Juno News - Free Speech Under Attack

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.900 Coming up, the Canadian government puts free speech in its crosshairs and the dangers of the net zero climate target.

00:00:22.220 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:25.780 Welcome to the Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:00:34.000 There is no reason to mince words, no reason to pull punches. Free speech in Canada is under attack.

00:00:40.980 This is not a new phenomenon. We've seen over the past several months the Liberals go all in on Bill C-10,

00:00:47.480 a bill that would bring the internet and content providers under the regulatory purview of the government.

00:00:53.360 We know culturally that cancel culture is ubiquitous. People that are deplatforming others, this is not a new phenomenon.

00:01:01.660 But to see the war on free speech go in such a brazen direction from the Liberals nevertheless makes this a very dark day,

00:01:10.260 not just in Canadian politics, but for Canadians and for liberty itself.

00:01:14.720 And again, this may sound melodramatic. I don't care. This is a big deal.

00:01:18.860 The Liberal government is bringing back a section that many people, myself included, cheered when it died,

00:01:26.720 and that is Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:01:30.240 If you've been new into politics, you might not have been around for this, and that's okay.

00:01:34.040 But in 2013, a Conservative private members bill introduced by Brian Storseth repealed Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:01:43.500 This was the section of the CHRA that effectively allowed the Human Rights Commission to prosecute bloggers,

00:01:51.580 columnists, journalists, people who said controversial things online,

00:01:55.380 because it said that there was an expectation of freedom from discrimination on the internet

00:02:01.480 from all of the protected grounds of discrimination laid out in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:02:07.120 And these protected grounds are the obvious ones, race, sexual orientation.

00:02:10.800 This is the act that Bill C-16, which shot Jordan Peterson to fame,

00:02:16.740 expanded to include gender identity and gender preferences in its current form.

00:02:23.520 So all of that is now part of what's just been introduced this week by Justice Minister David Lamedi,

00:02:29.380 which is a regulation that would effectively allow for government to prosecute hate speech

00:02:35.160 through the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

00:02:37.400 I want to read from the bill itself, so we are all on the same page of what's happening here.

00:02:43.300 The government adds back to Section 13, by the way, where there was a hole from the Conservative repeal, this.

00:02:49.180 It is a discriminatory practice to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by means of the internet

00:02:56.920 or other means of telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation

00:03:04.940 or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

00:03:11.560 So the act is saying if it is likely to foment detestation and vilification,

00:03:17.860 it is thereby illegal because it is discriminatory.

00:03:22.360 And it also goes on to say that if you are just hosting it, if you have a blog and someone comments on it,

00:03:28.840 that's not an offense.

00:03:30.000 If the social media companies are subjected to it because someone posts something online, they're not liable.

00:03:35.860 And it's interesting that Stephen Gilbeau, who's been talking about the need to go after the big guys,

00:03:40.580 actually pulled his punches on this and didn't make the social media companies liable,

00:03:45.700 which I just find interesting.

00:03:47.420 An aside there, they say that's going to all be dealt with in a future bill.

00:03:51.500 I want to read the definitions of this because the whole problem with hate speech laws

00:03:55.800 is the lack of a cohesive and universal definition for them.

00:04:00.140 In this act, it says hate speech is the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification

00:04:07.960 of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited grounds of discrimination.

00:04:15.200 So those words, detestation or vilification.

00:04:18.700 And it actually goes further than that to say that it does not qualify as hate speech

00:04:25.200 solely because it expresses mere dislike or disdain or it discredits, humiliates, hurts, or offends.

00:04:33.200 So the government has through this bill said there's a line between speech that humiliates, hurts, offends

00:04:38.760 and speech that is likely to foment detestation and vilification.

00:04:43.660 But how do you define that?

00:04:44.800 How do you draw that line?

00:04:46.540 What if I were to get up and say,

00:04:49.140 you know what, I don't think that trans women should be allowed to compete in women's sports. 1.00

00:04:53.640 Is that likely to foment hate?

00:04:55.960 What if I say, I don't like this thing or that thing that may be falling under a protected ground?

00:05:01.820 Is that going to just be humiliation or is that going to be hate?

00:05:06.480 The reality is we already have a definition of hate speech in Canada in the criminal code.

00:05:12.640 And that definition has a very high threshold because it is criminal law.

00:05:17.100 So anything we see here is lowering that threshold.

00:05:21.200 Anything we see here is thus expanding the parameters of what government constitutes as unlawful speech.

00:05:29.600 And the bill, by the way, does a number of other things.

00:05:31.660 It doesn't just allow the Canadian Human Rights Commission to prosecute you for thought crimes

00:05:36.520 if something you say is likely to foment detestation and vilification.

00:05:41.060 It also has a criminal aspect as well.

00:05:44.780 And I won't go into the huge list of details here because I want to explore this in a future show.

00:05:49.960 But effectively, it means that you can have a peace bond put against you if someone applies to the court

00:05:56.480 because they're concerned about the forms of hate speech that you may be embracing.

00:06:01.960 Fear of hate propaganda offense or hate crime.

00:06:05.180 So if you have fear on reasonable grounds that a person will commit a hate speech offense,

00:06:11.320 you can then go to a court and they can put a number of restrictions on someone from taking their firearms away

00:06:17.960 to making them agree to a list of conditions and so on.

00:06:22.320 So again, another example of this sort of thought crime approach in this bill.

00:06:27.120 But I want to focus in on the Human Rights Act because a lot of people will think because this isn't criminal,

00:06:33.160 it's not as big a deal.

00:06:34.860 And there are two issues.

00:06:36.000 Number one, when you are accused of hate speech, that is a label that sticks with you.

00:06:41.340 Especially when us, when Section 13 was around the first time around,

00:06:45.440 the burden was on those accused to defend themselves.

00:06:49.800 It wasn't as though you had to be proven to have said something hateful beyond a reasonable doubt.

00:06:54.480 No, you were the one that had to defend yourself.

00:06:56.580 And it was the state that was prosecuting you.

00:06:59.500 So someone would make a complaint.

00:07:02.320 And when you read through the bill, the same thing is happening here.

00:07:05.380 They are protected.

00:07:07.560 Their anonymity is protected.

00:07:10.060 Someone could apply to the Canadian Human Rights Commission,

00:07:13.220 complain about what you've said, and you never know who they are.

00:07:19.340 So they're not the ones that you get to defend yourself against.

00:07:23.480 You don't get to face your accuser, as is supposed to be a cornerstone of the rule of law.

00:07:29.300 It's the government that becomes your accuser.

00:07:32.980 So even with this protection of, well, you know what, it has to go beyond humiliating and

00:07:38.820 offending.

00:07:39.800 You have to really foment detestation and vilification.

00:07:43.980 That doesn't really matter without clear definitions of what those are.

00:07:49.120 And we know from what Stephen Gilboa has said in the past, I think it was in a Quebec newspaper

00:07:53.660 interview, that the government is going to take as its approach to this, the Watcott Supreme

00:07:59.280 Court decision, which holds that truth is no defense, as we've talked about a number of

00:08:04.680 times on this show.

00:08:06.860 So the Liberals are bringing back Section 13 with a vengeance after this section was taken

00:08:12.480 away.

00:08:12.880 And the way they're doing it, the way they're doing it is worth noting because Parliament

00:08:18.440 is basically done.

00:08:19.640 There is no more that the House of Commons can do.

00:08:22.320 They've introduced this full of rampant speculation from anyone and everyone that we are headed

00:08:27.400 into a summer election.

00:08:29.320 If that's the case, all the bills that haven't received royal assent before the election are

00:08:34.100 dead.

00:08:34.560 They're just gone and they have to be reintroduced whenever the new government comes back.

00:08:38.780 So when the government is introducing bills at this stage, it's doing so because it thinks

00:08:45.340 this is winnable in an election.

00:08:47.740 They want to put forward bills so that when they're running, they can say, oh, yeah, we

00:08:51.320 were in the middle of passing all these bills on this, on that.

00:08:54.080 We need you to vote us back in so that we can really go the full distance with them.

00:08:58.720 And that's almost more concerning culturally, that the Liberals think, and I fear are probably

00:09:04.760 right that censoring Internet speech, that censoring what people say online is a winnable

00:09:11.540 position in an election.

00:09:13.920 And the Conservatives are going to rightfully respond and say, well, you know what, this

00:09:18.260 is a bill that's anti-free speech, so therefore it's wrong.

00:09:22.500 But the reality is what the Liberals are going to do, because they're very good at this. 0.92

00:09:26.300 People call a lot of their opponents dumb, which you shouldn't do, because what the Liberals 0.91

00:09:30.340 are going to play on this is laying at the Conservatives' feet speech that is in that 0.84

00:09:37.580 gray area and forcing the Conservatives to say, should that speech be protected?

00:09:44.660 I mean, if I were Justin Trudeau and I were in a debate with Erin O'Toole and Jagmeet Singh

00:09:48.780 and Yves-Francois Blachet, I would just read a bunch of horrific, horrific things and say,

00:09:54.140 do you think all of those should be legal forms of speech?

00:09:56.920 Force Erin O'Toole to defend it. 0.58

00:09:58.480 But here's the problem.

00:10:00.500 We cannot, as free speech defenders, allow ourself to get dragged into that.

00:10:06.900 Because any time I've talked about it, someone says, oh, well, what about if someone says

00:10:10.100 this?

00:10:10.340 I say, I don't actually care.

00:10:12.760 Because once you start going through line by line and saying, well, you know, I don't

00:10:17.420 like this joke, but this speech is fine and this one's not, you've already lost.

00:10:21.600 Free speech is free speech.

00:10:24.700 And when people say, well, it's not free speech, it's hate speech.

00:10:27.380 Well, hate speech is in the eye of the beholder.

00:10:32.080 And you only need free speech for speech that you revile.

00:10:38.140 You only need free speech protections for speech that you find is offensive enough that

00:10:44.020 someone might want to censor it.

00:10:46.040 And this is what people miss out on.

00:10:49.600 If you want to prohibit and restrict all the forms of speech that you think are destructive

00:10:54.540 or counterproductive in society, all you're left with are the things that people would

00:10:58.740 say anyway and would not take issue with.

00:11:01.540 And as much as I take aim at cancel culture, rightfully so, there's a difference between 1.00

00:11:07.160 cancel culture that's imposed by society and what society has determined is appropriate

00:11:12.160 and cancel culture that is imposed by the state, which is precisely what the Canadian Human

00:11:17.700 Rights Act did when Section 13 was around for the first time and what it will be doing

00:11:22.380 in this new and modern iteration of it.

00:11:25.260 And I want to talk about the history a little bit here because it is significant.

00:11:30.320 I mentioned this was repealed in 2013.

00:11:32.840 It was repealed in part because the commission started going after people that were going

00:11:38.180 to fight back.

00:11:39.540 People like my late dear friend Kathy Shadle, people like Mark Stein, people like Ezra Levant,

00:11:45.660 all subjected to human rights complaints by aggrieved activists who were trying to weaponize

00:11:51.460 this law because they wanted to silence their opposition.

00:11:56.700 And that's the whole point.

00:11:57.960 You look at the complaints that were leveled against the Western Standard for publishing

00:12:02.360 the Danish Muhammad cartoons, the complaints that were leveled against McLean's magazine,

00:12:06.880 and that was an interesting one because that complaint was shopped around.

00:12:10.920 They tried to file it in Ontario.

00:12:12.660 They tried to file it at the Canada level and then eventually had to go to the BC level

00:12:17.240 because that was the only one that would take up the case.

00:12:19.940 And this commission and its investigative powers, its prosecutorial powers, were used by activists

00:12:27.620 who wanted to silence people.

00:12:29.060 They wanted to make an example of those they thought were doing the original version of

00:12:33.960 fomenting detestation and vilification.

00:12:36.540 And they didn't succeed.

00:12:39.380 They didn't succeed because they poked people that were prepared to fight back, which is why

00:12:45.740 Mark Stein, Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaddle, all literally wrote books about this.

00:12:51.340 And why there has been this enduring attitude that has understood how wrong these things were.

00:12:58.140 And it's amazing how quickly a country can forget that.

00:13:03.340 And I would also say it's amazing that these were around in the mid-2000s.

00:13:07.420 We're talking about conflicts that started 15 years ago.

00:13:11.340 It wasn't until Stephen Harper's conservatives had been in power for seven years, 2013, seven

00:13:17.520 years of a conservative government that this Section 13 was repealed.

00:13:21.900 And you can say, well, they had a minority for a lot of those.

00:13:24.800 Yeah, that's fine.

00:13:26.300 But I'm saying this should have been the very first priority when these issues started rearing

00:13:30.400 their heads for conservatives.

00:13:32.060 And it needs to be the first priority for Aaron O'Toole and the conservatives now.

00:13:37.980 If you are not prepared to die on the hill of free speech, you are not prepared to die

00:13:43.800 on the hill for anything that matters.

00:13:47.400 Free speech is the mother of all liberties.

00:13:51.040 It is the form of liberty that allows you to debate and argue anything else.

00:13:54.940 I've said this in the past.

00:13:56.080 Any right that you have, any law you've changed, happens because someone has challenged the status

00:14:02.400 quo at some time by using their right to free speech.

00:14:07.380 So by lowering the threshold for what constitutes illegal speech, you are shrinking the bounds

00:14:14.160 of discourse.

00:14:15.400 And it is the liberal government that decides where those boundary lines are drawn.

00:14:21.460 On a cultural front, on a legal front, this is wrong.

00:14:25.020 This is actually, I will go so far as to say evil.

00:14:28.900 A Western liberal democracy that does not protect free speech is not a Western liberal democracy.

00:14:35.860 And I do want to delve into the legal dimension of this in a bit more depth here.

00:14:40.340 And believe me when I say there will be a lot of talk about this on the show in the coming

00:14:44.460 months.

00:14:44.840 But there is a reason for it.

00:14:46.300 And that is because this matters.

00:14:48.200 And because I was around the first time when people were fighting to get rid of this.

00:14:52.120 But as I said, we will, I'm just giving you fair warning on this.

00:14:55.620 Let me bring into the show Christine Van Gein, who is the litigation director for the Canadian

00:14:59.720 Constitution Foundation, which has said this is a bill that will limit discourse.

00:15:05.860 No two ways about it.

00:15:06.820 Christine, good to talk to you.

00:15:08.100 Thanks for coming on today.

00:15:09.680 Thanks for having me on, Andrew.

00:15:10.760 So we have a couple of things here that I think are very important.

00:15:15.620 And one has been, I think, the most predictable discussion about this bill, even before it

00:15:20.600 was introduced.

00:15:21.060 And that is, how is government going to define hate speech?

00:15:24.920 And the bill does include a definition of it here, which just for context is, quote,

00:15:30.220 the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual

00:15:36.520 or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination, unquote.

00:15:42.320 And that's, you know, race, gender, gender identity, all of these things that we know are

00:15:46.820 protected grounds in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:15:49.560 And it also adds to that that it doesn't meet this threshold for detestation or vilification

00:15:55.200 just because it, quote, discredits, humiliates, hurts, or offends, unquote.

00:16:01.220 And I've seen a lot of people talk about this in the context of, oh, it's, you know, trying

00:16:04.780 to make sure it's not just going after speech that has the potential to be offensive.

00:16:08.560 But are these things really clearly defined from what we know about this bill now, as far

00:16:14.400 as when something crosses that threshold from discrediting and humiliating to vilification?

00:16:21.480 I mean, all of these things are just inherently subjective.

00:16:24.160 And that's the problem with trying to create a statutory definition for a subjective concept

00:16:31.660 like hatred.

00:16:32.960 And, you know, there's a lot of existing case law that has dealt with the difference between

00:16:37.480 these two notions, the detestation and vilification versus hurt feelings and things like that.

00:16:44.460 But one of the things that is so notable about this bill is it's brought back the civil remedy,

00:16:50.040 which means you can, as an individual, bring a claim to a tribunal about someone who has

00:16:59.100 used what you believe is hate speech.

00:17:01.980 So if the definition is as it is, which I think has a huge amount of subjectivity in it, you're asking the public

00:17:10.440 at large who can make use of this tribunal mechanism to understand the real nuanced difference between what is and

00:17:21.780 isn't hate speech under this statutory definition.

00:17:24.300 And if you and I are struggling with it, and we are pretty deep into this stuff, I think your average Canadian is really not going to know the difference.

00:17:33.240 You're going to have a lot of frivolous and disruptive claims brought under this new civil remedy.

00:17:40.320 Yes, and that was exactly what happened when the Section 13 1.0 was around prior to 2013.

00:17:48.360 You had people that were using it.

00:17:50.180 They were shopping complaints to the Canadian tribunal and to provincial ones.

00:17:54.520 They were going after columnists they didn't like, bloggers and authors.

00:17:58.940 And in seeing this, the one glaring issue here when you talk about the civil remedy is that the threshold for a civil wrong in the eyes of the law is lower than it is for a criminal wrong.

00:18:09.040 So the hate speech definition that we have in criminal law, which is very high by design as a threshold, is necessarily lower in this, is it not?

00:18:19.800 I believe it would have to be.

00:18:22.220 I haven't reviewed the bill in detail, but it is a civil remedy which would suggest a civil standard rather than a criminal standard.

00:18:30.940 But, you know, that old remedy, this old civil remedy, Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act, was repealed for a reason.

00:18:39.040 The reason was that the government of the day believed that that remedy was being abused.

00:18:45.000 It had been highly politicized that the remedy was being used to target certain types of speech and not other types of speech based on sort of like a political correctness standard.

00:18:59.800 And I think that there was a good reason to have removed that remedy.

00:19:02.960 This government is bringing it back, proving once and again, and expanding its scope to now include all kinds of online content.

00:19:10.880 So they're proving once and again that they are one of the most anti-speech, anti-expression, anti-technology governments we've ever seen in this country.

00:19:20.960 And I think that this type of arrogance by this government on imposing their views about what Canadians should and should not be allowed to say and how they should communicate it and creating even more government overreach and how to monitor it, Canadians should be very concerned.

00:19:39.620 I would agree, and we can talk about the subjectivity of fomenting detestation or vilification, but there's another word in there that was in the original Section 13 and is back, which is likely to foment detestation or vilification.

00:19:55.860 And when you hear likely to do something, it brings up images of minority report to me and prosecuting people for things that haven't even taken place but might take place.

00:20:06.060 Yeah, so I think that's another part of the problem is this vagueness standard in the law and the whole subjectivity.

00:20:16.620 And there's also, there's another portion on this that has even more to do with this sort of minority report aspect, which is this conditional, I forget what it's, the word is slipping my mind now,

00:20:34.400 but it relates to youth, but there are restrictions on conduct before they actually happen.

00:20:43.740 I'm sorry, it's slipping my mind.

00:20:45.620 Oh, is this the peace bond section?

00:20:47.140 Yes, it's the peace bond.

00:20:48.660 Yeah, it's the peace bond aspect, which is really, really troubling for a lot of civil libertarians, this notion of peace bonds, which restrict conduct as a condition of release for,

00:21:04.400 for a criminal act.

00:21:05.960 So, but this, this is something that a lot of civil liberties organizations have raised concerns over this new peace bond.

00:21:14.820 And this is something that's also included in the legislation.

00:21:17.200 Yeah, and just for context, so someone can go if they, they're concerned about someone's speech, theoretically, to a court and apply to have a peace bond applied.

00:21:26.640 And if you have one of these applied to you, I was looking through this section, you could have lawfully owned firearms taken away, you could be forced to do drug tests, you could be as well subjected to wearing a monitoring bracelet.

00:21:39.480 So, you have very real limitations of your freedom, and you're right, based on a crime or an offense for which you have not been convicted or perhaps even charged.

00:21:49.660 Yeah, so this is why there are a lot of concerns with peace bonds, like sort of generally, but in this particular context where it relates to expressive activity, it's extreme, seems like extreme government overreach.

00:22:02.460 I apologize, the word slipped my mind, I don't know how that happened.

00:22:05.940 No, at least, I trust me, I try to get these things out of my mind as quickly as they can, so no judgment on that.

00:22:12.580 I guess the question that I would ask you, and I know we're getting long ahead of ourselves here, because a bill like this will not even be debated in Parliament before summer, and if there's an election, it completely goes away and would need to be reintroduced.

00:22:25.560 But are things like this, in your view, likely to be struck down as unconstitutional, or is there enough of a wiggle room from, you know, reasonable limits and other forms in the jurisprudence that suggest something like this could actually be upheld?

00:22:41.260 Well, I certainly think it will be challenged, but I will say that the hate speech, the criminal hate speech laws have been upheld in this decision called What Caught,

00:22:50.440 and then there was a challenge to the previous Section 13 of civil remedy, which was also upheld.

00:22:57.220 So I do think that this bill is different, it's more expansive, and I also think in the revised version of the bill, we're likely to see something related to takedown orders for platforms that makes it different as well.

00:23:11.000 That doesn't appear to be included in this bill, but I do think that that is likely to come in perhaps a revised version of it that we may see later.

00:23:18.600 But I think that there's going to be a big interest in challenging this legislation.

00:23:25.240 And I will say that, you know, I view hate speech as abhorrent.

00:23:29.840 I view racism, homophobia, these things are abhorrent.

00:23:33.980 And these are ideas that are nasty ideas that we should explain why they're nasty ideas.

00:23:41.940 And if you have people just lurking on the internet, secretly sharing terrible ideas and concepts without confronting them and explaining why those notions are wrong, you'll never end up with a better society.

00:23:57.160 Instead, you'll have a society that criminalizes teenagers for burning pride flags.

00:24:02.440 And that's not a good direction for society.

00:24:05.220 Very well said, Christine Van Gein, Litigation Director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

00:24:12.300 Christine, thank you so much.

00:24:13.340 Always a pleasure.

00:24:14.360 Thanks for having me on.

00:24:15.760 That, you know, whenever I bring on the expert, because I'm not a lawyer, I just play one when I cover legal challenges and cases and bills and court decisions and all of that.

00:24:24.560 Christine is a real lawyer.

00:24:25.480 And I always hope when I have an interview with her or one of her colleagues that I'm going to, at the end of it, feel better because they've explained, well, no, it's not actually as bad as it thinks.

00:24:35.600 Unfortunately, this one is exactly as bad as it looks, which is why I spent so much time talking about the cultural implications of this at the beginning, because it really is two-pronged.

00:24:47.260 On one hand, you have the cultural dimension of this, the thrust behind this, that makes the liberals think they can successfully campaign on this.

00:24:55.740 That means the liberals know Canadians, by and large, do not support free speech.

00:24:59.980 And then the legal side, which is that it doesn't matter that our Constitution protects freedom of expression.

00:25:05.320 It doesn't matter that you are supposed to be protected against all of these arbitrary things that the law can throw at you.

00:25:12.380 It doesn't matter.

00:25:13.000 However, this is going to be most likely upheld, even though it is a bill that very literally and very directly will censor online content.

00:25:22.640 We will have lots more to say on this in the shows ahead, but let's take a quick break here with more of The Andrew Lawton Show coming up next here on True North.

00:25:32.420 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:36.020 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:38.180 You wouldn't think countries around the world would be racing to get to zero,

00:25:41.520 but that's exactly what they are doing when it comes to net zero.

00:25:45.760 The magic words are the fuel for the global climate change discourse.

00:25:50.700 By 2050, the world has to be at net zero in terms of emissions.

00:25:55.900 This is the goal.

00:25:56.680 This is the target.

00:25:57.680 Doesn't matter what the economic cost to get there is.

00:26:01.220 And as we hear in a fantastic column I want to promote right now, there is a great cost.

00:26:06.460 The Epoch Times, why net zero is a suicide mission for Canada.

00:26:10.700 The author, Fergus Hodgson, who's the director of Econ Americas, a financial consultancy, joins me now.

00:26:16.980 It's good to talk to you, Fergus.

00:26:17.960 Thanks for joining me today.

00:26:19.700 Andrew, my privilege.

00:26:21.280 And I'm just a great fan of your work.

00:26:24.060 So glad to be with you.

00:26:25.780 Well, that's how you get invited back when you open with that.

00:26:28.100 I appreciate your kind words.

00:26:29.900 Talk to me first for people that aren't as familiar with this.

00:26:32.620 What does net zero mean?

00:26:34.260 And then what are the implications of that for Canada?

00:26:36.780 Yeah, great question, because it can be cryptic.

00:26:40.720 Net zero means that our human activities contribute as much greenhouse gases as we remove from the air.

00:26:54.640 So in other words, we don't increase the quantity of greenhouse gases in the air relative to what they were previously.

00:27:02.700 Now, that's obviously a very difficult task because we cannot we simply cannot get our greenhouse gas production down to zero.

00:27:13.460 That means there have to be some forms of offsets, which means literally removing greenhouse gases from the air or capturing them before they get in the air.

00:27:25.720 And this is no easy task.

00:27:29.380 I don't know how much detail you want me to get into.

00:27:31.440 But but basically it means a profound restructuring of the energy sector.

00:27:38.400 Now, how you define greenhouse gas?

00:27:40.580 Obviously, that is a loaded term to begin with.

00:27:42.860 And it depends how much you believe human.

00:27:48.000 Activities are heating the earth, right?

00:27:50.840 Because greenhouse implies that our gas production release is heating the earth.

00:27:58.820 The term term is self-defining, basically, or it's it's it's affirming a point.

00:28:03.880 Now, of course, the major challenge is that this comes into direct conflict with Canada's energy sector.

00:28:16.400 Now, of course, Canada only produces about one percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

00:28:22.780 But on a per capita basis, it's actually higher than average, naturally, because Canadians use a lot of energy.

00:28:28.780 And so this is a particularly vulnerable issue or problematic issue for Canada.

00:28:35.620 Not only is it problematic because of energy consumption, it's problematic because you have a.

00:28:44.000 Incumbent government that is more inclined towards the virtue signaling or to the posturing as opposed to sound economics, then politicians normally are,

00:28:55.920 which is not which is not which is not a high bar to how can I put it?

00:29:01.260 I'm not saying that governments in general are inclined towards sound economics, but the Canadian government is particularly uninclined towards sound economics.

00:29:10.300 And that is why we have a profound problem of achieving this target.

00:29:15.820 Now, the stated goal is 2050.

00:29:18.080 2050, so just a generational way.

00:29:21.540 And that requires, as I said, a profound restructuring, basically.

00:29:27.360 And there is different organizations are putting out basically timelines for how this can be achieved.

00:29:33.520 And one of them basically is that there would be a ban, absolute ban on all coal mining this year.

00:29:40.020 That gives you a sense for how radical the changes have to be.

00:29:42.820 Yeah, and that's, I mean, one of the objectives of the upcoming conference in Glasgow, I mentioned at the beginning, COP26.

00:29:51.200 They want to accelerate the phase out of coal.

00:29:54.300 They want to flip entirely, basically, to electric vehicles.

00:29:58.120 Now, I'm assuming they don't expect that one to be an overnight.

00:30:00.460 But there are some fairly radical proposals that are pushed to states and pushed by states to get to net zero.

00:30:07.960 And you are right when you talk about Canada's per capita energy usage.

00:30:12.440 But considerations there that you have are a very cold country, so heating is required, a very rural country.

00:30:19.180 So transport, you can only reduce your fuel consumption so much.

00:30:23.100 And you know what?

00:30:23.880 Someone who lives in rural Alberta, you can't say, well, just get a Tesla and, you know, find all those charging spots, you know, on your way to Lloydminster or something.

00:30:31.400 And the reality is you get this goal that we have to, as a country, work back from to meet because our government has committed us to it without really realizing how radical the requirements to meet that goal are.

00:30:45.680 Yeah, you make good points there.

00:30:47.880 So it's not just the climate, but also Canada's vast geography, right?

00:30:52.580 The sparsely populated country, which just means that the energy needs are not going to go away.

00:30:58.560 Not only that, but Canada is an energy producer, right?

00:31:03.760 So if we were Singapore trying to cut down, it wouldn't hurt us so much because we're not an energy producer.

00:31:10.300 But if a fundamental producer in our economy, value adder in our economy, is energy, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

00:31:21.340 If we think we can just make radical changes and cut energy production and not have a serious dampening effect on our economic prosperity.

00:31:31.820 Now, yeah, there's so much to say about this.

00:31:34.620 Anyone who thinks that just switching to electric vehicles is a smart idea, I encourage you to watch the documentary, documentary Planet of the Humans.

00:31:49.000 Now, ironically, this comes from, I forgot his name right now, but this is a documentary which just goes through a lifetime environmentalist exploring how to make renewable energy and its cost effectiveness.

00:32:04.280 And it's just a very sobering review of the case that a lot of these touted saviors just are false gods.

00:32:14.380 So biofuels, for example, or many of these solar projects, the energy required to create them often is greater than their lifetime energy they will create.

00:32:27.300 And biomass, where you basically cut down trees and burn them in such a way as to capture their energy, is obviously tremendously destructive to the environment.

00:32:39.300 So a lot of these alternatives are just false gods.

00:32:42.200 And what I've found in this discussion is that the people who promote Net Zero 2050, and not just Net Zero 2050, but I'm calling in from Utah in the United States, the whole, you know, green agenda or the broader plans,

00:33:07.680 the people advocating for them don't want to get into debates about economics or the precise details, cost and benefit.

00:33:19.880 They want to promote the likes of the Green New Deal with fear, fear mongering, hyperbole.

00:33:28.260 And the antidote to that is a great book, Apocalypse Never, and it just goes through one by one and basically debunks a lot of these outlandish claims.

00:33:39.800 The most notorious is of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that the world is going to end in 12 years.

00:33:46.000 Now, but...

00:33:46.640 Yeah, but that was like, wasn't that two years ago?

00:33:48.600 So we've only got 10 years left now.

00:33:50.160 Come on, get with it.

00:33:51.260 Yeah, so, and he just goes through where that number came from.

00:33:55.680 And it just shows you, unfortunately, that these silly claims, you know, fear sells, fear works.

00:34:06.300 And so claims about the world coming to an end are causing people to go for any solution, no matter how radical, no matter how detrimental, without thinking it through first.

00:34:17.120 It causes this gut or knee-jerk reaction that goes around our logic.

00:34:22.280 Let's just be honest about engaging in such endeavours.

00:34:27.280 The arguments that you read on the Government of Canada website or the proponents' website are basically that this, these net zero 2020 plans, 2050 plans are win-wins.

00:34:40.220 That doing this is going to revolution our economy and make it so much more profitable and we're going to be so cutting edge.

00:34:46.340 Which, come on now, just admit the fact that this is going to cost.

00:34:53.400 And in Canada, there are numbers here.

00:34:56.680 Now, I always forget the right ones, but basically, between 312,000 and 450,000 energy sector workers are at risk of displacement.

00:35:08.340 That is a tremendous number of people to just to push out of their jobs.

00:35:15.320 Not only that, let's just remember that energy is basically an ingredient in almost anything.

00:35:21.400 So if we push up the price of energy, we're basically creating inflationary pressure across the whole economy.

00:35:26.100 And you're in Ontario, you know that you've seen the rising energy prices and not only rising energy prices, but basically taxpayer funds going to subsidize energy to basically camouflage the fact that energy has become so expensive.

00:35:41.940 So Ontario is actually a good test case of where these crazy plans are being implemented and having damage.

00:35:48.540 And there's actually research to show that Ontario is poorer, for example, than all of the Great Lakes states.

00:35:56.200 It's poorer than Michigan, comfortably so.

00:35:58.500 So the prosperity of Ontario has been hit over the past few years, especially by energy constraints.

00:36:08.540 Well, that competitive aspect is quite important here at a national level as well.

00:36:12.500 And you mentioned this in your op-ed that Canada is basically at a competitive disadvantage because of this environmental virtue signaling, because it's going and doing these drastic measures that end up hurting the Canadian economy when other countries are just posturing on this.

00:36:29.200 So this whole thing about all the world leaders from Canada to the United States to China linking arms and dealing with the climate crisis together is just not happening.

00:36:38.020 And I was remembering, I was looking at, and I'll have to pull up the number here because of all of the countries that had pledged to drop their emissions from the Paris climate agreement, the UN report found that since 2016, the combined impacts have cut emissions by 1%.

00:36:56.000 That's it.

00:36:56.660 The global reduction has been 1%.

00:36:58.900 So Canada is doing all this stuff, signing the death warrant on Canadian jobs, as you just indicated,

00:37:04.260 and it's going to amount to a minuscule, minuscule effect because the other countries that say they're doing this aren't even doing this.

00:37:12.720 Yeah, that's one thing I finished with.

00:37:14.640 In some ways, hollow virtue signaling would almost be better, right?

00:37:19.380 Because then we wouldn't be hurting ourselves.

00:37:20.860 Yeah, if ours were as hollow as the rest of the world's, yeah.

00:37:25.120 Yeah, so, and this, I must admit, Andrew, this really saddens me because I'm a Canadian citizen.

00:37:31.140 My mother's family are in Calgary, and I have a great affection for Canada, especially the West.

00:37:40.580 And it is true that the long-term prosperity and competitiveness of Canada is really struggling, really struggling.

00:37:51.360 Programs like equalization and the Nessera 2050 are just suffocating the Canadian economy.

00:37:59.640 And in the long run, there's actually good evidence to show, too, that Canada is attracting weaker immigrants relative to the United States,

00:38:08.700 that Canadian immigrants are much more likely to go on welfare and much more likely to earn below the average of the Canadian wage relative to immigrants coming to the United States.

00:38:18.600 Canada is attracting the wrong type of immigrants. 1.00

00:38:20.700 But in terms of the, yes, the competitiveness is a problem.

00:38:28.180 The, although those in government right now may think that they are garnering respect and admiration around the world, 0.97

00:38:38.060 the fact is other countries are laughing at Canada, that Canada is the sucker in this situation. 0.99

00:38:43.680 They are the one, Canada is really just being played a fool, and it's embarrassing. 0.98

00:38:53.080 And I just, I hope, mate, that Canadians really push back against this. 0.95

00:38:59.380 Now, whether that will happen, I'm not sure.

00:39:03.160 This is why I'm an advocate for independence, to be frank, which is another discussion.

00:39:06.140 But the, I just fear that the areas of the country, Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, Alberta,

00:39:14.600 are not politically influential enough to really fight back.

00:39:18.900 And ironically, one way this might, one of the breaks on this insanity, this net zero 2050 insanity,

00:39:29.560 may be the fact that no one's, no one's there to pay for equalization.

00:39:36.360 Because for basically, well, for decades, Albertans have sent about 5% of their economy to pay for equalization year after year.

00:39:49.000 And people in places like Nova Scotia and Quebec have been getting about 10% of their economy.

00:39:54.480 Well, not Quebec, in Nova Scotia, it's about that.

00:39:57.380 But they'll be getting a tremendous portion of their economy simply in equalization payments.

00:40:01.980 Now, when that gravy train dries up, I suspect the other provinces might get a wake-up call that

00:40:11.560 we've been living high on the hog on the wealth of Alberta for so long, and we've killed the golden goose.

00:40:19.480 But whether it's going to be too late, I'm not sure.

00:40:22.200 Anyway, so it's a very prickly issue.

00:40:28.160 And my main motivation for writing an article like this is just trying to make people aware that

00:40:33.960 when we engage in decisions like this, there is a trade-off.

00:40:38.340 Stop pretending that totally restructuring the energy sector and ratcheting it down by 50% to 75%

00:40:45.900 is going to somehow be to our benefit.

00:40:48.940 But it is not. That's lunacy.

00:40:51.320 And all these, you know, bought and paid for intellectuals who back that are just intellectual prostitutes. 0.99

00:40:59.640 Very well said. 0.86

00:41:01.180 Fergus Hodgson is the director of Econ Americas and the author of this great piece in the Epoch Times,

00:41:06.320 Why Net Zero is a Suicide Mission for Canada.

00:41:09.420 Definitely a message that needs to be heard.

00:41:11.540 Fergus, thanks so much for coming on. It was a pleasure.

00:41:13.920 Thank you, Andrew. Best of luck with this show. Cheers.

00:41:16.040 Absolutely brutal. And I was actually on a press conference, believe it or not, for the United Nations,

00:41:22.860 maybe it was a week or so ago, and we were talking about the upcoming UN Glasgow Summit.

00:41:29.980 And I had asked about it because one of the goals here is they want to keep the temperature increase

00:41:34.180 to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

00:41:39.400 And why this is so important is because they could not, all of the countries in the world that were thumping their chests about climate in 2015 at Paris

00:41:48.000 could not agree to meet the 1.5 degree target.

00:41:51.320 So they settled on two degrees.

00:41:52.640 And now they're all saying the UN and the rest of these climate hucksters that are telling us we need to destroy our economies

00:41:59.720 are saying, oh, no, no, no, two is not enough. We've got to keep 1.5 alive.

00:42:03.900 And I had asked about that. I say, is this even viable?

00:42:06.360 And they say, absolutely, this is the goal.

00:42:08.540 And you can see it on the COP26 website.

00:42:10.940 And when you look at how aggressive the climate change measures that Canada has put forward now are

00:42:17.200 and accept that those are not going far enough, we have to, as a country, ask, what is next?

00:42:22.560 And I was glad Fergus Hodgson laid this out as well as he did.

00:42:26.140 So we have to wrap things up there.

00:42:28.020 My thanks to all of you for tuning in to the program.

00:42:31.040 This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:42:32.860 Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:42:34.660 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:42:36.580 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 24, 2021

Free Speech Under Attack

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript