Juno News - A national inquiry into Canada's pandemic response (Ft. Preston Manning)

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Finally, it looks

00:00:22.520 like COVID-19 is behind us. Not that it is if you look at what the fear-mongering experts

00:00:28.700 continue to say, but by just looking around. Most people are not wearing masks, for example.

00:00:35.540 Uptake on the boosters is pretty low all across the country, and it feels like people just want

00:00:41.500 to move on. Now, having said that, there are a lot of unanswered questions about the way that all

00:00:47.580 levels of government, but especially the federal and provincial governments, handle the pandemic.

00:00:53.180 Everything from all but putting a gun to your head to get vaccinated, to repeated lockdowns,

00:01:00.680 mask mandates, and social distancing measures. And we couldn't meet our friends and family over the

00:01:09.040 holidays. There was a restriction on our mobility. And in places like Quebec, even nighttime curfews,

00:01:16.040 something we associate more with tin-pot dictatorships than a free society like Canada.

00:01:22.280 A lot of people are looking for accountability, which we've not yet had from any of our elected

00:01:27.080 officials. My guest today wants to change all of that. He's a very distinguished Canadian with a

00:01:33.320 stellar record of public service, none less than Preston Manning, whose influence in shaping the

00:01:39.320 present Conservative Party is incalculable. Mr. Manning has continued to be in public life,

00:01:45.720 and most recently, he's called for a citizen's inquiry into the pandemic to figure out what was

00:01:51.560 done right, what was done wrong, and where do we go from here in the event of future pandemics or other

00:01:58.760 emergencies which are sure to occur at some point in the future. So Preston Manning, it's great to have

00:02:03.960 you on the show. Thank you for taking the time. I would love to learn more about your motivation in

00:02:10.120 calling for this citizen's inquiry into the pandemic. Could you tell us what the citizen's inquiry is?

00:02:17.400 What would be involved? How are the commissioners going to be picked? Who will testify? So basically,

00:02:23.320 in other words, what are the nuts and bolts of how the citizen's inquiry will work and what exactly

00:02:28.920 are you hoping to accomplish? Okay, now there's about eight questions. I'll start with the first one.

00:02:36.440 I guess, like what this is, is a project to establish a national, independent, citizen-led inquiry, public

00:02:48.360 inquiry into what went right, what went wrong, and what lessons can be learned from the COVID-19 experience.

00:02:56.840 And a couple of the motivations behind it. One is, I personally keep hearing from a large number of

00:03:03.080 people saying there should be some kind of inquiry into this thing. And we actually set up a website,

00:03:10.120 this nationalcitizensinquiry.ca, where people can go to it and indicate, do you want this type of

00:03:18.120 an inquiry? And so far, there's been about 20,000 people that have said yes, they want an inquiry. A second

00:03:24.840 thing is that earlier this, or last month, or mid-October, we had a survey was done, a public

00:03:31.960 opinion survey was done, in which 74% of Canadians said they were hurt by one or the other of the

00:03:40.840 health protection measures, which is a pretty serious number. This isn't hurt by COVID and the

00:03:47.560 statistics on that, and there were people that were seriously hurt by that. These were people saying they

00:03:52.920 were hurt by the health protection measures in four categories, either their health was hurt in some

00:03:59.800 other way, or they felt their rights and freedoms were infringed, or there was a social harm, particularly

00:04:07.800 from the social distancing, and then the harms to the economy from the lockdowns. So those are two pretty

00:04:14.600 important reasons, I think, to have this kind of inquiry, and to have it citizen-led. There's so much

00:04:21.400 suspicion out there, and there'll be suspicion about this too, that if the governments were to have a

00:04:27.080 inquiry, it would be them investigating themselves, which would a lot of people be skeptical about that.

00:04:34.440 So this was a survey that was conducted by the citizens. Who conducted the survey, Preston?

00:04:43.000 It was done by one of the pollsters. It's actually on this website. It was done by one of the pollsters

00:04:47.800 that does these regular polls every month, and we talked him into tacking a couple of questions about

00:04:55.400 this COVID thing onto that survey. So it was a sample of 1,500, 1,600 people, but that's a fairly

00:05:05.320 interesting statistic. And it varied a bit across the country, depending on what region you were in.

