Trudeau’s big party tent is coming apart at the seams
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Summary
Lauren Gunter is a columnist with the Toronto Sun and a regular contributor to the National Post and the Globe and Mail. She joins me to talk about what went wrong for the Trudeau government after the carbon tax vote in Parliament Hill.
Transcript
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responsibly a carbon tax election that was the call from conservative leader pierre polyev and the house
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of commons of course the vote failed there is not going to be a carbon tax election not yet anyway
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hello i'm brian lily welcome to the full comment podcast there has been utter chaos over the last
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little while on parliament hill and the real question that we have to answer is whether the
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trudeau government can get themselves back on track or is pierre polyev's steam train just going to
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keep on rolling around the bend as johnny cash would say lauren gunter is a columnist with the toronto
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sun the edmonton sun if you've been paying attention to politics for the last 30 years you've read
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him somewhere national post edmonton journal all over the place and he joins me now for this discussion
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lauren um very strange last week in politics up on parliament hill you and i watching from afar but
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with great interest as uh polyev dares the prime minister to to call a carbon tax election yeah and
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and why not i mean i that dare plus the uh idea of holding a non-confidence vote was not really about
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triggering election i'm guessing the conservatives uh knew that that none of their pleas would lead to
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an election none of their maneuvers would lead to an election but this enabled them to get the other
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three parties in the commons the liberals the bloc and the ndp all to seem to side with the carbon tax
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and so uh you know on any issue in in politics if if the public is split 50 50 and you're the only
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only party on one side the other three are are splitting the other 50 you have a huge advantage
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in this case it's about a 70 30 split and the conservatives are now the only party
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on the 70 side i mean it it is good maneuvering it it wasn't going to lead to an election i had people
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texting me all last night and some this morning somebody oh what happened in the confidence vote
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are we in an election no that was never going to happen calm yourselves down but now polyev can go to
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the electorate whenever the election comes about and say hey look we're the only party who wanted to
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save you from the carbon tax if you want the carbon tax kept the same or eliminated we're the only
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option you have everybody else is in favor of increasing that tax year after year after year
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and i think it's good politics so there were two votes there was the vote on wednesday which was to
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um spike the hike i mean great branding from polyev i got to say that great branding spike the hike
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and ax the tax uh the liberals dismissed this as bumper sticker politics well first off we're canadians
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we don't do bumper sticker politics go visit go visit the states right we all visit the states at some
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point they love their bumper stickers and they're all over but what these are easy to remember slogans
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and so they had the vote on wednesday saying to the government 70 percent of canadians are opposed to the tax
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and that's borne out by elege polk we want to be fully accurate 69 percent opposed the uh the carbon
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tax and seven out of ten premiers and polyev stood up in the house of commons on wednesday ahead of that
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vote and just kept reading off all these different people well the liberal opposition in new brunswick
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is opposed to the carbon tax are you the liberal opposition and the ndp opposition in nova scotia voted
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unanimously with the conservative government of nova scotia against the carbon tax hike will you uh
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even the ontario liberal leader he wouldn't say her name bonnie crombie uh she has come out against
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the carbon tax and trudeau just kept standing up and saying no this this will make life more affordable
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for you this is an affordability measure do you think that has any resonance with anyone no and you
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want to know how deep the opposition goes we are currently in the middle of a leadership race to
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replace rachel notley as the ndp leader in alberta and there are six declared candidates two of whom
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have already come out and said they're against the carbon tax so if you get to the point where
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the carbon tax or the hike no they're against the carbon tax so even the alberta ndp's against it now
