Juno News - October 01, 2020


Feigning Opposition


Episode Stats

Length

39 minutes

Words per Minute

182.41553

Word Count

7,144

Sentence Count

416

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:00:12.920 Coming up, the NDP sells its soul, the lockdown left scapegoats, churches, and universities are pushing critical race theory again.
00:00:22.540 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
00:00:26.100 Hello and welcome to another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:00:33.660 Well, we were all watching the United States presidential debate and my goodness, what a great time that was.
00:00:40.940 The NDP was selling its soul or getting ready to in the House of Commons.
00:00:46.560 This did not get a lot of attention in the mainstream media, perhaps because the mainstream media in Canada is more incessantly focused on American politics right now.
00:00:56.100 than the things that are happening in our own country.
00:00:58.620 But on the night of the debate, there was a late night, middle night session of Parliament in which the Liberals achieved what they wanted,
00:01:07.680 which was getting the confidence of the House.
00:01:09.780 This was a vote on the latest COVID-19 relief bill, the bill that's changing up the delivery system for molding the CERB program into something else and spending more money and all of that.
00:01:23.420 And what happened was the Liberals decided, which was a bit cocky, but I think it proves their point, to make this bill a confidence bill.
00:01:30.900 So if the bill didn't pass, then they would cease to be the government effectively.
00:01:36.380 And the bill passed, even though the Conservatives were against it, the Bloc Québécois were against it.
00:01:41.200 The NDP had negotiated, it thought, a win, so they decided to support the Liberals.
00:01:46.960 And it gets worse than this, because it's not just that the NDP is saying,
00:01:50.360 you know, we think this bill on its merits is good, so we're going to go ahead with it.
00:01:55.220 The NDP has actually said they may continue to support the Liberal government for another three years.
00:02:03.860 Now, let this sink in for a moment.
00:02:06.000 This would mean that Justin Trudeau, who's been in office for one year, would actually serve out a four-year term,
00:02:11.760 which in a minority government situation is insane.
00:02:15.320 But that's how desperate the NDP is to have a seat at the table,
00:02:18.920 and how little they can afford to go back to the polls and have an election.
00:02:22.920 This was a story in Huffington Post.
00:02:25.340 Jagmeet Singh says the NDP could prop up the Liberal government for another three years.
00:02:29.860 It was in an interview on Follow Up, which is Huffington Post Canada's political podcast,
00:02:35.360 and he was asked if he could see the Liberals lasting another three years,
00:02:39.260 and he says, yes, the goal for me, like the test is,
00:02:43.920 if they continue to support us in bringing about things like paid sick leave,
00:02:48.300 that's something we fought for.
00:02:49.700 If they support us and bring that in, that's something we can continue to support.
00:02:55.560 Now, what the NDP is saying here is that they don't actually care about having buy-in from Canadians on their plan.
00:03:03.540 As long as they can get the Liberals to give them what they want, they're going to back the Liberals,
00:03:08.440 which means Jagmeet Singh is basically saying that he'd be okay being the third-party leader in perpetuity,
00:03:13.760 as long as the Liberals just keep spending more and more money,
00:03:16.760 and that's basically what he's doing here.
00:03:18.620 Now, this does not say it's a guarantee that the Liberals will last another three years,
00:03:23.220 but the fact that the NDP, after coming out and feigning criticism,
00:03:28.100 which is all I can call it, feigning criticism of the throne speech by saying,
00:03:31.920 oh, this is wrong, and it's just empty words,
00:03:34.100 and then it was like, what, a day and a half, two days later,
00:03:36.720 before the NDP is like, you know, I think we're going to support the Liberal.
00:03:41.320 Yeah, that throne speech seemed all right to us.
00:03:43.060 So wait, which is it?
00:03:44.280 Which is it?
00:03:44.780 Is it empty words and a false bill of goods being sold to Canadians,
00:03:48.700 or is it something that you think is justifiable in governing the country for the next three years?
00:03:55.580 So the NDP used to be,
00:03:58.260 and I'm going to regret saying this probably,
00:04:00.800 because I know how some people are whenever I say anything even marginally friendly to the left,
00:04:05.620 but the NDP used to be a very principled opposition party.
00:04:09.660 I mean, the Jack Layton era, I thought they were kooky on some things,
00:04:13.000 but the NDP actually was very principled,
00:04:15.240 and you know what, when the NDP had its shining moment in 2011, I said good on them.
00:04:20.000 But now the NDP doesn't even have the hard left populist principles that traditionally they always had,
00:04:30.420 which means that when something like this happens,
00:04:32.460 they have no direction whatsoever, no aim, no ideological grounding.
00:04:36.960 And that's why the NDP didn't really resonate with voters in the 2019 election.
00:04:42.080 Jagmeet Singh was more focused on being hip and cool and doing his TikTok videos
00:04:45.920 than actually rallying the troops like the NDP had always been able to do.
00:04:50.580 And the Liberals have actually taken that part of the Canadian political story now.
00:04:55.720 The Liberals are very ideological.
00:04:57.440 The Liberals, you may think that they don't stand for anything,
00:05:00.160 but the problem is they actually stand for lots.
00:05:02.240 They're a very far-left party now.
00:05:04.580 And the Liberals have moved so far to the left, there hasn't been a lot of room for the NDP.
00:05:10.220 So this is where I think there could be, if you look in Ontario as a great example of this,
00:05:14.840 the Liberal brand in Ontario is so just fatal that the NDP has now become the official opposition.
00:05:22.600 And the NDP did this by actually becoming a pretty center-left party.
00:05:27.100 I mean, the policies the NDP in Ontario has pushed for, yeah, some of them are like nationalizing
00:05:32.140 dental care and stuff, but they're really just taking that left, center-left spot.
00:05:37.600 Whereas if the NDP federally were to do that, do the Thomas Mulcair thing,
00:05:41.660 and I know it didn't work out too much for Mulcair,
00:05:43.620 and just say, hey, listen, we're going to be a moderate, sensible, left-wing alternative.
00:05:49.700 Right now, that would be very dangerous for Trudeau because all the moderates are being terrified out of the Liberals.
00:05:55.560 The moderates are being chased out of the Liberal Party right now because the Liberals just keep moving further and further to the left.
00:06:02.360 And them buying the NDP support, which is what they're doing with things like paid sick leave and all of this other stuff,
00:06:09.700 that is going to keep going because the Liberals have no moral aversion to spending money.
00:06:13.880 So if the NDP goes to them and says, we need you to spend a billion on this,
00:06:17.900 the Liberals are going to be like, oh, let me get the checkbook. Done.
00:06:21.460 There's no incentive for the Liberals to say no because it props them up for longer and longer,
00:06:27.420 and eventually we're going to be in 2023.
00:06:29.780 Justin Trudeau has been there for eight years, and the NDP is still useless,
00:06:33.400 but they've been useful idiots insofar as the Liberals are concerned
00:06:36.300 because they will have been continuing to keep this government alive that Canadians don't want,
00:06:42.400 and Canadians would probably vote out if given the opportunity.
00:06:47.020 So this is something that people need to pay attention to.
00:06:49.820 The fact that a confidence bill happened in the middle of the night
00:06:53.060 while most people were focused on the presidential debate is kind of important.
00:06:56.760 There is a desire right now to push the Canadian political narrative into the shadows.
00:07:02.020 We had the throne speech. We're going to have, you know, votes and stuff like that,
00:07:05.920 but they're trying to do this without Canadians paying attention to it.
00:07:10.340 And that's the huge problem here, and that's not going to go away.
00:07:16.200 I mean, in all honesty, I saw a tweet from Mercedes Stevenson, and I follow the news really closely.
00:07:20.680 I saw a tweet from Mercedes Stevenson the night of the debate saying that,
00:07:24.500 hey, there's this vote going on, and I said, okay, yeah, I had heard something about this.
00:07:27.700 And then I didn't see anything in the mainstream media.
00:07:30.440 I actually had to look it out.
00:07:31.680 Normally, big stories will, I'll get push notifications to my phone,
00:07:34.980 or everyone will be sharing them.
00:07:36.180 In these cases, yeah, the media covered it, but it did not really expand that much.
00:07:43.140 So Canadians are not paying attention, and the fact that the U.S. election is coming up
00:07:47.260 in a little over a month will probably make this worse.
00:07:50.360 People in the media are going to be focused on, oh, Trump said this, Trump said that.
00:07:53.820 Meanwhile, Trudeau is completely racking up debt, racking up deficit spending,
00:07:58.140 and the NDP and the Liberals are basically forming an unofficial coalition government,
00:08:02.780 and no one in Canada is any the wiser.
00:08:06.680 So this is hugely problematic for Canadians right now,
00:08:11.240 especially when you compound it with what's happening at the provincial level in Ontario,
00:08:16.180 but elsewhere in the country as well, as the threat of another lockdown looms.
00:08:20.900 Now, I spoke about this on the show on Monday with Randy Hillier,
00:08:24.280 who's an independent MPP, or the equivalent of an MLA in Ontario.
00:08:29.220 And what happened in the response to that interview was very great.
00:08:33.220 I got emails from all sorts of people saying thank you for having him on,
00:08:36.400 people that have become big fans of Randy Hillier for being, in many cases,
00:08:40.720 the one-man opposition to the politics of lockdown,
00:08:44.380 which are not limited to one particular ideological group.
00:08:49.240 And now you have the special interest groups that are getting in on this,
00:08:53.680 pushing governments to shut things down.
00:08:55.980 In particular, the Ontario Hospital Association has pushed a letter to the Ontario government,
00:09:02.340 and I'll tell you why this matters to people outside of Ontario in a moment.
00:09:05.720 But the Ontario Hospital Association pushed a letter saying,
00:09:09.000 there should be immediate restrictions and shutdowns on non-essential businesses,
00:09:12.820 such as gyms, dine-in restaurants and bars, nightclubs, theatres,
00:09:17.120 and restrictions on places like churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.
00:09:21.760 So now you've got a bunch of healthcare activists that are saying,
00:09:26.000 we need to shut down churches, shut down restaurants, shut down all of these things.
00:09:29.940 Basically go back to, I don't know if it was stage one or stage two,
00:09:33.560 but go back to one of the early stages of the initial lockdown
00:09:37.120 and ban people from getting together.
00:09:40.900 So this is so ridiculous.
00:09:42.540 And the narrative right now being pushed is that because we see cases going up,
00:09:46.420 we've got to shut everything down.
00:09:47.860 Even though hospitalizations are not going up, deaths are not going up,
00:09:52.280 the cases that we are seeing, and I mean, take for,
00:09:55.300 you can't take for granted that case counts are an accurate measure as we've talked about,
00:09:59.500 but the cases that we are seeing are by and large from younger people,
00:10:03.340 a lot of house parties, some bars and nightclubs,
00:10:06.060 but it's behavioral, it's not locational.
00:10:09.800 And this is the one thing that people need to realize.
00:10:12.320 These transmissions that we are seeing come down to how people choose to behave,
00:10:17.100 not the opportunity that's presented to them by the government or by any sort of business.
00:10:23.240 I mean, the latest change in Ontario was shut down bars at midnight.
00:10:27.200 They have to do last call at 11 p.m.
00:10:29.200 And I heard this, I'm like, well, this is ridiculous because I live in a student town.
00:10:32.440 I live in a town where lots of people are at a university and a college.
00:10:35.900 So we've got a very vibrant nightlife scene.
00:10:39.060 And I know that what happens already when the bar is shut down at,
00:10:42.340 I don't know, is it 2 a.m. they shut down at?
00:10:44.400 This is how little I've connected to that world in my life.
00:10:47.100 I think it's 2 a.m.
00:10:48.960 Everyone goes to a house party and drinks from, you know, 2 to 4.
00:10:52.740 So now the bars are shutting down at midnight.
00:10:55.120 Everyone's going to go to a house party and drink from midnight to 4.
00:10:57.900 And it's not really going to make a huge difference at all.
00:11:01.920 So this is where we're going.
00:11:03.540 It's theatrical.
00:11:04.620 It is theatrical in nature.
00:11:06.540 When we see the Hospital Association calling for shutdown of restaurants,
00:11:10.900 I'm not aware of a single outbreak from a restaurant,
00:11:16.060 from someone dining in a restaurant.
00:11:18.000 I'm not aware of any.
00:11:19.320 In fact, most of the people that are going to restaurants are the same bubbles as one another.
00:11:23.260 My wife and I have gone out to restaurants.
00:11:25.540 You know, the server's wearing a mask.
00:11:27.100 We sit down.
00:11:27.800 We eat.
00:11:28.180 We leave.
00:11:28.720 There's no risk to that.
00:11:29.900 We're not having big 20-person parties there.
00:11:31.860 And if we were, we'd probably be the type of people that were going to have
00:11:34.760 a 20-person party in a home instead of in a restaurant.
00:11:39.700 But churches?
00:11:41.060 There have been, I can count on one hand,
00:11:43.320 the number of cases there have been linked to churches.
00:11:46.500 And those are anomalies in the sense that you could find cases linked to any
00:11:51.160 marginally close contact activity.
00:11:54.020 But to say that shutting down churches is the way to go,
00:11:56.920 we've been down this road.