00:05:10.680 Right. And did one of the questions address vaccine injuries by any chance?

00:05:15.960 Not specifically. The two questions were of these four harm categories.

00:05:22.440 Okay. Which one affected you and your family

00:05:26.600 most seriously? And the social impacts came up highest on that one, with the health and economic

00:05:35.640 impacts almost equal, just slightly less. Then the second question was, which of these harm categories

00:05:43.160 do you think affected the largest number of people? Which one affected the country as a whole, as distinct

00:05:48.200 from you and your family? And the economic harms came up on the top of that list. So those were the

00:05:55.720 two questions and those are the answers. And there's a bit of a breakdown by region and by gender that

00:06:01.480 people can take a look at. Okay. So could you tell us why you're pushing for a citizens inquiry and not

00:06:07.800 an official government inquiry? Well, I mean, in one sense, the mechanism for having public inquiries,

00:06:15.480 there's the Public Inquiries Act, the federal one, and there's a number of provincial statutes,

00:06:21.560 inquiries. But the suspicion there is if the government holds it under that, that the government

00:06:29.160 really controls this investigating itself. And there's so much skepticism about that, that the credibility

00:06:35.800 of that would be challenged. If the government does it, the suspicion is it's a whitewash. If the

00:06:43.160 opposition parties gang up and say, we're going to have it, then the suspicion is, well, it's a political

00:06:48.760 witch hunt. So the idea was to endeavor to have this citizen led. And one of the people visit this

00:06:55.800 website, the one thing they're asking, do you support this idea? Register here. But the second

00:07:01.800 question they're asking is, who would you trust to conduct this? We have to get commissioners for this

00:07:07.720 independent inquiry. And we're asking people, who would you trust to conduct this inquiry? And so far,

00:07:17.800 this is just very early, so it's a little too early to tell what people think in large numbers. But

00:07:24.760 there seem to be two lines of thought on that. Some people say you need somebody that's very

00:07:30.440 objective, like a retired judge, someone that's distant from, you know, hasn't been connected with

00:07:35.880 the government or with the interest groups or whatever you want. Objectivity, sort of judicial

00:07:41.880 objectivity. Other people say, but you're going to have to have expertise on that panel. There have to be a

00:07:48.440 medical person, there should be a civil liberties person, there should be an economist, whatever.

00:07:53.400 It's typical of, you know, when you ask Canadians, this or that, why can't we do both? 0.98

00:08:01.160 And probably what'll come out is that maybe the chief commissioner should be this

00:08:06.680 arm's length, objective kind of person, but have others on that panel. The idea is to have five

00:08:12.920 commissioners, have others represent more expertise. And intent is to get people to testify at this

00:08:21.160 economy, at this inquiry, as to the impacts on themselves. And people that are going to testify

00:08:28.040 are told two things. One is you'll testify under oath. There'll be a commissioner of oath there that

00:08:33.240 asks you to affirm that what you're saying is true and the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which is

00:08:40.120 a good addition. And secondly, you'll be subject to cross-examination by someone who's probably pretty

00:08:45.480 knowledgeable about this. That's the attempt to, that's the framework for the inquiry.

00:08:51.960 Yeah. I mean, one downside of a citizen's inquiry is that any conclusion the commissioners reach

00:08:58.600 in the report would not have any teeth and not binding. But then, to be fair, as we know, for

00:09:04.280 example, the public inquiry into the Emergencies Act, which is ongoing now, it's an official inquiry

00:09:10.280 mandated by law, but it also has no teeth. So, I mean, there's been some criticism by some academics

00:09:17.320 and from some quarters that the citizen's inquiry that you envisage is biased towards those who are

00:09:25.080 opposed to government mandates around vaccination. And more generally, they make the claim that it will

00:09:30.520 be divisive and polarizing in an area which has already proved to be pretty polarizing. How do you

00:09:37.240 respond to such criticisms? Well, a couple of things. First of all, we say to someone like that,

00:09:41.160 why don't you go and testify then and say exactly that? Yeah. Why don't you go and present your side

00:09:46.760 that you think the other group is providing misinformation or prejudice? But you understand,

00:09:52.280 you will be asked to affirm what you're saying is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

00:09:57.960 It's not embellished with a whole bunch of other things. And you will be subject to cross-examination.