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or is part of it part of it is and so you know you've got nobody on the prime minister's side
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except a few die hard liberals who would defend him uh even if even if incriminating evidence were
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found about what he'd done on his jamaica trip uh so uh you know it's it's just those blind loyalists
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it's the sycophants they're the only ones who are left in favor of this and and you know a few
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activists who don't own cars and bike 14 blocks to their job at the non-profit in downtown vancouver
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who aren't affected by this because the weather isn't bad there who don't have to pay their home
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heating bills in in northern ontario or northern alberta in the middle of january when we had that
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cold snap that went down to minus 35 and minus 40 we had one night here in that minute it was minus 50
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how did your heat pump work that night yeah exactly exactly is it good i got all sorts of photos from
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people in nova scotia when that big snowstorm hit uh the maritime provinces and uh all sorts of people
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sent me these photos of their heat pump encased in frozen snow unable then to bring in air and and
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pump out heat in the house and so the two or three of them said we're glad that we kept our
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wood burning stove because at least we were able to stay somewhat warm so it's funny you mentioned that
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our uh our colleague at the toronto sun warren kinsella writes columns for us um you know former
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liberal never call him a liberal anymore because he says he's not with this current tribe but kinsella
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built a cabin uh up in it's not quite northern ontario it's eastern ontario and near minden and he's
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written about this he put in a heat pump you know you're out in the the wilds you're you're not connected
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you're not going to get a natural gas line where he's got his cabin and so he puts in a heat pump
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and he's up there in the winter and it conks out and he calls the guy that installed it he's like well
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hey this thing's not working what am i going to do and he said of course it's not working it's below
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minus 25. he said well i'm here i gotta stay warm what am i going to do and he said you see that black
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box down next to you the wood stove light it yes exactly exactly on on the on the government's own
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website on natural resources canada's own website until very recently there was a discussion of all
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sorts of different kinds of home heating you know wood burning stoves and natural gas furnaces and
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fireplaces and heat pumps and on natural resources canada's own site it said these don't work
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particularly well below about minus 15 and now that you know we're pumping where the federal
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government is pushing heat pumps on everyone everywhere in the country that's been removed
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from the natural resources website i i live in a veritable shangri-la of warmth compared to you
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you're out in edmonton i'm in downtown toronto where we rarely see snow um and so a heat pump
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could work here and you see them all over the place uh walking around on homes on you know i live
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near the u of t campus walking through there you see them on some of the buildings you know it's like
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electric vehicles they make sense in some instances but not others but justin trudeau you know this has
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become part of his big thing of saving the carbon tax let's let's get back to the carbon tax lauren
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yep um is this an albatross around trudeau's net can he salvage this you know i was seeing uh max
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faucet who's a columnist for one of the socialist websites i think it's the observer and even he was
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saying the carbon tax is dead let's you know figure out something else for climate change is this thing
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just done and and it's like the monty python dead parrot sketch they don't want to admit it right i think
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that's a very good analogy i do think it's a dead a dead parrot and uh and it's because what they
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fail to understand whether it's the liberal government or the environmental movement is that
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canadians have said time and again they'll pay up to about 250 dollars extra over a year for
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environment saving processes equipment whatever you know if if an ev was uh 150 more than
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an internal combustion engine vehicle and the heat pump was 100 more than a natural gas furnace
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well there'd be your two things they'd buy a heat pump and uh and an ev and spend the extra 250 but
