EZRA LEVANT ｜ The fine line between access and antagonism： An interview with Andrew Lawton
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
182.86389
Summary
A feature interview with Andrew Lawton, senior journalist at True North Media, about the World Economic Forum, Pierre Polyev, and other things in Canada, on this special interview edition of The Ezra Levenant Show.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my rebels. Today, a feature interview with our friend Andrew Lawton, senior journalist at
00:00:06.200
True North. I like Andrew for so many reasons, including I like seeing him when he's doing
00:00:11.380
journalism around the world. And last I saw him was in Switzerland at the World Economic Forum.
00:00:15.800
And he took a slightly different approach than we did, and it was very successful. Ours was
00:00:20.900
successful too, as you know. We'll talk with him about the World Economic Forum, Pierre Polyev,
00:00:25.760
and many other things in Canada. That's ahead on this special interview edition. But first,
00:00:31.380
let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of the show.
00:00:34.980
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe, eight bucks a month. And that's how we live,
00:00:40.820
my friends, because we do not take money from Trudeau and never will. All right, here's today's show.
00:00:55.760
Tonight, a feature interview with senior journalist at True North, Andrew Lawton. It's February 20th,
00:01:08.240
and this is The Ezra LeVant Show. Shame on you, you censorious bug.
00:01:25.140
Well, as you know, we always have a show on statutory holidays. It's just a tradition we have.
00:01:30.340
And one of the things we love to do is take the time to have an extended interview with someone we
00:01:34.860
find particularly interesting or an expert in a subject. And my friend Andrew Lawton is both
00:01:40.940
of those things. What I love about him is he fights for freedom, but because he's with True North,
00:01:47.200
which is, I'm going to say, 5% better behaved than Rebel News, he often gets into places where we
00:01:54.180
don't go. But I still get to hang out with him in the field. For example, I saw him in Davos,
00:02:00.540
Switzerland, covering the World Economic Forum. Without further ado, let's bring on our friend,
00:02:05.460
Andrew Lawton. Great to see you, Andrew. Nice to have you in the studio. Last I saw you,
00:02:10.600
we were actually at the World Economic Forum. I thought that was a fascinating event. I had never
00:02:16.660
been to it before. Was that the first time you were there as well? No, I went for the first time last
00:02:23.000
May when they had their first- Oh, right. Sorry, I knew that. That's right. I forgot about that. That's
00:02:26.760
right. So you're an old timer. You know your way around. Yeah, I'm a WEF veteran now. I will say,
00:02:32.480
though, I went in May. This most recent visit was my first time as a quote-unquote accredited
00:02:38.280
journalist. So I was actually able to get into some of the spaces this time around.
00:02:43.080
Right. And that's a fascinating balance because you get access to these VVIPs, but you've got to be,
00:02:52.160
you know, polite enough that you don't get the boot. Like there's some rules and it's walking a fine
00:02:58.080
line. And when I spotted Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer on the street, Avi Amini and I really
00:03:03.740
grilled them tough. I get the feeling if I had done that inside, I probably would have been kicked
00:03:08.680
out. Don't you think? Yeah. And I should say that the many different guidelines I was given as far as
00:03:15.480
what I can do and where I can go, none of it was focused on content. None of it was that you can't ask
00:03:21.320
tough questions. A lot of it was focused on spaces though, where you can't actually record in this space
00:03:27.760
and conveniently those spaces are where a lot of these VVIPs are milling about grabbing their coffee,
00:03:33.880
their juice and whatever. But, you know, I will say I was able to talk to people. I was able to do
00:03:38.900
interviews and my approach going into this was that I'm not going to change my coverage based on the
00:03:45.300
fact that I have credentials because I felt I had a job to do and that was that. So I didn't pull any
00:03:50.820
punches in that sense. Well, you managed to buttonhole some very serious players and I think you did a
00:03:56.300
great job. And I mean, I think there's pluses and minuses to both approaches. I loved what we did
00:04:02.000
with Albert Bourla, but you're right. Had we been at like a juice bar or a coffee bar, that would have
00:04:06.960
been forbidden. And fair enough because they, I mean, you don't want a guest at a conference to be
00:04:13.500
antagonized everywhere. I get it. What was your favorite interview? I'd love to show our viewers a
00:04:19.600
clip from what you thought was the most interesting interaction you had.
