The Irish people voted to take the word "mother" out of the Irish constitution, and they won. We talk to Ben Scallan about that, and then I show you some crazy crime and comedy videos from around the country.
00:10:38.480Well, Ireland, as I'm sure, you know, has had a number of referendums in recent history on
00:10:46.560progressive issues and all of them passed comfortably for, for years now. I mean, I believe if I'm not
00:10:52.100mistaken, I think we were the first country in the world to, uh, legalize same sex marriage by popular
00:10:57.880vote. You know, other countries have brought it in through courts, rulings and government, you know,
00:11:04.440edicts and so on. Whereas we were the first people that the Irish public at large voted for it. Same
00:11:09.860goes for abortion, uh, and so on and so forth. So I think they assumed this was going to be another
00:11:16.380one of those. And I think the reason they did it more than likely is because as you and I have
00:11:20.820discussed on this show before, Ezra, the government is under intense pressure when it comes to certain
00:11:25.840controversial issues like immigration and like, uh, hate speech laws and things like that. So for the last
00:11:32.680year or so, they've really been feeling the heat and they thought, you know, what would be a great way to get
00:11:37.260the heat off ourselves would be to throw out one of these nice liberal referendums that we always win. And
00:11:43.300that will be a nice kind of comfortable distraction. It won't really change much materially. It's largely
00:11:47.800symbolic. Uh, but then we'll, we'll get a nice, uh, uh, feel good love in once again. And hopefully that'll help us
00:11:56.680coming into the European elections and the local elections in June. And obviously that did not exactly pan
00:12:02.560out the way they would have liked. I can only assume. I have a theory for you and you'd tell
00:12:07.580me if I'm right, right or wrong on this. Um, sometimes a referendum can be a safety valve of
00:12:13.200a whole bunch of different issues in Canada. We recently had a special by-election in a district,
00:12:18.300uh, and the, the conservative opposition did tremendously well, 57%, even though prime minister
00:12:26.000Justin Trudeau and a lot of his cabinet campaign there. And obviously it was more than just the local
00:12:31.880campaign. It was like a, a, a lightning rod for all the various crises that Canada is going through
00:12:38.160right now. Inflation, immigration, crime, corruption. What do you think of the theory, the hypothesis
00:12:44.720that yes, this was about the government picking a fight with mothers and the word mother, but it was
00:12:51.120also a way for people to lash back at the establishment on some of the issues you just described,
00:12:56.460the immigration, the crime, some of the ways that the Irish government is perhaps getting too far
00:13:03.280ahead of their skis, so to speak. So this, sure, this was about defending mothers, but it was also a
00:13:09.000way for ordinary people to clap back at the establishment because really it was the entire
00:13:15.060establishment, wasn't it? All the NGOs, all the big political parties, all the official people loved
00:13:21.620this, didn't they? Yeah. And I mean, I think a lot of people who aren't familiar with the Irish
00:13:27.400political landscape will be shocked to know that even our biggest opposition party, Sinn Féin,
00:13:32.240which many people will remember from the Troubles as being this nationalist party that was fighting
00:13:37.480for Irish independence and so on and so forth. That party is now significantly more left-wing than the
00:13:45.640government. And if I had to explain the Irish political system to a foreign audience and maybe
00:13:51.940an American context, the current government we have is basically like the Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi wing of
00:13:58.300the Democrat Party. And then the opposition, the Sinn Féin type parties are like the AOC, Rashida Tlaib
00:14:05.300branch of the Democrat Party. But that's the range, that's the Overton window you're dealing with,
00:14:10.880where it's just left to radical left. And so all of them put their entire weight behind this thing.
00:14:17.920And it seems like the voters have rejected them all. It didn't go to anybody's favour,
00:14:23.480at least none of the major elected parties. We had one political party that has a single seat aimed to,
00:14:30.200and they campaigned against it. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see in the upcoming elections if
00:14:35.120they benefit from that. But for the most part, it was pretty much uniformity. And the entire
00:14:39.980establishment was rejected. And so to your question, was this a rejection of, you know,
00:14:46.540something bigger than just the question of the referendum itself? I think it's very telling that
00:14:52.020one big source of frustration that the public had was the amount of misinformation that was peddled
00:14:58.300by the government throughout the campaign. So just to give one example, this is a government that set up
00:15:04.720a group called the Electoral Commission as a kind of a misinformation arbiter. Their specific purpose
00:15:11.520that the government set them up to do was to fight misinformation at election time. And this is the
00:15:17.400first electoral event that they've existed for. So this was kind of the unveiling of this brand new
00:15:22.060group. And during the campaign, they were fact checking government ministers for false things that
00:15:29.440they were claiming about the Constitution. Our media minister, Catherine Martin, was saying things
00:15:35.660like, oh, the Irish government or the Irish Constitution says that a woman's place is in the
00:15:40.740home. It absolutely does not say that. That text does not appear in the Constitution. That's just a
00:15:46.200total and utter mistruth. Yeah, we just read what it says. It says a woman's place, if she chooses it,
00:15:53.120should be protected. She shouldn't be obliged to leave it. We just went through the text.
00:15:56.980The minister was lying. And so the Electoral Commission then effectively called her out for
00:16:03.940this and said that's not true. And the government totally disregarded what they said. I even asked
00:16:09.100her, I said, will you retract that statement now that you've been fact checked by your own fact
00:16:12.860checking body? This isn't me. This isn't Ben Scalin of Gripped Media telling you you're wrong.
00:16:17.180It's the authority that you set up to regulate the truth is telling you you're wrong. Are you going to
00:16:23.060retract it? And she refused. She said, oh, no, that's that's the widely understood
00:16:27.220implication of the amendment. And I'm not taking it back and yada yada. So I think things like that in
00:16:33.460the runoff people. I spoke to one government politician who he campaigned for the change.
00:16:40.000He was on the losing side of the referendum. And he told me that he thinks it failed due to
00:16:44.300government arrogance. He thinks that people just had enough of the the pride and the hubris and the
00:16:51.020sense that you can just say whatever you want, whether it's true or not, with no consequence.
00:16:55.700And that that played a big part in this thing's downfall.
00:16:59.700Huh. By the way, the idea of a ministry of truth where the where any government appointees get to decide
00:17:06.300what's true or not is is terrifying. The fact that in this one case, they condemn the government
00:17:10.880is cold comfort. The fact that they exist at all. I mean, each one of us should be our own
00:17:16.280fact checkers and should come to our own opinion. That's terrifying that Ireland has that in effect.
00:17:20.680Hey, let me play for you a clip. And I know you know the one. It was a debate on what I believe
00:17:26.640is your state broadcaster, RTE. And it was about what removing woman and motherhood might mean in
00:17:33.200terms of polygamy and other kinds of families. I didn't quite understand this, but I but this apparently
00:17:39.960was a bit of a bombshell moment in the debate on the subject. Here, take a look at this clip and help
00:17:46.660me understand what was going on here, because I I've watched this twice and I need a little bit
00:17:51.940of help. Take a look. Is he going to tell a Muslim man who has fled persecution to make his home in
00:17:57.240Ireland with his two wives and children that they're not in a durable relationship and that his family
00:18:02.160is not a moral institution, as Minister O'Gorman suggested? Well, again, in terms of immigration law,
00:18:07.880if that's what you're... No, that's not what I'm asking. I mean, I'm not going to embroil the hot red
00:18:14.280subject of migration into this issue, which is about a fundamental recognition of families in our
00:18:20.240community and the different types and modalities of family. What I would say is in terms of the state
00:18:25.160always reserves the right in terms of migration and does so through migration law. So you don't
00:18:29.480recognise that family? So I'm not making comments on sort of specific red herrings. You don't recognise this as a family. It's not a red herring. This is a reality in the new Ireland that we live in.
00:18:37.700We have many new immigrants that are citizens of Ireland now. Is his family a family or not?
00:18:42.420Sorry, in terms of... We have many different types of relationships. Yes. And I'm asking, is a
00:18:47.860polygamous marriage in that case a family? Sorry, bigamy is illegal. Polygamy. Sorry, polygamy is also illegal in this country.
00:18:55.300But so you're saying that... It's legally, it's illegal and the law prevents it. But you're making a new law and you're saying that durable relationships are on a par with marriage. So will this man have
00:19:06.100have family rights? Will his children have family rights? Sorry, sorry, sorry, but can I come back, come on.
00:19:10.820Will his children from his second marriage have rights?
00:19:12.820But can I come back now? You know that the rights are there in the Succession Act, the rights in terms of all of those legislation, the Social Welfare Consolidation.
00:19:18.100Okay. No, this is important though, because this has been introduced and needs to be clarified.
00:19:22.820The Succession Act of 1965, the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitance 2010,
00:19:28.100Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, Taxes Consolidation Act 1987, and International Protection Act of 250.
00:19:34.340They're all the laws that guarantee issues around inheritance, tax, social protection.
