Juno News - Is Freeland getting thrown under the bus？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.620 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew

00:01:29.660 lawton show on true north on this thursday july 11th the final episode of the week but

00:01:34.100 don't worry if you are going to be an andrew lawton withdrawal which i don't think anyone

00:01:38.980 is in fact i think you probably prefer it's the old absence makes the heart grow fonder thing but

00:01:43.620 if for whatever reason you want more of me i'll be back tomorrow with off the record uh with i

00:01:48.220 actually don't know who's on this week. I think my colleague William Macbeth is on, I believe

00:01:51.720 Isaac Lamoureux as well. So either way, we'll find out tomorrow. I'll be just as surprised as

00:01:57.400 you are apparently. But anyway, hope you're having a great week so far. Oh boy, we've got a lot to get

00:02:04.100 through today. We're going to be talking about the state of universities. We're going to be talking

00:02:08.440 about the state of Justin Trudeau's very disastrous net zero commitments. And I also want to talk

00:02:13.800 about this rather bizarre war of words that took place this morning at the Assembly of First

00:02:19.040 Nations conference, including what I would call quite a slanderous and demonstrably false claim

00:02:24.720 about Aaron Gunn, who's been on the show a number of times and is now a conservative candidate.

00:02:30.060 But let's start off with how there is no mercy available to those who have been shills for

00:02:37.820 Justin Trudeau. So if you're to look at this government right now and find someone who is

00:02:42.280 more pro-Trudeau than Trudeau even, who are you going to name? You're going to name Christia

00:02:46.380 Freeland. This has been the most loyal foot soldier of Justin Trudeau. It's been his conciliary.

00:02:51.820 It's been the reality that anytime he has been facing this internal strife, Christia Freeland

00:02:57.120 is the one that goes out and is the Trudeau defender in any circumstance whatsoever. It's

00:03:02.620 why I've never been too fearful of a Christia Freeland premiership because I think that if

00:03:09.060 Trudeau goes down in flames, she goes down with him because she is so inextricably linked

00:03:13.560 to the Trudeau brand. So my, my, my, where has the loyalty from the PMO been in repayment of

00:03:21.700 the loyalty Chrystia Freeland has showed herself? This is from the Robert Fyfe, not from the Robert

00:03:27.800 Fyfe, it's from Robert Fyfe. Well, it is the Robert Fyfe, I guess, at the Globe and Mail. PMO

00:03:32.720 officials worry Freeland's economic messaging has been ineffective as party struggles.

00:03:39.060 I don't know if we have a graphic of the first paragraph, but I'll read it for you anyway.

00:03:43.600 Senior officials in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office are concerned that Finance Minister

00:03:47.820 Chrystia Freeland has not been effective in delivering an upbeat economic message as the

00:03:53.280 Liberal government struggles to reconnect with Canadians amid low approval ratings, sources say.

00:03:59.720 Oh my, so that 20-point lead that Pierre Pauly of the Conservatives have over Justin Trudeau,

00:04:05.360 it's not Trudeau's fault. The PMO is saying it's Chrystia Freeland for not giving an upbeat

00:04:10.520 message about the budget to Canadians. Oh boy. It continues. There is an increasingly tense

00:04:16.960 relationship. Apparently, PMO under Trudeau has centralized decision-making, has a tight grip on

00:04:22.820 government messaging, and now they say that post-by-election loss, there is a need to blame

00:04:29.140 Chrystia Freeland for this. Now, this is normally the type of story you'd have to take with a grain

00:04:34.220 of salt. It cites unnamed sources in the PMO. He said, we know that unnamed sources to the Globe

00:04:38.800 and Mail are the way that the Justin Trudeau PMO likes to communicate. You may recall about four

00:04:43.940 years ago, the very same thing happened with Bill Morneau. When the liberals were getting ready to

00:04:48.700 thrust Bill Morneau out the window to defenestrate him, as the verb goes, they started leaking all

00:04:54.220 of these anti-Morneau stories about, oh, PMO sources say this and that. And it was notable

00:04:59.440 on Twitter when I looked up, I don't know if it's Sharon or Sharon, but Sharon or Sharon

00:05:05.140 Core, who used to be Bill Morneau's chief of staff, has tweeted out a few. One of them

00:05:10.040 here, I guess it was about time for the sequel. That's one of her comments. What else do we

00:05:15.440 have up there? I like to think of this as a PMO summer tradition. And then there was

00:05:20.920 a third one I saw. These were all in like rapid succession. I guess a playbook has been

00:05:25.700 created. So a little bit sassy and snarky, but I think deservedly so, because she saw

00:05:30.460 this same routine used against her former boss, Bill Morneau, and now it's being used against

00:05:37.000 Chrystia Freeland. So there is a gender aspect of this that's interesting to point out, because you

00:05:42.720 may recall the liberals under Justin Trudeau have not exactly liked strong independent women

00:05:47.700 cabinet ministers for all that long. We saw Selena Cesar Chavez, who was in caucus. We saw Jane

00:05:53.360 Philpott in cabinet, Jody Wilson-Raybould in cabinet, and now perhaps Chrystia Freeland.

00:05:58.860 So Chrystia Freeland has been out there just taking the slings and arrows on Trudeau's behalf,

00:06:03.340 not realizing that her back was just wide open for that big, giant, shiny red knife that has

00:06:09.140 sunny ways encrusted in it with diamonds. And that knife is going into her back. To mix my

00:06:14.860 metaphor, she's being thrown under the bus. She's being defenestrated. She is being made the

00:06:19.380 scapegoat of Justin Trudeau's failings. Now, I think there are a lot of things that we can point

00:06:24.260 to with Chrystia Freeland very critically. I think her loyalty to Justin Trudeau has been

00:06:29.040 one of the biggest criticisms because she's not an unintelligent person, and she has decided that

00:06:34.640 she wants to stay on the sinking ship. She is the, of lore, the violinist on the deck of the

00:06:41.560 Titanic, willing to just, you know, keep playing as it goes down. But now they're not even giving

00:06:46.180 her that chance. And it's fascinating because if you read this story further, you see that this is

00:06:52.700 just PMO spin. This is a PMO leak. This is an orchestrated leak. It isn't just some rogue

00:06:57.660 staffer. It's the government trying to get a message out that is making Chrystia Freeland

00:07:02.720 the problem. So remember, the polling issues predated the budget. And the polling issues go

00:07:09.760 beyond people saying, well, I don't know if there's a positive enough message on the economy

00:07:15.140 of the country. Like that is trying to simplify to the point of reductivism what the problems are

00:07:21.260 plaguing this government. Now, just to put some contrast on here, I want to play a clip of Pierre

00:07:26.920 Poliev speaking this morning at the AFN. Now, it wasn't entirely a rosy reception. He had some

00:07:32.460 people that stood up and turned their backs to him as he was speaking, some indigenous leaders

00:07:37.860 and indigenous chiefs. But this was the message that he gave nonetheless. I'm not here to run

00:07:44.000 your life. I don't want to run anybody's life. I want to run a small government with big citizens

00:07:49.660 free to make their own decisions and live their own lives. This is especially true for First

00:07:55.500 Nations peoples. Every one of you in this room is a leader. Every one of you knows your communities

00:08:01.800 better than Ottawa does and certainly better than I do. You draw on thousands of years of experience

00:08:07.420 while Canada has only been here for a century and a half. That's why we will get the government

00:08:13.500 gatekeepers the federal government gatekeepers out of your way so you can do what's best for

00:08:18.220 your members my promise to all canadians is that a common-sense conservative government

00:08:23.820 will axe the tax build the homes fix the budget and stop the crime this is my general commitment

00:08:29.740 but it is of particular importance to first peoples acts the tax means cancelling a carbon tax

00:08:35.820 that is making food and groceries more unaffordable for everyone but especially for first nations

00:08:41.180 people.

00:08:42.960 Because of the remote and colder weathers that you must confront, this tax is particularly

00:08:49.380 cruel and unjust, and that is why I support the Chiefs of Ontario and their judicial review

00:08:56.400 to counter this unjust tax burden.

00:09:00.160 But I have good news.

00:09:01.680 When I am Prime Minister, the Chiefs of Ontario will not have to spend any more money on lawyers

00:09:06.480 because I will axe the tax, and when I say it, I mean it.

00:09:11.180 That is a message that is, again, not all that dissimilar. In fact, it's pretty much identical

00:09:16.500 to the message he gives when he's speaking to non-Indigenous people, but he's giving it an

00:09:20.800 applicability to them. He's talking about why it matters to them more, and did he win over everyone

00:09:25.800 in the room? No, but he did, at a couple of points, get applause during his speech, when, again, the

00:09:31.400 relationship between the Conservatives and Indigenous groups has not always been a positive

00:09:35.440 one, politically speaking. So there is, I think, a great contrast when you say that, oh, well,

00:09:41.980 the problem that the conservatives have, or the problem that the liberals have relative to the

00:09:46.280 conservatives is that Christopher Freeland didn't give a positive enough economic message. It's the

00:09:50.860 liberals not realizing that they are fundamentally not offering what right now their most viable

00:09:55.800 alternative is, which is a hopeful message, a clear message, and one that people are willing

00:10:01.740 to embrace and willing to adopt. Now, this is again, a tremendous, tremendous failing on the

00:10:06.900 part of the liberals to look for, have Justin Trudeau look in the mirror and realize that he

00:10:11.960 is not offering that. People do not believe him. He's trying to point around and blame every single

00:10:17.440 person in the room, but himself, including Christian Freeland, including Christian Freeland,

00:10:24.020 blame everyone in the room, but himself for his party and him being so unpopular. And again,

00:10:30.160 the liberal NDP coalition on this is remarkably similar. Jagmeet Singh, who is the leader of the

00:10:36.860 NDP, but basically he's like the deputy liberal prime minister at this point, he just went off

00:10:42.400 on the conservatives using his opportunity to speak to First Nations people, not to provide a

00:10:47.420 positive message, a hopeful message, but just to crap on the party that he believes is so evil and

00:10:54.140 dastardly. This was what he said. He talks a lot about freedom, but what he really wants

00:11:01.200 is freedom for himself. For him, when he says freedom, freedom means not respecting treaty

00:11:10.740 obligations. For him, freedom means not respecting your rights. For him, freedom means not getting

00:11:18.960 your free, prior, and informed consent.

00:11:22.100 After all, he's a guy that said

00:11:25.220 indigenous people need a stronger work ethic,

00:11:29.060 not compensation for the atrocities committed

00:11:31.940 in residential schools.

00:11:36.020 All right?

00:11:39.740 He's a guy that said that chiefs like you

00:11:42.940 have too much power.

00:11:44.520 That's literally what he said.

00:11:46.280 He's a guy who speaks to anti-indigenous organizations

00:11:51.060 very recently, not years ago, but very recently,

00:11:55.300 denying the truth of residential schools.

00:11:58.760 He's a guy who right now has let a very well-known

00:12:03.060 residential school denier, Aaron Gunn, run for his party.

00:12:08.600 That's who he really is.

00:12:11.120 When someone shows you who they are, you got to believe them,

00:12:13.600 especially when they show you again and again and again.

00:12:20.880 Now, Jennifer L., who's an Indigenous woman herself and very active politically,

00:12:26.420 I think she leans right, but she's certainly not a dyed-in-the-wool partisan by any stretch.

00:12:31.340 I've seen her make criticisms of the Conservatives and of other parties.

00:12:34.160 She had an analysis on X that I wanted to share a little bit of,

00:12:38.020 in which she talks about Jagmeet Singh, who she says is very popular among Indigenous leaders generally.

00:12:43.340 But she says Jagmeet emphasized a lot on listening and started off good, then got lost in the weeds complaining about Pierre.

00:12:49.840 Dunks are okay, but it was too much and noticeably he sounded desperate.

00:12:54.780 And again, I think the desperation is clear with that sideswipe against Aaron Gunn.

00:12:59.360 Now, Aaron's been on the show in the past.

00:13:01.440 Jagmeet Singh called him a residential school denier.

00:13:05.400 A residential school denier and used that as a dunk in some way on Pierre Polyev.

00:13:09.680 Now, the thing is, and I'll read a statement that I got from the Conservatives on this.

00:13:14.620 Once again, Jagmeet Singh is fabricating stories and trying to distract Canadians from his own track record of abandoning hardworking Canadians and propping up a Liberal government that has continued to leave First Nations on the sidelines.

00:13:27.560 Aaron Gunn has been clear in recognizing the truly horrific events that transpired in residential schools, and any attempt to suggest otherwise is simply false.

00:13:37.560 Gunn is looking to join Pierre Pauliev in repealing Trudeau's radical anti-resource laws to quickly greenlight good projects so First Nations and all Canadians bring home more powerful paychecks.

00:13:48.620 Now, by the way, I don't even know the claim, the source of the claim.

00:13:52.280 One of our reporters is looking into it now, and he's going to ask the NDP to show their work on this.

00:13:57.120 The only thing that I could think remotely he could be talking about is Aaron Gunn saying that Canada is not a genocidal nation.

00:14:04.380 And if that makes you a residential school denier, my goodness, you'd have to lock up the majority of the country because most people who live in this country, who are proud of this country, believe that Canada is not a genocidal nation.

00:14:15.560 And if you did, you'd be recommending all of our leaders go up before the Hague, which is not what's happening.

00:14:20.820 So Aaron Gunn, who gets criticized for saying, hey, he's proud to be Canadian, is now called a residential school denier by Jagmeet Singh.

00:14:29.920 By the way, Jagmeet Singh, who is propping up the liberal government that accused itself of genocide.

00:14:36.260 So that means that he is propping up a genocidal government.

00:14:39.280 What does that say about him?

00:14:40.960 What does that say about Jagmeet Singh?

00:14:42.660 That he is literally the lone political entity keeping a government that has confessed to perpetrating genocide against indigenous people in power.

00:14:52.020 Why is he not facing criticism for that?

00:14:54.560 My goodness.

00:14:55.060 Well, this is the sort of bend over backwards wokeness that we see transpiring across the

00:15:01.100 country, not just in the political class, but also in academic institutions.

00:15:05.760 We spoke a little bit earlier on in the week with a gentleman who was looking at just diversity

00:15:11.600 hiring and why no one is providing any evidence.

00:15:18.140 The problem goes much deeper than that.

00:15:20.940 In a piece from The Hub this week by Professor Zachary Patterson, there is a far left, or he says, extremist left ideology supplanting core curricula and infusing every aspect of academia.

00:15:33.460 Now, it sounds a bit defeatist, but he says, no, no, no, it can be saved.

00:15:38.100 The piece in The Hub, Canada Must Reclaim Its Wayward Universities, Here's How, written by Concordia University Professor Zachary Patterson.

00:15:45.960 Zach, it's good to have you on the show.

00:15:47.300 Thanks for coming on today.

00:15:49.040 Thanks very much for having me, Andrew.

00:15:50.940 Now, Zach and I were hanging out back at the ARC Forum in London a few months back that Jordan Peterson had hosted, the ARC Forum.

00:15:59.260 We had a great time doing it. I think it was in Ottawa. I saw you more recently here.

00:16:03.360 But you offer the rare hopeful message for heterodox people about academia right now.

00:16:09.780 And I wanted to have you on. What's the first step to fixing this?

00:16:14.700 Yeah, so I'm going to try to give you a first step.

00:16:17.480 the article itself was trying to give a sense of the lay of the land of the possibilities

00:16:22.520 of what's available to policymakers in the domain of universities in Canada. So it looks at,

00:16:30.600 you know, federally, provincially, university level. And so I'll just give you that for now,

00:16:36.600 Andrew, maybe you have other questions. Well, let me start with the free speech

00:16:41.440 aspect alone, because there was this flurry of discussion a few years ago, you had Ontario

00:16:45.980 notably come out during the 2018 election and say, we're going to mandate free speech at

00:16:50.920 universities. Every university is going to have to have a statement of academic principles

00:16:54.600 affirming its support for academic freedom. And what happens? Every university comes out

00:16:59.120 with a statement and nothing else changes. So the problem there is that you can have people that

00:17:04.560 want to do the right thing or want to say they're doing the right thing, but it doesn't translate

00:17:09.100 down to administrations that are still doing the same things that are, I would say, censoring

00:17:14.480 heterodox opinions. We've seen the utter contrast post-October 7th when you can't say that a woman

00:17:21.580 is a biological human female, but you can say death to the Jews on campus.

00:17:27.720 Right. So there's a couple of things there, Andrew. The first is, so these laws that were

00:17:34.060 put in place, the Quebec government did, Alberta as well, asking universities to commit to free

00:17:40.040 speech and academic freedom and those types of things the the issue around those is that typically

00:17:44.360 what happens and what has happened in both those cases is that universities are left first of all

00:17:48.840 to come up with their own policies sometimes even to come up with their own definitions and also

00:17:54.920 obviously to enforce those things so there's there's a kind of a conflict of interest there

00:17:58.920 and so often what happens is the wording that you get in from the universities is what they

00:18:04.760 it's often referred to as i'm all for academic freedom but and so there are lots of different

00:18:09.720 things that uh you know can intervene there if it's a harmful speech if it's hateful if it makes

00:18:14.440 some people feel bad and so that's one of the the downsides of of that i've forgotten the second

00:18:19.800 thing i wanted to say about academic freedom so explain then what you think the policy tools

00:18:26.600 could be that would have some more teeth okay so this comes back to the previous point one of the

00:18:33.160 things is not having a mechanism to make sure that academic freedom is enforceable or enforced

00:18:39.320 is a problem. So the universities have to do it themselves. What's happened in the United

00:18:42.680 Kingdom is they have the Higher Education Academic Freedom Act, I think it's called. They have kind

00:18:47.560 of an academic freedom czar. So universities are supposed to respect academic freedom.

00:18:53.400 And if they don't, then people at the university can reach out to this czar,

00:18:57.880 and it's an ombudsperson of sorts, and they can evaluate what happened. And if there are extreme

00:19:03.480 problems with it, the universities themselves can be fine. So I think this is something that's

00:19:07.080 probably necessary if we want to take something like academic freedom seriously and that's um you

00:19:13.080 know that's one important pillar of this type of approach and then after that there's many different

00:19:19.320 interventions that can happen like i say either at the provincial or the federal or even at the

00:19:23.720 university level one of the most severe things that a government could do and again we've heard

00:19:28.600 people talk about doing this but we've never seen it put into action in canada is defunding them

00:19:33.640 These are, by and large, public institutions, certainly the ones where I'd say government has an ability to do anything at all.

00:19:39.240 It would be the public institutions, and they rely on government for a huge amount of money, federal and provincial, but predominantly provincial.

00:19:46.760 And there's nothing stopping a premier from saying, if you do not support academic freedom, your funding is gone.

00:19:53.440 That how responsive do you think universities would be to that?

00:19:58.080 I think I think they'd be pretty responsive to it, Andrew.

00:20:01.060 Like you say, in the column when I talk about these different types of approaches, these are what I call incentive-based approaches.

00:20:08.840 So basically, respect for academic freedom and what I call the foundational principles of the university.

00:20:14.200 And those are contingent upon all kinds of different funding streams.

00:20:18.000 So there's direct funding, there's funding from the funding agencies.

00:20:21.560 There's being able to get student loans for tuition for universities contingent upon their respecting these things.

00:20:31.060 And there are some that are a little bit more, a little bit, I don't want to say subtler, but there are some that are less heavy-handed.

00:20:39.440 You mentioned the more incentive-based approaches.

00:20:42.460 I don't know if they would be as responsive to that.

00:20:45.520 The reason I say that is because a lot of these are institutions that seem to be very ideological.

00:20:51.200 And you have to navigate this on your own through your work at Concordia.

00:20:54.860 But I know you've also been involved with a group that I'm a member of, the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.

00:21:00.120 you've heard from your colleagues and administrators because there's a fear

00:21:04.800 that administrators could be just fearful of the woke mob but I think I'm

00:21:09.000 increasingly of the mind and I'm curious for your thoughts on this that

00:21:11.800 administrators are part of it the administrators actually believe what

00:21:15.160 they're doing so evidence suggests that they are administrators are more

00:21:20.900 ideological even than their rank-and-file professors that's from what I

00:21:24.840 understand and so one of the things that I talk about in the piece also is

00:21:29.120 provincial governments have a series of different responsibilities towards

00:21:34.100 universities they decide the you know how the the charters or how the

00:21:39.800 universities are founded and as well as how they're governed and you know there

00:21:44.020 are things like being able to appoint boards of directors members of boards of

00:21:47.840 directors and so they can have a role at that level which you know might have an

00:21:53.280 influence on the political suasion of the people who are in charge the

00:21:56.840 administrators. So let's go to the question that unfortunately tends to put a sour note on these

00:22:04.460 sorts of discussions, but you may take us in a different direction. Are you an optimist that

00:22:08.140 this can and will be fixed, that this can and will be addressed? Well, I think we have to try.

00:22:15.320 And I think it's the obligation, basically, of governments to take this very seriously. Like

00:22:23.160 mentioned before, universities in Canada particularly are almost exclusively privately

00:22:27.240 funded. When doing research for these series of columns, I discovered that higher education

00:22:33.640 receives 30 percent more funding than the Department of National Defense or of National

00:22:37.560 Defense in general. So there's a lot of money that's going to universities. And there also

00:22:42.920 seems to be a big difference between what it is that universities want to be doing and what the

00:22:49.000 public thinks about what they want to be doing. If you look at issues like affirmative action,

00:22:52.120 decolonization all these types of things that the uh you know a recent report came out from

00:22:56.440 eric kaufman looking at the degree to which the public was in favor of these approaches and

00:23:02.200 policies and for the most part a large majority is not so basically there's a lot of money coming

00:23:07.480 from the public purse going to universities that are supporting uh policies or causes maybe if you

00:23:12.680 want uh that aren't endorsed by the public itself of the provinces you look at i think ontario

00:23:19.240 Alberta and Quebec were the three has one had any more success than the others would you say

00:23:24.120 I think it's hard to say Quebec's was a bit more it was stronger because they actually provided a

00:23:31.160 definition of academic freedom in a way that the other universe the other country provinces didn't

00:23:36.740 and so they asked the universities themselves to you know come up with their own I think Alberta

00:23:41.620 might have had something about the Chicago principles I think Ontario did as well but

00:23:45.880 But again, Ontario, they put the policy in place, and then they never looked at it again.

00:23:51.120 And like universities, some of them didn't even really do it.

00:23:54.460 Yeah.

00:23:55.820 So, I mean, I don't think we have a choice to, if someone doesn't have a choice,

00:24:00.520 those who are responsible for it don't have a choice, but to try to do something.

00:24:04.660 I don't know how hopeful I am, but I like to try to see the right side of things.

00:24:10.860 You touched on another aspect of this, and I wanted to visit this with you,

00:24:13.980 because we dealt with this last week with Kaylin Ford,

00:24:17.000 who's the head of the Alberta Classical Academy

00:24:18.960 in, well, Alberta.

00:24:20.480 And you had said that one possible, not a fix,

00:24:23.780 but a mechanism that could be deployed

00:24:25.360 is eliminating the monopoly

00:24:26.800 that university education faculties have

00:24:29.820 on licensing teachers.

00:24:31.480 Because a lot of the wokeness we see in education

00:24:34.380 is happening far before students

00:24:36.220 get to university or college.

00:24:37.580 It's happening with students in their K-12 education.

00:24:41.380 And all of the teachers are coming

00:24:42.940 from a select handful of education faculties and what's interesting in that is that i had never and

00:24:49.660 i said this to kaylin i had never really in my life thought that there could be a different way

00:24:53.340 and then i as i got older and started learning about this i realized well yeah why should you

00:24:57.580 need to have an education degree to be a teacher when you could be a subject matter expert and you

00:25:02.300 could be qualified that way so why would that help in your view well i think i mean mostly it's

00:25:08.380 because from what my understanding of the education schools is that they really are

00:25:12.860 purveyors and influenced by these ideologies, and they have been for a long time, since the 1960s,

00:25:19.020 and it was kind of, they were the first departments to undergo the sway of these ideologies.

00:25:26.860 And so they've been there for a long time, they've had a lot of influence, and of course they have

00:25:30.620 influences on the teachers, and the teachers are teaching the students, and I see it with my own

00:25:35.740 children and so i think if there was some way to break that monopoly uh people who had masters or

00:25:41.020 phd's like you say subject experts um maybe they could just go around that and that there would be

00:25:46.540 less power that was invested in the education schools or departments to be able to push an

00:25:53.500 agenda all right the piece in question in the hub canada must reclaim its wayward universities

00:25:59.740 here's how not quite a road map but a lot of the a whole menu of the options and i think

00:26:04.380 the first step is diagnosing which you've done quite well uh professor zachary patterson always

00:26:08.700 good to see you thanks for coming on today thanks very much andrew i appreciate it all right thank

00:26:13.260 you uh and again we're doing we're going around the world here we're covering everything we're

00:26:17.340 covering education we're covering indigenous issues we're talking about jagmeet singh we're

00:26:21.340 doing it all uh but we have to cap things off with a look at one of the most profound examples

00:26:26.540 of virtue signaling by the state of putting this lofty ideological goal ahead of anything resembling

00:26:32.300 science or facts or evidence, and that is the commitment to what is increasingly becoming a

00:26:38.360 very dangerous net zero goal. Now, this is not being a quote-unquote climate denier. It's

00:26:44.080 certainly not for being anti-science. It's about looking at the facts. We have had a couple of

00:26:49.640 major international agreements that have dealt with fossil fuel use and emissions. We had Kyoto

00:26:55.780 back in 1997. We had the Paris Accord back in 2015. Since both of those, we've seen fossil

00:27:01.680 fuel consumption go up. We've seen emissions go up. The entry into a carbon tax by Canada that

00:27:07.860 has continued to increase has not stopped emissions from increasing. And we're wondering

00:27:13.340 if you've been naive and just expected the government knew what it was doing. You've

00:27:16.860 probably been wondering why. Well, the reality is that this is just not working. And what we have

00:27:24.280 from our friend Kenneth Green, who has written a piece in the Toronto Stunt about this,

00:27:28.520 is a call on the government to abandon what is increasingly an unfeasible and damaging

00:27:33.140 net zero plan. This has not worked. It's requiring a massive phase out of fossil fuels without

00:27:39.660 an alternative. And that is the so critical part of this. Dr. Kenneth Green joins us once again.

00:27:45.440 Always good to see you, Ken. Thanks for coming on today.

00:27:47.680 Always good to be with you, Andrew.

00:27:49.140 So this number has just become so arbitrary. We have to reduce by 2050. They'll occasionally say

00:27:54.800 2040 we have to go net zero here we we've got to reduce emissions by this amount and and none of

00:28:00.480 it really matters in a way because they're not doing any of it we're not seeing any record here

00:28:05.760 but the policy mechanisms that are supposed to get us there are causing some real harms are they not

00:28:11.840 yes they are and and another one of the arbitrary targets we have is the uh 1.5 degrees c limiting

00:28:17.200 warming to 1.5 degrees c which actually drives all of the other ones beneath it um the the regulations

00:28:24.640 on the energy sector are actually causing significant economic harm in Canada and also

00:28:30.360 in the United States and around the world, because energy is intrinsic to producing

00:28:35.240 economic growth and economic productivity, and it's economic productivity and growth

00:28:41.020 that lead to prosperous and thriving societies. And so these regulations, which are increasing

00:28:47.540 the cost of energy to manufacturers, to producers, to consumers, to homeowners, are all basically

00:28:55.520 causing economic suppression and therefore lowering people's quality of life.

00:29:01.320 In some cases, the regulations themselves are also causing economic, leading to environmental

00:29:06.420 harm separate from climate change, for example.

00:29:10.940 So with plastics regulations, Canada has a goal of phasing out, reaching zero plastic

00:29:16.280 waste by 2030 the studies show that the substitutes people are using for plastics are actually causing

00:29:22.440 more harm to the environment they generate more amounts of waste that have to be managed and they

00:29:27.640 pose health risks to people different than than plastics do so uh the regulatory the crusade for

00:29:34.600 or jihad for net zero 2050 um is leaving a considerable amount of damage in its wake

00:29:41.080 and the one thing that i i find so fascinating about this is that no one is talking about and

00:29:48.160 i shouldn't say no one you are but no one in the government is talking about energy demands we have

00:29:53.260 a lot of very ambitious goals even if we go all in on electric vehicles and this will require

00:29:58.600 energy and i've yet to see anyone even so much as have a discussion about where that's going to come

00:30:03.200 from even when people talk about renewables it's all very theoretical they have not actually

00:30:08.100 provided a roadmap of matching energy needs which will only increase but even at the current level

00:30:13.860 with alternative energy well energy needs are are huge not only in canada but in the united

00:30:20.420 states but but around the world and especially in developing countries that that have are still

00:30:25.860 using uh wood and dung for uh cooking fires and things and so the global energy uh demand is

00:30:32.980 is massive and it will only expand with population, with global population.

00:30:38.660 And but the question you ask is a really valid one, which is how are we going to match the demand

00:30:43.700 with supply? And this is an area where governments, I believe, especially governments who are in the

00:30:50.500 Western governments and those who are in the net zero school of thought and the climate

00:30:54.900 are concerned about basically have climate change as their center of their existence.

00:30:59.860 this is where i believe they're actually mostly insincere because they actually don't intend to

00:31:05.020 supply the demand so they promise but they don't intend to deliver and they and historically that's

00:31:10.320 what has happened which is they promise you an alternative or a better version we don't it's you

00:31:15.140 know it's not that we don't want you to have energy we want you to generate it with this way

00:31:18.900 wind or solar instead of fossil fuels um it's not that we don't want you to have your refrigerator

00:31:23.420 we want you to have this super hyper efficient refrigerator it's not that we don't want you to

00:31:27.380 have a barbecue but it has to be an electric barbecue uh but they the thing is they just

00:31:31.740 never when the time comes for them to give you that alternative the electric car that matches

00:31:35.640 your vehicle you don't get it they don't give it to you and uh the prices prices never come down

00:31:42.040 to match the pre-existing competitive sources so these things just don't manifest and i think

00:31:47.300 that's that's actually a goal which is they want to actually reduce humans access to energy because

00:31:53.480 they want to control people more rigidly and have them do less things they don't want you flying

00:31:59.400 uh around in airplanes that's that's for not for the commoners that's for the elites

00:32:04.120 um they don't want you living in sprawling at bigger houses or independent houses or even

00:32:08.200 individual houses um they want to constrain people's behavior and constrict humanity

00:32:14.600 because of that is their philosophy is that human activity is detrimental to the world

00:32:19.000 is killing the world there's i mean the the other thing you have to look at as well is i think the

00:32:26.200 moving goal posts on this and the goal posts have not just moved on on the target and on when but

00:32:30.840 even whenever the un cop uh summits on this come up uh you'll always have these uh radical groups

00:32:36.920 that will say no no net zero isn't good we need absolute zero so they're actually against things

00:32:41.960 that industry can do to mitigate emissions they're against things like carbon capture they're against

00:32:46.920 carbon you know all of these alternatives and and when you hear people talk about absolute zero and

00:32:51.320 again it's not just fringe people it's some some legitimate people they actually are anti-industry

00:32:56.760 i mean they're anti-human they want us to all just be sitting in dark rooms alone and that is

00:33:01.480 that is the goal and that's why whenever you hear you know occasional proposals from some city

00:33:05.880 council in you know quebec say to to ban wood stoves i mean it's actually quite revealing about

00:33:11.000 the just the state of contempt they have for western 21st century life it's not even western

00:33:16.940 21st century life it's the life since humans harnessed fire and learned how to cook their food

00:33:21.620 humans used need energy to and use energy to transform things into the substances that keep

00:33:27.780 them alive materials things that keep them alive and so yeah the goalposts shift constantly that's

00:33:33.040 something that of course uh is is uh well known and of course the all the subsidiary goals shift

00:33:38.600 as well which is now it's not enough for the west to give the developing countries a billion dollars

00:33:42.600 a year now they have to give them a trillion dollars a year now they have to give them two

00:33:45.480 trillion dollars a year in order to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions um it is a never-ending

00:33:50.440 shifting goal post and it has been since kyoto in 1997. um but again of course we're seeing some of

00:33:55.960 that here at home as well which is uh you know back uh over the last 20 years it was it was

00:34:01.560 you have to phase out coal we want you to phase out coal and you can use natural gas

00:34:05.720 and now the new call is no natural gas either just wind and solar and when the wind and solar

00:34:11.320 if that would ever happen it was all wind and solar then they would no doubt find a way to say

00:34:15.160 well yeah but no wind because it's you know windows are causing killing birds and uh it is

00:34:21.240 a ratchet to zero it's a ratchet to extremism and it's it's a it is it is in fact a um a rejection

00:34:28.200 of the idea of human nature as being an empowered species humanity as being an empowered species

00:34:34.840 that can change the world by the use of energy and materials it's a rejection of fundamental

00:34:40.520 rejection of the of the acceptability of having human beings on your planet now i'm from ontario

00:34:48.440 so obviously my experience is different than it is for other people because we have an ontario

00:34:53.480 hydroelectric we also have nuclear and but but it's nuclear is probably the greatest way to expose

00:34:59.800 the utter hypocrisy from a lot of the emissions hawks because these people that want low emission

00:35:04.920 energy sources you bring up nuclear and all of a sudden no no no not like that absolutely that's

00:35:09.800 and that's what i say is you can you can you can recognize their actual goals by what they do

00:35:14.920 which is the rejection of nuclear power which was known of course as a non very low greenhouse gas

00:35:20.840 gas-submitting activity, and it's been safely used for 60 years or actually 80 years, maybe,

00:35:29.580 the rejection of nuclear power, absolute rejection and continued rejection of it, does show their

00:35:34.000 complete and utter insincerity about the reality of what they want to achieve.

00:35:39.740 They don't want to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions at the least cost while

00:35:43.900 giving, still maintaining humanity's energy profile, and they have rejected that every

00:35:49.780 single time in favor of socialist measures that control and redistribute wealth. That's the other

00:35:55.640 thing, which is you don't get to reward too many cronies if you're really relying on nuclear power.

00:36:00.400 And you don't get to play the subsidy game very much because nuclear power doesn't require a lot

00:36:04.520 of subsidies. Yeah. And I mean, it's low cost as well. It's accessible. I mean, obviously,

00:36:11.240 there's a significant upstart cost. But yeah. And the one thing I guess I'll say on this is that

00:36:16.340 when you see electricity shortages in Alberta, when you see other things like this, it forces

00:36:24.300 people to realize that some of these discussions are a bit of a luxury item. And that when people

00:36:29.980 are living through some minus 40 degree winter, it forces them to realize that, okay, maybe I don't

00:36:36.060 want to just shut things down entirely. So I do think that for the non-activist, there is a bit

00:36:41.380 of a realization coming that some of these things are just infeasible. I think that's true. That's

00:36:46.060 true. I think for the non-activists, for the non-committed believers, I think people are

00:36:50.420 looking at the effects of the climate policies on their wallet, on their house, on their wallet,

00:36:55.840 on their safety, in their cars and in their houses and against the climate, basically. Safety from

00:37:03.000 fires, safety from storms. And they're seeing these climate policies are not desirable and not

00:37:11.320 giving them anything of benefit. They're not giving them a benefit, but they're certainly

00:37:15.460 imposing a cost that people are increasingly seeing, taking a bite out of their paycheck

00:37:20.020 every month. And I think there's a loss of appetite for these extreme plans, not only in

00:37:26.640 Canada, but also around the world, where some governments that are shifting right are vowing

00:37:31.240 to move away from net zero. At 2050, much of us not go to absolute zero. No one is ever going to

00:37:37.380 absolute zero carbon emissions because it's impossible. But I think there is a waning of

00:37:44.800 enthusiasm for this. In polls, climate change doesn't come up very highly compared to people's

00:37:51.820 other needs for what they think is important, such as affordable housing, good education,

00:37:57.900 healthcare, healthcare, and healthcare. I think climate has never polled very well amongst the

00:38:04.100 normal people who are not activists, which is I think why we have actually seen the activists

00:38:10.440 held down in terms of their ambition, the scope of their ambitions for so many years,

00:38:15.220 since 1997, to oppose draconian regulations, draconian taxes, draconian limitations on

00:38:21.800 energy for energy use, bans on fossil fuels and things like that, because people are not

00:38:27.900 buying the extreme rhetoric.

00:38:29.400 They look out the window.

00:38:30.740 That's the thing, right?

00:38:31.480 Because one of my former colleagues or a former climatologist used to say, don't look away

00:38:36.620 from the weather report on your phone and look out the window.

00:38:39.360 Does the world look like it's being destroyed?

00:38:43.380 Are you seeing the disasters that you're hearing about constantly, all of the wildfires, floods, and droughts?

00:38:50.800 Is that happening near you?

00:38:52.720 And people are looking at it going, you know, I'm just not seeing it.

00:38:55.340 The air is cleaner than it's ever been before in Canada and the U.S. in terms of normal pollutants, conventional pollution.

00:39:04.300 Quality of life is good.

00:39:05.860 Safety is high.

00:39:06.620 So, you know, I think people are losing enthusiasm for these issues, and it's only a matter of time until that's reflected in the vote.

00:39:12.760 I always like when the delegate for the Maldives at the UN Climate Summit will say, you know, we're going to be underwater any minute now.

00:39:18.720 And then you look and realize that the Maldives has opened like 30 beachfront resorts in the last year.

00:39:23.640 And you're saying, well, you're not behaving like a country that's drowning.

00:39:28.520 Yeah, they're actually growing in land mass.

00:39:30.380 That's one of the things that was the funniest things of all about the climate change and the low-lying islands thing.

00:39:35.380 that it turns out when sea levels come up the islands grow because they're they're actually

00:39:39.460 partly live live ecosystems and so a lot of these islands that were supposed to be

00:39:44.340 be underwater by now have actually expanded in their in their land area and the coral reefs of

00:39:49.220 course are which were supposed to be dead 20 years ago and uh it's dead and extinct 20 years ago are

00:39:55.220 just exploding in uh with with uh vigor uh so you know australia was just saying we're going to come

00:40:02.260 I'm like, oh, we're going to lose our economy because we're going to lose our coral reefs.

00:40:05.600 It's not happening.

00:40:06.400 And they're not behaving as if they think it's going to happen.

00:40:08.720 Yeah.

00:40:09.140 Oh, it's the same.

00:40:09.820 You get the fear mongering about polar bears in the north and their population's thriving.

00:40:13.660 So, well, it's a great piece in the Toronto Sun.

00:40:16.200 Dr. Kenneth Green, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.

00:40:18.580 Always a pleasure, sir.

00:40:19.380 Have a great weekend.

00:40:20.300 Thank you, Andrew.

00:40:20.780 You too.

00:40:21.200 Take care.

00:40:21.580 All right.

00:40:21.900 Thanks a lot, Ken.

00:40:22.880 That does it for us for today.

00:40:24.720 We'll be back.

00:40:25.040 Maybe we need to do.

00:40:25.840 Okay, here's what we got to do.

00:40:26.780 I got to get the True North leadership team on board with this.

00:40:29.400 We'll do a fact-finding exploration to the Maldives.

00:40:32.420 If you want to send me to the Maldives,

00:40:33.980 it could take like two, three, four weeks.

00:40:36.420 You let me know.

00:40:37.180 It's going to be expensive,

00:40:38.240 but it's in the name of science.

00:40:40.420 So Sean, do you want to come to the Maldives?

00:40:42.800 We'll do some real investigating there.

00:40:44.940 I'll do a show every day

00:40:45.900 and I'll basically point at the water

00:40:48.320 and we'll see if it's moving.

00:40:50.020 And I might actually need to stay in the water all day

00:40:53.160 just to see if it rises.

00:40:55.460 And if I'm like drowning by the end of the day,

00:40:57.440 then we'll believe.

00:40:58.400 But yeah, I'll do it for a few weeks.

00:41:01.080 All right, Sean, you're on board.

00:41:03.160 You know, my wife might need to come as well.

00:41:05.900 This is it.

00:41:06.360 All right, True North, we'll set up a domain name.

00:41:09.680 Send truenorth to themaldives.com in the name of science.

00:41:13.000 All right, I've had my fun for the day.

00:41:15.380 I'll have to do like the Mayor Quimby backdrop

00:41:18.300 if I just decide to go there anyway

00:41:20.220 and pretend I'm not there from Simpsons.

00:41:22.180 There's a reference for you.

00:41:24.000 Anyway, have a great weekend, everyone.

00:41:25.980 We will see you on Monday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:41:30.980 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:41:33.740 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Martin Show.

00:41:36.260 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:41:55.980 We'll be right back.

00:42:25.980 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 11, 2024

Is Freeland getting thrown under the bus？

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