Juno News - February 23, 2021
Canada’s Back… Or Not
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172.28833
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4
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Hate speech
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Summary
Coming up, the Liberal government refuses to condemn China's persecution of Uyghur Muslims, and a Canadian pastor remains behind bars. This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, hosted by Andrew Lawton.
Transcript
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Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, the Liberal government refuses to condemn China's persecution of Uyghur Muslims, and a Canadian pastor remains behind bars.
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Welcome to the Andrew Lawton Show. This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
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Great to have you tuned in to the program here.
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I am not abstaining from my duties as a broadcaster today, unlike Justin Trudeau and his cabinet when it came to a vote on human rights,
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which should have been right up Justin Trudeau's alley.
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This is the guy who, when he took office, proudly proclaimed that Canada's back.
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Yeah, after those terrible years in which Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister and Canada had lost its way on the foreign scene,
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Justin Trudeau was going to bring the country back.
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He was going to be a leader on the global stage, and he was going to get us a seat on the UN Security Council.
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And, well, that part didn't work out, but he was going to take a stand.
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Justin Trudeau has never met a human rights fight he didn't want to take up until now.
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Well, yes, Justin Trudeau refused to attend a vote and directed his cabinet to not attend a vote
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on condemning China's persecution of Uyghur Muslims as a genocide.
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But rather than actually attending and standing up and saying that they were abstaining,
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They were washing their hair, they had doctor's appointments, they had meetings, they had conflicts.
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Just one lone Liberal Cabinet Minister, Mark Garneau, showed up to deliver this stunning, bold stand for human rights.
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Mr. Speaker, I abstain on behalf of the Government of Canada.
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Yes, a vote on condemning China's persecution of Uyghur Muslims, and the Canadian government abstains.
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It was quite shameful and not terribly unsurprising.
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There has always been a China-sized blind spot in Justin Trudeau's foreign policy,
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going back to even before he was elected Canada's Prime Minister.
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You remember that famous clip when he, of course, said that China was the basic dictatorship he admired most
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Well, they have been getting things done against the people they are abusing on the human rights front.
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Many groups are finding themselves persecuted by the Chinese regime,
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but the Uyghur Muslims are at the top of the list, especially in the Xinjiang region.
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Now, here's the problem with Justin Trudeau's approach.
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You may think that it's not Canada's business to go and meddle in Chinese affairs,
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and that's an entirely defensible position if you take what is called the realist stance in international relations.
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But there is a global obligation to act when genocide is taking place,
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which means that declaring something is a genocide is, as Justin Trudeau conceded last week, a loaded term.
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But that doesn't mean you can turn a blind eye to it because you don't want to fulfill those obligations.
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So by abstaining, Justin Trudeau thinks that he's doing something clever.
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He thinks that he's avoiding triggering a chain reaction,
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but what he's actually doing is displaying the very worst form of political cowardice
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because he doesn't want to rock the boat with China.
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But wait, I thought Canada was deeply concerned about human rights abuses,
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deeply concerned about allegations of genocide.
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They are, at least according to a statement from Foreign Affairs Minister Mark Garneau,
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who says the government remains deeply disturbed by horrific reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang,
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including the use of arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labor, torture, and forced sterilization.
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The free vote in Parliament ensures each member can make a determination based on available evidence.
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Taken together, these views will form Parliament's view.
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We welcome Parliamentarians working together and debating this critical issue.
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Now, this has just taken a page out of the Justin Trudeau book
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where everything is simply a learning opportunity and an opportunity for discussion.
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But yes, Mark Garneau remains deeply concerned about something that he abstained from voting on
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And despite Justin Trudeau's claim that genocide is just a loaded term,
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that didn't stop him from declaring his own government
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and all previous governments in Canada of being guilty of genocide.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is bending the pressure from the National Inquiry
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into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls,
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We accept the findings of the commissioners that it was genocide.
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So this China-sized blind spot about which I've spoken
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has permeated through all levels of the Canadian government
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where they have a documented and demonstrable policy of appeasement.
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They refuse to call a spade a spade when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party
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And the problem with this, there are many problems with this,
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but one of the chief problems of this is that it means that the country
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that is supposed to be the leader on the world stage has zero legitimacy
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when it comes to condemning human rights abuses anywhere.
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For Justin Trudeau to call his own country guilty of genocide,
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ongoing genocide, of which he's done absolutely nothing, by the way,
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And it's actually exactly what China has wanted.
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oh, Justin Trudeau is playing a game of 3D chess here,
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even though I don't even think he could play a game of Chinese checkers right now.
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And he's just trying to do this because he doesn't want to rock the boat
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and we have to get Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor back.
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The problem with this is that we would have had some results to show
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from this approach because this policy of appeasement is not new by any stretch.
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China continues to walk all over the world, Canada included in that.
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and the Liberal Cabinet's abstention didn't even win over China.
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No, they're still upset that the vote itself happened
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and that parliamentarians who were there voted unanimously
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to condemn the genocide against the Uyghur Muslims.
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This is a clip of Chinese ambassador to Canada, Kong Pei Wu, on CPAC.
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The Prime Minister and his cabinet, they did not vote.
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Does that make a difference to you that this vote is not endorsed by the Prime Minister?
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Or do you view this as a decision taken by Canada,
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I think the most important thing is for the Canadian side
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under the pretext of Xinjiang-related issues and the correct mistakes.
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And also they should discuss bias and prejudice and to respect facts
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so as not to further damage our bilateral relationship.
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Right, but people in this country believe that Western democracies don't just have the right,
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they have an obligation to interfere in the affairs of other countries
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if they think human rights are being sacrificed.
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Or if, in this case, the Canadian parliament has said a genocide is underway.
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Because I believe when it comes to a human rights issue,
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it's the people of the country concerned which has the best say.
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So for the Chinese people, they are in the best position to judge the human rights record,
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whether it's in Xinjiang or elsewhere in China.
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And we are in the best stage of human rights in the history.
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And that's also, I think, proved by those people in China.
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Because for many years, when it comes to the polling from international bodies,
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they have high regard for the central government of China.
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Apparently, everyone in China thinks it's just fantastic.
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which is why people are dissidents of the Chinese regime.
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And China is in a great position to judge and assess its own human rights record,
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which is why China has been so frustrated with other countries wanting to go in.
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And there was actually a point earlier on where Kong Pei Wu was asked
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if China would be open to international investigators to the region in question.
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The problem with detention camps is that you can't get to the part
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where a lot of the detentions are taking place.
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So being able to walk down the street doesn't mean that you can say
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this is just a wide open, completely free society.
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Now, again, I go back to this idea that if you are Canada
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and you don't want to rock the boat with China,
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But don't pretend to be a global leader in human rights
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when the country that is vastly becoming the global hegemon in China
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is continuing to trample all over any values, any liberties,
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and indeed other nations in the world, Canada included in this.
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And remember, the Justin Trudeau China blind spot
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It's even about becoming an apologist for China.
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I know I've played this clip a couple of times,
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Remember when people were raising questions about China's COVID-19 numbers?
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And by people, I mean, hello, me, as well as countless others
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from almost the very first month of the pandemic.
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And China, which had repeatedly revised its numbers,
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hey, maybe the numbers weren't accurate at first.
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But the whole point of this is Patti Hajdu, the health minister in Canada,
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accused a reporter of feeding conspiracy theories for daring to ask about it.
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One of the most important things to understand about this pandemic,
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this global pandemic, is that as long as coronavirus exists in one country,
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that we actually have to work collectively as a world now
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to defeat this virus, to find better ways to treat,
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and then eventually prevent this virus through vaccination
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And that's going to take everybody working together.
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So I would say that your question is feeding into conspiracy theories
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that many people have been perpetuating on the internet.
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And it's important to remember that there is no way to beat a global pandemic
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if we're actually not willing to work together as a globe.
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And the reason I bring that up again now is to introduce this clip
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from an interview on CBC over the weekend with Rosie Barton
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with Peter Ben-Emberic, who led the World Health Organization's
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So if the outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019
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than previously thought, was it a lack of information
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that prevented the rest of the world from knowing that?
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What do you understand about why we didn't understand that before now?
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I think it's not so much about lack of information.
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In December, nobody knew more than we knew back in a month after, in fact.
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and that started the interest and the investigation into what was this new disease.
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And remember, at that time, we didn't know about all the mild cases,
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were the severe cases with the severe pneumonia.
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So it was more about understanding that there was a lot of undetected cases
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We have been able, through retrospective studies,
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So around this, there must have been some, many more mild cases.
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Now, I don't think the WHO has all that much legitimacy
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because for far too long, it was shilling for the Chinese regime
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because Justin Trudeau seems to believe that it is the be-all and end-all.
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If even the WHO is now saying that China misled and covered up
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and that there were more cases than initially revealed,
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does that mean Patty Hajdu is going to apologize
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for accusing anyone asking about such scenarios
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Why has the official position of the Justin Trudeau government
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when anyone with a brain saw that China was not being an honest actor
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is not the same as China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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But the point is that we cannot give this country
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because of its demonstrable abuses of human rights
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China says things must be fine for the Uyghurs
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because the population in Xinjiang continues to grow.