Juno News - Election Readiness

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

00:00:06.540 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.680 Coming up, everyone's ready for the upcoming election.

00:00:15.960 Well, everyone except the Conservatives, that is.

00:00:18.940 And the Liberals strike another blow to free speech.

00:00:23.920 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:34.280 This is the Andrew Lawton Show on August 4th, 2021.

00:00:38.620 Great to have you aboard here on True North.

00:00:41.580 Getting back into a regular swing of things after a long weekend.

00:00:46.140 Hope you enjoyed some downtime perhaps.

00:00:49.020 And we are in that inter, not really an interregnum,

00:00:51.920 but that kind of weird twilight period as summer is almost ending, but not quite.

00:00:57.680 And we're trying to pretend that September is not as close as it is.

00:01:01.460 And we also have the added bonus of an election coming at any moment.

00:01:06.220 It's kind of like every time I go take a shower now,

00:01:08.580 I'm assuming that I'm going to come out and I'll check my phone and just have a text.

00:01:12.720 It's like, ah, the election's on.

00:01:13.860 So it hasn't happened yet.

00:01:15.140 Who knows?

00:01:15.500 By the time this show has finished recording, we could be in the midst of an election.

00:01:19.900 And I'm actually kind of getting tired of the rumoring about it because everyone says they

00:01:25.720 know and people like have claimed to know with like really in-depth precision of like,

00:01:30.240 oh yes, the election's going to be called on August 8th.

00:01:32.620 And then the election's going to be on September 17th.

00:01:34.780 And then someone else will say, oh no, it's coming on August 13th is the day.

00:01:39.820 I don't make predictions because then it's actually very brilliant because then I can never be wrong.

00:01:44.460 But I will say, this is I guess a very wide prediction.

00:01:50.020 I think there is going to be an election in the next couple of months.

00:01:54.460 As far as the exact day, I don't really care.

00:01:57.620 I'm at the point now of let's just get it over with because I'm tired of just everyone talking about it

00:02:04.820 without there actually being an election.

00:02:07.640 I know it's not going to be called this week.

00:02:09.520 And I know that because if you look at Justin Trudeau's itineraries,

00:02:13.020 he's been taking his favorite type of itinerary, the personal day itinerary for the last few days.

00:02:20.100 Now, even Justin Trudeau deserves a little bit of downtime.

00:02:23.360 I've never criticized Trudeau for taking vacations because I generally speaking think

00:02:28.180 the country is better off when he is on vacation.

00:02:31.180 So if he wants to just completely stay there, that is completely fine.

00:02:35.720 I am completely okay with that.

00:02:37.780 In any case, I do want to talk a little bit about the brewing election fever here

00:02:41.860 because some of the attack ads have already started,

00:02:44.720 specifically from third-party groups who can kind of spend as much money as they want right now

00:02:51.220 without any criticism, without any scrutiny, and without any disclosure of it.

00:02:58.260 And a couple of groups notably have decided to avail themselves of this privilege.

00:03:03.380 Most prominent among them is Unifor, which has never been a friend to conservatives.

00:03:08.640 It's always basically shilled for the liberals, but they take that ABC approach,

00:03:14.460 that anybody-but-conservative approach.

00:03:16.620 And they unveiled an attack ad against Aaron O'Toole, which I will say is well-produced.

00:03:22.820 I have to give credit where it's due there.

00:03:24.760 But they missed the mark on a few things.

00:03:27.500 But let's roll that ad first.

00:03:28.940 The next model of conservative is here.

00:03:31.920 Meet the 2021 O'Toole, ready to steer Canada in the wrong direction.

00:03:37.960 Engineered by big corporations to leave us behind.

00:03:42.300 Driven to cut health care and public services, just like Jason Kenney.

00:03:47.060 Another out-of-touch politician at a price we can't afford.

00:03:52.080 Meet the 2021 O'Toole.

00:03:54.440 New name, same old conservative.

00:03:56.720 Ah, yes, you think you're watching a vehicle ad and then it ends up being an anti-conservative attack ad.

00:04:04.280 Crapping on the types of vehicles made by Unifor or auto workers, one would presume.

00:04:09.900 But I digress.

00:04:11.280 Here's the thing.

00:04:12.060 Unifor is big business.

00:04:14.000 Anytime they try to claim that they're not,

00:04:16.960 they're neglecting the fact that they preside over more money than most businesses in Canada do.

00:04:23.080 Certainly the small and medium businesses who don't seem to be on their radar.

00:04:27.740 They have a right to support or oppose politicians.

00:04:30.540 That's fine.

00:04:31.580 But here's the thing.

00:04:32.620 I don't like the disingenuousness that comes when unions, especially Unifor,

00:04:37.720 which has gone through more mergers and acquisitions than a lot of big business,

00:04:41.600 is claiming to be out for the little guy.

00:04:43.700 That simply is not the case.

00:04:45.440 And more importantly, Unifor is the union that doesn't just represent auto workers and telecom workers

00:04:52.600 and people in numerous sectors.

00:04:54.660 Unifor actually represents thousands of Canadian journalists.

00:04:59.920 Journalists in newsrooms across the country, print, television, I believe maybe some radio as well,

00:05:05.460 though don't quote me on that.

00:05:06.860 Thousands of people who are supposedly non-partisan, unbiased, fair and objective,

00:05:12.860 and for the most part are, but are paying union dues to Unifor,

00:05:18.360 which is then using that money to go on these anti-conservative crusades.

00:05:22.320 Now, whether you agree or disagree with the message,

00:05:25.120 Unifor is putting journalist members in an incredibly dangerous spot.

00:05:29.020 And I've said in the past that anyone who is in Unifor who is a journalist

00:05:33.020 should have to disclose that membership in any coverage they do of the federal election

00:05:38.100 when their union has decided to go on these crusades to try to affect the election results.

00:05:45.560 We saw this in 2019 when Jerry Dias and his crew at Unifor declared themselves the resistance

00:05:52.680 to Andrew Scheer.

00:05:54.480 Now, even though Andrew Scheer lost, I really don't think you can blame Unifor,

00:05:57.720 but they had that photo.

00:05:59.980 It's actually a great, I'm going to show this.

00:06:02.080 It's a great photo because they had this photo and they declared themselves

00:06:05.280 Andrew Scheer's worst nightmare.

00:06:06.760 And while looking at that photo is enough to give you nightmares,

00:06:10.140 not for the reasons they think.

00:06:12.180 And I have a hard time trembling in my boots when they can't even manage to look at the camera

00:06:18.040 at the same time for this photo that they kind of use to launch their election initiative.

00:06:23.020 And Unifor has like a full election war room.

00:06:25.820 They're working nonstop.

00:06:27.540 They are basically a political action group.

00:06:31.020 They're not interested when there's an election in collective bargaining.

00:06:34.520 They're interested in doing the old trope that O'Toole is just like Stephen Harper

00:06:38.820 and just saying that the Conservatives are an old truck that still manages to work after 25 years

00:06:44.260 or whatever the case is.

00:06:45.740 So the reality is that Unifor is going to do what Unifor does.

00:06:49.980 But members of Unifor are going to be writing about the election while they are funding this effort.

00:06:57.420 And I mentioned this just very cheekily on Twitter the other day.

00:07:01.180 I said the latest from the union that represents thousands of Canadian journalists.

00:07:05.040 And someone said, well, why are you ignoring all of these other things that their members do?

00:07:09.160 And I said, because I don't care.

00:07:10.040 I don't care about auto workers that want to take a particular position.

00:07:13.340 I don't care about people that install cable that want to take a particular political position.

00:07:18.560 That's fine.

00:07:19.160 I care about the people who hold themselves up as the neutral arbiters of truth,

00:07:24.580 the ones who are responsible for communicating what's happening in this election.

00:07:29.600 They're the ones that I care about right now when they decide to be part of an organization

00:07:34.100 that puts political action front and center in an election.

00:07:39.140 And this has been kind of a recurring frustration.

00:07:41.800 And I will say a fair bit of pushback from some post-media employees.

00:07:47.580 Post-media is one company that has a lot of unionized shops with Univore specifically.

00:07:53.960 Andrew Coyne, Chris Selle, a few individual voices have kind of spoken up and said,

00:07:59.100 this is just not helping them.

00:08:01.160 It's raising questions.

00:08:02.860 And it's not to at all undermine the work that individual journalists are doing.

00:08:08.100 It's to say that it kind of causes questions about what's going on in these newsrooms

00:08:12.780 when Univore is a political action group and also the representatives of the workers in these unions.

00:08:20.460 And I mean, as far as just the old trope, the attack ad, whatever the case may be, doesn't matter.

00:08:25.140 People can say what they want.

00:08:26.800 This is not taking away Univore's right to speak freely or Univore's right to advocate for its members.

00:08:32.420 I'm actually very pro-union in the sense that I believe workers have the right to assemble

00:08:37.040 and I believe unions have the right to be a voice, but I believe it should be voluntary.

00:08:42.260 And that's key.

00:08:42.960 And that's why I have a lot more patience for private sector unions than for public sector unions,

00:08:47.620 which are basically just giant grifts off the backs of taxpayers.

00:08:53.220 But the election is very much happening.

00:08:56.080 The question is whether people are prepared for it and what that preparedness looks like.

00:09:01.220 And here's another example of this.

00:09:03.020 There's another group.

00:09:03.940 I won't play this ad because it's just sort of the same old, same old.

00:09:07.160 But a new action group has come together called the Protecting Canada Project.

00:09:11.620 And they've launched a 30-second ad saying that Aaron O'Toole is going to cut funding for health care,

00:09:16.520 which has never actually been proven.

00:09:19.420 True North did a write-up on this the other day.

00:09:21.940 And they looked at this and found there's no evidence to support the claims

00:09:25.260 that these attack ads are making.

00:09:27.820 But I digress.

00:09:28.680 Never let facts stand in the way of an agenda.

00:09:31.340 But this new group, Protecting Canada Project, getting funding from whomever, doesn't matter,

00:09:36.420 launching the anti-conservative attacks.

00:09:38.660 And it's always the same.

00:09:41.140 It's always the same.

00:09:42.380 The ominous music, the big scary close-up, and the assumption or presumption that whoever

00:09:48.620 the conservative leader is, is still just living in the puppeteering of Stephen Harper.

00:09:54.060 That's basically the rationale.

00:09:55.840 Now, I think there are a lot of conservatives in Canada who would love a conservative leader

00:10:00.300 that was a Stephen Harper puppet right now.

00:10:02.940 But I need to talk about Aaron O'Toole here.

00:10:05.680 Because the attacks are identical.

00:10:08.680 No matter what, no matter what a conservative politician says, the attacks they field are identical.

00:10:14.920 So any nice guy routine that a conservative leader does is not winning any support from the critics.

00:10:22.300 It is not changing minds in the least.

00:10:26.580 Aaron O'Toole has talked about this old line of his, that he wants more people to wake up,

00:10:31.120 more Canadians to wake up, and look in the mirror and see a conservative.

00:10:33.900 It's a great line.

00:10:35.120 He said he wants Canadians of every race, every religion, no religion, every sexual orientation,

00:10:39.960 gender, every industry, every part of the country.

00:10:42.400 He wants them all to find a home in the conservative party.

00:10:46.000 Great.

00:10:46.600 You need to expand the base.

00:10:48.200 You need to expand the tent.

00:10:49.480 But you don't do that at the expense of your base, because you're going to find that there

00:10:54.220 is a contingent of the population that will always hate you.

00:10:58.700 They'll always be against you.

00:11:01.100 And you can't just expect to win everyone.

00:11:04.620 And this is one of the greatest misconceptions about politics, about elections, that you win

00:11:09.380 them by getting more people to vote for you.

00:11:12.080 In a technical sense, you do.

00:11:14.160 But on the ground, it's about getting the people who like you motivated enough to vote

00:11:19.960 for you, and getting just that small subset.

00:11:23.000 You don't want to get everyone to vote for you, but that small subset you need to have

00:11:26.400 more than the other side to vote for you.

00:11:30.060 And the problem with that is that you can't do it if you are content to surrender your base.

00:11:36.060 And I'm getting a lot of frustration, a lot of frustration right now from the base.

00:11:43.300 Conservatives who are very annoyed that Aaron O'Toole has not taken a strong stand on Bill

00:11:47.500 C-36, which we'll be talking about later on in this show.

00:11:50.900 Conservatives very frustrated that just that there is a Freudian slip, if ever there was

00:11:55.480 one, that Aaron O'Toole introduced a carbon tax, basically, that he has kind of forgotten

00:12:01.620 about.

00:12:01.960 Hasn't really talked about it since then, but it's there.

00:12:03.800 It's been promised to Canadians, and that a lot of other things like Brad Trost's suspension

00:12:09.400 and then subsequent re-qualification, Derek Sloan's expulsion from caucus, all of these

00:12:14.640 things that have happened that have made a lot of people in the Conservative base sour

00:12:19.120 or, at the very least, be a bit leery of Aaron O'Toole.

00:12:24.180 And we remember what happened with Andrew Scheer in 2019.

00:12:27.460 Scheer was trying to win the support of everyone.

00:12:29.620 He wanted to be everyone's friend.

00:12:30.840 He really did not do himself any favors with the base, and it was only after that election

00:12:35.820 that he started to try to reclaim a lot of that.

00:12:38.940 We couldn't get an interview with him during the election or even in the immediate lead

00:12:43.040 up to it.

00:12:43.500 But after the election's over, he was like, oh, yeah, we'll come on the show whenever

00:12:46.400 you want.

00:12:47.160 And that's a problem.

00:12:48.720 When Conservative leaders are courting Conservatives in leadership races, but they kind of forget

00:12:54.840 about them in the general election.

00:12:58.040 And I want to talk about one notable example of this here, because there is going to be

00:13:02.720 an election.

00:13:03.260 We know it.

00:13:03.780 It's just going to be a question of when and how long it is.

00:13:06.880 But there is going to be an election.

00:13:08.620 It's a minority government that's already gone almost two years, which is pretty much

00:13:12.960 as much as you get out of a minority government.

00:13:15.520 And this is not coming from Aaron O'Toole directly, but it's coming from people on his

00:13:21.940 team.

00:13:22.420 And I think it is at the very least a test balloon here.

00:13:25.840 One of his people, Director of Strategy Dan Robertson, sorry, Chief of Strategy Dan Robertson

00:13:31.800 says, a Delta-driven fourth wave is a clear, immediate, and foreseeable threat to Canada.

00:13:38.120 Its mitigation should be the exclusive focus of the government right now, not an election.

00:13:43.760 And then Melanie Parity, who is on maternity leave right now, but she's also on Aaron

00:13:49.420 O'Toole's team, says in a retweet of this, parents want their kids back in the classroom

00:13:54.820 this September, but an election could mean polling stations in thousands of schools during

00:14:00.420 a fourth wave.

00:14:01.780 So here we have two rather prominent members of O'Toole's team that are talking about this

00:14:08.380 fourth wave, this Delta-driven fourth wave, apparently being justification to not have

00:14:13.740 an election because it's too risky.

00:14:15.620 It's too dangerous.

00:14:16.500 We can't have people in schools, COVID in schools, COVID with Delta in schools, Canadian 1.00

00:14:22.040 schools.

00:14:22.680 We're not making this up.

00:14:24.260 There's like an obscure Canadian political reference for you.

00:14:27.300 If you didn't get it, don't worry about it.

00:14:28.820 But here's the reality of it.

00:14:31.220 This is what they're saying, that it's too dangerous to have an election.

00:14:35.220 Conservatives, by and large, I shouldn't say that with a capital C, but people on the right,

00:14:41.400 small C conservatives, have been the ones pushing for reopenings for the last several

00:14:45.920 months.

00:14:46.560 They've been the ones telling the governments to ditch the pandemic alarmism to get back

00:14:51.440 to normal.

00:14:52.520 So the fact that Aaron O'Toole's office is now trying to say it's so dangerous to have

00:14:57.480 an election.

00:14:58.060 We can't have an election.

00:14:59.100 We can't have people walking into schools as polling stations. 0.81

00:15:02.140 That's going to be too dangerous and too reckless.

00:15:04.440 Government should be solely focused on the pandemic right now.

00:15:07.420 I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:15:10.300 The conservatives have been the ones criticizing Justin Trudeau's mishandling of the pandemic,

00:15:15.360 as is their job as the official opposition.

00:15:18.840 So all of a sudden, they're saying that they want Justin Trudeau's liberals to be solely

00:15:23.560 focused on pandemic response.

00:15:26.800 A government they've accused of being corrupt, unaccountable, too happy to rack up the

00:15:32.140 billions and billions and billions of dollars in debt and deficits.

00:15:35.500 And now they're saying, no, no, no, there shouldn't be an election.

00:15:38.200 We should just let them focus on the pandemic.

00:15:41.500 Which is it?

00:15:42.300 Is it a corrupt, reckless, spend-happy government that needs to be turfed?

00:15:46.880 Or is it a government that you trust to be the steady hand throughout the pandemic?

00:15:52.080 So there are two reasons, two theories I've come up with here.

00:15:56.080 Number one is that the conservatives are just not ready for an election.

00:15:59.140 They're scared.

00:15:59.860 They think they're going to lose.

00:16:00.920 They don't want an election right now until they're ready.

00:16:04.420 The other side of it is that they're true believers.

00:16:07.520 The conservatives are buying into this media-driven Delta fourth wave paranoia, the Delta Plus variant,

00:16:13.320 the Delta Double Mutant variant.

00:16:15.540 I mean, eventually, it's going to be like walking down sorority or fraternity row.

00:16:18.840 You're just going to have like the Delta Kappa Kappa variant, the Delta Upsilon variant,

00:16:22.780 the Sigma Chi variant.

00:16:23.800 And the reality is, if the conservatives are buying into that right now,

00:16:28.320 they're going down the road of the same COVID alarmism that was plunging people into lockdown

00:16:32.940 for almost a year and a half.

00:16:35.420 This is coming, well, even Manitoba. 1.00

00:16:38.680 Manitoba, led by Brian, you're all idiots if you want to protest lockdown, 1.00

00:16:44.300 Pallister, after he has dropped the mask mandate, 1.00

00:16:48.060 which I never thought would happen before Ontario.

00:16:50.140 So here I am in the masked and semi-restricted Ontario.

00:16:53.760 Well, even Manitoba is walking relatively free now.

00:16:57.700 And what's happening here is O'Toole is reversing that.

00:17:01.060 People in Alberta had the Calgary Stampede.

00:17:03.240 Not a whiff of trouble from it.

00:17:04.860 They're mask-free.

00:17:05.740 They're having a grand old time.

00:17:07.360 And O'Toole's team is saying it's too dangerous to have an election.

00:17:12.500 So they're trying to just score a political point with Justin Trudeau.

00:17:15.940 They're trying to be able to position him as reckless and irresponsible, 0.99

00:17:19.300 when in reality, all they look like are cowards. 0.99

00:17:24.460 There's no other way to view this. 0.94

00:17:26.220 The Conservative team, if they are not prepared and willing to fight an election right now,

00:17:31.140 after everything they've said about Justin Trudeau,

00:17:34.220 then what are they there for?

00:17:36.160 It's almost as if the Conservatives have just adopted this permanent role as opposition.

00:17:42.100 They forget that opposition has to be a vehicle to do something else,

00:17:47.380 ideally a vehicle to govern.

00:17:49.560 But they're just content now to be the perpetual, permanent opposition,

00:17:54.340 as long-lasting as the COVID restrictions in Ontario.

00:17:57.900 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:18:05.940 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:18:08.200 I was talking a couple of moments ago about election preparedness.

00:18:11.680 I have to share this.

00:18:13.420 I was on vacation last week, so I just, I wasn't doing a show.

00:18:16.660 So a few things that just, you know, popped onto my radar that I said,

00:18:19.860 well, I don't think anyone else has talked about this.

00:18:21.620 The Green Party of Canada has been in just, like, I feel bad for Annamie Paul for many, many reasons.

00:18:28.560 She's inherited a party that doesn't want her. 1.00

00:18:30.540 If I were her, I would just, like, say, well, screw you guys. 0.98

00:18:33.380 I'm leaving. 0.99

00:18:33.880 I could do better things. 0.99

00:18:34.880 She's not a dumb woman at all. 0.99

00:18:36.760 But she's trying to do it. 0.98

00:18:38.300 She's trying to cobble together whatever coalition she can within her Green Party. 1.00

00:18:42.280 Elizabeth May is, like, waiting, you know, stage left, 0.95

00:18:45.020 waiting for Annamie to be forced off so that she can, you know,

00:18:48.140 come on and just, like, you know, descend and say, here I am.

00:18:51.620 But here's the thing.

00:18:53.040 Branding is very important in politics.

00:18:56.080 I do feel it can be kind of overstated, but it is important.

00:18:59.280 You need to have a good brand.

00:19:00.400 You need to have some good designers.

00:19:01.940 Anyone and everyone can use Photoshop these days.

00:19:04.740 This is the official t-shirt that the Green Party has settled on for Annamie Paul.

00:19:11.980 Yeah.

00:19:13.400 I saw this on Facebook.

00:19:15.560 A friend of mine shared it, and I thought it was a joke.

00:19:17.840 Like, I thought it was like someone just did a Microsoft paint job.

00:19:21.460 And was just kind of making fun of it.

00:19:23.140 And then I looked, and there it is on the website.

00:19:25.000 That is a legitimate Green Party shirt.

00:19:27.500 And, oh, you can get it in multiple colors, too.

00:19:29.540 Yeah.

00:19:29.740 You can get it in gray.

00:19:30.960 You can get it in black.

00:19:32.960 You can get it.

00:19:33.260 Essentially, the black doesn't look too, too bad. 0.94

00:19:35.560 You can get it in teal, which is a little bit ostentatious.

00:19:39.260 But there we go.

00:19:40.980 And this is what they're doing.

00:19:42.780 Now, I wonder if the graphic designer is part of the group that's trying to launch the coup

00:19:47.500 against Annamie Paul. 1.00

00:19:49.160 That is kind of the only justification I can think of.

00:19:52.240 Although, then again, you look at the Elizabeth May t-shirt, which they're still selling.

00:19:56.480 Although, at a significant price reduction.

00:19:58.940 EM for PM.

00:20:00.360 That is down to $10 marked down from $29.

00:20:04.420 So, they're trying to, like, get rid of all this inventory.

00:20:06.800 But they may need to bring it back.

00:20:07.680 Once Elizabeth May swoops in to reclaim the party, that's going to go right back up to $29 1.00

00:20:12.620 again.

00:20:13.380 So, now's your chance if you want an EM for PM shirt.

00:20:16.960 Christmas is around the corner.

00:20:18.200 You never know who you might hate enough to give that to.

00:20:21.600 In any case, got to have some fun, right?

00:20:23.920 Because if you're not laughing, you are crying.

00:20:26.500 I am, anyway.

00:20:27.600 I want to talk about this story here.

00:20:29.840 Bill C-36, a few weeks back, I brought up.

00:20:32.720 It is the biggest attack on free speech that Justin Trudeau's liberals have launched.

00:20:37.720 Worse than C-10, far worse than anything else they've done.

00:20:40.840 A bill that restores Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act and will allow the government

00:20:46.760 to prosecute so-called online hate speech.

00:20:49.620 Now, in the time that Bill C-36 has been introduced, Parliament has risen.

00:20:54.940 So, it's more of a political fight now taking place outside of the House of Commons.

00:21:00.060 But still a bill that the Liberals are no doubt going to champion if they win an election.

00:21:05.760 And I think they're probably going to campaign on it.

00:21:08.160 And there has been nary a peep from most of the media.

00:21:12.240 There's been very little pushback.

00:21:14.100 In fact, I'm going to go out to say no pushback from Aaron O'Toole, a little bit from a couple

00:21:19.760 of Conservative MPs.

00:21:21.100 But for the most part, everyone has just accepted it and moved on.

00:21:25.900 Here's an interesting thing, though.

00:21:27.380 The Liberals appointed a bunch of senators in the last...

00:21:31.140 Well, two batches, actually.

00:21:32.540 A batch in June and a batch last week.

00:21:34.680 One of those, David Arnott, was the Chief Commissioner, the Human Rights Commissioner

00:21:39.680 in the province of Saskatchewan.

00:21:42.000 And when I heard that, I'm like, you know, I seem to remember hearing some very dangerous

00:21:47.300 things about free speech from the Chief Commissioner of Human Rights in Saskatchewan

00:21:51.740 a couple of years back.

00:21:52.700 And I went and looked up in my archives, looked up in the Hansards, as I do from time to time.

00:21:57.060 And David Arnott was one of the leading voices when the Liberals were planning to introduce

00:22:04.080 this hate speech bill that they had testifying before the House of Commons Standing Committee

00:22:09.740 on Justice and Human Rights.

00:22:11.380 And he was actually pushing the government to introduce a nearly identical version of what

00:22:18.000 the Liberal government has now introduced.

00:22:19.940 And he wasn't doing this as a prospective Liberal Senator that we knew.

00:22:23.440 He was doing this as a concerned Human Rights Commissioner in the province of Saskatchewan.

00:22:28.320 And I want you to hear how he refers to free speech, because this is the attitude that is

00:22:37.040 behind Bill C-36.

00:22:38.560 It's the attitude behind the Liberal government's approach to regulating the internet and regulating

00:22:43.060 online speech.

00:22:44.220 And by appointing him as a senator, knowing full well that he's been advocating and will help

00:22:50.220 the Liberals push this forward, to hear what he says about free speech is very revealing.

00:22:55.740 There is no empirical evidence that human rights legislation unduly fetters legal speech.

00:23:03.740 Contrary to the arguments of the free speech advocates, Canada has no democratic tradition

00:23:08.920 of unbridled free speech.

00:23:11.680 Freedom of speech in Canada has always been freedom governed by limits recognized in law.

00:23:17.280 Despite the charter protection of freedom of expression, there are numerous limits to free

00:23:23.480 expression that are justifiable in a free and democratic society.

00:23:27.540 Reasonable limits to expression protect against greater harms that flow from unfettered speech.

00:23:33.520 There is a lot to unpack there.

00:23:35.620 So he says that there's no evidence that a bill that literally regulates online speech will

00:23:41.860 regulate speech and limit free speech.

00:23:44.880 Well, OK, we'll get to that in a second.

00:23:46.380 And then he also says, which is not he's not saying this as a legal analysis, he's saying

00:23:51.840 this as a desirable point, that there is no right to what he calls unbridled freedom of

00:23:57.620 expression in Canada.

00:23:58.620 He says there's no right in Canada, no democratic tradition of free speech.

00:24:03.620 And he says we have lots of limits and reasonable limits protect against the greater harms that

00:24:10.340 flow from unfettered speech.

00:24:12.080 So he says that it's more harmful to have free speech than to have restricted government approved

00:24:19.080 speech.

00:24:20.920 And this is an important point here because it's one that the liberals have relied on.

00:24:24.820 They say that, well, I mean, free speech is harmful.

00:24:27.380 You can't have just completely free speech.

00:24:29.540 And they get so indignant that free speech absolutists like me actually think that.

00:24:34.760 And I've talked about why at great length, because when you when you don't have free speech,

00:24:38.880 you have government approved speech.

00:24:40.800 And then the question will always be in where you draw the line, which is a lot more difficult

00:24:46.560 to do than to just have no line and accept that in a free society, people are going to

00:24:50.860 say things you deplore.

00:24:52.460 You don't need legal protections for speech that you don't deplore.

00:24:55.600 You don't need freedom of speech to protect uncontroversial speech, which is the great

00:25:02.180 illogic of these things.

00:25:05.420 When they try to say, well, no, I support free speech, but not for hate speech.

00:25:08.520 Well, that isn't free speech at all.

00:25:11.680 And an interesting point about this that I think needs to be addressed is that they're

00:25:16.040 trying to play with definitions here, forgetting that we already have one.

00:25:20.200 We already have in the criminal code a very high threshold for speech.

00:25:24.140 What Bill C-36 does is basically lowers that threshold and allows the Human Rights Commission

00:25:30.060 to prosecute.

00:25:31.140 And this is something that David Arnott, now Senator David Arnott, was pushing for in his

00:25:36.660 testimony before the House of Commons a couple of years back.

00:25:39.960 It was in, I think, May of 2019.

00:25:43.440 And he said, well, the criminal code has too high a threshold.

00:25:47.040 This is what he said.

00:25:48.740 And he goes down that line that Stephen Gilboa has also gone down that, well, unfettered free

00:25:53.960 speech is just too dangerous.

00:25:55.440 And he thinks that it makes speech more free if you censor speech.

00:25:59.780 How that makes sense, I don't know.

00:26:01.500 But here's how he justifies it.

00:26:03.420 Ironically, hate speech arises in public debates and can be very restrictive and exclusionary.

00:26:11.180 Legitimate debate in our democracy, which is expressed in a civil manner, encourages the

00:26:16.920 exchange of opposing views.

00:26:19.900 Hate speech is antithetical to that objective.

00:26:22.720 It shuts down dialogue by making it difficult or impossible for members of a vulnerable group

00:26:28.820 to respond, thereby stifling discourse.

00:26:32.980 Hate speech that shuts down public debate cannot dodge prohibition on the basis that it promotes

00:26:39.900 debate.

00:26:40.680 So now he's moving the goalposts.

00:26:42.500 He's saying that, no, you have to express yourself in a civil manner.

00:26:46.340 Now, I'm a firm believer in the fact that you should express yourself in a civil manner,

00:26:51.700 but I do not believe that government has the right to stand behind you and force you to

00:26:56.480 do it.

00:26:57.660 There is no legal obligation to be civil.

00:27:00.920 There's no legal obligation to be kind.

00:27:03.160 These are social obligations.

00:27:04.740 They're moral obligations.

00:27:06.260 They're things that need to form the backbone of a polite society.

00:27:09.640 I've long said we need to have civil discourse.

00:27:12.620 I'm against no platforming because I believe that people should be able to have these debates.

00:27:17.840 And if they don't want to have a debate or a discussion with someone, they shouldn't

00:27:20.760 be forced to do it.

00:27:22.320 But what the government is doing is moving more and more towards this direction where

00:27:26.100 there is one approved position that you are allowed to espouse in society.

00:27:31.560 And as much as they want to hold up horrific examples like the attack on a Muslim family

00:27:36.820 in London, Ontario early this summer as justification to ban online speech, despite, by the way,

00:27:42.460 that no evidence has been put forward by authorities that there was an online hate speech component

00:27:47.920 there.

00:27:48.180 But I digress.

00:27:49.100 The liberal government used that as justification to push legislation forward that restricts

00:27:56.020 online speech.

00:27:57.760 What they don't tell you is that they and these bureaucrats, these faceless unelected bureaucrats,

00:28:04.680 are the ones responsible for the day-to-day definition and redefinition over time of what government

00:28:12.140 unapproved speech is.

00:28:14.560 And despite the fact that now Senator Arnott, a Trudeau-appointed so-called independent senator,

00:28:21.700 says there's no empirical evidence that free speech was threatened, just look at the prosecutions

00:28:26.960 that took place under Section 13.

00:28:30.280 Attempted prosecutions and prosecutions.

00:28:32.760 People were using this commission, weaponizing it against journalists.

00:28:36.500 You had Ezra Levant, who was targeted by the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

00:28:40.720 Mark Stein, who was targeted eventually by the BC Human Rights Tribunal after they tried

00:28:45.700 to shop it around to Ontario and to Canada.

00:28:48.160 And this section had a near 100% prosecution rate for most of its existence.

00:28:55.180 Nearly 100% of its cases were successfully prosecuted, resulted in convicting someone for blogging

00:29:04.400 the wrong words, for posting the wrong thing in an internet comment section.

00:29:08.340 The reality is when you allow the government to regulate the internet, what you are doing

00:29:14.060 is giving government the right to regulate speech.

00:29:17.080 And I have to point out, the bones of this have started to materialize a bit more.

00:29:22.440 The Liberals said last week they're going to unveil a digital security commission.

00:29:27.660 Oh, well, that sounds nice.

00:29:28.760 Digital security is important.

00:29:30.220 One of the things this commission will be doing is looking at things like child pornography

00:29:34.600 and harm emanating from online pornography sites.

00:29:37.940 Well, that's good.

00:29:38.500 Everyone can agree with that.

00:29:39.700 But in the same program, the same department, they're also going after social media companies

00:29:45.540 like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and they're going to weaponize their authority to force

00:29:53.360 these companies to take down so-called hate speech.

00:29:56.480 They'll have to take down child pornography.

00:29:58.420 Good.

00:29:58.900 No objection for me on that.

00:30:01.700 But they're also using this same power to go after online hate speech.

00:30:06.280 Companies could face millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars in fines if they don't

00:30:11.260 zap content that has been flagged as illegal within 24 hours.

00:30:16.760 So as I've warned about since long before C10, what the Liberals are doing is deputizing big

00:30:23.520 tech to become the enforcers of the government speech codes.

00:30:28.000 And when Facebook tells you, oh, well, this is hate speech, we're purging it online.

00:30:32.420 They're doing this under government authority, but you can't appeal it.

00:30:35.600 You can't take it to court.

00:30:37.580 Your grievance is with Facebook, even though it's government behind pulling the strings.

00:30:43.660 So anyone who says that, well, if you just oppose this, you're supporting hate speech.

00:30:47.640 No.

00:30:48.960 I'm supporting the right for people to engage in civil society without the fear of government

00:30:54.440 maligning speech.

00:30:56.000 It does not like us hate speech.

00:30:57.920 And using that as justification to zap impolite, discourteous, uncivil, perhaps inaccurate opinions

00:31:08.600 that people hold that are nonetheless protected under the spirit of free speech, a spirit that

00:31:14.180 the government simply does not embody.

00:31:16.280 And its appointment of Senator David Arnott is very much proof of that.

00:31:20.040 We've got to end things there.

00:31:22.320 My thanks to you all for tuning into the show.

00:31:24.140 We'll be back with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show in just a couple of days' time.

00:31:28.580 This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:31:30.640 Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:31:32.540 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:31:34.380 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - August 04, 2021

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