Juno News - Changing Hearts and Minds

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

00:00:06.700 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.860 Coming up, how practicing religious freedom landed a pastor behind bars,

00:00:17.220 winning hearts and minds over in the gunfight, and woke television.

00:00:22.920 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:26.500 Welcome, everyone, to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:32.660 This is The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:35.080 Good to have you tuned into the program as we delve into an issue

00:00:38.680 that if I were to tell you the story without the details of the where and when,

00:00:44.400 you would think I was talking about North Korea or China or Cuba.

00:00:49.880 But no, I'm actually talking about Canada,

00:00:51.980 a country which right now has a pastor behind bars

00:00:55.380 because he was exercising his right or his supposed right to religious liberty.

00:01:01.380 I mentioned this briefly at the end of the show earlier in the week,

00:01:04.420 and I promise to delve into this in more detail today

00:01:07.000 because this is of critical importance not just to religious people,

00:01:11.040 but to anyone in Canada who wants to avail themselves

00:01:14.400 of their so-called constitutional freedoms.

00:01:17.920 At stake is his refusal, the government says, to comply with bail conditions.

00:01:23.640 His lawyer, James Kitchen from the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom,

00:01:27.380 stresses that he never agreed to any such conditions,

00:01:30.420 so he couldn't actually be charged with violating them.

00:01:33.900 But regardless, with the trial date set for May 3rd,

00:01:36.500 Pastor Coates could find himself behind bars for another two and a half months almost.

00:01:42.240 Joining me on the line now to talk about this, the implications of it,

00:01:46.280 and more importantly, what's being done to push back against this

00:01:49.520 is John Carpe, president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:01:53.820 John, thanks for joining me today.

00:01:55.320 Just a terrible story.

00:01:57.160 Pastor Coates is in jail now.

00:01:58.740 It's been more than a week.

00:02:00.180 And this is in, it's like we're on par with these repressive regimes

00:02:08.160 that 11 months ago we used to look down on as morally inferior,

00:02:12.980 and now we're locking up pastors, we're locking up Canadians coming back from abroad. 0.75

00:02:18.760 And surprising level of support for those measures, it's quite amazing.

00:02:25.320 A lot of people don't seem to cherish freedom or the free society at all.

00:02:31.000 That's a scary part.

00:02:32.640 I mean, I had mentioned in my intro that if I were to tell the details of the story

00:02:37.260 without giving the location,

00:02:39.500 people would assume I was talking about one of those regimes you just mentioned,

00:02:42.780 you know, North Korea, China, Cuba.

00:02:45.040 But here we are in Canada.

00:02:46.500 I noted a trial date has been set for May 3rd,

00:02:49.320 so this could be another two plus months of being behind bars here,

00:02:53.600 notwithstanding the application for release that his lawyers put forward.

00:02:57.860 But how did we get to this point?

00:02:59.500 I mean, for people that haven't followed this,

00:03:00.940 how do we get to the point where a pastor is behind bars in this particular case?

00:03:05.380 I think it's fear of COVID.

00:03:07.760 I think the fear-mongering back in March of 2020 has been very successful.

00:03:13.360 And once people are in a state of fear,

00:03:17.020 they, to a large extent, they stop listening to facts, reason, logic.

00:03:23.740 Fear diminishes our capacity to think.

00:03:27.520 And when people are in a state of fear,

00:03:30.440 they want a very simple solution that can be implemented immediately.

00:03:35.840 They don't, you know, when you're afraid,

00:03:37.940 that's not the time for nuanced, careful thinking about possible options

00:03:42.380 and pros and cons.

00:03:44.480 And so, unfortunately, the fear is being perpetuated

00:03:47.840 by the government's propaganda machine, which is the mainstream media.

00:03:52.460 They are talking about all these case numbers every day,

00:03:55.560 and that's keeping Canadians in a state of panic,

00:03:58.560 even though these PCR tests were never designed to diagnose COVID

00:04:03.840 and they have false positive rates of 90%.

00:04:05.980 But still, you get the scary headlines.

00:04:08.280 Oh, you know, another 3,000 cases in Ontario

00:04:11.240 and 5,000 cases in Quebec and 2,000 cases in BC.

00:04:15.700 So, people in a state of fear, I think that's a big problem,

00:04:18.960 and that is why we have people in jail. 0.96

00:04:23.340 I want to talk about the case specifically, though, here, John,

00:04:26.740 because what's happened is the Alberta government

00:04:29.380 has put in very significant restrictions.

00:04:31.720 They allowed churches to open with a reduced capacity.

00:04:35.900 I think it was 15%.

00:04:37.120 Why was that not enough?

00:04:38.820 Why was it not viable just for this church or any other church

00:04:42.220 to say, all right, it's not ideal, but we can still open.

00:04:45.080 We can still do this and follow these rules.

00:04:47.540 Well, it's arbitrary when you consider that restaurants

00:04:51.020 are not limited to 15% of the fire code.

00:04:55.820 The Walmarts and superstores are open.

00:04:58.080 The liquor stores are open.

00:04:59.180 These rules are so arbitrary, and they're unscientific.

00:05:04.700 I mean, I've asked the Alberta government repeatedly,

00:05:08.520 on what basis do you believe that asymptomatic people

00:05:12.260 are spreaders of the virus?

