The Pope takes his apology tour to Quebec, then CBC labels 50% of conservative supporters in Quebec conspiracy theorists. We talk to reporter Alexa Lavoie about what she's working on, and why she thinks the Pope should have apologized to the First Nations community.
00:00:52.040And yet he was the last Indian affairs minister to sign off on residential schools in Canada.
00:00:58.080I'm reliably informed that he is still alive and could be dusted off and brought in front of the television cameras to make amends for his role in all this.
00:01:06.860But he's a liberal, so it ain't going to happen.
00:01:10.080And then CBC has now labeled half, one in two potential conservative party of Quebec voters as conspiracy theorists.
00:01:22.560Now, the conspiracy theories they subscribe to, I think it might be that lockdowns don't seem to work and the vaccines aren't as effective as they told us they are.
00:01:46.500Anyway, joining us tonight to discuss this and more and what she's working on next is my rebel news colleague and friend, Alexa Lavoie.
00:02:04.080So joining me now is my friend, Alexa Lavoie from her home in Montreal.
00:02:08.820And there's so much to talk about, but before we get into some of the other things I want to talk about, the conservative movement in Quebec, I want to ask you about the visit of the Pope to Quebec.
00:02:21.480So our Adam Sose and team covered the visit of the Pope to Alberta.
00:02:30.260And he also went to Quebec on yet another Catholic Church apology tour.
00:02:36.060But you actually told the other side of the story, which I thought was wonderful, because the mainstream media, they don't actually talk to indigenous Catholics all that much.
00:02:48.380They like to talk to the activists, but they don't really talk to the normal people.
00:03:17.520But some of them was like, no, it's mixing climate change, Ukraine war, no mentioning the responsibility of the church in this and saying that I'm really disappointed of the apologies.
00:03:36.700So I think, again, the opinion of the people was really polarized, I would say.
00:03:45.840Some people were really into the Pope's order with like, I'm not even sure if that would make a difference in the hill of the community.
00:03:56.720But I know one thing is like a lot of people agree that the money should have go and build better facility, giving them running water and helping them instead of bringing the Pope into Canada for an apology that it already did before.
00:04:17.760So a lot of people were concerned about the life, the quality of life of the community and that just the money should have been spent somewhere else and the government should have apologized for what they did too because they had a big part of responsibility on all of this story.
00:04:42.040Yeah, that was one of the things that I noticed that was the same with Adam's coverage.
00:04:47.540So with Adam's coverage, a lot of the people said, you know, the apology is actually quite helpful to us.
00:04:55.040For a lot of people, at least in Edmonton, they said it felt sincere and it would go a long way to healing them.
00:05:03.920But overwhelmingly, didn't matter if you agreed with the Pope coming or not agreeing with the Pope coming.
00:05:09.000Overwhelmingly, people said, we need tangible change on Canada's First Nations reserves.
00:05:16.300There is no excuse for a certain segment of the population in a developed first world country to be living without running water, with poor housing.
00:05:28.780And it's I mean, it's not just, you know, someone is homeless.
00:05:31.980You have entire communities living in shacks of derelict housing and whether it is through underfunding or mismanagement, there has to be a better solution.
00:05:44.020And a lot of people that Adam spoke to said, that's what we need.
00:05:47.780This is nice, but that's what we need.
00:06:00.620Some of the water is toxic for us and we need to deal with that.
00:06:05.520And like the poor poverty, it's it's incredible.
00:06:10.820Oh, it's high in the native community.
00:06:13.600And so the unfortunately, it's I have the impression that since 2015, when Justin Trudeau have promised so much change for them, nothing have moved from that time.
00:06:31.220So Justin Trudeau is going to go out there and say, oh, but I got the Pope to apologize yet again when he actually hasn't done anything to keep the promises he made in 2015.
00:06:42.920He made promises to the indigenous community for their votes and then abandoned them and actually mocked them.
00:06:50.620I don't know if you remember that clip where I think it was in Saskatchewan.
00:08:44.160You don't even care of all the other, like, multicultural people who are there, who did suffer from their country and suffer again here because you kill our democracy.
00:08:57.540And in the same time, you actually don't help your own citizen.
00:09:04.520So for me, it's just that I'm sorry, but this is just outrageous to come from someone who ruled the country.
00:09:15.940Yeah, and I mean, if we're in the business of dragging old men out to make them apologize, where the heck is Jean Chrétien?
00:09:24.460He was the last Indian affairs minister to sign off on the residential schools.
00:09:30.320He is still alive and he is an active member of the Liberal Party.
00:09:36.000Instead, to deflect away from the Liberal Party's role in making sure that the residential schools went on as long as they did, Justin Trudeau drags the Pope over here to get an apology instead of dragging Jean Chrétien out of his crypt or wherever he hides these days.
00:09:53.460Yeah, because we didn't see him for a while.
00:09:57.020And most of the time that we see him is because he's like Big Evan where lots of money is around him.
00:10:33.140Just just for that, I make make me a little bit frustrated about this because a lot of people have been really mad about the Pope and writing so many bad comments.
00:10:45.820But the Pope is in charge since 2013 and he was not in charge of the church when everything happened.
00:10:56.820So he's talking, he take all the weight on his shoulder coming here and apologize for something that he had no power to change anything because he was not the one who was living at that moment.
00:11:13.200But the one that was there, Zhang Keqiang, at that moment is not enough good to go out of his, I would say like, not tune, but almost that, to just do a one time out and apologize for what he was in charge.
00:11:34.540And he had the power to make a difference.
00:11:39.340And, you know, these people, these critics, and maybe I'm defensive because I'm Catholic, but I also acknowledge the dark spots of our history.
00:11:47.120But maybe I'm defensive, but, you know, so often people say, oh, you religious people, you're superstitious, but I'm not the one who believes in generational curses.
00:13:34.300I think conspiracy theory means things that public health officers will figure out in six months from now that you already know that lockdowns are bad, that the vaccines really aren't working.
00:13:50.300Empirically speaking, like wherever you fall down on vaccine mandates, they are not preventing transmission.
00:13:59.580And if you had said that a little while ago, that I guess makes you a conspiracy theorist at the CBC, even though now public health offices are starting to say those things.
00:14:10.820But CBC is very threatened that party leader, Eric Duhem, whom you have interviewed dozens of times at this point, or at least a dozen times in the last 15 months, his party has gone from being non-existent, just completely non-existent to gaining a seat in the legislature, polling at 20 percent.
00:14:32.820And you really only need to get around 30 percent to form government.
00:14:37.200And they, in the first six or seven months of the year, already at half a million dollars in donations.
00:14:43.120So it's obvious that CBC is scared because this, Eric's party has been the only party that actually had a different viewpoint on COVID, that maybe we needed to be cautious, but also respect people's civil liberties.
00:14:59.160Maybe we didn't need to be closing churches and locking up pastors and making people show their private medical information to a bartender.
00:15:06.600That, I guess, makes you a conspiracy theorist with the CBC.
00:15:11.720But I know a little bit, Eric Duhem, because I'm always covering what is going on because he's the only leader of a party in Quebec that will allow us to be there and to cover what he is doing.
00:15:27.420He's not scared to answer any kind of question.
00:15:32.560This person is really promoting pro-choice and he's talking really out loud about how the lockdown was bad, how that affects a lot of citizens.
00:15:45.520And he's telling all about, like, the decisions from Mr. Legault was, and as well, like, when we see all the candidates that he had, okay, we have someone that's come from Cuba that really knows what is communism.
00:16:05.140We have some doctors, some scientists, some people, some nurses, the candidate of Eric Duhem, I have one point in common.
00:16:21.360Nobody should decide what is good for me if I decide that I don't want to.
00:16:28.500And, yeah, they are just talking about, okay, like Mr. Legault said, what is the science in when I took the flight from Miami?
00:16:39.520Miami, and I think it's Miami, and without a mask, arriving on air at the border with Canada, and everybody needed to put it back in his face, and he said, where is the science in that?
00:16:52.960I'm with the same people in the same plane.
00:16:55.360But when I cross in the air, the border with Canada, everybody, I tell them that they need to put back their mask, he said.
00:17:07.620And it's probably why, because he's getting in the poll, and a lot of people is following him, and what he say is really contradictive with what Mr. Legault is telling.
00:17:21.240So I think they use that as a tool, and every time that he's releasing a new candidate, the next day or hours after, you will see some things going out, because some researcher will have, like, check all the social media of the candidate to try to find something that would be bad for Eric.
