Juno News - China’s Influence Game

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

00:00:09.740 north coming up china's infiltration of canadian politics and media a look ahead at this week's

00:00:17.920 and what the heck is up with our criminal justice system the andrew lawton show starts right now

00:00:27.040 good afternoon welcome to another edition of the andrew lawton show here on true north canada's

00:00:35.160 most irreverent talk show september 21st 2020 yes just a few months to go until the end of the year

00:00:43.060 and actually three months to go and a couple of days until christmas so if that is something that

00:00:49.040 disturbs you greatly well i apologize for nothing in any case great to have you tuned into the show

00:00:54.480 here it is a big week in canadian politics the throne speech is coming up on wednesday when this

00:01:01.200 show returns on thursday we'll of course have a full breakdown of all the things that justin trudeau

00:01:05.660 has offered to try to desperately cling to power and get the other parties to vote for the liberals

00:01:12.360 to continue to limp along and as i said last week would not be surprised to see universal basic income

00:01:18.420 or some other massively socialist policy or policies in the throne speech just to buy the support of the

00:01:26.520 ndp which we know does not exactly have the money or energy right now to head into an election but i'm

00:01:32.420 not going to lay out predictions because if you lay out predictions you can very easily prove yourself

00:01:36.200 wrong suffice it to say i will be talking about this on the next show i guess that's a prediction but

00:01:41.460 one i'm a little bit more in control of also going to be talking this show about china's influence

00:01:47.540 campaigns in canada and i want to focus on two prongs of this here not just china's pr machine but also

00:01:55.860 the way it seems to be really trying to go after canadian politicians we know this is happening we know

00:02:03.380 it's an ongoing problem in fact there have been intelligence and security reports in canada for years

00:02:08.900 about individual politicians that security officials suspect might be under the thumb of the chinese

00:02:15.540 regime or at the very least efforts about chinese attempts chinese attempts at influencing politicians

00:02:22.980 so we should be very cautious whenever chinese politicians start exalting canadian politicians and 0.99

00:02:29.860 you know there is one figure in canadian politics that seems to be just the absolute favorite of the

00:02:35.460 chinese regime right now and that is politburo patty herself canadian health minister patty haidu who 1.00

00:02:41.380 just when i had started to forget about the politburo patty name right gets renewed again and this latest

00:02:48.260 example of this is actually an article in xinhua which is the chinese state media outlet or one of the

00:02:54.980 many chinese state media outlets we'll talk about that shortly china appreciates canadian minister of

00:03:01.220 health patty haidu's objective and fair comments on china's efforts to combat covet 19 a foreign ministry

00:03:08.340 spokesperson said friday the spokesperson wang wenbin says china is willing to work with the international

00:03:15.380 community including canada to make positive contributions to containing the pandemic at an

00:03:20.420 early date wang had made these comments jinhua says at a press briefing when asked to comment on

00:03:26.660 haidu's remarks in a recent interview and it was about how haidu had recognized all of china's efforts

00:03:32.020 in informing the world health organization about the novel coronavirus and all of that stuff so just

00:03:37.460 heaping praise on her for saying what china itself has been saying to people let's play that clip of

00:03:43.300 politburo patty in retrospect do you think that china was honest and was forthcoming in the

00:03:48.900 intelligence that shared with the global community and canada about the risk look very early on china

00:03:57.620 alerted the world health organization to the emergence of a novel coronavirus and and also

00:04:03.380 shared the sequencing of the gene which allowed countries to be able to rapidly produce tests to

00:04:08.180 detect it in their in their own countries you know there was a remarkably honest headline about

00:04:13.380 haidu's comments in global news where they said health minister continues defense of china's handling

00:04:19.780 of coronavirus case data and whether it was intentionally critical or perhaps the intention

00:04:25.220 was even laudatory who knows but i do find it interesting that that's the narrative she's set out

00:04:30.100 that she's continuing to defend as then this has been a recurring thing for her just always all the

00:04:35.140 time anytime she's given the opportunity talk about how great china's handling this has been now

00:04:41.140 remember china itself has constantly revised its numbers reneged on some numbers they've adjusted

00:04:48.500 their calculations so china itself has said that china's numbers are wrong at various points and it

