Juno News - June 03, 2019


Andrew Scheer caves to the left by kicking Conservative MP off committee


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

160.25438

Word count

1,008

Sentence count

54


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In response to a claim made by a witness on a committee studying online hate, Conservative MP Michael Cooper says that violent acts can be linked to Conservative commentators. But the media and the left seize on this as evidence of racism and Islamophobia.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 The Conservatives are never going to win if they accept left-wing premises on contentious issues.
00:00:19.160 We saw a standoff last week in the House of Commons Justice Committee, a committee that's studying online hate.
00:00:25.240 Michael Cooper, a Conservative Member of Parliament, was speaking out in response to a claim made by a witness on that committee.
00:00:33.840 The witness, Faisal Khansuri, from the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Committee, made an asinine statement as he was discussing the power of online hate.
00:00:42.120 He said that violent acts can be linked to Conservative commentators.
00:00:47.580 This is the quote that's in question here.
00:00:50.360 Online hate influences real-life hate.
00:00:53.000 To be quite blunt about this, online hate is actually an enabler, a precursor, and a deep contributor to not just real-life hate, but to murder.
00:01:04.360 I think we've seen a lot of recent tragedies that have happened across the world.
00:01:09.240 In January 2017, in Quebec City, mosque-killer Alejandro Bissonette gunned down six Muslim men, in execution style,
00:01:16.000 where he came into the mosque with two guns and fired more than 800 rounds.
00:01:20.280 The evidence from business computers showed he repeatedly sought content about anti-immigrant, alt-right, and conservative commentators, mass murderers,
00:01:29.640 U.S. President Donald Trump, and about the arrival of Muslim immigrants in southern Quebec.
00:01:34.120 In October 2018, white nationalist Robert Bowers murdered 11 people and injured seven more at the shooting inside the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
00:01:42.200 An attack, again, that appears to have been motivated by anti-Semitism, inspired by his extensive involvement in white supremacy and alt-right online networks.
00:01:50.980 In March 2019, a lone gunman armed with semi-automatic weapons burst into the mosque in Chrysler's New Zealand.
00:01:57.420 This white nationalist, which was a gruesome terrorist attack, was broadcasted live on Facebook and Twitter, and 51 worshippers were killed.
00:02:07.420 So what Mr. Khonsuri is saying here is that we can link rhetoric from Donald Trump and alt-right and conservative commentators
00:02:15.420 to horrific violent attacks that conservatives, among many other people, deplore and condemn.
00:02:22.980 And what Michael Cooper said in response is that such a claim is defamatory,
00:02:27.120 that trying to tarnish conservatism and conservatives with a brush of violence is wrong.
00:02:31.980 And to illustrate his point, he actually quoted from the Christchurch Killers Manifesto,
00:02:36.520 which unabashedly disavowed conservatism.
00:02:39.640 This is what Michael Cooper said in that committee meeting.
00:02:42.220 I take great umbrage with your defamatory comments to try to link conservatism with violent and extremist attacks.
00:02:55.900 They have no foundation, they're defamatory, and they diminish your credibility as a witness.
00:03:02.480 And let me, Mr. Chair, read into the record the statement of Brendan Tarrant,
00:03:09.320 who was responsible for the Christchurch massacre.
00:03:13.140 He left a 74-page manifesto in which he stated,
00:03:17.900 Conservatism is corporatism in disguise.
00:03:21.980 I want no part of it.
00:03:23.980 The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People's Republic of China.
00:03:31.120 Close quote.
00:03:31.700 And I certainly wouldn't attempt to link Bernie Sanders to the individual who shot up Republican members of Congress
00:03:39.420 and nearly fatally killed Congressman Scalise.
00:03:44.520 So you should be ashamed.
00:03:45.980 So yes, he did read from the Manifesto of a Killer,
00:03:49.240 but he did it to disprove a disparaging claim that was made by a witness,
00:03:53.820 a very inflammatory claim that's been made by the witness.
00:03:56.560 But instead of taking this and looking at it factually, the media jumped on Michael Cooper.
00:04:01.820 The media accused him of racism, of Islamophobia,
00:04:05.180 of quoting, in some sense, of the Manifesto to support it.
00:04:09.540 And what happened from there was Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader,
00:04:12.940 decided to kick Michael Cooper off the Justice Committee.
00:04:17.060 Now this is a profound capitulation to the left, and there are a couple of problems.
00:04:21.440 Number one, Michael Cooper has been an effective operator on that committee,
00:04:24.960 not just throughout its study on online hate,
00:04:27.680 but also when he was grilling and holding to account Gerald Butts,
00:04:31.340 when he was helping get to the truth of the matter with regards to Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:04:35.660 Cooper has been a stalwart defender of the rule of law on that Justice Committee.
00:04:41.160 And what happens is that Andrew Scheer decides to try to make friends with the left
00:04:45.500 and try to make friends with the media,
00:04:47.040 kicks Cooper off of the committee with just a couple of months to go until the election,
00:04:51.140 and only a couple of weeks to go until the House of Commons rises for the summer.
00:04:55.800 And does it work? No.
00:04:57.640 People are still calling for Cooper to be ejected from not just the committee,
00:05:02.080 but from caucus itself.
00:05:03.940 This is what the witness in question said, Faisal Khonsori,
00:05:07.360 that Michael Cooper shouldn't even have a role within the Conservative caucus for what he did.
00:05:11.440 This is in spite of Andrew Scheer saying that he's talked to him and considers the matter concluded,
00:05:15.760 in spite of a direct apology from Michael Cooper for saying that Faisal should be ashamed
00:05:22.180 of making the claim he did about Conservatives.
00:05:24.960 But this is a very cowardly decision by Andrew Scheer.
00:05:27.780 It's ineffectual.
00:05:28.640 He's tried to tell people that,
00:05:30.420 oh, no, no, we're not Islamophobes, we're not bigots,
00:05:32.500 but the people that are making those claims are not discouraged from making those claims even further.
00:05:38.200 Conservatives are never going to win when they accept what the left is saying at face value
00:05:42.860 and take out these battles on their terms and their turf.
00:05:47.040 This is what's happened with Andrew Scheer's address at the Yellow Vest rally
00:05:50.140 and to the United We Rule convoy demonstrators.
00:05:53.080 He's constantly on defense, constantly saying,
00:05:55.460 I'm not a racist, I'm not a racist, I'm not an Islamophobe.
00:05:58.340 But let's face it, the left is never going to get off that way of thinking.
00:06:01.960 If Andrew Scheer wants to be a leader and a Conservative leader at that,
00:06:05.720 he needs to stop giving in.
00:06:07.400 When you throw one of your own MPs under the bus for saying
00:06:10.780 what anyone should view as a defense of conservatism,
00:06:14.000 you are not a leader.
00:06:15.760 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.