Juno News - David Johnston's report is a Trudeau whitewash

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

00:00:05.680 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:14.440 Hello everyone and welcome to you all.

00:00:17.440 Another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:21.380 Hope you caught our live election night, no debate night.

00:00:25.700 I keep calling it the election night.

00:00:27.020 The Alberta debate night confab that we had on Thursday, we'll be doing a supercharged version of that on election night on Monday.

00:00:37.100 So if you're in Alberta or are interested in Alberta politics, which I think all of you probably should be,

00:00:42.180 Monday night, tune in to True North.

00:00:44.180 We'll have yours truly, Rachel Emanuel, and a great other cast of characters coming to you live from UCP headquarters

00:00:50.720 in the election that will define in a lot of ways the future of Alberta.

00:00:56.120 and in a very corresponding way, I think the future of the country.

00:01:00.540 So we'll talk about that a little bit later on,

00:01:02.600 but wanted to just make sure you were aware of that to mark your calendars.

00:01:06.800 I have to start off.

00:01:08.140 I'm going to get into the whole David Johnston thing.

00:01:10.360 Like, so don't worry, I'm going to get into that.

00:01:12.220 I'm going to devote most of the show to it.

00:01:14.080 But I have to begin with a bit of a mea culpa here

00:01:17.220 because sometimes I just think something is just going to be

00:01:20.680 a light little non-serious topic.

00:01:23.600 and I mentioned something offhandedly that will get more emails than anything else I spoke about

00:01:28.560 on the big subjects and you may remember on Friday during Fake News Friday I talked about

00:01:33.140 this one article telling us we needed to decolonize our gardens and I mentioned just

00:01:38.200 offhandedly that I know nothing about gardening and if you left me to it I would look out on a

00:01:42.760 garden and see all those little yellow flowers and be like oh that must be nice those things

00:01:47.640 must be good let's not pull them out and then they'd be dandelions and then I mentioned that

00:01:51.340 dandelions are weeds and the premise of it was that if left to my own devices I wouldn't care

00:01:57.460 about them but I know other people take them out. I got more emails about dandelions over the

00:02:02.980 weekend than about any other subject and anything else I spoke about on the show including censorship

00:02:09.020 at a public library. That mattered less to people than what people understood as a shot across the

00:02:16.080 bow at Dandelions. I'll share a couple of these with you. People were very polite, generally.

00:02:22.500 Jacqueline writes, I'm the least woke person in the world. I'm very right-leaning.

00:02:27.080 However, Dandelions have been maligned unfairly for years due to their many, many food and

00:02:32.480 medicinal uses. The company that mostly attacks them is the producer of Roundup, and then she

00:02:38.660 goes on and says she's going to send me some other materials, which she did. Thank you, Jacqueline.

00:02:42.580 Nancy writes, FYI, love your show, Andrew,

00:02:45.180 but you have to catch up on the benefits of dandelions,

00:02:47.640 both for your lawn and your health.

00:02:50.280 All parts of the dandelion are edible right down to the root.

00:02:53.960 Juice from the stem can be used topically to treat bug bites,

00:02:56.640 supposedly anyway.

00:02:58.220 So I went outside this morning,

00:03:01.620 and unfortunately, most of the dandelions have now done that thing

00:03:04.900 where they turn to like the white, like, spore.

00:03:08.120 I know nothing about gardening.

00:03:09.940 But there were a couple of yellow dandelions remaining.

00:03:13.060 And I thought, what better way to show my contrition for maligning the dandelion

00:03:17.600 than to consume one on air for you?

00:03:20.540 Again, no one has ever emailed me and said, Andrew, I don't think you eat enough.

00:03:24.160 So someone said, here, this dandelion you probably have eaten.

00:03:26.860 Now, the problem is I picked this like three hours ago,

00:03:30.540 and it was a lovely, lovely, pretty dandelion then.

00:03:33.740 And now in the time it's been in my office, it's shriveled up into nothing.

00:03:38.920 So I don't know if this one still has the health benefits, but to prove there are no hard feelings, that was gross.

00:03:49.020 But you know what?

00:03:50.260 You got to give the people what they want.

00:03:51.720 I almost drank the water that I was keeping it in.

00:03:53.640 I'm going to go for the actual water.

00:03:56.420 If I die on air as we do this show, dandelions did not have the vaunted health benefits they were supposed to.

00:04:03.380 In any event, the big stuff that's happening today,

00:04:06.260 still, even today, I'm going to get more emails about the dandelion bit

00:04:09.280 than about David Johnston's complete whitewash

00:04:12.720 of the federal government's actions or inactions on the China file.

00:04:19.600 And I want to just put this in a little bit of context for people here.

00:04:23.220 David Johnston, we all know, is the lifelong family friend of the Trudeaus. 0.73

00:04:28.700 He's the skiing buddy of the Trudeaus. 0.69

00:04:30.720 He's the guy who was a neighbor of the Trudeaus. 1.00

00:04:34.020 Yet somehow, somehow, of all the people in the country,

00:04:38.560 all the people in the world, in fact,

00:04:40.300 David Johnston was the guy tapped by Justin Trudeau

00:04:43.560 to be the so-called special rapporteur

00:04:46.120 into foreign interference in Canada's elections.

00:04:50.080 Again, anyone in the country.

00:04:51.640 I would have been available.

00:04:52.800 Candace Malcolm was available.

00:04:54.060 Ezra Levant was available.

00:04:55.500 You've got former cabinet ministers, judges, Paul Rouleau.

00:04:58.960 Not a perfect pick, but Paul Rouleau might have been available.

00:05:02.020 But of all the people there, Justin Trudeau said,

00:05:04.480 we need a so-called eminent Canadian,

00:05:06.760 and it was David Johnston and a couple of former Supreme Court justices

00:05:10.140 that were all in the room, and David Johnston was next in the rotation

00:05:13.820 as far as eminent Canadians are concerned.

00:05:16.040 So David Johnston appointed to look into his longtime chum, Justin Trudeau,

00:05:22.840 and shocker, no surprise whatsoever, he comes out today and says,

00:05:26.800 well, you know, Justin Trudeau didn't really do anything wrong.

00:05:29.380 He has advised against an inquiry into foreign interference in Canada's elections,

00:05:34.520 but he says the story is not over yet.

00:05:36.640 We've got to do a little bit more digging.

00:05:38.760 And who better to do that than me?

00:05:40.860 David Johnson, the eminent Canadian.

00:05:42.620 So David Johnson has decided that David Johnson should continue to look into this.

00:05:48.020 And David Johnson also says if you criticize his appointment,

00:05:52.160 if you accuse him of being impartial, you are undermining confidence in democracy or undermining confidence in Canadian elections.

00:06:02.020 So this is actually a pretty sweet gig for David Johnson because he's the guy, you can't criticize him,

00:06:07.640 and he's making sure to reward Justin Trudeau by saying they did nothing.

00:06:11.760 So he's made this report available. There are five key recommendations in it.

00:06:17.040 Five key recommendations. The most important is that we don't apparently need an inquiry.

00:06:21.800 That is the reason. His argument was kind of bizarre. It was that, well, you know, I had the full context on this. All these media outlets like Global News and the Globe and Mail, they didn't have all the information I did, but I, David Johnston, did. And, well, it's classified, though. The rest of you can't see it.

00:06:40.440 So this was legitimately the point that he was trying to make.

00:06:44.200 And I think we actually have a clip to this effect where he says that media reports lack proper context.

00:06:51.120 Take a look.

00:06:52.400 Much of what has been reported has been based on limited and partial intelligence.

00:06:57.940 That reporting has been made without the benefit of the full context provided by all relevant materials.

00:07:05.580 Experienced intelligent professionals understand that individual pieces of intelligence must be viewed with considerable skepticism.

00:07:14.360 It is extremely rare to draw conclusions, much less take action from a single intelligence report.

00:07:23.260 Each piece of intelligence is a brushstroke to paint a broader picture.

00:07:28.560 Only upon seeing the full picture, with the benefit of all relevant intelligence,

00:07:34.580 Can one conclude that much of the reported intelligence has been misconstrued in media reports, presumably because of this lack of context in these instances?

00:07:48.240 Oh, yeah, what a great approach there.

00:07:50.560 So all of you can't see what I can see.

00:07:54.040 And then the obvious question is, OK, well, why don't we all see this?

00:07:57.980 Why don't we declassify these documents?

00:08:00.020 He says, no, no, no, no, no.

00:08:00.960 The general public can't see classified documents.

00:08:03.280 So his recommendation is that there should be no public inquiry because to have a public inquiry, you would need to provide people with documents that they can't see. So the only way we get to have accountability is by he continuing to look at this stuff and David Johnston continuing to be the one who gets to decide what's relevant and what's not.

00:08:24.300 And he said, oh, but, you know, maybe this committee like NSACOP can look into it.

00:08:28.340 And if they disagree with my findings, they can tell the government.

00:08:31.000 But he still becomes the gatekeeper on information.

00:08:35.400 So for a guy whose whole thesis in his report is that the media got it wrong and the media

00:08:40.700 didn't get the so-called full context, he then turns around and say, well, nobody else

00:08:44.620 can see this full context.

00:08:47.020 So China's interference in Canada's elections, which he admits is a thing, which no one disputes 1.00

00:08:51.840 is a thing, basically goes where democracy dies.

00:08:55.760 It goes into some hollowed out empty chamber where the public will never understand the

00:09:00.820 extent of it.

