Juno News - Chrystia Freeland tight-lipped on what she did in Davos

00:00:00 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30 Thank you.

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

00:01:19 by true north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:28 midway through the week already that's the benefit of a shorter week on this Wednesday July 3rd we

00:01:34 are right in the middle of Canada Day and Independence Day so if you're someone who is

00:01:39 afflicted with dual loyalties you get two holidays out of the mix so hopefully you have a good

00:01:44 Independence Day tomorrow we will be here in full strength irreverence here on Canada's most

00:01:49 irreverent talk show we've got a busy show today going to be speaking later on with lawyer Josh

00:01:55 I just saw on the camera, there's like a fly that's just taunting me behind me.

00:02:00 He wants to be famous or she, I don't want to misgender the fly. 0.99

00:02:03 So if you hear swatting when we're throwing up a graphic, that's why,

00:02:06 because eventually he's gotten the better of me.

00:02:09 But that is where we're already starting off today.

00:02:13 But the one thing I will point out, we'll have Josh DeHaz on the show

00:02:16 and we'll be talking about the injunction that was granted to clear out

00:02:20 the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Toronto.

00:02:22 also later on why the federal government's electric vehicle mandate is on track to decimate

00:02:29 Canada's auto industry that's coming up in a little bit later on as well with Ross McKittrick

00:02:34 fantastic economist from the University of Guelph but I want to begin by talking about a story that

00:02:40 we've been covering pretty I don't want to say religiously but pretty consistently for the last

00:02:45 several years and that is Canada's curious relationship with the World Economic Forum

00:02:51 And let me just say, first and foremost, this is not about conspiracy theories.

00:02:56 This is not about some, you know, hidden cabal of people pulling the strings of the world leaders from their lair in the Swiss Alps.

00:03:04 This is about an organization that is very open and very honest about its mandate, about its agenda,

00:03:08 and people such as Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland that are very willing and eager and enthusiastic participants of that agenda.

00:03:15 as evidenced by the fact that Chrystia Freeland, who is Canada's Deputy Prime Minister, 0.89

00:03:20 still sits on the board of trustees for the World Economic Forum.

00:03:25 And I've said you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to just imagine the conflict of interest there.

00:03:30 We would not like the Deputy Prime Minister of our country to sit on some corporate board

00:03:35 or the board of some non-profit that wants to get things out of the government.

00:03:38 So why should we be happy with her sitting on the board of an organization that has a policy agenda 0.93

00:03:44 that it wants countries, including Canada, to implement.

00:03:47 It doesn't take a rocket science.

00:03:49 I mean, we're talking about Christopher Freeland,

00:03:50 but even so, it doesn't take a rocket science

00:03:52 to figure out where the issues are going to come here.

00:03:55 Well, then you have the lack of transparency.

00:03:57 While the World Economic Forum is very enthusiastic

00:04:00 about promoting its agenda,

00:04:01 they live stream most of their sessions,

00:04:03 there's another Davos that takes place

00:04:06 that you can only see when you're there,

00:04:07 and even then, not really.

00:04:09 And I've gleaned this from my coverage of Davos

00:04:12 for the last three years,

00:04:14 And you have all of these multilateral meetings that take place that aren't on any public agendas, meeting lists, participant lists, nothing really disclosed about it.

00:04:24 And you actually have no idea what world leaders are committing to behind closed doors when they sit down in meeting rooms with the CEOs of this bank, of this corporation, the leader of this government, of this NGO, in a way that they would never really be able to do back home in Canada without there being more scrutiny.

00:04:41 So this brings us to an order paper question, which is a mechanism that you can file in the House of Commons to get an answer from the government, basically. It was a question filed by Conservative MP Leslie Lewis to try to get a sense of, let's put the question up there. She wanted to know who Chrystia Freeland was meeting with. She wanted to know what she was doing and how much it cost Canadians. And you think, okay, this is a reasonable question.

00:05:05 Freeland was there with a delegation of Canadian government leaders. This is what she asked for

00:05:11 specifically. Lesley Lewis wants to know the members of the delegation, their name, title,

00:05:16 role, the details of all meetings, the dates of the meetings, the names and titles of attendees,

00:05:21 the purpose, the agenda items, a summary of what occurred. She wants the full minutes

00:05:26 of every meeting Chrystia Freeland took in Davos while she was supposedly representing Canadians.

00:05:32 and then you look at the response that she got from the finance department all generalities oh

00:05:39 she met with a number of people she met with members of the ukrainian delegation a variety

00:05:44 of business leaders she met with foreign government leaders she met with a few specifics

00:05:49 there that are named but that was only on the public panel so christia freeland as you saw

00:05:55 on that document there is not interested in disclosing the meetings that she took place

00:06:01 outside of the one that was live streamed.

00:06:04 It's all generalities.

00:06:05 Oh, she met with lots of people, business leaders, all of that.

00:06:08 And I'm left wondering,

00:06:09 what on earth were you doing for Canada and for Canadians?

00:06:12 Now, I did a little look today at the government's travel costs.

00:06:16 They publish these things on a website after a certain period of time.

00:06:20 And I saw that the government spent about $40,000

00:06:22 on sending its delegates to the World Economic Forum annual meeting this year.

00:06:28 Christopher Freeland was spending $12,170.

