Juno News - Canada endorses UN pledge to phase out oil and gas

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.460 north hello and welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show on the

00:01:31.520 whatever day i have no idea what day it is it's wednesday i think uh this we're now getting to

00:01:35.820 the point of the year where no one has any idea what day or time it is at a certain point we'll

00:01:40.940 all just be in that weird twilight period between christmas and new year's in which we really have

00:01:46.000 no idea if we are even still alive, but we're not quite there yet. It's Wednesday, December,

00:01:51.260 something or other. It doesn't really matter too much. I know most of you have probably listened

00:01:54.400 to the podcast anyway, in which who am I to presume that you are listening to it on the day

00:02:00.020 that I am recording it on. So with that out of the way, I will say it is the finale of COP28,

00:02:06.220 which is the big giant climate confab in Dubai. Now they don't do these things by Zoom because

00:02:11.780 everyone knows if you want to save the planet and have people reduce their emissions, you all have

00:02:16.440 to fly on your planes from around the world to one particular country and have 100,000 people there

00:02:23.780 in that city who are using all the hotel rooms, who are eating all the fancy steak dinners, who are

00:02:29.800 consuming all of the resources that are required for a conference of this nature. That is the way

00:02:34.820 you solve the climate crisis. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Well, COP28, it's easy to

00:02:40.900 look at this as being one big giant gab fest but the problem is that when the countries get together

00:02:45.620 to gab it comes at a cost to the rest of us the things that they talk about there are things that

00:02:51.860 are implemented as policy in countries around the world that want to go along with dismantling

00:02:57.620 their economy and their reliance on oil and gas for this weird almighty climate goal all the while

00:03:04.360 places like China and India just kind of sit in the room and nod along knowing that they're going

00:03:09.420 to continue to industrialize and build and develop and emit and they will be the ones that get to

00:03:14.660 benefit when Canada decides that we need to phase out oil and gas. Now this year there was a little

00:03:20.280 bit of pushback to this phase out. It's often spoken about by the climate elites as though it's

00:03:26.520 an inevitability. We're just going to get rid of oil and gas. It's not a question of if but when

00:03:31.300 and we should do it sooner rather than later. But this time there were some people in the

00:03:35.600 delegations that said, maybe I don't actually want to do that. Maybe I, I mean, there was the one guy

00:03:41.740 who was the president of the conference in the United Arab Emirates who said earlier on, yeah,

00:03:46.320 there's no scientific basis for this phase out. Although as we'll be talking about in a few

00:03:50.360 moments with Mark Murano, he was very quickly slapped for being as honest as he was in that

00:03:57.140 moment. But it's important to understand the ideological outlook that the UN and the people

00:04:04.200 that are running these conferences have. Now, this is where I go back to the very beginning of this

00:04:09.940 when Simon Steele from the United Nations kicked things off with a very grim picture about how

00:04:15.820 things are. Take a look. We must teach climate action to run because this has been the hottest

00:04:25.180 year ever in humanity so many terrible records were broken and we are paying the price with

00:04:34.300 people's lives and livelihoods we're standing at a precipice facing the global stock take

00:04:45.340 and we've got two options either we can note the lack of progress tweaking our current best

00:04:53.260 practices and encourage ourselves to do more at some other point in time or we decide at what

00:05:04.060 point we'll have made everyone on the planet safe and resilient we decide to fund this transition

00:05:12.540 properly including the response to loss and damage and we decide to commit to a new energy system

00:05:23.260 If we do not signal the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it,

00:05:31.740 we welcome our own terminal decline.

00:05:35.980 And we choose to pay with people's lives.

00:05:41.180 Ooh, wow, quite the motivational speaker there.

00:05:43.920 He's a regular Tony Robbins.

00:05:45.360 It's basically, you're all going to die unless we in this room decide to save you.

00:05:51.580 But the only way we do that is by teaching climate action to run.

00:05:55.740 This is like the new UN children's book, See Spot Run.

00:05:58.920 See climate action run, see climate action walk, see climate action crawl.

00:06:03.180 But you only get to finish the book if the climate action is running.

00:06:06.240 It needs to be in a dead sprint, which means they need to accelerate all these things they

00:06:10.420 were talking about.

00:06:11.160 No tiptoeing around and saying it's not working.

00:06:13.680 You've got to go faster.

00:06:14.900 You've got to go harder.

00:06:16.040 And again, all of us around the world are the ones that have to pay for it.

00:06:20.240 What they're talking about here is monumental changes.

00:06:23.620 They're talking about wealth redistribution.

00:06:25.940 They're talking about, as they agreed today or yesterday, to a phase-out of oil and gas.

00:06:32.120 There was a bit of pushback, a bit of debate about this.

00:06:34.120 They weren't all entirely on board with doing this.

00:06:36.780 But in the draft agreement that all countries, including Canada, signed on to,

00:06:41.720 they said they are going to commit to a transition away from oil and gas, a phase-out of oil and gas.

00:06:47.880 Now, this may not be breaking news.

00:06:49.720 Justin Trudeau has used this language in the past, but it certainly re-ups and reiterates

00:06:54.880 that commitment. Now, Stephen Gilbeau, the environment minister who's been in Dubai,

00:06:59.620 I didn't know you could travel when you have a criminal record, but I guess he could.

00:07:03.260 He's been just downright giddy about this. There was the head of Greenpeace Canada posted this

00:07:08.120 tweet thread that I wanted to share with you. Keith Stewart says, is that tang in the post

00:07:14.720 cop 28 morning air from the salty tears of oil lobbyists or from the blood in the water

00:07:21.760 that is their balance sheets weighted down by what are now inevitably stranded assets he says this

00:07:27.600 is historic oh by the way still insufficient because they need to do more and uh need to do

00:07:33.680 more aggressively what they're trying to do now and then he lauds of all the people there

00:07:38.880 Stephen Gilboa in particular. Now, Stephen Gilboa, of course, responds to this, has a little bit of a

00:07:44.780 Twitter bromance with the Climate Radical. Thank you so much. And yes, probably a mix of all of

00:07:50.820 the above. Winky face emoji. Oh, just so cute. Isn't it nice to see Climate Radicals all singing 0.71

00:07:56.840 from the same songbook in this? Well, we're going to talk about this in a bit more detail, but I

00:08:02.100 first wanted to bring in Mark Morano, who has gone into the belly of the beast once again. He was in

00:08:07.140 dubai at cop 28 he's been uh we had him on last year when he was at what he termed the

00:08:11.640 charmel shakedown in egypt mark good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thank you andrew

00:08:17.440 happy to be here i'm finally back from dubai one of the greatest cities i've ever visited by the

00:08:21.820 way yeah so last year you uh rode in on the camel at what you dubbed the charmel shakedown in egypt

00:08:28.520 today it's uh or this time it was dubai uh what's been the the overarching theme of it what was the

00:08:34.760 flavor of the conference this year? It was, I would say, delusion, insanity, and a complete

00:08:41.280 lack of any basis in grounded reality. So that was the theme. And what I mean by that is they

00:08:47.300 literally are demanding everyone, and including the final text, say that we need to phase out

00:08:52.780 fossil fuels for the world. They are literally believing their own bullshit. They're believing 1.00

00:08:59.680 that solar and wind are going to replace fossil fuels, and they need to formally enshrine it now

00:09:05.600 in United Nations climate agreements. It got so bad that the president of the COP pushed back on

00:09:11.400 this with the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson. And he said, of course, there's no

00:09:16.500 science to support that. And he was right. The UN's own documents from ClimateGate, Phil Jones,

00:09:21.480 the lead UN scientist, admitted that the whole net zero, 1.5 degree, 2 degrees Celsius temperature

00:09:26.540 goals. We're pulled from thin air. They're just political goals. But they want to make it sound

00:09:31.280 as though they're apocalyptic scientific predictions. He had to back down from his

00:09:36.200 predictions. Saudi Arabia, if you want to know who the hero of this conference was, Saudi Arabia

00:09:41.020 is the one who said, this is just delusional. We're not going along with this. Guess who was

00:09:45.960 doubling down and pushing us to this renewable replacing fossil fuel? China. China at this 0.79

00:09:52.020 conference literally said, literally doubled down and wanted to make sure that the United States

00:09:58.080 relied more on China because China was the one pushing us. If they get us off more and more 0.99

00:10:03.980 fossil fuels and more on renewables, guess what? It makes us the once free West more and more

00:10:08.740 dependent on China, which essentially has a monopoly now, either through China and through

00:10:13.700 their African subsidiaries with the underage kids and poor human rights and low environmental 1.00

00:10:18.440 standards, all the mining. So that was the theme. It's literally the end of fossil fuels. And then

00:10:24.040 of course, the secondary themes included things like our vice president, Kamala Harris, showing up

00:10:28.360 and pledging $3 billion plus to the UN Climate Slush Fund. And guess what? This money, guess

00:10:36.680 who the highest attending delegations are historically? African nations, South American

00:10:41.440 nations, the poorest nations are in high attendance at these conferences. Why would that be? You may

00:10:46.120 ask. Very simple. They are out there to suck at the teat of the United Nations. And here's the

00:10:52.920 thing. I talked to a development activist, Leon Lowe in South Africa at a previous UN climate

00:10:56.900 summit. He said this will money will go to the country's leaders who are best able to keep their

00:11:02.720 citizens locked in poverty. So if you're a socialist dictator, authoritarian in Africa, 0.87

00:11:07.800 you are now going to be getting the most UN cash, more than other leaders, because you can

00:11:12.620 keep your citizens locked in poverty. Aside from that, even the Financial Times thought this was

00:11:17.580 going too far. They had an entire feature article during the Dubai UN Climate Summit

00:11:22.460 about how Western carbon offset companies to assuage us, the white liberal, not liberal,

00:11:29.040 but the white guilt association and the wealthy nations was buying up sometimes 25% of land

00:11:34.720 in African nation after African nation to literally set it aside so they can't develop it. 0.93

00:11:40.160 so white liberals can feel good about themselves in other countries.

00:11:43.560 So we're doubly harming development in African and poor nations in South America.

00:11:48.920 We're paying their leaders, giving them the most money to those who don't develop.

00:11:52.860 And we're stopping them from developing by buying up massive carbon offsets.

00:11:57.080 And sure, it'll give a little bit of cash to the country now,

00:11:59.500 but it's going to hurt them long term.

