Juno News - CBC refuses to call Hamas terrorists

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:01:20.280 north hello and welcome to the program canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north now

00:01:30.840 uh the one thing i always make a point of people knowing is that we do this show live and it means

00:01:36.600 that the show doesn't get like because this used to happen i'd record the show at like 7 30 in the

00:01:40.740 morning and think i can just go and have a nice little day and then uh we're editing it and then

00:01:45.700 some news breaks at like noon and it completely undermines the point of the show. Now the thing

00:01:51.180 that we do now that it's live is we have to make sure the guests are available at a certain time

00:01:55.520 and today was one of these days where we had like I don't know like 10 feelers out invitations for

00:02:01.160 this guest to join us that guest to join us no one was getting back to us and then like 10 minutes

00:02:06.260 before the show goes to air everyone that we talk to wants to come on today so we didn't have room

00:02:11.680 for them today. So we'll rearrange some stuff over the course of the week and talk to all these

00:02:15.840 wonderful people that I am very grateful are taking some time out of their day to speak to me

00:02:21.200 and by extension to speak to you. But I do want to begin with some of the breaking news out of

00:02:28.000 not just out of Israel, but specifically out of Canada's response to the brutal attacks by Hamas

00:02:34.860 against Israel. Now, one of the things that is most important to note here is that as my friend

00:02:41.080 Laura Rosen-Cohen, a prolific blogger, has always said, everyone meets at Jew hate junction. It seems

00:02:46.260 to be the place where the far left, the far right, extremists in a number of different environments

00:02:51.480 all tend to converge on anti-Semitism. And as a result, anti-Semitism is far more common than

00:02:59.080 many people would care to admit. Oftentimes, as we were talking about yesterday with Sue Ann Levy,

00:03:05.360 anti-Semitism is cloaked or hidden or concealed behind things like anti-Zionism or criticism of

00:03:14.000 Israel, which are both legitimate views that people could hold without being anti-Semitic,

00:03:19.280 but far too often there is an overlap there and people are just trying to mute what is a deep-seated

00:03:25.720 hatred or contempt for the Jewish people. And that's never been the case for me. I've had

00:03:31.340 the privilege of visiting Israel twice. Once was a trip that allowed me to immerse myself in

00:03:37.420 Holocaust history. It was a very heavy trip, but I learned a great deal. Another was a bit more of

00:03:42.400 a well-rounded trip where I spent some time talking to Palestinian representatives, talking to Israeli

00:03:48.640 representatives, talking to people in the private sector, talking to ordinary people on the streets

00:03:54.120 of Israel and communities across this very small country. And it was amazing how the people that

00:04:01.240 live in Israel have just sort of accepted that security risks are a part of their life. It's not

00:04:07.900 to say they shrug it off, they take precautions, but they just accept that they are going to live

00:04:12.460 in a place, especially people that live closer to the border with Gaza, for example, where they are

00:04:17.900 going to at some point have to withstand rocket fire. Now, that is not to say that this is not

00:04:23.140 relevant and is not newsworthy. It is. It absolutely is. But it's to say that the Israeli people have

00:04:28.340 shown a tremendous amount of resilience just by living in Israel. My friend Avi Yamini, who is a

00:04:35.020 contributor to Rebel News, just landed in Israel. He's going to be covering, doing some reporting

00:04:40.800 from the ground. And one of the things that he noted in his video I saw was that he was expecting

00:04:45.380 to get on an empty plane, going to Tel Aviv from wherever he was flying. But in fact, he got on a

00:04:51.420 plane that was full because people want to be with their families. They want to be in the country

00:04:56.520 that matters a great deal to them.

00:04:58.080 And there is a bit of inspiration we can all take from that.

00:05:01.460 Now, of course, none of that is apparent in the Canadian media coverage

00:05:05.420 or much of the Western media coverage, for example.

00:05:08.660 CBC, you may have seen, had sent a memo out to its journalists

00:05:12.140 urging them to not call Hamas a terror organization,

00:05:17.060 to not refer to Hamas as a terror group.

00:05:20.980 Now, let me say there are a number of things in journalism

00:05:24.140 that you have to include both sides of. Hamas is, as a matter of fact and a matter of law in Canada,

00:05:31.760 a terrorist entity. This is something that is a long-standing and really uncontested designation

00:05:38.100 as a list of terror organizations in Canada that includes Hamas. But to CBC, you cannot call them

00:05:45.100 that. You're also not supposed to reference the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza by Israel, which

00:05:51.480 took place in 2005, nearly 20 years ago. So any claim that Israel is occupying Gaza is simply

00:05:58.980 untrue. But you're not going to see that reflected in CBC coverage. This memo sent out by the

00:06:05.580 editorial standards director for the public broadcaster is one of the more explicit examples

00:06:11.320 of this bias against Israel in its reporting of the Middle East, but by no means exclusively so,

00:06:17.460 which is why Mike Fagelman always has his work cut out for him.

00:06:20.840 He is the executive director of Honest Reporting Canada,

00:06:24.120 which tries to keep the media responsible on this issue.

00:06:27.660 And he joins me now.

00:06:28.620 Mike, it's good to talk to you again.

00:06:30.100 Thanks for coming on today.

00:06:31.920 Thanks for having me on your program, Andrew.

00:06:33.500 So this CBC memo, which I'm very grateful was leaked

00:06:37.120 because it allows us to see very explicitly the marching orders that are being given.

