Almost 100 mayors of major cities have come together like the mighty avengers, except none of these cats have any superpowers. Except they do have one thing in common: they ve all committed to cut their city s fair share of emissions in half by 2030 and are taking bold steps to make this happen.
00:00:00.000move over wef and un there's a new group of elitists that want you to alter your diet
00:00:23.380all in the name of climate change it's wednesday july 27th 2022 i'm david menzies and this is the
00:00:33.200ezra lavent show shame on you you censorious bug
00:00:40.680you know folks i used to think that the mayor of a city had certain specific duties when it came to
00:00:55.940running a municipality which is to say make sure the garbage gets picked up the drinking water is
00:01:03.120clean the snow is removed from roads potholes are fixed in the summertime and so on this might
00:01:10.660seem to be pretty mundane stuff but it affects residents directly in a profound way i mean if
00:01:18.560the garbage does not get picked up the city will soon resemble a cesspool after all so i was most
00:01:26.640curious to come across a document called c40 cities subtitled quote a global network of mayors taking
00:01:35.440urgent action to confront the climate crisis and create a future where everyone can thrive
00:01:42.960end quote now as an aside i'm so confused here are we currently living through a climate crisis
00:01:50.540or a climate emergency or is that a climate disaster i mean can't the greta tunberg acolyte settle on
00:01:59.500one consistent scare word when it's attached to the word climate how dare you but back to the c40 which
00:02:08.860is not thankfully a type of explosive rather it is a collection of almost 100 mayors of major cities
00:02:16.400who you know jet set to copenhagen or wherever and assemble like the mighty avengers except none of
00:02:24.800these cats have any superpowers here's an excerpt from their pr video i wonder how much carbon was
00:02:33.440used to produce this opus i hear people say your future is bright but after this past year i wonder if
00:02:41.920that's still true when i see the news sometimes i'm overwhelmed what's going to happen to my family
00:02:48.320to our planet to the animals to my friends to me make no mistake we are in the midst of the fight for
00:02:57.540our lives for our planet our people and our shared future around the world we are grappling with an
00:03:06.380unprecedented pandemic confronting fires on our hillsides floods in our streets and entrenched
00:03:14.660systemic inequality a global crisis of this magnitude one that transcends borders politics and ideology
00:03:24.480requires nothing less than bold united global action to meet the urgency of this moment mayors of the
00:03:34.700world's greatest cities know that our communities and residents are already feeling the effects of the
00:03:40.680climate emergency first hand they know we cannot wait this crisis out so instead they've raised their
00:03:47.840ambition by committing to cut their city's fair share of emissions in half by 2030 and are already
00:03:54.400taking bold steps to make this happen mayors are delivering on a shared vision for a green and just
00:04:00.600recovery from the covet pandemic that puts equity and inclusivity at the heart of our decision making
00:04:06.840prioritizes investing in crucial public services creating good green jobs supporting essential
00:04:14.280workers ensuring access to healthy and sustainable food and giving public spaces back to people and
00:04:21.120nature mayors know that cities can't do this alone which is why they are working collaboratively with
00:04:27.360young people labor leaders heads of state businesses investors and citizens if we all work together we are not only capable of leading us out of the climate crisis we will build a world where everyone is included and everyone is safe
00:04:46.520where we can look our kids in the eye and tell them that their future is indeed bright
00:04:54.120the actions we take this decade starting today will determine the future of humanity and all life on our planet
00:05:04.680together we can we must change the trajectory our planet is on join us
00:05:12.360hmm cutting emissions in half by 2030 a in less than eight years right well as ex-ontario premier kathleen wynn would say
00:05:27.960that's a stretch goal and that last line in the video about changing the trajectory
00:05:35.240our planet our planet is on you know that sounds like a job for superman not a bunch of very ordinary politicians
00:05:42.920i mean come on toronto mayor john tory is somehow going to change the planet's trajectory give me a break
00:05:52.120i mean back in 2020 it took mayor milquetoast three weeks to clear a bunch of hobos operating under the banner of
00:06:01.160afro-indigenous rising out of nathan phillips square and once they were booted from the grounds of city
00:06:08.600hall they merely marched northwest to dufferin grove park and turned that parkland into a hellhole for a
00:06:16.520good chunk of the summer too we were there for cleanup time check it out oh i'm sorry ma'am i'm just
00:06:23.800reading your breasts what does that say exactly it says no justice no peace
00:06:28.440no justice no peace no justice no peace no justice no peace it's not on behalf of
00:06:34.120anybody else it's not necessarily helping the situation because this is what they're here to do
00:06:40.840did they trigger you get out of here get out get out get out of my face get out of my face
00:06:46.360you're always occupying every space in this yeah mayor tory can't even take care of his own backyard
00:06:57.480but he wants to save a planet that doesn't need saving in any event under the descriptor what we do
00:07:06.840the four-pronged agenda of these mighty mayors is set out one raising climate ambition
00:07:16.280two influencing the global agenda three building a movement and four scaling up climate action um
00:07:29.560call me a nitpicker if you must folks but what exactly is the difference between raising climate ambition
00:07:36.920and scaling up climate action and what's this obsession these mayors have
00:07:44.440with climate climate climate gee i think i'm about to have a jan brady moment here marcia marcia marcia
00:07:53.080alas it only seems farcical until you read the nitty-gritty fine print
00:07:58.120for example under scaling up climate action there is a notation that 30 percent of global emissions come
00:08:05.640from food systems that one-third of food produced is wasted and that 14 cities have pledged to reinvent
00:08:15.240their food systems by 2030 gee there's that new doomsday date again a 2030 didn't we learn anything
00:08:25.000from the mayans who predicted the demise of the planet as of 2012 how did that go yeah the mayans could see
00:08:33.880some 500 years into the future but didn't notice spanish conquistadors sailing into their neck of
00:08:41.080the woods in real time but i digress the c40 people say quote the global food system is broken end quote
00:08:52.200well we are seeing prices rise during this period of stagflation to be sure
00:08:57.080much of that is due to idiotic policies by both the biden and trudeau administrations depending on where
00:09:05.160you live but to call the system broken that's a stretch yet because it is allegedly broken
00:09:13.800it therefore must be fixed even though as henry ford once said if it ain't broke don't fix it
00:09:20.440in any event the c40 mayors are big on quote integrating food policies that reduce greenhouse
00:09:28.680gas emissions and increase resilience end quote and then there is this little nugget quote support
00:09:36.040an overall increase on healthy plant-based food consumption in cities by shifting away from unsustainable
00:09:46.920unhealthy diets end quote okay folks you see where this is going don't you emissions are bad plants
00:09:54.680are good so it's time to eradicate those flatulent and belching cows and pigs and lambs and whatnot
00:10:02.280because those delicious critters are just so bad for the environment and the planet the c40 mayors
00:10:10.200would rather we quote align food procurement to the planetary health diet ideally sourced from organic
00:10:20.280agriculture end quote the planetary health diet who's responsible for this orwellian menu
00:10:28.040is it the united nations or the world economic forum they won't say it out loud of course but a key
00:10:35.240piece of the climate food agenda is eliminating meat production in the name of saving the planet and
00:10:44.840indeed look what is happening in the netherlands right now the dutch government has declared war on
00:10:51.160its own farmers by declaring war on nitrogen a key element when it comes to farming and here in canada
00:10:59.480the justin trudo liberals are proposing a policy that will require farmers to use less fertilizer that
00:11:07.400will mean lower crop yields less profits higher prices for you and me and more family farms going
00:11:15.640out of business oh and it should be noted that this proposed policy wasn't concocted by agriculture canada
00:11:23.400rather it's the handiwork of environment and climate change canada all in the name of making canada a zero
00:11:32.440emissions nation in the future in fact farmers and agriculture industry groups they weren't even
00:11:40.360consulted and hey what would they know about growing crops and raising livestock after all and consider this
00:11:49.000this i don't think a single week has gone by this year without yours truly coming across yet another
00:11:58.040glowing article pertaining to humans eating insects here's a bbc feature from july 20th it's entitled
00:12:07.640could grasshoppers really replace beef but all you really need to know about the article appears in the
00:12:15.160subhead quote for most people in europe and the us the idea of eating crickets and grasshoppers can seem
00:12:22.840revolting but they are a popular snack in parts of africa and asia not only are they packed with nutrients
00:12:33.000but they are less harmful to the climate too end quote i'm sorry but the sad truth is this bugs are eaten in
00:12:41.960third world nations not due to desire but rather due to necessity are you trying to tell me that a
00:12:49.560ugandan would take a mealworm sandwich over a cheeseburger if given the choice come on but with the c40 group
00:12:59.240of 96 mayors they have clearly signed on to that nefarious agenda of building back better yet do they even
00:13:09.720practice what they preach the next c40 world mayor summit is scheduled for this october in buenos aires
00:13:18.840do you think for one second that mayor john torrey and the other mayors will be riding their bicycles
00:13:25.480to argentina this fall do you think his honor is going to chomp down on crickets as opposed to a fine
00:13:33.640argentinian steak come mealtime but that's the thing when it comes to virtue signaling you merely have
00:13:41.400to talk the talk as opposed to walking the walk and it is outrageous to think mayors have the power
00:13:49.800to enact concrete changes in the first place most of the things they are yapping on about
00:13:56.440fall under the bailiwick of states and provinces and countries not municipalities me thinks these
00:14:05.240mayors surely must take the advice of that wwe scholar duane the rock johnson you know your damn role
00:14:15.240and shut your damn mouth you know folks what we are seeing now from the elitists who comprise the un
00:14:23.400and the wef and now the c40 it's quite uncanny in one sense which is the resemblance to the world
00:14:32.520depicted in the 1973 science fiction movie soylent green new york city in the year 2022
00:14:42.280nothing runs anymore nothing works but the people are the same and the people will do anything to get
00:14:49.720what they need this is the police what they need most is soylent green the supply of soylent green
00:14:57.640has been exhausted return to your home
00:15:06.200indeed soylent green is set in our current year of 2022 and the thing is it is downright uncanny how many
00:15:14.760things this film got right despite being released a half century ago case in point assisted suicide
00:15:23.400is not only legal in the world of soylent green it's actually encouraged and of course there's the title
00:15:29.800of the film soylent green which refers to a synthetic food stuff now if you haven't seen the film i won't say
00:15:37.720what soylent green is derived from that would be a huge spoiler but let's put it this way the product
00:15:46.600of soylent green makes edible insects kind of look like filet mignon by comparison
00:15:54.200yet in the here and now in our real world in 2022 when it comes to the war on traditional farming
00:16:01.720and when it comes to the global elites dictating what they want us to consume sorry but i'm simply
00:16:10.200not buying what they are selling to put another way to paraphrase the greatest political quote
00:16:18.440ever uttered by the star of soylent green himself that being the late great charlton heston
00:16:23.960i'll give you my hamburger when you pry it from my cold dead hands
00:16:46.920well i'm very grateful to my dear friend and mission specialist david menzies for covering the
00:16:51.400monologue for me and i hope you'll accept my apologies for not being able to do that part
00:16:56.360of the show i am going to be hosting the live stream tonight co-hosting with my friend sheila gun reed
00:17:02.680covering the united conservative party's leadership debate in the province of alberta very interesting
00:17:08.280and as you know one of the main reasons that the premier in that province was defenestrated
00:17:14.680was his extreme lockdowns including the imprisonment of pastor arthur pavlovsky so we'll be watching
00:17:21.400with an eye to personal freedom tonight that's what i'm doing tonight but i am in the chair to
00:17:27.880talk to one of the most interesting people i've met over the past two years you know i have done less
00:17:31.000traveling in the last two years than i have done since i was a child i still am not allowed to go
00:17:36.680into the united states but despite that i've met some of the most interesting people from different
00:17:40.920walks of life as people from all backgrounds have done their best to fight against the civil
00:17:46.280liberties bonfire and one of the smartest people that i've enjoyed talking with is our next guest
00:17:52.600janine younis is a lawyer at the new civil liberties alliance and she joins us now from washington dc
00:17:58.120janine it's great to see you again great to catch up i have a big question i want to put to you in a
00:18:02.840minute but first let me just catch up with you because you're so busy on these things um can you give
00:18:08.600our viewers an update on some of the civil liberties matters that you are acting for as a public interest
00:18:15.960lawyer in the u.s we always look to the u.s for public interest law because your system and your
00:18:21.480courts are more amenable to it than here in canada can you give us an update on some of the stuff you
00:18:26.360were working on yes so i'm working on vaccine mandate cases still and i have a case pending in the
00:18:33.400sixth circuit court of appeals which covers sort of the michigan ohio area um so we're appealing a
00:18:39.320dismissal of the lawsuit there uh and have hopes that the sixth circuit will understand um more than
00:18:45.800the district court what the constitutional problems were here another area of law i've been very involved
00:18:51.160with is first amendment issues when it comes to government trying to censor um or government uh using
00:18:57.560big tech to censor views that it doesn't like so for instance i think one of the most common examples of
00:19:02.600this is twitter where you know twitter frequently will suspend people or label posts misleading that
00:19:08.120diverge from the government's message on various matters especially when it comes to covet