00:04:23.080
Oh, that's a tough one. I think one of the most substantive was an exchange I did with Dame
00:04:30.360
Melanie Dawes, who is the woman in charge of Ofcom, which is the broadcast regulator in the UK. And
00:04:38.260
the reason I think this is relevant to people in Canada and elsewhere as well is that Ofcom is
00:04:43.640
Britain's CRTC. And Britain is going through something very similar to what's happening in
00:04:48.900
Canada right now with Bill C-11, which is expanding the authority of its broadcast regulator to include
00:04:55.800
the internet. So the big question is why was a woman like this at Davos and why does her organization
00:05:02.660
take a censorship approach when it's supposed to be just deciding about broadcast spectrum and who can
00:05:11.120
You know, I want to show a clip of that. I think Ofcom, they are like the CRTC and they're quite
00:05:19.920
aggressive in their investigations and they're quite political. Here, let's play a clip of you
00:05:25.520
talking to the British regulator, a bit of a premonition of what might come to the internet
00:05:32.720
I was just wondering if I could ask you about whether you think Ofcom is being fair in enforcing
00:05:36.940
its COVID misinformation policy against very legitimate discourse about COVID.
00:05:42.080
Well, I'm not quite sure what you mean, to be honest.
00:05:44.520
Well, people that have spoken about vaccine injuries have received Ofcom complaints and
00:05:48.640
investigations and broadcast licenses are in jeopardy of people that talk about very real issues.
00:05:53.680
I just don't think that we've, I guess I'm not sure it's very hard to answer that question
00:06:02.760
Well, there are sometimes cases where we open up an investigation, but, you know, let's
00:06:06.980
see how that goes. What we're absolutely clear about is that freedom of expression is incredibly
00:06:11.120
important in our, the way that we deal with the broadcasting code. So people are absolutely
00:06:16.060
entitled to express views. So we always abide by those principles whenever we're looking into
00:06:21.800
So do you believe that discussing vaccine injury should be allowed?
00:06:24.980
Certainly, absolutely. Free and frank and open conversations are always good on any topic.
00:06:29.620
Well, good for you. And you also talk to other, I mean, Chrystia Freeland, I know you've engaged
00:06:35.140
with Mark Carney before that there are Canadians who love going to this thing. And I can understand
00:06:42.600
why, you know, Canada is a smaller pond in terms of oligarchs and influencers than the world. And,
00:06:53.520
you know, you can be the deputy prime minister of Canada and start to feel it's sort of small for
00:06:59.300
your ambitions. You go to Davos and, well, there's Xi Jinping, there's George Soros, there's Al Gore,
00:07:05.180
there's Albert Bulla. You're, you're in a whole different league. I think the Canadians sort of suck
00:07:10.640
up to Davos. They, they think it's where the fanciest Canadians go. Am I wrong in trying to get
00:07:16.180
into the mind of Canadians who go to Davos as Chrystia Freeland does? Or like they're trying to set up a
00:07:23.500
bigger deal than just hanging out with the peasants back home.
00:07:27.340
Yeah. And a lot of them, I mean, obviously we focus on the cabinet ministers who are there,
00:07:31.800
Chrystia Freeland or people like Mark Carney, but there's also another stratum of guests from Canada
00:07:38.460
that are not household names that are nonetheless there. For example, executives from SNC-Lavalin,
00:07:44.280
executives from Tech Resources, which is an oil and gas company, an odd pairing for an organization
00:07:50.040
like the World Economic Forum that just wants to declare war on the oil and gas sector. A woman
00:07:56.280
who represents an indigenous group in Canada, some guy that writes about blockchain. So you've got all
00:08:01.540
these people there. And the big question that I go back to is what are they getting out of it? Because
00:08:06.880
we know that business leaders have to pay big bucks to be there. In some cases, hundreds of thousands
00:08:12.780
of dollars, whereas the politicians are there for free. And as you and I have discussed in the past,
00:08:18.960
I think it's because they're the product being sold that makes it worth it for someone at a big oil and
00:08:25.020
gas company to perhaps spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or the CEO of BMO, who for the first time
00:08:31.520
was asked about his comments that came out in the Public Order Emergency Commission,
00:08:37.080
calling the truckers or wanting to label the truckers as terrorists. And again, I've tried to get BMO to
00:08:43.580
talk about this in the past. The only way I was able to put the question of their CEO
00:08:47.080
was just by doorstepping him on the streets of Davos. Good for you. And I'm so glad that you did
00:08:53.040
because those banks were part of really the worst moment. I mean, listen, shooting peaceful protesters,
00:09:00.380
shooting journalists was pretty atrocious. The riot horses that the cops were pretty atrocious.
