Juno News - ArriveCan needs to go – now

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.220 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.500 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:16.340 This is Monday, July 18th, 2022.

00:00:20.100 It is great to have you aboard Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:26.000 That is the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:27.320 and I want to say first off thank you thank you thank you thank you I had some delightful news

00:00:34.520 come over the weekend when I was informed that my book the thing you see back there

00:00:39.480 not so subtly placed the Freedom Convoy the inside story of three weeks that shook the world

00:00:45.860 made the glow not only made the Globe and Mail bestseller list but actually topped the Globe

00:00:52.500 and Mail bestseller list. So this book, which just came out a couple of weeks ago, is number one,

00:00:57.340 the number one nonfiction book sold in Canada last week. Now, this came out on the weekend,

00:01:02.840 that bestseller rank. And a few days earlier, it was also the top of the Toronto Star's

00:01:10.020 bestseller list. And I'm giddy not being, I mean, I'm excited about it. And I'm excited people are

00:01:15.280 buying the book and like the book. But I am more excited to know that some Toronto Star books

00:01:21.060 editor had to sit there and was like seething and spitting and raging and just like trying to be

00:01:27.500 like, no, no, no, let's just say it was that, uh, the, uh, anything else. Let's just say it was

00:01:31.980 that, that Lou guy's book. And let's just say it was something else. And the latest young adults

00:01:36.880 romance, let's just do it. Anything. No, no, no, not Andrew Lawton's freedom convoy book. We can't

00:01:41.020 say that's number one. And then they look at the numbers and are like, uh, I guess we have to. So

00:01:45.940 I imagine that it was kind of like a reverse Ouija board thing where it's like the keyboard was,

00:01:50.500 trying to make them do something that they didn't want to do. And eventually we had the list there.

00:01:56.540 So my thanks to the Toronto Star and to the Globe and Mail for recognizing that. And I don't know

00:02:01.720 how many weeks we're going to be there. I mean, this is like the thing for me that I'm excited

00:02:05.160 about this week because I made it one. So I don't care. I mean, I want to be at number one for a

00:02:09.680 bajillion weeks and do like the whole Jordan Peterson thing and just stay there. Because

00:02:13.240 this book came out like, I don't know, four years ago and he's still on the top 10.

00:02:16.660 but this is my first time ever there so i'm gonna soak it all up and i it's like there's a

00:02:23.280 schadenfreude there that the toronto star had to put that there so anyway if you want to make sure

00:02:28.660 it stays there if you want to trigger the toronto star book editor do head on over to amazon or

00:02:34.600 indigo and pick up a copy of the freedom convoy the inside story of three weeks that shook the

00:02:40.800 world and i'm actually thinking of it let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in

00:02:44.620 seeing this I was thinking of doing like an all Q&A edition about the convoy and about the book

00:02:50.800 and about covering the convoy and doing that in the next couple of weeks and taking any questions

00:02:55.740 that you have about the convoy any questions you have about what it was like covering it about the

00:03:00.280 book or anything else if that is something you would like to see let me know in the comments

00:03:04.280 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

00:03:09.120 won't do it so that's how it works one thing I want to talk about though is arrive can you may

00:03:14.280 have noticed in the last couple of weeks, I was bouncing around a little bit and doing the show

00:03:19.000 from various different places. And I was wearing another hat, not my true North role, but I was

00:03:24.260 wearing another hat. I was over in the United Kingdom for a couple of weeks and I just got

00:03:29.460 back on Saturday, which means I had to do the whole airport chaos thing. I had to do the arrive

00:03:35.080 can thing. And I want to just pull up here because I don't usually work with props, but I'm going to

00:03:41.180 work with a prop on today's show this uh can i show you this or does it have my date of birth

00:03:45.820 i don't think it has or like personal information so yeah so this is arrive can right here so this

00:03:51.740 this arrive can thing is just a little phone app it's just a little information you just took a

00:03:58.140 few tips you you know let the government know when you're showing up that's all it's no big deal

00:04:02.460 right wrong arrive can has proven to be one of the most disruptive and just plain wrong things that

00:04:10.400 government has done to disrupt travel and to disrupt canadians mobility rights so the whole

00:04:17.120 point of this at the beginning was that the government heaped all of these covet restrictions