00:11:58.440 And there was an outcry, as there should have been,
00:12:00.940 from people saying, hey, you're actually violating our civil liberties
00:12:04.240 when you talk about shutting down places of worship because they're non-essential.
00:12:09.160 And I was getting into a scrap with someone on Twitter about this the other day.
00:12:12.340 I try to avoid scrapping on Twitter, but it sucked me in.
00:12:15.400 Because people who aren't of faith, people who don't have a religion,
00:12:18.660 they don't understand.
00:12:19.580 They think that going to church is just like some
00:12:21.680 silly thing that people do as a hobby on the weekend.
00:12:24.340 They don't realize that it's actually something that Christians are called to do by God.
00:12:28.960 And people in other faith groups as well, I won't speak for them,
00:12:32.160 but they are called to do this.
00:12:34.080 They are commanded to do it.
00:12:35.080 They have to do it.
00:12:36.640 And that's not to say you can't adjust or amend the way you do it.
00:12:40.120 You know, some churches were doing online services,
00:12:42.500 parking lot services, drive-in style.
00:12:44.820 I get it.
00:12:45.460 And some churches have just modified the distance
00:12:48.040 to go in and sit down in the pews and worship like you normally would.
00:12:52.040 And the fact that this happens safely without issue
00:12:56.360 means that there is no license or justification to going back and saying,
00:13:01.240 we are going to shut down places of worship.
00:13:03.380 And it shows a profound disrespect that so many of the same people
00:13:06.900 who thought that 10,000 person Black Lives Matter rallies were okay
00:13:11.240 are saying that, oh, you know what?
00:13:13.220 You got to shut down your church.
00:13:14.280 That's not essential.
00:13:15.180 I'm sorry.
00:13:15.580 If 10,000 people can get together and take a knee against police brutality
00:13:20.020 or whatever they were protesting, it changes each week.
00:13:22.820 If 10,000 people can do that, then 100 people can go into a church.
00:13:27.100 A couple hundred people can go into a church, keep their distance.
00:13:30.080 And that is not harming or threatening anyone.
00:13:34.020 But it's the disrespect that we see from so many people on the lockdown left
00:13:39.740 towards faith groups.
00:13:42.180 And it's not like it's a conspiracy of the, you know,
00:13:44.580 they've been looking for an excuse to shut down churches
00:13:46.540 and now they've got one.
00:13:47.460 But it shows a profound disrespect for the importance of faith in people's lives.
00:13:53.480 And we do see that manifest in other ways.
00:13:55.820 We do see it manifest whenever policy issues come up
00:13:58.320 that are remotely related to morality or questions of ethics or morals.
00:14:03.200 But when we're seeing it in this context,
00:14:05.100 the fact is they just think, oh, it's just like a bar.
00:14:07.300 The fact that they're lumping churches in with bars as being,
00:14:10.400 oh, it's not essential.
00:14:11.120 No one needs to do that.
00:14:12.260 Pretty much says what we need to know.
00:14:14.880 So governments need to push back against this.
00:14:18.400 The reason I'm talking about the Ontario case
00:14:20.560 is because that's where we're seeing, I think,
00:14:22.900 the most pivotal and critical discussion
00:14:25.520 in that we have a conservative government
00:14:28.240 that's saying everything's on the table, threatening lockdown.
00:14:31.540 And I'll say I ran as a candidate.
00:14:33.500 I could have been, I mean, I didn't come close,
00:14:35.560 but I could have been theoretically a member of provincial parliament
00:14:38.640 in this government.
00:14:39.520 And I'm glad I didn't have to be.
00:14:42.820 I have a lot more fun doing what I'm doing now
00:14:44.680 than I would have if I were stuck in politics.
00:14:46.460 That's not a reflection of any particular party.
00:14:49.760 But I share that to say that there are a lot of conservatives
00:14:52.460 that I'm hearing from that are thinking,
00:14:54.760 okay, you know, I don't exactly like
00:14:57.120 that we have taken now this approach to government
00:14:59.480 that has very much targeted businesses
00:15:03.120 who are not the sources of the problems.
00:15:05.660 And all of the lockdowns that we see tend to be theatrical.
00:15:12.240 We flattened the curve.
00:15:13.920 The curve is a straight line.
00:15:16.200 That was the whole thing.
00:15:17.260 It was never about preventing everyone from getting it.
00:15:20.120 And I know I've repeated this,
00:15:21.220 but I'm going to say it again because it's so important.
00:15:23.260 It was never about zero cases, zero transmission, zero outbreaks.
00:15:27.640 It was about not overwhelming the hospital system.
00:15:31.500 Hospitals are sitting empty.
00:15:33.860 I don't know how many cities have done this,
00:15:35.420 but I know some have built entirely separate hospitals,
00:15:38.660 field hospitals that have gone unused
00:15:40.520 because there was no surge.
00:15:42.480 And we can be grateful for that.
00:15:43.620 I'm not unhappy there was no surge.
00:15:45.260 I'm actually quite glad that we didn't have
00:15:47.360 this overwhelming of ICUs.
00:15:49.500 But the whole point of it was that we want to be able
00:15:51.720 to manage the cases.
00:15:53.460 There was an understanding that everyone was going to get it.
00:15:56.820 You wanted to protect the vulnerable.
00:15:59.260 And I am fully prepared.
00:16:00.660 I'm not one of these pandemic truthers
00:16:02.560 or plandemic, scandemic type people
00:16:04.520 that thinks it's not real.
00:16:05.540 It is.
00:16:06.060 And I know that all these people
00:16:07.140 in the YouTube comment sections hate that.
00:16:09.240 Tough luck.
00:16:09.780 I think it's real.
00:16:10.680 I think we need to protect the vulnerable.
00:16:12.500 But that's where the focus needs to be.
00:16:15.380 Protecting the elderly in long-term care homes,
00:16:18.460 that's important.
00:16:19.980 Preventing people who want to go from church,
00:16:22.340 who are willing to keep their distance
00:16:23.700 when they go to church from doing that
00:16:25.040 because it's not essential,
00:16:26.700 that is not okay.
00:16:28.660 And the measured response that Canadians deserve
00:16:31.700 is not happening.
00:16:33.800 And we see it in provincial governments
00:16:35.880 that are feeling completely justified
00:16:37.760 and emboldened in lockdowns.
00:16:39.380 And we see it in federal government
00:16:41.040 now that the NDP and the Liberals
00:16:43.100 think this is licensed to spend every dime
00:16:45.040 and every dollar of taxpayer money
00:16:46.500 they've ever wanted to spend.
00:16:48.200 Give me a break.
00:16:50.100 Back in a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:16:52.500 Stay tuned.
