Juno News - December 29, 2021


Candice Malcolm and Andrew Lawton discuss the biggest stories of the year


Episode Stats

Length

30 minutes

Words per Minute

206.91116

Word Count

6,349

Sentence Count

333


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We'll look back at the biggest stories of 2021, both the ones that the legacy media completely
00:00:04.740 ignored and the ones that they blew way out of context and way out of proportion.
00:00:08.980 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:16.080 Everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the program. It's great to have you here. I'm really
00:00:19.820 happy that we're able to provide content throughout the holiday, throughout Christmas. I hope everyone
00:00:24.840 had a wonderful time with their families on Christmas and that you're looking ahead to
00:00:29.040 New Year's. Now, for me, I wanted to bring in my colleague and my friend, Andrew Lawton,
00:00:33.960 to join me to sort of reflect on the year that was, look back at 2021 and talk about the biggest
00:00:39.820 stories of the year. And like I said, the ones that the media ignored, the ones that the media got
00:00:43.160 wrong. So first, Andrew, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program. Yes, it's happy to be here.
00:00:48.380 Do we still get to say Merry Christmas? I never know when the statute of limitations on Merry
00:00:53.000 Christmases ends. I feel that way with November 11th and Remembrance Day because I love wearing
00:00:59.020 a poppy, but then I know that the like protocol is that you have to take the poppy off as soon
00:01:03.020 as you go to the Remembrance Day ceremony. But yeah, it's December. You can still say Merry
00:01:06.740 Christmas. Okay. Well, Merry Christmas to you and all those watching. Thank you. Okay. So for the
00:01:11.940 show today, I thought we'd do something a little different, a little fun. And so I asked you to come
00:01:16.420 up with your own answers to these three questions. And then I have my own. So we can sort of compare
00:01:21.340 notes here. But I asked you to bring the, what you thought was the top story of the year,
00:01:25.100 what you thought was the top story that the media just didn't cover and completely ignored.
00:01:29.320 And that what you thought was the biggest sort of media narrative lie or the story that the legacy
00:01:33.840 media just got completely wrong or blew out of proportion. So, so, Andrew, let's start with
00:01:37.960 your, your pick. What was your pick for the biggest story of the year in Canada in 2021?
00:01:43.780 So I almost did a cop out at first and just said, well, clearly the election. But to be honest,
00:01:47.900 I think the election was like the smallest story of the year because we all knew it was coming.
00:01:52.060 And the result was kind of the same as it was before the election. So I then kind of went back
00:01:57.340 and I ended up on an unconventional choice. So bear with me here. I thought that the flags being at
00:02:02.660 half mass for as long as they were, was one of the bigger stories of the year. And the two reasons I
00:02:08.140 think that are firstly, because it really informs the platitudinal way that Justin Trudeau approaches
00:02:14.620 most policy. And the other side of that was also because it involves so many different dimensions to
00:02:21.120 it. Remember there, there was no clear line on when the flags would go back up to full mass. There
00:02:26.080 was no metric and Aaron O'Toole had spoken out about it and it ended up becoming quite a significant
00:02:31.200 theme in the election and for several months after. So my pick unconventional, but the flags being at
00:02:37.200 half mass for basically five months.
00:02:39.400 Well, excellent choice. I think, I think that there's definitely a narrative around that, that, that, that, that
00:02:44.760 goes to show where we are as a country, this idea that Canada is a hateful, genocidal, um, you know, state
00:02:50.600 that's been built on, on genocide and slavery and all these things. That, that, that's sort of the, the left's
00:02:55.480 chosen narrative. I don't think very many Canadians buy into it, but there was a study and I think it said that
00:03:00.440 about half of Canadians believe that our country is systemically racist. So clearly that's something,
00:03:06.360 that something is a problem that, that so many Canadians believe that. Um, and, and, and of course
00:03:11.880 all the hectoring from the media, finding every little example of, of anything and blowing it out of
00:03:16.040 proportion as if that's the sort of defining feature of Canadian life. But also, um, Andrew, you know,
00:03:22.040 just to give you credit during the election, you were embedded in the conservative, uh, campaign.