00:19:12.440um and i think there's substantial evidence that the government is involved in telling big tech what
00:19:17.160to do and coercing it and that turns it into state action uh so far uh our lawsuit on this issue was
00:19:24.760dismissed but we're also appealing that um also in the sixth circuit it's very interesting both of those
00:19:30.840are very applicable to our canadian situation as well let me ask you first about the mandate the
00:19:36.120vaccine mandate appeal that you're looking at um my first question is is there a problem in the united
00:19:41.880states where the other side where the government would say well that matter is moot because we're
00:19:46.680no longer enforcing that are they still enforcing vaccine mandates in in the areas you're suing and if
00:19:54.280they're not does that stop you from getting a ruling from a higher court yeah that's a great question
00:19:59.320so mootness is one of the big issues that lawyers have faced not just with vaccine mandates but the
00:20:03.400covid restrictions in general so what often happens is you know you get in front of the judge and the
00:20:08.360lockdown has ended or the mask mandate has ended but you know that the you know governor or the mayor
00:20:12.760might bring it back in a few months um but then the other side the government argues it's moot
00:20:16.920there's no live controversy is what that means there has to be a live case or controversy so you can um
00:20:22.040circumvent at that by showing that the issue is or the circumstances are likely to be repeated again
00:20:29.400but those that's a disputed matter now in our case that's not an issue because michigan still has
00:20:34.680a vaccine mandate and now really yeah the universities are the worst on this the supposed
00:20:42.360bastions of enlightenment you know are just forcing their uh 30 year old or 22 year old students to get
00:20:49.480vaccines and boosters often when they've already had covid we know the vaccine doesn't stop transmission
00:20:54.120um we know that the risk uh profile for young people is much higher isn't that interesting um
00:21:02.280and i'm going to come back to that question a little bit later but let me first take the
00:21:05.720second thing you mentioned which is twitter and how government contracts out or outsources censorship
00:21:11.480to private companies and i can see how that would be an attempt to evade uh constitutional
00:21:18.840scrutiny in canada as well our charter of rights which is not as strong as your bill of rights
00:21:24.360only applies to government actors not to private parties so twitter and other big tech companies
00:21:31.560when they do bad things so you don't have a lot of recourse do you have evidence that the government is
00:21:39.880pushing is bargaining is making deals with twitter or other big tech companies to do their
00:21:45.880bidding another point of view might be well no they're just like birds of a feather they harmonize
00:21:50.520they get into formation no one's forcing them to it's just they're all woke uh censors instinctively
00:21:58.200so it's not surprising that a silicon valley san francisco-based liberal firm is censoring but
00:22:04.120there's no smoking gun showing that the white house ordered them how are you getting over that
00:22:10.120maybe there's confidential things you don't want to disclose to me but i would i would imagine that
00:22:14.440showing some link that the government asked for it and twitter gave it as opposed to twitter doing it
00:22:22.920organically uh have is that an issue in these court battles yeah so our case was dismissed along
00:22:30.280with a number of others actually uh all in the same week even though they were in different
00:22:33.480jurisdictions and that's exactly what the judge said the judge said you know you can't show that
00:22:37.880this was happening because of the government these companies were censoring people for misinformation
00:22:41.960prior to covet but it's i i believe the judge got it completely wrong and i think that that will
00:22:46.520come forth in um subsequent lawsuits for uh we have you know government officials on record biden his um
00:22:54.120former uh press secretary jennifer saki vivek murthy the surgeon general alejandro mayorkas um the
00:23:02.280secretary of dhs i believe all on the record making statements like big tech isn't uh you know twitter
00:23:07.640facebook aren't doing enough to censor this um you know skepticism of the vaccines people who spread
00:23:12.760what's called misinformation quote-unquote misinformation uh which just means that
00:23:16.680something that differs from what the government says that's actually often acknowledged to be right
00:23:20.920in the future like you know masks don't work very well to stop the spread or the vaccines don't stop
00:23:25.160transmission um so you know the fact that we have these people on the record saying the companies need to do
00:23:30.200more that means that you know they were coercing the companies to do more and they're they're
00:23:34.920making explicit threats about regulation and other legal penalties that could be levied i mean it's
00:23:40.120my opinion that if the founding fathers you know could have envisioned the internet and social media
00:23:45.240they would have seen that this was a clear clear first amendment violation i mean what you're doing
