Juno News - October 27, 2021Despite cabinet tweaks, Trudeau is planning more of the same
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Summary
Coming up, Justin Trudeau's cabinet changes, but everything really remains the same. The Liberals continue to wedge Conservatives on vaccination, and Aaron Gunn speaks out after being disqualified from the BC Liberal leadership race. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, Justin Trudeau's cabinet changes, but everything really remains the same.
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The Liberals continue to wedge Conservatives on vaccination,
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and Aaron Gunn speaks out after disqualification from the BC Liberal leadership race.
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Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
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I spent the last couple of days in Alberta, which I feel I've been saying a lot lately.
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There have been a few things that have pulled me out there.
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This time, I was speaking at another one of the Economic Education Association of Alberta's Freedom Talk conferences.
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We were talking about healthcare, and I'll have some interviews and coverage from that conference on my Thursday show in just a couple of days' time.
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Big news today is Justin Trudeau's new cabinet, which is new and exciting, and yet not all that different.
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People have been shuffled around, a couple of notable absences.
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But when push comes to shove, this is not an example of a government hitting the reset button in a substantive way.
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And I'm going to talk about a couple of the changes here.
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To be honest, I don't care who the fisheries minister is.
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But I am going to talk about some of the big changes that are taking place.
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There should be a recognition from the government that things have not been handled well.
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Those two, if there were no other changes, those two should make Canadians very happy.
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Patty Hajdu, who maligned border closures as racist before maligning people that oppose border closures,
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who said you are feeding conspiracies theories if you question China's handling of COVID pandemic.
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Patty Hajdu, who loves just firing off at everyone else for not wearing a mask and is then photographed hanging out in an airport lounge without a mask.
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She was an unmitigated, disastrous health minister and deserves to be gone.
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She's now been moved to the Indigenous Services portfolio.
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She's the Minister of Indigenous Services, which is pretty much as insulting to Indigenous Canadians as Justin Trudeau going to Tofino on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is.
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And a significant role that they've put someone who doesn't particularly handle files all that well in.
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And then we have Bill Blair, who was responsible for this absolutely failed attempt to manage the border, a failed attempt to manage firearms.
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They've split up, actually, the public safety portfolio and the emergency preparedness file.
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These used to be one, public safety and emergency preparedness.
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This is for no other reason than to give him a bit of a soft landing.
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So now Bill Blair is just the emergency preparedness minister and the public safety minister is Marco Mendicino, who was previously working on immigration.
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He was the most recent global affairs minister, five foreign ministers in six years.
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This is the Trudeau government's legacy on this.
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For all that Justin Trudeau loved to say that Canada was back, five foreign ministers in six years.
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This is how we send the message to the world that Canada's back.
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We send Melanie Jolie on the foreign stage.
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Now, having a new foreign affairs minister does not mean you have a new foreign policy.
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Canada has, despite the proclamation that, you know, it's not like the old days of Stephen Harper, we've not really done anything on the foreign stage.
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And apart from failing to get a seat on the UN Security Council, then failing to get our pick elected to the head of the OECD, Canada has not reasserted itself on the foreign stage.
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Not sure if the Trudeau government is going to try to do that with Melanie Jolie or if they're just giving up.
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And one amusing takeaway from the cabinet is that Mona Fortier, who was the minister for middle class prosperity.
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And you may remember, this is the woman who couldn't actually define what the middle class was when asked and gave this answer.
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But, well, people know when they're in the middle class.
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She's moved to another file, but the ministry is gone.
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There's no more minister for middle class prosperity.
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So, as I pointed out on Twitter, I don't know if that means the middle class is sufficiently prosperous or if the government just realized that this was a make-work position that was platitudinal in nature and achieved nothing.
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But, again, I don't really think there's been any introspection.
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So, you look at this and say, and by the way, the reports are that Marc Garneau is going to be headed to be an ambassador in France or something, which is what they did to Stéphane Dion.