00:06:30 that included her business class airfare with Air Canada, Toronto to Zurich. She brought along a

00:06:36 couple of staffers. One of them charged $6,000. One of them charged $8,000. One of them charged

00:06:41 just a paltry $2,356. It's not clear how he came in so low. And I looked at it in a bit more detail

00:06:49 and he billed zero for accommodations, which either he was deciding to live out homeless

00:06:55 on the streets of Davos, or perhaps he hasn't filed those receipts yet. And then the really

00:06:59 interesting one to meet, Jody Thomas, who was the National Security and Intelligence Advisor

00:07:05 to the Prime Minister. Jody Thomas racked up $11,520 for this trip. Now, this trip was

00:07:14 January 12th to 15th. Jody Thomas retired from her job less than two weeks later. She retired on

00:07:23 January 28th. So what a nice little retirement trip. You get to go into Davos when you know

00:07:28 you're going to be clearing out your desk the second you get home. And we're still on the hook

00:07:32 for her to be there. For what reason? I have no idea. I know she did some round table with other 1.00

00:07:37 national security advisors, but again, not exactly clear what Canadians got out of it.

00:07:42 So asking what Canadians are getting out of this seems to be a reasonable question that the liberal

00:07:47 government simply does not want to answer. Now, I have attempted on a number of occasions to speak

00:07:53 to Chrystia Freeland about this. I actually tried to get some time with her this year in Davos. I

00:07:57 couldn't even find her. Perhaps she was still a little bit sore about me finding her last year 0.57

00:08:02 when I was there and attempting to ask again a very simple question. Take a look.

00:08:10 Hi Minister Andrew Lawton, True North. I was just wondering if it's a conflict of interest for you

00:08:14 to be a trustee while also a cabinet minister. Are you proud of the work and if so why is there

00:08:19 an issue answering a question about it? Enjoy your panel Minister. That was again a very short,

00:08:26 don't even know if you can call it an interview it was a little bit one-sided a couple of questions

00:08:30 zero intention on her part to respond to it the question was a very simple one how do you justify

00:08:37 being a trustee with this organization while also serving as a cabinet minister in canada and is this

00:08:42 not a conflict of interest and if she is so proud of this work and if it is so important then just 0.66

00:08:47 answer the darn question i mean christine lagarde i've played the clip a number of times so i won't

00:08:52 make you watch it again if you don't want to but uh christine lagarde who's the head of the european 0.97

00:08:56 central bank she gave me my favorite answer that i've ever heard from one of the davos elites this

00:09:00 year when i asked her i think it was about digital currency or something and she just said oh i'm not

00:09:05 doing interviews right now because i'm in a quiet period uh which is again as i joked i've tried

00:09:10 that with my wife it has not worked when i don't want to answer a question oh no no i'm in a quiet

00:09:14 period it's all good i'm taking no questions but the world economic forum loves pretending it's

00:09:19 being transparent they love pretending i was very fortunate i went for the first time in 2022

00:09:25 And I had pulled one Davos guy aside and asked him a couple of questions and he stopped and

00:09:30 answered them. And I didn't quite agree with what he said, but I was glad he took the time.

00:09:34 And that gentleman, whose name is Adrian Monk, actually made sure that I got accredited the

00:09:40 next year. So when I went in 2023, I was there not as a white badge Davos elite, but I was a lowly

00:09:46 orange badge journalist relegated to the press room. But even so, it was a place to get out of 0.71

00:09:50 cold i was able to get a bit more access not a huge amount more and he did this because for

00:09:56 whatever it's worth he believes in the organization and he believes that they have nothing to hide

00:10:01 and that there is more of a benefit in having people even their critics inside to see what's

00:10:05 going on i appreciated that i was clear to behave i didn't uh you know steal too much food from the

00:10:12 snack card i didn't uh you know knock over the hot chocolate card i didn't uh you know go in

00:10:17 and start body checking people out of the way. 0.97

00:10:19 I was a very, very polite journalist.

00:10:22 I didn't even yell at Klaus Schwab

00:10:24 when he tried to get away from me

00:10:26 to go into the other room.

00:10:27 I was very, very polite.

00:10:28 And despite that,

00:10:29 I was not allowed to cover it the next year.

00:10:32 That was this year.

00:10:33 I was relegated to the streets once again.

00:10:36 And as it happened,

00:10:37 you still get pretty decent access

00:10:39 as people are coming and going,

00:10:40 okay, we're doing the Christine Lagarde clip.

00:10:43 It's too much fun to not share.

00:10:44 This was Christine Lagarde and that was this year.

00:10:47 Good afternoon, ma'am. How can people have confidence in digital currencies and government not using it as a tool of control?

00:10:53 I'm not giving an interview. I'm not speaking because I'm in a quiet period.

00:10:59 I'm in a quiet period. I'm not speaking. And again, the theme of the conference there was rebuilding trust.

00:11:04 But there is not really an interest in these people in rebuilding trust because they believe that distrust in them is everyone else's fault.

00:11:12 and it's amazing the verbal semantics the gymnastics that you see from so many of these

00:11:19 people just to bring it back to a domestic context for a moment uh you had today or yesterday it was

00:11:24 on power and politics mark garretson who is uh the member i'm trying to think of how i would

00:11:29 describe him like like he's from kingston area which is imagine how far we've fallen that

00:11:35 kingston once gave once gave us john a mcdonald and now we get mark garretson but mark garretson

00:11:41 anyway, the man who is searching for a second IQ point to rub against the first one, was there to

00:11:47 do the Liberal government spin on CBC. And they were talking about a number of things, talking

00:11:52 about the Toronto St. Paul's by-election, they were talking about the carbon tax, and he had a

00:11:56 very strange way of describing why he thinks the carbon tax matters to Canadians. Do you need to

00:12:03 change cabinet? Do you need to change staff? Or is it just policy change? What is it? I think it's

00:12:08 more along the lines of our communication and policy. You know, you brought up the carbon tax

00:12:12 earlier in Ken McDonald's point on that. The carbon tax has been around since 2018. We've had a carbon

00:12:18 tax since 2018. The scheduled increases since 2018. It didn't really become an issue until Pierre

00:12:22 Polyev made it an issue eight or nine months ago. And that has to do with a communication issue and

00:12:28 less to do with a policy issue. So I think there's a lot of stuff built into that and a lot of stuff

00:12:33 us to self-reflect on that yes we can do in a in a joint meeting together or we can do

00:12:38 individually i know the prime minister has been doing a lot of outreach in the last few days

00:12:42 reaching out to colleagues throughout the country to have discussions with them about that exactly

00:12:47 hmm canadians are only caring about the carbon tax now because pierre polyev is making them

00:12:55 care about it i believe that's what the kids these days call a self-own when he's really

00:13:00 admitting that Pierre Polyev is the one that is responsible for the narrative of Canadian

00:13:05 politics right now. The Canadians are more interested in what Pierre Polyev has to say

00:13:10 about things than they are in what Mark Gerritsen and Justin Trudeau and Christian Freeland have to

00:13:14 say in things. And I find that to be an incredibly fascinating admission on his part. Now, it's not

00:13:20 perhaps that the carbon tax has been continuously increased by the Liberals and that the carbon tax

00:13:26 is compounded in its effect because we're dealing with rampant inflation. It's not that we are in

00:13:30 the midst of a cost of living crisis and this carbon tax that isn't doing anything is just

00:13:35 punitive to Canadians. No, it couldn't have been any of that. The only reason Canadians care is

00:13:39 because Justin Trudeau just started talking about it. Sorry, Pierre Polly, yeah, there's a Freudian

00:13:43 slip, just started talking about it eight to nine months ago. Very, very strange way of coping with

00:13:50 the flagging fortunes for the liberals and you of course see all sorts of attempts at really getting

00:13:56 to the bottom of what's wrong with society right now and what's wrong with conservatives if you

00:14:00 talk to the toronto star bruce arthur who is ostensibly a sports columnist but seems to

00:14:06 not really care about writing about sports that much he had one column in the toronto star

00:14:11 yesterday that i found hilarious people should be afraid are you fearful are you afraid pierre

00:14:17 polyevs conservatives have been targeting experts is this just the beginning and he goes into the

00:14:24 piece a number of examples of where conservatives have criticized so-called experts whether it's

00:14:28 andrea sarita on so-called safe supply whether it is andrew leach the economist who i don't think

00:14:34 has ever said a kind word about any conservative and i just in general this expertocracy that we're

00:14:39 supposed to just be so deferential to and when i saw this i was thinking you know which experts are

00:14:45 are we talking about here? Before I had read the piece, are we talking about the experts who said

00:14:49 that masks don't work before mandating them? Are we talking about the experts who said closing

00:14:54 borders is racist before they close them? Are we talking about the experts who said don't worry

00:14:58 about inflation, it's just transitory? Are we talking about the experts that have told us that

00:15:03 there's no way Donald Trump will win the 2016 election? Are we talking about the experts that

00:15:08 have said all these sorts of things that have been proven incorrect? I think we are. And the

00:15:13 Liberals, the left, they're sycophants in much of the media anyway, if Bruce Arthur is fitting that

00:15:19 bill, believe wholeheartedly that you can put a PhD in front of someone's, or I guess behind

00:15:25 someone's name, put a doctor in front of their name, and we're all supposed to just treat them

00:15:29 with utter deference, that you are above criticism, that you are above scrutiny, even when these people

00:15:34 have been responsible in many ways for the things that are wrong with this country. So the

00:15:40 conservatives, whether you like them or not, are not treating the so-called expert class as being

00:15:45 the sacred cow. And of course, that is terrifying. Put that headline back up from Bruce Arthur there

00:15:50 if you can, Sean. This is the framing of this article. People should be afraid. No, the people

00:15:56 who should be afraid are the ones that have been coasting on this so-called expert class, that have

00:16:02 been coasting on this desired technocracy that they've been trying to implement in Canada. Those

00:16:07 the people who should be afraid because the gravy train is coming to an end we will revisit this as

00:16:13 the show progresses but i want to go into a bit more of a newsy topic here yesterday the injunction

00:16:19 that the university of toronto sought to dismantle the anti-israel encampment on campus was granted

00:16:25 and this means that as of today police are going to be moving in they've said they plan on enforcing

00:16:31 this injunction i want to talk about this from a constitutional liberty perspective here and also

00:16:37 the broader implications uh josh has returned to the show he's a lawyer with the canadian

00:16:41 constitution foundation and one of the hosts of their tremendous podcast digging into many of

00:16:46 these issues josh good to talk to you as always thanks for coming on great to be here thanks

00:16:51 andrew let me just start with the first uh you know the glaring question here why an injunction

00:16:56 was even necessary when you had what i mean at its core was a trespassing issue like you know

00:17:01 presumably if someone were to set up a camp on my front lawn i could call the police without

00:17:05 going to a judge and say please remove them why did it need to go to this stage yeah so it's a

00:17:11 good question it's a question we've been getting a lot because you know police can't enforce

00:17:16 trespass laws and this was very clearly a trespass from the beginning you know trespass just means

00:17:22 going onto somebody's property without lawful justification and there's an old english case

00:17:28 that says merely bruising the grass is going to count as trespass so what you had here was people

00:17:34 you know, deciding who was allowed to go into this space on campus right in the center of the

00:17:41 University of Toronto. And you had to, you know, pass a series of questions to sort of get into

00:17:47 this encampment. So it was just quite obvious it was a trespass. And, you know, in York University

00:17:52 in Toronto, as you well know, Andrew, police just went in and enforced the law against trespass the

00:17:58 day the encampment was set up. So what I think happened here was basically U of T decided that

00:18:05 they were going to negotiate and that they were going to let this encampment sort of fester for

00:18:12 at least a short period of time before they decided to seek legal action. And the protesters

00:18:18 had an argument, which was essentially that they have freedom of expression rights protected by the

00:18:24 Constitution, freedom of assembly rights to use this otherwise private property at U of T. And

00:18:30 they had just a little tiny bit of an argument, which was that this free speech directive that

00:18:36 Doug Ford had put in place in 2018 somehow meant that after decades of law in Ontario saying the

00:18:45 charter doesn't apply to these types of university actions, that all of a sudden the government had

00:18:50 decided that they wanted to apply. So I think Toronto police looked at that and they said,

00:18:54 okay, there's some legal uncertainty here. And you have law professors out there sort of siding

00:18:59 with the protesters saying this directive means that now the charter does apply to campus.

00:19:04 And just based on that legal uncertainty, I think they probably had advice to

00:19:08 wait and see, wait and see what happens with the court case. And not all that surprisingly,

00:19:15 the injunction has been granted. Just as an aside, I think it's a bit rich that these protesters,

00:19:21 many of whom have called for, you know, any professor associated with Israel to,

00:19:25 you know, be sent to the gulag, are all of a sudden these newfound defenders of academic freedom.

00:19:31 Yeah, and a lot of these people are the same people who, you know, they would have cancelled

00:19:35 just about anybody involved with the trucker protest if they tried to speak on campus a few

00:19:40 years ago um you know they've i remember there were if there was any talk about race or gender

00:19:45 that didn't align with uh sort of progressive uh shibboleths they would go on campus and pull the

00:19:51 fire alarms and try and get people uh try and get their expression shut down so yeah but all

00:19:57 of a sudden doug ford's free speech directive might not be such a bad idea for them yeah does

00:20:03 it from a legal perspective does it have any bearing at all on whether they are students or

00:20:08 faculty who generally have, I think, a right to use the campus?

00:20:14 From a constitutional perspective, I don't think it has really any bearing on it at all.

00:20:20 But a lot of this case was decided based on University of Toronto's own policies. And they

00:20:26 have, you know, use of space policies and speech policies. And I think under those policies, they

00:20:31 are uh going to uh you know they care a lot more about what professors and students are doing

00:20:39 because that's part of their mission right so under those policies they it might matter that

00:20:44 they're students or that they're professors but um from a general constitutional law perspective

00:20:49 it doesn't really matter all that much and frankly the respondents in this case i think

00:20:54 most of them if not all of them were students have we gotten to a point 0.84

00:20:59 or i i maybe this is a stupid question because it sounds self-evident as i'm formulating in my head

00:21:04 but i was gonna what i was gonna ask is are these policies just so far from being content neutral 0.80

00:21:10 in that like the way these things are enforced in any academic freedom context in any public

00:21:15 assembly context on campus depends entirely on the specific expression and rather the fundamentals

00:21:22 i think that was certainly the case uh up until fairly recently but i think the whole debate about

00:21:28 expression and academic freedom on campus that arose after october 7th really woke a lot of

00:21:35 people up on the sort of the progressive left who tend to be the people enforcing these policies

00:21:41 that they need to be a little bit more principled about these things so i think that's sort of the

00:21:46 silver lining here is that you know if you go back three years five years there was a lot of

00:21:53 shutting down of legitimate speech and legitimate academic research and lectures on campus and i

00:21:59 think we're going to see less of that hopefully going forward because i think people might have

00:22:04 learned their lesson this time around that um it's not just um you know right-wing voices that

00:22:11 uh are being cancelled but also that sometimes there are you know pro-palestinian voices that

00:22:16 are more closely associated with the left that get cancelled and that we want to have

00:22:21 the same rule for everybody so that we can so that rule will be there when we meet what we

00:22:27 obviously a police i mean like we saw with the freedom convoy police were really trying to get

00:22:32 people to just leave on their own volition and it didn't really work too well uh they're trying

00:22:36 to do the same thing here but the protesters have basically said they you know have no interest in

00:22:42 in you know packing up and going home in a lot of cases and there's always the possibility that

00:22:46 something like this is the Streisand effect, where now more people will descend on it. So

00:22:50 this could be very messy as things go on. If someone doesn't leave, you know, what are they

00:22:56 facing right now? Is it the, you know, $70 trespassing ticket? I think it's more serious

00:23:02 than that, to be honest. So if people don't leave, and I noticed there was a union, QP Ontario,

00:23:09 that's encouraging people to go down at 3.30 this afternoon and join the protest. And, you know,

00:23:14 this was the the union whose head fred hahn famously said he was going to use his own body to

00:23:20 you know stop um this protest from getting shut down and if the deadline passes which is 6 p.m

00:23:26 for people to leave and people are still there uh we don't know what time it's going to happen but

00:23:31 we do know toronto police are going to go in and force that and that means they're going to

00:23:35 physically remove people um and people will be thrown in in jail potentially um and a lot of

00:23:43 of them will face potentially even contempt of court charges, depending on how serious that is.

