Juno News - Are anti-Israel encampments a free speech issue？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:15.540 this is the Andrew Lawton show

00:01:18.600 brought to you by True North

00:01:20.020 hello and welcome to you all

00:01:26.980 Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:28.820 here the andrew lawton show i am back did you miss me no no no don't don't answer that my

00:01:34.320 delicate tender ego can't take it if you say no uh it is monday may 13th 2024 it is just after

00:01:41.680 one o'clock eastern time 11 a.m mountain time 10 a.m in beautiful british columbia and if you

00:01:47.660 want to get the atlantic provinces uh sorted out too we can do that as well just for you just for

00:01:52.620 today it is just after two o'clock on three of the four atlantic provinces all three maritime

00:01:58.020 provinces but in Newfoundland a delightfully charming 2 30 p.m trying to show us all uh off

00:02:05.140 with the show off to us all with the half hour time zone but wherever it is for you whether

00:02:09.880 you're listening live or pre-tape uh all of it is an option available to you through our podcast

00:02:15.360 which you should subscribe we welcome you nonetheless I was away on vacation last week

00:02:20.100 I don't really have anything to report I decided to I had a bunch of like air miles so my wife and

00:02:25.020 i were like and we had some time so we were just trying to get uh so far away as far as we could

00:02:30.000 get on the air miles basically while still being able to get back and i and i'm off and i'm away

00:02:34.900 next week but that is something that is related to my work at true north so i'll have an update

00:02:39.080 for you on that very shortly but it means we have to make the most of the time we have together

00:02:44.360 this week and a couple of big things that i wanted to point out here number one and i'm going to be

00:02:51.200 talking about this a little bit later on in the show. We have this ongoing standoff between

00:02:56.760 universities and these encampments. I was actually on my alma mater's campus, Western University,

00:03:02.680 and took a little stroll there. They had an encampment set up on the weekend.

00:03:07.000 It was pretty quiet and sleepy. I was there at about 8 a.m. in the morning. I should have just

00:03:12.560 brought a bullhorn and started blasting classical music or something like that, but I didn't have

00:03:17.580 my bullhorn or my... Are there still boomboxes? Are boomboxes still a thing? I didn't have a

00:03:22.560 bullhorn or a boombox with me, so I had to just walk by and sort of deal with it there. But in

00:03:27.920 Alberta, it was a very different story. So we're going to talk about whether this is a legitimate

00:03:32.240 form of protest or perhaps something that is illegitimate. The police are right to step in

00:03:38.960 and dismantle the way they have. Also later on in the show, we'll be talking about the return of

00:03:44.760 the Teddy Awards. This is the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's annual reward of the worst of

00:03:51.760 government waste and it is a bit of a doozy this year but just before we get into that I want to

00:03:57.960 talk about this creative math that we've seen from the Liberal government here. Now you may recall

00:04:03.020 it was a couple of weeks ago that Justin Trudeau gave what was a rather stunning admission that he

00:04:07.760 has bungled the immigration file. He says yes Canada has clearly accepted more in the way of

00:04:13.980 immigrants than Canada can sustain, more than Canada can absorb. This was a, again, stunning

00:04:20.040 admission from the federal government, especially because it has been Justin Trudeau at the helm

00:04:24.380 for the last nine years. So if there is a problem with the immigration system in Canada,

00:04:29.480 that is his and his immigration minister's faults. But he made this admission nonetheless.

00:04:35.800 And we talked about it on the show, and Mark Miller, who's the immigration minister now,

00:04:39.420 has made similar concessions that we have had too many specifically foreign residents so these are

00:04:44.900 the people that come in either as temporary foreign workers or as international students

00:04:49.820 he said maybe just maybe we have too many of these people in the country and you think okay great the

00:04:56.280 liberal government's paying attention to this they see there's a housing crisis they see there are

00:05:00.900 long lines at food banks of many in many cases international students trying to get access to

00:05:06.780 food because they can't afford it. He's seen all of these problems and he thinks, okay, great.

00:05:11.040 They're listening. They're finally, finally listening. What are they going to do about it?

00:05:16.000 And then Mark Miller gives us this answer. Maybe we can just decrease the number of temporary

00:05:22.820 residents by converting them to permanent residents. Yeah, this is literally Mark Miller's

00:05:31.640 position here. We can decrease the number of temporary residents in the country. Okay,

00:05:35.960 you're great you're on side you're with them you support that by just like moving them from column

00:05:41.480 b to column c if you just make them permanent residents then boom ta-da you've reduced the

00:05:46.440 number of temporary residents this is like it's hilarious because this is like the type of thing

00:05:51.800 that if some first-year statistics student at i don't know some like terrible podunk university

00:05:57.160 in the middle of nowhere tried to do this they would be failed and flunked out and maybe even

00:06:02.760 accused of academic misconduct because you are just fudging and molesting your data by just moving

