Juno News - Auditor General blasts ArriveCan waste and mismanagement

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

00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show monday february 12 2024

00:01:32.040 the andrew lawton show here on true north the day after the super bowl i know you all know i am a

00:01:39.440 huge sports fan i i watched the uh kansas city 89ers square off against the san francisco chiefs

00:01:46.680 It was an absolute bang-up game.

00:01:50.040 There was a guy named Patrick who was involved.

00:01:53.440 Travis Swift also did a tremendous job as the tight end, I want to say.

00:02:00.720 There's a spider crawling up my camera right now.

00:02:03.340 So if you saw a nondescript blur, that was why.

00:02:07.220 But anyway, I thought Taylor Mahomes stole the show.

00:02:11.840 And I loved her concert in Tokyo, by the way.

00:02:14.400 I didn't get a chance to see it, but I saw some clips going on.

00:02:16.980 No, no, no.

00:02:17.660 Before you all tune out, sometimes the sports fans get really mad when I do this.

00:02:21.340 I do know what the Super Bowl is.

00:02:25.160 It isn't just the haircut that I had when I was a kid.

00:02:28.200 I even watched the Super Bowl.

00:02:30.540 And not just for the halftime show.

00:02:32.160 I watched it, watched it.

00:02:33.480 Because football is, by virtue of me having played it in high school,

00:02:37.020 the only sport that I can understand and explain.

00:02:39.580 And next to my wife.

00:02:40.840 Because I know like this much, she knows this much.

00:02:43.360 So it's like the only sport where I get to explain it to someone else and then, you know, just, you know, quickly, discreetly Google if she asks a question I don't know about.

00:02:51.620 But nevertheless, I hope that all the teams had fun. Isn't that what you say? I hope that all the teams enjoyed themselves.

00:02:58.680 It was it was a good game. It was a bit of a nail biter.

00:03:01.140 My little political interjection on this, and I tweeted this yesterday, is that basically we need to see a conservative party or any party that is poised to take over for the liberals,

00:03:12.900 which right now is only the Conservatives, run on the most populist policy imaginable,

00:03:18.880 which would be a policy saying that the CRTC is banning its requirement of SIM subbing. Do you

00:03:26.440 know what SIM subbing is? It is when the Canadian outlets, news like outlets like CTV, have to sub

00:03:33.600 in their crappy Canadian feeds when you're trying to watch CBS. So you don't get to watch the

00:03:39.060 American Super Bowl ads, you have to watch, you know, some like weird Southern Ontario technical

00:03:43.880 colleges commercial instead of some star-studded American Super Bowl ad. So that would be like a

00:03:49.960 sports policy I could get behind. Let Canadians watch the American Super Bowl ads. Although I

00:03:55.420 shared this and one response just said, or how about we just abolish the CRTC altogether, which

00:04:00.700 is also an acceptable populist policy that a party may wish to run on. So perhaps that can be the one

00:04:07.180 area of overlap between me and the sports fans, which is ending the ban on seeing American football

00:04:12.860 ads. Nevertheless, hope you had a wonderful weekend. Not as good for the Liberal government

00:04:18.760 right now. We'll get in a few moments time to the Auditor General's report. She has come out with

00:04:25.200 what I would call a scathing indictment of the Liberal government's handling of this file. It's

00:04:31.600 boondoggle that's even more expensive than we had previously understood and that is insofar as she 0.97

00:04:37.520 was able to figure it out because it was so mismanaged and the records were so poorly kept

00:04:42.160 the auditor general doesn't even know exactly how much was spent on the arrive can app but i

00:04:48.400 wanted to begin by talking about this horrendous display that took place over the weekend i'll

00:04:53.200 share a clip of it this was a an attempted arson i mean successful in the sense that there was

00:04:59.040 actually vandalism, but an attempted arson against a Catholic church in Regina, Saskatchewan.

00:05:29.040 that was horrendous and i apologize about the profanity there we

00:05:58.800 usually try to censor that out for the nice virgin ears that I know tune into this show. But 0.97

00:06:03.100 in this particular context, we made an exception because I think it's important to see how vile

00:06:08.320 these people are as they sit there callously and try to burn down a Catholic church. Now,

00:06:15.040 church burnings in Canada are not anomalous. There have been dozens of graffitis, attempted arsons,

00:06:21.940 in many cases, successful arsons that have taken place, all going back with alarming frequency to

00:06:28.000 the announcement of unmarked graves at Kamloops, which triggered a process by which people take

00:06:35.920 out their anger on Christianity against churches that have had nothing to do with anything

00:06:41.200 to do with anything. And that is worded deliberately in that way because this is

00:06:46.200 inexplicable and absolutely tragic. Now, you'd think that we could all as a society get around

00:06:52.320 and say, okay, I oppose burning churches. I oppose burning mosques. I oppose burning synagogues. I 0.87

00:06:57.740 oppose vandalizing these institutions. And yet there is radio silence from many people in media

00:07:04.500 and the political establishment when it is a Christian church that is targeted. Now take for

00:07:09.600 example that church in Regina. There has been a comment condemning it from conservative leader

00:07:14.240 Pierre Polyev. I checked just a moment ago, absolutely no response whatsoever from Prime

00:07:20.760 Minister Justin Trudeau. And you may think, okay, well he can't respond to just anything and

00:07:24.340 everything that happens. Well, whenever something has happened to do with a mosque or many cases a 0.99

00:07:29.620 synagogue, Justin Trudeau cannot denounce it quickly enough. This was one such denunciation 1.00

00:07:35.780 when there were threats against a mosque. I want to start this morning by addressing the

00:07:41.260 unacceptable threats that were sent to a Toronto mosque over the weekend. Islamophobia and right 0.99

00:07:47.740 wing extremism have no place in our country or our communities. We must always stand united

00:07:54.000 against hate or intolerance of any kind. No issue whatsoever with that statement. There was a threat

00:08:02.280 it was reported on in the news. Justin Trudeau says absolutely we denounced this 20 seconds that

00:08:07.120 was all it took. There was also a case a few years ago you may recall when a young school girl in

00:08:12.580 Toronto, a hijab wearing Muslim claimed that she was targeted because of her Muslim faith by

00:08:19.120 someone. And this was a case that was very quickly questioned by a lot of people. There were a lot

00:08:26.180 of things that did not add up about this, but that didn't start, that didn't stop the unsubstantiated

00:08:31.300 allegation from making waves around the country. And again, warranting a denunciation from Justin

00:08:36.600 Trudeau. My heart goes out to the young girl who was attacked seemingly for her religion.

00:08:44.960 I can't imagine how afraid she must have been. Is there a danger in responding so quickly and

00:08:50.540 seizing upon these events as the symbols of our tolerance? Unfortunately, we've seen a pattern

00:08:56.200 over the past months of increased hate crimes against religious minorities, particularly

00:09:04.600 particularly against young women of racialized backgrounds.

00:09:13.460 This is something that we need to take very, very, very seriously.

00:09:17.460 And the pattern and the trend lines that we're seeing is something that,

00:09:22.540 as you pointed out, is one of those warning signs around increased intolerance

00:09:27.900 and reminding people that we are a country that defends freedom of religion,

00:09:33.020 that defends freedom of expression, that defends people's rights to go to school and not be

00:09:40.140 fearful or harassed is fundamental to who we are.

00:09:45.500 The second part of that quote was after Toronto police had come out and said,

00:09:50.220 yeah, this didn't really happen. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there was evidence

00:09:54.620 suggesting it was untrue. But he does the old Dan Rather fake but accurate thing there where he says,

00:10:00.780 Oh, well, yes, but there, I mean, it could have been true.

00:10:03.620 All of these other things have happened.

00:10:05.120 There's been an alarming, and we always stand up for this.

00:10:07.140 But again, why are you silent when a church is burned?

00:10:11.720 Now, there is a subset of people in this country, delusional radicals,

00:10:16.780 like the burn-it-all-down lady, that are celebrating the burning down of churches.

00:10:22.200 I think Jerry Butts had made, if I'm recalling correctly,

00:10:25.180 a comment seemingly justifying the burning of churches.

00:10:29.360 I have to look up the exact wording of it, but it was something that I recall being really,

00:10:35.000 really icky and going down that road of justifying or coming close to it.

00:10:39.500 And when I point that out, this is not a contest.

00:10:43.580 I'm not saying that Justin Trudeau should not condemn acts of violence or threats or

00:10:48.560 graffiti and vandalism against Muslims, against Jews.

00:10:51.120 Absolutely not. 0.98

00:10:51.940 I'm saying why on earth not do it when it's against Christians? 1.00

00:10:55.960 Now, he proclaims to be a Catholic.

00:10:57.620 He proclaims to be a Christian.

00:10:59.360 Apart from the Harsha Walia burn it all down, folks, most people in this country, I think, 1.00

00:11:03.740 could generally agree, I would hope, that we shouldn't target religious institutions in

00:11:08.280 general in this way. Now, you know, maybe I could be proven wrong on that point. I shudder to think

00:11:14.260 that perhaps I would be. But it is incredibly, incredibly disgusting that we have a political

00:11:22.020 class that is so either anti-Christian or so desiring of appeasing the people who are 0.99

00:11:29.380 anti-Christian that they won't stand up and say that 20-second condemnation, this should never

00:11:35.280 happen. Absolutely absurd. One of the other things that is absurd, to attempt a segue there,

00:11:41.980 a smooth transition, is the report from the Auditor General this morning. She was appearing

00:11:47.420 before the Public Accounts Committee. She'll be holding, actually I believe right now she's holding

00:11:51.140 a press conference. But if you chose me over the Auditor General, I thank you so much. Not that

00:11:56.720 she's not a lovely lady, I'm sure, but I like to think we offer a little bit more excitement on

00:12:01.220 this show than an accountant speaking. But nevertheless, don't answer that if you disagree.

00:12:06.220 This was the finding here, and there were a lot of them, but I'm going to play a couple of clips

00:12:10.700 from her appearance before the committee that I think capture and encapsulate what it is that

00:12:17.440 she found when she tried to dig in deep with ArriveCAN. This is her getting a very simple

00:12:23.020 and point-blank question from Conservative MP Michael Barrett about whether it was worth the cost.

00:12:28.560 Auditor, thank you very much for being here today. Did Canadian taxpayers get value for money from

00:12:34.200 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government on the $60 million ArriveCAN app?

00:12:39.800 So we concluded that the public service did not ensure that Canada received best value for money.

00:12:46.520 I would tell you that we paid too much for this application.

00:12:51.320 We paid too much.

00:12:53.220 Now, anyone who saw the price tag when this came up a while back,

00:12:56.180 that it could have been done for $80,000 and ended up costing tens of millions,

00:12:59.800 probably could have figured that out.

00:13:00.800 But it's good to have, from a nonpartisan figure, the official finding of such.

00:13:05.380 And this was, I think, a point that was important to stress in relation to that,

00:13:09.580 because there were also scathing indictments of mismanagement,

00:13:12.580 of records not being kept not even the basic fundamental level of due diligence

00:13:17.320 and the government's excuse here oh it's just covid everyone was working from home it was

00:13:21.880 difficult line wires got crossed so conservative mp kelly block tried to probe that point with

00:13:27.940 the auditor general karen hogan oh time and time again we have heard that we should cut the public

00:13:34.700 service or servants some slack because it was during the pandemic and we even heard it today

00:13:41.540 in in regards to public servants working from home. Do you believe the glaring disregard for

00:13:48.580 basic mismanagement and contracting practices as well as the lack of documentation can be

00:13:55.540 sufficiently excused by the fact that it was during a pandemic?