00:23:48 And that's a really big deal. Like you will, you know, you can go to jail for a serious amount of

00:23:54 time for contempt of court. So I think it's really kind of irresponsible to encourage people

00:23:58 to stay at this point when the protesters had their day in court, they got to make all their

00:24:03 arguments. And now it's time to respect the rule of law in case there was any lack of clarity before

00:24:09 that you were trespassing, that you didn't have a right to be there.

00:24:12 If someone is charged, does that constitutional question then, if they choose to go that road,

00:24:18 really start again? And do they, you know, get to in their defense, you know, basically

00:24:22 try again with the whole, no, no, no, I had a constitutional right to be there?

00:24:27 I don't know how much bearing that would have on the Asheville contempt of court. But yeah,

00:24:30 if there was a trespass charge, they'd probably be able to make, you know, charter arguments again.

00:24:35 and uh who knows how that will go but i mean the fact that the judge just took a very detailed look

00:24:41 at this you know this is an injunction decision an injunction is just you know what's going to

00:24:46 happen until uh we can hear the full hearing uh in a way that avoids irreparable harm um that is

00:24:54 normally a pretty short decision this is 98 pages like the judge took uh you know two days of hearing

00:25:01 people out. There were all kinds of interveners that submitted arguments and the judge really

00:25:06 meticulously went through the evidence. So there was a lot of evidence on the record already and

00:25:11 the law and came to a conclusion. So I think that would be highly influential to any other judge

00:25:17 that has to consider whether there's a charter issue here. I know there are obviously different

00:25:23 courts in different provinces, but where did this judge diverge from, apart from on the decision

00:25:28 from Quebec when the injunction request against McGill was rejected.

00:25:34 Yeah. So the big difference here is when McGill was asking for an injunction to get rid of their

00:25:42 encampment on campus, they did that. What they were seeking was called an interim injunction.

00:25:48 And that is something that's basically like you're saying there is an emergency and we need to go to

00:25:53 court today or tomorrow or the next day and the other side they don't really have a lot of time

00:25:59 to build their argument and put together you know affidavits and evidence and so if you're going to

00:26:06 court and saying this is an emergency you need to shut this down right away that's going to be a

00:26:10 really high bar to get over to convince a judge that we have to end this thing right away and

00:26:17 that's different than what happened here where you know we're more than a month into it before

00:26:23 U of T initiated these proceedings and the judge gave them weeks of time to get their evidence

00:26:30 together. So we have a much fuller, fuller record. And so the judge can feel confident saying, you

00:26:36 know, yes, there's a strong prima facie case that U of T is right here about the trespass. And I

00:26:43 think that's the main difference is just that what McGill is asking for was sort of an emergency

00:26:47 injunction. And this is something that's a little further down the line with better evidence and

00:26:51 arguments. Fair enough. Josh DeHaz, lawyer with the Canadian Constitution Foundation. What's

00:26:56 coming up on the podcast? Oh, well, we'll be talking about this. We're going to be talking

00:27:01 about sanctions against the Quesnel BC mayor. He's now suing city council because they sanctioned

00:27:09 him for his choice in books. Not even. It was his wife's choice in books. Well, there's a little bit

00:27:15 of dispute about that. So, you know, at the beginning, it was his wife who was handing out

00:27:20 this books uh and the book's called a grave error i believe uh true north is involved in that book

00:27:26 and it originally was his wife who was handing out this book and uh i think everybody was asking

00:27:32 um you know what what does this have to do with the mayor's job that his wife is handing out this 1.00

00:27:39 book but i think he does admit at some point that maybe there were uh he did try to recommend this

00:27:45 book to a couple people oh no he recommended and he may have even said at some point that it should

00:27:51 be in the public library that people should be able to access a controversial book in the library

00:27:57 yeah you can't say that in this day and age that a book should be in the library heaven forbid

00:28:01 all right well we look forward to that josh thanks for coming on as always all right thanks a lot

00:28:06 all right thank you josh to has from the canadian constitution foundation uh just returning to how

00:28:11 we started things off for a moment here. I mentioned, you know, Chrystia Freeland's

00:28:15 unwillingness to share the details of her little, you know, political dalliance in Davos earlier

00:28:21 this year. And again, I'm not even suggesting that anything untoward happened there. The point

00:28:26 is whenever you are having these meetings that take place behind closed doors, Canadians are 0.95

00:28:30 paying tens of thousands of dollars for them. And at the end, we come out with the question of,

00:28:35 okay, was it a waste of time and you weren't doing anything and you were just having fun and

00:28:40 dining high and flying high and all that, not like, you know, like smoking pot or whatever.

00:28:44 Anyway, fly. I was mixing my metaphors. You'll have to forgive me. But or were you doing things

00:28:49 substantive? And if you're doing things substantive, then the question is, well, tell us what? Tell us

00:28:52 with whom you were meeting and what you agreed on and all of that. And it's interesting how little

00:28:57 this government likes the idea of scrutiny, how little they like the idea of democratic

00:29:03 accountability. Justin Trudeau was speaking this morning, the prime minister. He's still facing

00:29:08 calls from inside the house for his resignation. But what was interesting today is that he had a

00:29:13 very curious way of explaining why he should be reelected after having served already close to

00:29:19 10 years. Take a look. It doesn't matter whether you're a liberal or conservative in Canada. Voters

00:29:24 tend to give prime ministers or have always given prime ministers in the last hundred plus years

00:29:28 the door after nine or 10 years. Why do you think you're different? Listen, there is a challenge

00:29:37 faced by democracies all around the world right now.

00:29:40 Whether we look at what's going on in France,

00:29:42 whether we look at the election in the United States,

00:29:45 whether we look at any democracy around the world

00:29:47 where we are seeing increasing challenges to people's well-beings,

00:29:52 greater anxieties, an erosion of democratic principles and rights,

00:29:57 this is a really important time for governments to step up

00:30:03 and deliver concretely for citizens to restore and encourage faith in the institutions that are

00:30:10 there to deliver things like more child care spaces to deliver better access to dental care

00:30:16 for people who don't have insurance to deliver more housing with the most ambitious housing

00:30:21 plan this country has ever seen these are the things that we need to stay focused on and that's

00:30:26 exactly what I'm working hard on right now. It takes a lot to make Mark Gerritsen look like an

00:30:35 intellectual heavyweight, but I think Justin Trudeau did it there. Why should Canadians vote

00:30:40 for you for more than three terms was basically the question from it sounded like Marika Walsh

00:30:44 of the Globe and Mail. And he said, well, democracy is under threat around the world. We're seeing

00:30:48 this with what happened in France and what's happening in the US. So his view of democracy

00:30:53 being under attack and democratic institutions eroding is left-wingers losing elections.

00:30:59 Like in the U.S. right now, Joe Biden doesn't even know he's running for president. That is

00:31:03 not an erosion of democracy. That is the Democrats fielding a terrible candidate.

00:31:07 In France, it was people being fed up with Emmanuel Macron that led to an overhaul of their

00:31:13 political process. It's the same thing that happened in Netherlands with

00:31:16 Geert Wilders being elected. It's the same thing that's happening in countries around the world.

00:31:20 it's not an erosion of democracy when people vote against you but Justin Trudeau thinks it is and

00:31:26 what's fascinating here is that Justin Trudeau is really trying to set the stage for explaining and

00:31:33 justifying and rationalizing his loss that's what he's doing here he's trying to make it so that

00:31:39 when he loses which I suspect will happen the polls are showing what they show what Justin

00:31:44 Trudeau is saying here is that the polling, the eventual loss is not his fault. It's part of a

00:31:51 global erosion of democracy. That's what he's going to say. Justin Trudeau is going to be

00:31:56 Canada's election denier. When Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives likely win a massive majority,

00:32:01 that's what the polls are suggesting. Trudeau is going to say, oh, well, this was part of a global

00:32:05 shift. This was part of a global shift. It had nothing to do with me. I'm not the unpopular one.

00:32:10 It's just like Mark Gerritsen saying, oh, no, I'm not the guy that you need to look at here.

00:32:15 Don't worry, the carbon tax, no one dislikes the policy.

00:32:18 People just don't like that Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives have been talking about it.

00:32:22 That's where this is all coming from.

00:32:25 This is another clip from Justin Trudeau, basically just doing the everything is fine routine when forced with, actually, no, we'll get to that clip later.

00:32:33 In the meantime, I want to bring into this discussion here one of Trudeau's environmental policies that, again, is all virtue signaling.

00:32:40 and very little in the way of substance behind it,

00:32:43 the electric vehicle mandate.

00:32:46 We are supposed to be staring down the barrel

00:32:48 of all light-duty vehicles,

00:32:49 so basically consumer cars being electric or hybrid by 2035.

00:32:55 It may seem like it's a long way away,

00:32:57 but that is just about a decade,

00:32:59 and there is a very stark warning by economist Ross McKittrick

00:33:03 in the Financial Post about what this mandate is going to mean

00:33:06 and is meaning for the auto sector.

00:33:09 Professor Ross McKittrick joins us once again.

00:33:11 Always good to see you, Ross.

00:33:12 Thanks for coming on today.

00:33:14 Hi, Andrew.

00:33:14 Always a pleasure.

00:33:15 So let's just start with the rationalization for this, because it's based on this idea

00:33:21 that this is going to solve or at least contribute to the solution to all of these economic and

00:33:27 environmental woes.

00:33:28 But the economic argument we've seen really falls apart on electric vehicles.

00:33:33 They are not desirable by consumers.

00:33:35 They are not particularly profitable for automakers without massive subsidies.

00:33:40 Like, where is the rationalization, if not just ideology?

00:33:44 Well, at this point, it is just ideology.

00:33:46 Everything you said is correct, that consumers don't want them.

00:33:50 The sales targets, it's not 2035 when the sales targets kick in.

00:33:56 They start in 2026.

00:33:57 It's not 100% in 2026, but it begins ramping up at that point.

00:34:03 British Columbia and Quebec are currently in compliance with the 2026 level, but they spend a fortune on subsidies for their consumers.

00:34:12 The rest of the country, we're not seeing EVs move off the lot in enough number.

00:34:17 The other problem, though, and this is a focus of my column and also a paper that is coming out in the Canadian Journal of Economics,

00:34:24 is that the auto sector itself will lose money under any conceivable technology scenario on

00:34:32 EVs. People just aren't willing to pay the costs that it involves to own and maintain them. Yes,

00:34:39 there are some cheap EVs. You can buy some cheap EVs and costs are coming down for some makers.

00:34:46 But to be really indifferent between a gas-powered car and an EV, there's more to it than that.

00:34:52 The maintenance costs are higher for EVs, the charging times, the cost of electricity.

00:34:57 I mean, electricity is a lot more expensive than it used to be, thanks to things like the Green Energy Act.

00:35:02 And so Hertz, for example, the big auto rental company, they went big into EVs a couple of years ago, and they've reversed course.

00:35:11 They're selling on 20,000 EVs because they found they were too expensive to maintain and customers didn't want them.

00:35:19 So the economics is not there under current and foreseeable technology.

00:35:26 And I think here a good parallel is the switch from LPs and 8-track cassettes to CDs and then music streaming.

