Juno News - Are masks coming back？

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 this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.520 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lotten show

00:01:30.800 on true north on this wednesday august 30th midway through the week at least if you are a monday to

00:01:37.760 friday type uh it is midway through the week depending on your working hours or days that

00:01:42.220 may not in fact be the middle of your week in which case i apologize for rubbing it in

00:01:46.200 on behalf of those for whom it is.

00:01:48.680 But nevertheless, a lot going on that I am eager to get through in today's show.

00:01:53.060 For starters, a rare bit of good news on the COVID file.

00:01:57.220 Now, you may not recall this COVID thing is a bit of a thing,

00:02:01.000 but there was this little chapter in Canadian history and world history

00:02:05.420 not that long ago in which people were subjected to massive sweeping crackdowns

00:02:12.240 on their civil liberties, restrictions, lockdowns, mandates.

00:02:15.200 And many of them were even charged if they dared to violate those edicts, fiats, mandates, and restrictions and so on.

00:02:23.480 A few examples are Chris Scott of the Whistle Stop Cafe in Alberta.

00:02:28.300 Other examples of this would include Pastor Tim Stevens in New Brunswick and James Coates.

00:02:35.380 I don't know if he's in Edmonton or if he's just outside of Edmonton and so on.

00:02:39.200 But we have a little bit of good news as far as some of these cases are concerned.

00:02:44.900 Just a little bit, just a teeny tiny itsy bit of good news here.

00:02:50.360 But Chris Scott, who is the owner of the Whistle Stop Cafe, was fully acquitted yesterday.

00:02:57.240 The Crown had basically applied to the judge to say, yeah, just, you know, we don't think there is a reasonable prospect of conviction.

00:03:04.000 So perhaps you can just ease off of this.

00:03:06.740 And that was exactly what happened.

00:03:08.420 You've got other cases that have popped up today where some of the churches and pastors that have had charges applied to them are finding themselves no longer facing prosecution.

00:03:20.260 And then you also had this decision that came about in an Alberta case just a couple of weeks ago, I think it was, that was basically a 90-page decision ruling that provincial health orders were invalid because they were in violation of the Public Health Act.

00:03:37.720 Now, the way this story has been reported is that there are a bunch of people that are going to find themselves getting a refund on their fines, that they may find themselves unconvicted of this.

00:03:49.820 And if you read this on the surface, it sounds like it's great. It's a victory. It's a blow against these COVID lockdowns.

00:03:55.820 We'll talk about that in a few moments time with lawyer Sarah Miller about whether that is, in fact, something that people should be jumping for joy about.

00:04:03.680 But right now, I have to begin by saying, here we go again.

00:04:09.460 This little past chapter of Canadian history that I was just talking about, the COVID era, that I think has long been over.

00:04:17.320 Some people think we've never left it and are wanting to keep us in this in perpetuity.

00:04:22.320 Have you seen these headlines warning of the new variant?

00:04:24.920 It's been a while since we've had a new variant, have we?

00:04:27.940 But the new variant is BA.2.86.

00:04:32.100 It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

00:04:33.920 But the Canadian mutation, or the mutation has come to Canada, rather.

00:04:39.300 It's not a Canadian mutation.

00:04:40.680 But they have found a case in British Columbia of the BA286 variant.

00:04:46.080 They'll give it a glitzy name sooner enough, like the Omicron variant or the Omega variant.

00:04:52.080 Or maybe we went through Omega and we're back to Alpha now, and it'll be the double Alpha, the double Delta.

00:04:57.060 Who knows?

00:04:57.420 But this is the new variant that has some experts, you know, experts, we've all learned of their infinite expertise over the last few years, warning that we are about to see, as this one article says here, a big, big wave, a big, giant wave is coming up.

00:05:15.500 That's not like the technical language, but it's kind of close there.

00:05:18.720 In global news, Canada likely at the start of a new COVID-19 wave.

00:05:23.340 How big will it get?

00:05:25.880 Well, how big will it get?