00:06:41.900 But I'm guessing you, just from reading coverage that CBC has published,

00:06:46.140 could probably have indicated this was either an internalized bias or a matter of policy in their

00:06:52.760 coverage already, right? Well, it's a systemic issue where our public broadcaster, again,

00:06:57.720 taxpayer dollars, refuses to call terror by its name. Andrew, as you point out, the Canadian

00:07:02.800 government deems that Hamas is a terrorist organization. This isn't subjective. This is

00:07:08.160 a matter of fact. But our public broadcaster is instructing its journalists to bend over backwards

00:07:12.980 to sanitize terror, and not call it for what it really needs to be called. The second component

00:07:18.640 is in terms of not regarding Israel's pullout, disengagement from Gaza. They're basically saying,

00:07:25.560 no, this is really effectively still an occupation. Israel controls the land, sea, and air.

00:07:30.640 Whereas in reality, up until a couple of days ago, when Hamas had kidnapped about 100 plus people,

00:07:37.220 there were no Israelis in Gaza, not settlers, not soldiers. This is what's actually happening

00:07:41.260 on ground. So when you ask, you know, is our public broadcaster, is there an inherent bias?

00:07:47.020 This is very clear. Well, and we also have seen some reporters in the past push back against

00:07:54.720 what they believe is a too pro-Israel bias that exists in the media. I know a couple of years ago

00:08:00.060 there was this bizarre open letter that was being signed in which you had activist journalists

00:08:04.620 saying that outlets should actually adopt the activist language. They should call it an

00:08:09.460 occupation. They should call it illegal. They should accuse Israel of war crimes. And that was

00:08:14.200 revealing of the sensibility of where a lot of individual reporters in Canada lie on this issue.

00:08:19.900 Yeah. And I think certainly in the past couple of years, we've noticed there's a shift in

00:08:23.720 journalism where a lot of journalists who are tasked to be politically neutral and objective

00:08:28.140 are shifting into becoming activists, even though they're under the payroll of either

00:08:32.600 our public broadcast or other media outlets. We're flagging journalists who constantly

00:08:36.820 inserting their personal opinion and personal political views into their coverage that makes

00:08:41.780 it jaundiced that makes it slanted and that fits their own political narrow viewpoint it is very

00:08:47.420 alarming yeah and i just to go back to this memo from cbc here they say please make sure you don't

00:08:55.600 use loaded language and it goes on in that same paragraph everything we say and write publicly

00:09:01.560 as cbc journalists can be seen as part of our coverage and should be fact-based so we go back

00:09:06.420 to the Hamas designation, the fact that Hamas is a registered and designated terrorist group in

00:09:11.600 Canada is a fact. So by not including that, they're undermining what they say is a commitment

00:09:17.320 to, you know, the old just the facts, ma'am line. Yeah, they need to call a spade a spade. Public

00:09:23.100 Safety Canada, our government deems Hamas, I think it was 20 years ago, I think it was over 20 years

00:09:28.460 ago, declared Hamas a terror group, but they refuse to call it as such. There's also hypocrisy

00:09:34.380 In the CBC's coverage, whether it's the Air India bombing, they have no problem appropriating the term and its variants, terror, terrorism, terrorist.

00:09:43.680 But not as it relates to Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group, not as it relates to ISIS even, Al-Qaeda, Hamas.

00:09:52.000 No, they prefer to use language like fighter, insurgents, militants, the most sanitized language you could possibly imagine.

00:09:59.540 imagine you're a reader, a listener, a viewer. You can't really tell who these people actually

00:10:04.580 are. In some respect, it almost comes off like their actions are legitimate when they're

00:10:10.500 whitewashed in such a horrible way. One of the things that I've always found so difficult about

00:10:16.400 this issue is that you are having to deal with seven decades, I mean, you're dealing with millennia

00:10:22.260 of history. But if you're just talking about the state of Israel, you're dealing with seven plus

00:10:26.260 decades of history, which if you've not been following it on the ins and outs, and even if

00:10:30.160 you have been, is very difficult to condense into a few sentences of background in a story. And as

00:10:35.500 a result, a lot of misinformation tends to be disseminated very easily. And I mean, one, and I

00:10:41.060 know you're well aware of this, people may have seen this map that, or it's a series of maps that

00:10:46.060 purports to show, you know, Israeli land grabs from Palestinians. And it's probably one of the

00:10:51.000 most easily debunked and historically inaccurate maps. But you see this held up on signs. You see

00:10:56.400 media outlets, in some cases, referencing it. The New York Times a few years back did this. And

00:11:01.540 do you think this is an example of, in most cases, incompetence or bias? Do you think it's

00:11:07.780 just journalists that don't know history, that don't know geopolitics, that are just

00:11:11.140 being fed information from faulty sources? Or do you think it is that pushing an agenda?

00:11:16.320 Yeah, I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I do think it is a healthy combination of both. I think there are certainly some journalists where there is an element of malice, where there is an intention to malign and to mislead.

00:11:28.860 And then I think there's like lots of people, there's no shortage of ignorance and naivete who accept the slanted political views and falsehoods as being conventional wisdom when they're not and are willing instead of doing their due diligence and fact checking and confirming the veracity of, you know, simple information that you can find with the click of a button on Google.

00:11:50.180 they refuse to do so, or maybe there's still lack of editorial vigor and due diligence.