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we're talking here about things that especially with evs you're talking about one that's on average
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somewhere between 10 and 12 000 more than an internal combustion engine and with heat pumps now you're
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talking about something that in much of the country simply is inadequate like okay so fine out of a 52
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week year maybe it would work for 45 weeks here in edmonton in northern alberta but what are you going to do
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for the other seven weeks me those are the worst seven weeks of the year you you go to arizona go to
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mexico you know exactly and i guess that's what they're thinking is going to happen but it is it is just
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based on such fantastical thinking it's it it makes sense to them on paper i remember using this analogy
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one time when i was a kid about eight or ten years old i used to draw up these battle plans you know
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this army and that army and my army always won because i could control all the variables and i could
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give myself the extra tanks and the extra soldiers and that's basically how environment canada does
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its studies on electric vehicles and heat pumps and how they will work they they control all the
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variables i remember black locks reporter caught them about a year and a half ago putting out a tender
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for consultants who could prove that evs were cheaper over their lifetimes than an internal combustion
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engine that's not how you do a study you say look we want to see which one's better which one has lower
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costs over its entire lifetime ev or ice you don't say we are looking for consultants who can show us that
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evs are cheaper that that's that's the goal of the report and that's where they're at they they just
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they they live in this world where they think all of this will work and i don't trust any of the
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reports that the government itself puts out or that it pays consultants to put out uh to show us that
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we are going to an electrified future for home heating and vehicles look on you and i have a bit
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of a different perspective on this i'm uh fine if the industry is going to go electric and i live in
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ontario and that's a major industry of course i want the manufacturing here electric or otherwise
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um but as far as the uses of evs in some instances they make sense uh you know there's a plant just
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uh maybe two hours west of where i'm sitting in gersall ontario and they use it's the old cami plant
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they retrofitted it to make the what they call bright drop these are they're kind of like the sprinter vans
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used by fedex ups all of that to deliver all the packages in urban settings guess what they're
00:13:59.500
evs okay great but that doesn't make sense if you've got to drive something from edmonton to
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fort mack or saskatoon to prince albert or thunder bay to kenora yeah and it's not a matter of
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infrastructure when you say these things and environmentalists overhear you saying them
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they say oh yeah it'll be fine once we get the infrastructure built once we get all the charging
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stations every five kilometers along the highways that'll be you know how much that's going to cost
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i mean even if you could do that it would still cost billions of dollars and i don't see a private
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solution to that so you're talking about taxpayers billions and we've already spent probably 200
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billion dollars in canada on the liberals green fantasies we look at at at the accumulating national
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debt people always say well that was because of the pandemic no no it wasn't it's because this
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government will spend on any green initiative that comes by and they will throw hundreds of millions
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and billions on upon billions i mean starting to sound like carl sagan they billions and billions of
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stars well they will spend billions and billions of dollars on on making their green fantasies reality
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and there's just no way at this moment you can do it i have often said it in print and in video
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i don't care what powers my vehicle i don't i have no particular love affair with the internal
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combustion engine for its time it was a technological marvel but if you look at an electric car some of
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them are the most elegant technological vehicles ever created and they are now among the world's
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fastest vehicles i don't care if it's electric but it has to go as far as my internal combustion
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engine does i can go about 900k on a tank of gas it has to be rechargeable in the same amount of time
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i used to go from here in edmonton to vancouver to visit our son when he was in university and make
