Juno News - Don’t forget – Trudeau under-reacted about coronavirus for two months

00:00:00.000 The Trudeau government spent two months praising China, defending open borders, and calling Canadians

00:00:06.220 racist. But now we're supposed to praise them and stand in unity as they kill the economy

00:00:11.340 and crack down on basic freedoms. I don't think so. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace

00:00:16.860 Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today. I want to do today's show

00:00:26.000 a little bit differently because I think it's so important that there's so much talk right now

00:00:30.440 about all the measures, all the increased measures that the government is taking to keep Canadians

00:00:34.180 safe, to prevent the spread of coronavirus. We see massive outbreaks now in the United States as well

00:00:40.720 as things continuing to look really, really bad in Europe, especially in places like Spain, France,

00:00:46.740 and Italy. Although in Italy, the daily death toll has sort of flattened and is now actually going down,

00:00:52.520 which is a good sign, although we're still talking about hundreds and hundreds of people dying

00:00:56.280 every single day from this virus. So everyone's talking about how kind of Canada's doing the right

00:01:01.500 thing now. Justin Trudeau has finally taken control, shut down basically the entire economy and our

00:01:08.200 society. Provincial governments and local governments are increasingly cracking down on

00:01:13.120 Canadians for doing basic mundane things like going to the park or going for a walk. So before we just

00:01:19.840 sort of sit back and praise it all and accept it all, I think it's incredibly important to be critical

00:01:25.040 at times like this. I totally understand that there's value in showing unity, showing solidarity

00:01:30.080 with Canadians. The important message is that people stay at home right now, that we do what we can

00:01:35.040 to prevent the spread in our own local, in our own direct communities and in our own lives.

00:01:41.700 You hear so much, flatten the curve, flatten the curve. I think that's all well and good,

00:01:46.120 but I don't think that the government deserves a pass. I think it's important to hold them

00:01:50.300 accountable, to be critical so that they don't try to do these things again. And we saw it last week

00:01:55.220 when Justin Trudeau introduced the legislation that was supposed to simply be an economic stimulus

00:02:01.100 or bailout bill, basically a bill to reimburse Canadians for the lost work, for the fact that we

00:02:06.840 have to shut down our businesses, the fact that we have to stop going to work. So the idea was just

00:02:12.360 simply to reimburse Canadians for the economic loss from forced government policies. But instead,

00:02:17.800 they sort of introduced a backdoor legislation that blindsided the opposition, asking, basically

00:02:23.640 demanding a power grab for two years, nearly two years, where they would have unlimited powers

00:02:28.760 and taxation powers and spending powers. Fortunately, the opposition stopped the Trudeau government,

00:02:34.680 but that's just a perfect example of why we need to hold them accountable. And even the bill that they

00:02:39.000 ended up getting still gave the government unprecedented powers for the short term,

00:02:44.440 for the interim. It gave the finance minister powers to tax and spend. It gave the federal government

00:02:50.840 new powers under the Quarantine Act. And so, not just from a libertarian perspective,

00:02:55.640 not just for libertarians, but all Canadians should be weary. We should discuss and talk about,

00:03:00.680 at least, the sacrifices that we're making, the trade-off that we're making, and have a fulsome

00:03:06.680 conversation about the pros and cons of the policy direction that we are taking. I've talked about

00:03:12.040 this on the show in the past. Justin Trudeau likes to sort of shrug his shoulders. He did it again today

00:03:16.520 during his press conference and just say, it's not up to politicians. We're only looking at experts.

00:03:21.240 We're looking to doctors and epidemiologists, and it's not up to us, it's up to them. That is a cop-out,

00:03:26.600 okay? That is just not how the world works. You're a politician. You're the prime minister of the

00:03:31.480 country. There's always going to be competing data. There are always going to be scientists

00:03:36.120 and experts who disagree with each other. And it is your job to choose a path, to carve out a direction

00:03:43.080 for the country. And you can't just say, you know, don't blame me. Don't hold me responsible. I was

00:03:47.480 just looking to the experts. It's fundamentally up to the politicians and the leaders of this country

00:03:52.440 to make those decisions. So I think that before we, again, go and praise the prime minister for

00:03:57.400 finally doing the right thing, which I think we're sort of going in that direction now with

00:04:01.960 borders more or less closed, with bans on internal travel, with a call for everyone

00:04:07.080 to basically stay at home, especially people who have been out of the country. There's finally a more

00:04:11.880 mandatory 14-day quarantine, self-quarantine. But let's go through how the government spent the past

00:04:20.040 two months. So there's a really good piece in the Edmonton Journal. I know, I know, the Edmonton

00:04:24.680 Journal, it's usually not my favorite publication. I went to school in Edmonton and I couldn't stand

00:04:30.200 that paper. It was incredibly biased and left-wing. But for whatever reason, they came up with a great

00:04:37.000 piece of journalism by David Staples over at the Edmonton Journal. And so they came up with a three-part