00:11:55.400 In any event, the resulting effect is that people are misled. And this fundamentally changes

00:12:00.020 paradigms about Israel, the Middle East, Canadian attitudes, Canadian foreign policy. It's debilitating.

00:12:07.440 One of the things that I am always encouraged by is that you do seem to get traction when you raise

00:12:12.960 these issues from a lot of media outlets. They'll issue corrections, they'll change reporting. And

00:12:17.760 I'm wondering if that's happening more or less frequency.

00:12:20.580 Are you finding it's harder to get those corrections and concessions when you point out these issues?

00:12:27.280 It's a mixed bag, and it's always going to be case by case.

00:12:29.580 We have found that there are certain media outlets who are more amenable to professional dialogues.

00:12:36.060 And then there are others who, quite frankly, are obtuse and, I'll be honest, provide a bit of a window dressing of journalistic accountability.

00:12:43.360 I think, you know, referencing the CBC, it's a perfect example where a public broadcaster is far too often reluctant to atone for journalistic transgressions.

00:12:54.160 Other media outlets we found are open to a dialogue.

00:12:58.420 It's, you know, it's a systemic issue, though.

00:13:02.280 Yeah. And just to use CBC as an example, one of the things that has happened with them is I'm talking to myself now.

00:13:09.760 I believe we have lost Mike, so we'll have to get Mike back here in just a moment.

00:13:14.440 But I should say, I mean, the CBC example, it was a leaked memo.

00:13:18.080 Yes, it was a memo that was published, that was disseminated, and that was reported on.

00:13:24.260 And at first, there were people saying, oh, we don't know if this is true or not.

00:13:27.700 When asked for comment, CBC completely owned up to it.

00:13:32.240 They completely bought the fact that, like, yeah, this is what we believe.

00:13:36.220 This is who we are, and we stand by it.

00:13:38.380 So CBC is a great example here, where as a matter of policy, they are choosing to take a very biased anti-Israel view, which is to say that we are going to whitewash the terrorism of Hamas.

00:13:54.140 And that's the thing. And when I mentioned yesterday on the show, and I'll repeat it for those who missed it, or I'll say it louder for those at the back, you cannot both sides a conflict in which one side is a terrorist group attacking civilians.

00:14:07.340 You cannot just talk about this as though there are two belligerents in a conflict like some state-on-state war.

00:14:13.800 This is a case where you have a terrorist insurgent group that is attacking Israeli civilians, attacking children, seniors, women, doesn't matter, and doing absolutely brutal things to them.

00:14:26.600 And by the way, I will mention one of the challenges yesterday. I had acknowledged that there had been this report from I-24, an Israeli reporter, in which she quoted IDF soldiers as saying they had seen evidence of babies being beheaded.

00:14:41.860 This has become just an absolute, like, brutal debate online about, oh, well, did it actually

00:14:50.040 happen? And her only evidence is what IDF said. And I qualified that on the show. But I said,

00:14:55.100 look, I've seen photos that suggest this stuff has gone on. And, you know, look, I would love

00:15:01.460 for it to not be true. I would absolutely love for no infants to have gone through what that

00:15:06.680 reporter and what the soldiers with whom she spoke described happening. But the reality is it is

00:15:13.480 entirely plausible. It has the ring of truth. Like anything in a conflict, you have to verify and

00:15:19.820 avoid the tendency to just buy into memes, buy in information which is traveling at breakneck

00:15:25.860 speeds and can't be verified. But it's something that I think it's interesting how many people are

00:15:32.300 trying so hard to say it's not true definitively, because they know how difficult it will be for

00:15:38.860 them to keep up the narrative and rhetoric they're keeping up, which is whitewashing Hamas's crimes,

00:15:44.120 if in fact this ends up becoming even more verified than it is. And I'll ask you about

00:15:49.900 that, Mike. We have Mike Fegelman back from Honest Reporting Canada. I mean, obviously,

00:15:53.740 information's coming at breakneck speeds. Media outlets, I believe, do have an important role in

00:15:59.660 sharing both sides of the conflict here. And if there are people in Canada that are rallying

00:16:04.120 because they oppose Israel, I think their voices should be included for context. Where do you draw

00:16:09.840 the line, though? Because I know you've raised criticism about the platforming of some of these

00:16:13.780 people. We draw the line when individuals are given a platform to justify terrorism. And listen,

00:16:20.300 if it's a live interview and something is said that, you know, whether it's calling for Jews

00:16:25.020 to be decapitated. You know, you've got to call that out. You've got to say this is just abhorrent.

00:16:31.380 What we're seeing far too often are column inches, reporting, airtime given to people who are saying,

00:16:37.940 look, it's because of the settlements, because of the so-called occupation of Gaza, that this is

00:16:42.720 what brought upon Hamas to come in, murder 1,200 people, decapitate babies, burn whole families

00:16:48.680 alive it it's it's just morally repugnant repugnant it's it's utter depravity and and it's

00:16:55.800 it's shocking that journalists just accept all these kind of claims at face value instead of

00:17:00.860 just simply asking you know Hamas calls for Israel's destruction and the Jewish people to be

00:17:06.160 on the receiving end of a genocide for or against it's a simple question nobody's asking it how is

00:17:13.900 that possible? Yeah. And I mentioned, I don't know if you heard it because it was when we were having

00:17:19.120 the connection issues, but you know, this is not an example of someone inadvertently using a loaded

00:17:23.320 word or someone who accidentally uses something, which, you know, I, for example, I don't, I didn't

00:17:28.160 have a lot of experience when I started out in media writing about indigenous issues. So there

00:17:32.060 were times when I would accidentally use the wrong term for something and someone would say, Hey,

00:17:36.380 Andrew, this is what you should do. And you correct it and you move on. We're not talking

00:17:40.100 about in CBC's case, an example of that, because they literally laid out their policy in writing

00:17:45.560 for us to see. Exactly. And look, there are people that they interview who use, you know,

00:17:51.140 lexicon like resistance, you know, Palestinians are entitled to resistance. Resistance,

00:17:56.620 that's a euphemism for terror. It's a euphemism for suicide bombings. And I saw a report a couple

00:18:01.640 minutes ago in the past, Andrew, in the past 10 minutes, you know, I think there's a dozen Hezbollah

00:18:07.120 paraglide terrorists who are trying to go into Israel and attack? And are we going to see people

00:18:12.320 saying, oh, well, that's legitimate. It's justifiable. Look, they're trying to end the

00:18:17.560 occupation now. And that's the statement some people are making are, look, it's been 75 years

00:18:22.400 of occupation, 75 years. What you're actually saying is that Israel fundamentally has no right

00:18:27.360 to exist. But our journalists are not pushing back against these claims. They're accepting it

00:18:32.580 at face value that's perhaps because they're they're willing and agreeable other times they're

00:18:38.360 ignorant either way it's unacceptable well i know you are doing a great job keeping them honest as

00:18:43.880 your name suggests honest reporting canada mike fagelman thank you so much for coming on mike

00:18:48.420 my pleasure andrew thank you all right and one thing that i i will point out here as well and

00:18:53.240 and i actually would would as i indicated in my question there disagree with mike slightly i think

00:18:58.360 that you should give people a platform if it's important that you understand what their

00:19:03.280 perspectives are. Because it's the same way that I defend the right to free speech for some of

00:19:09.560 these protests that we see when people are saying vile, heinous things, because I would rather know

00:19:14.420 about it. I would rather, if the media is going to cover a pro-Palestine or pro-Palestinian rally

00:19:20.920 and the people there are fine with the slaughter of Jews, I would actually like the media to

00:19:26.800 expose that and to give them a platform. Now, ideally, there should be some pushback. We should

00:19:31.140 challenge falsehoods. And this is the problem of just sending out some random person with a

00:19:36.740 microphone and a camera who doesn't know about an issue, is that they don't know when they're being

00:19:40.960 fed a lie. So if you send some reporter that knows nothing about Israel-Palestinian issues,

00:19:47.340 and someone says, oh yes, we support resistance, Israel's been occupied, human rights are being

00:19:51.480 violated, it's an apartheid state, bring out all the hits there, and the reporter's just like,

00:19:56.080 oh, okay, and then what are you doing next? Like, that's not journalism. So that is where we get to

00:20:03.780 the, I think, the real problem here. Now, Nikola in the comments says, so you only give interviews

00:20:09.140 to pro-Zionists, LOL. Well, actually, I would happily interview one of these people. If there

00:20:14.880 is one of these activists that can honestly say that they are okay and they believe that children

00:20:22.040 being slaughtered is advancing the Palestinian cause, I would absolutely welcome that conversation

00:20:27.760 because I believe that deserves to be called out. Now, the thing is, I'm also interviewing people

00:20:33.360 who I do not believe are given a fair shake by the legacy media. I interview people who oftentimes

00:20:39.520 are never given the opportunity to address audiences or are rarely doing it. So absolutely,

00:20:45.740 I am happy to have Mike Fegelman on the show, and that is not something I apologize for. So if you

00:20:50.180 don't like it, Nicholas, screw off. But also continue watching. You're a valued member of

00:20:54.780 this audience, I'm sure. But let me also point out something here, which is that QP Ontario

00:21:00.400 has like gone through this weird development in the last few days. Fred Hahn, who's their very

00:21:06.100 outspoken president of their Ontario division, was tweeting out on Thanksgiving about resistance.

00:21:12.680 There you have it. He says, resistance is fruitful and no matter what some might say,

00:21:16.660 resistance brings progress, and for that I'm thankful. Just like the pilgrims at Plymouth

00:21:22.120 Rock gathering around the table talking about resisting the Jewish Zionist dogs. That's what

00:21:27.740 they talk about, right? Yeah, absolutely disgusting stuff. What is passing for resistance rhetoric

00:21:34.180 in a lot of context here is actually a call for Hamas's obliteration of the Israeli state. Now,

00:21:41.660 Fred Hahn tweeted this morning that he never said he supported violence, he never did that,

00:21:48.000 but nowhere in his thread did he condemn violence. Nowhere in his thread did he denounce violence.

00:21:55.880 And that, I think, is a very important aspect of this. Lots of people that are trying to claim,

00:22:00.640 oh, I've never encouraged it, but they've also used the language of those who are happy with

00:22:06.480 violence without shouting it down. Now, Sarah Jama, who is a New Democratic Party member of

00:22:11.560 the provincial legislature in Ontario, she put out this statement in which she calls for an

00:22:18.540 immediate ceasefire. She says the generations-long occupation of Palestine is apartheid. She goes on

00:22:27.540 and says that the news coming out is deeply concerning. She says settler colonialism has

00:22:33.640 taken the lives of far too many people. So Israelis are colonists. Well, Jews are actually

00:22:38.980 indigenous to that region. So Israel is actually the largest indigenous settlement. Well, not a

00:22:45.000 settlement, indigenous community in the world. She says, we must look to the solution of this

00:22:50.500 endless cycle of death and destruction and all occupation of Palestinian land and end apartheid.

