ArriveCan needs to go – now
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Summary
Andrew Lawton's Freedom Convoy has topped the Globe and Mail bestseller list and is the number one nonfiction book sold in Canada last week! I m giddy about it, but I m more excited to know that some Toronto Star books editor had to sit there and be like, "No, no, let's just say it was that."
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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It is great to have you aboard Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
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and I want to say first off thank you thank you thank you thank you I had some delightful news
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come over the weekend when I was informed that my book the thing you see back there
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not so subtly placed the Freedom Convoy the inside story of three weeks that shook the world
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made the glow not only made the Globe and Mail bestseller list but actually topped the Globe
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and Mail bestseller list. So this book, which just came out a couple of weeks ago, is number one,
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the number one nonfiction book sold in Canada last week. Now, this came out on the weekend,
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that bestseller rank. And a few days earlier, it was also the top of the Toronto Star's
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bestseller list. And I'm giddy not being, I mean, I'm excited about it. And I'm excited people are
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buying the book and like the book. But I am more excited to know that some Toronto Star books
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editor had to sit there and was like seething and spitting and raging and just like trying to be
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like, no, no, no, let's just say it was that, uh, the, uh, anything else. Let's just say it was
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that, that Lou guy's book. And let's just say it was something else. And the latest young adults
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romance, let's just do it. Anything. No, no, no, not Andrew Lawton's freedom convoy book. We can't
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say that's number one. And then they look at the numbers and are like, uh, I guess we have to. So
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I imagine that it was kind of like a reverse Ouija board thing where it's like the keyboard was,
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trying to make them do something that they didn't want to do. And eventually we had the list there.
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So my thanks to the Toronto Star and to the Globe and Mail for recognizing that. And I don't know
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how many weeks we're going to be there. I mean, this is like the thing for me that I'm excited
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about this week because I made it one. So I don't care. I mean, I want to be at number one for a
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bajillion weeks and do like the whole Jordan Peterson thing and just stay there. Because
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this book came out like, I don't know, four years ago and he's still on the top 10.
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but this is my first time ever there so i'm gonna soak it all up and i it's like there's a
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schadenfreude there that the toronto star had to put that there so anyway if you want to make sure
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it stays there if you want to trigger the toronto star book editor do head on over to amazon or
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indigo and pick up a copy of the freedom convoy the inside story of three weeks that shook the
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world and i'm actually thinking of it let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in
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seeing this I was thinking of doing like an all Q&A edition about the convoy and about the book
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and about covering the convoy and doing that in the next couple of weeks and taking any questions
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that you have about the convoy any questions you have about what it was like covering it about the
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book or anything else if that is something you would like to see let me know in the comments
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and we will do that in the next week or so and if you don't want to do it just tell me that and we
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won't do it so that's how it works one thing I want to talk about though is arrive can you may
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have noticed in the last couple of weeks, I was bouncing around a little bit and doing the show
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from various different places. And I was wearing another hat, not my true North role, but I was
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wearing another hat. I was over in the United Kingdom for a couple of weeks and I just got
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back on Saturday, which means I had to do the whole airport chaos thing. I had to do the arrive
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can thing. And I want to just pull up here because I don't usually work with props, but I'm going to
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work with a prop on today's show this uh can i show you this or does it have my date of birth
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i don't think it has or like personal information so yeah so this is arrive can right here so this
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this arrive can thing is just a little phone app it's just a little information you just took a
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few tips you you know let the government know when you're showing up that's all it's no big deal
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right wrong arrive can has proven to be one of the most disruptive and just plain wrong things that
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government has done to disrupt travel and to disrupt canadians mobility rights so the whole
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point of this at the beginning was that the government heaped all of these covet restrictions
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onto people not the least of which was the need to have a pre-departure test before you show up
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at canada and the then the proof of vaccination requirement and the government was trying to make
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it so that what we can do is just have this little app and we can upload our vaccine certificate into
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the app. And then when you get to the border, they don't need to see it because you've already
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put it in. So they were trying to find a way to make it so that the COVID restrictions could be
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managed. Now, my view on this would be, all right, well, maybe if you can't manage your COVID
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restrictions, just get rid of the restrictions. But the government said, no, no, no, we've got
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to design this app. Well, all of these restrictions for the most part are gone if you're vaccinated.
