Juno News - Chrystia Freeland silent on journalist's arrest despite past support for press freedom

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

00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here midway through the

00:01:30.980 week on this wednesday january 10th 2024 had phenomenal feedback to my interview yesterday

00:01:38.040 well both interviews actually both with david the menzoid menzies of rebel news but also my

00:01:43.780 interview with Drew McGilvery and Tom Marazzo on the rather dismal state of affairs in the

00:01:50.780 Canadian Armed Forces. You may have seen at True North yesterday, my colleague Cosman Georgia had

00:01:56.300 a rather chilling report about this war on whiteness and patriarchy in the Canadian Armed

00:02:03.480 Forces official journal. The, what is it? The Canadian, I forget the name of it now. It's like

00:02:07.740 the Canadian Military Journal or Canadian Armed Forces Journal or one of those just benign

00:02:12.580 academic names uh sean said that's it but i mentioned like four so i don't know which one

00:02:16.820 the canadian military journal there we go so that was i think a really important interview and i heard

00:02:22.180 from a number of veterans including by the way my father who i mentioned yesterday on the show

00:02:26.580 is a veteran and i heard from a number saying that they would not enlist today if they were to you

00:02:33.780 know be their young selves when they enlisted the first time around they would not enlist today

00:02:37.380 seeing the military how it is and that is uh tremendously shameful and i mean it's easy to

00:02:41.620 sort of crack our jokes and say, oh, well, what's the Canadian military doing anyway? But the Canadian

00:02:46.740 military has a role to play. Canada has a role to play. And I think if we move beyond the Trudeau

00:02:51.900 era, as many of you hope we do sooner rather than later, we may find there is a role for Canada to

00:02:57.740 play that is even greater than. And it's really disgraceful that what the military has done in

00:03:03.560 the last several years has started to make the very best people want to self-select out of that

00:03:10.200 process. So we lower the bar so much that we think it's going to make all of the recruitment

00:03:15.660 problems go away. And all it does is mean you balloon it with basically people that don't

00:03:19.900 belong there. And the ones that you really want there, the ones that are really going to make the

00:03:24.240 military great are saying, I don't want anything to do with this. They're kind of doing the old

00:03:29.240 Groucho Marx thing to adapt that line. I think it's actually him. It might be apocryphal, but

00:03:33.860 the line as it's often attributed to him is that, you know, I don't want to be a member of a club

00:03:39.960 that would accept me as a member.

00:03:41.320 Now, that's pretty much my approach to life.

00:03:43.380 Speaking of by, well, speaking of nothing,

00:03:45.680 it's nothing to do with Groucho Marx.

00:03:46.940 It has to do with me.

00:03:48.640 I was nervous that if I were to say for sure

00:03:50.980 it was a Groucho Marx quote,

00:03:52.140 someone would email me and say,

00:03:53.800 well, actually it's not.

00:03:55.220 Because someone did email me

00:03:56.780 and fact-checked me the other day.

00:03:58.780 And I meant to bring it up yesterday

00:04:00.040 when I was talking on,

00:04:01.800 I think it was Monday's show about going to Davos.

00:04:04.160 I talked about last year and I said that

00:04:06.040 there was the time in which I was

00:04:08.040 just hanging out in the Davos Congress Center and there was the Serbian president who I spoke to

00:04:13.740 and then I went and spoke to the president of Kosovo and I made a joke about how they were

00:04:17.760 standing at opposite ends of the room because Balkan humor is absolutely my bread and butter 0.99

00:04:23.460 here. And of course I got the email pointing out that the president of Kosovo was not in fact in

00:04:30.700 Davos in 2023, to which I said, mea culpa. I meant to say the prime minister of Kosovo. It was not

00:04:38.820 the president of Kosovo. It was the prime minister of Kosovo and the president of Serbia. But I am

00:04:43.280 unflinching on the king of the Belgians because he was at the urinal next to me in the bathroom.

00:04:47.980 Not the king of Belgium. They don't call him that. They call him the king of the Belgians for

00:04:51.780 reasons unclear. Nevertheless, we got that out of the way. We'll put the correction notice

00:04:56.580 down at the bottom, way, way, way, way, way down that I meant to say the prime minister of Kosovo

00:05:01.780 instead of the president of Kosovo. And to be honest, I should have known better. I've been

00:05:05.940 to Kosovo. It's a lovely little country, except for the one thing that greets you when you go

00:05:10.860 into the capital of Pristina, which is this giant statue of Bill Clinton. And there is not a statue

00:05:17.420 of Monica Lewinsky in front of it, which would have been my, maybe I can get a Kosovo arts grant

00:05:21.980 to put a Monica Lewinsky statue there. 1.00

00:05:23.620 But anyway, Kosovo, Kosovo as a side,

00:05:27.060 we are going to talk just for a few moments.

00:05:29.500 I want to update you on the lead story we had yesterday,

00:05:32.500 which was the arrest and subsequent release of David Menzies,

00:05:37.360 who's a reporter with Rebel News,

00:05:39.600 arrested, well, questioning Chrystia Freeland.

00:05:43.020 Take a look.

00:05:45.540 Chrystia Freeland, how come the IRDC is not a terrorist group?