00:09:05.380
But seizing banks is actually, his bank account is actually far more chilling. Here's an excerpt from
00:09:09.640
you buttonholing, doorstopping, as the Brits say, the BMO chief. Let's take a look at that.
00:09:16.220
Minister Freeland said during the Public Order Emergency Commission that you had wanted to call
00:09:19.980
the convoy protesters terrorists to deal with their financing. Why was that?
00:09:24.020
So I would never call the convoy protesters terrorists. What was said was that in order for
00:09:36.340
the banks to be helpful, there are certain protocols. And those protocols include a sanction
00:09:43.440
where we can, in fact, help in that case. Otherwise, it's not our business to interfere in the affairs
00:09:51.060
of anyone's finances, truckers or otherwise. One of the other banking executives on that call
00:09:55.900
had pushed back a little bit and said that they didn't want the banks to be weaponized.
00:09:59.380
Was that a view you shared? Oh, it's always a view I shared. I don't think banks should be
00:10:02.860
weaponized any more than any other industry. I think we have jobs to do and we do it for Canadians.
00:10:08.720
And I think generally, in fact, more than generally, we do it pretty well.
00:10:11.900
Did you support the financial measures? Good for you, Andrew. Well, listen, I got one more
00:10:16.880
question about the World Economic Forum. I don't want to talk too much about it, although it was
00:10:19.460
it was so fascinating. It was like a target rich environment. Like you just stand there. I mean,
00:10:25.120
I was a peasant on the outside of the drawbridge, but the drawbridge would come down and you have
00:10:29.620
to have sort of a keen eye to look at a name tag. But just in the course of an hour, I saw John Kerry,
00:10:35.960
Tony Blair, Governor Kemp from Georgia, Albert Bourla. Like you just stand there and it would be like
00:10:43.780
going fishing in a pond that was stocked with huge trout. I mean, it really is probably in terms of VIPs per
00:10:54.780
square foot. It really is the densest gathering of influential people around. I mean, I suppose the United
00:11:01.900
Nations General Assembly could be, but those are just diplomats. And a lot of those, you know, frankly, smaller
00:11:07.860
countries aren't even, you know, that recognizable or wouldn't even command that much attention. I
00:11:14.580
think that Davos in some ways and Klaus Schwab in some ways, it's the most influential place in the
00:11:20.540
world. What do you think of that? Yeah, it's certainly certainly they strive for that. And I
00:11:24.900
think it's filled with the most influential people. It's it's odd in a way, because if you've ever been to
00:11:29.540
a conference, you'll know that I know you have, but your listeners there, they all have this very
00:11:34.720
similar approach where they're very collegial. You just bump into people and you see, oh, this
00:11:39.360
person that I haven't run into in several years, I just saw them there. And it's exactly like that,
00:11:45.060
except they're heads of government and heads of state. So, you know, you go to the washroom inside
00:11:49.300
and oh, the next stall over, it's the prime minister of Belgium, or you're walking around on
00:11:53.440
the street and oh, there's Princess Beatrice that I attempted to get to comment on Prince Harry and
00:11:59.160
Meghan Markle, but she didn't want to take the bait on that. She just laughed at me. But you run into
00:12:04.240
people that you would just never see even on their own elsewhere in most cases, let alone all
00:12:10.220
together. Yeah, good for you. Let me ask you one last question about the World Economic Forum before
00:12:15.000
we move on. I'm riveted by it because I feel like my eyes have been opened to them. You know, I for
00:12:21.560
years, Terence Corcoran and the Financial Post would write about them. And I never understood it. I
00:12:25.520
thought it sounds so boring, world economic forum. So a bunch of economists around the world having a
00:12:32.780
like I would fall asleep before I even finished reading the third letter of WEF. I didn't care.