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So, Europe is now the dumping ground for problematic Canadian ministers.
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We just, like, send them somewhere else so we don't need to deal with them.
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And as we saw with John McCallum, sending problem MPs to become ambassadors, in his case China, doesn't always work out all that well for Canada.
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But even though we see some changes, like Harjit Sajjan gone out of defense and replaced by a minister, Anita Anand, another one where Sajjan shouldn't have been in the cabinet at all.
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How he managed to get international development when here's a guy who oversaw what was increasingly looking like a defense department in which every single leadership member, not actually, but, you know, facetiously, was under investigation for some sort of sexual misconduct.
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And he was the guy at the top, but he still gets to stay in cabinet.
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So, obviously, the government is responding to some problems and scandals.
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The fact that, yeah, Haidu wasn't cutting it at hell, Sajjan couldn't be at defense, and Garneau wasn't doing well at foreign affairs and all of that.
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But at the same time, they're really just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic here.
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They're not accepting that they've done things wrong.
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They're not accepting that they need a course correction.
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In fact, I bet when the throne speech comes back, Justin Trudeau's message is going to be,
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We've just, you know, made a little couple of tiny, teeny, teeny little tweaks here.
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Just, you know, just a couple little tiny changes, trim around the edges.
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The Trudeau government is not adequately performing in a way that is serving Canadians.
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And the reality that they've taken these bad ministers out, but aren't even just saying,
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In some cases, significant files suggest the government is not planning to change anything else.
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Even if Justin Trudeau was reelected with another minority, the liberals won.
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Now, as I said after the election, when a lot of conservative defenders were saying,
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well, you know, the conservatives kept Justin Trudeau from getting a majority.
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And even if they won with a narrow mandate, they still are doing well.
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That's what you want in an election to end up in government.
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And I have no reason to suspect that the NDP and the Bloc Québécois will not continue to
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just rubber stamp whatever it is the Trudeau government is doing.
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There will be terms and conditions attached to this, of course, but the liberals will hand
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They're more likely to find a willing dance partner in the NDP and the Bloc than in the
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And I think this one will probably be a bit more stable than the last.
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And if you want an example of how the liberals are not eager to do any sort of course correction,
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just look at how the vaccine mandate has become the new fight for members of parliament in the
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class of 2021 before they've even taken their seats.
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The reality is you have MPs who were duly elected by their constituents, irrespective of
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their vaccination status, or perhaps because the constituents knew and it was important
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But MPs who are duly elected, if they're not vaccinated, will not be allowed to take their
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And this is thanks to a closed door meeting in the Board of Eternal Economy made up of members
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But of course, the conservatives are outnumbered in which they adopted a vaccine mandate for MPs.
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Now, this is what the liberals have decided to make a priority.
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They're not talking about how can we work together?
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They're saying, how can we make sure that we continue to drive wedge after wedge on vaccination
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Because they think that the conservatives are the crazy ones for believing that vaccination
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They think that that is not a position compatible with Canadian society right now.
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And they're moving more and more towards trying to mandate vaccination wherever they can.
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They can't, you know, drive up with a van to your front door and jab you against your
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But they can put vaccine mandates in more and more places so more and more Canadians are
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And in this case, it is members of parliament who have to play ball.
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So the conservative MPs who are unvaccinated, I don't know how many there are.
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But there are more that I think are taking the position I do, which is that you get vaccinated,
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don't get vaccinated, that's your choice, but let's stand against mandating it.
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And one of them notably has been rookie member of parliament, Leslyn Lewis.
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Now, I interviewed Leslyn Lewis when she was seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party
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of Canada back in, I think it was March of 2020.
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And she has been very vocal on Twitter in the last few days, standing up for the idea
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Now, I don't know or care whether Leslyn Lewis is vaccinated.
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She is seeking or she has won her first election.
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So she's going to be the member of parliament for Haldim and Norfolk.