00:09:01.420 And more importantly, will never understand what Justin Trudeau knew when he knew it and

00:09:07.200 what he refused to do with it.

00:09:09.720 And if you look at a couple of the clips that came out from David Johnston's remarks here,

00:09:15.400 one I'm going to share, which I think is fascinating because we know that he was a

00:09:19.400 longtime friend of Justin Trudeau's, but he has said that no one can question his impartiality.

00:09:24.700 No one whatsoever can question the old great oracle, David Johnson's impartiality. And then

00:09:31.580 he was asked about this friendship with Justin Trudeau. And he like spoke for basically two

00:09:36.120 minutes about how, oh, well, yes, you know, we used to be neighbors and his family would park

00:09:42.340 at my house because it was in Mont-Tremblant near the mountains when they went skiing. And

00:09:45.760 one time I gave him a ride home, but oh no, I've never, never seen, really saw him until he was

00:09:51.500 prime minister and I was governor general. And that, that was only when we started to be real

00:09:55.720 chums. And I'm like, well, okay. So yes, you've had this longstanding relationship with him. You

00:10:01.500 spoke for two minutes about why I'm not going to play the whole two minutes because I've summarized

00:10:05.660 it well. But you know, you've spoken about it and then you say, well, it's no biggie. And that

00:10:09.640 anyone who dares ask about it is the problem. So what we have from this is, I think, a pretty

00:10:16.280 sensible example of why he's not the guy who can deliver accountability on this. And it was funny,

00:10:24.600 he was asked by David Akin, to his credit of Global News, about whether there was a conflict

00:10:29.740 of interest because he's, again, a longtime Trudeau family friend. He's a former Trudeau

00:10:34.140 Foundation advisor. And I kid you not, his response was that he had himself cleared

00:10:41.160 of a conflict by former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci. Frank Iacobucci,

00:10:50.200 where do I know that name from? Oh, put up that graphic there, Sean.

00:10:56.260 Oh, what do you know? Frank Iacobucci is a Trudeau Foundation mentor. So heaven forbid,

00:11:02.440 the Trudeau Foundation guys turn on each other. So David Johnson cleared of a conflict of interest

00:11:08.120 for his role as a Trudeau Foundation mentor and member by Frank Iacobucci, who's a Trudeau

00:11:14.600 Foundation mentor, which means that oddly enough, David Johnson's report does not even acknowledge

00:11:21.740 the Trudeau Foundation. You look at the document here and you do a control F or a command F if

00:11:30.080 you're a mac user like i am for the word foundation and oh what do you see foundation of our democracy

00:11:35.840 foundation of information uh foundation weird the word trudeau foundation does not appear in his

00:11:42.180 report at all yet we know that to the tune of six figures the trudeau foundation was being used by

00:11:47.860 china as what china at least thought would be a laundering outfit where they get to give a big 0.95

00:11:53.280 check to the trudeau foundation which then gets filtered into putting these meetings in all the

00:11:58.220 right places, friends in high places. And this was not something that was investigated by the

00:12:04.120 special rapporteur. So all of this is coming at a time when how dare David Johnston put himself

00:12:13.000 in a situation where criticizing his impartiality, perceived or otherwise, is undermining democracy,

00:12:19.360 when I'd say his appointment as special rapporteur undermines democracy. And Stephen

00:12:25.720 Chase from the Globe and Mail had said something on his Twitter that I retweeted maybe about an

00:12:31.020 hour, an hour and a half ago, that his report inexplicably addresses only three Globe stories

00:12:37.080 on Chinese foreign interference in recent months that relied on CSIS documents and national

00:12:42.180 security sources. He's silent on 10 other Globe stories on the same topic that rely on secret

00:12:49.440 sources and documents. So David Johnson has been very selective about which stories he focuses on,

00:12:57.300 which stories warrant his condemnation of the media. He's been selective on which stories he

00:13:02.440 thinks are worth including, worth analyzing, worth investigating. And he has the gall to tell us that

00:13:08.660 we don't have the full context. We don't have all the facts. We don't actually know or get to know

00:13:15.300 or get to hear or get to understand why everything happened the way it was reported.

00:13:19.980 Because, well, you know, we're just these lowly plebs without security clearance. 0.91

00:13:24.060 We can't possibly.

00:13:25.380 And there was a thing here that jumped, that came out where Aaron O'Toole,

00:13:28.940 who we invited to come on the show today.

00:13:30.640 And as I understand, it didn't respond to us for one reason or another.

00:13:34.620 But Aaron O'Toole was interviewed by David Johnson.

00:13:37.620 And Aaron O'Toole wrote about this on his substack this morning.

00:13:41.160 In it, he basically said, listen, when he sat down with Johnson,

00:13:45.180 And he was convinced it was a waste of time and was also told, and Johnson confirmed this,

00:13:51.380 that parts of the final report that we saw today were already being sent off for translation.

