Juno News - Even Canada Post wants nothing to do with the Liberal gun grab

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.

00:01:16.280 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:24.240 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:26.940 Another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here.

00:01:29.880 the Andrew Lawton Show on True North on this Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024. I always give the

00:01:37.560 ear just in case you've been in a prolonged coma. You went into it in 2015, perhaps. And I have to

00:01:43.720 tell you, Justin Trudeau is still the prime minister. No, no, no, don't go back into the

00:01:47.520 coma. I think it's going to get better as well. If you look at the polling numbers anyway,

00:01:52.360 Canadians are eager for a change. Now, obviously, when push comes to shove, the Liberals thought

00:01:58.600 that their big giant big spending capital gains increasing budget was going to move the needle on

00:02:04.360 their polls but new numbers that came out I don't know if it was yesterday or this morning

00:02:08.920 showed that even with all that spending and all of that tax the rich stuff yeah 40 percent of

00:02:15.240 those who reacted said two thumbs down 43 percent didn't give a hoot and only 17 percent were keen

00:02:21.240 on what the liberal government was doing so that is not exactly the turning around of the numbers

00:02:27.740 that the Liberal government thought it would be getting.

00:02:30.180 So very good news if you're Pierre Polyev,

00:02:33.060 less so if you're Jagmeet Singh

00:02:34.520 because you're still keeping that Liberal government afloat.

00:02:37.540 And I think voters may, in fact,

00:02:39.320 not take too kindly to that in the next election.

00:02:42.680 But I don't want to talk about polling and horse racing.

00:02:44.820 We've still got, how long do we have now?

00:02:46.940 We're in April.

00:02:47.640 Next election's probably going to be September, October.

00:02:49.960 We've still got a year and a half left.

00:02:52.500 And so I don't want to just spend every day like,

00:02:54.520 you know, oh, this pop two points

00:02:56.200 and down one point and all of that.

00:02:57.580 But every now and then you have to pop in and look at the bigger picture trends there.

00:03:01.600 I do want to talk about some things that never change.

00:03:04.540 And one of those is government incompetence, which if you've heard this show in the past

00:03:08.900 and you've heard me talk about the Liberal government's attempted gun buyback,

00:03:13.600 you'll know that this is one of the rare situations in which I am delighted that the Liberal government is as incompetent as it is.

00:03:20.800 So let's go back in time here.

00:03:22.620 it was May 1st, 2020. So almost four years to the day ago that the Liberal government announced

00:03:30.620 this order in council, the sweeping prohibition on about 1,500 types of firearms. It was written

00:03:36.540 on the back of a napkin in the wake of the horrific spree killing in, well, it was around

00:03:42.060 different parts, but the epicenter of it was Portapique, Nova Scotia. And the Liberal government

00:03:48.020 knew that at that moment in time, Canadians were just so horrified by what had happened

00:03:53.600 that they would swallow any gun control measure the Liberals put forward.

00:03:57.280 It didn't matter if it had nothing to do with the criminal acts themselves.

00:04:01.120 The Liberals knew that they could just point to this guy, point to this incident,

00:04:04.460 then point to a gun ban, and it would be very difficult for Canadians to defend firearms in that moment.

00:04:10.040 And indeed, Aaron O'Toole was the leader, so it was difficult for Conservatives to, well, defend anything.

00:04:15.740 but what had happened there which was quite interesting is that the liberals which had

00:04:20.340 been promising this they had been promising this for quite some time just shoved this out the door

00:04:25.500 and gave no thought to implementation or rollout. Originally when they announced this order in

00:04:31.700 council they thought it was going to be wrapped up and done by May 1st 2022. Well I shudder to tell

00:04:38.800 you that it is not 2022. It is not 2023. It is almost May 1st, 2024. Not a single firearm has

00:04:46.460 been bought back. Now, obviously you need to take into consideration here that the buyback is in

00:04:52.000 and of itself a branding exercise. This is a massive nationwide firearms confiscation. But

00:04:57.920 nevertheless, the firearms buyback confiscation, whatever you want to call it, has racked up tens

00:05:03.520 of millions of dollars in costs, well over 40 million without acquiring a single firearm. And

00:05:08.600 shockingly, the government doesn't even have a way of getting these guns. Now, look, call it

00:05:14.700 schadenfreude, I find this to be absolutely hilarious. So let's start with Alberta and

00:05:19.800 Saskatchewan. These are two provinces that have put up serious roadblocks between the federal

00:05:24.540 government and its gun-grabbing desires. The government has decided that it's going to,

00:05:30.880 the Alberta government has decided it's going to license anyone who wants to function in the

00:05:36.440 province of Alberta in a capacity of collecting firearms. And that means that if a federal police

00:05:42.080 officer wants to come in and start collecting guns, they will need to have a provincial

00:05:46.920 license. And you know, what if the provincial government is very, very stingy with those

00:05:54.140 licenses? What if they just don't want to give out any of those licenses? That is what former

00:05:58.940 Justice Minister Tyler Shandro indicated would be the government's approach. Saskatchewan has

00:06:04.340 done something very similar. We had a couple of weeks back the new chief firearms officer of

00:06:09.380 Saskatchewan and the new, what's his name, I forget his name, a firearms commissioner. Bob

00:06:13.980 Freeberg was his name, who was the previous chief firearms officer and Saskatchewan not interested

00:06:19.600 in participating in this federal gun grab. So here you have two provinces, which I think per capita

00:06:24.640 have more gun owners in them than anywhere else in the country that are saying they're not going

00:06:29.760 to go along with this. Alberta has also, by the way, said it will not allow police resources in

00:06:35.640 the province to be used for this gun confiscation. Manitoba has been a little iffy on this. Not under

00:06:42.200 the NDP government. They're probably going to roll, but the previous PC government was fairly

00:06:47.940 critical in the territories. They've been fairly critical. But then we have this reporting that

00:06:52.580 came out of Radio Canada CBC, where the federal government thought that Canada Post could be a

00:06:58.740 partner on this. They thought because Canada Post has experience shipping guns. When I ordered a

00:07:03.420 handgun from one vendor, it was Canada Post that brought it to my door. And Canada Post, they

00:07:08.380 thought, okay, let's just send everyone a self-addressed stamped envelope. They can put

00:07:13.320 their gun in it and hand it to the mailman and the mailman will bring it back to Ottawa.

00:07:18.740 I mean, not exactly. You know what I mean? That's what the government thought. Well,

00:07:23.040 well, well, Canada Post isn't having any of it. They're saying, well, hang on. Why is this our

00:07:27.200 employees problem. They've sent a letter to the federal government saying, I love this, saying,

00:07:31.940 no, we don't want to do this. We don't want to send our postal carriers to your angry gun owners

00:07:37.720 houses, the gun owners that you've teed off with this gun grab and demand that they hand over their

00:07:44.220 guns to your friendly neighborhood mailman. I have a lovely mailman. I wouldn't yell at him,

00:07:49.380 but I have no interest in giving him my legally owned, legally purchased firearms to send back to

00:07:53.920 Justin Trudeau. So you have here now Canada Post, which was the government's fallback plan saying,

00:07:59.360 we don't want any part of this. So who is left? I mean, I have to wonder of the tens of millions

00:08:04.560 of dollars that the liberals have spent on this, where has it gone if they don't even have anyone

00:08:09.340 that's willing to assist in this so-called gun buyback? Remember, they partnered up with the

00:08:15.180 Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammo Association. We had the president of the CSAAA, Wes Winkle,

00:08:21.440 on the show a couple of weeks back, a very similar thing. They were trying to help the government with

00:08:26.760 just getting inventory out of businesses. They hadn't even gotten to the consumer stuff. And even

00:08:31.960 on the business side of things, they're not optimistic that there's a roadmap in place. And

