestic animals. I mean, really, let's it doesn't take a lot of thinking to realize that dolphins porpoises and whales have, like you say, a higher intelligence. I'll even challenge to suggest that they may be even more emotionally intelligent than we could ever appreciate. I mean, there's a chance that they're more intelligent than us. So when you say that what watching that dolphin get force fed, I have 12 years of that to process and to discuss and to talk. And it's invaluable that my experience that I have these open channels to speak and I have them because of you. So I'm thank you, Joe. I'm honored and I'm happy. And you've been here. I mean, if we're going back eight years, this is literally the beginning of the podcast when it was just you were one of the first groups of interviews. I was just kind of talking shit with my friends most of the time back then. Episode 425. It didn't have I mean, it wasn't it didn't have an impact on culture. It was just a silly thing that we were doing. And so to talk to you about something that meant something to me and to see that you've been just fucking swinging, duking it out all these years. When you watch the documentary, you get a real sense of how long this has been a part of your life. It's crazy. You've even got you're even rocking the glasses old man style. Now, I bought these. You've been coming on forever and now you're rocking. I'm so great. Now you're rocking glasses like this. It's really nuts, man. When you look at the the overall time spent battling this out, I can't think of another person that's more on the forefront of marine mammal captivity than you are. And again, I have for you to thank for all of that. I have you to thank. I wouldn't have I would just been just talking shit about it. I would I mean, I never thought that it would have an impact. I didn't you know, it wasn't a plan. I knew the second you DM to me, I thought this is it. This is my chance. And then years went by and it occurred to me. I'm going to have to go again. This doesn't end. And I came back and then the bills start piling up again. And then I got to come back. This is now the fifth time I've been here. Joe, I will say this. That's crazy. I have the most influential podcast in the world. The fact that I've had to come here five times will tell you just how much abuse that it is that I've endured, systematic abuse through both the courts. You know, Marine Lands lawyer Andrew Burns is really good at doing what he does, which is abuse the system. And you know, by virtue of I'm still here accruing inordinate amounts of of debt for a lawsuit that can easily be be resolved. It's a trespassing lawsuit. I never I never stepped foot on the property. There isn't an iota of evidence that I've been presented in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against me that I'm able to defend against. There's nothing. It's all fiction. They're literally created a bullshit story about me and are using the courts to in every which way silence me. What's crazy is during this time, the owners died from the time you came on the podcast way back eight years ago till now. The owner's now dead. The guy that you were calling out on the podcast back then and the guy who's in the documentary you see him and you see his just his demeanor and his attitude and everything about it. It's just and now the fact that he's gone, but yet the lawsuit rages on. And that's what screams that this is now personal lawyers. The reputation is everything. Marine Lands lawyer thought this would go away a long time ago because it's not. And because I've taken a lot of options away from him as I continue down this very long process, I think he's getting nervous a little bit. This has become a hallmark lawsuit in Canada. A lot of eyes are on what he's doing and there's going to be a lot more after this. And in a lot of ways, he's making himself famous for all the wrong fucking reasons, but I'm happy to be on the show to help make that happen. There's no good side to keeping those animals in captivity. There's no good side to be running a place like Marine Land. There's no upside. It's I mean, the video alone, if you watch the documentary, the video alone of the damage their skin when they're using chlorine and seeing those animals bleeding and seeing those animals getting force fed, there's no defending it. You can't defend that. It's not. And we have this concept of intelligence based on our own ability to manipulate the environment around us. Our concept of intelligence is based on our ability to build things and drive a car and fly a plane. And that's how we we need to see manipulation in order to to to believe that it's intelligent life. But these animals speak in a way that they've been I mean, Lily was trying to decipher dolphin intelligence in the 1960s. They still don't know what the fuck they're saying. They've determined that there's some sort of they have dialects and they have the different accents for different regions, but they don't know what they're saying. They still don't. Insanely intelligent animals. I don't want to I don't want to say give up on the idea of interpreting language necessarily. But the idea that we can attribute words to their sounds is just not it's not the thing to do. And again, I'm not gonna take anything away from scientists are doing this, of course. But I can I can attest that in my experience, being there, the things that I took note of in in terms of how they communicated, I can tell you when a dolphin was sad, angry, excited, all of these things I can tell you, I mean, I can I can attribute what I believe that to have been now in my experience. Yeah, I would say that that holds true. Yeah.