Juno News - Jason Kenney defends record as UCP members vote on his leadership

00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:57.940 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:05.640 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:08.200 This is another edition of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:01:11.760 Thursday, April 14th, 2022.

00:01:15.020 Hope you're having a fantastic Maundy Thursday,

00:01:18.500 getting ready for the Easter weekend or for Passover or just for a long weekend,

00:01:22.760 if neither of those is what you'll be doing this weekend.

00:01:25.500 But we thank you very much for tuning in today to another live edition of the program.

00:01:29.880 Going to be talking later on in the show about some comments by Chief Justice Richard Wagner

00:01:34.880 about the Freedom Convoy, which a few people have been raising some questions about online.

00:01:40.540 Also a bit of a peculiar poll that the Government of Canada is running.

00:01:44.640 We'll get to all that later on, but first want to focus a little bit on Alberta politics.

00:01:49.400 Last weekend, there was supposed to be a leadership review in Red Deer, Alberta for Jason Kenney's

00:01:56.200 leadership of the UCP, the United Conservative Party, and ultimately his premiership.

00:02:01.560 Now, because there was such high demand among UCP members that were going to go more than

00:02:06.240 the poor Cambridge Hotel and Red Deer could accommodate, they've switched to a mail-in

00:02:10.740 voting system.

00:02:11.600 So if you are a UCP member, you've probably received your ballot already to vote on Jason

00:02:16.980 Kenney's leadership.

00:02:18.340 Let's talk about what the big things are in the UCP and in Alberta that are weighing on people's minds with the man himself, Premier Jason Kenney, joins me live.

00:02:27.740 Premier, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

00:02:30.000 It's great to be back on the only media show in Canada that refers to this as Maundy Thursday. Thank you very much, Andrew.

00:02:36.100 Happy to oblige, sir. Let's start here because obviously you were going to have your leadership reviewed anyway right after the election.

00:02:44.160 that's the way the UCP views these things. The COVID pandemic, other challenges in your party

00:02:49.780 have certainly made this more acute. What are the key questions that you've been hearing that are

00:02:56.000 really the defining questions about how people are voting on this? Basically, whether we stay

00:03:01.080 united or not, we went through a decade of conservative division between 2005 and 2015 in

00:03:06.600 Alberta after Ralph Klein was pretty much kicked to the curb in a leadership review vote himself.

00:03:11.740 With the PCs cycled through four leaders, we ended up with two conservative parties.

00:03:16.020 That vote split handed government to the NDP.

00:03:19.160 And what I'm hearing from most conservatives is a desire to stay united.

00:03:24.280 I spent three years of my life crisscrossing the province, much of that time, Andrew, without a paycheck, with a five-point plan to recreate a big tent, common sense, mainstream conservative movement.

00:03:36.100 We won a million votes in the last election on a very conservative platform.

00:03:39.900 we've implemented 90% of those promises that we made, relieving Canada in economic growth.

00:03:47.100 But on the other hand, Andrew, to be blunt with you, there are a fair number of Albertans,

00:03:54.140 and Conservatives especially, who are still very frustrated with what happened during COVID.

00:03:58.960 They're angry that there were restrictions, some people who are opposed to vaccines.

00:04:03.100 I hear them, I respect them, but here's my view.

00:04:06.680 we could spend the rest of our lives arguing over COVID and staying stuck in that division

00:04:12.300 and tear our party apart. We could have a leadership election where we'd have candidates

00:04:17.220 out there arguing that we should have done things. We should have had hard lockdowns. We should have

00:04:20.940 had no restrictions. None of that speaks to the real daily concerns of ordinary Albertans. They're

00:04:26.160 focused on the economy, inflation, the cost of living. They want a strong Alberta. That's where

00:04:32.340 this government's at. And that's why I hope to get a renewed mandate in this review vote.

00:04:36.680 Is that your view, though, that this is the fault line, COVID, that the people that do want to oust you as leader, that's the primary concern or ultimately the only concern they have with your leadership?

00:04:48.120 Yes. I mean, look, I'm sure that there are other issues, grievances, concerns.

00:04:51.880 There always are in a party.

00:04:53.420 You're never going to have a leader who has, let me do that more slowly, you'll never have a party whose leader has 100% support.

00:05:00.620 And there are, I'll be blunt, there's some sour grapes.

00:05:02.880 there's one guy going around the province who lost the last leadership election two to one and

00:05:07.180 he wants to settle scores and things like that you know we had some candidates in the last election

00:05:12.600 who wanted to run for us who frankly we excluded because they had said truly extreme things like

00:05:19.320 out and out racist things and so we we're not look I made it very clear Andrew we were not going to

00:05:25.900 let this become another lake of fire party we're not going to allow people with with extreme views

00:05:31.740 You know, like one of these candidates said that Islam is a death cult, that all Muslims should have been exterminated.

00:05:38.840 People like that are not going to be on the ballot of my mainstream conservative party as long as I'm leader.

00:05:44.100 So you've got some people like that with grievances.

00:05:46.720 But I think the bulk of the concern and the division in the party has come around COVID.

00:05:51.600 I totally get that. I hated everything we had to do through COVID.