00:03:27.160 You followed them, um, on the campaign trail for a week as a journalist. And one, one of the,
00:03:32.440 probably the, the highlight for us at True North was you asking this question to Aaron O'Toole and
00:03:38.600 him giving kind of a surprising answer because we, we know that Aaron O'Toole took a very sort of
00:03:42.840 timid approach. He, he didn't want to talk about any cultural issues. He didn't want to defend,
00:03:47.080 be seen as defending Canada. He didn't, he didn't really take very many conservative positions at all,
00:03:50.840 to be frank. This was one of the moments of the campaign where he actually did carve out a pretty
00:03:55.480 decent conservative position because you asked him this very question about, about the flags and him
00:03:59.960 saying this, you know, it's time to bring them up. So, so, so, so there's a true north element to
00:04:03.640 the story as well. Yeah. And one interesting behind the scenes aspect of that, you know,
00:04:08.680 because I got very friendly with a lot of the reporters that were on the campaign trail and
00:04:12.760 we were all sort of chatting and there was a collective frustration with how many non-answers
00:04:18.120 Aaron O'Toole was giving most days when he was asked questions. So it was sort of this,
00:04:21.880 this running joke of, oh, well, no news today because he didn't say anything. And this question,
00:04:26.680 he started out as though he was not going to give an answer because he just went through the whole,
00:04:31.480 yes, reconciliation is important. And then it was at the tail end of the answer when everyone
00:04:35.560 has sort of assumed that, okay, it's done. He's not going there. He said, but yeah,
00:04:39.080 it's time for the flags to come up. And there was just this jolt among the press there that were
00:04:44.280 saying, wow, whoa, he's, he's making news. He's going for it. So it was a bit surprising,
00:04:49.000 but it ended up becoming the story of the day. And then over the next couple of days, because then the
00:04:53.480 media tried to get Justin Trudeau's response. And eventually I think it got back where most
00:04:58.200 people, even a lot of people on the left were saying to Trudeau, like, what's the end game here?
00:05:02.760 Right. Like what, what is the point other than just doing what Justin Trudeau does best,
00:05:06.200 which is sending empty virtue signals that don't really mean anything that don't really do anything,
00:05:10.760 but can make him and his liberal followers feel good about something. I don't know. And, and
00:05:15.640 meanwhile, you know, make, make conservatives angry and just say enough is enough. Let's celebrate
00:05:20.120 our country with all its faults. It's not like we're blind to those. We are aware that we're not
00:05:24.520 perfect. All right. Well, for my, for my biggest story of the year, I mean, this is sort of two
00:05:28.920 years in a row where COVID is, is, is everything. COVID is everywhere we look, everything we talk
00:05:34.520 about. There's an, an element of that. So for me, the biggest story of the year, Andrew, is the
00:05:39.160 enduring presence of COVID in our lives. And not just that, the, the moving goalposts when it comes to
00:05:44.600 compliance and how we're dealing with it, the sort of, especially in Canada,
00:05:47.960 the media uniformity in the way that these issues are discussed, there's no dissenting
00:05:52.600 opinion allowed whatsoever. And even, even if you, um, raise some questions, what I found with True
00:05:58.760 North is that the other legacy media journalists sort of turn on you and try to bully you and try
00:06:02.840 to discredit you on social media. We've seen that so much. And interestingly, uh, Andrew,
00:06:08.120 one of the things that COVID has done is it's made conspiracy theorists, uh, made their points
00:06:12.920 validated. We've seen this so many times. Like I was looking at an old Justin Ling tweet,
00:06:17.320 right? This is from August, 2020. And you know, he hates us. He hates True North, whatever.
00:06:22.120 And so he did this particular piece. He is furious at, um, the Toronto Sun column by our colleague,
00:06:28.600 Anthony Fury. And the issue that he's angry about is that he thinks that Andrew, or sorry,
00:06:34.120 he thinks that Anthony is spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory, hinting at the idea that we're
00:06:38.680 going to have a vaccine mandate. Um, and, and, and this is my favorite, uh, uh, quote here.
00:06:43.320 It says Anthony Fury, the Toronto Sun and True North crew are actively pushing really,
00:06:47.560 really dangerous misinformation about the pandemic and they don't really seem to care. So,
00:06:51.880 so Ling was calling us conspiracy theorists because we were hinting that there might be vaccine
00:06:55.960 passports and vaccine mandates. Of course that's become true. Um, that, that's not a conspiracy.
