Juno News - November 11, 2026


Carney says U.S. is a bigger security threat than China

Iran threatens to bomb Europe if EU bases aid U.S. strikes

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

175.1

Word count

3,826

Sentence count

162

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 a jaw-dropping about-face for Prime Minister Carney who now says it's the United States that
00:00:11.120 is a bigger security threat to Canada than China yes I will be meeting with President Xi Jinping
00:00:17.280 next week at APEC we will discuss many things we'll discuss security situation around the world
00:00:23.160 we'll discuss our economic partnership which is is something that is deepening but has clear
00:00:28.500 guardrails in terms of the areas uh in which we're involved and i didn't say this in french but i'll
00:00:33.140 add this uh in terms of the security risks of our partnership they are much much much much less than
00:00:39.140 the security risk for example of the united states well it sounded like you said it what do you think
00:00:44.580 the usa of course is our nato and norad partner our biggest trade partner our neighbor china
00:00:50.500 meantime has interfered with canada's elections levied huge tariffs on canada stolen billions
00:00:56.180 of dollars in intellectual property from companies like Nortel, which no longer exists,
00:01:00.820 has spied on Canadians and arrested Canadians. And now we're told America is the bigger threat.
00:01:06.580 Just last year, Carney said the opposite, calling China our biggest threat. Let's listen.
00:01:11.940 Mr Carney? Well, we're in a security section. I think we didn't have a chance to talk about
00:01:17.380 anything internationally. I think the biggest security threat to Canada is China. 0.95
00:01:20.740 China, you say? Yeah. Will the media call him out on it? Well, sadly, 1.00
00:01:25.540 millions of dollars more are going to media subsidies these days. Journalists are more
00:01:31.440 compromised than ever because they're being paid by government. Our guest today is Peter Menzies,
00:01:36.360 former commissioner of the CRTC. Welcome, Peter. Thank you. It's great to see you again. Thanks
00:01:42.100 for having me on. Yeah. Well, you heard that clip of the prime minister. I have no idea if you want
00:01:46.400 to weigh in on that. I know that media is your level of expertise. You worked in the media for
00:01:51.720 many years um yeah i would i would expect media to inquire into that like that like the the end
00:02:00.040 of the sentence sort of sound like i don't know what's he talking about he's talking about china
00:02:03.660 versus the united states or the united states versus this or something like that i like it
00:02:08.700 really he really didn't have to throw that thing about the united states in at the end he could
00:02:13.860 have just said hey we're getting along better with china now it's not as big a security threat 0.61
00:02:17.860 as I thought a year and a half ago, right? 0.86
00:02:20.320 And that's all because of me and my good diplomacy
00:02:24.240 and that sort of stuff.
00:02:25.140 That's the sort of thing you would expect a politician to do.
00:02:27.880 But throwing the other one in is, you know,
00:02:30.400 it's like a drive-by, right?
00:02:32.140 You're never really sure what's going to happen.
00:02:34.860 Yeah, I'd have to listen to that clip.
00:02:36.400 I've already heard it a few times,
00:02:38.040 but maybe I should listen to it a few more times
00:02:40.260 to really get the, because it's so outrageous.
00:02:43.940 On the face of it, it's outrageous.
00:02:45.680 It is, yeah.
00:02:46.280 But let's talk a little bit about media, because as I said, that's your area of expertise.
00:02:52.520 And let's listen to this clip, because I want you to listen to this exchange between Michelle
00:02:59.460 Rempel-Garner and the interviewer from CTV News on an immigration matter.
00:03:04.800 And I want to get your read on it, get to what you think.
00:03:07.140 Let's watch.
00:03:08.400 You were part of a government that offshered in roughly 140% increase in the temporary 0.95
00:03:13.960 migrant workforce between 2006 and 2013. If temporary migration or immigration is putting
00:03:20.080 pressure on housing and employment today, do you acknowledge that the Harper government
00:03:23.940 also contributed to expanding Canada's reliance on temporary foreign workers?
00:03:31.880 Dude, 2006 called. And why are you guys asking me about 2006? The economy is in 2006.
00:03:39.760 You were part of the government. I'm saying 2006 and 2013.
00:03:43.700 I'm saying between 2006 and 2013, you were elected in 2011.
00:03:48.060 That was part of the Harper government.
00:03:49.600 I'm asking you whether or not you acknowledge that when the Conservatives were in power,
00:03:53.360 that they contributed to part of the problem with the temporary workers and the reliance on it.
00:03:57.620 You rightly point out that a number of companies are now relying on it.
00:04:01.340 I reject everything you just said.
00:04:03.480 I reject everything you just said because wages kept pace with inflation back then.
00:04:08.400 rent was half the price uh people like a young person coming out of college could have the
00:04:14.040 prospect of buying a house you can't like i'm sorry why are you holding me to account more
00:04:19.640 than mark carney on this issue we didn't we weren't talking about immigration we asked the
00:04:25.360 questions of the government we asked the questions of the government we hold them to account on this
00:04:29.860 program and as much as we can when we're asking them in the halls as the way as you do in question
00:04:34.940 period. But I think there's a level of questions that I have to ask you about whether or not that
00:04:41.620 the environment had been created by previous governments, as you point out, by your previous
00:04:47.640 Trudeau government. And I'm asking you one government back, the Harper government. That's
00:04:51.660 all I'm trying to get at here. That was 20 years ago. And today, Mark Carney announced the highest
00:04:57.900 level of permanent immigration in Canadian history at a time when you guys, like the government
00:05:03.040 isn't building houses the economy is stagnant and the bank of canada is saying wages are being
00:05:08.720 depressed by immigration and you're going back 20 years that's been a while since either one of us
00:05:16.120 was in j school but i mean the idea of doing an interview is that you want to get the other person
00:05:21.460 to talk you want to draw them out and maybe trip them up over something they've said but this was
00:05:26.900 an ambush. They want to go back 20 years in order to try and undermine and discredit the
00:05:35.160 conservative position on immigration. What do you think of that? I thought that was, I mean,
00:05:40.760 he is quite rightly getting beat up for that on social media, that clip. I mean, there were
00:05:46.240 probably, I don't know what the exact number is, but let's call it a million people who voted in
00:05:50.020 last election who were not even born in 2006 right like how is this going to make sense for
00:05:56.900 them it's one thing to go back if you were going back five six years or something like that where
00:06:00.980 things are the same but you're going back a generation right at least a voting generation
00:06:05.860 into into the past and trying to you know like hold somebody accountable for that and say there
00:06:11.620 or there's some sort of hypocrisy i mean how many i mean when are we on our fourth or fifth
00:06:16.500 conservative leader and different platforms since that time right like it's just it's just uh it's
00:06:23.620 just a bad decision to to to to to ask that question and the other thing is that it looks
00:06:29.300 very much like he's reading that question off a teleprompter you know that i mean that do you
00:06:33.940 acknowledge i mean that's not normal or whatever it was that's not normal parlance right you know
00:06:40.820 that's that sort of stuff i mean it's it's one thing to sort of say so what was your experience
00:06:44.980 with this. What was, what was going on when you were in government, you know, and that sort of
00:06:49.340 stuff, you know, sort of what can you bring to the table and then open that door if you want that
00:06:53.460 way. But, but to go back and sort of try to discredit what you're saying today for something
00:06:58.720 that was that far ago, it's just, oh boy, talk about leading with your chin. Yeah. You sounded
00:07:05.740 like a prosecution or crown attorney, you know, in a hostile. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was
00:07:11.340 the manor too right yeah the manor was kind of you know like the old you know geraldo rivero
00:07:17.640 jumping out from under behind a bush right gotcha yeah it's that's that's uh it does and it's tough
00:07:26.420 for ctv's got a little bit of a reputation lately of you know like kind of focusing on
00:07:32.560 you know the uh the conservatives too i mean they had a they had a tweet or something last week
00:07:39.940 about Aaron Wedrick, who was leaving.
00:07:42.740 And I know Aaron because I worked with him
00:07:45.420 at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute
00:07:46.780 when I was doing papers there,
00:07:48.680 and he was their guy there.
00:07:51.660 But I didn't communicate much with him
00:07:53.700 in his conservative position,
00:07:55.800 but it was like breaking.
00:07:57.580 You know, Paul Yev loses another staffer
00:08:00.020 or something like that.
00:08:00.960 Like, it's kind of like, oh, come on, guys.
00:08:03.300 Nothing breaking.
00:08:04.120 The guy's got another job, right?
00:08:07.040 You know, it's just, they're trying to,
00:08:09.600 And, you know, when you do that stuff, you set yourself up for people not taking you seriously, you know.
00:08:16.960 And, I mean, maybe the liberal and NDP viewers and listeners love it, but you're alienating, you know, 40% of the population that you don't need to.
00:08:27.580 And then, just a segue, you complain that you're not making any money, that your audiences are shrinking, and you go to the government and ask for subsidies.
00:08:36.700 Right.
00:08:37.440 Which they got.
00:08:38.700 Which they got.
00:08:39.600 is now that that thirty thousand dollar little under uh uh journalist subsidy is extended to
00:08:47.200 radio and television yeah rooms as well so people like that individual you saw interviewing michelle
00:08:53.360 remple garner he qualify presumably if yeah he finds on to it you know yeah yeah and i i don't
00:09:00.100 know how many it'll be interesting to see how it breaks out whether it's just bill media just gets
00:09:05.080 one chunk and it's spread for everybody or if you know how it divides up and there's you know like
00:09:10.360 right now that journalism labor tax credit i think there's about like 190 194 a little under 200
00:09:16.200 anyway organizations that have been approved by the government appointed panel that decides whether
00:09:22.520 you're a trusted news agency or not um meet their to meet their criteria and that's maybe 350 titles
00:09:31.320 But there are like 1,100 licensed radio stations in the country.
00:09:35.740 Not all of them are commercial.
00:09:37.500 There's about 700 and some commercial.
00:09:40.400 But you don't know how that's all going to break out.
00:09:42.680 But I can't imagine that the community and the campus and those guys would, you know, be left out of that.
00:09:51.240 And there's probably 100 OTA, I'm guessing.
00:09:56.700 I know it's around that.
00:09:59.020 So, I mean, happy to be corrected.
00:10:00.880 but OTA TV stations that would have, they would have newsrooms, right,
00:10:06.680 and cable news and that to that extent.
00:10:09.580 The CBC doesn't qualify for that one, but that's costing a lot of money
00:10:13.780 and it's going on forever.
00:10:16.860 And the sad part about it is, I was just writing something,
00:10:21.480 it proves Milton Friedman's line that there's nothing more permanent
00:10:24.320 than a temporary government program, right?
00:10:26.820 It was introduced in 2019, everybody swearing up and down,
00:10:30.880 this is just for five years to help us transition to the digital world nobody nobody lifted a finger
00:10:37.280 to try to transition to the digital world right and i mean to be fair covet happened but but but
00:10:44.160 uh that didn't keep you from prevent you from thinking um in fact you had plenty of time to
00:10:50.560 think but and then all of a sudden then it gets it and that was and that was 25 percent of a maximum
00:10:57.520 of 55 000 and then it went to 35 percent of a maximum of 85 000 so it's 30 000 as you were
00:11:04.240 saying 29 750 whatever close enough um per per employee and it doesn't solve anything
00:11:14.240 all it does is just prop up dying businesses right it's just like i don't know this guy's
00:11:20.480 heart has failed let's let's inject some adrenaline into his system and start it again
00:11:24.800 right and it'll start for a while but it'll fail again unless you actually fix the problem
00:11:30.160 you're not going to do anything so we've got this like duct tape wrapped around a problem
00:11:35.840 without anybody taking you know like anybody solving it and it's just oh my god it's just
00:11:41.840 such a mess right yeah i'm not sure the government wants to fix it you know well why would you
00:11:47.200 actually the the media is functioning as kind of a an extension of their communications departments
00:11:54.160 now that public relations well i mean if you can keep them on a string you know like i mean
00:12:00.080 let's take the cbc for example i mean the conservatives did this too but it was just 50
00:12:04.960 million they had 50 million in cbc funding each year that wasn't part of the main bundle it went
00:12:12.320 out to the cbc every year right yeah 50 million that was sitting there and they'd have to cbc
00:12:17.840 would have to wait for every budget to see if that extra 50 million was there right so
00:12:22.000 So it kind of keeps you on a little bit of a leash there, right?
00:12:25.540 So, you know, it might not keep you on the leash,
00:12:30.680 but at least they're sort of there.
00:12:31.880 Now, what Carney's just done is that $150 million
00:12:35.460 that he promised in the election
00:12:36.900 that he granted in last year's budget,
00:12:39.080 he's now announced again.
00:12:41.680 He hasn't entrenched it in the CBC's core parliamentary funding.
00:12:48.260 He's keeping that at risk, right?
00:12:51.740 so he's announced it's good for the next two years and well will it be good after that
00:12:57.580 oh me we'll have to see right have you noticed i mean am i being too cynical here or what right
00:13:05.740 no you're being about cynical enough have you noticed a deterioration and the objectivity of
00:13:11.580 some of these organizations since those subsidies began you know uh picking up steam and and becoming
00:13:19.900 a fixture, really, in newspapers and now radio and TV.
00:13:24.540 Well, I have noticed, I mean, there was a general decline in even aspiring to objectivity
00:13:31.160 going on anyway that I think was coming out of the J schools before that.
00:13:35.660 The Globe and Mail, a couple of years ago, might be three years ago now, they reviewed
00:13:40.520 their policies and that sort of stuff, and they made an announcement that they weren't
00:13:45.580 going to use objectivity anymore.
00:13:47.420 They were going to go with fair.
00:13:49.800 And there was this whole discussion going around that, well, objectivity,
00:13:53.780 like it's impossible to be completely objective.
00:13:56.480 And it's sort of like, and I just look at that and I go like, oh, come on.
00:14:01.640 You know, like that's crazy.
00:14:05.580 You know, is it possible to be honest every day of your life?
00:14:08.880 Have you never told a small fib or dodged a question or anything like that?
00:14:15.220 It probably is impossible to do that.
00:14:17.760 But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be trying, you know, like these are, these are things you sort of, it's impossible to live a good moral life.
00:14:27.200 So I'm just going to stop trying, you know, the heck with it.
00:14:30.340 Right.
00:14:30.940 I think I'm trying.
00:14:32.240 And the fact that they now get the funding and I know lots of journalists who are going to get the funding and who do get the funding and they just hate it.
00:14:42.740 They just.
00:14:43.440 Really?
00:14:43.600 Yeah. I mean, they just personally, they just hate it because they get even the ones that work for organizations that don't get funded anymore. The public assumes they're all funded. So they get like, oh, you've been pimped out by your boss. You're just a liberal mouthpiece and that sort of stuff. No, they hate that.
00:15:06.600 i mean they can do their job they can be pure as the driven snow but everybody that's still going
00:15:11.080 to hang over their heads they and the amazing thing is the the employers just don't care 0.70
00:15:16.840 no because they they get they get the money now whether anybody reads or listens to a single damn 0.90
00:15:24.680 thing you say you know like you can have zero listeners you can have zero readers and you're
00:15:32.520 still going to get the money it's just production base that's the crtc price now right that's their
00:15:38.440 business case it's not about getting ratings it's not about selling newspapers it's about pleasing
00:15:44.200 your new boss the well yeah i mean that's what if that's what people that's what people think
00:15:51.160 right and and and so what when you talk about objectivity there you would think they would be
00:15:58.440 being extremely careful to guard against that right you wouldn't think you wouldn't you i mean
00:16:05.000 if i was if i was still a working journalist i would be you know not going crazy about it
00:16:11.880 but it would always be on my mind yeah right you know like if i if i don't get a conservative
00:16:16.920 voice in this story right or if i don't get this guy's perspective or if i pull a stunt like we
00:16:22.440 were just watching right what are people going to think what are what's where where people are going
00:16:29.000 to go directly where you went right on it and say you're just being you just you're just taking
00:16:36.600 daddy's money and doing what daddy wants right and that's yeah that's that's a crazy position
00:16:44.280 to be in and now it's permanent and it's everybody yeah right well almost everybody right so right
00:16:50.840 Well, the independent guys are not getting a nickel and they're, you know, telling everybody that we're not being paid by, we're not taking a dime from government.
00:17:00.520 The Juno News is of the world, the Black Lives Reporters of the world, and the Rebel News is, you know, of the world.
00:17:06.500 There aren't many of them, but it's that group and others who say, trust us because we're not taking government money.
00:17:14.200 Unfortunately, it skews the market, doesn't it?
00:17:16.140 I mean, how long can you hold out and compete for staff, right?
00:17:22.440 I mean, when your competition has, you know, a 30 and when you throw in the other subsidies, you know, like the Google Fund.
00:17:30.800 I mean, the Google Fund's different, but the Canada Periodical Fund, the Local Journalism Initiative, all that sort of stuff.
00:17:38.540 And if you're in Quebec, you get, you know, sort of another labor tax credit.
00:17:42.580 So almost your entire salary is paid by one government or the other.
00:17:47.460 How do you compete against that, right?
00:17:50.160 And how do we get the innovators and the startups that we need?
00:17:56.020 Would your operation, would Juno News be able to launch in this environment now, right?
00:18:02.180 I mean, with that much competition and that sort of stuff, or how long can you hold out before somebody finally says,
00:18:08.300 guys you know we just we just lost two good reporters who went someplace else because they
00:18:15.260 could pay them more and we can't afford that we can't compete on salaries because our you know
00:18:20.380 these guys are subsidized and that sort of stuff or how do we hire air news people still want fair
00:18:25.980 news though that they do gravitating towards organizations that are not dependent on government
00:18:31.460 that's the appeal now right well it should be it should be yeah but you know i like i was talking
00:18:36.660 to jesse brown at canadaland the other day and they're another holdout right um they have you
00:18:42.820 know a different world view than than juno news for instance but they've been very principled on
00:18:47.860 this file and he's like he's like it's getting harder and harder right western standards started
00:18:53.380 off not taking the money and then eventually derek just had to say i can't compete unless i do right
00:19:00.740 and i'm not sure if i was in his shoes that i might not have had to do the same thing when
00:19:06.420 When you're the publisher of a product, you've got to take, I mean, you've got to meet your bottom line.
00:19:11.200 You've got to meet your numbers.
00:19:12.680 Yeah.
00:19:12.880 And you might hate the way you have to do it, but eventually, see, that's the squeeze with the whole thing, right?
00:19:20.180 Is it actually, it's one thing to sort of offer the money and some people take it and some people don't.
00:19:26.780 But it sort of eventually, it puts a squeeze on people and kind of forces everybody into that channel, right?
00:19:36.420 And then there's no independent voices left.
00:19:40.340 Yeah, but if you take that money, then it's possible that you will lose subscribers.
00:19:45.320 Oh, absolutely.
00:19:46.140 I mean, that's the big, absolutely, you're bang on.
00:19:48.820 The thing is, at the end of the day, the more money you take, the less people trust you.
00:19:56.660 And you know, independent life in media, that, I mean, trust is what media depends on.
00:20:02.960 That's the billboards used to say, I'm sure in Halifax one day, there was maybe there a picture of Mark Petroni up there and it said, Halifax is most trusted news, right?
00:20:12.620 The Calvary Herald, when I was, you know, publisher there and editor there, we used to have billboards around town, pictures of our columnists or reporters and that sort of stuff.
00:20:22.420 And, you know, it was trust.
00:20:24.180 You were always selling trust.
00:20:25.560 you were selling trust and you know the advertisers advertised with you because the public trusted you
00:20:32.440 and they knew they would trust their advertising yeah if they trusted you and that sort of stuff
00:20:36.640 and all they're doing now is destroying trust so you're going to have all these subsidized guys
00:20:42.100 floating around this entire industry yeah that more fewer and fewer people trust and fewer and
00:20:49.140 fewer and fewer people even read right i mean it sounds like how the crtc creates cancon you know
00:20:57.720 like you're producing stuff but you're not bothering to measure whether anybody's consuming
00:21:04.200 it right so right yeah it's like supply side economics you know you just just produce the
00:21:10.160 stuff and put it out there yeah yeah like it's like glorious three-year plan or something
00:21:14.420 Peter Menzies. How do people find you online? You've got a sub stack.
00:21:20.680 I have a sub stack, which is going quite nicely. Thank you very much, everyone who subscribes.
00:21:27.100 And it's called The Rewrite.
00:21:29.820 Great. Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Peter. Appreciate it.
00:21:34.480 Thank you for your interest. Great to see you again.
00:21:36.120 Peter Menzies. If you enjoyed the show and appreciate independent journalism,
00:21:40.460 please consider becoming a premier member of Juno News by going to JunoNews.com backslash
00:21:46.400 straight up. It helps us do what we do here. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.