Juno News - Aviation employees sue government over vaccine mandate

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

00:00:05.040 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:11.980 Hey everyone, welcome to the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:18.840 It is Friday and hot off the presses, literally this fell into my lap like five minutes before I went on air.

00:00:28.700 This is air, right?

00:00:29.700 I don't know what the technical term is.

00:00:31.800 But five minutes before, I sat down in the chair and decided to...

00:00:35.340 I mean, I was already in the chair, but you know what I mean.

00:00:37.300 So you may have heard this week we've been covering the case of the London Public Library

00:00:43.180 in my city, where I am right now, deciding to ban Joanna Williams,

00:00:48.400 the tremendous British author and advocate.

00:00:51.000 She's written a number of books on academia, on wokeness, on free speech.

00:00:55.480 And the London Public Library would not allow her to broadcast or to present, to lecture in its theater, its main theater at the downtown branch of the library.

00:01:06.680 They said that the content was likely to violate library policies.

00:01:10.700 Having her there would go against like the workplace harassment and sexual harassment policies and all that. 0.99

00:01:16.120 She was going to be there at the invitation of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship,

00:01:21.840 whose president, Mark Mercer, I spoke to, I think it was on Monday or Tuesday.

00:01:26.440 But I just found out today that B'nai B'rith Canada,

00:01:31.240 which is a Jewish advocacy group,

00:01:33.200 is calling on the library to cancel a speaker

00:01:37.060 who is allowed to perform in the very same theater.

00:01:41.860 The comedian, supposedly, goes by the name of Amir Zar.

00:01:48.140 He is doing a three-city tour of Canada.

00:01:51.420 He's from the United States. He's doing Montreal today.

00:01:54.740 Tomorrow, he's going to be in London, Ontario, at the Wolf Performance Hall.

00:01:59.040 Now, again, I like comedy. I like comedians.

00:02:02.640 I've never heard Amir Tsar's performance.

00:02:05.740 So I don't know if this is part of his act or if this is just other stuff, he says.

00:02:10.380 But according to Bnei Brif, he has glorified the unrepentant terrorist, Leila Khaled,

00:02:17.220 and has praised the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

00:02:21.840 which nothing says comedy, like going on stage and talking about how great Hamas and Hezbollah are.

00:02:28.680 And then he also has, according to B'nai B'rith, a history of engaging in anti-Semitic rhetoric and support for terrorists.

00:02:37.540 Now, I should say that in this, they have not listed every single thing he said,

00:02:42.440 but I do know that he has praised Leila Khaled.

00:02:44.760 He called her his valentine, which is a weird thing to say about terrorists,

00:02:50.780 although, you know, to each their own.

00:02:53.740 He has, and Khaled, by the way, is a member of a designated terrorist group

00:02:58.600 who participated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 in 1969,

00:03:04.640 LL Flight 219 in 1970, or sorry, the terrorist group did,

00:03:10.040 a popular front for the liberation of Palestine.

00:03:12.940 And Khaled has advocated in favor of using children in terrorist activities.

00:03:17.740 Now, this is all just guilt by association.

00:03:20.080 Let's talk about Mr. Tsar himself, who has called the Zionist movement white supremacist,

00:03:27.120 says Israel is based on Jewish supremacy,

00:03:30.700 and says Israeli activists should stop, or no, anti-Israel activists should stop condemning anti-Semitism.

00:03:38.440 So this guy is performing tomorrow at the very library

00:03:43.560 that thought Joanna Williams' talk on free speech and sex and gender

00:03:48.480 was just a little too controversial. 0.96

00:03:50.880 So you can praise Palestinian terrorists 1.00

00:03:53.480 and that's all a fair game within library policy,

00:03:56.620 but you can't say,

00:03:57.640 you know, I think that biological sex is real.

00:04:00.580 Oh, that's just too controversial.

00:04:02.560 You can't do that.

00:04:03.340 No, no, no.

00:04:03.900 Stick to the terrorism, Joanna Williams, 0.63

00:04:05.880 and you would have been fine.

00:04:06.860 I mean, rookie mistake on your part.

00:04:09.140 So I'm actually going to,

00:04:11.760 not to the library

00:04:12.600 because we're not allowed at the library,

00:04:13.800 but I'm going to the Delta Hotel in London this afternoon

00:04:17.040 where I'm going to be introducing Joanna Williams in her rescheduled talk,

00:04:22.500 her relocated talk this evening on sex, gender, and the limits of free speech.

00:04:27.520 So I might have to give her the advice in person

00:04:29.600 that she should have stuck to condemning Israel, and she would have been fine. 0.94

00:04:33.380 Now, I will say, first and foremost,

00:04:35.720 I do not support what B'nai B'rith is saying here about Amir Tsar to cancel him.

00:04:41.180 My belief on free speech is that the more, the merrier.

00:04:43.600 And if someone says vile things, you either ignore them or you challenge them.

00:04:47.760 But if you are going to get into the censorship business, which the London Public Library has decided to do,

00:04:54.200 you really have to tell people how you find this guy less problematic than Joanna Williams.

00:05:01.340 Because the problem with censorship is that it's the race to the bottom,

00:05:04.100 is that when you decide to get into that, when you decide to enter the culture war,

00:05:08.920 you ultimately will open yourself up to people saying,

00:05:11.680 why not this? Why not this? Why not this? And the easiest way to do it is the way that I believe

00:05:17.300 is morally correct, which is to sit back and say, if you are breaking the law, you are not allowed

00:05:22.220 in here. If you are advocating for breaking the law, you are not allowed in here. But even that

00:05:28.420 is not entirely foolproof. I once went to, at this very library, a talk delivered by a photographer

00:05:35.420 who takes pictures of abandoned buildings, which I have done myself as well. And he's telling people

00:05:40.300 about these pictures he's taken,

00:05:42.240 which he had to break the law to do.

00:05:44.180 He had to trespass to do,

00:05:45.360 and the library was fine with that.

00:05:47.620 Now, again, I'm not making a comparison

00:05:49.460 between these two things.

00:05:51.060 I'm just saying that if you talk about

00:05:52.420 the exchange of ideas,

00:05:54.260 you have to take a very broad view of free speech

00:05:57.840 and a broad view of discourse,

00:05:59.580 which the library has not done.

00:06:01.340 And here's an example of them falling victim

00:06:03.120 to their own protocols.

00:06:05.320 So I don't believe they will cancel it.

00:06:07.100 I believe they're going to be entirely okay with this,

00:06:09.580 but I am, you better believe, going to ask them how they rationalized this

00:06:13.600 when Joanna Williams was seen as too controversial.

00:06:17.420 Let's shift gears a little bit.

00:06:18.740 Going to be talking in just about seven minutes or so with Greg Hill,

00:06:22.980 who is a Canadian pilot and also the founder or one of the directors of Free to Fly Canada,

00:06:29.440 which has launched a proposed class action lawsuit against Transport Canada

00:06:33.720 over the vaccine mandate in the aviation sector.

00:06:37.340 So we'll talk to Greg about that shortly.

00:06:39.580 But let me just, for a couple of moments here, follow up on my interview Wednesday with People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier, who is also running as the by-election candidate in Portage-Lisker.

00:06:53.420 So speaking to Maxime Bernier, we spoke about a number of things, but right out of the gate, he started talking about his policy on abortion, which he had unveiled the morning before the interview.

00:07:04.480 And it is, if you've forgotten or didn't listen to that interview,

00:07:07.200 a policy that basically says if he gets elected,

00:07:10.020 he's going to introduce a bill to ban abortion at 24 weeks,

00:07:13.720 to ban late-term abortion, which, as we discussed,

00:07:16.600 it does happen in Canada.

00:07:18.540 It's very, very rare.

00:07:20.480 It's not where the majority of abortions take place, 0.99

00:07:23.260 but it is a thing.

00:07:24.320 And Canada, as many of you may or may not know,

00:07:27.000 is one of just like two or three countries in the world

00:07:29.580 that does not have any legal restriction on abortion whatsoever.

00:07:33.600 as far as a point in gestation.

00:07:36.020 So that was the context of it.

00:07:37.180 He brought it up and I absolutely was happy

00:07:39.740 talking to him about it because he is a guy

00:07:41.680 who has positioned himself in the past

00:07:43.400 on this issue and others more as a libertarian.

00:07:46.700 And I'm a libertarian, I'm pro-life.

00:07:49.060 Most libertarians are not pro-life.

00:07:51.160 So I thought it was a fair question to ask

00:07:53.100 how he's approaching this issue,

00:07:55.220 what the lens through which he views abortion is.

00:07:58.720 And I asked point blank, one of my first questions,

00:08:00.900 are you pro-choice or pro-life?

00:08:02.720 Take a look.

00:08:03.600 Since you bring up the abortion issue, I wanted to get to that with you anyway. Let me just first contextualize this for people. Are you pro-life or are you pro-choice?

00:08:12.500 You know, I'm a guy that wants to have a debate, and that's why I'm tabling that legislation.

00:08:20.500 I said we must do the first step, Andrew. We didn't have any legislation.

00:08:24.500 We are the only country, all the European countries have legislation on abortion,

00:08:29.500 and usually it's illegal to have an abortion the second trimester. 1.00

00:08:35.500 In my legislation, I'm saying we must end the late-term abortion.

00:08:40.500 It must be illegal for a woman to have an abortion after six months. 1.00

00:08:46.340 Yeah, but again, it was a pretty direct question.

00:08:48.800 Are you pro-life or are you pro-choice, personally?

00:08:51.100 I would be very direct, Andrew.

00:08:52.880 I won't answer your question.

00:08:54.560 I won't, because the reality is this bill is there,

00:08:58.200 and the goal is to end late-term abortion.

00:09:01.480 And I will answer your question by that answer.

00:09:05.740 Ideally, it would be great to have a legislation

00:09:08.280 that will ban abortion at the second trimester

00:09:11.140 like all civilized countries.

00:09:13.480 It's time for Canada to be part of the civilized world.

00:09:17.560 So that exchange ended up taking on

00:09:21.060 a bit of a life of its own on Twitter.

00:09:23.580 I had a lot of conservative,

00:09:25.640 like capital C conservatives on Twitter 0.80

00:09:27.980 saying that, oh, Maxime Bernier is a grifter.

00:09:30.180 He's not actually pro-life at all.

00:09:32.960 And I had PPC activists that said,

00:09:35.060 oh, you know, it's great that he's done this.

00:09:36.500 And I also had PPC activists that were turning on me, saying that it was a gotcha question, it was unfair, and I was being oversimplistic.

00:09:44.320 One of them was Randy Hillier, who used to be a tremendously relevant and intelligent figure in politics, who unfortunately now is neither.

00:09:53.740 But Randy Hillier was coming after me, saying that I was, you know, asking, like, it was a mainstream media question.

00:10:01.120 It was a hatch, or what was it, a hatchet job, a hack job, whatever it was.

00:10:06.160 And the thing about Randy Hillier is that I was like,

00:10:09.900 okay, I'm going to get in on this and respond to it.

00:10:12.380 And I said, you know, asking if you're pro-life or pro-choice

00:10:14.960 should not be a difficult question for people.

00:10:18.120 And I think you have to be tremendously insecure about your preferred candidate

00:10:22.340 to think that that is an unfair question.

00:10:24.820 Maxime Bernier answered it.

00:10:25.960 He said, listen, I'm not going to give you an answer to that, and here's why.

00:10:29.700 And you can agree or disagree with what he said.

00:10:32.200 Maxime did not seem to take issue with the question as much as a lot of his supporters did.

00:10:36.960 But there still has been a little bit of criticism on this.

00:10:40.100 So I wanted to approach with you how I asked that question and why I asked that question.

00:10:46.080 Because you can say that an absolute free-for-all on abortion, which is what we have in Canada now, is wrong.

00:10:54.320 You can also say that an absolute 100% prohibition on abortion,

00:10:58.540 you know, even the morning after pill is not allowed, is also wrong.

00:11:02.620 You can say that you believe that the correct answer is somewhere in between there.

00:11:07.440 And I think that's a completely legitimate approach.

00:11:10.320 Even a lot of pro-life advocates I know would say,

00:11:13.320 yeah, okay, birth control is fine and the morning after pill is fine.

00:11:16.940 They're more concerned about when a, again, I don't want to get into the science of it,

00:11:21.420 but because I'm going to say like the wrong word and I'll just, it'll be like a viral moment for

00:11:24.560 all the wrong reasons, but they focus on when it is a life. And the reason I ask, are you pro-choice

00:11:29.880 or pro-life is not because I'm asking, do you believe in one extreme or the other? I'm asking

00:11:35.580 what the lens through which you view that issue is. How do you approach this subject? Do you

00:11:42.920 view it as a child welfare issue, which is what people who are pro-life do? Or do you view it as

00:11:48.440 a women's rights bodily autonomy issue, which is what pro-choice activists do. And I agree. I mean,

00:11:53.800 the pro-life pro-choice dichotomy is one that is not necessarily prescriptive. You can be pro-life

00:11:59.400 who believes that an incremental approach is important. You can be pro-choice who believes

00:12:03.620 that late-term abortion is terrible. But it was a completely fair question, and I stand by it. 0.99

00:12:08.800 And a lot of the people that think it's a gotcha question are people that are just so partisan

00:12:12.840 that they think any challenging question

00:12:15.580 is some affront against the person

00:12:18.700 to whom it's being asked.

00:12:20.460 I've talked to Pierre Paliyev about abortion

00:12:23.040 and I shared his answer

00:12:24.440 and I've criticized his answer

00:12:26.160 and we can dig that clip up

00:12:27.480 and I should say next week

00:12:28.860 I'm going to be talking to

00:12:29.820 the conservative candidate Brandon Leslie

00:12:32.500 and we'll talk about again

00:12:33.660 some of the other themes of the race

00:12:34.960 and we will talk about this issue as well.

00:12:37.480 I think he's on the show on Wednesday

00:12:39.120 if I'm not mistaken

00:12:41.080 But again, I mean, next week he is going to be on, Brandon Leslie, the conservative candidate.

00:12:46.600 So all of that is to say it's a very reasonable question to ask when a politician themselves brings up the abortion issue, which Maxime Bernier did in that interview and has in the campaign.

00:12:59.700 So if you don't like it, I mean, tough luck.

00:13:01.680 I'm not really apologizing for it or doing anything of the sort.

00:13:04.440 But I think that it is important that we understand that how people approach issues is just as important, if not more important, than where they land on with those specific issues.

00:13:15.240 And look, I understand the allure of what the PPC is promising here.

00:13:19.440 Because if you are pro-life, you have for years been told by capital C conservative politicians who identify as pro-life that this is just an untouchable issue that we shouldn't go anywhere near.

00:13:30.180 You have Andrew Scheer in 2019 saying, yes, I'm pro-life, but I'm not going to do anything about it.

00:13:35.020 And if you are pro-life and you do believe this is a child welfare issue, it's a tough one to sort of understand because you're like, well, hang on.

00:13:42.040 If you think this is a child that is at stake, why wouldn't you do?

00:13:46.180 Why are you doing nothing about it?

00:13:47.700 Like, how do you square those two things?

00:13:49.640 So political opportunism is a big part of the problem when you do this.

00:13:54.540 And I think that for someone like Maxime Bernier, who I think from his answer, you can tell is a pro-choice person generally, he is offering people more than a lot of pro-life politicians had.

00:14:06.460 So that's a calculation that individual voters can make.

00:14:09.360 But I think understanding, are you coming to this because you're pro-life?

00:14:12.580 Are you coming to this because you're pro-choice, but you think this is a reasonable compromise position, I think was fair ball.

00:14:18.540 He gave his answer, whether you like it or not, is up to you.

00:14:21.580 speaking of bodily autonomy i want to turn our attention to this proposed class action that's 0.63

00:14:27.960 been filed against the federal government specifically transport canada and it is a

00:14:33.520 proposed class action on the vaccine mandate for people in the aviation sector specifically which

00:14:40.480 was technically done under different orders than the general federally regulated workplace vaccine

00:14:46.700 mandate. But this was an order that meant flight attendants, pilots, other people working in this

00:14:52.600 industry would be terminated, would be suspended, would in some cases be coerced into early

00:14:58.840 retirement. And we'll talk about that in just a couple of moments here. But there is a proposed

00:15:03.200 class action that's been filed on behalf of Free to Fly Canada. There are three representative

00:15:08.780 plaintiffs, Greg Hill, Brent Warren, and Tanya Lewis. But ultimately, anyone who is affected by

00:15:14.880 this if the class action is approved and certified will be a beneficiary of this so basically

00:15:20.760 unvaccinated employees in Canada's aviation sector I want to welcome to the show from

00:15:26.060 Free to Fly Canada Greg Hill who is a pilot with a major Canadian airline and joins me now Greg

00:15:32.300 it's good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thanks so much to be appreciate being here

00:15:37.780 Andrew thanks so much now I should say I actually happened to meet you on a flight when you were

00:15:42.340 working and you got me safely to my destination which i appreciated so in your case you've been

00:15:47.780 able to go back to work but for some of your colleagues that wasn't the case as i understand it

00:15:53.300 yeah it's been quite a journey i think for all of us the last two or three years have almost

00:15:57.540 disappeared into a somewhat dark gray continuum so it's it's hard to remember exactly what happened

00:16:02.820 when but certainly those of us that were out of work for an extended period of time remember that

00:16:08.100 well and as you point out uh there are some of my colleagues uh who are not back to work when

00:16:14.420 when the mandate was suspended last june the majority did go back to work slowly over the next

00:16:20.020 month or two generally speaking but there there are a group of employees uh at west jet for one

00:16:25.540 thing um that refused to sign a a very uh egregious piece of uh a memorandum of understanding

00:16:33.780 essentially agreeing which required them essentially to go against their conscience

00:16:39.700 and say well WestJet did respect my charter rights WestJet did respect human rights sign

00:16:46.280 this document and then you can have your job back and to their credit as far as I know

00:16:50.420 to to a single man and woman they refuse to do so because these are people of principle

00:16:55.220 that we're not going to compromise based on conscience so I appreciate you bringing that

00:16:59.760 up because there does seem to be a pervasive attitude that we're past this that we've moved on

00:17:04.960 i was just speaking to a friend of mine that's in health care we've got a couple in my local

00:17:09.040 community and people think they've all gone back to work well they haven't there's a there's a cabal

00:17:13.200 amongst the hospitals certainly in the province of ontario that is not bringing them back to the

00:17:18.080 detriment of the population as a whole who who are short of doctors and nurses and other staff

00:17:23.680 in hospitals who they simply have not brought back so it's a great thing to bring up because

00:17:27.600 it's not well understood let's talk about what the actual we don't need to get into the legal weeds

00:17:33.760 but but what is the the real objection here i mean as i understand it uh the case really hinges on

00:17:39.520 that the government was forcing violation of the contracts that that you and your colleagues had

00:17:44.880 and i mean obviously we know that there are in some cases pretty stringent protections uh through

00:17:50.480 collective bargaining that have been fought and then the government just comes in with this mandate

00:17:54.240 that trumps that right well i mean the primary strategy uh and the angle here and and listen

00:18:01.520 we've we've sat back uh and watched the i'll call it challenging judicial landscape in this country

00:18:07.360 for uh for the past year or so uh and and i think that's uh we're certainly hopeful to our credit

00:18:15.120 and that isn't to disparage anyone who's made a viable effort to make headway legally but it's

00:18:20.880 enabled us to to get some understanding of where the courts uh are at right now and it is a

00:18:26.160 challenging environment and so out of that uh this is is what we put forward and what you're alluding

00:18:32.480 to is is what's called inducement that we uh as you said we've we fought hard uh as employees to uh

00:18:39.600 to have a standing with our our companies and an agreement uh and and listen at the end of the day

00:18:44.320 we want the success of the airline industry we want people to be traveling not staying in their

00:18:47.920 15-minute cities or otherwise we want them moving about the world uh freely as uh as free citizens

00:18:53.600 so so ultimately that's what we want and and doing our part to get people safely as i did with you on

00:18:58.880 that uh one day and it was a pleasure to to to chat with you briefly uh we have these agreements

00:19:04.160 well this interim order uh came in and um and it uh it induced a breach of that of that contract

00:19:11.840 i mean just as an example and it's it's been a beef uh at least of mine personally and i'm sure

00:19:16.800 with a bunch of my other colleagues is it was stated that we were on a leave of absence.

00:19:22.080 Well, I mean, there's no such thing in any contract I know of an involuntary leave of

00:19:27.940 absence. The aviation industry is prone to all sorts of ups and downs and trends with the economy

00:19:34.820 or with things like asinine COVID policy, for instance, right? So you've got circumstances

00:19:40.080 where former military guys, let's say, will say, hey, there isn't a lot of work for me here right

00:19:45.600 now or i may be um furloughed so i'm going to go back to the military i'll take a leave of absence

00:19:50.560 and i'll go back for two or three years but there's nothing contractually that says uh you

00:19:55.520 will involuntarily be put on a leave of absence so that's just just one example well we've had

00:20:01.040 people suspended which is a better word for that it's not actually leave of absence or terminated

00:20:07.280 so that's that's a simplistic uh angle and again i'm i fly airplanes i'm not an expert

00:20:13.200 in the law, but that's kind of a 35,000 foot view of what we're looking at here.

00:20:19.960 Let's talk about a little bit here where the liability lies. I know the proposed suit is

00:20:25.260 against Transport Canada, who issued the mandate, but in your view, were the airlines themselves

00:20:30.860 winning participants in this, or were they victims of this? Because I know when it came

00:20:34.880 to the vaccine mandate for passengers, for example, it's Air Canada or WestJet flight

00:20:39.440 attendants that are you know demanding you hand over your proof of vaccination but it's not their

00:20:43.800 fault they're enforcing a rule that is coming from a government mandate when this came up did the

00:20:49.500 airlines push back against the government at all or was their view that you know what anything that

00:20:53.460 lets us you know keep moving on and get the bailout money is fine with us we're just going to go along

00:20:58.340 with it yeah I mean you're touching on on a number of pieces that we've been fairly vocal about over

00:21:03.840 the past couple of years, I guess, you know, as much as I'll say, they were, they were pretty

00:21:09.380 enthusiastic in employing these. Once we were past that October 29th deadline, when this interim

00:21:16.860 order came out, it was fairly common if you were speaking with a manager and we pushed back hard.

00:21:21.980 I mean, individually, a lot of my courageous colleagues were quite vocal. And of course,

00:21:27.340 the management was prone to typically say, hey, you know, what do you want us to do? We've got

00:21:32.460 run an airline we're just uh we're just uh we're doing what we need to do it's the government's

00:21:37.660 the government's fault and there's certainly obviously this is our point that it was it was

00:21:42.460 it was pushed and forced down this road but even before this uh this came out there was all sorts

00:21:48.140 of things happening uh within the industry that that seemed fairly enthusiastic and at the end

00:21:52.700 of the day i mean they want to make money um so it's understandable but we can't live in a society

00:21:58.060 where we just take these these God-given rights and toss them out the window and then the point

00:22:03.700 being on this end of it you know if you want to use an analogy even with your home life if somebody

00:22:08.920 comes into your home a group of people and ransacks it runs down the road with your possessions

00:22:13.360 you're not typically prone to just sit in your house and shrug and say well at least I still

00:22:18.040 have the four walls to sit within and that's essentially what's happened the majority of

00:22:22.600 people have gone back to work but there's been there's been no willingness to to replace the

00:22:27.620 lost income. And it's not just lost income. There's intangibles here as well. People lost

00:22:33.580 their marriages. They lost their homes. They lost relationships and all sorts of things

00:22:38.240 directly related to the loss of employment. I'm glad you mentioned that because I think

00:22:44.900 oftentimes people who are disconnected from the situation would say, okay, yeah, they were

00:22:50.380 suspended for a bit. They got their jobs back. Everyone move on. But it is very difficult to

00:22:54.880 move on when you're one of the people that has just gone through what you've described there,

00:22:59.260 which I don't think is difficult to imagine. And you also look at the way that it would breed some

00:23:04.880 fairly nasty thinking among colleagues when, you know, all of a sudden you've been outed in,

00:23:09.960 you know, for this one thing, and then you go back and your colleagues probably know why you

00:23:14.020 were gone. And there might be some discontent there. And also just people that were forced

00:23:19.620 out of the industry, which I heard a lot of, you know, people that own businesses that were shut

00:23:23.300 down that just decided, okay, maybe there's no point and I'm going to go and get a job that's

00:23:28.400 not fulfilling, but I could work it. I mean, I know that when I looked at some of the comments

00:23:32.520 that have been made by Free to Fly, people that wouldn't have retired, they weren't ready to

00:23:36.600 retire, they didn't want to retire, but it was just, all right, well, maybe I have a few years

00:23:40.720 left. This is something I'm going to do now. That's not a win. That's not a win. They're

00:23:44.540 still victims of this. No, and I appreciate you bringing that up. It's essentially retirement

00:23:48.580 under duress and i you know just top of my mind there's like two faces and in my my brain of guys

00:23:53.620 that i have enormous respect for um that refuse to concede and and that's the road they went down

00:23:58.180 and they made it clear they weren't retiring because it was it was time to uh hang up the

00:24:01.780 headset uh and and move move into retirement it was done because of uh because of of the uh the

00:24:08.660 mandate so you know as relates to uh to to the work environment i i will say for the vast majority

00:24:16.340 um of my colleagues and and the flight tech's a fascinating uh place you're essentially locked in

00:24:21.700 a closet with somebody for hours and hours at a time right uh so the conversation can be simulating

00:24:27.780 and it's typically not terribly heated but i will say when it does kind of come up and it inevitably

00:24:32.820 does people talk about what you were doing last summer and it was like well working in a little

00:24:37.540 manufacturing plant or whatever and you'll have a conversation the majority are incredibly supportive

00:24:42.900 up to and often including saying i got so much respect for you and i did not want to go down

00:24:47.540 this road and i wish i would have held out myself uh there's the odd person that uh typically just

00:24:53.140 it's awkward silence for a few seconds and you talk about something else right because you

00:24:57.300 you're not going to get into it you get another five hours before you get to seattle or something

00:25:01.300 right um but for the most part uh certainly the uh the visceral feeling as we as we what you know

00:25:08.660 know ended up uh later last year was don't come near me with a booster uh amongst the majority of

00:25:14.540 my colleagues yeah and I think that was the turning point for a lot of Canadians when there

00:25:20.100 was that one press conference I can't remember when it was it was around the time they had suspended

00:25:24.180 the uh vaccine mandate the the broad sort of array of them and you know the health minister

00:25:30.040 uh Duclos had said something along the lines of you know it's just as temporary suspension and

00:25:34.820 And then there was another press conference where they talked about re-evaluating their definition of what it meant to be fully vaccinated and reconstituting that around being up to date.

00:25:44.400 And there were a lot of people that got their two doses, maybe even they got their third dose, that were being told by the government that, you know, there could come a time where you're unvaccinated because we've just changed what it means.

00:25:55.060 And I think a lot of people that were kind of on the cusp, like you've just talked about, really did draw a line in the sand there or would have had the government really gone ahead with that and said, no, no, no, now you need a booster every three months to be considered fully vaccinated.

00:26:08.100 Because at that point, you are no longer your own individual insofar as you ever were.

00:26:14.260 You are no longer making your own choices if your job is contingent on renewing your vaccination status every three, four, six months.

00:26:20.980 And I think there was a fear among a lot of people that that's where we were headed.

00:26:25.060 well and i would i remember that distinctly uh because because i was actually working in a

00:26:29.460 manufacturing plant at the time and i took a little break from gluing pieces together

00:26:34.340 to to watch that press conference uh and i remember thinking wow uh and i would almost

00:26:40.340 suggest it was somewhat of a trial balloon by the government to see what kind of uh what kind

00:26:45.140 of feedback they were going to get and and we are living in a little bit of a truman show i

00:26:49.700 would say here when it comes to the state as a whole and uh and even with with these mandates

00:26:55.780 themselves if you look at us here in the aviation sector up in canada versus in the states the the

00:27:01.380 troubling reality and i think this is something everybody needs to take uh as a takeaway is

00:27:07.540 collective action matters when it comes to standing up when it matters of conscience

00:27:13.300 because at the end of the day it was somewhat of a cost benefits analysis and sadly once we got

00:27:18.420 right down to the wire in that date it was a fairly small crowd of people across all sorts

00:27:24.500 of industries that were willing to say i'll give up my job i'll give up my home i'll give up whatever

00:27:29.140 it takes because i'm afraid of the right things down the road right i i jordan peterson talks

00:27:35.460 about that it's not necessarily courage it's understanding the bigger picture um whereas in

00:27:40.100 the states there was a couple airlines where there was enough guys and gals that and i'm not talking

00:27:45.220 40 50 it's not a big number i don't know what it is let's say it's 10 or 15 just said don't come

00:27:50.500 near me with that thing or i'm not flying your airplane and the airline did a cost benefits

00:27:55.140 analysis and thought the airplanes aren't going to move and it's going to fall apart in a hurry

00:27:59.300 uh and so as we go forward uh this this covet was it was a season i'd say we've got very deep

00:28:05.220 seasons of challenge coming up you speak to them all the time um andrew and unless people are

00:28:10.420 willing to stand up and the biggest of all in my view be willing to give things up give up comfort

00:28:17.140 give up convenience give up status quo give up your reputation because a lot of us conceded based

00:28:23.460 on what people were going to say about us and that's a pretty low threshold but unless we're

00:28:27.540 willing to really do that uh we're in for a real real um deepening uh season of challenge ahead and

00:28:34.500 And I think that's got to be our takeaway as citizens of this once great nation.

00:28:39.280 I'm being told by my producer that the longer you talk, the more our viewership just keeps going up.

00:28:44.700 So what you're saying is resonating with people.

00:28:46.760 And if you're watching live, do share it.

00:28:48.900 And I think what you mentioned there, Greg, is incredibly important in that a lot of the problems that I saw from, well, with the COVID restrictions, of which there were many, is that they were inherently meant to divide and isolate people so that they couldn't do exactly what you just described.

00:29:03.340 I mean, when it was literally illegal to go and have dinner with a neighbor or a friend or a family member, you can't actually sit around a table and talk about why this isn't right and talk about what you're going to do and plan and plot and scheme and all of these things.

00:29:16.960 And I mean that in more of a joking way than isolation, right?

00:29:20.080 Yeah, exactly.

00:29:20.940 And I think the same thing here.

00:29:22.360 I mean, you have pilots and flight attendants and other people in the sector that have very strong unions that we were talking about earlier.

00:29:27.560 And all of a sudden that that union is not really standing up in the way that it could.

00:29:33.340 Well, and it was really, they essentially left the room, let's be honest. I mean, that's what happened. We've got all sorts of things happening in aviation right now. We see WestJet going out on strike and some of the unions across the country, like the very next morning, I'm talking within eight hours, had a one or two page statement to all of their thousands of members about how we need to stand in solidarity.

00:29:56.100 and it's a little bit of a thorn in the side of guys and gals who were about to be terminated

00:30:02.700 and termination for a union it's it's like thou shalt never go there I mean I can give stories

00:30:08.220 of pilots that have done pretty rough things over the past 10 or 20 years and the union fought hard

00:30:14.300 to keep them employed and you've got people for a matter of conscience that's just said I'm not

00:30:18.160 going to go down this road not because of myself but honestly because I love my kids and my

00:30:22.440 grandkids and I don't want them to live in a world where the state can do this to us as citizens

00:30:26.620 and and the unions were silent they said nothing and I'm not talking for a couple days or weeks

00:30:32.500 I'm talking we were going to our union saying uh you haven't mentioned us for six months nine

00:30:37.300 months we've been out of work and we're going to be terminated in a month could you maybe just

00:30:40.780 mention that we are here in the background um it's a little bit hard to to to swallow and I will say

00:30:47.940 uh i'm not saying this out of out of resentment or bitterness because i think that's a very dark

00:30:53.300 place that that we can go as well and you see that in in in uh i would say the like-minded

00:30:57.760 community a little bit i think we've got to we've got to take a deep breath keep our wits about us

00:31:02.520 be the adults in the room uh see ourselves as leaders uh across the nation what we desperately

00:31:08.340 need right now are men and women of principle who are willing to lead this country back to where it

00:31:13.560 needs to get and the way to do that again is to count the cost to say I'm willing to give things

00:31:18.420 up for the next generation and the generation after that because if we don't again we're in

00:31:25.200 for a dark season here seeing the airplane behind you I think I know the answer to this question but

00:31:31.840 I do have to ask why did you even want to go back I mean after what happened to you which

00:31:36.360 I imagine would feel like a tremendous affront to you as an individual that you know your

00:31:41.320 your contributions your service your identity didn't matter why did you want to go back into

00:31:45.800 that world after um actually it's funny that picture i i was sitting more like this the other

00:31:51.280 day and i thought that my head's in the clouds i hadn't really thought of that i typically sit

00:31:54.500 here when i do interviews but my daughter painted that for me it's it's a favorite but um

00:31:58.540 that's a good question andrew it's not when i get asked normally so i you know i gotta i gotta

00:32:04.020 take a moment i i wrestled with it um i wrestled with it a fair bit i i guess on some level

00:32:12.180 we fought hard and and i do if i'm going to fight for something i try to think about it fairly

00:32:17.940 carefully and so if i'm fighting for my job back it's it's a a little bit disingenuous when you

00:32:22.660 get the opportunity to say no i'd rather uh i'd rather do other things um the vast majority of

00:32:28.500 us got into aviation because for me when i was 13 years old my father was a military man i flew

00:32:33.140 around in a c-130 which i ended up flying myself in the military and i love it we love the job um

00:32:39.220 it's it's different every day it's challenging you know insert all of the cliches that you

00:32:42.900 probably heard before i don't want to go on and on about it but it's a fantastic job

00:32:46.980 um it affords all sorts of uh perks and otherwise uh but at the same time uh

00:32:53.620 we did fight to to get our jobs back um the the job affords uh other opportunities and and part

00:33:00.980 of that is what i'm doing here with you now is advocating for things that that i'm passionate

00:33:04.740 about um and so that's that's the long and short of it is uh is we fought we fought long and hard

00:33:11.860 to get here uh i put in a full career in the military before i got to this job and the other

00:33:17.540 blunt um honest piece is aviation unless you've got some other skill i didn't worry you know to

00:33:24.820 go to dental school on the side or anything else it doesn't transpose terribly well to other

00:33:28.820 employment so i found myself at three o'clock in the morning uh shoveling parking lots and things

00:33:33.620 during my my year out of work um so some of it's just the practicalities of of getting back to it

00:33:39.620 to a good job that uh that we love uh but it was difficult um but i would say that the moments that

00:33:46.820 i have run across uh managers that i have run across other union members i i've been i've been

00:33:52.660 meticulous i believe in being careful with what i say with being professional and trying to be

00:33:56.980 kind in the way i say it so i have no shame when i come across these people i wasn't rude or

00:34:00.580 personally disparaging but there's times when i sense a difficulty uh on their part individually

00:34:06.980 with with our encounters because i some of the things that have been written and said i just

00:34:11.620 scratched my head and i think yeah man you're a smart guy uh but you've kind of hung up your

00:34:17.060 conscience along with common sense in doing this but people will do strange things sometimes for

00:34:22.900 for a sizable paycheck. And that's part of the problem is the government has got us by the

00:34:28.440 paycheck or got many of us by the paycheck. And we've got to learn, A, not to get ourselves in

00:34:33.680 so deep that we run out of choices and to create a life around us where we are able to make some

00:34:40.220 independent choices going forward. And I know a lot of people are doing that as well.

00:34:44.300 Well, I appreciate your service and also appreciate your taking a stand in this way

00:34:48.800 and joining us today. I've got a fair bit of travel coming up this summer for work,

00:34:52.200 So I'm sure I'll see you in the skies again.

00:34:53.960 I certainly hope to.

00:34:54.980 But Greg Hill from Free to Fly Canada.

00:34:57.700 Thank you so much, Greg.

00:34:59.080 Thanks for the opportunity, Andrew.

00:35:00.800 All right.

00:35:01.240 Thank you very much.

00:35:02.280 Yeah, it was actually quite fun because originally, sometimes I'm not famous by any stretch, like

00:35:06.960 just not at all.

00:35:08.020 But every now and then someone will just give me like a weird look and I'm like, oh, do

00:35:12.080 they recognize me?

00:35:12.940 And it's no, it's a homeless guy that wanted my wallet or something.

00:35:15.820 But then sometimes someone looks at you and then later on they come up.

00:35:19.960 And that was the thing.

00:35:20.900 When I got on the plane, Greg was standing there and sort of eyed me in a weird way.

00:35:24.920 And I carried on.

00:35:25.600 And then on the way back, he was like very, very sly.

00:35:28.400 He's like, thank you for what you do.

00:35:29.460 And then we've corresponded a bit since then.

00:35:31.760 So it was very nice to chat with him.

00:35:34.160 And I was in his wheelhouse.

00:35:36.000 Now he's in my wheelhouse.

00:35:37.400 So the two cancel each other out.

00:35:39.980 It is Friday.

00:35:40.880 We always try to end things with a little bit of routine here.

00:35:44.460 It is time for Fake News Friday.

00:35:49.960 Yes, Fake News Friday, going through the whirlpools of wackiness,

00:36:01.960 the hurricanes of hilarity, and all the other weird stuff that we can debunk

00:36:06.960 and try to make sense of.

00:36:08.360 This one is an Alberta politics-themed Fake News Friday

00:36:11.320 because yesterday the Ethics Commissioner in Alberta exonerated

00:36:15.480 Danielle Smith on the chief complaint made by CBC,

00:36:20.180 which is that she or someone in her office

00:36:22.580 had sent an email to Crown prosecutors

00:36:24.620 trying to interfere in the prosecution of Artur Pawlowski.

00:36:29.000 Now, Premier Danielle Smith in her office did an investigation. 0.94

00:36:32.320 Previously, they said, listen, there was no email.

00:36:34.240 We found no record of this.

00:36:36.060 CBC doubled down, and now we have the ethics commissioner

00:36:39.660 coming out and saying, yeah, there was actually no email.

00:36:44.480 The ethics commissioner found no evidence of this.

00:36:47.880 Now, if you look, interestingly enough, at the headlines on this,

00:36:52.520 there's a lot of support for the idea that Danielle Smith was exonerated on the chief accusation.

00:36:58.300 But the CBC headline, Danielle Smith Breached Conflicts of Interest Act, says ethics commissioner.

00:37:05.060 So they go way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way down to the report

00:37:09.140 and find that a conversation that Danielle Smith had with her justice minister

00:37:13.160 was inappropriate and they find that to be the headline there so talk about when two people can

00:37:19.900 look at the same thing and draw wildly different conclusions the reality is that she was cleared on

00:37:25.080 the most significant counts they did find her to have run afoul of a minor aspect of this

00:37:31.000 but odd the media focuses more on that one than the bigger picture here and danielle smith has

00:37:37.340 taken it on the chin she said look i i'd actually welcome more direction and clarity on that so this

00:37:42.420 doesn't happen. Because what she was found guilty of doing was asking her justice minister if

00:37:48.540 something was legally possible. Isn't that what you're supposed to lean on your justice minister

00:37:53.600 for when you are not a lawyer and they are a lawyer and you have a legal opinion that's been

00:37:57.840 given to you that you want to say, hey, just let me know what you think about that. So I found it

00:38:02.020 baffling that the commissioner found that. But ultimately, CBC has been the one who really has

00:38:07.860 to be held accountable here and so far has not recanted or retracted anything and just because

00:38:15.020 we like to end things on a bit of a lighter note as well uh we go to a piece in the conversation

00:38:20.880 now it okay let me just before we put it up on the screen here preface this by saying uh i am

00:38:26.900 good at many things gardening is not one of them i am not good at gardening i don't know about

00:38:31.680 gardening i kind of like if it were me i would look out and see the dandelions and be like oh

00:38:36.540 wow we have yellow flowers that's great let's plant more of them uh even though you don't want

00:38:40.320 to plant dandelions and don't even need to uh like i had this with my wife the other day where

00:38:44.540 i saw something i was like oh that looks nice what is that out there and she says those are weeds

00:38:47.820 and i said oh okay well they're nice looking weeds but i'm not a gardener uh it's not one

00:38:53.140 of these things that i focus on i as long as the what is it sean says are those the fun blowy

00:38:59.520 flowers oh that yeah dandelion in the fall you can blow them and spread these spores everywhere

00:39:06.260 so there are more dandelions.

00:39:07.760 Tell your kids.

00:39:08.580 It's a way to plant a nice yellow garden.

00:39:10.720 Don't tell your kids that, please. 0.93

00:39:12.460 Kids, your parents are going to kill me.

00:39:13.840 So I hope you're not listening to that part anyway. 0.87

00:39:16.640 But here we go.

00:39:17.740 I might actually be woke because I do not garden.

00:39:21.140 Now we go to the conversation.

00:39:23.600 Decolonize your garden.

00:39:24.820 This weekend, dig into the complicated roots of gardening.

00:39:29.700 This is a piece by Atika Kaki and Vinita Srivastava

00:39:35.120 who say the May long weekend is the unofficial start of summer and for those of you with home

00:39:40.500 gardens or access to community space it's time to dust off the gardening tools visit the garden

00:39:45.380 center however the practice of gardening is deeply tied to colonialism from the formation

00:39:53.340 of botany as a scientist science to the spread of seeds species and knowledge so the fact that

00:39:59.580 tulips have been the subject of colonial conquest the fact that they were hybridized and commodified

00:40:05.100 and have coveted status.

00:40:06.660 This is all just colonialism.

00:40:08.240 You can't like your tulips.

00:40:09.700 The fact that botanical gardens were laboratories

00:40:12.040 and scientific object...

00:40:13.760 This is an exact line.

00:40:15.200 Scientific objectivity asserted a Eurocentric point of view,

00:40:19.820 disrupting and displacing indigenous knowledge

00:40:22.320 and ecological practices.

00:40:24.320 So if you learn something scientifically,

00:40:27.380 you're colonial because you're not just learning it 0.58

00:40:30.400 via indigenous oral tradition.

00:40:33.120 Sean says, tulips are the OG Bitcoin.

00:40:37.400 Yeah, if you haven't familiarized yourself with tulip mania,

00:40:41.160 there was a bit of a bubble in the Netherlands and around the world.

00:40:45.020 What was it?

00:40:45.560 Like 500 years ago on tulips.

00:40:47.880 But the Bitcoin active, I think Bitcoin has actually held its staying power a little bit more.

00:40:52.880 Like Pierre Polyev didn't come out and say that Canada will become the tulip capital of the world.

00:40:57.740 So Pierre Polyev needs to come out with his tulip platform.

00:41:01.140 No, Bitcoin's holding a little bit.

00:41:02.980 There were no tulip ETFs.

00:41:05.080 There were no tulip vending machines and tulip ATMs and all that.

00:41:09.500 So get out of here with your bitcoins or tulips or the OG Bitcoin. 0.98

00:41:14.460 In any way, you are all colonial, white supremacist, racist if you have gardens. 0.99

00:41:17.940 Sorry to tell you. 0.99

00:41:18.760 That does it for us.

00:41:19.820 Andrew Lawton Show continues next week on True North.

00:41:22.300 Thank you.

00:41:22.700 God bless.

00:41:23.500 And good day to you all.

00:41:25.320 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:41:27.360 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 19, 2023

Aviation employees sue government over vaccine mandate

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