00:07:00.280 That was just us sort of reading the writing on the wall, but you know, if, if someone were to stop
00:07:03.800 you, Andrew, in, in April of 2020, when this thing was first started, when we first started doing our
00:07:08.520 daily shows, a true north update to give updates, if someone would have described what life is like
00:07:13.800 in December of 2021, you wouldn't believe them. You would say, no, that's, that's conspiratorial.
00:07:18.440 They're not going to, uh, you know, have these huge campaigns to force, um, mandate vaccines,
00:07:24.040 fire people who refuse. Um, and, um, you know, then turn around and say, oh, well, these, these,
00:07:29.080 these vaccines aren't really working the way that we want them to. So now you're going to have to
00:07:31.960 continue with a booster. Like all of this stuff has happened over the last year. It's, it's,
00:07:36.120 it's really just been dystopian to watch. So I, and now of course we're seeing vaccines
00:07:41.560 rolled out for kids. Um, we're seeing the, the idea of a forced booster, the, the, uh,
00:07:47.080 revolving door, uh, goalposts, moving goalposts, uh, with regards to what it means to be fully
00:07:51.640 vaccinated. So the fact that COVID is still such a big deal in our lives, Andrew, to me,
00:07:55.720 is the top news story of the year. Yeah. And it's not just the presence of COVID,
00:08:00.440 but as you indicated there, the president's presence of all these government responses to COVID,
00:08:05.080 which oftentimes are worse than the COVID itself in, in the sense of, of what they achieve and
00:08:10.280 what they seek to do. And I think that's, that's very poignant. And I wish we could say that we were
00:08:14.280 going to leave this behind us in 2021, but with all the discourse around Omicron and, you know,
00:08:19.240 whatever the next six or seven variants, uh, that are being cooked up in Wuhan now are like,
00:08:23.240 it's going to get worse in 2022, I fear. And I do think that's why it's been so important to have
00:08:29.080 independent media actually talking about some of these stories. And like, I remember at the very
00:08:32.920 beginning when you and I were talking again, this is 2020 now, but we were talking almost
00:08:37.720 in a, it's like a novelty when you get these stories about, oh, you know, someone ticketed for
00:08:42.600 playing in a public park and they were wrong. But I mean, that was just so small potatoes compared to
00:08:47.560 some of the bigger battles we've seen in 2021 with churches being shut down, pastors being arrested. So
00:08:53.320 no, I would definitely agree. That still is the preeminent story of our time.
00:08:56.760 Yeah. So, so I was talking to, I was talking to a scientist friend of mine about COVID the other
00:09:03.160 day, and he said that the trajectory of COVID is exactly what you would want, that every variant
00:09:07.880 spreads more quickly, that it reaches more people, but that it is less impactful. So it's having less
00:09:12.600 of a deadly effect each time. It seems like that's what Omicron is looking like. So instead of saying,
00:09:17.400 okay, this thing is probably run its course. We don't need all of these over heavy handed,
00:09:22.360 overreaching regulations. We can start to just, you know, live with COVID. It seems like our
00:09:28.360 government officials and this sort of expert classes evolved from this whole pandemic. It's
00:09:33.400 like, they're, they're just clenching onto control. They don't want to let go of that glory of that
00:09:37.320 power. And it's like, you know, there's no such thing as a temporary government program, right? Now,
00:09:41.320 now that we've lived with this kind of overreaching government presence in our lives,
00:09:44.840 it's going to be a fight. It's going to be a fight to, to win back our freedoms and to go back to
00:09:50.920 the way that things should be in a free and liberal society, Andrew. So again,
00:09:54.520 just more reasons why this is the biggest story of the year. Okay, let's move on and talk about
00:09:59.560 the biggest stories that the media did not cover. So I'll, I'll let you go first with this one,
00:10:04.760 Andrew. What was it? What was your biggest story that the media did not cover?
00:10:08.040 For me, and this is a huge one, Bill C-36. And if that number doesn't ring a bell to you,
00:10:13.320 that's because the media was not giving it much attention. This is the bill that the liberals put
00:10:17.880 forward just before, like literally the day before parliament rose for the summer with the liberals
00:10:23.560 knowing parliament wouldn't go back because they were going to call an election. It's the bill that
00:10:28.440 would put a hate speech in the criminal code, or sorry, put hate speech in the Canadian Human Rights
00:10:34.280 Act, and also amend the criminal code to genuinely allow for the prosecution of thought crimes. So this
00:10:40.680 was restoring a formerly repealed section of the Canadian Human Rights Act and actually doing more with
00:10:46.440 it. And this is again, a tremendously dangerous bill, significant implications against free speech
00:10:53.160 on face value, it's in the text of the bill, and the media coverage on it was virtually non-existent.