00:12:39.660
Terry Corcoran was always banging on about that. I never got it until very recently. And I think
00:12:45.860
95% of Canadians have either never heard of the World Economic Forum, or like I used to be didn't
00:12:53.740
understand why they should care about something full of boring people. Or if you if they followed the
00:13:00.780
CBC in the Toronto Star, they say, Oh, that's just a conspiracy theory by the alt right. So here's my
00:13:07.560
question for you, you and I have stumbled upon this incredible place where oligarchs and politicians and
00:13:14.660
business people try and shape the world in their image. But I think that most people either don't know,
00:13:22.540
don't care or don't want to hear. What do you think? Yeah, there are different criticisms. I mean,
00:13:28.320
there are the people that believe it's a shadowy cabal of satanic child killers in the mountains
00:13:33.600
pulling the puppet strings on the world. And then there are people on the other side that believe
00:13:38.220
it's saving the world. They're tackling the challenges head on there, you know, fostering
00:13:43.140
cooperation. And then I think there is a reasoned critique that is not extreme, which is the position
00:13:48.780
that I take, which is that this is a group that exists because it peddles influence, and they
00:13:53.680
wouldn't have the legitimacy they do to the people that give the money and go year after year if they
00:13:59.080
didn't have influence. And I think that the big challenge there that I would extract if we're
00:14:04.500
commenting on this, and I think our if we are paying attention to this is that we would never
00:14:09.560
settle for in a domestic context, all of the corporate CEOs in Canada, getting together behind closed
00:14:16.840
doors with all the cabinet ministers in Canada, we would think that was very weird. Why do we on a
00:14:22.100
global scale think that's acceptable? Right. And I asked both Albert Bourla and Greta, who did they
00:14:27.240
meet with in their private meetings? And neither of them had an answer for me. Of course, maybe I was
00:14:30.880
too prickly in my questions, but it is a legitimate thing. Because if Albert Bourla came to Canada's
00:14:35.740
parliament, he would have to register with the lobbyist register. Yeah, exactly. And he would have to,
00:14:41.060
at least in general terms, explain what he was there to do. And that does not happen at Davos for all
00:14:46.440
we know. He met with Chrystia Freeland and came to a deal. I mean, we don't know. It's not disclosed.
00:14:51.900
Like you say, it's influence peddling. Well, listen, it's a fascinating subject. I'm sure I'll go again
00:14:57.140
next year. I really enjoyed the trip. It was a little frosty and hard to get to, but that helped
00:15:01.500
make it more fun, I think. But let's come back to Canada now. And I want to talk about the opposite
00:15:07.460
of the World Economic Forum. They talk about global citizenship. I want to talk about Canadian
00:15:12.540
citizenship, which is rooted in our national sovereignty, our constitution, and our ability
00:15:17.400
to throw out our leaders. You can't do that at the World Economic Forum. You can't vote out
00:15:21.600
Klaus Schwab. You can't. There's no opposition party in the World Economic Forum. But there is in
00:15:28.680
Canada so far, at least for a while, there will be, I hope. And looks up here, Poliev is really starting
00:15:36.220
to get some traction. I saw a bunch of polls in a row showing that he's leading and not just by
00:15:42.220
the margin of error. And I, I mean, I live in the most, the city with the most liberal MPs in Canada.
00:15:49.020
I live in Toronto and I, and I, and I watch CP24, which is just a very popular all news channel that's
00:15:56.840
always on in restaurants and bars. And I can't believe my eyes, Andrew, they're actually giving
00:16:01.240
Pierre Poliev fair coverage. I don't like what's going on. Maybe even in Toronto, some people are
00:16:09.320
getting a little sick and tired of Trudeau and they're going to give Pierre Poliev a chance.
00:16:12.860
I don't know. What do you think? You know, there was a theory that I, I came up with a while ago and
00:16:18.120
so far I, I've not been able to disprove it, which is that the media is not always in the bag for the
00:16:24.380
liberals. And I know that's a shocking concept. So please let me explain before you pounce on it,
00:16:28.300
because the media will criticize Justin Trudeau. The media will criticize the liberals,
00:16:32.800
but when the media criticizes the conservatives, it's for being conservative. When the media
00:16:38.820
criticizes the liberals, it's for not living up to what they think the liberals should be.
