Juno News - Calls for Marco Mendicino to resign are mounting

00:00:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:00:08.340 north hello everyone welcome along canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north a little

00:00:16.660 bit less cool of a day than yesterday so i've ditched the sweater i had one colleague of mine

00:00:22.720 who i will not name for the sake of his or her dignity who was like getting mad that i was

00:00:27.820 complaining about how cold the air conditioner was when this person doesn't have a central air

00:00:32.640 conditioning. So I did not wish to start off yesterday's show by going on about air conditioner

00:00:38.280 privilege, which I believe is right up there with white privilege in the summer months. But

00:00:42.180 we will stand up for all of you, whether you have central air conditioning or not.

00:00:46.220 In all honesty, yesterday I wished I didn't because I just couldn't get it to stop blowing.

00:00:50.980 See, there we go. I'm asserting my air conditioning privilege once again. In any case, it is good to

00:00:56.940 talk to you. We are going to delve into the wonderful world of digital ID very shortly.

00:01:02.620 You may recall last week we started off talking about this and I think in quite a significant

00:01:07.820 way exposed the glaring issues with this thing that's being pushed upon us in the name of

00:01:14.120 convenience. And the other aspect of this that I will point out, and I think this is

00:01:19.740 very important, is that everyone says that the privacy issue is really no biggie. When

00:01:24.680 government talks about the digital id program they say oh yeah of course it'll respect privacy but

00:01:30.120 we are going to talk to ann kabukian who is not one of these uh raging right-wing types like 1.00

00:01:35.640 myself she is a very measured and intelligent person i mean i try to be intelligent but she's

00:01:41.320 got the phd she's done more to back up her intelligence in the academic sphere anyway 0.99

00:01:46.440 and she has grave concerns about the privacy implications of digital id so we're going to

00:01:50.760 to talk to Anne in just about 10 minutes or so on this program. And also later on, I want to delve

00:01:56.920 into the media layoffs taking place at Bell. And if you're expecting me to jump up and down and

00:02:03.060 cheer and spike the football in the end zone, there we go. I actually did a correct sports

00:02:08.340 analogy right there, spiking the football in the end zone. See, I know rugby very well.

00:02:13.980 People don't know I'm joking when I do that, but like my own brother says, you know, you have to

00:02:17.920 stop doing it because I can never tell if you're serious or not. Anyway, I'm going to talk about

00:02:22.560 this a little bit later on. And I'm not actually going to spike the football, so to speak. I'm not

00:02:28.220 going to celebrate, but I am going to talk about what this means for the state of media. And I

00:02:32.180 think there is a lot to unpack there. So we'll do that a little bit later on in the show. But let's

00:02:37.740 start off by talking about everyone's speaking of intelligence, Marco Mendicino. I joked a few

00:02:43.200 weeks ago that when on the firearms file, when gun owners talk about 22, they're referring to

00:02:48.320 a caliber. When Marco Mendicino uses 22, he's referring to his IQ, which I think is being a

00:02:54.020 little bit generous there. Here's a guy who by all accounts had a decent career as a lawyer.

00:02:58.620 And now that he's in politics is just this like fumbling, flailing fool that seems to bungle 0.97

00:03:03.900 every single file, every single file he touches, whether it's being the public safety minister 0.98

00:03:09.920 during the convoy, whether it's the firearms file, and now the corrections portfolio, where

00:03:15.200 anyone who's over, I want to say 40, maybe even 35 in Canada, knows Paul Bernardo and Carla Homoka.

00:03:24.140 They're household names in a way that they aren't for the younger generation. But certainly Marco

00:03:28.820 Mendicino is a guy who knows the name Paul Bernardo or should have known it. But this is a guy,

00:03:34.040 a serial rapist and murderer who, of all the things in Canada that we can disagree about, 0.97

00:03:40.780 I have yet to come across one single person that thinks Paul Bernardo is a decent guy. So 0.96

00:03:46.240 of all the things we disagree about, everyone can agree he's a dirtbag who should be a prime 0.98

00:03:51.440 candidate for the death penalty if we have it, and if not, should be rotting behind bars for 1.00

00:03:55.840 the rest of his miserable existence. And that was what was happening for uncontroversially since he 0.97

00:04:00.720 was put away, what was it, 20, probably pushing, no, 30 years ago now almost. And Paul Bernardo

00:04:06.580 though, this past month was transferred to medium security. Apparently it was just a little bit too

00:04:12.700 high security for what he needed down in Ontario. So they transferred him to a medium security

00:04:18.060 facility within the Canadian penitentiary system. And all of a sudden the government acts so

00:04:23.100 surprised by this, like they don't understand how this happened on their watch. And the initial

00:04:29.460 statement we saw from the Correctional Service of Canada was that the minister's office had no idea

00:04:37.120 whatsoever that Bernardo was being transferred, they say. But then they sort of said, well, yeah,

00:04:43.240 we can confirm that they did know and that we did tell them. And Marco Mendicino was this week left

00:04:49.860 holding the bag. He had to come up with a way to explain how this record that showed his office

00:04:55.220 being looped in three months ago somehow didn't manage to get to him. So the I don't check my

00:05:00.980 email excuse has become like the number one excuse for liberal cabinet ministers on a variety

00:05:05.920 of scandals in the last few weeks. It's what Bill Blair has been using. It's what Harjit

00:05:10.040 Sajjan has been using and all of the above. So the fascinating thing here, the fascinating thing is 0.63

00:05:16.520 that this is like a defense that ministers think is legitimate. The I don't know what's happening

00:05:21.220 in my own office defense, which is a far cry. Whatever you thought of Stephen Harper from his

00:05:25.780 approach, which was that the buck stops here and that ministers and the prime minister have to be

00:05:30.200 accountable for what staffers do. So this idea of just blaming some lowly staffer doesn't really

00:05:35.280 fly. So Marco Mendocino's office and his staff knew three months ago that Paul Bernardo was going

00:05:42.940 to be transferred to medium security. Now, if you think that is a problem, which it seems like most

00:05:47.860 people in this country do, then it's a problem that he didn't know about it, that his staff

00:05:52.200 kept this from him. You may think it was just because they wanted him to be able to have that

00:05:57.400 deniability that comes along with being deliberately kept in the dark. So in response, he's come out

00:06:04.620 and said, okay, well, I'm going to recommend a ministerial directive. That's what he's doing.

00:06:10.180 It's a learning opportunity for all of us, a ministerial directive. And this ministerial

00:06:14.900 directive, according to Mendicino, is apparently going to keep all of this from happening again.

00:06:20.720 He's saying here, let me see if I can pull it up again here. I had like a million channels open on

00:06:24.300 my computer and I missed the, oh, maybe I didn't post it. Oh, there it is. Yeah. He's pushed the

00:06:30.420 statement forward here. And he says that correctional services must re-examine its

00:06:35.120 policies. So the policies of the problem, not him, to ensure victims' rights are guiding the

00:06:40.080 decision-making process, CSC should inform victims of any transfer of inmates between maximum and

00:06:46.400 medium security institutions, and the minister must formally and directly be notified in advance

00:06:53.740 of the transfer of any high-profile or dangerous offenders. Nowhere in that list of three things in

00:07:00.020 this apparent ministerial directive does it prevent heinous, violent offenders like Bernardo from

00:07:07.220 being downgraded to medium security. Nowhere does it actually prevent that from happening.

00:07:12.360 It doesn't even require that the minister sign off on it, which he could have said. He could

00:07:17.200 have said the minister must not just be notified, but must approve it. So it's like he's almost

00:07:22.340 trying, not almost, he's deliberately trying to prevent having to be accountable in the future

00:07:26.960 on this. So all they have to do is inform victims. So correctional service will call up the family

00:07:33.220 members of Paul Bernardo's victim and say, victims plural and say, hey, just wanted to let you know

00:07:39.340 he's going into medium security. See ya. And they've done it. That's what Marco Mendicino

00:07:45.020 thinks is appropriate, that the notification is the issue and not the actual treatment of heinous

00:07:51.220 violent offenders. Now, believe it or not, I am not one of, I like to think I'm a tough on crime

00:07:56.700 person, but I also have a very nuanced view of it. And that I believe when we're talking about

00:08:01.460 majority of criminals who are eventually going to be released back into the world at some point,

00:08:07.540 we need to talk about the way that we can get the best outcomes out of them. And I believe

00:08:11.780 that may come through educating them. I believe that may come from finding alternatives to jail

00:08:16.740 if jail is not the most appropriate venue for them. That does not apply here. We are not talking

00:08:23.860 about a guy for whom a compassionate justice system is warranted or productive. It's a guy who

00:08:30.340 Anyone who's ever spoken to this man, reviewed him, assessed him, has said he shows zero remorse

00:08:36.000 for his actions. The fact that Carla Homoka, who was just as complicit and in some ways more so

00:08:41.980 than him, is out walking free with a real name looking after children is a shameful aspect of

00:08:47.600 Canada's justice system. But at least we got Bernardo, right? And now even that is seen as

00:08:52.540 apparently too harsh. We can't have him in maximum security. There are ministers in the past,

00:08:57.120 before the Trudeau government was in, for whom this would have been a resignation-worthy offense

00:09:02.920 right here. But instead, Mendocino has taken his marching orders from Justin Trudeau,

00:09:08.300 and it is abundantly clear that all you need to do is just say, well, we'll all vow to do better

00:09:13.180 in the future. We'll vow to do better in the future. It's everyone else's problem but mine.

00:09:18.120 None of the things he put forward, by the way, would have prevented this from happening. And

00:09:23.320 more importantly, none of these directives would have actually made him more responsible or

00:09:28.880 accountable. It falls on the Correctional Service of Canada. It falls on his staff. So why is he not

00:09:34.720 firing staff over this? Why is he not firing his staff, firing someone if he takes this as

00:09:41.280 seriously as he claims he does? Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservatives, has basically come out

00:09:46.560 with a laundry list of reasons why he thinks Mendocino needs to resign over this. Take a look.

00:09:53.320 This is not the first time Mr. Mendocino has lied to Canadians.

00:09:58.220 I have a list. You need a list because it's hard to keep track.

00:10:01.440 He lied saying that the police had asked him to bring in the Emergencies Act.

00:10:06.000 They did not.

00:10:07.140 He misled a federal judge by backdating documents.

00:10:11.160 He admitted in committee that the RCMP was using spyware to gain information on Canadians.

00:10:16.960 He lied that the Safe Third Country Agreement was working.

00:10:20.360 He claimed it was impossible to close Roxham Road, something that has now happened.

00:10:26.000 He claimed that his amendments would not ban hunting rifles.

00:10:31.840 And then later on, he had to admit that they did ban hunting rifles and reverse those amendments.

00:10:36.980 He said that the CSIS report on Michael Chong's family being targeted by a former government

00:10:46.780 did never left CSIS.

00:10:48.420 We now know that the documents went from CSIS to the Prime Minister's National Security Advisor.

00:10:54.140 He claimed there were no more Chinese-controlled police stations in Canada.

00:10:57.660 Now we know there are at least two.

00:10:59.920 And he lied about his knowledge that Paul Bernardo was being moved from a maximum security penitentiary to a medium security penitentiary,

00:11:08.500 something that he has the power to stop.

00:11:10.560 These are too many lies.

00:11:11.740 It's one lie too many.

00:11:12.820 It is time for Marco Mendicino to resign.

00:11:17.860 I should warn you, I had read a summation of that line before, and I hadn't actually watched

00:11:28.080 the clip. And when I realized that I was throwing to a clip of a list of evidence supporting Marco

00:11:34.260 Medellino's incompetence, I was worried it might actually fill up the whole show, that that was

00:11:38.500 just going to be like a one hour long list that we had to just pick up on Friday's show. But no,

00:11:43.760 thankfully, we were able to keep it a little bit more condensed there. We didn't even need to play

00:11:47.600 it at double speed. And I suggest if you were to dig into that, you'd probably find more reasons,

00:11:51.400 but literally it's the reverse Midas touch. Any file he touches turns to absolute crap. So it's 0.99

00:11:58.000 no surprise. I mean, if you are a, if you're a litigant in some way and you want to sue the

00:12:02.520 government, I would find a way to sue Marco Menachino because you'll probably manage to win

00:12:06.240 just by virtue of the fact that he'll get lost on the way to the courthouse or trip because he

00:12:10.340 forgot to tie his shoes or something like that. And all of this is to say that Marco Menachino

00:12:15.500 right now has never once taken responsibility for any of it. It's always someone else's fault.

00:12:22.600 That clip that I played during the Freedom Convoy protest is probably, this one I won't play because

00:12:27.760 it's like six minutes and it's six minutes of having to listen to Marco Manicino, which I

00:12:31.900 believe in actually in some undeveloped countries, they still use as torture in violation of the

00:12:36.780 Geneva Convention. But the thing about it is that he came out and just made things up. He just made

00:12:45.160 things up. He came out and said, oh, yes, there's a violent cell, people that want to do terrible

00:12:49.000 things, and they're connected from Coutts to Ottawa. And when journalists, to their credit,

00:12:53.160 pushed back at him on this and said, well, what group, what people? Eventually, he walked back

00:12:58.440 this claim of an organized militia-like group in Ottawa connected to the convoy to I've seen

00:13:04.320 rhetoric on social media that is concerning. Again, it took six minutes to get from one to

00:13:09.820 the other, but eventually he walked it back to just this unrecognizable point because that's

00:13:14.600 what Marco Mendicino does. He just says stuff. But in this case, we are talking about surviving

00:13:20.160 family members of Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French who have been re-traumatized time and

00:13:26.020 time again. Anytime Paul Bernardo comes up for air and is in the news because, oh, he's trying

00:13:30.240 to get married behind bars or, oh, he's applying for parole again. And this process re-traumatizes

00:13:36.060 them. And in that case, you know, the government always says, well, you know, the parole board

00:13:40.080 tamped down on it, the prison system tamped down on it. Now they are re-traumatized by seeing this

00:13:45.220 guy who ruined their lives, who took away the lives of their loved ones and is evidently seen

00:13:52.140 as unworthy of the maximum security treatment in Canadian prisons. This is what this family has to

00:13:58.360 do. So anytime the government wants to say like Mendocino does here, oh, it's outraged by this,

00:14:03.700 it's mad about this. No, you're not. Because if you were as outraged by this as you say you were,

00:14:08.700 there would be some semblance of accountability.

00:14:11.720 There'd be some semblance of responsibility.

00:14:14.100 And you would not allow your government

00:14:15.860 to maintain a policy over the criminal justice system

00:14:19.180 that focuses on how quickly they can get people out

00:14:22.220 on the streets rather than actually paying for their crimes.

00:14:25.800 And I'm not talking about being punitive

00:14:27.440 for the sake of punishing people.