00:13:58.280 So the report was already effectively done when he was sitting down being supposedly

00:14:04.780 interviewed by David Johnson.

00:14:07.080 And when the report is already being translated, it basically says that the idea of just talking

00:14:15.120 to a conservative was just an afterthought. And I think Pierre Polyev was right to just say he

00:14:20.560 wanted nothing to do with this process. Polyev did a statement today in which he basically said

00:14:26.800 this proved everything that he warned about with this inquiry. Take a look. We need a full public

00:14:33.400 inquiry to get to the bottom of Beijing's interference in our democracy. And that's what 0.85

00:14:39.420 i will deliver when i am prime minister there will be a full public inquiry into this mess

00:14:44.720 and in the meantime we will continue to push for a real foreign influence registry that exposes

00:14:50.400 anyone who does paid work on behalf of foreign dictatorship to manipulate our politics it's just

00:14:57.820 common sense yeah it should be common sense but i i wrote about this in a column a few months ago

00:15:07.820 The problem with this eminent Canadian category, of which David Johnston is a member, Frankie

00:15:13.780 Iacobucci is a member, Beverly McLaughlin's a member, is that they actually don't have

00:15:18.560 much sense, common or otherwise, between them.

00:15:22.020 Because it's all about just trying to keep the regime alive.

00:15:25.700 That's the goal.

00:15:26.520 It's all about just making sure that we don't undermine democracy.

00:15:30.680 But they get to define what democracy is.

00:15:33.200 They get to define what democratic institutions are.

00:15:35.780 And democratic institutions only exist if they're the ones representing, if they're the ones who are the faces of them. 0.62

00:15:44.260 So here we have David Johnston coming out and saying, yes, China is interfering in our elections.

00:15:49.500 And by the way, in his remarks, it took, I think, like 20 minutes before he even uttered the word China.

00:15:55.460 So he was just trying to deal with this only in the abstract, which is noteworthy and concerning.

00:16:01.220 But the report does talk about China. It talks about Chinese interference.

00:16:05.260 He says, oh, yeah, there were some shortcomings.

00:16:07.400 But you look at the shortcomings, and oddly, none of them involved Justin Trudeau.

00:16:12.360 It was the system needs to do better.

00:16:16.080 So he is either intentionally or otherwise, I don't know, parroting Justin Trudeau's approach to everything,

00:16:21.580 where when he is caught to have broken rules or broken the law in some cases,

00:16:26.740 it somehow becomes society's fault.

00:16:29.380 It's society's problem.

00:16:30.560 It's never Justin Trudeau's problem.

00:16:32.360 There's never a learning opportunity for him, but there's a growth opportunity for all of us.

00:16:37.140 And Johnson is essentially doing the same thing here, where he's saying,

00:16:41.140 well, you know what, we all need to do a little bit better.

00:16:44.260 But no, let's focus on the people that were being told that Michael Chong's family

00:16:51.440 was being spied on and intimidated.

00:16:54.480 The people who were told that a Liberal member of Parliament, or at the time,

00:16:59.380 and earlier a liberal candidate was being helped along in his career by officials with the Chinese

00:17:05.840 consulate. The Handong stuff is particularly interesting here. So Handong, the liberal MP

00:17:12.720 who was getting some help from Chinese officials, who later on was as a liberal MP, a backbench

00:17:19.880 liberal MP, having a conversation with a Chinese consular official about the two Michaels, which in

00:17:25.080 of itself is concerning. And a CSIS report said that he had advised against the release

00:17:30.680 of the two Michaels. And Handong said, oh, he's out of caucus now. But I mean, Handong

00:17:36.660 had basically said that, well, it was a mistranslation. He never actually said that.

00:17:42.400 Well, David Johnson gives like three paragraphs of attention to the Handong issue. And in the

00:17:48.660 three paragraphs, he says, there is well-grounded suspicion that the irregularities tied to the

00:17:55.040 PRT were tied to the PRT consulate in Toronto with whom Mr. Dong maintains relationships so

00:18:00.160 they say that absolutely he's friends with people that have been meddling in Canada's elections but

00:18:04.880 then they say well he probably wasn't aware of the irregularities but on the two Michaels he says

00:18:11.540 and this is I think quite fascinating here that and I'm just pulling up the exact quote because

00:18:18.180 I don't want to be accused of getting it wrong, that he never, in David Johnson's words,

00:18:27.540 he never talked about the, he never advocated for keeping them detained. So that's a complete

00:18:35.620 contradiction of the global news report. Johnston concludes the allegation is false. But then he

00:18:41.920 says, Mr. Dong discussed the two Michaels with a PRC official, but did not request to the official

00:18:49.640 that the PRC extend their detention. Well, okay, let's talk about why they were having a discussion.