00:16:43.600
So conservatives get attacked on policy, liberals get attacked on, on character. And I think that
00:16:48.840
there is still some frustration among media who would align with the liberals on policy
00:16:54.320
with Justin Trudeau. And I think that Justin Trudeau has really not done a good job at all
00:16:59.960
of trying to protect his left flank. I think he's always taken for granted that those voters have
00:17:05.400
nowhere to go. Jagmeet sings a joke. They're never going to vote conservative, but I think it's going
00:17:09.860
to be the left that ousts Trudeau before it will ever be the right.
00:17:14.680
You know, Pierre Poliev, he's got a certain style. Like he really, I mean, I like Pierre a lot. I've known
00:17:21.800
him since we were both young. And he has been, I mean, if he was a liberal, I'd say he's a politician
00:17:28.320
for life. That's really the job he's always had. But I think he's good at it. And I'm, I'm impressed
00:17:32.440
with his, the depth of his command of economic issues. Like he really does know financial issues,
00:17:38.360
monetary issues, to see him go toe to toe with a Bank of Canada governor and win is stunning to me.
00:17:44.220
And I think he's got a sense of humor too. I think he's a bit of a showman in a way. I think he's
00:17:49.280
smarter than Trudeau. And in his own way, he can put on a show. Let me show you a viral video that
00:17:55.880
Poliev put up or his staff. Now they edited it a bit to add some humor. So this isn't Poliev himself,
00:18:01.220
but they, they said, they quoted Shakespeare. If you have any tears, prepare to shed them. And it was
00:18:08.020
an exchange between Pierre Poliev and Justin Trudeau about Bill Morneau. And I acknowledged that most of
00:18:13.380
the humor here was added by the editors after the fact, but I thought this is the kind of thing
00:18:19.180
that's going to win it for the conservatives, a sense of humor, making fun of the other guy,
00:18:25.100
getting people to laugh along with you. If you ridicule someone, that's the most,
00:18:30.320
that's the most powerful way to attack them here. Watch this video put up by the conservative party
00:18:35.240
and tell me they don't have a good shot at their campaign tactics. Take a look.
00:18:40.220
It's not me that says that this prime minister overspent. It's Bill Morneau. Remember him?
00:18:46.900
My old friend, Bill Morneau. He's the one that said this prime minister spends too much.
00:18:54.800
You know, the conservative leader is stumbling over himself when he starts quoting random liberals.
00:18:59.340
It's been a long day without you, my friend. And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again.
00:19:17.180
We've come a long way from where we began. Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again.
00:19:34.040
That made me laugh. Now, I grant that's not all Pierre Paulyad there, but, you know, the fact that
00:19:40.680
that's his style and his office style and he does these little social media videos. I think he can win.
00:19:48.740
And if I had to put money on it, I would say he's going to win, Andrew.
00:19:53.820
I think he can. I don't make predictions because a lot can come up. And I think that oftentimes
00:20:03.160
conservatives can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, which I believe Andrew Scheer did.
00:20:08.720
I believe to some extent Aaron O'Toole did as well. And I think that what we see in both cases
00:20:14.040
is tremendous flip flops that took place where they positioned themselves as one thing in the
00:20:20.040
leadership and another thing in the period in which they actually were the leaders of the
00:20:24.680
conservatives. And in the case of Andrew Scheer, I think he is himself a genuine conservative,
00:20:30.500
but he took the advice that he had to go to the mushy middle. I think Aaron O'Toole is in the
00:20:34.800
mushy middle, but he took the advice in the leadership that he had to go hard right.