00:19:38.900What we're doing here is the foundational document of the Constitution,
00:19:41.540which is about values and principles, and which the courts interpret as from the very beginning of the Constitution.
00:19:50.260Tónustha, you know that legislation can be overturned. The whole point about introducing a constitutional amendment is that it trumps legislation.
00:19:58.820And if you give somebody new constitutional rights, legislation can be overruled and can be declared unconstitutional.
00:20:06.180Ben, that was very interesting because, of course, if you're saying mother is gone and just all families are there,
00:20:12.020well, there are polygamous families in Islam. And, you know, there's hundreds, perhaps thousands of those in Canada.
00:20:20.820And I didn't quite know who was arguing what there, but I think it's a live question.
00:20:25.620And if you undo the nature of a family, husband and wife, mother and father, any family could be protected by the Constitution.
00:20:38.100And I think that the point Ms. Steen was making is that you're opening up Pandora's box.
00:20:44.580That got a lot of light and heat, that part of the debate. What was going on there?
00:20:49.300So that was specifically referring to the other proposed change that the government wanted to make.
00:20:55.220One was the motherhood issue that we discussed earlier. The other one was that currently the Irish Constitution says that family is based on the institution of marriage.
00:21:05.860And the government said, well, that's discriminatory and unfair because there are people who aren't married who are in a family.
00:21:12.580You know, there are people who are raised only by their grandparents or, you know, one grandparent or whatever it might be.
00:21:18.420And so they wanted to say that instead the family was based on marriage or any other durable relationship.
00:21:25.520Now, what exactly a durable relationship is, is anybody's guess.
00:21:30.780You know, the ministers tried to assure us, oh, no, this has specific meanings under law and it's narrowly interpreted and the courts will figure out what it means.
00:21:39.840It's not a big concern. But we had very senior legal people.
00:21:43.800Maria Steyn, who was speaking in that clip, is a barrister herself.
00:21:47.240We had the former attorney general of Ireland, who is currently a senator, Michael McDowell.
00:21:52.300He raised serious concerns about this, saying that if you interpret a family as being anything based on a durable relationship,
00:22:00.060then that has all kinds of potential implications for tax law.
00:22:04.480Could be roommates. I mean, why not have some roommates? That could be a durable relationship. What does that even mean?
00:22:12.080I mean, I've been on this show a few times. Do you and I have a durable relationship?
00:22:17.360If one of us kicks the bucket, maybe somebody else will be claiming inheritance, you know?
00:22:23.280So it's so and then on top of all of that, of course, as we've discussed, immigration is a big issue in Ireland and a government minister went on the news several months ago before the campaign.
00:22:34.740And he said that this change and he was saying this is a good thing, by the way.
00:22:39.200He was bragging about this. He said that this change would have, quote, serious consequences for immigration law.
00:22:45.880Because if you say you have a durable relationship and that makes you a family, that would help things like family reunification for refugees.
00:22:54.100It would be easier for asylum seekers to bring their relatives over.
00:22:58.980Now, after that, that comment naturally went down like a lead balloon and everybody was saying, oh, my goodness, this is going to open the floodgates.
00:23:07.500And then ministers quickly came out and they said, oh, no, that's not true.
00:23:10.940That's all misinformation. But it was a government minister who said it.
00:23:13.820It wasn't we didn't come up with this. You guys told us that was going to be the impact.
00:23:17.680So anyway, that's that's basically the clip that Maria Steen was referring to there.
00:23:22.700That's what a big part of the debate was about, that people were concerned that if you enshrine durable relationships as having family rights,
00:23:31.800God only knows what the legal implications of that would be once it hits the courts.
00:23:35.780Yeah. And the judges would just take that as a starting point.
00:23:39.220You know, this whole thing is really a lesson about what it means to be conservative.
00:23:43.520It doesn't mean right wing, whatever that is.
00:23:46.380It means don't throw out something that has worked for generations that contains the wisdom of our entire past.
00:23:58.180It's much harder to build something than to destroy something.
00:24:02.080And the wisdom in the constitutional provisions that I read is the wisdom of decades and centuries and I think you could say of thousands of years of all the generations that have gone before us.
00:24:13.940So if you're going to rip those out, if you're going to rip out those mighty oaks and plant new weeds, you bloody well better know what you're planting.
00:24:22.680You better know what you're replacing the old tried and true with.
00:24:26.900And it sounds like Irish people have had enough change for now, enough radical change imposed on them that they just didn't want to take on the institution of motherhood.
00:24:36.680And I say good on the Irish and I was I didn't know about this referendum until right before the end of it.