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And she's been pointing out the reality of this being an oppressive measure that is inherently
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She says in one tweet here, a philosopher once said that the British serfs were free to leave
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their lord's feudal land and go to the city to starve.
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When a choice leaves people with no means of support, then it is an illusion created
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It appears to give options that are really ultimatums.
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She also took another tweet from Stockwell Day, who was pointing out a lot of the unfair
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And she said that the media is trying to paint her as a reckless lunatic to lynch her into
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She's not going to sit at the back of the bus.
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And she's continued in recent days to stand up for medical privacy, to stand up against
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vaccine mandates and be very vocal in a way that I think conservative members of parliament
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I think we've had him on the show in the past, or I've certainly interviewed him elsewhere.
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He is an MP in Alberta, good advocate for firearms.
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He's saying if we want to fight the pandemic, we need to be unified, not divided.
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And he says he's opposed to coerced vaccinations and feels strongly about that as he feels about
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So he's not anti-vax, despite how the media and the left would love to characterize him.
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He supports the right for people to make the decision for themselves, which is so critical
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So we have a couple of MPs that are speaking out.
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And Erin O'Toole has, I don't know if you've noticed, flip-flopped on this a couple of
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And then he was saying, well, yeah, but we'll just, we'll accept it.
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But, you know, we'll shake our finger at the Board of Internal Economy.
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We don't like it, but yeah, well, what can you do?
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And, you know, look, in a practical sense, maybe he's right about that.
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But I would like to see the Conservatives making a bigger stink.
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The reason they aren't, and this is the regrettable part about Canada right now, is that they are
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People like you listening, presumably people like me, those of us who believe this is a matter
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We are in the minority, in a country that is increasingly moving away from personal choice
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and individual liberty and individual responsibility, and moving towards a society that welcomes government
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fiat and government control over individual decisions.
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And this is why the Liberals continue to use vaccination as a wedge, because they know that
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there are more people on their side than there are on the other.
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Now, the way you do that is by impressing upon people the point of individual choice and
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helping people understand that the right to choose is separate and distinct from the substance
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or moral worth of what a particular choice is, in the same way that support for free speech
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is detached from what a particular expression of free speech is.
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I talk about it on the show, and that's one of the hardest hurdles to overcome.
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People that are so focused on the substance of speech, they don't think of the bigger picture.
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I don't have to find a joke funny to defend someone's right to say it.
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I don't have to find an expression of speech tasteful to support its status as free speech.
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And these are going to be, again, very related issues.
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That event in Alberta, which I spoke, I was talking about how government's universal monopoly
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on health care is a conduit for government to control individual decisions.
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Because as we've seen in the pandemic, they get to make hospital capacity the trump card
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Because they can say, well, you have your own choice, but we've got to protect the health
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A society and a culture that doesn't value freedom is not that far removed from one that
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And we know that the liberals are, as one of their first orders of business, it's going
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to be, mark my words, in the first hundred days.
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In the first hundred days, Justin Trudeau's government is going to reintroduce its ban on
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internet hate speech, on so-called internet hate speech.
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It will presumably have a new number when it comes back.
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But this is going to be one of the very first things the liberals do to try to reopen
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regulation of online speech under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
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That's also something to be concerned about and something we'll be watching.
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But this is specifically the liberals hate speech bill.
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And I noticed the conservatives yesterday, I sign up for on all the mailing lists for all
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the parties at my inbox makes me want to pull my hair out.
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But it's important to know what they're saying as they go about this.
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The conservatives sent out a fundraising email, fundraising, trying to ask Canadians for money
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on the back of this liberal ban to regulate speech.
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So what they said here is that Justin Trudeau won't bring back parliament, but he's already
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planning to introduce a bill that will censor the internet and regulate your free speech.
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Even liberal ministers are acknowledging that this new censorship bill is more extreme
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and far-reaching than their last attempt with Bill C-10.
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In a society that values freedom of speech and expression, we can't afford to leave the
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door open for a massive abuse of power on the rights of Canadians.
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And they're saying that the plan to censor the internet and restrict your free speech is
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So conservatives must come together to stand up for free speech.
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But I note that before the election, the conservatives were silent, absolutely silent on C-36.
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Aaron O'Toole, and believe me, I look, did not say a word about it, did not say a single
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word until I asked about it during the campaign.
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The conservatives didn't post any messaging on it, didn't put out any press release.
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The only comment was from one shadow minister, a critic who said something.
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But even then, it wasn't a proactive statement.
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So, I mean, Ezra Levant retweeted the tweet that I put out about that with a screenshot
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and said, yeah, yeah, they're just doing it for money.
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I also think it's a bit of now that the election's over, conservatives start feeling they could
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This was the challenge with Andrew Scheer in 2019.
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I did an interview with him in August of last year when he was on his way out, and he said
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in retrospect, you know, he wished he had just been more himself, because he is a conservative.
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But when a conservative is eyeing the finish line, they get all of these activists that
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jump on that say the road to victory is to move more and more to the left.
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And we're going to see Aaron O'Toole probably start talking about these red meat issues now
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because he's not going after centrist Canadians.
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He's instead trying to cling to his own leadership.
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And look, I mean, I take the position that better late than never.
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I want the conservatives to fight this because the conservatives managed to, whatever you
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think of them, they managed to sufficiently raise alarm bells about C-10 that the liberals
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didn't have a mandate to put forward Bill C-10 in the last session of parliament.
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The liberals were prepared to just, like, steamroll that one right ahead.
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And Michael Geist, a fantastic advocate at the University of Ottawa, had started to raise
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questions about it and point out why it was so dangerous.
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Then the conservatives picked it up and decided to make that a hill to die on, which, again,
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But in doing so, the conservatives managed to slow it down enough that it didn't really
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They better be prepared to do that, not just with whatever C-10's successor is, but also
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with C-36's successor, because these are things, as I've said, that need to be the hill to die
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on for conservatives and anyone in Canada who cares about freedom.
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When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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Let's talk about British Columbia politics for a couple of moments here.
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Aaron Gunn, who has been on the show in the past, was seeking for just a couple of weeks
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Now, this is where I have to put the obligatory disclaimer.
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The B.C. liberals are, for the most part, for the most part, and not exclusively, the
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choice party for right-of-center British Columbians.
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Now, there is a B.C. conservative party, but it doesn't really have much of an operation
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The B.C. liberals, that is the party for conservative British Columbians generally.
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And in fact, it was one of the things that Aaron Gunn wanted to rectify.
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He thought the B.C. liberals needed a new name.
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And he thought the party needed to establish itself on firm footing as a conservative party
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for British Columbians as an alternative to the NDP, which is currently in government
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And Aaron Gunn was going to be a disruptor, clearly.
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He was coming not from the political class, but from his role as a commentator, as an activist.
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He had a huge following, which is why when he started saying he was mauling a leadership
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bid earlier this year, we sat down with him and spent, I think it was like, you know,
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20, 25 minutes or so talking about a range of things.
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So a couple of weeks ago, Aaron Gunn launches his campaign.
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A couple of his colleagues saying, oh, this guy's too controversial.
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But nevertheless, he's going selling memberships, getting ready for it.
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Well, last week, a cabal of individuals behind closed doors decided that he does not have
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And they decided that he would be banned from running as a leadership candidate.
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To approve Mr. Gunn's candidacy would be inconsistent with the B.C.
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Liberal Party's commitment to reconciliation, diversity, and acceptance of all British Columbians.
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So it would not be sufficiently committed to reconciliation, diversity, or acceptance
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Now, again, there's no evidence given as to what he said or done
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that is insufficiently committed to reconciliation, acceptance, and diversity.
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But that's the cudgel they're using to keep Aaron Gunn out of the race.
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And whether you like him or not, whether you would have voted for him or not,
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surely these things can underscore the point that it should be members in parties
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who make these decisions, not backroom groups of individuals,
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like happened in the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race with Jim Carahalios,
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to give a recent example, like happens in nomination meetings that we take aim at all the time.
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And I say I was a beneficiary once of an appointment that took place behind closed doors.
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When I ran in Ontario in 2018 for the Ontario PCs, I was seeking the nomination.
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There were actually two other candidates that were seeking the nomination.
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One of them had been doing it for quite a while.
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And then the party decided just a few weeks out from the election,
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they were going to scrap the nomination race and appoint me.
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So people may say, well, who are you to talk about appointments?
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Even if they're the appointed ones, it's unfair,
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because it is the members who are supposed to be the ones to make these decisions.
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It's the members in parties who get to decide their leadership.
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So let's talk about this and what it means and also what comes next.
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Tell me, first off, since you've been disqualified,
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how's the response been from people, either your supporters or just in general?
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I've been completely overwhelmed by the response.
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You have hundreds of people tearing up their memberships, calling in to get refunded.
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You have up to and including former MLAs of the party who have done that,
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and people saying this is kind of the last straw.
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There's a lot of people that were already frustrated with the B.C. Liberals after the last election.
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I think there were a lot who were ready to walk away from the party
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and saw this leadership race as an opportunity to give it one more chance,
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and now they're just throwing their hands up in the air and walking away.
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And it's hard to obviously blame them when you have this kind of a situation
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where they use fabricated reasons and narratives
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and basically go along with exactly what the NDP was saying
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to try to allow their preferred candidate to win the race.
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Yeah, let's talk about those fabricated reasons.
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The release that the B.C. Liberals put out on the weekend when they disqualified you
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was that they felt your candidacy would, quote,
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be inconsistent with the B.C. Liberal Party's commitment to reconciliation, diversity,
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So setting aside for a moment that it's the members that get to decide
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whether your views are consistent or inconsistent with those of the party,
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what was the evidence that they were holding up
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that you were not sufficiently committed to reconciliation, diversity, and acceptance?
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Well, first of all, let me say that this seven-person unelected board
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that made this decision, none of the people on it were Indigenous.
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And in fact, the main Indigenous representative of the party
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is one of the candidates who's actually running in the race, Ellis Ross,
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and he publicly stated both before and after this decision
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and that none of these kind of accusations were true or based in reality.
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with the four tweets they highlighted going through my years
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and the other three were all derivative of each other,
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where I basically pushed back against the notion
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that Canada was a genocidal state that committed genocide
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in an attempt to exterminate Indigenous people.
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super nefarious or politically incorrect thing that I had said,
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but it literally was just saying Canada did not commit genocide.
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We did not do something on par with the Holocaust
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and that we shouldn't be throwing that word around willy-nilly
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But look, I think it's clear they made up their mind
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I think as we signed up hundreds and thousands of new people,
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they became very determined and panicked to stop the candidacy.
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would be most politically palatable to the mainstream media.
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and all that they found that they felt was disqualifying
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was believing that Canada is not a genocidal nation.
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that's their silver bullet to end your political campaign.
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the worst attempted kind of character assassination
00:26:07.840
and the fact that we lived in a much different world
00:26:12.360
the accusation that we actually committed genocide,
00:26:19.860
is not a view that is widely held by Canadians,
00:26:22.900
certainly not by party members or Conservatives,
00:26:34.960
that they couldn't find some kind of smoking gun.
00:27:00.420
Do you think it was that these people in that room
00:27:25.760
And we had basically been on the campaign trail
00:27:30.440
So I think it may have been a different decision
00:27:37.280
So there's no need in stirring up all this controversy
00:27:45.620
And they knew that this was their only move left.
00:28:24.760
and some of their failed policies on that front.
00:28:56.160
we're definitely going to have an announcement.