Juno News - Is Twitter the future of media？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:14.640 Hello everyone and welcome to you all. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North, the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:22.620 I don't know if it's the same for you. I got this little monitor. So a lot of people sometimes

00:00:28.760 comment on the show about why I'm always looking over this way. And it's because normally the

00:00:34.740 monitor that is connected to the computer that all the stuff is plugged into is over there. So

00:00:39.500 if I, you know, I'm like calling for a clip and then I look over awkwardly, it's because I'm

00:00:43.840 trying to figure out if the clip is playing. So I got a new little toy, which is a monitor right

00:00:49.280 in front of me so it looks like I'm staring at the camera but I'm actually staring at myself

00:00:52.860 right now on a screen and my cheeks look really really red and I'm trying to figure out because

00:00:57.800 this is the first day I'm using it if my cheeks are just really really red today or if I am just

00:01:03.540 like on this monitor that the red setting is just like completely flared up so if I do look red no

00:01:09.860 I haven't gotten a sunburn I actually have no idea why maybe it was too much of that wine from

00:01:14.020 yesterday's taping because yesterday we were just like thumbing our nose at the World Health

00:01:18.260 organization and having a glass of wine during the show I had a tweet from someone I think it

00:01:24.480 was last night it might have been this morning or last night I can't remember saying are you going

00:01:27.720 to drink during every show now and no I wasn't intending on starting like a new foray into live

00:01:34.020 real-time alcoholism and my I mean maybe I should if you guys all have to drink to suffer through

00:01:39.760 me doing the show maybe it's only fair that I join you in a beverage but no that was a

00:01:43.640 one-time gag as we say but it is good to talk to you it is Wednesday May 10th 2023 we are going to

00:01:52.080 be talking in this program with Brian Lee Crowley about Canada's increasingly strained but not really

00:01:59.140 relationship with China Canada has finally expelled the so-called diplomat at the heart

00:02:05.000 of the allegations of China trying to intimidate Michael Chong's family this is the conservative

00:02:10.120 member of parliament and longtime foreign affairs critic also going to be talking this show about

00:02:15.660 the new redesign of canadian passports and this is i think just a great quintessentially canadian

00:02:22.540 story you have all for the last year people lining up and at the beginning of the year either not

00:02:27.680 able to travel uh you know at the beginning of 2022 because of vaccine mandates and then finally

00:02:33.300 travel mandates are lifted and the big issue is that no one can actually get a passport to go

00:02:37.840 anywhere anyway and the government's grand solution to this is to put this like terrible artwork on

00:02:44.260 each passport page to redesign the whole thing uh talk about putting lipstick on a pig but i also

00:02:51.220 want to talk about independent media and i i hope you'll forgive if this sounds like a bit of an

00:02:55.560 indulgence segment because obviously true north is very much affected by these overarching trends

00:03:01.240 in the media world but there was a bit of a twitter bombshell yesterday in former fox news

00:03:07.120 channel personality tucker carlson who has been for as long as he was on air at fox the absolute

00:03:12.720 undominated king of cable news ratings pretty much every single day and tucker carlson made

00:03:20.720 an announcement that he is moving his show to twitter take a look at a bit of that video

00:03:26.640 hey it's tucker carlson you often hear people say the news is full of lies but most of the time

00:03:32.320 that's not exactly right much of what you see on television or read the new york times

00:03:37.040 is in fact true in the literal sense it could pass one of the media's own fact checks lawyers

00:03:42.480 would be willing to sign off on it in fact they may have but that doesn't make it true it's not

00:03:47.520 true at the most basic level the news you consume is a lie a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious

00:03:54.160 kind facts have been withheld on purpose along with proportion and perspective you are being

00:04:00.400 manipulated how does that work let's see if i tell you that a man has been unjustly arrested

00:04:06.240 for armed robbery that is not strictly speaking a lie he may have been framed at this point there's

00:04:11.280 been no trial so no one can really say but if i don't mention the fact that the same man has been

00:04:16.640 arrested for the same crime six times before am i really informing you no i'm not i'm misleading you

00:04:24.080 that was part of a nearly three minute long video which right now had let me actually check now i

00:04:33.920 checked an hour ago but i suspect it will have changed by now a video that has yeah it has

00:04:39.380 changed nearly 23 million views on twitter nearly 23 million views now this is a just an insane

00:04:49.560 number of videos video views which might not even be all that surprising to a lot of people if you

00:04:55.620 know that there is a tremendous level of interest in tucker carlson uh you looked at i i actually

00:05:01.500 should have pulled this up but if you were to look at cable news ratings yesterday you'd see

00:05:05.600 that uh the top rated program on whatever station probably had oh i don't know two three million

00:05:10.880 views on cable news nowhere near what tucker got even in the first couple of hours of that tweet

00:05:16.500 being up and I mean I I have never I have I met Tucker I don't know I've corresponded with him in

00:05:22.880 the past years ago I don't know Tucker well I I know Mark Stein who's been on the show knows

00:05:27.620 Tucker Carlson very well and he is as a genuine and funny a person off air as he is on air by

00:05:33.160 all accounts and he's passionate about what he does and all of these little leaked videos that

00:05:37.860 are being posted of him talking to his staff and guests off camera by like Media Matters which is

00:05:43.760 this left-wing hatchet mill in the U.S., they all make Tucker look better than, you know,

00:05:48.640 because they all sort of just humanize him and show him to have a sense of humor. So these big

00:05:52.820 like hot mic bombshells are actually just like Tucker making a joke that 95% of people in North

00:05:58.520 America would find funny, which is why his show is as popular as it is. But all of that is to say

00:06:04.840 that it's not just about one person. Tucker Carlson is making a point in that video that

00:06:10.680 the mainstream media cannot be trusted to which you might say big whoop we already knew that but

00:06:15.240 it shows that even among some places that you might think of as being on side for you places

00:06:21.380 like perhaps Fox News there are forces that are working against your perspective or at the very

00:06:27.220 least framing everything in a way that perhaps you don't know it's being framed and the reason

00:06:33.080 I think that's so important is because Tucker is actually holding up a mirror to himself here when

00:06:38.020 he's saying, don't take my word for it. He's not just saying, don't worry about what Brian

00:06:42.960 Stelter and Don Lemon say. He's actually saying, don't trust him without doing your due diligence.

00:06:48.620 And I say the same to me. I mean, I don't want this to be the only source of media you consume.

00:06:53.820 Maybe I want it to be the one you consume the most frequently. But the great thing about

00:06:58.080 independent media and the reason why people like the Western Standard, I mean, Western Standard

00:07:02.940 it's not a person, but the people at the Western Standard, the people at Rebel News, before they

00:07:07.920 became just an American clickbait mill, the people at the Post Millennial. When all of these outlets

00:07:13.140 have generally gotten along in Canada, it's because we aren't really competitors as much as

00:07:19.080 colleagues. My view is that a lot of the people that watch this show will watch Ezra's show,

00:07:23.380 will watch Derek Fildebrandt's live streams, will read, you know, whatever at these different

00:07:28.840 platforms. And I encourage that. I want people to cultivate a wide array of perspectives.

00:07:35.620 There's a reason. I mean, we do Fake News Friday, but it's actually a very healthy thing for us to

00:07:41.180 do because to do Fake News Friday, I have to watch CBC. And that's probably why I deserve a bit of a

00:07:46.420 raise. So if you're watching True North Management, the CBC is like warranting danger pay on my part.

00:07:52.440 I mean, like, yeah, send me to Afghanistan or send me to Albania, send me to Kurdistan, whatever. But

00:07:57.440 if you're going to make me watch CBC, I need to get some more money out of this deal.

00:08:01.440 But the thing about it is that you need to do that to know what people are saying, whether

00:08:06.400 you want to call it the other side or just whether you want to understand why people

00:08:11.280 in the country, why people in the world view things differently than you do.

00:08:16.420 And, you know, one of the things that always sort of grinds my gears to use that term is

00:08:21.300 when people will say, oh, Andrew, I love your show.

00:08:23.480 You're so unbiased.

00:08:25.220 And oftentimes I say, no, I am not.

00:08:27.680 I'm not unbiased.

00:08:29.020 I am transparent about my bias.

00:08:30.840 I'm transparent about what I think, about why I think it.

00:08:34.060 And just because I may agree with you or my perspective may align with yours doesn't mean

00:08:40.420 that I don't have a bias.

00:08:41.800 I think why independent media is so powerful is because we are open about our bias.

00:08:47.320 We show our work.

00:08:49.200 And that is so key, so key to show our work.

00:08:52.320 I'll say, yes, this is my conclusion.

00:08:54.300 This is why I think Justin Trudeau is X, but here's why.

00:08:58.360 And if you don't agree with that, you can draw your own conclusion.

00:09:01.960 And this is what I was talking about yesterday with Naomi Wolf.

00:09:04.740 You may not agree with her on vaccines, but she laid out what she believes are the premises.

00:09:09.340 She laid out her conclusion.

00:09:10.920 You can say, you know what?

00:09:11.880 I actually think those premises lead to another conclusion, or I actually don't agree with

00:09:16.620 your premise.

00:09:17.220 But you can only do that if you have media willing to have honest, fair discussions that

00:09:23.660 entertain a multitude of perspectives. And that is so much, I mean, that is only something that's

00:09:31.760 happening in independent media. And you have some of these like pearl clutching mainstream media

00:09:36.580 types that are going off that are just like terrified of Tucker Carlson right now. They

00:09:40.900 don't like Twitter. They don't like Tucker because they don't actually like that people have a way to

00:09:45.900 access information that doesn't require their filter. I actually studied once, and I'm going

00:09:53.880 to try to avoid getting very boring here, but I studied once in a university, political psychology,

00:09:59.620 and it was a very interesting class. And one of the weeks we did in the class focused on something

00:10:05.100 called media effects. And at the time, I was very interested in it. And media effects were,

00:10:10.820 I've forgotten what all the media effects were, but I remember right now, one of the media effects

00:10:14.980 was framing and it was simply the way that the framing of an issue has such an outsized influence

00:10:21.980 on the way that something is received and not just you know what someone thinks about a story

00:10:27.020 but literally what part of your brain it fires up you you can be primed to do it I mean one of the

00:10:33.660 the big studies that I remember reading about this was just about racial cues you know little

00:10:38.140 coded language that makes people associate certain things with certain racial groups and if you don't

00:10:43.160 think that this is happening in so many different ways in so many different contexts on mainstream

00:10:48.360 media platforms and perhaps even some independent media platforms you are missing that you are as

00:10:54.860 Tucker says being lied to and when Tucker Carlson is standing up and saying he's bringing his show to

00:11:01.440 Twitter what a lot of people might not realize is how much he's prepared to give up now I don't

00:11:07.360 know the ins and outs of Tucker's contract but I've seen some reports that he is going to have

00:11:12.760 to forgo a $25 million non-compete with Fox in order to launch this show now while he's still

00:11:19.940 very much relevant. And 20, I mean, look, you can say he's wealthy, which he very much is, but

00:11:26.420 to give up $25 million, if that is actually true, is only something you do if you are passionate

00:11:32.240 about it, you're principled, and if you believe that what you're banking on is actually the future

00:11:38.000 of media. And again, I'm not here to announce that we'll be following suit and making Twitter

00:11:43.600 the exclusive distribution platform for our show. I do think it's interesting that Twitter

00:11:49.940 is really morphing into an all-in-one content platform in a way that Facebook tried to

00:11:55.680 a few years ago. And, you know, I've been sort of a little frustrated by some of this because

00:11:59.680 I use Substack for my own personal newsletter. If you want to check that out, you can go to

00:12:04.020 andrewlotton.substack.com. But shameless plug there. But the thing about it is that Twitter

00:12:09.880 and Substack have been in this, you know, tug of war for the last couple of weeks, where now if you

00:12:14.620 tweet a link to a Substack post, it doesn't actually show up on Twitter. And if you use

00:12:20.020 Twitter on Substack, the link, the tweet doesn't show like they're just, they're kind of basically

00:12:24.800 just have this little fight with each other. But the reason is that Twitter is expanding into areas

00:12:30.280 that were previously outside of its lane.

00:12:33.000 One of them is long-form tweets.

00:12:35.200 Another is full-length video.

00:12:36.800 You've got Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire

00:12:38.820 that is putting forward this show on Twitter

00:12:42.900 for people to watch.

00:12:44.160 And there's an audience there.

00:12:46.620 I mean, when I look at Convoy coverage,

00:12:48.520 Convoy coverage was driven by Twitter.

00:12:51.460 Coverage of Davos, I think,

00:12:52.880 was largely driven by Twitter.

00:12:54.920 So the question that I sort of titled this show with,

00:12:58.340 if you're watching or listening to the podcast,

00:13:00.280 I mean, if you're not, then I guess you don't hear this anyway.

00:13:03.060 But if you pay attention to that stuff is, is Twitter the future of media?

00:13:06.800 And my answer is yes, with an asterisk.

00:13:09.500 So not exclusively.

00:13:11.220 I mean, media will continue to fire on multiple platforms, but Twitter is so key.

00:13:17.340 And if Elon Musk keeps it up and continues on the path that he's on, Twitter is going

00:13:22.920 to be a formidable force, not just in dominating against other tech companies, but I would

00:13:26.700 actually say in completely dismantling the traditional media stranglehold on information

00:13:32.860 that even though it's been damaged and abated in some way has not yet been obliterated and if these

00:13:41.880 perspectives that they are putting forward if they want them to be relevant they have to make

00:13:46.480 them relevant they can't just rely in an ideal universe on government subsidies they can't just

00:13:51.780 rely on putting out this stuff and hoping that everyone else will be silenced and everyone else

00:13:58.260 will be shut down. And just, I mean, on the Muskification of Twitter, for lack of a better

00:14:04.560 term, you may remember a few weeks ago, I think it was Elon Musk had the government-funded media

00:14:10.820 label put up on CBC's Twitter platform. And then CBC, of course, comes out and says, no, no, no,

00:14:16.800 we're only, you know, 51% government funded or whatever it was. And then he, you know,

00:14:21.280 changes the line to, you know, the exact percentage. I think it was like 48% government.

00:14:26.540 I can't remember the exact numbers, but you know, he changed it to do that. And that didn't help.

00:14:31.940 That did not reduce CBC's inclination to say we are no longer going to use Twitter.

00:14:38.600 So this was fantastic. CBC makes this big stink about we're going to be stopping our Twitter

00:14:44.320 activity effective immediately we're going to be re-evaluating things and oh oh boy don't you

00:14:50.580 believe that cbc is back they published a tweet saying that they were going to start using twitter

00:14:57.860 a little bit less than they were before so they're they're kind of just you know tiptoeing around it

00:15:03.180 we're going to tweet a little bit maybe they're only going to tweet during certain hours maybe

00:15:06.840 they're going to cap themselves to a number of tweets uh elon musk of course seizes this and

00:15:12.040 shares a meme taken from Brokeback Mountain of CBC saying, I wish I knew how to quit you. That

00:15:19.400 is the Elon Musk troll trolly response to CBC there. Now, maybe they'll get all upset about

00:15:26.560 that and decide to rage quit Twitter again. But I think it seems like CBC actually realized that

00:15:32.020 there is an audience on Twitter that it cannot afford to forego. And certainly in Tucker Carlson's

00:15:37.380 case he's uh risking a lot of money and a lot of other potential offers i mean remember this is a

00:15:42.580 guy that could have been courted by the daily wire he could have done his own thing he could

00:15:47.320 have been courted by the blaze he could have just uh gone to youtube rumble was interested in him

00:15:51.940 but he's decided that he wants to go with twitter and that i mean in and of itself has the potential

00:15:58.100 to revolutionize the landscape in the same way that rush limbaugh being on am radio revolutionized

00:16:04.400 talk radio in America. So enough about media navel gazing. I'm starting to sound like all

00:16:09.660 those CBC people that just talk about themselves all day. I'm trying to be a little bit more in

00:16:13.540 the abstract about it than just about yours truly. But we will move on to the big picture

00:16:18.660 issue of our time, Canada's relationship with China. And this has finally reached a point where

00:16:26.220 it looks like the government is maybe trying to be a little bit more serious about this. I mean,

00:16:32.720 that's a bit of an if. China has expelled a Canadian diplomat after Canada expelled a Chinese

00:16:40.880 diplomat. But the diplomat that Canada expelled was one that was implicated in a plot to intimidate

00:16:47.800 Michael Chong's family overseas. That's a Conservative member of Parliament, Michael Chong.

00:16:53.440 And the Liberals still need to answer for a few aspects of this, such as, you know, exactly how

00:16:59.760 much they knew why michael chong wasn't informed of it until this week why the intelligence reports

00:17:06.000 that said this was known a year ago never managed to make their way to the person who was the

00:17:10.820 subject of them and why justin trudeau claims that he had no idea but everyone around him seemed to

00:17:16.020 it's a bit of a weird dynamic there in which i think you know canada has more to answer for

00:17:21.220 than china uh but then we have some other dimensions of this that we have to talk about i

00:17:26.360 I want to welcome into the show Brian Lee Crowley, who is the Managing Director of the

00:17:30.820 Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

00:17:32.340 Brian, good to talk to you.

00:17:33.600 Thanks for coming on today.

00:17:35.880 On the show, Andrew, I really appreciate the invitation.

00:17:38.940 Well, let's start first off with the idea of, I mean, Canada and China, which is, I

00:17:44.400 know, a big question.

00:17:45.280 And the idea that, you know, this stuff was known, it was in the intelligence community,

00:17:50.160 the National Security Advisor knew about it.

00:17:52.380 And then only this week do we get this expulsion of a Chinese diplomat that was, again, not just, you know, representing China, but doing so in a way that was very much working against Canada.

00:18:05.220 Well, look, you're absolutely right that, you know, a lot of people in the media seem to be giving the impression that this is something that's been known for maybe a week.

00:18:17.320 But on the contrary, this was in reports from CSIS, reports that reached the political level, that reached the national security advisor to the prime minister,

00:18:28.160 that said that there were Chinese diplomats in Canada working to intimidate an elected member of Canada's parliament.

00:18:35.860 And it's only now, two years later, that we're taking action.

00:18:40.900 And of course, you know, the Prime Minister having kicked a diplomat out, in my view,

00:18:46.580 not because he thought that it was important to kick the diplomat out, but because he thought

00:18:51.220 it was important to respond to public opinion. Once it became known, he said, well, I guess I

00:18:56.580 better take some action. But the fact is that at least the people around him, if not the Prime

00:19:02.340 minister himself knew all about this two years ago and the fact that it's taken them this long

00:19:10.340 to react to say to china you know you can't actually ask us to accredit diplomats to

00:19:16.900 represent you in our country and then have them break our laws try and intimidate our elected

00:19:22.500 representatives uh uh and we are not going to allow that your your diplomats who do this are

00:19:28.500 going to be sent home i i i i'm i'm kind of speechless that uh the prime minister uh has

00:19:35.460 taken so long and uh before he made the decision made it very clear that he was hesitating quite a

00:19:41.460 lot uh because he worried about what the chinese might do in response which i i i think is pathetic

00:19:49.220 behavior by the prime yeah yeah no and melanie joe lee the foreign minister had made some comments

00:19:55.380 And I don't have the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of, you know, we want to talk through China, what our options are.

00:20:01.180 I'm like, why are you talking this through with China for you? 0.92

00:20:03.480 I mean, for starters, I think there's only one option.

00:20:06.140 But secondly, it shouldn't be part of a consultation at that point.

00:20:08.820 I mean, it was still from when this news became public, even if we give the government the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know before that, which I don't.

00:20:16.960 But even from when the news went public, we're talking about a significant period of time before this guy was on a plane back home.

00:20:23.460 Well, and there is no better way to telegraph to the Chinese that the government of Canada is frightened of them and is frightened to take actions that would protect the interests of Canadians because they're afraid of what the Chinese will do in response. 0.94

00:20:40.600 And frankly, you know, this is exactly the reason why so many of us said with respect to the two Michaels, when China basically kidnapped two Canadian citizens to punish us for the arrest of Meng Wenzhou, the CFO of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms company, you know, we were saying to the government of Canada over and over again, don't let this affect the way that you behave towards China.

00:21:08.960 You cannot say to China, well, as long as you're holding two of our citizens, we won't do anything that upsets you. 0.95

00:21:15.960 This is exactly why, you know, countries say, for example, they won't negotiate with terrorists.

00:21:21.580 Because as soon as you say, oh, you're going to hurt my people, well, then I will do whatever you tell me to do.

00:21:29.400 You create incentives for bad actors to do bad things because they know that you will let them get away with it.

00:21:36.060 And so, you know, the whole behavior of Canada, not just towards this diplomat who was intimidating Michael Chong through his family, but the behavior with respect to the two Michaels and many other ways, we have sent the message to China, you can walk all over us and we will do everything we can to avoid responding.

00:21:59.100 I want to put a picture up.

00:22:00.900 This was a picture tweeted by the royal family on May 5th,

00:22:05.380 shortly before King Charles' coronation.

00:22:07.800 And it says the king meets with Commonwealth leaders at Marlborough House.

00:22:11.740 His Majesty is head of the Commonwealth,

00:22:13.500 a voluntary association of 56 independent and equal countries.

00:22:17.740 And if you look, I'm not going to get you to zoom in,

00:22:19.980 but if you look through the picture, you see His Majesty the King,

00:22:22.400 you see the Prime Minister of Australia, the Prime Minister of New Zealand,

00:22:26.360 the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, leaders from the Caribbean and Africa and in the Commonwealth

00:22:31.960 realms in Asia. Nowhere in that picture is any Canadian delegate, and that includes Justin

00:22:37.940 Trudeau, who was at the time on his way or speaking at the Liberal Convention. But then you

00:22:43.460 juxtapose it with this. This is a picture from a panel discussion with Harjit Sajjan, formerly the

00:22:50.620 defense minister in Canada from the Liberal Convention that says, everywhere we go, meeting

00:22:56.460 our partners, helping those in need and protecting the vulnerable, there's always one message.

00:23:00.900 We need more Canada. And the message there is that the world needs more Canada. So I like the

00:23:07.620 juxtaposition of the world needs more Canada and Justin Trudeau skipping the Commonwealth meeting.

00:23:12.760 But there's a serious point in that, I think, Brian, which is that the liberals generally talk

00:23:18.640 about this very lofty and aspirational place for Canada in the world. But when you get down to

00:23:24.740 brass tacks and you talk about the situations that matter, where a decisive position is expected of

00:23:31.440 Canada, like on China, they're nowhere to be found. Well, Andrew, I think this is absolutely 0.93

00:23:38.040 right. You know, the government of Canada always prides itself on being, you know, a calm, reasoned

00:23:43.720 voice of diplomacy and so on. But people forget that diplomacy isn't an end in itself. Talking

00:23:50.620 is not an end in itself. A country must effectively defend its real interests. And, you know,

00:23:59.040 simply saying, well, you know, we're friends to everybody. Everybody likes Canada. So, you know,

00:24:05.860 as long as we're here, everyone will behave themselves. It's complete rubbish. The Chinese 1.00

00:24:12.460 laugh up their sleeve at this kind of rhetoric because they are completely unapologetic about

00:24:19.340 defending their interests. I mean, that's what we're discussing here. They say to their diplomats,

00:24:23.940 oh, you're in Canada? Make sure that you punish Canadian politicians who do anything contrary to

00:24:30.200 China's interests. Now, I'm not saying that we should behave that way in China. What I'm saying 0.98

00:24:35.600 is China makes no bones about the fact that the purpose of their diplomacy is to defend the

00:24:42.280 interests of china completely unapologetically and canada's response is oh well we don't want 0.94

00:24:47.960 to offend you so even though you've done things that break our law that break the geneva convention

00:24:53.800 that are completely inappropriate for your diplomats um let's have a conversation about

00:24:58.600 how we might uh you know resolve this problem i i think that this simply encourages the chinese 0.95

00:25:05.640 to think that canada will not do anything to protect its own interests and therefore china

00:25:10.440 that can walk all over us. Yeah, and I think it was noteworthy whenever the AUKUS alliance came

00:25:16.620 to fruition between the UK, the US, and Australia, that this wasn't really a new partnership. It was

00:25:22.980 the five eyes minus New Zealand and Canada. And I think New Zealand is well known, especially among

00:25:28.720 Indo-Pacific countries, to be very pro-China relative to other Western nations. And then you

00:25:34.180 had Canada. And when people were pointing out why is Canada excluded from this alliance, it was,

00:25:38.700 well you know it's mostly about nuclear submarines we don't have any of those and uh you know there

00:25:43.820 were there were a lot of excuses for why Canada didn't need to be involved and then you fast

00:25:48.160 forward to this week when the Trudeau government decides it needs to get tough on China and a story

00:25:53.200 in the Globe and Mail Canada seeks to join non-nuclear pillar of AUKUS alliance so this

00:25:58.240 thing that the government said we didn't really need before is now a big part of our China strategy

00:26:02.940 somehow? Well, it's interesting that you talk about AUKUS. I think this is a terribly important

00:26:08.760 organization. And I think the reason why Canada is not at the table and is, you know, that this

00:26:14.640 organization has been founded, it's been started, you know, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United

00:26:21.520 States are spending billions of dollars to prepare themselves for this partnership to stand up to

00:26:27.820 China and the Indo-Pacific. Why was China, why was Canada not there? Well, I think part of the

00:26:33.240 answer is to be found, you might remember, Andrew, that just a few weeks ago, a Massachusetts National

00:26:39.720 Guardsman released a whole bunch of secret national security papers from the United States

00:26:45.660 government. And these were, you know, made a huge splash in the media and so on. If you read those

00:26:51.140 documents and see what they say about Canada, these were internal intelligence and national

00:26:57.420 security assessments by american government authorities of canada and what they said

00:27:02.620 unambiguously is canada is no longer a trustworthy ally uh you know if we're going to be sharing

00:27:09.500 intelligence if we're going to be building military alliances if we're going to be uh

00:27:14.060 building economic uh uh organizations to respond to china's rise basically the argument was uh

00:27:22.620 let's not bother with canada because they're not trustworthy we don't want to share intelligence

00:27:27.740 with them we can't be confident that it won't find its way into chinese hands we have essentially 0.99

00:27:32.860 not only uh turned ourselves into a doormat for china but we have offended our own allies in doing 0.91

00:27:38.700 so yeah it's quite shameful and i guess i want to ask you a question that perhaps you can't answer

00:27:45.420 but it's an open opportunity if you do want to seize it brian which is how easy is it to repair

00:27:50.700 this? Because I think domestically, we know that when you have a change in government, things

00:27:55.920 change. When you have a change in government, there can be some drastic deviations domestically.

00:28:01.380 But on foreign policy, it's not always like that. I mean, across the Atlantic, across the Pacific,

00:28:08.120 Canada is Canada. And whether there's a liberal or a conservative there, the dynamics of the

00:28:12.820 relationship might change. But it's largely the same bureaucrats that are going abroad.

00:28:17.040 it's so so i'm curious if we have a government led by someone else i mean right now it's pierre

00:28:22.800 polyev who's the the leader of his majesty's loyal opposition how easy is it to flip that reputation

00:28:29.040 well you see part of what concerns me so much andrew is that it's not just the liberal party

00:28:34.960 and liberal governments that have been tainted by uh the relationship with china i think it's

00:28:40.080 the entire political class you know there are people in the conservative party who are just

00:28:44.880 as close to china as some of the worst offenders in the liberal party uh just on that i mean it 0.82

00:28:51.280 was the conservatives that really tried to put a lot of hope in free trade with china as being a

00:28:56.240 a positive economic policy absolutely there so you know there's there's nothing to uh to

00:29:03.920 reassure our allies in a simple change of government what we need is a change of government

00:29:10.160 and a new government that says we are going to rid our institutions and our political class

00:29:16.880 of this malevolent Chinese influence. We are going to make it very clear that we have rejoined 1.00

00:29:25.360 the Western Liberal Democratic Alliance, that we will not be intimidated, we will not be a place

00:29:32.400 where information shared by our allies will find its way to China, and we're going to clean house.

00:29:39.520 and by the way i i i have to say that you know the the the trudeau appointment of a special

00:29:45.680 rapporteur and so on with strong ties to china himself isn't getting that job done so everything

00:29:52.000 will depend uh on whether in the event of a change of government that government signals very clearly

00:29:59.040 to our allies that there is going to be a change of orientation a change of commitments a rejoining

00:30:04.560 of the the western alliance and end to our what i call our slow motion defection uh and uh um uh

00:30:13.120 we win back the trust and confidence of our allies including by doing what we promised nato we would

00:30:19.840 do which is to spend two percent of our gdp on uh on national defense and national security if we

00:30:26.000 take those steps uh uh following a change of government uh i i think it is possible to win

00:30:32.720 back the confidence of our friends and allies but a simple change of government alone won't get the

00:30:37.440 job done brian lee crowley managing director of the mcdonald laurier institute always a pleasure

00:30:42.880 sir thanks for coming on today i'll look forward to the next time and thank you very much and there

00:30:46.800 will certainly be a next time you can catch up with brian and many of his colleagues find work

00:30:52.560 over at the mcdonald laurier institute website uh let's talk a little bit about uh the gateway to

00:30:59.760 the world from Canada, which is your passport. Actually, my passport is probably somewhere

00:31:04.020 around. I could have held it up as a prop. And then all the spies out there can just write down

00:31:09.660 the serial numbers that might happen to flash across the screen. But I assure you, no one is

00:31:13.420 pretending to be me. I don't even like being me most of the time. But the thing about the passports

00:31:18.940 is that they are getting an overhaul, which the government has unveiled today. And it's going over

00:31:26.140 pretty much as well as you'd expect from an announcement that involves artwork so uh this

00:31:31.500 is the let's start with the cover design the cover of the new passports is not like the old uh you

00:31:37.940 know coat of arms design here but this one uh they've decided the coat of arms needed a modern

00:31:43.500 silhouette outline of a maple leaf and what is that aerial font of the word canada in the top

00:31:49.920 right and then on the back you get this little like uh you know twing is it aerial sean sean is

00:31:55.220 the font expert he says it's ariel thin uh so not just ariel ariel thin so they just like went with

00:32:00.780 the free fonts you get with microsoft word to design our passports and then you have the little

00:32:05.600 red sort of ivy like that's not how maple leaves grow but i guess we're just rolling with it then

00:32:11.320 so that's the outside now i mean i don't love the outside but i also don't like change in general i

00:32:16.360 don't hate the outside as much as some people the inside is a different story altogether uh let's

00:32:23.060 just cycle through some of these. I don't know if I want to critique everyone individually. Oh,

00:32:27.060 there we go. You get many of them. So it's like this weird sort of sand art design of like painting

00:32:33.300 by numbers. We've got someone doing a sort of long jump on the grass, which is a very Canadian 0.57

00:32:41.180 activity, given that it snows for, you know, 360 days of the year. What else do we have here? My

00:32:46.360 little monitor that I had, I can't actually see this enough. So I'm like, I'm going back to the

00:32:50.780 old monitor here uh to analyze this what else do we have um uh we have is that like a just geese

00:32:57.220 okay well uh yeah i'll give them geese that that seems like a pretty reasonable canadian

00:33:02.700 canadian symbol there uh what else do we have see some of the stuff i i can't even quite make out

00:33:08.520 what it is that's like the awkward part of this but the whole point of this is that this is like

00:33:15.420 not Canadian. It's not aesthetically pleasing. It's not culturally relevant. And if you look at 0.63

00:33:22.180 what they removed, it's insane. They removed Terry Fox. They removed Vimy Ridge. You can take that

00:33:30.960 down, Sean. People are tired of those four images now because they're going to be seeing them for

00:33:34.940 the next 20 years. Oh, he says it's already down. On my screen, it's still up. So I'm just the one

00:33:40.120 that is forced to stare at it until the end of the show, I guess.

00:33:42.900 But the thing about this is that they've taken down things

00:33:47.700 that were part of Canada's history.

00:33:50.840 And again, I remember all the hand-wringing

00:33:52.640 when someone dared put a Canadian flag on the Terry Fox statue

00:33:55.860 at the Freedom Convoy,

00:33:57.000 and they were saying it was desecrating Terry Fox.

00:33:59.360 And now the Liberals have just stripped Terry Fox

00:34:01.640 off the passport altogether.

00:34:05.840 Melissa Lantzman, who is the Conservative MP,

00:34:08.120 He tweeted out, a bunch of liberal politicians got together to talk about how to fix their abysmal record of passport delivery and unacceptable wait times.

00:34:16.140 And instead, they landed on kick Terry Fox out of the passport and cancel the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

00:34:22.220 Let's replace them with a man holding a rake and pictures of a boy about to go swimming.

00:34:30.460 So actually, the boy going swimming is about to go into the Atlantic to swim across the

00:34:36.820 ocean because he's not vaccinated.

00:34:38.640 So the Liberals aren't letting him get on a plane.

00:34:40.540 That's what the boy swimming represents.

00:34:43.180 The guy with the rake is representing all of the shredded passports of people that don't 1.00

00:34:49.020 want to look at them anymore, that are trying to just get rid of them to throw them in the

00:34:52.620 big dumpster when the design changes.

00:34:54.700 So now I don't know if they're going to pre-order this stuff, like how long it's going to take

00:34:58.840 if, you know, there's a change in government next year, it's going to be like the old Ontario

00:35:02.560 license plates where the new guy comes in and just overhauls with a new design that he likes

00:35:08.340 better. And then everyone gets mad about the change because they've just grown familiar with

00:35:12.100 it. But I will say I was buying a present for my nephew. It was his birthday recently. And I went

00:35:19.200 to Toys R Us and I don't often frequent toys stores, let alone this one. But what struck me

00:35:26.480 is that in this like little potted plant

00:35:28.880 right in front of the toy store,

00:35:31.220 there was a mother goose

00:35:33.300 and her goslings, I think they're called, right?

00:35:37.080 Not like Ryan Gosling, but is it goslings?

00:35:39.580 Yeah, Sean says it's goslings.

00:35:41.760 I'm not a, this is what happens

00:35:43.180 when you don't commune with nature as one should.

00:35:45.200 Maybe I should spend more time

00:35:46.360 with the Canadian passports.

00:35:48.060 But, and there was like a father goose, I presume.

00:35:51.160 I mean, you never want to be,

00:35:52.240 he could have been gender non-binary,

00:35:53.780 but I believe a father goose standing guard,

00:35:55.580 which is a familiar sight, because whenever there's a mother goose, you got to run because

00:35:59.340 there's a father goose nearby and they will like dive bomb at you. I once had to kick one in Detroit

00:36:04.300 because he was flying at me. But nevertheless, the thing about this is that they had like sort

00:36:09.320 of just seeded this area to the geese, like the geese won. And instead they had like set up all

00:36:15.500 this caution tape and put signs so you couldn't actually go in the store the way you normally

00:36:20.300 would. You had to like walk around. And this is what happens when a goose decides that they are

00:36:25.360 going to camp out somewhere, we all just capitulate because the geese actually run the country. And

00:36:30.560 sometimes when you look at, for example, what the liberals passed at their convention, you'd

00:36:34.040 wonder if the geese would do a better job than some of the people involved. But all of that is

00:36:39.000 to say, I'm actually prepared to say the goose should be on the passport, even if we don't like

00:36:42.540 them. They are generally our overlords. But then, yeah, like the guy raking and the guy swimming,

00:36:48.840 and there's like a weird, so on, maybe we put the, put them back up there.

00:36:54.360 Page 36 specifically, 36 and 37 on the passport, there's like a polar bear on the right.

00:37:01.600 And on the left, there's like a, it's like a penguin, but it kind of looks like a ladybug.

00:37:07.220 And if you tilt your head ever so, it looks like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

00:37:10.920 So, and then underneath him, there's a fish.

00:37:13.740 So it's probably a penguin and not Quasimodo.

00:37:16.040 But the whole point is I actually wonder if AI could have done a better job at a fraction of the price to the federal government.

00:37:23.700 Just to like play around, I tried to spit out a couple of AI generated images and they all look like very weird like Soviet passport designs, which, you know, maybe these days is more accurate. 0.93

00:37:34.280 But anyway, that's it for us for today.

00:37:37.260 We will be back on Friday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North.

00:37:42.480 This is the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:43.520 thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:37:48.580 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - May 10, 2023

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