Juno News - August 08, 2023


Is Justin Trudeau trolling us with Barbie photo op？


Episode Stats


Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

163.41154

Word count

7,176

Sentence count

285

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

14

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, Andrew tells the story of why he decided to pay someone else's water heater for something he doesn't own. He also explains why he thinks it's a good idea to rent a water heater.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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.
00:01:22.960 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:01:31.000 Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:01:36.040 It is Tuesday, August 8th, Canada's most irreverent talk show.
00:01:39.340 We are live just after 4.02 Eastern Time, in case you are unaware of what time it is,
00:01:47.120 in which case I am blissfully aware of the time.
00:01:51.360 So anyway, if you hear a little bit of background noise going on, I should probably apologize in advance.
00:01:56.740 We are having a, okay, I can't tell you what's going on without telling you a whole story that I'll try to condense here.
00:02:03.900 But we are getting a new water heater installed.
00:02:06.460 And I think at like my last glance, it is installed and they're just doing some finishing touches and whatnot.
00:02:12.720 But the reason we are, I live in Ontario, so please don't hold it against me.
00:02:17.420 Ontario has this like very uniquely Ontario scam in which people I presume a majority of the
00:02:25.860 province certainly a large chunk rent their water heaters now I've been going through my whole life
00:02:32.100 thinking this was the natural order of things and thinking this is just what everyone in Canada did
00:02:36.460 you just paid your $30 a month and you use someone else's water heater and if it breaks down they
00:02:41.740 come in and replace it. And it came up only like two or three months ago that I was speaking to
00:02:48.220 someone from Alberta who legitimately had never heard of this. Like they never in their entire
00:02:53.640 life had heard of the idea of someone renting a water heater. And this person had, I think,
00:02:59.380 a fairly legitimate level of incredulousness at it because they're like, well, you don't rent
00:03:03.760 your washer and dryer. You don't rent your dishwasher. You don't rent your oven and so on.
00:03:08.840 And as I was trying to explain this thing, I realized how little sense it made.
00:03:14.940 And it's not that you're not allowed to own a water heater in Ontario.
00:03:18.420 You can buy one if you want, but it just seems like a lot of people have just been suckered
00:03:22.960 into this rental thing.
00:03:23.900 Anyway, so we bought our house about three years ago and the old owners had a rental
00:03:28.860 agreement and just in all of the things that you have to pay for when you move into a place,
00:03:34.180 buying a new water heater just didn't seem like something we wanted to do.
00:03:37.160 So we just sort of paid the monthly fee. And I think I set up auto billing and just sort of forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago. No, it was about a month ago, I guess. Our air conditioner, we had to get some maintenance done on it anyway. So the company that rents us the water heater is also the company that does the maintenance on the air conditioner, apparently. So we own the air conditioner that we don't rent, don't worry.
00:04:00.520 So we had them come by and they tried to like put us on this stupid like maintenance plan where they're like 0.79
00:04:06.460 Well for ten dollars a month you can get your annual maintenance done on the air conditioner 0.78
00:04:11.340 And I said well, but that's more than if I just pay for you to come and do the maintenance on the air conditioner
00:04:15.080 So no, I don't want this plan and then they said okay, but you should get the plan
00:04:19.280 And I said no, I don't want the plan
00:04:20.400 So they come and do the air conditioner maintenance and then they ask again if I want the plan and I said no
00:04:25.600 And then on my next bill, I've been charged $10 for a maintenance plan in addition to the service charge of like $100.
00:04:33.260 And I was so annoyed by the company trying to gouge me for $10 that I just decided I would screw them out of the $35 they've been getting from me every month for the water heater.
00:04:42.760 So I think it was like the very next day I called and asked for a water heater, which we're now getting installed.
00:04:47.700 and I'm like so ashamed of it because if I look at like what I've been paying for the last three
00:04:52.700 years for someone else's water heater it is a big chunk of what I'm paying today for my own water
00:04:59.460 heater and I've never in the last three years had to have any repair done or replacement and this
00:05:05.020 one I mean maybe the joke will be on me if in a week's time it just like goes on the fritz or
00:05:09.240 whatever but anyway I was asking a couple of my colleagues before I started the show here
00:05:13.620 because they live all over the country.
00:05:15.880 I said, are any of you aware of this?
00:05:17.620 And they all think I'm insane 0.99
00:05:19.000 and the biggest sucker whatsoever 0.99
00:05:20.760 for having rented something 0.99
00:05:22.620 when I don't rent any other appliances.
00:05:24.920 So if you are in Ontario
00:05:26.180 and you are paying for a water heater,
00:05:28.400 there is a better way.
00:05:29.640 There is another world outside of this
00:05:31.380 that you don't know.
00:05:32.200 And no, I'm not getting a commission.
00:05:33.740 I'm not selling water heaters.
00:05:35.420 Maybe we should do like a True North branded water heater
00:05:38.060 and try to just like outfit Ontarians
00:05:40.340 and we'll give them water heater freedom.
00:05:42.440 uh but but all of this i i'm looking here uh frank in the chat says there's a manitoba i don't even
00:05:48.540 know what that word is a manitoba manitoba ian i what is someone from manitoba called actually i
00:05:54.700 realize i just don't talk about them often enough manitoba ian i don't know it's spelt weird uh but
00:06:00.080 he says we don't rent our water heaters here either we buy them and install them ourselves
00:06:04.240 yeah well i'm like a little ontario nancy boy so i didn't install my water heater i've had someone
00:06:09.040 that is far better at that doing that.
00:06:11.060 Yeah, no, it's Manitoban.
00:06:12.640 Yeah, this guy just added like an I in there.
00:06:14.900 It's totally Manitoban.
00:06:16.180 I don't know why I forgot the demonym for Manitoba.
00:06:19.080 Anyway, I'm getting like a whole bunch of people saying
00:06:21.320 they have gotten rid of the rental,
00:06:23.180 so they're all miles above me.
00:06:24.940 Anyway, miles ahead of me and above me.
00:06:27.280 You never know.
00:06:28.160 Okay, that's my little rant of the day here 0.99
00:06:29.860 about how once again, Ontarians are getting screwed. 0.98
00:06:32.540 Albertans figured this out long time ago. 0.99
00:06:34.200 They don't have rats
00:06:34.940 and they don't have rented water heaters
00:06:36.440 and they are a freer people for it.
00:06:39.040 In any event, the big story today, no, it's not my water heater.
00:06:43.460 You may have seen this photo from Justin Trudeau where it is, oh, now we've got like the rental
00:06:49.700 water heater apologist here saying they're built to a higher standard than the ones you
00:06:54.100 buy.
00:06:54.480 Well, I'm not sure that's true actually, but nevertheless, it's an asset that now I own.
00:07:00.240 So I can be proud of my water heater.
00:07:01.740 I can hug my water heater and just, you know, draw a smiley face on it if I want.
00:07:06.300 In any case, yeah, Big Hot Water Heater has got to him, my colleague Phil has.
00:07:10.500 The Big Hot Water Heater rental lobby is out in full force today.
00:07:14.840 Anyway, going on to serious business here.
00:07:17.540 Not that this isn't serious for people.
00:07:19.580 Justin Trudeau and his son Xavier are on Team Barbie.
00:07:24.520 Yeah, I don't know if you saw this photo.
00:07:26.560 Our Prime Minister decided he would take in a movie over the weekend.
00:07:30.320 And there is Justin Trudeau and his son.
00:07:32.940 We are Team Barbie wearing their...
00:07:35.380 People were calling this a pink shirt that both of them were wearing.
00:07:39.900 If I'm being technical, I think Justin Trudeau's shirt is more aptly described as coral than pink.
00:07:49.080 Maybe it's not, no, it's not, yeah, it's a little bit, yeah, it's got that orange hue that coral does.
00:07:54.720 I don't know if we put coral in the category of pink.
00:07:58.380 But nevertheless, Justin Trudeau's coral slash pink hoodie, Xavier's hot pink t-shirt,
00:08:03.040 The two of them on Team Barbie, a father-son duo taking in a nice movie.
00:08:07.340 I could not care less about this.
00:08:10.340 I told you last week that I saw the Barbie movie on opening weekend.
00:08:14.220 And while I went in expecting it to be terrible, I left thinking it was tolerable.
00:08:21.640 It was certainly not as horrendously woke as a lot of people were pretending.
00:08:27.080 And I actually, if you saw Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire's commentary on this,
00:08:31.200 I'm kind of on Michael Knoll's side on this and that Barbie actually had, if you really look for
00:08:36.920 it, a somewhat conservative message in the sense that it was mocking the performative wokeness.
00:08:42.920 It was mocking the virtue signaling. It was mocking the very ideas that a lot of people
00:08:47.600 think it was promoting. And I said at its core, Barbie also upholds the idea of a gender binary, 0.56
00:08:54.680 which in this day and age, the woke refused to do. It talks about at great length, the fact that
00:08:59.360 men and women are fundamentally different. So I didn't leave the Barbie movie thinking it was this
00:09:05.000 grand, beautiful, cinematic brilliance. I didn't leave it thinking it was my favorite movie ever,
00:09:10.240 but I said it actually is not a movie that conservatives have to just naturally hate.
00:09:15.700 But now that Justin Trudeau is wearing his coral slash pink sweatshirt and standing up and
00:09:21.440 declaring himself on Team Barbie, I realize that it makes it easier to hate the whole thing here.
00:09:25.960 but now the question that I would ask here is what is he getting at now it is entirely possible
00:09:32.420 that Justin Trudeau is just letting his inner Barbie soar here and this is who he's been maybe
00:09:36.900 he played with Barbies as a kid maybe he just has played with him as a father with his daughter or
00:09:42.000 his children in general I don't know I don't really care maybe that's just who he is and he's
00:09:47.080 been waiting for this moment or or perhaps it is about trolling us all now it is very difficult to
00:09:55.200 accuse Justin Trudeau of playing 3D chess, of actually doing anything that involves a level
00:10:00.620 of self-awareness. But when you look at the responses to this, it kind of just triggered
00:10:05.660 everyone. It triggered conservatives in this country. It triggered people in other countries.
00:10:10.640 Piers Morgan, who is a bit insufferable himself for a number of reasons, not this necessarily,
00:10:16.380 has come out and said he's so glad he's not Canadian, which of course basically gave his 0.99
00:10:22.200 opponents the ammunition they needed of being able to turn around and say well we're glad you're not
00:10:26.560 Canadian too but whether you like Piers Morgan or not he sort of doubled down and then in true
00:10:31.380 Canadian fashion whenever anyone criticizes Canada it's like a bat signal goes up for all the usual
00:10:37.060 suspects so the Toronto Star ran this whole thing about it and all of that and now you've got Katie
00:10:42.160 Telford pushing back I mean Katie Telford who's just been like on a Twitter tear lately going
00:10:46.660 after conservatives. This is like catnip for her. And all of this is to say that it's caused a bit
00:10:52.340 of a weird culture war and it's brought out some very negative commentary. You've got people that
00:10:58.060 are saying, oh yeah, Justin Trudeau is gay and oh, it's creepy for him and his son to do this. 0.95
00:11:02.740 And I say, don't go down that road at all. Because what you're doing is, for starters, you're just 0.97
00:11:07.980 stretching something that is entirely benign. The idea of a father and son going to a movie,
00:11:13.720 whether it's Barbie or the new Beanie Babies movie
00:11:17.540 or Oppenheimer, it should be encouraged.
00:11:19.860 And we should actually encourage parents
00:11:21.820 and their children to have a relationship,
00:11:23.840 especially when your kid's a teen
00:11:24.960 and you don't want anything to do with your parents.
00:11:26.760 Even if they aren't Justin Trudeau as a teen,
00:11:29.220 you don't want anything to do with your parents.
00:11:30.700 If your parent is Justin Trudeau,
00:11:32.380 probably a bigger problem for you to have to contend with.
00:11:35.760 But nevertheless, that should be encouraged.
00:11:38.460 And then you flip to the other side of this
00:11:40.600 and you wonder who actually cares.
00:11:43.080 And I don't think anyone is truly bothered by this.
00:11:46.500 I think people just don't like that they see everything as being scripted and stilted and
00:11:52.560 performative.
00:11:53.660 And that is, I think, where we need to look at here, which is that this is a guy who less
00:11:58.240 than a week ago announced a very difficult chapter in his life that was coming to an
00:12:03.080 end in the sense that he had said he was separating from his wife and they wanted privacy.
00:12:09.060 They wanted the kids and the family to be able to handle this all together.
00:12:12.560 and they said they're going on a vacation this week.
00:12:15.320 And then the leave my family alone,
00:12:18.080 keep them out of it becomes a,
00:12:20.500 here's a picture of my son and I
00:12:22.000 in pink shirts going to a movie.
00:12:23.720 So putting your kid out there when you've said,
00:12:27.660 hey, leave my kids alone 1.00
00:12:28.760 as they deal with this difficult time,
00:12:30.240 I think is actually quite problematic.
00:12:32.680 And it shows that Justin Trudeau
00:12:34.120 is wanting the best of both worlds.
00:12:35.780 He's wanting to use his kids when it suits him 0.91
00:12:38.260 and keep them away from everything when it doesn't.
00:12:41.380 Now, to be clear, I do not believe kids are at all fair game in politics.
00:12:45.940 I believe we should keep people's families out of it unless the family is pontificating on politics in a way that you can criticize the ideas on. 0.87
00:12:54.900 And that is not what Xavier is doing.
00:12:56.820 Xavier's offense is wearing a pink shirt, which he can actually pull off a little bit better than Justin Trudeau can do the coral hoodie, I think, and going to a movie with his dad.
00:13:05.660 Now, if we want to talk about taste in cinema here, I'm not aware of Justin Trudeau broadcasting any other film preferences.
00:13:14.300 So maybe he's a big cinephile and he's going to a new movie every week.
00:13:17.760 I don't know.
00:13:18.720 Jen Gerson, who is the co-founder of The Line alongside Matt Gurney, of which I'm a subscriber, would encourage you to subscribe as well.
00:13:26.820 She said here, look, she just wants a world leader who picks Oppenheimer and she doesn't think that's too much to ask.
00:13:32.420 Yeah, I want the world leader that is going to steep him or herself in the historical nonfiction genre of Oppenheimer or anything else.
00:13:42.400 That's what we want.
00:13:43.640 And look, I think the whole point of the whole Barbieheimer thing was that people see both.
00:13:47.740 So if he wants to do the doubleheader and say we're Team Barbie and then we're, I don't know if you want to be Team Oppenheimer necessarily,
00:13:53.180 but Team Barbie and then Team Oppenheimer, that's one way to do it here.
00:13:58.160 But that's not what he did.
00:13:59.260 And he's trying to do the whole look at me, look at me thing, the woke performative virtue signaling, or he's also just trying to, as I said earlier, troll conservatives.
00:14:08.860 And you know what, if that's his goal, it's probably going to work.
00:14:12.640 And just to put some contrast on this here, if you want to talk about the tale of two leaders, Pierre Polyev has put forward his own image today that is trying to really shatter, I think, the left's scary, evil, conservative boogeyman narrative about him.
00:14:28.060 the ad that was released very simple very well shot i don't know when it was put together but
00:14:34.360 it was a brief ad in which pierre polyev the family man is put on offer for people and i'm
00:14:40.360 going to play this for you here because i want to talk about it for a couple minutes after
00:14:43.660 who is pierre polyev many know him as the common sense leader the country needs
00:14:51.160 his school teacher parents know him as the boy they adopted and raised in their modest home
00:14:57.320 in the suburbs of calgary his dad knows him as the son he took to early morning hockey games
00:15:04.360 his neighbors know him as the boy who used to deliver the morning newspaper
00:15:09.320 his children know him in francais espagnol and english as papa and i know him as a guy who loves
00:15:17.160 me for who i am a canadian who came to call canada home and his wife so when pierre says
00:15:26.200 It doesn't matter who you know or where you're from,
00:15:29.260 but rather who you are and where you're going.
00:15:32.980 These aren't just empty words.
00:15:34.940 He's lived it.
00:15:36.900 Common sense.
00:15:38.700 Let's bring it home.
00:15:46.080 That was Anna Polyev narrating this ad about Pierre Polyev the father,
00:15:51.240 Pierre Polyev the son, Pierre Polyev the husband,
00:15:54.180 really putting forward an ad that tells you absolutely nothing about what the guy will do
00:15:59.460 as prime minister but it also puts him in a light that a lot of people haven't seen him as and i
00:16:04.820 think right now we're seeing the conservatives are trying to do i don't know if it's a rebranding or
00:16:09.920 just a branding of polyev but they're trying to paint the guy in a light that's different than 0.94
00:16:14.760 the evil can scary conservative racist white supremacist bigot pro uh whatever anti this 0.94
00:16:20.460 anti that thing that the liberals are going to do and it's a very lovely ad i mean i'm seeing 0.97
00:16:26.860 from all these people that are part of like the big political establishment saying oh if this is
00:16:30.660 the side of pierre pauliev that people are going to see he's going to be prime minister and i i
00:16:35.000 don't think it's that easy but i think there's a way that you can have your family highlighted
00:16:40.700 that doesn't look like you're just trying to do what trudeau and his son were doing in the barbie
00:16:47.760 photo, which is just like this weird sort of photo op-y nonsense, even though a political ad
00:16:55.080 is by its nature, the most scripted, stilted, inauthentic thing that there can be. I mean,
00:17:00.240 for all I know, they had 10 versions of those and they ran them all by the focus groups,
00:17:04.260 the glasses on, the glasses off. Do we throw the daughter? Do we carry her? Do we, you know,
00:17:09.060 kiss them on the cheek? Like whatever, like, I don't know, but I'm saying that these things
00:17:12.920 are not as natural and authentic as people may want to believe.
00:17:18.160 But it still comes across as such.
00:17:20.660 And that's what I think is kind of interesting here.
00:17:22.860 Now, just for contrast, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals
00:17:26.480 also released their own new campaign ad today.
00:17:29.820 Take a look.
00:17:42.920 Oh, wait, that might have been the wrong one.
00:17:52.900 Sorry, I thought that was the liberal campaign ad.
00:17:55.900 No, it didn't have the, like, I'm Justin Trudeau and I approve this message.
00:17:59.540 Although, you know, if we are going to start drawing some comparisons here,
00:18:03.580 I will say that the inauthentic, plastic, utopian world of Barbie
00:18:09.320 is probably not far off from the liberal world of Justin Trudeau.
00:18:13.880 Maybe that can be the real poll question we go for is
00:18:16.740 who sets a better standard for the real world, Barbie or Justin Trudeau?
00:18:21.960 And I think Barbie is probably going to edge out Justin Trudeau on this one before long.
00:18:27.540 But nevertheless, the point of all of this is that there is a way
00:18:31.760 that you can have your family become a part of your brand.
00:18:35.520 but if you do you have to make sure that that is a part of you that is real and the reason we saw
00:18:44.040 so much uh i'll say finger wagging about justin trudeau last week from people is that they
00:18:49.440 actually felt like justin trudeau had been stage managing this entire image for so many years
00:18:55.080 and i maintain what i said last week which is that his separation is absolutely none of anyone's
00:19:02.600 business. I think people should leave them alone. I think no matter how much you hate the guy
00:19:06.080 and how aggrieved you feel about his and his government's policies and statements,
00:19:10.780 his marriage is not the issue. His politics are, his policies are, and perhaps even his
00:19:16.400 personality is, but not his wife and not his kids. But it is also, I think, worth pointing out,
00:19:23.160 as we've been discussing, that Justin Trudeau is trying to have it both ways. When it was
00:19:27.240 convenient, he'd bring the wife out on the campaign trail. She'd be up there on stage 1.00
00:19:31.800 in London with Idris Elba trying to promote the Trudeau brand and then behind closed doors as we
00:19:37.640 know clearly it was not an ideal situation for either of them and I do not celebrate the breakdown
00:19:43.020 of a family and I think we all need to understand the costs that go along with families in politics
00:19:49.560 and Pierre Polyev is in a similar situation I don't know what the guy is like behind closed
00:19:55.120 doors I know a lot of people who have known his wife for many many years and speak so highly of
00:20:00.700 And I think the fact that she's actually taking an active role in his campaign in a way that the last two conservative leader spouses haven't really as much.
00:20:10.820 Rebecca O'Toole, lovely woman, wasn't, I don't recall her ever narrating an ad or being in them except for just being there in the photos, similar to Jill Scheer and their kids.
00:20:21.340 I know their kids were quite a bit younger as well.
00:20:23.680 so we'll see what happens with this but I do think that there is a cautionary tale here that
00:20:30.260 people need to be aware of and if we're going to stack up you know Trudeau the family man against
00:20:34.880 Pierre Polyev the family man I think it's a legitimate question which one is more believable
00:20:39.840 to Canadians which one are Canadians going to buy into so that's the question there and hopefully 0.84
00:20:46.940 you enjoyed the liberal campaign ad gag I thought of that like two minutes before I did it so glad
00:20:52.080 Sean fired the right clip there and didn't go like, wait, wait, we have a liberal ad?
00:20:54.920 I didn't know about this.
00:20:55.920 No, that was the one.
00:20:57.420 Let's turn to energy policy here.
00:21:00.140 And just one point before I get to the real topic of the discussion here that I wanted
00:21:05.080 to get to is that the federal government is trying to use the carrot and stick thing,
00:21:10.260 except it's a lot more stick than carrot, to force provinces to get their electricity
00:21:15.340 grids to be so-called net zero.
00:21:18.080 We've heard from the environment minister that the feds are considering tying a lot more tax credits to provinces overhauling their electricity system.
00:21:27.820 Now, a lot of provinces are already doing this, but it's a slow process and it's a very costly process.
00:21:34.340 And a lot of the activists, for example, don't like that Ontario's phase out of coal had to involve gas.
00:21:40.920 Well, yeah, wind and solar are not at all doing what you think it's doing.
00:21:44.980 They're not at all affordable.
00:21:46.220 The activists seem to hate nuclear, despite the fact that it's one of the most clean and cost-efficient forms of energy generation.
00:21:54.240 But not enough for the federal government, who thinks they need to try to extort more money out, or more action, out of the provinces.
00:22:02.480 And this is how they're going to do it.
00:22:04.760 But then we go to the bigger picture here, which is the climate change catastrophism,
00:22:09.420 as termed in a new book by Andy West with the Philosophy Foundation in London,
00:22:15.460 which I learned of in a great column by Joe Oliver in the Financial Post.
00:22:20.100 This is Canada's last fiscally responsible finance minister, and he joins me now.
00:22:25.120 Joe, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming back on the show.
00:22:29.980 Now, you contended with a lot of the activists when you were in government and in cabinet.
00:22:35.580 And the one thing that I would say is that enough was never enough.
00:22:38.600 And we've seen the rhetoric really ramp up in recent years to the point where it's not just, yeah, we've got to do something about climate.
00:22:45.820 It's the world is burning. We're all going to die.
00:22:48.580 There's no question. This is a catastrophe that is imminent, and we mustn't question it.
00:22:56.860 And that's been building up for some time.
00:23:00.060 You recall it was global warming, and then when it didn't warm, it became climate change.
00:23:05.540 but there was always this intensity, almost a quasi-religious fervor or certainly an ideological
00:23:15.940 fervor that was behind the rhetoric and there were all sorts of incantations of doom and priests
00:23:25.460 and priestesses that were carrying the sacred message and if you weren't on side and totally
00:23:34.260 on side and then of course you weren't just a skeptic you were a denier. Well that term is
00:23:41.340 actually quite an important one because there are a lot of people and I've interviewed many of them
00:23:45.660 who are believers in the fundamental idea that humans are causing global warming that we need
00:23:52.340 to change something they're even supporters of carbon taxes but people that don't go the full
00:23:58.120 distance and the full demonization and the full anti-industrialization approach and they're
00:24:04.460 vilified they're called deniers or lukewarmers uh sometimes and i think that's interesting as well
00:24:10.220 that we've basically taken this uh scientific process or what's supposed to be a scientific
00:24:15.100 process and have turned it into this us versus them a very polar political discussion yeah and
00:24:21.840 you can only you know the reason i wrote the article is because for some time i've been puzzled
00:24:27.200 as to the fervor we were talking about, the prevalence of these beliefs and the willingness to undergo really severe economic hardship,
00:24:41.460 even though what we were doing wouldn't necessarily have any effect on the global temperature, and we know that in Canada.
00:24:49.300 So I was always searching for what was the psychology behind it, and then when I read the book that you just referred to,
00:24:56.880 which is a social psychological analysis of it. It really came together because it refers to
00:25:05.520 to culture and culture is either religious or it's ideological. And either way, it doesn't
00:25:15.040 permit any dissent. Dissidence is not allowed. I mean, we talk a lot about diversity,
00:25:21.120 But diversity of opinion, certainly on that issue and a lot of others, is simply intolerable.
00:25:28.940 And I think that part of the fervor and the fundamental insecurity, I guess, is that it's based on, allegedly, a profound belief that the science is settled.
00:25:42.020 And we've all heard that repeated endlessly.
00:25:45.040 So there's no reason for anybody to listen to someone who might want to present scientists who have a different view.
00:25:54.980 And let me tell you, there are thousands of them that do, even though they're in the minority.
00:25:59.680 So, you know, what explains that?
00:26:02.240 And I think it goes to the ideological or religious commitment.
00:26:09.080 And it just doesn't tolerate any dissent.
00:26:14.720 and and that's that's really unfortunate because what we're being asked to do will in in canada
00:26:22.800 according to rbc economics cost the country two trillion dollars to get to net zero by 2050
00:26:31.040 and the globe according to mckenzie uh will have to fork over 275 trillion dollars well this is
00:26:39.920 this is a staggering amount and frankly i don't think there's any way that the uh that the western
00:26:47.280 democracies will uh will tolerate that we're starting to see the resistance um in in europe
00:26:54.800 where they've just gone through a an energy crisis and the cost of uh of energy has ballooned and
00:27:02.640 they're confronted in a lot of cases very tragically with a choice between eating or
00:27:07.920 heating well that's not tolerable and neither is depriving the world's poorest countries of energy
00:27:16.960 which is the only way out of abject poverty i i fear you may be slightly optimistic in one sense
00:27:25.360 and my reason for thinking that is just looking at the last three years and how much economic
00:27:31.440 harm people were willing to withstand uh to deal with what was presented as an emergency and that
00:27:36.960 was COVID and whatever we think of how governments responded to that once what we learned there is
00:27:42.320 that when something is an emergency or a crisis all of the old rule books tend to get thrown away
00:27:48.720 and I feel that the branding of climate change as an emergency will license a lot of the same
00:27:54.720 economic harm people are totally willing to bankrupt certain sectors and certain businesses
00:28:00.320 to fix this problem well i i don't confuse me totally with an optimist on this matter but i
00:28:08.400 think you you got it right when you said they're they're prepared to to see others suffer but the
00:28:14.720 question is uh how much um pain will will the population overall be willing to and and polls
00:28:21.680 indicate that that it's not very much and what what we've got in europe is a bit of a test case
00:28:28.480 because there the emergency is real it's it's intense and it's it's hurting people right across
00:28:36.400 the board uh the poor people always are the ones who are affected most adversity but the middle
00:28:41.840 class is is uh suffering as well and you see it in the polls you see um the prime minister of the
00:28:49.200 uk backing off some of his his policies he's allowing a lot more drilling going on he's
00:28:56.240 He's backing off some of the restrictions on what kind of heating is permitted and whether,
00:29:05.440 and you know, in Europe, they've defined natural gas as non-emitting, as a clean source of energy.
00:29:13.120 Well, you know, you can argue with that or not, but the reason they did that is the practicality
00:29:21.520 that if you don't have gas to back up wind and solar, you're going to have blackouts and brownouts,
00:29:28.280 or you're going to use coal and you're going to burn wood pellets. So when it comes to that kind
00:29:35.880 of a crisis, and we're not there yet, but when it does, then I think people start changing their
00:29:41.100 minds. And you can see that also in some of the U.S. states like California, the so-called blue
00:29:48.180 states that is the democratic states which have moved more uh to to renewables and are paying the
00:29:55.220 price in terms of a very high energy costs and periodic brownouts well and i think to add to
00:30:02.640 that the one thing in canada that's been so infuriating and this goes back to the electricity
00:30:06.840 stuff i was talking about at the outset of the segment here is that they're wanting a solution
00:30:11.960 that doesn't exist. And yes, wind power and solar power exist, but the output, the cost,
00:30:18.760 the efficiency, the reliability are simply not there. And it's not that they might not be in
00:30:23.920 the future or some other magical energy source won't exist in the future, but they're not there
00:30:28.060 now. And provinces like Ontario, like Alberta have spent a lot of money to transition away from coal
00:30:34.440 because that was deemed to be an environmental benefit. They have to rely on gas. In Ontario,
00:30:39.560 you have the benefit of nuclear but even that is derided by a lot of these same activists
00:30:44.920 yeah that's right and i've written about that because i have some background i was the former
00:30:49.500 chair of the uh of of the independent electricity system operator which basically runs the grid in
00:30:56.720 in ontario and the the the truth about renewables is that in a small amount
00:31:03.000 They can have a role. But as we know, the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. And so as you increase the amount, the proportion of energy that's coming from renewables, then the cost starts escalating dramatically and the reliability declines as well.
00:31:23.240 You absolutely have to have natural gas as a backup, because right now there isn't a technological alternative.
00:31:33.400 You know, we're hoping that one day battery power can provide the storage.
00:31:41.100 But right now it's four hours, and that's certainly not long enough.
00:31:46.020 But since most of the time, neither of the two renewables, wind and solar, are operating, you have to have something to back it up.
00:31:56.620 I mean, nuclear is absolutely fundamental, but it can't gear up in minutes.
00:32:01.580 It takes days to shut down.
00:32:04.560 And hydroelectric power is also critical, but it isn't as flexible as natural gas is.
00:32:12.620 So we can't get off that.
00:32:14.940 And I think the government of Ontario realizes that.
00:32:18.600 They're not being explicit, but they talk about a pragmatic approach.
00:32:22.840 And that's, I think, what they're talking about.
00:32:26.500 But frankly, it's complete delusion for people to think that they can get off natural gas and rely entirely on renewables.
00:32:37.600 It's been tried, and it's been a catastrophe, frankly.
00:32:42.400 And to bring it back to that catastrophism and that aspect of this, the one thing that I'll point out as well is that there are a lot of slogans and platitudes in this space.
00:32:51.780 Now, I mean, obviously this exists in politics in general, but when we hear net zero by 2050, we've picked an arbitrary goal, net zero, we've picked an arbitrary year, 2050, and we've said everyone has to bend over backwards to make this happen.
00:33:04.720 And it's not particularly feasible, as we're seeing, which is why even if Canada were to bend over backwards and cripple its economy and do all sorts of harmful things, we're talking about a net reduction of emissions in the world that is minimal, absolutely minimal compared to China, India, the United States.
00:33:25.380 And that part is, I think, probably one of the most obvious points, but it's not really one acknowledged by governments.
00:33:32.060 well they don't want to uh talk about it but canada is 1.5 percent of global emissions so
00:33:38.380 we could go back to the stone age and it wouldn't uh it wouldn't affect anything within a few weeks
00:33:44.220 uh china's increase in in coal production would make up for that and we would be running around
00:33:49.740 with with with rocks and clubs you know a feeling right and our led-powered candles because you
00:33:57.340 can't even burn the flame that's not allowed you know so you know really this is this is not uh
00:34:03.260 this is not uh the way to go and it's not uh it's it's totally it's totally impractical and uh
00:34:10.140 you know europe uh european under understands that uh so i'm afraid it may take a a a a a real
00:34:19.180 sort of emergency to get people off the idea that uh that this is uh this this is something that
00:34:26.300 they have to pursue at the expense of the least advantaged people in the least advantaged countries.
00:34:33.740 But you know, maybe at some point, practicality and guilt will start moving things over. And of
00:34:42.300 course, another way that it could happen is with political change. Right now, it may be that it's
00:34:49.740 too early to be sure, but the Liberal Party seems to be in its death throes, so that could
00:34:55.660 that could obviously make a difference but we're we're seeing this issue play out in in other
00:35:02.460 countries and frankly those who are carrying the green banner are not doing well politically in
00:35:09.340 the last year or two no and i think to put a fine point on this your contrast of the canadian
00:35:16.060 experience in the european experience is an important one and i would also say that even
00:35:20.300 people that are very committed to the abstract idea of a climate emergency when the energy crisis
00:35:26.220 hits them that's no longer an abstract emergency that's something they have to contend with and
00:35:30.260 it's all well and good to say when everything is theoretical oh yes we need to you know go and save
00:35:35.160 the seaside property in the Maldives or whatever but when you are faced with that decision and
00:35:40.220 don't have the energy you need to run your business or you can't afford to heat your home
00:35:44.980 It's not the abstract crisis that grabs you.
00:35:48.580 Well, the other thing that's really important to understand is that the science is not settled.
00:35:53.840 No.
00:35:54.220 There's a book written by Stephen Coonan, who was an undersecretary of energy and is a scientist in the Obama administration.
00:36:06.540 And the title of his book is Unsettled.
00:36:08.780 So that would indicate where he's coming from.
00:36:12.640 But very recently, and this was quite significant, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the body, the UN body that so many of these catastrophists look to for support, the chairman said, let's not exaggerate this.
00:36:33.660 There isn't the emergency that, frankly, so many people are talking about.
00:36:39.480 And you're paralyzing people with fear by claiming that almost nothing can be done.
00:36:46.600 We got 12 years, two days, and five hours before the doom is sealed.
00:36:53.600 Well, first of all, they've been making these projections forever.
00:36:59.000 The models run hot.
00:37:01.360 They've all been wrong.
00:37:02.400 So why would we believe models which are consistently wrong the next time? You know, just maybe they don't have it right this time either. Someone who has a perfectly wrong record is not someone that normally inspires confidence.
00:37:20.360 But, you know, the latest projections are getting even more strident, I think, because of the fact that they can't really back it up.
00:37:31.780 And the reason that they're running hard is because they have certain relationships built into them mathematically that aren't proving out.
00:37:41.280 So, you know, I don't think we should lose sleep about an imminent climate emergency.
00:37:48.980 I'm losing sleep about what the climate alarmists are doing to the economy.
00:37:55.320 Very well said.
00:37:56.420 And what they're doing to the Western world in its real existential battle, and that is an emergency, in its real existential battle with China, which is laughing all the way to the bank. 0.98
00:38:11.600 Very well said.
00:38:12.980 Joe Oliver, Canada's last fiscally responsible finance minister, hopefully not forever.
00:38:18.160 Joe, thanks very much for coming on.
00:38:19.520 Always good to talk to you.
00:38:20.740 Great to talk to you too.
00:38:22.040 All right, Joe Oliver.
00:38:23.000 And you should read his piece in the Financial Post
00:38:25.220 called the We Are in the Grip of Climate Change Catastrophism.
00:38:29.340 And we certainly are.
00:38:30.920 One thing I want to talk about just very briefly
00:38:33.140 before we hit the road here metaphorically
00:38:35.780 is this push by the media,
00:38:38.980 which I absolutely love 0.77
00:38:41.000 just because of the sheer brazen hypocrisy of it.
00:38:44.020 Now, I'm going to talk about this in a bit more detail tomorrow.
00:38:46.000 You may recall in C18, the government said that the big tech companies like Facebook and Google
00:38:52.820 had to pay the mainstream media money.
00:38:55.560 And the reason was because all the media got up in arms and started yelling and screaming,
00:38:59.520 saying, Facebook's stealing our content.
00:39:01.920 You know, when we post a link on Facebook and Facebook lets people click that link
00:39:06.260 and come to our website because we wanted them to come, that's theft.
00:39:11.000 And I'm like, okay, we're relying on these people to give us an accurate, grounded vision
00:39:17.800 of what's happening in the world.
00:39:20.220 So take that aside for a moment.
00:39:22.220 These people that are so detached from reality themselves that they think the dissemination
00:39:27.680 of content that they disseminate is theft.
00:39:30.080 Nevertheless, these people got their bluff called.
00:39:33.580 They said to Facebook, how dare you?
00:39:35.440 You're stealing from us.
00:39:36.520 Facebook turned around and said, okay, fine.
00:39:38.480 let's accept at face value what you're saying we will not allow your content to be stolen we will
00:39:44.280 not steal your content we don't want to pay you but we just won't take it well now you have these
00:39:50.520 very companies the companies that were the most enthusiastically gung-ho for c18 now complaining
00:39:57.540 to the competition bureau to apply prosecutorial powers against facebook i i kid you not the media
00:40:06.880 companies have filed a joint complaint against Facebook. They want the Competition Bureau to
00:40:12.360 throw the book at them. Now, the companies here are the Canadian Association of Broadcast, which
00:40:18.300 includes Broadcast Media, the News Media Canada, which includes newspapers, and CBC. Now, CBC
00:40:26.740 applying any complaint to the Competition Bureau seems rather odd. This is a government monopoly
00:40:33.300 that dares to say it wants to protect competition.
00:40:37.560 Like that to me, talk about being devoid of reality,
00:40:40.340 but even taking the CBC factor out of the question.
00:40:43.260 You've got newspapers, broadcasters that are saying,
00:40:45.920 okay, we now demand Facebook take our content and pay us.
00:40:50.600 Well, which is it?
00:40:51.540 Do you want them to stop stealing the content
00:40:53.420 or do you want them to steal the content?
00:40:56.620 Oh no, they want you to pay for the content,
00:40:58.740 which means it is not anything other than extortion.
00:41:02.600 It is extortion. The mainstream media in this country are extorting big tech and the government is facilitating it because there is never anyone more generous than someone who has access to the wallet of someone else.
00:41:16.500 So the federal government gets to claim that it is being benevolent and generous while it is spending Facebook's money and spending Google's money to prop up dying legacy media outlets.
00:41:27.820 and we in Canada as taxpayers are supposed to be grateful that the government's sticking it to big
00:41:33.320 tech and oh well at least they're not charging us more in tax money it is about what is right
00:41:38.020 and what is wrong and the government has decided that it wants to just penalize tech companies who
00:41:44.260 have many flaws many many flaws but just penalize them for the sake of subsidizing dying media and
00:41:52.100 doing it in a way that it doesn't look like the government's just writing another big fat check
00:41:56.420 And how dare, how dare these outlets, which demanded their content be removed in the first
00:42:03.320 place by virtue of supporting Bill C-18, turn around and now try to get this company prosecuted.
00:42:10.500 Facebook, like I said, not perfect.
00:42:12.560 I've got a lot of issues with big tech, but as I've often repeated, if it comes to a battle
00:42:17.000 between big tech and big government, I am siding against the government every single
00:42:22.200 day.
00:42:22.860 That does it for us for today.
00:42:24.840 We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show.
00:42:28.320 This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.
00:42:30.700 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:42:34.820 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:42:37.400 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:42:54.840 We'll be right back.
00:43:24.840 Thank you.