00:05:49.300 why is your government supporting islamo naturally 1.00

00:05:53.220 what are you doing

00:05:56.740 you're under arrest for assault

00:05:58.720 you're under arrest for assault

00:06:01.760 you're under arrest for assault

00:06:04.320 police you're under arrest

00:06:07.820 you bumped into me

00:06:09.720 you pushed into me

00:06:10.860 I was just scrubbing

00:06:12.120 I got my credentials here and you just bumped into me

00:06:14.880 so excuse me

00:06:16.200 what is your name in your bag

00:06:18.580 Now, had he arrested David for a fashion crime for wearing that hat, maybe it would be a bit

00:06:45.240 more justifiable. But no, he was arrested for assaulting a police officer, which, as we did

00:06:51.680 the slow-mo version of the video yesterday, simply did not happen. It's the officer himself who you

00:06:57.820 see outstretch an arm to try to block David's path. This is perhaps why police later decided to

00:07:04.040 drop. They've already managed to do what they wanted to do there, which was put a barrier

00:07:13.400 between a journalist asking questions and Chrystia Freeland. 0.99

00:07:17.180 It was never about a good faith belief on that officer's part

00:07:20.660 that David had committed an assault.

00:07:22.580 It was that we needed to find a pretext

00:07:24.860 to get him away from Chrystia Freeland,

00:07:27.480 even though there was no risk there.

00:07:29.060 This was the RCMP making up a charge, basically,

00:07:32.640 to run interference for a cabinet minister.

00:07:35.640 But it's peculiar that that cabinet minister

00:07:38.580 has had nothing to say about this.

00:07:40.500 This would be a great opportunity

00:07:41.740 for a magnanimous minister to speak up and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not how journalists

00:07:47.440 should be treated. Oh, wait, hang on. I'm told she actually did put out a statement about

00:07:53.900 journalists being essential to liberal democracy. Oh, okay. I stand corrected. Let's watch that.

00:08:01.420 And there is no part of our liberal democratic garden, which is more threatened by the jungle's

00:08:08.780 resurgence than the free press. The danger is often specific and physical.

00:08:15.620 Many of you have probably already, in fact, realized that this – have seen the number

00:08:29.820 of journalists that have lost their lives over the last few years. So let's just remember

00:08:35.460 them for a minute and let us also salute their courage because the troubling reality, as

00:08:43.320 was explained in detail during meetings today and yesterday, and that the journalists and

00:08:50.920 workers in the media are more and more targeted and more and more abused and attacked. And

00:08:58.120 This must stop. We have to work together in order to ensure that journalists can carry out their

00:09:06.860 work in all safety and without any kind of worry for reprisals. Wow, that was a bold statement. Oh,

00:09:16.920 wait. No, hang on. It looks like that was from 2019. Okay, she had nothing to say in the last

00:09:26.660 48 hours or so. My, my, my, I wonder why that is. Could it be that her bold, big proclamation for

00:09:33.760 press freedom was merely lip service? Well, that clip that I just shared was from the Global

00:09:39.380 Conference for Media Freedom, which took place in London in the United Kingdom in 2019. I had the

00:09:45.060 great privilege of going there. I was accredited by the UK government to be a journalist at the

00:09:50.600 Global Conference for Media Freedom. But you may find it to be a little bit weird as to the why

00:09:58.200 she was there. This was this big thing that she wanted to do, this big giant thing that she wanted

00:10:03.960 to do with the UK. And what we found, which was quite fascinating here, is that it was Chrystia

00:10:11.040 Freeland who blocked Sheila Gunn-Reed from Rebel News and me from attending a press conference she 0.98

00:10:17.660 was holding at the Global Conference for Media Freedom. And it was only a rare bit of unity from

00:10:23.680 our legacy media colleagues who said, we're not covering your press conference unless you let

00:10:28.220 them all in. We have not seen that unanimity or any support, in fact, for David Menzies. So in

00:10:34.900 fact, the only people that are offering any are qualifying it by saying, well, I don't like rebel,

00:10:40.940 but maybe the police officer went a little bit too far with this. So Christian Freeland, perhaps

00:10:47.020 not actually a supporter of press freedom. The reason I wanted to revisit this, Ezra Levan has

00:10:53.060 announced that they are suing not just Freeland, but also the RCMP and York Regional Police for

00:10:59.620 this. I know they're still working out the details on exactly why, but Ezra joins me now. Ezra, I mean,

00:11:05.780 this is something that you've basically had to just contend with, with David Menzies. And I know

00:11:10.460 that there are a lot of people, when the Conservatives have spoken up in support of David,

00:11:15.080 as they did yesterday, that have said, oh, well, hang on, they were the ones who not that long ago

00:11:19.620 were kicking them out and calling the police. But I don't think that's, you know, an accusation of

00:11:24.380 hypocrisy. I think if anything, it's to say that they realize that that is not what politicians

00:11:29.420 should be doing. And I was critical when that happened, as I know you were. So that being said,

00:11:35.100 the media is not offering any support right now. Yeah. And I'm not surprised by that. I mean,

00:11:40.520 And I remember when I was growing up, I would study legal cases where the media, all the different rivals, all the different competitors, would each chip in a couple of thousand dollars to hire a lawyer together to fight every free speech freedom of the press case in Canada.

00:11:59.560 So CTV, Global, CBC, Toronto Star, Global Mail, they would each chip in a few grand and they would hire an excellent lawyer who would go to court on any free speech matter.

00:12:09.900 and say, Your Honor, I'm here on behalf of basically every journalist in the country.

00:12:15.160 You see that with publication bans right now still to some extent.

00:12:18.180 That's right. So that's the one place you see it. But I have not seen it for general free speech

00:12:23.740 cases in 10, 20 years. So what happened to David Menzies yesterday, and we've all seen the video,

00:12:30.400 14 million people have seen the video in about 36 hours, by the way. We see that David had clean

00:12:36.800 hands. He didn't push anyone. He didn't threaten anyone. He didn't swear at anyone. He didn't

00:12:41.540 assault anyone. And we all saw the worst. That was astonishing that he was arrested. But we all saw

00:12:47.080 how the cop pushed him, sticking out his arm, getting in his way and say, you're under arrest.

00:12:54.180 He's a plainclothes cop who didn't identify himself, by the way. And so we all saw how the

00:13:00.140 police immediately lied about it and tried to gaslight David saying, oh, you were aggressive.

00:13:04.200 you were pushing people around, pack a lies. I get the feeling that these bodyguards for

00:13:10.180 Trudeau and Freeland do this all the time. This is just the first time it was caught on tape.

00:13:16.280 So normally, I mean, if this were a CBC reporter that Doug Ford did this to, or Danielle Smith did

00:13:23.800 this to, or back in the day, Stephen Harper did this to, you might well see that consortium

00:13:28.800 of media companies hiring a lawyer together and you would see a national condemnation of this

00:13:34.580 but no it's david menzies of rebel news and actually by the way he's the only person in

00:13:39.340 our company with a journalism degree um and i mean i so we're all citizen journalists here but he's

00:13:46.180 actually the most credentialed of us and he was doing real journalism and it's astonishing to me

00:13:52.720 to watch the CBC denigrate him.

00:13:55.680 They won't, the CBC won't even call him a journalist.

00:13:58.500 They won't even call him a reporter.

00:13:59.760 Their website calls him a media personality.

00:14:04.700 I'm not too sad about that

00:14:06.660 because the CBC won't call Hamas terrorists

00:14:09.540 and the CBC doesn't know the answer to what is a woman. 0.99

00:14:13.680 Well, and their people also lack personality, 1.00

00:14:15.300 so it might actually be a compliment.

00:14:17.280 Yeah, but anyway, my point is,

00:14:18.920 So yesterday, I checked the Twitter feeds of all the so-called free speech groups, Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, Amnesty International, Penn Canada, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Canadian, sorry, the Council for the Protection of Journalists, about six different groups, not one of them had anything to say.

00:14:42.740 And I think it's because Trudeau has successfully colonized the media.

00:14:48.280 And most of those groups I just referred to are too busy applying for grants from Trudeau and Freeland to upset them.

00:14:56.420 Anyways, we're going to take things into where that's a very long way of saying we can't rely on anyone to help us.

00:15:02.860 No one's coming to help us.

00:15:04.340 So we have to help ourselves.

00:15:06.360 So I have spoken to Sarah Miller, who I know has been a guest on your show before.

00:15:10.240 That's the excellent young lawyer who managed to get Pastor Arthur Pawlowski his successful appeal at the Court of Appeal in Alberta.

00:15:20.420 She has agreed to take on this case.

00:15:22.700 Now, we're still formalizing the lawsuit, but I would imagine it would encompass false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, negligent investigation, assault,

00:15:36.000 and charter violations violating David's freedom of the press.

00:15:41.540 And by the way, I'm not the only person who's worried about this.

00:15:44.720 I see the RCMP has claimed that they are reviewing the incident.

00:15:48.600 Now the CBC will, I can tell you in advance, they're going to whitewash it.

00:15:51.860 But I'm not going to let them go so easily.

00:15:55.260 They abused, lied, arrested, detained, assaulted David Menzies and said,

00:16:01.180 whoopsie, my bad, you can go now.

00:16:03.880 All right, we can go now, but they can't go now.

00:16:06.000 Now we're going to take this before court.

00:16:07.840 And one of the things I'm going to ask Sarah as we prepare the lawsuit is,

00:16:11.080 do we want a jury trial?

00:16:13.160 I don't know the answer to that right now, but I want the world.

00:16:16.200 Listen, 14 million people saw that video and were disgusted by it.

00:16:19.940 I want a judge to see that, maybe a jury to see that.

00:16:23.840 And I want David Menzies to get a win.

00:16:27.360 And I want to set a precedent.

00:16:29.040 I want to send a warning because this is not the first time Trudeau's thugs have beat up David.

00:16:33.440 and it's not the first time christia freelance thugs have assaulted our people too one of her 1.00

00:16:38.100 staffers assaulted our videographer lincoln jay so if we don't stand up to these bullies it's

00:16:43.460 going to keep happening and sometimes people say as are you too litigious my first answer to that

00:16:48.060 is they violated our rights it's my right to go to court second of all sometimes we win like when

00:16:54.700 we fought to get access to the election debates and i know you were part of that fight in 2019

00:16:58.460 and sometimes you just need a small precedent for a win when Stephen Gilboa blocked us on Twitter

00:17:04.020 oh that's a trivial matter well no not really because it's a government department blocking

00:17:08.380 us from getting government information we sued in federal court and we won these are all little

00:17:14.060 wins and I wish more people were doing it I give I tip my hat to the Justice Center for

00:17:18.040 Constitutional Freedoms and the Canadian Constitution Foundation but we need more

00:17:21.260 civil liberties litigation no absolutely and one of the big things that we see in this and I

00:17:26.780 mentioned our little mini solidarity that we saw at the Global Conference for Media Freedom a couple

00:17:32.320 of years ago. But, you know, that event was very interesting because you were there as well for a

00:17:37.240 part of it. But I don't know how far away was it, maybe 20 kilometers away from that conference.

00:17:42.840 Tommy Robinson was appearing in court at the Old Bailey. And I can't remember which appearance it

00:17:47.840 was at that point, but I believe it was a decision about whether he was going to jail or a decision

00:17:52.900 about whether he was at risk of going to jail,

00:17:55.640 whatever it was at the day.

00:17:56.700 And I recall talking to one of the journalism advocates

00:18:00.920 at this group.

00:18:01.720 I think she was with Reporters Without Borders.

00:18:04.320 And she said, oh, yes, press freedom,

00:18:06.360 journalists are being targeted.

00:18:07.320 And you mentioned Tommy Robinson.

00:18:08.560 And just instantly, the color drains from the face

00:18:10.440 of, well, he's not a journalist.

00:18:11.660 And they had the same approach to Julian Assange.