00:08:36.640 one of the points that Wes Winkle raised on the show here is that the federal government just

00:08:41.400 doesn't even know anything about the space that it's decided to enter. They don't know about the

00:08:46.300 types of guns. They don't know the difference between a shotgun and a pistol. They don't know

00:08:50.420 any of this stuff. And they're now trying to come in and pretend to be the experts to oversee this

00:08:55.660 massive, massive program, the costs of which are likely to balloon up to a billion dollars

00:09:00.040 if this goes ahead. So all of this is to say, I am not telling the government to get its act

00:09:06.640 together. I actually am completely fine with the government spinning its tires and being so utterly

00:09:11.080 inept and incompetent that it can't actually do what it's setting out to do. But my goodness,

00:09:16.740 this is an absolutely hilarious development where, you know, the governments first expected

00:09:22.120 the provinces to do their job. And then the provinces said, well, this isn't our job. We

00:09:26.260 aren't interested in doing this. And then the federal government said, okay, Canada Post is

00:09:30.300 going to, yeah, Canada Post will do it. And now Canada Post is saying that it's not going to do

00:09:36.180 this as well. So again, at a certain point, I don't even know what they have left because you

00:09:40.660 may recall, I believe it was David Lamedi, the former justice minister, who, when the provinces

00:09:46.780 were initially saying what Alberta and Saskatchewan were saying, which was that we're not going to let

00:09:50.960 police resources be used, we're going to license them, the federal government really didn't have

00:09:55.760 any tool in its arsenal to respond to that except for finger wagging. They basically said, oh,

00:10:00.520 you're getting in the way of what we're doing. And I think it was, you know, Daniel Smith that said,

00:10:04.620 well, yeah, that's kind of the point, minister. We don't want you to be doing what you're doing,

00:10:09.000 and we don't want you to be doing it in our province.

00:10:11.660 I would love a whole country of people doing that.

00:10:14.420 I would love to see Premier Doug Ford in Ontario.

00:10:17.400 I can't remember if Blaine Higgs went down that road as well in New Brunswick.

00:10:22.060 I seem to recall there was at least some resistance

00:10:24.680 to what the federal government was trying to do.

00:10:26.660 But I can't recall if they had gone as far as Alberta and Saskatchewan had.

00:10:30.760 But I wanted to read a quote from this letter

00:10:33.000 that the Canada Post folks sent to the federal government here.

00:10:37.500 they said that i just got to find it here oh here it is that employee safety is the concern that

00:10:46.140 they actually don't believe that it's safe for their employees uh now the federal government

00:10:51.160 has said that it would be the most efficient and least costly way of doing it so they think that

00:10:56.680 canada because now they care about cost savings and efficiency in ottawa inexplicably but they

00:11:01.920 think canada post is going to be that uh the canada post folks are saying yeah we're actually

00:11:07.200 refusing to do this. Now, here's the one quote I wanted to share with you from the article.

00:11:11.420 Federal officials told Razio Canada, oh sorry, no, that's the, I just read that line. My screen

00:11:16.940 is bouncing all over the place here. They're saying it's going to delay. It's a challenge,

00:11:21.360 but we don't think this jeopardizes our timetable or the government's desire to move forward.

00:11:25.940 We want the discussions to continue. So the government's latest timeline on this is October

00:11:33.440 of 2025, conveniently when the next election is scheduled for. So we're now talking about a year

00:11:40.200 and a half from now, and the government is still in the discussion phase. So the idea that they

00:11:46.260 are going to discuss, reach a conclusion, find a plan, implement that plan, and finish it,

00:11:55.140 collect the millions of guns across the country that fall under this prohibition. And they're

00:12:02.260 going to do this all in a year and a half. If you believe that, I have some oceanfront property in

00:12:09.520 Saskatchewan for you. This is not going to work at all. Now, I suspect what the Liberals want

00:12:15.080 is they want to just delay, delay, delay, delay, delay until like right at the election time.

00:12:20.760 And then all of a sudden, the big, scary, meanie conservative Pierre Paulyev is going to have to

00:12:25.140 get out there in front of journalists and Canadians and defend the right of Canadians

00:12:29.880 to keep their AR-15s, a gun that is vastly misunderstood by people, which is why it became

00:12:35.400 the subject of the Liberal government's ire in the first place. But they want to make this an

00:12:39.320 election issue in the same way they did in 2021, and I believe 2019, but more so in 2021 with Aaron

00:12:46.080 O'Toole. But the reason it was so effective on Aaron O'Toole is because he completely rolled on

00:12:51.860 his platform. He had his pledge literally printed and laminated and bound in his platform, and then

00:12:58.040 he got a couple of questions from reporters he didn't like, and all of a sudden he just reversed

00:13:02.060 it, and they released an updated version with some asterisk where they effectively said they

00:13:06.300 weren't going to change what the Liberals had done. And when your commitment in an election

00:13:11.100 is that you're going to let what the other guys did stand, you're telling Canadians that you are

00:13:16.700 not providing any contrast. You're telling Canadians that you're not actually a different

00:13:21.560 option. You're not actually an alternative. So that's why it is so important to not try

00:13:25.360 to compete on the other side's turf if you are in fact running on a different platform. Own that

00:13:30.900 platform, defend it. And let's be real, Canadians don't understand guns if they haven't been around

00:13:36.840 them. A lot of Canadians just do not get it. The way you counter that is through education. It's

00:13:42.860 one of the reasons I made Assaulted, which was a firearms documentary I am incredibly proud of.

00:13:47.620 It's one of the reasons that I also have continued to talk about this issue on my show. I know there

00:13:52.860 are a lot of people that listen that are gun owners, that love it, that whenever we do a

00:13:56.540 segment on guns, it's always shared on the gun groups on Facebook. And I love hearing from those

00:14:00.520 people. There are also folks that are like, yeah, I'm a conservative on every other issue, but you

00:14:05.040 know, I don't get on this one. But even a lot of those people are starting to understand the

00:14:09.600 importance of firearms policy, just from a property rights perspective. Like, do you want

00:14:16.160 the government coming and saying that this thing that you bought legally, that you played by the

00:14:19.880 rules on is now the government's property. And someone raised, I was chatting with someone who's

00:14:25.040 a gun owner in Toronto. So, you know, heaven help him. But he was telling me when we were chatting

00:14:30.560 about this, and I thought it was an interesting point. If the government hasn't even thought of

00:14:34.420 the transport aspect, if the government hasn't even thought of how they're going to transport

00:14:39.180 all these firearms, have they thought about how they're going to store them? Because remember,

00:14:44.540 all of these guns that get turned in are going to get melted down. It's going to be a very depressing

00:14:48.360 day if you love guns, when these, you know, antique guns, these collectible guns, these

00:14:52.700 fascinating guns, these things that are used for sport shooting that have never hurt anyone

00:14:56.420 are just, you know, smelted down and put into this big heap of metal in Ottawa. But what are

00:15:02.660 they going to do when they're storing it? What's the repository going to look like? Like we just

00:15:07.760 passed the anniversary of, I forget how much it was, but it was like millions of dollars of gold

00:15:12.460 that was stolen from a secure warehouse at Pearson airport. Now, if we can't protect millions of

00:15:18.060 in gold from being stolen by, you know, based on the charges, not, you know, just a random group

00:15:23.860 of guys. How are we going to protect thousands of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of

00:15:29.200 thousands of firearms that are all sitting in a warehouse just waiting to be smelted? Keeping in

00:15:34.840 mind, we know how inefficient and ineffective government is on this. So I absolutely, absolutely

00:15:41.880 do not believe that this is going to happen. I think there is probably going to be a significant

00:15:46.820 an about face when there is an election coming around. And look, every time I talk about Pierre

00:15:52.740 Paulieva as being the most likely elected in the next election, you get people saying,

