00:02:40.840Because I know like this much, she knows this much.
00:02:43.360So 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.
00:02:51.620But nevertheless, I hope that all the teams had fun. Isn't that what you say? I hope that all the teams enjoyed themselves.
00:02:58.680It was it was a good game. It was a bit of a nail biter.
00:03:01.140My 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,
00:03:12.900which right now is only the Conservatives, run on the most populist policy imaginable,
00:03:18.880which would be a policy saying that the CRTC is banning its requirement of SIM subbing. Do you
00:03:26.440know what SIM subbing is? It is when the Canadian outlets, news like outlets like CTV, have to sub
00:03:33.600in their crappy Canadian feeds when you're trying to watch CBS. So you don't get to watch the
00:03:39.060American Super Bowl ads, you have to watch, you know, some like weird Southern Ontario technical
00:03:43.880colleges commercial instead of some star-studded American Super Bowl ad. So that would be like a
00:03:49.960sports policy I could get behind. Let Canadians watch the American Super Bowl ads. Although I
00:03:55.420shared this and one response just said, or how about we just abolish the CRTC altogether, which
00:04:00.700is also an acceptable populist policy that a party may wish to run on. So perhaps that can be the one
00:04:07.180area of overlap between me and the sports fans, which is ending the ban on seeing American football
00:04:12.860ads. Nevertheless, hope you had a wonderful weekend. Not as good for the Liberal government
00:04:18.760right now. We'll get in a few moments time to the Auditor General's report. She has come out with
00:04:25.200what I would call a scathing indictment of the Liberal government's handling of this file. It's
00:04:31.600boondoggle that's even more expensive than we had previously understood and that is insofar as she
00:04:37.520was able to figure it out because it was so mismanaged and the records were so poorly kept
00:04:42.160the auditor general doesn't even know exactly how much was spent on the arrive can app but i
00:04:48.400wanted to begin by talking about this horrendous display that took place over the weekend i'll
00:04:53.200share a clip of it this was a an attempted arson i mean successful in the sense that there was
00:04:59.040actually vandalism, but an attempted arson against a Catholic church in Regina, Saskatchewan.
00:05:29.040that was horrendous and i apologize about the profanity there we
00:05:58.800usually try to censor that out for the nice virgin ears that I know tune into this show. But
00:06:03.100in this particular context, we made an exception because I think it's important to see how vile
00:06:08.320these people are as they sit there callously and try to burn down a Catholic church. Now,
00:06:15.040church burnings in Canada are not anomalous. There have been dozens of graffitis, attempted arsons,
00:06:21.940in many cases, successful arsons that have taken place, all going back with alarming frequency to
00:06:28.000the announcement of unmarked graves at Kamloops, which triggered a process by which people take
00:06:35.920out their anger on Christianity against churches that have had nothing to do with anything
00:06:41.200to do with anything. And that is worded deliberately in that way because this is
00:06:46.200inexplicable and absolutely tragic. Now, you'd think that we could all as a society get around
00:06:52.320and say, okay, I oppose burning churches. I oppose burning mosques. I oppose burning synagogues. I
00:06:57.740oppose vandalizing these institutions. And yet there is radio silence from many people in media
00:07:04.500and the political establishment when it is a Christian church that is targeted. Now take for
00:07:09.600example that church in Regina. There has been a comment condemning it from conservative leader
00:07:14.240Pierre Polyev. I checked just a moment ago, absolutely no response whatsoever from Prime
00:07:20.760Minister Justin Trudeau. And you may think, okay, well he can't respond to just anything and
00:07:24.340everything that happens. Well, whenever something has happened to do with a mosque or many cases a
00:07:29.620synagogue, Justin Trudeau cannot denounce it quickly enough. This was one such denunciation
00:07:35.780when there were threats against a mosque. I want to start this morning by addressing the
00:07:41.260unacceptable threats that were sent to a Toronto mosque over the weekend. Islamophobia and right
00:07:47.740wing extremism have no place in our country or our communities. We must always stand united
00:07:54.000against hate or intolerance of any kind. No issue whatsoever with that statement. There was a threat
00:08:02.280it was reported on in the news. Justin Trudeau says absolutely we denounced this 20 seconds that
00:08:07.120was all it took. There was also a case a few years ago you may recall when a young school girl in
00:08:12.580Toronto, a hijab wearing Muslim claimed that she was targeted because of her Muslim faith by
00:08:19.120someone. And this was a case that was very quickly questioned by a lot of people. There were a lot
00:08:26.180of things that did not add up about this, but that didn't start, that didn't stop the unsubstantiated
00:08:31.300allegation from making waves around the country. And again, warranting a denunciation from Justin
00:08:36.600Trudeau. My heart goes out to the young girl who was attacked seemingly for her religion.
00:08:44.960I can't imagine how afraid she must have been. Is there a danger in responding so quickly and
00:08:50.540seizing upon these events as the symbols of our tolerance? Unfortunately, we've seen a pattern
00:08:56.200over the past months of increased hate crimes against religious minorities, particularly
00:09:04.600particularly against young women of racialized backgrounds.
00:09:13.460This is something that we need to take very, very, very seriously.
00:09:17.460And the pattern and the trend lines that we're seeing is something that,
00:09:22.540as you pointed out, is one of those warning signs around increased intolerance
00:09:27.900and reminding people that we are a country that defends freedom of religion,
00:09:33.020that defends freedom of expression, that defends people's rights to go to school and not be
00:09:40.140fearful or harassed is fundamental to who we are.
00:09:45.500The second part of that quote was after Toronto police had come out and said,
00:09:50.220yeah, this didn't really happen. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there was evidence
00:09:54.620suggesting it was untrue. But he does the old Dan Rather fake but accurate thing there where he says,
00:10:00.780Oh, well, yes, but there, I mean, it could have been true.
00:10:03.620All of these other things have happened.
00:10:05.120There's been an alarming, and we always stand up for this.
00:10:07.140But again, why are you silent when a church is burned?
00:10:11.720Now, there is a subset of people in this country, delusional radicals,
00:10:16.780like the burn-it-all-down lady, that are celebrating the burning down of churches.
00:10:22.200I think Jerry Butts had made, if I'm recalling correctly,
00:10:25.180a comment seemingly justifying the burning of churches.
00:10:29.360I have to look up the exact wording of it, but it was something that I recall being really,
00:10:35.000really icky and going down that road of justifying or coming close to it.
00:10:39.500And when I point that out, this is not a contest.
00:10:43.580I'm not saying that Justin Trudeau should not condemn acts of violence or threats or
00:10:48.560graffiti and vandalism against Muslims, against Jews.
00:18:14.060And there's a bunch of layers, I would say, with respect to procurement that are the problem.
00:18:17.600I mean, you do have this sort of basic ignorance of the rules.
00:18:21.640You have people issuing, you know, sole source contracts when they should be open to competitive bids.
00:18:26.860You 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.
00:18:34.920And I'm thinking particularly for military procurement.
00:18:37.420You have government trying to fiddle with making sure that, well, they got to be made in Canada.
00:18:40.620They have to create a certain number of jobs in this region.
00:18:43.400And 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.
00:18:58.340I mean, these are just eye-watering sums of money.
00:19:01.480And procurement in this country is badly, badly broken.
00:19:04.320There needs to be a real top-to-bottom rethink about how we can ensure this process is fair, it's competitive.
00:19:10.620and it is immune from political interference.
00:19:14.580Yeah, and I think that is where we get to the point here
00:19:18.100of whether this was a bureaucracy run amok
00:19:21.820or is this something that is laid at Justin Trudeau's feet.
00:19:25.280Now, there's an argument that Justin Trudeau has to own
00:19:27.860what the bureaucracy does when they're implementing his strategies,
00:19:30.380but what's your read on that from what's come out so far?
00:19:33.860Well, they certainly, as you mentioned,
00:19:36.480they're trying to barge pull away from this.
00:19:38.200And I mean, part of that is just basic politics.
00:19:39.960This 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.
00:19:47.200I mean, you are responsible at the political level for the mistakes of the department underneath you.
00:19:51.780And that's one of the questions that I have here.
00:19:53.520The money's already gone, and that's unfortunate, but will there be any consequences?
00:20:00.340Is any minister going to resign for this?
00:20:02.240I 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.
00:20:11.920There would be some consequence to failure or stealing or mismanagement.
00:20:17.920We 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.
00:20:27.680And they sort of, that's almost worse doing it that way, Andrew, because it deprives them of any meaning.
00:20:32.940What is the point in saying you take responsibility if there's just no consequence other than having to say the words?
00:20:37.940Yeah, 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.
00:20:45.740But just to compare the numbers here, the ad scam was, I think, about $2 million in contracts without a proper bidding system.
00:20:53.960With ArriveCAN, we're talking about something that went up to $60 million.
00:21:18.180It's just the egregiousness of how it's done.
00:21:20.320And 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.
00:21:37.060So 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.
00:21:45.640So explain to me what could come of this.
00:21:48.360I mean, obviously, the Conservatives are making a bit of hay about this, as I think is reasonable enough to do.
00:21:53.720The 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.
00:22:09.000Yeah, I mean, I don't see anybody resigning.
00:22:11.340And 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.
00:22:22.220I just don't see that happening in a lot of cases.
00:22:26.180You 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.
00:22:34.540And I unfortunately think that there's not a non-zero chance that that's what's going to happen here.
00:22:40.520So one thing that I would be very curious about it as well to get your take on it is
00:22:45.540whether this you think is the tip of the iceberg because you alluded earlier to this is just one
00:22:50.740aspect of pandemic spending. We had billions and billions of dollars going out the door.
00:22:56.980We've already seen with CERB there were a lot of people that got it that didn't have to. CRA has
00:23:02.140had mixed success in collecting that but you go to other programs and other spending and there's
00:23:06.740never really been a deep dive into it. No, and I think that there needs to be a top to bottom
00:23:12.200review of all of that spending from the pandemic period. And I mean, in addition, we've called for
00:23:17.020a review of all the COVID-19 pandemic measures generally, right? So not just the spending,
00:23:25.120but all the programming decisions, all the policy decisions taken during that time. We all know what
00:23:29.460some of those are that were some of them very controversial to this day. But this was a lot
00:23:33.900of money that went out the door. And I think a lot of people at the time said, okay, we're willing
00:23:38.240to lower our standards because it's an emergency, but not indefinitely and not without a review
00:23:46.560after the fact. And I still think that needs to happen. We're not talking about a little bit of
00:23:52.840money here. We're talking about a significant amount of money. And if for no other reason,
00:23:56.340then to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen again, because some of these problems
00:24:26.180and just by virtue of the show schedule,
00:24:29.000We'll have to wait a whole weekend to talk about it.
00:24:30.460But it's been making a bit of waves around the internet, this story.
00:24:36.400So the World Health Organization every year,
00:24:39.020one thing that UN and WHO and all these bodies do,
00:24:42.340they love creating a convention, a treaty, a framework, whatever it is.
00:24:46.960And then every year they have the same conference to talk about it.
00:24:51.080And they call it Conference of the Parties or COP.
00:24:53.880Now, we usually hear COP in terms of the COP28-29 climate summits, but there's COP this, COP that.
00:25:02.140Every one of these agreements has a COP.
00:25:04.680Now, the World Health Organization, they're up to COP11 on their tobacco control conference.
00:25:10.240And every year, countries send delegates from around the world.
00:25:13.320They 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.
00:25:19.900Now, 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.
00:38:33.340This 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.
00:41:33.680And when government gets involved in subsidizing, all of a sudden it adds a new dimension into
00:41:38.700business decisions, which is that the government can turn around and point to Bell and say,
00:41:42.640well, hang on, you don't have the right to do that because we've been giving you money.
00:41:46.260So this is entirely inevitable in my view.
00:41:49.260Yes, you must be shaking your head because I think you and I have had this warning conversation
00:41:53.840now for the past five, six, maybe more years than this.
00:41:57.000This 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.
00:42:22.920very sad to see that show go but then you become beholden to the very thing you're supposed to be
00:42:28.040holding accountable the state and look what's happened um full disclosure i worked for ctv
00:42:35.240for many years the vast majority of the time everything went really well so it's not a sour
00:42:40.600grapes thing i'm appealing though to my former colleagues some of whom have lost their jobs
00:42:46.200to take a look at this funding structure and realize what has happened
00:42:50.360in that your mother corporation okay has taken money while saying unless you do this we're going
00:42:56.120to cut jobs and news and they've turned around and done that anyway two weeks after i don't know if
00:43:01.400you noted this earlier in your show andrew two weeks after bell let's talk right what worse
00:43:07.400thing for mental health happens than losing your job very few things and it used to be a little
00:43:13.800thing among the newsrooms it was kind of grim and macabre but they used to joke among the rank and
00:43:19.640file workers of oh oh bell let's talk days coming up because they knew that's often when the company
00:43:25.400would time layoff notices after right after i'm not joking so it's i've have care i've carried
00:43:32.840that bag out of my drawer at my desk i've cleaned that out many times quite often leaving bell again
00:43:38.360not fired but laid off downturned furloughed all those things and so we're in a massive change
00:43:45.400right now when it comes to government okay we're seeing the state broadcaster cbc coming under
00:43:51.320heavy fire for taking all this government money and still blowing canadians money on bonuses and
00:43:57.320wastefulness with their ceo we're seeing more and more mainstream journalists going on government
00:44:02.760payroll and we're seeing trust just take a nosedive people aren't watching they're not listening
00:44:07.720they're tuning out of mainstream media and here on the other side hopefully we're seeing a rebirth
00:44:12.920we're seeing a resurgence of independent journalism that's my hope is that we can get
00:44:17.240shows like this becoming viewed more and more often yeah and and look i mean one of the things
00:44:23.000that i would point out here for people is that there is money available in media you look at the
00:44:28.760number of people that are making uh big money on substack you look at people that are i wouldn't
00:44:34.600say making big money but people that are able to to make a decent living through uh podcasting and
00:44:40.120through other work and it's different and and you know there there are questions that you can raise
00:44:44.680about the journalistic rigor of all of that is you know barry weiss's substack uh to the same standard
00:44:49.800as glenn greenwald's the intercept to the same standard as your local paper and and these are
00:44:54.360questions that consumers i think that readers have to adjudicate for themselves so i i think
00:44:59.400the problem here is that there's been a lot of coasting on legacy credentials that have been
00:45:04.600taking place where we are the baseline we are the benchmark we are the gold standard and
00:45:09.720that i think there's a bit been a bit of denial there which has contributed to where we are
00:45:13.960yes yes and it's hard because i've been back and forth i've done mainstream media i've done
00:45:20.760kind of this mix of independent and mainstream which was sun news network which has given birth
00:45:24.920to a lot of different new independent shows and so i've been through that rigmarole and i've been
00:45:30.280through the agony of losing your job having your network shut down crtc getting involved all that
00:45:35.720stuff happening and so again my hope is that both through okay here's one thing i think we need to
00:45:42.360take a long hard look at the clubs that are journalists within capital cities okay that
00:45:48.840includes the parliamentary press gallery of which i was a member for many years we need to break up
00:45:53.800those cool kids clubs because it causes groupthink okay it makes them think that number one they all
00:46:00.120need to say the same thing and ask the same and write questions and if you don't you're not a
00:46:05.400cool kid okay because you get peer pressure there two it kind of insulates them from the realities
00:46:12.280and the storms of what is going on in the rest of the media world and it makes them start thinking
00:46:17.960that they don't need to change and that they don't need to alter their formats and they don't need to
00:46:22.120change their command structure and they do they clearly do and that going to government is not
00:46:27.960going to help them it's not going to save them uh pierre polyev just addressed a lot of this
00:46:32.840conservative leader opposition leader addressed a lot of this in the last press conference he just
00:46:37.000did on arrive can and he held forth on the problem of the government handing over millions of dollars
00:46:43.960to the media yet the media turning around and axing people's jobs anyway and this is not cbc
00:46:50.920again i can't believe we're having this conversation this is supposedly private media corporations so
00:46:56.200i can see all of this kind of coming to a pointy end within the next year or so i think you're
00:47:01.880going to see a big a big shake up yeah very well said we'll have you back on next week as always
00:47:07.800although it's family day in ontario so next monday so we'll have to can we get you on next tuesday
00:47:12.920i can do monday or tuesday my kids can wait they're good well i'm not doing monday so
00:47:17.400you'll be here wondering where the show is uh to introduce you but we'll figure it out chris
00:47:22.440sims from the canadian taxpayers federation always a pleasure chris thanks for coming on
00:47:26.360likewise thanks andrew all right yeah i forget how many provinces do family day because we do
00:47:31.400i'm just looking at my calendar here so i think it's it's family day in alberta bc and ontario
00:47:39.240and it is nova scotia heritage day it's islander day in prince edward island and it's louis real
00:47:45.880day in manitoba which i don't approve of for reasons i may share with you next week if i
00:47:50.960decide to unload on that but nevertheless yeah no no louis real day we don't do on the andrew
00:47:56.240lotten show but sean is just happy he has monday off so uh sean whether you're doing louis real
00:48:00.760day or islander day or family day no you don't need to come to work next monday so all right
00:48:05.100that does it for us for today we will be back in uh 23 hours and uh 50 minutes no 23 hours and 10
00:48:11.320minutes here on The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show. Thank you, God bless,
00:48:16.240and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:48:20.260Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.