Calls for Marco Mendicino to resign are mounting
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Summary
In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, host Andrew Lawton is joined by guest Anne Kabukian to discuss her concerns about the privacy implications of digital ID, the media layoffs at Bell, and the case of serial rapist and murderer Paul Bernardo.
Transcript
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welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
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north hello everyone welcome along canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north a little
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bit less cool of a day than yesterday so i've ditched the sweater i had one colleague of mine
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who i will not name for the sake of his or her dignity who was like getting mad that i was
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complaining about how cold the air conditioner was when this person doesn't have a central air
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conditioning. So I did not wish to start off yesterday's show by going on about air conditioner
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privilege, which I believe is right up there with white privilege in the summer months. But
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we will stand up for all of you, whether you have central air conditioning or not.
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In all honesty, yesterday I wished I didn't because I just couldn't get it to stop blowing.
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See, there we go. I'm asserting my air conditioning privilege once again. In any case, it is good to
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talk to you. We are going to delve into the wonderful world of digital ID very shortly.
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You may recall last week we started off talking about this and I think in quite a significant
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way exposed the glaring issues with this thing that's being pushed upon us in the name of
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convenience. And the other aspect of this that I will point out, and I think this is
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very important, is that everyone says that the privacy issue is really no biggie. When
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government talks about the digital id program they say oh yeah of course it'll respect privacy but
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we are going to talk to ann kabukian who is not one of these uh raging right-wing types like
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myself she is a very measured and intelligent person i mean i try to be intelligent but she's
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got the phd she's done more to back up her intelligence in the academic sphere anyway
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and she has grave concerns about the privacy implications of digital id so we're going to
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to talk to Anne in just about 10 minutes or so on this program. And also later on, I want to delve
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into the media layoffs taking place at Bell. And if you're expecting me to jump up and down and
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cheer and spike the football in the end zone, there we go. I actually did a correct sports
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analogy right there, spiking the football in the end zone. See, I know rugby very well.
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People don't know I'm joking when I do that, but like my own brother says, you know, you have to
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stop doing it because I can never tell if you're serious or not. Anyway, I'm going to talk about
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this a little bit later on. And I'm not actually going to spike the football, so to speak. I'm not
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going to celebrate, but I am going to talk about what this means for the state of media. And I
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think there is a lot to unpack there. So we'll do that a little bit later on in the show. But let's
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start off by talking about everyone's speaking of intelligence, Marco Mendicino. I joked a few
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weeks ago that when on the firearms file, when gun owners talk about 22, they're referring to
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a caliber. When Marco Mendicino uses 22, he's referring to his IQ, which I think is being a
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little bit generous there. Here's a guy who by all accounts had a decent career as a lawyer.
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And now that he's in politics is just this like fumbling, flailing fool that seems to bungle
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every single file, every single file he touches, whether it's being the public safety minister
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during the convoy, whether it's the firearms file, and now the corrections portfolio, where
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anyone who's over, I want to say 40, maybe even 35 in Canada, knows Paul Bernardo and Carla Homoka.
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They're household names in a way that they aren't for the younger generation. But certainly Marco
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Mendicino is a guy who knows the name Paul Bernardo or should have known it. But this is a guy,
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a serial rapist and murderer who, of all the things in Canada that we can disagree about,
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I have yet to come across one single person that thinks Paul Bernardo is a decent guy. So
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of all the things we disagree about, everyone can agree he's a dirtbag who should be a prime
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candidate for the death penalty if we have it, and if not, should be rotting behind bars for
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the rest of his miserable existence. And that was what was happening for uncontroversially since he
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was put away, what was it, 20, probably pushing, no, 30 years ago now almost. And Paul Bernardo
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though, this past month was transferred to medium security. Apparently it was just a little bit too
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high security for what he needed down in Ontario. So they transferred him to a medium security
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facility within the Canadian penitentiary system. And all of a sudden the government acts so
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surprised by this, like they don't understand how this happened on their watch. And the initial
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statement we saw from the Correctional Service of Canada was that the minister's office had no idea
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whatsoever that Bernardo was being transferred, they say. But then they sort of said, well, yeah,
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we can confirm that they did know and that we did tell them. And Marco Mendicino was this week left
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holding the bag. He had to come up with a way to explain how this record that showed his office
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being looped in three months ago somehow didn't manage to get to him. So the I don't check my
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email excuse has become like the number one excuse for liberal cabinet ministers on a variety
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of scandals in the last few weeks. It's what Bill Blair has been using. It's what Harjit
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Sajjan has been using and all of the above. So the fascinating thing here, the fascinating thing is
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that this is like a defense that ministers think is legitimate. The I don't know what's happening
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in my own office defense, which is a far cry. Whatever you thought of Stephen Harper from his
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approach, which was that the buck stops here and that ministers and the prime minister have to be
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accountable for what staffers do. So this idea of just blaming some lowly staffer doesn't really
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fly. So Marco Mendocino's office and his staff knew three months ago that Paul Bernardo was going
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to be transferred to medium security. Now, if you think that is a problem, which it seems like most
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people in this country do, then it's a problem that he didn't know about it, that his staff
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kept this from him. You may think it was just because they wanted him to be able to have that
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deniability that comes along with being deliberately kept in the dark. So in response, he's come out
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and said, okay, well, I'm going to recommend a ministerial directive. That's what he's doing.