00:05:56.120 But on the one hand, I wasn't going to have the hospitals overflow, pull life support.

00:06:00.120 And on the other hand, we avoided the hard lockdowns that would have been so damaging.

00:06:04.400 We didn't get everything right.

00:06:05.860 But I don't want to spend the rest of our lives arguing over it.

00:06:09.940 Let's look through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.

00:06:13.140 You mentioned the Lake of Fire.

00:06:15.000 When Danielle Smith announced that she was getting back into politics, seeking a UCP nomination in Livingston-McLeod,

00:06:22.060 and you were asked about this at a press conference a week or two weeks back, whenever it was,

00:06:26.260 You had talked about the importance of keeping extremists out of the party.

00:06:30.840 And I don't know, are you calling Danielle Smith an extremist?

00:06:34.060 And who are you referring to as extremists?

00:06:36.040 Is it social conservatives?

00:06:37.300 Is it people that are against vaccine mandates?

00:06:39.500 Or is it just those couple of people you mentioned there that have made those comments that you characterize as racist or homophobic, whatever they are?

00:06:46.860 So, look, Andrew, you know, I have been a frontline warrior for the conservative cause in Canada pretty much my entire adult life, from the days I helped to start the Taxpayers Federation in the early 1990s.

00:07:00.820 I mean, I was criticizing Ralph Klein's government for being insufficiently conservative.

00:07:07.260 And so I've been called all of those names by the people on the left.

00:07:11.800 That's not what I'm talking about.

00:07:13.480 You know what, Andrew? We conservatives have got to show the ability to make critical judgments, to be mature about things like this.

00:07:21.180 Just because people on the left, people like Trudeau, casually call mainstream conservative names does not mean that we should allow ourselves to associate with people with truly hateful views.

00:07:34.620 I've just quoted a guy who we excluded as a candidate, he's running around the province

00:07:38.540 organizing against my leadership, who said that Islam is a death cult and the Mongols should have

00:07:44.700 snuffed them out when they had the chance. We have people who have threatened, you know,

00:07:51.420 left a noose on the door of an MLA saying that she would be executed as supposedly I will,

00:07:58.140 following the Nuremberg trials for crimes against humanity for supporting vaccines.

00:08:02.700 There are people who are getting involved here who would normally never be involved in a mainstream center-right party who have expressed truly hateful views.

00:08:12.740 And we have to remember, I think it was the 2011 campaign, Daniel Smith was the leader of the Wildrose Party.

00:08:18.920 They had failed to do proper candidate vetting and screening.

00:08:22.480 They had a candidate who had said at a speech that homosexuals would be thrown into a, quote, lake of fire.

00:08:31.240 And I think 95, 98% of Albertans thought that was revolting.

00:08:36.520 And yet she kept that guy on as a candidate.

00:08:39.320 We have to have the ability of discernment about what is within the broad mainstream

00:08:44.660 of Alberta conservatism and what is truly extreme.

00:08:48.200 I think as a lifetime fighter in the movement, I can make those judgments in a pretty good way.

00:08:53.660 So, but people were hearing you talk about extremists and assuming that you were doing

00:08:58.980 the Trudeau thing.

00:08:59.800 You were talking about people who are unvaccinated, people that are against vaccine mandates.

00:09:03.400 That's not who you're calling too extreme for the UCP, correct?

00:09:08.240 Absolutely not.

00:09:09.320 And I hope they don't make that assumption.

00:09:12.120 But Andrew, once again, we should not allow the casual politics of defamation of the left, which I have been dealing with my whole life in Canadian politics.

00:09:23.220 We should not allow that to cause us to be unable to make a distinction between maybe sometimes controversial views that are right of center and views that are truly extremely violent or hateful.

00:09:38.400 I, as a leader, have to make these decisions when it comes to excluding certain people as candidates.

00:09:43.460 You know, I had somebody who's running around organizing against my leadership who said on Facebook, we're coming for you, Kenny.

00:09:50.200 On April 9th, we're taking you and your corrupt government down.

00:09:52.900 You and the Jew-loving great reset tyrants are headed to the Nuremberg trial.

00:09:57.340 Another who's organizing against me claiming that I'm involved with Walmart in trafficking children as part of the globalist conspiracy.

00:10:06.100 We have an organizer against my leadership who organized a tiki torch parade in Edmonton

00:10:12.700 using images from the Charlottesville Ku Klux Klan neo-Nazi rally.

00:10:18.800 Now, Andrew, surely we conservatives can say that views like that are beyond the pale.

00:10:26.880 That, yes, we support freedom of speech.

00:10:28.900 But if you want to give speech like that, you're not going to do it in a mainstream conservative party.