00:18:57.320 Why was Handong even talking to China about the two Michaels? He had no consular authority. He

00:19:03.200 was not a member of global affairs. He wasn't a minister. It doesn't sound like he was doing it

00:19:07.340 on the government's behalf.

00:19:08.940 So you'd think a special rapporteur

00:19:11.340 would be interested in getting to the bottom of that.

00:19:13.440 But instead he does this.

00:19:15.420 This is what Johnson says.

00:19:17.540 The allegation that he did make that suggestion

00:19:20.700 has had a very adverse effect on Mr. Dong.

00:19:25.520 Hmm.

00:19:26.520 So David Johnson is more interested

00:19:29.140 in talking about the hurt feelings that Handong had

00:19:33.080 than the substance of the allegation.

00:19:35.140 And even the uncontested substance, which is that he was having a conversation with Chinese officials

00:19:40.320 while China was keeping two Canadians locked up for years without due process.

00:19:46.160 And we're supposed to be concerned about all the adverse effect that Global News' reporting had on Mr. Dong.

00:19:54.260 So I think that if it's false, great, let's see the transcript.

00:19:58.180 Why are we being told to just trust David Johnston when David Johnston was reviewing a transcript of a call

00:20:04.260 that he's saying no Canadians should be allowed to see.

00:20:07.960 And this is exactly why there needs to be an inquiry,

00:20:10.700 an inquiry that makes public documents that right now are not being public

00:20:14.700 because right now the government has shown itself to not be trustworthy on this.

00:20:19.420 Not Justin Trudeau, not the brass at CSIS, and certainly not David Johnson.

00:20:25.480 We're going to revisit this a little bit before the show ends,

00:20:28.540 but I want to shift gears to another topic which is important.

00:20:31.980 We had actually planned to talk about this today as of last week, and that is the move towards climate-friendly banking, which sounds like a bit of an absurd thing, but there are some MPs that are actually trying to force this on financial institutions, on pension funds, that they rejig their investment rules to only back projects or initiatives or corporations that have climate-aligned goals.

00:20:59.080 We spoke a while ago about this in the context of what Gina Papano of InvestNow is doing,

00:21:05.240 and we have Gina back with us today.

00:21:07.440 Gina, it's good to talk to you again.

00:21:08.860 Thanks for coming on the show.

00:21:12.060 So let's first off talk about this idea that it is not a new one.

00:21:15.760 I mean, we've seen institutions push this, and you've been on the front line of that,

00:21:20.260 but now we have MPs that are actually trying to codify this in regulation.

00:21:24.460 What would that actually mean?

00:21:25.560 well it would mean that they're putting an arbitrary um rule on investments in what it

00:21:34.520 really means the elimination of the oil and gas sector as an investment potential

00:21:37.800 and in canada this is very disconcerting because everything that we do runs on oil and gas and we

00:21:44.920 have an abundance of oil and gas and we need to invest in this sector to ensure that the supply

00:21:51.080 that the world needs is met by Canada and Canadian companies. So putting this into law

00:21:57.560 is giving it the climate alignment as a superseding duty over fiduciary duty to

00:22:06.920 invest in things that will provide the best returns for their beneficiaries.

00:22:12.380 You know, I have a big problem with the ethical aspect of this for reasons that we'll get into

00:22:18.040 with the effect on the oil and gas sector.

00:22:19.920 But if I'm someone who is trying to get my retirement savings

00:22:24.200 done through a pension plan,

00:22:25.960 I mean, I'd be mortified that I was being denied

00:22:28.760 what should be the primary goal of a pension fund,

00:22:30.980 which is return on investment,

00:22:32.240 because they've decided, oh, you know what?

00:22:34.220 We only need to invest in climate aligned companies

00:22:37.740 or you could take that to any number of other issues.

00:22:40.440 We only want companies that have a feminist focus. 1.00

00:22:43.520 We only want companies that fly the pride flag or whatever.

00:22:46.080 If you're an investor in this, is this even something you care about?

00:22:51.940 Well, if you're an investor, you should only be concerned, it's public money.

00:22:56.800 So the investors, the public pension funds, the banks, they should be concerned with providing the best returns to their shareholders, to their beneficiaries.

00:23:07.020 And imposing this rule eliminates an entire sector from the investment potential.

00:23:13.280 and that is not that's not even ESG investing because if you if you take a if you take away

00:23:20.660 the oil and gas sector for example you can't invest in any Canadian oil and gas sectors

00:23:24.700 any oil and gas companies the demand is still there so the supply will come from somewhere

00:23:31.260 it just won't be Canada and emissions will go up and everything that they're trying to do

00:23:36.640 will not be attained achieved but what will happen is the elimination of the oil and gas sector in

00:23:42.680 Canada, jobs, our way of life. There's just so many industry will shut down. So many industries

00:23:52.100 rely on oil and gas. The mining industry, you can't have industries without oil and gas

00:23:56.780 because they fuel every industry on the stock exchange.