00:06:07.720 things around changing the labels but not dealing with the substance of the problem the issue is not

00:06:14.520 which column people are in the issue is the fact that we have had more people in the country at a

00:06:20.920 more aggressive rate than the country and the economic climate of the country have been willing

00:06:27.320 to withstand now miller met with his provincial counterparts so these are the ministers in

00:06:32.520 ontario's government quebec's government vc's government and so on for the first time and this

00:06:38.200 is to announce a plan for the temporary resident problem and so he has this opportunity he has all

00:06:43.640 of these provincial ministers that are saying to him okay yes we really want to find a way to do

00:06:48.120 this and he says okay so the issue is that we have high immigration okay what if we just call

00:06:56.840 it a different type of immigration and you're like well well minister the people are still

00:07:00.840 in the country the the food bank line is still long okay what what if we put up a a mirror of

00:07:08.440 some sorts and we make it look like the line is shorter than it actually is that this is like

00:07:14.200 basically the type of nonsense he's suggesting here this is the the guy that we're supposed to

00:07:19.960 look at to have these solutions to the problem and he is instead deciding to aggravate and

00:07:25.880 exacerbate the problem now this is what he has said here and i want to keep the most important

00:07:31.560 quote of this the fact people are already here their impact on affordability has already been

00:07:39.880 baked in so it's smart it's smart to do it he's and he walked it back a little bit he said well

00:07:46.120 it doesn't mean by extension that everyone's entitled to stay here or be here in canada but

00:07:51.240 but they want to take all the people who are here who came to Canada on a temporary basis.

00:07:56.440 The basis of their entry, the condition of their entry was that they would be here temporarily

00:08:01.420 to either complete their studies, to work for a period of time on this farm or in that service environment,

00:08:08.180 whatever the case may be.

00:08:09.460 They already knew that was temporary.

00:08:12.160 And his answer to there being too many of them by his own government's admission

00:08:15.960 that have come in in too short a time is that, well, maybe we should just turn it around

00:08:20.060 and move them into the other column.

00:08:22.080 And you wonder why the liberal government

00:08:24.140 is cratering in the pool.

00:08:26.500 You wonder why no one is looking to the liberals now

00:08:28.760 and saying, these guys really seem to have a handle

00:08:32.420 on what's happening.

00:08:33.600 I'm trying to like come up,

00:08:34.360 we should just come up with some meme of sorts

00:08:36.200 where, you know, find ways that we could say

00:08:40.340 that the liberal government is actually coming up with.

00:08:42.440 For example, I've got a Mark Miller solution here.

00:08:45.340 So I was reading, I read this book a while ago,

00:08:47.780 but let's say I hadn't.

00:08:48.980 This is a delightful book, Eric Fromm's Escape from Freedom.

00:08:52.160 Let's say I had to read this for an assignment

00:08:54.320 and I had to get through all, how many pages is it?

00:08:57.640 All 296 pages of the book

00:09:01.060 because I had to read the entire book.

00:09:03.000 And oh no, I'm only at page 75 in the classes tomorrow.

00:09:06.140 Mark Miller says not to worry.

00:09:08.280 Just rip off the back half.

00:09:09.860 The book only has 75 pages now.

00:09:11.940 Congratulations, you've done it.

00:09:13.480 You've managed it, you've conquered it.

00:09:16.320 You're having trouble conquering Everest?

00:09:18.080 ah, just lop off the top of Everest and ta-da, you're there. This is Mark Miller's idea of

00:09:23.640 achievement. And I'm sorry, it is hilarious in some ways, but it wouldn't be for long if this

00:09:30.140 guy has his way for, you know, the years and years that the liberal government tends to think

00:09:35.000 it's going to be in power. Absolutely absurd. One thing I wanted to just pivot to here is the

00:09:43.140 ongoing uh well in some cases dismantling of these encampments on university campuses there

00:09:49.920 were a police movement in Alberta on the weekend uh one well share a couple of clips

00:09:55.240 Sean it's your choice which one we do first uh from the dismantling in Alberta

00:10:13.140 you see just in the background there the number of police officers involved tearing down the

00:10:21.860 scaffolding pretty anticlimactic in a way uh this was one though that i found was a little

00:10:26.920 bit more forceful where you had basically the anti-israel encampment uh form of hold the line

00:10:33.120 do not let them surround our camp do not let them take down the walls

00:10:40.820 So we basically have her say, no, no, no, don't let them do it.

00:10:56.340 Don't let them do it.

00:10:57.160 And there was one video I saw where like one officer single-handedly took down an entire wall.

00:11:10.820 he was actually the uh captain of the calgary police dominoes team by the way so that he put

00:11:28.060 that all to good use uh he just knocked the one down the other side uh those officers like each

00:11:33.440 one took one pallet he was able to like knock the whole pallet down on his own so uh good on that

00:11:38.140 officer there. But this was what happened. Police moved in. And in Montreal, we have a bit of a

00:11:43.080 different case. McGill University is going to the, well, it's in court today, asking for permission,

00:11:49.140 basically. They're asking for an injunction to be able to remove these encampments. And look,

00:11:54.920 I have very little time for the message being espoused by the people at these encampments. I

00:12:01.080 have seen symbolism that is, in my mind, and I think very demonstrably supporting literal terrorism.

00:12:08.140 in terror groups. I have in other cases seen rhetoric that I don't think is glorifying

00:12:12.680 terrorism, but I think is nonetheless callous and anti-Semitic. And there are other people

00:12:17.260 that probably just don't know why they're there. This is the trendy thing. This is the cool thing

00:12:21.360 to do, the cool place to be. And that's why they are there. People who are wearing keffias,

00:12:26.360 they don't even know anything about a keffia. They were just handing them out outside the quad

00:12:30.240 and they put them on because the cute girl they like from their gender studies class is wearing

00:12:36.520 one as well and they wanted to fit in. That is the campus activist mindset in a lot of cases. But

00:12:41.100 I'm also very aware of the fact that a lot of the people who are cheering the dismantling of these

00:12:46.840 encampments were people who may have been supportive of the Freedom Convoys continued

00:12:52.600 presence in Ottawa a couple of years ago and vice versa. People on the left who wanted police to

00:12:57.960 barge in and break down the Freedom Convoy are telling police they should stay outside of these

00:13:04.300 little activist safe spaces on campuses now when it comes to these encampments and it's why when

00:13:10.020 the freedom convoy happened I was so insistent on the need to come up with a universal rule

00:13:16.620 a universal rule for protest that we could apply regardless of cause find the limit because

00:13:23.160 remember people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have come out and said in unequivocal terms

00:13:28.040 protest is meant to be disruptive so disruption alone is the point well not alone but disruption

00:13:33.900 is the point. So you can't even say if a protest is disruptive, it's unlawful. And I wanted to

00:13:40.320 just have a legal analysis of this, if you will, not from a boring dry perspective, but just in

00:13:46.480 the climate in Canada that we are at now, is this a legal, legitimate, defensible protest? Or are

00:13:53.740 police justified in barging in? Or is the answer somewhere in between? Wanted to welcome into the

00:13:59.220 show, Josh Tahaz, who is the lawyer extraordinaire. Well, he's our lawyer extraordinaire with the

00:14:04.460 Canadian Constitution Foundation. Josh, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:14:09.500 Thanks for the invitation.

00:14:12.480 So let me ask first and foremost, in law, how clearly defined is that line between

00:14:19.180 an unlawful and a lawful protest? Setting aside the kind of the inconsistency that we'll get from

00:14:25.240 media commentary on this. Is there actually a really clear line in the law on this?

00:14:30.780 No. So it's a really difficult question. There are a bunch of different factors you need to

00:14:38.200 consider here. And if we're talking about the protests on campus, for example, one of the

00:14:44.940 questions is whether the charter even applies because campuses are in many ways considered

00:14:51.400 private property. And therefore, you know, if they're trying to get rid of an encampment on

00:14:56.580 campus, then they may just be trying to enforce their private property rights. And so the charter

00:15:02.600 might not even come into play. But if you look at the Supreme Court's jurisprudence over the years,

00:15:09.040 they've said some rather confusing things on what counts as expression. You know, the first case

00:15:16.580 where they sort of developed the free expression test was called Irwin Toy. And in that case,

00:15:20.840 they said, on the one hand, certain forms of expression. So, you know, if you punch someone

00:15:26.540 in the face, that's an expressive activity, you're trying to convey a message and usually

00:15:32.180 pretty effectively, but that's not covered by the free expression guarantee because of the form of

00:15:38.300 that expression. And yet at the same time, in that case, they said, you know, if you go park your car

00:15:43.800 as a protest in a parking lot, I know this is a weird example, but it's the example that they

00:15:51.260 used. If you're doing that as a protest against reserving parking spots for certain people,

00:15:56.180 then that is an expressive activity and the chart and your expression is protected. And if you look

00:16:03.760 at something like an occupation or an encampment, it's hard to know whether that's protected

00:16:11.420 expression or not and you can look at some of the later case law there's a case called

00:16:16.780 montreal city where they get into okay which places does the charter protect expression

00:16:22.380 in and which places are excluded from protection and they say you know look at the historical

00:16:27.600 and actual use of the the place is it a place where historically we would expect expression

00:16:33.100 like a a public park or is it a place where we historically wouldn't like the secure areas of

00:16:39.960 an airport is one example they used. And in terms of actual function, okay, well, is it compatible

00:16:46.640 with the function of the place? And you can look at something like the University of Toronto campus

00:16:51.880 and you say, assuming that it is public property, which I think might not be correct, then the

00:17:01.680 actual function of that space, well, what is it? It's to, you know, play Frisbee, it's to sit on

00:17:06.780 grass but it's also to protest so you have to accept some degree of protest there in that type

00:17:13.740 of space and the question then becomes is an occupation where you're there night after night

00:17:19.820 for weeks on end is that compatible with the function of that space and there's good arguments

00:17:25.420 that it isn't that it you know destroys the grass or it keeps anybody else from

00:17:29.900 uh using that public space so these are really tricky questions to resolve

00:17:34.020 Well, and this came up to some extent with the Freedom Convoy, and I wanted to get your

00:17:38.220 perspective on this. Does the length of time have any bearing on whether something is legal?

00:17:43.840 You know, so for one of these encampments, could it be that it's legal if you do it for Saturday

00:17:48.440 and Sunday, but if you do it for three weeks, it's not, even though the activity itself and

00:17:52.740 the location are the same? Well, I think legally, we don't know with any certainty the answer to

00:17:58.600 that question we do know that to some degree uh there are sort of time-based restrictions so

00:18:04.540 this came up in the Occupy Toronto case where uh protesters occupied uh St. James Park in

00:18:12.260 downtown Toronto and they said um our protest is our expression and therefore if you say we can't

00:18:18.820 uh camp here overnight for weeks on end uh you're you're completely uh you know quashing our

00:18:26.540 expressive rights. And the court said they thought this was a form of expression to pitch tents and

00:18:32.460 all of that. But they said, no, the city can place limits on that. That's justified in a

00:18:38.860 free and democratic society. This is not what freedom of expression protects. So I do think

00:18:44.140 that time is a factor that courts would consider if they're trying to decide whether or not these

00:18:49.760 protests are illegal. Just to go back to the university question, I've spent far too much of

00:18:55.160 my life in recent years trying to figure out the answer to the charter applicability question on

00:19:00.760 university campuses. And it's really a mixed bag across the country, as I understand it. And

00:19:06.260 ironically, in Alberta, I think there is the strongest protection in the kind of the established

00:19:12.400 court ruling on there being charter rights on campuses. But Alberta was also where police

00:19:17.580 moved in at two of the province's big universities over the weekend.

00:19:21.140 yeah so there are differences and it depends on uh provinces uh in ontario there's a lot of case

00:19:28.940 law that suggests that university property is generally private and that universities are

00:19:34.180 autonomous institutions and the way they they look at that the courts the court says okay well

00:19:40.500 let's look at the acts that created these universities and they say pretty clearly that

00:19:44.420 they're meant to be autonomous and you know they receive public funding so we think of them as

00:19:50.000 public universities and we call them that. But in the case law, there's an argument to be made

00:19:55.560 that they're essentially private property. And so the charter wouldn't even really apply if that's

00:20:01.080 the case. In Alberta, like you say, there is a different case. It's a case involving a right to

00:20:07.640 life group that wanted to protest on campus. And in that case, the judge reviewed the case law and

00:20:14.260 said, look, if the university is implementing essentially a government program on the government's

00:20:21.960 behalf, then they are part of government. And as we all know, the charter applies to government. It

00:20:26.360 doesn't apply to private actors. So in that case, it did apply to the particular student group in

00:20:34.680 that particular case. And that was about discipline for their freedom of expression. So it's a little

00:20:42.620 bit of a tricky question and it might depend on which province you're in. So one of the most

00:20:47.920 frustrating things, and this comes up anytime there's a discussion about free speech or an

00:20:52.760 legal context, freedom of expression is that so many people are unable to separate the legality

00:20:58.260 from their own value that they attach to whatever the speech is. And this is sort of as I led into

00:21:03.600 this segment, the issue where I have to be fully candid. You know, I have very different views

00:21:07.940 about the value of the Freedom Convoy protests and the value of these protests. But I have to

00:21:12.780 take that out when I'm talking about the merit of their legal right to protest. And I'm wondering

00:21:18.200 from what you've seen, and I realize all these encampments are different and the rhetoric at

00:21:22.960 them is different. And sometimes the universities themselves may choose to avail, may choose to use

00:21:28.920 their property rights and may choose not to. And a university has that right. What's your general

00:21:34.040 read on where a court would take these? So my general read is that it's pretty hard to tell,

00:21:43.280 but I think if you're talking about Ontario... This is why lawyers always win,

00:21:47.220 because you can make an argument for or against anything, right?

00:21:51.620 You really can, but this is... I was debating this with a couple of my colleagues early this

00:21:56.440 morning, and you really can make the argument on either side. My personal view is that I...

00:22:04.040 I hate seeing protests broken up.

00:22:07.920 I don't agree with the message of this protest.

00:22:10.260 I generally think they're wrong,

00:22:12.420 but universities are places traditionally

00:22:14.640 where people express themselves on all manner of topics

00:22:19.160 and they're entitled to be wrong about those things.