00:04:54.740 is particularly telling that patty haidu has more confidence in china's early numbers than even china

00:05:00.500 does because she was actually trumpeting this even before china had said ah you know on second

00:05:05.940 thought maybe we got things a little bit wrong here so she's been a constant she's been a more

00:05:10.980 stalwart defender of china's coronavirus data than china itself has been and this is something that

00:05:16.660 we need to take stock of because patty haidu has been praised repeatedly by the chinese regime it isn't

00:05:23.460 just this latest uh you know accolade from the chinese foreign ministry but previously you may

00:05:28.740 remember there was that uh heaping of praise she got from a china daily european union bureau chief

00:05:35.300 who had said that you know she is a model she's a role model to all and you know it's the journalists

00:05:40.180 that are asking questions about this that are the problem and we talked about that back on the show i

00:05:45.220 think it was somewhat like april or may that's how long this has been going on and you may remember the

00:05:50.900 catalyst to that was when patty haidu had accused a reporter who asked a pretty reasonable question of 0.58

00:05:58.740 feeding conspiracies for daring to question china this is that clip there's no indication that the

00:06:04.900 data that came out of china in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified

00:06:10.900 in any way in fact if you look at the death rate uh overall in china it's much higher than the one

00:06:15.460 we're seeing now um and so we we rely on the world health organization to do this important work

00:06:21.380 because of course we're all in this together and i think one of the most important things to

00:06:26.100 understand about this pandemic this global pandemic is that as long as coronavirus exists in one

00:06:31.540 country that exists in all of our countries that we actually have to work collectively as a world

00:06:36.660 now to defeat this virus to find better ways to treat and then eventually prevent this virus

00:06:43.060 through vaccination or other kinds of methods and that's going to take everybody working together and

00:06:48.020 and sorry please let her finish no ian

00:06:58.900 so i would say that your question is feeding into conspiracy theories that many people have been

00:07:03.940 perpetuating on the meat on the internet and it's important to remember that there is no way to beat a

00:07:09.940 global pandemic if we're actually not willing to work together as a globe we will have to come up with a

00:07:15.540 global solution to this virus no country is an island and i am so proud of the canadian researchers

00:07:21.540 that are part of the world health organization solidarity project that are working on developing

00:07:26.500 vaccines and treatments for this virus that undoubtedly are going to be a big part of the

00:07:32.340 solution about how we all get ourselves out of the situation so why is this important it's significant

00:07:38.820 because we're talking about a regime that has no fundamental respect for truth or honesty just

00:07:45.380 coincidentally i was going to be talking about this anyway based on that xinhua piece about patty

00:07:50.180 haidu but coincidentally there was a story that came out on abc which is the australia abc not the

00:07:56.180 american abc this past weekend about the former beijing bureau chief for abc who was actually detained

00:08:04.980 alongside his 14 year old daughter and threatened with prosecution after the chinese politburo raised

00:08:12.260 issues that they had with his coverage of china of the treatment of the igars the treatment of any

00:08:18.660 number of human rights issues in china and this was something that again i can't summarize the entirety

00:08:25.380 of it because there was a lot of nuance to the story i would encourage you to take a look yourself at

00:08:30.020 abc.net.au but it's a story by matthew carney who writes of how his telephone rang and he was

00:08:38.580 summoned to a meeting with the politburo where they had printed out copies of his stories and they

00:08:43.540 continued to get more and more angry as they read through his headlines and this is by the way headlines

00:08:50.020 from articles that are not even accessible in china because the chinese government has blocked access

00:08:55.220 to them but that's beside the point and he talks about how the chinese government was not just

00:09:00.580 spying on him going through his emails they had remotely accessed his computer but actually

00:09:06.500 deliberately making sure he knew that at one point they left an email open on his computer as if to

00:09:13.540 say he theorized anyway we're looking and we know what you're up to and what it was is some activist

00:09:19.060 group in the u.s had cc'd him on an email which trust me if you're in media you get emails all the

00:09:24.020 time that are unsolicited so something being in my inbox is very rarely an indication that i even know

00:09:29.460 about it let alone am i complicit in you know whatever it is that's going on but at one point

00:09:35.300 he and his 14 year old daughter who is viewed they say as an adult in chinese law are summoned

00:09:41.300 they're threatening her with detention to take her away from the father and i mean this is the price you

00:09:46.100 pay if you take a beijing posting i could not imagine if i had a fan i couldn't imagine moving to china

00:09:52.580 anyway for work but i certainly couldn't imagine doing so if i i had a family although you know

00:09:57.460 every family has to make the decisions that are right for them but ultimately this is what was

00:10:01.940 happening and this is all par for the course this is quite a commonplace turn of events in china and

00:10:08.420 you know i remember talking to a former canadian lawmaker well actually a current canadian lawmaker

00:10:13.540 who in the previous conservative government had done a trip to china of some kind as a member of

00:10:19.140 parliament and they were telling me that one of the standard protocols when you go to china is you

00:10:24.900 leave your phone at home and you take a burner because the second you get off the plane at the

00:10:29.140 airport your phone's being scanned and all of a sudden your data are not your own so this is something

00:10:35.460 that we all just accept with china and we all take for granted and we know china is involved in

00:10:40.580 dominance they're involved in influence campaigns intelligence campaigns and they are becoming the new

00:10:47.300 global superpower if they aren't already so when they start they as a country that are ostensibly

00:10:54.820 an enemy of freedom and an enemy of canada when they start heaping praise on another country's

00:11:01.540 lawmakers that other country in this case canada needs to be very wary what is it they're trying to

00:11:07.780 accomplish and it's not to say that they can't do this deliberately to stoke concerns we know that but

00:11:15.380 they're saying it because they think that the chinese government's talking points are in some

00:11:20.660 way in alignment with the canadian government's talking points and if i'm the canadian government

00:11:25.060 i'm thinking okay we're doing something wrong if this is who we're attracting as our friend

00:11:31.540 and and politburo patty has continued this we're not talking about her just refusing to criticize china

00:11:38.020 which is what trudeau has done he said famously when asked about chinese numbers and those are questions

00:11:43.060 for a different time no we're talking about someone who's deliberately going out of their way to say

00:11:47.940 yeah you know we think that you know everything's hunky dory what they're doing is great and we are

00:11:52.100 so grateful that china was so forthright with the world health organization well yeah because the china 1.00

00:11:58.340 approach and the who approach are pretty much in lockstep with one another and it's the rest of the

00:12:04.660 world that's on the losing end of that alliance china has there's no question about it unleashed 1.00

00:12:12.020 this virus on the world so many of the issues that we have the issues with lockdowns the issues

00:12:18.580 with the deaths that we have had are because china could not keep this contained and was not 0.82

00:12:25.300 forthright so when you have a canadian health minister who should be more concerned about the

00:12:29.700 health of canadians than the diplomatic relations between canada and china saying that china itself

00:12:36.340 deserves praise we are desperately desperately missing any genuine honest and authentic leadership in

00:12:43.780 this country and that's what we have at the top of our health file and it isn't just politicians it's

00:12:50.020 the media as well i'm not a print newspaper subscriber i read everything online because i read so many

00:12:56.020 but in the print edition of the globe and mail on saturday so the big saturday edition of the newspaper

00:13:01.700 there was a full two-page spread of glowing stories about china tree fellers turn into tree lovers

00:13:09.780 live streams help produce a mushrooming industry shopping centers change with the times and what's

00:13:15.700 the common thread of all of these things well it is a china watch series titled all you need to know

00:13:22.340 china watch and at the very very bottom of the page if you look at a photo that was posted by

00:13:27.540 david lundgren from reuters content produced by china daily and distributed in the globe and mail

00:13:35.620 and another one there a chain of celestial lights to celebrate inclusiveness foreign firms see rosy

00:13:41.220 prospects for services trade so all of these stories if you were to look at this you'd say oh my goodness

00:13:45.700 china is a great place everyone wants to invest there they're developing things they're renovating

00:13:49.940 things that that's fantastic well who is china daily you might ask well i mentioned xinhua earlier which

00:13:56.900 is one of the chinese state media outlets china daily is another one and specifically china daily is

00:14:04.180 owned by the chinese politburo itself by the publicity department of the chinese communist party so

00:14:12.580 everything that china daily does is chinese communist party propaganda now this is a reason you might say

00:14:20.660 that we should probably take what china daily publishes with a grain of salt well not the globe and mail

00:14:25.860 instead they republish it they republish it now this is an advertorial content yes so it's advertorial

00:14:33.220 you pay to put it in there but this is something that is significantly problematic because yes it's

00:14:39.380 disclosed in tiny letters but they are passing off political propaganda as news the average reader would

00:14:46.980 flip through this and think that this is just another section of the globe and mail the average reader does

00:14:52.340 not know that china daily is the political and publicity arm of the chinese politburo the average

00:14:59.940 reader does not know this they see it and think okay yeah the globe and mail must have some partnership

00:15:04.820 with a chinese media outlet and it's not to say that people are stupid it's to say that the whole point

00:15:10.340 of chinese government propaganda is that they couch things and conceal things so that it can have the air of

00:15:17.060 legitimacy when people that aren't immersed in this world come across it and that's why you've got to

00:15:22.340 be so careful that the canadian government is allowing china daily xinua and all of these other outlets

00:15:28.740 access at the expense of independent canadian media like true north i said jokingly to one of my colleagues

00:15:35.860 maybe we should do in the globe and mail whatever it costs pay to do like a china watch spread that's all of true north 0.98

00:15:41.540 stories on china which are going to be a heck of a lot more honest and authentic than anything the china

00:15:47.060 daily is publishing about china but this is what the stakes are this is what the stakes are the chinese

00:15:53.780 government uh heaping praise on canadian politicians infiltrating canadian media outlets and people say ah

00:16:00.260 you know well it's china you know we they're they're they're the they're the future is this really the

00:16:05.220 country we want to be the future is this the country we want to be cozying up to hell no

00:16:11.860 when we come back more of the andrew lawton show you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:16:22.980 welcome back to the andrew lawton show so this past weekend was a fairly busy one as far as news is

00:16:28.820 concerned we had the passing of former canadian prime minister john turner and also the passing of

00:16:35.140 supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg and neither one is surprising in the grand scheme of things

00:16:41.460 in the sense that they're both you know quite elderly but at the same time we are talking about

00:16:45.940 two people that in their own way were lions of their respective systems and i did find it interesting

00:16:52.420 and completely unsurprising how the media was completely guns blazing in canada on ruth bader

00:16:58.660 ginsburg's passing and john turner's passing who despite the fact that he was only there for a short

00:17:03.940 period of time as pm was a very influential figure in canadian politics more broadly he was in many

00:17:10.980 cases a footnote most notably and our friend ezra levant pointed this out when ruth bader ginsburg

00:17:16.820 died justin trudeau was very quick on the uptake with a tweet about how much she'd be missed and then

00:17:22.420 when john turner died it was hours before justin trudeau said anything at all about it and i'm like

00:17:28.820 okay yeah i get that we are able to look globally and and have feelings about things that happen

00:17:34.020 outside of canada but there does seem to be this relentless fascination with american politics much

00:17:40.900 more than canadian politics and american news much more than canadian news even from canadian media

00:17:48.020 outlets and i realize that i'm not a protectionist as far as information is concerned so i'll talk about

00:17:54.100 american politics on the show from time to time such as right now but i can also point out the

00:17:59.940 double standards that seem to exist when we're talking about what's relevant to the media and

00:18:05.460 then again though with the segment we talked about prior about the globe and mail maybe uh may canadian

00:18:10.180 media is only interested in you know getting coverage from outside of canada now not just china

00:18:15.300 but also the us but that's a secondary point uh let's talk about the supreme court battle though

00:18:20.820 because now you have this complete double standard that has been set out by everyone in 2016 when

00:18:26.900 barack obama nominated merrick garland for the supreme court the republicans were saying oh you know

00:18:32.340 hang on we shouldn't be doing this we shouldn't be nominating a supreme court justice in an election

00:18:37.460 year and now in 2020 the republicans are like all right we've got to nominate a supreme court justice

00:18:42.660 even though it's an election year and before you say that the republicans are big dirty hypocrites the

00:18:47.460 democrats are just as bad because in 2016 they were saying oh come on we've nominated people to

00:18:52.180 the supreme court in election years time and time again it's no big deal we got to confirm it and now

00:18:57.860 the democrats are saying this is an outrage how dare you so no political party no side no tribe has a

00:19:04.340 monopoly on being a hypocrite i i think that ultimately speaking the republicans are right to do it now

00:19:10.100 because constitutionally they have the right to do it and whether it's politically opportune or not

00:19:15.140 that's something that people can decide at the ballot box and the political concerns are separate

00:19:20.100 from the is it legal and is it proper concerns but there is something that i wanted to bring about

00:19:27.300 a discussion of in a canadian context that ties to ruth bader ginsburg and that's that canadians

00:19:33.620 need to learn from the frenzy that exists around the supreme court and actually embrace a bit of it

00:19:39.300 now i ended up writing a column about this subject in the national post in 2018 when anthony kennedy

00:19:45.860 had stepped down and i i said listen i mean right now the complete global media buzz around who's going

00:19:51.300 to fill the supreme court seat is absolutely insane but in canada when beverly mclaughlin who was the

00:19:58.420 former chief justice stepped down i think most people would have said who and mclaughlin by the way was

00:20:04.660 one of the more well-known supreme court justices now that she's gone how many of you without googling 1.00

00:20:09.860 it can say who the supreme court of canada chief justice is how many of you can name any other

00:20:16.100 justices on the supreme court i follow this stuff i love this stuff and i can only name a small handful

00:20:21.300 of them i think with earlier on i think i was able to rhyme off three right away i was able to come up

00:20:26.580 with one more and then i just completely hit a wall on it and once i googled it and i'd be like oh yeah that

00:20:32.020 name rings a bell that name rings a bell there was one name that i'm convinced i've never heard

00:20:36.260 before in my life but in canada we have no investment as a country in the supreme court we pay

00:20:43.700 no attention to it and we don't politicize the vacancies and some people may say that's a good

00:20:49.460 point that's a feature of the canadian system but i'm gonna say it's actually a drawback because

00:20:55.460 so much governance now happens from the court and not from the legislatures on issues like

00:21:01.460 assisted dying abortion religious freedom on whether you can take beer from one province to

00:21:07.540 another big and small issues in canada right now are legislated from the bench that's where the

00:21:14.020 decisions are being made so it doesn't matter if there's a conservative government in power

00:21:19.620 if anything substantially conservative is going to get struck down by a bunch of activist supreme court

00:21:26.660 justices and this is something that we saw most notably after 10 years of stephen harper being in

00:21:33.620 power we had 10 years of a conservative government at 1.6 of 9 supreme court justices were appointed by

00:21:40.340 conservatives and even then they were still ruling against religious freedom look at trinity western

00:21:47.220 the majority of the justices on the bench when the trinity western case was decided were conservative

00:21:52.660 appointments and still religious freedom lost trinity western was found to not be allowed to have a law

00:22:00.980 school because they said that the constitutional right was trumped by the desire for inclusion and

00:22:07.780 equality and equity on the part of the law society of ontario so that's the sort of thing that matters a

00:22:13.780 lot more than this bill or that bill this tax credit or that tax credit and i'm not saying elections don't

00:22:19.780 matter but i'm saying that conservatives put a heck of a lot more emphasis on winning elections than they

00:22:25.940 do on winning the longer term cultural battles and those battles are on the court margaret thatcher

00:22:32.740 famously said first you win the argument then you win the vote we're i mean right right now people on

00:22:37.380 the right aren't winning either of them but when they are they're not focused on the argument i mean

00:22:42.980 let's face it we need to have a supreme court that people understand and the point that i made in the

00:22:49.220 column is a partially tongue-in-cheek one but i think still valid how do you have a strict

00:22:54.100 constitutionalist in a country that doesn't have all that strict a constitution it's difficult but

00:22:59.780 at the same time it's still important and if we want judges that are going to stick to issues of freedom

00:23:06.260 free speech religious freedom in particular freedom of assembly all of these charter rights we need to

00:23:13.300 start having a lot more of an emphasis in who gets on the bench and that means we need to have a lot

00:23:20.260 more emphasis on the political machinations of this and that's something that is not going to come about

00:23:28.740 unless there's a profound culture shift in canada wherein people start paying attention to this issue

00:23:34.100 more and whatever you may think of how hyper polar hyper polarized or hyper partisan the u.s judicial

00:23:40.820 selection process is that comes about at least from people caring in canada they don't care in canada

00:23:47.780 no one is paying attention to this so the reality is you could have a monumental shift a seismic shift

00:23:55.140 against what you believe in and no one would be any the wiser because the supreme court operates

00:24:00.500 in those funny red suits in a room far away that isn't really all that relevant to what people like

00:24:07.220 us are talking about and caring about and this is coming when this week as a matter of fact

00:24:12.740 the supreme court of canada is set to hear the carbon tax appeals from ontario saskatchewan

00:24:19.380 and i believe alberta as well so we're going to again have another decision coming down from the bench

00:24:24.340 where a supreme court decision is going to ultimately be to the deciding factor more than what individual

00:24:31.220 provincial legislatures are determining and i'm of the mind that i go into these things with a very

00:24:37.940 pessimistic view and it's easy i'm never disappointed which is why when the true north

00:24:42.420 case against the federal government during the last election ended up with a win in our favor i was

00:24:47.460 actually quite surprised because i assumed that oh it doesn't matter how good your case is

00:24:51.300 you know we're never gonna we're never gonna win these things and i was pleased we did

00:24:55.940 and we're going to continue to fight our case we are continuing to fight our case

00:24:59.780 but the point behind that is that we need to have a solid grounding in our courts not just the supreme

00:25:06.420 court but most notably the supreme court if we want the issues that we care about to end up in our favor

00:25:12.660 long term and i think it was a profound failing of stephen harper's government that there wasn't more

00:25:17.940 of an emphasis on the institutions like the court and other bodies and commissions for down the road and

00:25:23.780 the senate as well and i think that that's something that if erin o'toole is successful

00:25:27.700 and becomes the next prime minister he needs to take into consideration as well yes it may not get

00:25:32.980 you any votes in the here and now but if you want to advance and champion conservatism in the long run

00:25:39.620 you have to do so by thinking of these longer term institutions like the courts and start thinking

00:25:44.820 of the legacy of these issues which may not be your personal legacy but if you care about advancing

00:25:50.660 small c conservative values this is where it has to be done and again i mean the stakes are immensely

00:25:57.460 high because right now you've got a liberal government that is going to buy its way into

00:26:01.620 re-election or that's certainly going to be the effort i mentioned earlier we're going to have a throne

00:26:05.940 speech this week in which we're going to see billions and billions and billions of dollars that

00:26:10.420 are spent without any regard for debt or deficit and a lot of people are going to go along with that

00:26:16.740 a lot of people are going to buy into that because they don't think government has a fiduciary or

00:26:22.100 ethical or moral responsibility to spend money well and any belief in that that did exist i think

00:26:29.140 has been obliterated to a lot of people in the midst of the pandemic because that's the narrative that

00:26:34.740 justin trudeau has been selling that well you know what it's times are bad so we've got to spend

00:26:40.420 and when times were good i've pointed this out in the past he said well we can spend now because we

00:26:44.580 can afford to spend so the liberals have already put their cards on the table it's always the time

00:26:49.700 to spend people need to say no people need to push back against that and that's what i hope comes in

00:26:57.140 the response to the throne speech on wednesday because again i've already just completely uh kissed

00:27:02.420 away the possibility that there's not going to be just a spend spend spend budget and throne speech

00:27:07.460 that's coming here we know it's going to be all of those things so let's not delude ourselves into

00:27:12.820 thinking otherwise now the interesting thing is just as an aside this is the first throne speech

00:27:18.260 that julie payette the governor general will have to deliver after all of these stories that have

00:27:23.300 come about about her not actually liking her job and not liking people and uh you know all of the

00:27:29.140 people that apparently have had to like memorize the planets in front of her to rhyme them off on

00:27:32.660 command so that may be actually the delay the throne speech as of when i'm recording this doesn't

00:27:38.340 actually have a fixed time yet so i'm wondering if someone's actually trying to find her to uh you

00:27:43.700 know actually ask her if she wants to do it or maybe they found her and she hasn't agreed yet or

00:27:49.300 my colleague candace malcolm pointed out you know perhaps it's different perhaps no one in the prime

00:27:53.780 minister's office like everyone's too afraid to ask her if she can do the throne speech on wednesday 1.00

00:27:58.980 so she's just like you know uh hanging out in a cottage in quebec somewhere not even knowing that

00:28:03.540 she's supposed to be showing up for work to do like the one thing each year that we kind of expect 0.98

00:28:08.340 the governor general to do but maybe so maybe she'll be there maybe we won't that's like the

00:28:12.660 real that's the real challenge for the odds makers does the governor general show up for the throne

00:28:17.300 speech on wednesday september 23rd and just before we wrap things up here this is a story that really

00:28:24.900 made me shake my head and i was quite ashamed that there wasn't a great deal of mainstream media

00:28:30.180 attention to it at all a british columbia man with a violent history released from custody two days

00:28:36.500 before allegedly assaulting children the story is about brian james lamb who's now facing two counts

00:28:44.100 of assault plus charges of mischief and assault with a weapon a bc mother is livid and outraged according to 1.00

00:28:52.100 this cbc story that this man who had a history of violence was released from custody just two days

00:28:58.420 before assaulting her son and another boy allegedly at a park in okanagan bc and this is something

00:29:06.820 that happens time and time again when people who are known to be risks of violence people who are

00:29:13.380 known to be risks to communities are released and oftentimes the police will send out a media release

00:29:19.860 to say hey you know so-and-so has been released to the community and yeah we think they're violent

00:29:23.780 and every time i would get one of them i would always say okay well why are we releasing them

00:29:27.940 and by the way i'm not one of these people that says lock everyone away for life and throw away

00:29:32.420 the key i've actually had a profound evolution on justice issues in the last several years the more

00:29:38.340 i look into them but the one constant that should be there no matter how liberal you are on justice

00:29:44.420 is that anyone who poses a threat to the community should not be released into the community and this

00:29:52.420 is a pretty fundamental hallmark of the justice system at the very least maybe you don't believe

00:29:58.740 that prison's restorative maybe you don't believe that prison is something that can actually change

00:30:03.940 people and make them better maybe you don't believe that it's a deterrent but we can believe that

00:30:08.260 having someone pulled out of the general population if they are a threat to the general population is a

00:30:13.700 pretty good use of the prison system but no here we have someone who is released and cannot keep it

00:30:22.740 together for two days before he assaults children allegedly and the rcmp described him this is key

00:30:29.860 as a repeat offender and said in the week before the park incident he had struck someone else with a

00:30:35.060 baseball bat five days later he caused a disturbance on the street where he held up traffic threw items

00:30:40.660 screamed and tried to pick fights then he spat on an rcmp officer and resisted arrest so perhaps these

00:30:48.820 are not the behaviors of someone that we should be releasing out onto the street in the first place

00:30:55.300 and stories like these serve to undermine the justice system because they prove that it's completely not

00:31:01.540 about justice and it's sickening think of all the things that could have happened to children in this

00:31:07.700 case i mean thank goodness we're not talking about someone who had a tendency or a desire

00:31:11.620 to sexually assault children and again i don't want to minimize what happened here in the sense that

00:31:16.500 it was just physical assault i don't want to say that but i i am saying that it could have been a lot

00:31:21.380 worse and we can be grateful that it wasn't but at the end of this i'm looking and like how can there be

00:31:26.500 any faith any confidence in the system when people that are known to be risks are released out and

00:31:32.260 we're just supposed to say oh but you know what they serve their time well maybe the time itself

00:31:37.380 is the problem that needs to be fixed we've got to wrap things up when we come back on the next show

00:31:42.180 we'll talk about the throne speech and all of the other things that have happened between now and then

00:31:46.260 my thanks to all of you for tuning into the show we'll talk to you soon this is the andrew lawton

00:31:50.420 show on true north thank you god bless and good day canada if you enjoy the show and want to hear more

00:31:55.860 of it we need your support head on over to andrew lawton show.com and click donate to support the

00:32:02.500 work that we're doing and stand up for independent media thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:32:07.380 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - September 21, 2020

China’s Influence Game

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