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one stop in 1100 kilometers and that was in a place called blue river bc i could fuel up run in and get
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a drink and a snack and be back on the road in under 15 minutes so you have to go as far as my
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internal combustion engine you have to recharge as fast as i can refuel and it has to work in the
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winter because we get a lot of and so far that's not happening i'm with you if the market thinks we
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can go to evs if if all the major manufacturers suddenly want to switch from ices to evs and they
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think they can get the same level of sales they can bring it down to the same price level if they
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make enough of them you know you you you get you get the the economy of scale he said if if if that
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happens fine i don't care you could you can fuel my car with bug burps i don't care it just has to be
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ideas that that'll keep them busy for another 30 years but the but at least it but it has to work the
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way the machine i have now works so you know when when i go down to the states um places like florida
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and california you see a lot more evs than you do up here even than you do in toronto and there's a
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simple reason for that they have the range that you're talking about i i still don't think the
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charger the charging uh technology is there it's not as fast as it needs to be but there's at least
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the fact that you've got the range and and that's due to the fact that it isn't freezing cold whether
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it's heat pumps or evs justin or bicycle lanes justin trudeau wants us to all believe that we're
00:17:36.720
living in amsterdam yeah yeah and we're simply not yeah so i i once wrote that there were five because
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the city of edmonton is obsessed with bike lanes it takes lanes out of traffic all the time and converts
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them to bicycles and i said the five biggest causes or the five biggest obstacles to bicycle
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transportation in edmonton are november december january february and march and because people
00:18:00.980
won't ride bikes and like i got i get up early every morning so i go out and clear off my my sidewalk
00:18:07.120
because there are cyclists who go every day 12 months of the year past my house and i like to have the
00:18:13.140
sidewalk clean so that they have a safe place to ride that's how committed i am to them but i'm not
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joining them i'm not january 15th when it was minus 32 and someone went riding by my house first thing in
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the morning i'm not saying hey wait a minute i'll get my bike and i'll come with you i'm getting in my
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jeep and i'm driving with the heater on but you're like me i look i walk i i take the subway i i have a bike
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i have a car i'll use all modes of transportation it's whatever makes sense at the time but in the
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bitter cold and it's late march here in toronto and suddenly we've got bitter cold and snow again
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i'm not going out there uh let me just bring it back to the carbon tax stuff that we were discussing
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earlier um justin trudeau is very committed to the carbon tax just like he's committed to all the
00:19:05.800
other things we've been discussing and and he you know he's got a bit of a messianic complex it's why
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he's not leaving anytime soon in my view uh he's going to save us from climate change he's going to
00:19:17.880
save us from misinformation and disinformation but also on the carbon tax he is either convinced or doing
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a very good job of pretending he's convinced that we actually get back more than it costs us and
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you know for months now pierre pauliev has been standing up inciting the parliamentary budget
00:19:39.460
officers report from march 30th 2023 which showed that in the provinces where the federal carbon tax
00:19:47.280
is implemented that when you add up all the costs not just the carbon tax but the the the loss of income
00:19:56.460
the loss of economic opportunity the higher prices that we pay that we don't get a rebate on
00:20:01.840
um and the fact that the gst is charged on top of the carbon tax that we're actually down significantly
00:20:09.640
most middle-class families are down significantly and trudeau keeps standing up and saying no that's
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not true you get back more and why would you take away these checks this is an affordability
00:20:21.160
issue he's trying to frame this these rebates as this is how you deal with higher prices i'll give
00:20:29.160
you money back ignoring the fact that part of the reason prices are higher not the whole reason but
00:20:34.240
part of it is his tax exactly and you know really good example of that came out yesterday
00:20:41.180
statistics canada released its inflation figures for uh the month of february and inflation in canada
00:20:50.300
was down to 2.8 on an annual basis that's pretty good i mean it should be a little lower than that
00:20:57.260
but that's for the last couple of years that's a pretty decent level in saskatchewan it was 1.7 percent
00:21:04.480
and stats can says the reason that it's 1.1 percent lower in saskatchewan than on the national average
00:21:11.900
is that saskatchewan is no longer permitting its crown utilities to charge the carbon tax on home
00:21:18.640
heating that's how big an impact the carbon tax has saskatchewan takes it off exactly saskatchewan
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takes it off it it lowers their inflation rate by over a third and uh and trudeau says no no no no
00:21:35.740
no you know the bank of canada which i think he runs around with them in his hip pocket the bank of
00:21:42.120
canada says it's less than half of one percent that it that is caused but it's a fraction what i think
00:21:48.480
the last time tiff macklin talked talked about he said it was 0.15 percent was of inflation was the
00:21:56.160
carbon it's not because as you said by the time you add it in to your groceries because everything
00:22:01.860
that's trucked to your grocery store pays carbon tax by the time you add it in to any other thing that
00:22:08.300
you the building material say you're doing a reno in your house and you brought in some drywall well
00:22:13.080
that drywall had to come somewhere and the trucker who brought that drywall added on a cost to the
00:22:19.920
drywalling company for the carbon tax and it just it filters its way through the entire economy and now
00:22:28.060
we're seeing in saskatchewan just taking it off just taking it off home heating in saskatchewan which is
00:22:33.320
mostly natural gas they're they're over 80 percent of homes in saskatchewan are are heated by natural
00:22:38.900
gas just taking it off home heating reduced their uh car reduced their inflation rate in saskatchewan
00:22:45.920
in february by more than a third amazing uh and by the way uh sylvan charlebois the food professor
00:22:53.880
um it was him and and not any media outlet in this country that when tiff macklin claimed the carbon tax
00:23:01.220
did not impact inflation at all that it was just such a minuscule number sylvan charlebois said
00:23:06.480
i don't think so and he persistently wrote to the bank of canada to say how did you come to this
00:23:13.800
calculation and i forget which items it was on but they only considered i think three items that the
00:23:22.960
carbon tax was on it was a ridiculous calculation you know not something worthy of you know an
00:23:30.040
organization like the bank of canada but that's what they did um we're going to take a quick break
00:23:35.360
lauren when we come back i want to ask you about uh the other chaos that we had last week and that's the
00:23:43.560
the vote on on israel uh on on gaza and have you ever seen anything like that more on that when we come
00:23:52.060
back bank more encores when you switch to a scotia bank banking package learn more at scotia bank.com
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slash banking packages conditions apply scotia bank you're richer than you think the fight over
00:24:09.340
the carbon tax isn't the only chaos we've been seeing in the house of commons of late um lauren i uh
00:24:15.640
i spent a long time physically on parliament hill covering this stuff and and then you know a bunch
00:24:23.580
of years since going back and forth and especially during the pandemic remotely watching um i struggled
00:24:31.220
to find something as chaotic as what we saw last monday on the vote on the ndp motion regarding israel
00:24:40.220
gaza and hamas uh i i think same-sex marriage would be close back in 2005 and i can describe what
00:24:49.380
that was like if you want but do you remember anything so chaotic with the government standing
00:24:53.960
up at 7 13 to read 14 different amendments into a motion that they're supposed to vote on at 7 15
00:25:00.960
yeah no i don't and even with the same-sex marriage uh votes that was stretched out over a period of
00:25:09.780
uh several days this was you know jammed in at the very last minute and and nobody i think to this
00:25:17.300
day we're now we're now looking at three days after that vote uh i still think there are an awful lot of
00:25:23.760
people who are scratching their heads at just what the amendments mean and what that what what
00:25:29.360
canada's foreign policy should look like as a as a byproduct of this vote it really is that chaotic you
00:25:37.860
you have a government that has both uh a traditional base among jewish voters and is desperately trying
00:25:46.900
to woo muslim voters who outnumber jewish voters by about six to one in canada right now and so they
00:25:53.320
they're they're like a mississippi bullfrog sitting on a hollow stump you know they they don't know
00:25:59.200
which way to jump they they don't they they want to because they're progressives they want to show
00:26:04.820
their support for uh palestinians but because they are desperate for any vote they can have and and
00:26:11.600
and their their traditional base of of uh candidate recruitment and organizational skill and things is
00:26:18.600
is it has an awful lot of jewish members uh they don't want to set them off either but but now you've
00:26:25.820
seen as you see with the liberal mp uh house father anthony house father yeah anthony house father
00:26:33.060
um they have really alienated i think they've really alienated the jewish community in canada because
00:26:39.300
there is no other way for me to interpret like i've i've seen people reading the tea leaves from
00:26:45.620
this motion for the last three days but for me the one message this sends because you can you can look
00:26:51.640
at the minutiae and you say well it says this but it also says this and the minutiae for me it says
00:26:57.040
it is unimportant because what it basically says is look we're prepared to forgive hamas for what they
00:27:03.600
did to israelis on october 7th please just desperately vote for us and the liberal party um and you know it
00:27:11.740
was an ndp motion uh i guess the liberals did rewrite it yeah yeah exactly but they you know
00:27:16.860
it the the the palestinian cause has become one of several litmus tests for the progressives in
00:27:25.300
canadian politics you you aren't truly progressive unless you see systemic discrimination everywhere
00:27:32.260
you aren't truly progressive unless you believe every story about unmarked graves at residential
00:27:39.080
old residential school sites you aren't truly progressive unless you buy into electric vehicles
00:27:44.720
and heat pumps and climate disaster without questioning any of it and you aren't truly
00:27:50.460
progressive unless you stand in solidarity with the palestinians and you believe everything they
00:27:56.420
say about we're oppressed we are occupied by israel uh there is apartheid going on we are the victims
