Juno News - Bank CEO apologizes to convoy spokesperson for account freeze

00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:30.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you

00:00:57.640 by true north hello and welcome to another live edition of canada's most irreverent talk show you

00:01:07.920 are tuned into the andrew lawton show here on true north monday may 30th 2022 moments ago justin

00:01:15.780 trudeau and a team of cabinet ministers bill blair marco mendicino david lametti marcy and i think a

00:01:22.900 couple of others as well they just kind of loaded them all up into the clown car and drove to the

00:01:27.500 press conference room i think in west block it looks like from the photos i have in front of me

00:01:32.160 here and have announced a national freeze on handgun ownership so it will no longer be legal

00:01:39.600 assuming this passes which of course it will because they've got the ndp support to buy sell

00:01:45.020 or import handguns in canada so it sounds like what they're doing is trying to expand this massive

00:01:52.940 assault weapons or so-called assault weapons ban that they put in place two years ago on AR-15s

00:02:00.500 and Mini-14s and stuff like that. It sounds like they're trying to do it on handguns. Now,

00:02:04.440 this is significantly ramping up what they tried to do in the previous parliament on handguns,

00:02:10.580 which was simply let municipalities make their own thing. So now we have Justin Trudeau further

00:02:15.100 eroding legal gun ownership. The details are still coming in. We'll certainly revisit that

00:02:19.460 later in the show as we have a bit more information. And you better believe I'm going to be doing a

00:02:23.940 full show on it tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. But I wanted to talk about some other news here

00:02:29.640 in the Freedom Convoy front, which has not gone away despite how, I mean, they may have cleared

00:02:34.820 the trucks away, but the story very much persists. And if you follow a great substack led by Benjamin

00:02:40.640 Dichter, who was the spokesperson for the convoy, you will have seen this morning that he's received

00:02:45.660 something of an apology from Scotiabank, which says here, and I'm going to quote it and we can

00:02:51.780 put the email up on the screen. We understand you raised a concern regarding your personal

00:02:56.600 accounts, having a hold placed on them. Please accept our sincere apologies for the frustration

00:03:02.240 and inconvenience this situation may have caused. And thank you for your patience while we prepared

00:03:08.040 our response. This is in response to an email he sent on February 20th. And this reply, as you see

00:03:15.440 there comes from the office of the president. And one thing that I really want to point out here

00:03:22.300 is that there still are significant questions, significant questions about how this whole thing

00:03:29.980 came about, about whose accounts got frozen, who made the call, who was aware of it. Joining me now

00:03:35.500 is Benjamin Dichter himself. Ben, good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today.

00:03:40.060 It's good to talk to you. How are you?

00:03:41.660 Now, let me ask you first off here, you've said in this piece on your substack that Mark Petrone

00:03:46.500 wrote, bank apologizes. I read this and I'm not sure if this is an apology or if this is like a

00:03:52.440 we're sorry you feel that way, non-apology apology. But do you feel as a Scotiabank customer

00:03:58.280 sufficiently apologized to? I think it's a step in the right direction at the very least. Yes,

00:04:03.540 it's an apology for my frustration. But there's the other side of me that's thinking, is this the

00:04:09.340 type of overregulation that the financial sector has been crowing about for decades. And it's now

00:04:17.980 gone completely amok to the point that there's just now arbitrary suspensions and freezing of

00:04:23.380 people's accounts when the government decides. So maybe this is a good opportunity for the

00:04:28.180 financial sector to fight back and say, hey, you know, we're always crying about regulation.

00:04:33.780 This is why. This is what it leads to. So I think it's a step in the right direction. And I know a

00:04:39.320 angry and, oh, you should sue Scotiabank and whatever. But the other side of it, I'm like,

00:04:43.820 no, I think this is progress. And I think you're going to start to see a divide from the other

00:04:49.240 side, much like that parliamentary hearing where everybody's pointing at each other and saying,

00:04:53.280 it wasn't me. Yeah. I mean, this is like what's happening right now with the whole airport

00:04:57.980 situation in Canada, where you've got the Greater Toronto Airport Authority blaming CAATSA, which

00:05:03.840 is blaming the CBSA, which is blaming the government, which is blaming the airline. I mean,

00:05:07.440 it's all of this. And ultimately, you lose sight of the fact that there's something wrong that

00:05:13.260 needs to be addressed here. And the bank account freezes are a great example of that. I know there

00:05:17.620 was one document that was filed in court that showed police had handed over information to

00:05:22.300 banks that was actually based on media reports. One in particular that showed up in the court

00:05:27.480 documents was he looked at, I think it was like a CTV or a global piece that was the who's who of

00:05:32.360 the convoy. And they just kind of copied and pasted all the names that CTV or global, whichever

00:05:36.860 it was road and and sent it on to the RCMP which sent it on to the banks the way the emergencies

00:05:42.800 orders were worded the banks didn't have to do it they were given the power to do it and we still

00:05:49.240 don't know if they were being told by the government you better do this yeah I mean I think

00:05:54.740 you're seeing the increasing laziness of government despite it getting larger and larger and a perfect

00:05:59.420 example the topic you just opened up with the handguns and the AR-15s if you remember correctly

00:06:05.180 one of the types of weaponry they banned was ar15.com everything is just now copy and paste

00:06:12.640 right it's the same thing with with this scenario with the banking and i think the what i want to

00:06:18.440 know and i think we're all very curious about is at some level somewhere some politician or

00:06:25.400 bureaucrat made the decision to press the go button who is that person what is their name

00:06:32.820 because it's time for the faceless bureaucracy,

00:06:36.300 that era to end.