00:22:56.080 So again, nowhere in there does she denounce any violence? Does she denounce any extremism?

00:23:01.600 And one point that I, I shouldn't say it's the largest in the world.

00:23:05.140 I guess, you know, China is a large indigenous colony as well.

00:23:08.600 No, not colony.

00:23:09.480 I'm mixing up the words here.

00:23:10.760 See, I read too much CBC this morning and now my words are all mixed up like theirs.

00:23:15.040 I've got to go to re-education camp.

00:23:16.600 Only True North content for the next 24 hours.

00:23:19.640 But the reality is in Israel is the largest re-indigenized country.

00:23:24.640 That's the word I was attempting to say there because it's a society in which Jews have

00:23:29.820 returned to their homeland. And the one thing that is important to note in the context here is that

00:23:35.580 Israel has extended, at several points throughout history, the offers of a two-state solution.

00:23:44.400 Israel has historically welcomed a two-state solution, and it is the Palestinians who have

00:23:49.600 rejected it. I shared yesterday for probably, I don't know, a minute and a half, the map of the

00:23:54.620 Middle East, the screenshot of Google. Oh, we still have it there. And I note that the Mediterranean

00:23:59.200 Sea on the west, the Jordan River on the east side of Israel. That is what Palestinians claim

00:24:05.880 as Palestine, from the river to the sea. They want there to be no Israel. So it's hard to come up with

00:24:13.120 a workable two-state solution with a group of people that believe you should not have a right

00:24:19.240 to have your state in the least. And again, people can debate whether Israel has been too heavy-handed.

00:24:25.380 People can debate the blockades on Gaza. People can debate Israeli settlements. People can debate

00:24:30.420 the Jerusalem status. All of this is entirely legitimate for us to debate and discuss

00:24:35.860 as individual people, which is why I believe freedom of speech is so paramount, even the

00:24:41.760 freedom to engage in rhetoric that people may find uncomfortable or offensive. But here's the catch

00:24:49.700 with that. The caveat with that is that oftentimes people are only interested in free speech for

00:24:54.820 their own perspective. I am consistent and I'm hopeful that a lot of you in this audience who

00:24:59.700 value freedom of speech are consistent as well and are understanding the importance of folks from

00:25:05.820 different sides of this to have the right to say their piece. But it is funny how all of these CUPE

00:25:11.760 folks, for example, CUPE issued a statement in the wake of the Fred Hahn stuff and in its statement

00:25:17.680 They've somehow invoked indigenous peoples in Canada.

00:25:21.940 They've issued a clarification on it.

00:25:24.960 They've still not denounced violence.

00:25:28.220 They have still not denounced violence.

00:25:30.300 And if you read this statement,

00:25:32.100 they are talking about choosing justice over injustice,

00:25:36.560 siding with the powerless over the powerful,

00:25:38.680 and supporting the colonized over the colonizer.

00:25:42.420 And again, they have not denounced violence.

00:25:46.800 And the only thing you'll get from these groups is this very peripheral window dressing.

00:25:52.820 Well, we don't like what civilian, we don't like what happens to civilians.

00:25:57.140 But as I shared yesterday in that clip from the Edmonton rally, oftentimes if you ask

00:26:02.040 one question further and say, well, give me a definition of civilian, they will not view

00:26:06.720 an Israeli civilian as being a civilian because, oh, well, they're maybe in the reserves or

00:26:11.620 maybe they once served with the IDF because of Israel's conscription policy, and that is that.

00:26:16.980 So one thing I'll say on this before moving on is that I am very clear and very unambiguous about

00:26:23.660 what my bias is, and this is a talk show. While I do try to bring a level of facts to it, I also

00:26:28.640 bring my own opinion, and I'm very clear in what that opinion is. You will never have to wonder

00:26:33.580 with me where I stand on an issue. That is not true for the people at CBC. They claim they are

00:26:41.220 free of bias. They claim their view is rooted in facts, but as we've learned, it is in fact rooted

00:26:46.820 in a very deep-seated bias which whitewashes Hamas terrorism. So next time CBC is willing to

00:26:54.320 own up to admitting Canada is a nation of genociders, it's not really a term you hear

00:26:59.800 that often. In fact, it may be a word I made up. I just remember how often they're able to whitewash

00:27:04.380 real attempts at genocide, at the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people as, well, we don't want to

00:27:09.860 use loaded terms. That is CBC's approach here. So we will move on from this and revisit it tomorrow

00:27:16.260 as the news develops here. I want to pivot to a breaking news story, which literally just happened

00:27:21.580 in the hour before this show commenced. You may recall a couple of weeks back, we spoke to Rod

00:27:27.540 Giltaka of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights about how the CCFR was calling on the

00:27:34.220 federal government to extend the amnesty period for firearms that were banned by that May 2020

00:27:41.600 order in council. Now, just to bring you up on speed, this was often called the AR-15 ban,

00:27:47.220 but there were about 1,500 types of firearms that the government banned overnight with the stroke

00:27:51.920 of a pen. And they said, you'll have two years of amnesty, and then you'll be able to sell it back

00:27:58.060 to the government in that time or sell it back. Well, that's a little bit of an odd term because

00:28:02.360 government never owned it in the first place. But because this was a plan that was written on the

00:28:07.020 back of a napkin, there has not been a single gun purchased by the government. There is no buyback

00:28:12.480 program. And the amnesty period was extended and was about to come to an expiration. And that was

00:28:19.600 going to come this month. Now, the big news this morning is that the government has quietly

00:28:23.460 adopted a renewal of this amnesty period. It will now go to October 2025. So two years from now,

00:28:31.960 You see it buried on the government's website there, which I learned from our friends at the CCFR.

00:28:37.660 Tracy Wilson joins me now.

00:28:39.800 It is always good to talk to you, Tracy.

00:28:42.300 So, look, obviously you're not at all happy about the ban in the first place,

00:28:47.400 but it's got to be a bit of a win in the sense that this is not putting gun owners in jeopardy

00:28:53.240 as imminently as it once looked like it would.

00:28:56.240 Yeah, absolutely, Andrew.

00:28:57.360 Thanks for having me.

00:28:58.280 We are fighting that ban in court still and are expecting a decision from Justice Kane in the federal court by the end of the month as well.

00:29:06.460 So lots of stuff happening.

00:29:08.260 But this extension, to me, it was almost cruel for the Liberals to leave it this late in the game.

00:29:14.460 Last time, I think it was months before it was coming to expire, they recognized they didn't have the ability or the, you know, the framework to follow through with the confiscation program.

00:29:25.360 So they willingly extended it.

00:29:27.320 This time, here we are just weeks away from the original expiration date of the last extension, and gun owners are sitting here wondering if they were about to be exposed to criminal charges.

00:29:38.900 So we had filed an injunction application with the federal court to force the liberals to go ahead and extend that amnesty.

00:29:46.340 Of course, we did get this news this morning. The Crown Counsel for the government did send

00:29:53.440 this information as well to the judge in our case, you know, I guess hoping that we would

00:30:00.460 pull back on that application motion before the court. However, this announcement so far is

00:30:07.800 actually just an announcement. Normally, this stuff would appear in the Canada Gazette,

00:30:12.360 which it does not yet so we're sort of waiting for that assuming that this is they are going

00:30:18.420 to go through with this extension until after the next election which we can talk about um

00:30:24.520 then we will withdraw that that application for an injunction so yeah we are going to get to the

00:30:30.260 election aspect of this do not worry about that tracy but you know one element of this that i

00:30:35.300 really and rod and i were talking about this a couple of weeks back that i i really am

00:30:39.380 disturbed by is that it really reminds gun owners the precarity of their rights, that you are

00:30:46.900 entirely at the whim of government here. Government can just keep it dangling this

00:30:50.880 deadline until the last possible minute before changing it. And this puts gun owners in a very

00:30:57.180 difficult position. I mean, obviously, on a rational level, we know that if the government

00:31:02.160 has banned a gun, and they haven't put the mechanism in place to buy it back, they're

00:31:06.180 probably not going to kick down my door without extending that amnesty and giving me an opportunity

00:31:10.960 to turn it in. But for a lot of people that aren't as tuned into this issue, it's just like,

00:31:15.960 why bother with the hassle would be the response. Oh, I had a 71-year-old member call me last week

00:31:22.860 and he left a message for me to call him back. And I called him and he broke down in tears on

00:31:28.120 the phone. He said, look, I've owned these guns for decades safely and without issue.

00:31:32.740 and I you know it was hard enough for me to hear the government say that they no longer trust me

00:31:39.300 to own this stuff that I've owned forever without problem but to now say that that amnesty is

00:31:46.400 running out and he said I don't know what to do do I take my guns to the police station who do I

00:31:52.120 call what do I do and it is unfair to me to leave Canadians in this kind of position where they're

00:31:59.380 dangling you know by a thread until the very last moment and that's why we filed that emergency

00:32:06.340 injunction application was because we know better after eight years of treatment from this government

00:32:11.340 we won't leave the freedom and future of Canadian gun owners in the hands of the liberal government

00:32:17.000 because we know they don't care about us and not that I am at all encouraging the government to

00:32:22.060 expedite anything this is one of these examples where government incompetence has actually worked

00:32:26.440 in our favor as Canadians, I think. But, you know, their argument when they issued this order

00:32:31.320 in council in May of 2020 was that, and I remember that press conference very well,

00:32:35.760 Bill Blair saying these guns serve one purpose alone, and that's killing people. They believed

00:32:40.020 that these guns were putting humans in Canada at risk. If that were the case, letting those people

00:32:47.880 keep having those guns for five years would be rather reckless. But we haven't seen mass killings

00:32:53.880 take place in Canada in that time. So, I mean, this extension and re-extension undermines the

00:32:59.060 government's core argument in banning the guns in the first place. Oh, it absolutely does. I mean,

00:33:03.980 these are guns, you know, designed to kill the most amount of people in the shortest amount of

00:33:08.240 time. And all this crazy baloney that they said in that press conference, guns so dangerous,

00:33:13.740 we're not permitted to own them, yet we're forced to keep them for five and a half years,

00:33:17.600 minimum like to me it's it's it's insane and you're right it does speak to the fact that

00:33:24.420 everything they said in that press conference and from that day forward has been nothing but

00:33:29.740 political fodder and of course we're the football in their game um and we know we can see there

00:33:36.760 hasn't been a problem with them we've still got them every single person in canada who legally

00:33:42.200 owned an AR-15 before that ban, still has it. I've got two of them about 10 feet from me right

00:33:48.600 now. You know, we're all in the same boat. And now here we are, we're going to have to keep them for

00:33:54.540 another two years. And that's the other weird thing is somebody who is a gun owner, a sports

00:33:59.420 shooter, or maybe even an aging sports shooter, and maybe they're not going to be involved in

00:34:03.760 this sport anymore. And they decide they, you know, look, I'm getting out of it, I'm retiring,

00:34:08.140 or I've got an injury, I'm not interested.

00:34:10.840 Whatever the reason is, it's not an option.

00:34:13.260 You are forced to keep those guns.

00:34:15.140 So guns so dangerous that the Liberal government

00:34:18.180 is forcing you to keep them.

00:34:21.240 It's just, it's a weird paradox that we're in.

00:34:24.700 It is, and you mentioned the election aspect.

00:34:26.940 So this deadline now, the end of October, 2025,

00:34:29.880 I mean, there could be an election at any moment

00:34:31.940 in a minority government,

00:34:33.220 but there will be one by 2025 under the fixed election laws.

00:34:37.220 So on one hand, I think this gives gun owners a bit of hope that maybe some party is going to run and win.

00:34:43.440 And part of their election promise will be that they're not going to follow through with this.

00:34:48.280 They're going to lift the ban and get rid of the amnesty and the buyback and all of that.

00:34:52.860 The flip side of that, though, is that it also means the Liberals are planning an election to be fought about firearms.

00:34:59.160 And I'm wondering how you feel about that, because we know that as gun owners, we are in a minority in Canada.

00:35:04.660 And we know that banning guns has historically played pretty well for the Liberals.

00:35:09.800 Well, we saw what happened when Justin Trudeau, in the debates with Aaron O'Toole,

00:35:14.900 former Conservative leader, got him twisted up.

00:35:17.720 And the headlines will be, Conservatives will put AR-15s in the streets of Canada.

00:35:22.920 Like, it will be some absurd thing like that, that they're going to try and hang around the neck of Pierre Polyev,

00:35:28.480 um who has committed to you know instead of focusing on banning legal guns from licensed

00:35:34.720 owners will instead focus on crime violence and gun smuggling i know crazy notion um but i would

00:35:42.480 like to save them all that trouble and win in court and have this oic deemed um improper and

00:35:50.140 illegal and have it overturned uh because yeah that's exactly what it'll be and at the end of

00:35:55.760 the day the the people who really lose here are the anti-gun groups because boy have they been

00:36:01.360 played you know and now you've got this once again going to be taken to as an election platform as an

00:36:08.840 election issue and they'll be used they'll reuse it over and over again they're just recycling the

00:36:14.560 same thing you know i i understand the general public maybe doesn't understand why average

00:36:22.260 Canadians like me, I'm a suburban grandma, why I would own guns like that. But at the end of the

00:36:29.600 day, when you keep using this over and over again for political fodder, and we see the rising crime

00:36:35.860 continue to escalate, I think that's going to get old really quickly. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree.

00:36:42.820 And I think also, the liberals have capitalized off of crisis, and they've capitalized off of

00:36:48.020 crime. I mean, most of their sweeping gun measures have come in the wake of some tragedy, whether it

00:36:53.300 was the Nova Scotia killing spree which led to the OIC, whether it was the, I think it was Uvalde

00:36:58.860 in Texas that kind of precipitated the introduction of the handgun ban in Canada. The one thing that

00:37:04.920 the Liberals have done is leverage that news. I think there are a lot of Canadians that would

00:37:09.240 probably be looking around and saying, well, I'm not actually seeing that my neighbour who likes

00:37:13.600 to go to the range on weekends is causing me any harm. I mean, that's the hope. And I think that's

00:37:17.380 why the education key has always been has the education component has always been so key

00:37:22.160 yeah well and we've put a lot of effort into that i think you know what what happens is you hear

00:37:28.280 these horrific stories and these you know these crimes they're horrendous and i think every

00:37:33.180 canadian agrees we don't want to see that we don't want that but for the liberals to tie that

00:37:38.460 directly to licensed legal gun owners is not only disingenuous it's actually dangerous because what

00:37:44.800 it does is it draws the focus and the resources away from combating crime and from even implementing

00:37:53.460 a lot of the measures that already exist in our toolbox. I did an ATIP a few years back

00:37:58.140 on the application for a firearms license. You have to provide two references. And I think that's

00:38:04.840 a really important part of the vetting process is who would know better if somebody like me or

00:38:09.780 somebody like you should own a gun than the people closest to us, right? People have known us for

00:38:14.720 years and years. Is this person trustworthy? And I wondered, because I know I've been the reference

00:38:20.420 for probably hundreds of gun owners. And I've never once received a call from the RCMP firearms

00:38:26.280 program asking me to, you know, to vouch for these people. So I filed an ATIP to find out how often

00:38:34.060 do they even call the references, or even the spouses, you know, if there's a concern about

00:38:39.540 domestic violence. And it's less than 10%. And the reason for that is with this government,

00:38:46.020 they keep putting more and more burden, more and more regulation and work on the shoulders of the

