Juno News - Canadian corporations say digital ID is ＂necessary evolution＂

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.360 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.220 Welcome to you all. This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,

00:00:16.200 the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:18.200 Midway through the week, June 7th, 2023,

00:00:21.400 in case you've been in a lengthy coma and we're not even quite sure of the year.

00:00:25.820 And if you weren't already in a coma by the end of this show,

00:00:27.980 hopefully you still won't be. But I have been known to have that effect to people. You shouldn't

00:00:31.900 listen to me when driving necessarily. And don't take us here. If you're driving, keep listening.

00:00:36.220 I'm sure you're fine. Maybe you'll have some natural immunity. But nevertheless, we are going

00:00:40.660 to get to some of the big issues of the day. Yesterday, we talked about the World Health

00:00:44.800 Organization's plans for a global vaccine passport. Today, we have news that some of Canada's top

00:00:52.060 corporations are beating the drum hard in favor of digital identification. And not just digital

00:00:58.580 ID, not just like a little sort of QR code that you can look at to perhaps just be reminded of

00:01:05.560 your name if you forget it, but an entire digital existence in which everything you might want to do

00:01:11.000 from buying something, getting a new cell phone, getting a new job is all connected to your little

00:01:17.360 digital identity. We'll talk about that momentarily and a little bit later on in the show, what the

00:01:21.980 Bank of Canada's interest rate hikes mean for you. Plus, we'll hopefully get to some other odds and

00:01:27.840 ends as the show progresses. But yesterday, Michelle Bachman was on the program, former

00:01:32.820 presidential candidate, former congresswoman, to talk about the World Health Organization's desire

00:01:38.320 to universalize and globalize the European Union's vaccine passport. They looked at Europe through

00:01:45.280 the pandemic and said, wow, you know, the EU was really on top of things with that global vaccine

00:01:50.080 passport of theirs. Let's make sure everyone in the world is able to use that. So this is

00:01:55.360 conveniently for the WHO, a great reason to assert a level of power and control over how individual

00:02:02.040 countries around the world act. And it's perhaps related, not directly, but certainly indirectly

00:02:07.940 that today we find ourselves looking at a digital identity white paper. Now, a white paper is just

00:02:14.400 a lengthy policy paper. It doesn't have any legislative weight just yet, but it's the type

00:02:19.520 of thing that tends to influence lawmakers and those who are lobbying the government

00:02:23.500 for political and policy change. This one is called Peace of Mind in the Digital Age.

00:02:29.980 It's possible with an exclamation mark and a really happy looking woman holding an iPad

00:02:36.240 on the front cover. Now, who is behind this digital identity white paper? Well, you scroll down below

00:02:42.900 the forward and you see that there are a few Canadian companies that are involved in this.

00:02:47.740 There's the Digital Identity Laboratory, Videotron, which is a Quebec media company,

00:02:53.060 TELUS, which I used to be a loyal customer of until they screwed me over on my cell phone bill

00:02:57.860 one too many times, and now I get screwed over by Rogers.

00:03:01.380 KPMG, the big audit firm, Desjardins, the credit union, and Beniva, which I've never heard of,

00:03:07.520 but I'm guessing is an insurance company just by the name.

00:03:10.380 Now I've got to make sure if I'm right.

00:03:12.300 Yes, insurance company.

00:03:13.860 So that's good branding on their part.

00:03:15.160 I guess that you can tell what they are just by the name alone.

00:03:18.620 But all of these companies are part of this digital identity white paper,

00:03:22.680 which among other things says digital ID is, quote,

00:03:25.920 a necessary evolution for society, unquote.

00:03:29.920 Now, there are some people like me who say, yeah, digital ID is inevitable.

00:03:33.980 It's coming.

00:03:34.960 And I say that to warn you so that we know to fight against it.

00:03:38.480 These folks are welcoming it with open arms and they want us to all be very happy

00:03:43.420 and satisfied and content in our little digital realms which conveniently enough rely on other

00:03:49.020 people to both control and monitor every decision we make every step i take they'll be watching you

00:03:55.400 is that a sing sting song in any case what we see in this white paper if you scroll through and i'm

00:04:00.860 not going to make you do the whole 27 pages with me here but there are a few points where they talk

00:04:05.820 about how this works and they do it all in a way that seems very eager and very excited and very

00:04:10.440 happy to welcome this in. For example, a page called How is Digital Identity a Step Forward?

00:04:17.400 They say it strengthens privacy protection. They say governments are cracking down with

00:04:22.560 harsher penalties for mismanaging personal information. So they think that the solution

00:04:27.600 to this is to require more of our personal information to be there so that government

00:04:33.300 can really crack down on people who abuse it. Do you know what a good way to prevent your

00:04:37.240 personal misinformation from being abused and misused is to not put it in any sort of online

00:04:42.840 repository if you can help it. They say that digital ID builds digital trust. Ooh, that sounds

00:04:50.880 nice. How are they going to do that? Well, the idea of trust is pretty central to what digital ID

00:04:56.680 is. And they even have a nifty little graphic on page seven, figure one, in which they talk about

00:05:02.860 the trust triangle now i hadn't heard of this concept but in the physical world your id card

00:05:08.320 is the subject of this trust it means that you take your id card and you go to i don't know the

00:05:14.000 liquor store and they verify it because they trust that oh an ontario driver's license has been

00:05:20.580 issued by a legitimate body being the government so they say right there the verifier trust the

00:05:26.680 issuer and that's how it works so uh the government gives you an id card you show it to someone that

00:05:31.980 you might need to have your credentials checked on, and if they trust each other, you are golden.

