Is Twitter the future of media？
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Summary
In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show: Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, True North's Andrew takes a trip down memory lane to reminisce about the early days of the show, and talks about a new gadget he's been using to help him keep track of what's happening on the show.
Transcript
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Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Hello everyone and welcome to you all. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North, the Andrew Lawton Show.
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I don't know if it's the same for you. I got this little monitor. So a lot of people sometimes
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comment on the show about why I'm always looking over this way. And it's because normally the
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monitor that is connected to the computer that all the stuff is plugged into is over there. So
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if I, you know, I'm like calling for a clip and then I look over awkwardly, it's because I'm
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trying to figure out if the clip is playing. So I got a new little toy, which is a monitor right
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in front of me so it looks like I'm staring at the camera but I'm actually staring at myself
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right now on a screen and my cheeks look really really red and I'm trying to figure out because
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this is the first day I'm using it if my cheeks are just really really red today or if I am just
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like on this monitor that the red setting is just like completely flared up so if I do look red no
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I haven't gotten a sunburn I actually have no idea why maybe it was too much of that wine from
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yesterday's taping because yesterday we were just like thumbing our nose at the World Health
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organization and having a glass of wine during the show I had a tweet from someone I think it
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was last night it might have been this morning or last night I can't remember saying are you going
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to drink during every show now and no I wasn't intending on starting like a new foray into live
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real-time alcoholism and my I mean maybe I should if you guys all have to drink to suffer through
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me doing the show maybe it's only fair that I join you in a beverage but no that was a
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one-time gag as we say but it is good to talk to you it is Wednesday May 10th 2023 we are going to
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be talking in this program with Brian Lee Crowley about Canada's increasingly strained but not really
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relationship with China Canada has finally expelled the so-called diplomat at the heart
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of the allegations of China trying to intimidate Michael Chong's family this is the conservative
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member of parliament and longtime foreign affairs critic also going to be talking this show about
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the new redesign of canadian passports and this is i think just a great quintessentially canadian
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story you have all for the last year people lining up and at the beginning of the year either not
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able to travel uh you know at the beginning of 2022 because of vaccine mandates and then finally
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travel mandates are lifted and the big issue is that no one can actually get a passport to go
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anywhere anyway and the government's grand solution to this is to put this like terrible artwork on
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each passport page to redesign the whole thing uh talk about putting lipstick on a pig but i also
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want to talk about independent media and i i hope you'll forgive if this sounds like a bit of an
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indulgence segment because obviously true north is very much affected by these overarching trends
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in the media world but there was a bit of a twitter bombshell yesterday in former fox news
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channel personality tucker carlson who has been for as long as he was on air at fox the absolute
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undominated king of cable news ratings pretty much every single day and tucker carlson made
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an announcement that he is moving his show to twitter take a look at a bit of that video
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hey it's tucker carlson you often hear people say the news is full of lies but most of the time
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that's not exactly right much of what you see on television or read the new york times
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is in fact true in the literal sense it could pass one of the media's own fact checks lawyers
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would be willing to sign off on it in fact they may have but that doesn't make it true it's not
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true at the most basic level the news you consume is a lie a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious
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kind facts have been withheld on purpose along with proportion and perspective you are being
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manipulated how does that work let's see if i tell you that a man has been unjustly arrested
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for armed robbery that is not strictly speaking a lie he may have been framed at this point there's
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been no trial so no one can really say but if i don't mention the fact that the same man has been
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arrested for the same crime six times before am i really informing you no i'm not i'm misleading you
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that was part of a nearly three minute long video which right now had let me actually check now i
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checked an hour ago but i suspect it will have changed by now a video that has yeah it has
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changed nearly 23 million views on twitter nearly 23 million views now this is a just an insane
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number of videos video views which might not even be all that surprising to a lot of people if you
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know that there is a tremendous level of interest in tucker carlson uh you looked at i i actually
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should have pulled this up but if you were to look at cable news ratings yesterday you'd see
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that uh the top rated program on whatever station probably had oh i don't know two three million
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views on cable news nowhere near what tucker got even in the first couple of hours of that tweet
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being up and I mean I I have never I have I met Tucker I don't know I've corresponded with him in
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the past years ago I don't know Tucker well I I know Mark Stein who's been on the show knows
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Tucker Carlson very well and he is as a genuine and funny a person off air as he is on air by
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all accounts and he's passionate about what he does and all of these little leaked videos that
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are being posted of him talking to his staff and guests off camera by like Media Matters which is
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this left-wing hatchet mill in the U.S., they all make Tucker look better than, you know,
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because they all sort of just humanize him and show him to have a sense of humor. So these big
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like hot mic bombshells are actually just like Tucker making a joke that 95% of people in North
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America would find funny, which is why his show is as popular as it is. But all of that is to say
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that it's not just about one person. Tucker Carlson is making a point in that video that
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the mainstream media cannot be trusted to which you might say big whoop we already knew that but
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it shows that even among some places that you might think of as being on side for you places
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like perhaps Fox News there are forces that are working against your perspective or at the very
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least framing everything in a way that perhaps you don't know it's being framed and the reason
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I think that's so important is because Tucker is actually holding up a mirror to himself here when
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he's saying, don't take my word for it. He's not just saying, don't worry about what Brian
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Stelter and Don Lemon say. He's actually saying, don't trust him without doing your due diligence.