00:24:00.720 So prior to the environmental dimension that we talked about previously and that we're talking

00:24:06.100 about now, has there ever been a moral test to these investment funds or is that in and of itself

00:24:11.720 a new phenomenon well there was apartheid uh so people weren't investing in south african companies

00:24:18.840 um and tobacco companies in the past but um there's what they found was um those pension

00:24:28.360 funds lost out especially tobacco companies they lost out on returns and i think if someone wants

00:24:36.440 to do what whatever they they if they want to invest in something of their own money but this

00:24:42.200 is taking the public pension plan and using it weaponizing it basically to invest in what is

00:24:51.160 termed climate friendly but we we really have no way of proving that because i mean there therein

00:24:57.320 lies i think the other problem which is even if you agree fundamentally with what they're trying

00:25:02.040 to do uh it's not even clear that it will do that and i think all the evidence probably points in

00:25:07.200 the other direction i mean uh you talk about the environmental impact of the mining industry and

00:25:13.080 it is there but it's the mining industry that benefits the most when we decide that everything

00:25:17.260 needs to be electric like i remember once seeing uh at davos there was this mining executive that

00:25:22.540 was talking about oh we need battery powered everything and everyone's like oh he's so he's

00:25:26.440 such a climate champion and it's like well yeah who stands to benefit from you know the world

00:25:30.080 ratcheting up its demand for lithium. It's these mining executives. So it's not even like it will

00:25:35.740 achieve that environmental objective. No, it's really an exercise in magical thinking because

00:25:41.080 to think that we can eliminate our oil and gas sector, especially in Canada, where we're blessed

00:25:45.220 with the natural resources, we should be getting our Canadian oil and gas out there. We should be

00:25:50.380 investing in it because the divestment activists may believe that they're helping Canada and

00:25:58.600 reducing co2 emissions but the facts point to quite the opposite just today 84 percent

00:26:05.800 of primary energy needs are coming from oil natural gas and coal and global demand is

00:26:11.880 increasing not decreasing so we want canada and canadian companies to meet this demand

00:26:18.360 otherwise we're hobbling ourselves and giving it to you know the supply will be met from someone

00:26:25.640 and we want it to be from Canada. When we look at these regulations, do they make a distinction

00:26:32.120 between, you know, Canadian companies that, as you've noted, are doing a lot of work to really

00:26:37.820 comply with government environmental regulations and to innovate themselves and reduce their

00:26:42.200 emissions and, you know, foreign oil companies that might not be as diligent with this? Or does

00:26:47.480 it basically just paint any traditional energy source with the same brush and any company in

00:26:51.760 that space. That's right. It's all oil and gas and coal painted with the same brush. There's no

00:26:57.220 distinction for Canada. It's obvious that they want to dismantle this sector in Canada. And we

00:27:04.300 hear the government using these, you know, nice little words like just transition as though this

00:27:09.040 is all just part of some natural evolution. And, you know, they don't often conceal the

00:27:13.320 fundamental goal of envisioning a future without oil and gas. No, but the problem is, is that even

00:27:20.480 possible you know there's so much so much more to oil and gas than just electricity there are so

00:27:26.000 many products that rely on oil and gas and uh you can't make steel without coal there's so many um

00:27:32.560 products that we rely on to live our lives to uh to drive to work to you know um to to heat our

00:27:41.600 homes to air condition our homes and so we we we can't i don't even think you can fathom a world

00:27:48.640 without oil and gas right now but people think we can just flip a switch in 20 years and be done

00:27:54.080 with it i i know there's been a big push and it's actually been unfortunately getting some success

00:27:59.920 at universities to have universities divest from from oil and gas and i was wondering if you could

00:28:05.520 just provide an update on on kind of how that is because i think there were uh some calls and i'm

00:28:10.000 in london ontario there are some calls at western university which hasn't yet done it yet but some

00:28:13.920 pretty big universities have that's right u of t has um so the divestment movement's been around

00:28:20.160 for 10 years uh the universities were a prime target to get the endowment funds to divest from

00:28:26.240 oil and gas but if you if you look at the movement um pension funds have divested now they're attack

00:28:33.920 you know they're going after the banks to divest so you see an escalation in their targets but what

00:28:39.840 you don't see is any reduction in emissions. In 10 years, demand has gone up, emissions have gone

00:28:46.960 up. So even though all of these endowment funds and public pension plans have divested,

00:28:56.240 there has been no discernible impact on emissions. Now, I know that the Canadian 0.97

00:29:02.640 pension or the Canada pension plan has rejected this call, but are you optimistic that position

00:29:07.840 will hold if the current trajectory keeps up? Well, we've been tracking all of the movements

00:29:14.460 and I guess the targets of the divestment activists. And we're just trying to state

00:29:20.520 our case of why the Canada pension plan should not be divesting from oil and gas. They should

00:29:25.940 be investing in oil and gas. It's good for innovation. It's good for emissions reductions.