00:05:37.880 Now, I used to work, believe it or not, through university at the LCBO. Yes, I reject vehemently

00:05:43.320 the LCBO's existence as a crown corporation, but you know what? When you're a kid getting $25 an

00:05:48.820 hour as a cashier, it's a pretty good deal, I must admit. But I saw my share of fake IDs. I was

00:05:53.900 pretty good at spotting them. One time I got lucky in that someone came and gave me the ID of her

00:05:59.640 older sister, who I happen to know, which was just really bad luck for her that day.

00:06:04.800 But nevertheless, you trust the ID, identify, identification issuer, so you trust the person

00:06:10.980 who shows you the ID.

00:06:12.420 Now we look at the individual's experience in the digital world.

00:06:17.900 How are you going to, as the LCBO, trust the digital ID that some teen that wants to buy

00:06:24.580 their Smirnoff is going to give you?

00:06:26.300 well there's a little step they've had to insert in the middle there a verifiable data registry

00:06:33.020 now by that they mean a place that the lcbo can go or air canada can go or your bank can go

00:06:39.420 to verify that your document your little qr code is legitimate and we had this in the vaccine

00:06:46.460 passport era where you could as a store scan a vaccine passport and it would bring you to

00:06:52.500 a government page in some provinces that said if it was legitimate or not and they kept saying

00:06:57.060 oh this is entirely secure they don't have access to your personal information and then we found out

00:07:02.120 that someone working in an Alberta MLA's office was actually hacking effectively the database and

00:07:09.340 looking up vaccine records and it was odd how all of a sudden this thing that was never supposed to

00:07:14.360 be accessible to anyone was actually accessible to people so for the digital trust triangle to

00:07:21.380 exist and to work there needs to be by the enthusiastic digital id pushers a data registry

00:07:28.860 and that's where we get to the crux of it it's not like a physical card that you can look at that

00:07:33.660 you know is legitimate because it has all these hallmarks and emblems and holograms and stuff

00:07:38.020 like that instead there has to be a registry there has to be a database now some of you may say so

00:07:44.080 what's the big deal your driver's license may be a physical card but it's connected to some

00:07:48.720 digital record the issue is accessibility of that and the connectedness of that and who has control

00:07:55.660 of that and anyone living in Canada doesn't have to be all that surprised to learn that there are

00:08:00.840 grave concerns when your digital identity is at stake because we've seen with digital finances

00:08:07.660 what happens when all of a sudden the government decides to freeze the bank accounts of political

00:08:12.880 protesters of political dissidents and all of a sudden the only way you could get around

00:08:17.360 is if you had cash because your bank accounts were frozen.

00:08:20.540 If you were Tom Marazzo or Benjamin Dictor or Tamara Leach or Chris Barber

00:08:25.240 or any number of other people who were involved in the convoy protesters.

00:08:30.180 Now, digital currency is a different discussion but very much a related one

00:08:34.480 because the whole point of it is that your identity and some core hallmarks of your identity,

00:08:39.920 your life, your existence, are digitized, which means they can be controlled.

00:08:45.560 And some people who talk about digital ID, and it's alluded to in this white paper here,

00:08:50.860 will say, you know, we can do this in a way that's a bit more like the blockchain,

00:08:55.320 where only you have physical possession of this little digital ID card.

00:09:00.780 You're the only one that can do it.

00:09:02.120 And, you know, you put it on your phone.

00:09:03.620 But once you install something on your phone,

00:09:06.340 it is very easy to get lulled into this false sense of security about it,

00:09:10.820 when in actuality, it is not secure.

00:09:12.580 And I don't just mean if someone steals your phone,

00:09:14.200 but if there is this centralized registry that has to be available to some people that has to

00:09:19.780 be accessible to some people so we talk about this in the context of what it means to have your id

00:09:27.340 centralized and digitized in this way and what it means is that you no longer have control of it you

00:09:32.540 are no longer a physical being with a physical existence that has physical attributes in the

00:09:39.540 sense of your ID cards, your credit cards, your bank cards, everything becomes in the cloud,

00:09:44.440 as we say. And that means that you no longer have the ownership over it in the pure way.