00:05:14.780 Show me the science.

00:05:16.400 And you just get stonewalled.

00:05:17.640 Every question you ask of the government about lockdowns,

00:05:21.000 about their science, you get stonewalled.

00:05:23.760 You get no response.

00:05:24.960 So I think, you know, religious freedom is one very important aspect of it.

00:05:33.080 But there's another part of it that Pastor Coates, 0.99

00:05:36.360 like so many other Albertans, he sees that these measures are stupid. 1.00

00:05:41.440 They're not bringing about any good. 1.00

00:05:43.860 They're arbitrary.

00:05:44.740 And they're futile because there's not a single example in history

00:05:51.560 of any society, country, province that succeeded in vanquishing a virus

00:05:58.580 by placing all kinds of restrictions on the entire population for 11 months.

00:06:05.000 With Pastor Coates' case, he is being accused of violating bail conditions.

00:06:13.220 Now, I know that your lawyer, or not your lawyer, rather,

00:06:17.180 but I know that at your organization, James Kitchen, who's taking up this case,

00:06:21.460 has argued that he never agreed to any conditions.

00:06:23.740 Explain this, because I think this is an area where the mainstream media

00:06:26.860 is distorting a little bit about what's happening.

00:06:29.940 Well, he was, you know, the police have been, the health authorities

00:06:36.360 and law enforcement, and I think including in some cases police as well,

00:06:40.460 police and health authorities have been harassing the church for many months.

00:06:46.740 And at one point, the police said that the pastor had made an undertaking,

00:06:53.860 a solemn promise to refrain from having normal church services,

00:06:58.840 as opposed to the, you know, government restrictions.

00:07:03.740 But he never made such a commitment.

00:07:06.100 That's more of a technical detail.

00:07:07.900 The reason he's in jail right now is because he will not violate his conscience

00:07:14.900 by making a solemn promise to refrain from having regular church services.

00:07:21.340 That's the bottom line.

00:07:22.640 And some people have said, well, he's in jail by choice.

00:07:24.720 And there's a kernel of truth in that, insofar as if he agreed and said,

00:07:30.820 okay, we're just going to obey these unscientific and irrational health orders,

00:07:38.480 if he made that commitment, he could be out of jail.

00:07:41.900 But the bigger problem, though, is that Jason Kenney's laws and policies

00:07:46.000 have put the pastor into this situation where he has to choose

00:07:50.600 between following his conscience or getting out of jail.

00:07:56.180 Now, those two things in a society that values or says it values religious liberty 0.52

00:08:01.200 are not supposed to be in conflict, to follow the law and follow your conscience.

00:08:05.600 Yet here we are.

00:08:07.060 Well, and Alberta's premier, Jason Kenney, gave a speech back in 2014

00:08:12.240 to lawyers in Toronto and was all about St. Thomas More and conscience rights

00:08:19.620 and the spirit of the age and resisting the spirit of the age.

00:08:23.700 And right now, the spirit of the age is saying that everybody must participate actively

00:08:28.860 and enthusiastically in this futile quest to get rid of a virus.

00:08:34.380 And if you don't participate, well, shame on you.

00:08:36.560 You're a bad person and you could end up in jail.

00:08:40.360 And so it's kind of ironic that Alberta's premier was the big defender of conscience rights

00:08:45.920 and has a reputation that way.

00:08:48.720 And now in Jason Kenney's Alberta, we've got a pastor in jail

00:08:52.120 whose conscience is telling him that the pastor's conscience is telling him

00:08:57.440 that he should obey God and not the unjust law that's not grounded in science.

00:09:05.540 You and I have talked about this in the past.

00:09:07.980 One of the great challenges in constitutional cases in Canada

00:09:11.180 is that as clear as the constitutional right to religious practice

00:09:14.940 and right to assembly is there,

00:09:16.620 we also have the so-called reasonable limits section of the charter,

00:09:20.000 which often is used to circumvent a lot of these other liberties.

00:09:24.260 And I guess the question is, when arguing this,

00:09:26.720 how much is the court licensed to just say,

00:09:29.800 you know what, it's a pandemic, we've got to be careful?

00:09:32.160 Well, I think that goes to the heart of the evidence

00:09:35.180 that the government's not putting forward.

00:09:37.920 It goes to the heart of the fear-mongering in March.

00:09:40.580 I mean, in March of 2020, not March next month.

00:09:46.260 The COVID is real.

00:09:49.280 People are dying with COVID.

00:09:52.660 But the fear of COVID is exaggerated and it's unwarranted and it's unnecessary.

00:09:57.840 And one good thing about the court actions,

00:10:00.820 and we have several on the go, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba,

00:10:06.380 we are going to force the government to have to explain itself

00:10:12.540 and come up with the science.

00:10:14.320 And the government's going to be forced,

00:10:15.840 rather than just asserting, oh, you know, the virus is really deadly,

00:10:19.920 it's really scary, the lockdowns are working,

00:10:22.320 the lockdowns are saving lives.

00:10:23.680 It's rather than just making these assertions,

00:10:26.960 the government's going to have to back everything up with evidence.

00:10:30.560 And even if we lose these court cases,

00:10:32.920 it'll be interesting to see governments for the first time

00:10:35.880 having to actually produce evidence to back up their claims.

00:10:41.680 One of the things that the government used very early on in this is,

00:10:45.180 well, you know, we don't know, so we need to be excessively broad

00:10:47.980 and really cast a very wide net as we learn more about this.

00:10:52.640 In your legal assessment, does that fly, caution without evidence?

00:10:57.780 Yes, on a temporary basis.

00:11:00.940 But not a year in.

00:11:02.400 And not when we've got all the facts.

00:11:04.320 We know 11 months later,

00:11:05.860 we know that the vulnerable population is,

00:11:10.460 you know, somebody say 82 years old in a nursing home,

00:11:13.920 already dying of cancer, heart disease, emphysema, diabetes, etc.

00:11:18.000 So if you're in a nursing home and you're already dying,

00:11:21.440 COVID is going to shorten your life by four months or six months or eight months.

00:11:26.120 However, we also know that children, youth, teenagers,

00:11:29.340 90% of the population,

00:11:31.180 your chance of getting killed while driving a car

00:11:33.920 is much higher than your chance of getting killed by COVID.

00:11:38.360 So we know the facts and in a courtroom setting,

00:11:42.240 the government is going to have to produce these facts

00:11:44.980 and then try to explain why we should all be afraid based on the facts.

00:11:51.620 As far as Pastor Coates goes,

00:11:53.880 am I correct that he is behind bars until May 3rd

00:11:57.320 unless some court intervention happens that releases him prior to that?

00:12:02.040 Yes, he would be.

00:12:03.300 As things stand right now,

00:12:04.640 he's got to be locked up for the next eight weeks or so or longer.

00:12:10.240 However, we're filing an appeal in the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench

00:12:14.080 to secure his release.

00:12:18.620 And that application will hopefully be heard fairly soon,

00:12:24.200 like in the first week of March, hopefully.

00:12:27.100 So we're hoping to get him out of jail before the May 3rd trial.

00:12:30.360 That's the goal.

00:12:30.900 Has there been any documented outbreak of COVID at this church?

00:12:36.000 I'm curious.

00:12:36.720 No.

00:12:38.340 So it's not even like the government is responding to something

00:12:41.620 that was a demonstrable public health risk.

00:12:44.380 No.

00:12:44.700 And, you know, I've...

00:12:46.820 Dina Hinshaw, the chief medical officer in Alberta,

00:12:50.680 was asked what scientific evidence is there

00:12:53.700 for treating churches differently from, say, restaurants.

00:12:58.200 And she had none.

00:12:59.100 All she had was just anecdotal evidence and said,

00:13:02.240 well, you know, last July there was a conference somewhere

00:13:05.600 and, you know, and there was an outbreak.

00:13:09.560 It's like, okay, so she doesn't have... 0.68

00:13:13.100 She doesn't have scientific evidence to back up

00:13:16.780 why churches should be treated differently from restaurants.

00:13:19.940 And that's the same argument in British Columbia in our court case.

00:13:23.060 The government there is treating churches different from restaurants.

00:13:26.280 And the government has no evidence that there's outbreaks in churches.

00:13:30.280 One of the big challenges,

00:13:33.800 and I'm sure you've probably had this problem as well, John,

00:13:36.440 is that I have not been able to just keep track of how many different,

00:13:40.740 what I would say are violations of liberty are taking place.

00:13:43.700 I know earlier on it was businesses that were being hit with lockdown fines

00:13:47.640 and then churches that were being given these orders and businesses.

00:13:51.220 I mean, how are you keeping on top of this?

00:13:52.840 Because I know that you've had to turn down cases

00:13:55.720 because there are just so many of them.

00:13:58.360 We have right now well over 100 ticket cases,

00:14:02.600 which are where somebody, you know, got $1,000, $1,200 or more ticket

00:14:08.060 just for peacefully exercising their charter freedoms

00:14:11.040 of association and assembly and so on.

00:14:14.680 So in over 100 of those,

00:14:16.620 we've got very large court actions in Manitoba, Alberta,

00:14:20.900 and British Columbia and then apart from the lockdown stuff,

00:14:28.000 we have all of our other court cases on, you know,

00:14:31.580 religious freedom and free expression and campus free speech.

00:14:36.260 So we need to hire another two, three, four lawyers as soon as possible.

00:14:41.120 Well, if you're a lawyer with a Pension for Civil Liberties listening in,

00:14:48.620 you've got the all call there.

00:14:49.800 Send John your resume.

00:14:51.420 You know, it's funny when you talk, I mean, it's not funny, actually,

00:14:53.780 but when you talk about these lockdown things,

00:14:55.680 up until a couple of months ago,

00:14:57.960 when we were seeing people get these fines for $800, $900, $1,000,

00:15:02.140 there was, I think, a sense that, you know what,

00:15:04.460 a lot of these are not going to stand up in court.

00:15:06.460 That was the belief and you still need to fight them.

00:15:08.680 But the belief was that these things are absurd.

00:15:11.100 We're not talking about something that can just be ripped up here

00:15:13.900 when you've put a man behind bars.

00:15:15.800 And that, I think, is the great injustice here,

00:15:18.120 is that if you get a ticket for $1,500, there's an appeal of that.

00:15:22.100 You don't have to pay it if you're fighting it.

00:15:24.020 You can never get two months of your life back

00:15:26.880 that you were put behind bars for daring to exercise your religious liberty.

