John A Macdonald gets memory-holed
Episode Stats
Words per minute
209.17032
Harmful content
Misogyny
8
sentences flagged
Hate speech
6
sentences flagged
Summary
In this week's Off The Record, we kick back in a casual setting and analyze the week that was, and talk about the events that were. This week, we're covering the events of the Palestinian protesters who capitulated on the day that they were supposed to be cleared out of a genocide protest, and why it's a good thing they couldn't even stand their ground.
Transcript
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have you recovered from your uh protest injury harrison oh yes yes i recovered they they didn't
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get they didn't get sam and i as much as they i think they were hoping to but uh you know like
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that's just that's just how they that's just how they do things right antifa they have the black
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umbrella it's the symbol of antifa's antifa's presence these days what i've noticed is they
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all they always try to cover you up and then whatever they want to do afterwards they can
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basically have free reign once you're out of once you're out of the camera they put the umbrella over
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top they try to cover the camera up it's absurd really but i think even what's more absurd is
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that these palestinian protesters who have been protesting for two months protesting a genocide
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capitulated on the day that they were actually going to be cleared out they couldn't even stand
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their ground uh i found that to be remarkably uh cowardly if you ask me so my takeaway from this
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is that if i'm ever at a protest and the black umbrella comes out that's my cue that i'm in
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trouble things are about to get bad yes if you're fair enough beware that beware the umbrella all
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right let's get this going hello and welcome to you all this is another edition of off the record where
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we kick back in a casual setting and analyze the week that well i don't know if analyze is too
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serious a word we just kick back and dish about it uh hope you are settled in and ready for the ride
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the last few weeks have been tremendous train wrecks but we've had fun on the train wreck this time
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we've got a crack crew of professionals we'll uh try to keep the train on the rails but if not it'll be
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more fun so whatever happens happens que sera sera uh it is my privilege to be hosting this show i'm
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andrew lawton joined by harrison faulkner host of ratioed and the faulkner show and rachel emmanuel
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host of alberta roundup and a no rachel parker i did it ah okay rachel parker and we congratulate
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her very much on this tremendous milestone uh host of rachel and the republic which just launched on
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true north last week as well but uh good to have you both thanks for the judgmental head shake rachel
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anytime i'm always here for some judgment fair enough uh so we'll uh we have lots going on this
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week we're gonna i think go around the world but uh tell me about the new show how's that going for
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you so far yeah it's great so for our audience i will be covering the uh america to american election
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in the coming weeks uh the show is called rachel in the republic so that will be released every
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wednesdays i was typically doing two episodes of the alberta roundup so we're gonna take a pause from
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that for the time being but yeah i mean there's no shortage of things it's actually a totally
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different ballpark covering american politics because it's like you're receiving major updates
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almost hourly and so i feel like it's just totally different than what i'm used to and i'm gonna have
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to kind of play around with it i think the news is stale much quicker than it is for my typical show
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um and it's also just obviously much more competitive field there's so many people covering american
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politics but it's a ton of fun i think this is going to be one of the most exciting elections ever
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i will be going to the states to be doing some on the ground coverage so yeah i'm really excited
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about the the coming weeks nice we should we should have gotten you to do a uk election show harrison
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like i don't know harrison and the motherland or something uh oh you know i would have been up you
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know i would have been up for that andrew i was uh i i have to say it it did cross my mind to pitch
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that a few months ago but uh never got around to it but it would have been fun well we'll uh we'll get
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it out of your system this episode we'll do some uk election breakdown in just a little while but
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we'll start with canada we are a canadian show uh this is every canadian of a certain age knows the
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heritage minute like they still make them but i don't think they have the cultural relevance
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that they used to these things are produced by an organization which used to be on the front lines of
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uh preserving and documenting and communicating canadian history historica canada uh they and you
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can't talk about canada's history without talking about canada's founding confederation john
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a mcdonald a great period of time and this was memorialized in well maybe commemorated is the
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better word in one heritage minute that i want to share for you right now careful careful that
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champagne cost a fortune mr mcdonald do you plan to bribe the entire delegation our methods may differ
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mr brown but our objective is the same my objective sir is honest talk and mine is to win gentlemen
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enough we must convince the maritimes or there will be no confederation aye george today civil war
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grips america how long before they look to our borders again separated the colonies are isolated
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and weak but united just imagine the east the atlantic provinces then upper and lower canada across the
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prairies to the rockies and beyond a new country made one by a railway from sea to sea gentlemen the time
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the charlatan conference set confederation in motion on july 1st 1867 sir john a mcdonald became
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that's hate speech got to get rid of that uh believe it or not historica canada has deleted
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that they've removed it from youtube quite quietly uh our colleague cosmon georgia reached out to them
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and asked why and they gave a long long long answer which we're very grateful for uh but in this answer
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they said that it was because they got quote feedback from educators unquote about his quote
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controversial unquote legacy and subsequent controversies and uh they said that this was
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produced in 2015 it was before they learned about how he was a big you know haiti haiti white supremacist
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neo-nazi hate monger that john a mcdonald or whatever it was uh they said that there has been lots of
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discussion about canada's history and the context of it and mcdonald's so-called treatment of indigenous
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peoples which uh hadn't been entertained in 2015 now what's interesting is that this was not even a
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particularly laudatory piece about mcdonald it was 60 seconds it was the story of confederation
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but now it's been taken offline as they come up with a way to better they view position his legacy
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and all of these controversies now i'm not even going to ask a question on this i'm just going
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to say harrison go you know what the problem with this clip is in the eyes of these radical left-wing
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educators that's the name that historical canada gave to true north when we asked what exactly was
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going on here the problem with it is that it actually paints confederation in a positive and
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unifying light right they don't want you to think that this country is built on something other than
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racism colonialism they'll even throw in slavery because that's we we know they've actually they
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actually believed that they said that at the opening of bellevue house johnny mcdonald's
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monument that somehow canada is steeped in slavery which of course it is not it's just a lie everything
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about what these people are trying to do all comes back to this one core idea that we need to
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delegitimize canada itself we need to strike at the core of what this country is we need to tear down
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all of our monuments no matter what no matter no matter what it what it takes we'll lie about about
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historical will lie about historical figures we'll attack every single person oh sorry you'd frozen
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there for a minute but i think we got you back i'm back i'm back here but uh yeah historically canada
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was taking you offline too exactly now they're coming after us it was only a matter of time right
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but no it's just absurd they have to attack every single historical person who has been involved in
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in the creation of this country so they can lie about our creation they can lie about this country and
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say that actually none of it is legitimate it was all built on racism well what's your take on this
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rachel listen this might ruffle ruffle some feathers uh harrison but uh you know it's just funny to me
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watching this video the music they're portraying of hope and optimism poor alberta if only we knew
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what we were getting ourselves into the mess that canada would become the raw deal that we would be
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getting from the federal government we could have just stayed our own separate colony but our own country
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had our own energy had our own wealth you know here we are years later i think a lot of us are
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regretting what colonial what confederation has become and uh hoping we can still turn things
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around but uh very different perspective you know maybe we should be taking a look at the context of
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canada and think uh we've gone down a bad path hopefully it's not too late to sort things out and to
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to get back on track well you guys didn't join for like another 50 years after that though we were
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enjoying our wealth for a little longer you know we should have we should have just kind of continued
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down that path before we decided to start splitting up the share of our energy resources
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with the rest of canada yeah i mean look there are lots of things that you can talk about in a
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canadian context and disagree with them certainly the west has you know its fair share of grievances
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some of which are i think legitimate but the story of confederation was also a tremendous one if you
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looked at what he had to do like we think you know polarization is an issue now at the time it was
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as bad if not worse you had all of these different colonies that had their own agendas you had
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all of these different uh disparate groups you had the tories and the grits in uh you know canada
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east and canada west you had french english divides you had all of this and and you had a
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geography that was incredibly incredibly hostile to anything resembling a national government so i when
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i mean i i would say that you know that actually didn't even go far enough to give credit to uh
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mcdonald and the founding fathers but to say it's something that needs to be memory hold because of
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these so-called controversies is absurd well they try to make mcdonald of course they use the they use
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the usual attacks against mcdonald the first line being about champagne and booze again trying to just
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make him i i don't think that's unfair i like no i'm not i'm not saying i'm not i'm not saying it
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is unfair that is part of the story but it should be a small part of the story it's the first line
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as you point out andrew it's not as though they make mcdonald out to be uh the the hero that he
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really is of course they put him at the center of the story of confederation which is true but again
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they just have to tear it down they have to delete it because apparently to some it glorifies
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racism it glorifies colonialism obviously i i disagree with rachel and i think that uh i think
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that of course canada is what makes canada canada is that it it encompasses the prairies it encompasses
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quebec it encompasses the maritimes that's what makes us such a special country uh but again these
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people need to be exposed the people that the people that are involved in historical canada should
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be ashamed of themselves this is yet another example of the fact that in justin truos canada
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celebrating mcdonald is strictly forbidden behavior just to jump in on that rachel i don't know if it's
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fair to blame mcdonald for the west's woes because remember he was the guy that wanted the west connected
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to the east he was the guy that pushed for the transcontinental railway so what say you to that
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i'm not blaming mcdonald for the western woes i'm just saying that if we look at the history of canada
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it seems like you know you were saying oh this was such a monumental feat and i agree with harrison that
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it's shameful what historically canada has done when we're actually talking about whether this is a
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historical moment worth recognizing of course it was my point was simply that so much has gone
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wrong since then and when you andrew are talking about you know the colonies the different the
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different territories and provinces they were all very skeptical of the federal government they all
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had their own interests i think we actually need to get back to a bit more of that i wish there was
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more skepticism of the federal government i wish that the provinces had more authority to implement
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their own agenda without constant interference from the federal government here in alberta the
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ottawa telling us we can't build roads if they're highways if they're if they're too big of highways
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we have to get approval now from ottawa from that so we look at what confederations can we look at what
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the federal government has done to our provinces and the way that it bootstrapped us that is my point
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the criticism lies within that of course you know ridiculous that we can't talk about this historical
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moments without needing to have so-called educators come in and um and just do away with monumental
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things that past historical figures have done but i think there's also a conversation to be had
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there about what we've become as canada and what the federal government has become and the way that
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they just have so much control over our individual lives and over provincial autonomy but i don't
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think you can have that conversation if you aren't able to have an honest discussion about your history
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as a country i think that's the the problem here is that i i mean look i would love for the west to
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tell its own history in the west to tell its own stories and and do that but if we can't have those
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discussions there's no like it's that that's why we end up in such this such a mess i think
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yeah i would agree with you i don't have a problem with having that discussion that was
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just simply the point that i was making i think we've really gone awry and i think that uh you
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know it's it's a shame what we've as people have allowed it really you know the fault is honestly
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with the apathy largely of the canadian people who continue to vote in these governments that have
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ceded so much control from us over our lives and we vote them in time and time again harrison i'll give
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you the last word on this one well where to begin i don't think anyone was uh i don't think anyone was
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having that kind of take when the conservatives were in charge and if that's the case then maybe
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there is something to be said about that but it obviously comes down to a disagreement with the
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federal liberal government i don't think the people in alberta agree with this take that alberta should
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be its own should be should be separated from confederation i think if you put it to a
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put it to a referendum it would be a shocking decision a decisive victory to remain in this
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country so i mean i think i think we obviously found a disagreement here but i say you know what
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give it to the people let the people decide i'm pretty sure i know what the result will be
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i don't think that we're having a referendum on alberta separation anytime soon
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yeah because i also think we're all in agreement on the uh the actual topic we were starting out
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discussing here which was uh the memory of uh of john mcdonald's legacy but uh we'll have to
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revisit the western question on a future episode uh but it's a natural segue into uh this one thing
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that you flagged for us this week rachel what's going on at the calgary stampede and uh specifically
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what's not going on well what the media is liking to peg as the controversy of the calgary stampede is
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that prime minister justin trudeau will not be attending this year it's it's not a controversy in
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alberta it's actually something that everyone is celebrating he's not well liked in alberta when he
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comes he's dogged with protesters and hecklers and you know i was reading the cbc story about
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it today and they said last year people were jockeying among crowds for selfies with trudeau and
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he joined the george jahal stampede breakfast and it was like no no people were yelling at him the
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liberal party does their absolute best to keep his location um top secret when they know that he's
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coming so that they don't have hecklers you might remember a few months ago when he came to alberta and
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they would just not tell anyone where he was meeting with danielle they wouldn't release the
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name of his press conference to anyone other than his approved journalist i was asked to to leave
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multiple locations throughout the day following him trying to get a question i wasn't even allowed
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on the road near his vehicle because the prime minister just couldn't be bothered to be bothered
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by me a journalist in my hometown which is just mind-boggling the censorship that we're seeing from the
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prime minister himself so he's very unpopular in alberta we know that he faced a devastating loss in
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toronto he's obviously embarrassed i think everyone thinks maybe that he will resign soon
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he probably will never come to the calgary stampede again so definitely a sense of relief from people
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in alberta and calgary that the prime minister won't be coming to the stampede this year um you know it's
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just such a bad show for him every year when he comes he leaves looking so foolish and looking very
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embarrassing i think we have that clip of him flipping pancakes at the uh at the stampede last year i mean
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this is someone who doesn't even know how to how to make pancakes he doesn't even know how to flip a
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pancake probably doesn't even want to make scrambled eggs um so really just in the best interest that
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he's not coming this year um i think it's i think it's good for the people of alberta we we need a
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little bit of a break from the from the stench of corruption that he carries with him everywhere
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that he goes well since you mentioned it we've got to see the clip this is what happened when
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justin trudeau tried to do his man of the people schtick in alberta last year uh here we go look at
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that all right no pressure on me there's no pressure there we go
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i like that he needs like the handler and the safety vest to like point to the pancake to flip like
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he's even that again i mean look it simple things when you have an audience can be difficult like i
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i don't you know extrapolate from this any broad character flaw except to say that that's pretty
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much a sign of where justin trudeau is when he tries to be an ordinary person it's sort of like when um
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jason kenney just before you know his leadership review which ultimately led to his resignation
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was doing this announcement on um pausing the fuel tax this was like my first day ever reporting in
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alberta he was at a gas station and he went to fill up his truck and his the gas pump got stuck in his
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vehicle and he couldn't get it out and he was like pulling and pulling and of course then everyone was
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like aha he doesn't fill up his own gas it was obviously very embarrassing for him but in this
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case i just want to know the staffer that you know inevitably got yelled at later for not double
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checking that the pancakes were were ready to be flipped like you know that someone just got reined
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out for not being absolutely sure that it was time to flip the pancakes you know i would say i feel bad
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for that staffer but that's sort of what you get for uh working for the liberal party yeah i think
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the caption that went uh last year when that video clip went viral was you know everything you know
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he touches is destroyed or whatever so uh there was something like that yeah if you if you can't trust
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a man to flip your pancakes how can you trust him to uh you know save anything else in your country
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right well then there was also the side-by-side comparison of him flipping the pancake and then
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danielle smith you know just oh she was like flipping them over the shoulder she was tossing them into
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tossing them into like a like a little like container whatever she was just passed them over
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every single time made it in and he can't even manage to flip one so uh yeah those are the types
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of like the video images and i mean i would agree with you when you're doing things on camera can go
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awry pretty quickly when it's live we're lucky to film at home in studios with good lighting and
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technology but i think the comparison was was pretty apt as to everything trudeau touches touches turning to ash
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go ahead arison it's amazing how times change just two years ago he was mobbed by admirers at
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the calgary stampede and now i guess they just they're gonna have to uh go home unhappy you know
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they're uh they have no they have no one to cheer for in alberta so it it's it's remarkable i'm not
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surprised he can't go anywhere in this country actually without getting heckled it doesn't matter
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if he's in toronto it doesn't matter if he's in alberta probably the same situation in vancouver
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actually i know it's the same situation everywhere he goes he gets heckled he's likely the most hated
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man in the country um so i'm not surprised i think his time is obviously up we're sort of entering into
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that into that territory of uh of cabinet ministers and backbenchers leaking to the media trying to get
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the message out that they want him to go even the even his own legacy media are turning on him
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and demanding that he holds a meeting with his uh with his caucus so yeah this doesn't surprise me at
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all it seems it's just that we're in we're in the very final days of the uh of the long trudeau
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story i guess you could call it a nightmare which would be more accurate yeah and i know there was
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a bit of the spin going out that no he can't do the calgary stampede because he's at the nato summit
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in dc which is true he does have to be at the nato summit the calgary stampede is what like 10 days
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rage like it's a long thing like it's already the calgary stampede's already started and he's not going
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to the nato summit for another three days yeah so he could have just you know popped into calgary
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on the way there popped in don't give him any ideas though andrew listen we're happy he's not coming
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he doesn't have time it's fine you don't need to come no one misses you you're not welcome here
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don't give him any ideas you know just just be honest so just be honest alberta doesn't like me
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i don't like you my political career is coming to an end i don't think i'm ever gonna have to come
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again so might as well not go this year yada yada that's it we're done yeah there is a bit of a damned if
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you do damned if you don't damned if you don't dilemma and that you know yeah it's like funny
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to rag on him for not wanting to go there but if he does go there all the albertans are like no no
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we don't want you here we don't like you we don't uh it was like the old uh thing that nigel farage
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used to say about uh the head of the european commission is like we don't know you we don't
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want to know you who are you yeah exactly oh that we should have pulled out that clip for the uh
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nigel farage greatest hits as we uh have the charisma of a damp rag
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exactly well since we're on the the subject harrison why don't you give us the rundown on
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the big election on uh us independence day in the uk right exactly well the uk have a new prime
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minister they have a new government they're led by a labor majority government led by keir starmer
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and this result really surprised nobody it wasn't as though there was some sort of tight contest between
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who would end up winning the conservatives over the past 14 years have abandoned the british people
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they've abandoned all their core promises opened up their borders to mass immigration more immigration
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and i think the last four or five years in the brit than the brits have seen in the last thousand
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years right so we're dealing with truly unprecedented and a truly unprecedented situation
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transgender ideology woke ideology whatever you want whatever you want to call it has been injected into
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the military into the public service britain is essentially unrecognizable today than uh than before
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i guess david cameron took office even under tony blair that's when the mass immigration experiment
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really began but it just got way worse under the conservatives the story however is not that the
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conservatives have been destroyed not that they've lost over 200 seats the story is really reform reform uk led
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by nigel farage have shocked i think even even even their supporters you know they ended up winning 14
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over 14 percent of the popular vote now they came third in the popular vote they only ended up winning
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four seats compare that to the liberal democrats who came fourth in the popular vote winning 71 seats it
00:22:18.800
isn't quite right how this has shaken up but the reality is nigel farage he is in westminster on the eighth
00:22:25.280
time of trying talk about perseverance he's got three other mps that are going to sit with him
00:22:30.240
in westminster and hopefully they can actually start to shape the conservative party into truly being
00:22:36.320
conservative i miss other point too andrew before i send it back to you that i'm hoping that
00:22:41.520
conservatives in canada both at a provincial level and a federal level watch the results closely
00:22:46.800
because after 14 years of not governing like conservatives and governing more like liberals
00:22:51.840
and centrists they got decimated their party is now faced with an existential crisis there are several
00:22:58.400
conservative premiers in this in this pro in this country who have governed like liberals i'm looking
00:23:03.360
at doug ford in particular that may in fact end up facing a similar fate they choose to not govern
00:23:11.120
like conservatives so i hope that i hope that there was a good canadian audience yeah the decline i mean
00:23:17.360
this is the party of churchill and thatcher and what's become of that party has become
00:23:23.760
quite a tragic story in a lot of ways and i mean even boris johnson i i find to be a tremendously
00:23:28.720
overrated political figure he got brexit done he did a lot of good but he also uh was the one that
00:23:34.720
committed the uk conservatives to accepting the left's premise on all of these environmental policies
00:23:40.640
that have been incredibly harmful and and really persist under or will persist under a labor government
00:23:45.280
uh and again you had rishi sunak who was elected by nobody he was there because liz truss who won the
0.96
00:23:52.080
leadership was defenestrated uh basically more quickly than a lettuce ahead of lettuce wilted if
00:23:57.760
you remember that gag that was i think it was the uk sun or the uk mirror whoever it was did back then
00:24:03.440
but what ends up happening and liz truss by the way loses her seat jacob rees mogg loses his seat you've got
00:24:08.480
some big heavyweights in the uk conservative benches that are not returning to parliament and what i find
00:24:14.880
so fascinating about this is that i don't know if they're really going to learn their lesson
00:24:18.960
immediately because i did nigel farage and reform and by the way he didn't really he was only the
00:24:25.520
leader for like what five weeks like he was a last minute less than that yeah yeah less than that
00:24:31.760
but he was inspired and this is where it becomes very relevant to canada's history he was inspired by
00:24:36.560
preston manning and the canadian reform movement uh going back to the late 80s in the early 90s and
00:24:42.080
it's interesting when you see uh that and make that comparison because the story of that was
00:24:48.080
that the reform party eventually became the vehicle that created the modern conservative
00:24:53.120
party that pulled that party back to where it needed to be ideologically do you think rachel that
00:24:57.920
that will replicate in the uk that there will be this moment when the reform party and the uk
00:25:03.040
conservatives will have this merger and perhaps a new more viable churchill-esque or thatcher-esque
00:25:09.440
entity will come out of it i think there's an argument to be made there because of the fact
00:25:13.840
that nigel farage has a seat that they have three other seats as well so four in total the question
1.00
00:25:17.840
that i'm kind of wondering is whether we can draw any parallels between reform and the ppc we know
00:25:23.920
the ppc saw a surge in popularity during covid i think that that popularity has has diminished
00:25:29.440
significantly since then i think that even when we look at maxime bernie as the leader of that party
00:25:34.720
you know people are seeming less excited about him and uh in canada it's very difficult to start
00:25:39.920
a new party and to see any success with that um but the fact here in the uk that nigel actually has
0.98
00:25:45.200
those four seats they actually have a voice in parliament that is going to make a world from
00:25:49.280
different cement it really it's up to him to see i mean he still doesn't have a ton of power but what
00:25:53.440
can he do with the voice that he has in parliament how effective can his small caucus be i think that
00:25:58.160
will really determine how they're able to shape the future of the conservative party in britain and
00:26:03.360
in the uk and if they're able to actually have you know effective advocacy and play a role in what the
00:26:08.640
future of conservatism looks like in britain yeah i think that the the answer to that you you touched
00:26:14.800
on it with talking about parliament because if if bernier had won a seat in his several attempts
00:26:20.720
whether it was in 2019 2021 in the portis-lisker by-election totally different discussion we're
00:26:25.520
having about the pbc but the pbc after having you know what nearly six percent of the vote in
00:26:31.760
2021 has decreased in relevance ever since then like even the toronto saint paul's by-election
00:26:37.440
they got i think 234 votes like less than one percent this is not a party that has managed to
00:26:43.760
capture people again popular vote is important in a westminster system it doesn't amount to a hill of
00:26:48.880
beans though it's important as a barometer of support but you need an efficient vote in the
00:26:53.680
lib dems to your point harrison had a very efficient vote because they were concentrated
00:26:58.080
in areas where they could win a lot of ridings ppc had an inefficient vote reform had an inefficient
00:27:03.600
vote but the fact that they now are in parliament is a makes it a night and day difference from the ppc
00:27:09.200
it does and there's a lot of difference between the ppc of course and reform another thing that's
00:27:14.560
worth highlighting is that is the number of seats in which reform candidates came second to a labor winner
00:27:21.040
right that means they were outperforming the tories in northeast england in parts of the red wall that
00:27:28.640
they called it the the brexit wall and that shows that actually votes for the tories were taking away
00:27:35.040
from reform votes there is no real comparison that we can see in canada to that situation also it's
00:27:41.600
important to highlight the differences between nigel farage and maxime bernier maxime bernier talks about
00:27:46.880
the right issues i think it would be tough to deny that he's not the he's not the loudest political
00:27:52.400
voice against mass immigration in our country but he does not have the charisma and the ability to
00:27:57.920
energize young canadians and disenfranchised anglo-canadians the way that nigel farage does in
0.96
00:28:05.280
the uk the english is a barrier for for maxime bernier nigel farage is more popular in the uk than bernier is
00:28:12.880
in canada and farage is probably more popular farage is probably more popular than keir starmer and
00:28:19.200
likely rishi sunak if we're being honest he is a star in the uk his presence was what dragged that
00:28:25.440
party over the line bernier doesn't have that same effect and i do think that ultimately when when
00:28:32.480
pierre polyev does become prime minister a party on the right in this country will be critical it will
00:28:38.960
be crucial to anchor a conservative government to the right and not allow them to drip further and
00:28:44.320
further to the left as is naturally the case so if there can be if there can be some sort of reform-esque
00:28:52.160
movement in canada when we have a conservative government i think that would be a good thing for
00:28:56.960
the country but it's not there right now time to kick up the old the old reform party the west wants in
00:29:03.840
well but i i think i think the future it will depend a lot because i i think there are a lot
00:29:09.920
of people that were part of the ppc or were sympathetic to the ppc that have rallied behind
00:29:15.040
pierre polyev and the conservatives so they're seeing a rightward drift not a leftward drift now
00:29:20.560
if if a government under polyev were to go in a different direction i think you're right you're going
00:29:24.240
to see that because people have gotten a lot less forgiving of politicians abandoning their their
00:29:29.680
roots now than they were uh even back in the back in the 80s so that's something to keep an eye out
00:29:35.120
for for sure i i also think just speaking of rishi sunak we have to put up this clip this was him
00:29:41.280
making his concession speech and uh there was a youtuber i i can't remember the youtuber's name
00:29:46.560
uh because i'd never heard of him i think it was like it doesn't matter it was nico or something but
00:29:50.080
a known youtube prankster uh that decided to really hammer home the fact that rishi sunak was the
00:29:56.160
the big loser of the night i'd also like to thank the police who have ensured that we can conduct
00:30:01.360
this ballot here in north yorkshire but also across the country in safety on this difficult night
00:30:07.840
i'd like to express my gratitude to the people of the richmond and north allison constituency
00:30:12.960
i like the camera zooms in so you don't see the l the uh the holder realizes it tries to you have
00:30:18.160
made me and my family feel so at home and i look forward to continuing to serve as your member of
00:30:24.480
parliament it is an enormous privilege l by the way is the uh conventional uh acronym for loser
00:30:35.040
having to explain that i'm afraid reveals that our audience is uh quite old i think
00:30:41.280
i mean you're too young for both of you it's like the old uh all-stars or um what was it the smash
00:30:46.320
mouth we are not too young for that song in the shape of an ellenor oh no i just gave the people a
00:30:51.920
screenshot to use against me anyway yes what we need to bring we need to bring back the tradition
00:30:57.200
of having all of the candidates in a local election be on the stage together when the count is read out
00:31:04.160
and when when the victor delivers a speech there's something i just i just love the visuals of that
00:31:09.840
when you've got your you got your legitimate candidates and then you've got your your your
00:31:13.680
your joke candidates there's another video going around we don't have time to pull it but it's
00:31:18.080
you know these just these jokers with with fake names and fake party names like count bin face
00:31:24.000
well count bin face of course but that that's that's the obvious one and it's hilarious it's a
00:31:28.880
great it's a great thing and if you lose an election you have to stand there and listen to
00:31:33.520
as you as you have lost and listen to your victor deliver us listen to the victor deliver a speech
00:31:38.640
you have to bring that back imagine what that would look like in saint paul's with what a hundred
00:31:42.480
candidates i think it would give some people pause for putting putting their name forward which we
00:31:47.840
you know potentially could be a very good thing especially in writings like saint paul's where
00:31:51.840
we had what was like a hundred candidates or something ridiculous as a protest yeah by the way
00:31:56.320
right just to in my defense rachel that song came out in 1999 but have everyone seen the movie shrek i
00:32:02.800
was literally listening to a friend's house the other day like that's still is that how people know
00:32:06.240
that song i know it from shrek okay i know that's how they know that like uh schmaltzy uh rufus
00:32:13.200
wainwright well it's the leonard cohen song originally but hallelujah that also everyone knows from
00:32:18.000
from shrek even though it was right i don't know about that that reference as much but definitely
00:32:22.640
the smash bros song is popular believe it or not i used to always be the oldest the youngest
00:32:26.320
person in a room and now i'm like i feel like i'm ancient in the 20 years ago yeah anyway uh all
00:32:32.160
right we'll go from the uk to the us uh this was a five no point like talking about like the ins and
00:32:38.880
outs of who's up in iowa and whatever just yet but uh we can talk about what's become the real story of
00:32:44.400
the last couple of weeks which is the world finally realizing that joe biden is not fit to be president
00:32:50.240
rachel what was the latest gaffe so biden speaking at a july 4th uh sort of party first of all it actually
00:32:58.880
started even before he started talking he was introduced by vice president kamala harris who
00:33:03.040
appeared to at one point start to introduce biden as the vice president a little bit of a freudian slip
00:33:08.800
if you ask me i think she's just sort of standing there salivating at the thought of power as the
1.00
00:33:13.600
world discusses when joe biden is going to step down if he's going to step down why he needs to step
00:33:18.720
down so she's obviously you know her already big head is inflating even further at the thought of of all
1.00
00:33:24.720
the power that could soon be here so she appears to begin to introduce the president as the vice
1.00
00:33:29.360
president and then immediately biden takes the mic and he says ho ho ho so you know the speculation
00:33:36.800
is rampant that he uh he briefly mistook the independence day celebrations for christmas day
00:33:43.120
which if you watched any of the debate or if you've seen a biden press conference in the last
00:33:47.600
four years you know you'd be pretty apt to believe as well this man does not know where he
00:33:51.840
where he is a lot of the time he does not know what he's saying he's just really unsure of a lot
00:33:55.920
of things so it's not surprising that he mistook a hot day a hot july summer day for for christmas
00:34:01.840
day by any means i think we i think we have that clip we should play it for the audience so they can
00:34:06.400
see it for themselves and judge what they think happened there and we give thanks to our commander
00:34:12.400
in chief the vice the president of the united states the extraordinary president of the united states
00:34:31.200
i don't think he thinks it's christmas i may but it's still just when you put it in the context
00:34:35.520
of everything else it's uh the funniest part is the rest of them he starts talking they're all just like
00:34:40.640
what's he gonna say what's he gonna say and then as soon as he says happy independence day they're all
00:34:44.400
like they all relax like you can see their body language they're all like phew he he remembers
00:34:49.040
where we are he remembers what's going on even if just for a couple seconds you know they're all
00:34:53.040
it's the funniest part of any time he's speaking is watching the body language of everyone else around
00:34:57.120
him very uncomfortable very tense what's your take on the situation harrison well it's just what i
00:35:03.440
what we've been seeing for the last three years is just pure chaos pure uh it's ridiculous when i was
00:35:09.120
watching the debate i was so like i was actually taken aback and refreshed by listening to cnn the
00:35:17.120
first 30 seconds of the cnn commentary after the debate hearing a guy actually speak coherently and
00:35:24.400
in full sentences i felt like both of them trump and biden were just rambling on they weren't answering
00:35:30.160
any questions it wasn't even clear it's absurd i'm reading this article right now i just pulled it up
00:35:35.200
on my computer from yesterday 8 p.m on cnn that biden tells democratic governors he needs more sleep
00:35:41.440
and plans to stop scheduling events after 8 p.m oh i'm sure everything that's fine we're all good
00:35:47.040
guys the united states president is uh gonna just stop working at a at 8 p.m and get more sleep the
00:35:53.040
world is totally fine not like there are lives at risk and uh and you know major wars taking place
00:35:59.280
i mean the only part of it was kind of weirded out too by we don't have the clip but you can look it up
00:36:04.400
yourself when he did an interview on a philly radio station joe biden did and he talked about
00:36:09.200
how he was the first black uh president to the first black vice president it was like he just
00:36:13.760
again like you know he's trying to sort of talk about appointing kamala harrett but it's like
00:36:18.320
he just can't get out even the simplest of lines the only surprising part of that article that you
00:36:24.720
just referenced here is that he harrison is that he was even working until 8 p.m i assume that he
00:36:29.120
retired far earlier in the evening i mean that was one of the worst debate performances i haven't
00:36:34.640
i've been around for too long i'm not old like you andrew so maybe you can think of some examples
00:36:38.720
in history that were worse when noah's on though you're like the old matron basically and he calls
00:36:43.520
you no no is the reason that i had to change my name because i was tired of my colleagues referring
00:36:48.000
to me as mrs emmanuel like that's my mom like don't be gross so if you're wondering the real reason
00:36:52.320
why i changed my name you can all thank noah for that later noah blame noah yeah but um for example
00:36:57.920
the debate performance i mean there was reports coming out later on the uh the biden team they
00:37:02.480
tried to kind of pin this on their staff for their staff under the bus say that he was unprepared
00:37:06.480
but then the staff came out swinging and saying they took six days to prepare for that debate
00:37:11.120
performance he wouldn't get started until about 10 30 11 and then he would have to take a nap in the
00:37:16.560
afternoon so he would basically work for about an hour maybe an hour and a half and then he would
00:37:21.520
have to take a nap in the afternoon and now we know he's retire retiring at eight so how many hours in
00:37:26.240
the day does that leave for actual work to be getting done i would peg it to maybe about four
00:37:30.480
hours a day where he's actually awake and is somewhat able to to make decisions even though
00:37:36.080
i highly suspect he's not the real person making decisions in the white house yeah you're probably
00:37:42.160
right about that uh we don't have too too much time left but i know you want to talk about this one
00:37:46.560
harrison and you were actually there and like sustained a battle injury which is how you know you've made
00:37:51.440
it as a journalist when you've been attacked at a protest which can be i'm making light of it but
00:37:56.000
it can actually be incredibly incredibly risky to cover these things these days uh what happened
00:38:02.240
right so at the university of toronto these uh pro-palestine protesters had been encamped at the
00:38:08.560
university for over two months and yesterday i believe it was no two days ago two days ago was the
00:38:14.320
day they were to be evicted from their encampment the police were granted an injunction to clear them out
00:38:20.640
and before the police even showed up they all fled they all dispersed they ran away from the police
00:38:27.360
and they decided to hold a large march instead um and essentially we were there to see what
00:38:33.920
was going to happen when the police cleared out the uh the protest we all wanted to see
00:38:38.320
what was actually going to take place but what happened was that they just decided to do a large
00:38:44.160
march around the university instead we were there we asked some people some questions simple questions
00:38:49.040
like do you feel the protest had been successful what have you accomplished if anything or have you
00:38:54.320
accomplished anything at all you know the main the main effort of the protest was to have the university
00:38:59.600
divest from companies real and i don't believe that the university has done anything in regards to that
00:39:06.160
so that would that would assume that they had not been successful anyway upon asking some people some questions
00:39:11.760
questions we were moved over to the sidewalk of the march and that's when we had some antifa type
00:39:17.520
characters with black umbrellas was this by police by protesters you just like naturally we just we
00:39:23.600
just didn't want to be like in the center of it we tried to ask people some questions then we moved over
00:39:27.600
to the sidewalk and uh my cameraman and i were quickly encircled after asking a woman those exact same
00:39:34.160
questions because that's what we were there to do and then we had we had umbrellas come over the top of both
00:39:39.680
our cameras and into our backs basically spearing our camera my cameraman and i as we tried to just
00:39:46.080
get out of the way and get out of the uh get out of the mix uh but that's just the way that these
00:39:51.200
characters are behaving now they've become emboldened they know that they can get away with a lot
00:39:56.320
and they know that police aren't really watching what they're doing on the sidelines of the march
00:40:00.720
so it's astonishing to see it all take place i will say though that if you are protesting a genocide
00:40:07.200
and it's a really important cause you would think that these protesters might stand their ground
00:40:12.240
just for the actual day that it counts but no not for them they fled yeah and it was interesting
00:40:18.480
because qp ontario which has been like very you know against very much against israel and supporting
00:40:23.600
the protesters in the encampments they were like urging people to go down they were urging like more
00:40:28.240
people to go there but they cleared out on their own pretty much quickly it was the uh it stands in
00:40:32.720
contrast to say the freedom convoy where people notably use the the rally and cry hold the line
00:40:37.920
now i look i'm also of the mind that these people probably didn't want to be pepper sprayed and you
00:40:42.160
know dragged out by their heels and and whatever but uh you know because that was their argument but
00:40:46.480
they said they were going to come back they said they were going to return rachel do you think they
00:40:49.920
will i wouldn't be surprised these people seem very dedicated to you know really raising the alarm over
00:40:56.640
this issue and drawing attention to it i don't know what their reason was for why they came in
00:41:01.520
the night of maybe they thought they were going to be arrested um if it was somebody that they didn't
00:41:05.680
want to face police you know that's another story but i don't know the the reasoning there i'm not
00:41:09.200
going to make assumptions um obviously you know harrison as far as them seeking to have companies
00:41:14.240
divest from israel you said that wasn't successful what i think we can all agree on is they have been
00:41:17.920
successful in drawing a lot of attention to this issue this has been going on for weeks and we're still
00:41:21.680
talking about it we talk about it on the show very very frequently it's infrequent media coverage so they
00:41:25.920
definitely are are successful at drawing attention to the issue you know i think sometimes it's not
00:41:30.640
helpful the way that we talk about the israeli-palestinian conflict it's sort of these like
00:41:34.880
you know these quick issues of the protesters but we actually people are not very informed on i think
00:41:39.440
what's really going on there in the history of the whole issue and that's just not the way that we've
00:41:43.440
talked about what's happening right now um but harrison i think that you had an astute point as to the
00:41:48.880
fact that they felt so emboldened that they that they were touching you and that they and some were they
00:41:53.920
hitting you or they just put their umbrella over you either way you know you are a reporter you
00:41:57.600
should have been able to go to that protest and to feel safe covering the incident you should have
00:42:01.920
been able to ask your questions sounds like you weren't asking any inflammatory questions you were
00:42:06.400
asking some very simple questions trying to get information out and you know i saw a video of you
00:42:10.800
circulating online where you and your camera and you actually had to kind of very quickly try to rush out
00:42:15.200
rush out of the crowd because you were no longer in a safe circumstance and i think it's very shocking and
00:42:20.560
disturbing that we're in a situation in canada where people like yourself and myself when we're
00:42:24.800
going to go cover protests we actually have to ask ourselves if it's going to be a safe environment for
00:42:28.800
us i don't think that should be the case at all yeah i mean sue ann levy who we all work with i mean
00:42:34.080
she's been very much threatened and i don't know if she's been assaulted probably they've come close to
00:42:38.880
it and you look at some of these uh protest guys in the u.s like ford fisher is one he goes into
00:42:44.320
films like all of these protests he's got to basically go in full riot gear because it's the only way he can
00:42:49.440
offer himself just a semblance of protection now i don't know if true north needs to start issuing
00:42:53.200
that when uh people are going out but but these things are legitimately they get unhinged because
00:42:58.400
i remember when i was covering the um it was the republican convention in cleveland there was a group
00:43:02.800
of protesters and i went out and very similar to you harrison just tried to ask a couple of questions
00:43:06.800
and they wrapped they wrapped me in this banner it was very weird it was actually quite comfortable if you
00:43:12.800
overlooked the fact that these unwashed antifa people were there it was like a nice little like seaweed wrap
00:43:17.440
at a spa they like wrapped me in their banner and then a few like started coughing on me and it was
00:43:22.480
it was a very bizarre thing i never felt physically threatened because i could probably have taken any
00:43:26.960
one of them individually but in that it's a mob-like mentality and you see that when you're in the midst
00:43:32.080
of this thing it's quite something absolutely and uh i mean not to not to make it just about that incident
00:43:38.400
uh but it's important to highlight this as well the protest a lot of people there were holding signs
00:43:43.840
about free university education had nothing to do with what they were protesting or what the media
00:43:49.440
had made the protest out to be they had one woman had a sign that said israel is terrorist those words
00:43:56.320
and then on the other side it was free university education now and you had all these other protesters
00:44:01.680
sounds like she needs it in her defense sounds like she needs the education yes yes it does sound that way
00:44:07.280
and that seemed to be what they all the qp signs were about free university education um it was a
00:44:13.200
very bizarre situation i we we we've we don't cover the protests that much anymore but at the beginning
00:44:19.680
when they were starting we would we would cover them and we would do our job we would try to ask them
00:44:24.400
some questions and actually get their side of the story out and it was sort of the second or third time
00:44:30.080
that we had gone to the protest this was several months ago last year that we were starting to get
00:44:34.560
noticed and it wasn't even it wasn't even what appeared to be arabs who were accusing us of
00:44:40.000
being in the wrong place and telling us to get lost it was white antifa masked up people who were
00:44:46.160
attacking true north and that was the case on wednesday it's like people who aren't even really uh
00:44:50.960
you know don't don't even have like a blood connection to the issue um they're just there
00:44:54.800
because they want the chaos they want the scene it's a very bizarre situation yeah that always seems to
00:44:59.440
be the way the people that are the most fervent in these protests are never the ones directly affected by
00:45:04.560
by the the thing that they're they're protesting that's i mean the story of indigenous energy
00:45:08.480
protests it's like you know three indigenous people and then like 87 uh you know just woke
00:45:12.880
british colombians there but anyway that does it for us for today my thanks to harrison
00:45:17.280
faulkner and rachel parker for their contributions to today's program
00:45:21.280
remember everything you've heard is off the record
00:45:31.680
there i got it right nicely done honestly i can't say anything i'm still getting it wrong
00:45:37.360
when i go to record my show i'm like oh yeah i changed my name have you like relearned your signature
00:45:41.920
yet um i haven't relearned my signature yet but i am very relieved because ever since i was a kid
00:45:48.320
my last name was so long that somewhere in the middle of like because i always do cursive somewhere
00:45:52.160
in like the about the third hump of the first m i would start to get confused as to how many m
00:45:57.680
humps i had done and then the whole thing would just go to crap so i'm really excited to not have
00:46:01.600
to do the cursive m's anymore it's like you just i can never keep track of how many i've done it's my
00:46:06.640
whole life i have not been able i think on my show today i made an argument for my audience and
00:46:10.400
i'm pretty sure i'm dyslexic so there you have it i most likely am i i'm like i i have terrible
00:46:15.680
handwriting and now that i like i'm an author and have to do book signings like if any if i'm ever
00:46:19.920
relevant enough in history that someone has to like authenticate the autographs in my books they're
00:46:25.120
going to have a heck of a time because i think every one of them is different yeah i don't know that
00:46:29.120
that's going to happen though so don't worry about it too much harrison do you how's your
00:46:33.920
handwriting do you have like typical guy writing it's it's so bad i uh i i'm embarrassed every
00:46:39.920
time i have to write a card to someone i i have to just give them a warning in advance say if you
00:46:44.320
need me to like read it over your shoulder out loud do you do penmanship or do you print
00:46:50.080
uh like is that penmanship is that are you asking if i write cursive cursive yeah i thought cursive was
00:46:55.680
also no i i i print yeah cursive is a lost art form i think i still write in cursive
00:47:03.600
people can't even read it anymore i'm gonna read it when i when i was in high school there
00:47:07.920
was this girl next to me that wanted to like borrow my notes and i had a crush on her but
00:47:11.440
so i like couldn't show her my notes because i was embarrassed about my handwriting it was so terrible