00:04:42.360 series where they are going to talk about how the government has handled the coronavirus from the

00:04:47.240 onset. From the first time it sort of came up and we learned about this new foreign virus going

00:04:53.640 around China. China was lying about it. China was trying to hide it. So it starts in January. This

00:04:58.440 is going through January and talking about how the government responded. What Staples did here,

00:05:04.520 which is really interesting, he sort of compared and contrasted what Canada did versus what Taiwan

00:05:10.120 did. Taiwan is a small country off the coast of China, very close to China, very close economic and

00:05:15.960 cultural ties to China. And they took control of this thing like from the get-go. They completely

00:05:22.200 closed off their borders. They closed off travel. They stopped their citizens from being allowed to

00:05:26.040 go to Wuhan. They stopped people from Wuhan from coming in. They really took control of their borders.

00:05:30.520 And because of that, they've had virtually no cases and no deaths in Taiwan. So he juxtaposes

00:05:37.880 Canada's response with Taiwan while also talking about what the Chinese were doing, how the Chinese were

00:05:42.920 hiding this and lying about this and doing things that really, really hurt the global community when

00:05:48.200 it came to containing this virus. And interestingly, Staples leaned on the National Review, which is a

00:05:55.000 great conservative magazine in the United States who did their own timeline talking about China's evil,

00:06:00.680 evil misdeeds throughout the course of this virus. So what we learned is basically this is what it comes

00:06:08.440 down to. The first month of this virus, when it was just first being talked about, first being learned

00:06:14.040 about, the Trudeau government basically did three things. They shockingly and kind of disgustingly

00:06:21.400 continued to praise the Communist Party of China, the Chinese Communist Party. So there's plenty of

00:06:26.840 examples here. On January 29th, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam praised the Chinese response.

00:06:33.720 She said this, what we have seen, given my close communication with World Health Organization,

00:06:39.000 is how impressed they are with the work of China. The astonishingly rapid way in which they tried to

00:06:44.840 get a handle on what is causing the outbreak and giving the world the sequence of the virus was very

00:06:50.200 helpful. They've been providing information about cases, which is extremely helpful. You've seen the

00:06:54.920 incredibly extraordinary measures that China has put in place to try to contain this within its borders.

00:07:01.000 I just don't understand why Canada's chief political officer is praising a foreign communist country,

00:07:07.480 which, as we know, again, they lied about this disease, they lied about the human transmission,

00:07:12.040 they shut down journalists, they shut down whistleblowers, doctors and nurses who were initially

00:07:17.800 saying like, hey, this is a big problem. Those people got reprimanded, they got removed. I mean,

00:07:22.760 the Chinese government has just been terrible from the get-go. So why is our chief public health

00:07:27.480 officer? That's supposed to be a non-partisan, non-political role. It's not her job to be praising

00:07:33.160 foreign countries. Leave that to the foreign affairs minister, leave that to the politicians.

00:07:36.760 This is supposed to be a neutral, unbiased, serious doctor talking about public health,

00:07:41.880 talking about the best health interests in the country. But here she is, again, praising the Chinese 1.00

00:07:48.680 government. Dr. Theresa Tam was not alone in praising China. Canada's foreign minister,

00:07:54.200 Francois-Philippe Champagne, he repeatedly praised China, including in a bilateral meeting that

00:07:59.960 happened on February 14th, where he openly, the Chinese embassy put out a press release saying

00:08:06.920 that Canada had praised their leadership and really, really just laying it on thick. So in an interview

00:08:12.520 on February 7th with Evan Solomon, which was on CTV Question Period, Minister Philippe Champagne said that

00:08:19.080 frequent communication with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been a positive aspect of the

00:08:24.920 complicated dynamics around repatriating Canadians from the hot zone of Wuhan. Okay, and Canada wasn't

00:08:31.240 just praising China for their supposed great effort and sort of parroting the WHO's praise of China,

00:08:39.720 but there were repeated questions by opposition members in the House of Commons asking the Trudeau

00:08:44.840 government why they weren't taking measures to restrict travel from China, especially at a time

00:08:50.120 where all over Asia, every country that was neighboring China was starting to put in

00:08:54.600 restrictions. We know that Canada sees a lot of tourists, a lot of travelers coming and going

00:08:59.800 from China, especially into the major airports in Vancouver and Toronto. So on January 27th,

00:09:05.480 Conservative MP Todd Daugherty asked the health minister, he said, quote,

00:09:11.560 every day, thousands of passengers from China and elsewhere in Asia arrive at our ports of entry,

00:09:15.800 Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. Oftentimes they board domestic flights and connect through Canada

00:09:21.080 and elsewhere in North America. Calling the coronavirus a grave situation, China has quarantined

00:09:26.120 entire cities with millions of people. The World Health Organization now lists the global threat as

00:09:32.040 high. The safety of Canadians is currently dependent upon screening in China and self-reporting by

00:09:37.400 infected passengers. When will the government institute a real plan to include enhanced screening