00:18:14.800 And look, I'm all for debating the tactics,

00:18:18.900 the ethics, the merits of a Tommy Robinson,

00:18:21.660 and a David Menzies, a you, a me, a Julian Assange, a Rosie Barton, a David Carr. Let's debate and

00:18:27.600 let's challenge and let's criticize and be skeptical. But where you draw that line on what

00:18:32.960 a journalist is, is crucially important because the government's trying to make it where audiences

00:18:38.580 aren't the ones that make that determination, where police do. And I want to just play a clip

00:18:43.180 if I may, Ezra, here, because at the Global Conference for Media Freedom ended up becoming

00:18:47.460 a big dud like christian freeland and jeremy hunt in the uk had such big hopes and then the next year

00:18:52.340 it ended up being like this virtual conference that botswana was hosting and then it just disappeared

00:18:57.460 but i asked at that next one francois philippe champagne who was the canadian delegate

00:19:03.380 what a journalist is and if it's government what what definition government uses and this is the

00:19:08.420 answer he gave okay well that's a very good question and thank you for it i don't think it

00:19:13.140 is for any government to define who is a journalist actually i would leave it to journalists to define

00:19:19.380 that themselves i think our role is to make sure that as we said today we have seen a number there's

00:19:25.700 a number of trend uh against media freedom around the world we heard from our colleagues in belarus

00:19:32.340 today who have been harassed who have been facing violence and i've been seeing more and more

00:19:37.780 restrictions on media freedom one other aspect which is of concern to me and i mentioned that

00:19:43.300 before it's the kind of emerging technologies which are spreading misinformation and disinformation

00:19:51.300 so i would think that we need more than ever journalists around the world to speak up to stand

00:19:59.060 up and to report information accurately so that citizens around the world can be properly informed

00:20:04.820 And that's the bedrock of our democracy.

00:20:07.660 And you notice the pivot to Belarus.

00:20:09.980 Christopher Freeland loves to do this.

00:20:11.360 You talk about it.

00:20:12.000 Well, let's talk about journalists in Congo.

00:20:14.020 Let's talk about journalists in Iran.

00:20:15.600 Let's talk about journalists in Belarus.

00:20:17.060 I say, let's talk about journalists in Richmond Hill.

00:20:20.540 So right there, you have Minister Champagne saying, no, no, no, it's not government that

00:20:24.720 decides, but his government is the one that has effectively a podcast registry that has

00:20:30.880 state subsidized media a government that has all of these designations of qualified canadian

00:20:36.080 journalism organizations where they decide you can be a journalist and you can't be and and now you

00:20:40.720 look at the liberal response to what happened to david and it's all well he's he's not a real 0.62

00:20:46.320 journalist as though that excuses the conduct first and foremost yeah well that's why i want

00:20:51.440 to get this in the court i i mean i i spoke to a very senior lawyer this morning um very senior

00:20:57.920 criminal lawyer, famous name, and he said that, he watched the tape very carefully. He said,

00:21:03.580 absolutely, they violated his rights. Absolutely, there's significant damages here.

00:21:09.500 So all these know-nothings at the CBC and elsewhere poo-pooing what happened to David,

00:21:15.060 I know a court will find it differently. And by the way, you got to keep hope alive because we

00:21:20.840 have had victories in the courts, which tells me there are still some people in Canada who believe

00:21:25.820 in freedom for reporters. By the way, you didn't include in your list of censorship there that the

00:21:31.160 CRTC is now requiring news companies like yours and mine to come up with codes of conduct that

00:21:39.520 the government will approve or not. Could you imagine the chutzpah in this? The government

00:21:43.680 will hold journalists to account rather than journalists being allowed to hold the government

00:21:47.380 to account. I saw a CBC panel yesterday that said that David Menzies was harassing Chrystia

00:21:53.880 Phelan by asking her questions by virtue of him being male. And there was a gender aspect. And so

00:22:00.680 the arrest may have been reasonable because he was a man and she was a woman. That's the new 1.00

00:22:06.040 ideological woke thinking at the CBC. They would never say that, by the way, if the woman in 0.94

00:22:12.020 question were Danielle Smith or another conservative like that. Andrew, it falls to

00:22:19.160 people like you and us and David Menzies to keep real journalism alive, that doesn't make excuses

00:22:25.780 and say, oh, that's harassing, and doesn't excuse police brutality. Because the regime media,

00:22:33.120 the media party, they no longer believe in speaking truth to power. They no longer believe

00:22:39.280 in scrumming powerful people, if it's people on the left who are being scrummed. So I'm looking

00:22:45.520 forward to going to court and as soon as our lawsuit is finalized we'll publish it and i'm

00:22:49.480 happy to share it with you and happy to talk to you about it or invite our lawyer sarah miller

00:22:53.800 to go on your show to answer technical questions um it's an expensive thing to sue because we get

00:23:00.260 no government money we're like you in that regard so we do crowdfund it and sometimes people say oh

00:23:04.640 ezra you're always crowdfunding yeah because i feel like i'm fighting the whole world at the

00:23:08.560 same time we have seven different lawsuits against justin trudeau right now and this will be number

00:23:13.660 eight if people want to help out they can go to standwithdavid.com i don't know how much it's

00:23:18.460 going to cost to sue the government i don't think there's any chance it'll be less than 100 grand

00:23:23.020 and i can tell you right now the government is going to have five or ten lawyers on the other

00:23:26.380 side they always do i can tell you right now they're going to spend a million dollars of public 0.89

00:23:30.220 money fighting against us but i i'm pretty sure we're going to win and damn it we have to try

00:23:35.820 all right ezra levant thank you very much for coming on thanks my friend bye-bye all right

00:23:40.140 Right. Thank you. And I just want to show, I mean, there's the legal aspect of this, which I think