00:20:38.340
Pierre Paulyad, I think, is who he is. And he has been consistent. And I'm not a single issue
00:20:44.000
voter on CBC defunding. But that was one of the litmus test issues for me, where I said,
00:20:48.920
if Pierre Paulyad becomes the leader and never speaks of this policy again, this is going to be
00:20:54.000
a big red flag. He has doubled down and tripled down on CBC defunding since becoming the leader
00:21:00.960
of the conservatives, which I actually think is a very important thing. So at this point,
00:21:05.940
he has not abandoned the red meat issues. I think he softened his support for the convoy,
00:21:11.140
which I found a little bit concerning when he started saying, well, you know, I wish everyone
00:21:14.940
had been a pedestrian. I wish, you know, they didn't show up with trucks. So I think we need
00:21:18.900
to be mindful of it. But if he can actually stay consistent and show Canadians that he has
00:21:25.600
beliefs, he's not afraid of those beliefs, and he's willing to sell those beliefs, that's going
00:21:30.620
to be his path to victory. You know, you're so right. I, when he said defund the CBC, I thought,
00:21:35.420
boy, that's what every conservative leader says when they're seeking the leadership. But then they drop
00:21:40.940
that fast when they get comfy in the Ottawa bubble, not Polyev. And, and the president of the CBC,
00:21:50.340
I think, Catherine Tate, has just fumbled the ball by demonizing the conservatives saying,
00:21:58.260
that's why no one likes us. Because Pierre Polyev, as if people would have been watching the CBC by the
00:22:05.540
million, were it not for a political leader, critics like it, not only was it such an excuse,
00:22:11.980
a bizarre, self-serving excuse for why no one watches the CBC anymore. But it's, it just absolutely
00:22:18.580
plays to the conservative hunch, the feeling in our bones that the CBC preacher naturally, inherently,
00:22:25.800
genetically hates conservatives. And oh my God, as she played into that, I think it's always a winner
00:22:31.900
to run against the CBC. Just like if you're an Alberta premier, it's always good to run against
00:22:37.220
Ottawa. If you're a conservative, it's always good to run against the media party. Look at Donald Trump.
00:22:43.660
And the more the CBC takes the bait, the more it proves Pierre Polyev's right. Now, I'm not
00:22:49.660
proposing this as some trick or some gimmick. I think it's the only way to win because you've got to
00:22:54.580
out them to show that they're not neutral referees, they're players in the game. I'm, I'm with you.
00:22:59.660
I think that that's one of the most encouraging things that Pierre Polyev has done is fight the
00:23:04.500
CBC harder since becoming the leader than he did even before. Well, you know, our, our, our mutual
00:23:11.240
late friend, Kathy Shadle had always said, they're never going to like you. And that was, I think,
00:23:16.600
so true about the media, about the left. You're never going to win them over. So any, any conservative
00:23:22.040
who tries to charm the media, who tries to charm the liberals, they're going to fail because the
00:23:26.740
knives are going to come there. So you can't outplay them. You can't outwit them unless you
00:23:31.840
are prepared to call out the premises. And that means calling out bad questions, calling out bad
00:23:37.440
behavior. And I think that one thing that was really interesting here when it came to, uh,
00:23:42.980
Pierre Polyev and going after CBC is that he has done this by going after David Aiken at that press
00:23:49.900
conference where David Aiken was, you know, just berating him for not taking enough questions.
00:23:53.560
Let me, let me play a second of that. Hold that thought. I just want to remind people how crazy
00:23:57.760
that was. I'm so glad you reminded me here. Take a look at our, my former colleague. I don't know
00:24:02.700
if you would consider him a former colleague as well. David, it just went nuts. Take a look.
00:24:06.460
Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I appreciate your presence here today. Uh, before I begin,
00:24:12.280
let me just say that, uh, thank you very much. I'm being, I'm being heckled here by, by, by the,
00:24:21.260
by. Thank you very much for your congratulations. Thank you very much for your questions. I'm
00:24:27.200
going to begin my remarks now. But will you take some questions afterwards? Justin Trudeau
00:24:31.560
is out of touch and Canadians are out of money. The cost of government is driving up the cost
00:24:39.180
of living. A half a trillion dollars of inflationary deficits have bid up the cost of the goods
00:24:46.460
we buy and the, and the interest that Canadians pay. The cost for workers and businesses to produce
00:24:55.140
the goods that we buy. On top of that, Trudeau proposes yet more spending to bid up costs even
00:25:01.760
further. The more things, the more he spends, the more things cost. It is just inflation. Their homes
00:25:10.520
costs and to buy a home in the very first place. The reason that the, look, yeah. So I mean,
00:25:19.200
we have, we, we have, uh, basically a, a liberal heckler who snuck in here today to, well,
00:25:26.640
I work for Global News. I'm the chief political correspondent for that organization. Are you
00:25:30.900
going to let me make my statement? You may remember me from the guy who actually reported first on the
00:25:34.740
prime minister breaking the law. Are you going to let me make my statement? We'd just like to ask a
00:25:37.620
question. Say, yes, I'll take a question. I've never, I've actually never seen you heckling the
00:25:41.660
prime minister. I've never seen you heckling the prime minister back in the day. Look, bottom line is
00:25:45.480
this. I'm going to take some questions at the end of this statement. Yes, I'm taking, I'm taking two
00:25:48.740
questions at the very end. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The, uh, so I'm going to start my
00:25:52.600
statement again. Yeah. And Paulyev called him out. Sorry, I interrupted you. I just wanted to play
00:25:57.120
that clip clip. No, that's better than my description of it. So I'm all for it. So he,
00:26:03.040
Pierre Paulyev didn't let that slide. Other conservative leaders would have let that slide.