00:14:02.580 I know I said it in my opening remarks I do not believe that an emergency

00:14:07.060 is an excuse for throwing out the rules throwing the rules out of the window these are some really

00:14:14.740 basic elements that i would have expected to see documenting a decision on who is being selected

00:14:21.220 and why why they have the skills to carry out the work that you need done basic bookkeeping

00:14:29.860 factors that i would expect to see invoices well supported making it clear

00:14:34.420 what work should be charged to what project that's ongoing.

00:14:39.620 I think that my advice to public servants would be to document as you go.

00:14:43.640 And we saw other contracts throughout the pandemic,

00:14:47.360 while had opportunities for improvement,

00:14:49.660 were not as glaring as the lack of documentation that we see.

00:14:55.440 Thank you.

00:14:56.300 So the crucial part of this is that public servants

00:14:59.920 were not trying to get value for money.

00:15:01.860 They weren't making an effort of adequately tracking how much was being spent.

00:15:06.900 They didn't do their due diligence.

00:15:08.320 They didn't do basic management.

00:15:09.640 And it's not enough just to blame it all on COVID.

00:15:12.500 And this is what the government has tried to do.

00:15:14.500 And you could even see in the liberal questions that were being put to Karen Hogan this morning

00:15:19.280 on committee, they were trying to just pass the buck anywhere and everywhere, but on the

00:15:23.260 government.

00:15:23.700 So at a certain point, CBSA is going to be made out to be the fall guy and some lowly

00:15:28.300 bureaucrats going to be made to be the fall guy. 1.00

00:15:30.000 But it really is the government that has to own this.

00:15:31.860 because the bureaucrats were implementing a government program, this unnecessary app,

00:15:37.820 which we're just talking about the mismanagement of it, not even the fundamental question

00:15:41.760 of whether this app was just and constitutional and violated or violated people's civil liberties,

00:15:48.580 which I suspect it did, but that wasn't part of what the Auditor General was delving into.

00:15:53.960 But the real takeaway here, even with the benefit of hindsight, she could not adequately figure out

00:16:00.980 the cost of this thing. She could not adequately figure out how much Canadians spent on this. She

00:16:07.320 did her best, came up with a figure of around $60 million, way more than the $54 million that was

00:16:13.780 initially said, and way more than the $80,000 it was supposed to be. But she's had to do some

00:16:20.400 guesswork because of how shoddy the records are. Aaron Woodrick is the head of the domestic policy

00:16:26.360 program over at the McDonald Laurier Institute and joins me on the line now. Aaron, always good

00:16:32.800 to talk to you here. I mean, at a certain point, you have to wonder, did any of this go the way

00:16:37.820 it was supposed to? And it really doesn't seem like it. No, it doesn't. I mean, it's not every

00:16:42.180 day that you have the Auditor General coming out and saying, you know, I can't even tell you how

00:16:45.760 much this costs. There's so little of a paper trail. And I think her comments are just damning.

00:16:51.200 Look, it is possibly true that during a pandemic and, you know, people were panicking.

00:16:56.560 Remember, this is early 2020.

00:16:58.160 People are in a real hurry.

00:16:59.320 OK, so maybe everything isn't exactly by the book.

00:17:02.500 But her point is, in some cases, there's not even the most basic notation, aren't even basic invoices.

00:17:08.400 This is not just a matter of, you know, rushing through the process because you think that the sky is going to fall.

00:17:14.060 They just completely gave up on some of the most basic safeguards.

00:17:17.500 And the result is, you know, tens of millions of dollars wasted for taxpayers.

00:17:22.920 And again, you know, this is just one aspect of spending during the pandemic.

00:17:26.900 This is just an example of the lack of safeguards in place.

00:17:31.460 And, you know, Canadians have just paid an eye-watering sum for basically nothing.

00:17:37.200 Yeah, and I mean, obviously, she was focused just on a rive can here.

00:17:40.560 But I have to assume, and you would know this better than I would, given your work,

00:17:45.400 but I have to assume that there is underneath this revealing, I think, a bigger problem with

00:17:51.900 procurement in Canada because something like jumps out here and says that this to me is not

00:17:57.500 an aberration. This is probably business as usual. The fact that there's an entire company set up

00:18:02.580 that doesn't produce anything that just cashes a huge fat check and then finds other people to do

00:18:07.360 the work strikes me as evidence that this is pretty much business as usual in Ottawa.

00:18:12.960 Yeah, it's a serious problem.

00:18:14.060 And there's a bunch of layers, I would say, with respect to procurement that are the problem.

00:18:17.600 I mean, you do have this sort of basic ignorance of the rules.

00:18:21.640 You have people issuing, you know, sole source contracts when they should be open to competitive bids.

00:18:26.860 You also have in a lot of areas, you know, very sort of strange political layers to rather than getting sort of the best bang for your buck.

00:18:34.920 And I'm thinking particularly for military procurement.

00:18:37.420 You have government trying to fiddle with making sure that, well, they got to be made in Canada.

00:18:40.620 They have to create a certain number of jobs in this region.

00:18:43.400 And anyone who's followed, for example, our disastrous shipbuilding program, I mean, if you think wasting $50 million on a phone app is bad, wait till you hear about the tens of billions of dollars that we're getting for not receiving ships yet.

00:18:58.340 I mean, these are just eye-watering sums of money.

00:19:01.480 And procurement in this country is badly, badly broken.

00:19:04.320 There needs to be a real top-to-bottom rethink about how we can ensure this process is fair, it's competitive.

00:19:10.620 and it is immune from political interference.

00:19:14.580 Yeah, and I think that is where we get to the point here

00:19:18.100 of whether this was a bureaucracy run amok

00:19:21.820 or is this something that is laid at Justin Trudeau's feet.

00:19:25.280 Now, there's an argument that Justin Trudeau has to own

00:19:27.860 what the bureaucracy does when they're implementing his strategies,

00:19:30.380 but what's your read on that from what's come out so far?

00:19:33.860 Well, they certainly, as you mentioned,

00:19:36.480 they're trying to barge pull away from this. 0.58

00:19:38.200 And I mean, part of that is just basic politics.

00:19:39.960 This is a government that's in very deep trouble in the polls, so they're not obviously looking to take ownership of any more problems, but there's no getting around it.

00:19:47.200 I mean, you are responsible at the political level for the mistakes of the department underneath you.

00:19:51.780 And that's one of the questions that I have here.

00:19:53.520 The money's already gone, and that's unfortunate, but will there be any consequences?

00:19:57.580 Is anybody going to get fired?

00:19:58.860 Is anybody going to get reprimanded?

00:20:00.340 Is any minister going to resign for this?

00:20:02.240 I do think is something that's extremely frustrating for a lot of Canadians right now is that even when you make mistakes, it used to be just assume that someone would take responsibility.

00:20:11.920 There would be some consequence to failure or stealing or mismanagement.

00:20:16.880 We don't have that anymore.

00:20:17.920 We have, you know, the best you're going to get is a minister go out solemnly before the cameras and say, you know, I take full responsibility and then they won't do anything.

00:20:26.500 They'll just say those words.

00:20:27.680 And they sort of, that's almost worse doing it that way, Andrew, because it deprives them of any meaning.

00:20:32.940 What is the point in saying you take responsibility if there's just no consequence other than having to say the words?

00:20:37.940 Yeah, and I don't want to compare apples to oranges here because there was a lot going on with ad scam back in the day that I have not seen evidence of here.

00:20:45.740 But just to compare the numbers here, the ad scam was, I think, about $2 million in contracts without a proper bidding system.

00:20:53.960 With ArriveCAN, we're talking about something that went up to $60 million.

00:20:58.720 Yeah, look, it's a lot of money.

00:21:00.780 And it's funny how in this country, scandals over waste often don't depend on the amount, right?

00:21:05.360 Everyone will remember BevOda's orange juice.

00:21:07.360 That was only $16, right?

00:21:09.480 Whereas in other cases, I just mentioned the shipbuilding procurement.

00:21:12.060 Now you're into tens of billions of dollars or these subsidies for electric vehicle batteries.

00:21:16.300 So sometimes it's not the dollar.

00:21:18.180 It's just the egregiousness of how it's done.

00:21:20.320 And I think Arrive Can in that respect is particularly controversial because, as you mentioned, a lot of people were very put off, you know, by the nature of this app, you know, this sort of, you know, whether or not it was violating Canadians' rights, it was very draconian.

00:21:37.060 So you add that layer onto it, it wasn't just that $50 million was wasted, it was in service of something that was pretty dark in and of itself.

00:21:45.640 So explain to me what could come of this.

00:21:48.360 I mean, obviously, the Conservatives are making a bit of hay about this, as I think is reasonable enough to do.

00:21:53.720 The Liberals, it seemed like, from the little bit of the committee that was on earlier, are desperately trying to just to shove the blame somewhere in a corner, like some random procurement officer with CBSA.

00:22:05.720 They want to own this whole thing.

00:22:07.100 Where do you think it will go?

00:22:09.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't see anybody resigning.

00:22:11.340 And it would be nice if someone actually had the dignity to resign over this, a minister or even civil servants, or whether it would be investigations of the specific individuals responsible for this.

00:22:22.220 I just don't see that happening in a lot of cases.

00:22:26.180 You know, the tactic, first of all, is to deny and then to stall in the hopes that something else will pop up in the news cycle and people will lose interest in this.

00:22:34.540 And I unfortunately think that there's not a non-zero chance that that's what's going to happen here.

00:22:40.520 So one thing that I would be very curious about it as well to get your take on it is

00:22:45.540 whether this you think is the tip of the iceberg because you alluded earlier to this is just one

00:22:50.740 aspect of pandemic spending. We had billions and billions of dollars going out the door.

00:22:56.980 We've already seen with CERB there were a lot of people that got it that didn't have to. CRA has

00:23:02.140 had mixed success in collecting that but you go to other programs and other spending and there's

00:23:06.740 never really been a deep dive into it. No, and I think that there needs to be a top to bottom

00:23:12.200 review of all of that spending from the pandemic period. And I mean, in addition, we've called for

00:23:17.020 a review of all the COVID-19 pandemic measures generally, right? So not just the spending,

00:23:25.120 but all the programming decisions, all the policy decisions taken during that time. We all know what

00:23:29.460 some of those are that were some of them very controversial to this day. But this was a lot

00:23:33.900 of money that went out the door. And I think a lot of people at the time said, okay, we're willing

00:23:38.240 to lower our standards because it's an emergency, but not indefinitely and not without a review

00:23:46.560 after the fact. And I still think that needs to happen. We're not talking about a little bit of

00:23:52.840 money here. We're talking about a significant amount of money. And if for no other reason,

00:23:56.340 then to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen again, because some of these problems

00:24:00.280 can't be attributed to the pandemic.

00:24:02.460 It's just, there's just poor mechanisms in place

00:24:05.260 to ensure that money can't get wasted this easily.

00:24:09.960 Aaron Woodrick is the Domestic Policy Program Director

00:24:13.200 over at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute.

00:24:15.140 Thank you very much, sir, as always, for your time.

00:24:17.660 Thanks a lot, Andrew.

00:24:18.660 All right, Aaron Woodrick, thank you, as always.

00:24:20.660 Good to talk to him.

00:24:21.460 Now, one thing that I wanted to bring up here,

00:24:24.080 I actually had this story on Friday

00:24:26.180 and just by virtue of the show schedule,

00:24:29.000 We'll have to wait a whole weekend to talk about it.

00:24:30.460 But it's been making a bit of waves around the internet, this story.

00:24:36.400 So the World Health Organization every year,

00:24:39.020 one thing that UN and WHO and all these bodies do,

00:24:42.340 they love creating a convention, a treaty, a framework, whatever it is.

00:24:46.960 And then every year they have the same conference to talk about it.

00:24:51.080 And they call it Conference of the Parties or COP.

00:24:53.880 Now, we usually hear COP in terms of the COP28-29 climate summits, but there's COP this, COP that.

00:25:02.140 Every one of these agreements has a COP.

00:25:04.680 Now, the World Health Organization, they're up to COP11 on their tobacco control conference.

00:25:10.240 And every year, countries send delegates from around the world.

00:25:13.320 They gather in a lovely location, spend a bunch of money, and they talk about ways that they can go back and restrict or end tobacco usage.

00:25:19.900 Now, I have never covered one of these things, but I was alerted to a presentation that the Canadian government delegate or one of the delegates, a Health Canada tobacco control czar, gave a few weeks back ahead of the COP11 summit this week in Panama.

00:25:37.280 but actually wrapped up on Saturday.

00:25:39.640 And I'm going to share a couple of clips here

00:25:41.860 because when I learned what was being floated

00:25:45.500 as reasonable tobacco control measures,

00:25:49.220 I was quite baffled that this had not received more coverage.

00:25:53.160 This is a very, very lovely lady.

00:25:55.080 Laura Smith is her name.

00:25:56.180 She's with Health Canada's Tobacco Control Directorate.

00:26:00.760 But this was her listing just some of the available ideas

00:26:03.960 that governments have.

00:26:05.440 so let's start to look at some of these examples under 2.1 measures relating to article 2.1 can

00:26:14.440 be quite diverse and we've already heard some examples here this morning but here are a few

00:26:19.840 more that could be in line with article 2.1 so smoke-free private spaces involve the regulation

00:26:27.100 of smoking in private places such as homes vehicles multi-unit housing government subsidized

00:26:33.960 housing, balconies, patios, and yards belonging to housing complexes. Another measure involves

00:26:40.640 designating specific stores to sell tobacco, such as selling tobacco products only in specific

00:26:46.360 specialist stores. So those were ideas that she says are consistent with 2.1, section 2.1 of the

00:26:56.120 framework for tobacco control. Now, to be clear, she is not saying that Canada is going to do those

00:27:01.980 things but what she is saying is that these are these are policies these are measures that are

00:27:07.320 consistent with what canada has agreed to do and this fed into a motion that canada introduced a

00:27:13.900 draft resolution that canada introduced which i as i understand it was passed was adopted by other

00:27:18.840 countries to strike a task force to come up with a list of these things so that we could have

00:27:24.220 countries do more of them so it's one of the ideas she's putting to countries to say hey you guys can

00:27:29.360 do this. We can all do this. Not allowing smoking in private homes, sometimes even in patios and

00:27:35.720 driveways is one of the examples. And then she also used this to transition into what are called

00:27:41.420 end game strategies. These are policies that governments could embrace to abolish smoking

00:27:46.520 altogether. Here were some of those that she listed as examples. So as I mentioned, there are

00:27:52.720 also some examples of measures that may align with article 2.1 and also relate close more closely to

00:27:59.920 end game strategies so one again we've heard already today about the introduction of tobacco

00:28:06.160 free generation legislation which involves restricting the acquisition of tobacco and

00:28:11.680 tobacco products to all those born after a specific year with the intent of phasing out

00:28:17.440 tobacco sales and preventing young people from starting to use tobacco. Another strategy also

00:28:23.920 includes phasing out tobacco sales and that's the sinking lid strategy which has an end date in

00:28:29.760 mind. This approach involves regularly reducing the amount of tobacco that is allowed to be sold

00:28:35.840 each year to achieve a specified level of commercial sales. Such a measure could also

00:28:41.600 be aided through continuously decreasing the number and density of tobacco retailers

00:28:47.520 overall retail availability would decrease thereby decreasing initiation and marketing exposure

00:28:54.160 and increasing long-term cessation

00:28:58.720 so a couple of ideas there number one is making it so that the age to smoke is let's say uh 21

00:29:05.600 this year and then next year it's 22 and next year it's 23 and then 24 and in 30 years you

00:29:12.480 need to be 54 years of age to buy tobacco products so i i can only imagine when you know tom's uh

00:29:20.080 70 year old friend has to like go into the convenience store uh because tom is uh 68 and

00:29:26.800 his friend uh you know can show his id and get cigarettes and then pass them off like you know

00:29:31.760 know the 19 year olds and the 16 year olds used to do now it's going to be uh sexagenarians and

00:29:36.460 septagenarians that are doing that in the back alley behind the variety store so i don't have

00:29:42.340 skin in the game here i am not a smoker i enjoy the odd cigar i have never smoked a cigarette in

00:29:47.280 my life i'm not bragging i'm just saying as a matter of fact i don't actually care for any

00:29:51.540 personal reasons about how available smoking is i must admit i like the idea of going into a

00:29:56.920 restaurant and not having to smell cigarette smoke, but I would firmly defend the right of

00:30:01.320 any restaurant if they wanted to in my libertarian utopia of saying this is a restaurant that allows

00:30:07.320 smoking. This is a restaurant that allows smokers. If you don't like it, you can go somewhere else.

00:30:12.080 So let's be real. Smoking and, well, smokers have become a group that it is very easy and very hip

00:30:19.660 and trendy to discriminate against and the last safe place that a smoker has is their own property

00:30:28.140 their own home now many smokers choose not to smoke in their home because they know it damages

00:30:32.460 the home it affects resale value they choose not to that's a choice they make but if you buy a

00:30:36.940 house you own a house it is yours the idea that any government bureaucrat would be entertaining

00:30:42.780 a ban a statutory regulation on your ability to do what you want in your own home with a substance

00:30:49.980 that by the way is still legal to purchase and consume at least for now is absolutely absurd

00:30:56.860 and people can raise questions about oh well it's not really enforceable oh well they're not really

00:31:01.660 talking about doing it but this is again this is a policy that they say is consistent with an

00:31:06.860 international convention that canada has adopted that canada has signed on to so this is when i

00:31:12.860 talk about why global treaties are so dangerous this is exactly what i mean because you have a

00:31:18.620 treaty that tries to pull a country in a direction into a domestic policy direction that it wouldn't

00:31:23.820 normally go to and and interestingly enough this i just shared the the clips from her presentation

00:31:29.900 you can watch the whole thing we link to it in our article over at true north i don't know

00:31:34.540 if they would extend this to vaping as well. Because I mean, if you want to vape in your own

00:31:40.940 home, who that cares? Again, I've never vaped. I know people who do, and I know people who swear

00:31:45.820 by it as a tool that helps them or has helped them mitigate smoking. I also know people who

00:31:50.680 have never smoked that have started vaping, and that was their introduction into tobacco. So I'm

00:31:55.700 not going to claim that this is 100% a positive. All I can share is the anecdotal, the anecdata

00:32:01.540 I've collected from having looked at this issue in the past.

00:32:04.960 But again, if they're going to put restrictions on smoking, it stands to reason they would

00:32:09.300 probably extend them to vaping as well, because many of the restrictions that already exist

00:32:13.440 on where you can smoke do apply to e-cigarettes and vaping.

00:32:17.020 So even your private home, even your private home is no longer available to you if some

00:32:23.920 of these bureaucrats have their way. 1.00

00:32:25.220 Now, on that panel discussion that Laura Smith from Health Canada did, there was a one

00:32:31.140 focus one woman from a European agency I think it was DG Sante and I it's like the you're one of the

00:32:38.400 European health agencies and she was saying well you know I know it's controversial we aren't moving

00:32:44.100 on it just yeah but she was almost like joking about it as though oh yeah people people take

00:32:48.440 issue with this but at a certain point I am confident that someone is going to in Canada

00:32:52.920 put this forward as a serious policy proposition so I can say I can do the old you heard it here

00:33:00.160 first line and this is i think where we get into the global compact for migration the pandemic

00:33:07.120 treaty that the world health organization is pushing a lot of these other international

00:33:10.920 organizations that have these agendas and everyone says oh well you know what's the big deal they can

00:33:15.080 talk about whatever they want abroad well these policies that we see in canada coming domestically

00:33:21.040 are oftentimes justified because a government wants to comply with a treaty it signed abroad

00:33:27.100 So it might even be worth, I should look up where COP12 is. It might even be worth going to

00:33:33.140 see this Tobacco Control Summit in action next time. I'm just imagining, again, I'm not a smoker,

00:33:38.820 but if I were to go to the Tobacco Control Summit, I'd have to just get a big giant

00:33:42.420 cartoonish-sized pipe and just smoke it outside the main door just to be a contrarian because

00:33:48.660 that's where we've gotten in the process of politics, just smoking to own the globalists

00:33:53.080 or something like that.

00:33:54.640 Kids, I'm not recommending you do that.

00:33:57.160 Anyway, I wanted to talk about this story

00:34:00.140 that came out kind of under the radar here

00:34:02.460 because CBC, you may recall,

00:34:03.960 was paying a lot of money in executive bonuses

00:34:06.520 while implementing and imposing layoffs

00:34:08.840 on its own people.

00:34:10.780 CBC, it's hard to believe

00:34:12.240 with their $1.4 billion a year subsidy

00:34:14.480 that they are ever going to be cash strapped,

00:34:16.520 but they talk about their budget

00:34:18.540 as though the sky is falling,

00:34:20.080 as though they're bleeding,

00:34:21.200 they're starved, they have no money.

00:34:23.080 and yet and yet courtesy of black locks reporter and then it was picked up by the western standard

00:34:30.360 catherine tate who is the ceo of cbc who makes i believe about half a million dollars a year

00:34:38.040 running cbc she claimed in the span of one year november 1st uh 2021 to november 1st 2023

00:34:45.000 according to ATIP records $119,000 in expenses for junkets these very glitzy foreign trips

00:34:55.200 including to Prague in the Czech Republic and Hollywood in California this was all being done

00:35:02.660 but well CBC was claiming a budgetary shortfall of about 125 million dollars and warning of employee

00:35:09.360 job cuts which we saw of course last year implemented now Catherine Tate was saying oh

00:35:14.400 yes, you know, we're facing rising costs of operations and productions. And let's be real,

00:35:18.780 her $119,000 junkets did not break the bank, but it certainly shows the imbalance of it. Now,

00:35:26.260 there are a lot of private media companies that are not doing this sort of stuff. And there are

00:35:30.500 a lot who are, but you know what, at least if they're doing it privately, it is shareholders

00:35:33.760 who are the ones ultimately responsible for assessing how well or poorly the company is

00:35:38.960 being managed. CBC is a crown corporation. We, the Canadian taxpayers, are the shareholders,

00:35:46.020 yet we don't really have a say. In fact, we don't have a say at all in how CBC manages its funds and

00:35:51.560 manages its assets. We're just supposed to sit back and accept that this is all happening. Now,

00:35:57.420 private media is hemorrhaging. Private media has had to get government bailouts to continue to run.

00:36:03.200 CBC just goes to the government hat in hand and generally gets what it wants. You may recall

00:36:08.380 Justin Trudeau famously giving CBC reporter David Cochran a poutine while proudly telling him

00:36:14.820 that a liberal government will always look out for CBC. Well, maybe Catherine Tate needed a 1.00

00:36:20.720 few more poutines to make up for the $119,000 she was spending on these business class travel 1.00

00:36:27.300 junkets. We did see last week mass layoffs from Bell. Bell has had a number of issues in the past.

00:36:35.100 they sold off a ton of radio stations now that's near and dear to my heart as a former talk radio

00:36:40.140 guy and they continued that sell-off last week uh shutting down or getting rid of a number of

00:36:46.060 stations including in small and medium markets and even their large uh operations their major

00:36:51.260 newsrooms in toronto have had to trim down significantly on staff in fact when you looked

00:36:56.220 at the list of jobs it was hard to imagine there being anyone left after cutting 4 800 jobs the

00:37:04.380 largest round of layoffs one article said in 30 years ending multiple shows now i have had a lot

00:37:12.060 of criticism about legacy media but i do not at all celebrate the decline of media i don't celebrate

00:37:18.700 4 800 people being out of work i i do think that when people try to cling to an old approach to

00:37:25.660 things that isn't working it's not healthy or constructive but i don't celebrate it and the

00:37:30.780 liberal government has wanted to make bell the scapegoat here justin trudeau had this to say on

00:37:36.220 friday on the bell canada layoffs of 4 800 people across the country your heritage minister accused

00:37:43.820 bell canada of breaking its promise to invest in local news after receiving 40 million dollars in

00:37:48.940 regulatory relief funding what is your view of that company's layoffs and what is your commitment

00:37:55.340 into future government support with that company?

00:37:59.240 I'm furious. 0.99

00:38:01.440 This is a garbage decision by a corporation that should know better. 0.99

00:38:06.540 We have seen over the past years journalistic outlets, radio stations, 0.98

00:38:12.320 small community newspapers bought up by corporate entities

00:38:16.320 who then lay off journalists, you know, change the offering,

00:38:23.140 the quality of offering to people,

00:38:24.740 And then when people don't watch as much or engage as much, the corporate entity says, oh, see, they're not profitable anymore.

00:38:31.300 We're going to sell them off.

00:38:33.340 This is the erosion, not just of journalism, of quality local journalism at a time where people need it more than ever given misinformation and disinformation.

00:38:44.740 But it's eroding our very democracy.

00:38:47.700 So, yeah, I'm pretty pissed off about what's just happened.

00:38:50.600 and look i i think that a lot of the criticism is warranted bell media cashed a lot of money

00:38:57.880 from the government and there was i think an expectation there that okay you're doing this

00:39:01.480 to protect jobs and journalism and then to turn around and say we're getting rid of this tv was

00:39:06.780 very hard hit uh is uh something that is going to sting but a lot of the problems that have

00:39:12.680 happened here have been because the government was getting into and meddling in this idea of

00:39:17.540 subsidizing media in the first place. When government starts to say, we're going to give

00:39:21.720 you this money in regulatory relief, we're going to mandate this much money from Facebook and Google,

00:39:26.640 all of a sudden you're creating this framework where government has an expectation that private

00:39:30.900 companies are operating in ways that they would not operate without government's hand being there.

00:39:36.940 And these companies are looking and saying, okay, yeah, this little pittance we're getting from

00:39:40.520 Google, courtesy of Bill C-18, isn't enough to overhaul or isn't enough to underwrite this

00:39:46.660 division of our operation that is not profitable. I've told my story on the show time and time again

00:39:53.820 about how bloated CBC is, about how many people they have doing jobs that even their private

00:40:00.460 sector competitors at CTV and Global do not have, let alone independent media startups like yours

00:40:06.180 truly and true north but the reason i bring that up is to say that these these operations have not

00:40:11.780 done in many ways the work that they've needed to do to downsize and trim down in a sustainable way

00:40:20.020 now again i don't celebrate people being out of work but you know what the folks that uh you know

00:40:25.460 run the printing presses are not as valuable as the folks that run the digital for newspapers a

00:40:30.660 lot of uh tv reporters have to shoot their own videos so there are not a lot of jobs for camera

00:40:35.860 operators compared to what they're usually where there used to be historically and at some larger

00:40:40.340 players they may be all of this is tragic for individuals but it is part of an evolution and

00:40:45.540 when you get government trying to delay the inevitable it is a recipe for exactly what

00:40:51.780 happened on friday so government i think has to take its hands off now that means that companies

00:40:57.860 will either sink or swim i have a hard time believing the doomsday scenario that there is

00:41:02.500 no business model for news i think the existence of organizations like true north proves there is

00:41:07.060 a business model for news but you have to be creative you have to be nimble and you cannot

00:41:11.700 rely on the state and you cannot rely on old practices now uh this is something that i think

00:41:18.420 the government desperately desperately needs to learn as a lesson we just have a few minutes left

00:41:23.060 in the show here but we'll bring in our friend chris sims from the canadian taxpayers federation

00:41:28.280 Chris, you know, I think there's a cautionary tale in all of this that government is delaying

00:41:32.960 the inevitable.

00:41:33.680 And when government gets involved in subsidizing, all of a sudden it adds a new dimension into

00:41:38.700 business decisions, which is that the government can turn around and point to Bell and say,

00:41:42.640 well, hang on, you don't have the right to do that because we've been giving you money.

00:41:46.260 So this is entirely inevitable in my view.

00:41:49.260 Yes, you must be shaking your head because I think you and I have had this warning conversation

00:41:53.840 now for the past five, six, maybe more years than this.

00:41:57.000 This is what happens when you start relying on the government for your payroll. It's even worse, Andrew, when you have a trade like journalism. We have a calling like journalism. So I know a lot of us who went to journalism school and some of us who didn't, who truly feel journalism is a calling, we want to speak truth to power. We want to comfort the afflicted. We want to find the answers to our W5 questions. Let that show rest in peace.

00:42:22.920 very sad to see that show go but then you become beholden to the very thing you're supposed to be

00:42:28.040 holding accountable the state and look what's happened um full disclosure i worked for ctv

00:42:35.240 for many years the vast majority of the time everything went really well so it's not a sour

00:42:40.600 grapes thing i'm appealing though to my former colleagues some of whom have lost their jobs

00:42:46.200 to take a look at this funding structure and realize what has happened

00:42:50.360 in that your mother corporation okay has taken money while saying unless you do this we're going

00:42:56.120 to cut jobs and news and they've turned around and done that anyway two weeks after i don't know if

00:43:01.400 you noted this earlier in your show andrew two weeks after bell let's talk right what worse

00:43:07.400 thing for mental health happens than losing your job very few things and it used to be a little

00:43:13.800 thing among the newsrooms it was kind of grim and macabre but they used to joke among the rank and

00:43:19.640 file workers of oh oh bell let's talk days coming up because they knew that's often when the company

00:43:25.400 would time layoff notices after right after i'm not joking so it's i've have care i've carried

00:43:32.840 that bag out of my drawer at my desk i've cleaned that out many times quite often leaving bell again

00:43:38.360 not fired but laid off downturned furloughed all those things and so we're in a massive change

00:43:45.400 right now when it comes to government okay we're seeing the state broadcaster cbc coming under

00:43:51.320 heavy fire for taking all this government money and still blowing canadians money on bonuses and

00:43:57.320 wastefulness with their ceo we're seeing more and more mainstream journalists going on government

00:44:02.760 payroll and we're seeing trust just take a nosedive people aren't watching they're not listening

00:44:07.720 they're tuning out of mainstream media and here on the other side hopefully we're seeing a rebirth

00:44:12.920 we're seeing a resurgence of independent journalism that's my hope is that we can get

00:44:17.240 shows like this becoming viewed more and more often yeah and and look i mean one of the things

00:44:23.000 that i would point out here for people is that there is money available in media you look at the

00:44:28.760 number of people that are making uh big money on substack you look at people that are i wouldn't

00:44:34.600 say making big money but people that are able to to make a decent living through uh podcasting and

00:44:40.120 through other work and it's different and and you know there there are questions that you can raise

00:44:44.680 about the journalistic rigor of all of that is you know barry weiss's substack uh to the same standard

00:44:49.800 as glenn greenwald's the intercept to the same standard as your local paper and and these are

00:44:54.360 questions that consumers i think that readers have to adjudicate for themselves so i i think

00:44:59.400 the problem here is that there's been a lot of coasting on legacy credentials that have been

00:45:04.600 taking place where we are the baseline we are the benchmark we are the gold standard and

00:45:09.720 that i think there's a bit been a bit of denial there which has contributed to where we are

00:45:13.960 yes yes and it's hard because i've been back and forth i've done mainstream media i've done

00:45:20.760 kind of this mix of independent and mainstream which was sun news network which has given birth

00:45:24.920 to a lot of different new independent shows and so i've been through that rigmarole and i've been

00:45:30.280 through the agony of losing your job having your network shut down crtc getting involved all that

00:45:35.720 stuff happening and so again my hope is that both through okay here's one thing i think we need to

00:45:42.360 take a long hard look at the clubs that are journalists within capital cities okay that

00:45:48.840 includes the parliamentary press gallery of which i was a member for many years we need to break up

00:45:53.800 those cool kids clubs because it causes groupthink okay it makes them think that number one they all

00:46:00.120 need to say the same thing and ask the same and write questions and if you don't you're not a

00:46:05.400 cool kid okay because you get peer pressure there two it kind of insulates them from the realities

00:46:12.280 and the storms of what is going on in the rest of the media world and it makes them start thinking

00:46:17.960 that they don't need to change and that they don't need to alter their formats and they don't need to

00:46:22.120 change their command structure and they do they clearly do and that going to government is not

00:46:27.960 going to help them it's not going to save them uh pierre polyev just addressed a lot of this

00:46:32.840 conservative leader opposition leader addressed a lot of this in the last press conference he just

00:46:37.000 did on arrive can and he held forth on the problem of the government handing over millions of dollars

00:46:43.960 to the media yet the media turning around and axing people's jobs anyway and this is not cbc

00:46:50.920 again i can't believe we're having this conversation this is supposedly private media corporations so

00:46:56.200 i can see all of this kind of coming to a pointy end within the next year or so i think you're

00:47:01.880 going to see a big a big shake up yeah very well said we'll have you back on next week as always

00:47:07.800 although it's family day in ontario so next monday so we'll have to can we get you on next tuesday

00:47:12.920 i can do monday or tuesday my kids can wait they're good well i'm not doing monday so

00:47:17.400 you'll be here wondering where the show is uh to introduce you but we'll figure it out chris

00:47:22.440 sims from the canadian taxpayers federation always a pleasure chris thanks for coming on

00:47:26.360 likewise thanks andrew all right yeah i forget how many provinces do family day because we do

00:47:31.400 i'm just looking at my calendar here so i think it's it's family day in alberta bc and ontario

00:47:39.240 and it is nova scotia heritage day it's islander day in prince edward island and it's louis real

00:47:45.880 day in manitoba which i don't approve of for reasons i may share with you next week if i

00:47:50.960 decide to unload on that but nevertheless yeah no no louis real day we don't do on the andrew

00:47:56.240 lotten show but sean is just happy he has monday off so uh sean whether you're doing louis real

00:48:00.760 day or islander day or family day no you don't need to come to work next monday so all right

00:48:05.100 that does it for us for today we will be back in uh 23 hours and uh 50 minutes no 23 hours and 10

00:48:11.320 minutes here on The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show. Thank you, God bless,

00:48:16.240 and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:48:20.260 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:48:41.320 We'll be right back.

Juno News - February 12, 2024

Auditor General blasts ArriveCan waste and mismanagement

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