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Now, if you're unvaccinated, different stories we've talked about on the show. You don't need
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have the pre-departure test but all of a sudden government is still committed to the app and i
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mentioned a few weeks back that one of the things omar al gabra was doing was what we can best
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characterize as mission creep where the purpose of arrive can is no longer about covid screenings
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but is actually about your standard canada border services agency entry and screening requirements
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where they're doing this little pilot project where you can do the declarations of you know
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You know, do you have fruits or vegetables or have you been to a farm or are you importing
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some rare ocelot from, you know, the Maldives or what?
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I don't know if they have all ocelots in the Maldives, but if you do, you have to declare
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You don't want to, don't ask me what happens when, when that goes wrong.
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But the whole point of this for the government is that they're trying to make Arrive Can
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a permanent feature of the Canadian government, a permanent feature of Canada.
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Well, there are two big deals. Number one, anyone is supposed to have free entry into their own
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country. So the idea of having an app, even if it's seemingly innocuous, an app that you must
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go through the process of and go through the motions of before you get into your own country
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is fundamentally wrong. But also, it's already having a tangible effect and not a positive one.
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Two stories I wanted to talk about today that have both come out on the weekend.
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one young scouts stuck in Zurich over the weekend arrive at Toronto Pearson Airport so
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finally after being stranded in Zurich Switzerland there were a group of scouts that were returning
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they had been I when I was in scouts by the way we went to like a campground that was 30 minutes
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from where I live so I don't know why scouts are now going on trips to Switzerland but nevertheless
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that's neither here nor there this was like a really bougie scouting unit that went over to
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Switzerland on a trip. They went from Bancroft to Switzerland. Have a good time, folks. Maybe
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they should have come in January. We could have done the World Economic Forum together. I could
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have led a tour with scouts and they can get like the Klaus Schwab badge, which I believe is the
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badge that lets you get into all of the other rooms and secret chambers and all of that. But
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anyway, the thing that happened here was these scouts were having issues doing the Arrive Can
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app. And what happened was they were over there. They were trying to do it and they couldn't get
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on wi-fi and interestingly enough i know exactly what they're talking about because when i covered
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the davos forum in may and i was trying to come back there was an issue at the airport that i
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encountered where you had to supply a phone number to get on wi-fi and i recall there being some
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issue with it not registering my canadian number which is really stupid at an international airport
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but so when i read the story i knew exactly what they were talking about because they say here
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that they couldn't get on wi-fi to do arrive can because they didn't have a local phone number
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and then to make matters worse air canada would not let them board their flight without seeing
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proof of arrive can now that's not part of the government rules the government rules are that
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you have to show arrive can in canada why on earth do you need to do it to board your flight
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why is air canada now doing and presumably other airlines as well the dirty work of the government
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here. And if you've looked into it a bit, as I have, you'll notice the government has actually
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been pushing this. They've been trying to make it so that they don't have to deal with the problems
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on their end. They want the airlines to be the bad guys. So what happened for these scouts is
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that due to challenges with the Arrive Can app, several of them were delayed and missed their
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flight. And it's only been days later that the six of them that were held, six until including
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two leaders were finally able to make it back to Canada. No connection whatsoever to public health
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and it doesn't even pretend to have a public health connection at this point. So we're stranding
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scouts in Switzerland because of this stupid app. Well, what about people that don't have a cell
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phone? You may have seen this video go viral over the weekend. On his own, I travel on my own.
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He has his proof of documentation showing that he's been vaccinated.
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I will be flying by my cell phone. I don't have a cell phone.
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If I'm flying by my cell phone, how can I do that?
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are you guys related yeah yeah so what's the problem with putting it on your account i don't
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think i should have to why not dancing dancing never mind this is a bureaucracy gone amok i know
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but you know this that's why you have to do it right this is one of the requirements
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it's part of the quarantine act right to get back in well let's see you've got you've got my
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shots i've had four of them okay you have you have my passport okay why not let's just do the
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pay for work and get this over because they want the app the government wants the app let me ask
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you what's what's the reason why you don't want to do it i don't think i should have to there's
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got to be a reason to it i don't think i should have to but there has to be it's i'm traveling
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this is this is my phone it's my app i'm just having myself on it
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it's very circular that conversation but here's a guy 86 years old he's in a wheelchair now i
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I don't know if it's permanent or if it's just to get around the airport because if you're not,
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I mean, anyone actually, I almost need a wheelchair now because no one likes waiting in lines,
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you know, seven and a half days long at Pearson Airport. So he's in a wheelchair,
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four times boosted. I believe it's a CBSA officer is holding his passport, holding the ticket,
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holding the proof of vaccination. So there is zero question that this guy has been boosted
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and boosted again. He's got the proper documentation. He's done everything right
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except own a cell phone, which in Justin Trudeau's Canada is a crime that can get you a $5,000 fine.
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And his daughter, the guy was saying, well, you know, you could just put them on your app. And
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the daughter said, no, I don't want to. So, okay, she's deciding for herself. But when he travels
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alone, what's the excuse going to be then? He can't just go on some random stranger's phone.
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And it's interesting that, you know, it used to be the whole thing was if you didn't pack your
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own bag you can't come on the airplane and now it's like yeah just load up onto everybody else's
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app your personal information otherwise you're getting slapped with a five thousand dollar fine
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so we all have to be friends now just find some random passerby that will agree to put their data
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on your phone and that's your way into the country and any and the government has said oh you don't
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need a cell phone you can do it on a computer and yeah if you're taking some holiday through the
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foothills of Bangladesh you can find your printer and you've got to find the printer you ask the
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local Sherpa. And I guess the local Sherpa will just set up an HP printer for you on the back of
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the donkey or whatever they take you around on. And then you can print off your arrive can. So
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yeah, we all have workarounds. We all have options. But what the government is doing right now
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is purely punitive and purely rooted in the idea of control. And what, pray tell, is the public
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health benefit of stranding scouts in Switzerland? What's the public health benefit of finding a
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four times vaccinated octogenarian? All because we don't believe, we don't believe that the
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government, the government doesn't believe rather, that we can let the peasants travel without
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knowing exactly where they're going, why they're going, how they're going, what time they're
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arriving. If you've ever flown to the United States, one of the big frustrations is that you
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have to go through customs typically before you get on the plane. So if you're at Pearson Airport,
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one of the big delays is that, and this is by the way, a delight where you have to go through
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customs in Toronto. So by the time you've gone through that, you're in the United States,
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even though you're in Mississauga, according to immigration law. And it's great because what
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happens is sometimes the delays are like three or four hours long and someone will miss their flight,
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I have been there myself on the plane and off the plane.
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And what's happening here is the government
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So they want to know everything before you get there.
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So they need to know if they're going to haul you
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into a secondary screening for questioning and all of that.
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you get punished for not giving the government a heads up.
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And you may think, okay, perhaps it streamlines the government's efforts.
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But we're not talking about making life easy for government here as being our top priorities as Canadians.
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Our passports, our Canadian citizenship entitles us free entry into Canada.
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And the government's rationale, the government's rationale is, well, no one's stopping you from entering Canada.
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I mean, even that 86-year-old man, he was not denied entry into Canada.
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that they let him in, but they probably fined him or at least threatened him with fines when he got
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there. But they're saying, oh, well, we didn't impede you. We didn't stop you. Wow. Talk about
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exploiting technicalities to the nth degree. So arrive can needs to go now. And when people talk
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about so-called minor inconveniences, you need to tell them to just shut up. Because I'm so sick
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tired after two and a half years of COVID of being told that we have to put up with all of
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these little minor things because, oh, well, it's just a little mask. It's just a little mask. It's
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just a little lineup. It's just a little app. It's just this. It's just that. And at a certain
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point, all of these things are contributing to a society in which nothing works. The airports are
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just one example of a society that is completely broken from top to bottom. I came back on Saturday
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and I wanted to pick up a bottle of Irish whiskey for someone,
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The sole reason I didn't is because I didn't want to check a bag
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because you can't take the liquids on, of course,
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which means I should be able to just get off the plane and go.
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We get to Pearson Airport, my wife and I, on Saturday,
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and they give that announcement that, okay, we are going to be metering, which is what they call it
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when the customs hall is unable to accommodate the flow of people getting off planes, even while
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they have canceled flights, by the way, but that's neither here nor there. So what they say is we'll
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take off people with connections first. We had a connection. We were literally the first ones
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off the plane because they brought us to the front because we had a connecting flight
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that was pretty soon. We ended up missing it, by the way. But not before they made the plane wait
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on the tarmac for, I think it was about 45 minutes, while they did more metering, I suppose.
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So they do this. They make us wait 45 minutes. Then they tell us that we have to stagger getting
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off the plane. So some people were on there probably for another two hours or so. And then
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we get off first. So we've already been made to wait because apparently it's so busy in the
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customs hall that they can't just let the plane unload we've got nexus cards so we go and kind
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of bolt through and it's all the same customs hall but there's a little nexus line on the left
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so we're trying to just get to the nexus line we walk into the customs hall at pearson airport
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terminal one literally not one person in there not a single person in any line of any of the
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however many wickets that were open now maybe i caught it at just the perfect time and there
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were a thousand people that just went through five minutes earlier but they're making you wait
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at this point for no reason just because they i i think are so used to this is how it is
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and again i'm not saying that people are not finding significant delays
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at the airport because obviously they've put in this thing for a reason but it was the most
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infuriating process to being told, to be told that, okay, we've got to do all of this stuff.
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And then you get there and it's like, all of it was for nothing. You could have just let me off
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and things would have been fine. And then you find people that are getting stranded at foreign
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airports because they can't get on wifi there because of other things that don't work to put
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in their information to get the arrive can thing. The 86 year old grandpapa, he managed to get on
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the plane. He managed to bypass the flight attendants, but he gets down there and he's
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threatened with a $5,000 fine because he doesn't have a cell phone. So these things are not minor.
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They are not insignificant. They're very significant. And it is government with its
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foot on the back of your necks, making it so things don't work. It's government that is putting
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barriers in place. It's government that's putting roadblocks in place. And it's the government that
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is exacerbating existing problems and making them worse. And they're still lying to us and telling
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us that this has to do with COVID when it is entirely about control. So when people look
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around and see that others are still protesting and they say, well, why are they still protesting?
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What's wrong? What's the problem? This, just look around. The world of 2019, the world we left
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behind that we used to call the old normal is becoming a distant memory if it isn't already.
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and yes it's vaccine mandates but it's this whole host of challenges it's bigger than arrive can i
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mean after the freedom convoy packed up and some of the organizers were arrested and all of that
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james top the canadian armed forces veteran started his march across canada he set out from
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the west started going to ottawa with a plan ambitiously of arriving by canada day and he
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ended up being there a little bit early was able to do some meetings and then come back and do his
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formal re-entry. And the media basically ignored him. We had him on the show. I know other
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independent media covered him. But the legacy media effectively ignored him. And when they did
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start paying attention, they did all the usual stuff where they throw, oh, well, he was on this
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podcast with this guy who in 1992 said something rude, so we're going to slander him. And oh,
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why did this member of parliament, why was he seen in a room with James Topp? And it became this guilt
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by association and people just started saying well what's the problem why is he even protesting
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all the mandates are gone life is back to normal normal is a long way away we had james top on
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joining us from the road i think he was somewhere through saskatchewan when we spoke to him last but
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now that he's on the other side of his ottawa arrival wanted to welcome him back to the show
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james top it is good to talk to you sir thanks so much for coming on and because this is the
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first time we've spoken since canada day congratulations on achieving your mission quite
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an accomplishment oh i don't have james's audio yet yeah i'm not hearing uh i'm not hearing james so
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can you hear us all right where whereabouts are you now sir
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i didn't get any i'm getting i'm getting a little bit of an intermittent uh james top here well
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we'll try this again are you able to hear him let me know where you are can't hear me
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yeah i'm hearing uh james very intermittently we will try to get him back on the show i'm actually
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curious because again a lot of people as well the media have moved on from this story the media have
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moved on from this story and and as you can see there very briefly if you are watching the video
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version he is still walking he's still going on he's still moving on this thing so the mission
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continues. And I think there's something very important that Canadians need to realize here,
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which is that when someone has to tell you that life is back to normal and admonish you
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for saying otherwise, for thinking otherwise, clearly things aren't back to normal. I mean,
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that's the reason. It's like I said with the Emergencies Act, when the government has to tell
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you it is respecting your civil liberties, clearly it isn't. Clearly your civil liberties are not
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intact. Otherwise they wouldn't need to go through painstaking efforts to remind you that they are
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upholding your fundamental liberties. And I think the same is true of normalcy. The same is true of
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normalcy. When the state is telling you, the media is telling you, oh, everything's fine. Everything's
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normal. We're all good to go. Well, clearly that isn't the case. I think we have James Topp back
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on the line here. So we're going to put him up and hopefully we'll have the audio. If nothing else,
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top here. So I think we'll have to try to book him on when he's a bit more stationary and do
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this another time, which is quite unfortunate. And if you can hear me, James, I'm sorry, the
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technology is not cooperating with us right now. But I think it's very important to point out that
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what he has done has been inspiring to so many people. And it didn't have the zeal and it didn't
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have the large scale that the convoy did, but there was something quite magnificent in its
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simplicity. One man starting out a large mission, a large journey to Ottawa, a very long journey.
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Certainly, if you look at me, you will not be surprised to know that I have never walked that
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far in my life. I don't even think cumulatively at this point. But when he does this, you saw
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the crowd behind him. It was fascinating to see with the footage and the videos, the crowd behind
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him get larger and larger, especially the closer he got to Ottawa. And at a certain point, all the
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politicians jump in and Roman Babber walked with him for a bit and Pierre Polyev walked with him
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and Leslyn Lewis met with him in Ottawa and they had all of this thing. And then the media tried
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to do this like old style documentary, like identifying all of the conservative MPs in a
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photo with James Topp. And then we started to see all of this criticism of them. But I was looking
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at this and saying, absolutely, when a Canadian veteran, I mean, when any Canadian, but certainly
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a Canadian veteran, someone who has served this country, is going to go to Ottawa with a message.
00:24:10.180
I think at the very least, leadership should listen. At the very least, leadership should
00:24:16.060
listen. And he got to Ottawa. I mean, mission accomplished. A lot of people would have expected
00:24:21.240
him just to hang it up and go home. But he's going to Newfoundland now. So he's not even satisfied
00:24:26.580
just making it to the nation's capital. He's walking all the way east. Now, part of that
00:24:31.180
doesn't surprise me because you, I mean, the one place you could get me to run would be out of
00:24:36.420
Ottawa. Like if I'm in Ottawa, generally speaking, I want to get out as quickly as possible and I'll
00:24:40.540
take whatever means of travel is easiest. So walking out of Ottawa makes more sense than
00:24:45.480
walking to Ottawa in general. But James Topp continues and he is on his way to the East Coast
00:24:51.900
now. When he gets there, he'll have traversed the whole country. And still Justin Trudeau has not
00:24:58.400
gotten off that message that he has been giving since long before the convoy got to Ottawa that
00:25:04.000
the unvaccinated and anyone who stands up for the rights of the unvaccinated are just unworthy of
00:25:10.920
being represented and just don't belong in civil society and don't belong in the political process
1.00
00:25:16.280
and don't deserve to be listened to. And I look at what's happening in this country right now.
00:25:23.340
the division of vaccinated unvaccinated has continued even when a lot of the mandates are
00:25:30.560
gone i mean remember back in january and early early february you could not as an unvaccinated
00:25:36.760
person go to a restaurant in most of the country in alberta saskatchewan in quebec in ontario
00:25:43.380
in quebec you were facing a fine and what ended up happening was people revolted they stood up
00:25:51.560
And it was not an angry message. It was a very positive message. And that was the convoy,
00:25:56.060
the event immortalized in that book over my right shoulder here, the Freedom Convoy,
00:26:00.540
the inside story of three weeks that shook the world. And all of this has come about in a country
00:26:06.780
that I would say in 2019, most people would have not hesitated to say is a free country. We'd say,
00:26:12.580
well, you know, I have issues with this and issues with that. And maybe I don't like the
00:26:15.780
carbon tax and, you know, this policy I'm a little bit uneasy with. But I don't think most people
00:26:20.380
would say this was an unfree country before 2020 and certainly before 2021. And the things that the
00:26:29.120
government has done, not just against the unvaccinated, but it's against everyone. I mean,
00:26:34.820
the whole point of human rights, the whole point of civil liberties is that if you attack one
00:26:38.800
person's civil liberties, you have attacked everyone's civil liberties. If you've attacked
00:26:43.940
one person's free speech, you've attacked free speech itself. If you've attacked one person's
00:26:48.260
bodily autonomy. You've attacked everyone's right to bodily autonomy. And we need more people in
00:26:53.040
society that are prepared to realize that. More people who will actually say, yeah, you know,
00:26:59.380
I don't agree with so-and-so, but I don't like the idea of the state targeting them.
00:27:06.840
And Pat King is a fantastic example of this. I've sat on the show time and time again,
00:27:11.160
and it bothers me that I have to do the obligatory disclaimer, just because I know
00:27:15.440
that the angry boys and girls of the Canadian legacy media will just take something out of
00:27:20.440
context here. I do not have a great deal of respect for what Pat King does. I find that
00:27:26.860
even if he's been taken out of context by a couple of his critics, there are things that he has said
00:27:31.560
in context that I just do not agree with. I mean, the white Anglo-Saxon replacement theory is one
0.54
00:27:37.340
of them. In general, the tone and rhetoric he has. But I understand that he is a human being,
00:27:42.620
he is a Canadian citizen and he has rights and he's entitled to justice and he's entitled to due
00:27:47.660
process. And he's effectively been denied that. It is now July 18th. He was arrested five months
00:27:56.220
ago today and has been in a jail cell for the entirety of that five months. It's only just today
00:28:02.420
that he is being released or has been released. I don't know if it's happened yet, released from
00:28:08.220
custody. And for a time, he couldn't even get a lawyer. He went through the churn and finally
00:28:14.420
found someone that was prepared to represent him and fight for bail conditions, which he has been
00:28:19.100
granted release on. Still very onerous conditions. His conditions are very similar to what Tamara
00:28:23.840
Leach had at the beginning, where he is not allowed to use social media. He has to leave
00:28:28.500
Ottawa immediately. He is banned from talking to certain people and that sort of stuff. But
00:28:34.020
he is now at least out or on his way out. And you shouldn't have to say, I don't like Pat King,
00:28:43.220
but you should just be able to say, it doesn't matter whether I like Pat King or not. He's
00:28:48.100
entitled to due process. Same as free speech. It doesn't matter if I like or respect or agree with
00:28:53.520
someone's speech. I should support free speech. You should support free speech. I wasn't going
00:28:59.240
bring it up because i i find like these little uh twitter spats uh wholly tiresome and i don't want
00:29:05.000
to import them into real life but just because it's relevant to the topic at hand i wanted to
00:29:09.880
share this little exchange that i had with so i mean it wasn't really an exchange in the true
00:29:14.840
sense of the word because what happened was i posted something this guy like retweeted like
00:29:20.760
20 of my tweets with snarky stuff and i replied to one of them and what he said to me was uh and
00:29:28.520
And it doesn't even matter what he was like taking issue with an interview of Justin Trudeau's that I had commented on.
00:29:35.080
But anyway, he said, let us move to take action against those moving society backwards.
00:29:39.400
This includes True North Media and all its dangerous journalists.
00:29:48.900
I'm tired of people spreading hate under the misguided protection of freedom of speech.
00:29:55.320
And I accurately summarized what he was saying there.
00:29:58.700
And I said, translation, people I disagree with shouldn't have free speech.
00:30:03.080
And there was a brazenness, and I at least appreciated his candor, a brazenness in what
00:30:07.780
he was saying that people I don't like should not be allowed to use what he called the misguided
00:30:20.460
And what he means by that is that free speech should not be afforded to people he does not
00:30:24.880
And it's just like what the government's doing with this online hate bill.
00:30:27.880
If you go along what the government says, you're fine.
00:30:31.100
If you go against what the government says, you could very easily be maligned and cast
00:30:35.960
off as misinformation, disinformation, all of that.
00:30:41.040
And we need people that are prepared to take stands for freedom and take stands for due
00:30:45.080
process, irrespective of the likability of the person who stands to benefit from that,
00:30:56.600
My sincere apologies that we weren't able to have that interview with James Topp.
00:31:00.260
We'll try to get him back on as soon as we can.
00:31:03.580
But in the meantime, let me know what you think.
00:31:05.300
I put an idea to you at the beginning of the show of doing an all Q&A edition about the Freedom Convoy on this show.
00:31:11.000
Talk about the book, The Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that shook the world and other themes that came up in the course of covering the convoy.
00:31:19.500
So if that is of interest to you, let us know in the comments, and we will schedule that post-haste.
00:31:24.440
But seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously, if you are using Arrive Can and traveling, I wish you the very best of luck.
00:31:31.460
May God be with you, because certainly the government isn't.
00:31:35.020
We'll talk to you soon with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.
00:31:44.260
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:31:46.220
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.