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And I say the same to me. I mean, I don't want this to be the only source of media you consume.
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Maybe I want it to be the one you consume the most frequently. But the great thing about
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independent media and the reason why people like the Western Standard, I mean, Western Standard
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it's not a person, but the people at the Western Standard, the people at Rebel News, before they
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became just an American clickbait mill, the people at the Post Millennial. When all of these outlets
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have generally gotten along in Canada, it's because we aren't really competitors as much as
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colleagues. My view is that a lot of the people that watch this show will watch Ezra's show,
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will watch Derek Fildebrandt's live streams, will read, you know, whatever at these different
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platforms. And I encourage that. I want people to cultivate a wide array of perspectives.
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There's a reason. I mean, we do Fake News Friday, but it's actually a very healthy thing for us to
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do because to do Fake News Friday, I have to watch CBC. And that's probably why I deserve a bit of a
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raise. So if you're watching True North Management, the CBC is like warranting danger pay on my part.
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I mean, like, yeah, send me to Afghanistan or send me to Albania, send me to Kurdistan, whatever. But
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if you're going to make me watch CBC, I need to get some more money out of this deal.
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But the thing about it is that you need to do that to know what people are saying, whether
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you want to call it the other side or just whether you want to understand why people
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in the country, why people in the world view things differently than you do.
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And, you know, one of the things that always sort of grinds my gears to use that term is
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when people will say, oh, Andrew, I love your show.
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I'm transparent about what I think, about why I think it.
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And just because I may agree with you or my perspective may align with yours doesn't mean
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I think why independent media is so powerful is because we are open about our bias.
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This is why I think Justin Trudeau is X, but here's why.
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And if you don't agree with that, you can draw your own conclusion.
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And this is what I was talking about yesterday with Naomi Wolf.
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You may not agree with her on vaccines, but she laid out what she believes are the premises.
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I actually think those premises lead to another conclusion, or I actually don't agree with
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But you can only do that if you have media willing to have honest, fair discussions that
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entertain a multitude of perspectives. And that is so much, I mean, that is only something that's
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happening in independent media. And you have some of these like pearl clutching mainstream media
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types that are going off that are just like terrified of Tucker Carlson right now. They
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don't like Twitter. They don't like Tucker because they don't actually like that people have a way to
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access information that doesn't require their filter. I actually studied once, and I'm going
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to try to avoid getting very boring here, but I studied once in a university, political psychology,
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and it was a very interesting class. And one of the weeks we did in the class focused on something
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called media effects. And at the time, I was very interested in it. And media effects were,
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I've forgotten what all the media effects were, but I remember right now, one of the media effects
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was framing and it was simply the way that the framing of an issue has such an outsized influence
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on the way that something is received and not just you know what someone thinks about a story
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but literally what part of your brain it fires up you you can be primed to do it I mean one of the
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the big studies that I remember reading about this was just about racial cues you know little
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coded language that makes people associate certain things with certain racial groups and if you don't
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think that this is happening in so many different ways in so many different contexts on mainstream
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media platforms and perhaps even some independent media platforms you are missing that you are as
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Tucker says being lied to and when Tucker Carlson is standing up and saying he's bringing his show to
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Twitter what a lot of people might not realize is how much he's prepared to give up now I don't
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know the ins and outs of Tucker's contract but I've seen some reports that he is going to have
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to forgo a $25 million non-compete with Fox in order to launch this show now while he's still
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very much relevant. And 20, I mean, look, you can say he's wealthy, which he very much is, but
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to give up $25 million, if that is actually true, is only something you do if you are passionate
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about it, you're principled, and if you believe that what you're banking on is actually the future
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of media. And again, I'm not here to announce that we'll be following suit and making Twitter
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the exclusive distribution platform for our show. I do think it's interesting that Twitter
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is really morphing into an all-in-one content platform in a way that Facebook tried to
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a few years ago. And, you know, I've been sort of a little frustrated by some of this because
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I use Substack for my own personal newsletter. If you want to check that out, you can go to
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andrewlotton.substack.com. But shameless plug there. But the thing about it is that Twitter
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and Substack have been in this, you know, tug of war for the last couple of weeks, where now if you
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tweet a link to a Substack post, it doesn't actually show up on Twitter. And if you use
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Twitter on Substack, the link, the tweet doesn't show like they're just, they're kind of basically
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just have this little fight with each other. But the reason is that Twitter is expanding into areas
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So the question that I sort of titled this show with,
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if you're watching or listening to the podcast,
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I mean, if you're not, then I guess you don't hear this anyway.
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But if you pay attention to that stuff is, is Twitter the future of media?
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I mean, media will continue to fire on multiple platforms, but Twitter is so key.
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And if Elon Musk keeps it up and continues on the path that he's on, Twitter is going
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to be a formidable force, not just in dominating against other tech companies, but I would
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actually say in completely dismantling the traditional media stranglehold on information
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that even though it's been damaged and abated in some way has not yet been obliterated and if these
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perspectives that they are putting forward if they want them to be relevant they have to make
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them relevant they can't just rely in an ideal universe on government subsidies they can't just
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rely on putting out this stuff and hoping that everyone else will be silenced and everyone else
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will be shut down. And just, I mean, on the Muskification of Twitter, for lack of a better
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term, you may remember a few weeks ago, I think it was Elon Musk had the government-funded media
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label put up on CBC's Twitter platform. And then CBC, of course, comes out and says, no, no, no,
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we're only, you know, 51% government funded or whatever it was. And then he, you know,
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changes the line to, you know, the exact percentage. I think it was like 48% government.
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I can't remember the exact numbers, but you know, he changed it to do that. And that didn't help.
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That did not reduce CBC's inclination to say we are no longer going to use Twitter.
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So this was fantastic. CBC makes this big stink about we're going to be stopping our Twitter
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activity effective immediately we're going to be re-evaluating things and oh oh boy don't you
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believe that cbc is back they published a tweet saying that they were going to start using twitter
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a little bit less than they were before so they're they're kind of just you know tiptoeing around it
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we're going to tweet a little bit maybe they're only going to tweet during certain hours maybe
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they're going to cap themselves to a number of tweets uh elon musk of course seizes this and
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shares a meme taken from Brokeback Mountain of CBC saying, I wish I knew how to quit you. That
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is the Elon Musk troll trolly response to CBC there. Now, maybe they'll get all upset about
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that and decide to rage quit Twitter again. But I think it seems like CBC actually realized that
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there is an audience on Twitter that it cannot afford to forego. And certainly in Tucker Carlson's
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case he's uh risking a lot of money and a lot of other potential offers i mean remember this is a
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guy that could have been courted by the daily wire he could have done his own thing he could
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have been courted by the blaze he could have just uh gone to youtube rumble was interested in him
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but he's decided that he wants to go with twitter and that i mean in and of itself has the potential
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to revolutionize the landscape in the same way that rush limbaugh being on am radio revolutionized
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talk radio in America. So enough about media navel gazing. I'm starting to sound like all
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those CBC people that just talk about themselves all day. I'm trying to be a little bit more in
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the abstract about it than just about yours truly. But we will move on to the big picture
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issue of our time, Canada's relationship with China. And this has finally reached a point where
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it looks like the government is maybe trying to be a little bit more serious about this. I mean,
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that's a bit of an if. China has expelled a Canadian diplomat after Canada expelled a Chinese
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diplomat. But the diplomat that Canada expelled was one that was implicated in a plot to intimidate
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Michael Chong's family overseas. That's a Conservative member of Parliament, Michael Chong.
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And the Liberals still need to answer for a few aspects of this, such as, you know, exactly how
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much they knew why michael chong wasn't informed of it until this week why the intelligence reports
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that said this was known a year ago never managed to make their way to the person who was the
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subject of them and why justin trudeau claims that he had no idea but everyone around him seemed to
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it's a bit of a weird dynamic there in which i think you know canada has more to answer for
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than china uh but then we have some other dimensions of this that we have to talk about i
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I want to welcome into the show Brian Lee Crowley, who is the Managing Director of the
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On the show, Andrew, I really appreciate the invitation.
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Well, let's start first off with the idea of, I mean, Canada and China, which is, I
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And the idea that, you know, this stuff was known, it was in the intelligence community,
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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.
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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.
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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,
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that said that there were Chinese diplomats in Canada working to intimidate an elected member of Canada's parliament.
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And it's only now, two years later, that we're taking action.
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And of course, you know, the Prime Minister having kicked a diplomat out, in my view,
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not because he thought that it was important to kick the diplomat out, but because he thought
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it was important to respond to public opinion. Once it became known, he said, well, I guess I
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better take some action. But the fact is that at least the people around him, if not the Prime
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minister himself knew all about this two years ago and the fact that it's taken them this long
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to react to say to china you know you can't actually ask us to accredit diplomats to
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represent you in our country and then have them break our laws try and intimidate our elected
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representatives uh uh and we are not going to allow that your your diplomats who do this are
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going to be sent home i i i i'm i'm kind of speechless that uh the prime minister uh has
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taken so long and uh before he made the decision made it very clear that he was hesitating quite a
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lot uh because he worried about what the chinese might do in response which i i i think is pathetic
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behavior by the prime yeah yeah no and melanie joe lee the foreign minister had made some comments
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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.
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I'm like, why are you talking this through with China for you?
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I mean, for starters, I think there's only one option.
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But secondly, it shouldn't be part of a consultation at that point.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You cannot say to China, well, as long as you're holding two of our citizens, we won't do anything that upsets you.
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This is exactly why, you know, countries say, for example, they won't negotiate with terrorists.
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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.
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You create incentives for bad actors to do bad things because they know that you will let them get away with it.
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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.
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This was a picture tweeted by the royal family on May 5th,
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And it says the king meets with Commonwealth leaders at Marlborough House.
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a voluntary association of 56 independent and equal countries.
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And if you look, I'm not going to get you to zoom in,
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but if you look through the picture, you see His Majesty the King,
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you see the Prime Minister of Australia, the Prime Minister of New Zealand,
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the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, leaders from the Caribbean and Africa and in the Commonwealth
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realms in Asia. Nowhere in that picture is any Canadian delegate, and that includes Justin
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Trudeau, who was at the time on his way or speaking at the Liberal Convention. But then you
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juxtapose it with this. This is a picture from a panel discussion with Harjit Sajjan, formerly the
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defense minister in Canada from the Liberal Convention that says, everywhere we go, meeting
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our partners, helping those in need and protecting the vulnerable, there's always one message.
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We need more Canada. And the message there is that the world needs more Canada. So I like the
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juxtaposition of the world needs more Canada and Justin Trudeau skipping the Commonwealth meeting.
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But there's a serious point in that, I think, Brian, which is that the liberals generally talk
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about this very lofty and aspirational place for Canada in the world. But when you get down to
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brass tacks and you talk about the situations that matter, where a decisive position is expected of
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Canada, like on China, they're nowhere to be found. Well, Andrew, I think this is absolutely
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right. You know, the government of Canada always prides itself on being, you know, a calm, reasoned
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voice of diplomacy and so on. But people forget that diplomacy isn't an end in itself. Talking
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is not an end in itself. A country must effectively defend its real interests. And, you know,
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simply saying, well, you know, we're friends to everybody. Everybody likes Canada. So, you know,
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as long as we're here, everyone will behave themselves. It's complete rubbish. The Chinese
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laugh up their sleeve at this kind of rhetoric because they are completely unapologetic about
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defending their interests. I mean, that's what we're discussing here. They say to their diplomats,
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oh, you're in Canada? Make sure that you punish Canadian politicians who do anything contrary to
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China's interests. Now, I'm not saying that we should behave that way in China. What I'm saying
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is China makes no bones about the fact that the purpose of their diplomacy is to defend the
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interests of china completely unapologetically and canada's response is oh well we don't want
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to offend you so even though you've done things that break our law that break the geneva convention
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that are completely inappropriate for your diplomats um let's have a conversation about
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how we might uh you know resolve this problem i i think that this simply encourages the chinese
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to think that canada will not do anything to protect its own interests and therefore china
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that can walk all over us. Yeah, and I think it was noteworthy whenever the AUKUS alliance came
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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
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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
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not only uh turned ourselves into a doormat for china but we have offended our own allies in doing
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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
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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
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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
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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
00:33:52.640
when someone dared put a Canadian flag on the Terry Fox statue
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
00:34:08.120
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
00:34:38.640
So the Liberals aren't letting him get on a plane.
00:34:43.180
The guy with the rake is representing all of the shredded passports of people that don't
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00:34:49.020
want to look at them anymore, that are trying to just get rid of them to throw them in the
00:34:54.700
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
00:35:33.300
and her goslings, I think they're called, right?
00:35:43.180
when you don't commune with nature as one should.
00:35:48.060
But, and there was like a father goose, I presume.
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.
00:37:16.040
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.
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We will be back on Friday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North.
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