Juno News - Guns and 3D Chess

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

00:00:06.700 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.820 Coming up, the need for conservative opposition to Justin Trudeau's gun grab, 0.74

00:00:17.340 big tech versus big government, and racist trash cans. 0.79

00:00:22.740 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now. 0.62

00:00:26.300 Welcome, everyone, to another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:33.180 This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:00:35.680 And if you're typing the show out somehow, for some reason, make sure autocorrect doesn't get you.

00:00:40.820 It is not, in fact, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:44.900 As I one time had the misfortune of telling a sponsor of the previous carrier of the program,

00:00:50.420 no, no, no, it's not the Irreverent Show, it's the Irreverent Show.

00:00:53.580 And that is a very, very important distinction.

00:00:56.780 I probably should have come up with a better tagline.

00:00:58.920 But you know what? We are very much embracing our irreverence on every edition of the show.

00:01:03.820 So thank you very much to those of you who are tuning in.

00:01:06.720 We've got a lot to talk about today from big tech censorship and control

00:01:10.980 and a little game of brinksmanship, actually a rather large game of brinksmanship

00:01:14.920 between Facebook and the government of Australia that has a Canadian connection.

00:01:19.480 But I also want to do a follow-up on what we started talking about earlier in the week

00:01:24.340 with the Liberal gun ban.

00:01:27.000 Now, Bill C-21, tabled by the Liberals, would do a lot of things.

00:01:31.140 As I talked about, it would actually ban toy guns.

00:01:34.060 And I've had the chance to look through this in a bit more detail.

00:01:36.680 And the way the legislation is actually worded is just bizarre.

00:01:40.500 You don't even need to be able to fire something from a device.

00:01:43.640 If it looks like a gun, it is going to be illegal unless it's an antique.

00:01:47.920 So if you've got, you know, for whatever reason, a handgun paperweight or something,

00:01:52.600 well, that's not going to be allowed because the Liberals have decided

00:01:55.760 they're going to go after the aesthetics and theatrics rather than actual gun crime.

00:02:00.440 So that's one thing.

00:02:01.560 The other part, though, is that the Liberal bill will kind of indefinitely force you

00:02:07.020 to either sell your gun to the government if it's one of the ones that they've prohibited

00:02:11.080 or hold on to it without being able to do anything to it ever again.

00:02:15.120 So if you've got a Mini-14, if you've got an AR-15, if you've got one of the 1,500 models

00:02:20.900 that the Liberals decided to ban, you can hold on to it if you want.

00:02:25.380 You can't shoot it.

00:02:26.600 You can't transport it.

00:02:27.980 You can't sell it.

00:02:28.980 You can't do anything, even pass it on in death.

00:02:32.020 You can't do that.

00:02:32.800 All you can do is hold on to it in a locked cabinet at home.

00:02:37.380 In fact, I'm not even sure if you're allowed to clean it technically because then the Liberals

00:02:40.880 would be asking, well, why do you need to clean it if you haven't been able to use it

00:02:43.600 since, you know, 2020?

00:02:46.060 So this is the big problem is that you've got people that invested a lot of money building

00:02:50.100 up gun collections and they're now sitting on what Justin Trudeau has called completely

00:02:55.180 useless devices.

00:02:57.140 Take a look at this clip from Trudeau's press conference earlier in the week.

00:03:00.660 We have, since last spring, banned assault-style weapons in this country.

00:03:07.160 1,500 different models that can now no longer be used, shot in one's backyard, transported,

00:03:16.200 sold, bequeathed, transferred.

00:03:19.780 Since last spring, these assault-style weapons cannot be used in Canada.

00:03:25.580 That was a significant step forward.

00:03:28.200 We are now ensuring that there is a buyback program so that Canadians who lawfully purchase

00:03:36.860 these weapons are treated fairly and respectfully and now that they are next to useless as weapons

00:03:45.440 are able to obtain fair compensation for that.

00:03:50.320 And there's almost a giddiness there because the government is giving you the illusion of

00:03:54.840 a choice.

00:03:55.160 They're saying, well, we're not forcing you to sell it back to the government.

00:03:58.320 I say back.

00:03:59.060 I mean, that is the biggest misnomer of this all.

00:04:01.420 They never owned it.

00:04:02.120 It was never theirs.

00:04:03.020 It's like build back better is now buy back better, except there's no back and there's

00:04:06.800 no buy.

00:04:07.340 It's just taking and here's a bit of money for you.