00:26:08.000
Yeah. They would have apologized. They would have said, Oh, you know, I'm so sorry. I'm going to take
00:26:11.200
more of you. And then they would have been bludgeoned down. So I, I, I, I'm not saying that Pierre
00:26:15.380
Paulyev is taking my advice, but one bit of advice I gave on my show, uh, some months back was to be
00:26:21.560
more like Ron DeSantis. And I, you don't need to do the Trump thing because Trump is a very unique
00:26:26.060
character who can pull off stuff that other people can't, but certainly be like Ron DeSantis,
00:26:30.920
if in no other way than calling out the premises, because if you don't undermine the premises,
00:26:36.340
you have to be beholden to the conclusions. Yeah. You're, you're so right. DeSantis, exactly.
00:26:42.260
He's got all the positive characteristics of Trump without some of the excesses. And, uh, you're
00:26:48.060
right. Only Trump can be Trump and he's an inherent entertainer. I mean, the guy had,
00:26:51.160
you know, uh, absolute blockbuster TV shows for years. He's an empresario. I, I like the Ron
00:26:58.000
DeSantis approach and maybe that's where Pierre Paulyev, I think the anti-Trump, the anti-DeSantis
00:27:05.760
was Aaron O'Toole, who literally in the last election was sued by Rosemary Barton and the CBC.
00:27:14.240
They filed a lawsuit. That was in 2021, right? No, that was Andrew Scheer in 2019.
00:27:19.800
This year. Sorry. I got my elections mixed up. Filed the law. Thank you for the correction.
00:27:26.640
Filed the lawsuit against the conservatives. Rosemary Barton, while she was the boss of the
00:27:31.380
election coverage and the conservatives still went on her show. How? What? They're suing you.
00:27:37.880
And, and I don't think Pierre Paulyev would make that mistake. And here's hoping he does. Hey,
00:27:43.760
do you think there's going to be an election in 2023? It's tough to say. I mean, I, I never want
00:27:48.960
to make the mistake of presuming that Jagmeet Singh is at all a relevant person, but I think the
00:27:54.260
challenge is that he is the one holding the keys to the kingdom here. And he's ultimately the one
00:27:59.060
that's going to decide when, and if there is an election. And, you know, we, we look for example,
00:28:04.540
at the release of the emergencies, uh, the public order emergency commission report this week, a very
00:28:09.040
watershed event, but the NDP had months earlier said, Oh yeah, well, even if it comes out and it's
00:28:15.340
a scathing indictment of Justin Trudeau, we are still going to continue to support the government.
00:28:19.960
So I think it's possible, but I don't think it's likely. Yeah. Interesting. Go one last
00:28:26.720
question for you. By the way, it's been great to hang out with you this past half hour. Appreciate
00:28:29.980
it. I'm worried about civil liberties, not just because we saw what the government got away with
00:28:37.300
during the truckers and the emergencies act. We saw what the media was willing to let them get away
00:28:43.680
with. Many media were egging Trudeau on to go further. Many media were. And I think that Trudeau's
00:28:51.520
reelection, um, after the lockdowns, I think the reelection of other lockdown premiers, I think
00:29:01.180
the media supporting lockdowns and the, and many media supporting the emergencies act. I think Trudeau
00:29:08.320
has learned a lesson that civil liberties and the charter of rights aren't quite the Canadian values
00:29:13.240
that we all thought they were. I see that Trudeau. Well, I think so. And you know, if we view
00:29:18.920
journalists as being the counterbalance to authoritarianism, and I use that in the broadest
00:29:24.860
sense, what happens when both are in lockstep? I mean, one of the things, if you look at dictatorial
00:29:29.720
regimes that take place is the government co-ops the media and media are an agent of the government.