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It's a learning opportunity for all of us, a ministerial directive. And this ministerial
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directive, according to Mendicino, is apparently going to keep all of this from happening again.
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He's saying here, let me see if I can pull it up again here. I had like a million channels open on
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my computer and I missed the, oh, maybe I didn't post it. Oh, there it is. Yeah. He's pushed the
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statement forward here. And he says that correctional services must re-examine its
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policies. So the policies of the problem, not him, to ensure victims' rights are guiding the
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decision-making process, CSC should inform victims of any transfer of inmates between maximum and
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medium security institutions, and the minister must formally and directly be notified in advance
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of the transfer of any high-profile or dangerous offenders. Nowhere in that list of three things in
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this apparent ministerial directive does it prevent heinous, violent offenders like Bernardo from
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being downgraded to medium security. Nowhere does it actually prevent that from happening.
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It doesn't even require that the minister sign off on it, which he could have said. He could
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have said the minister must not just be notified, but must approve it. So it's like he's almost
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trying, not almost, he's deliberately trying to prevent having to be accountable in the future
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on this. So all they have to do is inform victims. So correctional service will call up the family
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members of Paul Bernardo's victim and say, victims plural and say, hey, just wanted to let you know
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he's going into medium security. See ya. And they've done it. That's what Marco Mendicino
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thinks is appropriate, that the notification is the issue and not the actual treatment of heinous
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violent offenders. Now, believe it or not, I am not one of, I like to think I'm a tough on crime
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person, but I also have a very nuanced view of it. And that I believe when we're talking about
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majority of criminals who are eventually going to be released back into the world at some point,
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we need to talk about the way that we can get the best outcomes out of them. And I believe
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that may come through educating them. I believe that may come from finding alternatives to jail
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if jail is not the most appropriate venue for them. That does not apply here. We are not talking
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about a guy for whom a compassionate justice system is warranted or productive. It's a guy who
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Anyone who's ever spoken to this man, reviewed him, assessed him, has said he shows zero remorse
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for his actions. The fact that Carla Homoka, who was just as complicit and in some ways more so
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than him, is out walking free with a real name looking after children is a shameful aspect of
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Canada's justice system. But at least we got Bernardo, right? And now even that is seen as
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apparently too harsh. We can't have him in maximum security. There are ministers in the past,
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before the Trudeau government was in, for whom this would have been a resignation-worthy offense
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right here. But instead, Mendocino has taken his marching orders from Justin Trudeau,
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and it is abundantly clear that all you need to do is just say, well, we'll all vow to do better
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in the future. We'll vow to do better in the future. It's everyone else's problem but mine.
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None of the things he put forward, by the way, would have prevented this from happening. And
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more importantly, none of these directives would have actually made him more responsible or
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accountable. It falls on the Correctional Service of Canada. It falls on his staff. So why is he not
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firing staff over this? Why is he not firing his staff, firing someone if he takes this as
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seriously as he claims he does? Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservatives, has basically come out
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with a laundry list of reasons why he thinks Mendocino needs to resign over this. Take a look.
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This is not the first time Mr. Mendocino has lied to Canadians.
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I have a list. You need a list because it's hard to keep track.
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He lied saying that the police had asked him to bring in the Emergencies Act.
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He misled a federal judge by backdating documents.
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He admitted in committee that the RCMP was using spyware to gain information on Canadians.
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He lied that the Safe Third Country Agreement was working.
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He claimed it was impossible to close Roxham Road, something that has now happened.
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He claimed that his amendments would not ban hunting rifles.
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And then later on, he had to admit that they did ban hunting rifles and reverse those amendments.
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He said that the CSIS report on Michael Chong's family being targeted by a former government
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We now know that the documents went from CSIS to the Prime Minister's National Security Advisor.
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He claimed there were no more Chinese-controlled police stations in Canada.
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And he lied about his knowledge that Paul Bernardo was being moved from a maximum security penitentiary to a medium security penitentiary,
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I should warn you, I had read a summation of that line before, and I hadn't actually watched
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the clip. And when I realized that I was throwing to a clip of a list of evidence supporting Marco
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Medellino's incompetence, I was worried it might actually fill up the whole show, that that was
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just going to be like a one hour long list that we had to just pick up on Friday's show. But no,
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thankfully, we were able to keep it a little bit more condensed there. We didn't even need to play
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it at double speed. And I suggest if you were to dig into that, you'd probably find more reasons,
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but literally it's the reverse Midas touch. Any file he touches turns to absolute crap. So it's
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no surprise. I mean, if you are a, if you're a litigant in some way and you want to sue the
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government, I would find a way to sue Marco Menachino because you'll probably manage to win
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just by virtue of the fact that he'll get lost on the way to the courthouse or trip because he
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forgot to tie his shoes or something like that. And all of this is to say that Marco Menachino
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right now has never once taken responsibility for any of it. It's always someone else's fault.
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That clip that I played during the Freedom Convoy protest is probably, this one I won't play because
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it's like six minutes and it's six minutes of having to listen to Marco Manicino, which I
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believe in actually in some undeveloped countries, they still use as torture in violation of the
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Geneva Convention. But the thing about it is that he came out and just made things up. He just made
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things up. He came out and said, oh, yes, there's a violent cell, people that want to do terrible
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things, and they're connected from Coutts to Ottawa. And when journalists, to their credit,
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pushed back at him on this and said, well, what group, what people? Eventually, he walked back
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this claim of an organized militia-like group in Ottawa connected to the convoy to I've seen
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rhetoric on social media that is concerning. Again, it took six minutes to get from one to
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the other, but eventually he walked it back to just this unrecognizable point because that's
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what Marco Mendicino does. He just says stuff. But in this case, we are talking about surviving
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family members of Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French who have been re-traumatized time and
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time again. Anytime Paul Bernardo comes up for air and is in the news because, oh, he's trying
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to get married behind bars or, oh, he's applying for parole again. And this process re-traumatizes
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them. And in that case, you know, the government always says, well, you know, the parole board
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tamped down on it, the prison system tamped down on it. Now they are re-traumatized by seeing this
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guy who ruined their lives, who took away the lives of their loved ones and is evidently seen
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as unworthy of the maximum security treatment in Canadian prisons. This is what this family has to
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do. So anytime the government wants to say like Mendocino does here, oh, it's outraged by this,
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it's mad about this. No, you're not. Because if you were as outraged by this as you say you were,
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there would be some semblance of accountability.
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to maintain a policy over the criminal justice system
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that focuses on how quickly they can get people out
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on the streets rather than actually paying for their crimes.
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which means that anytime you get a press release
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from a police department about someone they picked up
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who stabbed someone, who committed some offense, who committed some sexual assault.
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It is increasingly the case that they're telling you this person was out on bail.
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But no, if you're a law-abiding gun owner, you will get the arm of the state,
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the heavy arm of the state going after you every which way.
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If you want to own a old hunting rifle to go and do some plinking in the woods,
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rest assured you will be at the top of Marco Menachino's and Justin Trudeau's radar.
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But if you want to get out on bail and sexually assault someone on a city bus, that is A-OK.
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If you want to commit serial rape and murder and get transferred into medium security, that's all fine as well.
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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.
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That's the only way that Marco Mendicino will care what he does.
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We are going to be talking about digital ID in just a couple of moments time with Dr.
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I want to just on the note of censorship, I know there's been a lot of hand wringing
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by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez about C18 and how Facebook's responding to it.
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And they're basically blocking access to news content from some people.
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And they're doing this in a way that I find is actually quite brilliant.
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And I, you know, I'm no no secret to the fact that I've got some big issues with the big tech companies.
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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.
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Not a lot, but a bit more. And the thing because ultimately regulating big tech is about regulating tech users.
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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.
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And that's why I find these things are problematic.
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But Facebook, instead of having to pay up for the privilege of letting media outlets
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post their content to Facebook, which is what the government's trying to do in C18,
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the thing that's happening now is Facebook is saying,
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all right, we're going to just try blocking it altogether.
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So there are some users in Canada right now where if you want to go and link to a news article
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or something like that, you will not be able to.
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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.
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Because on one hand, the government says, all right, we think you're stealing.
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And then when Facebook says, okay, we won't steal anymore, we won't steal, we won't post it.
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Instead, what the government says is, oh, well, how dare you cut people off?
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And I'm like, well, hang on, which is the bad thing and which is the good thing, allowing
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So what we see when big tech companies start to flex their censorship muscle, though, is
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that it happens in a way that is very ideologically driven.
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So a couple of weeks ago, I had Aaron Gunn on this show, who has produced this new documentary
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called Canada is Dying, a tremendous look at the drug and opioid and I would just say
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and after getting 1.2 million views in just two weeks,
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and this means that they're blocking distribution of it.
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So that meteoric rise, 1.2 million views and counting,
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and the only way to access it is to seek it out.
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because it's not the right kind of Canadian content.
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So you know it's not going to get fed out to people
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So, you know, hopefully Aaron will be able to appeal that
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uh anytime i've tried to go up against youtube i've not managed to succeed i mean we had like
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the my pillow guy on i don't even want to say his name because i'm worried then this will get banned
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but we had oh who cares i think they changed their policy on this we had like mike lindell on the show
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to talk about pillows and christianity and then we ended up getting that interview flagged like
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weeks after the fact because it like violated the policy youtube has on the my pillow guy
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but our administrator, William, told me to go pound salt.
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just giving us $55 without any question or comment.
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Let's talk a little bit here about the media landscape in this country, because we know that
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Bell has a huge, huge, huge round of layoffs that has been announced today. And it isn't just 1,300
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jobs. It's also like whole radio stations, including the radio station in my neck of the
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woods that I used to do a weekly panel on, CJBK 1290, which is quite a significant radio station
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It has a great deal of history, and it has now shut down.
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Just at 11, they flipped the switch and went off.
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And we'll talk about that a little bit later on because we do have Ann Kavoukian with us.
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And just to bring you up to speed on the digital ID discussion we had last week,
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a lot of Canadian companies are saying digital ID is inevitable.
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I read a piece from Interac that was actually quite concerning,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Anne, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today.
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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?
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it's such nonsense because for digital id you need the highest level of security and privacy
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intertwined because the fishers and hackers are brilliant they can gain access to so much
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information online people are um shuddering at the thought of potential third parties
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unauthorized third parties gaining access to this information and you see digital id it's just
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it's an evolving technology it's not firmly planted so if you ask the government about it
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they say oh we're going to build in the strongest security and privacy measures possible
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show me i would say trust but verify in this case i wouldn't even say trust because people
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are very concerned about it understandably i haven't seen anything from the government that
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says here's what we're doing and here's what will prevent any third parties from gaining access to
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this which is nonsense and once they have your identity they can do identity theft they can do
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so much i remember when i was privacy commissioner people will come to me who are victims of identity
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theft and just say oh my god we're trying to to prevent this but we don't know what to do they've
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got our identity that you know we've got all these claims that we're racking up all these charges and
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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
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police file an occurrence report something that validates your claim that your identity is stolen
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and and and then i would try to help them but under this model everybody's identity would be
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online the police couldn't handle it it's an evolving area and the thought of losing your
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digital identity and trying to get it back it's just there's so many unauthorized third parties
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who would gain access to it yeah i mean i i would look uh for anyone that says it's no big deal i
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would look no further than the vaccine passport scheme in which the government made a lot of the
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same claims which is that oh no information is going to be stored it's just you scan this qr code
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and it verifies it but we saw in alberta and ontario notably data breaches of this because
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in order to have some verification system which any legitimate id is going to have
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there has to be some database in which some form of information is stored absolutely it has to be
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retained somewhere as you said in a database somewhere and obviously you try to protect the
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data but i'm not kidding when i tell you about the hackers these days they're brilliant so unless
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you go to great lengths to secure the data using non-conventional methods not just trying to
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de-identify the data which can usually be re-identified you have to think of all kinds
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of additional measures to take and obviously encryption would be needed end to end and all
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kinds of things and then i would want it to be tested by the brilliant minds out there like
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bruce schneier brilliant cryptographer etc but none of that that i'm aware of is happening
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digital signed verifiable credentials are an evolving technology these are very early days
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so if anyone tells you don't worry about it's a done deal it's safe nonsense show me and we have
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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.
00:28:28.800
It is nonsense, utter nonsense to jump into this.
00:28:34.160
Anne Kabukian, thank you so much for your time.
00:28:39.020
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.
00:32:40.860
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
00:32:50.580
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
00:37:40.520
with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show
00:37:49.100
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.