00:35:35 If it's a good technology that saves people money and provides a superior product, they will make the switch.

00:35:40 You don't have to force them.

00:35:42 but if we were trying to go the other direction so if people were currently streaming and using

00:35:48 electronic devices and we're going to force them to go to lps and eight track cassettes

00:35:55 obviously you'd need to bring it into law you need expensive penalties for people you need

00:35:59 massive subsidies and the industry itself would go under because people would just rebel and they

00:36:05 wouldn't buy the product and that's what's going to happen with evs consumers are rebelling they're

00:36:10 not buying the product and the auto sector itself i predict will disappear in canada as a result

00:36:17 yeah and and to be fair the market is trying to do this i i commend tesla in particular for really

00:36:22 trying to change the perception of electric vehicles and make them a lot cooler make them

00:36:27 a lot trendier i was at uh you know a nice wholesome weekend activity on friday i was at

00:36:31 the tractor pull in elmer ontario and uh if you've never been to tractor pulls they're great fun and

00:36:36 they had this electric this gmc electric hummer that was uh participating and i thought they were

00:36:42 doing it to mock the thing i thought they were like this was all some elaborate ruse to make

00:36:46 fun of the electric vehicle man that thing had some power it just absolutely motored it cleared

00:36:51 everything else in that category so there's an example where they've made a product that some

00:36:55 people will like and some people want but the market needs to be the one to cause the uh to

00:37:00 cause the surge in support and the other thing is that even support for them right now it's very

00:37:06 false because of those subsidies you mentioned so it's not an accurate reflection of what consumers

00:37:10 are willing to pay for these things right it's not an organic consumer-led transition it's entirely

00:37:17 dependent on policy measures now tesla reports making profits on evs um they have aimed at the

00:37:25 high income market because their products are pretty expensive um but they're good cars i mean

00:37:30 people obviously like them the the cyber truck is a really impressive looking vehicle um but

00:37:37 they're not penetrating the middle income and lower income end of the market tesla is also

00:37:43 unique um the other auto companies don't report their ev division separately except ford ford

00:37:50 is the only company that breaks out their ev division profits and they are losing money

00:37:55 massively they've reported uh 67 000 loss per vehicle last year it's up to a hundred thousand

00:38:02 in the first half of this year so that's obviously unsustainable even with all the

00:38:08 subsidies in the world a company is just not going to be able to continue producing a product where

00:38:12 you lose a hundred thousand dollars per vehicle now in the course of doing this research some

00:38:19 some of my readers and referees said yeah but the costs of producing them will come down

00:38:24 but that's actually not the case. Some elements are coming down, but a lot of the key ingredients

00:38:30 into the motors used in EVs, it's sole sourced from China. China has basically a monopoly on

00:38:35 some of the key metals that are needed for these high performance motors. And those costs are not

00:38:40 going to come down. Instead, if anything, China is going to exploit its monopoly position to make 0.92

00:38:46 it even harder for Western auto companies to produce these things. Well, and we've already

00:38:50 seen in the last few weeks even the flare up on on tariffs as you know people try to prevent you

00:38:55 know cheap chinese evs from being the ones that flood the flood the market here let me ask you 1.00

00:39:01 where you think this is going to go i mean obviously bailing out the auto sector is not

00:39:04 entirely unprecedented now drastically different circumstances to go back to 2008 2009 but if we

00:39:11 are seeing this scenario in the auto sector of just a mandate that is going to you know cripple 0.92

00:39:17 or decimate large parts of their operation.

00:39:20 Is that not inevitable

00:39:21 if the government wants to fully commit to this mandate?

00:39:25 Yeah, in the paper that I've published,

00:39:30 I did computations based first on an assumption,

00:39:33 maybe we'd get to full cost parity by 2035.

00:39:37 And, but if not, maybe we'll get there by 2050.

00:39:41 If it takes till 2050 to get full cost parity

00:39:43 between EVs and gas powered cars,

00:39:47 it'll take more than a trillion dollars in subsidies to keep the auto sector in existence

00:39:53 in Canada. And if we were to get to full cost parity by 2035, it would cost about 150 billion

00:40:02 in addition to everything that we've already spent. But the thing is, under that scenario,

00:40:06 you don't need the mandate. If costs are going to come down so quickly, and the products are

00:40:12 to improve so quickly that people will happily buy an ev rather than a gas-powered car we don't need

00:40:18 the mandate so the key takeaway here is in any circumstance where we need a mandate to force

00:40:25 people to switch to evs in that scenario the auto sector disappears it can't survive if if there's

00:40:32 a scenario where the auto sector in canada can continue to exist and profitably produce and sell

00:40:38 EVs, we don't need a mandate to get them onto the market. Is there, not that I want to give anyone

00:40:45 ideas, and I know you were mindful of that in your column as well, but if the United States

00:40:50 were to adopt a very similar mandate, would that change the calculation? Because all of a sudden

00:40:55 you have a scale that you don't have when it's just the Canadian market. Well, the US right now

00:41:01 is pretty much talking along the same lines, some states individually, but at the federal level,

00:41:07 the Biden administration is putting in place regulations for the auto sector that do substantially

00:41:13 the same thing. Generally, no. There are certain economies of scale that, okay, if the U.S. begins

00:41:22 mass-producing EVs, some aspects of the cost will come down. But remember, they're going to be

00:41:27 bidding for all those same rare earth minerals that we only get from China and the other

00:41:32 really specialized inputs, including into battery manufacture.

00:41:39 So that could just as easily make it harder, not easier for us to make affordable EVs.

00:41:45 Well, and when you mentioned the battery production, I mean, we've seen the government

00:41:48 go whole hog into trying to, you know, do domestic EV battery manufacturing here.

00:41:53 And that's another layer of subsidies on top of, you know, the subsidies on the purchase

00:41:59 of the cars themselves.

00:42:00 Yeah, it's amazing to listen to them brag about Canada is now this superstar in the supply chain for EV batteries.

00:42:14 We're nothing of the sort. They had to pour $15 billion just to get one company to open a plant to make battery systems for EVs.

00:42:26 that means that we're not a superpower in this field it means we're singularly unsuited for

00:42:34 producing both in terms of the labor and then the access to the inputs and the cost of electricity

00:42:40 and all the rest of it if we were a superpower in this field companies would be opening plants

00:42:45 on their own they'd be doing it on their own it would be profitable but it's not profitable it's

00:42:49 not profitable now it's never going to be profitable so all we're doing is i think it's

00:42:55 just you may not remember the old hydroponic greenhouse fiasco in Newfoundland when the

00:43:01 government of Newfoundland decided they were going to build a whole industry in the province

00:43:06 by subsidizing hydroponic greenhouses and they wasted a ton of money and the whole thing fell

00:43:12 apart because of course there's no way to do it profitably in the province and at the time

00:43:18 everybody swore up and down never again we're not going to fall for this we're not going to do this

00:43:22 again we're doing it again but on a much much bigger scale and it will come to the same end

00:43:28 yeah and you're right to keep pointing out the inputs because even if you have all the domestic

00:43:33 production and domestic assembly in the world you still are not doing anything about that choke

00:43:38 point of the need to have the access to these minerals which and then in the environmental

00:43:42 aspect that part's often overlooked as well as the environmental cost of the environmental cost

00:43:47 of mining in general but certainly mining in in china right and so with this uh then this new push

00:43:55 to put uh big tariffs on evs and this is kind of a one of these ironies about the government so

00:44:02 in one office down the corridor they're putting this rule in that says everybody's got to buy an

00:44:09 ev and then two doors down the corridor they're alarmed at the fact that there are too many cheap

00:44:15 EVs coming from China, so we're going to throw on heavy tariffs to try to stop them. 1.00

00:44:21 The government created that problem, and they strategically, they did it by saying to China,

00:44:27 we're going to give you massive leverage over our industrial future.

00:44:31 I'm sure the Chinese government in Beijing can't believe their luck that Western countries

00:44:38 like canada and the united states are planning to phase out one of our most powerful industries

00:44:46 and demand that people purchase an alternative product that is primarily sourced in china

00:44:53 and it just gives china an enormous amount of power over our economy and um there's a little 0.87

00:45:01 bit of recognition at this point that this may not be a good idea given the fact that china is

00:45:07 such an aggressive and hostile entity in the world um but that's that's what the government

00:45:14 is doing and so you're going to start seeing all these contradictory policies where on the one hand

00:45:19 yeah we really want evs and they only come from china but we don't want china sending us evs 0.99

00:45:25 professor ross mckittrick piece in the financial post ev mandates don't make economic sense and

00:45:30 if you want to dig in in a bit of a less readable but more comprehensive way for uh for most folks

00:45:35 you can read his piece coming out in the journal a canadian journal of economics ross good to talk

00:45:40 to you thanks for coming on today and great work on this thanks andrew my pleasure all right thank

00:45:44 you i i don't mean to besmirch academic journals i they uh you need to really settle in for them

00:45:49 but they're very important i've actually started to enjoy reading some of these things because

00:45:53 often you find how news articles about academic papers have just like woefully misrepresented

00:45:57 what was in the paper itself which i know has been the bane of many professors who put so much work

00:46:02 in this and then someone just like misrepresents it but I promised a second Trudeau clip but we

00:46:08 had Ross on the line and I didn't want to keep him waiting there this was a Trudeau I probably

00:46:13 don't even need to play it but we'll play it well why not we'll have some fun with it this

00:46:16 I forget what this this is um I think him explaining why he is not resigning for the

00:46:21 umpteenth time there are members of your caucus that are considering leaving if you do stay on

00:46:27 what's your reaction to that and are are you willing to stay on and lose members of your

00:46:31 caucus i think the conversations that i'm having with uh mps directly right across the country the

00:46:38 conversations that we're all having as liberals uh are going to continue and we're going to stay

00:46:45 focused on canadians i can't speak to uh to uh what people in the media are thinking that's your job

00:46:51 but i can speak to the strength and focus that all liberals have on delivering for canadians

00:46:57 and that's what we're going to continue to do. A little bit sassy there. I can't speak to what

00:47:03 the media thinks. That's your job, but I'm going to continue focusing on Canadians. Well, 0.97

00:47:07 I think Canadians are kind of tired with what you're doing, so maybe focus on Tofino. Tofino 0.86

00:47:11 is calling. There's the campaign that the Conservatives should do. A billboard campaign

00:47:16 of Justin Trudeau. Actually, no. A billboard campaign of just the lonely beach in Tofino

00:47:20 with a surfboard waiting for him, and it can be Tofino is calling. That, I think, will be the

00:47:27 million dollar idea. All right. If someone on the True North team has like five extra minutes and

00:47:30 you want to do up like a little graphic, we'll use it on tomorrow's show. All right. That's it

00:47:34 for us for today. Thank you so much, everyone. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you. God bless

00:47:38 and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program

00:47:43 by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:47:57 We'll be right back.

00:48:27 We'll be right back.

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Juno News - July 03, 2024

Chrystia Freeland tight-lipped on what she did in Davos

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