00:23:44.280 is incredibly important, but I also want to focus on the political response because the conservatives

00:23:51.200 saw an opportunity here. And again, the conservatives have not always been great on this

00:23:54.800 issue. They've had a very, I mean, in the past they've banned rebel from their events. It seems

00:23:59.600 like that embargo or that ban has ended and the conservatives are fine. I saw a screenshot. I

00:24:05.560 haven't verified it, but that the Conservatives might even be advertising on Rebel News. I don't

00:24:10.800 know if that's the case, and it doesn't matter. I mean, a party should be targeting where it thinks

00:24:16.080 voters are. I mean, we are at True North, we don't take ads. So for us, it's not really an issue. But

00:24:21.760 I know the Conservatives have advertised with Key and Bexy's countersignal. I believe the Western

00:24:26.280 Standard as well, if I recall. But ultimately, what we're seeing here is a real change in that

00:24:33.240 party. So when in the past, they had an incident with Melissa Lansman, who's a conservative member

00:24:39.340 of parliament who's been on this show. I don't think she is a particular fan of David Menzies.

00:24:44.200 And that case, though, there was one big difference because while I was critical and

00:24:48.900 condemned that, I don't regret doing so, I've had a number of people say, oh, well, why didn't you

00:24:52.940 criticize the conservatives? Well, I did. There is a difference, though, in one way, which is that

00:24:58.300 political parties do not have a legal obligation to accommodate journalists. I think they have a

00:25:04.920 moral duty and a political duty, but legally a political party is a private entity. When it has

00:25:09.920 an event, they have the legal right to have police remove people from that event in the same way that

00:25:16.220 if I hold an event and you're there and I don't want you there, I can have police review because

00:25:19.940 at that point you're trespassing on private property. Now that's what's happened to me.

00:25:25.280 The liberals have done that. It's what's happened to me. It's what happened to Menzies with 1.00

00:25:30.000 conservative events. It's what's happened to Karima Saad, who's an independent journalist

00:25:34.360 and lawyer as well. And in that case, there isn't a legal ground on which you can go after these

00:25:41.060 parties. You have to just criticize them and condemn them and shame them, which I think you

00:25:45.740 should. I mean, the liberals had police in Thunder Bay remove me from an event during the 2019

00:25:50.480 election. They eventually apologized, but didn't really release their ban on me covering their

00:25:56.420 events as a journalist. So in this case, we're talking about a police officer who either

00:26:02.700 unilaterally or with direction from the cabinet on a public space, this was not a trespassing issue,

00:26:09.340 decided to arrest this journalist, accuse him of assaulting a police officer. Then as David said

00:26:15.160 yesterday, just like drop him off on the outskirts of town with, I don't know, they gave him like a

00:26:19.800 bag on a stick or something and just like the hobo had to march around. But what we see happening

00:26:25.980 here is the normalization of this decision by the liberals. And when the liberals banned me from

00:26:34.260 covering their caucus retreat, which was in my own city, there was nary a peep from a lot of legacy

00:26:39.520 media outlets, which I think was absolutely disgraceful. Not because my fragile little

00:26:45.180 legal wanted the support, but because we need to take the principled stand on these issues and you

00:26:51.560 need to apply it to everyone. So that is, I think my little Ted talk on this, although I will show

00:26:56.520 you a video of the liberals just did not choose their timing all that well. So they're being

00:27:02.520 dragged even by people that are generally fans of them for having this reporter arrested or the

00:27:07.540 perception that they had this reporter arrested. This was the tweet they issued and the video they

00:27:12.060 put out yesterday.

00:27:42.060 how one-sided it is, how biased it is.

00:27:44.480 Well, first of all, your question was typical of CBC, biased again.

00:27:50.100 So they're doing the, oh, he's mean to the media on the same day,

00:27:56.200 or I guess the day after they literally had a reporter arrested

00:28:00.660 for questioning their deputy leader.

00:28:03.500 All I'm thinking is like, dudes, just sit this one.

00:28:05.780 Like, you're losing this one.

00:28:07.900 Absolutely just sit this one out because this is not reflecting well for you.

00:28:11.680 And of course, I should actually check the numbers.

00:28:13.880 This might be a good nominee for Ratio of the Week for my colleague, Harrison Faulkner.

00:28:19.240 Let's just, while we're on this topic, to wind it down, let's show one more clip of

00:28:23.040 Chrystia Freeland pontificating about the virtue of media freedom.

00:28:28.800 Journalists are not the enemies of the people.

00:28:32.140 Journalists serve the people.

00:28:34.780 Speaking from my own experience in government, I cannot say that every single question that

00:28:40.940 I am asked by a journalist is welcome or easy to answer. But I am absolutely convinced that the

00:28:51.480 fact that journalists are present to bear witness, the fact that journalists are present to hold

00:28:59.460 governments to account, makes governments better. So freedom of the press is an essential human

00:29:09.000 right and it is an essential element in making democracy strong essential the questions are

00:29:18.420 sometimes unpleasant you don't always like them uh then okay arrest that man all right well glad

00:29:24.320 we're consistent at least uh we are going to move on from this for now but i suspect this story will

00:29:29.220 have a few more developments in the days and weeks to come uh we've spent a fair bit of time on the

00:29:35.780 show in recent weeks talking about immigration. Now, this was something that came up when I sat

00:29:39.860 down with Conservative leader Pierre Polyev for a year-end interview, which was, well, I guess,

00:29:45.960 as the name would suggest, near the end of the year last year. And I was asking about immigration,

00:29:50.320 and I said, listen, we have a housing crisis. You've talked about this. Here are the immigration 1.00

00:29:54.180 numbers. Are those inflaming the housing crisis? And he basically said, well, yeah, you have to do