00:10:03.160 So if you want balance there, why don't you go and provide it? Second thing we say is we'll do

00:10:08.760 everything we can to make it as objective as possible. And rather than prejudge the thing,

00:10:14.360 prejudge is like prejudice that comes from the same root, rather than prejudge this and saying,

00:10:19.320 oh, it's not going to work, it's going to be biased, etc., etc., why don't we wait and do it,

00:10:23.880 and then make the judgment as to whether it was objective or not? And then the third thing I say,

00:10:30.200 we'll do everything we can to make it objective, it will at least be as objective as the CBC,

00:10:35.240 it'll be as objective as the editorial page of the Toronto Star, and it will be as objective and

00:10:41.240 ideology-free as your department of political science at the university. These are the great

00:10:46.440 models of objectivity to which we will aspire. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I wanted to

00:10:54.680 chat with you about was, you know, our Westminster parliamentary system is notable for its lack of

00:11:00.440 accountability, especially when a government has a majority in parliament or de facto majority as we

00:11:05.880 have right now with the NDP supporting the Liberals. As I, you know, and I've talked about this with other

00:11:12.280 guests on the show, you know, Canada has an incredible deference by the judiciary to the government,

00:11:18.840 much more so, say, in the US. For example, key parts of Biden's mandates on the pandemic were

00:11:26.840 shredded by the courts. Nothing like this has happened in Canada. And when a government doesn't

00:11:31.560 have to face voters for another four years, and they can just hope that everything just disappears,

00:11:37.080 what kind of accountability do we really have in our system? I suppose your citizens' inquiry is one

00:11:44.840 way of getting that accountability, although it's going to be non-binding. My question really is,

00:11:50.600 do we need more checks and balances? And how would we get them in our system where the Prime Minister

00:11:56.280 is all-powerful? Well, that's a huge question. In a way, it's beyond this COVID thing. But with respect

00:12:05.240 to this citizen inquiry, it can come up with recommendations. If it was a Royal Commission,

00:12:10.920 that could come up with recommendations too. But there's no way that you can bind the government to

00:12:15.720 implement the recommendations of a Royal Commission, other than you create a public

00:12:21.160 support that says that recommendation should be followed. And that kind of public interest

00:12:26.840 and support can be generated just as much by the citizens' one as by a Royal Commission. And I think

00:12:34.200 the intent of this is to, the ultimate intent is to be positive, is to say, okay, listen to all the

00:12:39.640 things that went right, the things that went wrong. But at the end of the day, and in fact, if I was one

00:12:43.960 of those commissioners, the last question I would ask of any witness, no matter what they've said is,

00:12:50.280 okay, you've related your experience, your perspective, what could be done differently? What

00:12:56.760 would you recommend so that the next time there's a national crisis, it's better managed? And so hopefully,

00:13:02.760 the recommendations that come out of this are a list of things that could be done. And you're

00:13:09.080 endeavouring to get enough public support to have moral suasion to get those things implemented. And

00:13:16.920 as a federal election comes along, one of the questions then will be, how was this COVID thing

00:13:22.920 managed? Here's a bunch of recommendations. Do you or do you not support these recommendations?

00:13:27.880 Well, what's been the general reaction to the Citizens Inquiry, especially the political reaction,

00:13:36.120 if any? Well, let's say there's been a lot of people go to this website and say, yes, they want

00:13:41.800 it, which is really what prompted this in the first place. The credibility is the rest on three things,

00:13:47.000 probably the number of people that say, yes, we want it. Yes, we want it. The credibility of these

00:13:51.960 commissioners are the people that folks have confidence in. And the third will be that the

00:13:58.840 testimony that's actually given at these hearings, that that'll add to the credibility. And so far,

00:14:05.160 there's been an increasing amount of interest in it. Our next challenge is actually to identify these

00:14:11.320 commissioners. And we're asking more and more people to go, who would you trust? Who would you trust?