00:15:58.020 oh, what about Maxime Bernier? What about Yves-Francois Blanchet? No one's actually said

00:16:01.820 about what about Blanchet, but I'm going with what the poll numbers are now. And the poll numbers are

00:16:05.780 showing that Canadians are ripe for change. If they perhaps change from there and you see someone

00:16:10.700 else poised for victory, I'll amend my commentary. But for all intents and purposes, we are looking

00:16:15.840 towards a conservative government in 2025 and that is one that has at this point been pretty

00:16:22.160 unequivocal about wanting to roll back all of these liberal government proclamations edicts

00:16:28.060 the order and council the firearms laws all of that so that is exactly where we are on this now

00:16:33.960 and I think it's an important one because if government is going after your property on

00:16:37.520 something like firearms it's only a matter of time before they go after your property for some

00:16:42.060 other reason that they think is necessary that they think is a public safety requirement and you

00:16:47.860 don't and that is I think so crucial here so it isn't just a gun issue it is a property rights

00:16:54.300 issue and that I think is an important angle on this now I wanted to revisit a discussion we had

00:16:59.920 on the show yesterday about plastics you may have seen there's this big giant plastic confab that

00:17:05.600 the United Nations is hosting in Ottawa right now so the Canadian government is the host nation as

00:17:11.880 the world delegates decide they want to create a plastics treaty. Now, even the Secretary General

00:17:19.280 or Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, he was

00:17:23.540 tweeting today about the need for a plastics treaty as a public health issue. He says we need

00:17:29.120 a plastic treaty to protect the health of people and the planet, to which I replied somewhat

00:17:35.460 glibly on Twitter, two weeks to flatten the Tupperware. That is my response to that. When

00:17:40.620 When the guys who brought you the global COVID response are leading the plastic response, it will not be good in the least.

00:17:47.520 That was from Dr. Tedros there.

00:17:50.100 We also had Greenpeace roll out the red carpet and welcome delegates there.

00:17:54.880 This was them, I believe that's the Shaw Centre in Ottawa.

00:17:59.220 Welcome delegates, don't trash the treaty.

00:18:02.700 Welcome to Ottawa for Inc. 4 unless you are with big oil and plastic.

00:18:06.920 So if you're with big oil and big plastic, they are not welcoming you.

00:18:10.080 But if you're not from one of those industries, they welcome you to Ottawa.

00:18:16.320 By the way, Greenpeace, I assume, has to travel to these conferences, and I presume they don't swim and walk.

00:18:26.720 So take from that what you will, but I think there's a little tiny bit of hypocrisy.

00:18:32.060 Oh, Sean's done the research on this.

00:18:34.320 Her bio says she's from North Carolina.

00:18:36.700 So, okay, she didn't need to swim.

00:18:38.740 She could have walked.

00:18:39.700 I don't think she walked from North Carolina.

00:18:42.380 I don't even, Greyhound doesn't even like

00:18:44.360 running Canada anymore, I don't think.

00:18:46.080 So she had to get to Ottawa somehow

00:18:47.880 and she might have burned some fossil fuels

00:18:52.740 to get to Ottawa.

00:18:54.040 He says he has a script.

00:18:54.860 What do you have?

00:18:55.220 I don't know what you're,

00:18:55.800 what do you have a screen grab of?

00:18:57.280 Oh, there we go.

00:18:58.680 Sean was just telling me you had a screen grab.

00:19:00.180 Yeah, I really hate plastic

00:19:01.980 and get to do fun things with Greenpeace.

00:19:04.720 That, imagine that being your epitaph.

00:19:07.640 I really hate plastic.

00:19:09.360 Like the one line of real estate that you get to define yourself to the world is I really

00:19:14.580 hate plastic.

00:19:15.740 I actually, William Shatner, I saw, wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail the other day

00:19:20.620 calling for a global plastics treaty.

00:19:23.940 And look, I like William Shatner, but I think if we restrict plastics too, too much, his

00:19:28.560 face might not look the way it looks to this day.

00:19:30.740 So, oh, was that a low blow?

00:19:33.340 No, he, no.

00:19:34.640 William Shatner actually picked a fight with me on Twitter once.

00:19:37.020 So I think I'm allowed.

00:19:37.920 Okay. What happened was I had requested an interview with him because I had his email

00:19:43.520 address and I had emailed him for something unrelated. And I had emailed him for an interview

00:19:48.980 because I thought this is, you know, I like William Shatner. He's a Canadian legend. I had

00:19:52.080 interviewed him once on my radio show years ago. And instead of responding to the email,

00:19:56.300 he looked me up on Twitter and issued like a public rejection of my request and then told me

00:20:03.540 I had to go through proper channels next time.

00:20:05.640 I, you know, wanted to speak to him.

00:20:07.020 So that was the last I spoke to William Shatter.

00:20:10.120 Anyway, I just had my comeuppance, I suppose.

00:20:12.620 So this is what is happening there.

00:20:15.580 We've got the WHO pushing this.

00:20:17.720 We've got Greenpeace pushing this.

00:20:19.380 And you've got Stephen Gilbeau pushing it.

00:20:21.100 I shared the clip yesterday of him talking about

00:20:23.660 the need to have a global plastics treaty.

00:20:27.060 And we're going to be revisiting this

00:20:29.300 over the course of the week here

00:20:30.460 because you have to be very concerned

00:20:31.960 at what happens at these sessions

00:20:33.360 because it always tends to trickle down to domestic policy.

00:20:38.560 And this is the part that people fail to realize

00:20:40.660 is that they'll all say,

00:20:42.380 oh, this treaty is non-binding, it's symbolic,

00:20:44.300 we're just doing this,

00:20:45.240 we're trying to all get on the same page.

00:20:46.900 But at a certain point,

00:20:48.320 it all trickles down to what we do here.

00:20:52.140 And remember, this is a federal government in Canada

00:20:54.160 that tried to and succeeded in banning single-use plastics.

00:20:57.780 They did it by declaring plastics a toxin,

00:21:01.440 believe it or not.

00:21:02.160 and then it was only when it went to court that the judge ruled like yeah you can't call plastics

00:21:07.780 a toxin you actually can't put plastic in this category so the federal government has tried to

00:21:12.720 redefine this to push a very I mean they couch it as an environmental agenda but really it is an

00:21:20.280 anti-energy agenda it is an anti-energy agenda and it's one that ultimately makes consumers suffer

00:21:27.080 in this country. It makes manufacturers suffer. And it's not even like this old like big oil

00:21:31.820 versus the environment thing. Like plastics really are the backbone of industry. They've made

00:21:37.680 infrastructure incredibly affordable. They have made just COVID. Just look at COVID alone.

00:21:44.280 Whatever you think of pandemic response, it was plastics that really saved the day in COVID

00:21:48.220 because you had this ability to manufacture single-use products, which was needed in a

00:21:54.840 situation like this. So, you know, basically I wanted to just set the stage that we are on top

00:22:00.920 of this. We are following along with this and we're going to continue to have coverage over

00:22:05.040 the course of the week because I want to make clear here that as much as they claim science

00:22:09.320 is on their side and environmental policy is on their side, these things could not be further

00:22:15.200 from the truth. And they really are waging what looks genuinely like an anti-industrial agenda.

00:22:21.820 And we had yesterday on the show from the Vinyl Association, the president of that organization, Anya Curran, and she was saying, listen, we're working with them.

00:22:30.260 We're working. We're trying to be stakeholders here.

00:22:32.820 So anyway, we will follow that along over the course of the week.

00:22:36.520 I wanted to kick back in time to something else in Ottawa.

00:22:39.840 A couple of weeks back, I was there for the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference and sat down with my friend Jen Gerson,

00:22:45.900 who has quickly become one of the most successful figures in independent media in this country as

00:22:51.260 co-founder of The Line. Now, she's not, you know, one of these like disrespectful, you know, horrendous

00:22:56.840 evil Haiti right-wingers like me, but she was invited and she was on a panel. It was rather

00:23:01.460 spirited with Michael Geist and David Freyheit, who goes by Viva Fry or Viva Free, Frey. To be

00:23:08.060 honest, I don't know how he pronounces it now that I think of it, but he goes by Viva on Rumble

00:23:12.940 and on social media, and they had a spirited discussion about the future of media.

00:23:17.600 Now, Jen is very critical of the government's heavy-handed approach here,

00:23:21.340 but at the same time, she also doesn't go as far into the libertarian realm as David did,

00:23:26.600 and as perhaps many of you do.

00:23:27.720 So I wanted to sit down and get her perspective on this.

00:23:30.400 This is from the CSFN conference in Ottawa.

00:23:35.180 Non-subsidized media, independent media.

00:23:38.100 It is a relatively small community in Canada.

00:23:40.740 One of the best in this space, though, is The Line, founded by Jen Gerson and my old talk radio colleague, Matt Gurney.

00:23:47.060 Great to have Jen Gerson with us in person here.

00:23:49.760 Jen, welcome.

00:23:50.920 Thank you for having me.

00:23:52.040 You were speaking on a panel that actually got, it was one of the more engaging panels because there was a fair bit of contrast about the internet regulations.

00:23:59.300 And there are a great many of them from C11 to C18 and now C63.

00:24:04.080 At its core, you had said something that I found quite interesting, which was that, you know, yes, you're against a lot of what the government's doing.

00:24:09.940 but you're also concerned about a media ecosystem in which there's only a particular type of media

00:24:15.860 left i mean frankly one in which true north fills that void and i was wondering if you could just

00:24:19.860 expand on that a bit yeah i mean this this goes back to my argument and i it's a very unpopular

00:24:25.240 argument in this room and it will definitely be an unpopular argument with your audience

00:24:28.860 is that i do think there's a an important role for an organization like the cbc to play especially

00:24:34.760 when we're talking about a population we don't have the same population density in the u.s we

00:24:39.200 We don't have the same economies of scale that the U.S. has, and therefore it's a really,

00:24:43.600 really hard place for private media organizations to cover extensively, particularly when we're

00:24:48.660 talking about local news, right?

00:24:51.040 Not talking about Calgary or Toronto, those places are well served.

00:24:53.600 What about Medicine Hat?

00:24:54.680 What about Lethbridge?

00:24:55.680 What about Moose Jaw?

00:24:56.680 Places like that.

00:24:57.680 These places have become news deserts, and I think it becomes really difficult not only

00:25:01.780 to govern countries that don't have access to good quality journalistic media, but also

00:25:07.460 how do we maintain a sense of national identity and a sense of national cohesion in a media

00:25:13.220 environment where private media has essentially vacated this field? This is where I think that

00:25:17.760 there could be a role for a radically reformed or radically rethought out CBC or something like it

00:25:24.520 to be able to, by statute or by mandate, provide good quality, basic, objective journalism in,

00:25:32.420 say, every town over 100,000 people in this country. I think the counterpoint to that is

00:25:36.860 that that was supposed to be what CBC was doing,

00:25:39.320 and they've had a fair bit of mission creep

00:25:41.280 in the sense that they haven't wanted to do that.

00:25:43.440 I mean, when CBC launched its online opinion section,

00:25:45.640 it's like, can anyone say that opinions on the Internet

00:25:47.700 are in short supply, that we need a government?

00:25:49.720 Oh, dude, I'll go further.

00:25:50.980 Why do we have a CBC gem?

00:25:52.420 Why do we have a CBC streaming service?

00:25:54.180 Did you know that CBC actually is trying to duplicate Duolingo

00:25:57.040 with an app to teach people French and English?

00:25:59.220 I mean, these are things that are radically beyond

00:26:01.580 what most of us would understand the CBC mandate to be.

00:26:04.600 However, the answer to that question isn't necessarily to defund the CBC, the answer

00:26:08.820 is a radical mandate review.

00:26:10.620 And the other thing that I would do is I would take the CBC out of the Broadcasting

00:26:13.580 Act, where it currently nestles and has a very unclear and fairly vague mandate which

00:26:17.780 permits that kind of remission creep, and I would create a CBC Act.

00:26:21.360 I would essentially put the CBC in statute and I would enshrine things like their journalistic

00:26:25.680 standards of practice, I would enshrine a standard of journalism that I think most taxpayers

00:26:29.200 could get behind, and I would enshrine things like every, let's say for example, every town

00:26:33.920 over 100,000 people needs a CBC reporter, for example.

00:26:37.400 The other thing that I would do with the CBC,

00:26:39.080 I mean, if I were in charge in God,

00:26:40.300 then you know that's going to happen.

00:26:41.700 Well, if we probably have wins,

00:26:42.880 we can put your resume to the top of the pile

00:26:44.420 for taking over.

00:26:45.780 I would also say everything that the CBC produces

00:26:48.140 should be open source.

00:26:49.380 So every news organization, left, right, center, whatever,

00:26:52.120 should be able to take the CBC's written and visual content

00:26:54.660 and audiovisual content and use it.

00:26:55.880 Canadian press might not like that,

00:26:57.220 but let it be a public good.

00:26:59.260 But it's a public good.

00:26:59.980 If we're going to fund it like a public good,

00:27:01.240 we should treat the resources of that thing

00:27:03.040 like a public good.

00:27:03.920 I would have the CBC imagine itself more as a library,

00:27:06.320 like a library of journalistic knowledge and resources.

00:27:08.440 The other thing that I think people are not remembering as well

00:27:10.400 is that the CBC is a huge store of archival information,

00:27:13.260 digital and physical archives.

00:27:15.040 This is the repertoire or the reservoir

00:27:18.180 of a huge amount of Canadian culture and history,

00:27:20.700 and I think that we need to treat it as such

00:27:22.680 and put some serious investment

00:27:24.520 in maintaining those archives and those archive services

00:27:28.560 for the purpose of maintaining a Canadian culture thing.

00:27:31.480 The other thing I would do, and I would just say this,

00:27:32.720 I would also have the CBC see itself as a training apparatus or a training role.

00:27:38.160 So perhaps you go to the CBC if you want to start a podcast in Lethbridge.

00:27:42.380 Well, maybe you can go to the CBC and get a workshop about how to do podcast editing.

00:27:45.460 Maybe you can go to the CBC and rent out a room.

00:27:47.240 Maybe you can go to the CBC and rent out your equipment, that kind of thing.

00:27:50.620 So I could see them as being a real hub for being a support for creating an innovative media model in a country like Canada

00:27:58.360 where we have some unique sort of market-based challenges

00:28:00.940 by virtue of our size and lack of population density.

00:28:04.320 To go back to the local aspect for a moment,

00:28:06.020 one of the challenges with a true north is that,

00:28:08.080 and the line in particular, we're lean operations.

00:28:10.900 We can also find a coalition to support what we're doing nationally.

00:28:15.120 It would be incredibly difficult, if not possible,

00:28:17.280 to do that at a local level.

00:28:18.580 It's a hard, the numbers are really hard.

00:28:21.320 Because how many people do you need to make a living?

00:28:24.560 Well, you really need about a base of about 1,000 people

00:28:27.020 who will pay for you.

00:28:27.720 I mean, it's not huge.

00:28:28.660 It's not unattainable.

00:28:29.620 It's the old 1,000 true fans argument.

00:28:30.820 It's the 1,000 true fans, right?

00:28:32.140 So, okay, that's easy when you have, well, it's not easy,

00:28:35.400 but even in a country of, what, 40 million people, what are our fan bases?

00:28:39.960 Our fan bases are maybe large enough to support our income and a small team around us.

00:28:44.080 They're not large enough to support the 20, 30-person newsrooms of yore.

00:28:48.280 And I think that's just a reality that mainstream media has got to get used to.

00:28:51.360 But if we're talking about, well, how do we ensure that people in Sparwood

00:28:56.360 have good access to local information are there gonna be a thousand paying

00:29:00.380 people in Sparwood well maybe for some people they're really good but you know

00:29:04.880 what you're producing is the local football team the local basketball team

00:29:08.720 your local City Council your local court cases those sorts of things it's really

00:29:14.480 hard to make the economy of scale work there and that might be a reason or an

00:29:18.980 argument for some kind of help in the form of maybe it's just the CBC is in

00:29:23.620 that is in that space and supporting any kind of local startups but also serving that community in

00:29:28.560 that space. I think we need to get the CBC also does need to get back into the mindset of like

00:29:32.560 its job isn't to be a top-down creator of culture and meaning for people it's there to serve the

00:29:38.640 people it's a service that the people need to buy into to understand its value. If you lost the

00:29:43.460 audience in your CBC plan I think you can get them back on this one because you had also made a

00:29:47.120 comment in your remarks on stage that was I think probably the most controversial thing you'd say

00:29:51.460 to some people, which was that we need to get comfortable

00:29:54.180 with the idea of things going out of business.

00:29:57.180 And we need to get comfortable with this idea of collapse

00:29:59.260 because there is never going to be that reinvention

00:30:01.500 without that death.

00:30:03.140 And what we have now is this weird, you know,

00:30:05.340 indefinite life support model where we're keeping industries

00:30:08.240 that don't want to reform a board for what?

00:30:12.360 Well, that's the question.

00:30:13.600 And also, I mean, the line has made a particular point

00:30:15.980 of not accepting government subsidy in any form.

00:30:18.740 Not only do we not accept government subsidy in any form,

00:30:20.900 www.read the line please subscribe uh gotta get that bitch in like and like and subscribe um

00:30:26.980 but we think that's a bad business model not only does it compromise your independence and

00:30:31.460 your integrity and the credibility that you have with an audience but it's terrible it's a terrible

00:30:36.660 way to build a sustainable business model because it means that the next time a government comes in

00:30:40.580 and out of power your money can get turned off like that that's not that's not a way to run a

00:30:44.660 business now i understand that to some degree there's always going to be some aspects of

00:30:48.100 of subsidy in a country like Canada, you know, okay, fine, I'm fine with the local journalism

00:30:52.660 initiative that supports local reporters. You know, I don't really have an issue so much with

00:30:56.560 that. I do also understand that there's going to be some subsidies for organizations that are

00:31:01.720 purely cultural, so maybe there's going to be some arts magazine subsidies, those sorts of things.

00:31:06.360 Fine, you know, I'm not too fussed about that. I think that's the table stakes of a country like

00:31:11.500 Canada. There's nothing to be done about it. It's nothing I'm going to get too worked up over.

00:31:15.380 But no, what we've done is we've moved into a model

00:31:18.440 where basically every single private media outlet,

00:31:21.680 with the exception of maybe you and me, are government-subsidized.

00:31:25.780 That's not sustainable. That's insane.

00:31:28.280 That's completely insane.

00:31:29.820 And the taps are, I think, when Pierre Polyev becomes prime minister,

00:31:33.020 and I think at this point it's very likely to happen,

00:31:34.980 the taps are just going to get turned off on you.

00:31:36.400 And then what are you going to do?

00:31:37.640 You haven't reformed. You haven't sustained.

00:31:39.320 You haven't built something viable for yourself.

00:31:41.420 You're still bloated. You're still debt-ridden.

00:31:43.060 and you've still lost your advertising monopoly.

00:31:45.740 Now what?

00:31:46.940 There's no there there.

00:31:49.180 There's no future in that.

00:31:50.580 Well, and it cements that path dependency

00:31:52.160 because now you can't take it away

00:31:53.980 because we've built our entire businesses around that.

00:31:56.100 And also you've destroyed your brand models in the process

00:31:58.460 because now you've taken money from the government

00:32:00.040 so nobody trusts you, right?

00:32:02.300 Yeah, very well said.

00:32:03.060 And if you believe that money doesn't sway coverage

00:32:08.040 and how things are covered,

00:32:09.540 look at the way that the media who are the recipients

00:32:12.660 of, for example, C63's, Google's money,

00:32:16.380 go look in the past and look at how they covered C63.

00:32:19.380 It was almost-

00:32:19.920 C18.

00:32:21.100 C18, you're right.

00:32:21.780 I'm sorry.

00:32:22.020 Yeah, C63 is the online harm's one, yes.

00:32:23.580 I'm talking about the online news app.

00:32:24.600 All the numbers blur together.

00:32:25.860 It's a problem, I'm sorry.

00:32:26.940 But go look at how they covered themselves in that.

00:32:28.920 There was very, very little coverage

00:32:30.640 outside of the independent media,

00:32:32.400 organizations like mine, organizations like yours,

00:32:34.360 and academics like Michael Geist.

00:32:36.320 There was very little critical coverage of that.

00:32:39.240 So you can see in real time how money affects

00:32:41.880 the way people approach problems and coverage and by the way I don't think

00:32:45.600 that that's even unique to government money or advertising money you know the

00:32:49.080 people who could cut the check kind of get to set the rules and you and I we're

00:32:52.860 right now the line is 100% reader funded everybody who supports us supports us

00:32:56.940 because they find value in our product the risk of that kind of a model is

00:33:00.600 audience capture right like how do you make sure that you're providing stuff

00:33:03.640 that's true to yourself and demonstrates integrity for your own

00:33:06.480 beliefs and not just pander to your audience because you know that's what

00:33:09.300 they're going to pay for, right? That's a risk. When you have an advertising-based model,

00:33:14.900 you run the risk of being swayed by your advertisers. That's a risk you have to deal

00:33:19.240 with. And when you're predominantly subsidized by government, yeah, the government in power is

00:33:25.580 going to affect your ability to pay your rent. Of course, that's going to sway the way that you

00:33:29.340 view news and the way that you're shifting your mindset. That is unavoidable, but the way to

00:33:35.340 avoid that is to try and create as many different revenue streams as possible so that you can avoid

00:33:39.280 too much dependence on one kind of revenue stream and the other thing is to do is to just try and

00:33:44.320 maintain your integrity as much as possible with with a high diversity of revenue streams but also

00:33:48.100 you know not making yourself solely dependent on one revenue stream like the government right i

00:33:53.680 mean that's which is also true of you because even though you run the line you're publishing

00:33:56.520 everywhere i see you see you all the time but there's no purity here right and there can't be

00:34:00.940 because in a in an environment where everybody takes government money money if i want to do any

00:34:05.000 freelancing on the side yeah i mean i guess i have to i'm going to the cbc i'm going to take

00:34:09.360 a fee for going to the cbc but i'm also going to take a fee if i if i go to to write something for

00:34:14.060 the star or the globe so you're respectable you get invited all these places i don't yeah well

00:34:17.180 that's i i mean i'm i'm working on it i mean one of the funny things of the panel today is that i

00:34:21.640 suddenly realized that i'm not the bomb thrower in the room anymore and that was a real shift for

00:34:25.320 me yeah viva fry took that role yeah he took that role and i became the adult in the room and i'm

00:34:28.960 like i got a new suit but my god like i didn't think that this had happened like i'm i'm an old

00:34:33.440 I'm the old respectable lady now.

00:34:35.360 Like, how did that...

00:34:36.120 He's more of a burn-it-down person than you are on this, yeah.

00:34:39.400 Yeah, I mean, it was...

00:34:40.220 And then Michael Geist was, like, the government defender for a moment.

00:34:42.640 Which is hilarious, because Michael Geist is not a government defender in everything.

00:34:47.620 I think David and I sort of just agreed on a couple of points,

00:34:50.460 and that was one of them being there are aspects, for example,

00:34:53.400 of the Online Harms Act that are probably good and worth preserving.

00:34:56.240 There's a lot of problems with the Online Harms Act,

00:34:58.120 and, I mean, both Michael and I have written in depth and at length

00:35:01.520 about what we think those problems are.

00:35:03.440 I kind of disagreed with David.

00:35:05.140 I think he's got a misapprehension of why mainstream media is in trouble.

00:35:09.100 It's not for the reason that people like to think it is.

00:35:11.380 Most people, especially conservatives, like to think that mainstream media is in trouble

00:35:14.200 because mainstream media doesn't align with their viewpoints,

00:35:18.440 and therefore they've lost audience.

00:35:19.640 I think that's contributing, though.

00:35:21.620 I don't think you can separate the trust deficits from the business issues.

00:35:27.020 Yes, there's a trust deficit and there's a decline deficit.

00:35:29.260 But the primary, and I think that those are accelerating right now and have accelerated in the last five years.

00:35:34.580 But if you want to go back 10, 15 years where the problems with media started, the problems with media started with the collapse of the ad monopolies.

00:35:41.360 And you need to fundamentally understand that.

00:35:43.660 And as the collapse, the money got sucked out of the industry, the industry became more and more beholden to a kind of ideological viewpoint.

00:35:52.020 And that contributed to the trust deficit.

00:35:54.020 They became more dependent on government money.

00:35:55.580 That contributed to the trust deficit.

00:35:57.160 But it doesn't start with the trust deficit.

00:35:59.260 It starts with the collapse in the ad monopolies.

00:36:01.460 And this is why you see the same issues affecting mainstream media and legacy media,

00:36:05.760 regardless of whether or not they're left or right.

00:36:07.580 Because the reason why these organizations traditionally were able to print money

00:36:11.220 is because they had an absolute ironclad monopoly on the ad market,

00:36:14.720 and particularly on classifieds.

00:36:16.620 The second newspapers lost classifieds, they were in deep shit.

00:36:19.760 Yeah, fair enough.

00:36:20.600 Right?

00:36:20.980 All right, well, that's the first time that word has ever been uttered on True North.

00:36:23.580 Sorry.

00:36:23.740 Oh, wow, really?

00:36:24.760 Well, because we have the clean tag on Apple Podcasts that we forever lose.

00:36:28.380 I'm so sorry.

00:36:29.060 She has gone more irreverent than me, which is, I think, a great testament to the work of the line.

00:36:33.460 So, Jen Gerson, I love the line.

00:36:35.400 I read the line.

00:36:36.080 You should as well.

00:36:36.780 But it's great to talk to you in person.

00:36:38.000 You too.

00:36:38.280 Thanks.

00:36:42.340 Always love connecting with Jen Gerson.

00:36:44.440 And as I said about that conference, it was great to connect with people in person that I usually see in little Zoom boxes.

00:36:49.620 I don't know why I needed to, like, illustrate a Zoom box, like the old, like, you know, charades.

00:36:53.400 Anyway, well, I wanted to pivot from that to a discussion we had yesterday on the program about the normalization of anti-Semitism.

00:37:03.020 And I've always been clear to point out since October 7th, this is not a new issue.

00:37:06.720 It is one that I think has a new zeal and one that people have a newfound brazenness.

00:37:12.400 But a lot of what's happened in the last six months has merely been a ramping up of existing sentiments, existing groups, and really a sense that no one feels they need to hide.

00:37:23.400 their, what is in many cases, venomous hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. But it's not just

00:37:29.260 about Israel. It's not just about Zionism. It is about Jewish people. And this has become

00:37:33.800 abundantly clear in the clip that we played yesterday from Ottawa of them literally defending

00:37:38.880 October 7th and those attacks. And it's been clear in a lot of the rhetoric that talks about

00:37:43.620 resistance as though all of what's happened is not just bloodthirst and a murder, but is in fact

00:37:49.740 just an act of political resistance.

00:37:52.640 Now, that comment that was made on the weekend,

00:37:56.500 but we'll comment, plural, in Ottawa, about October 7th,

00:37:59.660 I wanted to share this clip of Deputy Prime Minister

00:38:01.460 Chrystia Freeland being asked to condemn it.

00:38:04.920 Over the weekend, protesters in Ottawa were heard

00:38:08.680 chanting, among other things,

00:38:10.480 long live October 7th,

00:38:12.040 and October 7th is proof that we are almost free.

00:38:15.720 Is this hate speech?

00:38:16.960 i wasn't in ottawa over the weekend and i'm not aware of those specific reports and so it would

00:38:27.220 be just wrong of me to comment on something that i am not specifically aware of um what i will say

00:38:37.220 is today is a time in Canada

00:38:41.540 when anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are on the rise.

00:38:48.360 When we have a lot,

00:38:51.340 there are a lot of Canadians

00:38:52.620 who are not feeling safe.

00:38:58.020 Oh, I wasn't in Ottawa then.

00:39:00.000 Oh, I was washing my hair that day.

00:39:01.780 Oh, I must have missed it.

00:39:03.300 I mean, at that point,

00:39:04.160 if I was the journalist

00:39:05.400 and I don't know the format of the press conference,

00:39:06.980 it would have been, well, I have it on my phone here. Why don't you watch it for yourself? But

00:39:10.200 that wasn't even necessary. The journalist quoted it. Why could Christopher Freeland not just in

00:39:14.720 that moment say, well, based on what you've just said, I think this. But she didn't because this

00:39:20.580 government's default position is cowardice. They only defend the most extreme examples and even

00:39:25.760 then never write away because they have to think about how it's going to reflect in their polling

00:39:30.700 numbers. This is what Christopher Freeland wrote on X after the fact. She writes in response here,

00:39:36.680 I need it up on the screen before I can.

00:39:38.460 There we go.

00:39:39.360 Having seen a video from this weekend,

00:39:41.280 I can only express shock and disgust

00:39:43.280 at the anti-Semitism and glorification of terrorism

00:39:46.280 that occurred on Parliament Hill.

00:39:47.580 This hate speech has no place in Canada, none.

00:39:50.300 I guess by that time, 529,

00:39:52.380 the focus groups had come back

00:39:53.860 and she could safely condemn what had happened.

00:39:56.420 It's difficult to not get angry about this.

00:39:59.280 And I also don't think people,

00:40:00.780 especially members of Canada's Jewish community,

00:40:02.820 should have to hide this.

00:40:04.380 My friend Dahlia Kurtz,

00:40:05.640 I actually met in Israel for the first time in person.

00:40:08.560 She and I were colleagues for the same radio company some years ago,

00:40:11.820 and we had the chance to go and travel Israel as part of a delegation of Canadian journalists

00:40:16.960 and have been friends ever since.

00:40:19.400 Dahlia was working on a book about something that had nothing to do with politics,

00:40:23.340 nothing to do with Israel, but was pushed off of that project onto another one.

00:40:28.380 In the wake of October 7th, that book is called Dear Zionist, You Are Not Alone,

00:40:32.980 just came out in the last few days.

00:40:34.980 and Dahlia joins me on the line now.

00:40:37.600 Dahlia, wonderful to talk to you again.

00:40:39.200 Thank you so much for coming today.

00:40:40.780 What's the background?

00:40:42.020 What is happening here?

00:40:43.420 I thought you did that.

00:40:44.900 I do not.

00:40:46.180 None.

00:40:46.680 No background.

00:40:48.220 That was...

00:40:49.160 There we go.

00:40:50.160 We're off to a great start.

00:40:51.500 It was the laser from Zion.

00:40:54.120 They redirected it in the inappropriate way

00:40:57.320 they were supposed to use those lasers

00:40:59.720 to send them...

00:41:00.980 I'm not allowed to say.

00:41:02.980 Andrea, I'm so happy to be on your show.

00:41:04.980 Well, it's good to have you here. Let's start on that comment by Chrystia Freeland, because

00:41:11.480 you have always been, and even just now, we're talking about a serious topic, but you've always

00:41:15.680 been just this ray of sunshine in Canadian media. Back when you did your former show, I know you

00:41:21.100 always used to highlight good news stories and positive things. I've seen from you a lot more

00:41:26.920 of an edge since October 7th, and I don't fault you for that, but I was wondering if you could

00:41:31.180 speak about how what's happened has really pushed the way that you are using your voice?

00:41:36.940 Well, one, when you're an independent, things change. People don't have to tell you to not

00:41:43.020 be as Jewish. You could be Jewish, but not a Jew. Ish part is okay. But the other part of it is

00:41:51.040 October 7th, I just put everything aside. I dropped everything that I was doing because I immediately

00:41:57.920 saw where this was going and what this was going to become and I immediately realized I'm going to

00:42:04.880 be that person that I always thought I would be if something like this happens again and let me tell

00:42:10.520 you anybody who is a child of the holocaust a grandchild of the holocaust that's what you're

00:42:16.740 you're going to think it's going to be in the back of your brain forever to hear Christia Friedland

00:42:23.720 speak the way that she does i mean the entire thing was absolutely laughable so all i can do is

00:42:29.480 i i wrote an entire joke about it online but the sad part is it was funny but it was only funny

00:42:37.560 because it's true so it's actually entirely pathetic i wasn't in ottawa i had heard what

00:42:44.140 had happened you don't need to be in ottawa she could have asked any one of the hundred plus

00:42:47.820 people in that room like you said to just play a little clip of the audio there she which she of

00:42:54.120 course let's all be clear she already heard that audio there's no way that she never did and then

00:43:00.800 she has to plop in there somewhere let me just say islamophobia is on the rise in canada which

00:43:07.960 she forgot to mention in that whole little spiel is about her sweet grandfather who interesting

00:43:14.080 connection when, you know, he is one of the Nazi newspapers that recruits, hmm, who did we end up

00:43:23.620 seeing in our parliament? It was the same type of person. There's a lot of direct lines here.

00:43:29.260 So, you know, it's not her action that I'm looking at. It's her inaction. And the inaction

00:43:35.820 is abundantly clear. There was a mosque that had a break in entry. It was an attempted break in

00:43:42.300 entry in winnipeg a couple of weeks back justin trudeau drops everything carbon emissions be

00:43:48.840 damned and he gets himself to winnipeg you could see like this lock was sort of broken and he's

00:43:55.380 hand on heart hand on heart nobody should be scared of a place they worship in what about

00:44:01.360 the hundred churches that have gone up in what about the jews who 400 000 of us with numbers

00:44:10.560 dwindling as we're moving away making aliyah more and more what about that what does that mean to

00:44:17.840 him and it's come to a point where the way i feel about it is everybody keeps saying lead lead and

00:44:23.840 i mean just yesterday i shared some investigative journalism that i've done where i looked at the

00:44:29.680 person who had been campaigning for the mayor of toronto olivia chow and this person mozem patel

00:44:37.360 i have a video in this tweet where you can see him asking demanding that we kill israel the very

00:44:43.920 person who has been campaigning with olivia chow so you know what i think it is absolutely ridiculous

00:44:50.880 that we even ask the leaders to do better there's there's nothing to do better because

00:44:55.440 one they're leaders with air quotes and two they've already failed us so we see what they're

00:45:02.240 capable of and we see what they're not capable of so the leaders have failed us we will not fail us

00:45:09.440 and i feel that that it's up to me it's up to people who have a voice it's up to anybody who

00:45:15.120 will speak up and not be afraid andrew it boggles my mind that people call me outspoken

00:45:22.240 why because i say don't kill the jews crazy talk you said something a few moments ago i i wanted to

00:45:31.200 revisit because you said it, I think almost incidentally, but you had said the type of

00:45:36.120 person you wanted to be the type of person you thought you'd be if something like this happened

00:45:39.300 again. And I found that word again, quite jarring because you and I know that terrorism in Israel is

00:45:46.100 not sadly uncommon. I mean, when you and I were there in 2015, there had been a spate of knife

00:45:51.180 stabbings on the street and Israelis have a much higher than normal tolerance level for, you know,

00:45:57.020 these sorts of things there. It takes a lot for something to rise to front page news in Israel

00:46:01.680 that elsewhere in the world would be. But when you say never again, you're putting October 7th,

00:46:06.960 as I understand it, in the same category as the Holocaust, are you not?

00:46:10.600 A hundred percent. And that's not even coming from my mouth directly. That's coming from every

00:46:15.900 hostage who's been released. They have said that was a Holocaust. It's a Holocaust. And so I'm

00:46:22.360 going to take from the people who are there, I'm going to take from the feeling that it gave me

00:46:27.000 And that is absolutely a Holocaust. I shared a picture the other day. I was looking at Columbia University and all of the students there who are blocking the Jews from going in. And I juxtaposed that against a picture I saw from 1938 in Vienna, where the students were blocking the Jewish students from entering.

00:46:47.520 And I thought, I'm going to find obviously the similarities in this, but what really struck me were not the similarities. It was the dark differences. It was the fact that now in 2024, where it looked worse because you saw more students, population has grown this or that.

00:47:07.460 The worst part about it is that these students who are now joining in this Kristallnacht, as it was described by the Jewish students at Columbia, they've had the opportunity to see history.

00:47:21.660 They've had the opportunity to learn from history and they have chosen the side of be less than human from history.

00:47:31.440 So that choice unto itself makes this much worse than what we experienced before.

00:47:39.900 And to see the way that Canada has reacted, to see what's happening in the U.S., to see all of these governments fail us,

00:47:47.860 I can completely understand how you create bonds and you create bonds with people.

00:47:55.980 it's the entire bond of am yisrael chai you know it's the bond of being one because you know that

00:48:02.860 not everybody is going to have your back so if they don't have it you will have it but at the

00:48:09.540 same time there are a bunch of people who are suffering and not everybody has the tools to

00:48:14.720 cope with this and since october 7th i've been receiving messages because i've been very bold

00:48:20.900 and I have been blacklisted up the wazoo, Andrew, death threats, blacklisted. My entire mission

00:48:28.640 has just gone to, okay, fine, I'm just going to pour myself into this. You can't pay rent with

00:48:35.040 pouring yourself into something. I'll be clear about that. But I will pour myself into this.

00:48:40.640 And if people are sending me messages from around the world saying that I'm doing something that's

00:48:45.980 helping them, well, that's absolutely fantastic. I need to do more of this. So I decided to write

00:48:53.440 this book, Dear Zionist, You Are Not Alone, 18 Letters of Hope and Light. And the whole idea of

00:49:00.240 it, first of all, is that this is not about Jews. It's about Jews and our non-Jew supporters.

00:49:06.980 The quickest Zionist test anybody could take, and most people don't even realize that they're

00:49:10.940 a zionist but the quickest zionist test anybody could take is do you believe israel has a right

00:49:16.100 to exist and if you say yes mazel tov you're a zionist and you know i got a message from one of

00:49:23.660 the readers yesterday and she said to me i finished reading the book and you know this part about you

00:49:28.220 are not alone when we're getting to that i know that you meant it for jewish people but i have to

00:49:32.600 say it really made me feel not alone i didn't mean it for jewish people i meant it for people i meant

00:49:39.580 for anybody who has a shred of humanity in them because i can guarantee you you can be any religion

00:49:46.860 any color any heritage any ethnicity and this book is going to touch you in some way just be careful

00:49:55.740 who you sit next to on an airplane because one of the readers was crying next to somebody who

00:50:00.540 did not quite know how to comfort them through this let me ask you about the hopefulness of it

00:50:09.260 because one of the challenges in a time like this is that we don't yet see an ended site. I mean,

00:50:15.600 if anything, you know, the public sympathy for Israel from people that might not identify as

00:50:20.760 Zionists was at a high point on October 7th, October 8th. And I think it's been in decline

00:50:25.380 ever since then. And I think, you know, people often very dishonestly conflate, you know,

00:50:31.120 oh, I have this little criticism with Benjamin Netanyahu. They use that to sort of shield,

00:50:36.360 No, you actually have a deep hatred of the Jewish people.

00:50:38.920 You're just, you know, trying to.

00:50:39.820 We're talking to a synagogue in Toronto and Benjamin Netanyahu's in his war cabinet.

00:50:44.180 Yeah, he doesn't even, you know, know what Yonge Street is.

00:50:47.060 And you're out there and you're in, you know, Forest Hill and all of that.

00:50:51.300 But where do you see this going?

00:50:54.100 Because, you know, with any sort of, you know, boiling crisis like this, the fear is that

00:50:59.040 it has to get worse before it gets better.

00:51:00.960 But at this point, it is worse.

00:51:03.040 I mean, we're seeing this.

00:51:03.940 We're seeing open calls for violence on the street.

00:51:06.100 And at this point, people are faced with two options.

00:51:09.100 They can either do something about it or they can literally do the Christopher

00:51:12.440 Ellen thing, do the ostrich thing, stick your head in the sand and say, oh,

00:51:15.220 I wasn't in Ottawa. Like, like at that point, it's you,

00:51:17.780 you can't make it more apparent than these people already have.

00:51:22.820 The hiding thing isn't hiding. It's aiding and abetting. That's all it is.

00:51:26.420 I don't see any other way around it. I think that things,

00:51:30.380 especially this past weekend,

00:51:31.640 I saw the surge and I see the surge of violence that's going to get worse.

00:51:35.080 somebody in person in person i mean andrew i get death threats i get people have like measured

00:51:41.400 nooses for my neck i i've had so many horrid things said to me online but there was a person

00:51:50.360 just near where i live who saw me gave me a dirty look and called me a nazi quick to run

00:51:58.920 mind you because that's what they do let's i love how defending jews has become nazism in 2024

00:52:07.560 i mean they show how devoid of historic historic knowledge and just you know basic fundamental

00:52:12.360 reason these people are and i took the word zionist also for the book because one its meaning

00:52:17.160 is powerful and true and two they're trying to take the word zionist away from us this has been

00:52:22.520 an ongoing campaign and this is where the jewish people have failed themselves in fighting something

00:52:29.720 like this which we've known for many many years has been coming there's been an ongoing palestinian

00:52:35.720 campaign that is very centralized and everybody has their documents and everybody has their way

00:52:43.320 of speaking and there's a very clear path and it is being executed exceptionally well it is a very

00:52:51.240 well-oiled machine meanwhile you have so many different jewish organizations each trying their

00:52:56.440 own thing not necessarily working together and it's just ending up being a lot of noise instead

00:53:03.560 of cohesiveness so this entire idea of the war that is not in the field but the war that the

00:53:10.120 war that is in the real world it needs to change the way that it is fought and for me i look at

00:53:15.480 at that in a couple of folds one you need to strengthen your people and by my people i'm not

00:53:22.060 referring to jewish people i'm referring to jewish people and our non-jewish supporters and i think

00:53:28.160 that the strength that is found in this book from the people who have been at the most bitter bitter

00:53:34.560 points of darkness in their lives the things that have happened to them a few of them are holocaust

00:53:39.600 survivors. One is a war hero. Another was on his way to terrorist camp to become a terrorist,

00:53:46.020 and then everything changed for him. So when you look at what these people have been through,

00:53:51.800 and also a very special story about my father, because he sacrificed everything to change

00:53:58.540 Canada so that people could get jobs regardless of religion, which ended up hurting him much more

00:54:03.620 later on but when you look at the hardships the tragedies the how are they going to get out of

00:54:10.500 this and these true stories and not only how they made it through but how they made it through to

00:54:16.740 become exceptional successes who thrived beyond measure and i will say if you've ever seen in

00:54:27.060 glorious bastards the last person that i highlight as a holocaust survivor in this book

00:54:33.460 dr morris schnitzer it will give you a little bit of that cathartic kick that you could get i'm not

00:54:42.520 going to give anything away there but really the whole point of this is i think that's one side of

00:54:48.560 the battle is helping people empowering people jews and our non-jewish supporters and that is

00:54:55.980 where this book comes from, and I have greater plans for a bigger series. I had to get this out

00:55:00.600 as quick as possible. My second edition is going to be longer in audiobook, in paperback, and then

00:55:07.740 this whole Dear Zionist is going to move on towards other series as well. But first, we have to work

00:55:14.720 on strengthening people, and the other side is we have to become more cohesive. We have to create

00:55:20.300 more of a singular vision in how we're going to tackle this the same way that the PR on the other

00:55:26.960 side has been working it for years, for years, for years, for years. And that requires a lot

00:55:32.860 of catching up. But we've also learned from Israelis and Jewish people, we can be very

00:55:37.720 innovative, especially when our lives are at risk. Yeah, very much so. And I've always been,

00:55:44.540 you know, I've always tremendously admired the resilience of Israelis, but you have to extend

00:55:48.860 that to Jewish people now. And, you know, people that go around the world in this day and age and

00:55:53.060 wear a yarmulke, walk into a synagogue, wear a Star of David. I mean, they're doing that knowing

00:55:56.820 full well what that attracts. And there you go. You got the, I don't know, it's a super Jew,

00:56:02.160 Superman. I don't know. It's a little bit of both there. I love it. Let's, Sean, throw that book

00:56:08.240 cover up there. The book from Dahlia Kurtz called Dear Zionist, You Are Not Alone. You can get that

00:56:12.800 over on her website, DahliaKurtz.com. Great to talk to you, Dahlia. Thanks so much for coming on

00:56:17.480 today andrew can i just mention quickly of course you you bought this book from me i didn't ask for

00:56:23.940 this conversation i'm happy i'm here usually you send media a book and you know that's just how it

00:56:29.540 is you didn't even ask me for a copy like everybody else you paid sir worth every penny but i will say

00:56:38.440 i mean i when i worked in in daily radio i i used you probably did as well in winnipeg i'd get from

00:56:43.100 publishers like it was it got to the point where it was almost like um you know like the letters

00:56:47.680 in harry potter and where they just keep coming like all these books like books would just show

00:56:51.940 up and i've never like asked for them or ordered them and and then once i wrote a book for the

00:56:56.260 first time i like i was like no i can't afford to just give everyone books and now i always i

00:57:00.280 always support my friends by buying the books so i want to know from the book at the end you tell

00:57:04.240 me your favorite quote no pressure to read it okay i'll do yeah it's always you pick one from

00:57:08.500 the middle so that everyone knows you read it and didn't just read it but i will read it from cover

00:57:12.500 to cover uh dahlia thank you so much thank you all right we'll get you back on soon that is it

00:57:20.020 for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of canada's most irreverent talk show here on true

00:57:24.380 north this is the andrew lawton show thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for

00:57:30.000 listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:57:42.500 We'll be right back.

00:58:12.500 We'll be right back.

00:58:42.500 We'll be right back.

Juno News - April 23, 2024

Even Canada Post wants nothing to do with the Liberal gun grab

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