00:14:29.160 I'm talking about the lack of bail reform,

00:14:31.840 which means that anytime you get a press release

00:14:34.040 from a police department about someone they picked up

00:14:36.060 who stabbed someone, who committed some offense, who committed some sexual assault.

00:14:40.960 It is increasingly the case that they're telling you this person was out on bail.

00:14:45.960 This person was out on bail.

00:14:47.460 But no, if you're a law-abiding gun owner, you will get the arm of the state,

00:14:50.680 the heavy arm of the state going after you every which way.

00:14:53.660 If you want to own a old hunting rifle to go and do some plinking in the woods,

00:14:59.720 rest assured you will be at the top of Marco Menachino's and Justin Trudeau's radar.

00:15:04.100 But if you want to get out on bail and sexually assault someone on a city bus, that is A-OK.

00:15:09.960 If you want to commit serial rape and murder and get transferred into medium security, that's all fine as well.

00:15:16.900 Everything's hunky-dory.

00:15:18.300 If they, if we want, seriously, if we want the government to take what's happening to Paul Bernardo seriously, let's give him a firearms license.

00:15:25.960 That's the only way that Marco Mendicino will care what he does.

00:15:29.220 Absolutely shameful.

00:15:30.860 We are going to be talking about digital ID in just a couple of moments time with Dr.

00:15:36.240 Anne Kavoukian.

00:15:37.720 I want to just on the note of censorship, I know there's been a lot of hand wringing

00:15:41.960 by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez about C18 and how Facebook's responding to it.

00:15:49.640 And they're basically blocking access to news content from some people.

00:15:54.460 And they're doing this in a way that I find is actually quite brilliant.

00:15:58.480 And I, you know, I'm no no secret to the fact that I've got some big issues with the big tech companies.

00:16:04.060 But when it comes to government versus big tech, big government versus big tech, I tend to have a bit more sympathy for big tech.

00:16:12.660 Not a lot, but a bit more. And the thing because ultimately regulating big tech is about regulating tech users.

00:16:19.040 So when government says we're regulating Twitter and Facebook, what they're really talking about is regulating the people who use Twitter and Facebook.

00:16:26.280 And that's why I find these things are problematic.

00:16:29.780 But Facebook, instead of having to pay up for the privilege of letting media outlets

00:16:35.660 post their content to Facebook, which is what the government's trying to do in C18,

00:16:41.200 the thing that's happening now is Facebook is saying,

00:16:44.840 all right, we're going to just try blocking it altogether.

00:16:46.980 So there are some users in Canada right now where if you want to go and link to a news article

00:16:53.320 or something like that, you will not be able to.

00:16:56.280 And it's a good way for Facebook to expose, for Facebook to expose the, what I would say is a quite interesting dilemma here.

00:17:06.400 Because on one hand, the government says, all right, we think you're stealing.

00:17:10.720 And then when Facebook says, okay, we won't steal anymore, we won't steal, we won't post it.

00:17:16.100 Instead, what the government says is, oh, well, how dare you cut people off?

00:17:20.680 News is vital.

00:17:21.620 You're stopping the flow of information.

00:17:23.160 And I'm like, well, hang on, which is the bad thing and which is the good thing, allowing

00:17:27.380 this content or not allowing this content?

00:17:29.840 So what we see when big tech companies start to flex their censorship muscle, though, is

00:17:35.080 that it happens in a way that is very ideologically driven.

00:17:38.560 So a couple of weeks ago, I had Aaron Gunn on this show, who has produced this new documentary

00:17:42.960 called Canada is Dying, a tremendous look at the drug and opioid and I would just say

00:17:48.020 crime crisis across Canada.

00:17:49.640 and after getting 1.2 million views in just two weeks,

00:17:54.420 YouTube has started censoring and blocking it.

00:17:57.780 So this is absolutely insane

00:17:59.260 and I have no idea what the basis of it is.

00:18:02.880 It's still available, but you need to log in.

00:18:06.840 So you need to have an account

00:18:08.060 and it also is labeled as violent.

00:18:11.660 They've put a label on it.

00:18:13.220 So if you do try to watch it,

00:18:14.720 you're actually gonna find that you can't

00:18:17.060 unless you're logged in.

00:18:17.880 and this means that they're blocking distribution of it.

00:18:20.420 So that meteoric rise, 1.2 million views and counting,

00:18:24.880 effectively gets halted,

00:18:26.380 and the only way to access it is to seek it out.

00:18:29.560 And I don't think they're doing this

00:18:31.100 because of pressure from the liberals,

00:18:32.600 but I do believe wholeheartedly

00:18:35.280 that what's happening here

00:18:36.920 is the liberal government's policies

00:18:39.620 are going to result in more of this,

00:18:41.640 of manipulating the algorithm

00:18:43.320 so that only government-approved content

00:18:46.520 is what you can see on your home screen.

00:18:48.880 Only government approved content.

00:18:50.280 It's what gets fed to people

00:18:51.360 through the almighty algorithm.

00:18:53.460 And in this particular case,

00:18:54.460 it doesn't matter that Canada is dying

00:18:56.180 is an original Canadian production

00:18:58.440 because it's not the right kind of Canadian content.

00:19:02.460 It's not the right kind of Canadian content.

00:19:04.400 So you know it's not going to get fed out to people

00:19:06.860 the same way that it is supposed to.

00:19:09.700 So, you know, hopefully Aaron will be able to appeal that

00:19:13.020 in my defense.

00:19:13.720 uh anytime i've tried to go up against youtube i've not managed to succeed i mean we had like

00:19:19.040 the my pillow guy on i don't even want to say his name because i'm worried then this will get banned

00:19:23.380 but we had oh who cares i think they changed their policy on this we had like mike lindell on the show

00:19:28.180 to talk about pillows and christianity and then we ended up getting that interview flagged like

00:19:34.860 weeks after the fact because it like violated the policy youtube has on the my pillow guy

00:19:39.780 which they may or may not have changed.

00:19:41.880 I said we need to get Mike Lindell on back

00:19:43.920 to test if the policy had changed,

00:19:45.460 but our administrator, William, told me to go pound salt.

00:19:48.720 So take it up with him.

00:19:50.840 We had a super chat from Austin Taylor,

00:19:53.900 who I think, isn't that a clothing store?

00:19:55.400 I don't know if it was the store or some guy

00:19:56.900 named Austin Taylor,

00:19:58.400 just giving us $55 without any question or comment.

00:20:04.680 So thank you very much for your support

00:20:06.680 of Independent Media, Austin.

00:20:09.320 Let's talk a little bit here about the media landscape in this country, because we know that

00:20:15.020 Bell has a huge, huge, huge round of layoffs that has been announced today. And it isn't just 1,300

00:20:22.700 jobs. It's also like whole radio stations, including the radio station in my neck of the

00:20:27.340 woods that I used to do a weekly panel on, CJBK 1290, which is quite a significant radio station

00:20:36.140 It has a great deal of history, and it has now shut down.

00:20:40.680 Just at 11, they flipped the switch and went off.

00:20:43.360 And we'll talk about that a little bit later on because we do have Ann Kavoukian with us.

00:20:47.860 And just to bring you up to speed on the digital ID discussion we had last week,

00:20:52.580 a lot of Canadian companies are saying digital ID is inevitable.

00:20:56.520 It's coming.

00:20:57.360 I read a piece from Interac that was actually quite concerning,

00:21:01.500 talking about it as though it's all positive.

00:21:03.240 It's all sunshine and roses.

00:21:05.100 It'll make obtaining a driver's license faster and easier because all you have to do is just go on and do this all on your phone and everything's going to be digital and all of that.

00:21:14.900 And it's astonishing to me how much of the boosting of digital ID doesn't come with any warning or any caveat about some of the very real issues that will come up as far as accessibility and privacy are concerned.

00:21:27.320 So I wanted to talk about this with Dr. Anne Kavoukian, who is formerly the Information and Privacy Commissioner in Ontario and also is the head of the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at what's now Toronto Metropolitan University, or Ryerson for us, old school types.

00:21:43.500 Anne, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today.

00:21:46.300 A pleasure, Andrew. Thank you.

00:21:47.480 So is it naivete when anyone who seems to be promoting digital ID does so by basically assuming that privacy is not going to be a concern?

00:21:57.300 it's such nonsense because for digital id you need the highest level of security and privacy

00:22:04.900 intertwined because the fishers and hackers are brilliant they can gain access to so much

00:22:10.580 information online people are um shuddering at the thought of potential third parties

00:22:16.980 unauthorized third parties gaining access to this information and you see digital id it's just

00:22:22.740 it's an evolving technology it's not firmly planted so if you ask the government about it

00:22:28.100 they say oh we're going to build in the strongest security and privacy measures possible

00:22:33.380 show me i would say trust but verify in this case i wouldn't even say trust because people

00:22:39.220 are very concerned about it understandably i haven't seen anything from the government that

00:22:44.500 says here's what we're doing and here's what will prevent any third parties from gaining access to

00:22:49.780 this which is nonsense and once they have your identity they can do identity theft they can do

00:22:55.460 so much i remember when i was privacy commissioner people will come to me who are victims of identity

00:23:00.500 theft and just say oh my god we're trying to to prevent this but we don't know what to do they've

00:23:06.020 got our identity that you know we've got all these claims that we're racking up all these charges and

00:23:10.660 we have to pay and we it wasn't us so i always used to say to them first thing you do go to the

00:23:15.220 police file an occurrence report something that validates your claim that your identity is stolen

00:23:19.700 and and and then i would try to help them but under this model everybody's identity would be

00:23:25.140 online the police couldn't handle it it's an evolving area and the thought of losing your

00:23:31.940 digital identity and trying to get it back it's just there's so many unauthorized third parties

00:23:37.780 who would gain access to it yeah i mean i i would look uh for anyone that says it's no big deal i

00:23:43.460 would look no further than the vaccine passport scheme in which the government made a lot of the

00:23:48.020 same claims which is that oh no information is going to be stored it's just you scan this qr code

00:23:53.140 and it verifies it but we saw in alberta and ontario notably data breaches of this because

00:23:59.060 in order to have some verification system which any legitimate id is going to have

00:24:04.580 there has to be some database in which some form of information is stored absolutely it has to be

00:24:10.740 retained somewhere as you said in a database somewhere and obviously you try to protect the

00:24:16.100 data but i'm not kidding when i tell you about the hackers these days they're brilliant so unless

00:24:21.060 you go to great lengths to secure the data using non-conventional methods not just trying to

00:24:28.340 de-identify the data which can usually be re-identified you have to think of all kinds

00:24:35.060 of additional measures to take and obviously encryption would be needed end to end and all

00:24:40.420 kinds of things and then i would want it to be tested by the brilliant minds out there like

00:24:46.180 bruce schneier brilliant cryptographer etc but none of that that i'm aware of is happening

00:24:52.900 digital signed verifiable credentials are an evolving technology these are very early days

00:24:59.940 so if anyone tells you don't worry about it's a done deal it's safe nonsense show me and we have

00:25:06.820 to have this kind of credential based identity solution has to be demonstrated that it is truly

00:25:13.940 superior to having a physical driver's license in your wallet which may be a pain you might lose it

00:25:19.540 you might need to get another one but at least it's retained in terms of the potential for

00:25:24.340 unauthorized access to it by third parties yeah i think that's the critical part of it here and

00:25:30.180 i'm guilty of it in the sense that i've put my credit cards on my phone so that if i'm out i can

00:25:35.460 you know press a button on my phone and tap it against a terminal but even with that i have never

00:25:40.420 once left home without the physical cards on me because i know that that is the real card not the

00:25:45.540 one that exists on the phone and i i've met people that you know will say oh i'll leave my wallet at

00:25:50.340 home i have it on my phone and then for whatever reason it's not working when they get to the store

00:25:53.700 and i've had to pay the bill being the good friend that has the physical card there so maybe the

00:25:57.860 joke's on me but that type of thing is not uncommon here right anyone who relies on this as a

00:26:03.060 a replacement for what is tangible, I think is opening themselves up to huge issues and not just

00:26:08.480 security related, but even just outages, battery deaths on phones and so on.

00:26:13.560 Exactly. And when you think of the privacy related aspects, privacy is all about control,

00:26:19.180 personal control relating to the use and disclosure of your data. Now, if all this

00:26:25.080 data is out there digitally, unless you have measures like synthetic data, which basically

00:26:29.220 replaces the identical digital identity into synthetic data, which is used in another way.

00:26:35.540 Unless you go to dramatic measures like that, your data will be accessed by third parties. I mean,

00:26:41.460 I guarantee it. And that's my enormous concern. And that's a lot of people worried about this too,

00:26:47.300 that it could also be leaked in some way. Somebody else gains access to it, which you have not

00:26:52.660 permitted, you haven't authorized. So we have so much work to do before actually thinking of

00:26:57.700 implementing this. Show me. That's what I want to say to the government. Show me. Show the brilliant

00:27:03.240 minds. I know you have to leave in a moment. No, it's okay. This is very important. Well, it is.

00:27:08.620 And I'll have to ask, are you optimistic that government will answer these questions before

00:27:12.800 pushing a product out? Or do you think it's going to end up being a learn-as-we-go experiment where

00:27:16.980 a lot of the damage has been done by the time they release this thing? Andrew, it can't be the latter

00:27:21.640 because it would cost us so much. And I don't mean just physically. The cost in terms of

00:27:28.340 restoring your identity once it's been stolen oh my god and i can tell you this because i was

00:27:32.980 privacy commissioner for three terms in ontario it's a nightmare it's a nightmare for these

00:27:37.700 individuals you really want to do that to them um unless you get rid of you know the great

00:27:43.540 majority of risk hire the brilliant minds the brilliant cryptographers bruce schneier um there's

00:27:50.260 all kinds of Caled El Imam. We have brilliant minds. Let's get the best and make sure this is

00:27:57.200 as strong as possible. And don't touch it until you do that, because you're going to cause a lot

00:28:02.480 of harm. And that's the last thing this government should be doing. Yeah. And the cautionary tale,

00:28:07.060 I think, was in Australia, where identity theft spiked when digital ID came in?

00:28:11.880 Absolutely. And who's surprised by that? Of course, it's going to spike,

00:28:15.800 because they didn't take all the unbelievably strong measures you need to take.

00:28:20.320 And I'm not suggesting that's easy to do, but you have to do it.

00:28:24.140 Or you hold off on this until you can do it.

00:28:27.220 You don't just jump into this.

00:28:28.800 It is nonsense, utter nonsense to jump into this.

00:28:34.160 Anne Kabukian, thank you so much for your time.

00:28:35.820 Really appreciate it.

00:28:36.980 My pleasure as always.

00:28:38.120 Thank you.

00:28:38.600 All right.

00:28:39.020 That was Dr. Anne Kabukian, formerly the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario,

00:28:43.240 now the Toronto Metropolitan University head of the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence. And

00:28:49.560 I believe if you say Ryerson, it's a hate crime, but that's Toronto Metropolitan University. That's

00:28:54.480 Ryerson, like I said, but that's my silent, it's not so silent of a protest, but my little

00:29:00.580 protest is call it Ryerson when I can, or just don't acknowledge it sometimes. But Anne is one

00:29:05.520 of the good ones and I'm glad she came on. And yeah, the Australia case, I should actually get

00:29:09.600 someone from Australia on the show about this because the Aussie case is fascinating. They

00:29:13.900 literally put in place digital ID and privacy theft went right up. They had a huge issue

00:29:20.480 and they also had, there was one story I found here where a data theft victim service, which I

00:29:27.240 don't even think we have in Canada, had pointed out that Australia is fueling cybercrime by putting

00:29:32.760 so much data online. And they essentially just make this big giant repository for data. Whereas,

00:29:38.220 you know, you used to, if you wanted to steal someone's identity, have to go through the work

00:29:41.380 of doing it on an individual level. Whereas now it can happen in aggregate and you, you need not

00:29:46.760 look further than these massive data breaches where if you use, I think it's Google Chrome that

00:29:51.380 does it, the browser every now and then you'll get an alert that says your password has been found

00:29:56.160 in some leaked trove of passwords. And I always get so worried. And then I look at it and it's

00:30:01.560 like my password for my Neo pets account that I had when I was in grade six or something like

00:30:06.580 that. I'm like, you know, if someone wants to hack into my, you know, however many decades old

00:30:10.220 account and play Neopets in my name, I guess they can. But I'm pretty diligent now. But there are

00:30:16.700 some boomers that are like, what the hell is Neopets? But anyway, you don't need to know. The

00:30:20.000 point is that if you want to hack my Neopets account, you have my permission. If you want to

00:30:24.460 hack my old MySpace page, I don't even know if I ever had MySpace, but I'm sure that password's

00:30:28.740 been leaked. And if you can hack it and find my password, let me know the password, because then

00:30:32.520 I can log in and deactivate the account and see what MySpace Tom has been up to. He was the guy

00:30:37.240 he used to automatically be the friend with on MySpace. This is like a 90s nostalgia edition of

00:30:43.260 the Andrew Lawton Show. I'm not even a 90s kid, but I think I'm late 80s, so I'm sort of aligning

00:30:48.700 with a lot of the 90s kids. But nevertheless, the reason I bring all this up and it's important is

00:30:54.460 because when your password exists online, when your identity exists online, you're putting it

00:31:00.300 in a way that can be accessible to those who are nefarious in their intentions. There's a town

00:31:06.540 near me, I believe, I can't remember if it was St. Thomas or Central Elgin. I think it might've

00:31:10.740 been Central Elgin, where the entire town IT division was like taken hostage by, I believe

00:31:16.800 they were Russian hackers or something like that. And literally they couldn't get it back. They

00:31:20.800 could not get it back. It took weeks. And when Indigo got hacked, it took them weeks to get back

00:31:26.000 up. So we're not talking about, you know, people that are unable to protect their identity here in

00:31:30.860 theory. We're talking about, you know, institutions that have a fair bit of money that they can put

00:31:35.000 towards cybersecurity that still get sidelined by these things. So if you think that the government

00:31:39.480 will protect your digital ID just because it says it's taking privacy seriously, you are sorely

00:31:45.040 mistaken. I started off earlier talking about the media news and we were, the problem with live is

00:31:51.120 that sometimes the guest doesn't come in when you think they're going to come in and you have to

00:31:54.360 get creative with timing. And just when I had sort of come down to, okay, I'm just going to do this

00:31:58.720 other segment, then Anne popped on and we were happy to have her. But to bring it up again, Bell

00:32:03.620 has laid off 1,300 people. They have closed six radio stations. And one of them is the radio

00:32:11.040 station I mentioned in London, Ontario, CJBK News Talk 1290. And it was unfortunate because you

00:32:17.020 could see this coming from a mile away. And I have a great deal of nostalgia for AM radio. I

00:32:22.200 I got my start in media working for an AM radio station in London, not this one.

00:32:27.260 I had gotten my start in being interested in politics and media by listening to talk radio,

00:32:33.520 by listening to AM talk radio from Detroit, notably, and then eventually listening online.

00:32:38.760 And all of this was crucial.

00:32:40.860 But AM radio has been going the way of the dodo bird for years.

00:32:44.620 We get these stories every now and then where car manufacturers are not going to be putting

00:32:48.680 AM radios in after a certain point.

00:32:50.580 It is expensive, it's difficult, and more importantly, it is just the way of the past,

00:32:56.980 that there's no two ways about it. And that doesn't mean that the content itself is dead.

00:33:03.860 And this is where I find the media discourse in Canada tends to be a little bit off from where

00:33:11.500 it needs to be, because people focus on medium instead of focusing on the message. And I know

00:33:16.200 Marshall McLuhan's whole thing is that the medium is the message, but I don't think that's entirely

00:33:19.900 the case because the reason talk radio was good was not because there was anything special about

00:33:24.760 the AM band five minutes ago. The reason talk radio was so powerful in the last 20 years is

00:33:30.240 because talk radio offered a conversation that people weren't getting anywhere else.

00:33:35.180 And that was so crucial. And there was a reason that I love talk radio because it was the

00:33:39.020 irreverent place that you could actually have real conversations. And when talk radio in Canada

00:33:44.380 started dying. It was not because of the AM band. It was because the companies that ran talk radio

00:33:51.220 stations started running them into the ground, taking away the very essence of what made talk

00:33:56.740 radio great. And I'm not just talking about firing me. I mean, my old company Chorus went through

00:34:01.460 a conservative purge where they got rid of all of the conservative voices over the span

00:34:06.740 of a few years. And then Charles Adler, they just managed to just get rid of his conservatism. They

00:34:12.800 I didn't have to get rid of him initially. And Charles Adler is a casualty of, I think,

00:34:18.900 what media itself has gone to in Canada, where this, you know, one sort of conservative firebrand 0.92

00:34:23.500 truth teller just becomes this woke loser. And I think that's the story of a lot of Canadian

00:34:29.560 media stations. And it's quite unfortunate. And it's not about the individual people that work

00:34:33.620 for them. It's that these outlets lost the relationship with their audiences by design

00:34:41.220 in these corporate boardrooms that were so disconnected from the real world on the ground.

00:34:45.940 And I take no delight in people losing their jobs. I know that there are a bunch of people that are,

00:34:51.960 you know, all giddy on Twitter because Glenn McGregor was laid off from CTV today. I've had

00:34:56.200 a few run-ins with Glenn McGregor. Most of them have not been the most pleasant, but I, you know,

00:35:00.660 met him in, when was it? It was the, when I was in Alberta for the Alberta election, I, you know,

00:35:05.840 said hi to him, shook his hand, and there was no ill will there. And, you know, I could take

00:35:10.260 whatever issues I want with his content. But I don't delight in someone at any age, certainly

00:35:14.540 not someone in their, I assume he's in his early 50s or something, losing their job and having to

00:35:19.900 pivot. And I think it's unfortunate. And I don't want to celebrate it. And I don't want other

00:35:25.980 people to celebrate it. I mean, you're going to do what you're going to do. And that's your right

00:35:29.340 as individuals. But I think that we need to stop trying to fit this into a narrative that is

00:35:34.140 something other than what it is. This is not greedy corporations. This is not some situation

00:35:40.580 where capitalism is the problem. This is an issue of the need to come up with a new business model

00:35:46.020 for Canada, for media that aligns with what audiences want. And when you look at trust in

00:35:53.040 media, which has been continuing to decline, the reason for that is not capitalism. The reason for

00:35:59.000 that is not what corporations are doing in their corporate interests. The reason is that the

00:36:05.440 content that is being pushed on these outlets is often not what it should be. And I know that's

00:36:11.840 a generalization. And I'm not trying to say that that's going to be true for every newspaper, TV

00:36:17.260 station, radio station across the country. But in generalities, in generalities, I think that's

00:36:22.840 what's happening here. And the talk radio example is the most notable because podcasts are doing now

00:36:28.600 what talk radio used to do. So the issue is needing to pivot. And I'm sorry, it's very

00:36:34.060 expensive to run a talk radio station relative to how it is to run a podcast where this microphone,

00:36:40.420 which is one of the very same models you'll see in broadcast studios is I think $400.

00:36:46.500 But I don't have a transmitter. I don't have an antenna. I don't have a giant studio, a giant

00:36:52.980 IT division, a giant operation. We've got one producer who helps on in the show. We have a

00:36:56.840 couple of people behind the scenes. Most of, well, actually all of what you hear me say is what I

00:37:01.340 decide to say. And there's a reason that this is a form of media that's growing and the traditional

00:37:09.360 delivery is dying. But it's also not, and I guess this is critical here, it's not just about the

00:37:16.200 technology and it's not just about the medium, it's about the content. And while my heart breaks

00:37:20.800 for people who have lost their jobs, I think the only constructive way to solve this problem

00:37:25.940 is by talking about the business models themselves

00:37:28.560 and talking about the content,

00:37:30.160 talking about the substance,

00:37:31.100 which is just as important,

00:37:32.980 if not more important than the message.

00:37:34.500 Because if people want to hear it,

00:37:35.920 there's a market for it.

00:37:37.200 With that, I will say farewell to you today.

00:37:39.700 We'll be back on Friday

00:37:40.520 with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:37:43.140 here on True North.

00:37:44.280 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:46.080 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:37:49.100 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:51.600 Support the program by donating to True North

00:37:53.740 at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 14, 2023

Calls for Marco Mendicino to resign are mounting

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