00:17:44.680And it's all the time the same thing, and because the election is coming soon, I think it's September, they will start the campaign.
00:17:54.640Now, I have the impression that it's kind of a big war, like, to try to make him being low in the poll, because, yes, he has been admitted for one of the leadership debates, but the other one, he needs to be at a certain percentage in the poll.
00:18:14.680I think it's 10%. I think it's 10%. I'm not even sure. But if he'd not reach that percentage, it would be out of the leadership debate.
00:18:23.380So I don't know if it's like a tactic to maybe try to discredit his party, but as well, when the big research about the conspiracy movement in Quebec went out, they did survey 2000 people.
00:18:42.260And on the 2000 people, they find out that 50, about 50%, I think, was voting for the Conservative Party of Quebec.
00:18:51.820And they show as well for the People's Party of Canada.
00:18:56.240But, of course, it took, I think, a couple of days, or maybe not even a day, that we see in the newspaper that 50% of the voters are conspiracy theorists.
00:19:12.620I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's not what they're writing in the research, but they manipulate their research to make the people, the viewer, the people who read the article, thinking that 50% of the people who will vote for the Conservative Party are conspiracy theorists.
00:19:31.920That is not true. But some people have wrote to the newspaper and saying, like, it's not accurate. This is not true. It's not what is shown in the article.
00:19:45.860They are aware of it, but nobody has changed the article.
00:19:49.860No, they don't care. You know that, though, firsthand, dealing with CBC, because you covered the story of Martin Englehart.
00:19:56.120And he was the poor, downtrodden convoy supporter who has allegedly taken advantage of the convoy, and they basically hung him out to dry, and he didn't have any money, and blah, blah, blah.
00:20:08.600He was just a con artist. And you dug down. You did a little extra layer of digging because you realized the story stunk.
00:20:18.600And you also reached out to CBC saying, these are the new facts. Are you going to correct your story? And they never did.
00:20:23.780No. So they say, they get back to me, say, can you tell me what is inaccurate? I will pass it along.
00:20:32.060So they will investigate, and they will get back to you in 20 days.
00:20:37.800It's been almost a month and a half now. No news.
00:20:44.520Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, with regard to this study that found that 50% of the Conservative Party of Quebec supporters were either convinced or moderate adherents of conspiracy theories,
00:20:56.440they don't even say what those conspiracy theories are, although they briefly allude to them.
00:21:01.580One of them, because they're discussing one of the candidates and how she's apparently some sort of kook.
00:21:07.460And what she said was that she expressed doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccines.
00:21:16.780And she basically said that maybe there are side effects to the vaccines that are being downplayed.
00:21:23.980Well, as it turns out, I don't know how many vaccinated people, well, that have gotten COVID.
00:21:36.500And then we just find out that they've actually even downplayed the extent to which myocarditis is a side effect for young males in the vaccine.
00:21:45.400That it's even worse than what they were telling us.
00:21:48.080And this is now, like, government sources that are saying these things.
00:21:52.520But because she said it, and not some public health officer said it, she's a conspiracy theorist.
00:21:57.380So we have to wait until, I don't know, Dina Hinshaw says it, or Theresa Tam says it, and then it's no longer a conspiracy theory.
00:22:04.620People can't make up their minds for themselves, I guess.
00:22:07.660No, and for them, as I say, they take the conspiracy theories that they wanted to take in account.
00:22:17.640So the one who question the science, the one who question the measure, the decision, the government.
00:22:26.740But they have a lot of conspiracy theory in life.
00:22:29.940But for that, they really target the one who are questioning the science and questioning the government.
00:22:38.900And of course, for them, it's just like, but they are conspiracy theory because they don't want to follow our science and say, yeah, you're right.
00:22:49.060And no, you didn't, like, say anything wrong or you don't lie to us.
00:22:56.640Because so many people have questions and they don't want to do a debate.
00:23:00.960Especially our premiere did really mention that it will not have a debate with the people who believe on 5G and a chip in the skin in TV saying, like, I'm not going to debate with all of them because they think that everybody who question the science are all like that.
00:23:20.780Oh, yeah. So they conflate people who say, and there's a lot of people out there who say, I got vaccinated and then I got COVID.
00:23:31.160Maybe these things don't work. So they're actually calling the people who went along to get along.
00:23:35.940You're calling them conspiracy theorists now, too.
00:23:38.040And you're lumping them in with people who think that, you know, they're going to implant a microchip under your skin, which actually I think Jeremy's working on a story about how that technology does exist.
00:23:49.980So, you know, like conspiracy theorists are sometimes people who are just ahead of the curve a little bit.
00:23:55.700But it's funny because CBC should be careful who they call conspiracy theorists here, because this could force people to bleed off of the Liberal Party over to the Conservatives in Quebec.
00:24:07.660Because in their own study, however flawed that it was, and UN funded, by the way, UNESCO funded, among Quebec Liberal supporters, 31% were classified as conspiracy theorists.
00:24:19.580So these are skeptical liberals who are skeptical, who are like, after two years of this thing, you know, maybe, maybe I was wrong.
00:24:28.080Because sometimes, you know, you need to look back to get a fuller picture.
00:24:32.000And 29% of party Quebecois supporters are also saying, maybe we could have done this a different way.
00:24:39.460They're calling them conspiracy theorists.
00:24:41.740And so I think they should be careful because that might force people over into Eric Duhem's party.
00:24:48.600You know, if you don't want him to win, you should be careful.
00:24:56.240But even Liberal Party supporters who just break with the party on this one issue, they're also crazy now.
00:25:02.980But I don't know if it's something that happened as well in Alberta.
00:25:06.520But I know that in Quebec province, mainstream media and a lot of, how you call it, columnists, did use a lot, a lot of band names to try to discredit the people who were questioning or thinking differently than the government.
00:25:25.260We had so many different band names and it's beginning to be a tool.
00:25:32.380And now it's beginning to be normal, normalized to call the people who are voting, for example, for the Conservative Party or have a different view, to call them just normally conspiracy theory.
00:25:48.680So that will put the people in the, to think, do you really, I want to be called like that or I would just change my idea and just go with the flow of the society.
00:26:01.560So I think it's really a tool that people will feel really uncomfortable to go and expose themselves to be called a conspiracy theory and saying like, I'm just going to be as normal citizen and I don't want to be part of that.
00:26:21.160And they would just change probably their mind or something like that.
00:26:23.840Yeah, it takes a special person to be a rebel when everybody's telling you to do one thing and say one thing.
00:26:30.120It takes a special person to say, actually, I think that's wrong.
00:26:35.700And yeah, like when you mentioned Alberta, three of our seven leadership candidates are openly anti-lockdown, anti-vax mandate.
00:26:43.860And I think two of the three lockdown resistors are openly questioning the efficacy of vaccines all the time.
00:26:54.360And so I guess it takes someone like Eric Duhem in Quebec to normalize that opinion for to say to people, actually, it's OK to hold that opinion.
00:27:04.000I mean, it's a little bit more OK in Alberta since it's, you know, a topic of conversation everywhere because we're in the middle of a leadership election.
00:27:12.260But Eric's the only one talking about it there.
00:35:10.660Yeah, it's just like Justin Trudeau, when he first announced the plastics ban.
00:35:15.260Again, I found myself talking about plastic every single week.
00:35:17.860But, you know, I love plastic, especially single-use plastic.
00:35:21.160But when he announced the plastic ban, one intrepid reporter, probably fired from the mainstream media at this point for actually asking an effective and good question,
00:35:31.080asked Justin Trudeau what he does to reduce his use of plastics in his life.
00:35:35.840And he said he drinks from drink box water bottle sort of things because he didn't know what to say.
00:35:44.780And his brain malfunctioned at the junction.
00:35:47.360And he actually has never even thought about reducing plastics.
00:35:51.380So when somebody asked him how he did it, he literally had no clue.
00:35:54.900Because, well, first of all, he wasn't ever expecting a tough accountability question from the mainstream media.
00:36:00.400But he's never actually thought about doing the things that he wants you to do.
00:36:05.620We have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of water out of when we have water bottles out of plastic.
00:36:16.360Sorry, away from plastic towards paper, like drink box water bottles sort of things.
00:36:23.000Do you think he's actually worried about whether or not his utensils are single-use plastic while he's getting room service or laying out by the beach in Costa Rica?