Can we trust Canada's top public servant Michael Wernick？
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Summary
Two seemingly unrelated issues: The SNC-Lavalin scandal, and the Liberal government's attempts to restrict social media to police fake news and political disinformation. What's the connection between them? And why should Michael Wernick, the Privy Council clerk, step down?
Transcript
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Two seemingly different issues the SNC-Lavalin scandal and the Liberal
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government's attempts to restrict social media to police fake news and political
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disinformation. That's something a lot of people have been really worried about
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myself included. How do you define the terms? What do you mean by disinformation?
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What do you mean by fake news? Are you just gonna be policing things that are
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from Eastern European bot farms that are just a hundred percent nonsense? Or is
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this gonna turn into pushing and suppressing away news that you don't
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really like? News that criticizes the government. Valid questions that need to
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be asked. So what do these two stories have in common? Well I want to bring up
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one release that Charlie Angus, NDP MP, came out with this week. He called on
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Michael Wernick to resign. The top bureaucrat in Canada, the chief clerk of
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the Privy Council. The guy who gave that blistering testimony, warning about
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political assassinations, talking about the rhetoric of calling people traitors, the
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vomitorium of social media. And a lot of people scratching their heads going, what
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on earth is going on? This should be the most non-partisan guy in the realm and he's
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doing this. I worry about my country right now. I'm deeply concerned about my
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country right now and its politics and where it's headed. I worry about foreign
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interference in the upcoming election and we're working hard on that. I worry
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about the rising tide of incitements to violence when people use terms like
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treason and traitor in open discourse. Those are the words that lead to
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assassination. I'm worried that somebody is going to be shot in this country this
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year during the political campaign. Well, in his letter, Charlie Angus reminds us
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that one of the things that's troubling about Michael Wernick's current position,
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where he is the chief non-partisan bureaucrat but basically outed himself as
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a massive partisan, one of the problems is that a job that he has coming up is to
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serve as one of five people who are going to run this election critical
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incident protocol panel. That is the thing that the feds have set up to police
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political disinformation during the 2019 election. So if there's some attack that
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happens, some cyber attack, whether it is through hacking or denial of service
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attacks or just fake news being bombarded at us, they will make the call to
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intervene, to make all political parties aware and to make some sort of
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announcement to Canadians. Watch out, this is fake news. They're the five people who
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will be policing fake news, policing social media as well. And wait a second,
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Michael Wernick, that guy who talked, is going to be one of the five to do that?
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And I think Charlie Angus is right to point out, not a good scene at all. This guy can't
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be in this post at all. Now it may seem a little odd to say, is the Lavalin story a part of this
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whole narrative. But go back and remember what Justin Trudeau first said when he
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was asked about the Lavalin scandal when it first broke in the Globe and Mail.
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The allegations reported in the story are false.
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False? Well, another term for fake, for fake news. He basically used the phrase, said
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there's nothing to see here, folks. And then when he was pressed further on it, it was
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really comical, of course. He opened up more and more every time he talked about it. He said,
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OK, fine. Well, yeah, we chatted about it. We chatted about the idea of political interference,
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but I didn't actually interfere. In fact, we talked about the fact I wasn't influencing
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her and pressuring her and so forth. Obviously, there have been many discussions around this
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government, questions asked of me from two different Quebec premiers, questions asked of me
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and representations made by the company, made by a broad range of individuals, of MPs. There
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were many discussions going on, which is why Jody Wilson-Raybould asked me if I was directing
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her or going to direct her to take a particular decision. And I, of course, said no, that it was
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her decision to make and I expected her to make it. And now we're pretty much at the point where
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Michael Wernick and others were basically saying, OK, fine, there was pressure, but it was not
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undue pressure. It was lawful advocacy. So hold on a second. Justin Trudeau begins with saying false,
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fake story, not correct. And then they basically admit that a large part of it is correct. They're
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just fighting for their lives to justify what they did. Well, hang on. If this story had dropped in the
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election, massive bombshell story, what would have happened? Would Michael Wernick, who serves on
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that panel, step forward to denounce it? I don't know. It seems far-fetched that this panel would
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be used for, say, a story in the Globe and Mail. But the bottom line is, can we trust the integrity
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of any of these people now, Michael Wernick, to sit on this panel? Can we trust this panel in the first
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place to go about and wade into what is and what isn't political misinformation and disinformation
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and so forth? Or should we just trust the common sense and intelligence of regular Canadians to
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figure out how they get their news and what news sources they trust and how they separate the wheat