00:29:59.780 the numbers. There are only so many houses being built. There are this many people coming into the

00:30:03.580 country, but he would not commit to what his number would be. Although he said that when he

00:30:09.480 forms government, if he forms government, his immigration target, which for the liberals is

00:30:14.380 500,000 a year, but is truthfully higher than that when you take into account foreign students,

00:30:19.560 temporary foreign workers, and so on, that the number would be tied to economic metrics. It

00:30:25.020 would be tied to housing, it would be tied to labor force availability, and so on. Now, I think

00:30:30.640 there is a bit of an issue when we only look at immigration on the narrow economic grounds. While

00:30:36.660 these are important, it is not the totality of the immigration issue. There are issues to do with

00:30:41.880 culture and integration. These were very controversially discussed in the 2015 election,

00:30:47.680 but as a result, it's become this big no-go topic that no one is allowed to bring up.

00:30:53.920 Well, if there are issues here, and we're going to take an honest high-level view of immigration,

00:30:58.600 can we have a grown-up conversation? Aaron Woodrick, who is the Domestic Policy Program

00:31:04.900 Director for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, had a fantastic piece over at The Hub about this. Let's

00:31:10.620 see if we can kick off this grown-up conversation. Aaron, always good to talk to you. Thanks for

00:31:15.560 coming on today. Always a pleasure, Andrew. So let me just first ask you why this gets so

00:31:21.440 narrowly pigeonholed into being an economic issue when obviously immigration is going to be more

00:31:28.520 complex than that? I think it's because it's safe turf for people, right? If we're talking about

00:31:33.480 economics, if we're talking about the obvious thing, which is that we have a housing problem

00:31:37.640 and immigration as arithmetic, that I think is safe turf. I think it starts to get a little 0.99

00:31:43.420 more uncomfortable for people when they're starting to imply that they're uncomfortable

00:31:47.620 with large numbers of people who are not like them coming here. And look, I understand why 0.99

00:31:53.660 this is a minefield. Some people can interpret this as just being hostile to people who aren't

00:31:57.920 like you or racist. I mean, there are people who are like that, but a lot of it also is just human

00:32:02.400 nature, right? Like we are more comfortable around people like us who speak our language,

00:32:07.280 who practice our religion, who have the same cultural tastes as we do. That's just human

00:32:12.100 nature all around the world. And so I think it is fair to have a conversation, especially in a

00:32:16.880 country like Canada, which is, as I make the argument in the piece, largely been built by

00:32:21.100 immigration and fairly successfully at that. You know, what is the rate of immigration that we're

00:32:27.620 all comfortable with that's optimal for canada that gives canadians who are already here the

00:32:32.020 most benefits the newcomers most benefits and that you know ensures that we can all continue

00:32:35.940 to get along um you know this is a problem that a lot of countries are struggling with and canada

00:32:39.780 is no exception but we need to have this conversation out in the open because pretending

00:32:44.100 that it doesn't matter and pretending that um it is it's not creating any tension uh does not do us

00:32:49.060 any favors i i think there there have been waves of this discussion and i wouldn't say they've

00:32:53.460 always been constructive or productive i think post 9 11 certainly a lot of people were talking

00:32:57.780 about uh the integration aspect of immigration i think we're seeing another wave now and in canada

00:33:03.700 you you see this on a number of fronts i mean you have uh ethnic tensions on the calistan seek

00:33:09.780 separatism issue especially out in some parts of british columbia you've got uh now the wave of

00:33:14.420 anti-semitism and and again i'm not going to broadly uh in in broad strokes here malign any

00:33:20.260 individual group but you have a lot of people that are immigrants from arab or muslim countries that

00:33:24.820 have views on israel that don't align with i think where a lot of canadians are and we see this in

00:33:28.900 some of these protests you have uh then on the other side the gender uh the gender ideology

00:33:34.260 fights that were taking place in the fall where you had some of those same people muslims saying 0.66

00:33:38.340 well hang on my values don't align with these things so no one can say there isn't a conversation

00:33:44.260 there. But as we see, the longer you don't talk about it, the more hot it gets.

00:33:50.640 Yeah, you know, and that's a problem. You know, we have to recognize that, you know,

00:33:55.840 when we talk, for example, about integration, right? About the idea that when you come to a

00:33:59.680 country, you're kind of joining a national project, right? And nobody expects you to,

00:34:03.800 you know, you move to Canada and the next day, suddenly you're pouring maple syrup on your

00:34:08.200 cereal and you've got the toque on. I mean, but what they do expect is that over time,

00:34:13.020 You know, you kind of, if not assimilate, which is a dirty word in a lot of quarters, integrate, sort of at least merge your past with our future together.

00:34:21.440 I think most people think that's a reasonable compromise.

00:34:23.780 And there's all kinds of things that impact how that happens.

00:34:26.480 It's how many people from your home country are here when you get here.

00:34:30.140 Are you able to live in Canada, essentially amongst the community from your home country entirely?

00:34:34.760 What does that impact, does that have on your integration?

00:34:38.020 You know, government, whether the government is signaling to you that there's an expectation that you're supposed to start to adopt or integrate Canadian ways, you know, respect Canadian laws, Canadian values, or whether it's sort of, you know what, you come here and you can just do your own thing and you don't need to pay any attention to the national project.

00:34:53.600 So there's a bunch of different factors at play here. But I think most Canadians, you know, look, again, I think there are some who are just genuinely, if someone has a different skin color, they don't like them.

00:35:03.840 I don't think that's most Canadians, though. I think most Canadians, what's more important to them is that people come here and they want to be Canadian. They want to feel Canadian. They want to live together with other Canadians rather than side by side. And I think that is the sort of general consensus that's really there. We just have to figure out, you know, what's the right level of immigration that allows us to get there?

00:35:23.460 Yeah, and I would also say even if someone views immigration purely as an economic calculation, if there's enough space and there are enough jobs and enough resources, I don't really care about anything else.

00:35:33.320 Let's just accept that premise for a moment.

00:35:35.560 There is a threshold that will exist for Canadians as how many is too many. 0.99

00:35:40.520 And it's not to say that they're right or wrong, but it's that people are going to have their own threshold.

00:35:44.520 And once you push above that, whatever it is, you start to have Canadians turn on immigration and turn on immigrants themselves, which I don't think anyone wants.

00:35:54.820 And I mean, it's an unpleasant conversation because we can say, well, Canadians shouldn't have an issue with it if there's enough space and there are enough jobs.

00:36:01.800 But if they do, any government that overextends that is naturally going to, as you talk about in your piece, erode that consensus around it.

00:36:10.820 Yeah, and I think it's a sliding scale.

00:36:12.440 And I think what's important is that, you know, it's OK for some people to be uncomfortable with people that aren't like them.

00:36:18.920 That doesn't necessarily make them racist.

00:36:20.620 And I really, really like to reserve that term for people who sort of are very explicit in saying they think lesser of people who, you know, have a different skin color.

00:36:28.840 Being, you know, just being more comfortable with people who speak your language or practice your religion or things like that.

00:36:33.560 That's normal. I don't I don't begrudge people that.

00:36:36.860 And I think, you know, I think we need to allow for that roommate.

00:36:40.220 To me, the analogy to me, Andrew, is kind of like some people, they like to try different

00:36:44.660 kinds of food all the time.

00:36:45.820 That's just their personality.

00:36:47.040 They find it interesting.

00:36:48.100 They like the adventure.

00:36:49.620 Other people know what they like to eat, right?

00:36:51.460 And they want to stick with what they know.

00:36:52.860 And it's just that maybe it's a handful of things.

00:36:54.840 And there's nothing wrong with either of those.

00:36:56.240 Those are just different personality types.

00:36:57.960 And I think we need to be careful with Canadians when they express that preference that we're 0.99

00:37:02.120 not really make.

00:37:03.160 And I think that's the reason we don't have this conversation a lot of the time is people

00:37:06.100 are afraid that if they even say something remotely, like, you know what, I, you know,

00:37:10.240 in my own town, sometimes I feel like there's no one like me, even though I was, I was born in

00:37:15.120 Canada. You know, people are wary of being called racist for saying that. And I don't think that's

00:37:20.660 fair to treat people that way. And even on the economic side alone, you have, you know, basically

00:37:26.500 what's an inherent contradiction here. You have, you know, some jobs that just, you know, we don't

00:37:30.680 have enough people to fill in Canada. So we say, okay, well, we need to bring in all of these 0.97

00:37:34.560 immigrants to fill those jobs and then oh well we don't have enough houses to uh house the immigrants 1.00

00:37:38.580 uh so we need to build more houses oh we need to build more house okay let's bring in more

00:37:42.340 immigrants to build like and it's this cycle that no one has really found an answer to yet 1.00

00:37:47.420 yeah and you know this is a problem that exists in a lot of countries where you kind of have this

00:37:52.100 almost imported labor for underclass you know i've lived in different places uh you know places like

00:37:56.760 the middle east in dubai where you have basically a whole imported uh class of slave labor i call 0.97

00:38:03.320 nothing short of labor, indentured labor almost. And in a lot of other countries, it's the same

00:38:08.340 thing. Canada, we've had a bit of that, right? We're seeing a lot more of it now. I think that's

00:38:12.080 why it's attracting more attention. And a lot of cases, you know, employers will say, well, we

00:38:16.180 can't find Canadians to do the work. In some cases, they could by raising wages. That, of 0.98

00:38:22.800 course, would lead to higher prices. And I think Canadians might not love that part. But part of

00:38:27.700 it also is we don't talk about our entitlement system, right? Especially with seasonal workers 0.96

00:38:31.460 In Atlantic Canada, some employers, for example, have had a hard time trying to find people to work.

00:38:36.440 That's why they import foreign labor. 1.00

00:38:39.000 But that would, you know, if we reformed our entitlement system, remove that disincentive to work.

00:38:43.220 So part of this is systemic, too.

00:38:45.000 And I think a lot of governments are just taking a shortcut.

00:38:47.020 The easy thing to do is just say, oh, yeah, we'll just kind of let people in through this channel.

00:38:50.840 And that solves the problem.

00:38:51.900 It goes away.

00:38:52.400 But as we can see now, it creates a whole different set of problems when it comes to discussing immigration.

00:38:57.780 Just on another note here, one of these issues that it's kind of like supply management in that

00:39:02.520 you have like nine people in Canada that really care about it from a policy perspective, but those

00:39:07.120 nine people really care about it, which is telecom regulation. And I would say more people should

00:39:11.100 care about it because, you know, it affects everyone, you know, price of dairy, price of

00:39:14.740 your phone plan. I'm a Rogers customer. I am on a contract right now. So I think I'm a little bit

00:39:21.260 safe, but anyone who's not on a contract is going to find an increase, which I know will affect me

00:39:25.780 when it comes up for renewal um here we have an issue in which the conservatives previously

00:39:31.020 tried to do a little bit with it they tried to basically allow verizon and you'd think it was

00:39:36.120 though like we were being invaded by germany it was just like how dare we let a foreign telecom 0.99

00:39:42.100 company in the liberals say the right things they say well yeah you know competition we need but

00:39:46.960 they aren't doing anything as you pointed out to allow competition what's going on here yeah look

00:39:52.360 And it's not just telecoms or supply management, it's banks, it's airlines.