00:04:21.600 onto people not the least of which was the need to have a pre-departure test before you show up

00:04:26.640 at canada and the then the proof of vaccination requirement and the government was trying to make

00:04:31.440 it so that what we can do is just have this little app and we can upload our vaccine certificate into

00:04:37.360 the app. And then when you get to the border, they don't need to see it because you've already

00:04:40.820 put it in. So they were trying to find a way to make it so that the COVID restrictions could be

00:04:46.060 managed. Now, my view on this would be, all right, well, maybe if you can't manage your COVID

00:04:50.220 restrictions, just get rid of the restrictions. But the government said, no, no, no, we've got

00:04:55.060 to design this app. Well, all of these restrictions for the most part are gone if you're vaccinated.

00:05:01.540 Now, if you're unvaccinated, different stories we've talked about on the show. You don't need

00:05:05.520 have the pre-departure test but all of a sudden government is still committed to the app and i

00:05:11.120 mentioned a few weeks back that one of the things omar al gabra was doing was what we can best

00:05:15.920 characterize as mission creep where the purpose of arrive can is no longer about covid screenings

00:05:22.000 but is actually about your standard canada border services agency entry and screening requirements

00:05:28.240 where they're doing this little pilot project where you can do the declarations of you know

00:05:32.960 You know, do you have fruits or vegetables or have you been to a farm or are you importing

00:05:36.600 some rare ocelot from, you know, the Maldives or what?

00:05:40.260 I don't know if they have all ocelots in the Maldives, but if you do, you have to declare

00:05:43.940 it.

00:05:44.220 You have to declare your Maldives ocelot.

00:05:46.380 You don't want to, don't ask me what happens when, when that goes wrong.

00:05:50.160 Been there, done that.

00:05:50.960 But the whole point of this for the government is that they're trying to make Arrive Can

00:05:55.520 a permanent feature of the Canadian government, a permanent feature of Canada.

00:05:59.980 And people will say, what's the big deal?

00:06:01.780 It's just an app.

00:06:02.960 Well, there are two big deals. Number one, anyone is supposed to have free entry into their own

00:06:09.580 country. So the idea of having an app, even if it's seemingly innocuous, an app that you must

00:06:15.620 go through the process of and go through the motions of before you get into your own country

00:06:19.840 is fundamentally wrong. But also, it's already having a tangible effect and not a positive one.

00:06:27.000 Two stories I wanted to talk about today that have both come out on the weekend.

00:06:30.200 one young scouts stuck in Zurich over the weekend arrive at Toronto Pearson Airport so

00:06:36.240 finally after being stranded in Zurich Switzerland there were a group of scouts that were returning

00:06:42.460 they had been I when I was in scouts by the way we went to like a campground that was 30 minutes

00:06:47.420 from where I live so I don't know why scouts are now going on trips to Switzerland but nevertheless

00:06:51.600 that's neither here nor there this was like a really bougie scouting unit that went over to

00:06:56.140 Switzerland on a trip. They went from Bancroft to Switzerland. Have a good time, folks. Maybe

00:07:01.100 they should have come in January. We could have done the World Economic Forum together. I could

00:07:05.340 have led a tour with scouts and they can get like the Klaus Schwab badge, which I believe is the

00:07:10.060 badge that lets you get into all of the other rooms and secret chambers and all of that. But

00:07:13.960 anyway, the thing that happened here was these scouts were having issues doing the Arrive Can

00:07:21.220 app. And what happened was they were over there. They were trying to do it and they couldn't get

00:07:25.800 on wi-fi and interestingly enough i know exactly what they're talking about because when i covered

00:07:31.960 the davos forum in may and i was trying to come back there was an issue at the airport that i

00:07:37.320 encountered where you had to supply a phone number to get on wi-fi and i recall there being some

00:07:43.000 issue with it not registering my canadian number which is really stupid at an international airport

00:07:48.760 but so when i read the story i knew exactly what they were talking about because they say here

00:07:54.040 that they couldn't get on wi-fi to do arrive can because they didn't have a local phone number

00:08:00.260 and then to make matters worse air canada would not let them board their flight without seeing

00:08:06.660 proof of arrive can now that's not part of the government rules the government rules are that

00:08:11.460 you have to show arrive can in canada why on earth do you need to do it to board your flight

