Canada’s largest journalism union announces it will campaign against the Conservative Party
Episode Stats
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Summary
On this episode of the Ezra Levenant Show, Ezra takes a look at the latest front cover of Canadian conservative leader Andrew Scheer's campaign against the Conservatives. Plus, why is there no Canadian Prime Minister on the cover of a conservative magazine?
Transcript
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Tonight, Canada's largest journalism union announces it will campaign against the Conservatives.
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I appreciate their honesty. It's November 16th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
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You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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Here's the front cover of a recent copy of Maclean's magazine.
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That's Andrew Scheer, the federal conservative leader in the middle there.
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To his right is Jason Kenney, the Alberta opposition leader who will probably be Alberta's premier next year.
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And the other is from left to right. Obviously, it's Doug Ford, premier of Ontario.
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And on the right there, that's Scott Moe of Saskatchewan.
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They're against the carbon tax and that's the theme of the story.
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Now, Maclean's magazine isn't really a thing anymore.
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They were once the leading news magazine in Canada.
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And Rogers, which owns it, has put it up for sale.
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I guess you could say it's sad, but that's what happened to a lot of magazines.
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This cover is an anomaly that they have any conservatives on it at all.
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I mean, seriously, Donald Trump ate our lunch in an afternoon renegotiation.
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But they called our disastrous negotiator God's gift to Canada.
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I've lost track of how many of their covers feature loving pictures of Trudeau on them.
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I guess they thought that everyone in Canada just loves Trudeau as much as they do.
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But the fact that they're being sold for scraps suggests otherwise.
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Back to the latest cover, the resistance with those five conservatives on the cover.
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I'm not sure why those leaders posed for that picture the way they did.
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I think it makes them look like a group of bankers or something.
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Almost the Libranos looking tough, stiff, and angry.
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My view is that you can never trust the mainstream media to be fair to you,
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These are covers of her before she was first lady.
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the media would feast on her beauty and her style.
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But she has not been on a single cover of a fashion magazine or a popular magazine in two years.
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The somewhat less compelling Michelle Obama was constantly on covers as first lady.
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And when Melania is photographed at all, the only pictures that ever make it to publication are those with her not smiling.
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We all have moments in the day where we're not smiling.
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There is a strong media narrative that Melania is deeply unhappy,
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that she is somehow trapped in her marriage to Donald Trump or something.
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The media speculation went nuts when she wasn't seen with Trump for a few days,
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only to have it revealed that she had been in the hospital with minor surgery.
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If you go on Google, you can actually find plenty of happy pictures with Melania and Donald Trump smiling at each other.
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But you have never seen them on CNN or CBC or the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star.
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The narrative is that she is either evil herself or that she is deeply happy and actually trapped by Donald Trump.
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Oh, by the way, has Sophie Trudeau been photographed within 10 feet of Justin Trudeau lately?
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Melania was out of the public eye for a week and the conspiracy theories went nuts.
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No such curiosity about Sophie Trudeau's invisibility.
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I think their grand family vacation to India at taxpayers' expense was really their last quality time together.
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I'm not in the gossip business, but the rest of the media is.
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They're quiet on Sophie Trudeau, though, aren't they?
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All of those points are my long-witted tangents about McLean's and photo editing.
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But really, I wanted to show you that resistance front cover that I think looked a bit daunting, a bit wrong.
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I don't think it looks good, but I could be mistaken.
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But what is not mistakable is how many people mocked that pose with satirical takes of their own.
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Again, that goes to my theory that it was a bad picture to take, deliberately embarrassing and mockable.
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And one of those memes was made by a big union called Unifor.
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And you can see the president of Unifor in the middle there.
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And that was tweeted on the official Unifor Twitter account.
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So not a lot of doubt about whose side that union is on.
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They will surely register as a third-party campaign group in the upcoming election to re-elect Trudeau.
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You'll recall that Jerry Diaz was actually part of Justin Trudeau's disastrous advisory committee on the NAFTA deal.
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But apparently, every single member of Unifor is now being conscripted into being a liberal, too, with their union dues, like it or not.
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Now, I don't know how many conservatives are working for Unifor.
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Probably a bunch, at least in Alberta, especially in the oil sands.
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They have to pay their union dues so that Jerry Diaz can act out being Andrew Scheer's worst enemy.
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And just in case it wasn't clear enough, Diaz retweeted it again.
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Unifor represents thousands of Canadian journalists, as in reporters.
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Those reporters cover Andrew Scheer professionally as a subject in the news.
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News reporters on TV, news reporters in newspapers.
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Here's the Unifor handbook to their reporters union.
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If you skip ahead to page six, you'll see a list of some of the news reporters who are part of Unifor, the union.
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I'm going to read three full paragraphs here, just so you see how widespread this is.
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Local 87M represents the bulk of members at some of the largest national and provincial dailies,
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including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, London Free Press, the Toronto Sun, and Hamilton Spectator.
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On the West Coast, Local 2000 represents members of the Vancouver Sun in the province,
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as well as at various Glacier, Black Press, and Continental-owned newspapers across B.C.
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Local 191 represents workers at five different newspapers,
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including the Winnipeg Free Press, Brandon Sun, Thunder Bay Chronicle, Lethbridge Herald, and the Winnipeg Sun.
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Local 145 represents members in Quebec, including Le Tribune newspaper in Sherbrooke.
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In the broadcast sector, Unifor is best known as the Local TV Union Local M1,
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represents global TV stations across Canada, as well as independent stations CHCH Hamilton and Check TV in Victoria.
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A variety of other vocals represent local TV staff at Bell Media, CTV, Rogers, Patterson,
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I'll mention another union in a moment that's just as bad,
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and they cover off a lot of the rest of the media, including the CBC.
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But basically, the reporters of the Globe and Mail and CTV and the Toronto Star,
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well, they have announced they're going to war.
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They are campaigning against some of the people they claim they're reporting on neutrally,
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And they're going to war on behalf of some of the people they claim they're reporting on neutrally,
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Now, obviously, they don't represent everyone in the Union.
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I can't believe they're all Trudeau lovers there at the Sun.
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But can you show me a single journalist anywhere in Canada
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who is actually doing anything about this outrage,
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moving a motion at a union meeting to vote against this, to rescind this,
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or running to be the president of a union local
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to put a stop to this politicization of the union,
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maybe even suing or threatening to sue the union
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for forcing them to campaign against someone they're reporting on,
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even starting a new politically nonpartisan rival union for political journalists?
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I mean, you can't even imagine if they had done the opposite,
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That's not even physically, scientifically possible.
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And if it did happen, there would be judicial inquiries
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about the independence of the media and election meddling.
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I mean, I just showed you in that little graphic by Jerry Diaz
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more evidence of journalistic meddling in the Canadian election
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than there is evidence of Russian meddling in the election, don't you think?
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Here's a list of the super PACs, to use a U.S. phrase,
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the third-party campaign groups who registered with Elections Canada
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to campaign against Stephen Harper in the 2015 election.
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and it's a list of any groups who campaigned in the last election,
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They were obviously campaigning against Harper last time,
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of anti-Harper super PACs called the Canadian Media Guild.
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to fight against the Conservatives in the election,
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This is the ordinary working journalists themselves
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you can't really trust their reportage, can you?
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they should disclose their conflict of interest,
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don't you think they should have a little asterisk