00:09:48.880 So at the very least, it's creepy. At the very worst, it gives governments the profound opportunity

00:09:54.440 to take significant steps to curb your independence. And even if they do it unintentionally,

00:10:00.440 remember, was it two years ago, a year and a half ago, when there was that giant Rogers outage,

00:10:05.620 actually was last July I remember because I was in the middle of nowhere in Northern Ireland and

00:10:10.860 I was using the GPS on my phone to get around and when the Rogers outage in Canada happened

00:10:16.360 it affected my roaming plan because I was a Rogers customer and whichever network I was on in Northern

00:10:22.880 Ireland was you know pinging back to my home network and they said oh apparently you don't

00:10:26.860 have a phone plan or whatever the technical existence was and I was a bit stranded now

00:10:31.620 thankfully Northern Ireland is like the size of, you know, a large shopping mall. So it was easy

00:10:35.480 enough to get around. But the point of that is that we all saw when interact terminals were down,

00:10:41.680 when we could not engage in commerce and all you had left was cash, that when someone can control

00:10:49.640 things in a digital space, it means you can't and you aren't. Let's talk about this a little bit

00:10:55.560 broader in the scope of it and what it means for privacy rights, what it means in the eyes of the

00:11:00.440 law. Joining me on the line now is Luke Nielsen, who is the Education Programs Coordinator for

00:11:06.380 the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which has itself put out a white paper on this.

00:11:11.400 And I should just say, in the interest of disclosure, I sit on the board of the JCCF.

00:11:15.520 That's not why I am doing this segment, though. I'm doing it because I believe it's an important

00:11:19.200 one. And the JCCF's work on this has been quite strong. Luke, good to have you on. Thanks for

00:11:24.300 joining me. Thanks so much for having me on the show, Andrew. Good to be here. So let's just

00:11:29.060 situate this in a legal context for a moment because people oftentimes assume there is a

00:11:33.380 right to privacy and i think we have certain pieces of legislation in canada that do try

00:11:38.400 to protect privacy but but it's not as simple as saying that anything that is an intrusion of our

00:11:43.160 privacy will run afoul of the law especially when it's government that's deciding to be the intruder

00:11:48.680 yeah exactly i mean we do have privacy laws in canada for instance we have the privacy act which

00:11:55.000 is the highest law in Canada governing privacy. But of course, technologies develop rapidly and

00:12:02.720 sometimes policies and laws and even our thinking about privacy doesn't keep pace with emerging

00:12:09.240 technologies like artificial intelligence or biometrics or facial recognition technologies

00:12:14.740 or, of course, digital ID. So as technology develops and improves, so too does our thinking

00:12:22.340 about privacy need to develop and improve. So where has the JCCF approached this issue from?

00:12:28.980 What's been your experience and why did you wade into this first off? Yeah, that's a great question.

00:12:35.920 For the last few years, governments all across the world have been persuading their citizens to

00:12:41.860 adopt digital ID on their smartphones, in their wallets, on their laptops. And, you know,

00:12:49.000 according to Juniper research, there are, I think, 3.8 or 4.8 billion users of digital ID across the

00:12:54.900 world today. More than 70 countries across the globe have digital ID programs. And so it's a

00:13:01.040 significant emerging technology. And we believe that it could impact the enjoyment of rights and

00:13:06.720 freedoms in Canada. So while governments are persuading our citizens to adopt what they're

00:13:13.700 describing as mere counterparts to traditional ID like passports and driver's license. We think that

00:13:20.300 a lot of these policies are actually asking Canadians to surrender a lot of data that is

00:13:25.180 unnecessary for identification. Data about your behaviors and your interests and your beliefs and

00:13:30.580 your financial transactions. We think that government should not be in the business of

00:13:35.220 peering into the intimate identities of Canadians. And so we think that, you know, this is a

00:13:41.160 significant policy debate this is a significant legal challenge ahead of us we need policies and

00:13:47.680 laws that protect citizens against governments that want to know too much about you yeah and

00:13:53.340 the one thing that is the most insidious about this is that digital id digital identity biometrics

00:13:59.260 all of these things don't come about because government one day flips a switch and says

00:14:03.560 your paper drivers or your plastic driver's license is no longer you have to be digital they

00:14:08.140 they sort of hoodwink you in with offers of things where your life will be ostensibly more

00:14:13.920 convenient. And I'll give one example of this. I'm looking at my Air Canada app right now,

00:14:18.620 and they have a little banner at the top of the app that says, we've introduced several

00:14:21.980 enhancements to our digital identification program with our latest app release. If you

00:14:26.960 already have a digital profile, please upgrade, yada, yada, yada, and create a new profile using

00:14:31.900 your biometric passport or driver's license. And what Air Canada is doing here is a pilot project

00:14:37.560 where instead of having to scan your boarding pass,

00:14:39.920 you'll be able to go through the gate

00:14:41.200 because they'll scan your face.

00:14:43.180 And they'll say, this is Andrew Lawton

00:14:44.660 and the machine might break when it scans my face,

00:14:47.180 but that's a secondary point.

00:14:48.640 And then the gates open and I walk in

00:14:50.420 because they're saying this is slightly more convenient

00:14:52.960 than me having to show a paper boarding pass

00:14:55.640 or my boarding pass app.

00:14:57.680 And for some people who are busy, I see that.

00:14:59.980 I see that convenience.

00:15:01.120 I see that there.

00:15:02.540 You know, one example,

00:15:03.600 and people may criticize me for being a sellout on this,

00:15:06.020 but I have a Nexus card

00:15:07.040 because it allows me to more quickly cross the border

00:15:09.780 and go through airport security.