00:24:45.920Do you think it will have any long term impacts?
00:24:48.200Do you think it'll cause the government to be less radical?
00:24:51.240Do you think it might encourage other opposition parties?
00:24:54.200Or do you think they'll just try and forget this ever happened and quickly go back to their old ways?
00:25:00.660I do think it's definitely giving them seeds of doubt and things to think about.
00:25:05.580And one of the reasons I think that is very quickly after the referendum results, we had a government minister coming out saying that they're going to have to consider how representative NGO organizations, particularly the state funded ones, are of the general public and their views.
00:25:22.920Because one of the groups that kind of spearheaded this campaign was the National Women's Council of Ireland, which is one of Ireland's best funded NGOs, of course, funded by the state.
00:25:32.780I think they receive about 96 percent of their staff funding from the government, which is a weird kind of non-governmental organization that's almost exclusively held up by the government.
00:25:43.020I'm not sure what kind of independence that is.
00:25:44.740But anyway, that's that's a whole other issue.
00:25:46.440And they advocated very strongly for this.
00:25:50.000And then obviously it was overwhelmingly rejected.
00:25:52.800And exit polling shows that even women rejected it by a very significant margin.
00:25:57.120So I asked our quality minister after in the aftermath of the result, does this mean would you say that these groups are not representative of women?
00:26:06.820How can they claim to represent women when they were so clearly radically out of step with what ordinary women on the street think?
00:26:13.080And he said, oh, no, I think I think they are definitely representative.
00:26:17.580This is just a kind of an isolated incident.
00:30:46.040Yeah, you're not supposed to be helping the people illegally blocking roads.
00:30:51.580I mean, at least I remember last time when the truckers blocked the roads and they actually just, you know, didn't actually block full roads.
00:30:59.200Justin Trudeau called in the Emergencies Act of Martial Law.
00:31:03.300Oh, by the way, here's Justin Trudeau today saying, oh, no, no, no.
00:31:06.800He's fine with all the street protests.
00:31:11.540And we've seen some incredible increases in anti-Semitism across the country.
00:31:15.580I'm wondering what you think the role of the federal government is to help stamp that out.
00:31:19.120Well, the government has continued to step up in pushing back against the rise in hatred that we're seeing around the country,
00:31:26.140whether it's working directly with police services across the country, whether it's making sure that community and religious centers have the right kinds of protections,
00:31:39.660or whether it's just reminding Canadians of who we are.
00:31:43.020Yes, the freedom to protest is sacrosanct and a really important part of our free, robust democracy.
00:31:51.420But that doesn't give you the right to make a fellow citizen feel unsafe in their own home, in their own community, in their own neighborhood.
00:32:01.580And we need to make sure that even as people are feeling extraordinarily impacted by what's going on at the other end of the world,
00:32:12.340they don't take it out on their fellow Canadians because that's not the kind of country we are.
00:32:16.780Yeah. Justin Trudeau's fine with actual criminals. He saves the police work for peaceful trucker protests.
00:32:24.840It's just astonishing. And I think it is safe to say, based on their conduct, the Toronto police are actually assisting the criminals.
00:32:35.920They're telling homeowners to make it as easy as possible for the criminals to get the keys.
00:32:42.080I mean, the only thing they didn't say was, leave your doors unlocked. Welcome to Canada in decline.
00:32:48.620Toronto's probably worse than most. Vancouver is atrocious as well.
00:32:52.740I want to leave you with one quick video. I found this on TikTok.
00:32:56.120Here's a young person. Boy, she's got a sense of humor, a very dark sense of humor.
00:33:00.680Look at her comparing housing in Vancouver with prison cells.
00:33:06.180She does it in the form of a quiz. She shows you a room and says, is this a rental unit in Vancouver or a prison?
00:33:15.400Today we're playing a game called, is it for rent in Vancouver or is it a Norwegian prison?
00:33:20.400Up first is the single bed desk closet combo. That is for rent in Vancouver, $1,200 a month.
00:33:27.260Next up, we have a similar vibe, beautiful natural light, single bed desk.
00:33:31.040This would be a room at the Halden prison in Norway. The bars on the window might make this one pretty obvious, but it is in fact for rent in Vancouver.
00:33:57.460It would be funny if it weren't true. Hey, by the way, do you think that young woman is going to be voting for Justin Trudeau anymore?
00:34:04.620Maybe if Trudeau tries to equate Pierre Polyev and Donald Trump or whatever his latest scheme is.
00:34:09.880No, I think Trudeau is toast when you have people like this making videos like that.
00:34:14.760Well, that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.