00:10:59.080 And part of that was because the political opposition was virtually non-existent. Darren O'Toole
00:11:04.040 did not utter a word about this when it was released. He did in the campaign come out in the platform
00:11:09.880 and say that he would oppose such measures, but did not utter a word at all. There was talk about Bill C-10,
00:11:15.480 sure, but Bill C-36, which was much worse, was ignored by the conservative establishment
00:11:21.000 and completely ignored by the legacy media as well. Which is pretty wild because, you know,
00:11:27.240 you'd think that the purpose of a free press is to defend sort of the basic freedoms associated with
00:11:32.440 freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and yet they didn't want anything to do with it. I think
00:11:35.960 there's been this weird narrative built up, Andrew, that somehow there's these dangerous right-wing
00:11:40.760 forces that exist online that somehow pose a threat to society, or that it could lead to
00:11:46.040 political violence, or something like that, even though there's not really any evidence,
00:11:49.800 any evidence that I can see, that these shadow groups really exist in the way that the media and
00:11:55.080 the liberal government describe them. What do you think is behind this? Why is Justin Trudeau doing
00:12:00.440 this? He's a liberal. He's supposed to care about the charter. The very first thing listed in the
00:12:04.280 charter is freedom of speech and freedom of press. So why is he doing this, do you think?
00:12:12.280 Well, I think there are two things there. Number one, the government knows that when it uses words
00:12:18.680 like hate speech, they're kind of like assault rifle, which is that people hear them and they
00:12:23.000 conjure an image of what they are that isn't inherently accurate. And most people would say,
00:12:27.320 well, yeah, of course I'm against hate speech. Okay. Ergo, if you're going after hate speech, that's fine.
00:12:31.880 But the reality is those terms lack meaning and they're very political because the government can
00:12:37.160 use them to apply them to whatever they want. So I'm all, I'm against hate speech as well. I think
00:12:41.960 hate speech is deplorable, but you and I may have different definitions of what hate speech is.
00:12:46.840 Certainly Justin Trudeau and I are going to have different definitions of what hate speech is.
00:12:51.000 And I would take the view that even if speech is hateful and deplorable,
00:12:54.280 that doesn't mean it is not protected by free speech. So I think that one of the big explanations
00:13:00.280 to address your question there of the why is because they can.
00:13:05.480 It's wild. It's almost like everything the liberals do. I just cynically think the purpose
00:13:09.800 is to try to trap the conservatives. So they presume that a principled conservative opposition
00:13:14.440 will say, no, no, no, we believe in free speech. We believe in these principles and sort of make the
00:13:19.720 case as to why you don't really want to just outright ban this stuff. Because if you take an idea,
00:13:25.480 you ban it, it's just going to push it underground. It's going to make it seem more appealing.
00:13:28.680 And that idea will spread that the best way to combat real hate speech is through daylight,
00:13:33.720 right? The daylight is the best disinfectant, they say. And so a principled opposition would
00:13:38.200 make this case, whereas we don't have that in this country. We don't have that with Aaron O'Toole.
00:13:43.240 And so instead, Aaron O'Toole says, okay, whatever you want. And we've seen that with multiple bills.
00:13:48.680 And we saw that earlier in December with the quote unquote, so-called conversion therapy bill,
00:13:55.880 which really just banned conversations that people might have with, even with a registered
00:14:01.160 therapist. If they're confused about their gender or their sexual orientation, that's now illegal.
00:14:05.560 And all the conservatives were jumping up and down for joy that this bill got unanimous consent. So
00:14:09.800 the problem is that we don't have a real opposition in this country because the conservatives are so
00:14:15.000 desperate to be loved by the media and sort of fancy people like the liberals, that they're not
00:14:20.920 doing the job they're supposed to be doing, which is opposing the government.
00:14:25.320 Yeah. And I think you're right to point out the conservative default position of being timid. I think
00:14:30.520 that's so huge. And also I think related to that is that in order to take a principled stand for free
00:14:36.040 speech, you need to defend some very unpopular and unpalatable things. Now, I have no issue doing
00:14:41.240 that, not because I defend the merit of the comments, but because I defend the right for people
00:14:46.040 to say unpalatable things. That's the whole point of free speech. But there are a lot of people certainly
00:14:51.000 in the political class that are not comfortable standing up for things that on their surface are
00:14:55.560 bad because they don't want to have to own that. And I think it's actually more important to then
00:15:00.280 return to the principled stand, because if you're consistent in supporting free speech as a general
00:15:06.040 concept, as a general ethos, then you don't need to get into the details of, oh, what about this comment
00:15:11.080 and what I have said that you don't need to because you're consistent. So I don't even engage
00:15:15.160 on the specific merit. Same as when we were talking about individuals that have been de-platformed and
00:15:20.120 someone would say, well, do you agree with them saying X? And they say, I don't care. I don't
00:15:24.200 care what they say. It could be, you know, Mahatma Gandhi speaking. It could be Mother Teresa.
00:15:29.080 It could be Milo Yiannopoulos. There's a trio that is one for the ages. It doesn't matter if you're
00:15:34.040 consistent about it and you focus on the importance of freedom. You don't need to get dragged into that.
00:15:38.680 But the conservatives have never quite been on sure enough footing to do that.
00:15:43.560 Well, these conservatives know, but I think the broader issue, of course, is the media narrative
00:15:48.120 that they don't want. They know that the media will frame it exactly how the Liberals have asked,
00:15:52.520 exactly what the Liberals say. And so exactly to your point, rather than, you know, the headline
00:15:57.400 being Aaron O'Toole defends free speech, it will be Aaron O'Toole defends this horrible, horrible Nazi
00:16:03.080 who said this deplorable thing, which, you know, Aaron O'Toole might not be sophisticated enough to fight
00:16:08.040 back against that. He wants to avoid any mention of that. But in the process, he is completely
00:16:13.000 selling out conservative principles and putting us in a dangerous position as a country where we don't
00:16:17.560 have anyone to fight back against these horrific assaults on our freedom, Andrew. So good choice.
00:16:23.640 I tend to agree. My biggest story of the year, to me, has to be the assault on Christians in this
00:16:29.080 country. And we've alluded to it a little bit. This is pretty wild, Andrew, because it's particularly
00:16:33.560 happening in Western Canada. You would think that Western Canada, the whole country, would be the
00:16:38.040 sort of least likely place where we would see these sort of sustained attacks on Christians.
00:16:42.360 But I'm talking about two stories in particular. The first is the arrest and prosecution of a handful
00:16:47.800 of pastors, mostly in Alberta. We had Artur Poloski, we had Tim Stevens, and then another fellow pastor
00:16:54.520 in Manitoba named Tobias Thyssen, who was arrested. All of whom, there were probably others as well. I
00:17:00.280 don't know if you can think of any others, Andrew, but there were so many that were arrested for the
00:17:04.040 crime of holding church services. And a lot of times, this was at the same point where something
00:17:09.640 else was open. You could go to a restaurant, you could go to a sports arena, you could do all kinds
00:17:13.640 of things. We're starting to open up again. And yet, for some reason, we are still going after a
00:17:18.920 religious sacred ceremony for people in a time where we need hope, where we need community. And the fact
00:17:26.520 that they were arresting and making examples out of these pastors was despicable. Andrew,
00:17:30.200 in fact, if this was happening in another country, you would see conservative leaders,
00:17:34.840 people like Jason Kenney, I hope people like Aaron O'Toole speaking out against it,
00:17:38.200 if we're seeing this happen in China or somewhere in the Middle East. Yeah, it's happening in Canada,
00:17:43.240 and no one bats an eye at it. And of course, the media doesn't cover it. And then the sort of
00:17:49.320 other story that had to do with Christians was the burning and desecration of dozens and dozens of
00:17:56.280 churches across Canada in the summer. And, you know, sometimes it was barely reported. It was
00:18:01.080 reported as a local story. And none of it was ever tied together. We at True North, of course,
00:18:05.960 took the opposite approach. We had a story called a map of the churches that had been vandalized or
00:18:11.640 burned since residential school story announcement. We kept updating this piece as it came. At this point,
00:18:18.120 there were 68 churches across the country that were either burnt to the ground or desecrated. And again,
00:18:24.920 this was one of our biggest news stories on our website this year because no one else was doing
00:18:28.920 this. No other media outlet was keeping track of them or giving you a tally or giving you maps and
00:18:33.720 filling Canadians in in the way that they clearly wanted because this was such a big story for us.