00:28:04.860
of genocide unless you are prepared to to accept all of that unconditionally then you you lose your
00:28:11.860
membership in the alliance of canadian progressives uh and and that's where the liberals are at is that
00:28:18.380
they they have for 30 years bought the propaganda around the arab israeli conflict which is largely
00:28:26.280
leans towards the palestinian and arab side and and so now they were left on on monday with this vote
00:28:33.540
where they had to keep their progressive bona fides uh but also trying to swage uh the the jewish vote
00:28:42.380
in in montreal and toronto well mostly montreal because they they've got one seat in a riding with
00:28:49.380
a significant jewish population here in toronto um i guess they've got a couple they've got marco mendicino
00:28:55.820
and yara sacks and um i'll tell you that i think both of them will be unemployed come the next election
00:29:03.120
i don't see either one of them winning it's absolutely incredible to watch uh we had anthony
00:29:10.700
housefather on the podcast a few weeks ago asking him about you know how are you still in the liberal
00:29:17.000
party yeah i've known anthony a long time uh more than 20 years i he you know all this talk of him being
00:29:23.800
you know willy cross to the conservatives he's not a conservative um no he's very much a liberal
00:29:30.280
but he's disappointed in his own party and that can happen to people and he's not he's not a one
00:29:35.260
he's not a one issue politician you know if you you've seen up close american politics enough to know
00:29:42.480
that out of 435 members of the house of representatives some of those districts are so small
00:29:48.160
and so homogenous that you can have members of the house of representatives congressmen who are kind of
00:29:56.960
one issue but house father wouldn't fit in that in in the united states he doesn't fit in it here
00:30:03.440
he's not a one issue guy i can't imagine him crossing the floor but he he could sit as an independent
00:30:09.120
you know and who knows by the time this is posted maybe something will happen but you know he's been
00:30:13.640
disappointed on english language rights by his own party because the liberals after championing that
00:30:19.820
cause i mean when i lived in uh montreal i i used to thank god for jean creche and actually standing up
00:30:27.600
to all the separatist language crazy nonsense um but trudeau has abandoned that um so has every other
00:30:36.120
party by the way but now they've also abandoned him on israel and so that becomes very difficult for
00:30:42.780
for someone to deal with but in you know the jewish canadian community people that i'm hearing from
00:30:49.320
in the toronto area they feel betrayed yeah by this vote yeah they feel utterly betrayed and alone
00:30:57.660
because the anti-semitism is through the roof you've got that cartoon in la presse you've got a
00:31:04.220
hamilton uh movie theater deciding that they're going to cancel a jewish film festival that they'd agree
00:31:10.660
two months ago because uh people are threatening them you know you can't allow jews to have movies
00:31:16.440
or we'll come for you that's pretty frightening um you've got uh a toronto city counselor shouted down
00:31:24.200
while they're discussing the fifa world cup they're not even discussing these issues but the
00:31:29.360
protesters showed up to yell at james pastanak because he's jewish you know the mask is all disturbing
00:31:35.480
one to me was when protesters blocked the entrance to hospitals uh in toronto uh and set off fire
00:31:43.380
bombs and or smoke bombs and uh there was a firebomb of a delhi yes yes but the the protests i'm
00:31:52.040
thinking of at the hospitals at mount sinai hospital in toronto involved smoke bombs and people jumping up
00:31:57.280
on the entrance and and then with megaphones and shouting anti-israeli slogans which are anti-semitic too
00:32:04.320
you you you cannot tell me because the people who utter those sentences mean them to be anti-semitic
00:32:10.780
you can't tell me that the phrase like from the river to the sea is not anti-semitic because it is
00:32:16.700
they're on the the bullhorn shouting we are the intifada at a hospital
00:32:21.840
exactly and and you know you okay so you go and you park your 18 wheeler in downtown ottawa and honk
00:32:31.140
your horn for three weeks they call out the emergencies act on you and they seize your bank account
00:32:35.640
i don't see any of that going on with these anti-israeli anti-semitic very violent rhetoric
00:32:43.940
uh protests in favor of palestine nobody says oh you know the prime minister doesn't say these are a
00:32:51.580
fringe element with unacceptable views he doesn't say that these are un-canadian actions he doesn't say
00:32:58.940
any of that but he did say that about uh about truckers you know i this party just does not the
00:33:06.340
liberal party just does not know where to go on on the israel palestine issue it just doesn't
00:33:13.360
i i've been walking with the uh they call themselves pro-palestinian after walking with them since october
00:33:21.800
9th i call them pro-hamas protesters i've never heard them once call for the release of the
00:33:27.940
hostages i've never once heard them say hamash should stop using palestinians as human shields
00:33:34.060
i've never once heard them say hamash should stop stealing the aid that's delivered to gaza
00:33:39.560
did they condemn the october 7th butchery no no none of that they celebrated it exactly celebrated it
00:33:47.560
they showed up on october 9th in downtown toronto including a sitting uh new democrat mpp who yes
00:33:55.220
who was eventually thrown out of her ndp caucus sarah jama um she uh they showed up to celebrate
00:34:03.840
what happened on october 7th and you if you're going to be chanting there's only one solution
00:34:10.020
intifada revolution two days after what happened and israel hasn't even responded yet well we know
00:34:16.880
what you're saying and we know what you're celebrating and you're claiming to be peaceful
00:34:20.620
no you're you're not peaceful you're you're celebrating revolution and north american and
00:34:25.540
western european progressives can delude themselves into thinking that you know talking about intifada
00:34:32.840
and revolution and independence and you know palestine will be free from the river to the sea
00:34:38.000
you you can delude yourself into thinking that that simply means equal right for palestinians and
00:34:44.380