00:06:37.920 We need names of people specifically who they were.

00:06:40.840 And then we can ask them why they did it.

00:06:43.600 And once you get that person in the crosshairs,

00:06:45.980 you know how they are.

00:06:47.760 They'll grow like anybody else

00:06:49.400 just to get the pressure off

00:06:50.880 and then we'll get somewhere.

00:06:52.720 I want to just, again, to prompt our audience here,

00:06:54.940 I want to put that email we had back up on the screen here

00:06:57.380 from the Scotiabank Ombudsman

00:06:59.740 slash Customer Complaints Appeals Office.

00:07:02.480 And I, by the way, I love the line at the bottom, sincerely, office of the president.

00:07:05.960 So you don't even get the courtesy of knowing who supposedly sent you this letter here.

00:07:10.580 But they say they hope it has clarified the matter for you.

00:07:13.800 And nothing has really been in the grand scheme of things clarified.

00:07:17.740 And I go back to that emergency order that the government gave authorizing this, indemnifying

00:07:23.160 the banks against liability.

00:07:25.220 So giving them the legal cover to do whatever they want, even if they get it wrong, or even

00:07:30.340 of you as a customer would say to them, hey, you violated your agreement with me. So the banks are

00:07:35.760 in a kind of good spot here as far as their legal coverage. I mean, PR coverage is a bit of a

00:07:40.460 different matter. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. But at the same time, and maybe I'm wrong in my

00:07:46.200 worldview. I am somewhat sympathetic because I understand the constraints that banks are under.

00:07:53.100 I don't believe that the bank went out of their way on their own accord. And maybe I'm wrong.

00:07:59.680 But I would find it hard to believe that with all the problems that banks have right now, the fact that, you know, with fractional reserve lending and, you know, increased debt loads and all that sort of stuff, that they're going to go out of their way just out of, I don't know, spite, that they're going to start, oh, let's find our customers who are involved in the most peaceful protest in Canadian history and let's cause a potential PR disaster.

00:08:27.560 And the other thing to note is, at least Scotiabank responded.

00:08:33.780 My main bank, TD, didn't even bother to respond to my question.

00:08:37.320 So I give them credit for that.

00:08:38.660 Now, the quality of their response, it's a step in the right direction.

00:08:43.620 I'd like to see them to be more honest and forthwith about what sort of pressures they were put under by the government.

00:08:52.840 I know we talked about this previously, Benjamin, but just to bring people up to speed,

00:08:57.160 What was it that happened when the freeze went into place as it pertained to you?

00:09:02.460 It was interesting.

00:09:03.940 I had arrived at a friend's house because for a variety of different reasons, my lawyers,

00:09:09.600 who you know, suggested that I needed to leave and to merit.

00:09:14.460 Everything was in flux.

00:09:16.240 And I arrived at a friend's house who was well outside the Ottawa area, which is basically

00:09:21.800 what the police had required of all of us.

00:09:25.260 And I went to, you know, it's a favor to order food.

00:09:28.940 You know, you go to somebody's place, you're going to stay there for a couple of days, let me buy dinner.

00:09:33.440 And boom, my credit card was denied.

00:09:36.960 And said, check your balance, did it two or three times.

00:09:40.020 And I remembered, wait, there's talk about freezing of accounts.

00:09:43.880 Went to my online banking, actually went to my corporate bank account.

00:09:47.480 And my entire banking history was erased as though I had never done a transaction from those accounts ever.

00:09:57.040 There was still a balance there.

00:09:58.560 But my bookkeeper actually called me and said, what's going on with the banks?

00:10:02.020 I can't even reconcile your banking right now.

00:10:05.540 I said, a little bit of difficulty going on right now.

00:10:07.940 Turn on the news.

00:10:09.220 And then, again, as I try to tell people over and over again, as I did when I spoke at the Bitcoin conference in Miami, it wasn't just my bank account.

00:10:21.700 It was all my bank accounts, business bank accounts, credit cards not affiliated with my main bank, lines of credit, absolutely everything.

00:10:32.520 And like you just said, different institutions as well.

00:10:35.620 All different institutions.

00:10:36.880 Wow. And ironically, you know, the only thing I could transact and if I if I wanted to would have been Bitcoin, which became the other story on those truckers who actually received donations.

00:10:48.100 That was the only way they got them. But yeah, technically, I couldn't.