00:14:15.880 Give us the names to try and investigate them. Do you know of any other countries that have come up

00:14:24.200 with this kind of inquiry? Well, I believe I haven't followed it closely. I think in Australia,

00:14:28.920 there was a senator that, this was more in the political arena, there was a senator that

00:14:37.160 organized an inquiry sort of like this. Now, of course, he was an elected person, so it had the

00:14:44.040 political flavor. I think it was an independent senator, but it had the political flavor to it.

00:14:47.960 And what we've said to the political, we're not asking the political people to take a position on

00:14:51.720 this. I mean, people have, I believe there was a liberal backbencher actually introduced a private

00:14:57.000 members bill saying the government should have this. We haven't tried to talk them one way or the

00:15:01.640 other. In fact, we've said, why don't you let this happen and see if it is of benefit, you know?

00:15:10.440 Mm-hmm. Stepping from the citizen's inquiry, if you were to take stock of where we are in Canada

00:15:19.960 right now, would you say that we have now become a much more polarized society? You know, you have,

00:15:27.000 on the one hand, these Gungo enthusiasts on vaccines and other restrictions and those who are critical of

00:15:34.440 them and also what looks like a resurgence of a major geographical divide between Western Canada

00:15:41.480 and Central Canada. To my mind, all of these point to signs of trouble going forward. Where do you

00:15:48.840 think we stand? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Well, I'm concerned about this polarization. I mean,

00:15:55.000 it's very pronounced in the United States and we'll probably see how that affects the elections but

00:16:03.480 I worry about this polarization and the democratic process and democratic institutions are supposed to

00:16:10.680 be able to handle that, that people with differing views or have freedom of speech to argue for their

00:16:17.640 position. They ought to be arguing it in an elected assembly where people are accountable for what they

00:16:24.760 hear and what they do and then that assembly comes to some kind of a conclusion, often trying to find

00:16:31.320 the common ground between those polarized opinions and the fact that we seem to have lost that ability

00:16:38.360 and the contempt that the government shows for the parliament, the prime minister shows up less and

00:16:43.800 less. You can hardly physically get to the facility in Ottawa there. So I think this illustrates a

00:16:53.640 problem right across the Western world with the democratic processes, democratic institutions,

00:16:58.360 and people have to decide whether those need to be renewed in some fundamental way or else you're

00:17:03.400 going to have this conflict that this continual polarization creates.

00:17:08.920 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of that going on. I mean, especially here in Canada

00:17:14.680 and of course the pandemic hasn't helped with respect to that. You know, you've been involved in the

00:17:21.640 political evolution of Canada and especially of the conservative movement and today's conservative

00:17:27.720 party is very different from the last progressive conservative government of Brian Mulroney and arguably even

00:17:35.560 different from the last conservative government of Stephen Harper. Where do you think the conservative

00:17:43.160 movement, and by that I mean small c is today, and where is it going? There's always been this

00:17:49.480 impression in Canada that Canada is liberal, small l leaning, and it's borne out by the fact that we've had

00:17:57.560 way more liberal governments than conservative governments, at least in our recent history. Do you think

00:18:02.520 that'll ever change? Well, yeah, right now you're more conservative provincial governments than you do

00:18:09.160 liberal governments. No, I think the, you know, I've been involved in the current, the evolution of the

00:18:15.240 current conservative party, and I think it's headed in the right direction. I've known Pierre Polyevre

00:18:22.040 since he was a teenager. He was on my board actually in Calgary Southwest as a teenager. He had

00:18:27.960 political interests way back there, and I think he'll make a constructive contribution. I think

00:18:36.520 it's important for people in different parts of the country to understand the politics of the other.

00:18:41.400 You cannot understand Quebec politics without understanding nationalism, soft nationalism,

00:18:47.640 hard nationalism. You cannot understand the politics of Western Canada without understanding

00:18:52.200 populism. Populism is to the political culture of Western Canada what soft nationalism is to Quebec.

