Juno News - Election date change might make dozens more MPs eligible for pensions

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:15.480 this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true north

00:01:19.980 hello and welcome to you all happy monday to you happy day after palm sunday for those who

00:01:30.880 observe welcome to another edition of canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north it

00:01:36.800 is monday march 25th just after one o'clock eastern and i won't go through the whole time

00:01:41.860 zone uh rigmarole but i hope you know where it is wherever you are if not you should probably

00:01:46.700 seek help, but do it after the show. Enjoy the next 45 minutes or so first. I want to talk a

00:01:52.200 little bit later on about not the great carbon tax revolt per se. We spent a lot of time last

00:01:57.440 week and the week before that on that subject, but I do want to speak a little bit about

00:02:02.580 how the federal government is still not exactly owning up to how long it's going to continue to

00:02:09.260 increase the carbon tax. We know it's going to keep going up until 2030. This weekend,

00:02:13.820 the Environment Minister Stephen Gilboa did an interview and he said, oh, the government hasn't

00:02:17.840 really decided beyond that. Now, I realize there's a lot of optimism in that on the part of the

00:02:22.400 Liberals that they think they'll be in power in 2030, when at this point, they don't even know

00:02:26.820 if they'll be in power in 2026. But this is a bit of an interesting dilemma in that on one hand,

00:02:33.420 we have a government that is so ideologically committed, so hellbent on the carbon tax,

00:02:39.600 It doesn't even quite know how long it wants to continue to ramp that up.

00:02:43.180 The most imminent increase is the one coming into effect on April 1st.

00:02:47.160 And I was seeing on Twitter, or X as they call it now, on social media this morning,

00:02:52.200 there are a lot of these rallies that are being planned across the country in places like Lloydminster, Alberta, Saskatchewan.

00:02:58.820 I don't know which side of the border it's on.

00:03:00.820 In Ottawa, in Cochrane, in a town in Ontario, Pickering.

00:03:05.280 I like Pickering. It's a nice place, but I've never known it to be the hotbed of any particular protest.

00:03:11.120 So all over the country, people are going to be demonstrating on April 1st.

00:03:14.440 Now, of course, by this time, it is too little too late.

00:03:17.060 The increase will be in effect.

00:03:19.260 The government has been unflinching and unrepentant so far, but it will show the growing dismay.

00:03:24.840 So we will talk about that later on in the program here.

00:03:30.060 But let me just first off talk about the elites saying the quiet part out loud.

00:03:35.620 Now, I've been talking on this show for, I don't know, probably years, but certainly for the last few weeks about Bill C-63.

00:03:41.880 This is the Liberal government's so-called online harms bill, a piece of legislation that the Liberals have just decided to believe is the panacea for online discourse.

00:03:57.660 Now, the problem is that they're trying to rein in and curb online discussion.

00:04:02.460 They're doing this under the guise of what we would call speech they don't like.

00:04:09.960 Speech they don't like is really what they're trying to avoid.

00:04:12.920 But they have to come up with all of these ways to deal with that, to make that justifiable.

00:04:17.060 And what they do is they say it is, oh, what do we call it?

00:04:21.280 It's hate speech.

00:04:22.200 Oh, it's a speech that is hateful.

00:04:24.340 Well, they are the ones who get to decide what hate is.

00:04:26.700 And I have lamented that in the past when this issue has arisen, you had this stable of people

00:04:34.520 that was a, I would say, an unflinching defender of free speech. People that weren't just

00:04:41.600 ideologically conservatives. You had principled liberals that, like Jerry Grafstein, the former

00:04:46.840 liberal senator, was an absolute firebrand when it came to defending free speech. People like

00:04:52.040 norm mcdonald at cbc no not norm mcdonald neil mcdonald norm mcdonald's brother i prefer norm

00:04:57.580 mcdonald to neil mcdonald for many many many reasons and i'm sad that norm mcdonald is no

00:05:02.060 longer with us but no neil mcdonald at cbc used to be quite critical of censorship but all of

00:05:08.320 these people at a certain point just shut up and they decided to go along with it they decided to

00:05:13.460 go along with the state's censorious impulses and what i want to share with you today is a piece

00:05:19.920 that I came across in the Globe and Mail,

00:05:22.260 a column by Lawrence Martin,

00:05:24.620 who is the Globe and Mail's public affairs columnist.

00:05:28.240 You can see the headline there,

00:05:29.560 excessive free speech is a breeding ground for more Trumps.

00:05:35.460 Now, sometimes, here's a little secret of journalism and media.

00:05:39.380 The writers generally do not write their own headlines.

00:05:42.700 Certainly at newspapers, the writers don't write their headlines.

00:05:45.620 So if you ever come across a sensationalist headline

00:05:47.660 that doesn't quite match what's in the story.

00:05:50.000 That's why.

00:05:50.600 It's a headline written by an editor

00:05:52.640 that didn't actually read the story.

00:05:53.800 But this one, the headline really does match

00:05:56.240 the substance of the column.

00:05:58.220 He talks about all of these cases

00:06:00.680 where there have been battles

00:06:02.520 between different state governments

00:06:03.840 and social media and all of that

00:06:05.220 before he gets to the real point.

00:06:07.460 That there is a tsunami of free expression

00:06:11.360 that he links to the arrival of the internet

00:06:14.860 and social media platforms.

00:06:17.660 He says, despite the grumblings we still hear about the lack of free speech,

00:06:21.180 these platforms gave more of it to the masses than anything ever before.

00:06:25.980 He says, printing presses, radio, television, they were controlled by elites.

00:06:30.340 You had regulatory bodies like the CRTC in Canada.

00:06:33.580 But basically, people can say whatever they want online.

00:06:36.080 They can talk.

00:06:36.720 We have a tsunami of free speech.

00:06:39.340 And here's where he starts talking about the view he holds of the little people.

00:06:43.980 the masses were were finally weaponized not with arms but with a communications instrument that

00:06:52.360 empowered them against establishment forces like they had never been empowered before he says oh

00:06:57.740 what a wonderful democratic advance it was but well there's always a but with these folks but

00:07:03.760 it came with a rather massive irony free speech became as much a slayer of democracy as an enabler

00:07:10.980 He says unchecked free speech means there's raw sewage in the public square, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, polarization, child pornography, threats, bigotry, conspiracy, claptrap.

00:07:21.860 That's effectively a direct quote.

00:07:23.980 And he says Trump's rise wouldn't have been possible without the Internet.

00:07:29.680 So ultimately, his argument here is that we can't have free speech because it yields a political outcome that he dislikes.

00:07:38.180 In fact, what he calls for very explicitly to reverse this trend is rigid regulation.

00:07:45.240 But he says, oh, the free speech lobby in the United States is as fierce as the gun lobby.

00:07:49.440 So Lawrence Martin believes that we need rigid regulation of speech.

00:07:53.360 And how terrible it is that you have a free speech lobby.

00:07:57.700 Again, someone committed to upholding the fundamental right to speak your mind

00:08:02.180 is just part of some evil, scary lobby group like the NRA.

00:08:06.100 That's the comparison he draws.

00:08:07.520 so because you might use your free speech in a way that he disagrees with free speech itself is

00:08:14.180 the problem now this is the ivory tower mentality that is being embraced and adopted increasingly

00:08:20.440 by the elites who are invested very heavily in your censorship because again just talk about

00:08:25.820 saying the quiet part out loud it's because we have twitter because i have this podcast because

00:08:30.860 you have the ability to engage with content as you so choose that people like lawrence martin are

00:08:35.920 increasingly irrelevant to people, that his voice in the Globe and Mail is no longer the forced,

00:08:43.200 it no longer has the forced relevance because it's just one of a small handful of voices that

00:08:48.280 people can access in the establishment media. So when people like that talk about being threatened

00:08:54.720 by free speech, you should very much pay attention to them because they're talking about this

00:08:58.740 because they do not want to have free speech for their own selfish reasons. They want to be

00:09:04.260 the gatekeepers on opinion. They want to be the arbiters of what you can and can't say,

00:09:09.100 what you can and can't think. And heaven forbid the plebs enjoy free speech. They might vote for 1.00

00:09:14.700 Donald Trump or, oh, maybe Pierre Paulyev or, oh, maybe they might oust Emmanuel Macron and

00:09:19.540 I mean, who cares? The point of free speech is that you have just as much a right to push back

00:09:25.220 against that. Free speech gave Joe Biden the ability to campaign against Donald Trump. Free

00:09:30.700 speech is what's giving Justin Trudeau the ability to defend his record. When people talk about free

00:09:35.620 speech as being the problem, what they're actually saying is that they don't believe their arguments

00:09:40.020 will win. They don't believe that when push comes to shove, their free speech will be as effective

00:09:45.440 as their opponent's free speech because on a certain level, they know they are wrong. So you

00:09:51.020 can take your censorship and you can shove it. And if you can find room wherever you shoved it,

00:09:55.620 you can put that copy of the Globe and Mail up there as well. My goodness. We are going to talk

00:10:01.720 about this, I'm sure, in more detail as the defenders of Bill C-63 come out of the woodwork.

00:10:07.380 But I do want to talk about MP pensions for a little bit here because this has been an incredible,

00:10:13.740 incredible display of brazenness. So we have in Canada, you may not realize it because we've had

00:10:18.780 a string of minority governments, but in Canada, we have a fixed election date and it's fixed in

00:10:24.020 statute. It's supposed to happen every four years. Now, obviously, the government can dissolve

00:10:30.220 Parliament at any point as it sees fit, and we can have an election. Opposition members of Parliament

00:10:35.480 could, of course, go to band together and take down the government with a motion of non-confidence.

00:10:40.900 The Conservatives tried to do that last week, but as predicted, it was defeated when the Bloc,

00:10:45.540 NDP, and Liberals all maintained their confidence in the government. But all things being equal,

00:10:50.800 if there's no non-confidence motion, there's no snap election by the Liberals, we have a fixed

00:10:55.640 election date, which means that we know it's coming, and our fixed election date right now

00:11:00.280 is on the books for October 2025. Now, I didn't give a specific date there because this is subject

00:11:08.100 to change. Currently, the law says the election will be October 20th, 2025, but the Liberals are

00:11:15.560 tabling an amendment to this that will push that date to October 27th. It will push it back seven

00:11:21.540 days. And you may think, okay, what's the big deal? I don't even know what I'm doing for dinner

00:11:25.640 tonight, let alone what I'm doing in October of 2025. Well, why it matters is you have to look

00:11:32.260 at the motivation. Why is the liberal government changing this? Well, the liberals say, and it's

00:11:37.600 not untrue, by the way, that October 20th is the date of Diwali. Now, Diwali is the Hindu festival

00:11:44.440 of lights. It's a very popular and very big celebration in the Hindu community, a large

00:11:49.420 enough group in Canada. Having this election on that holiday would be disruptive. We move elections

00:11:54.700 around for Jewish holidays and Christian holidays. So that in and of itself is not inherently

00:11:59.280 unbelievable, but they could move it a week earlier. They could move it two weeks earlier.

00:12:05.080 They chose to move it a week later. Now something happens between October 20th, 2025

00:12:12.480 and October 27th, 2025.

00:12:15.640 Something happens in that span of seven days.

00:12:19.940 And what you may ask, well, that's a fantastic question.

00:12:22.320 What happens is dozens more MPs become eligible

00:12:25.600 for their gold-plated taxpayer-funded pensions.

00:12:30.060 Ah, yes, now it starts to become clear.

00:12:33.140 Well, no offense to the Hindus in our audience,

00:12:35.300 no offense to observers of Diwali,

00:12:37.260 but I suspect your holiday has been less of an incentive

00:12:41.440 for MPs to delay the election by one week than this little detail about pensions has been.

00:12:49.100 And this is where we get into, I mean, what's the old Shakespearean line?

00:12:52.700 Aye, there's the rub.

00:12:53.980 Well, right here you have, and Canadian Taxpayers Federation and National Post both crunch the

00:12:58.820 numbers on this, you have to, to be eligible for your MP pension, have six years of pensionable

00:13:04.960 service.

00:13:06.180 Now, I was actually a little bit confused by this, and I spent much of my morning pouring

00:13:10.820 over legislation so uh you'll forgive me if i have a glazed over look in my eyes i haven't like ripped

00:13:16.100 the glaze off from reading legislation for it's not from donuts it's from reading legislation

00:13:20.660 but what happened is we saw that you needed six years of pensionable service now i didn't actually

00:13:27.620 know how they calculated that because mps are elected on election day but they're often not

00:13:32.340 sworn in for several weeks after that maybe even more than a month does pensionable service begin

00:13:38.980 when you are elected or when you are sworn in i would have assumed when you're sworn in because

00:13:44.260 that is when your work begins and similarly when parliament dissolves you cease to be a member of

00:13:50.100 parliament so do you stop amassing pensionable service time when parliament's dissolved or on

00:13:56.820 the election date if you lose now as it happens it goes from election to election so even though

00:14:04.100 you're not even serving as a member of parliament for a good chunk of either end of that you're

00:14:10.100 actually amassing pension credit in that time period which means that yes six years the amount

00:14:17.380 of time it takes to qualify your for your pension six years is actually a threshold that dozens of

00:14:22.820 mps will cross between october 20th 2025 and october 27th 2025. now the mps we're talking

00:14:30.260 about are the ones who were elected in the 2019 election now the elephant in the room here most

00:14:36.260 of those mps were conservatives because this was the election in which the liberals which had a

00:14:41.540 majority government from 2011 or from 2015 to 2019 were knocked down to a minority the conservatives

00:14:48.820 elected a couple of dozen more mps the liberals elected some new ones as well the bloc quebecois

00:14:54.260 the ndp there were lots of new faces conservatives have most of this but not all of it and why this

00:15:01.940 is relevant is because you have here i think in a lot of the cases mps that look the conservatives

00:15:06.980 aren't the ones changing the legislation the conservatives are the ones uh that are just

00:15:11.540 there the liberals are the ones steering this ship but you have liberals that are motivated

00:15:15.700 uh perhaps by realizing that they're not going to get much pushback from mps that are retiring

00:15:21.060 are going to lose i mean right now all the polling is showing the conservatives are on track to win a

00:15:27.300 super majority which means that liberals ndp and block mps all stand to lose a little bit in the

00:15:35.060 next election so the mps that were first elected in 2019 are getting very nervous right now they

00:15:40.580 don't want to lose their pensions and you better believe i think they care more about that than

00:15:44.660 they care about diwali chris sims is the alberta director for the canadian taxpayers federation and

00:15:50.580 joins me on the line now look chris cdf has always been sounding the alarm about mp pensions these

00:15:56.660 things are absolute sweetheart deals mps get a better pension than pretty much anyone in the

00:16:04.100 private sector in this country yes but the more insidious part is how you know that they make

00:16:10.500 decisions based on eligibility like i i know people make the criticism and no one can prove

00:16:16.340 what's in someone's mind but i'm convinced that jagmeet singh is motivated by his own pension

00:16:20.980 eligibility in terms of keeping the government alive yeah exactly uh we don't want to you know

00:16:26.420 dance around this uh we put out the news release uh franco terrazzano and his team there in ottawa

00:16:31.380 did an immense amount of work calculating these potential pensions and again this is the upper

00:16:36.260 limit right it's the parameter that if all of them lost their seats which is highly unlikely

00:16:42.420 this is how much the taxpayers would be on the hook for. So that's the mathematical part.

00:16:47.300 But we have to notice the forest along with the trees here. And of course,

00:16:51.700 this would play into somebody's decision whether or not they want to, say, continue to support the

00:16:56.500 Trudeau government. If they're going to be lined up for a big pension in just a few more days,

00:17:01.780 why not just hang in there? There are very few members of parliament who've been able to withstand

00:17:08.100 that temptation credit where it's due uh the former prime minister stephen harper took a big

00:17:13.780 hit on his personal pension i can't remember how much money it was but it was big time like seven

00:17:19.700 figures something like that over his lifetime for his pension so there are some members of parliament

00:17:25.220 who do walk the talk and they are in it for pension reform but they're pretty few and far

00:17:31.220 between yeah and i'll give those numbers you just alluded to that franco crunched here is there are

00:17:36.980 80 members of parliament who will become eligible in that week who will become eligible on October

00:17:43.400 21st 2025 80 of them now of those I think it's about 30 or 33 that were conservative so

00:17:49.980 most of them very few conservatives are saying they're not running again a handful are so most

00:17:55.480 of them given these polling numbers are probably going to be staying around but even if you look

00:18:00.060 at the 50 of liberals that aren't running again or will lose NDPers who aren't running again or

00:18:05.460 will lose, Bloc Québécois. These are all folks that will amass collectively tens of millions of

00:18:11.540 dollars just by moving that election one week. Yeah, exactly. And imagine that temptation. And

00:18:17.840 so again, folks need to remember that quite a member of parliament will start getting a pension

00:18:23.320 once they reach a certain age. And then you just do the basic calculation from there. You decide,

00:18:28.320 you know, how long are they going to live past then? Sorry to be grim, but that's what we have

00:18:32.040 to do with mathematics and calculations. It's not personal. You know, are they going to live

00:18:35.720 to 80, 85, 90? And then you go through all the different numbers of MPs and that's how you do

00:18:41.120 this math. And so I think that's why it's really important that Franco put out this piece this

00:18:44.940 morning. So yes, we understand the politics and the chess match that is happening right now,

00:18:49.820 but we also understand the math and the cost to taxpayers behind it. I think I just saw before

00:18:55.520 we jumped on here, did the opposition leader, Pierre Polyev, call this bluff and say that,

00:19:01.420 no, let's move it up even earlier. So we don't run in to the religious ceremony and festival,

00:19:07.380 but you're still not hitting the pension date. I think I saw that.

00:19:12.120 Yeah, I guess I'm just a little bit, well, take a step back. How do you think that plays out?

00:19:19.200 Have to see, right? So this is it. So, okay. Taking off my CTF hat a little bit here.

00:19:25.560 I was on Parliament Hill working there through a couple of different political blowups,

00:19:30.420 you'd call it. So I remember when suddenly the Canadian Alliance, a lot of people within the

00:19:36.880 Canadian Alliance lost faith in their leader Stockwell Day. And a lot of party stalwarts

00:19:41.880 got up and left. And they went and sat by themselves. I remember when Belinda Stronach,

00:19:47.300 who actually ran for party leader, it's not like she was just some random no-name backbencher,

00:19:51.640 when she dramatically crossed the floor. We all got to see Peter McKay with his dog in his

00:19:56.840 potato field. Like politics sometimes isn't boring. My point of all of this is, is before that

00:20:02.440 happened, everything seemed fine. So on the surface, the duck is cool and calm and collected,

00:20:08.460 but underneath the surface, they're just going like this. And so everything's fine until it

00:20:14.460 suddenly isn't. And so the same way that we saw the carbon tax vote, getting all of those members

00:20:19.860 of parliament on the record, yay or nay, are you for or against the carbon tax increase?

00:20:24.300 that was pressure. And I think if I can just put on my hat a little bit here, I think that's what

00:20:30.200 they're doing with this. He's calling a bluff. It's kind of a gangster move. And he's going to

00:20:35.160 try to get everybody on the record whether or not they want to move the vote day. And so again,

00:20:40.340 that's more pressure that's increasing on this hull. And so I think that's why they're doing

00:20:45.680 that. Yeah. And again, I gave my little civics one. Candace Malcolm always calls me the in-house

00:20:51.340 political scientists because i just have a tendency to take all of these like salacious

00:20:54.540 political topics and just frame them in the most boring technical terms possible but i've said at

00:20:59.600 any time there could be an election so we're not bound by this but that supply and confidence

00:21:04.460 agreement with the ndp and the liberals has been pretty ironclad so far i mean justin trudeau i'm

00:21:10.500 convinced and you and i have spoken about this before that he's a burn it all down on the way

00:21:14.900 out kind of prime minister i actually don't think he cares about his mp's pensions i think that he

00:21:19.860 wants to just pick the moment that's going to be best for him. And if it costs a few dozen liberal

00:21:25.960 MPs their pensions, so be it. I don't think he cares. But I do think it says a lot about the

00:21:30.500 entitlement mentality you see in the House of Commons and you see among MPs. And look, I'm not

00:21:36.500 going to say conservatives are immune. I mean, there were a lot of these fire-breathing reformers 0.90

00:21:41.440 that were elected in the 90s and then alliance candidates in 2001 that were big crusaders against

00:21:48.400 this sort of stuff, but then benefited from it the second they were in the door.

00:21:51.980 They sure did. And a lot of them were part of a majority government. And we didn't see a lot

00:21:57.320 of dramatic reform. Again, credit where it's due, we did see some. Some folks are pretty sticklers

00:22:03.120 to their principles. And so we did see some, but no, this has got nothing to do with the color of

00:22:07.880 the jersey. This has got everything to do with power and money. And in this case, those who are

00:22:14.480 currently holding on to power are in line for an awful lot of money for the rest of their lives,

00:22:21.280 if only they move this little election date up just a little bit further. And so we'd be naive,

00:22:27.440 we'd be silly to think that this does not play a role here. You mentioned Prime Minister Trudeau

00:22:33.680 in this sense, and this is where I wanted to bring it back to political activism and peaceful

00:22:39.040 grassroots activism. I was describing all the pressure these MPs are under, and we're seeing

00:22:43.840 that with polls right we're seeing that with these votes another element for real is the pressure

00:22:49.680 they're getting from constituents and it's not just coming from taxpayers federation writers

00:22:53.840 but a lot of it is if they keep getting this pressure from their constituents right so their

00:22:58.880 their middle bencher and backbencher mp if they're getting a call from mary and joseph and sahil from

00:23:05.440 their from their constituencies saying hey man i can barely afford this i can't pay my hydro bill

00:23:12.160 I can't fill up my minivan and take my kids to school.

00:23:14.720 I'm voting against you unless you smarten up.

00:23:18.200 That really rings bells with these MPs.

00:23:21.040 And what I'm hearing, some scuttlebutt from Parliament Hill, is that apparently, I don't know if this is true, apparently the Prime Minister is tuning out of his caucus more than he has before.

00:23:35.080 And this has been a pretty late development.

00:23:37.620 and regardless of political party once a leader starts doing that and tuning out the people who

00:23:44.720 are part of his team if that's happening things start getting bumpy and so this is again why i

00:23:51.020 would encourage people and i would say the same thing if it was another party that was screwing

00:23:54.960 you over on your taxes and trying to take your money um this is why it's important to keep up

00:23:59.780 the pressure right now right now continue yeah and we we had heard something to that effect when

00:24:06.440 And the Liberals had their caucus retreat in London, which I only know of through other reporting, because as we perhaps recall, I was banned from covering it, even though it was, you know, like five minutes from my house or whatever.

00:24:16.020 Were you kicked out of the city? Or were you allowed to stay in?

00:24:19.060 No, I was allowed to maintain my residency in London. They didn't go full like G20 on me and like shit me out. 0.87

00:24:25.260 They didn't give me the old David Menzies and drive me out to the outskirts and dump me in a parking lot or anything. 0.97

00:24:30.040 But they did say, you know, you're not welcome here and that's fine. 1.00

00:24:33.900 Well, it's not fine, but I'm just moving on to what I wanted to say here, which was that we heard that Liberal MPs were quite frustrated with the status quo in their party.

00:24:44.280 And again, how they have been so silent.

00:24:47.140 I mean, hurting Conservatives is very, very, very difficult.

00:24:51.380 I mean, Stephen Harper was probably the best at it, and even he had a lot of trouble with caucus members that were just a little bit rambunctious.

00:24:58.340 Hurting Liberal, they are a conformist people.

00:25:01.100 They fall in line.

00:25:02.980 He has kept that caucus tight. There has only really been one criticism of him that is by someone who's still in that caucus, and that was a no-name Quebec MP. Others, like the second there's a bit of dissent, they're out the door. Jody, Jane Philpott, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Selena Cesar Chavans, and as a result, everyone else just shuts up.

00:25:22.420 Yes. Until recently. And until the carbon tax, which is again why I think this pressure is so important. And I keep coming back to it. I know we're geeking out here politically speaking. But the fact that the Atlantic caucus of the Liberal Party said, hey, Trudeau, we're not going to be paying this carbon tax here, boy.

00:25:43.120 like all of our constituents are really mad at us who we've been hearing at it hearing about it over

00:25:48.060 the summer and again i have family there i lived there okay i know the culture all of those little

00:25:53.740 gatherings over the summer they they still call them box socials i'm not kidding and the picnics

00:25:59.420 and all that stuff they would have been hearing from a lot of their hardcore liberal party

00:26:04.440 supporters in atlantic canada and they got an earful and they turned around and gave prime

00:26:09.980 Minister Trudeau an earful. And magic, he carves out a carbon tax exemption for their primary home

00:26:17.080 heating fuel, which of course is oil. So for him to blink on that showed that there is a division

00:26:23.420 within that caucus, that he will cave to pressure, and he had to admit that the carbon tax is a

00:26:30.160 financial burden to people. So that was a major move. And the fact that the environment minister,

00:26:35.700 Stephen Guilbeau was not at that meeting, I think that's the crack in the armor. So I would

00:26:41.700 encourage everybody just go at that and put pressure on that fissure. We have a super chat

00:26:47.680 from Marco here. He says, why is everybody against the liberals? They made my house the best asset I

00:26:52.040 have. Yes. You're one of those wealthy homeowners just because of inflation and all of that stuff.

00:26:59.460 You mentioned Stephen Guilbeau, Chris. Let me play this clip of, well, let's just let the clip

00:27:04.500 speak for itself here. The plan rather that your government laid out post-2019, the 2019 election

00:27:11.900 got us to 2030 and the targets that you've set out to 2030 and that is when the price on carbon

00:27:16.900 will reach $170 a ton. Do you intend for that price to continue to go up since you do see this

00:27:23.260 as such an integral part of your climate policy beyond 2030 to help Canada reach its 2050 target?

00:27:28.280 So we haven't made a decision on that. We've started consultation to prepare the next phase of emission reduction, so post-2030 in Canada, in fact, going to 2035. Those consultations are ongoing.

00:27:43.140 Canada will need to make a determination by next year, as per our United Nations commitment, to set those new targets for 2035. We will need to do that by next year, by 2025.

00:27:55.220 there's no decision that has been that has been made yet other than we will continue

00:27:59.480 increasing the price on pollution oh we don't yet know again a lot of things here that are

00:28:06.440 important to caveat such as are the liberals going to be in power in 2030 i don't know i mean

00:28:11.340 theoretically even if they lose in 2025 they could be back in in 2030 crazy things happen

00:28:15.860 i do love the profound uh irony here of him giving a lecture on global warming well he's like

00:28:22.220 puffed up like the blueberry girl in Willy Wonka. Like he's like, basically he's on the verge of

00:28:27.420 just taking off off the ground. He's so puffy while talking about how we need to tax more

00:28:31.780 because it's so warm outside. Yeah. It's late March and you're a basically jiggly puff there

00:28:36.540 with your big giant parka. But, uh, nevertheless, what do you make of that? I mean, literally this

00:28:42.040 is an infinite carbon tax and an infinitely increasing carbon tax to Steven. Yeah. I was

00:28:46.720 noticing his downfilled, likely downfilled parka there too. It looks pretty chilly. I would bring

00:28:52.520 us back to the former environment minister. So Catherine McKenna famously before an election

00:28:58.480 said they had no plans to increase their carbon tax past $30 a ton. Remember that? Feels like it

00:29:05.960 should be like with old timey music and like sepia tone, right? And then magic, as soon as

00:29:11.340 election was over up it went and they announced it to a hundred and seventy dollars a ton so folks

00:29:17.900 regardless of political party again i hate to break this to people but i think i need to because

00:29:23.020 we're getting some feedback of oh well look at the rebates look at the rebates you're richer for it

00:29:27.820 politicians sometimes don't tell the truth they do this so often that we have a mascot for them

00:29:34.940 that looks a lot like that italian fable of the wooden boy who couldn't tell the truth and his

00:29:39.820 nose kept growing so they do this and so for him to say oh well we'll have to wait and see

00:29:45.660 yeah wait and see so i think in this case you just need to look back at his previous work history

00:29:52.140 and his current behavior as environment minister and will they continue to increase the price the

00:29:57.980 carbon tax or the price on carbon or whatever they want to call it you know is water wet of course

00:30:04.140 they will. Of course they will. The only thing that would stop them, I think, is a strong rebuke

00:30:10.900 from their own constituents. Again, we would have to crack through that fissure of influence, I

00:30:16.060 think, and get through to those members of parliament and get those members of parliament

00:30:20.620 to convince their prime minister to change his ways on this. To say, hey, people are broke. They

00:30:26.600 can't afford anything anymore. We have to, you know, call a spade a spade and do a full retreat

00:30:31.800 on this. I'm always an optimist. I actually think that that risk is not zero. I do think

00:30:38.080 that politicians do change their mind when they realize their own job is on the line.

00:30:42.040 This could happen because the NDP in British Columbia used to rail against the carbon tax

00:30:47.260 and now they love it that they're in government. The NDP here in Alberta imposed a carbon tax

00:30:53.040 in Albertans without warning and now most of their political candidates. Oh yeah, they're all

00:30:58.200 scrambling to see who can oppose it the most yeah right so just you know if you don't like the

00:31:02.700 politics wait five minutes right so i do still think that there's a chance of that but we need

00:31:07.680 to keep that clip because we need to remember what gibo said there in the future all right and

00:31:13.920 if you are missing any feathers from your duvet uh check stephen gilbo's jacket uh all right

00:31:19.060 chris simms alberta director for the canadian taxpayers federation always a pleasure we well

00:31:24.500 we won't see you next monday because it's easter monday but we'll we'll make it up somehow

00:31:27.780 Thanks so much.

00:31:28.740 Have a happy Easter.

00:31:29.540 Bye-bye.

00:31:29.900 All right.

00:31:30.300 And to yourself as well.

00:31:32.480 This, yeah, I'm not making fun.

00:31:35.520 Well, I guess I'm sort of making fun.

00:31:36.680 Yeah, no, I'm making fun of the coat.

00:31:37.820 Okay, never mind.

00:31:38.620 He looks very warm.

00:31:39.780 That's all I'm saying.

00:31:40.540 And I don't think it's climate change

00:31:41.960 that is letting him feel that warm.

00:31:43.280 I think it's the jacket because he's standing out

00:31:46.400 in the Alberta cold in late March

00:31:48.920 or the Quebec cold in late March.

00:31:50.500 I actually don't know where he is.

00:31:51.620 I don't care anymore either.

00:31:52.800 But all right, we will shift gears here.

00:31:54.800 there was a bit of a development on the Freedom Convoy legal front last week. Now, I've been

00:32:00.400 speaking on this show periodically about the seemingly never-ending trial of Tamara Leach

00:32:06.580 and Chris Barber. They went on trial supposedly for 13 days in September, but it is now the end

00:32:12.900 of March and their trial is still underway, although it's not every day. It's on and off.

00:32:18.020 They'll do a couple days at a time and whatnot. But it is easy to forget that there are other

00:32:23.760 cases that have a lot less publicity around them, but are still stemming from those same three

00:32:30.060 weeks in Ottawa. Now, one of those came to a bit of an end, at least to some extent last week. It

00:32:35.360 was the trial of Jason Vanderweer, Jay Vanderweer as he goes by. He was one of the participants in

00:32:42.600 the Freedom Convoy protest. Now, one of his contributions, and I only learned this after

00:32:47.900 the fact but let's put up the cover of my book on the convoy uh so this is the freedom convoy the

00:32:54.780 inside story of three weeks that shook the world pardon the shameless plug but the you can see

00:32:58.780 there's a shed on the back of that one truck there that shed was actually a rather a pivotal role

00:33:05.820 uh in the convoy it was a multimedia studio it was live streaming it was doing all of that

00:33:11.100 and uh there there's a connection between that shed and the man i wanted to speak about in this

00:33:15.660 particular segment now uh david anbert joins me he is a criminal lawyer very prominent uh commentator

00:33:21.660 on twitter as well and he was the legal representative of mr vander weir uh david

00:33:28.460 it's good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thanks for having me andrew uh now now i

00:33:33.180 should just say i actually testified in this trial just by way of disclosure and my testimony was

00:33:39.580 effectively my own experiences and things that i saw as a journalist covering this but but let me

00:33:45.260 ask you what happened last week what was the judge's finding here so after the trial you

00:33:51.580 testified you were i think on day two of what was ultimately a four-day trial um there were

00:33:57.580 different sort of pieces to the puzzle that came together uh different uh testimony about the

00:34:03.580 beginning the middle the end of the convoy and ultimately uh we made arguments that a mischief

00:34:10.300 had not been made out uh certainly jason's participation in a mischief had not been made out

00:34:17.100 and even if it had been made out in the alternative we argued that there were two sections of the

00:34:22.460 criminal code uh that permitted either one to act with color of right or one to act in the course

00:34:31.260 of delivering a message and i i argued that the evidence certainly established that that's what

00:34:38.140 what the convoyers were engaged in doing.

00:34:42.220 The judge rejected all four of our arguments

00:34:44.980 and ultimately found the Crown had proven

00:34:46.900 beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a mischief,

00:34:49.840 that Jason was involved in it to the requisite level

00:34:55.140 of attracting criminal guilt,

00:34:56.420 and he did not find that there was color of right

00:34:59.140 or that the other section applied.

00:35:02.260 So he found Jason guilty.

00:35:04.900 And now the case, I mean, it's, you said brought to a conclusion.

00:35:09.180 It still has one more step is because he has now been found guilty, regardless of what you think about that, the court has found him guilty.

00:35:16.380 And as a result, there will be a sentence that's going to be imposed.

00:35:20.060 He will, of course, have the chance to appeal.

00:35:23.000 And that's something that he is looking into doing.

00:35:26.440 What is this?

00:35:27.480 I mean, mischief was something that a lot of people who are not criminal lawyers had really first heard in the context of the convoy.

00:35:34.060 i know it's not a new charge but what actually is mischief in a criminal sense and how does that

00:35:39.260 apply to the freedom con where we've heard it come up both in uh jason's case and also the cases of

00:35:44.540 tamara leach and chris barber and others right um okay so mischief we most commonly see it in

00:35:50.780 criminal law involving the destruction of property you know if you get an argument with someone um

00:35:56.300 and let's say they i don't know they film they want to record you on their phone and you don't

00:35:59.660 like that's you grab the phone from their hand and smash it into the ground that could be mischief or

00:36:04.540 punching a hole in the wall could be considered mischief but if you go in and read the section

00:36:09.660 there are other ways in which a mischief can be committed and one of the well-established ones is

00:36:15.900 by interfering with the lawful enjoyment of property and i think that was the angle that

00:36:22.300 the crown came at this from uh that they actually had two counts that basically slightly different

00:36:28.620 with slightly different wordings said the same thing one said that it basically interfered with

00:36:33.820 the lawful enjoyment of the property wellington parliament hill uh the downtown area and that

00:36:40.940 also interfered with the citizens of ottawa's lawful enjoyment of the property and so i mean

00:36:47.420 he was found guilty of both but because they're so closely related he can only be sentenced on

00:36:53.100 one of them effectively the conduct that leads to one inextricably leads to the other and so

00:36:59.580 he's only going to get sentenced on one of those counts on which he was found guilty and so what

00:37:04.140 what is meant by interfering with the lawful enjoyment is that it was the crown's theory

00:37:10.860 that people could not enjoy the public property uh downtown ottawa that roads could not be

00:37:18.540 traveled that good night sleeps could not be had because of the constant honking um that

00:37:27.580 there was the inability to uh to access certain roads uh and what's interesting about this trial

00:37:35.500 compared to maybe some of the more high profile trials like you talked about the tamara leach

00:37:40.380 trial is the crown actually led very little evidence in this particular case in fact it

00:37:46.860 led so little evidence a judge even said that it wasn't for the evidence both of the defense but i

00:37:53.580 mean we would we wouldn't have called that evidence if they also didn't have some in their case and

00:37:58.380 the judge also pointed the fact that mr van weir had posted videos on social media himself if it

00:38:04.700 wasn't for that evidence there would have been there would have been really no evidence of what

00:38:09.900 the actual mischief was um i mean again like the defense had to call the evidence because the crown

00:38:16.140 would have and did call the evidence of that jason had posted and so without any response the

00:38:23.180 conviction would have almost been been certain at least on this judge's analysis of of the law

00:38:28.780 and so we argued that they didn't really prove they didn't really prove uh the mischief and in

00:38:37.100 fact one thing that was actually interesting was you may recall there was a video montage that i

00:38:43.900 I put to you about some misinformation that went on during the convoy to such an extent that

00:38:53.180 numerous members of parliament and the NDP and the Liberal Party kept talking about this arson

00:38:58.840 case, arson, kept repeating this lie that the convoys had been involved in arson. I put that

00:39:05.720 to you, and there was actually a point where the judge intervened, and we had to address this in

00:39:11.420 your absence where the judge was suggesting to me that I was essentially you know putting up a

00:39:17.200 straw man that no one was suggesting that anyone was engaged in arson but my response to the judge

00:39:23.260 was that one of the reasons we're trying to put this forward is that the crown in other cases has

00:39:29.780 asked the court to take judicial notice to accept without hearing evidence certain facts such as

00:39:36.220 the fact that Ottawa was occupied or Ottawa was the subject of this large-scale mischief where

00:39:43.100 people couldn't get to their homes or couldn't sleep at night without even hearing evidence of

00:39:47.220 people saying those things. And I explained to the judge that whenever, if the Crown were to approach

00:39:53.180 him, approach the court and ask the court to take judicial notice, or even if the Crown wanted to

00:39:59.060 ask the court just to draw inferences about the convoy, that the court should be very guarded to

00:40:04.500 do so because of the prevalence of misinformation that's what that evidence sought to establish

00:40:10.260 and i thought that that was clear to the judge um one comment he made which is going to be

00:40:15.860 interesting to look at if this matter goes to appeal is that in response in response to one

00:40:20.980 of my arguments the judge made the comment that said you'd have to be living under a rock

00:40:26.180 to not be aware of the intrusion that this caused and that's exactly what judicial notice is

00:40:34.020 that we don't necessarily have to hear evidence of it that everybody knows that this is what

00:40:38.820 happens and that that's the type of of finding that the court shouldn't have been able to make

00:40:44.020 and so certainly that's something we're going to look at when deciding whether or not to appeal

00:40:50.500 just to jump in on that point david because one of the problems here is that you do have in a lot of

00:40:55.300 these cases that i i've seen come up a case where crown is putting the convoy itself on trial right

00:41:02.020 and applying that to the person who happens to be the defendant and and it it really happens

00:41:07.300 irrespective of the individual defendant's conduct and it sounds like that was really

00:41:10.740 what was happening here as well well to a certain degree that is a an effective and an appropriate

00:41:16.580 strategy of the crown and to a certain degree that was our strategy to combat it i mean the

00:41:22.260 crown would need if the crown wants to go that route they have to establish that the convoy

00:41:26.980 itself constituted a mischief and also that the person on trial participated in some way that they

00:41:35.020 just weren't simply observing it happen in front of them, but they were in some way acting either

00:41:40.120 as a principal actor in that convoy or as a participant or as a aider or a better of the

00:41:47.160 convoy as a party to that. And so we actually liked framing it like that because if we could

00:41:55.880 establish either of those two had failed to be done, that would have resulted in an acquittal.

00:42:02.440 So our primary line of focus is to argue, look, the Crown is not established beyond a reasonable

00:42:07.440 doubt, certainly not in the evidence in this trial, that there was a mischief. And to whatever

00:42:13.500 extent that there was, the convoy was there to deliver a message. And so under subsection seven

00:42:22.400 of the mischief provision. You can't find someone guilty of that. And then even if that was

00:42:27.980 established, they had to establish that Jason participated. And I think the judge was able to

00:42:32.720 make that leap in the sense that they found him to be a fairly involved participant in the convoy.

00:42:39.680 So let me just ask you moving forward here, not just in this case, but in general,

00:42:44.640 now that a judge has found that someone who was involved in the convoy had committed mischief,

00:42:50.780 that's the finding as it stands right now can that seep into other cases when crown is making

00:42:57.740 similar arguments for example the tamara leach and chris barber trial which is already underway

00:43:02.140 can they use this ruling to kind of help make that case against them that oh a judge has already

00:43:06.300 found the convoy was a mischief in theory it shouldn't i mean and the main reason why is that

00:43:12.620 um every criminal trial is a trial on its own evidence other than when a court takes judicial

00:43:18.300 notice like just to just to reiterate that point you know a court can take judicial notice that

00:43:23.900 water freezes at at zero degrees without having to call a scientist into court to testify in every

00:43:29.660 case where that's where that's a situation there is a place for that process you're saying pardon

00:43:35.180 me there's a place for that process of taking judicial notice right i'm saying there are ways

00:43:40.220 in which judicial notice can be taken i mean judicial notice can be taken of the fact that

00:43:44.620 that Wellington is located north of the Queensway and that Metcalfe Street runs north-south. I mean,

00:43:52.860 these are things where everybody does in fact know this. There's no controversy. Any resources

00:43:59.020 like maps or anything like that would confirm that. And so where there's no dispute, courts can

00:44:04.860 find that. But to answer your question, on the extent of whether or not something is a mischief,

00:44:11.180 the court needs to adjudicate it on the record that's before it on the evidence that's before it

00:44:16.380 and and so i think that it would be inappropriate for a court to um to find that because one court

00:44:25.020 found it to be a mischief another court could do that as well all right well uh sorry about the

00:44:30.140 loss but i know you're looking at your options and let's hope that uh we have some sanity prevailing

00:44:35.020 here david anberg criminal lawyer in ottawa and not a simpsons character as for quite a while his

00:44:40.140 uh twitter uh profile photo made it seem david good to talk to you thanks thanks thanks for

00:44:44.380 having me and also thanks again for your testimony in the in the trial it was it was quite well

00:44:49.740 received well always happy to talk about things i i saw and observed there so appreciate that very

00:44:54.460 much david and we will uh end things in a moment but just since we're talking about the post covet

00:45:00.380 era here i'd be remiss to not talk about this i've never seen the show yellowstone i see the ads for

00:45:05.660 it i think it's on amazon prime or something and i think kevin cost and i was gonna say kevin space

00:45:09.980 he's not in anything now kevin costner i think is in it uh but there's another guy who's in it who

00:45:14.780 is uh let's see uh my my show notes here i don't even have the name of the guy um how do how do we

00:45:20.060 have this story on oh there we go forrey j smith and apparently his name forrey j smith he uh well

00:45:26.140 let's just hear what he has to say for himself like i just got kicked off a plane in uh where

00:45:33.980 the hell am i at houston texas because i asked told them that i didn't feel comfortable sitting

00:45:44.140 next to somebody with a mask on yeah i've been drinking i've been sitting in the airport for

00:45:51.340 three hours yeah i'm drinking i ain't drunk but they throw me off the plane because i'm drunk

00:45:57.660 because you people won't stand up and tell everybody what this is i just told them i

00:46:07.500 didn't feel comfortable about sitting next to somebody that had to wear a mask and i'm off the

00:46:14.540 plane uh i never heard of the guy but i don't even so i don't even know if he's any good on

00:46:22.140 Yellowstone, but I like him for that alone. His best performance is his post-plane ejection

00:46:27.980 confessional about not feeling comfortable sitting beside someone wearing a mask. All right,

00:46:32.860 a little bit of lighter fare for you as we end the day here. We will be back tomorrow in just

00:46:37.800 23 hours and 15 minutes here on Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. Thank you, God bless,

00:46:43.360 and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Vaughn Show.

00:46:47.300 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:47:17.300 We'll be right back.

00:47:47.300 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 25, 2024

Election date change might make dozens more MPs eligible for pensions

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