00:12:01.500 It's just insanity from beginning to end.

00:12:03.940 Let me go back to that comment you alluded to by the president of COP.

00:12:07.700 This was Sultan Al-Jabbar, I believe.

00:12:10.000 who comes out representing the UAE and says that,

00:12:13.780 oh yeah, no, there's no science, it doesn't make sense,

00:12:16.120 this whole phase out of oil and gas,

00:12:18.320 which is a very consistent position with being the guy

00:12:22.580 who is tasked with handling this file on a very oil-rich nation.

00:12:27.020 Last year, the conference was in Egypt.

00:12:29.600 Again, Egypt is not a country that is not making money off of its oil reserves here.

00:12:35.100 I think it has like the sixth largest in Africa or something like that.

00:12:38.060 and the UAE, an even larger supply.

00:12:40.320 So, I mean, these countries hosting these summits in the first place,

00:12:44.060 like, is it just paying lip service?

00:12:46.180 Like, are they even true believers in this?

00:12:49.380 No, no.

00:12:50.060 The way this works is I've been to 18 out of the last 20 since 2014.

00:12:54.360 And I've also been to two UN Earth summits.

00:12:56.700 But the way they do it, they just pick countries.

00:12:59.600 And they usually pick countries that are hostile.

00:13:02.060 Now, we've had it in Poland three times.

00:13:04.220 you may ask, why is Poland hosting a UN climate summit pretty relatively close together? It's

00:13:09.580 almost like 2008, 2013, 2017. I can't remember the exact, 2018 or something. And the reason they

00:13:18.080 pick these countries is they try to go all around the world. They're going to be going to Australia.

00:13:21.520 They're going to be going to India. But they try to pick countries where they try to woo them in.

00:13:26.340 So they want to give them business. But just hosting a UN climate summit, this was the largest

00:13:30.880 ever. It's 100,000 plus people. So first of all, it's good PR for the UN to these countries. It's

00:13:36.700 a sort of payout saying we're going to bring in an unbelievable amount of business. Think of 100,000.

00:13:41.060 Oh, yeah. Well, when they had it in Glasgow, there was not a single hotel room available

00:13:44.620 in the entirety of Scotland that week. It's the biggest thing going. I mean,

00:13:48.220 I can't think of any other corporate, World Economic Forum, even I don't even think the

00:13:52.080 who is this. This is probably the largest international conference that I'm aware of.

00:13:56.820 Anyway, 100,000 plus petitions, this was a record.

00:13:59.520 So that's one thing.

00:14:00.720 And then they bring in all the people

00:14:03.020 and they sort of shame the countries.

00:14:04.580 That's what they did with Poland. 0.99

00:14:06.080 And I went to Polish minors 1.00

00:14:08.580 and the Polish government was never that happy,

00:14:10.980 but they're always willing to host them.

00:14:12.340 So they figured they're having a dialogue.

00:14:14.180 So what happens here is they've had it

00:14:15.560 in the Middle East a couple of times.

00:14:16.720 They've had it in Qatar, in Doha, a couple of places,

00:14:21.120 a couple of other locations in the Middle East.

00:14:23.220 And they're going there because they want to highlight

00:14:25.940 that they can be part of this UN Climate Summit.

00:14:29.260 And a lot of times, the way they get the developing world 1.00

00:14:31.420 is they're paying their leaders to come.

00:14:34.000 The way they get the developed world 1.00

00:14:36.060 and even the oil-rich nations

00:14:37.480 is they're going to woo them in.

00:14:39.260 They're going to give them a lot of money

00:14:40.580 in terms of all this business.

00:14:42.200 And they're going to bring them

00:14:43.500 into the community of nations.

00:14:44.480 And it works because, you know,

00:14:45.980 Sultan al-Jabbar literally did not want to fight.

00:14:49.360 Once he made his comments,

00:14:50.640 his spokesman immediately backed down.

00:14:52.540 He backed down.

00:14:53.840 They're not interested.

00:14:54.660 they're interested in the virtue signaling. They may not follow through on it with, you know,

00:14:59.480 even if they make a pledge, they may not follow through an action. But unfortunately, they're

00:15:03.320 still allowing this fraudulent process to go. What I think needs to happen, we need a coalition. I'd

00:15:09.140 call it a Clexit. You had the Brexit. We need a climate exit from the UN treaty. We need countries

00:15:14.400 to band together and just say, hell no to net zero. It's anti-human. It's insane. It's Soviet 0.98

00:15:20.160 style central planning. We're done. We're not part of this anymore. Donald Trump, of course,

00:15:25.800 tried it, but he did it tepidly. He just withdrew us. He didn't withdraw us from the whole United

00:15:29.420 Nations climate process. He didn't withdraw us from funding the UN panel and all that stuff.

00:15:34.260 We need actually Donald Trump to triple down. And hopefully if he gets elected, he will. I don't

00:15:38.740 know who elected, but that's the problem. So what's happened here is all this virtue signaling

00:15:43.620 for decades in the green agenda, they got away with. But now we're hitting where the rubber hits

00:15:48.160 the road solar wind collapsing we have at least a dozen offshore wind collapsing in the us the ev

00:15:54.240 mandates collapsing all the global automakers saying no it's not working they're piling up on

00:15:59.200 our lots we're not going to do more you have the energy collapse in europe with hastened by the

00:16:04.160 russian war now israeli conflict all of this is just they can't afford the virtue signal anymore

00:16:09.840 but the un knows how this works it's a campaign cost so they double down and face of all of this

00:16:15.840 insanity, they wanted to phase out of all fossil fuels. And by the way, I went to fashion shows

00:16:21.140 there. They had red carpet events, sustainable clothing and fashion. I asked the spokesman there

00:16:27.480 at the UN with their keynote speaker about the C40 Cities report sponsored by Google, Ikea,

00:16:33.640 funded by Mayor Bloomberg, who was the chairman, about the limit of three new items of clothing

00:16:37.880 per person per year by 2030. And their answer is, well, it depends. If you're getting synthetic

00:16:43.580 clothing, yes. If you're buying hemp-made organic clothing, maybe from the skin of a cockroach,

00:16:51.140 then yeah, you can get more than three. This was an insane conference. They had children's events,

00:16:56.380 all the usual stuff you would expect, but everything is just so much more insane.

00:17:00.440 And the overriding theme, by the way, was this bypassing a democracy. Because right before it,

00:17:05.960 the 200 medical journals wanted to declare climate a public health emergency. The Biden

00:17:11.080 administration is being urged to do it. What that would do is take this even further out of

00:17:15.480 democracy. Because remember, we didn't vote to ban gas-powered cars. We didn't vote to ban meat

00:17:19.900 eating. We didn't vote to ban agriculture, restrictions on high-yield agriculture. But

00:17:24.760 it's all just happening because of corporate government collusion through edicts. And if

00:17:28.180 they get a climate emergency, whether it's through the WHO or whether it's even in the United States,

00:17:32.800 it gives Biden 130 new executive powers. NBC News actually said it would give him COVID-like

00:17:38.160 powers, what mayors and governors had. And he's a lame duck. So this is always a tool on the table. 0.98

00:17:43.960 Anyway, that's what the UN wants. It is, I call it the Great Reset Summit, because none of it had

00:17:48.720 to do with democracy. All of it had to do with rationing energy, food, transportation, freedom

00:17:53.780 of movement, so that they could be more in charge. And it was just nuts. And you had King Charles

00:17:58.720 there, you had Al Gore, you had John Kerry, a funny stat. On John Kerry, though, let me bring

00:18:05.180 this up because John Kerry is an example of how ideological this all is and you see the moving

00:18:10.420 goalposts it used to be about emissions and then it became about temperature and now it's just about

00:18:16.140 phasing out fossil fuels so the reason I bring up John Kerry here you have the oil and gas sector

00:18:20.880 trying to meet them halfway and say well we're going to invest in carbon capture and John Kerry

00:18:24.860 comes out oh no that carbon capture is nothing I think he called it the great facade because he

00:18:29.360 just wants the industry to be obliterated and effectively outlawed. He absolutely does. John

00:18:35.880 Kerry, first of all, his speech here before the conference was all about shutting down not only

00:18:42.080 U.S. coal, but we had the petition to do the natural gas by U.N. delegates targeting the

00:18:48.100 United States. So they take away coal and gas and we're left literally a whimpering nation begging

00:18:53.400 China for what scraps, begging Venezuela, the Middle East. John Kerry has no problem with any

00:18:58.500 of that because in his mind, ideological mind, his legacy for the world is going to be saving

00:19:05.280 the planet. And he really thinks that in order to do that, you're going to break a lot of eggs

00:19:10.540 to make this beautiful utopian omelet of some kind of world. And he's pushing that. He's also

00:19:15.760 pushing, as you mentioned, carbon capture and storage. And the money going into that is insane.

00:19:20.340 But here's the thing you have to understand. The Inflation Reduction Act, so-called in the United

00:19:25.100 States was probably the most evil genius bill that we've ever seen passed by the United States

00:19:31.280 Congress, certainly in the green energy environment. Unlike the President Obama's

00:19:35.860 green stimulus of 2009, which was a boatload of money, I think it was like $70 billion.

00:19:40.740 It got dispersed and then it sort of died out. So you had a lot of success stories and then

00:19:45.360 these companies would go bankrupt and disappear and, you know, Solandra, et cetera. Yeah. But

00:19:49.720 the difference with this, and here's the thing, Politico has a whole article there. European

00:19:54.460 nations want to model. The difference with the Inflation Reduction Act, it bakes in for decades

00:19:59.620 green mandates, subsidies, regulations that just keep kicking and kicking and kicking and kicking.

00:20:05.400 So you're going to have companies, governors, legislators, states, everyone just sucking at

00:20:12.560 that teat for decades to come on this money that's going to be completely reauthorized and reauthorized

00:20:17.440 and reauthorized. And it makes the green agenda not go away like we had under Obama once the

00:20:22.600 money runs out because the money is designed never to run out and this is what you use this this wealth

00:20:27.500 transfer from the west to the south as being a feature and not a bug of this all yeah not yeah

00:20:33.100 Otto Edenhofer who years ago said this was not about environmental policy this was about

00:20:38.700 redistributing wealth by climate policy this has nothing to do with environmental I mean he was

00:20:43.640 very explicit the whole IPCC basis and the climate treaty basis this is not about environment at all

00:20:51.060 It's about creating what they see as equity in the world.

00:20:55.400 And unfortunately, even though I would say climate skeptics, if you will, are winning.

00:20:59.880 We just had a Nobel Prize winning scientist, Dr. John Clouser, who won the Nobel last year, come out and say climate basically is a is a he didn't see the word hoax, but he said basically was pseudoscience and it was nonsense.

00:21:10.700 And he went on in The Washington Post actually featured it, you know, Nobel winner dissents on climate.

00:21:16.700 I mean, I bet the reporter and editor who allowed that article to go with that headline has lost their job or been demoted.

00:21:22.980 But none of that matters because they now post-March 2020 know the game plan forward.

00:21:29.500 And the game plan forward is not about public opinion.

00:21:31.900 They could care less that recent public polling, at least in the U.S., is showing skepticism and reaching new heights.

00:21:36.900 People don't trust the institutions.

00:21:38.580 They could care less about what people don't trust, whether it's public health now or the climate agencies, because they have their model.

00:21:44.840 They're going to bypass democracy. 0.99

00:21:46.280 They have corporate government collusion. We now have banks who are joining up saying they're not going to give car loans to people who want to buy gas powered cars in working in collusion with the ESG, with the BlackRock, with the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

00:22:00.620 And so we are citizens facing perhaps something we haven't ever faced this nakedly.

00:22:05.500 They are just doubling down on raw power and bypassing a democracy with corporate government collusion.

00:22:10.660 And that's what this UN conference was celebrating. That's why if you watched it, you were just like, this is insane.

00:22:16.020 They're talking about phasing out fossil fuels.

00:22:18.240 They're talking about billions here.

00:22:19.900 They're talking about Soviet-style central planning for decades into the future with

00:22:23.880 all this net zero.

00:22:24.920 I mean, again, regulations on every aspect of your life down to how many clothes you

00:22:28.900 can buy, to the cars, to your thermostat, to your diets.

00:22:32.720 The World Economic Forum was there.

00:22:34.180 The World Health Organization was there.

00:22:35.520 It's just incredible.

00:22:36.540 And by the way, one little note is the British Foreign Secretary, Richie Rich, as Mark Stein

00:22:41.740 calls him richie sunak and king charles all flew on three separate private jets to the conference

00:22:47.580 but it's okay because they're important the same conference by the way which cnn coincided an

00:22:52.540 article literally cnn travel article and i have as my headline at climate depot carbon passports

00:22:59.500 uh are the thing of the future for travel they're talking about massive restrictions on international

00:23:05.260 travel when we need carbon passports limits when you hit your max you can't travel we have

00:23:09.420 activists saying under declared climate emergency you can't just fly whenever you want it has to be

00:23:13.660 quote morally justified this was all the sentiment at this un conference they have like the diplomatic

00:23:19.980 passport equivalent of the carbon passport on theirs it's a very much a different rule they

00:23:24.780 have a higher limit or no limit at all well you did great work they're glad you made it out alive

00:23:28.940 mark morano you can check out his work over at climate depot.com thanks so much mark

00:23:33.580 thank you and we also did a protest which you can go to climate depot and see we did a

00:23:37.420 just say no style protest we blocked traffic and we said no to net zero and no to meat bans so did

00:23:43.180 you destroy any priceless art no we didn't yeah okay all right well you have some standards unlike

00:23:48.460 the uh the other folks you're up against mark thanks very much thank you andrew appreciate it

00:23:53.260 always always good to talk to uh mark baron actually i think we have we have the video

00:23:57.820 of his little pro i yeah i think we have the video of the protest right sean can we play that

00:24:01.980 Seafact, in the tradition of just say no to oil, decided to just say no to net zero by

00:24:11.240 by conducting a bus blockade at the UN Climate Summit in Dubai.

00:24:41.240 stop net zero save red meat you know what i'd vote for anyone that runs on that platform alone

00:25:04.300 right there uh stop net zero save red meat yes save the red meat you know all these climate

00:25:10.040 bureaucrats when they go to these conferences are eating a healthy diet of red meat. I'm actually

00:25:14.200 going to be going back to Davos in January with Sean and with our reporter and editor Cosman

00:25:20.780 Georgia. We're going to be reporting from WEF and I assure you they may love writing about and

00:25:25.680 talking about fake meat but there is absolutely real meat on the menu whenever you go to those

00:25:31.160 swanky Swiss alpine restaurants over there as I'm sure there was in Dubai, there was in Egypt,

00:25:37.100 There will be next year in Australia and all the like.

00:25:41.400 So you can catch up with Mark Morano's coverage over at ClimateDepot.com.

00:25:45.740 Wanted to turn from the global to the provincial, but to further complicate things,

00:25:50.820 the provincial tends to be the national in this particular context.

00:25:54.640 Ontarians are very, very, very familiar with a guy by the name of Mike Harris.

00:26:01.020 Mike Harris was elected Premier of Ontario just under 30 years ago, back in 1995.

00:26:08.740 And what was interesting about the Harris years is that they're held up as being by so many people in the province,

00:26:16.540 especially teachers and basically just teachers, as being this great villain.

00:26:21.320 I mean, his name is a curse word.

00:26:23.620 But you talk to ordinary people, you talk to Conservatives, and Mike Harris is an absolute hero.

00:26:29.440 And I think Mike Harris, for a lot of the time, has not really had his story told the way it needed to be.

00:26:36.160 And by that I mean he revolutionized politics in Ontario.

00:26:39.980 He took a party, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, which was always a very squishy, moderate, elite party.

00:26:47.180 And he turned it into one that was very grassroots oriented.

00:26:49.940 He had the Common Sense Revolution, a rather legendary roadmap and platform that was unafraid to tackle some very difficult challenges.

00:27:00.380 And the Common Sense Revolution turns 30 years old, and Mike Harris's legacy is finally being put in what I think is an appropriate context here in a new book, which has been quite well-hyped, which is good for a political book, called The Harris Legacy, Reflections on a Transformational Premier.

00:27:16.980 You can see it there and get it on Amazon and other places fine books are sold.

00:27:21.020 It has some fantastic contributions from a number of characters, many of whom will be

00:27:24.860 familiar.

00:27:25.840 And it was edited by my favorite Alistair Campbell.

00:27:29.280 No, not that hack that works for Tony Blair, but the much superior Alistair Campbell who

00:27:34.740 joins me on the line now.

00:27:36.660 Alistair, good to talk to you.

00:27:37.720 Thanks for being with me today.

00:27:39.480 Absolute pleasure.

00:27:40.380 Thanks for the invitation.

00:27:41.860 So let's start with the why now, because Mike Harris has for decades now, but now

00:27:46.960 of public life every now and then he may pop up in an interview but why did you feel this was an

00:27:51.440 anthology that 2023 warranted so i think uh the urgency of this uh maybe didn't get felt by others

00:28:00.880 but during the period when premier ford named uh mike harris to be a member of the order of ontario

00:28:08.800 it was his mini tempest in the media teapot and it became very clear that the only historical legacy

00:28:15.920 that the mainstream media wanted to cover was Walkerton and Ipperwash. And I felt strongly

00:28:23.440 that the real history was being kind of cancelled. And so, at the side of my desk during COVID,

00:28:29.520 I started recruiting different specialist authors to help me kind of write the true historical

00:28:37.200 record of the time, policy area by policy area. And I was able to recruit some fantastic talent

00:28:44.880 from David Frum, through Jack Mintz, through Bill Robson. But I didn't just kind of ask Tories.

00:28:51.040 I asked liberals, I asked Greens, I asked academics, I asked journalists who were nonpartisan.

00:28:57.680 And the core takeaway is maybe the most intriguing part of this legacy. It turns out almost nothing

00:29:04.800 he did was reversed. And so maybe all of this kind of mainstream take of, you know,

00:29:13.760 Paris is a brief blip in the otherwise benign progressive trajectory of Ontario politics

00:29:19.680 isn't right and that in fact through education and welfare and tax rates all the way through

00:29:26.720 municipal reform and parkland creation and protection of the Oak Ridges Moraine just on a

00:29:33.200 consistent policy area by policy area basis what Mike did turned out to be permanent and we're

00:29:40.960 actually living in uh harris's ontario today i ran as a pc candidate in the 2018 election and and

00:29:49.760 what was always so fascinating is you'd knock on doors and you'd walk up to this giant giant giant

00:29:55.840 mansion of a house i'm exaggerating a little bit but by london ontario standards a mansion and

00:30:00.560 you know the person would come to the door and be like i'm a teacher and we still haven't

00:30:04.160 recovered from mike harris i'm i'm and you'd look at well you know your husband looks like

00:30:08.080 like he's in the pool back there. And, you know, this house is pretty big, like, but there does

00:30:12.400 seem to be this very revisionist approach that unions, public sector unions have about Mike

00:30:18.000 Harris, in particular, which was that, you know, he just decimated them and crippled them. And

00:30:22.840 when you say that nothing has been reversed of his legacy, I guess maybe there, there's a bit

00:30:27.680 of truth that there is still some lingering effect in the public sector from what he did. But

00:30:31.300 but where does that come from? Because I can't think of a politician that still has as much

00:30:36.200 venom 30 years after the fact. I mean, even George Bush, I think, was viewed more favorably

00:30:41.700 by people that hated him more quickly. But Harris never really got that.

00:30:46.020 The intensity of the public sector union resistance to the changes that were implemented

00:30:51.520 during the common sense revolution was visceral. And it actually started before Harris. The

00:30:59.340 MVP government of Bob Ray tried to introduce something called the social contract, which was

00:31:05.200 effort to save union jobs, but still control government spending. And it ripped that party 0.96

00:31:10.320 apart. And in the course of that, I think he discovered he probably wasn't actually an NDPer

00:31:14.480 himself. So the war began before we got there. And it just intensified when we did. Somehow the

00:31:22.240 teachers union leadership convinced themselves they were all Arthur Scargill and Mike was

00:31:27.840 Margaret Thatcher and they were the coal miners. And if they didn't fight back, they would be 0.75

00:31:31.840 exterminated which of course given the critical function the public sector teachers unions perform

00:31:38.080 in our system is absurd but somehow they've managed to maintain this intensity the core

00:31:44.720 point in bill robson's excellent chapter on education is in fact that ontario kids scores

00:31:51.440 on exams relative to other provinces and other countries in the world improved during this time

00:31:56.560 and what's lasted standardized testing grade three grade six grade nine published results

00:32:03.160 mandatory literacy exam before you graduate all of that component of what was in the Harris

00:32:09.120 reforms of the time hated by the teachers or not it's still there and even when the teachers got

00:32:16.220 what they thought was a more benign regime and McGuinty and when those things were not changed

00:32:22.080 And nor was the centralized negotiation between the province and the unions, which was a revolutionary part of what Harris did.

00:32:30.940 It did not go back to negotiation with 78 amateur boards of education up against the strongest and smartest and most sophisticated public sector unions in the world, I think.

00:32:41.400 there was a time i mean if you go back now you know 20 20 some odd years where people were

00:32:47.840 pushing him to move to federal politics and mike harris was being courted to run for the leadership

00:32:53.240 of the canadian alliance now i mean obviously we i think a lot of people were probably happy with

00:32:58.020 what ended up happening stephen harper winning and then eventually merging the parties but

00:33:02.200 what was it that you think prevented him from trying to really parlay what he had done into

00:33:08.300 in Ontario into something bigger? Because I think he did have an opportunity to do something. I mean,

00:33:14.180 even if he didn't end up leading the alliance, he probably could have been a federal cabinet

00:33:18.260 minister and had a bit of a different trajectory than he chose to, which was transitioning into

00:33:22.560 relative obscurity after office. Yeah, so I think a couple of thoughts there. First of all,

00:33:28.420 a key contribution of the Harris legacy was three of the most outstanding cabinet ministers of the

00:33:33.640 Harper Governor, Flaherty, Baird and Clement, all of whom were blooded in the revolution and made,

00:33:41.080 I think, significant contributions because they had already done big change at the government

00:33:48.360 level in Ontario. I think, honestly, people underestimated just how hard the job was of

00:33:55.240 implementing that common sense revolution. And when Mike stepped down, when asked if he had any

00:34:00.840 regrets at that final Queen's Park press conference. And he answered, yes, he should have done more

00:34:05.880 faster. But I think he was genuinely done. I think he felt like he had come with a mission

00:34:12.360 he'd executed against the plan. As we now know in this book, what he contributed has led to the

00:34:21.180 Ontario that honestly remains one of the most attractive places to move to in the world,

00:34:26.080 if you can get here. And that's a lasting legacy, and I don't feel like he needed to do more in his

00:34:33.880 own head. You will also see in this book two excellent contributions on what he did in federal

00:34:39.720 provincial relations, one by the late Hugh Siegel and one by a former bureaucrat, Craig McFadgen,

00:34:45.660 that shows, in fact, that Mike had a huge impact on the rebalancing of the Canadian Federation

00:34:50.520 itself after the near fateful experience of the Quebec referendum. And that Mike had already

00:34:57.100 done an awful lot on the federal stage as well without ever having, I think, felt the need to

00:35:03.420 run himself at that level. I know you were obviously involved heavily in the 95 campaign

00:35:10.220 in particular. Well, your bio says you were the message guy. Everyone knows titles are always a

00:35:15.880 bit murky on campaigns. But I did want to ask you about his approach to messaging, because

00:35:20.600 one of the criticisms that I've heard about Mike Harris, and I don't know if you would agree with

00:35:25.400 it or not, is that he was so focused on the policy that he often didn't think about as much

00:35:31.340 the messaging of it and the packaging of that policy. And I'm curious what your take on that

00:35:36.320 was with your involvement in that campaign. And just in general, a 30,000 foot view now that you

00:35:41.360 have the benefit of hindsight on his government.

00:35:44.480 So I think the messaging of Harris was actually one of his strengths.

00:35:51.120 Somehow he radiated kind of a sense of a normal guy who was tackling big projects and trying

00:36:00.280 to get things done and then did what he said.

00:36:04.740 It wasn't just the shock of coming from 30 points behind in six weeks to a landslide

00:36:09.480 majority in 95. What you've got to remember was that in 99, there was effectively a second election,

00:36:15.880 which was really a referendum on the Harris Conincense Revolution, and he won a bigger

00:36:21.640 majority. And the messaging of Harris, I think, was tight and effective. But you're right,

00:36:29.000 he was a policy premier. And that's not always the way to win. Some people can do it with the

00:36:38.360 right image or the right tone uh i think of a politician who promised sunny ways and you can't

00:36:45.800 remember much else uh and we may be all paying a price for uh falling for that uh but in the end

00:36:52.520 uh harris had i think excellent messaging and strong policy and as we're watching the term

00:36:59.560 common sense be uh given a new lease on life uh federally by uh the conservative leader now

00:37:07.880 I think it's important to reflect on how the brand needs to be connected to content

00:37:15.400 in order for it to be as effective as it was when Mike Harris used it.

00:37:20.680 One of the big challenges in federal politics for the Conservative Party has always been the

00:37:26.360 factionalism. You have to unite Quebec Tories and Atlantic Canadians and Albertans and rural,

00:37:33.480 red Tory, urban, blue Tory, all of this. Ontario doesn't have as much factionalism. There still is

00:37:40.520 some. And I'm curious, especially with where he came in the history of the PC party, a party that

00:37:46.940 had had the much discussed dynasty and was not really a hard line, what we would call blue Tory

00:37:55.120 party. How was he at that party unity factor? How well did he bring his supporters and members

00:38:01.480 behind what he was doing? Well, it's probably one of the more controversial chunks of the book,

00:38:06.600 but the discussion about how he unified the party by winning a one-member-one-vote convention,

00:38:12.740 the first of those, was actually critical. He went into that first election in 1990,

00:38:19.720 barely survived, picked up a handful more seats, but was still in third place.

00:38:24.980 But because he had won in a one-member-one-vote system, he actually had the full support of the

00:38:29.480 party. He did a masterful job between 90 and 95 in bridging the different factions of the party

00:38:37.020 by bringing the top talent from across the different factions into his campaign team.

00:38:42.720 And then I think allowing that team to create a strategy that worked for his personality,

00:38:52.640 met his demand for policy content and then allowed the campaign to focus on things that

00:39:00.320 unified conservatives lower taxes balancing the budget significant welfare reform significant

00:39:10.960 education reform pretty meaty content but stuff that as conservatives it spoke to everyone

00:39:17.760 and then there were some surprises in that that people forget now we swept the 905 uh it turned

00:39:24.960 out that you know mandatory work for welfare was incredibly powerful policy in new immigrant hindu 0.53

00:39:32.640 muslim sikh communities that i honestly i'm not sure we pulled accurately on that before

00:39:38.320 because it spoke to their community values in the same way that it spoke to ontario's

00:39:42.240 community values uh and what harris was able to achieve in bringing a whole ontario together

00:39:49.360 and a whole party together by focusing on stuff that actually works for everyone

00:39:56.320 except perhaps some teachers uh was pretty potent and uh and actually can and will work again

00:40:03.440 i i was in school during the harris years and i remember the teacher just seething as they were

00:40:11.600 handing out those what were they called the my ontario books these little books that uh hair the 0.97

00:40:16.320 harris government had printed to give to every student and in retro as a kid i didn't really

00:40:20.000 care one way or another it was just you know 10 minutes out of class that we had to do this but i

00:40:23.760 recall that was again one of the other things the teachers really i didn't like but again a way to

00:40:28.000 go directly to the people which is uh something that we see politicians doing more of now bypassing

00:40:33.200 the media here's a book about our province and i think that uh what we achieved right from the

00:40:39.600 start putting out the platform a year in advance. We printed two and a half million copies of that

00:40:45.440 platform. So everybody could read it for themselves, do the math, kick the tires, look under the hood

00:40:51.600 and decide whether they liked it or not. And when he held it up at that debate in 1995 and says,

00:40:56.800 I will resign if I do not keep the promises in this platform, it was incredibly powerful.

00:41:02.320 And it resonated because there was this kind of deep, visceral distrust of politicians.

00:41:08.120 And here was one saying, I actually believe this stuff.

00:41:12.100 I will really do this stuff.

00:41:14.280 And if you don't like it afterwards, you can vote me out.

00:41:17.700 And in fact, in 99, many of the people who voted to reelect him didn't like all of what

00:41:23.480 he had done, but they really liked a politician who honored their vote by doing exactly what

00:41:32.780 he promised.

00:41:33.320 yeah i mean even from critics of him that was one thing i i've heard you know going back to his

00:41:39.700 years say well he did what he said he was gonna do uh and that's the thing he had been remarkably

00:41:44.380 transparent about his agenda ontarians gave him a mandate and he he very much did it well

00:41:48.820 it was a very i'll say in the the canon of ontario politics your book which you edited was a

00:41:54.320 tremendously refreshing read and i i know it delves into the policy at times which for people

00:41:59.040 like me is good, but it's important, I think. So the book is The Harris Legacy. You can see it up

00:42:04.060 on your screen in a second there. Reflections on a Transformational Premiere edited by Alistair

00:42:09.440 Campbell. Alistair, thank you so much. Really appreciate it and well done on this. Thanks. I

00:42:13.980 appreciate the opportunity to chat. All right. Thanks very much. And that does it for us. I've

00:42:18.560 been telling you this week we are going to do next week a Letters to Andrew show. You can get

00:42:23.360 your questions in by emailing andrew at truenorthcanada.com. I'm not going to reply to

00:42:29.040 them this week, so you don't need to resend them. I'm going to put them all in a little bundle and

00:42:32.680 we'll do a special edition of the show next week in which we will answer some of your questions,

00:42:37.360 however fun, wacky, odd, or off the wall they are. But don't make it like three and a half pages

00:42:41.900 long. I got one of those and I'm like, it would take the whole show just to read the questions.

00:42:45.180 So nothing good takes that long to say. That's my motto. Well, I've just came up with it now,

00:42:49.900 but maybe it would be a good motto.

00:42:51.320 In any case, we will all have a great time

00:42:53.900 with that next week.

00:42:54.560 Hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.

00:42:56.580 We will see you tomorrow.

00:42:58.300 Same time, same place here on True North.

00:43:00.360 Thank you, God bless and good day to you all.

00:43:03.400 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:43:05.920 Support the program by donating to True North

00:43:07.980 at www.tnc.news.

00:43:19.900 We'll be right back.

00:43:49.900 We'll be right back.

Juno News - December 13, 2023

Canada endorses UN pledge to phase out oil and gas

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