Juno News - Is 2023 going to be an election year？ (ft. Anthony Furey)

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:10.500 Coming up, Anthony Fury and I talk about all the big picture issues, media, politics, what's coming up for True North in the year ahead. Stay tuned.

00:00:19.600 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:23.000 Welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:28.500 We're still in the midst, I think, of the holiday season more broadly.

00:00:33.000 So we're taking advantage of it and taking a look at some of the bigger picture discussions that we don't often get time to do when we're chasing the horse race story of the day, the breaking news, whatever else is happening.

00:00:45.780 And this episode, I've actually been trying to put together for a couple of months now.

00:00:50.180 And just for whatever reason, we haven't been able to do it.

00:00:52.500 And a big part of it was because when this guy joined the True North team, we were in the midst of the Public Order Emergency Commission, and obviously that was dominating our coverage.

00:01:02.900 But Anthony Fury, who I don't even think I can say new now, but for the last few months has been True North's VP of Editorial and Content, is with me.

00:01:12.540 Anthony, an absolute pleasure to have you back on. Thanks for coming on today.

00:01:16.980 Yeah, thanks, Andrew. It's great to be here with you on the show, and it's great to be here at True North. It's been a great couple of months.

00:01:21.460 Yeah, it has. And I mean, obviously, you bring a wealth of experience. You and I go way back. We've had each other on each other's shows.

00:01:29.380 I've written columns that you've been kind enough to publish when you were with the Toronto Sun.

00:01:34.220 And I think it's actually really great that you're at True North now for a number of reasons.

00:01:39.220 But I was wondering if you could just first explain, I know you've talked about it a little bit in the past, why you took the plunge to new media, to independent media.

00:01:48.180 Yeah, look, it was a great privilege to be at Post Media for, well, 12 years. And I think that's a long time.

00:01:54.720 You know, you hear all these reports that say people aren't in jobs for life anymore.

00:01:57.900 Young people jump around three or four different jobs within a decade or what have you. 0.99

00:02:03.380 And I thought, oh, man, you know, I want to go out and do a little bit of that. I hope I can still count as a young person.

00:02:08.520 So it really was about exploring different opportunities out there.

00:02:12.940 And look, I think True North's growth is really impressive.

00:02:15.740 I mean, I've been friends with Candice Malcolm for many years before she created True North.

00:02:19.460 And I was always impressed with how every year I'd be speaking with Candice or other people at True North.

00:02:26.000 And just the growth is so impressive in terms of growing the audience and the reach.

00:02:29.740 And it's exciting to be something that has that energy behind it, for sure.

00:02:33.340 And it's no surprise that the media industry in general is moving away from more traditional models,

00:02:39.660 whether it's printing physical newspapers or whether it's creating a broadcast news package exclusively to go to air on a TV station or on a radio station.

00:02:49.660 I mean, increasingly, we're all sort of YouTube content creators.

00:02:52.440 We find that major television stations, after they record the broadcast, have to repackage it so it can go on Instagram or go on Facebook

00:02:59.900 or some other video model up to YouTube and newspaper companies are doing that as well.

00:03:06.440 So things are really converging to the point where the core product is actually the same.

00:03:11.860 I can't imagine I'm the first person to bring this up.

00:03:14.400 But in some ways, I think COVID was really the great equalizer because you had all of these media companies with their big, fancy, expensive studios.

00:03:21.560 And they were forced to figure out, you know, how to get guests in by Zoom and they were doing everything remotely.

00:03:27.720 And they were doing a lot of what independent media outlets and certainly what I've been doing on this show for quite a while.

00:03:33.620 And I think the audience sort of had adapted to that already.

00:03:38.000 Yeah, no, it's an interesting point.

00:03:39.660 I mean, in past years, when I would be asked to appear on CTV or CBC, of course, you say, and please show up at this studio and you spend time with the technicians and you spend time in getting some basic makeup on to go on television.

00:03:52.220 And it's an elaborate professional production and that's fine.

00:03:55.440 And they would not have allowed anything else.

00:03:57.020 I guess if you'd said, no, I don't want to leave my house.

00:03:58.560 I want to do it via Zoom.

00:03:59.920 They would prefer being a studio model, which is fine.

00:04:02.560 Of course, you get that studio look.

00:04:04.780 And now it's almost the opposite.

00:04:06.100 But that still doesn't even really happen all that much, even though COVID is behind us.

00:04:09.980 When you look at the broadcasts and the panel discussions on places like CBC, it looks just like you and I talking right now.

00:04:16.600 They're in their homes or they're broadcasting from their phone or what have you.

00:04:19.800 And I think that's fine.

00:04:21.000 But to your point, all of those assets that they have, the physical assets, they're just kind of utilizing them less.

00:04:27.840 So things have been democratized.

00:04:30.460 This was, I think, for a lot of reasons, a big year for independent media.

00:04:34.760 Obviously, the Freedom Convoy, I know I keep harping on it.

00:04:38.060 I know I've got a book about it.

00:04:39.320 I know True North has a fantastic new book about it as well.

00:04:43.120 But it was a really important moment, not just in Canadian politics and, dare I say, Canadian history.

00:04:49.880 But I think in terms of exposing the problems with some of the legacy media outlets in this country.

00:04:55.600 And I think that was just the number one thing that we heard from people throughout those few months at the beginning of this year.

00:05:01.240 That they just didn't trust CBC to tell the story.

00:05:04.800 They just didn't trust the Toronto Star to tell the story.

00:05:07.940 And I think that as far as the convoy is concerned, True North did a tremendous job with that.

00:05:13.920 And continuing along with all of these different stories that have come up, like the Public Order Emergency Commission, where do we go from here?

00:05:21.760 I mean, it's not every year you're going to get that gift as far as news value is concerned.

00:05:27.040 No, but to your point, what was the underlying tension or challenge with the storytelling and the narrative that happened this past years with the convoy, with the inquiry?

00:05:37.780 I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that there were so many news outlets that wanted to play gatekeeper.

00:05:43.600 That wanted to say, okay, we've got these people on social media.

00:05:47.660 We've got the great unwashed who are trying to set the narrative one way.

00:05:51.600 And we're going to tell them how they're wrong.

00:05:53.180 But part of the challenge with that is the great unwashed was on the ground, seeing these things happen in real time.

00:05:59.340 And you've got traditional media trying to either misdirect, misinform, or just focus on things that weren't really the true narrative there.

00:06:08.400 But because there was so much live streaming and so much firsthand experience going on, people said, this is not accurate.

00:06:15.100 And I think one of the big crises we've seen and why we see all these surveys put on by international organizations about declining trust in traditional institutions, whatever they may be, and media lumped in there as well.

00:06:27.300 Back in the 60s and the 70s, you would have that one person on the nightly news broadcast, you know, Knowlton Nash in Canada, obviously a little bit later on.

00:06:35.480 It's Lloyd Robertson and Peter Mansbridge.

00:06:37.220 There's a general sense that most people felt they could trust those people to tell them what is happening.

00:06:43.140 And at a certain point, that trust really started to decline when people thought, can I actually rely on these sort of nightly newscast figures to tell me unvarnished what's going on?

00:06:54.180 Or are they filtering it with a narrative?

00:06:55.880 And I feel like people want to really hold on now to their ability as gatekeepers.

00:07:01.140 But one of the things that both social media in general and then just this whole sort of variety of other news options has shown is that the narrative that they're actually safeguarding isn't necessarily true.

00:07:15.220 And that's a big problem.

00:07:16.340 If you're saying things that aren't accurate or things that are obviously pushing an agenda, that's going to see people ghost away from you.

00:07:23.540 And the numbers show that that's happening.

00:07:25.620 When you talk about that institutional trust, the one thing that bothers me whenever this comes up is that the legacy media types will often bring out a lot.

00:07:34.200 They'll just go right into navel gazing on this and talk about why that decline in trust is everyone else's fault.

00:07:39.980 Donald Trump, I think, was probably blamed for more of the distrust in media than there was any self-blame.

00:07:46.820 And obviously, when institutional trust across the board is being harmed, there isn't just one factor.

00:07:52.560 But I don't think there's been, and you may have a different perspective on this, a lot of recognition by the mainstream media as far as its role in that declining trust.

00:08:03.500 Yeah, not enough.

00:08:04.420 I mean, some of them are honest and they talk about it.

00:08:06.400 Obviously, the whole fact that Hillary Clinton had like 107% chance of becoming president and it didn't come to pass. 1.00

00:08:13.500 And they did have some honest postmortem saying, are we actually serving our country well?

00:08:17.340 Are we ignoring middle America?

00:08:19.160 But soon after they had that conversation, they also had something called the Trump bump where the Washington Post, New York Times, they did really well with bringing on new subscribers.

00:08:28.420 Which you go, oh, really, that was happening because we heard subscribers were tanking in recent years.

00:08:32.960 And they did get a lot because they really sort of obsessively covered the Trump White House and really kind of grilled him on absolutely everything that he did rigorously.

00:08:42.680 And I don't have a problem with that per se, because I think it's important to absolutely grill our politicians, whatever their background.

00:08:49.300 Now, obviously, they're not doing that with the Biden White House.

00:08:52.060 There's a lot of, oh, let's not talk about this.

00:08:53.980 Let's not go there.

00:08:54.640 So they've lost that energy, that energy only applied to Trump and the subscriptions are going down again.

00:08:59.160 That Trump bump is gone and they're kind of trying to deal with what all of that means for their revenues.

00:09:04.480 And that's this interesting situation they find themselves in right now.

00:09:08.860 Yeah, I must say, I think my absolute favorite was the CNN chyron of Donald Trump gets two scoops of ice cream when everyone else around the table gets one scoop of ice cream.

00:09:18.500 And it's like that that was basically CNN saying we've got nothing else to cover right now, but we know that Trump is good for ratings.

00:09:25.460 And I saw Biden actually had two scoops the other day when he was having lunch with Emmanuel Macron.

00:09:30.040 So we got a problem here.

00:09:31.480 But did Macron get two or did he get one?

00:09:33.540 That is the imbalance is the real issue there.

00:09:35.920 I think he had a croissant.

00:09:37.740 OK, oh, that's even more.

00:09:38.860 Yeah, of course he did.

00:09:39.560 The interesting thing in a Canadian context is that we have our own now, I think there are a lot more muted than they are in the US, but we have our own sort of blank derangement syndrome phenomena that happen in the media.

00:09:52.980 And right now, Polyev derangement syndrome is the flavor of the day.

00:09:57.040 He had that one infamous press conference when David Akin just decided to, like, use up two of the five questions he was going to take, asking why he wasn't taking more than five questions.

00:10:07.120 And I think that these sorts of things are probably going to happen a little bit more.

00:10:12.060 And I guess my question is, do you think Canada could withstand a Ron DeSantis type politician that actually actively tries to flip the script on the media?

00:10:22.060 Or do you think that our political culture is just a little bit too cautious for that?

00:10:26.900 Well, it all depends.

00:10:28.140 I think increasingly people are aware of, to our point about crafting narratives by certain mainstream voices, that the power that they harness is smaller and smaller when your audience is both decreasing and the people who are getting news from a plurality of sources through a variety of sources is really kind of increasing.

00:10:47.500 We're seeing that happen where there are people who just don't at all access their news from traditional outlets at all.

00:10:54.640 That original idea of Donald Trump basically doing and run around the media.

00:10:58.300 So, yeah, I certainly think it's possible.

00:11:00.660 I mean, I will note, I think you're right to say things are much more tepid here.

00:11:03.460 I look back to what was happening during COVID and you had Doug Ford, who we were told was like a Trump-like figure and he's like a right-wing politician.

00:11:10.980 And there was a time, of course, just this past January, it's hard to believe this was this calendar year, where he was bragging about a fourth hard lockdown.

00:11:18.300 And he was actually making fun of Ron DeSantos at one press conference and making fun of Florida.

00:11:23.200 So, supposedly, Canada's leading right-wing politician.

00:11:26.980 Meanwhile, just across the border in Michigan and New York, you had Democratic politicians who weren't having it.

00:11:31.600 You had the Democratic mayor of Boston, a Black lady who had said that Kim Haney was her name, to say that she doesn't believe in vaccine passports because her people had already endured slavery. 0.99

00:11:42.580 That was controversial and she sort of half-apologized for that remark.

00:11:45.180 But that's a remark that if a conservative politician had said it in Canada during COVID, they would be out of a job.

00:11:51.320 They would be gone.

00:11:51.840 They wouldn't even consider saying it.

00:11:53.220 But you had Democratic politicians who were pushing back so much more.

00:11:56.040 We were told that Maxime Bernier was some sort of extremist in his views on COVID, but when you looked at mainstream Republicans like Rand Paul, who is an MD, a medical doctor, he was always saying things much more aggressively than Maxime Bernier was.

00:12:09.400 So, it's interesting and I would say lamentable that the confines in Canada are still extremely narrow.

00:12:16.500 Yeah, and it's tough because I think that there are some aspects of the American political system that I would not want to adopt.

00:12:22.840 For example, I think that the two-party system, while it has its benefits, I think generally speaking, it takes away a lot of voter choice.

00:12:31.440 Now, the practical side of that is that it really hinders the chance of a conservative success in Canada in a way that it doesn't in the United States.

00:12:40.200 But I think your point is incredibly well taken, which is that we in Canada have an Overton window that is in a much different place than it is for the United States as far as what the bounds of acceptable discourse are here.

00:12:51.660 Yeah, no, certainly.

00:12:53.500 I mean, one of the things, just from a simple analytic point that I always found really interesting about Trump 2016, was he created the ballot box questions, the referendum questions, out of thin air.

00:13:04.380 Drain the swamp, build the wall.

00:13:06.460 I mean, that was not a thing.

00:13:07.600 I think there were obviously people in states like Texas who were passionate about border security and getting more of a wall built.

00:13:13.940 But these were not national referendum questions.

00:13:16.500 Yeah, if you're in Ohio, like, why do you care about a wall between Mexico and Arizona?

00:13:21.840 No, exactly.

00:13:22.820 And yet Trump made those the questions that everybody in America had a strong opinion on and people passionately fought for them.

00:13:28.980 And he really just, it was like magic conjuring of them all.

00:13:32.140 And I do think there's an opportunity.

00:13:33.760 I mean, the question of, are you a leader or are you a follower, whether or not you're a left-wing figure or right-wing figure, I would say both Barack Obama and Donald Trump are leaders.

00:13:42.400 And then you find people like both Mitt Romney and Joe Biden are not leaders, for instance, in terms of whether or not they can sort of bring these issues to the fore, take the bull by the horns, almost single-handedly, great feats of individual strength.

00:13:53.700 And I think Canada can make that happen.

00:13:56.180 I think Pierre Polyev, during his leadership race, he really, he didn't create things out of thin air, but he saw things that were bubbling on the surface and articulated that stuff that people were feeling in terms of one of his big refrains about, I'm going to put you back in control of your life.

00:14:11.680 Almost in a nonpartisan way, Andrew, because I think there's a lot of, I think it applies to so many issues.

00:14:17.420 It's not just one policy issue.

00:14:18.820 This idea that too many different government bodies or even just gatekeeper elite type people, maybe not government figures, but in other industries, are just trying to tell us how we should live, what choices we should make more.

00:14:31.120 So I think a lot of people are feeling that right now, even if they're not card-carrying conservatives.

00:14:36.060 Pierre really picked up on that.

00:14:37.040 I don't know if that's still going to be the case whenever this election is and whenever Jagmeet pulls the strings on the coalition in 2055 or what have you.

00:14:44.360 But, you know, for now, that's how it is.

00:14:47.620 Okay, since you bring up Jagmeet Singh, not that I find him to be usually the most useful kind of person to talk about in Canadian politics,

00:14:56.040 but I do just find this running gag that I and some others are doing on Twitter to be quite amusing,

00:15:02.420 which is any time he tweets about how unconscionable something the Liberals have done is to point out, like, the fact that this is the guy who has given the Liberals a blank check and really not gotten anything in return here.

00:15:13.700 And it baffles me to some extent.

00:15:16.820 To some extent, it doesn't.

00:15:17.840 But it baffles me to some extent that more people don't see through that.

00:15:23.180 No, for sure.

00:15:24.060 And I think what's really going on is that the NDP just doesn't have the money to fight an election.

00:15:29.080 The NDP knows that they can't win an election.

00:15:31.500 The NDP has moved back to where it was under leaders like Alexa McDonough, where they are just happy to be the third party or the fourth party.

00:15:38.900 They call themselves the moral conscious of parliament, basically, that when there's legislation that isn't considering the issues they care about,

00:15:46.120 they're going to get a couple amendments in committee and a couple tweaks, and then they're going to score victory for that.

00:15:50.180 Jack Layton used to basically own a number of bills that passed and said, I actually made this bill what it is.

00:15:55.440 And there's, I think, some case to that being true in some legislation.

00:15:58.760 But then also Jack Layton realized, I'm actually sick of all of this being this, like, always third wheel.

00:16:03.540 Let's be winners.

00:16:04.480 And then he got that going to his credit.

00:16:07.360 Tom O'Kerr picked up on it.

00:16:08.560 And now the NDP, I think for a number of reasons, has decided, no, we don't want to be winners anymore.

00:16:12.680 Let's just be perpetual losers.

00:16:14.360 So Jagmeet's just kind of treading water. 0.91

00:16:16.560 He wants that job.

00:16:17.560 Well, let's be honest, if you leave being federal liberal leader, conservative leader, there are a lot of interesting job opportunities, corporate positions.

00:16:24.660 That doesn't exist when you're an NDPer.

00:16:27.140 Rachel Notley has just gone back to being opposition leader because there's no other, you know, she's a person who has to pay bills. 1.00

00:16:32.720 I'm sure she has a mortgage. 0.83

00:16:33.960 Andrew Horvath, why was she Ontario NDP leader for so long?

00:16:36.700 What else is she going to do?

00:16:37.720 And now she's mayor of Hamilton because, again, she has to pay her bills. 1.00

00:16:41.060 The opportunities for them are just that much more narrow.

00:16:43.940 Yeah, I don't know.

00:16:45.400 I mean, Tom O'Kerr, I know, is on CTV every now and then, but I actually have no idea what he does with his life.

00:16:51.420 He goes on CTV.

00:16:53.480 Hey, you know what?

00:16:54.280 It's a living.

00:16:54.980 And I don't begrudge anyone doing whatever works for them.

00:16:57.560 But, yeah, you are right on that.

00:16:59.620 And I think it's interesting.

00:17:00.960 I mean, I don't support most of what the NDP stands for.

00:17:04.020 But I just, putting on my strategist hat here, I wonder why they gave away so much for so little.

00:17:10.180 Because if I were Jagmeet Singh, I would have held out for one of these big ticket items.

00:17:14.300 Like, they still, even their dental plan that they supposedly exacted from the liberals, even though Justin Trudeau had already promised it, isn't the dental plan that the NDP really wants, which is basically to extend Medicare to dental care.

00:17:26.920 They didn't do anything to get universal pharmacare, which was another long-time liberal plan.

00:17:32.380 And, again, I don't support these policies, but it's like the worst negotiator in history has to have been Jagmeet Singh.

00:17:39.860 No, certainly.

00:17:40.760 What did he get out of it?

00:17:42.140 And we have to play this kabuki theater.

00:17:44.040 It's a coalition by any other name.

00:17:46.500 Don't call it a coalition, obviously.

00:17:48.220 He didn't even get a cabinet seat out of it.

00:17:49.780 Like, a token, like, throw you in there for something.

00:17:51.960 Nothing.

00:17:52.800 Well, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

00:17:54.240 I mean, it's just not working.

00:17:55.320 And I know Jagmeet Singh says, and we can withdraw any time.

00:17:58.860 But as you pointed out, Andrew, well, okay, if you think Canada is, like, currently complicit in ongoing genocide or whatever these, like, really over-the-top remarks he's making, I mean, if you're just in it for the memoirs, okay, well, that tells us what you're all about here.

00:18:12.620 You just want to tweet for the sake of the RTs.

00:18:14.760 If you're genuine about all of this, well, then you're going to have to do something about it.

00:18:18.240 And you have to do something by getting on the phone to the prime minister and saying, look, I'm going to collapse this thing unless I get X, Y, Z.

00:18:24.400 Instead, and to your point, Andrew, with the details of the dental plan, he's not actually doing that.

00:18:27.860 He's not striking a hard bargain.

00:18:29.420 So what do you do?

00:18:30.480 I mean, if he wants to play that game of being the moral conscious of parliament, I'm just going to, like, tweet my indignation once a week.

00:18:37.780 Well, fine.

00:18:38.180 I guess that's what he's doing.

00:18:39.060 He's doing that job.

00:18:40.560 But if they're serious about affecting policy change and playing their role in parliament, then, yeah, he's certainly got out of his game.

00:18:49.980 Let's turn a little bit here to the year ahead, 2023.

00:18:54.480 Do you think this is going to be an election year federally?

00:18:58.700 I don't.

00:18:59.840 I think Justin Trudeau wants to run out the clock.

00:19:01.940 It's very interesting that with the interest rate hikes, we're told by some of the major banks that people have hit their trigger points.

00:19:09.880 Now, there's a certain period where when you have a variable rate mortgage, when the rates go up, your actual raw payment is not going up.

00:19:18.080 It's just that the amount of interest in principle skews against you, and you almost get to the point where you're paying 100% interest.

00:19:24.720 But your payment still hasn't gone up, so your daily living is not affected.

00:19:27.840 The trigger rate means, sorry, we're actually going to have to push this rate up, and you're going to be paying more a month.

00:19:33.780 And you could be paying $200, $500, over $1,000 more a month, depending on when you took out your mortgage.

00:19:39.500 There was years like 2019 when Vancouver, Toronto, just crazy bidding wars.

00:19:44.160 And I think a lot of people were overleveraged.

00:19:46.320 And some people, I hope it's not a lot, I don't like saying this, but some people will lose their homes, and they're not going to be happy about it.

00:19:52.880 And I think a lot of this is going to be in swing ridings as well.

00:19:55.800 So why would you, if you're Justin Trudeau, want to roll the dice on all of that?

00:20:00.480 Why would you want to go to the polls when suddenly, almost four weeks after you've started the election, the economy gets really problematic, and there's a good argument to be made that you have partial blame for it?

00:20:14.060 Yeah, and you had people that were talking about the possibility of a fall election, which I never thought was really likely, like one in 2022.

00:20:23.340 But I thought that the only justification for it would have been, if Justin Trudeau was seeing that, you know, we're heading into a recession, we're heading into really bad economic terrain, let me see if I can just like squeak out a win before things get really bad.

00:20:36.980 Because at a certain point, there's going to have to be accountability.

00:20:39.680 And even the most Teflon, scandal-proof government will have to pay the piper.

00:20:44.600 I mean, voters will not injure a government forever.

00:20:47.540 And I think there's still that prevailing question of whether voters turf Justin Trudeau or Liberal MPs turf Justin Trudeau.

00:20:54.840 And I go back and forth on that.

00:20:56.480 What do you think?

00:20:57.020 I go back to what happened before Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, when he abolished the Liberal Senate.

00:21:04.880 And back then, that was held up as this brilliant thing to create independent senators or something.

00:21:10.200 No, what he was doing, it was a really kind of Maoist thing, because all of the Liberal senators back in 2014 would have been appointed by Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien, or even a few before then.

00:21:20.740 And these are kind of old guard liberals who I think we've really seen from former cabinet ministers from that era, they're not happy with the direction of this weird, woke, leftist Liberal Party.

00:21:30.920 He needed to get rid of those voices.

00:21:32.900 So when we talk about backroom machinations, and look, I'm not this, I don't like playing the Ottawa bubble game.

00:21:39.260 So I get a lot of my backroom calculus wrong because I'm just not interested in keeping score and all of that.

00:21:44.780 But I think the idea of elder statesmen in the Liberal Party coming in to make things happen doesn't really exist with the federal liberals in the same way it necessarily does with other parties.

00:21:56.600 So this idea that someone's going to force them out and there's factions, that's not to the same degree it was during the Chrétien-Martin fighting years.

00:22:05.480 Trudeau has really, really isolated himself, which has some benefits for him and I think some negatives for all of this.

00:22:11.480 You know, there's this talking point for years that Jerry Butts is the puppet master and he's running things and he's been out for actually a couple of years.

00:22:18.600 And Andrew, I've got some very bad news for you, actually.

00:22:21.360 Justin Trudeau is in charge.

00:22:23.900 He is running things.

00:22:27.740 Yeah, it's funny because I've obviously covered and I'm going to be covering in a couple of weeks the World Economic Forum.

00:22:34.720 And you always get every now and then the person that thinks that Klaus Schwab is pulling the strings on Justin Trudeau.

00:22:39.740 And I say, no, no, no, it's worse than that.

00:22:41.120 Justin Trudeau likes to do this sort of stuff.

00:22:42.980 Justin Trudeau likes these policies.

00:22:44.880 You don't need to tell him to do them.

00:22:46.900 No, it's a good point.

00:22:48.220 I mean, with the World Economic Forum stuff, I think the big problem with it is it's a bunch of like-minded people who are getting together in a room and they hear these kind of rather elitist ideas disconnected from regular folks.

00:22:59.560 And they're more connected to each other, to the global elite cocktail circuit, than they are to the regular folks on the ground, which is why they get really interested in these bizarre, newfangled ideas that they're doing.

00:23:12.620 The idea that, you know, to your point, it's not like Klaus Schwab has his compromising intel and all these figures.

00:23:18.640 They're willfully doing it.

00:23:20.300 And that's, I think that's a lot more problematic, actually.

00:23:24.700 So let's get out of the Ottawa bubble and the Ottawa Palace intrigue then, Anthony.

00:23:29.400 I think we all benefit from being out of that space as much as we can be.

00:23:32.620 What are the big things you're looking out for this year?

00:23:34.640 What do you think are the big stories or the big themes?

00:23:37.320 Oh, well, economic issues.

00:23:38.780 I mean, nobody knows what's going to happen.

00:23:40.580 Tiff Macklem a year ago said there's not going to be any inflation.

00:23:43.720 There's going to be no need for interest rate hikes.

00:23:45.940 That's his core job.

00:23:47.100 You know that meme, Andrew?

00:23:48.040 You had one job.

00:23:49.220 The meme is like, Tiff Macklem, your one job is to pay attention to interest rates.

00:23:52.900 And he has failed on all that.

00:23:54.020 He doesn't know what's going to happen.

00:23:55.480 So if he doesn't know, nobody knows.

00:23:57.840 And look, this is a very real thing in terms of inflation in people's lives.

00:24:01.440 Folks who were only just scraping by six months ago, I don't know what it means to say what happens six months later.

00:24:09.060 Because they can't just scrape by anymore where the food bank usage rates are rising.

00:24:13.540 And this is very real stuff.

00:24:15.440 I do also wonder to what degree we are going to see a pushback on all the woke stuff.

00:24:20.560 In the United Kingdom, they had a lot of concerns with the transgender issues that they'd gone too far.

00:24:27.380 You know, you could be like deleted from Twitter for merely saying you support JK Rowling or what have you.

00:24:31.800 Now, it's totally gone the opposite.

00:24:34.120 They've realized they're in problems.

00:24:36.180 They've temporarily shut down that Tavistock clinic, which was doing gender reassignment surgeries.

00:24:40.860 I think we're just behind them.

00:24:42.180 So something's going to come to a head on that issue.

00:24:44.420 On a related issue when it comes to kids and woke stuff, here at True North, we've been doing so much coverage on school board issues because people are really concerned about what's going on in public schools and the agendas that are being pushed, the politicization that's happening.

00:24:58.600 And we saw in elections in Vancouver and throughout Ontario, anti-woke school board slate trustees.

00:25:06.380 And they did not win for the most part.

00:25:09.240 But I think that's just the beginning.

00:25:11.260 I think it was basically like a beachhead moment.

00:25:13.860 And that'll only continue next year.

00:25:16.320 Well, and I think it was actually a very important battle for people to get in on because I find oftentimes conservatives in particular tend to ignore local government.

00:25:26.040 And I don't know why that is.

00:25:27.300 I don't know if it's because they think it's beneath them or because, you know, a lot of people on the right tend to be more policy minded.

00:25:33.220 And the bigger policies that mostly come across our radar are provincial and federal.

00:25:37.760 But local government is very important.

00:25:40.360 School board is very important.

00:25:41.820 And this has really been the first election I can recall where there's really been an orchestrated effort by the right.

00:25:47.860 And I use that in the broadest sense here to really get involved there.

00:25:52.280 No, it's a very good point.

00:25:54.060 And I can think of a number of examples where I see a left-wing individual running for trustee.

00:25:59.160 And I go, this person, they don't have kids.

00:26:02.280 They're not previously interested in these related issues.

00:26:05.340 What's going on?

00:26:05.840 It's pretty obvious what's going on.

00:26:07.440 They're a trustee for one term.

00:26:08.880 And then, oh, they're the city councilor or the MPP next term.

00:26:11.400 So they really see it as a feeder system in the way conservatives typically don't.

00:26:15.420 Kathleen Wynne began her career as a trustee and then became education minister and, of course, became premier.

00:26:20.900 And I credit her.

00:26:21.720 She was a parent and she was involved in the school system.

00:26:23.820 So I think she was much more, it made much more sense for her to run for trustee rather than some of these other individuals.

00:26:29.940 But, yeah, the left-leaning people, they see it as a pipeline.

00:26:33.620 And you're right, conservatives don't as much, but looks like they are now.

00:26:38.520 So let's talk a little bit about where True North goes from here.

00:26:42.020 And I know we've touched on it a little bit.

00:26:43.600 Obviously, we've got a team that just keeps growing and growing.

00:26:46.620 Like, I can't remember if I've said it on the show before, but I remember when I joined True North in 2018, we didn't really have a team call because our team was, you know, four people.

00:26:56.440 So we would just, you know, message each other once a week about what we're working on.

00:27:00.240 And then the calls kept getting longer and longer and longer because we kept having more and more people and more and more stuff that we're doing, which is a very good problem to have.

00:27:10.340 And, I mean, at this point, people ask me, how many do you have?

00:27:12.800 And I'm like, I don't even know how many people work for us anymore, which, again, is a very good problem to have.

00:27:17.640 But what is it you'd like to see?

00:27:19.440 What's the big challenge, Mr. Vice President, that you'd like to see us tackle?

00:27:23.720 Well, to really simply answer the first question, where's True North going in 2023?

00:27:29.640 Onward, upward, bigger, better.

00:27:31.720 And it's really exciting because that's certainly happening.

00:27:34.160 And, you know, Andrew, you've got a lot of fans up there for a good reason.

00:27:37.980 I mean, you're just doing amazing stuff.

00:27:39.720 You've been really killing it with so much of what you're doing and being on the ground to cover things like the convoy, where whether people support them or oppose them, it's still important to just get the basic facts right.

00:27:52.420 And that's what you did.

00:27:53.480 And that's what True North's been doing.

00:27:55.200 So moving forward, I think the team will be growing.

00:27:57.620 You know, as you know, I've been aware of the metrics of most media companies in Canada in terms of the web traffic they get, the audience they command.

00:28:05.720 And to your point of, you know, why did I want to be involved in True North?

00:28:10.260 One of the reasons is, wow, you got a good thing going on here in terms of a growing audience, what those numbers are and the space True North fills in the Canadian media landscape, a big space and an increasingly growing one.

00:28:22.340 So we're going to see people doing more things.

00:28:23.740 The shows are just gaining in popularity, which is great.

00:28:28.860 And we're going to be doing more news gathering, more exclusive information.

00:28:32.140 To our point about the school board issue, there are many issues that traditional media companies just aren't interested in exploring as much.

00:28:40.200 They're not putting the work into it.

00:28:42.740 Blacklock's reporter, I think one of the reasons that they've had some success is because they cover House of Commons committees and Senate committees.

00:28:48.920 And you go, well, doesn't everybody cover them?

00:28:51.420 They actually don't anymore.

00:28:53.400 It used to be that.

00:28:54.040 And certainly not the reports and documents.

00:28:56.260 No, absolutely.

00:28:56.860 And it used to be the case that all the wire agencies and the major outlets would have a person sitting in a committee and watching the whole thing.

00:29:06.520 And that just doesn't happen anymore.

00:29:08.160 I think one reason, because they've ceded the floor to these issues and they're not reporting on the nuts and bolts of what matters to Canadians.

00:29:14.100 And another issue is business metrics.

00:29:15.620 They just don't have the people to do it anymore.

00:29:17.560 So True North is going to be really telling the full story in a way that a lot of media outlets just aren't doing anymore.

00:29:26.280 School board reporting was a traditional thing throughout the 80s and 90s.

00:29:30.300 It's not happening anymore.

00:29:31.780 So we're going to be bringing Canadians, both getting the scoops, the exclusives, the voices they need to hear, but also getting on the basic news that it is out there.

00:29:41.620 But a lot of media just aren't telling people about it anymore, either for agenda crafting reasons or for lack of resource reasons.

00:29:49.440 All right.

00:29:50.260 Onward and upward.

00:29:51.480 I look forward to it.

00:29:52.500 Very glad to have you on the team.

00:29:55.100 Anthony Fury, VP of editorial and content for True North.

00:29:58.640 Thanks so much, Anthony.

00:29:59.780 Always a pleasure, sir.

00:30:01.060 Thank you, sir.

00:30:01.580 That does it for me.

00:30:03.600 We will be back with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show soon enough.

00:30:07.360 This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:30:09.860 Thank you.

00:30:10.540 God bless.

00:30:11.180 And good day to you all.

00:30:12.440 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:30:14.640 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:30:19.580 True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - January 03, 2023

Is 2023 going to be an election year？ (ft. Anthony Furey)

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