00:23:49.400is you're having the government um the government is dictating the messages what views are allowed
00:23:55.000to be heard and what views are not um and the fact that it's using a private company to do so doesn't
00:24:00.600really change that you know we talk a lot about that same issue in canada um i think there was one
00:24:07.880point where they would attack people ad hominem you're racist you're transphobic you're whatever
00:24:13.320i mean that that used to be a response including by our own prime minister by the way then it was
00:24:19.080you're inciting an insurrection they were trying to piggyback off the january 6th event in washington dc
00:24:26.040which of course has no relation to canada i don't think that worked very well
00:24:29.480although they tried to call the truckers the trucker convoy in canada they tried to equate them
00:24:34.440to although there was it was completely peaceful but i think they've settled on what you've just
00:24:38.920mentioned there misinformation disinformation trying to swallow up entire arguments as crime
00:24:46.120think if you if you remember the book 1984 um some some ideas you didn't debate them you just
00:24:52.680swallow them up and say we can't even debate them because the idea is illegal and it's foreign and
00:24:58.120it's immoral the idea itself is a crime so we're not going to engage with it i think that's what
00:25:02.920misinformation and disinformation is it's instead of saying you have a an opposition to me you're
00:25:08.840contrary you're a dissident we just have two different points of view you're saying your point
00:25:13.000of view is from the root a poisoned point of view that's not even authentic you are a shill for
00:25:20.760vladimir putin is the most common one we have today i see that really becoming an issue in canada
00:25:28.120canada you have the department of defense funding that kind of work you have our equivalent of your
00:25:35.560homeland security we have our public security minister i fear the disinformation that whole
00:25:41.960shtick it's really a weaponized a harsher version of the the epithet fake news like fake news you could
00:25:48.600laugh about but disinformation sounds scary is that being funded by i don't even want to use the word
00:25:55.000military industrial complex but when the money's coming from the pentagon when the money's coming
00:25:59.640from the department of homeland security maybe it is are our military and foreign affairs and cia type
00:26:05.800organizations funding that i'm not talking about speculation like do you know if if money for this
00:26:12.600disinformation campaign is coming from the military so that is not something that i know um well i know that
00:26:19.880the uh dhs the department of homeland security has formed a disinformation governance board a lot of
00:26:25.160people may have heard of and it's sort of been on hold because people were you know there was a lot of
00:26:29.560public outcry about it it sounded very orwellian as you mentioned um but no i don't i don't have hard
00:26:35.800evidence of what you just asked fair enough and that's the right answer if you don't have it i should
00:26:40.280tell you that we were startled to discover that the u.s navy has funded research into us as an information
00:26:49.080operation i was just shocked uh i mean we're canadian we're we're loyal frankly i'm very pro navy it was
00:26:58.040really weird um so we have uh through access to information requests discovered that the u.s navy
00:27:04.520intelligence side is funding research into rebel news as a as an information operation so you never know
00:27:12.680um which i i find really creepy and um i would have thought that maybe they needed all their money
00:27:18.680to buy navy ships to fight against you know the chinese aircraft carrier but i guess a little
00:27:23.400website in canada is more dangerous here's the question i really wanted to ask you genie i mean
00:27:27.400i'm glad for the updates on those lawsuits i wish you good luck in those appeals i'll be following it
00:27:32.840frankly as a role model because we we do you know at a modest scale what you're doing down there we try
00:27:38.520and do up here too i want to ask you about something i'm hearing from people who are in the battle
00:27:45.000for example i heard this from my friend john carpe the leader of the justice center for constitutional
00:27:49.560freedoms which is a public interest law firm in western canada and i hear this from others
00:27:54.680justin trudeau signed a contract for 400 million doses with pfizer and there's only 38 million canadians
00:28:02.760so that's 10 for every man woman child and baby his um health minister said the new standard for
00:28:11.080being up to date there's no such thing as fully vaccinated anymore they're calling it up to date
00:28:16.680and they say it means every nine months so it's a rolling constantly deteriorating standard that you
00:28:25.080always have to meet you you theoretically would never be fully vaccinated because their phrase is up to
00:28:30.680date now yeah and i see these things and i see that they're maintaining the um the the tracking app
00:28:41.720that canadians and foreigners are required to fill out to come into canada i i see that they're retaining
00:28:49.160for example the the ban on unvaccinated people coming into canada and so some of my friends and very
00:28:55.720thoughtful and very educated people say ezra you're just in the summer reprieve but when it is fall again
00:29:03.720and when it's flu season again and when it's not as much fun to be outside again because as if they
00:29:11.240could tell young people to stay inside in the glorious summer in canada that there will be a return
00:29:17.240of masking requirements and possibly even a return of vaccine requirements now that we have the new standard
00:29:25.080quote up to date and i'm i'm just asking for the feeling in your bones i mean none of us are prophets
00:29:32.040but you've been in this battle for for two solid years as have i in my own way i'd like to be more
00:29:38.840hopeful than than my friends i think well geez that's a pretty dark view of the future that we're doomed to
00:29:44.520repeat this in eternity do you think that we will head back into another round of this or do you think maybe
00:29:51.640the u.s midterm elections is a protection against that um i think we will head back into another
00:29:57.480round but it won't be as bad each successive one is kind of less bad than the last and what they
00:30:01.800what's happening is they're losing public support i mean most americans are over covet there's just a
00:30:06.600small contingent that's clinging to this and it gets smaller and smaller every day i think but you
00:30:11.480know la for instance is uh claiming they're bringing back their mask mandate um i am hearing again from
00:30:17.480students uh there had been a reprieve where i wasn't really hearing from people about vaccine
00:30:21.240mandates now i'm getting emails again it's much less than it was a year ago but uh you know because
00:30:26.040they have to have their full vaccine course by the end of august um i'm getting those emails so i do
00:30:32.120think it's not over i don't know how long it's going to go on for i think they're going to keep losing
00:30:37.240more and more support the longer it goes on but there's obviously just a contingent of the population that
00:30:41.960for some reason embraces this and is accepting it so i think there will be certain democratic
00:30:46.600strongholds where i mean it seems like it might never go away yeah i mean i i think that you could
00:30:53.640feel a pivot when democrats i think sensed that this wasn't a winner for them in the polls anymore
00:30:59.080that they were out of sync and the midterms are looming large in the minds i would imagine of democrats
00:31:03.960but once that's over like that's in november i suppose literally the day after that you could see the
00:31:10.200president who at his uh you know he's an old man who is very frail if he could power through covid
00:31:19.800i mean i'm not sure why anyone younger would be afraid of it but let's say he gets through the
00:31:24.040midterms in whatever shape his party is he could theoretically push the panic button again a day after
00:31:31.240the vote and and do what he could to put things within his federal purview back in you know and a state
00:31:38.840of emergency again i mean i'm just daydreaming i don't know the american scene so i mean it i it
00:31:44.280depends a little bit what happens if you know the republicans sweep the midterms as i had expected that
00:31:48.920they would before the um before dobbs overturned roe um then i don't see how that would be very smart
00:31:55.560politics but on the other hand i think the democrats know that they're going to lose the election
00:31:59.320and i'm a little uh surprised that some of the sort of people we know you know they're not necessarily
00:32:04.760political actors but people like anthony fauci we know are you know supportive of the democrats
00:32:09.800uh are are really insisting on um bringing you know on continuing these measures fauci is continuing
00:32:15.880to push the idea of mass mandates um he said we should have locked down harder so they're not
00:32:20.280repudiating what happened they're not really listening to what's going on with the american
00:32:24.600public and i'm perplexed as to why biden hasn't told fauci you know this isn't this isn't the message
00:32:31.000we want to be sending so i don't really know what's going on with those democrats i don't know
00:32:34.760if they're living in an echo chamber and they don't understand that most of america has has moved on
00:32:39.000but hopefully they'll get the rude awakening they deserve in november yeah i want to ask you one
00:32:43.240last question it's a personal question i follow you on twitter that's how i've discovered your work
00:32:48.120and i and um and you're sometimes personal you you remark sometimes on how the lockdowns and the
00:32:56.280psychological response people have to the virus itself has called rupt has caused ruptures in
00:33:01.960in friendships and even amongst families and i think everyone has detected that i mean i do too
00:33:09.160and um i won and i think that that has been a devastation to our society it's pitted people
00:33:16.680against each other i first saw it pitting store owners against customers like there was a there was
00:33:21.720a little italian bakery block away i would go to every morning every morning i would go there for