00:29:36.320
Now in Canada, I don't want to be extreme. We're not North Korea. We're not China. We're not Cuba,
00:29:41.180
but we have serious liberty problems that the government has created. And the media in this
00:29:47.080
case has the legal right to be a critic of that power. They have the legal right to be a
00:29:52.820
counterbalance against government. And many of them choose not to be. Yeah. You know, forever it's been
00:29:58.360
that way. I mean, Trotsky had a famous speech. We need a newspaper. You know, of course they did.
00:30:03.360
They had to get the message of the first thing that was often done in coups in third world countries
00:30:08.120
was seize the radio station, seize the TV station. And I think that Trudeau, he isn't seizing them
00:30:13.820
by force. He's seizing it through carrots, not sticks, through bailouts and renting them really.
00:30:20.440
But what scares me about 2023 are these bills moving through Parliament, C11, C18. Yeah.
00:30:28.240
What used to be called C36 and a bill that has not been introduced yet called the Online Harms Act.
00:30:34.200
Together, that's four bills, each of which gives the government increasingly more power over the
00:30:40.780
internet, over media, over, quote, hate on the internet, which is in the eye of the beholder in
00:30:48.000
many cases. I'm worried that four bills, that's more than Trudeau has on inflation or the economy,
00:30:55.600
tells me that this is going to be the year where freedom of speech is really tested in Canada,
00:31:00.700
the freedom of the press. And you guys are independent media. You don't take government
00:31:06.420
dough. We're clearly, we got a bullseye on our back. I would put the Western standard in that
00:31:12.720
category and a handful of others. I am worried about the free press in 2023. Is that just me
00:31:19.880
being paranoid or do you think I should be worried?
00:31:23.160
No, I think you should be worried. I think other Canadians should be worried as well. And I,
00:31:27.380
if I were to put a bigger picture look at it, I would say this, that the last three years,
00:31:34.360
the COVID era has shown us a monumental expansion of government power. When government is responsible
00:31:40.580
for making decisions about what you put in your body, about where you can work, about where you
00:31:45.540
can travel, it's not a big leap to see that same government wanting to control what you can consume,
00:31:52.200
what you can read, what you can post. So a government, it's not just a free speech issue.
00:31:57.400
It's a government control issue, but I think it's still nonetheless concerning.
00:32:01.640
Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll fight it. And we're members of the independent press gallery
00:32:05.240
along with True North and dozens of others. And hopefully there'll be some counterweight to really
00:32:10.620
what I call the government press gallery in parliament. Andrew Lawton, senior journalist with
00:32:15.920
True North. Great to see you again. Before we say goodbye, is there a project you're working on
00:32:20.760
or, uh, or something that you would encourage our viewers to see? We, we know you've got the
00:32:26.060
Andrew Lawton show, which we're big fans of. Is there anything else you want to tell our people
00:32:30.600
about? Well, we just passed the one year anniversary of the emergencies act and the convoy. So if you
00:32:36.160
want to relive that period in Canada's history, I have a book out about it called the freedom convoy,
00:32:41.040
which I was so proud to be able to document. And so far I think remains one of the authoritative
00:32:47.660
sources on this chapter of history. It wasn't given to the Toronto star or to CBC, uh, but it
00:32:52.320
was on the side of freedom. Yeah. And by the way, that was the number one best seller on in the
00:32:58.860
Canadian bestselling list. Although boy, did chapters work hard to keep it off their shelves.
00:33:03.620
And I, whenever I would poke my nose into chapters, I would make a small fuss, not a big fuss. I would
00:33:08.440
make a small fuss. Where is Andrew Lawton's book? And, and that's a kind of censorship as well,
00:33:14.300
but you know, you sold it online, which of course is where most of the action is. Take care,
00:33:18.300
my friend. Nice to see you. It was great to hang out with you a little bit in Switzerland,
00:33:22.920
holding the oligarchs to account. And we look forward to watching what you and True North does
00:33:27.640
in 2023. Thank you. All right. There he is, Andrew Lawton. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow,
00:33:36.220
on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.