00:39:55.940 There's a raft of sectors in this country where the reason there's no,

00:39:59.600 was we don't allow it.

00:40:00.960 We have rules around foreign investment and foreign ownership.

00:40:03.580 And that is the reason for the lack of competition.

00:40:05.500 So I say to people, you have to pick a lane.

00:40:07.940 You can have on one side,

00:40:08.980 if you absolutely insist that all these companies be headquartered in Canada,

00:40:13.200 be owned by Canadians, by controlled by Canadians, 0.91

00:40:15.240 you're not going to have enough competition.

00:40:17.140 You're going to pay high prices for things like telecoms.

00:40:19.700 The other alternative is you let in foreign competitors. 0.71

00:40:22.360 you'll see more competition, you'll see price wars, you'll probably get better customer service

00:40:26.380 to boot. The trade-off will be some of our companies will not survive. Some of our corporate

00:40:30.380 giants are titans. They are coddled. They are protected. They don't want competition, Andrew.

00:40:35.480 They're afraid of it. And, you know, I made this remark elsewhere. When it comes to trade and

00:40:39.840 business, anytime there's talk of a new trade deal or loosening restrictions, you see Canadian

00:40:43.920 business divides into two camps. One camp is excited. They're ambitious. They say, you know

00:40:48.580 what i can go out there i can take over the world you know i can dominate and then you know the other

00:40:52.420 half which are terrified they do not want competition they're afraid of global competition

00:40:56.520 why i want to know why our governments always side with the terrified group and never double

00:41:01.840 down on the ambitious entrepreneurial group that see you know competition as an opportunity and a

00:41:06.640 challenge not as an existential threat yeah and i think the re i mean i remember i you you and i

00:41:13.120 first met i don't even know if you remember this but it was a fraser institute student seminar

00:41:17.300 however many years ago, back when they used to do those and they'd bring in a bunch of

00:41:21.800 rambunctious young students to talk about policy. I don't know if they still do them, but

00:41:25.460 they were great fun. And you know, at the time I was a bit of a rabble rouser. And I remember at

00:41:29.560 university, I sat in through this one session that you all had to do if you were part of a club on

00:41:35.700 campus. And the head of the club's program, as always, who's like a raging lefty, gave this big

00:41:41.160 long lecture about how we're not allowed to sell food as clubs because there are vendors on campus

00:41:45.560 that sell food and she used the line and everyone knows competition makes prices go up and i was

00:41:52.660 like i i i don't know if i could agree on that but but everyone like it's the opposite i mean

00:41:59.020 even like raging marxists i think concede that competition will except for this one will will

00:42:03.660 lower prices they may say it's not good to do so but no one can argue that competition wouldn't be

00:42:08.840 better for consumers here no but the problem the problem that the government has from a stakeholder

00:42:13.520 standpoint is it's not good for the incumbents, right? It's not good for Rogers and Bell.

00:42:17.740 And Rogers and Ellis, I mean, we see this over and over in other sectors. What they do is they

00:42:22.660 start trying to spook the public with job losses, right? They say, oh, well, if we get a competitor

00:42:27.100 in here, we're going to have to lay off all these people. And then governments don't want the bad

00:42:30.360 headlines. So they back off. And of course, they never want to tell you the other half of that is

00:42:34.080 that, you know, someone else is going to be doing that job. I mean, when, you know, when Walmart

00:42:37.500 moved into Canada, that wasn't good for certain Canadian retailers that were the competitors. But

00:42:42.140 A lot of people work at Walmart in Canada now.

00:42:44.260 So they created jobs on the other side of the ledger.

00:42:46.160 So, you know, I think it's disingenuous.

00:42:48.200 It's self-serving.

00:42:49.980 Obviously, any business that's doing well wants to keep doing well.

00:42:52.880 And they're going to pull all the levers they can, including trying to press your governments into not allowing more competitors.

00:42:58.140 I think as consumers, as voters, we need to be very, very aware about that.

00:43:01.840 They're not looking out for our interest.

00:43:03.180 They're looking out for their own self-interest.

00:43:05.240 And really, if we're really interested in competition and lower prices, it shouldn't matter, you know, which company is delivering that.

00:43:11.540 What should matter is that consumers are getting lower prices and better service.

00:43:15.540 Yeah, and telecom is probably a great example because everyone's had a terrible customer service experience with every one of the companies.

00:43:22.100 And everyone's had at a certain point a call drop on every one of them.

00:43:25.220 But they all claim to have like the fastest network, the largest network.

00:43:28.460 So they're all the same.

00:43:29.340 It's purely a matter of which one has your business at a particular point in time.

00:43:33.460 And I think, you know, anything that would change that, I would be all for.

00:43:36.460 So an opportunity for the conservatives, possibly.

00:43:39.360 Aaron Woodrick, thank you so much as always, sir.

00:43:42.140 Thanks a lot, Andrew.

00:43:43.180 All right.

00:43:43.740 And you can read his phenomenal piece

00:43:45.160 on immigration over at The Hub.

00:43:47.080 I would encourage you to do so.

00:43:48.740 And hopefully we started off

00:43:50.200 that grown-up conversation on immigration

00:43:52.160 right here on the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:43:54.320 So I don't want to be presumptuous.

00:43:55.800 He may have had like a conversation before this one,

00:43:57.820 but I'm claiming it because I didn't know about it.

00:44:00.080 All right, that does it for us for today.

00:44:02.100 We will be back tomorrow

00:44:03.000 with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:44:05.820 here on True North.

00:44:07.080 Same time, same place.

00:44:08.360 Thank you.

00:44:08.760 God bless and good day to you all.

00:44:11.540 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:13.880 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:44:41.540 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 10, 2024

Chrystia Freeland silent on journalist's arrest despite past support for press freedom

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