israelis and a peaceful two-state solution blah blah blah none of the people who say those things
00:34:50.280
at the protests mean that by it what they mean is we need to wipe out like it was there was an imam
00:34:57.200
in montreal shortly after the october 7th uh atrocities who said we need to wipe out all the jews
00:35:05.460
allah come please and call for god to do it and that was his defense oh i didn't call for that
00:35:11.760
i called for god to kill them all yeah what no so so please don't tell me when you're voting in the
00:35:19.380
house of commons for a two-state solution and you're voting for recognition of a palestinian state
00:35:24.660
don't tell me please that what you're looking for is equal justice for both sides you have taken a side
00:35:31.840
that by its very nature calls for the other side to be eradicated and and i have you know you and i
00:35:41.620
both have talked about this before we have a lot of jewish friends and they are staggered since october
00:35:49.100
7th by the level of anti-semitism that that those attacks have provoked like they they are stunned that
00:35:58.720
most universities in in canada the the a big percentage i shouldn't say the majority because
00:36:05.440
we don't know what the silent majority says but the most vocal minorities at most universities among
00:36:11.500
the faculty are very pro-palestinian and very anti-israel to the extent where i think it's fair
00:36:18.580
to say they're anti-semitic yeah um and you know i i know an awful lot of westerners i don't mean
00:36:26.160
western canadians i mean people in europe and north america an awful lot of liberals and progressives
00:36:31.800
in western countries think it's possible to uh criticize israel but not be anti-semitic and that
00:36:39.240
is true but when you are siding with people whose very nature is to eradicate jews and the state of
00:36:47.700
israel i'm sorry you you you don't get to draw those fine lines because the people you're supporting
00:36:54.220
are not drawing those fine lines i'll tell you how scared people are um first off just after
00:37:03.640
october 7th uh did a podcast with ben shapiro and at that point ben said uh every jew i know is
00:37:11.960
getting a gun now of course ben lives in the united states of america pretty much everyone has a gun
00:37:17.640
already but then i was at an event and a couple uh two guys came up to me uh two jewish men one
00:37:26.820
whom i knew one who i previously didn't know and both of them wanted to thank me for the uh you know
00:37:34.980
the the views put forward in the sun in national post and post media in general and in just say
00:37:42.200
they appreciated it and then they both started talking about how they both signed up for their
00:37:46.420
gun courses in canada and that every person in their class was also jewish because they were so
00:37:54.060
afraid they felt they needed to do something and i can guarantee you for every for every one of those
00:38:00.620
people in a gun class there's three or four jews who have gone out and bought guns who are not
00:38:05.800
registering them who aren't taking the the pal course uh just because they feel for it i was
00:38:12.940
sitting in a cafe a couple of weeks ago two young people telling me how they're trying to decide
00:38:18.860
whether to stay in canada is it safer to move to south florida or to move to israel and then a few
00:38:24.940
days after that i i'm with uh deputy conservative leader melissa lansman in her riding talking to the
00:38:31.720
rabbis of the synagogues that were targeted and they're saying that this is a big discussion in
00:38:38.280
their own community is it even safe to be a jew in canada anymore this motion these cartoons these
00:38:45.220
actions do nothing to help that well and look yesterday the the toronto city police toronto police
00:38:52.320
service uh released its uh numbers for hate crimes that have been committed since october 7th and almost
00:39:01.420
60 percent of them were against jews i mean if you listen to the prime minister or to melanie jolie or
00:39:08.680
any of the liberal cabinet ministers you'd think that what we're really facing here is uh anti-islamic
00:39:17.400
uh rhetoric and hate it's not it's not i mean i i'm sure there's been some of that and then and none of
00:39:24.660
it is and it's despicable it's of course it is but the vast majority of hate initiated incidents
00:39:31.880
in toronto i'm assuming pretty much across the country since october the 7th has been directed at
00:39:38.080
the jewish community and no wonder they're feeling what they're asking the question are they safe in
00:39:44.340
canada anymore let me ask you about this motion because it's we're getting mixed messages over what
00:39:50.860
the motion actually means we kind of discussed that um the fact that they took out the part of
00:39:57.740
recognizing officially recognizing the state of palestine um okay good still don't like the motion
00:40:04.300
but there was the the part that said cease all future uh transfers of military goods um you know i i
00:40:14.000
looked at the numbers we've given like 40 000 rounds of artillery shells um 150 millimeter artillery
00:40:21.600
shells to ukraine we just gave it to them we gave them four howitzers we've given them eight leopard
00:40:26.460
two tanks we've given them 10 000 rounds of 105 uh tank uh artillery ammunition uh 10 million dollars
00:40:35.760
of small arms you know so pistols uh infantry rifles sniper rifles and this is all good we've given
00:40:43.060
israel nothing on the military side they were buying some limited amount but some from canadian
00:40:49.900
firms and we've now essentially said you're getting nothing i mean effectively the way they're talking
00:40:56.840
the israeli government could not buy boots if there was a canadian manufacturer for army boots or
00:41:02.580
ration packs and you know canadian ration packs used to feed a lot of the western armies of the world
00:41:08.100
uh and now we're saying no if there's a military use you can't have it it is it we've got two
00:41:14.420
democratic allies um in at war both have been invaded one is being treated in a vastly different
00:41:21.960
manner than the other and to me it's all due to demographics and votes 1.3 million ukrainian
00:41:28.340
canadians 1.8 million muslim canadians 335 000 canadian jews okay i think i think that's absolutely
00:41:35.500
i think every calculation that the liberal government makes whether they are conscious
00:41:40.460
about this or not is predicated on whether or not it will get them re-elected they are nothing but an
00:41:46.960
election machine they can't or i used to have a guy i worked with on parliament hill who said
00:41:52.940
these people couldn't organize flatulence at a bean dinner um i mean as as a government they can't do
00:41:59.820
anything you have the the parliamentary budget officer who said the other day that the front
00:42:05.260
the average frontline federal worker has seven bosses no wonder they can't get anything done it's
00:42:12.460
it's paralysis through management they have so many levels of management managers they can't do anything
00:42:17.880
so they are incompetent so the only thing that makes any sense to them when they're looking at a
00:42:23.340
policy is whether or not it will get them re-elected um because ultimately they don't really care what
00:42:29.140
they do with power they just have to have the power and and i i think that's why we're sending
00:42:35.280
i was chuckling when you were talking about the the shopping list we were sending to ukraine because
00:42:41.060
even it's pathetic we don't have anything to send them uh you know we we had three days of munitions
00:42:48.600
in this country if we were invaded three days and the nato rule is 30 days um and so we don't have
00:42:55.260
anywhere close to the nato rule that we're supposed to have but you know we have to rummage
00:42:59.640
i don't know what the state the leopard tanks are that we sent to them but at one point we said well
00:43:05.540
we have 90 some tanks but there's really only four of them that are in working order well like hello
00:43:11.740
you know this is this is pathetic i mean we announced the other day that that we no longer have
00:43:16.660
trainer jets so that we're going to have to send all of our young fighter pilots to italy or finland
00:43:20.940
or texas to learn how to fly jets i mean so what we're sending to ukraine i don't know it it they
00:43:28.120
probably got it out of the the war museum in ottawa and sent it over there because they had to send
00:43:33.780
them something but but they even that is much better than what they're prepared to give to israel
00:43:39.540
and i mean i think israel's not even asking for anything though israel wants to buy in fact there
00:43:44.660
was a piece in the jerusalem post after uh they announced that we're not going to sell anything
00:43:49.700
to israel if the military can use it there was a piece in the jerusalem post about how well while
00:43:55.060
canada bans the israeli military from uh buying from canada here's all the things the canadian
00:44:01.520
military has been buying from israel over the last several years and it was pretty extensive list well
00:44:06.640
and look at all of the the uh inter-force cooperation we've had since the liberals came to
00:44:14.380
power with the chinese with the with the the the uh people's army the people's liberation army of
00:44:21.660
china you know they would turn on us in an instant the israelis would be there to the very last
00:44:28.500
to help defend us i think there are three canaries in democracy's coal mine israel is one of them if
00:44:36.460
it doesn't survive i'm not sure that democracy survives everywhere ukraine is another one and i
00:44:43.260
think we're losing our interest in helping ukraine which is dangerous because it just sends signals to
00:44:49.260
people like putin that they can invade democracies at will and we're not going to do much about it and
00:44:56.580
the third one that hasn't turned hot yet but could at some point is taiwan and if we're not prepared to
00:45:02.620
to help israel ukraine and taiwan then we're showing we don't have a lot of commitment to
00:45:08.300
democracy and maybe progressives and and canadians at large don't see it that way but i guarantee you
00:45:16.020
the rest of the world does if we are not prepared to help people who have the same political values
00:45:22.200
that we do then the the people in the world who would do us ill uh take that as a signal they know
00:45:30.640
what they know what they'd face if they attacked us and are now a close ally okay then i'll leave you
00:45:36.600
with this uh put what you just said through the lens of the ndp motion that the liberals backed at the
00:45:44.340
last minute in a night of chaos and what message are we sending i think that's exactly the message
00:45:50.380
we're sending is that we're like what is it that the ndp wanted to glorify in palestine was it the
00:45:57.100
human rights record was it the fact that there hasn't been an election in any palestinian territory
00:46:02.300
in over 20 years so that they're not committed to democracy there is no particular court system
00:46:08.480
there's no rule of law there aren't equality for women or lgbtq members like what is it about
00:46:15.260
palestine that that the ndp think and the liberals too a lot of liberals think is worth celebrating like
00:46:23.140
they don't share any of our political values and yet somehow they've become this mascot for
00:46:31.580
tolerance and progressivism and and so if you're not in favor of palestinian rights then you're not
00:46:39.060
progressive that to me is utter rubbish if you're not in favor of israel defending itself and its
00:46:47.420
democracy and and its supreme court and you know the supreme court has been at war with the the the
00:46:52.980
majority in the knesset now for about three years over whether or not the supreme court has the right
00:46:58.220
to read in rights to legislation that's what a democracy does a democracy does not send people over
00:47:05.900
the wall on october the 7th and slaughter babies and teenagers and defenseless women and seniors and
00:47:12.700
and then go back to gaza and celebrate that what it is that you want to support for from the ndp i
00:47:22.160
simply cannot fathom and why the liberals decided to sign up to it especially the cabinet i don't know
00:47:28.600
lauren we'll we'll leave it there great chat as always thank you very much you can read lauren in the
00:47:34.340
edmonton sun the toronto sun across post media uh full comment is a post media podcast my name is
00:47:39.840
brian lily your host this episode was produced by andre fruit with theme music by bryce hall kevin
00:47:45.340
libin is the executive producer you can subscribe to full comment please do hit the subscribe button
00:47:50.920
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00:47:57.000
may and whitby about it let people know and thanks for listening until next time i'm brian lily