00:09:43.800 processes? And then in response, Health Minister Hadju says, in fact, our government has been well

00:09:49.720 ahead of the World Health Organization strategies in terms of screening at ports of entry. We have

00:09:54.360 multiple measures to alert travelers from affected regions about what to do if they suspect they have

00:09:59.960 illness. We have trained our CBSA officers to ensure they have the tools they need to support people who may

00:10:05.640 be ill. We have worked with partner airlines to ensure there is information on flight. So again,

00:10:10.600 it entirely relied on honesty of individuals, of self-reporting, of people who are sick to sort

00:10:17.000 of come forward and say, look, I have the virus or I'm ill. Whereas we know that no one, no one was

00:10:22.760 doing that. People weren't doing that. People were trying to, in fact, hide their symptoms and lie in

00:10:27.320 order to do the travel that they wanted to do. That's not just people from China. It's still happening

00:10:32.280 today with Canadians trying to return to Canada amidst all the travel bans and all of the new

00:10:37.800 precautions. So instead of taking the threat seriously and instead of looking at where the

00:10:44.520 origin of this disease was coming from, the Trudeau government took a totally different approach.

00:10:49.640 And that was to essentially say that this was all just a matter of racism and bigotry on behalf of

00:10:55.640 Canadians against Chinese people. So again, on January 29th, Dr. Theresa Tam said on Twitter,

00:11:03.240 I am concerned about the growing number of reports of racism and stigmatizing comments on social media

00:11:08.040 directed to people of Chinese and Asian descent related to the coronavirus. Racism, discrimination,

00:11:14.120 and stigmatizing language are unacceptable and very hurtful. Again, that is a political statement.

00:11:19.400 That is a political statement coming from a person who's supposed to be a neutral doctor. So how are we

00:11:24.840 supposed to take Theresa Tam's health advice seriously when she's also sitting there pearl 1.00

00:11:31.640 clutching and calling Canadians racist? The concern was not the stigma against Chinese people or people

00:11:38.040 of Asian descent. The concern was not about racism. The concern was about public safety and our public

00:11:43.560 health. The Trudeau government didn't seem to realize that back then. They didn't seem to care.

00:11:47.480 And so they kind of fell back on what they're comfortable with. And we know that Justin Trudeau is

00:11:53.400 the most comfortable when he's standing on his high horse, looking down his nose at Canadians,

00:11:57.960 and calling us racist for any number of imagined reasons. And so Justin Trudeau repeats this language

00:12:03.960 again. February 1st, he says, there is no place for discrimination driven by fear in Canada. As he

00:12:10.920 delivered marks at the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration in the East End of Toronto, Trudeau condemned

00:12:15.960 racism linked to the coronavirus outbreak, which originated, as we know, in Wuhan, China. So instead of taking the

00:12:22.600 threat seriously, they kind of fell back on their familiar territory of talking about how this is

00:12:27.720 nothing more than just xenophobia. It's an excuse for Canadians to just, you know, take off the mask

00:12:34.680 and show our race as true colors. That's according to not just the Liberals, but also our neutral public

00:12:41.560 health official or the top doctor, the top public health official in the country, Dr. Theresa Tam.

00:12:47.160 So those are the two main approaches they took first. First, they praised China. Second, they blamed

00:12:53.880 Canadians and blamed it all on racism. And then on top of that, we've talked about this many times on

00:12:57.960 the show, they defended their open borders. So they repeated over and over and over again that closing

00:13:03.720 the borders wasn't going to help, that it wasn't going to stop the disease. Diseases know no borders.

00:13:08.360 We have plenty of plenty of examples. So Dr. Theresa Tam on January 29th, she, this is from the Edmonton

00:13:16.440 Journal piece, she spelled out her own philosophy with a focus on the main line of defense being the

00:13:21.400 country's hospitals, not its borders. This is a virus that can cross borders. This is a layer of a

00:13:28.040 multi-layer response. So Theresa Tam really kind of doubled down on the idea that she was more concerned

00:13:33.160 about making sure that people like coronavirus were safely going to hospitals and that there was just

00:13:38.040 no point in stopping the border because the border was not going to be able to stop this virus.

00:13:43.560 She reiterated that on February 3rd. She said, the advice is provided to travelers. World Health

00:13:49.080 Organization advises against any kind of travel or trade restrictions. This is February 3rd. The World

00:13:55.480 Health Organization advises against any kind of travel or trade restrictions, saying they are

00:14:00.600 inappropriate and could actually cause more harm and good in terms of our global effort. We had that

00:14:07.640 reiterated by Health Minister Patty Haju, who said that the more countries that have outbreaks, the

00:14:13.080 less relevant borders become. A virus knows no borders. And then Justin Trudeau, as recently as March 5th,

00:14:19.880 March 5th, he says he strongly affirms Canada's open border approach to reporters. He said,

00:14:25.400 we recognize there are countries that make different decisions. The decisions we make is based on the best

00:14:30.920 recommendations, the World Health Organization and the tremendous health experts who work within Canada and

00:14:35.960 around the world. We knew that keeping Canada safe needs to be done in the right way. We're going to

00:14:41.480 keep doing the things that actually keep Canadians safe. There's a lot of misinformation out there.

00:14:46.280 There is a lot of knee-jerk reaction. This isn't keeping people safe. This is having real challenging

00:14:52.040 impacts on communities and community safety. So it's interesting that they basically spent more than

00:14:57.320 two months from January 1st until basically the second week of the first or second week of March,

00:15:02.600 reiterating this entire philosophy that they have, that they want to stop a campaign of fear, that they

00:15:09.640 want to protect people from the Chinese community from a stigma and racism, that they want to keep the

00:15:15.960 borders open. They reiterated this. They doubled down on it. They said it over and over and over again. Meanwhile,

00:15:22.440 meanwhile, this virus was spreading all over the world. It reached far off places, far away from Asia.

00:15:28.840 It hit Italy. It hit Iran. At this point, the numbers were really, really starting to look bad

00:15:34.520 in those places. And it wasn't until basically mid-March that all these politicians kind of had their

00:15:41.560 eyes open. They had an awakening and they did an about-face and changed course on all of this stuff.

00:15:46.840 So all the stuff that they had said before, they did an about-face on, particularly the borders.

00:15:52.840 So how are we supposed to sit here and praise them for closing the borders when they spent 0.98

00:15:57.320 months defending the borders and during that time allowing the virus to get into the country to spread

00:16:04.680 to a point where we can no longer contain it and we have to put the entire society and the entire

00:16:09.480 economy on hold? Again, I don't think that we can just easily forgive them, but there's just so many

00:16:14.440 people out there that say, look, now's not the time to have a political conversation. Jonathan Kaye,

00:16:19.960 who is the editor over at Quillette, which is a great publication. He's also a columnist

00:16:24.280 over at the National Post. He had a thread on Twitter, which I think represents what a lot of

00:16:30.600 people are thinking. I just happen to disagree with this. So Jonathan Kaye says, I see a lot of people

00:16:36.760 tweeting about holding the Canadian government to account for screwing up the coronavirus response.

00:16:42.280 Yes, they screwed up early, as did every country except South Korea and Taiwan.

00:16:48.120 What's important now is a policy going forward, not scoring points over the past. He continues,

00:16:53.560 Canada's fortunate coronavirus policy is being conducted in the realm of adult discourse.

00:16:58.040 This isn't the U.S. where states in D.C. are hashing things out based on tweets. Trump's mood,

00:17:03.560 White House intrigues, and gubernatorial bluster. Focus on policy. Plenty of time for political talk

00:17:09.720 later. This doesn't mean giving the libs a pass on everything. Opposition parties were correct to

00:17:14.440 oppose the Liberals' grab and no holds barred fiscal policies till the end of 2021. I don't see the

00:17:20.920 point in obsessing endlessly over health decisions made months ago. Most governments made similar

00:17:25.480 mistakes. One defining aspect of this pandemic is that government defaulted early to their baseline

00:17:31.880 neurosis. This is an interesting analysis here. He says, in China, it was international image. In the U.S.,

00:17:37.960 it was Trump's ego and the economy. In Canada, it was fake racism, accusations, and lectures. In the

00:17:43.880 U.K., it was populist skepticism. But the responsible leaders have moved on from that. I think people

00:17:50.280 know that I like a good culture war knockout as much as the next guy. And in some countries,

00:17:55.160 such as the U.S., those wars are inescapable because the political culture is so pathologized

00:18:00.920 that even the grim reaper wears red or blue. This isn't Canada. Let's keep it that way. I appreciate 1.00

00:18:07.000 some parts of that. I think it's interesting, the idea that everyone kind of fell back on their basic

00:18:11.560 neurosis, he calls it, that in Canada, the impulse is to just blame a problem on fake racism,

00:18:18.200 accusations, and lectures. I think that's probably pretty true. And I do appreciate that Canada is a

00:18:23.880 less politicized, less partisan country than the United States, that we can all come together and

00:18:30.440 kind of get past some of the political squabbles that we have. So I do appreciate that. But I just

00:18:36.280 I just completely reject the idea that we can't hold the government accountable. I don't think

00:18:40.440 it's about scoring points. I think it is about holding government accountable for spending two

00:18:44.440 months insisting on open borders, praising the communists in China, and scolding us as racist

00:18:48.920 instead of taking the tough measures that were implemented. There were a lot of people saying,

00:18:52.360 look, we need to take these tough measures. The Trudeau government rejected it. And if you read

00:18:55.880 through the Edmonton Journal article that, again, I say is really well done, you should go check it out.

00:19:00.920 One of the things that they were really concerned about was, again, protecting the minority Asian

00:19:05.720 community in Canada, which, again, is all well and good, you need to protect minority rights in any

00:19:10.520 country. But they were so concerned about trampling the liberties, the civil liberties and economic

00:19:17.000 freedoms of people who had just come from China, that they refuse to take any measures. And yet here we 0.93

00:19:21.720 are now at the end of March. And they've taken those measures for the entire society. And I didn't see the

00:19:26.840 same sort of caution and trepidation about doing that to all Canadians that they were so concerned about

00:19:32.360 doing to a small group of a subset of people in Canada just one month ago. So I think it's important

00:19:39.720 that we hold them accountable, like I said. And it isn't just that. It isn't just that. There's a lot of

00:19:44.840 misnomers that are being put out there. So basically, the Trudeau government has done a complete

00:19:49.720 about-face. And now they're entirely just so concerned about stopping the spread that they're

00:19:54.520 willing to take any measure possible, any measure possible, including putting millions and millions

00:20:00.040 of Canadians out of work. And so when someone loses their job or when someone's business is teetering

00:20:06.120 on the brink, I know that there are government programs that are promised to reimburse and compensate

00:20:11.560 businesses. But that doesn't stop the fear and anxiety that so many business owners have about not

00:20:17.000 being able to make their payroll, not being able to pay their expenses, what they're going to do.

00:20:22.120 And the idea that the government is just simply able to write endless checks and sort of mend all

00:20:27.400 of those needs is complete nonsense. It's complete nonsense. There are thousands of thousands of

00:20:32.280 Canadians that are going to go bankrupt because of this. Thousands and thousands of businesses that are

00:20:36.680 going to go bankrupt, regardless of all of the measures that the Trudeau government takes. There are

00:20:40.840 people who- let me give you an example. If you just open a restaurant, if it was your lifelong dream

00:20:45.720 to open a restaurant, you borrowed, you saved, you did everything you could to launch the restaurant,

00:20:51.560 and you launched it on March 15th, it doesn't matter what the Trudeau government does. You're

00:20:56.760 not going to be able to bridge that gap and make it last. And even when this thing all ends,

00:21:01.320 which at this point we have no idea when it will or if it will. I mean, we hear from the health

00:21:06.520 officials that this could be months and months away, that we could be stuck in this situation

00:21:10.920 until June or July. And I'm sorry, getting 75% of the wages to pay your employees is not going to

00:21:17.000 bridge that gap for so many people. And that's not to say anything about the sort of culture of

00:21:22.280 young freelancers and people who run their own businesses, people who do startups, people who really

00:21:28.120 need a good economy in order to just survive. All of those people are going to be irreparably damaged.

00:21:35.160 And so when you look at public health concerns, like you look at the public health concern

00:21:38.760 about coronavirus. And I'm by no means trying to downplay coronavirus. I think that it is very wise

00:21:45.400 and sage advice for people to stay home. I personally am now in my third week of, sorry, I'm now in my

00:21:51.080 fourth week of being self-isolated and staying at home. The only time I have left the house in the last

00:21:57.160 four weeks is to go grocery shopping, which I've done twice, to go to the hospital when I got my own

00:22:03.960 coronavirus test. And I tested negative. And then just to go for family walks around the neighborhood

00:22:09.720 with my husband and my young son. So I am self-isolated. I'm not going out. I encourage

00:22:15.800 everyone watching this to do the same, to not risk it, to not go out. There's no real reason to. There's

00:22:20.920 no point in doing it. But that said, I think that the policies that the government is taking, and not

00:22:27.480 just in Canada, but all over the world, the idea that we're just going to sort of press pause on the

00:22:31.560 global economy, hope that the virus will pass, and then we'll press unpause and the economy will

00:22:36.520 somehow be exactly the same. I think that's a very, very risky policy. I think it's a risky decision.

00:22:42.120 It was made hastily. And we don't know, we don't know how it's going to turn out. We don't know

00:22:46.680 whether that's going to be the right choice. We don't know at the end of all of this, if we're

00:22:50.120 going to learn like, hey, the coronavirus mortality rate is less than the seasonal flu. We all kind of

00:22:56.360 overreacted. Yes, we know that it's much more transmissible. It spreads a lot faster. It's much more

00:23:01.160 contagious. But we could learn that it's much, much less deadly than the flu. And there are

00:23:06.440 plenty of experts and epidemiologists. There are plenty of epidemiologists out there who believe

00:23:12.760 that when this is all said and done, we're going to learn that the mortality rate for this thing

00:23:17.560 is less than the flu. So yes, I think hopefully, hopefully what happens is this thing goes behind

00:23:25.000 us, we get a vaccine, we get a treatment for this disease, and we stop in its tracks before it gets

00:23:31.960 as deadly as many predict. That's my hope. My hope is that we look back at this whole saga of 2020,

00:23:38.360 and we think of it as the year we massively overreacted. The year that we decided to tank our

00:23:44.520 own economy, the best economy the world has ever seen, the year we decided to tank our economy out of

00:23:50.440 an abundance of caution for a disease that turned out not to be as bad. That's what I hope will

00:23:55.240 happen. I'm not saying it will. But I do think that it's important to lay out the the choice that

00:24:01.240 we're making. And I think that there's a lot of people presenting a false dichotomy. I'll give you

00:24:06.040 an example of this is just a sort of a random guy on Twitter. But I think that his sentiment

00:24:10.840 is what a lot of people on the left are saying right now. So I'll use it as an example.

00:24:15.640 He says to me, he says, so in response to my point that I was making that doctors and

00:24:22.760 epidemiologists don't all agree with each other. And that's the problem with just saying,

00:24:26.040 we're going to listen to doctors and epidemiologists is that, well, they don't all think with one

00:24:30.040 collective brain. And there's a lot of different theories, a lot of different models out there.

00:24:33.480 So you can't just say, let's rely on what the doctors say, because the doctors don't disagree.

00:24:37.640 And so this individual, he says, and when the experts disagree, do you err on the side of public

00:24:43.320 safety or the side of profit? Because you seem to be advocating for the latter. So I think this is

00:24:47.240 a complete false dichotomy to say that on the one side, we have public health concerns. The other

00:24:52.040 side, we just have like a bunch of greedy capitalists who want to make money. You know,

00:24:56.360 who cares if a lot of people die? It's just all about the bottom line. That's a totally,

00:25:00.280 totally false dichotomy. And it's very silly because we're talking about death and misery on both

00:25:05.800 sides. Let's be clear. We're talking about people who, if we decide to say, you know what,

00:25:11.880 we're not worried about the coronavirus. Everyone just go about your daily lives.

00:25:15.160 And you know what, we're going to lose like 1% of the population. That is a incredibly

00:25:21.880 deadly decision to be made. And that's probably the wrong decision. But if we say the opposite,

00:25:26.200 you know, we're going to do everything we can just to save one life. So every single person

00:25:30.680 is mandated by law to stay inside their house and not leave. We're also going to probably lose,

00:25:36.520 I don't know if we're going to lose 1% of the population,

00:25:38.920 but there are plenty of studies out there that suggest the economic misery and suffering that

00:25:44.040 comes as a result of a global recession. And that's what we're talking about. We're talking

00:25:49.160 about basically a Great Depression and something that we haven't seen for a hundred years in this

00:25:53.800 country. So let's talk about the health, public health concerns that come from a Great Depression.

00:25:59.800 There was a study in the Guardian that found that unemployment causes about 45,000 suicides worldwide.

00:26:06.440 And then this is a study from a few years ago before any of this happened. We know that,

00:26:11.560 Ian L. Burnham talked about this on the show before, the University of Calgary looked at the

00:26:18.680 suicide rate in the province during the sort of ups and downs of the ongoing saga with the price of

00:26:27.400 oil. And they found that for every one point that the unemployment rate increased, there was a 2.8%

00:26:34.680 increase in the province's suicide rate. And just keep that in the context of the fact that Canada's

00:26:40.280 unemployment rate just jumped from 5.8% all the way up to 14%, all the way up to 14%. So a nine point

00:26:48.040 increase, each one of those nine points could be correlated to a 2.8% increase in suicide. And it

00:26:55.000 isn't just suicide that is a result of a massive economic downturn. There are also all kinds of

00:27:01.240 problems, everything from substance abuse to domestic and spousal abuse. People get involved in the sort

00:27:08.440 of underground economy, which could lead to greater crime rates. There are all kinds of unintended

00:27:13.080 consequences that come from a massive economic downturn that need to be weighed against the health

00:27:18.760 concerns that is a result of coronavirus. So it's not simply about public health versus profits. No,

00:27:24.920 it's the public health concerns of a global pandemic like coronavirus versus the public health concerns

00:27:31.080 of a massive Great Depression, like the one that we've just plummeted ourselves in without any kind of

00:27:36.760 a fulsome debate over the pros and cons of what we were doing. So basically, I just think that we should

00:27:43.320 be weary of that. And that's to say nothing about the kind of ongoing kind of crackdowns, I'll say,

00:27:49.720 against our civil liberties that I think are pretty much over the top. I mentioned this,

00:27:55.000 I think I mentioned this in the True North update. There's a park across the street from my house and

00:27:59.160 I like to take my little son there. There's a swing set and a slide and all the kinds of stuff that

00:28:03.960 you see at a park. Not a very busy park. There's not that many people that go there. But last week,

00:28:09.800 I woke up to see a city of Toronto employee with yellow tape taping up the whole thing,

00:28:16.360 basically saying the parks are closed. You can't bring your kids to the park. I think that is massive

00:28:22.120 overstep. I mean, I go to that park every day. I see kids and families. Everyone just naturally

00:28:27.640 spaces out. Everyone understands that we're in the midst of a global health crisis. People aren't

00:28:32.920 really congregating. Like I said, I went for a walk over the weekend and every time I saw another person,

00:28:38.680 both parties would go out of their way to make sure that we weren't getting within the six feet.

00:28:42.840 So whether that would be crossing the street or sort of standing aside so that I could push a stroller

00:28:48.520 and go the other direction, everyone is taking the precautions. There was not a single interaction that

00:28:52.680 I had where somebody came within six feet of me. So the idea that we can't trust citizens to

00:28:58.680 do this, we have to tape off parks, I think is really over the top. And that's not the only thing.

00:29:03.560 Montreal closed all dog parks and community gardens. The city of Toronto closed playgrounds,

00:29:08.440 dog parks, and stop gatherings. Ontario extended its emergency declaration banning all gatherings of

00:29:17.640 five people or more. There was a mandatory quarantine in a Jewish community in Montreal. The Tosh 1.00

00:29:25.400 community, the Tosh Jewish community was placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine on Sunday after 19

00:29:31.000 members tested positive. The decision to quarantine 4,000 members of the Hasidic community in Montreal

00:29:37.320 has nothing to do with religion, said Quebec's public health minister, everything to do with

00:29:41.640 epidemiology. So again, under normal times, if a community was just all of a sudden singled out

00:29:47.880 and placed on self-quarantine, you know that the journalists and the left-wing activists would be

00:29:52.520 jumping up and down, ringing the alarm, setting their hair on fire, but they don't bat an eye when it's

00:29:57.320 happening just because of this coronavirus. There's also been plenty of arrests. A woman in Newfoundland

00:30:03.000 was arrested twice in one week for ignoring a self-isolation order. Interestingly, this woman didn't

00:30:09.240 have any symptoms. She wasn't sick. She didn't have coronavirus. She appeared to maybe be homeless,

00:30:14.680 but the police just kept arresting a woman just for being out in the street, even though she wasn't

00:30:19.720 sick. So I don't know exactly what she was doing. But again, you know, where are the civil liberty activists

00:30:25.560 asking about these things? And, you know, again, the force shutting down of our economy. We know

00:30:31.160 that nearly a million Canadians submitted an EI application, so they're already out of work,

00:30:36.760 and we know that there are public health repercussions. So I just think we should

00:30:40.360 have a conversation about it. I'm not saying that one way is right or the other way is right,

00:30:44.360 but it just seems odd that in Canada we haven't had any kind of public conversation about this,

00:30:49.000 and everyone is just sort of united in standing behind the prime minister and saying,

00:30:52.760 yes, take further and further tough measures. Don't worry about the economy. Don't worry about

00:30:56.520 civil liberties. Just do everything you can. I think that there should be more people pushing

00:31:02.520 back against it, and I'm more than happy to do that. Okay, let's talk about fake news.

00:31:07.560 Okay, this is sort of the definition of fake news because so the prime minister has been doing

00:31:11.640 a daily press conference, and then on top of that, the sort of cabinet that's in charge of the cabinet

00:31:17.560 ministers that are in charge of the coronavirus response team have been holding their own press

00:31:21.800 conference, since that usually includes Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, as well as Dr.

00:31:27.000 Theresa Tam, and then a few other cabinet ministers, whoever is sort of relevant in whatever they're

00:31:31.880 announcing or proposing. So last week, all of a sudden, all the journalists in those rooms cared about

00:31:37.800 was this story from Global News. The story came from Mercedes Stevenson, who's a great reporter, 0.99

00:31:43.480 and it was basically a speculation, though. The piece was Trump looking to put troops near Canadian

00:31:48.600 border amid coronavirus fears. The American government officials inside Donald Trump's

00:31:53.240 White House are actively discussing putting troops near the Canadian border in light of US border

00:31:58.200 security concerns around the new coronavirus pandemic. Sources tell Global News. So anonymous

00:32:03.880 sources are the basis of the story, and it's kind of speculation. They're saying sources are telling

00:32:09.880 Global News. We're hearing that perhaps someone inside Donald Trump's White House are actively

00:32:15.960 discussing the potential possibility of putting some troops at the border. And that was it. There was

00:32:22.520 no confirmation. There were no quotes. There were no name quotes, like a quote where someone was willing

00:32:27.320 to put their name behind it. It was just basically a story saying maybe they're kind of thinking about

00:32:32.120 doing this. If you had been watching those press conferences, you would have thought that there was

00:32:37.000 like a smoking gun, like there was already military presence, that there were like tanks lining up at the

00:32:43.240 Canadian border to stop people from coming over because the media just totally overreacted. Every

00:32:47.400 single question, okay, not every question, many, many, many questions were being thrown at both the

00:32:52.600 Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland asking about this, talking about this. Freeland gave

00:32:58.120 this sort of long, elegant speech about the importance of rules-based diplomacy and the importance of the

00:33:03.960 Canada-US economic and trade relationship and basically said this would really hurt the relationship we'd have.