00:05:27.220 Who knows? It depends whether we are allowing the sensible types to govern our response to it or whether we're going to outsource public health to people like Dr. Nilly Kaplan-Mirth in Ottawa or David Fistman in Ontario and all of these other folks that are very fanatical about wanting to keep us in COVID-stan in perpetuity. 0.56

00:05:47.100 Now, there are some folks that want masks to return ASAP.

00:05:50.980 They want them to use the medical language-backed stat,

00:05:53.380 such as a group of health professionals in British Columbia

00:05:56.620 that is urging for a reinstatement to mask mandates,

00:06:00.060 not just in hospitals and healthcare environments,

00:06:02.940 but in schools as well, because they don't want the triple-demic. 0.90

00:06:06.760 Do you remember the triple-demic of RSV, COVID, and influenza?

00:06:10.920 So they think that we need masks to make a comeback in schools and hospitals.

00:06:15.560 You had some people that, believe it or not, went to their MLA's office to protest, to protest for masks, like people that wore their masks, which they have a voluntary right to do as citizens, but are going to an MLA to protest to make everyone else wear them.

00:06:35.280 And, of course, when the pro-COVID people convene, it's always a peaceful, calm protest, right?

00:06:41.940 stay here with us and let's continue and let's continue to

00:06:47.940 let him go dude let him go let him go 0.98

00:07:12.900 Why are you blocking my camera?

00:07:15.740 Don't want people to see what happens at these things?

00:07:19.300 I got a glimpse of the guy that was being beaten up's sign,

00:07:24.060 and it said CBC is government-funded propaganda,

00:07:27.040 so maybe they didn't take too kindly to that.

00:07:29.360 But the kind people bludgeoning that man who didn't want masks

00:07:34.180 were part of a protest that was organized by a group called Do No Harm.

00:07:38.180 and if you can't reliably have a protest in which you don't beat up a guy who disagrees with you

00:07:44.500 maybe just maybe you should reconsider the name do no harm nevertheless the one thing about masks

00:07:49.720 that I've always maintained is that I am not anti-mask I am pro-mask choice I believe that

00:07:54.880 we should all be able to make our own decisions and when mask mandates were taken away it didn't

00:08:00.500 actually prohibit the wearing of masks it didn't make it so no one who wanted to was unable to

00:08:06.340 wear one. It just made it so no one was mandated into wearing one. The people that want to stand

00:08:12.140 outside and cover up their faces until the end of time have every right to do so, and they can do

00:08:17.180 it whether there is a triple-demic, a double-demic, a quadruple-demic, a quintuple-demic, or just

00:08:22.620 because they didn't put their makeup on that day. They have that choice, but increasingly there are

00:08:28.160 people that are trying to take that choice away from us, even in 2023. We're seeing this more in

00:08:34.040 the United States, there's a piece in Newsweek that is keeping a running tally, a running tally

00:08:40.500 of all of the places where mask mandates are returning. And if you look at this Newsweek

00:08:45.640 article here, they have colleges like Morris Brown College, Lionsgate, which is a film studio

00:08:51.200 in Hollywood, Kaiser Permanente Healthcare in California, United Health Services in New York.

00:08:57.720 It's mostly hospitals, but also, as mentioned, some universities. And this list, even from when

00:09:03.460 I was looking at it yesterday to today has already grown by one or two, because we're seeing more and

00:09:09.260 more places that are deciding they are wanting to go along with this in perpetuity. Now, Sean points

00:09:15.320 out Lionsgate is also a Canadian company or has Canadian offices. So I don't know if the Canadian

00:09:20.980 headquarters, I mean, the Canadian office was probably the one pushing for the return of mask

00:09:24.420 mandates, if anything, but this is where we are. Now, someone asked me yesterday, actually a few

00:09:30.580 people have asked me in the past couple of days, whether I think they're going to try putting a

00:09:35.040 mandate in place, they being any of the levels of government in Canada. And I said, you know,

00:09:40.480 I've been wrong on some stuff like this be in the past. Like I wouldn't have said two years ago

00:09:45.080 that Justin Trudeau would freeze the bank accounts of his political dissidents. But here we are. At

00:09:49.500 the same time, I'm also very heartened by the fact that I don't know anyone in my life, even those

00:09:54.960 who dutifully went along with every step of this, that would go along with it again. People that

00:10:00.180 just barely, barely, barely scraped through the COVID 1.0 have no tolerance and no patience for

00:10:07.880 anything to do with this now. And I think that's going to be the real question mark that we have

00:10:13.520 to address here is whether there is anyone left who will go along with this. Because the great

00:10:18.980 thing about it is that it used to be where you had some moderate, sensible, respectable people

00:10:25.400 that were saying, yeah, we should keep masking.

00:10:27.620 But now even they've abandoned it.

00:10:29.560 So the only people left in the pro-mask camp 0.63

00:10:31.820 are the Nilly Kaplan-Murse.

00:10:33.880 The only people left in the pro-mask camp

00:10:35.520 are the people that think fresh air

00:10:37.300 is like white supremacy or something like that.

00:10:39.940 So that's essentially where we're going to see this debate go

00:10:43.680 is that the lone holdouts are the people

00:10:45.860 like those folks in British Columbia protesting

00:10:48.500 who just want to beat up a guy 0.98

00:10:49.960 for daring to say that he isn't a fan of CBC,

00:10:53.120 which, if anything, should give the guy a medal for going and saying that in British Columbia,

00:10:58.380 because it's probably a very lonely community in British Columbia for someone who doesn't

00:11:02.340 exactly like CBC and all the stuff they're pushing on people. So all of this is to say

00:11:07.640 that we are right now on the cusp of a big opportunity here, a big opportunity to stand

00:11:13.880 firm against this. And I think anytime this comes up, people have the obligation to say,

00:11:19.080 you know what, you can mandate whatever you want. I am not doing it. I am not going along with it.

00:11:25.220 And governments are going to very quickly find themselves utterly humiliated if they start

00:11:30.520 flirting with mandates that have no legitimacy whatsoever. And the one thing we have now that

00:11:36.140 we didn't have in 2020 is the benefit of hindsight. And I would specifically look at Sweden, which has

00:11:43.140 been one of the most important cases for analysis of COVID restrictions because Sweden was running

00:11:49.620 an experiment effectively, like everyone else in the world was, but it went to a bit of a different

00:11:54.460 world than most other countries did. And Sweden was the restriction mandate control group. It was

00:12:01.340 the place we could look at and see what does a world look like without mandates and without

00:12:05.900 restrictions. And if you look at Sweden's outcomes, even now, and we've just seen as recently as

00:12:11.120 today, I think some new information about this. Sweden should have been, as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

00:12:17.040 said this afternoon, a catastrophe, but it wasn't. Life and liberty were preserved for Swedes. That

00:12:23.820 was what Jay Bhattacharya said. He's actually going to be speaking in the fall at the George

00:12:29.380 Jonas Freedom Award dinner in Calgary for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms,

00:12:34.220 and I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say. And so the reason that this is so important

00:12:39.800 is because I actually would love to not have to talk about COVID.

00:12:43.340 I would love if this didn't loom over our heads as much as it does.

00:12:47.380 But this is still an issue that is continuing to rear itself.

00:12:51.380 For example, I mentioned the court cases in Alberta

00:12:54.100 that have had a bit more of a positive outcome.

00:12:57.900 But next week, we have Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, 0.99

00:13:00.940 two of the most prominent faces of the Freedom Convoy,

00:13:03.960 going to a criminal trial in Ottawa that is scheduled for 16 days.

00:13:08.240 But because there are a couple of breaks in there, it's going to go for the better part of a month.

00:13:13.320 And we also have, as always, the possibility that these things that were only ever suspended on the restriction front will be reintroduced.

00:13:21.700 But let's talk about some of the better news this week.

00:13:24.800 Sarah Miller is a lawyer who has dealt with many civil liberties cases from Alberta. 0.94

00:13:29.980 And she is with JSS Barristers and returns to the show in just a moment's time here.

00:13:35.120 because Sarah is someone who has taken up these cases.

00:13:39.260 Now, she's not involved in the whistle-stop case,

00:13:42.460 and she's also not involved in any of the cases

00:13:46.140 that are affected by this decision

00:13:48.080 that I alluded to at the beginning.

00:13:50.940 And this is the decision that is going to result

00:13:53.400 in the returning of fines

00:13:55.440 and the overturning of convictions.

00:13:58.720 But I still think she has a solid analysis on this.

00:14:02.260 And again, I have said time and time again,

00:14:04.460 I'm happy to move on from this stuff when they do. So if the other side stops talking about the

00:14:09.720 bringing back masks and the other side stops talking about continued prosecutions, then I

00:14:15.580 will stop talking about all of the stuff that has been affected by this and all of that. So Sarah

00:14:21.880 Miller, good to have you on the show again. Thanks so much for coming back. Hi, Andrew. Good to see

00:14:26.620 you. So let's talk first off about this overturning decision. Because when I saw the headline, it was

00:14:32.200 like, oh, this is great. You know, we've got some people in Alberta that are, you know, that may

00:14:35.960 have just paid the fine to make it go away. They're going to get a refund on it. But there were a lot

00:14:40.400 of cases I heard about that were unaffected by this. So what is actually happening here?

00:14:46.100 Yeah, so Ingram is a case that was recently decided in Alberta that found the CMOH orders

00:14:53.720 were ultra vires or inconsistent with the enabling legislation. So the Public Health Act in Alberta

00:14:59.960 is the act that empowers at the time Dr. Hinshaw to make a CMOH order which restricted us and who

00:15:08.200 we could interact with how we could interact with them right all of those gathering restrictions

00:15:12.920 and Ingram is the case that said those orders that were made during the pandemic were not made

00:15:19.640 appropriately and so therefore are essentially um ultra virus act and so that's why everybody was

00:15:29.000 excited because it sounds positive. If you're anti COVID lockdown restrictions, it sounds,

00:15:36.360 it sounds positive when I summarize it that way. But it sounds like there's a but there.

00:15:42.440 So my, my interpretation of this case would say it, I would not interpret it as to be

00:15:49.120 really moving the needle very much generally. And if anything, the needle has been moved

00:15:58.980 in the direction of strengthening lockdown. So to really understand why that is, you have to look

00:16:08.120 at the case that Ingram cites, which is CM. And that case is an Alberta case that came out in

00:16:13.760 the fall of 2022. And the applicants in that case wanted masks. So you were just talking about how

00:16:19.780 people want masks to come back. Well, the applicants in CM wanted masks, wanted mask

00:16:25.160 mandates, they were quite upset that the mask mandates had been removed. And so they applied

00:16:29.300 to the court regarding that masking mandate and said, we want those back. And the court looked at

00:16:37.020 the information in front of it and the evidence before and said, yeah, okay, you're right. The

00:16:41.600 order itself that removed the masking mandate was a public policy decision, not a health decision.

00:16:48.520 And so therefore, it's outside of the act, the Public Health Act. So he found in favor, Justice Dunlop at the time, found in favor of the pro-masking group.

00:17:01.160 Okay, so then we get Ingram, and Ingram is a lot of individuals who are concerned about the

00:17:06.700 restrictions and making an application to the court to say, hey, we don't like these restrictions.

00:17:12.680 And the judge in Ingram says, great, I'm going to look at CM. I'm going to look at the evidence

00:17:18.280 before me from Dr. Hinshaw's to how these orders were coming about. And the judge finds that

00:17:25.160 there's too much interference from cabinet or elected officials and their public policy decisions

00:17:33.280 on a health mandate. So what the result of this is, is that now the CMOH, the person in charge

00:17:42.760 who's authorized under the Public Health Act to make lockdown measures, doesn't have to listen

00:17:48.920 to our public officials. So we elect public officials hopefully to represent us and represent

00:17:53.680 our interest. If we elect somebody in Alberta, right, Premier Smith has been elected. And if

00:18:00.120 the majority of Albertans want Premier Smith in power, that also probably means that they want

00:18:06.020 some of her public policy decisions. Obviously not everything, but some, at least some. And now

00:18:11.940 if there's another pandemic, the CMOH does not have to listen to cabinet, does not have to do

00:18:17.200 an iterative process with them. And in fact, if the CMOH does take into those public policy decisions,

00:18:22.960 um or interest that will be found to be all providers act so it it vests a ton of power

00:18:30.760 with our medical officer and essentially tells them they do not have to worry about anything else

00:18:35.340 except their health priorities um it removes a balanced approach i would say um in making

00:18:45.420 yeah i mean that's a very it's a very sobering analysis because on one hand we can agree with

00:18:51.760 the outcome. But as you're noting there, be very worried about the precedent that it will set. And

00:18:57.120 I mean, just as an analogous, well, I guess it's not a similar case, but it reminds me of it for

00:19:02.720 a reason I'll make clear in a moment. Back in 2022 or whenever it was, when there was the

00:19:09.080 conservative leadership race and Jim Carahalios was running and he was disqualified by the party

00:19:14.940 and he took the conservative party to court. And the judge said, yeah, you know, the party didn't

00:19:19.580 follow its process to disqualify you and we've overturned it. And then the next day, the party

00:19:24.200 says, okay, great, now we'll follow the proper process and disqualify you. So it basically

00:19:28.240 establishes the way to do this in a way that will be a bit more ironclad. And I am very aware of the

00:19:35.200 fact that this was not a case that was decided based on any constitutional implications or any

00:19:41.300 freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of association. And on those issues, am I to

00:19:46.800 understand that not a single court decision has really established that lockdowns and restrictions

00:19:52.780 are not saved by Section 1 of the Charter, the reasonable limits part? Yeah, so across the

00:19:59.120 country, you know, we have decisions on BC, Manitoba, Alberta included, Ontario, all of the

00:20:06.320 courts have essentially found, yes, there might be Section 2 violations, all saved by Section 1.

00:20:11.840 And including Ingram in the sense of in the, there was arguments in the alternative to the public health analysis I just gave. And the court provided, you know, half of its decision is in obiter as in the alternative, let's talk about the constitutional issues.

00:20:30.120 and the government rightfully so admitted that there was section two violations um and the case

00:20:37.060 came down to section one and the court said if if these orders were valid and implemented

00:20:43.240 appropriately they would have been saved by section one so uh even though the court didn't

00:20:47.800 have to go there it decided to just to make a determination on section one um so it's not

00:20:55.200 looking at some of the developments this week i mentioned chris scott with the whistle stop cafe

00:21:01.140 we also have james coates of grace life church uh fairview baptist church as well i i i believe

00:21:08.360 that was tim stevens if i recall correctly are these cases and the fact that charges have been

00:21:14.080 withdrawn here is this flowing from ingram or is there something else going on here yeah so as you

00:21:19.420 noted i'm not really involved in those i'm just observing from outside like everyone else but my

00:21:24.580 understanding is that is the outcome of ingram so that would be from a constitutional uh perspective

00:21:31.260 you know of a pro-libertarian perspective that would be the positive the positives of ingram

00:21:37.140 is that it did result in a in this like uncertainty as to whether or not any of the cmoa

00:21:43.600 orders were implemented appropriately according to the decision in ingram and since the crown is

00:21:51.220 obviously not sure. It seems to me like they've decided to stay or withdraw all of the outstanding

00:21:58.420 charges. I know we have coming up next week the criminal trials of Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.

00:22:06.260 That's going to be one that we're watching here. But on the civil liberties front, are there any

00:22:10.220 particularly novel or unique cases that you're still keeping an eye on that you think could

00:22:14.520 actually perhaps have a bit more hope? So I'm not aware of any outstanding right now. There

00:22:22.240 may be some in some of the provinces that I don't track. I think that my own case, the

00:22:32.940 Pawlowski matter that arose out of the Coutts border protest, is going to continue to be

00:22:43.540 interesting. So Mr. Pawelski has been convicted of mischief for speaking at the Coup protest,

00:22:49.740 not participating in the protest, but speaking there. And it engages some interesting constitutional

00:22:55.840 rights, which tie into COVID in the sense that the Coup protest was related to protesting lockdown.

00:23:04.960 And that we anticipate will be the conviction will eventually be appealed. And sentencing

00:23:12.780 that's happening later in September. So I think that one will be interesting. I think the CM case

00:23:19.320 that I noted earlier, the one where pro-masking groups had applied to the court, that is under

00:23:25.440 appeal. So it'll be interesting to see if the court of appeal makes the same determination

00:23:31.380 regarding the structure and how a CMOI charter should be issued. But it will obviously be some

00:23:39.420 time before that decision is released. Yeah, and I mean, obviously, certainly as a lawyer, you have

00:23:46.440 to, you know, keep a level of hope alive. And I think as a Canadian, we all have to keep a level

00:23:50.380 of hope alive. And I've heard some people say, oh, yes, and you know, these things will go to

00:23:54.040 the Supreme Court. And then I'm like, just read the interviews that the Chief Justice was doing

00:23:58.400 about the Freedom Convoy, if you think that the Supreme Court is going into this without its mind

00:24:02.540 made up in some way about this. And I think this is the big problem is that we've seen here is that

00:24:07.620 once the the jurisprudence as we've seen has basically established that government had the

00:24:12.680 latitude to do this uh it's very easy to see how that latitude expands and expands and expands and

00:24:19.280 all of a sudden i mean even something as draconian as the emergencies act becomes within the ambit of

00:24:24.400 oh well that's you know legislative purview and all that that's the that's government that's them

00:24:28.440 their responsibility but when it's flipped and you have governments that are trying to do things to

00:24:33.020 restrain its governments on those rare occasions, then all of a sudden the courts are reading so

00:24:38.460 much in and saying, oh, no, no, no, we don't give you deference now.

00:24:42.660 I have a lot of faith in our Court of Appeals and our Supreme Court in Canada. So to the extent

00:24:49.340 that any of these warrant going to the Supreme Court of Canada, and some simply do not, we have

00:24:54.020 a very overburdened system. And currently, we don't have lockdowns in place, right? So there

00:24:59.500 is a question of mootness that is, I think, legitimate and live as to whether or not these

00:25:04.480 should take up very valuable Supreme Court of Canada time. But I do have a lot of faith in our

00:25:10.840 Court of Appeal and our Supreme Court. You know, I do think that those that make it to the Court

00:25:17.800 of Appeal will have the law applied and interpreted correctly for the most part. And so whether that

00:25:26.660 means that, you know, it's always going to land on the side of a more libertarian interpretation,

00:25:32.860 maybe not, but as long as we uphold the rule of law, that's the important part.

00:25:36.980 All right, Sarah Miller of JSS Barristers, thanks so much for coming on.

00:25:40.800 Thank you, Andrew. Have a good evening.

00:25:42.160 All right, thank you. And I will just point out on this as well, that when we are talking about

00:25:47.840 these cases, if a mask mandate all of a sudden comes down the pipeline again in the winter,

00:25:54.060 something that I've gone my entire life without seeing until COVID, and then perhaps twice in the

00:25:59.420 span of a few years, I would say it's not moot. And that was the whole point. It's that oftentimes

00:26:03.720 government uses mootness, which Sarah mentions is a completely legitimate reason to not hear a case,

00:26:09.460 but they use mootness as a way to basically get rid of a case when they're planning to do the

00:26:13.980 same thing again. The Leaders Debates Commission, a classic example of this, Rebel and True North

00:26:19.220 in 2018, denied accreditation. We take the government to court. We win an injunction.

00:26:24.500 We want to follow the case through after the government says it's moot and then turns around

00:26:28.300 and in 2021 starts flexing its muscle again and banning some independent journalists, not True

00:26:34.300 North that time, from attending and covering the debate. So that's the problem with it is that if

00:26:38.780 they're going to say it's moot, we need to hold them to account when they turn around and do the

00:26:42.460 same thing that they said was over, was not a live issue and all of that beforehand. So let's

00:26:49.080 to talk a little bit about this bizarre, bizarre advisory that the federal government put up

00:26:56.180 yesterday for people traveling to the United States. Now, I have traveled to many, many places

00:27:03.000 in the world. I've been very privileged just with a combination of the work that I do and

00:27:06.940 other opportunities I've had along the way to see different countries. And I've been to places that

00:27:10.980 are slightly riskier than others. And I've been to places that have no issue whatsoever. And the

00:27:15.780 United States has always been in that latter category. I've never known there to be a travel

00:27:20.480 advisory for going to the United States. But now, despite the fact that the US is still seen as a

00:27:26.480 green light, a place you can go to relatively safely, the government of Canada has put a

00:27:31.940 slight little warning, just a little itty bitty warning there. If you are a member of, and I want

00:27:38.240 to get this right. The 2SLGBTQI plus community. The government says that some states have enacted 0.83

00:27:46.980 laws and policies that may affect 2SLGB. I was reading it. Sean's congratulating me for nailing

00:27:53.160 it. I was reading it. I had to like scroll down to the page. I can't do that for memory. I'm just

00:27:57.820 like Justin Trudeau when I try to flounder around and find letters. The good news is if you give it

00:28:02.260 a couple of years, no matter what letter you say, it's going to be in there. So that'll be the good

00:28:06.980 part there. At a certain point, you can just do the whole alphabet and you'll have gotten it

00:28:10.500 accurately as long as you throw a two and a plus in. But some states have enacted laws and policies

00:28:15.480 that may affect 2SLGBTQI plus persons. Check relevant state and local laws. Now, this is

00:28:22.840 relatively nondescript. It's relatively nondescript. It doesn't say, you know, Ron DeSantis in Florida

00:28:28.960 is going to like lock you up if you're gay. It doesn't say no trans people are allowed in 0.92

00:28:33.180 Mississippi or whatever. It just says that you should check local laws. And you may think,

00:28:38.760 okay, what's the big deal? Well, it's about the context of where this comes from, because it

00:28:43.480 actually clicks through to a link about traveling if you are a member of the, see, now I don't have

00:28:48.860 it on my page, so I'm not going to read it again. But if you're a member of that particular group,

00:28:52.620 and it's the same page that warns about authoritarian states in which homosexuality

00:28:57.480 is criminalized, it's the same page that you're linked to if you are traveling to Saudi Arabia.

00:29:03.180 For example, where it is illegal to be gay, it is the same warning that you're going to get about

00:29:09.200 countries in which you will literally face prosecution and some potentially horrendous

00:29:14.300 outcomes for your sexuality. And it's including that in the same context as the United States.

00:29:19.680 Now, this is to me, nothing that is beyond the virtue signaling of the Canadian government on

00:29:26.200 foreign policy. This is all they do. It's virtue signaling foreign policy. And it's a way that

00:29:30.800 Trudeau can do the same thing he loves to do whenever a court decision in the U.S. comes out

00:29:35.740 and takes a pro-life stance. We have to assert ourselves and say, but we're so much more

00:29:40.540 progressive than the United States. We're better than those guys. We're safer for gay people. We're

00:29:45.420 better for women. We don't have guns. And it's just this constant Canadian superiority complex 1.00

00:29:51.200 of trying to distance ourselves from this country that we should be relishing as a friend and 0.98

00:29:58.060 neighbor, but instead like to just completely crap on all day and all night. That is the liberal 0.98

00:30:03.740 ethos here. And Chrystia Freeland, I won't play the clip because I believe that our numbers do

00:30:09.320 plummet quite a bit when I play a Chrystia Freeland clip, but she gave an answer. Well, no, she didn't

00:30:14.020 give an answer. She was asked about this yesterday and it was like a two and a half minute long

00:30:19.200 answer in which she said nothing at all. Like I kept waiting for the point and the point never

00:30:25.680 came. And I wondered, like if you ever watched The Office, the US version, there was this great

00:30:31.380 little scene where Steve Carell's character, Michael Scott, was asked a question by his boss

00:30:37.280 and he just started going down and he got absolutely nowhere. And he's like, you know,

00:30:41.220 never under any circumstances ever for any reason at all, at all, whenever, like, and he just never

00:30:48.820 went there. And he said it was an improvisation. He said an improv conversation where you hope

00:30:53.280 you'll find it along the way. Well, Chrystia Freeland did the Michael Scott improvisation and 0.98

00:30:57.580 never found her way there because she couldn't really answer the question of, are you saying

00:31:02.400 that the United States is unsafe for gay Canadians? Are you saying the U.S. is unsafe for gay 0.93

00:31:07.820 Canadians? And she could not answer the question, yet her own government, and she, by the way, used

00:31:13.120 to be the foreign affairs minister herself, her own government thought it was fitting to warn

00:31:18.280 gay Canadians about going to the U.S. in the same way that it might warn them if they were going to 0.96

00:31:24.240 Saudi Arabia or Tanzania or some other place. So just completely ridiculous. I'm not even 1.00

00:31:31.820 concerned about, oh, because Joe Biden has not actually had an alert thought. So he's not going

00:31:36.860 to notice this. But surely there could be some conceivable diplomatic blowback on this. And I

00:31:44.180 would love it if the United States put up a travel advisory for Canada saying, be careful if you want

00:31:49.620 to go there and express your civil liberties. Be careful if you want to go there. Your bank account

00:31:53.780 might actually be frozen if you, you know, wave to a trucker as they're driving down the 401. So

00:31:59.840 the U.S. should return the favor and in kind start warning about all of these civil liberties

00:32:04.300 infractions that you can expect if you are in Canada, certainly if you are a political dissident

00:32:09.240 to Justin Trudeau. I started out the show asking if the masking was making a return, and I guess

00:32:16.440 I wanted to close by showing a little bit of leadership from a politician I had never heard

00:32:21.660 of until today, which was the governor of Mississippi. Now, I had heard of the state of

00:32:25.980 Mississippi, but I did not know by name the governor of Mississippi, but he sounds like a

00:32:31.500 great guy. Tate Reeves responded to this growing chorus from the so-called experts of a return of

00:32:38.040 mask mandates. And he posted a lengthy statement, which I won't read the whole thing of here,

00:32:42.800 but he says there was understandable uncertainty when COVID first came. He said, we did not know

00:32:49.640 what we were facing. As the months unfolded, it became clear there were two pandemics,

00:32:54.320 a disease that was easy to spread and that was deadly for many vulnerable people,

00:32:58.000 and a pandemic of fear stoked by the expert class that demanded total subjugation of the

00:33:04.100 American people. He goes on to take an aim at those who kept this up with bureaucrats and experts

00:33:10.280 seizing power. But he says in unequivocal terms, no, we will not return to widespread masking or

00:33:17.280 COVID rules. People have a right to make their own decisions, to decide how much risk they tolerate.

00:33:23.440 And no matter what pronouncements come down from the Biden-Fauci administration, we will go to

00:33:27.400 school, we will go to church, we will go to work, and we will play sports. We will live in self

00:33:32.860 determination, not top-down fear. That is the statement I would like to see from every single

00:33:39.460 premier in Canada. I want Danielle Smith to be putting that out. I want Doug, like Doug Ford's

00:33:46.520 going to put that out. I want Blaine Higgs to be putting it out. I want Heather Stephenson in

00:33:51.220 Manitoba to put it out. I want the premiers, Premier Scott Moe, EB and BC. I want them all

00:33:56.840 to put that out. Andrew Fury, put it out. I should not list them all because at a certain point,

00:34:01.300 I'm going to like get to the one that I don't know offhand. But I've got like six premiers

00:34:05.060 already. That's good enough. I want all of them to put that out and say, no, if you want to wear

00:34:09.180 a mask, wear a mask. If you want to get your boosters, get your boosters. If you want to do

00:34:13.020 all of this, this is your choice, but we will not impose it. Never again will we go down the road

00:34:19.400 of locking down our citizens because of fear. Fear that as time has shown has not been founded

00:34:27.360 in anything resembling science.

00:34:29.640 So thank you for putting out that template.

00:34:32.640 Governor Reeves, Canadian premiers,

00:34:35.000 it is your move now.

00:34:36.440 That does it for us.

00:34:37.120 We will be back on Friday

00:34:38.140 with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:34:41.220 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:34:45.080 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:34:47.560 Support the program by donating to True North

00:34:49.720 at www.tnc.news.

00:34:57.360 We'll be right back.

00:35:27.360 We'll be right back.

Juno News - August 30, 2023

Are masks coming back？

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