00:29:31.140 It's good for our economy. And so the Canada pension plan should not be entertaining divestment.

00:29:37.280 but we're just hoping to be able to um get our messages out there our narrative well yeah and i

00:29:43.360 think as you should be and i know you've talked about the demand issue but you know they talk

00:29:47.120 about a divide between the real economy and the financial economy here because if you know if you

00:29:52.080 if you could divest you know all your stocks and holdings in an oil and gas company but it does

00:29:56.800 nothing to eliminate the demand for oil and gas which is still there and and the need for hydrocarbon

00:30:02.480 But it really does try to just kill this industry by a thousand blows.

00:30:08.020 It's just affecting their access to capital.

00:30:10.980 And it gives other companies in less democratic regions an opportunity to fulfill the supply.

00:30:21.120 Yeah, and that's always been the reality here, is that anything that we do in the West to hurt our oil and gas sector benefits Venezuela

00:30:30.820 and benefits the Middle East and to indirectly Iran and all these other places that tend to do

00:30:38.180 very well. So when you get Justin Trudeau saying there's no business case for exporting LNG to

00:30:44.400 Germany, well, Germany is looking around, desperately looking for it. It's another 0.90

00:30:48.000 country that fills that void. Yes. And also at the same time, China's building a coal plant every

00:30:53.360 week right now, or getting approvals to build a coal plant every week. So there's not a global

00:30:59.920 alignment on this stuff and to just hobble ourselves makes no sense. So I guess the big

00:31:07.440 question here, and I don't know if you can answer it simply, but are you an optimist or a pessimist

00:31:11.600 on this? I'm an optimist. I think the way things are looking in Europe is like a marker for us to

00:31:22.620 watch. And even like countries like Qatar are saying that due to the lack of investment,

00:31:29.320 there's going to be a severe oil supply shortage, which means prices are going to go up.

00:31:35.040 So I think people might start connecting the dots that, hey, maybe investment is not such a bad

00:31:41.220 thing. We need to invest in our supply. We need to invest in our Canadian companies. We have the

00:31:46.280 highest environmental standards in the world. So I think we just have to keep getting our messages

00:31:50.900 out and we might be heard. I'm optimistic that we'll be heard. All right. Well, we certainly

00:31:58.160 hear you here as well. And I think there is obviously a little bit of a deck stacked against

00:32:03.640 the little guy feeling that a lot of individual investors have. But I think you need to call up

00:32:08.300 your banks. I think you need to call up the people managing your funds because we know that the

00:32:12.420 activists are doing that. And if they're not getting anyone on the other end saying it's

00:32:16.640 important that you keep my money going towards this, if there's a business case there, then it's

00:32:21.860 completely going without being contested. That's right. We need to stand up and fight for the

00:32:27.640 industry. All right. Well, you're certainly doing that. And I think everyone needs to join you in

00:32:31.940 that fight. Gina Papano, Executive Director of InvestNow. Thanks so much. And do keep us posted

00:32:37.100 on this. Thank you, Andrew. All right. Thank you, Gina. I said before the show was up, I'd get back

00:32:42.720 to the China files here. And I will in just a moment. But speaking of being heard, let me just

00:32:49.080 briefly offer an update to a story we've talked about at True North, which is the ban on Canada

00:32:55.760 day fireworks by the city of calgary so uh the city of calgary decides uh when mayor jody gonda

00:33:01.920 gets in that it's a climate emergency so all of a sudden the climate crisis means you can't light

00:33:07.340 fireworks uh it has nothing to do with their hatred of canada day it's their hatred of anything

00:33:12.460 that emits into the atmosphere or something like that so uh now they've decided to replace it with

00:33:17.720 a sound and light show now i'm not against sound and light shows i went and saw an abba hologram

00:33:23.440 concert that was a sound and light show and I loved it, but I didn't do it because they were

00:33:27.680 fighting against the climate crisis. I did it because it looked like it was good on its own

00:33:32.060 merits. And now in Calgary, thousands have signed a petition to bring back Canada Day fireworks. So

00:33:38.980 I don't know if Jody Gondak is going to listen. I think some, I think anyone who wants to should

00:33:44.400 chip in and have their own private firework show that's going to rival the cities. Just rent some

00:33:49.020 giant acreage and do the fireworks show that the city is not allowing and make sure you admit

00:33:54.300 twice as much as the city would have just to prove the point. But all that being said, let's talk

00:33:59.460 about the China stuff here. If you're just tuning in, David Johnston has decided to give a clean

00:34:06.060 bill of health to Justin Trudeau's handling of the China file. He said, oh no, he didn't know

00:34:11.520 anything. He didn't avoid anything. He didn't ignore anything. The real problem is those pesky

00:34:16.620 civil servants, that we need to figure out what a good way is for them to be able to communicate

00:34:21.480 stuff to government and communicate stuff to Justin Trudeau. So they're the ones we need to

00:34:27.080 look at here, not Justin Trudeau. And oh, the media, you guys, no, no, no, the media just got

00:34:31.860 it wrong. We didn't have access to all of the wisdom and documents that David Johnson had. So

00:34:37.220 the recap on this, and if you're having trouble following along, you're not alone, because I think

00:34:42.580 anyone with two IQs, two IQ points to rub together is even having trouble with this. And the whole

00:34:49.780 point here is that David Johnston is effectively saying that everyone but Justin Trudeau is the

00:34:57.920 problem. And if you criticize Justin Trudeau, you're part of this media misinformation. If you

00:35:02.460 criticize David Johnson, you're undermining faith in democracy. It's actually quite brilliant because

00:35:06.640 it means that no one is able to say anything but David Johnston because, well, you didn't have all

00:35:11.220 the facts you didn't have all the full context so uh it's a pretty smart way of doing things but is

00:35:17.580 it in canada's best interest absolutely not and i i pointed out on twitter earlier you can tell why

00:35:23.900 johnson and trudeau are friends because both of them whenever they're busted on something just

00:35:29.560 talk about broad abstract shortcomings well not talking about their own responsibility and saying

00:35:35.480 it's the system to blame and then pointing to the media more than anything else. But what happens

00:35:42.260 here, and I'm just going to go through some of the greatest hits of this, the five conclusions

00:35:45.760 that Johnson had. One, yes, foreign interference is happening in Canada's elections. Two, materials

00:35:51.720 were misconstrued in some media reporting. Three, there are serious shortcomings in how intelligence

00:35:59.340 is communicated and processed. Again, the general, the abstract, nothing to do with Trudeau.

00:36:04.440 number four, I'll get back to in a moment. Number five is that Trudeau should invite

00:36:10.740 these independent oversight committees like NSACOP to review his conclusion and have access

00:36:17.260 to classified information and say if they disagree with his conclusion. Number four, though, was that

00:36:23.640 a further public process is required, but that should not be a formal inquiry because to do so

00:36:30.460 would mean that documents that have been classified

00:36:34.180 would have to be made public, and we can't have any of that.

00:36:36.780 So instead, Johnson is going to embark on a second phase

00:36:40.760 and keep this going himself.

00:36:42.820 And in that second phase, he's going to have public hearings,

00:36:45.360 but the documents, well, those aren't going to be public.

00:36:48.980 So this is what he's saying, and we're supposed to just trust him.

00:36:52.780 And if you read through the report,

00:36:54.400 it's odd how he tends to just want to give Justin Trudeau outs on things.

00:37:01.160 Like I mentioned the Handong stuff.

00:37:03.280 There's one point of Handong that talks about when he was a nomination candidate,

00:37:08.120 which was the subject of one of the CSIS reports.

00:37:11.280 And the reason it was important is because there were things brought up to the Liberals at the time

00:37:16.420 that looked like he was trying to get a little bit of help from China and from the Chinese Politburo.

00:37:22.640 And Justin Trudeau was briefed about the irregularities.

00:37:27.380 And Johnson acknowledges this in his report.

00:37:29.160 He said he was briefed.

00:37:30.600 No specific recommendation was provided.

00:37:32.720 He concluded there was no basis to displace Mr. Dong as the candidate for Don Valley North.

00:37:39.520 Now, had he ended there, it would have been just a statement of fact.

00:37:44.460 But Johnson goes one line further.

00:37:46.580 He says,

00:37:47.000 this was not an unreasonable conclusion based on the intelligence available to the Prime Minister

00:37:53.180 at the time. So he's actually in his report trying to make Justin Trudeau's case for him.

00:37:59.060 He is preemptively doing Justin Trudeau's spin so that Justin Trudeau doesn't have to even do

00:38:05.280 his own spin. He can just look at the report, take it at face value and say, see, David Johnson

00:38:09.840 exonerated us. That's probably why you appointed him because you knew this was going to be the way

00:38:14.960 things are going. We're going to talk about this more after I've had a time to go through the

00:38:18.900 report in a bit more depth tomorrow, but you can read it for yourself and I would encourage you to

00:38:23.320 because that way when Trudeau gets up there and misrepresents it, you are armed with the facts

00:38:28.560 and not just the spin. Although I warn you, the spin is baked into the report itself. That does

00:38:34.220 it for us. We will be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the

00:38:38.980 Andrew Lawton Show on True North. Thank you, God bless, and a good day to you all.

00:38:42.900 thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north

00:38:49.240 at www.tnc.news

Juno News - May 23, 2023

David Johnston's report is a Trudeau whitewash

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript