Juno News - Jagmeet Singh says he’ll keep supporting Trudeau until elections can be trusted

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.460 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.540 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:15.020 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, The Andrew Lawton Show, here on True North.

00:00:19.920 What is it? Wednesday, May 31st.

00:00:22.120 I, for whatever reason, had it in my mind that it might actually be June already,

00:00:25.720 But I'm jumping the gun by, well, certainly in Eastern time, eight hours.

00:00:30.660 But in eight hours, it'll be June, and then we can all celebrate the summering, the arrival of summer, the ability to summer.

00:00:38.340 We can all summer. You know what I mean.

00:00:39.960 We have a big show planned today.

00:00:42.560 Obviously, the big news this week, if you've been following True North or anywhere else, is that the UCP and Danielle Smith were elected in Alberta.

00:00:50.200 I actually just got back yesterday from Calgary, where we were Monday night hosting True North's live election night show.

00:00:57.500 So we'll break down some of the bigger picture aspects of the campaign and what lies ahead for the UCP with Rebecca Schultz, a newly re-elected UCP MLA.

00:01:07.300 She's also still in cabinet as Minister of Municipal Affairs.

00:01:11.300 She'll be dialing in in just a couple of minutes and a little bit later on in the show.

00:01:16.280 This story, I love it.

00:01:17.900 I'm going to try to do it with a straight face.

00:01:19.360 But Jagmeet Singh says election interference is so bad and has gotten so bad under Justin Trudeau's watch that he is not going to pull his support from Justin Trudeau because he doesn't have confidence in an election.

00:01:32.420 So Justin Trudeau gets to stay there because Jagmeet Singh doesn't trust the election.

00:01:37.740 I mean, this is great.

00:01:38.880 This is like in a level of election denialism that the media should be pouncing over, but so far aren't.

00:01:44.560 I want to start off, if you don't mind, by talking about something that came up on Friday's show.

00:01:50.900 Now, on Friday, I had a fantastic discussion with Anita Krishna, who is a former director at Global News.

00:01:56.720 She testified before the National Citizens' Inquiry, and we talked on Friday about a range of subjects.

00:02:02.960 We discussed media bias, among other things.

00:02:06.040 And as is the nature, when you have a long conversation with someone, you cover a lot of ground.

00:02:10.900 and sometimes in the midst of it I try to be very careful in listening to guests

00:02:15.880 but there was something that she said that the nuance of and the implications of

00:02:21.440 didn't really, wasn't really received by me or recognized in the moment

00:02:26.380 and I just want to be very careful about what I say here

00:02:29.760 because I don't understand exactly or cannot speak exactly

00:02:33.840 for what Anita Krishna was getting at and what point she was making

00:02:37.120 But we were talking about media and she mentioned in passing the Rothschild family, which is obviously a very wealthy Jewish family that has had tremendous amounts of success, but is also the subject of a great deal of conspiracy theories.

00:02:51.680 And I had a few people, very thoughtful people to listen to the show, reach out to me and say that oftentimes they're very concerned about a lot of this whole grandiose Jews running the world conspiracy theory stuff that tends to come up when people mention these things. 0.56

00:03:07.000 And again, I want to make very clear, I don't know what Anita was saying there, because my mind when we were talking about media bias was really on, I think, the ideological dimension of it.

00:03:17.700 And what I've always thought is the problem with media, which is not this, you know, puppet master pulling the strings of what people are doing, but the hearts and minds of people to go into the media, what they want to cover, what they don't want to cover, and how they want to cover the stuff that they do.

00:03:32.040 And that was where, if you heard the interview, I was trying to get the conversation because that was what I thought was the most important point.

00:03:38.320 And I actually said to Anita, I don't believe that the issue is people from the top down controlling individual journalists.

00:03:45.980 And I realize that if you are perhaps someone who believes in the conspiracy theories, you may think that, oh, well, someone's telling him to say this.

00:03:53.840 No, it's not that at all. It's that I listened back to the show, and normally I would have pushed back on that, except it didn't really trigger what it should have in me in that moment.

00:04:04.380 And I just wanted to say, because I know there are a great deal of many people on the show who are from the Jewish community, and I'm a big supporter of Israel.

00:04:11.380 I always have been, and I am a big opponent of anti-Semitism.

00:04:16.720 And it didn't mean that to me, but I know it did to a lot of the people listening.

00:04:20.920 And I apologize for that, that I didn't make that clear when we were having the discussion

00:04:25.900 and know that I very much resist and reject all of anti-Semitism that I see, which is

00:04:31.520 why we call it out so often on the show, as recently as a couple of weeks ago in London

00:04:35.680 when some anti-Semitic comedian was performing in my neck of the woods.

00:04:40.320 But I wanted to say that right up front, and thank you to those who did reach out about

00:04:44.340 that.

00:04:44.640 To get into the serious stuff of the Alberta election, we're going to be talking about the, I want to say the sweep, and I have to be cautious with how we describe the win, because Daniel Smith obviously was victorious, the UCP won, they did lose seats from what they had going into it, but I think anyone could have said going into it that that was always going to be the case, that that was always going to happen.

00:05:11.740 Jason Kenney in 2019 did so well that it was going to be very difficult for any UCP led by him or anyone else to rise to that same threshold.

00:05:21.340 But all of that aside, let me just point out here that all of the people that are like sycophants for the NDP and for Rachel Notley and the media and the activist group, all of them are trying to spin a win as a loss.

00:05:35.740 They're saying, oh, Danielle Smith won, but it wasn't really a win.

00:05:39.100 And you got people that have said, yes, Rachel Notley lost, but her loss was really a win.

00:05:43.740 And, you know, even Rachel Notley herself, we don't have the clip of it, but Rachel

00:05:49.640 Notley made that comment in her remarks when she gave the concession speech on Monday night

00:05:55.820 about how she was forming the largest opposition in Alberta's history. 0.94

00:06:02.300 Now, that means that you are the biggest loser in Alberta's history. 0.84

00:06:07.140 That means that, I mean, there was an old Seinfeld bit about this, about silver medals, if I recall, where he said, you know, if you get a silver medal of all the losers, you came first. 0.98

00:06:16.980 You were the best of the losers.

00:06:19.020 So the largest opposition in Alberta's history means you have come the closest to winning yet still lost, which is not exactly an accomplishment that you should be proud of. 0.93

00:06:30.680 But Rachel Notley and Jagmeet Singh, birds of a feather, both of them have this tendency to lose elections and then talk about how, well, they lost and, yeah, it sucked, but they really won.

00:06:41.560 So I don't know if the knives are going to come out for Rachel Notley.

00:06:45.300 I don't have any idea.

00:06:47.020 I think one of the points that William Macbeth raised on our Monday night panel was how there really isn't anyone else on deck.

00:06:54.500 Like, the NDP does not have a huge amount of bench strength here.

00:06:59.740 So it's not entirely clear what it is that we can expect to see

00:07:03.520 as far as some successor, some heir apparent that's going to come in

00:07:07.300 and try to save this party.

00:07:09.720 So the reason I bring all of that up is to say that Daniel Smith actually,

00:07:13.940 despite having only a few seats of a buffer between her and the NDP,

00:07:19.640 between the UCP and the NDP, still has a pretty clear and decisive mandate.

00:07:26.000 And I think this is going to be a very interesting thing to see

00:07:28.720 because it was a majority government from the get-go.

00:07:31.060 It was always going to be a majority government.

00:07:33.160 And now as she proceeds with this,

00:07:35.760 she has essentially four years to enact her agenda,

00:07:40.300 to enact the UCP agenda,

00:07:42.140 assuming there isn't some inside turmoil

00:07:45.900 like there was in the end under Jason Kenney.

00:07:48.660 But I think this is where it's important to look forward

00:07:51.480 because the campaign that the UCP ran

00:07:53.840 was really sticking to conservative strengths.

00:07:57.040 It wasn't a campaign that was talking largely about sovereignty.

00:08:00.520 It wasn't re-litigating the COVID file.

00:08:02.460 It was talking about economy.

00:08:04.320 It was talking about jobs.

00:08:05.580 It was talking about oil and gas.

00:08:07.060 It was talking about all of these other things that are fairly, I don't want to say, well,

00:08:12.540 no, let's be real.

00:08:13.500 They're safe conservative issues.

00:08:15.020 These are things that the conservatives, generally speaking, can talk about in a broadly

00:08:20.000 appealing way.

00:08:21.400 She wasn't campaigning on the culture war, although obviously there are people that know

00:08:25.040 her as that and expect her to be that. But one of the things that I think a lot of people are

00:08:30.620 going to be looking for is what the path forward is. What's the plan here? So it's my pleasure to

00:08:37.620 welcome back the newly re-elected MLA for Calgary Shaw, also still in cabinet as Minister of

00:08:44.160 Municipal Affairs, Rebecca Schultz. Rebecca, good to talk to you. Congratulations again and thanks

00:08:48.700 for coming on today. Hi, Andrew. Thank you so much. So obviously, Calgary was the nail biter

00:08:56.720 of the night. I mean, you saw me upstage there at the Monday night event, just withering away

00:09:02.520 because it was going several hours. And you know, some of your colleagues ridings just kept flipping

00:09:06.440 back and forth with with each poll. Why was Calgary so difficult for your party and the NDP

00:09:13.900 to really claim? And why do you think it went the way it did with the NDP really picking up a fair

00:09:18.260 You know, and I said this on election night that the last four years have been a challenge.

00:09:24.240 We ran on jobs economy pipeline and we faced things that we just couldn't predict,

00:09:29.600 like an oil price crash, an economic downturn, obviously COVID.

00:09:33.660 And so there were some challenges there.

00:09:35.840 But when I look at where Alberta is today versus where our province was after four years of the NDP,

00:09:41.760 I think Albertans wanted certainty.

00:09:43.620 I mean, the NDP and almost every media outlet asked me about the division in the campaign.

00:09:51.060 And of course, the NDP ran a highly divisive campaign.

00:09:55.020 It was negative.

00:09:56.160 A lot of it was complete fear and misinformation.

00:09:59.580 And they put a lot of money behind it, as did some of the unions.

00:10:03.180 And so that also made it a challenge.

00:10:05.340 And we remain focused on our record, our four years in government, where Alberta was in

00:10:11.000 terms of leading the nation in economic growth jobs opportunity and a platform that build on

00:10:16.380 our spring budget and committed to things like keeping communities safe again making sure our

00:10:21.440 economy is more diverse than ever before balanced budgets things that resonate with the vast

00:10:26.000 majority of Albertans and so that's why I think ultimately Albertans decided look we want a party

00:10:31.540 that's going to give us something to vote for that has some optimism both in our province and its

00:10:36.160 people. And that's why I do think that we saw positive results overall just the other night.

00:10:43.160 One of the things I found interesting to your point there is that there really were two campaigns

00:10:48.000 in some ways. There was the policy-oriented campaign that you're talking about there. And

00:10:52.700 there was also the divisiveness and the negativity and the, I think the media obsessions over, you

00:10:57.260 know, what Danielle said in a blog post, you know, in, you know, 1942 or whatever. But it was

00:11:02.860 It's interesting how much the message that your party put forward broke through with

00:11:06.640 people, though, in some ways.

00:11:07.820 I remember on the way back from the UCP election night party on Monday, so it was 12.30 a.m.

00:11:14.040 I'm going to my hotel, and the driver of the Uber said, thinking I was a UCP guy and not

00:11:19.380 a journalist, I voted for you guys for the first time in my life, he said.

00:11:25.520 I said, well, I'm a journalist, but I'm still curious.

00:11:28.200 Why did you vote UCP?

00:11:29.200 And he said, well, his 21-year-old daughter told him to because she believed that the UCP was the party that would guarantee economic security.

00:11:37.100 And he said it was very moving.

00:11:38.560 He said, you know, I was voting for my daughter's future.

00:11:40.980 And that's the type of story when I share it that makes it sound like I'm campaigning for you guys.

00:11:45.840 But in reality, it was actually interesting because I had seen all of the CBC stuff and the Rachel Notley stuff.

00:11:51.700 But here's a guy that really is, I think, your model voter in what you were trying to tell people.

00:11:56.320 Yeah, and it really was a platform that focused on just the top of mind issues for everyday Albertans. And as conservatives who run on balanced budgets, we're not the party that has a commitment for everybody, right? We have commitments, or I mean, like in terms of dollar amounts and the big spending amounts. It's a commitment to maintain fiscal responsibility. You have to manage your finances in your household, and we're going to manage your tax dollars responsibly. We're going to make sure we have a stronger growing economy. Why?

00:12:25.080 because if we don't we can't invest in our health care system in our education system

00:12:29.820 in mental health and addictions and keeping communities safe whether you live in calgary

00:12:34.740 edmonton or rural alberta these are things that matter to people and i had a lot of people i mean

00:12:39.280 we were door knocking i think i finished door knocking on election night at 10 after 7 like we

00:12:43.960 went until the very end and i i had people say man like i just had to stop watching the news

00:12:49.760 through this campaign i can't believe how negative it was and so i i was really encouraged to see

00:12:55.300 that our message resonated and we did have you know it wasn't just about because some people

00:13:00.740 said do you think it's a election campaign between two leaders is it you know two people and i said

00:13:06.060 it's also two records we have the ndp who had a record of four years in government that a lot of

00:13:11.500 people just said look we can't afford to go back to that um and we also had a record that also

00:13:16.100 So through a difficult time, we came out here in Alberta, a place of hope, optimism, opportunity,

00:13:21.180 where more people are choosing to call our province home, record investments in health

00:13:24.680 care and education and a balanced budget and a commitment to keep communities safe.

00:13:29.540 You know, I think people just felt like, look, I can I can get behind that.

00:13:33.180 And I think they started to see through, you know, some of those ads.

00:13:37.120 No, you're not going to have to pay to see a family doctor.

00:13:40.500 You know, you're not.

00:13:41.720 uh danielle smith made that commitment and i think people started to see through some of the

00:13:45.560 negativity too i know when a government comes into power and i'm referring specifically to danielle

00:13:51.800 smith not the ucp uh through a leadership there's a there's a bit of nervousness in going too bold

00:13:57.240 with policies because you didn't really receive a mandate from voters and now you have received

00:14:01.960 that mandate so do you see there as being a more significant change of course in your government's

00:14:07.800 priorities? Or do you really see continuity from what have been the priorities of the cabinet for

00:14:12.900 the last eight months? Yeah, I'll say, you know, Danielle Smith, when she was elected leader of 0.86

00:14:18.580 the United Conservatives, really put effort into bringing our caucus and our team together and

00:14:23.100 maintaining that, you know, we are a big tent coalition of the centre-right. And I also think

00:14:29.180 that when you look at our platform and you look at the top issues, look, whether you live in rural

00:14:32.960 Alberta, you live in Calgary, community safety matters. Making sure that there are police officers

00:14:38.120 and that, you know, when you're in an emergency, somebody's going to come and respond. EMS response

00:14:44.060 times. This was a huge win for Danielle Smith, where, you know, she just reached out to paramedics

00:14:49.860 and said, what is the barrier? Why are our response times so long? And she took their feedback and

00:14:54.760 made changes that they've been asking for for over a decade. And so I think when you look at what

00:14:59.880 we're committing to do it is committing to keep our finances in order to grow the economy but to

00:15:06.100 have a common sense approach to government to reduce some of the barriers facing whether it's

00:15:10.620 businesses or Albertans there's a very real commitment to do that and I think the changes

00:15:16.280 she made in health care to bring down the surgical wait times to bring down the EMS wait times I think

00:15:21.800 my goodness if we were able to do some of that in seven months that's a good sign for our health

00:15:27.700 care system and and for frontline health care workers which is you know that's something top

00:15:32.100 of mind for Albertans right now too that you have a government that's willing to take a common sense

00:15:36.440 approach get rid of some of the bureaucracy and say how do we make sure that we have a system

00:15:41.700 that works for Albertans you know I think that that also is a big difference between us and

00:15:47.560 obviously the NDP they grew red tape they grew the bureaucracy and so of course we're always going to

00:15:53.080 have a different approach on that front but we want to focus on addressing the problems of

00:15:57.700 Albertans right across Alberta. I know that obviously with the losses in Calgary and in the

00:16:04.220 case of Minister Madhu in Edmonton there are some changes that are going to have to come about in

00:16:09.560 cabinet and I know you're not speaking for the premier right now on this but do you have any

00:16:14.100 kind of indications of I'm not going to ask you who's going in what role but of what sort of

00:16:18.980 changes will be made and what the message will be with the next cabinet yeah and i i really don't

00:16:24.820 have any insight into that and make your pitch tell me the spot you want you know i always say

00:16:29.820 this that when i first decided to run back in 2018 i told people like why i wanted to get into this

00:16:35.440 is because i think that albertans deserve government that knows that we're here to serve

00:16:40.560 people that we're here to serve our neighbors i work for albertans and my first and most important

00:16:46.240 job is always as mla and a local representative so that is my top priority but i'm also of course

00:16:52.960 happy to serve wherever i'm needed or asked um but yeah i don't really make those predictions

00:16:58.160 all right fair enough well i guess the one one thing i'll ask you in in closing on on this

00:17:03.680 obviously there was a leadership race uh you know what eight months ago that was uh relatively

00:17:09.440 divisive in some ways but there was a fair bit of unity after again i mean a lot of the people that

00:17:14.160 were running against danielle smith including yourself ended up being brought into cabinet and

00:17:18.800 have been uh very big champions do you see the party as being unified moving forward because

00:17:23.520 even during the last campaign there were some uh people that nominally were conservative activists

00:17:28.800 or called themselves conservative activists that are saying i you know i i can't get behind the

00:17:32.800 ucp for for whatever reason or another you know i do believe that our team is unified and i know

00:17:38.240 media was saying oh you know there's a couple of long-time ucp supporters that are going with the

00:17:42.960 NDP, those are people who weren't largely as supportive of the UCP after Unity. When we went

00:17:48.400 through the leadership race, I give Danielle Smith a lot of credit for bringing our team together.

00:17:53.920 And I would say this on the doors too, right? That she, you know, really wanted to see our team

00:17:59.140 come together. She took our feedback or our concerns because even during the leadership

00:18:03.800 race, I think, you know, for the most part, the debates were about records or policy positions

00:18:10.640 or things like that and so when other leadership candidates had concerns about specific policies

00:18:17.600 danielle smith took that feedback and made changes to legislation to policy approaches 0.89

00:18:23.200 and you know i i think that that went a long way in building trust amongst our colleagues and that's

00:18:28.720 why um you know i'm so optimistic in the unity of our team because that also then creates unity

00:18:35.840 amongst our party members as well and i've seen that um at events throughout the last couple of

00:18:40.880 weeks and i think that that's what we can continue to see in the months and years to come all right

00:18:46.880 well newly re-elected calgary shaw mla rebecca shawls congratulations again thanks for coming

00:18:51.600 on today thanks so much great to see you again andrew all right thank you yeah i saw rebecca very

00:18:56.720 briefly when i was up on the platform there uh but she was uh chatting with rachel and i was like had

00:19:02.160 had to run to get a glass of water that I hadn't been able to get in like two hours because of how

00:19:06.000 the night was going. So I didn't get a chance to say hello in person, but glad we could catch up

00:19:11.260 with her tonight on this program. We're going to talk a little bit more about what we can expect

00:19:16.700 moving forward. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is going to be with us

00:19:20.880 tomorrow on the show for a deep dive. So you won't want to miss that. But let's turn to federal

00:19:26.340 politics for a second here. Maybe a couple of seconds. I think we're going to go a little bit

00:19:30.880 longer on this one, because I want to just preface this by saying that sometimes the jokes write

00:19:37.080 themselves. I'm a big believer in comedy, and I like jokes. So in the interest of jokes, let's

00:19:41.940 talk about Jagmeet Singh. He had this to say. How serious is your threat then to ask David

00:19:49.440 Johnson to step down as a special rapporteur if you're not going to follow through with pulling

00:19:53.840 the plug on the confidence and supply agreement? What we're doing is we're forcing this government

00:19:58.900 with a vote, we're forcing Parliament to decide on whether or not Mr. Johnson should continue.

00:20:04.500 I think that's a serious question. Given the clear appearance of bias, we are putting before

00:20:09.460 Canadians that it is no longer useful to have Mr. Johnson in that position, given the clear

00:20:14.720 appearance of bias. It's not going to restore confidence in the electoral system. So we're

00:20:18.260 going to push for that. But I would question the approach of creating the conditions for an

00:20:23.120 election or triggering an election as not serious about protecting our democracy. If we want to

00:20:28.500 protect our democracy, I would think the approach should be, let's put in place new measures. What

00:20:33.420 are the new steps to protect against foreign interference? What are the new steps going to

00:20:36.820 be taken to ensure that nomination meetings aren't being influenced, that MPs aren't being

00:20:40.740 influenced? I would like to see a series of steps being taken, and that to me would show some real

00:20:47.040 seriousness about protecting our electoral system. If it's just about a game to trigger an election,

00:20:52.340 then sure, Mr. Polyev's approach is tear it all down, have an election. I actually don't think

00:20:56.400 this is a game. I think this is serious. I want to make sure that there are steps in place, that

00:21:00.420 there are recommendations being followed that actually reinforce our democracy. Because for me,

00:21:05.140 I want to see people believe in voting. I want to see people confident in voting. And I want to

00:21:09.120 restore Canadians' confidence in that. It's not about a game for me. I want to continue to fight

00:21:13.260 for a public inquiry because it's the right thing to do to give Canadians the answers to questions.

00:21:17.620 But I don't see how it's logical if the goal is to protect our democracy to then trigger an election

00:21:22.320 when we're worried about foreign interference.

00:21:24.300 That isn't logical.

00:21:29.320 I've got to say, you know,

00:21:30.820 I make fun of Canadian content and Bill C-11, 0.72

00:21:33.640 but this up-and-coming stand-up comic is fantastic.

00:21:37.600 That was just hilarious right there.

00:21:39.920 I, like, was choking on my drink.

00:21:41.500 That's why you may have heard me coughing during that clip.

00:21:43.480 I didn't know my microphone was turned on.

00:21:45.880 But, like, again, you can't write jokes like that.

00:21:50.560 Jagmeet Singh's position is that the federal government has failed to make Canada's election

00:21:56.620 secure, to resist China's interference in Canada's elections. He's so dedicated in this belief system

00:22:02.940 that he wants to fire David Johnston. Great. He wants to call a public inquiry. Great. He wants

00:22:08.680 to call on the federal government to take action, to fix this mess. Great. What's the one thing you

00:22:14.060 can do Jagmeet Singh to get the liberals to do something you can pull your support of the

00:22:20.900 liberals but doing that would trigger an election and he says well I don't know we uh we can't you

00:22:26.200 know the election the system's too bad we can't really do it we've got to get the the whole point

00:22:31.120 he's he's rewarding Trudeau for doing the thing that he says he's mad at Trudeau for doing like

00:22:37.860 this is a level of incoherence that even Jagmeet Singh has struggled to meet. Like he has never

00:22:44.560 managed to be this incoherent. I think that $10,000 Rolex is on his wrist just a little bit

00:22:50.340 too tight. It's cutting off the blood flow to the rest of the body. Maybe those tailored suits were

00:22:55.000 just not tailored properly. It's squeezing something there, but he's, he's like unable

00:23:00.300 to realize the absurdity of his point.

00:23:04.740 I mean, a point, again, such as it is,

00:23:07.520 is that the elections are so untrustworthy,

00:23:11.200 we have to keep the liberals in indefinitely.

00:23:13.320 Can you imagine if Justin, you know what, forget about Justin Trudeau.

00:23:16.340 Imagine if Donald Trump said that.

00:23:18.180 Yeah, we've received evidence of interference in our elections.

00:23:21.660 The only way we can make sure everything is safe is if I just stay in office.

00:23:26.080 No elections until we make sure we've fixed it.

00:23:29.320 So Jagmeet Singh is making the point that it is not safe or secure or democratic to have an election in Canada right now.

00:23:37.640 Now, admittedly, interference is a problem, but the problem is not that we weren't aware of it.

00:23:43.260 The problem is that we weren't communicating that from CSIS to the Liberals in a way that was resulting in action.

00:23:51.560 So we have a lot of the safeguards we need.

00:23:54.460 We are going to be more on guard for this.

00:23:56.680 Candidates can be very aware of where their volunteers are coming from,

00:24:00.500 where their endorsements are coming from.

00:24:02.000 There are a few individual cases where we're certainly watching.

00:24:05.840 Because as we know, CSIS has been sitting on troves of information

00:24:10.580 that it hasn't been sharing.

00:24:12.360 I want to play a clip in just a moment of Aaron O'Toole

00:24:14.840 making what ended up being a rather explosive speech

00:24:18.120 in the House of Commons yesterday.

00:24:19.880 I missed part of it.

00:24:20.920 I saw it when I was waiting at the airport to catch my flight home,

00:24:24.040 and then I re-watched it all later.

00:24:25.980 and it was actually quite a bombshell.

00:24:27.780 He revealed CSIS as coming to him very recently,

00:24:31.800 having been aware years ago of attempts to interfere with his work

00:24:37.020 and in doing so, only telling him now,

00:24:40.780 only telling him now that this has become a full-blown scandal.

00:24:44.400 Take a look at this little excerpt.

00:24:46.560 Not only were the multiple threats against me and members of my parliamentary caucus

00:24:51.020 not raised to me by the government or security agencies

00:24:54.580 during the 43rd Parliament, but these serious threats were also not communicated to us through

00:25:00.100 the Security and Intelligent Threats to Elections Task Force created by the government in the 43rd

00:25:06.540 Parliament to safeguard our election. The threats identified against me by CSIS did not relate to

00:25:13.040 one single event or one single accredited diplomat. Rather, the numerous threats identified to me

00:25:20.120 provide proof of an ongoing campaign of foreign interference intended to disrupt my work as a

00:25:26.840 member but also to critically disrupt my work as leader of a large parliamentary caucus in

00:25:33.800 a minority parliament. Threats, disruption and interference of this scale actually violated the

00:25:40.280 privilege of hundreds of members of this house. Look, I've had a lot of criticism about Aaron

00:25:50.620 O'Toole and actions he took when he was leader of the Conservatives, but I believe he is a thoughtful

00:25:56.280 man, I believe he is a patriotic man, and I believe he takes democratic institutions very

00:26:01.060 seriously. So he was revealing information in the House of Commons yesterday that some people have

00:26:06.020 argued, and I don't know the ins and outs legally, that might legally have been challenging to do

00:26:11.660 because of the security laws, but he did it because he believed in it and felt that Canadians

00:26:16.940 needed to know. And I'm very glad he did, because he revealed how much we actually know about foreign

00:26:23.340 interference already, which is really the source of the scandal here. I restate this over and over

00:26:28.760 again. The news is not that China has been interfering in Canada's elections. The news is

00:26:35.180 that the government has turned a blind eye to it or otherwise not taken the interference

00:26:40.100 seriously. It's not new information. It's not at all new information. And don't let anyone tell

00:26:46.840 you it is. So when Trudeau gets up there and be like, oh, I was never briefed on this. Yes, you

00:26:50.360 were. You were absolutely briefed on most of this. And just because you got that whitewash of a report

00:26:55.660 from David Johnston does not mean you weren't. And speaking of David Johnston, today in the House

00:27:01.260 of Commons, I don't know what time it was, maybe like an hour ago, members of Parliament voted in

00:27:06.100 favor of getting rid of David Johnson. They voted for him to step down and have a public inquiry be

00:27:12.280 called. The margin was 174 to 150. Among those voting against it was, of course, Justin Trudeau,

00:27:19.300 but the NDP, the Conservatives were, as well as the bloc, voting in favor of this. And the reason

00:27:25.580 that's important is because right now the NDP are keeping up with their pattern of being Canada's 0.99

00:27:32.280 biggest cowards. They want to throw their grenades, throw their bombs over. They're pacifists. They 0.98

00:27:36.600 want to throw their water balloons over. Maybe water balloons aren't environmentally friendly,

00:27:40.860 but you know what I mean. The NDP will say, oh yes, we are taking a tough stand and Trudeau has

00:27:46.720 failed Canadians and the Liberals and the Conservatives are all the same, but oh, we are

00:27:51.120 not going to do anything about it. And it's great because usually he hasn't had a reason. He's just

00:27:55.180 been like, they're terrible, but we're not going to call an election. Now he's like got the excuse

00:27:59.760 that he's using. We're not going to have an election because the election's not safe. It's

00:28:03.900 not safe to have the election. This is the mighty Jagmeet Singh trying to justify why he has never

00:28:10.140 in all of his years in public office been able to find something resembling a spine, which would be

00:28:15.180 a lovely thing for Jagmeet Singh to have. Again, maybe you forgo the next Rolex and just buy a

00:28:21.120 spinal implant. I don't know if we have those things in Canada, maybe not in Alberta, because

00:28:25.180 you can't get private health care there, despite the NDP's proclamations. But my goodness, this is

00:28:31.380 something that is only going to get worse. And listen, I mean, Pierre Paliyev and Jagmeet Singh

00:28:37.880 do not agree on a lot. They aren't going to agree on taxes. They aren't going to agree on vaccine

00:28:42.420 mandates. They aren't going to agree on a great many things that are going to be in their respective

00:28:46.620 platforms but when they can agree it is important like the importance of having elections that are

00:28:52.720 free of interference but Jagmeet Singh taking that stand doesn't mean anything if he's not prepared

00:29:00.260 to accompany it with action if he's not prepared to actually say I believe so strongly about this

00:29:06.640 that I am willing to let the government that has promised all promised me all these goodies that

00:29:11.800 I'm willing to let it fall. And I'm willing to go to voters. And if the liberals are that bad,

00:29:17.260 if the liberals are that corrupt, then Jagmeet Singh should welcome the chance to go to voters

00:29:22.800 and say, you know what? I am the guy that the Canadian left should vote for. I'm the guy that's

00:29:28.180 going to take Canadian democracy seriously. I'm the guy that's going to be a principled voice for

00:29:32.860 progress, socialism, whatever it is that he's standing for. I mean, he's not standing for

00:29:36.540 anything. That's the point, but he's not doing that. And that's precisely the problem here.

00:29:41.380 So it's proof that all of this, you know, grand virtue signaling gesturing that he does

00:29:46.960 is completely phony.

00:29:49.340 It is completely phony, unlike the watch.

00:29:51.660 And this is exactly what Canadians have to deal with here.

00:29:54.140 So election, no election, it's not going to matter to Jagmeet Singh, except insofar as

00:29:59.920 he doesn't think it's going to get any better.

00:30:01.620 He knows that after the next election, he's probably done as leader.

00:30:06.140 He's probably done as leader after the next loss.

00:30:08.360 So he wants to keep this going as long as he possibly can.

00:30:11.760 I've seen a few people online saying he's got to stay there just long enough to get his pension.

00:30:15.780 Well, I mean, he's going to be re-elected as an MP, so he's going to get his MP pension regardless.

00:30:20.940 Let's just talk about what's in the best interest of the country,

00:30:23.840 which, as the obvious point, shouldn't need to be restated, but is going to be restated right now.

00:30:29.700 The NDP rarely in Canada's best interest, if ever.

00:30:33.420 One thing before we go to end on a bit of a lighter note here.

00:30:36.800 You may remember a couple of months ago, there was some sporting event, I'm told,

00:30:40.740 at which the singer, Julie Black, decided to ad-lib the national anthem

00:30:46.560 and, you know, oh, Canada, our home and native land.

00:30:49.780 No, no, no, she didn't do that.

00:30:50.940 She did our home on native land. 0.95

00:30:53.520 And it made, you know, all these people very happy, more people upset.

00:30:57.320 Well, now Bonnie Crombie, who is the mayor of Mississauga,

00:31:00.720 is trying to get the lyrics changed permanently from oh, Canada

00:31:05.500 to the instead of in our home in native land she wants our home on native land so what started out

00:31:12.320 as one jazz singer's dumb protest is now becoming an official policy position in the city of

00:31:18.420 mississauga now i don't know if mississauga is just gonna at its council meetings do these weird 0.71

00:31:22.680 lyrics on its own like maybe we're gonna get to a point where we've reverted into like national

00:31:26.780 anthem city states where every city just has its own national anthem and if so i'm gonna like lobby

00:31:32.180 my city to go back to in all thy son's command i mean if we can change lyrics uh means we can

00:31:37.820 change them back to the good ones as well uh that was on the ndp's uh talking points i'm sure but

00:31:44.360 now also bonnie crombie who's a liberal is pushing for the same thing that does it for us for today

00:31:49.580 we'll be back tomorrow with more of canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew

00:31:54.120 lawton show here on true north thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to

00:31:59.760 the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 31, 2023

Jagmeet Singh says he’ll keep supporting Trudeau until elections can be trusted

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