00:16:55.820 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:17:03.180 Welcome back.
00:17:04.040 I know earlier I complained that people
00:17:05.720 in the Canadian mainstream media
00:17:07.440 like to focus on American politics.
00:17:09.480 I'm not going to focus on it,
00:17:10.660 but I am going to mention it
00:17:11.540 because I'm not saying we shouldn't pay attention to it.
00:17:14.380 We just need to not turn our back
00:17:16.240 on things that are happening here.
00:17:17.460 But I did watch the presidential debate
00:17:19.540 and as someone who's moderated debates in the past
00:17:22.200 and moderated leadership debates in the past,
00:17:24.500 I felt bad for Chris Matthews at first
00:17:26.460 because I'm like, oh, this guy,
00:17:27.500 like he lost control from the very first question.
00:17:31.100 And then I started to not feel bad for him
00:17:33.780 because I'm like, you know, he's asking for it
00:17:35.240 because he's not really doing much
00:17:36.740 to assert himself as an unbiased
00:17:39.160 and powerful force in the course of the debate.
00:17:42.140 Like I think that whoever was like set
00:17:43.640 to moderate the next one is probably like,
00:17:45.000 nope, not happening, don't want to do this.
00:17:46.820 And now they're talking about mic muting.
00:17:48.740 So which is going to be even more political
00:17:50.300 because it's going to be now this audit of,
00:17:52.560 oh, well, how many times was Joe Biden's mic muted
00:17:55.760 versus Donald Trump's?
00:17:57.000 And I'm kind of of two minds on this
00:17:58.960 because I thought that the debate itself was terrible.
00:18:01.480 I thought Biden was good
00:18:03.500 when he was speaking directly into the camera,
00:18:05.660 but not good when he was scrapping
00:18:07.820 because he just, he started to lose it.
00:18:09.640 There were a couple of points
00:18:10.420 where he just couldn't get his words together.
00:18:12.400 I didn't think Trump was that great though.
00:18:14.620 Like I didn't think Trump was that good.
00:18:16.860 I was expecting primary Trump.
00:18:19.260 I wanted 2016 primary Trump
00:18:21.100 where he's like rhyming off the zingers.
00:18:23.820 He's funny.
00:18:24.760 He was just, he came across as just petulant
00:18:27.600 at some points where,
00:18:29.140 and I get that he had to debate Biden and Chris Wallace.
00:18:32.640 I get that.
00:18:33.140 Did I call him Chris Matthews earlier?
00:18:34.520 Did I, I mean, if I said Matthews,
00:18:36.040 I meant to say Wallace, either way.
00:18:37.280 Uh, like he had to debate both.
00:18:40.580 I get it, but he wasn't like,
00:18:42.560 if you're going to be the bombastic guy,
00:18:44.880 you got to be funny.
00:18:46.280 And there's a difference between
00:18:47.880 when you're on stage with 12 people
00:18:49.680 and you've got to stand out in a primary
00:18:51.160 because he just sucked the oxygen out
00:18:52.880 versus one-on-one where it just,
00:18:55.280 it came across as very tiring.
00:18:56.620 So like 90 minutes later, I'm like, okay,
00:18:58.800 do I feel like we really got that much out of it?
00:19:01.600 No.
00:19:02.340 However, I do think that it was interesting.
00:19:05.460 The, the one, uh, opportunity
00:19:07.480 that, uh, Trump had to condemn white supremacy.
00:19:11.420 He did.
00:19:12.340 He did.
00:19:12.680 He said, who do you want to,
00:19:13.420 who do you want to condemn?
00:19:14.340 I'll condemn it.
00:19:14.900 He mentioned the Proud Boys.
00:19:15.920 And now the left is saying,
00:19:17.160 well, but he didn't actually condemn them.
00:19:18.780 No, because Trump said,
00:19:19.900 stand back and stand by.
00:19:21.120 I think he means,
00:19:22.180 and again, I don't want to put words in his mouth,
00:19:25.320 but when he is asked in that context
00:19:27.500 to condemn them and not be violent,
00:19:29.400 he said, yep, no, stand back, stand by.
00:19:31.880 Stand by does not mean in this context,
00:19:34.300 I don't think anyway.
00:19:35.640 Okay.
00:19:36.000 Get ready to siege.
00:19:37.220 It means no, no, no.
00:19:37.880 Back off.
00:19:38.640 That's what he was saying.
00:19:39.680 But it proves that no matter what he says,
00:19:42.440 it will never go enough.
00:19:44.040 If he were to say, you know,
00:19:44.820 I hereby condemn X, Y, Z for X, Y, Z,
00:19:47.500 then the media was, oh, well, no, no, no.
00:19:48.940 He, he, he, you could tell there was a comma
00:19:50.920 when he was speaking that didn't need to be there.
00:19:52.880 It was just ridiculous.
00:19:53.540 So, uh, we'll be watching the next debates.
00:19:55.560 I had actually hoped to go down to them,
00:19:57.640 but with the, uh, uh, border restrictions in place,
00:20:00.540 I was still like, okay, I'll go, I'll cover them.
00:20:02.280 But then they, I weren't accrediting Canadian media
00:20:04.400 to go to them.
00:20:05.120 So it's just like the leaders debates commission
00:20:07.700 in Canada.
00:20:08.140 I don't get allowed or I don't get accredited
00:20:10.460 to cover them.
00:20:11.380 But I will say that, uh, the debates commission
00:20:13.720 should, uh, switch them to fireside chats.
00:20:15.560 That's what we did when Peter McKay backed out
00:20:17.440 in the, uh, uh, leadership race for the conservatives
00:20:20.080 and it tended to work out pretty well for us.
00:20:22.220 I wanted to just talk about a couple of silly stories
00:20:25.060 here before we go on to an interview.
00:20:27.100 I'm very much looking forward to an Irish court
00:20:29.900 has ruled that Subway's bread is not actually bread.
00:20:34.220 It was the Irish Supreme court, which apparently exists.
00:20:37.660 And they ruled that the bread served at Subway
00:20:39.740 cannot be legally defined as bread under the tax code
00:20:43.740 because it has too much sugar in it.
00:20:46.780 And they found that the sugar content in the bread
00:20:49.080 is five times the qualifying limit,
00:20:51.280 meaning it's not a staple food.
00:20:53.400 Therefore it's not allowed to be tax exempt.
00:20:56.020 So basically it's, uh, more of a pastry
00:20:58.200 than a bread they're saying about this.
00:21:00.680 Uh, Subway did not respond to a request
00:21:02.920 for comment from the Guardian.
00:21:04.540 I mean, I find American bread and a lot
00:21:06.200 of American products to be actually too sweet anyway.
00:21:08.840 Uh, Subway is weird because I like it.
00:21:10.820 It's consistent anywhere you go, you get it.
00:21:13.020 It feels like it's a bit more healthy than McDonald's,
00:21:15.360 even though that's a bit questionable
00:21:16.420 and it depends what you do with it.
00:21:18.120 I remember Subway sued a CBC.
00:21:20.440 It was for something like $200 million, I think,
00:21:22.220 because a CBC had written a story
00:21:24.500 that the chicken that Subway puts on your sandwiches
00:21:26.880 was only like 50% chicken DNA
00:21:28.740 and the rest was filler.
00:21:30.500 And Subway like was so angry about it,
00:21:32.160 they sued and then a judge ended up
00:21:33.400 dismissing the case outright.
00:21:34.880 So, uh, Subway, not the first time
00:21:36.560 they've been challenged in courts
00:21:38.160 or, uh, over what they are serving people.
00:21:42.040 It's still good,
00:21:42.860 but just know that you're not necessarily getting
00:21:45.340 something that is real bread
00:21:46.900 if you get it in Ireland anyway.
00:21:48.400 Shows how governments can just change
00:21:49.700 definitions of things on a whim.
00:21:52.040 And also, this is kind of a funny one,
00:21:53.820 a British zoo has separated
00:21:55.660 five foul-mouthed parrots
00:21:57.920 who keepers say were encouraging each other to swear.
00:22:01.600 The Lincolnshire Wildlife Center
00:22:03.740 has a colony of 200 gray parrots
00:22:05.560 and they started working blue,
00:22:07.580 doing blue material.
00:22:08.920 And in particular, Billy, Eric, Tyson, Jade,
00:22:11.560 and Elsie were swearing at each other.
00:22:13.480 All five were swearing at each other
00:22:15.240 and they were having these
00:22:16.160 very foul-mouthed conversations
00:22:17.960 amongst each other.
00:22:20.260 And at the museum, they decided,
00:22:22.120 or the zoo, they decided this is no longer.
00:22:24.180 Everyone apparently found it funny.
00:22:25.760 The parrots were telling visitors to F off
00:22:28.200 and apparently it brought a smile
00:22:29.980 to a really hard year.
00:22:30.980 But since then, they've separated them
00:22:32.560 out of some sense of needing to think
00:22:34.800 of the children,
00:22:35.700 even though no one was complaining.
00:22:37.280 So again, it's the killjoys
00:22:39.560 that are creating problems
00:22:41.360 that do not exist.
00:22:42.500 In fact, this probably would have been
00:22:43.820 good for zoo attendance if you go there
00:22:46.240 and it's like a Don Rickles roast.
00:22:48.460 You go and you get roasted by the parrots.
00:22:50.400 I would pay extra to go to a zoo
00:22:52.200 where I get roasted by the parrots.
00:22:53.560 So I think there was a very missed opportunity here.
00:22:56.820 We'll be right back with Professor William McNally
00:22:58.960 talking about academic wokeness
00:23:01.280 versus academic freedom.
00:23:02.900 That's coming up next on The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:23:05.000 Stay tuned.
00:23:07.080 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:23:10.580 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:23:12.700 At what point does academic freedom
00:23:15.260 and free speech cross the line
00:23:17.280 into really propagandizing
00:23:20.060 and advancing this woke agenda
00:23:21.980 in spite of all of the things
00:23:24.440 that universities are supposed to be?
00:23:26.260 That's one of the discussions
00:23:27.480 that's come about through a debate
00:23:29.760 at Laurier University
00:23:31.020 and other campuses across Canada
00:23:32.760 and North America earlier this month.
00:23:35.000 A scholar strike,
00:23:36.760 which according to an op-ed
00:23:38.300 in the Postmillennial
00:23:39.120 by two Laurier professors,
00:23:40.960 has institutionalized propagandist teaching.
00:23:44.180 One of the authors we had on the show
00:23:45.700 a couple of weeks ago,
00:23:46.640 Professor David Haskell.
00:23:47.720 The other, Professor William McNally,
00:23:49.880 joins me on the line now.
00:23:51.800 Good to talk to you again, Professor.
00:23:53.000 Thanks for coming on today.
00:23:54.260 Hey, my pleasure.
00:23:55.500 So what is the scholar strike?
00:23:57.260 Well, it seems to have originated in the U.S.
00:24:01.740 and then some Canadian academics championed it
00:24:05.820 and they wanted everyone to take
00:24:07.620 September 9th and 10th off,
00:24:09.720 that's all faculty,
00:24:11.200 and not do any administration or teaching,
00:24:13.820 but instead hold teach-ins
00:24:15.740 on anti-police brutality
00:24:18.720 and then a whole line of,
00:24:20.740 a laundry list of issues.
00:24:23.800 So this would have been the first,
00:24:25.380 the first two days of class,
00:24:27.860 September 9th and 10th.
00:24:30.260 Yeah, and that's the weirdest part.
00:24:31.620 I mean, this is already
00:24:32.360 an odd enough school year
00:24:33.720 where classes have had to kind of amend
00:24:35.600 how they're taught
00:24:36.540 and move, most stuff has moved online,
00:24:38.640 but to say we're not even going to teach,
00:24:40.260 and this is not just for,
00:24:41.340 you know, sociology profs,
00:24:42.960 but this is for finance profs,
00:24:44.740 for chemistry profs,
00:24:46.220 for everyone, right?
00:24:47.360 Yeah, this, it was the,
00:24:49.000 you know, the spirit of the thing
00:24:50.280 was that everyone would do it
00:24:52.000 and it was championed
00:24:52.760 by all the faculty unions.
00:24:54.200 The Canadian Association
00:24:55.300 of University Teachers promoted it
00:24:57.400 and then every faculty union,
00:24:58.900 it seems in Canada,
00:25:00.160 there's a list on their website.
00:25:02.500 And, you know,
00:25:03.660 you're going to get into class
00:25:05.040 as a student
00:25:06.000 and the first thing you get
00:25:07.780 is sort of critical race theory,
00:25:10.960 you know, on the first day
00:25:12.380 of your Shakespeare course.
00:25:14.340 Was this being pushed
00:25:15.520 by any administrations
00:25:17.040 or was it just by a few radicals
00:25:18.920 in faculty associations?
00:25:20.740 Well, yeah, at first it was,
00:25:22.120 it was just,
00:25:22.800 I heard about it
00:25:23.380 from my faculty union
00:25:24.500 who was forwarding an email
00:25:26.040 that was sort of boiler plated
00:25:27.340 from a central source
00:25:29.140 like CAUT.
00:25:31.000 And we got really upset about it.
00:25:34.120 We don't like the union
00:25:35.780 promoting these things
00:25:37.480 which are inherently political
00:25:39.140 using their distribution list,
00:25:41.680 but then that they would advocate
00:25:43.640 not teaching your discipline
00:25:45.460 and teaching and said
00:25:46.600 the content that ScholarStrike
00:25:48.120 was promoting
00:25:48.680 seemed outrageous to us.
00:25:50.660 So, in fact,
00:25:51.140 David Haskell wrote an email
00:25:52.720 to the administration
00:25:53.580 and said, you know,
00:25:55.420 you have to condemn this.
00:25:56.640 This is unacceptable.
00:25:57.840 And then we were shocked
00:25:58.940 to find a statement
00:26:00.120 from the university administration
00:26:01.540 wholeheartedly supporting
00:26:03.720 ScholarStrike
00:26:04.420 and encouraging faculty
00:26:05.780 to not teach their disciplines,
00:26:07.820 to teach the content
00:26:09.180 provided by ScholarStrike
00:26:10.680 and violate, you know,
00:26:14.820 the inherent contract, right?
00:26:16.300 Like, we're selling a product
00:26:17.840 which is our courses
00:26:19.820 and the administration
00:26:21.200 was saying,
00:26:21.820 no, no,
00:26:22.320 you'll just teach something else
00:26:24.300 that's very political
00:26:25.420 instead of what the student
00:26:27.360 has paid to receive.
00:26:30.000 And that seems to be key here
00:26:31.980 because you're not viewing this
00:26:33.400 as a discussion of
00:26:34.840 they don't have the right
00:26:35.880 to pursue these things.
00:26:37.020 I mean, you're a big believer
00:26:37.980 in free speech
00:26:38.680 and academic freedom, as am I.
00:26:40.280 You're basically saying
00:26:41.040 this is false advertising
00:26:42.160 to the students.
00:26:43.300 Yeah, yeah.
00:26:43.680 It's like a form of fraud.
00:26:45.900 You know, ScholarStrike supporters
00:26:47.620 are free to support that opinion.
00:26:50.680 I don't happen to agree
00:26:51.740 with most of it.
00:26:52.340 Of course, you know,
00:26:52.880 we're all against police brutality,
00:26:54.880 of course.
00:26:55.920 But the laundry list
00:26:57.460 of demands that they came up with
00:27:00.300 becomes farcical.
00:27:02.700 One of their planks
00:27:04.060 called on everyone
00:27:05.160 to support the custodial union
00:27:08.520 at the University of Toronto.
00:27:10.660 Apparently, the U of T
00:27:11.580 is trying to outsource
00:27:12.780 its custodial work
00:27:14.140 to a third-party company.
00:27:16.620 And ScholarStrike wanted us
00:27:18.340 to support the CUPE local
00:27:19.920 in their fight against
00:27:21.400 outsourcing of custodial work
00:27:22.940 at the University of Toronto.
00:27:24.380 Right?
00:27:24.800 It has nothing to do
00:27:26.440 with police brutality
00:27:27.860 and race.
00:27:30.500 That's what George Floyd's memory
00:27:31.820 is about now,
00:27:32.620 is the who takes out the trash
00:27:33.820 at U of T.
00:27:34.840 Yeah.
00:27:35.600 Yeah.
00:27:36.200 So it's bizarre.
00:27:38.440 It's like they weren't even serious
00:27:40.320 about their primary cause
00:27:42.980 and purpose.
00:27:44.120 But, you know,
00:27:44.880 that's their right.
00:27:45.760 And people want to support that.
00:27:47.280 They're entitled
00:27:47.840 to have that opinion.
00:27:49.100 But the problem here
00:27:49.980 is having a...
00:27:51.080 There's two problems here.
00:27:52.100 It's having the university
00:27:53.200 sort of act fraudulently
00:27:58.020 with respect to the students
00:27:59.300 and offer to sell them something,
00:28:01.820 which is a course on, say,
00:28:03.040 Shakespeare or accounting,
00:28:04.040 and then substitute it
00:28:05.480 with critical race theory,
00:28:07.480 which is outrageous.
00:28:08.460 And the other problem here
00:28:09.920 is having the university administration
00:28:11.760 take a position on all of this.
00:28:14.980 University administrations
00:28:16.420 should be studiously agnostic
00:28:18.400 on political issues
00:28:20.100 and allow faculty and students
00:28:22.280 to explore these issues,
00:28:24.100 to discuss them,
00:28:26.320 and in that process
00:28:27.600 sharpen our understanding.
00:28:29.580 And if they come out and say,
00:28:30.960 no, no,
00:28:31.400 the right way to view this
00:28:32.560 is that it's systemic racism
00:28:34.420 and to take a critical theory lens
00:28:36.680 really distorts the capacity
00:28:40.080 of people
00:28:40.980 to find their own opinions
00:28:42.800 and really puts a lot of pressure
00:28:46.080 on dissenting opinions.
00:28:47.740 Students who might not agree
00:28:49.520 with the administrative line
00:28:51.220 really are at a disadvantage
00:28:54.400 because other students
00:28:56.860 can hit them over the head
00:28:57.860 by saying,
00:28:58.420 hey, you know,
00:28:58.880 we have the authority
00:28:59.580 of the administration on our side
00:29:01.160 and so therefore
00:29:02.320 we're right and you're wrong
00:29:03.500 and you should shut up
00:29:04.420 and, you know,
00:29:04.940 we'll get a cancel mob
00:29:05.900 going after you.
00:29:07.400 Yeah, and that's, I think,
00:29:08.880 something especially Laurier
00:29:10.560 would be aware of
00:29:11.680 with everything that went on
00:29:12.640 with Lindsay Shepard
00:29:13.460 who's now a colleague of mine
00:29:14.740 here at True North
00:29:15.440 back in 2017
00:29:16.700 and you'd think Laurier
00:29:18.220 would be keenly aware
00:29:19.540 of what happens
00:29:20.340 when administration gets involved
00:29:22.240 in stuff like this.
00:29:23.720 When I look at this story,
00:29:25.740 I mean, the big problem
00:29:26.520 is that this critical race theory
00:29:28.220 and this narrative
00:29:29.120 is injected into everything now.
00:29:31.040 I mean, there used to be
00:29:31.660 certain places where
00:29:32.660 you'd expect to see it,
00:29:34.260 certain faculties,
00:29:35.280 but the fact that,
00:29:36.440 as you mentioned,
00:29:36.980 you going to your Shakespeare class
00:29:38.620 or your accounting class
00:29:39.780 is now to some people
00:29:41.340 supposed to be
00:29:42.020 a learning opportunity
00:29:43.120 about race relations
00:29:44.080 suggests that they're really
00:29:45.320 trying to expand this
00:29:46.540 where there will be
00:29:47.280 no safe space from it
00:29:48.680 to use the university lingo.
00:29:51.700 Yeah, yeah.
00:29:52.480 It's infecting everything.
00:29:54.840 You know,
00:29:55.400 the Lindsay Shepard affair,
00:29:57.000 just to mention that,
00:29:59.120 when that happened,
00:30:00.440 a central issue there
00:30:01.660 was whether Lindsay
00:30:04.080 had the right
00:30:04.920 to show the agenda episode
00:30:06.680 with Jordan Peterson
00:30:07.560 and whether it was appropriate
00:30:08.780 to the communication studies class.
00:30:11.000 And she was eventually exonerated.
00:30:13.320 And the university,
00:30:14.560 the president came out
00:30:15.380 with a statement saying,
00:30:16.160 hey, it's really important
00:30:16.920 that we stick to the material
00:30:19.920 that is, you know,
00:30:21.080 in the course description
00:30:22.080 and is appropriate
00:30:22.920 for the discipline.
00:30:24.160 And she said that back
00:30:25.620 in like late 2017.
00:30:27.540 Here we are, you know,
00:30:28.260 three years later.
00:30:28.920 And now she's saying,
00:30:30.160 oh, go ahead
00:30:30.600 and teach critical theory.
00:30:33.960 It's now infused
00:30:35.320 our HR department,
00:30:36.700 our administration.
00:30:38.120 The president uses terms
00:30:39.520 like systemic racism
00:30:41.900 and anti-racism.
00:30:44.140 And these are critical
00:30:45.420 race theory terms.
00:30:46.620 And, you know,
00:30:47.300 once you start using
00:30:48.100 that language,
00:30:48.860 you're going to start using
00:30:50.160 that lens for viewing the world.
00:30:51.720 And it's only one lens.
00:30:53.460 There's lots of other ways
00:30:54.580 to view these phenomenon.
00:30:56.440 How many professors,
00:30:58.140 maybe not an exact number,
00:30:59.460 but how many actually
00:31:00.580 took part in this?
00:31:01.520 Or was it mostly this,
00:31:03.360 you know, by email battle?
00:31:06.660 In the scholar strike,
00:31:08.160 it's almost impossible to tell
00:31:10.060 because all of the classes
00:31:12.000 are now on Zoom.
00:31:14.300 So there's really no way of knowing.
00:31:16.820 I would imagine a great number
00:31:18.580 in the Faculty of Arts
00:31:20.080 and the humanities
00:31:21.580 because that's, you know,
00:31:23.240 where most of these academics,
00:31:25.620 quote unquote, practice.
00:31:27.500 But yeah, there's no way of knowing.
00:31:29.940 And this is something as well
00:31:31.700 that I find particularly troubling
00:31:33.420 because, you know,
00:31:34.560 it's not going to end here.
00:31:36.100 And at certain points,
00:31:37.220 I mean, you, I know,
00:31:38.420 have already cemented your fate
00:31:39.700 as being loathed
00:31:41.340 by most of your colleagues
00:31:42.500 by speaking out on these issues,
00:31:43.860 as has Professor David Haskell.
00:31:46.120 But there are going to be
00:31:46.920 a lot of other professors
00:31:47.980 that perhaps are middle of the road
00:31:49.980 on a lot of these issues
00:31:50.860 that are going to look at this
00:31:51.640 and say, OK,
00:31:52.300 if I want to stay around,
00:31:53.720 I have to jump on that train.
00:31:55.160 Yeah, there's a lot of
00:31:58.500 institutional pressure here
00:32:01.100 to conform to the orthodox opinion
00:32:03.940 and not speak out against it.
00:32:07.380 Both David Haskell and I
00:32:08.960 have been getting mobbed
00:32:10.100 on social media,
00:32:11.160 on Twitter and on Instagram
00:32:13.180 by students and faculty
00:32:15.820 for speaking out about these issues.
00:32:18.740 So you don't hear
00:32:21.880 too many faculty speaking up,
00:32:23.520 not at Laurier,
00:32:24.260 not anywhere in Canada.
00:32:25.480 It's a pretty small group of people
00:32:27.420 who are prepared to publicly
00:32:28.720 even question any of this.
00:32:32.060 Do you think the Laurier experience,
00:32:33.800 because we have this,
00:32:34.900 we had the Lindsay Shepard affair,
00:32:36.560 is it distinct from other universities
00:32:39.000 in North America, do you think?
00:32:40.300 Or is it just we're hearing about it more
00:32:41.600 because of, you know,
00:32:42.660 people like you and like Lindsay
00:32:44.180 and like David Haskell
00:32:45.460 and like Jordan Goldstein?
00:32:46.720 That's a good question.
00:32:49.960 A little bit of it is just,
00:32:51.940 you know, the circumstances
00:32:53.320 around what happened to Lindsay
00:32:55.000 and then us jumping in to defend her
00:32:58.620 and then getting turned on
00:33:01.020 and becoming more vocal about it.
00:33:04.480 Because it is happening
00:33:05.860 in every university in North America.
00:33:09.200 This critical theory
00:33:10.160 is like an intellectual cancer
00:33:12.620 that has creeped in everywhere
00:33:15.140 and it's into the human rights departments
00:33:17.920 and the university administrations as well.
00:33:21.220 You know, you saw with Donald Trump
00:33:23.300 just signed an executive order
00:33:25.480 banning any critical race-based training
00:33:29.820 in any federal department or contractor.
00:33:34.600 Yeah, that's huge.
00:33:37.120 And again, what people on the left
00:33:39.360 are trying to do right now
00:33:40.580 is conflate critical race-based training
00:33:43.900 with anti-racism.
00:33:46.060 And that's a very dangerous leap
00:33:48.120 because they're trying to position an argument
00:33:49.860 so that if anyone opposes it,
00:33:51.740 well, they're actually racist.
00:33:53.420 Yeah, yeah.
00:33:54.100 You noticed on the debate
00:33:55.740 between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,
00:33:58.240 Chris Wallace referred to it
00:33:59.960 as racial sensitivity training.
00:34:02.420 He didn't say anti-racism
00:34:04.780 or critical race theory,
00:34:06.380 so he completely misrepresented it
00:34:08.260 and made it look really benign
00:34:09.840 because who wouldn't be against,
00:34:11.860 you know, who would be against
00:34:12.860 racial sensitivity training?
00:34:14.960 That sounds very reasonable.
00:34:16.040 We should all be more sensitive.
00:34:17.640 But that's not what this is.
00:34:19.280 This is about a revolution
00:34:21.680 and pulling down the capitalist system
00:34:24.900 and democracy
00:34:25.840 and at universities pulling down reason
00:34:28.260 and the scientific method.
00:34:30.160 And banning the outsourcing
00:34:32.120 of garbage collection, too.
00:34:33.600 Yes.
00:34:33.880 The true social justice battles of 2020.
00:34:36.800 You know, if they were to focus only on that stuff,
00:34:38.840 it wouldn't bother me as much.
00:34:40.740 Oh, or one or the other, you know?
00:34:42.700 Yeah, yeah.
00:34:43.140 Yeah, pick one or the other.
00:34:44.560 You can have two different movements.
00:34:45.820 That's fine.
00:34:46.580 But don't lump them both into the same.
00:34:48.980 I know that obviously the school
00:34:50.620 still didn't step in to stop the scholar strike,
00:34:53.660 but I'm curious,
00:34:54.260 did they give any response
00:34:55.500 to the letters that you had put forward,
00:34:58.500 to the complaint that was put forward by SAFS,
00:35:01.260 the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship?
00:35:03.180 Any response at all?
00:35:04.640 Yeah, yeah.
00:35:05.040 Thanks for bringing that up.
00:35:06.040 The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship,
00:35:08.140 or SAFS,
00:35:09.260 wrote a letter to Wilfred Laurier
00:35:11.380 complaining about this,
00:35:13.480 that it was a violation
00:35:14.480 of the spirit of free inquiry
00:35:18.560 that should guide universities.
00:35:19.980 They also sent a letter to Dalhousie
00:35:22.740 and one to U of T.
00:35:24.500 So, Laurie wasn't the only one doing this.
00:35:28.440 But no, no,
00:35:29.600 there's been no formal response to this,
00:35:32.120 as far as I know.
00:35:33.280 There hasn't been a statement officially.
00:35:36.340 So, as far as I can tell,
00:35:38.500 the new policy is,
00:35:39.880 if you want to be political in your classroom,
00:35:42.340 go ahead.
00:35:44.220 Which, you know, is outrageous.
00:35:46.420 Last year, during the federal election,
00:35:48.240 I was supporting Maxime Bernier
00:35:51.220 and the People's Party,
00:35:52.800 and I have to admit
00:35:54.640 that I was teasing my students
00:35:56.160 about the election
00:35:57.720 and mentioned it a little bit more
00:35:59.940 than I should have,
00:36:01.140 and they weren't happy about it.
00:36:03.220 I heard about it in the course evaluations,
00:36:05.680 you know,
00:36:06.000 and on reflection,
00:36:07.460 I think rightly so.
00:36:09.040 You know,
00:36:09.400 it shouldn't be my place
00:36:11.200 to use that platform
00:36:12.800 to espouse my political beliefs.
00:36:15.140 I should just be teaching the discipline
00:36:16.800 that the students paid to learn about,
00:36:19.800 and, you know,
00:36:20.420 if we want to have a meeting
00:36:21.340 after class in the bar
00:36:22.740 over a beer,
00:36:24.120 you know,
00:36:24.320 that would be the appropriate venue
00:36:25.660 to talk about politics.
00:36:27.520 Yeah, and I think your point
00:36:28.440 is very valid there,
00:36:29.300 that it doesn't go both ways.
00:36:30.780 You don't have the same license
00:36:32.260 on your political views
00:36:34.140 to do what's been done
00:36:35.520 under the scholar strike
00:36:36.640 for people with opposing political views.
00:36:38.580 No, no, no, no, no, no.
00:36:41.860 Because there's so few conservatives
00:36:43.640 at the university,
00:36:45.080 they get really surprised
00:36:47.720 when they hear a conservative view.
00:36:51.340 Just two weeks ago,
00:36:52.580 we got an email from our union
00:36:54.800 talking about a climate committee,
00:36:58.080 and the email started out
00:36:59.860 with a reference to the fires
00:37:02.260 in the Pacific Northwest
00:37:04.260 and how this forces us
00:37:07.380 to take emergency action
00:37:08.780 to fight climate change.
00:37:10.400 And I had just come across
00:37:11.600 an article by Ross McKittrick
00:37:13.160 at Guelph
00:37:13.800 where he had done
00:37:15.400 a long study of precipitation
00:37:17.160 and found that it was just trending.
00:37:20.740 It wasn't trending up.
00:37:22.020 It was just fluctuating normally,
00:37:23.560 and there was really,
00:37:24.680 you couldn't blame climate change
00:37:26.500 for what's happening.
00:37:27.820 And I wrote an email
00:37:29.080 back to the author of this letter,
00:37:31.120 and they said,
00:37:32.720 yeah, you're right.
00:37:33.940 You know, I wasn't aware
00:37:34.880 of that literature,
00:37:35.460 but I was using
00:37:36.580 a little too much hyperbole,
00:37:38.140 and I probably shouldn't have.
00:37:39.740 And it seemed to me like,
00:37:41.240 well, you're just
00:37:41.940 in an echo chamber then.
00:37:43.500 You know, you never get challenged,
00:37:45.540 and you feel free
00:37:46.320 to write an email
00:37:47.200 to 550 faculty
00:37:48.780 being alarmist
00:37:51.160 and assuming everyone's
00:37:52.580 going to agree.
00:37:54.400 Very well said.
00:37:55.740 By the way,
00:37:56.160 I'll happily take you up
00:37:56.980 on that offer
00:37:57.440 to chat about politics
00:37:58.700 over a beer.
00:37:59.660 Yeah, that'd be great,
00:38:00.880 Andrew.
00:38:01.440 Yeah, once everyone's
00:38:03.060 allowed to be
00:38:03.440 in the same room
00:38:03.960 as each other,
00:38:04.480 we look forward to it.
00:38:05.580 William McNally,
00:38:06.360 Professor of Finance
00:38:07.440 at Wilfrid Laurier University.
00:38:09.920 The letter,
00:38:10.840 fantastic,
00:38:11.480 an op-ed in the
00:38:12.320 Post-Millennial
00:38:13.160 written by
00:38:13.820 Professor McNally
00:38:14.840 and David Haskell.
00:38:16.160 Professor,
00:38:16.680 thanks so much
00:38:17.100 for coming on.
00:38:17.640 Always a pleasure.
00:38:18.760 Yeah, great.
00:38:19.420 Thanks, Andrew.
00:38:20.520 Well, that does it for me.
00:38:21.600 My thanks again
00:38:22.300 to Professor McNally
00:38:23.420 and all of you
00:38:24.300 for tuning in
00:38:25.060 to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:38:26.540 We'll be back
00:38:27.200 with Canada's
00:38:27.880 Most Irreverent Talk Show
00:38:28.900 next week
00:38:29.420 here on True North.
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