00:18:38.680 Andrew, but again, this sustained assault on Christianity and its institutions and its house of
00:18:43.960 worship and the fact that the media was just nowhere to be found. Yeah, it's the last acceptable prejudice.
00:18:49.800 I mean, there have been stories in the last few years when someone has vandalized a mosque or a
00:18:55.160 synagogue, which is also deplorable. And Justin Trudeau will put out a statement, he'll condemn it,
00:19:00.840 he'll call an address, he might even go and visit the site of it and have a meeting and talk about the
00:19:05.720 importance of fighting against Islamophobia, and in some cases, anti-Semitism. But when dozens of
00:19:10.920 churches had been burned, had been vandalized, had been threatened, he was literally completely silent.
00:19:17.160 I don't just mean he didn't say a lot. I mean, for the longest time, for weeks, he was completely and
00:19:22.200 utterly silent, had no condemnation, finally gave a half-hearted one when it became such a bigger
00:19:28.360 story. I think thanks in large part to the reporting of True North and other independent
00:19:33.240 media outlets. And then as well, you had that lawyer or the head of the BC Civil Liberties Union saying
00:19:40.360 that, you know, we should burn it all down. And that was something that, again, was met with a lot of
00:19:44.920 defense and support from several of the elites in the civil liberties world, or so-called civil
00:19:50.840 liberties world and government. So this is a very real problem. And, you know, in Ontario, we had
00:19:57.080 two churches notably, actually three, there was Harvest in Windsor, there was Trinity Bible Chapel
00:20:02.600 in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, Church of God in Elmer down in Elgin County, churches that had their doors
00:20:08.760 walked on them, because they were refusing to comply with measures that were restricting them,
00:20:14.680 but not restricting the grocery store and the liquor store.
00:20:18.200 It's so wild. Such a double standard, Andrew. And you say it's the last acceptable prejudice. I agree,
00:20:25.240 except for now there's an even newer and more acceptable prejudice, and that is against
00:20:29.480 unvaccinated people. That's like the only group that we're allowed to, yeah, that puts you at the very,
00:20:34.840 very bottom of the totem pole. Okay, let's move on to the last question I had for you, Andrew,
00:20:41.320 which is, so we talked about the stories that the media did not cover, but we know that the media
00:20:45.880 is mostly just guilty of creating these total fake narratives that just have no connection to real
00:20:52.600 life. And they're so easy to pick apart that it's sort of self-explanatory. But I wanted you to pick out
00:20:58.360 what you thought was the biggest story of the year that the media either got completely wrong,
00:21:02.200 or they completely blew out of proportion. I think the, for me, this was a slam dunk,
00:21:07.000 the People's Party of Canada. Now, at first, this was one that the media didn't cover. When Maxi
00:21:12.120 Bernier launched his campaign, I was at the press conference he did in Ottawa, and there were a bunch
00:21:17.000 of reporters there. He took like 40 minutes of questions. And then at the end of it, no one really
00:21:22.520 ran any stories. No one actually ran any of the coverage. And for the longest time, we were seeing
00:21:28.360 polls that had Bernier up at 9%, 10%, 12%. In Alberta and parts of Ontario, it was up even higher
00:21:35.320 than that. And the media was just completely doing a blackout. We know he wasn't in the debate. And it
00:21:41.800 was only near the end of the campaign when people realized this wasn't a blip, that the media started
00:21:46.520 to pay attention, but even then didn't really understand or seek to understand where it was
00:21:51.320 coming from. They didn't understand that a big part of the PPC support was not coming from
00:21:55.960 disgruntled conservatives, but was coming from people that had been traditional non-voters,
00:22:00.680 people that had voted green or NDP in past elections, a lot of natural living types that
00:22:07.080 were against vaccine mandates because of their own personal ethos that are not politically
00:22:11.880 conservative. So there was a very diverse support base there. And we covered not just the conservative
00:22:18.520 campaign, but also the PPC campaign. I was on the road with Maxine Bernier for a few days in Alberta
00:22:24.200 and saw this coalition that the media just simply wasn't covering.