00:38:52.180 provincial CFOs without allocating any more funding to cover that. So they are stretched so

00:38:57.500 thin that they're not able to carry through the original vetting processes that are in place to

00:39:05.220 make sure that guns don't fall into the wrong hands and then use that when something does go

00:39:09.960 wrong then they use that for political fodder to further attack our community and to divide

00:39:15.080 Canadians along political lines so to me that's that's dangerous it's not good for any of us

00:39:20.820 and you know I also don't want bad people to have guns right so yeah I mean you're never gonna I

00:39:27.120 think I may have joked about it with you I can't remember if it was on air or off air I mean the

00:39:30.980 the worst thing you could ever do as a gun owner is like post a photo in which your finger is like

00:39:36.960 even like the shadow hovering over the trigger because the law-abiding responsible gun owners

00:39:42.800 will pounce and it is vicious and it is terrible because they are the most safety conscious people

00:39:48.740 they are to a fault and that's i think the thing that people don't realize is how like if you're

00:39:54.900 one of these people that likes to live dangerously the worst thing you can do is go out to the gun

00:39:59.300 range with a bunch of gun owners because you will be like just mortified by how safety conscious

00:40:05.420 they all are well and that's part of the whole process of developing national range day uh which

00:40:11.920 is a couple years old now and it's it's just you know look we can debate gun policy back and forth

00:40:17.640 and fight on twitter and go through long threads of information and fight all day long about it

00:40:23.420 but the we you and i both know the very best way to influence somebody's opinions about guns and

00:40:28.620 gun ownership is just to take them to the range. And when people come to the range on National

00:40:33.300 Range Day, I mean, these are, you know, families coming, just average people from the community,

00:40:38.440 most of them have never laid their hands on a firearm before. And they come and they get to

00:40:43.600 experience it in a safe and welcoming atmosphere, under proper supervision and instruction,

00:40:49.180 and recognize all the safety protocols that are put in place. It totally changes their mind.

00:40:54.700 And that's why we're going to continue to do that and grow that across the country, because Canada has a very safe, robust history and heritage in owning firearms ownership.

00:41:08.360 And I want that to continue, not just for my kids, but for their kids, too.

00:41:12.600 Just a funny, funny story on this. I can't remember what gun it was. It was some handgun or something.

00:41:17.200 I just purchased it and I was cleaning it. So, you know, you have it out on the table and you're taking it into a bunch of different pieces.

00:41:23.100 and I had the gun pointing, and I needed to get up from where I was sitting, and I was about to

00:41:29.360 step in front of the barrel. Now, this is a gun that has never been used, that's dismantled,

00:41:33.980 that is not loaded, and I like stopped and walked around, just without even thinking of it

00:41:39.100 instinctively, because that's one of the things that's just drilled into you, is you never,

00:41:42.940 you know, that was going, I think, above and beyond, but you know, you never put a human in

00:41:46.020 front of the barrel of a gun. Load it, unload it, it doesn't matter. So this is something that gun

00:41:50.240 owners know. And you're right that the government knows it too. And I think that's key here is that

00:41:55.080 they cannot plead ignorance on this. They know the regulations, they know restrictions, they know

00:41:59.260 the crime rates. So when they talk about legal guns as being some source of crime, it is a blatant

00:42:05.320 brazen lie. Yeah. And that's what I mean. At the same time they're doing that, they're ignoring

00:42:12.140 the problem of increased smuggling. And I mean, look, you know, with technology and 3D printing

00:42:17.520 and all of these wild, crazy things going on out there,

00:42:20.940 you're never going to catch it all.

00:42:22.600 But we could do a better job at catching more of it.

00:42:26.200 And this buyback confiscation program that they're talking about

00:42:31.460 eventually developing five years down the road or later,

00:42:35.200 that's going to cost taxpayers upwards of $6, $8 billion, billions of dollars.

00:42:41.940 And I can't help but wonder, just as an average person, a mom and a grandma,

00:42:46.440 would those funds not better be spent focusing on intersecting illegal smuggled guns coming

00:42:55.040 across the border or programs for at-risk youth who might be entering gang life or a number of

00:43:02.000 other programs that would have a more positive public safety impact than targeting the very

00:43:09.280 people who have dedicated their lives to following every rule and regulation regardless of how

00:43:15.320 ridiculous it is and you know that's the social contract that we made as gun owners as we would

00:43:21.460 follow all this stuff um with the with the uh expectation that the government would more or

00:43:28.340 less leave us alone and unfortunately this government has proved that they've broken that

00:43:31.640 contract and so therefore we have no alternative but to fight them in court to fight them in the

00:43:37.220 court of public opinion and of course to fight them at the election booth which cannot come

00:43:43.440 quickly enough to a lot of people.

00:43:45.180 Tracey Wilson, VP of Public Affairs

00:43:47.040 for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

00:43:49.720 Always a pleasure, Tracey.

00:43:51.160 Thanks a lot, Andrew.

00:43:52.460 All right, thank you for that.

00:43:53.820 That does it for us for today.

00:43:55.120 We'll be back in just 23 hours and 15 minutes

00:43:58.560 here on Canada's most irreverent talk show,

00:44:01.380 The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:44:03.260 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:44:06.160 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:08.440 Support the program by donating to True North

00:44:10.780 at www.tnc.news.

00:44:40.780 We'll be right back.

00:45:10.780 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 11, 2023

CBC refuses to call Hamas terrorists

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