00:15:31.700 Well, this would be like, you know,

00:15:33.120 somebody that's getting a lot of speeding tickets

00:15:35.020 and then the government says, well, we're going to take away your right to drive

00:15:41.480 because you might speed again.

00:15:42.980 Like, when you get a speeding ticket, the officer doesn't ask you,

00:15:46.860 you know, do you solemnly swear that you will never speed again?

00:15:49.920 I mean, if he does ask you that, it's, you know, redundant

00:15:52.960 and you don't have to answer it.

00:15:54.680 But here, the government's essentially saying to Pastor Coates,

00:15:58.820 you have to promise to adhere to these health orders.

00:16:03.840 And if you don't make that promise, you're going to be locked up.

00:16:06.860 And that's very different from issuing more tickets and more tickets and more tickets.

00:16:10.060 Because as you said, the Alberta government could just issue more tickets to the church.

00:16:14.920 And, you know, we will take, we will defend against those charges.

00:16:19.080 And the government's going to have a hard time defending its health orders in court.

00:16:22.620 Yeah, and it says a lot about his character, by the way,

00:16:26.960 that he was given the magic words to say that would not put him behind bars.

00:16:30.980 And he didn't say them because he didn't believe them.

00:16:33.140 Well, Jason Kenney was here on this interview, you know,

00:16:37.640 saying the magic words was like St. Thomas More refused to say the magic words.

00:16:43.600 I recognize King Henry VIII as the head of the church in England.

00:16:47.760 Those were the magic words.

00:16:49.100 And he said, like, no, I cannot say that.

00:16:54.440 And he lost his head over it.

00:16:56.480 So, yeah, it's, there's always the danger of tyranny in human history.

00:17:04.620 And it's not limited to medieval England,

00:17:06.820 because we certainly have it right now in Alberta today.

00:17:10.180 Well, thankfully, we haven't gotten to the decapitation stage just yet.

00:17:15.140 But as you know, history shows that heresy against the government has a very steep penalty.

00:17:20.360 John Carpe, president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:17:23.880 Thanks for taking up this case and for coming on today, John.

00:17:26.640 Glad to be with you, Andrew.

00:17:28.600 Just a horrendous case.

00:17:30.160 Pastor James Coates of the Grace Life Church in Edmonton,

00:17:33.080 still behind bars because he wouldn't tell the government that he,

00:17:36.420 as a pastor, would not have church.

00:17:39.080 We've got to take a break.

00:17:40.940 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:17:44.100 Stay tuned.

00:17:46.320 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:51.460 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:53.620 I actually spoke a fair bit a couple of weeks back about the liberal gun bill, C-21,

00:17:59.600 which is going after law-abiding gun owners. 0.56

00:18:02.360 And I took aim at conservative leader Aaron O'Toole for giving what I thought was a very

00:18:07.300 meandering and non-committal answer to what he would do for law-abiding gun owners.

00:18:12.580 Now, that question and answer exchange was in a press conference Aaron O'Toole held that

00:18:16.780 I had dialed into.

00:18:18.060 And it actually triggered a huge amount of conversation and, in some case, criticism towards

00:18:23.500 Aaron, but also to me in the gun community.

00:18:26.500 I'm not going to relitigate all of it.

00:18:27.960 But there were a lot of gun owners that were saying, hey, listen, Aaron, you said you were

00:18:31.340 with us in the leadership race.

00:18:32.660 What's changed?

00:18:33.640 And other gun owners who said, well, listen, this is just how politics works. 0.91

00:18:36.860 He can't be the guy that's jumping up and down saying, I'm going to give the rednecks 0.99

00:18:40.380 back their AR-15s.

00:18:41.740 That's how it would be characterized by the media.

00:18:44.680 Now, I get it.

00:18:45.360 There was truth on both sides of this.

00:18:47.360 But I was very pleased a few days ago to see Aaron O'Toole give a very firm and committed

00:18:53.540 position to guns.

00:18:55.160 And I wanted to play that for you because this is exactly what I had said on the show

00:19:00.580 last week I wanted him to do.

00:19:02.880 This is what I said I wanted him to talk about.

00:19:04.740 And I'm not saying he did it because I told him that.

00:19:06.960 But I do think he realized, seeing a lot of the conversation online, that he needed to

00:19:10.980 put his position on the record.

00:19:12.840 And I'm glad he did.

00:19:13.700 Take a look.

00:19:14.260 The extent the Trudeau Liberals are willing to go to divide Canadians is disappointing

00:19:18.720 and dangerous.

00:19:19.980 Their latest firearms laws are no exception.

00:19:22.280 The way the Liberals seek to demonize law-abiding firearms owners while at the same time introducing

00:19:28.480 new measures to actually reduce sentences for criminals charged with illegal gun offenses

00:19:33.260 is beyond confusing.

00:19:35.720 Canadians deserve certainty and competence from their government.

00:19:39.400 Let me be clear.

00:19:40.660 An O'Toole government will repeal C-71, C-21 and the May 2020 Ordering Council.

00:19:46.540 I will review existing firearms legislation to ensure it focuses on dealing with criminals

00:19:53.000 rather than making life more difficult for law-abiding firearms owners.

00:19:57.420 I will restore mandatory prison times for criminals that use a firearm in the commission of a crime.