00:08:17.380 why is air canada now doing and presumably other airlines as well the dirty work of the government

00:08:22.820 here. And if you've looked into it a bit, as I have, you'll notice the government has actually

00:08:26.900 been pushing this. They've been trying to make it so that they don't have to deal with the problems

00:08:31.100 on their end. They want the airlines to be the bad guys. So what happened for these scouts is

00:08:37.380 that due to challenges with the Arrive Can app, several of them were delayed and missed their

00:08:43.100 flight. And it's only been days later that the six of them that were held, six until including

00:08:48.380 two leaders were finally able to make it back to Canada. No connection whatsoever to public health

00:08:55.940 and it doesn't even pretend to have a public health connection at this point. So we're stranding

00:09:01.440 scouts in Switzerland because of this stupid app. Well, what about people that don't have a cell

00:09:07.460 phone? You may have seen this video go viral over the weekend. On his own, I travel on my own.

00:09:14.740 I have the Arrive Can app, and he does not.

00:09:18.220 He has his proof of documentation showing that he's been vaccinated.

00:09:23.100 That's all that's required.

00:09:26.320 Why should I have to?

00:09:33.740 What if he was flying by himself?

00:09:35.540 I will be flying by my cell phone. I don't have a cell phone.

00:09:39.060 So what does he do?

00:09:41.020 If I'm flying by my cell phone, how can I do that?

00:09:44.020 are you guys related yeah yeah so what's the problem with putting it on your account i don't

00:09:47.940 think i should have to why not dancing dancing never mind this is a bureaucracy gone amok i know

00:09:54.660 but you know this that's why you have to do it right this is one of the requirements

00:09:58.100 it's part of the quarantine act right to get back in well let's see you've got you've got my

00:10:06.740 shots i've had four of them okay you have you have my passport okay why not let's just do the

00:10:11.780 pay for work and get this over because they want the app the government wants the app let me ask

00:10:16.340 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

00:10:20.180 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

00:10:24.420 this is this is my phone it's my app i'm just having myself on it

00:10:31.380 it's very circular that conversation but here's a guy 86 years old he's in a wheelchair now i

00:10:38.340 I don't know if it's permanent or if it's just to get around the airport because if you're not,

00:10:42.400 I mean, anyone actually, I almost need a wheelchair now because no one likes waiting in lines,

00:10:46.140 you know, seven and a half days long at Pearson Airport. So he's in a wheelchair, 1.00

00:10:50.080 four times boosted. I believe it's a CBSA officer is holding his passport, holding the ticket,

00:10:57.540 holding the proof of vaccination. So there is zero question that this guy has been boosted

00:11:03.420 and boosted again. He's got the proper documentation. He's done everything right

00:11:07.660 except own a cell phone, which in Justin Trudeau's Canada is a crime that can get you a $5,000 fine.

00:11:14.720 And his daughter, the guy was saying, well, you know, you could just put them on your app. And

00:11:18.680 the daughter said, no, I don't want to. So, okay, she's deciding for herself. But when he travels

00:11:23.260 alone, what's the excuse going to be then? He can't just go on some random stranger's phone.

00:11:31.060 And it's interesting that, you know, it used to be the whole thing was if you didn't pack your

00:11:34.660 own bag you can't come on the airplane and now it's like yeah just load up onto everybody else's

00:11:39.700 app your personal information otherwise you're getting slapped with a five thousand dollar fine

00:11:43.860 so we all have to be friends now just find some random passerby that will agree to put their data

00:11:48.240 on your phone and that's your way into the country and any and the government has said oh you don't

00:11:53.000 need a cell phone you can do it on a computer and yeah if you're taking some holiday through the

00:11:57.320 foothills of Bangladesh you can find your printer and you've got to find the printer you ask the 0.70

00:12:01.780 local Sherpa. And I guess the local Sherpa will just set up an HP printer for you on the back of

00:12:07.620 the donkey or whatever they take you around on. And then you can print off your arrive can. So

00:12:12.020 yeah, we all have workarounds. We all have options. But what the government is doing right now

00:12:16.740 is purely punitive and purely rooted in the idea of control. And what, pray tell, is the public

00:12:26.100 health benefit of stranding scouts in Switzerland? What's the public health benefit of finding a

00:12:32.480 four times vaccinated octogenarian? All because we don't believe, we don't believe that the

00:12:41.360 government, the government doesn't believe rather, that we can let the peasants travel without

00:12:47.880 knowing exactly where they're going, why they're going, how they're going, what time they're

00:12:52.780 arriving. If you've ever flown to the United States, one of the big frustrations is that you

00:12:58.900 have to go through customs typically before you get on the plane. So if you're at Pearson Airport,

00:13:03.940 one of the big delays is that, and this is by the way, a delight where you have to go through

00:13:07.920 customs in Toronto. So by the time you've gone through that, you're in the United States,

00:13:12.220 even though you're in Mississauga, according to immigration law. And it's great because what

00:13:17.000 happens is sometimes the delays are like three or four hours long and someone will miss their flight,

00:13:21.180 but their bags have made it on.

00:13:22.920 So then they need to hold up the flight

00:13:24.120 while they take the person's bags off.

00:13:25.740 And by the time the bags are off,

00:13:27.140 the person has actually made it to the gate,

00:13:28.920 but they don't let them board anyway.

00:13:30.200 I have been there myself on the plane and off the plane.

00:13:33.960 And what's happening here is the government 1.00

00:13:36.200 has now tried to do this with a RiveCAN. 1.00

00:13:38.700 So they want to know everything before you get there. 1.00

00:13:41.380 So they need to know if they're going to haul you

00:13:42.920 into a secondary screening for questioning and all of that.

00:13:46.060 And if you don't do it,

00:13:47.060 you get punished for not giving the government a heads up.

00:13:49.680 And you may think, okay, perhaps it streamlines the government's efforts.

00:13:53.680 But we're not talking about making life easy for government here as being our top priorities as Canadians.

00:14:00.240 Our passports, our Canadian citizenship entitles us free entry into Canada.

00:14:06.580 And the government's rationale, the government's rationale is, well, no one's stopping you from entering Canada.

00:14:14.100 Anyone can show up.

00:14:15.360 I mean, even that 86-year-old man, he was not denied entry into Canada.

00:14:19.180 that they let him in, but they probably fined him or at least threatened him with fines when he got

00:14:24.320 there. But they're saying, oh, well, we didn't impede you. We didn't stop you. Wow. Talk about

00:14:30.140 exploiting technicalities to the nth degree. So arrive can needs to go now. And when people talk

00:14:39.480 about so-called minor inconveniences, you need to tell them to just shut up. Because I'm so sick

00:14:46.480 tired after two and a half years of COVID of being told that we have to put up with all of

00:14:51.040 these little minor things because, oh, well, it's just a little mask. It's just a little mask. It's

00:14:56.460 just a little lineup. It's just a little app. It's just this. It's just that. And at a certain

00:15:00.800 point, all of these things are contributing to a society in which nothing works. The airports are

00:15:06.960 just one example of a society that is completely broken from top to bottom. I came back on Saturday

00:15:14.820 from Heathrow to Toronto.

00:15:16.840 Now, I didn't check a bag.

00:15:18.140 I actually wanted to.

00:15:19.300 I was at the Bushmills Distillery,

00:15:20.840 and I wanted to pick up a bottle of Irish whiskey for someone,

00:15:23.740 and I didn't want to for the sole purpose.

00:15:25.540 The sole reason I didn't is because I didn't want to check a bag

00:15:28.620 and be waiting for it for,

00:15:30.460 because you can't take the liquids on, of course,

00:15:32.260 and be waiting for it for like five more days.

00:15:35.000 So I didn't check a bag.

00:15:36.500 I took a carry-on,

00:15:37.460 which means I should be able to just get off the plane and go.

00:15:39.980 We get to Pearson Airport, my wife and I, on Saturday,

00:15:43.640 and they give that announcement that, okay, we are going to be metering, which is what they call it

00:15:48.880 when the customs hall is unable to accommodate the flow of people getting off planes, even while

00:15:54.660 they have canceled flights, by the way, but that's neither here nor there. So what they say is we'll

00:15:59.700 take off people with connections first. We had a connection. We were literally the first ones

00:16:04.700 off the plane because they brought us to the front because we had a connecting flight

00:16:08.640 that was pretty soon. We ended up missing it, by the way. But not before they made the plane wait

00:16:14.680 on the tarmac for, I think it was about 45 minutes, while they did more metering, I suppose.

00:16:20.500 So they do this. They make us wait 45 minutes. Then they tell us that we have to stagger getting

00:16:25.640 off the plane. So some people were on there probably for another two hours or so. And then

00:16:30.820 we get off first. So we've already been made to wait because apparently it's so busy in the

00:16:35.880 customs hall that they can't just let the plane unload we've got nexus cards so we go and kind

00:16:40.860 of bolt through and it's all the same customs hall but there's a little nexus line on the left

00:16:45.820 so we're trying to just get to the nexus line we walk into the customs hall at pearson airport

00:16:50.460 terminal one literally not one person in there not a single person in any line of any of the

00:17:00.100 however many wickets that were open now maybe i caught it at just the perfect time and there

00:17:05.860 were a thousand people that just went through five minutes earlier but they're making you wait

00:17:10.340 at this point for no reason just because they i i think are so used to this is how it is

00:17:17.780 and again i'm not saying that people are not finding significant delays

00:17:21.940 at the airport because obviously they've put in this thing for a reason but it was the most

00:17:25.940 infuriating process to being told, to be told that, okay, we've got to do all of this stuff.

00:17:30.680 And then you get there and it's like, all of it was for nothing. You could have just let me off

00:17:34.660 and things would have been fine. And then you find people that are getting stranded at foreign

00:17:41.140 airports because they can't get on wifi there because of other things that don't work to put

00:17:45.760 in their information to get the arrive can thing. The 86 year old grandpapa, he managed to get on

00:17:51.080 the plane. He managed to bypass the flight attendants, but he gets down there and he's

00:17:54.980 threatened with a $5,000 fine because he doesn't have a cell phone. So these things are not minor.

00:18:00.740 They are not insignificant. They're very significant. And it is government with its

00:18:05.640 foot on the back of your necks, making it so things don't work. It's government that is putting

00:18:11.860 barriers in place. It's government that's putting roadblocks in place. And it's the government that

00:18:16.300 is exacerbating existing problems and making them worse. And they're still lying to us and telling

00:18:21.800 us that this has to do with COVID when it is entirely about control. So when people look

00:18:28.760 around and see that others are still protesting and they say, well, why are they still protesting?

00:18:34.120 What's wrong? What's the problem? This, just look around. The world of 2019, the world we left

00:18:40.440 behind that we used to call the old normal is becoming a distant memory if it isn't already.

00:18:45.640 and yes it's vaccine mandates but it's this whole host of challenges it's bigger than arrive can i

00:18:52.560 mean after the freedom convoy packed up and some of the organizers were arrested and all of that

00:18:57.340 james top the canadian armed forces veteran started his march across canada he set out from

00:19:05.620 the west started going to ottawa with a plan ambitiously of arriving by canada day and he

00:19:11.300 ended up being there a little bit early was able to do some meetings and then come back and do his

00:19:15.220 formal re-entry. And the media basically ignored him. We had him on the show. I know other

00:19:20.420 independent media covered him. But the legacy media effectively ignored him. And when they did

00:19:25.420 start paying attention, they did all the usual stuff where they throw, oh, well, he was on this

00:19:29.840 podcast with this guy who in 1992 said something rude, so we're going to slander him. And oh,

00:19:35.580 why did this member of parliament, why was he seen in a room with James Topp? And it became this guilt

00:19:40.220 by association and people just started saying well what's the problem why is he even protesting

00:19:46.880 all the mandates are gone life is back to normal normal is a long way away we had james top on

00:19:52.680 joining us from the road i think he was somewhere through saskatchewan when we spoke to him last but

00:19:57.320 now that he's on the other side of his ottawa arrival wanted to welcome him back to the show

00:20:02.140 james top it is good to talk to you sir thanks so much for coming on and because this is the

00:20:07.560 first time we've spoken since canada day congratulations on achieving your mission quite

00:20:12.040 an accomplishment oh i don't have james's audio yet yeah i'm not hearing uh i'm not hearing james so

00:20:29.160 wait i hear now james can you hear me

00:20:31.000 can you hear us all right where whereabouts are you now sir

00:20:37.920 i didn't get any i'm getting i'm getting a little bit of an intermittent uh james top here well

00:20:49.980 we'll try this again are you able to hear him let me know where you are can't hear me

00:20:53.680 yeah i'm hearing uh james very intermittently we will try to get him back on the show i'm actually

00:21:03.640 curious because again a lot of people as well the media have moved on from this story the media have

00:21:09.920 moved on from this story and and as you can see there very briefly if you are watching the video

00:21:14.320 version he is still walking he's still going on he's still moving on this thing so the mission

00:21:19.620 continues. And I think there's something very important that Canadians need to realize here,

00:21:25.240 which is that when someone has to tell you that life is back to normal and admonish you

00:21:32.240 for saying otherwise, for thinking otherwise, clearly things aren't back to normal. I mean,

00:21:38.820 that's the reason. It's like I said with the Emergencies Act, when the government has to tell

00:21:42.420 you it is respecting your civil liberties, clearly it isn't. Clearly your civil liberties are not

00:21:47.800 intact. Otherwise they wouldn't need to go through painstaking efforts to remind you that they are

00:21:52.660 upholding your fundamental liberties. And I think the same is true of normalcy. The same is true of

00:21:58.020 normalcy. When the state is telling you, the media is telling you, oh, everything's fine. Everything's

00:22:02.860 normal. We're all good to go. Well, clearly that isn't the case. I think we have James Topp back

00:22:08.600 on the line here. So we're going to put him up and hopefully we'll have the audio. If nothing else,

00:22:14.160 maybe he can learn sign language

00:22:16.080 abruptly and we can get one of those CPAC

00:22:18.160 translators on. James,

00:22:20.160 let's try it now. Whereabouts are you, sir?

00:22:25.740 Hello?

00:22:27.500 Hi, I can

00:22:28.280 hear you. You were a bit sloppy there.

00:22:30.240 Whereabouts are you?

00:22:36.880 Hello?

00:22:38.080 Alright. Unfortunately, we are

00:22:40.220 not having luck with James

00:22:42.100 top here. So I think we'll have to try to book him on when he's a bit more stationary and do

00:22:47.100 this another time, which is quite unfortunate. And if you can hear me, James, I'm sorry, the

00:22:51.420 technology is not cooperating with us right now. But I think it's very important to point out that

00:22:57.980 what he has done has been inspiring to so many people. And it didn't have the zeal and it didn't

00:23:04.180 have the large scale that the convoy did, but there was something quite magnificent in its

00:23:09.960 simplicity. One man starting out a large mission, a large journey to Ottawa, a very long journey.

00:23:16.220 Certainly, if you look at me, you will not be surprised to know that I have never walked that

00:23:19.780 far in my life. I don't even think cumulatively at this point. But when he does this, you saw

00:23:25.980 the crowd behind him. It was fascinating to see with the footage and the videos, the crowd behind

00:23:30.780 him get larger and larger, especially the closer he got to Ottawa. And at a certain point, all the

00:23:36.900 politicians jump in and Roman Babber walked with him for a bit and Pierre Polyev walked with him

00:23:41.440 and Leslyn Lewis met with him in Ottawa and they had all of this thing. And then the media tried

00:23:46.740 to do this like old style documentary, like identifying all of the conservative MPs in a

00:23:52.160 photo with James Topp. And then we started to see all of this criticism of them. But I was looking

00:23:58.200 at this and saying, absolutely, when a Canadian veteran, I mean, when any Canadian, but certainly

00:24:04.040 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.

00:29:34.180 Like it was a weird thing.

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.

00:29:44.220 Scare quotes.

00:29:44.840 I had to do the scare quotes voice.

00:29:46.500 Journalists like Mr. Lawton here.

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

00:30:13.900 protection.

00:30:14.620 Oh, sorry.

00:30:15.120 I use the scare quotes again.

00:30:16.240 The misguided defense of free speech.

00:30:20.460 And what he means by that is that free speech should not be afforded to people he does not

00:30:24.180 like.

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.

00:30:39.260 And in doing so, surrender your rights.

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,

00:30:50.620 because freedom benefits all.

00:30:53.700 Freedom benefits all.

00:30:55.300 We've got to end things there.

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.

00:31:34.000 That does it for me.

00:31:35.020 We'll talk to you soon with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:31:39.300 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:31:40.620 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

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.

Juno News - July 18, 2022

ArriveCan needs to go – now

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