00:15:11.780 Well, Netflix, not Netflix, Nexus has my fingerprints

00:15:14.840 because that was a condition of the program.

00:15:16.980 And I traded that little part of me

00:15:19.260 for something that I got in return.

00:15:21.460 But when you have corporations and government

00:15:23.940 both doing this, we end up really getting sucked

00:15:27.180 into something that is, yes, technically voluntary,

00:15:30.500 but is becoming fairly all-consuming.

00:15:33.780 Yeah, absolutely.

00:15:34.940 You know, Andrew, convenience and security and safety will always be the bait on the hook.

00:15:41.080 Governments are talking about, hey, it's so costly to conduct transactions with physical documents.

00:15:46.400 So let's digitize the economy.

00:15:48.280 Let's digitize interactions with government.

00:15:50.620 We're going to save millions and billions of dollars each year.

00:15:53.120 We're going to get people to their destinations faster.

00:15:56.520 We're going to lower the probability of fraud occurring.

00:16:00.320 These are all true statements.

00:16:01.600 I mean, this technology will accomplish all of those things.

00:16:04.120 the question is, what do Canadians have to exchange for that? Many Canadians aren't aware

00:16:08.840 that governments are using laws and policies to equip them to capture data that they probably

00:16:15.380 shouldn't have. And most Canadians aren't aware of the costs of this, right? There's a cost to

00:16:20.200 surrendering otherwise private information about yourself. And you've talked about this on your

00:16:24.960 show today, right? When people know too much about you, they're in a position to threaten your

00:16:30.180 security. They're in a position to use what they know about you to limit your access to flights

00:16:35.760 or to medical care or to post-secondary institutions. It also undermines your autonomy

00:16:43.100 and your human dignity. I mean, human beings aren't specimens. They're not objects of study.

00:16:48.980 And maybe I'm alone in this, but I don't think it's a proper function or purpose of government

00:16:55.060 to model their citizens or to understand them more intimately than their partners do or their

00:17:00.780 friends do. So you're right. Security and efficiency and lowering the cost of transactions,

00:17:06.100 these are all very fine goals. But I don't think Canadians are aware that they're surrendering

00:17:11.120 something very valuable for those goods. Yeah. And you'll always hear, I mean,

00:17:15.640 they're the most infuriating words in the English language to privacy advocates. If you have nothing

00:17:20.760 to hide, then you have nothing to fear. And the best way I have ever heard a cheeky retort to

00:17:27.620 that is when you go into a bathroom and close the door, everyone knows what you're doing. That

00:17:31.740 doesn't mean you want them to watch you doing it. There are things that are not secrets,

00:17:35.900 but are nonetheless private. And I think that's actually a good way of distinguishing them.

00:17:41.120 And the reason I bring that up is basically to say that when we're talking about the broader

00:17:47.600 implications of privacy rights and digital ID. It's that there are certain things that just no

00:17:54.180 one needs to know. And I mean this on even pretty insignificant things. Let's say I go on Kijiji

00:17:59.080 and I buy a barbecue from my neighbor and the neighbor says, here's the barbecue. And I say,

00:18:05.200 here's $50, give me the barbecue. And I give them that cash. There's no record. There's no receipt.

00:18:10.100 You know, yes, should he technically be reporting that as income? Probably in the legal sense. But

00:18:15.440 But the whole point is, is that no one needs to know that happened except us.

00:18:19.700 Whereas when you force digital currency, as an example, or you force electronic record

00:18:24.800 keeping, all of a sudden there is a record on that.

00:18:27.080 And if CRA wants to go after the guy for not declaring that $50, they can.

00:18:31.100 And if CRA wants to come after me for not disclosing that I have this asset in the crappy

00:18:35.340 old barbecue, they can.

00:18:37.160 And all of a sudden it becomes a tool of compliance, not a tool of convenience.

00:18:42.660 Yeah, absolutely.

00:18:43.600 You know, people think that privacy only matters for criminals, for people who have things to hide.

00:18:49.660 And, you know, what we're trying to do at the Justice Centre is to equip Canadians with conversational tools when they encounter that absurd claim that privacy only matters for criminals.

00:18:59.040 No, it matters for good, law-abiding, responsible, ethical citizens as well.

00:19:04.520 You know, you mentioned $50.

00:19:06.040 The Justice Center has a case right now of a gentleman named Constable Briscoe, who was a member of a police department in Ontario.

00:19:14.240 He donated $50 to the 2022 Freedom Convoy.

00:19:18.660 The Give, Send, Go donations list was hacked.

00:19:22.480 That data was released to the police department.

00:19:25.500 And Constable Briscoe is now subject to disciplinary hearings and forced to work without pay.