00:20:05.280 And I will significantly increase funding for border security to crack down on illegal firearm

00:20:12.280 smuggling.

00:20:13.580 Right.

00:20:14.440 Back to work.

00:20:16.440 Now that is a perfectly sensible and actually a laudable commitment to firearms.

00:20:21.260 He's saying we're going to roll back all the dangerous anti-fact and anti-gun owner policies

00:20:26.000 that the Trudeau government has put in place, including the Order and Council last year,

00:20:30.360 which summarily banned 1,500 models of so-called assault rifles,

00:20:34.840 but also focus on where the crime is taking place.

00:20:37.800 Focus on border smuggling.

00:20:39.180 Focus on illegal trafficking of firearms.

00:20:41.700 Focus on guns that are being used in crimes rather than on law-abiding gun owners whose

00:20:46.420 firearms have never been within five kilometers of a crime that's taking place.

00:20:51.380 This is exactly what I wanted to hear.

00:20:54.040 And I'm so glad we got it.

00:20:55.260 I'm so glad we got an answer.

00:20:56.840 Would I have liked it the first time?

00:20:58.160 Yes.

00:20:58.480 But if that's the position and it's on the record, well, he is the leader, then I'm very

00:21:03.100 happy with it.

00:21:03.800 But I do think there is an important discussion to be had along the lines of what I was bringing

00:21:09.680 up earlier about the divide within the gun-owning community about this.

00:21:13.740 Tracy Wilson, who I've had on the show before, she's a fantastic woman and a fantastic advocate

00:21:18.380 for gun owners, did a live stream in which she talked about the press conference, which

00:21:23.020 at the time was very much exploding in this world.

00:21:26.140 And she had said that she doesn't want him to talk about guns at all during the election

00:21:31.720 just for the purposes of making gun owners feel better.

00:21:35.000 And she raised a compelling argument.

00:21:36.820 And I want you to take a listen to a snippet of her live stream.

00:21:40.700 The title of this video is, I don't want Aaron O'Toole to talk about guns and neither

00:21:44.340 should you.

00:21:45.220 And here's why.

00:21:47.480 Elections are not going to be won on giving guns back.

00:21:50.920 Yes, we're going to vote for that because our guns are at stake here.

00:21:54.460 But, moose, but the average Canadian is not going to vote for us to get our guns back.

00:22:00.680 In fact, they might actually vote the opposite.

00:22:03.140 But there's an opportunity here.

00:22:06.480 This week, Andrew Lawton asked, he's an independent journalist, he asked a question of Aaron O'Toole

00:22:15.020 during the scrum after a press conference.

00:22:17.300 And he basically asked him to reaffirm the fact that he would overturn the OIC.

00:22:25.320 And at the same time, he asked about overturning C-21, which are two separate topics.

00:22:30.400 So it should have been separated because they're two different issues.

00:22:33.780 But in any event, Andrew is a great friend to the firearms community.

00:22:37.020 He's a gun owner.

00:22:37.900 And I get it.

00:22:38.940 We all want to feel better.

00:22:40.740 We all want to have our fears and our insecurities subsided.

00:22:46.300 You know, we just want to feel better.

00:22:47.640 And we want to keep hearing that.

00:22:49.700 But here's the problem.

00:22:50.740 The rest of Canada doesn't.

00:22:52.420 And this is going to be hard for some people to hear.

00:22:55.760 And I get it.

00:22:57.940 Trust me.

00:22:58.640 I worry about this file 24 hours a day.

00:23:01.760 I eat, sleep, and breathe it.

00:23:03.960 In fact, I don't sleep.

00:23:05.060 I stay up at night worrying about you, worrying about me, worrying about our guns, worrying

00:23:09.920 about the future of the country, worrying about an election.

00:23:14.280 And the thing is, is that the majority of Canadians, they don't care.

00:23:19.140 Whether or not they believe that gun bans against us would reduce crime, that's an entirely

00:23:26.420 different topic from do they actually want us to keep our guns.

00:23:30.340 They don't.

00:23:31.240 They don't care.

00:23:32.080 Like I said, I mean, people can disagree or agree on specific tactics, but no one can

00:23:37.120 deny Tracy is a phenomenal advocate and a tireless advocate.

00:23:40.800 She literally, if you're friends with her on Facebook, as I am, you'll see she's working

00:23:44.080 around the clock for gun owners.

00:23:45.760 And she's actually lobbying, meeting with MPs.

00:23:48.440 She's doing all the heavy lifting. 1.00

00:23:49.840 So when she says something like this, people need to listen.

00:23:52.980 But the reason I bring that up is because there's a lot of truth to that idea that if a 0.68

00:23:57.880 politician is going to walk into what is basically a big old trap, and we know the media loves

00:24:03.060 to set those, you want to try to get them out of it.

00:24:05.820 And there are different ways to do that.

00:24:07.440 Some politicians try to avoid the issues.

00:24:09.420 Some try to avoid giving a particular position on the issues.

00:24:13.080 When you do that, you oftentimes create problems on the other side in what happened with the

00:24:18.120 press conference, where someone gives an answer that angers the people that are, some people

00:24:22.960 theorize, supposed to be on the receiving end of a wink wink in this.

00:24:27.040 So I'm of the mind that we need to have honesty, and we need to have truth, and we need to have

00:24:32.680 integrity.