00:18:59.320 If recognizing that soft nationalism is legitimate, in the case of Quebec, no matter how you deal with it,

00:19:07.560 it ought to be legitimate to recognize the populist roots of the current conservative party coming from the

00:19:15.400 West. But I think, I say I'm a conservative ideologically, but I say almost more importantly that I'm a small d

00:19:27.160 Democrat first and foremost, and I think there are small d Democrats in all the parties, and the small d

00:19:33.880 Democrats better be concerned about this deterioration of democratic institutions and democratic process,

00:19:39.400 because the whole thing rests on that foundation. That foundation goes. It doesn't much matter whether

00:19:45.560 you're liberal, conservative, or socialist, or whatever. If democracy's in trouble, then we're all in trouble.

00:19:53.320 Yeah. Finally, Preston, are you optimistic that values of individual liberty, which have taken a battering

00:20:03.240 in the last two and a half years or so, and conservatism may become the dominant ideology in Canada moving forward?

00:20:13.080 Well, I think the rights and freedoms are under threat, the ones that are supposedly guaranteed by the

00:20:20.040 Charter, but existed long before the Charter, and Canadians should be alarmed about that. If they're not

00:20:26.440 alarmed, but if rights and freedoms can be limited in the way they have been in the COVID crisis, or for

00:20:36.200 other reasons, then I think democracy itself is in trouble. One of the worrisome things about that

00:20:41.800 survey that I mentioned to you, I mentioned the four categories, the harms, did you experience harms to

00:20:48.200 your health, your harms, social well-being, your economic well-being, or harms to your rights and

00:20:54.280 freedoms? The one that was mentioned the least was the harms to rights and freedoms, which in fact,

00:21:02.680 only 11 percent said that was the one that worried them the most with respect to their personal and

00:21:09.000 family life, and an even lower percentage said that was the one that was most worrisome on a national

00:21:16.040 basis. And what that illustrates to you, and I've talked to some of the lawyers on this, they say,

00:21:21.640 people do not see the connection between losing your rights and freedoms and it having an effect

00:21:27.000 on your health, losing your rights and freedoms and having effect on your social well-being,

00:21:33.400 losing your rights and freedoms and having an economic effect. The mandate aspect of all of those

00:21:40.600 caused those harms, but it got its legitimacy or illegitimacy from the attitude toward rights and

00:21:47.320 freedoms. So I think what that illustrates is that a lot of work has to be done to stress the importance

00:21:54.840 of conserving those rights and freedoms, particularly when they're under pressure through a crisis like

00:22:01.080 the COVID-19. Right, and you cannot discount the power of fear and paranoia, which was very much prevalent

00:22:11.640 during the two years and continues to be so actually. You wonder, like with November 11th coming along,

00:22:18.840 in Calgary there's this field of crosses where they have a cross for every soldier that died in the

00:22:25.960 First and Second World War, and it's a sobering thing. There's this huge field along Memorial Drive,

00:22:33.240 there are just thousands and thousands and thousands of people that sacrificed their lives and for what,

00:22:40.520 you know? For our freedoms. Yes, yes. And for us to ignore that or to be cavalier about it or say,

00:22:50.760 well, it doesn't, it's not relevant today. I think that's a huge, a huge mistake. Yeah. And how do we,

00:22:56.760 how do we fix that? How do we change that? How do we get people to be more, more concerned about losing

00:23:04.360 their rights and freedoms? Well, I think a part of it is in the education system, but the education

00:23:10.280 system doesn't seem to attach a great deal of importance to that either. So by education, I mean

00:23:14.600 more of the education at home, parents themselves, and the children, of the importance of these things,

00:23:21.080 and getting more people in the political arena that are prepared to advance and defend those,

00:23:26.280 those freedoms in the public arena. Right. Well, on that note, Preston, I don't want to take up too

00:23:34.440 much of your time, but I really appreciate you joining me on the show. It's been a real privilege

00:23:39.800 and pleasure to have you on the show. And I hope we can speak again soon. Okay. Well,

00:23:44.920 thank you very much. I enjoyed it too. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay.

00:23:51.080 Thank you.

Juno News - November 10, 2022

A national inquiry into Canada's pandemic response (Ft. Preston Manning)

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