00:33:27.400a little bite and a little coffee every day i wouldn't say we were friends but i was a regular
00:33:33.720and then where's your mask where's your mask i'm sorry i'm not your friend anymore i have never been back
00:33:39.480and i regret that because part of life part of a neighborhood part of a feeling of community is
00:33:45.000well that's the shop where i have my coffee and that's the place and there's a nice lady there
00:33:49.640and there's a like you feel the and you're pitted against these people and they're they're probably
00:33:54.840don't want to be against you but they're they're afraid of something or maybe they're afraid of
00:33:59.640their more zealous customers and families and friends and i think it's been you know there's been
00:34:08.120tremendous objectively measurable harms done but i think that it's hard to measure the harm amongst people
00:34:16.680and between friends and between family members and i want to know if you think that that has healed
00:34:22.680at all and i ask you that because i i found your tweets on the subject quite poignant and very sad
00:34:28.280actually um and you were very candid and honest about that is there a interpersonal healing that has
00:34:36.440happened or is this like a war and people will just never forget it until they die i i my experience i
00:34:46.040would say is the latter i don't think um the friendships that uh ruptured in my life i don't
00:34:51.480think are going to come back and part of it i admit is because of me you know i actually i sort of
00:34:56.200blamed them because they you know told me i was a bad person for not wanting to wear a mask or for
00:35:01.880thinking that lockdowns when work or questioning the whole uh idea of this you know virus mitigation
00:35:06.840government and imposed virus mitigation and uh ann bauer who's also on twitter and has a large
00:35:12.840following she said something that i i sort of recognized and i hadn't been willing to acknowledge
00:35:16.840myself which is i think a lot of them i think much less of a lot of them and i don't want them in my
00:35:21.720life i saw how they reacted i saw that you know i saw selfishness i saw people who didn't really you
00:35:27.080know purporting to be leftists who didn't really care about the working class who didn't really care
00:35:31.320about children from disadvantaged homes who just you know were terrified and wanted to stay at home on zoom
00:35:36.760um which and you know i have empathy for people being terrified but to be nasty and cruel to other
00:35:42.120people and to refuse to listen when they have you know thoughts that might differ from the approved
00:35:46.840messaging and to tell them they're bad people i don't think it's forgivable and so you know i have
00:35:51.000to say a lot of it is me i don't want them back in my life very interesting we're in very strange days
00:35:58.840we salute you and we're fans of the new civil liberties alliance your public interest law firm
00:36:04.280and i love that name the new civil liberties alliance because it is true it is a new coalition
00:36:08.440of people who are you know you talked about where were the people who cared about working
00:36:14.760class folks where were the people who cared about children you're so right it's an interest even our
00:36:19.560company here we have people working for us today who i think in the before times would have said oh you're
00:36:24.760too right-wing or something but what what does it mean to be right-wing if you're for privacy you don't
00:36:29.000want to fill out trudeau's spyware app what does it mean if you believe in bodily integrity that used
00:36:34.120to be a liberal thing so it is a new alliance and i like it myself i like dealing with people who i
00:36:42.920hadn't known before it's uh it stretched me as a person we work with an interesting coalition i think
00:36:49.960you're part of that i mean your your nickname is lefty lockdown like like you you call yourself a woman of
00:36:55.800the left or maybe you used to be and no longer do i mean there are some some wonderful things
00:37:01.960that have come out of this horrific two years but i think on the whole every one of us is poorer and
00:37:08.120sadder uh not every one of us but i think most of us are and it's it's been a very troubling time
00:37:14.120i think it has been the worst thing to happen the worst thing to happen to canada
00:37:18.440in our country's history we didn't have slavery because i would say that would i would say american
00:37:25.160slavery was a greater violation of civil liberties than this of course um but i think that this
00:37:32.280lockdown and the government going to war against its own people and pitting people against each other
00:37:38.120is actually the worst thing to ever happen to canada and i think most canadians failed the more the
00:37:44.760the moral test of the moment and i'm not saying that to push myself up i'm saying i'm i'm shocked
00:37:51.080and sad to see how easily everyone else tumbled and um i'll stop being so pessimistic janine that's
00:37:57.880that's very similar to how i feel that it's i was surprised that people were so weak and so easily
00:38:04.600terrorized into turning on each other yeah well you're one of the fighters you're one of the good
00:38:09.640ones thank you janine great to see you again there you have it janine youness one of our favorite