00:24:33.220 And I want politicians who are unafraid to take the bull by the horns and say, this is what

00:24:37.840 I believe.

00:24:38.960 But here's the point.

00:24:41.100 There is a lot of media backlash towards any conservative politician for any number of issues.

00:24:47.100 Guns are going to be one, social issues are going to be another.

00:24:50.280 It's never been more important to lay the cultural groundwork for a lot of these issues

00:24:55.500 so that they do not become so toxic politically.

00:24:59.240 And this is a longer term problem.

00:25:01.260 This is a longer term process.

00:25:03.060 This is what a lot of social conservative groups are doing.

00:25:05.620 It's not just about getting people to vote a certain way.

00:25:08.420 It's actually about changing hearts and minds, changing the culture, so that if a politician

00:25:12.820 does speak up and says, I'm pro-life, they aren't vilified and pilloried.

00:25:17.100 The same thing has to be done with firearms.

00:25:20.280 You've got 2 million licensed gun owners in Canada, in a country of 36, 37 million people.

00:25:26.940 Most people in the country have never shot a gun.

00:25:29.720 They've never fired a gun.

00:25:31.120 A lot of people, especially in cities, which is where a lot of the politicians are coming

00:25:35.480 from, and which is where a lot of the journalists writing about guns are coming from, have never

00:25:40.860 seen a gun, nor do they even know that firearms are a way of life for so many people.

00:25:47.280 And it isn't just about rural folks.

00:25:49.320 It's about family-owned gun businesses in cities and in small towns.

00:25:52.960 It's about people in the north.

00:25:54.380 It's about indigenous Canadians.

00:25:56.160 It's about hunters.

00:25:56.900 It's about competition shooters.

00:25:58.820 It's about individual hobbyists and collectors.

00:26:02.080 The people who own guns, the people who are affected by gun bans and restrictions that

00:26:06.980 only go after the law-abiding are your friends, your neighbors, your family members, and they

00:26:12.320 are just ordinary people who right now are being completely assaulted by the government's

00:26:17.760 approach.

00:26:18.860 I think the political discussion is important, but the cultural discussion is also important.

00:26:24.220 And for the last while, I've been grappling about the question of what can I do about

00:26:28.620 this?

00:26:29.280 You may remember back in the summer, I was in Ottawa for the Integrity March, which was

00:26:33.860 put on by the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, Tracy Wilson's group, and Rod Giltakas,

00:26:38.980 who we've also talked to on the show.

00:26:40.680 And they had thousands and thousands and thousands of gun owners from all over the country, as far

00:26:45.000 away as the Yukon, you may remember, to stand up to politicians and say,

00:26:48.220 hey, you can't just walk all over us like this.

00:26:50.820 And did the liberals listen?

00:26:52.100 Of course not.

00:26:52.960 Fast forward a couple of months, and we have Bill C-21, which we talked about last week.

00:26:57.960 People in Canada who aren't part of this community need to understand that there is, in fact,

00:27:03.500 a community and that gun owners are just people.

00:27:06.840 They're not, you know, scary gangbangers like Trudeau and Bill Blair would have you believe,

00:27:10.560 but they're ordinary people.

00:27:12.060 So the answer to that question, what can I do about it, came about in one way by producing

00:27:16.600 a series that actually puts a human face and a human voice to all of these people who are

00:27:22.140 targeted unfairly by Justin Trudeau's gun ban.

00:27:25.820 We're proud to announce on this show a new series that's going to be coming out later this year,

00:27:30.920 in spring of 2021, called Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.

00:27:36.080 And production is actually starting on this next week.

00:27:39.240 So I'm going to be down to just one show next week as I'm traveling, because we're going to be

00:27:43.580 traveling the country, talking to real people, real Canadians, and trying to explain the stories

00:27:49.000 of the untold victims of Justin Trudeau's assault on firearms.

00:27:52.680 Here's a little trailer we put together.

00:27:55.820 I'm thrilled today to announce a brand new project from True North, a documentary series called

00:28:01.860 Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.

00:28:05.460 It's easy to talk about guns in abstract terms.

00:28:08.000 This is, in fact, what the Liberal government has been doing as it's enacted its crusade against

00:28:12.960 lawful gun owners.

00:28:14.100 They don't talk about the facts or the people.

00:28:16.400 They talk about the guns, these big, scary things that are not particularly understood

00:28:21.100 by mainstream Canadian society, and least of all, the media and the politicians who are

00:28:25.960 trying to ban them.

00:28:27.320 This documentary series will tell the stories of the people who are affected by these bans

00:28:32.440 and restrictions.

00:28:33.580 The family-owned gun business, sport shooters, individual people for whom firepower,

00:28:38.000 firearms are a way of life.

00:28:39.960 I'm going to be traveling the country, giving a voice and putting a face to these people,

00:28:44.180 the stories of the untold victims of Justin Trudeau's gun ban.

00:28:47.880 This is a project that has never before been done in Canada, which is why it is so necessary.

00:28:53.160 If you agree and want to make this happen, head on over to www.assaulted.ca.

00:28:59.400 That's www.assaulted.ca, where we'll have all the information you need.

00:29:04.840 And remember, anyone who contributes at least $100 will have their name in the credits of

00:29:10.000 each episode of the series.

00:29:12.480 Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners, coming to True North, Spring 2021.

00:29:17.840 I'm excited about this project.

00:29:19.700 I'm a gun owner myself.

00:29:20.920 When I tell these stories, it's partially because I am a member of this community,

00:29:25.680 and I want people to understand who aren't part of it, why it's not something that the

00:29:30.600 government can continue to scapegoat, and why this won't even succeed at enacting the

00:29:35.340 government's objectives, which are supposedly taking guns off the streets, making cities

00:29:39.200 safer, and so on and so forth.

00:29:41.000 And as you saw in that trailer there, this is something that you can actually be a part

00:29:44.800 of, if you head on over to the documentary's website, www.assaulted.ca, there's information

00:29:52.740 about how you can contribute to this.

00:29:54.720 And remember, we're going to have credits at the end of every episode, and anyone who

00:29:58.180 donates at least $100 will be in the credits in all four episodes.

00:30:01.780 So I hope to see your name in those credits if you're able to give us a hand on this.

00:30:05.880 Hugely important project.

00:30:07.260 So glad to be doing it, and I know True North's whole team is looking forward to it.

00:30:11.300 That'll be coming up later this year.

00:30:13.180 We've got to take a break.

00:30:14.140 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:30:19.720 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:30:28.280 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:30:30.440 We've talked about some heavy stuff so far, so let's take a delving into the area of woke

00:30:35.000 television, which, believe it or not, is increasingly becoming the only form of television available

00:30:41.040 to you, and a few stories in Canada.

00:30:43.840 Now, the one I have to mention before I get into the Canadian ones is that The Muppet Show

00:30:48.460 is now one of the trigger-warning programs of the world.

00:30:53.040 Yeah, The Muppet Show is now getting an offensive content alert on Disney+.

00:30:57.220 So, like many things else, if you want to learn about The Rainbow Connection or you want to

00:31:02.320 learn about The Muppet Show tonight or The Monomena or Kermit or Statler and Waldorf, any of these

00:31:07.240 things, well, now you have to subject yourself through an impending hate crime because now

00:31:12.400 only the adult accounts can view The Muppet Show.

00:31:17.200 The Muppet Show is now getting an offensive content warning.

00:31:20.980 At a certain point, even, like, Tide commercials are going to be getting trigger warnings before

00:31:25.480 them, but I digress.

00:31:27.020 Big Brother Canada is back.

00:31:28.900 This is the show that was making quarantine cool before quarantine existed, locking a whole

00:31:33.620 bunch of people in a house and not letting them leave unless, of course, they're voted out.

00:31:37.820 Well, Big Brother Canada is back this year.

00:31:40.100 Last year, it actually had to be suspended midway through the broadcast because of the

00:31:45.140 COVID-19 restrictions.

00:31:47.000 This year, it's back, and the show has decided to make pronouns, preferred pronouns, a part

00:31:53.120 of the contestant profile.

00:31:55.240 So, the Big Brother Twitter account had announced the contestants who are going to be on this year's

00:31:59.820 show.

00:32:00.460 One of them is actually transgender.

00:32:02.440 So, she's actually a transgender woman.

00:32:04.720 She's going to be the first on the show's history.

00:32:07.500 You have Braden White, who goes by He and Him.

00:32:09.820 You've got Julie, who goes by She and Her.

00:32:12.660 Austin goes by She, Her.

00:32:14.420 Ethan goes by He, Him, and so on and so forth.

00:32:17.300 And you may think, oh, well, Big Brother's being so progressive.

00:32:19.880 They're being so woke.

00:32:21.040 They're letting people choose or forcing them even to choose their preferred pronouns.

00:32:25.240 Well, apparently, that is transphobic, too.

00:32:28.640 Yes, Andrew Chiles, or Chiles, I don't know.

00:32:32.760 He is a he, him, as I see from his Twitter account.

00:32:35.320 He wants Big Brother to know that preferred pronouns is an inaccurate statement.

00:32:40.500 Someone's pronouns is not a preference, but a reality.

00:32:44.760 Beth says, I'm so excited you have a diverse and inclusive cast.

00:32:47.880 But remember, preferred pronouns makes it sound like pronouns are a preference and that

00:32:52.460 other pronouns are acceptable.

00:32:54.260 This is harmful and causes misgendering.

00:32:57.260 Nick writes, it's not preferred pronouns, just pronouns.

00:33:00.700 And Cody says the same thing.

00:33:02.460 Preferred implies it's a choice.

00:33:03.980 It's not a choice.

00:33:05.180 So it goes to show that no matter how far you bend back, you can bend so far back that

00:33:11.100 your back snaps and you will still be deemed not going far enough or actually making things

00:33:18.040 worse.

00:33:18.440 So anyone who is like a social media intern for a television network needs to understand,

00:33:23.200 like, don't even bother.

00:33:24.180 It's never going to fly.

00:33:25.200 No one's ever going to like it.

00:33:26.680 And that's where things are.

00:33:27.900 And the problem, of course, with not even trying is that you go into the world of blatant

00:33:33.140 and brazen anti-Semitism as one Canadian show is being accused of.

00:33:38.600 So I had never heard of this show.

00:33:40.140 It has joined the legions of medical dramas like ER and Grey's Anatomy, which may or may

00:33:45.660 not still be on.

00:33:46.520 I honestly have no idea.

00:33:48.120 But they had this scene that went viral for all the wrong reasons.

00:33:51.860 The graft, where does it come from?

00:33:53.720 It's called an aloe bone graft.

00:33:55.200 It's harvested from a deceased donor.

00:33:56.520 Well, you want to put a dead leg inside of me?

00:34:01.120 A dead goyim leg. 0.99

00:34:02.400 From anyone.

00:34:03.440 An Arab? 0.90

00:34:04.340 A woman? 0.83

00:34:04.880 Or God forbid an Arab woman. 1.00

00:34:10.980 Look, you can't be lugging this metal cage around. 0.93

00:34:14.380 No, I don't consent.

00:34:15.640 Ezra, without this next step, you will never walk properly again.

00:34:19.120 Which means forget about basketball.

00:34:21.140 Which is obviously what he wants.

00:34:25.520 It's God who heals what he creates.

00:34:27.680 So that baffling scene has been accused of being an anti-Semitic trope and not even particularly

00:34:37.540 accurate as there is no aversion in the Jewish faith, even among ultra-Orthodox Jews, to accepting

00:34:44.240 bones from Muslims or Muslim women or Arab women or anything of the sort like that.

00:34:50.460 This was picked up by American viewers because this show had been picked up on NBC and now

00:34:56.260 NBC has said, oh, we're not playing this anymore.

00:34:59.660 And now Chorus, which runs global in Canada, on which the show originally appeared, has

00:35:05.080 apologized.

00:35:06.060 They sent a statement to Honest Reporting Canada in which they say they deeply regret all inaccuracies

00:35:12.020 related to religious beliefs as well as the negative portrayal of any religious community

00:35:16.840 in our content, characters, or storylines.

00:35:19.520 They do specifically call out the Jewish audience, but I wonder if they've done a broad sentence

00:35:24.880 there just in case there was like another episode coming down the pipe that was offensive to

00:35:28.940 some other group.

00:35:29.640 So they're just trying to get it all done in one sort of catch-all now.

00:35:33.720 And just before we wrap this segment up, in the world of wokeness, Ryerson University's

00:35:38.740 student newspaper is abandoning the word Ryerson.

00:35:43.360 This is actually quite shameful.

00:35:45.180 And if you're a student at Ryerson whose student fees are going towards funding this school,

00:35:50.680 you should be protesting this.

00:35:52.340 It used to be the Ryerson Review of Journalism.

00:35:54.880 Now it's the Review of Journalism.

00:35:58.480 No, you didn't go mute there.

00:35:59.740 I'm just, there's a blank space.

00:36:01.060 I don't know how you say it.

00:36:01.900 Do I put a bleep over?

00:36:02.900 Okay, let's try it with a bleep.

00:36:04.540 The review of journalism.

00:36:07.660 Yeah, that just sounds like I'm swearing about it, which you know what?

00:36:10.160 On the inside, I actually am.

00:36:12.060 So the Review of Journalism is now the blank space review of journalism.

00:36:16.220 The reason is because we have to retroactively cancel Egerton Ryerson, the namesake of the school.

00:36:22.960 This decision is currently until the end of the term, the end of the school year.

00:36:27.420 And they're saying that they aren't officially changing the name, they're not including content

00:36:32.040 that was previously published, but they want this year's publication to reflect that the

00:36:37.060 name is under review because they say that the residential school system, which Egerton

00:36:42.480 Ryerson was a part of establishing, was part of a cultural genocide.

00:36:47.260 And the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls on journalism programs and media schools

00:36:51.440 to require education on the history of Aboriginal people.

00:36:54.920 So they say that because the university has no mandatory education, all of the members

00:36:59.540 of the review's masthead have decided they're going to just purge their title while they

00:37:05.220 understand the direction they're going to go in the future.

00:37:08.080 As we've said time and time again, eventually there will be no names left because no one can

00:37:13.720 withstand the critical lens of 2021, regardless of the point in time in which they existed.

00:37:19.540 It won't be long before Ryerson University itself is done.

00:37:22.320 And maybe it'll just be a blank university, which is pretty much the value of a degree

00:37:26.260 from Ryerson these days, I'm sorry to say.

00:37:29.340 We've got to wrap things up for the program today.

00:37:31.900 We'll be back next week with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:37:35.700 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:37:37.920 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:39.800 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:37:45.300 Thank you, God bless.

00:37:52.880 You're welcome.

00:37:54.580 Thank you.

00:37:55.200 Take care.

00:37:55.340 Bye.

00:37:56.560 Bye.

00:37:56.880 Bye.

00:37:57.560 Bye.

00:37:58.000 Bye.

00:37:59.000 Bye.

00:38:00.020 Bye.

00:38:01.180 Bye.

00:38:01.600 Bye.

00:38:02.120 Bye.

00:38:03.380 Bye.

00:38:04.260 Bye.

00:38:04.440 Bye.

00:38:05.540 Bye.

00:38:06.600 Bye.

00:38:07.040 Bye.

00:38:07.640 Bye.

00:38:08.840 Bye.

00:38:09.700 Bye.

00:38:11.460 Bye.

00:38:12.100 Bye.

00:38:12.560 Bye.

00:38:13.160 Bye.

00:38:14.100 Bye.

Juno News - February 25, 2021

Changing Hearts and Minds

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