00:10:52.360 And remember, I was sitting there with a broken ankle. It was not well.

00:10:56.820 I couldn't buy food. I couldn't buy medicine because my government was trying to starve me.

00:11:02.980 And I think we're starting to encroach on this territory where in the modern age, if a government tries to target its people in this manner, is that a human rights violation in the modern era?

00:11:15.260 And I think that's something to consider.

00:11:16.940 And that's something that should be discussed on Parliament Hill at some point.

00:11:20.760 And how long were your accounts frozen for?

00:11:25.060 If I remember correctly, it was seven or eight days.

00:11:27.760 As soon as the Emergency Measures Act was dropped, the next day I was able to transit by two o'clock in the afternoon.

00:11:35.100 So if you were someone that didn't have access to cash or crypto or friends, I mean, you would have been screwed.

00:11:40.960 That's right. That's right.

00:11:42.000 It was the government trying to do, you know, what we did in the Middle Ages of trying to banish people from society, throw them to the wolves so they can starve themselves.

00:11:50.500 It was the most aggressive thing I could ever see.

00:11:54.040 I couldn't even imagine from a Western government, but that's where we are now.

00:11:58.480 One part of the story I haven't heard much about, and you may have, because obviously you've lived this in a way that I haven't.

00:12:05.640 The meetings that Chrystia Freeland had the weekend before they announced the Emergencies Act was CEOs of banks.

00:12:12.760 You know, were they about consulting and asking the banks, what do you guys want?

00:12:16.920 Or was it, hey, this is what we're going to do?

00:12:19.000 Have we heard anything definitive about what those talks entailed?

00:12:23.060 Absolutely nothing, but I do hope that the next government that forms in Canada, if that happens

00:12:29.540 to be Pierre Polivri or whoever, that they will bring this to a committee and investigation,

00:12:36.900 a parliamentary inquiry, a royal commission, whatever you want to call it,

00:12:40.260 so they can investigate it. And as well, at the same time, there's a whole bunch of us

00:12:44.900 right now that have been talking for some time that we may need to go down the direction

00:12:51.700 of having a class action lawsuit just to go through the process of discovery

00:12:56.420 so they'll be forced to finally answer questions under oath yeah in all honesty i mean and i don't

00:13:02.260 want to sell short the claim that you would have for for recompense from the government here but i

00:13:06.900 think that the transparency would be the best remedy on something like for sure and you know

00:13:12.100 what with any honest government transparency is a benefit to them as well because then they can say

00:13:17.940 well listen we made these decisions maybe they were the wrong decisions but we made them for

00:13:22.580 this reason but this kabuki theater that we're in right now where everything's going to be hidden

00:13:27.620 away on guess what he says no it was him no it was me it's like a bunch of five-year-olds

00:13:31.780 it's absolutely ridiculous yeah and we don't know if any of this will come out if the government

00:13:37.380 will let it come out in this uh public inquiry that they've launched because they're still being

00:13:41.860 very coy about i mean even allowing cabinet information to be revealed no i shouldn't say

00:13:46.260 coy they're they're explicitly saying they won't yeah exactly and you know what we have uh all the

00:13:53.340 time in the world because you know we're going back to our regular lives they eat lead live eat

00:13:57.760 and breathe politics we don't so this is a perfect example this email came to me on march 3rd i was

00:14:05.160 sitting on it and you know why i was sitting on it i was waiting to see the parliamentary inquiry

00:14:10.800 i knew they would do something and i knew they would all try to blame each other

00:14:14.520 and that's exactly what's happened so uh the email and again people can head on over to

00:14:20.300 bjdictor.substack.com and read it for themselves something of an apology again i i hold a little

00:14:26.660 bit more skepticism towards the apology than you do but let's hope that your optimism will pan out

00:14:32.500 and this is the the start of something yeah i'm trying to take the same approach we did with the

00:14:36.800 freedom convoy we all got to at some point stop yelling at each other and try to come together a

00:14:42.000 little bit and i'm trying to give the financial sector a little olive branch and say hey listen

00:14:46.360 guys uh you guys need freedom too you need freedom to transact to do your businesses and whatever

00:14:51.640 and this may be an opportunity for you guys just to uh come out and say well this is unfortunately

00:14:57.480 these are the pressures that we were under uh due to uh you know regulatory uh constraints

00:15:02.940 or maybe christopher friedland telling us this is what you're going to do wouldn't that be

00:15:07.720 fascinating to find out exactly what went on behind closed doors in those meetings.

00:15:13.180 Benjamin Dichter, spokesperson for the Freedom Convoy, and you can check out a Substack now.

00:15:18.540 Ben, good to talk to you as always. Thanks for coming on today.

00:15:21.000 Likewise. Thank you. And thanks for all the hard work you do.

00:15:23.480 Oh, it's very kind of you, sir. Thank you. Yeah, I am following this. And one thing that I think

00:15:27.840 is very clear is that when the trucks got cleared out, that wasn't the end of the story. And there's

00:15:33.740 going to be i think a fair bit more to come of this in the weeks and months to come i'm going

00:15:38.540 to pivot to ontario politics in just a moment here but i want to go back if you're just tuning

00:15:42.640 in i'm not ignoring the announcement that is taking place on firearms right now we've been

00:15:48.040 waiting for the information to come out and we are going to have a full show on this tomorrow

00:15:52.960 but first i want to play a clip from this press conference of justin trudeau announcing what it

00:15:58.020 is the government is proposing to do here. We're introducing legislation to implement

00:16:05.260 a national freeze on handgun ownership. What this means is that it will no longer be possible

00:16:13.600 to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada. In other words,

00:16:24.560 we're capping the market for handguns.

00:16:28.020 One of the things I have to point out here contextually to just state the obvious is that

00:16:36.900 the liberal government holds these things until they have a news story that justifies putting

00:16:43.140 them forward. This is what they did on their big ban in 2020 of a bunch of semi-automatic rifles.

00:16:48.900 They waited until that horrible shooting spree in Nova Scotia. It's no secret, no coincidence,

00:16:54.720 and no surprise that this is coming in the wake of an American tragedy

00:16:58.500 that has absolutely nothing to do with Canada or Canadian gun laws.

00:17:02.940 So we'll get the updates on that and do a full show on that tomorrow.

00:17:06.100 But we have a lot happening this week.

00:17:08.160 Ontarians go to the polls for the provincial election on Thursday.

00:17:11.640 Of course, advance polls were already taking place,

00:17:14.640 so a lot of Ontarians have already voted.

00:17:16.420 But still, I think it's important to talk about the themes

00:17:19.240 that are coming out in this as Doug Ford

00:17:21.720 and the Progressive Conservative Party seeks re-election.

00:17:24.720 New Blue leader, Jim Carajalios, joins me back on the program here.

00:17:29.300 Jim, we talked a little while ago, but I wanted to drill in to the policy aspect here.

00:17:34.880 Tell me about the new blueprint.

00:17:36.660 What is this?

00:17:37.600 Well, thanks for remembering the name of it, Andrew.

00:17:39.420 And we're really happy with the new blueprint.

00:17:42.220 It's the most important topics going into this election for the new blue party and our candidates.

00:17:47.440 presented in six bullets, in addition to the COVID-related legislation that we've been pushing

00:17:54.720 back on since Belinda voted against Doug Ford's lockdown bill, Bill 195. And we're really,

00:18:00.400 really proud of it. I'm happy to go over some of the key highlights for you. But of course,

00:18:04.840 we've been talking since last summer about banning the use of vaccine passports,

00:18:11.500 not just making them optional in the public or private sector, but banning them. I was there,

00:18:17.020 I saw you in Ottawa at the trucker convoy talking about restitution for some of those truckers who had their businesses, 39 of them had their businesses shut down without due process.

00:18:27.700 And for some of the churches who had their doors shut and their keys taken from them and couldn't access their facility.

00:18:34.220 But we knew that the PCs were going to run away from their COVID record and make it sound like they had nothing to do with it or wasn't their fault in the last two years.

00:18:42.060 And so we've been very diligent to make sure that we're talking about fiscal, social and

00:18:46.760 democratic issues.

00:18:48.180 We're the only party out there talking about scrapping the per vote subsidy for the establishment

00:18:53.360 political parties that Doug Ford brought back and increased by 40 percent over 100 million

00:18:58.140 dollars in 10 years has gone to the PCs, the liberals and the NDP.

00:19:02.000 We're talking about canceling the Toronto Star's online gambling license.

00:19:05.820 And we need one provincial party that fights for free press.

00:19:08.840 And we're talking about bringing down electricity rates by getting rid of the wind turbines. And I'm happy to get into that some more with you because it's a complicated file. And of course, we all remember Belinda was the only MPP to vote against critical race theory in Bill 67.

00:19:23.320 And we launched that stopwoke.ca petition that Belinda read on the last day of the legislature.

00:19:31.160 And in our platform, the new blueprint is getting rid of critical race theory in our schools and offering tax credits for those parents who've chosen alternatives in education.

00:19:41.880 Let me go back to what you said at the beginning there, Jim, which is preventing the government from being able to do some of the horrific things they've done in the name of public health and COVID with vaccine passports and mandates.

00:19:53.320 and all of that. I mean, the federal government has a constitution which theoretically,

00:19:58.480 and I mean, there's a big debate we could have about the efficacy of the courts here, but

00:20:02.080 theoretically constrains future government's actions. If you were to get in and you were to

00:20:06.660 pass this, what's to stop a government from basically doing what the Doug Ford government

00:20:11.160 did, which is ripping up the law and ripping up all of this and saying we're doing it anyway? I

00:20:15.880 mean, a government that can impose a restriction on itself could also remove that restriction when

00:20:20.420 it was expedient to do so, couldn't it? And it's kind of a similar question on a variety of

00:20:25.380 policies, even Doug Ford's industrial carbon tax that we're talking about. That's part of the new

00:20:29.500 blueprint. But I've always said that these are not just legal questions. These are political

00:20:34.820 questions. And I remember, Andrew, when I was in law school in Ottawa, I hope the viewers forgive

00:20:40.780 me for going to law school. Belinda did when she met me. But I remember some of the judges that we

00:20:46.000 admitted that when they make some of these charter decisions or constitutional decisions,

00:20:50.720 they do look at public sentiment and they do look at what the debates are in the legislature. So

00:20:56.640 it's not just a legal answer and lawsuits are necessary in advocacy just as are protests and

00:21:04.280 rallies and petitions. But the other piece is having a political party fighting to change

00:21:09.880 legislation and pushing back when legislation is changed in the future. So we saw the government

00:21:16.280 throw away a lot of the what we thought were constitutionally protected rights and freedoms.

00:21:22.340 And we saw Doug Ford take emergency powers that we traditionally thought were only for a period

00:21:28.200 of time of under a month and expand it to two years. And you're right. A future government can

00:21:34.320 do that under the current political climate that we have here. But we need a political party to say

00:21:41.060 it's not enough to just, you know, walk away and say vaccine passports are going to be optional now.

00:21:46.500 We need government created this problem. We need the pushback to be government is going to solve

00:21:51.340 this problem. And it starts with advocacy from the new blue party saying we're going to ban

00:21:55.760 vaccine passports, public or private sector. And I think that's an important step in ensuring that 0.99

00:22:01.680 future governments know not to try this again. The pessimism that I had through a lot of the

00:22:08.460 pandemic came from the fact that it seemed like a lot of Ontarians welcomed restrictions. A lot

00:22:13.360 of Ontarians welcomed vaccine passports. I mean, how do you square what you're proposing with what

00:22:18.780 I fear was at times in the pandemic a democratic will for some of these things? Well, I think in

00:22:24.820 the early going, there was a lot of fear that came over. And even when Belinda voted against Bill

00:22:31.420 195, we saw a lot of politicians vote in favor of it, who later cheated. And so, sure, the public

00:22:40.700 was afraid. And part of the problem, I think, is that the government was, I've said this publicly,

00:22:47.660 it's nefarious that St. Joe's and Hamilton had early treatment for COVID. And it wasn't readily

00:22:54.140 being promoted and expanded, whether it's monoclonal antibodies or other early treatments.

00:23:01.260 It wasn't expanded across Ontario. So the public's fear was there's no treatment for this.

00:23:06.260 Nothing can be done. And that gave the government some early leeway.

00:23:10.700 But if you look now, the PCs have been running away from their record and they're scaring the public about these types of mandates and lockdowns,

00:23:19.120 saying that the NDP might do exactly what Doug Ford did a few times.

00:23:23.060 So I think it's important with advocacy, the public responds and the public mood may shift depending on more information that comes out.

00:23:32.700 And so maybe in the beginning there was skepticism, but I think largely the more people find out about treatments for COVID and the studies that have come out and in discussion that the lockdowns did nothing to curb the spread.

00:23:45.900 And there was no such thing as COVID zero. And the same with the vaccine passports. I think the public comes around.

00:23:53.060 And I would also remind people on this that the government and their public health advisors have

00:23:58.120 not ruled out the return of these things. I mean, it's all well and good during an election to see

00:24:03.500 everyone mask free, vaccine passport free. But Kieran Moore has gotten up there and said, you

00:24:08.560 know, once winter comes around, who knows what's going to happen. And we've got to, that's why the

00:24:12.920 new blue party is just getting started on June 2nd. It's no conclusion. We need a political party in

00:24:17.980 every corner of this province, Andrew, that when the establishment parties, and we know it's not

00:24:22.900 even if. We know that they're not going to stick to their commitments and especially the Ford PCs.

00:24:28.040 We're going to be there, the new blue party outside the legislature, hopefully inside the

00:24:31.640 legislature to keep advocating and keep pushing. And one of the things that COVID brought up in

00:24:36.760 the last two years, you'll know this, Andrew, that the power that some of the local bureaucrats have

00:24:42.300 in the name of public health. So you can have specific regions just declaring without any due

00:24:47.920 process, without any debate in the legislature, they're going to shut down businesses. And part

00:24:51.900 of the new blueprint is doing a comprehensive review of what those legal powers are of local

00:24:57.720 bureaucrats in the name of public health. They have no idea what it's like to operate a church

00:25:02.640 or worship or run a small business. They shouldn't have that power in many instances to shut down

00:25:08.520 small businesses and tell people how many people they can have over for Christmas and Thanksgiving.

00:25:13.180 Yeah, I mean, there was a time not that long ago, I guess two years and a bit, where the public

00:25:17.940 health officer was the one telling you about getting your malaria shot before you go to Africa,

00:25:23.140 teaching people about the importance of safe sex and, you know, making sure that there were

00:25:27.980 drug overdose responses available. I mean, these things that most people associate with public

00:25:32.440 health, the amount of power that we've learned was always there, but has only more recently been

00:25:37.400 deployed is shocking to people. And I guess the question is, how big of an overhaul do we need to

00:25:43.680 reign that in. We need a comprehensive overview of the laws and the regulations on the books for

00:25:49.040 the local bureaucrats. In addition to repealing all of the laws that Doug Ford put in under the

00:25:54.440 guise of, you know, lockdown mandate related legislation, including Bill 100 that he put in

00:26:01.160 near the end of the legislative sitting that allows him to go after people without due process

00:26:05.220 and shut down businesses. It's got to be a comprehensive overview of the last two years

00:26:09.940 of COVID lockdown related legislation and mandate related legislation and proactive legislation

00:26:16.880 because of the problem the PCs have created in many instances where Doug Ford is now saying

00:26:23.040 it's an option for people or facility operators, whether they want to use the COVID vaccine

00:26:28.160 passport. But a few months ago, when Belinda was standing in the legislature challenging them on 0.77

00:26:33.240 it, whether it was a liberal private members bill or otherwise, the PCs were advocating for it

00:26:38.240 publicly and in the legislature, telling facility operators to impose COVID vaccine passports and

00:26:45.000 the nurses that were terminated from their jobs. It's only increased the backlog of procedures.

00:26:49.560 The new blueprint calls for rehiring those nurses. So there's a lot of work to do, but it starts with 0.61

00:26:54.640 ensuring that the discussion continues and the advocacy in the right direction continues.

00:26:59.380 And that's what the new blue party of Ontario was started for two years ago. And we're just

00:27:03.540 getting started on June 2nd. You've gone in the new blueprint back to basics on, I think,

00:27:08.480 conservative fiscal policy here, a reduction in the HST from 13% to 10%. So that's a pretty

00:27:14.900 significant reduction in the provincial portion of that. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm

00:27:19.620 opposed to that. I think that's wonderful. I'd say bring it on. How would you pay for it, though?

00:27:24.680 The payment's got to be through economic growth. I mean, conservatives in the past, Andrew, would

00:27:28.740 say, we don't have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem. Well, under 20 years of liberal

00:27:34.340 and PC governments, we have a spending problem and we have a revenue problem because the economy

00:27:39.140 is growing at over 1%. And we all know that the more you increase taxation, the economy is not

00:27:45.080 going to pick up. And we saw it with Doug Ford put in an industrial carbon tax. That's part of the

00:27:49.840 same tax relief we're promising in the new blueprint. And every time you add one of these

00:27:55.060 taxes, you're just slowing down the economy. Our new blueprint has the best plan to get the economy

00:27:59.880 going again. It starts with reducing electricity rates by taking down and decommissioning those

00:28:04.960 wind turbines and reducing the HST will also have an economic impact. And that's how we're going to

00:28:10.960 pay for tax relief and for social services going forward. And social services are in trouble

00:28:17.100 because if we keep growing this economy at a fraction of what our spending increases,

00:28:22.300 we're going to have a big problem.

00:28:23.680 But I'll say one more thing, Andrew.

00:28:25.020 I said this to someone who interviewed me the other day from a publication.

00:28:30.060 When it's time for the PCs or the liberals to spend money,

00:28:33.680 like Doug Ford just did,

00:28:34.900 he spent more money in the last four years than any government.

00:28:37.920 He's run greater deficits, excluding COVID spending,

00:28:41.340 than any government in the history of Ontario.

00:28:43.940 It's amazing that the establishment press never says,

00:28:46.540 how are you going to pay for that?

00:28:47.980 It's just like it's a bottomless pit of money when it comes to spending.

00:28:51.740 when it comes to 6.9 billion dollars to try to keep hydro rates down. But when it comes to tax

00:28:57.200 relief, the left is all over the place and the establishment media are screaming, you can't pay

00:29:01.900 for it. Well, the best way to to afford tax relief is by doing a tax relief and getting the economy

00:29:07.300 going. Are there any big significant expenditures that you see? I mean, obviously, you're not in

00:29:13.140 there and you don't have access to the full books in the sense that you would if you were the

00:29:17.120 the premier, but are there things going into it that, you know, you could, you could cut that

00:29:21.160 are big ticket items or that you would at least look at for cuts? Well, one of the ways we reduce

00:29:26.900 spending is through the alternative schooling tax credit and other wasteful spending, like the

00:29:32.600 a hundred million dollars a year that Doug Ford's been doing, um, uh, for the political parties over

00:29:38.200 the last 10 years, he didn't do the a hundred million dollars, but the establishment party

00:29:41.380 set it in motion but the other big spending 6.9 billion dollars a year of taxpayer money being

00:29:47.220 used to artificially deflate hydro rates when the solution is to take down the wind turbines

00:29:52.580 and we just saw him for two months um make promises of the in in the billions hundreds of

00:29:59.060 millions of dollars worth of um green energy electric vehicle subsidies and and i hate using

00:30:05.780 the term green energy because it's not it's not green energy um so right there with his commitments

00:30:11.140 that he's promised, totally opposed to the electric vehicle subsidies, corporate welfare

00:30:16.420 going to create these industries that are entirely going to be dependent on government

00:30:22.420 funding. And the minute the government can't afford to fund them anymore, those industries

00:30:26.600 will collapse. So there's a lot of wasteful spending that the Ford PCs have continued

00:30:31.620 in continuing the McGinty Wind legacy and trying to create a provincial paradigm here

00:30:37.580 in Ontario of whatever Justin Trudeau wants federally.

00:30:41.400 Things like accountability are not or should not be left-right issues. The COVID handling,

00:30:47.060 I've seen a lot of criticism towards what Doug Ford's done here from the left and from the right,

00:30:52.180 and I think increasingly from people that aren't even political or aren't even on the political

00:30:56.040 spectrum. So let me ask how you envision your party fitting into the political landscape here.

00:31:01.040 Are you trying to be an alternative for conservative voters, or do you actually see

00:31:05.200 something in here that's going to attract votes from former Liberal voters, NDP voters, Green

00:31:10.880 voters and non-voters? One of the biggest components of our supporters are people who

00:31:17.520 have stopped voting for a long time. We get it in Kitchener, Conestoga and Cambridge and across

00:31:23.760 Ontario, people who have said they gave up on the establishment parties because they're all the

00:31:28.700 same and whether it's we are talking about issues that voters previously would have said you know

00:31:36.380 I consider that a right of center issue or they thought that that was not a right of center issue

00:31:41.860 and they're coming around and and and realizing that's actually a good solution or whether we're

00:31:47.820 talking about the things on accountability and democratic reform and not wasting money

00:31:53.140 that a lot of voters used to think was common amongst all the parties.

00:31:57.400 For example, the idea that you're subsidizing a political party for their operations,

00:32:02.340 I don't think there's a voter out there on the left or the right

00:32:05.200 that thinks that's a good idea, or very few at least.

00:32:07.980 The idea that the PCs would not allow Belinda's private member's bill to pass in 2019

00:32:14.700 and they parked it at a committee.

00:32:20.500 Oh, I think you froze there.

00:32:23.140 do we still have jim which was to for the first time yeah sorry we got you back now we're uh

00:32:29.700 carry on there so uh in ontario's history there's never been a law against voter fraud in internal

00:32:35.620 party elections and belinda proposed that private members bill and she got unanimous support from

00:32:41.060 all the parties in the legislature because the greens the liberals the ndp they all know that

00:32:45.620 their voters wouldn't be in favor of voter fraud but the doug ford pcs just parked at a committee

00:32:50.420 never allowed that private members bill to become law. I mean, what kind of party, Andrew,

00:32:54.840 wouldn't pass into law a bill against voter fraud in internal party elections? And a lot of voters

00:33:00.380 in Ontario, whether it's Cambridge or otherwise, they had no idea that there are no laws on the

00:33:05.980 books against voter fraud taking place in a leadership and a nomination at a party convention.

00:33:11.400 And of course, the other promise we've made is to scrap the Toronto Star's online gambling license.

00:33:16.540 And Andrew, you're you're one of the best read on this stuff. You'll see a lot of left leaning commentators writing articles on this stuff, saying this is a terrible idea to mix online gambling revenues with print media is a terrible idea.

00:33:31.360 And there's other local issues that we've been fighting for, like Belinda has been standing up against a drug injection site in Cambridge and voters that traditionally may have voted on the left or the right or never voted are coming around and saying, I agree with that.

00:33:45.640 So we are talking about the things that the establishment parties and others in the political process are not talking about, and that's where we've been building our support for the last two years and even before that since I started the Acts of Carbon Tax campaign.

00:33:59.220 I know about 15 years ago, Ontarians voted in a referendum on electoral reform, on introducing mixed member proportional representation, which would have allowed for some proportional representation in the legislature, which would have allowed for newer parties and upstart parties to have a bit more of a direct path in.

00:34:18.380 Is that something you'd support or you have a position on as leader of New Blue electoral reform?

00:34:22.920 it's not in the new blueprint it's something we're always looking at ways to strengthen our

00:34:28.720 democracy but in the immediate future we're fighting for a cleanup of the internal party

00:34:35.100 process so I think that's the immediate thing that needs fixing and tinkering with the general

00:34:41.200 election system is kind of you know jumping a few steps ahead federally you remember in 2005

00:34:47.880 Stephen Harper brought forward the Accountability Act and he made a clear line between lobbyists

00:34:54.400 getting involved in internal party politics. Provincially, we've seen those same guys like

00:35:01.780 Doug Ford's campaign manager taking advantage of the fact that in Ontario, there are not as strong

00:35:06.840 laws against that. And we've seen lobbyists or reported lobbyists on the PC side jumping on

00:35:12.700 caucus calls and telling caucus how they should be voting. And the entire internal party system

00:35:18.680 in Ontario politics is totally broken, not just damaged a bit, where it's entirely driven by the

00:35:25.540 leader and whoever the gang in the back is. So the focus has to be on cleaning up the internal

00:35:30.440 party system first, I think, before we start tinkering with how the general election model

00:35:36.160 works. Now, I mean, just one last question, Jim, if that happened, is a party like the New Blue

00:35:41.180 needed if if the major parties or the established parties are are subject to the rules that you've

00:35:46.460 proposed well that's just one element of it but the new blue party of ontario i worked really hard

00:35:52.800 and belinda worked really hard and there were thousands of others that really worked very very

00:35:56.900 hard for many years to influence the

00:35:58.620 Ontario PC party work from the inside is what they said to push for the solutions that the

00:36:12.380 establishment parties don't want to talk about. And June 2nd is just a starting point for us.

00:36:17.040 We're not going away. We've balanced the narrative. We've changed the course and we've challenged the

00:36:22.060 left for the last few years. And we're going to continue to do that.

00:36:24.900 Jim Carajalios, leader of the new Blue Party. I know it's a big week with the election coming

00:36:30.200 up Thursday. So thanks very much for joining me again. Thanks, Andrew. All right. Thank you.

00:36:35.080 And I know that last time we talked to Jim Carajalios, we had people and also Derek Sloan,

00:36:41.160 leader of the Ontario Party, who will be here tomorrow. We had people saying, why are you

00:36:45.080 focused a bunch on Ontario? And I had to say, no, no, no. I focus on Alberta. I focused on BC. I

00:36:50.820 I haven't done as much on the Maritimes, but we focus on the conservative movement more broadly.

00:36:56.460 And we do that right now because there's an election in Ontario.

00:36:59.540 And I have invited Doug Ford on the show.

00:37:02.260 I've invited him numerous times through the pandemic and during the election.

00:37:06.160 And they have thus far not wanted to.

00:37:08.880 And it's quite unfortunate.

00:37:10.020 I ran in 2018 as a PC candidate.

00:37:13.260 I know Doug Ford personally.

00:37:15.100 I've been very critical of his handling of the pandemic.

00:37:17.640 I'm politically neutral in this election.

00:37:20.340 but I don't hide my history and my past connection with that party.

00:37:24.360 But again, they haven't wanted to talk, which I think has been a great shame.

00:37:27.240 But it also speaks volumes about where that party's priorities are

00:37:30.840 as far as the audience and the voter base it's trying to cultivate.

00:37:35.820 So we are going to talk tomorrow to Ontario party leader Derek Sloan.

00:37:40.260 We're focusing on policy here with just a couple of days to go until the election.

00:37:44.560 But I do want to speak just for a couple of moments again

00:37:47.460 about this announcement the Liberals made.

00:37:49.240 And I want to just, if you're just tuning in, play that clip of Justin Trudeau again,

00:37:53.260 laying out what it is his government's doing.

00:37:58.120 We're introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership.

00:38:06.060 What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada.

00:38:17.220 In other words, we're capping the market for handguns.

00:38:47.220 control and Canadian handgun ownership, which most people in this country don't understand.

00:38:54.320 Gun owners in this country are a minority, so politically it's a very easy group to beat up on.

00:39:01.260 But it is embarrassing and shameful and pathetic that the federal government is introducing firearms

00:39:09.200 legislation that is not needed to answer a problem that does not exist because lawful handgun

00:39:15.240 ownership in this country is a non-existent threat to public safety. People are going to be

00:39:22.680 shocked. I mean, they probably won't pay attention to it because the media won't cover it, but people

00:39:26.400 are going to be shocked in three, four, five, six years time when this law is on the books and they

00:39:31.660 wonder why gang shootings in Toronto and Surrey and Montreal and Vancouver haven't gone down at

00:39:38.920 all. And they're like, but wait, I thought the government banned handguns. And someone will have

00:39:44.520 to say no no no they only ban legal handguns not the ones that criminals are using what's wrong

00:39:49.500 with you you thought we were going after those guns no not at all the borders are the problem

00:39:54.820 not the legal gun stores not me not you if you're a registered possession and acquisition license

00:40:01.660 holder but we are going to do a full show on this tomorrow like i said the timing just came

00:40:06.700 where we couldn't delve into it in as much detail today but that is coming up on tomorrow's show

00:40:11.200 which will also be live and we'll have a great guest for you to break that down i just i don't

00:40:15.440 want to announce it because i haven't invited them yet so that'll be tomorrow though in the

00:40:19.380 meantime i want to thank all of you for tuning in to the program today this is canada's most

00:40:24.140 irreverent talk show the andrew lawton show live on true north thank you god bless and good day to

00:40:29.100 you all for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north

00:40:35.940 at www.tnc.news.

00:41:05.940 We'll be right back.

Juno News - May 30, 2022

Bank CEO apologizes to convoy spokesperson for account freeze

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