00:19:33.380 um because because he donated to the freedom convoy now really what this issue is about it's

00:19:39.280 about privacy and it's about data if government agencies can't have access to data like this

00:19:44.880 um they can't use that data to unjustifiably penalize canadians for yeah yeah yeah if he

00:19:50.440 put a 50 bill in a trucker's hand this is an entire non-issue he still has his career unblemished

00:19:55.820 so i think a lot of times we fixate on what i might call the effects of some rights and freedoms

00:20:03.020 violation i think the core of the issue is really about privacy if government agencies don't have

00:20:07.980 data about canadians it's very hard for them to use data in unethical or illegal ways now do you

00:20:15.980 buy the white paper that i was talking about before i brought you on luke has this view that

00:20:19.980 it's kind of just inevitable now they're a bit more enthusiastic about it i take the view that

00:20:24.300 it's inevitable but not in a good way is your view that this can or should be resisted or is your

00:20:29.420 focus on let's put in the safeguard so that when it when it comes we at least have a protection

00:20:35.180 against these intrusions we've been talking about yeah great question i mean when i cite statistics

00:20:40.460 like there are 3.8 or 4.8 billion users of digital id today um is it inevitable genie bottle it sort

00:20:49.740 of happened already right i do think that there is a really important opportunity for canadians

00:20:56.060 to determine what a national or federal digital id will look like in canada right now we have i

00:21:03.020 would call very modest digital id programs in canada unless my understanding of the technology

00:21:09.820 is wrong i don't think they allow governments to capture what should be private data about canadians

00:21:17.340 but that's not what the future will look like agencies like the pan-canadian trust framework

00:21:23.660 of the digital identification and authentication council of canada are proposing i think very

00:21:29.500 nefarious digital id programs canada has entertained a partnership with the world economic forum to

00:21:37.020 deliver a known traveler digital identity program in canada and so these programs are more privacy

00:21:43.900 violating in our public policy analysis they do try to capture unnecessary data about canadians

00:21:50.780 and the concern is that data will lead to control or the opportunity for control so

00:21:57.420 i do think there's an opportunity for canadians to get involved i think um the time is running

00:22:03.820 short though i mean canadians need to become informed about this and need to start reaching

00:22:07.580 out to their elected representatives very quickly otherwise the public policy debate will pass them

00:22:13.340 by yeah very well said luke nielsen education programs director or coordinator for the justice

00:22:19.100 Center for Constitutional Freedoms. Luke, thanks very much. Thanks for having me, Andrew. Nice to

00:22:23.900 be here. Thank you. And again, you know, a lot of it, when I talk about this, you're talking about

00:22:28.220 theoretical risks. You know, government could do this, could do this, but theoretical risks are

00:22:32.800 very important. It's not, it's theoretical and hypothetical are different because, you know,

00:22:37.580 things are hypothetical until they happen, which is, I guess, the meaning of the word hypothetical,

00:22:42.540 but things do happen. And I know that sounds kind of, you know, circular in nature, but

00:22:47.560 the trucker convoy bank account freezes are a fantastic example of this. If you had told people

00:22:52.860 a month beforehand, three months beforehand, they would have said, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I mean,

00:22:57.160 maybe the government could do this, but they're not going to. And then government did. And while

00:23:01.520 I do not accept that that should have happened, and I'm not glad it happened, I do find it to be

00:23:07.600 a useful illustration. And if we are going to talk about these issues, again, I don't want to

00:23:14.400 say that I'm happy it happened, because I'm not. But I'm saying that it is helpful to have that as

00:23:19.720 an example of what happens when government goes to extremes, that people would generally say,

00:23:24.480 oh, they're never going to do that. Well, they have, they did, and they will. Let's talk a little

00:23:28.280 bit about another financial issue. And I should say, we're going to have on the show next week,

00:23:32.000 Anne Kavoukian, who is one of the most tremendously important and brilliant privacy advocates in

00:23:38.660 Canada. We were trying to get her on today, and scheduling didn't work out, but we will have her

00:23:42.400 on next week and we'll talk about digital id and central bank digital currencies and all these

00:23:47.100 related issues in a broader context but uh today we did have a bank of canada interest rate hike

00:23:54.040 yay except not so much went up to 4.75 the first hike since january joining me is the federal

00:24:02.500 director for the canadian taxpayers federation franco terrizano franco not surprising but at

00:24:09.000 the same time also not something that will come without costs and consequences well you're

00:24:14.220 absolutely right and look canadians are going to be paying higher interest rates because the

00:24:18.260 government spent and printed money like crazy let me break down the process the government has been

00:24:24.180 running never-ending deficits the government printed more than 300 billion dollars out of

00:24:29.240 air during the pandemic that led to higher inflation and with higher inflation brings

00:24:34.800 higher interest charges so make no mistake about this folks this is directly in relation uh in

00:24:39.900 relation to the crazy out of control spending and printing that the government did over the last

00:24:44.380 couple years while we had revolving government lockdowns that led to inflation and now canadians

00:24:49.420 are going to be paying higher interest rates higher mortgage payments because of it let me

00:24:54.120 just give you the government response to your line because every time they get criticized for

00:24:59.200 this rightfully so by people like you and i they always say well the bank of canada is independent

00:25:03.400 And they try to basically pretend that fiscal policy and monetary policy are just like, you know, apples and automobiles, like that they have no relation whatsoever.

00:25:14.160 I mean, Justin Trudeau's famous line in that last election is that, you know, he doesn't think about monetary policy, which I probably agree with him on that he doesn't think about it.

00:25:22.180 But they say that the Bank of Canada kind of does its own thing and market forces, monetary forces are not responsive to what the government is doing.

00:25:30.300 How do you counter that?

00:25:32.260 Well, OK, two ways.

00:25:33.800 Number one, the amount of money that the Bank of Canada just happened to print during the pandemic when the government was running these huge deficits into the hundreds of billions was way bigger than the amount of printing that the Bank of Canada did in other years.

00:25:50.440 I mean, the growth in the Bank of Canada's balance sheet is significantly larger than what we saw during recessions of the past, including the 08-09 recession.

00:25:58.320 I mean, what we saw in terms of the printing press from the Bank of Canada over the pandemic years was similar to the entire years of the last World War when the Bank of Canada came into place essentially around that.

00:26:14.460 OK, but the second point of this is that the Bank of Canada deserves some blame here as well.

00:26:19.620 they printed more than 300 billion dollars out of thin air and the more dollars that the bank

00:26:25.720 of canada prints the less that your dollars buy that's called the inflation tax and what did the

00:26:31.080 bank of canada think was going to happen when you print all this type of money launch 300 billion

00:26:35.620 dollars into an economy that was essentially locked down for two years but here's what the

00:26:40.200 big problem is for canadians you have the bank of canada officials saying that don't worry folks

00:26:45.600 inflation is going to stay low interest rates are going to stay low so how many canadians then went

00:26:51.000 out and got a home a variable uh rate mortgage because the bank of canada was telling them that

00:26:56.880 interest interest rates would remain low right so where is the accountability now on the bank of

00:27:02.060 canada where is the accountability now uh for these federal politicians like our finance minister

00:27:07.320 christia freeland and prime minister justin trudeau yeah i think that's a very important

00:27:13.200 point. And I mean, I know that Justin Trudeau liked to rag on Pierre Polyev for saying he

00:27:17.640 would fire the Bank of Canada governor. But I think at a certain point, the question that a lot

00:27:21.360 of Canadians would ask Justin Trudeau is, why aren't you? I mean, why would you say you have

00:27:26.080 confidence in this? It's one thing to say that, you know, he's the one making the decisions and

00:27:30.080 not you. It's another thing to say that you tacitly or explicitly approve of those decisions.

00:27:36.040 Yeah, well, there is an issue with Mr. Polyev's proposal to fire the Bank of Canada governor.

00:27:40.640 There's many other bureaucrats in Ottawa that should also be getting pink slips.

00:27:44.160 So that's the main problem with Paulieff's promise to fire the Bank of Canada governor.

00:27:48.340 But here's the thing, right?

00:27:49.360 You think the layoffs are not expansive enough.

00:27:51.820 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:27:53.740 I mean, look, the Bank of Canada failed.

00:27:57.140 It has one overarching objective, and that's to keep inflation low and around 2%.

00:28:02.820 Well, if you've been to a grocery store, if you've been to a gas pump in the last two or three years,

00:28:08.260 you know that the bank of canada failed to do its only job now not only do canadians know that

00:28:14.360 the bank of canada itself knows that it failed you have the deputy governor of the bank of canada

00:28:20.040 acknowledge that the central bank should be held accountable well hold on a second folks

00:28:25.160 the bank of canada also handed out 45 million dollars in bonuses and pay raises during the

00:28:31.740 pandemic and as inflation took off. So isn't that a funny way to hold your organization accountable

00:28:38.620 and to go around and hand out tens of millions of dollars in bonuses and pay raises?

00:28:44.460 Yeah, I think you're right about that. And the one thing about this too is that the

00:28:48.760 consequences of these sorts of interest rate hikes are not always immediate. I mean,

00:28:53.780 we're staring down a few years of Canadians renewing their mortgages and finding that the

00:28:59.660 house they bought, you know, two, three, four, five years ago, they won't be able to afford

00:29:03.140 the mortgage payments on or they're or in some cases, they're just paying and less and less of

00:29:08.020 it's going towards principal. And I mean, people that went into variable rate mortgages, I know,

00:29:12.780 have already felt the squeeze now that that again, is not immediate when the Bank of Canada raises

00:29:17.500 its interest rates, but it filters down through the banks into the retail market. So it may take

00:29:21.900 years for us to see just how disastrous this era has been for people. Totally right. I mean, look,

00:29:28.760 people right now who are on these variable rate mortgages, I know they're worried. I get texts

00:29:34.440 from my friends as well asking, hey, what do you think is going to happen? When is the Bank of

00:29:37.820 Canada going to stop these interest rates hikes? So not only are people worried about losing their

00:29:43.800 homes or worried about the massive amount of cuts that they have to make in other areas of their

00:29:48.300 budget just to afford their mortgage payments, right? That's a real concern. But there's many

00:29:52.560 other interest rates in the economy that are going to be affected by the Bank of Canada's

00:29:56.520 rate hikes, right? Whether you're a business who needs to take out a loan to fund its capital,

00:30:02.140 right? Well, that's going to be impacted. Even consumer debt could be impacted by these interest

00:30:06.720 rate hikes. But folks, make no mistake about it. These interest rates are going up because

00:30:11.920 inflation was sky high. Inflation was sky high for three reasons. Number one was the massive spending

00:30:20.720 and never-ending deficits from the government, from politicians like the finance minister,

00:30:26.100 Christia Freeland from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Number two was because of the Bank of

00:30:31.140 Canada having its printing press on overdrive, not realizing that, what, this is going to be

00:30:37.180 the only time in world history that more dollars doesn't lead to inflation? Of course it was going

00:30:42.240 to happen. It always happens that way. And number three is the inflationary tax hikes. And I'm

00:30:48.420 specifically talking about the carbon tax. There's a second carbon tax coming in right around the

00:30:52.820 corner on July 1. Happy Canada Day, folks. Those carbon taxes, their design is to be inflationary.

00:30:59.860 The whole objective of the carbon tax is to increase the price of gasoline, is to increase

00:31:04.300 the cost for you to keep your home warm during the winter months, right? So I think Trudeau and

00:31:09.420 Freeland pat themselves on the back every time they pass a Shell gas station and see those high

00:31:14.780 prices. I've got to throw a potential curveball at you here because I don't know if my producer

00:31:20.200 or asked you about this story,

00:31:22.280 but there was a piece in The Guardian that I saw,

00:31:25.040 I think it was yesterday,

00:31:26.080 rich countries with high greenhouse gas emissions

00:31:28.660 could pay $170 trillion in climate reparations.

00:31:34.060 Now, this is obviously a global story,

00:31:37.380 but $170 trillion,

00:31:39.240 I don't know how many countries

00:31:40.260 we're going to put on the distribution list there,

00:31:43.060 but when they say wealthy nations,

00:31:44.380 Canada's in the G7,

00:31:46.040 I have a feeling this will involve Canadian taxpayers.

00:31:49.020 Any thoughts on this?

00:31:50.200 Oh, I mean, come on, like $170 trillion. Here's the thing, right? What Canada should be doing. Here's what Canada should be doing to help these countries that may have lower living standards to help reduce global emissions.

00:32:05.360 we can do it with one thing, making sure that remove the barriers to actually develop the type

00:32:11.100 of resources here in Canada, whether that's our oil, whether that's our gas, and to make sure

00:32:15.400 that we can actually sell our energy around the world, right? Rather than putting in these policies

00:32:20.640 in place that drive up the cost of essentially everything, like the carbon tax, rather than

00:32:26.260 putting these policies in place that make it nearly impossible for job creators to develop

00:32:30.920 the resources and to sell them abroad. And rather than putting in these types of policies that you

00:32:35.600 just talked about, which will take massive amount of money from taxpayers, rather than doing all of

00:32:40.120 that, let's produce the cleaner resources here in Canada and let's sell them all around the world,

00:32:46.060 reducing energy prices. That's what we should be doing. Well said. If there is a vacancy in the

00:32:53.440 Bank of Canada governor's seat, do you want the job, Franco? We can all start sending our emails

00:32:58.020 to Pierre Poliev? No, I sure don't, man. Sure don't. Oh, Darwin, you'd be better than Tiff

00:33:04.040 Macklin there. All right. Franco Terrizano, Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers

00:33:08.740 Federation. Thanks for coming on as always, sir. Thanks for having me on. All right. This is just

00:33:14.160 insane. $170 trillion in climate reparations. So this is basically industrialization guilt

00:33:22.420 that wealthy countries are to pay to developing countries because we are industrialized.

00:33:27.940 And they say that we're big, evil, dirty, scary emitters.

00:33:31.880 And you get all the time at these climate summits that people like the, I don't know,

00:33:37.480 the Prime Minister of Tubaloo and Tonga and Togo's in Africa, not the South Pacific.

00:33:42.500 The Maldives, they're in the Indian Ocean, lovely place.

00:33:44.980 My wife keeps wanting me to bring her there.

00:33:47.500 Will all of a sudden say, oh, we're melting, we're melting.

00:33:50.720 The sea levels are rising around us.

00:33:53.240 And then they're like building these waterfront resorts.

00:33:55.760 and i was like uh you know if you're uh gonna be consumed by the ocean then maybe just maybe you

00:34:04.940 shouldn't be building oceanfront property but again i mean i'm all for the climate reparations

00:34:08.960 if it means that canadians get to stay for free in the maldives at the resorts that our reparations

00:34:13.900 have paid for but uh the whole point of this is that we are talking about a massive wealth transfer

00:34:20.580 and this is part of what we were discussing yesterday with kenneth green where we have a

00:34:25.080 wealth transfer within countries because of carbon tax and then a wealth transfer on a global level

00:34:30.340 as the wealthy countries have to start subsidizing uh the other countries meanwhile china just sits

00:34:35.220 back and laughs at us all while building coal plants while emitting whatever it wants and just

00:34:40.120 saying and doing the right things when they're at these big giant climate summits i wanted to do a

00:34:45.860 bit of an update on our pride discussion from a few days back on the show and i talked about the

00:34:52.220 woke virtue signaling that we see from corporations. And one of the big things that

00:34:57.880 we've seen in the development of the Pride season in Canada, like I said, it's not Pride Month

00:35:03.200 anymore, is that it tends to push people a little bit outside of their comfort zones. And I'm not

00:35:08.900 talking about scary right-wing evangelicals. I'm talking about Muslim Canadians, for example, who

00:35:14.760 themselves are maybe tolerant of people having their sexual orientations, their gender identities,

00:35:20.560 and whatever, but perhaps don't want to cheerlead for it, which has become the expectation.

00:35:26.060 And it was interesting to see this reach a bit of a boiling point in my own city, London,

00:35:30.620 Ontario, where a couple of months back in, I believe it was February or March, there

00:35:35.100 was this international day against homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, and one local public

00:35:41.420 school, which has about a third of its population Muslim, found that 400 students, the virtually

00:35:47.740 the entire Muslim population of the school, stayed home on this day.

00:35:52.200 And then all of a sudden you had this weird sort of diversity hierarchy

00:35:56.220 of who do we side with, the gender activists or the Muslims?

00:36:01.080 Who's on the winning side of it?

00:36:02.580 Remember a few years ago when you had the Muslim estheticians

00:36:05.460 and the transgender spa clients,

00:36:07.200 and you had to decide whose rights mattered more?

00:36:10.200 That's what's happening now.

00:36:11.520 And then we have this audio from a teacher in Edmonton

00:36:14.960 lambasting Muslim students for not being all gung-ho about the school's pride festivities.

00:36:22.120 If you want to be respected for who you are, if you don't want to suffer prejudice for your

00:36:27.500 religion, your color of skin, your whatever, then you better give it back to people who

00:36:33.520 are different from you. That's how it works. It's an exchange. And it isn't like that in all

00:36:40.340 countries. As I told you, in Uganda, literally, if they think you're gay, they will execute

00:36:45.380 you. If you believe that kind of thing, then you don't belong here. Because that is not

00:36:51.920 what Canada believes. We believe in freedom. We believe that people can marry whomever

00:36:58.600 they want. That is in the law. And if you don't think that should be the law, you can't

00:37:05.140 be Canadian. You don't belong here. And I mean it. I really mean it. And it's not a joke, Mansoor.

00:37:13.140 It's not a joke, Mansoor. Now, poor Mansoor there, who just probably smirked at the wrong

00:37:19.800 point as the teacher just went off on this tirade, is actually representative of a bigger dialogue.

00:37:25.840 And it's interesting how people think that all this pandering they do will come back in favor

00:37:30.980 of them the teacher said you know basically all the gay students did your ramadan thing

00:37:35.720 so now all you muslim students need to do the pride thing and it was amazing actually she said

00:37:40.720 the quiet part out loud seeing just how transactional it is when you start playing the

00:37:46.080 diversity games obviously uh in canada we have to accept people with different views different

00:37:51.440 lifestyles different identities as a christian i have to accept and i'm okay to accept that there

00:37:56.100 are Muslims and Jews and Sikhs and Buddhists and atheists, and they have to and should accept that

00:38:01.340 I exist as a Christian, as a straight married white guy. I will accept that there are other

00:38:06.400 people who are not like me. And I do actually believe as much as we make fun of Justin Trudeau

00:38:11.120 for his diversity is our strength business, I believe the world will be very boring if we all

00:38:15.820 had the same outlooks and identities. And the reason I bring that up is by saying that there

00:38:21.000 is a difference between coexisting and celebrating. And the edict that we get from that teacher in

00:38:28.020 Edmonton is that we can't just coexist and we can't just tolerate. We must celebrate. Stephen

00:38:33.940 Lecce, the education minister in Ontario, issued a statement yesterday in light of some of this

00:38:39.820 pride tension at Ontario schools saying that schools must celebrate. That's a part of what

00:38:45.200 tolerance is. They must celebrate. And this is something that I'm paraphrasing, but was basically

00:38:51.340 the sentiment. And this is why we're seeing resistant to the prideification of schools,

00:38:57.160 people that were completely fine, I believe, with the existence of gay straight alliances,

00:39:02.100 people that were completely fine with gay civil rights. But when it starts being pushed to a point

00:39:07.400 where they can no longer have their own religious views, their own religious values, their own

00:39:12.040 cultural views, that becomes the source of tension. And when you push people too far,

00:39:18.360 rightly or wrongly, they're going to push back. And I think that it is important that we understand

00:39:24.260 the difference between tolerance and celebration. And I go back to my discussion with Sue Ann Levy

00:39:29.780 about this, a lesbian woman herself who said, you know, she can walk down the street, she has equal

00:39:34.380 rights. She views it as being very different when you look at what people are advocating right now.

00:39:39.700 that does it for us for today we will end things there back on friday with more of canada's most

00:39:45.440 irreverent talk show here on true north this is the andrew lawton show thank you god bless and

00:39:49.920 good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating

00:39:55.360 to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - June 07, 2023

Canadian corporations say digital ID is ＂necessary evolution＂

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