00:04:09.960 So the government is saying, well, we're not forcing you.

00:04:12.640 We're not confiscating it.

00:04:13.600 You can sell it or you can just hold on to it. 0.95

00:04:16.820 But you are sitting on something that is completely useless.

00:04:19.860 This is basically the liberals' scrap metal program where they want to make every firearm

00:04:24.000 in the country that they don't like a piece of scrap metal.

00:04:27.720 So what is it that Canadian gun owners are supposed to do about this?

00:04:31.380 I've had so many emails from gun owners since Tuesday's show that have been saying I've got

00:04:35.900 thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

00:04:37.560 I don't know if the liberals are going to give me fair market value for it.

00:04:40.620 I have no idea how much I'll be able to get for this.

00:04:43.300 And you've also got guns that have some sort of a sentimental value, but they were purchased

00:04:48.020 to use.

00:04:48.700 They were purchased to do sports shooting, to participate in, in many cases, competitions

00:04:53.400 or for some people hunting.

00:04:55.500 They were purchased with the intent of doing all of these things that are now illegal.

00:05:01.280 And the question is, you know what?

00:05:03.240 Is Aaron O'Toole, if he wins, going to do anything about this?

00:05:06.460 Aaron O'Toole had a press conference this morning and I asked him about this in very clear

00:05:12.040 terms and the answer itself wasn't all that clear.

00:05:15.820 Why don't you take a listen?

00:05:16.640 This is the full exchange.

00:05:18.060 You get one question and one follow-up at these press conferences.

00:05:21.120 And I want you to listen to the question and the answer because the answer on its own might

00:05:26.020 sound fine enough, but not when you hear it in relation to what the question was actually

00:05:30.660 trying to elicit.

00:05:31.660 Good morning, Mr. O'Toole.

00:05:33.420 The Liberals' firearms bill that was tabled earlier this week will give Canadians two options

00:05:38.720 for a number of legally purchased firearms, either sell it back to the government or hold

00:05:44.100 on to it indefinitely without the right to transfer, sell, use, or even bequeath it to

00:05:48.920 someone else.

00:05:50.060 And mainly, this is about guns that were prohibited by Order and Council back in May, those 1,500

00:05:55.220 models.

00:05:56.380 If this legislation passes and you should subsequently form government, would you repeal this legislation

00:06:03.160 and would you reverse those 1,500 prohibitions?

00:06:07.440 Thank you, Andrew.

00:06:08.800 I think the Liberal Party and Mr. Trudeau need to stop misleading people when it comes to

00:06:14.540 public safety issues.

00:06:15.800 No one likes to see some of the shootings we've seen in the cities and some of the gang violence,

00:06:23.280 criminal violence we've seen.

00:06:25.220 Having an approach that goes after law-abiding Canadians, hunters and people like that is

00:06:30.440 actually ignoring the real problem.

00:06:31.980 Mr. Trudeau and his caucus voted against a measure that was intended to stop the illegal

00:06:37.840 smuggling of firearms from the United States, where if you speak to law enforcement, that

00:06:44.260 is the vast, vast majority of the problem.

00:06:46.940 So let's target the problem.

00:06:48.960 That is what I will do as Prime Minister.

00:06:51.060 I won't try and divide and mislead Canadians.

00:06:53.620 I will try and actually target and prevent these firearms from getting in the hands of criminals.

00:06:59.760 With respect, Mr. O'Toole, you didn't really answer the question there, so I'll try framing

00:07:05.660 it in a different way.

00:07:07.000 If you're a Canadian who has a firearm that you legally purchased that the Trudeau government

00:07:11.300 has declared prohibited, will an O'Toole government make a change that will allow that

00:07:15.940 Canadian to keep that firearm legally and use it the way they were prior to the prohibition?

00:07:20.000 Andrew, let me be perfectly clear.

00:07:23.280 We do not support this legislation because it's actually dividing Canadians and misleading

00:07:28.500 Canadians.

00:07:29.340 So we will have a totally different approach.

00:07:32.120 The problem, as much as 80 to 90 percent of the firearms used in illegal activities, mainly

00:07:39.000 in large cities, come from illegal smuggling from the United States.

00:07:42.600 The Trudeau government has made that worse through inaction at the border in the last four-plus

00:07:49.260 years.

00:07:50.280 That is where the resources need to go.

00:07:52.500 And if we can partner with law enforcement provinces and cities to stop that illegal smuggling

00:07:58.180 operation, that will be our key priority.

00:08:01.060 It won't be trying to blame law-abiding people who are farmers, hunters, and sports shooters.

00:08:08.300 The statistics show they follow the rules.

00:08:11.860 The terrible attack Mr. Trudeau tried to use in Nova Scotia as some reason for this was

00:08:19.300 a terrible attack perpetrated by someone with illegally obtained weapons.

00:08:23.860 That needs to be part of the dialogue so that we're not misleading Canadians as the Liberal

00:08:28.180 government tends to do.

00:08:29.480 So Aaron O'Toole is clear that he opposes the legislation.

00:08:33.560 He's clear that he opposes the bill.

00:08:34.940 What he was not clear about is whether he would reverse the prohibitions in May.

00:08:40.520 And those prohibitions are actually, in a lot of ways, more meaningful than the bill itself.

00:08:45.840 Because the bill does a lot of things that kind of facilitate those prohibitions.

00:08:50.100 But the issue is that you can't use any of these guns that the Liberals prohibited because

00:08:54.160 they are prohibited.

00:08:55.520 So you need someone that's going to go back and say, anything that was a restricted before

00:08:59.480 will be a restricted again.

00:09:01.280 Anything that was a non-restricted before will be non-restricted.

00:09:04.740 And make it so that these guns can be used for all the things that they were used for

00:09:08.700 without issue up until May of 2020.

00:09:12.820 The reason this is so important, and there is a lot of debate within the gun-owning community

00:09:17.480 about this, is because I want a conservative leader.

00:09:20.560 Actually, no, let me clarify.

00:09:22.180 I want any leader.

00:09:23.840 Any leader at all.

00:09:24.740 I don't care whether it's conservative, liberal, green, NDP, PPC, libertarian, Christian heritage.

00:09:29.640 I want any political leader to stand up and say, you know what, guns owned by legal gun

00:09:35.100 owners, by law-abiding Canadians, are not the problem.

00:09:38.120 I'm about issues, not partisanship.

00:09:40.440 Which means I want the best possible policy from any politician, from any leader.

00:09:44.920 People all the time say, well, how dare you criticize this person because you're supposed

00:09:48.880 to be on their side.

00:09:49.840 My side is about the issues that I think Canadians care about and should care about, and certainly

00:09:55.420 the issues that I care about.

00:09:57.440 And as a law-abiding gun owner, I care about this.

00:10:00.540 So there are a lot of people that have defended Aaron O'Toole's answer, saying, oh, well, no,

00:10:04.280 no, no, he can't say it.

00:10:05.660 He's going to do it.

00:10:06.300 He's on our side.

00:10:07.040 But he can't say it because then the media will go after him.

00:10:10.400 And sure, there's some truth to that.

00:10:12.040 The media is, let me tell you, going to go after him no matter what.

00:10:15.820 So if you think that him giving a waffly, ambiguous answer about an issue like that

00:10:20.560 is going to save him from the scourge of liberal media bias, well, you are sorely mistaken.

00:10:25.500 So I actually don't have much time for the, oh, he's playing 3D chess argument that a lot

00:10:30.680 of conservatives tend to use.

00:10:32.200 This is not just about Aaron O'Toole.

00:10:33.700 In general, this is a longstanding problem where they say, no, no, no, no, no, we, they're

00:10:38.160 on our side, but they can't do this until they get in and get a majority.

00:10:41.540 We heard that for the entirety of Stephen Harper's premiership from 2006 to 2008.

00:10:48.500 It was okay.

00:10:48.940 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:49.280 He's new.

00:10:50.020 You know what?

00:10:50.580 He can't do X, Y, Z because he's only just gotten there.

00:10:53.700 Just wait until he wins another election.

00:10:56.180 And then from 2008 to 2011, it was okay.

00:10:59.180 Yeah, I get it, but he's in a minority now.

00:11:01.360 So you got to wait until he has a majority.

00:11:03.120 Then that's when, you know, it's just open the floodgates.

00:11:05.620 And then 2011 came.

00:11:07.960 Stephen Harper had a majority government.

00:11:10.080 Now, I am a big fan of Stephen Harper.

00:11:12.600 I think he did a lot of good.

00:11:13.740 I think his government did a lot of good.

00:11:15.500 And I think he was a great steady hand through a very difficult time in Canada for economic

00:11:20.500 reasons predominantly.

00:11:22.040 And the Stephen Harper government did a lot of good.

00:11:24.880 But all of the things that hardcore red meat, small C conservatives were promised when he 0.85

00:11:30.680 got a majority didn't happen.

00:11:32.880 Senate reform being one of the big examples of this.

00:11:35.600 Dismantling the CBC, the CRTC, taking aim at some of these institutions that have become

00:11:40.720 so antagonistic to conservatives.

00:11:43.220 Supreme Court appointments.

00:11:44.520 Look at how a lot of these decisions by Harper-appointed justices have landed against free speech and

00:11:50.940 other constitutional freedoms in the years since.

00:11:54.980 So this idea of just wait until they're in there, then you get what you want, just doesn't

00:12:00.520 work.

00:12:00.880 So I don't have a lot of patience for it when people start defending answers that should

00:12:06.700 have been very easy, that aren't given, because of, well, you know what, once he gets in, he's

00:12:13.420 going to do that.

00:12:14.700 If you vote anyone, anyone in on the premise that, well, they didn't say they supported what

00:12:21.720 you care about, but you know they do deep down, you're actually sorely disappointed when

00:12:26.540 you actually have no leverage that you can use against them once they are in.

00:12:30.900 And this is a general idea, by the way, because if you vote someone in based on just this idea

00:12:36.220 that maybe they're on side, but you have nothing to hold them accountable with, you're actually 0.98

00:12:41.600 a big sucker. 0.99

00:12:43.240 And I say this for any gun owner or any group that has an issue it cares about. 0.98

00:12:47.880 Don't expect that someone will be there for you if they're not prepared to take a stand

00:12:52.140 for the thing you care about when they are running.

00:12:56.180 We heard lots of things from Aaron O'Toole during the leadership that he was going to

00:13:00.140 do.

00:13:00.360 Some very specific things.

00:13:01.900 One of them is defunding, well, to be honest, privatizing, fully privatizing the CBC.

00:13:08.400 You can't weasel out of that.

00:13:10.040 That has to be part of the conservative platform.

00:13:13.160 He took a stand for gun ownership.

00:13:14.720 Now, granted, the prohibition had happened by the time the conservative leadership race

00:13:19.820 came around.

00:13:20.700 But now that Aaron O'Toole is the leader, I want to hear someone say, yeah, you know what?

00:13:24.100 All these gun owners who are sitting on things that are now prohibited, help is on the way.

00:13:28.680 Don't sell them back to the government.

00:13:30.280 If a conservative government is elected, you're going to find that we are there for you.

00:13:35.600 That's what I would have liked.

00:13:37.240 Something clear, something concise, and not something that leaves people with more questions

00:13:42.100 than answers.

00:13:42.740 And the stakes are very high.

00:13:45.600 I would say pro-lifers and gun owners are the two most mobilized, organized groups on

00:13:52.260 the right in Canadian politics, or generally on the right.

00:13:55.260 The left has labor unions.

00:13:56.880 Conservatives, by and large, don't.

00:13:58.720 But organized issue groups like the gun community and like social conservatives, they are very

00:14:04.160 powerful.

00:14:04.800 These groups combined, either on their own or together, theoretically, not that they care

00:14:09.200 about the same things necessarily.

00:14:10.480 These groups are tremendously powerful and can sway nominations, can sway leaderships,

00:14:16.040 and actually can sway elections.

00:14:18.480 And I did an interview with Ezra Levant over at Rebel News yesterday in which I talked about

00:14:23.140 this.

00:14:23.340 And I said, you know, standing up for gun ownership is probably not going to get you

00:14:27.220 many votes from the left to the center.

00:14:28.840 But not standing up for gun ownership is going to cost you a lot of votes from yourself.

00:14:34.820 And people will say, well, I mean, who else are gun owners going to vote for?

00:14:38.000 It's not about that.

00:14:39.720 Gun owners may say, well, the conservatives are the best hope, so I'm always going to 1.00

00:14:43.020 vote conservative.

00:14:44.080 Or PPC, whatever the case may be.

00:14:46.000 But a lot of them will stay home.

00:14:49.000 And a lot of them will not bend over backwards if they don't feel they're getting something

00:14:52.800 out of it.

00:14:53.440 So if you want gun owners to show up, to donate, to vote, to volunteer, to do all of these things,

00:14:59.080 you have to give them a reason to do it.

00:15:01.940 So even if you might not pick up votes from the GTA centrist by standing up for the AR-15,

00:15:07.780 you are going to lose a lot of votes of people that you need, people that are part of your

00:15:11.840 base, if you don't talk to the base, if you don't rely on the base for support.

00:15:19.020 So the cautionary tale in all of this is that if a politician or political leader is not going

00:15:24.300 to speak up for you before they're in the office they desire, in this case, Canada's

00:15:28.560 premiership, there's no guarantee they will speak up for you in office.

00:15:32.480 Now, you may say there's no guarantee they will anyway, but you have a lot more leverage

00:15:36.620 if you can hold up a promise they've made, a statement they've made previously, to compare

00:15:41.320 it against whatever action they eventually take.

00:15:45.160 And mark my words, this is not a controversial thing to do.

00:15:49.880 This is not a controversial thing for someone to speak up on and say, well, actually, yes,

00:15:54.220 we support gun ownership and law-abiding gun owners because they aren't the problem.

00:15:57.880 Just as one example here, and I know I talked about a little bit of this on Tuesday, there

00:16:02.380 was a great story in the Toronto Sun by Brian Passifume.

00:16:05.960 He says, Toronto malls handgun ban, illegal guns still flood city streets.

00:16:11.380 And one of the issues I pointed out previously was that we need data collection, is that there

00:16:16.500 is no national data for whichever guns are coming from legal origins versus illegal origins.

00:16:23.780 And when we do have little isolated pockets of data, we know those data say, in fact, that

00:16:29.460 it is smuggling that's the problem, where we're not talking about law-abiding gun owners or

00:16:34.460 legal gun owners as having guns that are ending up being used in crime.

00:16:38.680 In Toronto, the Toronto police maintain a guns seized Twitter account.

00:16:43.980 And if you look through this, which I actually hadn't seen before, so I'm glad that Brian did

00:16:48.240 do the deep dive into it, he actually found something that kind of disqualifies what the

00:16:54.180 government is claiming the problem is.

00:16:56.360 20 of the 23 weapons tweeted since January 1st were handguns, and all but one were prohibited.

00:17:04.500 So that means, and granted this is a small sample size, just 23 guns seized this year,

00:17:09.320 but of those, the guns were already illegal to buy, which means that prohibiting other

00:17:16.140 things probably won't prevent people from buying those, given that it already isn't.

00:17:20.640 But oh, John Tory loves this.

00:17:22.300 John Tory's come out just very happy about the federal gun ban, as has Kennedy Stewart,

00:17:27.940 the mayor of Vancouver.

00:17:29.460 The mayor of Montreal was positively gleeful, but she said it doesn't go far enough.

00:17:34.120 She doesn't just want municipalities to be able to ban.

00:17:36.700 No, she told one of our researchers at True North that she actually wanted even more.

00:17:41.940 She wanted a national handgun ban, but you better believe Montreal is probably going to 1.00

00:17:46.800 be availing itself of its municipal right granted by the liberals to restrict these handguns.

00:17:51.740 So you've got the biggest mayor, or the mayors of the biggest cities in Canada that are jumping

00:17:56.520 up and down saying, this is great, we can't wait to do this.

00:17:59.380 Meaning that now the federal government has basically deputized municipal governments to

00:18:04.140 start controlling criminal law.

00:18:06.220 And I hope to goodness this gets challenged, because this opens the door to a lot of other

00:18:10.280 issues beyond firearms that we could have problems with.

00:18:13.820 What if municipalities could start drafting their own immigration policy?

00:18:17.120 What if municipal governments just become these individual city states across Canada

00:18:21.200 on so many key issues?

00:18:22.900 Now, in some ways this sounds absurd, but I drive home the point that we can't have the

00:18:28.580 liberal government just giving power to municipal governments just to do what they lack the

00:18:33.020 political capital for at the federal level.

00:18:36.080 We've got to take a break.

00:18:37.220 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:18:40.120 Stay tuned.

00:18:40.560 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:18:51.560 Here is a battle that is tough to figure out who to support, big tech or big government.

00:18:58.000 Seriously, I don't even know which side I'm on.

00:18:59.940 I'm kind of leaning towards big tech in this case, which is problematic, given that I've

00:19:03.980 typically been very critical of big tech censorship.

00:19:07.020 You may remember we even had that panel last week in which we looked at it from all angles,

00:19:12.340 talking about how we solve this problem.

00:19:14.600 But in Australia, there is a game of brinksmanship that, as I termed it anyway, going on between

00:19:21.480 the Australian government and Facebook over an absurd bill passed by the government that

00:19:25.880 would force tech companies to pay news publishers for the privilege of letting news be shared on

00:19:32.840 Facebook.

00:19:33.340 This is something that was very dangerous, and I actually suspected, as did a lot of

00:19:38.420 other people, would become a model for the Canadian approach.

00:19:41.820 And it's why I've been so critical of this bill that Stephen Gilbeau is advancing, as well

00:19:46.920 as the online hate bill, which is dangerous for other reasons, that would force essentially

00:19:51.240 licensing for online publishers, that would start regulating internet publishers the way

00:19:56.420 that television and radio stations are, because it opens the door to government doing something

00:20:00.560 like this down the road.

00:20:01.700 So the reason I think this is something we need to keep in mind is that the government

00:20:06.540 was trying to blame big tech companies for the erosion of local media by saying that Facebook

00:20:12.720 is to blame somehow for no one wanting to buy a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald, which

00:20:17.720 is incidentally a lovely paper.

00:20:20.120 But the reality of this is that news publishers need Facebook far more than Facebook needs news

00:20:25.000 publishers.

00:20:25.400 So what did Facebook do?

00:20:27.360 They banned Australians from sharing news.

00:20:31.240 And they banned everyone in the world from sharing Australian news.

00:20:36.400 So if you on Facebook, as a Canadian or American or Brit, wherever you are outside of Australia,

00:20:41.980 want to share an article from the Sydney Morning Herald or from Quillette or from ABC, the Australian

00:20:47.440 ABC, I think the American ABC is still fine.

00:20:49.840 You cannot do it.

00:20:51.300 You can't share those links.

00:20:53.120 And if you're in Australia, you can't share a story either.

00:20:56.960 So Australians can, at this point, not get their news from Facebook.

00:21:01.720 Now, of course, the Australian government has come out and said that they will not be intimidated

00:21:06.640 by the tech giant.

00:21:08.620 Scott Morrison, who's the prime minister, decided to get a little bit cheeky.

00:21:12.180 He said they're going to unfriend Australia.

00:21:14.180 That's what he accused Facebook of doing.

00:21:16.800 But here's the reality of it is that Facebook's answer to this, to why it did it, was, I think,

00:21:23.860 actually pretty fair.

00:21:25.500 A statement from William Easton, the managing director for Facebook Australia and New Zealand,

00:21:30.540 says,

00:21:30.800 For Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal.

00:21:34.180 News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their news feed.

00:21:39.120 Journalism is important to a democratic society, which is why we build dedicated free tools to

00:21:44.360 support news organizations around the world in innovating their content for online audiences.

00:21:49.540 Over the last three years, we've worked with the Australian government to find a solution

00:21:53.560 that recognizes the realities of how services work.

00:21:56.680 We've long worked toward rules that would encourage innovation and collaboration between digital

00:22:01.840 platforms and news organizations.

00:22:04.340 Unfortunately, this legislation does not do that.

00:22:07.300 Instead, it seeks to penalize Facebook for content it didn't take or ask for.

00:22:13.100 And here's the thing.

00:22:14.320 If you are a big tech company, you're not publishing news.

00:22:19.560 You're not publishing news.

00:22:21.060 So it is actually the news publishers that are doing it and willingly putting their content

00:22:26.680 on Facebook and Twitter.

00:22:28.740 Australian news outlets are choosing to use Facebook to share their news.

00:22:33.540 They're choosing to invest in social media teams to figure out the best way to make videos,

00:22:38.740 the best way to share articles, the best way to share stories.

00:22:41.380 They're doing that because they want to, because that's where the audience is.

00:22:46.900 So Facebook is not taking this.

00:22:49.820 Facebook is not taking clicks away.

00:22:52.000 Facebook is not taking shares away.

00:22:53.500 Facebook has offered for free a tool that allows news publishers to share their work.

00:22:59.540 Facebook will also take money from these news publishers when they want to advertise.

00:23:03.940 But again, these publishers who advertise, and not all of them do necessarily, are choosing.

00:23:08.840 They're saying, yeah, you know what?

00:23:09.920 We think that there is a great product here we are going to spend money on.

00:23:14.240 So for government to say that Facebook needs to not just continue to provide that service, 0.90

00:23:19.840 but must pay to provide that service, is absolutely ridiculous.

00:23:26.040 It's a violation of free market principles, and also it's a fundamental inversion of what's

00:23:30.900 actually happening and how this dynamic between news and social media is unfolding.

00:23:36.200 So this is very much the nuclear option, as Matthew Ingram, who's been great on these

00:23:41.700 issues, has said.

00:23:42.840 The company is blocking Australian news publishers and Australian users.

00:23:46.860 I didn't realize when it was first announced that it would also extend to Australian outlets

00:23:51.360 in other countries.

00:23:52.640 So even if you are using a proxy server to, if you're an Australian, you're using a proxy 0.85

00:23:57.900 server to make it seem like you're accessing from one place, you're still not going to be

00:24:02.820 able to see Australian content because Australian platforms are banned.

00:24:06.880 Claire Lehman, who's the editor-in-chief of Quillette, has said that they're going to look

00:24:10.560 to move it outside of Australia.

00:24:13.480 Now, I don't know if they were going to do that anyway, or if it's just because of this,

00:24:16.840 but the Australian government, by trying to demand Facebook play ball, has now deprived

00:24:22.980 Australian citizens of the right to access news.

00:24:26.540 Now, there are a lot of things that you can say about big tech companies, about their motivations,

00:24:31.780 about what they care about, about what they value, and that's all fair game.

00:24:35.940 Facebook operates in some fundamentally unfree parts of the world, and that is not lost on

00:24:40.780 me.

00:24:40.940 People are saying, well, Facebook operates in places that have very strict government regulations

00:24:45.380 on content, but in Australia, now they're going after real news.

00:24:49.480 And that's a fair criticism.

00:24:51.260 But the point is, is that governments that think they can back Facebook into a corner are

00:24:55.960 sorely, sorely mistaken.

00:24:58.120 And as was pointed out by one friend of mine, David Clement, he said,

00:25:01.360 I'm baffled that Canadian regulators are looking at this nightmare scenario and contemplating

00:25:07.040 following Australia's lead.

00:25:09.840 That's still happening.

00:25:10.940 You've got a Canadian government that still thinks that social media companies can be vilified

00:25:15.420 in this way.

00:25:16.200 And even if you don't like them, and by the way, it bothers me that I have to take Facebook's

00:25:21.180 side.

00:25:21.880 But even if you don't like these companies, you have to understand that government forcing

00:25:27.240 them to behave in a certain way is not going to make them better.

00:25:31.600 It's only going to make things worse.

00:25:33.660 And Facebook is one example.

00:25:35.160 We haven't seen it from Twitter or Google yet.

00:25:37.400 But Facebook is one example is just saying, you know what?

00:25:40.260 This is just not worth it for us.

00:25:42.760 And this is not incidentally without precedent.

00:25:45.380 Remember back in March of 2019.

00:25:46.920 2019.

00:25:47.860 So how long was that?

00:25:49.080 Probably six months or seven months before the 2019 federal election.

00:25:53.140 Google announced that it would not allow any political advertising.

00:25:57.200 Google would not allow any political parties or third party groups to advertise.

00:26:01.280 And the reason was they did not think they could be compliant with the new rules that the

00:26:07.000 government had put in on political advertising.

00:26:09.760 So for these companies, which have GDPs that are larger than nations, many, many nations,

00:26:16.360 by the way, for them, complying with these restrictions in Canada, in Australia, in even

00:26:22.460 smaller countries is just not worth the hassle in a lot of ways.

00:26:25.860 So who loses out?

00:26:26.840 The citizens, the citizens in those countries that for whatever reason, for personal or

00:26:31.000 professional reasons, were utilizing these platforms.

00:26:33.900 They're the ones that lose out.

00:26:35.880 Now, sure, if there were a major regulation by the EU or by the United States government,

00:26:41.060 that might be of a size and scale that Facebook and Twitter and Google would have to

00:26:45.680 take stock and say, OK, what are we dealing with here?

00:26:48.620 But we are like gnats, other countries like Australia and Canada and even the UK to some

00:26:54.860 extent, in that it's just not worth the hassle.

00:26:57.280 So for Facebook, it's easy to say, you know what, we're just not going to deal with it.

00:27:02.260 As much as people like me who are newshounds think that news is like the only reason to

00:27:06.440 use social media, 96% of Facebook content is cat videos, personal updates, memes, gifs,

00:27:16.740 prank videos, clips from TV shows.

00:27:19.100 96% is non-news.

00:27:22.260 So capitulating to some government edict in Australia to have to pay for the privilege

00:27:27.520 of letting just 4% of your content be on there is not worth it.

00:27:31.100 Now, I don't know who backs down in this.

00:27:32.760 I'd say the government will have to back down because Facebook has proven it just doesn't

00:27:36.940 care.

00:27:37.960 So now the media lobby that was pushing the Australian government is going to have to

00:27:42.160 say, OK, we I'm not going to do an accent.

00:27:44.800 Don't worry.

00:27:45.480 You know, we may have just overplayed our hand a wee wee wee little bit here.

00:27:50.780 And good for Facebook in a way, because now other countries around the world are going

00:27:57.060 to think twice before they go down the same road.

00:27:58.940 And I hope Canada takes stock of that as well.

00:28:01.440 We've got to take a break.

00:28:02.700 One more segment before we wrap things up.

00:28:04.700 Stay tuned.

00:28:05.200 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:28:08.100 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:28:13.640 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:28:15.540 It's been a while since we've had a little weird random story because there's been so

00:28:18.880 much big to big stuff to talk about.

00:28:20.740 But this one out of Montreal is interesting.

00:28:24.200 Structube, which is a higher end furniture store.

00:28:27.260 It's actually it's funny.

00:28:28.120 It looks very sort of industrial and discounty.

00:28:30.960 But the first time I went in there thinking that I was looking around, I'm like, oh, man,

00:28:34.240 this stuff's expensive.

00:28:35.520 And they have like so many boutique furniture designers, all of these different lines of

00:28:39.740 products which have different names.

00:28:42.060 Now, Structube is under fire because it decided to give Arab male names to a couple of products

00:28:48.860 that you might not want your name attached to, namely trash cans.

00:28:53.200 Yes, Structube had a $119 dual compartment stainless steel waste bin called Waleed and a $59 garbage

00:29:02.700 can called Wasim. 0.95

00:29:04.560 And I don't know whether we should be more offended by the Arab male names for the garbage 1.00

00:29:08.220 cans or the fact that it was $59 for a garbage can.

00:29:12.340 But the company has apologized.

00:29:13.760 They vowed to be more careful in the future after people have said that, oh, they're going

00:29:18.320 to boycott.

00:29:18.900 They're going to go to Leon's.

00:29:19.900 They're going to buy their products from elsewhere.

00:29:22.180 Structube says it is insensitive.

00:29:24.980 It was completely unintentional.

00:29:26.700 And they'll be more thoughtful when naming products in the future.

00:29:30.720 Now, the problem with stuff like this is that if you give things any names, they're going

00:29:35.780 to be criticized for not being diverse enough.

00:29:37.820 If you had the Sarah, the Catherine, the Maddie, the Cassie, the whatever, people are going

00:29:44.320 to say, oh, well, why are their product names all just white?

00:29:47.020 Well, OK, well, let's diversify a bit.

00:29:48.660 This is, you know, the Wang, this is the Waleed, this is the, I don't, whatever. 1.00

00:29:53.200 This is the Raj. 0.98

00:29:54.080 I mean, you could name all sorts of diverse names.

00:29:56.200 And if you do that, you got to make sure that only the good products are getting the

00:30:01.000 diverse names and the crappy products. 0.90

00:30:03.500 They can get the white male names. 0.99

00:30:05.040 Like the Bob garbage can is fine. 0.98

00:30:06.900 The John garbage can is fine.

00:30:08.940 But you can't do the Waleed or the Waseem. 0.99

00:30:11.100 Now, I don't know if there was any malintent behind it.

00:30:14.660 I don't know who was the one at Structube HQ that had to do this.

00:30:18.680 But it's like naming schools, which are all being declared hate crimes years later.

00:30:23.460 Eventually, we're just only going to have numbers.

00:30:25.580 Only numbers are fine.

00:30:26.960 You can name things product one, product two, product three.

00:30:30.460 Hurricanes, even hurricane names have been put under the microscope in the last few years

00:30:35.740 when people say that, oh, well, it's actually sexist because people don't take the women 0.74

00:30:39.660 hurricane seriously.

00:30:41.160 So this is because we all have this deep bias against women and so on and so forth.

00:30:47.080 So again, anytime one of these stories happens, it's fun to laugh at.

00:30:50.800 But we are moving more and more into a society in which no one wants to do anything for risk

00:30:55.400 of being canceled down the road.

00:30:57.800 And with that, we will say farewell to you for today.

00:31:00.520 We'll be back next week with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:31:03.920 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:31:05.080 Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:31:07.180 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:31:09.260 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - February 18, 2021

Guns and 3D Chess

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