00:22:29.320 Well, no, it's so true. And then even to add another element onto that,
00:22:34.040 when the media finally did start covering Bernier and the PPC, they did it in such a condescending,
00:22:40.040 mean-spirited, disauthentic, unauthentic way, because they painted these people as if they were
00:22:47.640 anti-vaxxers or anti-science or quacks, like fringe far right. We saw a lot of stories that had that
00:22:55.320 undertone that really, instead of trying to understand and respect Canadian voters who are
00:23:00.840 part of a political trend, even if it's a political trend that you don't have respect for, instead of
00:23:05.800 doing that, the media just completely took the worst of the worst and held that up as an example of who
00:23:12.200 these voters were. I can't imagine them treating Green Party voters or NDP parties with party voters
00:23:18.680 with such disdain the way that they showed towards the PPC.
00:23:22.280 No, not at all. And I mean, just the imbalance there of the Greens versus the PPC, I think is
00:23:27.800 interesting because the Green Party was just in a perpetual state of turmoil that involved the
00:23:33.160 resignation and, well, it was going to be an expulsion, but I think she resigned before they got
00:23:37.400 to her of Anna Maeve Paul. But the Green Party was still being treated as though it was just this
00:23:42.200 entirely normal, happy, peaceable alternative to the mainstream parties when the Green Party paled
00:23:48.680 in comparison to the PPC. And again, this is not an endorsement of PPC. I don't have a stand,
00:23:54.440 I don't endorse any party, but I'm all about endorsing the idea of covering the PPC and covering
00:24:01.320 the narratives. And the mainstream media certainly was ignoring what was happening there, which we know
00:24:05.720 from the numbers was not as significant as those, you know, 12%, 13%, 14% polls were suggesting,
00:24:11.400 but was still a pretty significant trend in the election.
00:24:14.040 Absolutely. And the fact that Bernier wasn't allowed into the debate. So you had this ridiculous
00:24:19.320 spectacle where you had Anna Maeve Paul, who doesn't really have any political background. You could tell
00:24:23.960 that she was really out of her depth when asked about any issue that wasn't related to the environment.
00:24:29.000 And then they wouldn't let Maxine Bernier, who's a former cabinet minister, almost the leader of the
00:24:32.920 Conservative Party. He lost by a hair. Could you imagine, Andrew, if someone came that close to
00:24:38.040 winning the Liberal leadership and then ended up splitting off and forming their own sort of Liberal
00:24:42.280 adjacent party? The media would be all over it. That person would be a star. But of course,
00:24:46.360 because it's a Conservative on the right, they had to come up with the worst accusations and really,
00:24:52.360 really just malign him with character assassinations that didn't suit, didn't actually have any living
00:24:59.160 connection to Bernier and what he actually was about and what he actually stood for. So I tend to
00:25:05.720 agree with your choice. Well, for my choice, Andrew, I'm sort of going to bring this whole episode full
00:25:09.880 circle because I think that the biggest story that the media got wrong and blew out of proportion was
00:25:14.440 the story of the mass graves at residential schools. And I say that tongue in cheek because there were,
00:25:19.160 of course, no mass graves found at residential schools. The story, when it first came out,
00:25:24.680 it was really vague and unclear. And I think that the way that the uncertainty sort of compounded with
00:25:31.960 reporters filling in their own words. So, you know, the original news release from the T'Kemloops
00:25:37.160 Band was, we have discovered graves at our school, basically, at this former site of the residential
00:25:44.600 school. We use ground penetrating radar. Nobody really knew what that meant. So the headlines were
00:25:49.480 saying bodies were discovered, graves were dug up, you know, children's remains were found.
00:25:55.080 They were found in mass graves. There was just a huge disconnect from the, what the media was
00:25:59.880 writing. Well, it wasn't just Canadian media. It was a global media. It was BBC, New York Times,
00:26:04.920 Washington Post, all of these big outfits, as well as the CBC and Globe and Mail and Post Media and Canada
00:26:11.320 completely botching the story. And then it kind of took on a life of its own where, you know,
00:26:17.160 everyone had to agree that Canada had committed genocide. Everyone had to agree that this was a
00:26:21.960 crime against humanity. And everyone had to agree that Canada was awful. We're going to cancel Canada
00:26:26.120 today. And to bring it back to the first story we talked about, that we were going to lower that flag
00:26:31.160 and basically just hang our heads and shave. Of course, none of that was wrong. When they finally
00:26:34.920 got around to the presentation by the scientists about the ground penetrating radar, we learned that
00:26:41.800 the science is really unclear, that the researchers themselves said that there was no way to know how many
00:26:46.040 people were buried, whether they were children or adults, whether they had anything to do with
00:26:49.640 the residential school. Their estimate wasn't 215, as every media outlet had reported. It was
00:26:55.640 probably more like 200. And then, you know, all of the other stories that came out of it,
00:27:00.760 other reserves making similar accusations, you know, we heard from people in their community saying,
00:27:07.240 well, you know, these graves were found in a graveyard. They used to be marked, but the
00:27:12.040 gravestones eroded over time, and we don't know whose graves these belonged to. This was also a
00:27:17.720 community cemetery. In one of the cases in Lower Kootenay, the cemetery predated the residential
00:27:23.720 school by about 30 years, and it was actually associated with a hospital and not with a residential
00:27:27.720 school. So there's just so many holes in the story, Andrew, that the narrative just bared no
00:27:33.640 similarity whatsoever to the facts on the ground. At times, I felt like I was one of the only
00:27:37.480 reporters in the entire country that was even bothering to look into this stuff. And again,
00:27:41.480 because of that, this was a huge story for us at True North. My report, Six Things of Legacy
00:27:47.160 Media Got Wrong, also became one of the biggest sites in the history of our website. So I think
00:27:51.720 that Canadians started to sort of see through the myth and realize that there's more to the story
00:27:57.160 than the ridiculous narrative headlines that were being pushed by legacy media.
00:28:01.080 Yeah, and I think, I mean, you did absolutely tremendous work on that, and I'm still very proud to have
00:28:06.440 been, not on those projects, because you were taking the lead on it, but to have been working
00:28:10.120 with you in general, as you worked on this, because one of the big challenges, and you mentioned
00:28:14.200 the word narrative there is important, is that you can't let facts get in the way of a narrative
00:28:19.240 to a lot of the people that are pushing narratives. That's the attitude they take. And
00:28:22.840 I would say it's entirely possible to deplore residential schools and Canada's past treatment
00:28:27.880 of Indigenous people, while also raising questions in a journalistic fashion about any
00:28:32.520 allegation that's made about anything. And I do think that the deference that we are expected to
00:28:38.760 take on the Indigenous file is something that very much clouded the mainstream media's willingness
00:28:45.000 to ask questions that would be asked about any other group making a claim. If you say, you know,
00:28:50.040 so-and-so murdered my daughter, asking for details about that has nothing to do with not believing or
00:28:55.720 challenging. It's doing your job. It's doing your due diligence. And there was, I think, a lot of fear,
00:29:01.400 a lot of fear that anything you do to poke around and ask questions and try to demand proof
00:29:07.800 was going to be stepping on the toes of the Indigenous communities, which media did not want to do.
00:29:14.120 And it's sort of a sad state where we would rather just take these terrible accusations against
00:29:19.000 our country at face value than bother doing a little bit of journalism. Because, of course,
00:29:23.160 I agree, like, I'm the last person to defend a residential school program. It was a big government
00:29:27.720 centralized program that sought to break up families. That's complete opposite of what
00:29:34.040 conservatives believe in and want. But at the same time, it's like, I care about the truth,
00:29:38.760 and I care about facts. And I think that that is sort of what led, you're right, that's what should
00:29:42.920 lead all journalists. And the fact that it was just True North, maybe a few other outlets, but hardly,
00:29:48.200 not even. I didn't even really see Post Media pick up this issue other than my own reports in Post Media.
00:29:53.240 So really, a chill over the legacy media out there, because no one really wanted to be seen
00:30:00.600 poking around on this issue and raising questions. Well, again, Andrew, I think that all of these
00:30:05.880 stories we talked about just confirmed the reason why True North exists, the reason why True North is
00:30:10.360 doing so well, the reason why True North is growing, and we have a bigger audience than ever. And, you know,
00:30:14.840 you've been with us pretty much since the very beginning. And it's so great to watch our team expand
00:30:19.560 and continue to grow. And, you know, the reports that you and I do continue to have to reach. So
00:30:25.400 I just want to say, yeah, it's great to have you on the team. It's great to have you
00:30:28.680 part of True North, a leading force here. And thank you so much for joining the show today.
00:30:33.320 Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for all your work.
00:30:36.440 All right. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Candace Belcom, and this is The Candace Belcom Show.