00:10:34.620 part because we respect human dignity um we respect equality of all before the law

00:10:41.120 but also we're not going to allow people with truly extreme views to make us permanently

00:10:47.000 unelectable i would completely agree all of those comments and others that you've raised in the past

00:10:52.920 not becoming of people that are trying to have a seat at the table totally what party should

00:10:57.780 be disavowing but when you start laying out those as you defend your leadership are you not saying

00:11:03.000 that, you know, the people that are against me are all like that. But I'm not saying that. To

00:11:08.180 the contrary, I've said there are many people who have legitimate griefs, gripes, I should say,

00:11:13.320 and grievances about how we handled COVID. I get it. I respect that. I welcome constructive

00:11:20.920 criticism. I welcome the accountability of this leadership review. I have been explicit in saying

00:11:26.640 And not everyone opposed to me has these views, but some not insignificant number of people do, Andrew.

00:11:34.660 And they are these are folks who we excluded as candidates because of clear extremism in the past.

00:11:42.020 They're angry about that. They want revenge for it. They want to take over this party.

00:11:45.740 They want to be there are extreme people who want to be candidates for this mainstream Alberta Conservative Party.

00:11:51.640 I'm not going to let that happen.

00:11:54.000 Danielle Smith did, which is why she lost the 2011 election.

00:11:57.840 That was an exercise in weak leadership and poor judgment, which we cannot repeat.

00:12:03.280 So if Danielle Smith is successful in her nomination, do you allow her to sit as a UCP MP, MLA rather?

00:12:11.280 Well, yes.

00:12:12.320 She'll have to go through the same vetting process as anybody else, including the incumbent, RJ Sigurdsson there, including me.

00:12:18.600 I have to go through that vetting process and articulate what the criteria is.

00:12:24.540 I'm not accusing Danielle, who's been a friend of mine since she was in university in the early mid-90s.

00:12:31.280 I'm not accusing her of holding extreme views.

00:12:33.560 I'm saying that when she was Wildrose leader, she did not exercise strong leadership or good judgment in excluding candidates who made the party unelectable because of such extreme and hateful views.

00:12:46.320 Looking at the leadership review itself, this was supposed to be decided last weekend,

00:12:50.720 as you and many of my viewers well know.

00:12:53.280 Obviously, the huge outpouring of people signing up for memberships led to the change.

00:12:59.240 What do you take from that?

00:13:00.920 Do you take that all of these people are signing up because they're really happy with you

00:13:04.720 and they understand the stakes?

00:13:05.720 Or do you look at that and say, you know, maybe all of these people are signing up because

00:13:10.300 the opposite is true?

00:13:12.420 Well, there's probably people on both sides who have signed up.

00:13:14.880 that's typical in a contested party vote. But I can tell you this, Andrew, I've been all around

00:13:21.460 the province in the past few weeks, and I'm quite encouraged by what I'm hearing from grassroots

00:13:27.100 conservatives. Every single one of them, myself included, were frustrated with aspects of what

00:13:32.000 happened during COVID, and understandably so. But they're also encouraged to see that our

00:13:36.820 government has implemented 90% of what we ran on, of the 375 specific commitments we made in the last

00:13:43.640 election, scrapping the Alberta carbon tax, scrapping the NDP's effort to unionize the

00:13:48.400 family farm, scrapping the NDP's radical left curriculum reforms, suing Justin Trudeau over

00:13:53.600 the no more pipelines law, over his tanker ban, creating an Alberta chief firearms officer,

00:13:58.760 an Alberta parole board, and cutting business taxes by one third, cutting red tape by 25%.

00:14:05.280 And now they can see we've got the strongest economy in Canada last year and this year,

00:14:09.680 the best job creation record in the country. We've been right to fight for oil and gas. Putin's

00:14:14.720 invasion of Ukraine underscores that. They can see diversification happening in our economy

00:14:19.140 and that we are keeping our word on jobs, the economy, pipelines, and building a strong province.

00:14:24.740 Most conservatives I talk to don't want to put all that at risk by driving into a ditch of division

00:14:31.180 only to have us argue over COVID policy, which is in the rearview mirror, when most Albertans want

00:14:38.080 is talking about the cost of living, housing, affordability, and inflation issues like that.

00:14:45.460 What is victory for you in this leadership review? What's the threshold at which you

00:14:49.040 believe you have a mandate to stay on? Well, in a democracy, a majority is 50%

00:14:54.060 plus one. And that's what the leader needs in our party constitution in the leadership review.

00:14:58.640 I obviously hope to get a larger endorsement than that. And I'm confident that I will,

00:15:02.600 but there's no magic number. I'll tell you this, if I don't have an endorsement from the members

00:15:09.660 to carry on, I will accept their judgment with humility and gratitude for the opportunity to

00:15:16.200 have served in the best job in Canada as Premier of Alberta. And I will move on if that's the

00:15:22.920 judgment of members. But if the members... Is 50% plus one an endorsement?

00:15:27.600 Well, listen, if you run in a leadership election and you get 50 percent plus one, you are the leader.

00:15:33.440 The premier of Manitoba, Heather Stephenson, just won her leadership in the fall with, I think, literally 51 percent of the vote.

00:15:41.320 And she's the she's the leader. She's the premier. So that's a majority.

00:15:44.440 I would hope to get a larger endorsement than that. No doubt about it.

00:15:48.440 But here's the bottom line. I will respect the decision of our members.

00:15:52.440 And I expect all members of the Conservative caucus to do the same.

00:15:57.760 One message I'm getting loud and clear from our members is get your act together, stop the internal firing squad, focus on the NDP, stay united and be disciplined.

00:16:10.540 And that, I expect, will be a strong message from our members in the mail ballot currently underway.

00:16:17.640 Looking at the, I mean, you mentioned being, and everyone should know this, a longtime member of

00:16:22.020 the conservative movement in this country and in Alberta specifically. The UCP is still a new party.

00:16:27.960 The Alberta conservative movement was fractured and there was a lot of good reason for that

00:16:32.560 fracture. And even now you have a couple of high profile people seeking seats that want to challenge

00:16:37.920 your leadership, Danielle Smith and Brian Jean. You have the Wild Rose Independence Party, which

00:16:42.260 It doesn't have any representation, but still is tripping the radars in polls, as you will.

00:16:48.740 So do you believe that unity itself is under threat right now in Alberta politics,

00:16:53.220 this idea of a united mainstream conservative party?

00:16:57.040 Well, yes, it is under threat.

00:16:58.860 And if we're not really careful, we're going to end up back to where we were five years ago

00:17:04.840 with two conservative parties and a vote split that hands power to the NDP.

00:17:09.200 There's no doubt about it.

00:17:10.040 I think that would almost be certain if we went into a leadership election right now, because the fault line amongst Alberta Conservatives is primarily over the issues like COVID and vaccines, when all of that's behind us.

00:17:23.580 I truly believe that. The worst of COVID is behind us. We have no intention of bringing in additional restrictions. They're not necessary to protect the hospitals.

00:17:31.280 But Andrew, I'll be very blunt with you.

00:17:33.940 And I said this in my speech to our members last Saturday.

00:17:36.680 If we have a leadership election right now, the passionate driving issue will be some

00:17:41.620 people wanting to settle scores over COVID and express their views, their opposition

00:17:47.340 to vaccines, and others saying, what are you talking about?

00:17:52.500 People want to focus on the economy, on jobs, on fighting Trudeau, on a strong economy,

00:17:57.160 on things like carbon taxes and housing costs and inflation, the kind of issues that Pierre

00:18:01.100 Polyev is talking about. And if we get into that, we will split the party. It will be largely rural

00:18:08.060 and urban. And I fear it would largely be along legacy party lines between former PCs and former

00:18:15.100 Wild Rosers. It would be deeply, deeply divisive. Mainstream Alberta conservative voters want us to

00:18:24.260 keep our eye on the ball, jobs, the economy, pipeline, fighting Trudeau. They don't want us

00:18:31.380 to go in to an endless debate of recrimination and anger over things like vaccines. That is not

00:18:39.220 where the mainstream Alberta conservative voter is at. So I'm taking my marching orders from those

00:18:44.660 folks. I respect people who have different views, and they'll have a chance to express those in the

00:18:49.180 leadership review vote but I just plead with them let's not dread look we're leading the country in

00:18:55.100 economic growth according to the most recent credible polls we're beating the NDP and forming

00:18:59.420 a majority government right now we have 13 months to go 13 months of economic growth of private

00:19:04.580 sector investment of cutting red tape of reducing taxes of building a stronger Alberta let's move

00:19:11.380 forward to the future united speaking of pipelines this week you hosted a democrat senator although

00:19:17.860 he's fairly pro-energy, certainly for the current Democrat Party, Joe Manchin in Alberta, and he had

00:19:23.500 a strong endorsement for Keystone. But as you mentioned, we have hostility from the federal

00:19:27.880 government towards the Western and Canadian energy sector and pipelines. You've got hostility from

00:19:33.100 the current U.S. government towards it. How much of an advocate can Alberta be when you have all

00:19:38.700 of this other hostility surrounding the people that are needed to advance some of these large

00:19:43.640 scale energy projects? Well, it was a huge win for Alberta to get Senator Mention up here. He is

00:19:50.520 certainly the most powerful man in the American Congress, and some say the most powerful person

00:19:55.860 in Washington because he's the key swing vote in the United States Senate, chairman of the

00:19:59.740 powerful energy committee. He came up here for not a few hours, but for two and a half days,

00:20:05.400 toured the oil sands, and I spent hours with him. I was so impressed with his understanding and deep

00:20:12.920 support for Alberta oil and gas. He cannot understand the Biden veto of Keystone or the

00:20:20.360 anti-Alberta energy campaign that's been coming out of U.S. politics. He and I discussed some very

00:20:28.040 bold strategies to get pipelines built to get more Alberta energy to U.S. and global markets.

00:20:33.960 And he is an unqualified ally. He's invited me to Washington to meet with his colleagues in the

00:20:38.520 Senate, appear before the Senate Energy Committee, and develop a North American Energy Alliance,

00:20:44.080 as he calls it, that's a big win.

00:20:46.140 It would be awfully nice if we had a Prime Minister in Justin Trudeau who would bother

00:20:49.720 to pick up the phone and call President Biden to deliver the same message and say, we need

00:20:54.740 to get pipelines built to displace OPEC and Russian energy from global markets.

00:21:00.500 Yeah, and I think the readout of the Prime Minister's first call with President Joe

00:21:05.180 Biden back in January of 2021 had like one line at the bottom of oh yeah and they also talked

00:21:10.180 about Keystone but there hasn't been federal advocacy here and even on carbon tax as well

00:21:14.920 you know the Alberta and Ontario governments took this to the Supreme Court were ultimately

00:21:18.980 unsuccessful the federal carbon tax remains in place so what is going to happen for Alberta

00:21:25.720 voters that are looking and just finding it just increasingly like there's no path forward

00:21:30.640 well this i always believe where there's a will there's a way 77 percent of americans support

00:21:37.920 keystone xl the project itself may be dead but i believe we can find a way to to revive a another

00:21:43.220 major canada u.s pipeline um i believe it's critical for global peace and security to

00:21:47.980 displace putin's dictator oil and uh so we will continue to work on that you're right though about

00:21:54.720 trudeau i'll tell you andrew a week before president biden was sworn in we got word from

00:22:00.420 our allies in the big unions in the United States who supported KXL and oil and gas.

00:22:06.700 They told us that the president-elect planned on vetoing Keystone through an executive order

00:22:12.780 on day one of his administration.

00:22:14.600 They pleaded with me to get Justin Trudeau to call him.

00:22:17.260 I called the prime minister, and he basically refused to intervene.

00:22:20.980 So I think that he was, at best, indifferent about Keystone XL.

00:22:26.680 After all, he's the guy who vetoed Northern Gateway, killed Energy East.

00:22:29.920 and is now in a full frontal war with our energy industry

00:22:33.820 through his recent emissions plan

00:22:35.300 that will add another tax, by the way,

00:22:37.160 $1,000 per pickup truck, $4,000 for a F-350.

00:22:45.520 We've got to stop Justin Trudeau's war on working people.

00:22:49.400 Just finally, Premier,

00:22:51.060 because you mentioned a few moments ago Pierre Paliyev,

00:22:53.300 I know he was just in your province and might still be.

00:22:56.420 Is this an endorsement of him?

00:22:58.500 when you name-check him and talk about the issues he's talking about?

00:23:01.680 Are you supporting his leadership bid?

00:23:03.820 Well, right now I'm focused on the big task in front of us here in Alberta.

00:23:07.660 But I will say this.

00:23:08.540 I'm a huge fan of Pierre's.

00:23:11.140 The first campaign he worked on was my Reform Party nomination in 1997

00:23:16.480 when he was like 15, 16.

00:23:18.520 And I could tell he was a brilliant young Conservative.

00:23:21.740 Then he worked as an intern for me in Ottawa when he was about 18, 19

00:23:26.280 and a young staffer as well.

00:23:27.680 So I'm so proud of how he's become a really prominent and powerful spokesman for conservative values.

00:23:34.900 And I wish him every success, but I'm not going to get into formal endorsements or anything at this point in time because, you know, I've got to focus right now on maintaining conservative unity in Alberta so we don't split up this party and hand government to Rachel Notley and the NDP.

00:23:50.720 Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, always a pleasure, sir. Thank you for coming on the show.

00:23:54.720 Thanks, Andrew, for being an independent voice in Canadian media.

00:23:56.860 Really appreciate that.

00:23:57.840 Well, it's my pleasure and happy Easter, Premier.

00:23:59.940 Happy Easter to you.

00:24:01.780 Thank you very much.

00:24:02.900 Always great to catch up with Premier Jason Kenney in Alberta

00:24:06.140 and virtually when it doesn't work that way.

00:24:08.560 I was actually going to be out there in Red Deer

00:24:10.740 and I've been to the Cambridge before a number of times.

00:24:13.200 It's like the halfway point between Calgary and Edmonton.

00:24:15.480 So they tend to do very well at hosting the big conferences.

00:24:18.040 But then, of course, when that got moved,

00:24:19.560 I got to stay home last weekend instead, which was also nice.

00:24:22.680 So I am a very appreciative of Premier Jason Kenney for coming on. I want to move on to some other issues that are happening in Canadian politics right now. Feel free to reach out and let me know what you thought of what Premier Kenney was saying. And if you are a UCP member in Alberta, what you're thinking about the race coming up. And if you're voting, let me know what's going on there, because it is fascinating. And every time I've been out in Alberta, I always hear from so many people.

00:24:47.980 And I'm always astonished at just how, no, I shouldn't say astonished. I'm always pleasantly surprised by just how like raucous everyone is in Alberta in a way that I wish they were here. And I mean that in a good way. Like everyone gets very gung ho about political causes. And certainly during the pandemic, that was the case because I was going to all of these conferences, including one a while ago, one like clandestine conference that was like just flirting with the legalities of COVID restrictions at the time.

00:25:15.960 So I shouldn't admit to that, but now it's like, I think, past the statute of limitations.

00:25:21.020 I do want to talk about one thing here that jumped onto my screen yesterday, and it's

00:25:28.180 a few days old now, but this is an interview that Chief Justice Richard Wagner did with

00:25:33.840 Le Devoir, which is a French language outlet in Quebec, a newspaper there.

00:25:39.300 And interestingly enough, I'm looking here and I'm fascinated, absolutely fascinated

00:25:46.040 that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada would go down this road.

00:25:51.140 The interview was on the 40th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which

00:25:55.980 is marked this year, very big momentous day, 1982.

00:25:59.320 And the interesting thing is that he was talking about this knowing, I would assume he's knowing

00:26:06.660 that he is going to have to preside over cases that are related to the convoy.

00:26:12.400 There are legal challenges about the Emergencies Act.

00:26:15.220 There are going to be legal challenges about charges.

00:26:17.760 There are going to be legal challenges.

00:26:18.780 I mean, the Alberta government has talked about wanting to take the federal government

00:26:21.960 to court over the Emergencies Act.

00:26:23.940 Plus, you have the Canadian Civil Liberties Association,

00:26:26.640 the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms,

00:26:29.120 the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

00:26:31.440 You've got people challenging the freezing of money.

00:26:33.800 all of these challenges, some of them or all of them could end up before the Supreme Court.

00:26:38.920 And Chief Justice Wagner has to know that, has to know that. And he says that what we have done,

00:26:47.220 I'm translating here, but what we have seen recently on Wellington Street, that's the main

00:26:52.360 street in front of Parliament Hill, is the beginning of anarchy where some people have

00:26:56.800 decided to take other citizens hostage, to take the law into their own hands, to not respect

00:27:02.960 the legal mechanism. That I find disturbing. So he says it's disturbing, the convoy. He says

00:27:10.820 it was anarchy. He says it was taking Ottawa citizens hostage. You go on and he condemns

00:27:17.620 politicians who stood up for it. He said he disapproves of political actors who stuck up

00:27:22.820 for the freedom convoy. And he says, oh yeah, people of good faith might've been in it, but

00:27:26.740 they were misguided, misguided. They were trying to bypass the political system, he said. He says

00:27:32.920 it doesn't inspire good feelings in me. I find that disturbing. Now this is translated, but you

00:27:39.700 can look it up for yourself at Le Devoir. The Chief Justice of Canada is talking about the

00:27:46.140 Freedom Convoy as though it was this lawless bunch of hooligans, not people that have a democratic

00:27:53.760 and constitutional right to protest. And he dares talk about this in the context of the 40th

00:27:58.600 anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which affirms the right to protest, which affirms

00:28:04.800 the right to free speech and freedom of expression. So I disagree with the message itself, but

00:28:11.340 especially coming from someone who will have to adjudicate cases related to this convoy. How could

00:28:17.560 anyone who was connected to the convoy in some way get a fair hearing at the Supreme Court when

00:28:22.260 the Chief Justice has already decided that this is something he disapproves of? How are politicians

00:28:27.640 supposed to respond if the chief justice has already said, oh yeah, I'm against you because

00:28:33.440 you supported this protest. I mean, I was talking about the problems of Jean Charest,

00:28:38.100 the conservative leadership candidate, taking aim at the convoy in this way. But at least he's

00:28:43.920 doing it in a way that is appealing to a constituency. He's not supposed to be neutral.

00:28:47.800 He's not supposed to be above the fray. Chief Justice Wagner, on the other hand,

00:28:51.800 he is supposed to be impartial. And again, maybe we should be happy that he was honest.

00:28:57.620 Maybe we should be happy that he was so transparent

00:28:59.900 about his contempt for these peaceful protesters.

00:29:03.920 Remember, Tamara Leach, who is, I mean, she's on bail right now,

00:29:07.540 and part of her bail conditions are that she's not allowed

00:29:11.220 to express publicly any support for the convoy.

00:29:15.140 The convoy is not in Ottawa right now.

00:29:17.140 The convoy is not at any border crossings.

00:29:19.240 The convoy exists in people's hearts and minds,

00:29:21.840 but it doesn't exist in any physical form at a site

00:29:24.920 to the extent that it did in Ottawa.

00:29:26.580 She's not allowed to express support for a protest that no longer exists.

00:29:32.360 She's not allowed on social media.

00:29:34.100 She's not allowed to talk to people.

00:29:35.880 And by the way, I heard from someone that some of the people on the list of folks she's not allowed to talk to,

00:29:41.300 she had never even heard of before she had these bail conditions imposed.

00:29:45.500 So I point that out to say just how heavy handed these restrictions are.

00:29:50.580 And the judge that initially denied her bail was a former liberal candidate.

00:29:56.580 So there's a pervasive problem, and this was something that was raised by Tamara Leach's lawyer, not as a significant point.

00:30:02.860 It was more just, you know, we have to look at this and raise questions where they may exist about judicial bias.

00:30:10.020 But here we have the Supreme Court of Canada's chief justice, the chief justice of this country,

00:30:14.700 the guy who fills in for the governor general when we don't have a governor general as the chief administrator of this country,

00:30:20.320 saying that he's disturbed by people supporting the convoy if they're politicians and that it was

00:30:25.800 anarchy and that Ottawa citizens were held hostage. So good luck getting a fair hearing if

00:30:30.680 you're one of these people. And this is where I get to my great frustration. And by the way,

00:30:35.420 a number of people, when I shared this on Twitter said, oh, well, he was a Trudeau appointee.

00:30:39.260 No, he wasn't actually. He was appointed to the chief justice role by Trudeau,

00:30:45.220 but he was appointed to the Supreme Court by Stephen Harper. And the problem with institutions

00:30:52.220 is that they take on a life form and ideology of their own, where it doesn't even matter who's

00:30:57.660 there. They all end up being consumed by this. You know, Stephen Harper, he stacked the board

00:31:02.600 of CBC. He stacked the Supreme Court. He stacked for a time the Senate. He stacked as well the

00:31:08.000 Canadian Human Rights Commission. And John O'Sullivan, fantastic writer, former advisor to

00:31:13.360 Margaret Thatcher, he coined O'Sullivan's first law some years ago that any institution that's

00:31:18.900 not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing. And it's hard to dispel this because

00:31:25.420 he's talking about the leftward drift of any organized institution, any organization at all.

00:31:31.640 And courts are great examples of this. He was basically making the point that neutrality

00:31:37.460 or impartiality inherently drift leftward.

00:31:41.620 And part of that is because cultures

00:31:43.060 tend to drift leftward.

00:31:45.040 The other part of it is that you have, again,

00:31:47.740 consuming power, all-consuming power.

00:31:51.760 So Richard Wagner, I mean, again, I'm not a lawyer.

00:31:54.460 I haven't studied his decisions.

00:31:56.080 He's come down on the right side of some

00:31:57.720 and the wrong side of others

00:31:58.800 from ones that I have come across.

00:32:00.840 But the Supreme Court of Canada,

00:32:03.060 even when you talk about conservative appointments,

00:32:06.060 Even when the court was stacked by conservatives with, you know, six of the nine justices by

00:32:11.400 Stephen Harper, it was still siding against civil liberties.

00:32:14.920 And now the Supreme Court is unilaterally and preemptively declaring that the Freedom

00:32:20.820 Convoy does not have a right to exist.

00:32:23.900 And it's just baffling to me how people can look at this and say, again, we talked about

00:32:29.420 this with Bruce Party and Patricia Adams a couple of weeks ago.

00:32:32.540 They were arguing that Canada needs a new constitution.

00:32:36.160 And Bruce was saying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms just isn't protecting Canadians.

00:32:40.820 And the flip side of that is that Brian Peckford, the former Premier of Newfoundland,

00:32:44.500 I've had him on the show a couple of times, and he's defended the Charter.

00:32:48.480 He's the last guy around, the last First Minister around the table

00:32:52.160 when the Charter was being negotiated and was passed.

00:32:55.060 He believes in it.

00:32:56.360 He believes it's been abused and crumpled up and trampled on by courts and politicians,

00:33:00.900 but he fundamentally believes in the document as we look at its 40th anniversary.

00:33:07.260 And with all due respect to Premier Peckford, I have a hard time landing on his side of this

00:33:13.780 because your constitutional rights mean nothing if you don't have institutions that are prepared

00:33:20.720 to uphold them. The carbon tax is a great example of this. The carbon tax is a political decision

00:33:27.380 now. It's supposed to be federal, uh, provincial jurisdiction, but the court has determined that

00:33:32.600 it's actually the federal government that gets to impose this thing onto the provinces. Okay.

00:33:37.400 Yeah. You carbon tax may be annoying. It may be something you don't like, but it's not about your

00:33:41.660 fundamental freedoms, right? What about free speech? Well, when that comedian Guy Earle,

00:33:49.600 was it Guy Earle or am I mixing up comedians? No, not Guy Earle. The, uh, the other one whose,

00:33:53.300 name escapes me for a moment. The guy whose case went to the Supreme Court not that long ago.

00:33:58.700 Guy Earl was another one who the courts went after him. His name was Mike something. I don't

00:34:03.580 know why I can't think of it. In any case, I'm sure someone in the comments will point it out.

00:34:07.400 But when his case went to the Supreme Court recently, it was basically whether he was

00:34:12.200 allowed to tell jokes. Whether he was allowed to tell jokes. Mike Ward, thank you very much

00:34:17.820 to the people who flagged that. And it was close. It was 5-4. 5-4. If one Supreme Court justice had

00:34:26.100 decided, yeah, you know, I actually don't think you have the right to tell mean jokes,

00:34:29.980 then the right to comedy would no longer exist. So I would look at this and say that should have

00:34:36.780 been a 9-0. Maybe an 8-1. We'll give him an 8-1. You're allowed to have one extremist on either

00:34:42.240 side on the court. But that should have been just absolutely a no-brainer, 9-0, maybe 8-1.

00:34:48.860 5-4, it was close. It was close. And the problem with these courts is that they're stacked by

00:34:56.140 people that want to expand the power of the court. They want to expand the ability for the court to

00:35:01.980 decide things that are not for any institutions to decide. Beverly McLaughlin was famous for this.

00:35:09.160 She gave a line in a speech, and I quoted it in some article I wrote a while ago about

00:35:14.100 assisted suicide, where she said that her job was to look at the evidence, then sit back

00:35:18.800 and consider what's best for society.

00:35:21.880 And I was floored by that, because that's not your job as the Chief Justice of the Supreme

00:35:27.940 Court.

00:35:28.240 You're not deciding what's best for society.

00:35:30.820 What you're deciding is what the law says.

00:35:34.120 You're interpreting the law, you're applying the law, but you're not passing social engineering,

00:35:39.340 or you shouldn't be passing social engineering off as judicial decisions.

00:35:44.180 And when you have judges like the chief justice right now talking about the convoy in political

00:35:50.580 terms, that if a politician were to say what he'd say, I'd oppose it, but at least there's

00:35:55.140 an accountability there. At least you can vote the politician out. You can condemn them. You can say

00:35:59.300 they're wrong. This is the guy who has not even seen or entertained a convoy related case. And

00:36:04.180 he's already decided that they were a bunch of hooligans, anarchists, you name it. I don't even

00:36:10.700 need to extrapolate or editorialize because his words themselves have defined what he believes.

00:36:17.240 Absolutely unreal. Just before we wrap things up here, I want to focus on this amusing thing.

00:36:22.680 So I get polls every now and then. And the only reason I answer my phone and take telemarketing

00:36:27.940 calls is because from time to time, I like to know who's polling what. And sometimes I've learned of

00:36:32.960 people that are launching leadership campaigns because of this, because I hear they're polling

00:36:37.000 it. Other times I learn of weird things the government is considering. I got one yesterday

00:36:42.060 from ECOS for a poll being conducted by the Canadian government in partnership with the

00:36:48.200 World Health Organization. And I was going through this and a lot of the questions, they called me

00:36:55.000 and asked if they could email me the poll

00:36:56.440 and I said yes and then they emailed it to me

00:36:58.080 and I took 20 minutes or so and I did the poll today.

00:37:01.680 And a lot of them were how much has the pandemic affected you?

00:37:04.880 What's your view of this?

00:37:06.140 How concerned are you about COVID?

00:37:07.800 How comfortable are you viewing people without a mask?

00:37:11.080 And the sort of the usual COVID stuff.

00:37:13.060 And then I just kept clicking through

00:37:14.260 and I was answering the questions quite diligently.

00:37:17.700 And then they started asking questions

00:37:19.340 that you know they're using to support this idea

00:37:22.840 that the people who don't care about COVID,

00:37:25.960 the people who aren't living their lives in fear

00:37:27.980 are idiots or conspiracy theorists.

00:37:30.640 There were two sections in particular

00:37:32.660 that told me they were doing this.

00:37:34.260 The first one was a list of headlines.

00:37:37.340 I didn't take a screenshot of it,

00:37:38.580 but it was a list of headlines.

00:37:40.140 And they said, how much do you agree or disagree?

00:37:42.580 Or how true or untrue do you think these things are?

00:37:46.440 And one of them was like,

00:37:47.840 anyone who gets vaccinated is dead or something.

00:37:50.440 They're really weird, extreme things.

00:37:52.480 and some of them were study finds that COVID vaccines are not effective in children or stuff

00:37:57.860 like that. And then I went through that, and then the next page was trying to root out who the

00:38:04.400 conspiracy theorists are. And I'm going to put this up on the screen here. You have to, on a scale of

00:38:09.660 zero to 100%, indicate the likeliness that each of these statements is true. The first, I think

00:38:17.520 there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions well maybe i'll

00:38:23.920 give that one a 90 i don't know i think that government agencies closely monitor all citizens

00:38:29.040 well we know they do i've had like atip responses access to information filings that show the

00:38:34.480 government is monitoring people's social media so i'll give that one 100 i think that politicians

00:38:40.080 usually do not tell us the true motives for their decisions well i'd say that's 100 i mean

00:38:45.680 Absolutely, they're politicians. I think that many important things happen in the world which

00:38:49.820 the public is never informed about. That just seems like a no-brainer. And I think that events

00:38:54.220 which superficially seem to lack a connection are often the result of secret activities.

00:39:00.260 Is it bad that I think all of these things are reasonable enough to believe? Maybe not with 100%,

00:39:05.400 but at least 70, 80, 90. But you just know that they're going to take from this that anyone who

00:39:11.440 checks these things off on their list is a conspiracy theorist. So I'm going to be like

00:39:15.860 waiting and watching for whatever the results of this poll are that the Canadian government

00:39:21.860 is inexplicably conducting with the World Health Organization. That'll do it. I know it is Maundy

00:39:27.800 Thursday, as Premier Jason Kenney said. He's grateful I call it. So happy and blessed Maundy

00:39:32.820 Thursday to you all, and I hope you all have a fantastic Easter. I know it's never fun to pull

00:39:36.580 up the show heading into the long weekend, but I do appreciate you sticking through me as we talk

00:39:41.980 about Alberta politics, federal politics, and whatever else comes out along the way. We'll be

00:39:46.700 back next week with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North. This is the Andrew

00:39:51.580 Lawton Show. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:39:58.120 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:40:06.580 We'll be right back.

00:40:36.580 Thank you.

Juno News - April 14, 2022

Jason Kenney defends record as UCP members vote on his leadership

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