00:33:11.320 The journalists were just all over it. It sort of enabled their bias against the United States,

00:33:16.920 their anti-Americanism and their hatred for Donald Trump to come to the surface and they really pushed

00:33:23.080 hard. Okay, the only problem is that the story didn't really have any basis in reality and it didn't

00:33:28.440 come to fruition. It didn't actually happen. So the very next day there was a report in the Wall Street

00:33:34.120 Journal that says the U.S. drops proposal to put troops at the Canadian border. The Trump administration

00:33:41.400 dropped its consideration of plans to send U.S. military forces to the Canadian border

00:33:46.520 to help with efforts to combat the new coronavirus, U.S. officials said Thursday, disclosing that

00:33:51.480 decision after Canadian officials had strenuously objected to the idea. So just one day later we

00:33:59.800 learned that the story wasn't true. It was something that maybe they were talking about. Maybe it was a

00:34:03.560 proposal. We don't even know if it had actually been agreed upon or if there were any steps, but it looked

00:34:09.240 like there was sort of this win for Canadian officials. Canada strenuously objected and so

00:34:14.840 the decision was dropped. I just think that this is the perfect example of the creation of a fake

00:34:21.400 news narrative. Something that never was going to happen and then it didn't happen, but somehow it

00:34:26.200 wrapped up an entire week of news cycle and news stories in Canada. Tons and tons of ink were spilt over

00:34:32.360 a story that was never going to happen. I wanted to also just quickly give this one an honorable

00:34:37.160 mention in the fake news category. This is a poll that came out on March 28th and it asked Canadians

00:34:46.440 about the approval of leaders handling of the COVID-19 crisis. So the question asked was,

00:34:52.440 there has been a lot of talk lately about the outbreak of the new coronavirus disease, COVID-19.

00:34:57.560 Do you approve or disapprove of how each of the following leaders has responded to the crisis?

00:35:02.680 Okay, so Francois Legault, the Premier of Quebec, gets just an astonishingly positive response. 95%

00:35:10.520 of respondents of polls, of people polled, said that they approved a 95% approval rating. That is wild.

00:35:17.240 And then we see similarly high numbers in the in the high 60s for BC Premier John Horgan, Ontario Premier

00:35:23.240 Doug Ford, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,

00:35:27.240 and Jason Kenney. They all range from 65% to 68%. And then for some reason, for some reason,

00:35:33.640 the poll included Donald Trump, President of the United States, who according to Canadians who took

00:35:39.880 part in this poll, only 20% approve of Donald Trump, 77% disapprove. So I just have a couple of

00:35:47.000 questions for these pollsters. Why would you include a foreign leader in this poll? If you're going to

00:35:51.560 include a foreign leader, why not include the President China? China is the epicenter of this

00:35:57.560 disease, of this virus. They were the ones that lied. There was a study that came out that said,

00:36:01.560 had China not lied, and had they given the information that they had when they had it,

00:36:05.720 that this virus would have been contained globally by 95%. So 95% of the suffering and the death out there

00:36:12.280 can directly be linked to the Chinese government's response. And yet, we don't see the Chinese

00:36:18.440 government on this approval list. We don't see the Ayatollah of Iran. Iran is the second biggest

00:36:23.560 outbreak after China. We don't see approval rating of any of the leaders in Europe that also allowed

00:36:29.320 this virus to get to Canada. But for some reason, we have Donald Trump, and we know that Canadians,

00:36:34.440 according to this poll, overwhelmingly disapprove, which also shows that we know that the Canadian 1.00

00:36:41.240 media love to pick on Trump. We know that they create a straw man out of him, that they take his

00:36:45.640 words out of context, and they use him as a punching bag. Anytime they want to report something

00:36:49.320 negative, they kind of ignore what the Canadian government is doing. They don't bother digging

00:36:53.320 in and looking into the true government. They just turn right to Trump, use him as a punching bag.

00:36:57.480 And I guess 77% of Canadians agree with that media take on Donald Trump, and they think that he

00:37:03.000 is doing a bad job. Which, again, is kind of interesting, because this is a point that Jonathan

00:37:07.320 Kay made. Everybody kind of screwed this up at the beginning. Everyone did it in their own different

00:37:11.800 ways. And it's more about how everyone's kind of playing catch-up now. And I think you could probably

00:37:16.520 say that Trudeau and Trump are in a similar position in that regard. They both should have done a lot more,

00:37:21.480 and they didn't. I will just say, at least Donald Trump closed travel from China. He closed travel from

00:37:27.640 the European Union well before the Canadians did. And at the time when he did that,

00:37:32.120 he was criticized by the media, by the Canadian media, for going too far and for being unfair

00:37:38.760 and saying, you know, another one of Trump's travel bans. This is Trump acting like a dictator,

00:37:44.600 yadda yadda, saying what they do. So I just find it interesting. I have no idea why the Canadian polls

00:37:50.600 included Donald Trump other than the fact that they just wanted a punching bag. All right. Well,

00:37:54.760 thank you so much for tuning in, and we will be back again on Thursday. I'm Candace Malcolm,

00:37:58.600 and this is The Canada's Welcome Show.

Juno News - April 01, 2020

Don’t forget – Trudeau under-reacted about coronavirus for two months

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript