Juno News - April 26, 2022


CPC MP Dane Lloyd grills the Anti-Hate Network


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

173.05853

Word count

1,086

Sentence count

59

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk to the Canadian Anti-Fascinating Network, a group dedicated to fighting white supremacy and white nationalism in Canada. We discuss the United We Roll protest in Ottawa, Canada, and the possibility of a terrorist attack.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first question is to Mr. Balgord from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
00:00:08.940 Mr. Balgord, would you suggest or would you say that your organization is an objective organization?
00:00:17.840 We wear our biases on our sleeves, right? We are very proudly anti-fascist and we focus on
00:00:23.660 the far right. We focus on the far right because if you speak with anybody who is a researcher of
00:00:29.320 this or an expert in national security threats, they will agree that ideologically motivated
00:00:34.820 violent extremists and threats primarily today are coming out of far right organizing. Thank you.
00:00:39.740 No, I appreciate the honesty, Mr. Balgord. It's important and not diminishing some of the work
00:00:45.320 that you do. You know, I come from an area where last summer we had a, you know, 100-year-old church
00:00:51.540 burned to the ground and dozens of people had to be evacuated from an apartment building close by,
00:00:57.100 which nearly went up in flames and killed dozens of people. But you just don't hear it talked about
00:01:02.400 in this country and I understand that it's not your organization's mandate to talk about these
00:01:06.540 things. As you've said, you're clearly focused on the far right. My question is, you know, during the
00:01:14.500 convoy protests, your executive director, I believe that's his position, Bernie Faber, posted a tweet
00:01:20.180 with a photo of a vile anti-Semitic flyer and claimed that this flyer was, that this was a picture of the
00:01:28.400 flyer being circulated in Ottawa among the trucker protesters. But upon further examination, it was
00:01:34.680 proven that this exact same photo was taken in Miami, Florida, weeks before the protests ever began.
00:01:42.520 Can you explain why the executive director of your organization was claiming that an anti-Semitic, like that
00:01:50.400 this photo was being circulated at the protests when in fact it was a photo that was from a completely
00:01:56.400 different country weeks before the protests?
00:01:58.520 Yes, thank you very much for giving me a way to address this. So first off, that was our chair, I'm the executive
00:02:05.520 director, and I was privy to the email chain that led to him tweeting that out. So what had occurred
00:02:11.520 was he was, somebody had reached out who was in Ottawa, who said that they saw that flyer there and
00:02:18.520 they provided the photo. At that moment, you know, Bernie was not aware that the photo itself was taken from
00:02:24.520 an American source. What the person was trying to communicate to our organization was that they saw the
00:02:29.520 the same flyer, but they had attached the photo from the states. So it was our error in not communicating
00:02:36.520 that more clearly, where the photo itself originated from. What the person was reporting to us was that
00:02:42.520 they had seen the same flyer in Ottawa. Thank you.
00:02:45.520 So you have no evidence other than hearsay that that flyer was actually being distributed in Ottawa, correct?
00:02:52.520 That is correct. You know, we took the report from somebody on the ground, and our chair put the
00:02:58.520 information out there. I would say we did see very similar messaging. In Toronto, there was somebody
00:03:06.520 who was wearing a billboard with essentially the same messaging.
00:03:09.520 Well, let's move on here. We're talking about the Ottawa protest, but I appreciate, you know, your
00:03:13.520 clarification on that matter. You've raised some pretty disturbing allegations about the potential for a
00:03:20.520 terrorist attack, a mass violent event. I think we can all be thankful that this didn't happen during the
00:03:29.520 protests. And I think it sort of undermines the argument that was being made by many, including by
00:03:36.520 organizations such as yours, that this protest had violent, you know, motivations, that they had a desire to
00:03:43.520 commit violence. I mean, the fact that we didn't see a terrorist attack, we didn't see a mass violent
00:03:49.520 event. I mean, it sort of undermines the claim. But I just want to ask, you know, you've connected the
00:03:55.520 United We Roll protests, which came to Ottawa in 2018, I believe. You know, a lot of people from
00:04:02.520 Western Canada concerned about the carbon tax pipelines being blocked. How do you draw this
00:04:07.520 connection between, you know, white supremacy and fascism with people that are concerned about
00:04:14.520 protecting their livelihoods?
00:04:17.520 We don't. And I'm always very careful at every juncture to point out that not everybody that was
00:04:22.520 involved in the convoy is necessarily racist or necessarily violent.
00:04:26.520 We draw a generalization here about a protest and saying that it was organized by the same people and that
00:04:31.520 this is a conspiracy to spread white supremacist and fascist views.
00:04:36.520 Under the guise of pipeline and carbon tax politics, what evidence do you have to back up that claim?
00:04:42.520 Sure. So if you look back at the Elvis Canada movement, and this is well documented,
00:04:47.520 you will find, you know, hundreds of examples of death threats and racist comments towards Muslims.
00:04:52.520 And the, so that's the Elvis Canada movement, which I just addressed.
00:04:56.520 In terms of your earlier comment about the organizers and how do we make statements of a nature,
00:05:02.520 I'd point back to, you know, one of the key influencers and organizers of the convoys Pat King,
00:05:08.520 who said the mandate would only end with bullets, right?
00:05:10.520 We saw other organizers who had previously made Islamophobic statements.
00:05:13.520 But nobody had ever heard of this Pat King fellow before these convoy protests in Ottawa,
00:05:17.520 and yet you're saying that these people were involved with the United We Roll protests in 2018?
00:05:23.520 Can, do you have any evidence to the direct connection?
00:05:27.520 Can you provide that evidence?
00:05:28.520 You've made this claim.
00:05:29.520 Sure. Tamara Lich was in fact an organizer of United We Roll, 0.85
00:05:33.520 and she was one of the key organizers of the convoy. 0.87
00:05:35.520 That's one example.
00:05:36.520 Pat King got...
00:05:38.520 Please.
00:05:39.520 At the time of the convoy.
00:05:41.520 You know, like, you know, we sometimes get, you know,
00:05:44.520 can you make a submission to the committee and provide us with this evidence?
00:05:47.520 Like, you've said it, and I guess I'll take you out your word for now,
00:05:50.520 but can you actually provide us written evidence to back up these claims?
00:05:55.520 Yes, we have.
00:05:56.520 I'd be happy to share some of the articles we've already written on the subject with the committee.
00:06:00.520 And do these articles contain primary sources that back up the evidence,
00:06:04.520 or are these opinion articles written by your admittedly not objective organization?
00:06:08.520 10-second answer, please.
00:06:10.520 Yes, everything is demonstrated in the articles.
00:06:13.520 Thank you.
00:06:14.520 Thank you.
00:06:15.520 Now...