Juno News - August 19, 2020


Going Prorogue


Episode Stats


Length

29 minutes

Words per minute

177.31635

Word count

5,155

Sentence count

273

Harmful content

Misogyny

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Coming up, the politics of prorogation and Justin Trudeau's double standard. Also, Morneau's departure, and Finance Minister Christia Freeland's ouster from the cabinet. To progue or not to prorogue? That is the question, and the answer seems to depend more on partisanship than integrity.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:00:06.660 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:00:12.940 Coming up, the politics of prorogation and Justin Trudeau's double standard.
00:00:17.960 Also, Morneau's departure and Finance Minister Christia Freeland.
00:00:24.140 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
00:00:30.000 To prorogue or not to prorogue, that is the question.
00:00:35.020 And the answer seems to depend more on partisanship than integrity.
00:00:39.960 Justin Trudeau has prorogued Parliament, effectively killing the investigation into WE,
00:00:45.920 killing a number of government bills, killing the parliamentary process until September.
00:00:51.080 Just a little over a one-month reset, which really serves no other purpose
00:00:56.240 than to hope Canadians forget about everything that's been happening in Canadian politics
00:01:00.700 and specifically in Parliament for the last few months.
00:01:04.300 But what I find baffling about this, and maybe not baffling, that's probably not the right word,
00:01:09.040 what I find audacious about this is that the Liberals have been the ones that,
00:01:14.460 going back as far as 2008, were jumping up and down,
00:01:17.340 saying that prorogation is not at all business as usual,
00:01:20.540 and prorogation is not at all a good thing.
00:01:23.200 And now that Justin Trudeau is doing it, it's supposedly just dandy.
00:01:29.040 Now, prorogue is a word that most people don't know.
00:01:32.940 And in the sense that we're talking about it now, let me be frank,
00:01:35.940 normal people don't talk like this.
00:01:37.720 Normal people don't use words like prorogue or prorogation.
00:01:41.220 It's specifically a parliamentary term in this context.
00:01:45.280 And in 2008, most people learned of it for the first time when Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament
00:01:51.360 to avoid what looked like it was going to be this unholy alliance of the Liberals,
00:01:56.220 the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois.
00:01:58.120 You remember that famous handshake and photo between the leaders of the three parties,
00:02:03.080 Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe after the 2008 election.
00:02:09.080 And Stephen Harper didn't want to go and have a coalition government.
00:02:12.940 He prorogued and then came back a couple of months later and let cooler heads prevail.
00:02:18.160 Now, this was seen by the left as being just a brazen assault on democracy.
00:02:24.180 How dare the prime minister avoid a vote that would trigger the downfall of the government
00:02:29.220 by proroguing?
00:02:30.740 And now you fast forward to it.
00:02:32.740 And Justin Trudeau, who has, by the way, one party calling for his resignation in the
00:02:38.300 Bloc Québécois, the Conservatives, for whom a couple of the leadership candidates,
00:02:42.940 have said they want to push for an election at the earliest opportunity, meaning the NDP
00:02:47.600 could, if it joins with these other parties, support that downfall of government.
00:02:53.100 So Justin Trudeau, I don't think, is going to be losing his job as prime minister.
00:02:58.240 I don't think he was going to be this summer.
00:03:00.320 But it was a possibility that the downfall of the Liberal government could have happened.
00:03:05.240 So now he's prorogued in the midst of scandal.
00:03:08.680 And yes, in the midst of investigating scandal, the committee czar, and investigating Liberal
00:03:14.800 scandal specifically, because, you know, what other kind is there right now in Canada?
00:03:19.040 He's saying, you know what, we're going to walk things back and, you know, going to come
00:03:23.240 back.
00:03:23.780 And when we come back, we're going to have a throne speech and a budget.
00:03:27.480 Now, this is assuming the Governor General has hung around until then, although that's
00:03:33.320 a different discussion altogether.
00:03:35.440 But the thing that I, like, it is truly disgusting, the pretzel twist that people will put themselves
00:03:45.040 into to try to defend what they're doing as not being hypocritical.
00:03:50.120 Justin Trudeau has had some very strong words about prorogation in the past.
00:03:55.200 Two prorogations in two years, the first to avoid a vote of non-confidence that would
00:04:03.820 have surely brought this government down, the second to avoid difficult questions.
00:04:12.460 Anyone who disagrees with this government gets pushed aside.
00:04:17.500 The challenge becomes that he gets to use every tribune he can use, all the media, all the
00:04:28.400 voices, all the attention, and gets to further marginalize people who disagree with him.
00:04:34.900 That's why we're talking about prorogation today.
00:04:38.340 That's why we want Canadians to go into this summer remembering that this is not a government
00:04:45.740 who values their voices.
00:04:47.960 Not a government who accepts easily the legitimacy that exists in every member sitting in this
00:04:57.680 House who is duly elected by the people they strive to represent.
00:05:02.580 But now he says it's all good.
00:05:04.800 Now he says it's different than what Harper did in 2008 because Harper did it to avoid
00:05:09.820 a confidence vote, whereas Justin Trudeau is expecting that there will be a confidence
00:05:14.120 vote when the House resumes in the fall.
00:05:16.400 This is legitimately his defense that, oh, well, I'm doing it for different reasons, so
00:05:21.100 it's all fine.
00:05:22.420 Stephen Harper and the Conservatives prorogued Parliament in order to shut it down and avoid
00:05:29.660 a confidence vote. We are proroguing Parliament to bring it back on exactly the same week it
00:05:36.720 was supposed to come back anyway and force a confidence vote.
00:05:42.180 We are taking a moment to recognize that the throne speech we delivered eight months ago had
00:05:48.040 no mention of COVID-19, had no conception of the reality we find ourselves in right now.
00:05:56.420 We need to reset the approach of this government for a recovery, to build back better, and those
00:06:02.200 are big, important decisions, and we need to present that to Parliament and gain the confidence
00:06:08.360 of Parliament to move forward on this ambitious plan.
00:06:12.020 The prorogation we are doing right now is about gaining or testing the confidence of the
00:06:17.720 House, which is the opposite of what the Conservatives did that we rightly railed against back in 2015.
00:06:23.420 And incidentally, there's this little nugget, as Brian Lilly called it when he posted it
00:06:29.560 on Twitter, from the Liberals' 2015 platform under a section called Prorogation and Omnibus
00:06:35.640 Bills, and it says, quote, we will not resort to legislative tricks to avoid scrutiny.
00:06:41.400 Stephen Harper has used prorogation to avoid difficult political circumstances.
00:06:46.020 We will not.
00:06:47.620 So, again, not as advertised is a pretty good way of describing Justin Trudeau, but again,
00:06:53.900 it goes back to his whole narrative and that of all of the Liberal defenders that it's different
00:06:58.100 when we do it.
00:06:59.300 That is Justin Trudeau's guiding principle.
00:07:01.880 It's different when we do it.
00:07:02.980 Everything Stephen Harper did was wrong, but everything we did was for pure, moral, justifiable
00:07:08.240 reasons, even if it's pretty much the same thing.
00:07:10.420 And, you know, listen, you could make an argument against Stephen Harper's coalition on the grounds
00:07:15.240 that, yes, he was trying to avoid a vote, but there was also going to be a vote that would
00:07:21.540 have circumvented an election that had just happened.
00:07:25.440 In Justin Trudeau's case, it's not just the confidence vote that we should be concerned
00:07:30.080 about that is being avoided because, yes, that will happen when Parliament goes back in
00:07:34.900 the fall.
00:07:35.700 The bigger issue here is that we're looking at an ongoing investigation, a finance probe.
00:07:41.940 Now, Trudeau is insisting that parts of it are still going to continue, that documents
00:07:45.480 have been handed over, and that may be so, but it doesn't change the fact that any ability
00:07:51.760 for Parliament to deal with this, and more importantly, any ability for the new leader of
00:07:57.160 the Conservative Party of Canada to have a role in Parliament more quickly, more imminently,
00:08:02.700 is gone, is gone.
00:08:04.440 So Trudeau is actually taking the opposition out of play, and I don't just mean the Conservatives,
00:08:09.980 but all of the mechanisms of the opposition, the Conservatives, the Bloc, and even, yeah,
00:08:14.440 the NDP, he's taking them out of play, doing exactly what he wanted to do at the very beginning
00:08:19.700 of this pandemic, which was to basically say, you know what, we're going to do things extra
00:08:24.820 parliamentar, extra parliamentarily, that's the term I'll make up right now.
00:08:29.100 We're going to do things outside of the parliamentary process, and this is where, again, the Prime
00:08:33.900 Minister tries to become a king.
00:08:35.560 So we are, as Canadians now, looking at something that is not insignificant, and I don't want
00:08:42.220 people to get buried down in the weeds about the importance of, you know, parliamentary procedure
00:08:48.440 and all of this stuff, because, yeah, if you're a dork like me and you want to pay attention
00:08:52.120 to that, you can.
00:08:52.980 But even if you never use the word prorogue again, understand that in this context, what
00:08:59.080 Justin Trudeau is doing is trying to immunize himself from all of the things that are happening
00:09:04.460 right now, and from the House of Cards that, in many respects, seems like it is falling down
00:09:09.960 upon his head at this very moment.
00:09:13.320 And if you don't believe that's happening, just look at what preceded the prorogation, which
00:09:18.780 is the departure of his finance minister, who's been his finance minister since the very beginning
00:09:23.980 of the Trudeau government back in 2015, Bill Morneau.
00:09:27.720 And on Monday, I started in a very facetious way.
00:09:31.420 I said, you know, Minister Morneau, blink twice if you need help, blink three times if you're
00:09:35.460 okay.
00:09:36.140 And it's amazing how true that ended up being.
00:09:38.800 I was concerned because I pre-recorded the show.
00:09:41.540 We don't do it live always.
00:09:42.700 But I was concerned, is the show that I do going to be dated by the time it comes out?
00:09:49.040 Because I knew that as I was recording, Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau were having their,
00:09:53.280 you know, secret meeting on Parliament Hill.
00:09:55.760 And I was a bit worried.
00:09:57.200 And thankfully, he didn't.
00:09:58.040 I mean, the show came out and still we didn't have any insight about what was going to happen.
00:10:02.180 And then it was a couple of hours later that Bill Morneau gets up and says he's resigning,
00:10:06.760 not just as finance minister, but also as a member of Parliament.
00:10:10.960 So he's tapping out.
00:10:12.420 Bill Morneau is gone.
00:10:13.820 And the thing that we should see about this as being particularly insidious is that the
00:10:19.220 Liberals pretend that this was always planned, that there was, you know, no issue, no time
00:10:24.380 sensitive nature.
00:10:25.300 Morneau himself, when he was speaking, it said, oh, you know, I was always going to, you
00:10:29.140 know, not serve more than two terms, even though I'm not convinced he's ever said that
00:10:33.160 publicly before.
00:10:34.220 It may be true that he was never going to be elected more than twice, but I've never heard
00:10:38.400 him say that.
00:10:39.120 And he then comes out and says, oh, you know, it's just this was the time.
00:10:43.160 And, you know, we need a finance minister that has the longer term interests of Canada
00:10:47.460 in mind as we look forward to a long term recovery for coronavirus.
00:10:52.400 So his departure, if you listen to it, is basically something that we're supposed to think is just
00:10:59.260 entirely insignificant.
00:11:00.660 Take a listen.
00:11:01.720 I met with the prime minister today to inform him that I did not intend to run again in
00:11:07.280 the next federal election.
00:11:09.260 It's never been my plan to run for more than two federal election cycles.
00:11:13.940 As we move to the next phase of our fight against the pandemic and pave the road towards economic
00:11:21.960 recovery, we must recognize that this process will take many years.
00:11:26.960 It's the right time for a new finance minister to deliver on that plan for the long and challenging
00:11:33.060 road ahead.
00:11:33.660 That's why I'll be stepping down as finance minister and as member of parliament for Toronto
00:11:39.000 Centre.
00:11:39.320 But this is coming after days of leaks from presumably the prime minister's office and
00:11:45.680 the former finance minister's office about all the reasons that Justin Trudeau and Bill
00:11:50.260 Morneau aren't getting along, all the things that they're arguing on, whether it was green
00:11:54.460 energy programs, coronavirus recovery, deficits, all of these other things.
00:11:59.560 And this is apparently completely insignificant.
00:12:02.420 No one cares about that.
00:12:03.400 It's not about the WE scandal.
00:12:04.580 It's not about the $41,000 in travel that Morneau took from WE and only three years later
00:12:10.160 decided, hmm, maybe I should pay that back here, you know, just have some pocket change.
00:12:14.180 It's nothing to do with that.
00:12:15.340 That was all just coincidence.
00:12:16.800 This is just because Bill Morneau wants to run for the OECD.
00:12:20.440 No, no, no, not the OECD, the OECD.
00:12:23.660 You have to listen really carefully in these days.
00:12:26.180 Although, who knows?
00:12:27.220 Maybe like everything else Bill Morneau touches, it will turn into a WE enterprise before long.
00:12:33.620 But at this point, it's not the OECD, it's just the OECD.
00:12:37.980 But Bill Morneau saying he wants the Secretary General job, Justin Trudeau saying he'll throw
00:12:42.800 the full support of the Canadian government behind that.
00:12:45.440 We are supposed to take that as a sign that, oh, see, everything is fine.
00:12:51.260 You don't tap out of a financial crisis as finance minister in a country the size of Canada
00:12:58.640 unless you have to.
00:13:01.800 He claims that he was not asked to leave by Justin Trudeau.
00:13:05.940 He claims he was not asked to leave.
00:13:07.680 But here's what was interesting.
00:13:09.120 Justin Trudeau was asked at a press conference, I think it was the next day, if he asked him
00:13:13.200 to stay on and he didn't give an answer.
00:13:15.800 So it doesn't sound like there was much of a choice here.
00:13:20.500 It doesn't sound like there was much of an alternative to Morneau leaving.
00:13:24.640 And this has happened in a long string.
00:13:27.020 I know we focus on Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, but there have been a long string
00:13:32.420 of ministers that have not been able to stick around working for Justin Trudeau.
00:13:37.160 Going back to, I think, his very first year in office, John McCallum and Stephane Dion.
00:13:41.940 You've had Scott Bryson leave.
00:13:43.440 You've had numerous, numerous ministers that have left, all under varying degrees of circumstances
00:13:50.120 and severity of those circumstances, but still we're not talking about as cohesive a cabinet
00:13:55.500 as Justin Trudeau is trying to make everyone believe.
00:13:59.540 So when Morneau leaves, tries to say that everything's fine, I am as a Canadian, I am as
00:14:06.000 a journalist looking at this and saying this does not happen unless it has to.
00:14:10.960 And, you know, for them to try to say that the leaks of all of these fights don't matter
00:14:15.880 is actually pretty brazen.
00:14:18.660 And Bill Morneau himself just said, this was, I'll roll the clip, but he just said, oh,
00:14:22.420 no, no, no, this was nothing.
00:14:23.440 This was just, you know, the vigorous debate that we need to stand up for Canadians.
00:14:27.780 I had a constructive conversation with the prime minister this morning.
00:14:32.440 We have always worked together over the course of the last five years in a way that recognized
00:14:38.020 the importance of vigorous discussion and debate to get to the best policies for Canadians.
00:14:43.200 I'm proud of what we've done over the last five years, working to make sure that we have
00:14:47.580 a more inclusive economy, that we have a greener economy.
00:14:50.260 And I know that work will continue.
00:14:52.240 So, I mean, yes, vigorous debate's important.
00:14:54.460 And obviously you want ministers that are prepared to push back.
00:14:57.940 And once they reach a decision, everyone has to be a united front.
00:15:01.200 I don't think anyone disagrees in principle with that.
00:15:04.220 But there is a difference between what he is saying as far as, oh, you know, we didn't
00:15:09.980 really have any disagreements that were substantive and all of the media coverage of that growing
00:15:17.360 rift and that growing schism between the two of them, none of which has actually been denied.
00:15:23.360 This is the thing, none of which has actually been denied.
00:15:25.760 So for the Morneau-Trudeau team to just put on the happy face and say, no, everything's
00:15:30.640 good and, you know, Morneau's seeking a promotion, he's going to be the secretary general, and
00:15:34.900 gave that just abysmal line that just makes me cringe and want to like shove a hammer through
00:15:39.420 my eye.
00:15:40.180 I don't even know what that would look like, but it wouldn't be good to say, oh, we need
00:15:43.640 more Canada in the world, not less.
00:15:45.600 I'm like, can you do anything without resorting to the most useless and ridiculous of platitudes?
00:15:50.860 The answer is clearly no.
00:15:52.140 So I don't know why I ask.
00:15:54.240 But in any case, so Morneau's gone.
00:15:56.920 And who do we get?
00:15:57.880 Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. 0.68
00:16:01.480 Chrystia Freeland coming.
00:16:02.840 Yes, that's the circus music, because this is exactly what's happening.
00:16:06.760 So she is just juggling as many different roles and portfolios as possible.
00:16:11.480 Chrystia Freeland, deputy prime minister still, and now also finance minister, which is absolutely
00:16:17.820 fantastic.
00:16:18.520 We have the first female finance minister. 1.00
00:16:21.020 The downside is we also have the first Chrystia Freeland finance minister, which is the bigger 0.98
00:16:25.920 problem.
00:16:26.840 So here's a woman who has no experience in finance at all. 1.00
00:16:32.760 She has no real business experience either.
00:16:35.900 She was a reporter.
00:16:37.600 I mean, she wasn't even a business reporter.
00:16:39.220 She was, you know, a reporter interviewing Russian oligarchs, which I suppose maybe you
00:16:43.960 pick up some business acumen there.
00:16:45.800 And then she was responsible for a business project at Reuters that was absolutely driven
00:16:51.280 into the ground.
00:16:51.900 And after she left, they said, yeah, let's let's get rid of this.
00:16:55.160 And then she's been a minister and she was a foreign minister.
00:16:58.120 She was the deputy prime minister.
00:16:59.940 Nowhere was she connected to the finance portfolio.
00:17:03.400 As far as I can tell, or any of the things that you would want to see as assets to a finance
00:17:11.200 minister, such as, you know, business experience, management experience, finance.
00:17:15.780 I mean, say what you will about Bill Morneau and a lot of his policies and directives.
00:17:19.920 But but he was a rich guy who ran a business.
00:17:22.120 So, I mean, as far as finance ministers go, that's probably a pretty good, maybe not the
00:17:27.860 guy part, but someone who's rich and has run a business, I think, is generally speaking
00:17:31.660 going to have a leg up on someone who's not run a business.
00:17:34.640 And it's not to say that wealth is a prerequisite.
00:17:37.320 But if you're talking about managing the country's money, having some experience managing
00:17:41.960 money seems to be a pretty good priority to have there.
00:17:45.280 So when I look at Chrystia Freeland being appointed to this role and the fact that her acceptance
00:17:52.400 speech, if you will, was all about breaking the glass ceiling and stuff like that, it has
00:17:56.980 me thinking that this is another one of these displays of virtue signaling, like when the
00:18:01.520 Trudeau government talks about having the gender lens in the budget and talking about
00:18:05.700 having gender equality at the forefront of the NAFTA renegotiations, where it's like there's
00:18:10.780 something very important that's being taken off the table to be replaced by something
00:18:15.860 that is purely theatrical.
00:18:18.440 Because men and women are both affected by Canada's finances.
00:18:21.480 The idea of putting a gender lens in there because, oh, we have to make sure that we're 1.00
00:18:25.640 having a feminist budget. 1.00
00:18:27.600 This is the type of thing that we're getting.
00:18:29.880 And for Chrystia Freeland, who in many cases has been the chief virtue signaler on a lot of
00:18:35.280 things, certainly NAFTA negotiations, to put her at the helm of finance is not going to be
00:18:40.760 I think a decision that will reflect well in the long run, but she has proven one thing
00:18:47.900 which makes her valuable.
00:18:49.300 She is blindly loyal to Justin Trudeau.
00:18:52.740 And I shouldn't say blindly loyal.
00:18:54.960 She's made a choice.
00:18:55.780 She's made a decision.
00:18:56.920 She is fiercely loyal to Justin Trudeau.
00:18:59.060 That's a better way of putting it.
00:19:00.520 Because Freeland, despite all the rifts that have happened between Trudeau and Dion, Trudeau
00:19:05.820 and McCallum, Trudeau and Bryson, Trudeau and Morneau, all of these, Freeland has been
00:19:10.000 on Team Trudeau.
00:19:11.940 And there's a reason that she is his lieutenant.
00:19:14.820 There's a reason that she is his deputy and remains that role because she has proven and
00:19:20.080 she has made that determination that she's not going to be the one that is ever going
00:19:25.100 to go against him.
00:19:26.540 So she sets herself up as the heir apparent if and when Trudeau does resign.
00:19:30.740 Although Trudeau did say this week that he is planning on running again in the next election.
00:19:35.120 He actually laughed or more like cackled when, I don't know if we have that clip, but he
00:19:39.560 like actually cackled when he was asked about it.
00:19:42.600 We do have it.
00:19:43.260 Here we go.
00:19:43.940 Will you be on the ballot the next time there's an election?
00:19:46.780 Absolutely.
00:19:47.980 There are a lot of challenges Canada is facing right now.
00:19:51.120 And I'm actually excited about the opportunity and the responsibility.
00:19:56.100 So take from that what you will.
00:19:57.840 I don't know if it was like the cackling is the tell that he's lying or I don't know if
00:20:01.280 the cackle is just proof of the indignation because he can't believe that there would
00:20:05.820 be any circumstance in which he wouldn't run.
00:20:07.880 But but either way, we we market here on August 19th, 2020.
00:20:12.540 But all of this is going to be, I think, a big problem for Canadians.
00:20:18.140 And we're already at that point.
00:20:20.220 I think Pierre Polyev summed up a lot of the frustration and angst about this when he
00:20:24.620 spoke after Morneau stepped down as finance minister.
00:20:28.560 We have a government of elites and self-serving snobs who look down on ordinary working class 0.90
00:20:40.120 Canadians.
00:20:40.980 I'm not sure if that's true of the governor general, but it's certainly true of the people
00:20:45.380 around the prime minister.
00:20:47.440 They think they're better than everyday Canadians. 0.93
00:20:50.220 They think they can turn their nose up at the people.
00:20:53.200 And they believe that they have a God-given entitlement to rule over the country and use
00:21:01.760 the Treasury as their personal piggy bank.
00:21:04.760 That is the attitude of entitlement that we have come to expect from Trudeau and everyone
00:21:10.860 he has put in positions of power.
00:21:12.800 Hey, tell us how you really feel, Pierre.
00:21:14.480 Don't don't hold back like you've been doing.
00:21:16.680 I kid.
00:21:17.160 Pierre has never once held back in his life.
00:21:19.460 I don't think when it comes to political barbs and we as Canadians are all the better
00:21:23.880 for it, I think, or certainly all the more entertained by it.
00:21:27.140 So this is where we have to take stock of what it is that we want moving forward, because
00:21:33.760 the liberals are cleaning house.
00:21:35.700 They want to claim that we had nothing to do with Bill Morneau stepping down, that all
00:21:40.780 of the disagreements, that Trudeau wanting to rack up monumental deficits and Morneau not
00:21:45.720 wanting to that that all is a window dressing.
00:21:48.000 It's all about the OECD and all about Morneau just jumping to this better opportunity because
00:21:53.380 he, for some reason, didn't want to have a life in politics, but he wants to now go for
00:21:59.780 this international organization, which is, you know, just basically supranational politics.
00:22:05.060 So that is a bit odd.
00:22:07.520 So it's not even like he's returning to the private sector, which would justify the narrative
00:22:12.040 if he's put forward that, oh, no, no, no, I just wanted to, you know, do a couple of
00:22:15.220 years in politics and then, you know, get back to my real life.
00:22:18.600 So take from that what you will.
00:22:21.120 But we are going to look at this going towards the fall where there may or may not be an election.
00:22:28.840 I mean, what that election would look like with, you know, public health restrictions,
00:22:32.120 I have no idea.
00:22:33.360 But we have a possible election opportunity in the fall, which means Trudeau has the next
00:22:39.620 couple of months to try to make sure that the NDP does not leave his side.
00:22:47.580 And if you want Canada to be in good hands, let's just take a moment to realize that right
00:22:55.380 now the balance of power is being held by Jagmeet Singh because the bloc is saying, yeah,
00:23:01.280 we're done.
00:23:02.160 The conservatives, you know, will not vote to have confidence when push comes to shove,
00:23:06.980 especially since they'll have their new leader effective Sunday of this week, assuming all
00:23:11.180 goes to plan.
00:23:12.240 You've got a few independent MPs, but I don't see them as triggering the downfall of government.
00:23:17.380 Someone asked me about this the other day, actually.
00:23:19.580 They said, do I think Jody Wilson-Raybould, who's sitting as an independent, will vote to
00:23:25.240 defeat the government?
00:23:26.460 And I really don't see it for a couple of reasons.
00:23:30.000 Number one, she is to her heart, to her core, a liberal.
00:23:33.760 Jody Wilson-Raybould, maybe not a capital L liberal, but she is a progressive still. 0.50
00:23:39.200 And her departure from the liberal party, the capital L liberals, had more to do with
00:23:45.220 her discontent about the management of it and Justin Trudeau personally than the aims.
00:23:51.380 And she's been very clear about this.
00:23:52.820 She still supports the fundamental liberal vision for Canada.
00:23:56.940 So I don't think she's going to vote against that in favor of what would almost assuredly
00:24:02.900 be a conservative vision for Canada.
00:24:06.380 So that's part of the problem.
00:24:08.580 And the other part is that I don't think Jody Wilson-Raybould wants an election.
00:24:12.640 She won as an independent, which is a very difficult thing to do in Canadian politics and
00:24:17.380 a very rare thing to do in Canadian politics.
00:24:19.820 So for Jody Wilson-Raybould to have a seat right now was the stars aligning, everything
00:24:25.800 happening in the way that was right, everything that needed to happen.
00:24:29.860 And more importantly, she had a lot more momentum going into the 2019 election than she would
00:24:35.240 now.
00:24:35.760 If she were to run again, there's no guarantee she keeps her seat. 0.98
00:24:40.740 There just isn't.
00:24:41.660 I mean, there's no guarantee for any member of parliament to keep their seat, certainly not
00:24:46.360 an independent, and you take away what was national fundraising.
00:24:49.980 If you look at her fundraising, a lot of the money that she took in came not from her Vancouver
00:24:54.020 Granville riding, but from people across the country that were supportive of what she did.
00:24:58.340 She won't have that as easily now.
00:25:00.360 And also she won't have the media that's really invested in what she's doing. 1.00
00:25:04.580 So for JWR, as she's known more colloquially to people, it would be a big gamble for her to
00:25:11.520 support anything that would put Canadians back to the polls.
00:25:15.120 So for those two reasons, which I think are pretty significant ones, I think she would
00:25:19.760 vote alongside the government.
00:25:21.160 So all of a sudden, no, you don't have enough independent votes to topple the government,
00:25:25.920 to vote a lack of confidence.
00:25:27.740 So right now, Trudeau is going to be wheeling, dealing, negotiating, doing everything possible
00:25:33.560 to ensure that when that budget and throne speech come out in the fall, that they pass.
00:25:38.760 And all of a sudden, Trudeau will say, we have a renewed mandate.
00:25:41.600 We have a renewed focus.
00:25:43.360 We've done all of this.
00:25:44.300 And I mean, Trudeau has, there's a little bit of truth to what he said, which is that,
00:25:49.440 you know, the previous budget and throne speech are kind of meaningless now because the world's
00:25:53.440 changed a fair bit since then.
00:25:54.760 And I would agree with that.
00:25:56.420 But I would also say that the next one is similarly going to be meaningless just for different
00:26:01.260 reasons, because this is now the one when the liberals are going to be an electioneering
00:26:05.140 their next throne speech, their next budget.
00:26:07.780 These are going to be political platforms.
00:26:10.740 They are not going to be government documents or public policies.
00:26:14.480 They are going to be political platforms because they know that these visions are going
00:26:18.060 to be the ones that carry the liberals into the next election, whether that's in the fall,
00:26:21.880 whether it's in the spring or whether it's a year or two years from now, because this is
00:26:26.180 now the game.
00:26:27.180 This is now the game.
00:26:29.300 It's that Trudeau has to convince Canadians that he's the only one that knows what he's
00:26:33.480 doing, that can continue along.
00:26:36.000 He's the steady hand.
00:26:36.980 He's all of that.
00:26:37.940 And it's very difficult to sell that when Bill Morneau, who is one of the more or was
00:26:43.180 one of the more capable and competent members, albeit disagreeable in terms of his conduct,
00:26:49.620 but one of the more capable and competent, just in terms of qualifications, members of
00:26:54.040 the team.
00:26:54.900 And now without that, who do you have?
00:26:57.160 Where's the bench strength?
00:26:58.660 I mean, whether you like Chrystia Freeland or not, she is there to stay.
00:27:02.060 She's around for the long haul and she is someone who tends to pull very well.
00:27:06.660 You've got Justin Trudeau.
00:27:07.840 You've got Chrystia Freeland.
00:27:09.700 Those are really now the only remaining really high profile ministers that are really, I think,
00:27:18.060 the diehard loyalists.
00:27:19.260 I mean, you've got other people that are there, clearly.
00:27:21.660 I mean, David Lamedi is the attorney general.
00:27:24.160 Patty Hajdu is the health minister.
00:27:25.720 You've got Mona Fortier.
00:27:27.220 I mean, you've got people in cabinet, but none of these people do as much to, you know,
00:27:32.180 trumpet the Justin Trudeau team as Freeland and Trudeau.
00:27:39.040 And, you know, it's amazing how far we've fallen from that, you know, ridiculous billboard
00:27:43.560 in Toronto of, you know, Justin Trudeau's and Bill Morneau's bromance with the hearts.
00:27:48.880 I was funny.
00:27:49.780 An American friend of mine saw me tweet out a version of this the other day and she thought
00:27:54.940 it was a Photoshop.
00:27:55.840 She didn't realize that anyone would actually, any serious people like the finance minister
00:28:00.640 and prime minister of a G7 country would actually put forward some photo that looks like it's
00:28:05.900 from like some buddy comedy Hallmark movie.
00:28:08.260 She didn't believe it was real.
00:28:09.320 And I, as a Canadian, it actually pained me to have to share that it was real, but that's
00:28:15.480 where we are, folks.
00:28:16.680 In any case, we have to wrap things up for today.
00:28:20.660 We will keep tabs on what's happening.
00:28:22.700 And next week we'll have a new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and we'll try
00:28:27.440 to get them on the show for a bit of a victory speech after those results come in.
00:28:32.060 Also, we are going to be doing a live show on Sunday night as the results come in.
00:28:38.160 I think we're starting at 5 p.m.
00:28:39.940 Eastern time, but if you check tnc.news for details, you'll have all of the information
00:28:44.740 you need there, but you can watch a little bit of a pre-show, watch as the results come
00:28:48.340 in with us and then a post-show analysis of what happened.
00:28:51.900 So that's all coming up this weekend.
00:28:53.660 We'll talk to you then.
00:28:54.620 Thank you.
00:28:55.220 God bless and good day, Canada.
00:28:56.580 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:28:59.200 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.