00:22:22.840 And we need disagreement and debate on campus.

00:22:25.640 So I don't like seeing police go in and break them up.

00:22:28.680 But I think if you're talking about Ontario

00:22:31.440 and the university trying to enforce its property rights,

00:22:35.260 I think they're on pretty, fairly solid ground

00:22:38.020 that they could, you know, say trespassers,

00:22:41.600 especially the non-students, you know,

00:22:43.760 get off our lawn, you've been here long enough.

00:22:46.640 And in other cases, you know, the courts might say,

00:22:50.000 okay, well, this was a, take for example, Alberta,

00:22:53.440 this was violating their expression to say

00:22:56.500 they can't, you know, use this space,

00:22:58.920 But there were genuine safety risks here or there are other factors that make this a justified limit on the charter rights.

00:23:08.200 So I think that they, you know, those universities in Alberta might also potentially win.

00:23:12.980 But there's conflicting case law. That's the reality.

00:23:15.280 These things come up not all that often in the courts and different judges say different things.

00:23:20.520 So it's not always all that clear.

00:23:22.860 Well, and I would hope and assume that there could be some middle ground here.

00:23:26.980 I mean, for example, I played some clips a few moments ago of police taking down what looked like, again, not terribly permanent or terribly well-constructed fences, but there had been efforts to literally build a fence around this.

00:23:38.840 And we've heard reports from some of these cases of them trying to block people from walking through.

00:23:44.100 Like, I would be more amenable to this if a university were to say, listen, you can be there, you can set up your tents, you can sleep there, you can chant, but you can't commandeer this entire space.

00:23:55.260 If someone else wants to walk through that space and exercise their own free speech rights there, they should have that right. Similarly to, you know, the Freedom Convoy, if, you know, the government had said, listen, you can stay here as long as you want, but move the trucks, that would have changed the calculation a little bit, I think.

00:24:10.780 Yeah, I agree. I think that there are ways you can put reasonable limits that can allow people to continue to express themselves without actually, you know, commandeering the space, like you say, or creating some of these other risks.

00:24:25.840 And in fact, we have seen universities do that in this case. They have said things like, look, you can protest here every day and you can use up a large amount of space. You can be as loud as you like. But if you start impeding people walking to class, that's a potential violation of our student code of conduct.

00:24:44.760 and and there will be consequences for you know impeding other people trying to get just get to

00:24:50.040 class or you know you can you can be here all day but you can't stay overnight um and i think that

00:24:57.600 might be a type of limit that um makes sense considering the extent of our charter um if you

00:25:04.660 look at the ottawa protests the same thing too like if the city maybe found places where the

00:25:09.300 trucks could park so that people could do their protests day in day out every day. That's one

00:25:16.000 thing. But, you know, blocking a street might be legally a different thing, right? So I think

00:25:21.540 that's a good way to look at it is that we should be able to try and find ways to accommodate

00:25:25.700 people's expression, but not go overboard to the point where it's creating serious harm to other

00:25:32.460 people. There's one thing I wanted to ask you about, Josh, is, you know, whether just moving

00:25:38.200 forward here and whatever the next thing is the next protest if let's say that a pro-life group

00:25:43.880 is not allowed to demonstrate in the same space at you know university of toronto or whatever the

00:25:49.960 school is that this encampment is in and the university cracks down on them as has happened

00:25:54.480 to pro-life groups does this actually help them in a way can they turn around and say well hang

00:25:58.800 on you know last year you were fine when uh this protest was there

00:26:02.360 interesting because when these uh protests started up in the united states and you saw

00:26:10.040 you know university presidents being called before congress they they uh went back to principle and

00:26:16.500 they said look we're a university campus people should be able to say um extreme uh points of

00:26:22.460 view as long as they're not you know harassing a particular student over and over again and that

00:26:28.580 was the right principle. But for many years before that, universities had the opposite principle,

00:26:33.260 which was, oh, no, no, we need to protect student safety. Students can't be exposed to

00:26:38.760 controversial ideas they don't like because, you know, everything is discriminatory or

00:26:44.000 hurts their feelings. Yeah, the iHeart JK Rowling encampment wouldn't have lasted this long a year

00:26:49.940 ago. No, I don't think it would have. I don't think it would have. I think you're right. So

00:26:54.460 hopefully now we've got the right principle, which is that you should be able to express yourself

00:27:00.420 regardless of the content of your ideas, but certain forms of expression like violence or

00:27:06.640 maybe entrenched encampments go too far and they're not covered by your speech rights. But

00:27:12.000 whatever the principle is, we need to know that in advance. We need to apply it equally regardless

00:27:17.460 of whether we like the message of the protesters or we don't. Well, fascinating stuff. And I

00:27:24.400 I understand you have an op-ed coming out

00:27:26.020 about something very similar, hopefully soon, correct?

00:27:29.180 I hope so.

00:27:30.220 Not sure where yet, but we'll see.

00:27:33.000 All right.

00:27:33.380 Well, if everyone else rejects it, send it my way

00:27:35.220 and True North will publish it there.

00:27:37.040 But always good to talk to you, Josh DeHaz from the CCF.

00:27:40.200 Thank you very much.

00:27:41.420 Thanks, Andrew.

00:27:42.920 All right.

00:27:43.320 Always good to get the level-headed view of things there.

00:27:46.640 Wanted to turn to one thing,

00:27:49.200 the thing we can always, always, always count on.

00:27:52.280 Well, what are the two things?

00:27:53.220 Death and taxes, right?

00:27:54.300 We'll focus a little bit more on the second one here because government was, government loves patting itself on the back, but a couple of days ago, government was honored in a way that only the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is able to do.

00:28:09.460 It was Teddy Award season.

00:28:11.220 This is the, some of you like the Oscars, some of you like the Grammys, some of you like, what are the weird Canadian, the stupid Canadian ones that no one watches?

00:28:20.200 Is it the Gemini's?

00:28:22.320 No, not the Juno.

00:28:23.080 People like the Junos, Sean.

00:28:24.740 Let's not crap on the Junos too much.

00:28:26.840 It's the Gem, but I don't even know what the Geminis are

00:28:28.880 because there's also something called

00:28:30.880 the Canadian Screen Award.

00:28:32.040 So maybe I'm mixing up two awards, but either way,

00:28:34.400 it's the thing that like that CBC show

00:28:36.780 with the non-binary anti-colonial tomato

00:28:39.360 or whatever gets nominated on.

00:28:40.780 But anyway, but the award that I like,

00:28:43.700 the awards that I follow are the Teddy Awards

00:28:45.960 courtesy of the CTF.

00:28:47.820 I believe we have our good friend Franco Terrazano here

00:28:51.440 that he is with Teddy and he's holding a Teddy.

00:28:55.680 So this is like a Teddy-ception there.

00:28:58.820 And if you want to get a sense of how Franco feels

00:29:01.440 about a government waste,

00:29:02.840 I think this photo generally tells us that.

00:29:06.240 Yeah, that's also how he feels

00:29:08.500 whenever I ask him to come on the show, sadly.

00:29:10.320 But he's here now, nonetheless,

00:29:11.820 Franco Terrazano, federal director for the CTF.

00:29:14.880 Happy Teddy season to you, Franco.

00:29:17.320 Happy Teddy season to you

00:29:19.080 and all the big spending politicians and bureaucrats out there so give me a little bit

00:29:24.980 of the backstory here every time we do this we have to remind people of where the teddy came from

00:29:29.360 well we've been doing it we just had our 26th uh teddy ceremony you know celebrating the worst and

00:29:36.380 funniest examples of government waste uncovered over the last year let me tell you folks let me

00:29:40.980 bring you all behind the curtain it is a very very competitive field in government waste over the

00:29:46.200 last year let me tell you but the whole ceremony where we dress up with you know a bow tie black

00:29:52.120 suit uh it all started when well it was named after ted weatherall who is a former federal

00:29:58.260 appointee he was canned over his dubious expenses including a 700 lunch for two back in the 90s

00:30:05.720 so for the last 26 years we've been poking fun mocking these politicians and bureaucrats for

00:30:11.380 wasting people's money. And just reminding folks out there that the reason you are all paying too

00:30:16.720 much tax is because the government is wasting too much of your money. Oink, oink. All right. Well,

00:30:22.560 very, very well said there. Let's go through some of the winners because you're very good at not

00:30:27.000 just keeping it all focused on the federal government. You have municipal, provincial,

00:30:30.980 and federal categories, and of course, the Lifetime Achievement Award. So let's go through

00:30:35.420 the list here. Municipal, you went to Prince Edward Island, as I understand it.

00:30:40.180 No, that was last year. This year's we have the city of Regina. I know there's so much waste out there. It's hard to keep track of it. But this year's winner was the city of Regina. And, you know, Regina wanted to give the city a rebrand. So tourism Regina became experience Regina. And they came up with slogans like this. Now, folks, I didn't make them up. Here are the slogans they chose. Regina, the city that rhymes with fun.

00:31:07.320 Yeah, bureaucrats actually made that up. Regina, this city that rhymes with fun. And yeah, sure,

00:31:13.280 it's fun until you're paying for college 18 years later. Or how about this slogan? They came up with

00:31:19.480 this one as well. Show us your Regina. Yep, that was an actual slogan from the city of Regina.

00:31:25.940 They spent $30,000 on this rebrand for those slogans. And then after some blowback, obviously,

00:31:34.440 they quickly uh you know canned the rebrand it cost them 30 000 bucks so taxpayers are out tens

00:31:41.480 of thousands of dollars and we didn't even get to keep the rebrand i actually i didn't mind the

00:31:46.520 i didn't mind the slogans i thought it was like the most interesting thing to come out of vagina

00:31:50.140 in quite a while uh i just didn't like that they rolled on it and then pretended oh we didn't know

00:31:54.500 how it was going to go over it you're literally your whole premise is about comparing your city

00:31:58.800 to female bodily autonomy you have to be prepared for the pushback that's going to well andrew you

00:32:02.760 You know, apparently it's the most press Regina has experienced since college.

00:32:09.780 There you go.

00:32:11.100 I don't even have anything on me.

00:32:12.600 You've successfully silenced me.

00:32:14.380 So well done there.

00:32:15.540 All right.

00:32:16.120 Then we go to the provincial category.

00:32:17.940 And this is your own former province here, Alberta.

00:32:21.340 It's sad.

00:32:22.000 It's sad that the province of Alberta is winning an award here, folks.

00:32:25.940 So the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, they spent $30,000 flying a Lethbridge artist.

00:32:32.120 you know where my family's from flying a lethbridge artist to places like south korea

00:32:36.500 and new york you know one of these artists paintings can best be described as uh ants

00:32:42.360 on a pop tart you know that's the name that i've given that painting uh but then also in south

00:32:46.900 korea she did like an eight minute video i guess of her flopping around on a futon uh you know

00:32:53.560 you know i got away the alberta government can save some money instead of paying this artist 30

00:32:58.200 grand to fly around the world they could have just set up a beach for the next time that i had

00:33:02.120 or set up a camera for the next time I head to the beach in Mexico.

00:33:05.880 Yeah.

00:33:06.360 And the one thing that annoys me here is that like,

00:33:08.660 these are the people that told us that you can do everything by zoom.

00:33:12.100 You can do everything remotely and everything virtually.

00:33:14.460 And we all, you know,

00:33:15.440 had our zoom meetings and everyone built video conferencing programs.

00:33:18.340 And then it's like, we need to fly, fly you around the world here.

00:33:22.120 We can't just upload a video on YouTube and, you know, run, you know,

00:33:25.200 20 bucks worth of YouTube ads for this.

00:33:27.440 No, but folks, like, I wish I had the video to play for you right now.

00:33:30.840 it's so crazy that this artist literally took off her flip-flops and then just spent about

00:33:37.080 eight minutes rolling around on a futon like that is the best way that I can describe it

00:33:41.860 and you know this whole grant system it ended up costing taxpayers $30,000 like you gotta see the

00:33:48.280 video the painting like I said best be described as ants on a pop tart but really it really just

00:33:54.160 boils down to the fact that like why are taxpayers paying for this artist to travel around the world

00:34:00.060 to produce art, I guess, uh, that no, that very few people would actually willing to pay, uh,

00:34:06.360 themselves. Yeah. And I'm also like wondering, yeah, I I'm with you. Like I can't even get onto

00:34:12.240 the artist train, let alone the flying around the world thing. It's like, you know, I guess

00:34:16.060 this is like, this is making Yoko Ono look like Da Vinci basically. It's, it's bad. And here I

00:34:23.140 gotta, speaking of bad, I gotta go now to the federal waste award. Let's see the lifetime

00:34:26.980 have achievement for the end because it's absolutely crazy but hey the federal waste

00:34:31.000 award winner this year of course CBC president Catherine Tate very well deserved right because

00:34:37.440 if you'll remember at the end of last year just weeks before Christmas Tate announced that the

00:34:42.240 state broadcaster was laying off hundreds of employees then Tate you know did the rounds

00:34:47.300 claiming that the CBC is chronically underfunded begging for more taxpayer cash more more more more

00:34:53.020 more. So did the CBC end the bonuses that they were handing out if they were laying off hundreds

00:34:58.520 of staff, if they were claiming the cupboards were bare? No, of course not. The CBC still handed out

00:35:04.260 $15 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses last year. All told, the CBC has been handing out $114 million

00:35:12.160 in those taxpayer-funded bonuses since 2015. So for handing out those bonuses, for claiming that

00:35:18.460 they're somehow underfunded, although they take like $1.4 billion a year from taxpayers,

00:35:24.300 CBC President Catherine Tate, a worthy, worthy recipient of the federal Teddy Waste Award.

00:35:30.480 But not as fun as the Lifetime Achievement Award.

00:35:34.500 Okay, so the Lifetime Achievement Award. Now, I'm going to preface this with folks,

00:35:38.840 this actually happened. This isn't me just coming up with jokes, okay?

00:35:42.320 I have verified this, by the way. He's not lying to you here.

00:35:45.640 the lifetime achievement award goes to the now killed mission cultural fund okay so we first

00:35:52.740 heard about heard about this fund when we heard that the prime minister flew a canadian chef to

00:35:58.360 india to cook indian food so that's when our uh taxpayer spidey senses started going off about

00:36:04.500 this mission cultural fund because you know the first thing that came to my mind is like well

00:36:09.180 how else are you supposed to get indian food in india you know what i mean yeah they just call it

00:36:14.300 food there you don't even need to work that hard for it but but here's some of the other things

00:36:18.540 or here's some of the things that the mission cultural fund was spending taxpayers money on

00:36:22.320 uh like a ten thousand dollar birthday party for margaret atwood in new york or a uh fifty two

00:36:29.600 thousand dollar photo exhibit for rock star brian adams so he could show off his totally awesome

00:36:34.960 photos like one of justin trudeau but now it gets really crazy okay folks because the mission

00:36:41.320 Cultural Fund, which was the federal slush fund, spent more than 8,000 bucks on a sex toy show

00:36:48.460 in Germany. Now, Andrew, maybe I'm a little old school, man, but if the Germans want to have a

00:36:54.340 sex toy show in Germany, they could pay for it themselves. You know, that's all I'm asking for

00:36:59.380 here. Or this one. And this is just a description from the government. They had a musical, I guess,

00:37:06.000 some type of play that highlighted, you know, these lesbians who are dressing up as male pirates

00:37:13.240 who found each other and fell in love. That was a musical paid for by the taxpayer. Yeah,

00:37:19.260 you might not have even known about that. Now, even after all of this crazy spending,

00:37:23.600 the Mission Cultural Fund, they hung on. They stuck with it until one thing finally put it

00:37:30.280 over the top. So what was the thing that finally killed the Mission Cultural Fund?

00:37:34.220 sex stories from senior citizens in other countries okay the fed spent 12 grand paying

00:37:41.580 senior citizens in other countries to talk about their sex lives in front of live audiences now

00:37:47.920 andrew these weren't even canadian seniors we were outsourcing old people sex stories

00:37:53.620 they should have just gotten up and talked about the city of regina

00:37:56.880 there you go we currently saved saved you know maybe 20 000 of that hey or why couldn't the

00:38:03.840 senior citizens just like go to the german sex toy show why did this need to be two line items

00:38:08.060 and it wasn't even a canadian jobs program these were these were these were seniors in other

00:38:13.380 countries oh hang on i'm trying so i just i want to understand this i i try to look through the

00:38:19.220 lens of the the government bureaucrats that are doing this so these were non-canadian citizens

00:38:25.560 talking about their sex lives in non-canadian countries like and i'm assuming it wasn't like

00:38:32.500 limited to that time i had sex in canada so i'm failing to see why the canadian government had

00:38:37.240 pardon the language skin in the game here

00:38:40.700 spreading canadian diplomacy abroad or something like that now folks now spreading something

00:38:48.380 i knew you're gonna say that uh so this thing folks they had these seniors in other countries

00:38:54.700 They had to talk about their first time, their last time, their best time.

00:39:00.060 12 grand.

00:39:01.020 You know what would have been a better use of 12 grand?

00:39:03.420 Paying those seniors to talk about literally anything else.

00:39:07.440 And maybe just do 10 grand.

00:39:09.640 You don't even need to do the full 12.

00:39:11.640 They're retired.

00:39:12.860 Let them just, oh gosh.

00:39:15.860 Canada.

00:39:17.120 Canada's back.

00:39:17.980 This was Justin Trudeau's promise when he was elected.

00:39:20.280 Canada's back.

00:39:21.700 Canada's backside.

00:39:23.100 Anyway.

00:39:23.760 All right.

00:39:24.140 well happy teddy season to you hope i mean you've killed the mission cultural fund so the award is

00:39:29.920 working yeah yeah i mean hopefully we can kill some more of this wasteful spending in ottawa and

00:39:35.460 across the rest of canada uh but you know folks um it's it's always a really fun time and it's

00:39:40.360 really to highlight the fact that like you are paying too much tax because these bureaucrats

00:39:45.120 are wasting so much of your money all right well uh keep up the good work there franco terrizano

00:39:50.280 from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:39:52.020 Always a pleasure, sir.

00:39:53.340 Hey, take care.

00:39:54.580 All right.

00:39:55.540 Oh boy, what a great, what a great story.

00:39:58.420 And by great, I mean like great for show value,

00:40:00.780 not for Canadian taxpayer value.

00:40:02.300 But all right, that will do it for us for today.

00:40:04.380 We will be back tomorrow

00:40:05.620 with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:40:08.860 Same time, same place.

00:40:10.140 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:40:12.880 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:40:15.160 Support the program by donating to True North

00:40:17.460 at www.tnc.news.

00:40:47.460 We'll be right back.

00:41:17.460 We'll be right back.

Juno News - May 13, 2024

Are anti-Israel encampments a free speech issue？

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