Juno News - Justin Trudeau claims handgun ＂freeze＂ doesn't target law-abiding gun owners

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

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

00:00:58.060 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:05.660 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:08.020 This is another live edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,

00:01:12.100 The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:01:13.820 What is it? Tuesday, May 31st, 2022.

00:01:17.400 Summer is just a few weeks away and it doesn't feel like summer in terms of the news cycle

00:01:22.280 because so much is happening, which is rare for this time of year.

00:01:26.380 It's not all good stuff. We mentioned very briefly in yesterday's show a topic that I promised we'd

00:01:32.120 revisit today and I am revisiting today. And that is Bill C-21. And this is the firearms legislation

00:01:38.420 that Justin Trudeau announced, the so-called freeze on handgun purchases. And I say so-called

00:01:45.940 and I say freeze because I want us to actually be very clear about what has been proposed and what's

00:01:51.940 this bill and we're going to break it down in just a moment but i want you to hear first off

00:01:56.740 and we played this clip yesterday how justin trudeau framed what it is that he's doing here

00:02:04.340 we're introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership

00:02:12.420 what this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy sell transfer or import handguns

00:02:21.940 anywhere in canada in other words we're capping the market behind us

00:02:33.940 there was that weird pause before the applause started that makes me think there might have

00:02:37.380 been someone just standing out of frame reminding people no no now's the time you you have to clap

00:02:42.260 here but the way he talks about it it's as though no longer will you be able to have one a freeze

00:02:47.620 on ownership, he said. And then you hear further, okay, it's a freeze on purchasing. And then you

00:02:52.060 read the bill. And there's a fair bit of confusion there, especially when it comes to sport shooting.

00:02:57.100 So first off, I want to drill down into what it is that was actually announced. And who better to

00:03:02.320 do that with? The answer is no one than Tracy Wilson of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm

00:03:07.680 Rights. Tracy, it's good to talk to you as always. This is something that we knew was coming in some

00:03:13.280 form. I mean, the Liberals tried in the last Parliament to allow municipalities to ban

00:03:18.380 handguns, which was something that, you know, Toronto and Vancouver and Montreal were asking

00:03:23.020 for. This is a significant escalation from that. Yeah. So as you know, they started off talking

00:03:29.580 about municipal handgun bans, giving cities and towns the ability to ban handguns within their

00:03:35.440 territory, which would basically be a bylaw prohibiting the storage and transportation

00:03:40.540 within their borders. So of course that didn't work out. Alberta, Saskatchewan, a bunch of

00:03:46.140 provinces went ahead and put in legislation preemptively to block them from being able to do

00:03:51.640 that. So then in the last election cycle, they switched to talking about maybe doing a provincial

00:03:56.640 ban. Of course, Quebec is all over it, cheering for it. And almost every other province I'm sure

00:04:02.820 would say no. So they knew they weren't getting anywhere with this. It would be impossible to do.

00:04:08.320 It's kind of funny.

00:04:09.340 It's a little bit of a gut punch to Stephen Del Duca here in Ontario.

00:04:13.400 He's been running that as a big part of his campaign.

00:04:16.260 But this is what they've decided to do.

00:04:18.200 And I mean, at the end of the day, I think all Canadians can agree.

00:04:22.680 We don't want gangbangers, violent criminals, abusers, people like that to have guns.

00:04:27.740 But closing the market on legal handguns isn't a public safety measure.

00:04:32.500 It's political theater.

00:04:34.080 Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things that the liberals do, and it's a very smart move politically, is they, whenever they're putting something that restricts gun ownership for law-abiding gun owners, they also put all these things that are uncontroversial in there as well so that people can look and like, I mean, for example, in Bill C-21, they talk about the border, I'd say not nearly in as strong enough terms as they should.

00:04:55.340 They talk about domestic violence. They talk about the firearm situations of people that may be at risk of violence for others, what they call red flag laws. And in a lot of cases, I mean, let's talk about red flag laws here, because when you look at the way the liberals frame this, you'd say, well, yeah, I want absolutely there to be the ability to take guns away from people that pose a risk to others. But that already exists.

00:05:18.340 Yes. Yeah, of course. So that already exists. I mean, you and I both know I'm a handgun owner. I'm an AR-15 owner. I own all kinds of guns. If something was to happen here and my husband was to call the police or the RCMP or the Canadian Firearms Program and say, hey, Tracy Wilson is being violent with me. I'm in danger. She's a violent person. You know exactly what that's going to look like.

00:05:41.680 it's an ERT response at my door, my door being kicked in, my guns being seized, you know, seize

00:05:47.680 them now, ask questions later. And of course, I'd have to fight to get them back. All of that

00:05:52.400 already exists in Canada. And, you know, in an emergency, a crisis situation, of course,

00:05:58.640 you've got 911. Like this is, this is literally existing framework that, that we've already got

00:06:05.020 in Canada. And StatsCan data shows us that less than 1% of all domestic calls even have a firearm

00:06:13.080 present at the address, let alone used or threatened. Can you say that again? StatsCan

00:06:18.380 data shows us that less than 1% of all domestic violence calls in Canada even have a firearm

00:06:24.680 present at the address, let alone used or threatened. Yeah, so it's solving a problem

00:06:30.460 that simply doesn't exist. Yeah. And I think all of this is ultimately padding for what the

00:06:35.800 liberals really want to do, which is the handgun ban. And we know from 2020, and I explored this

00:06:42.040 extensively in the documentary series we put out last year, Assaulted, the Order and Council,

00:06:47.660 an overnight ban on some 1,500 types of firearms, which they later expanded a couple of years later.

00:06:53.400 To this day, the promised buyback program hasn't materialized. So people like me, like you,

00:06:58.500 and like dozens and hundreds and hundreds of gun business owners that we spoke to and that

00:07:03.540 also are just sitting on this, unable to do anything with it. This is different. They're

00:07:08.100 proposing this through legislation, which means that it still has to go through the proper channels,

00:07:12.340 which means it's still legal in Canada if you're licensed to go out and buy a handgun right now.

00:07:17.240 So, I mean, I don't want them to be more aggressive with it, but it does strike me as odd that on one

00:07:22.460 hand is this pressing threat that is causing carnage in the streets, but on the other hand,

00:07:26.820 not so pressing that we don't have the benefit of time for people to go out and buy more as they

00:07:31.580 are in droves right now. Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, like, look, if this was a crisis,

00:07:37.900 if this was something that Canada absolutely needed for public safety measures, if this was

00:07:43.200 a credible public safety policy, then he would have tried to do the same thing he did with the

00:07:48.880 May 2020 gun ban. It would just be like, hey, that's it. You know, we don't need handguns in

00:07:53.000 this country we're coming around them up and that's the end of it but of course as you know

00:07:57.020 we've got the 2020 gun ban tied up in federal court it's not going the way they thought it would go 0.64

00:08:02.880 um the majority of our case is based on the fact that they've used an oic which circumvents

00:08:08.840 democracy totally avoids the entire parliamentary process and uh so yeah so they they've taken a

00:08:15.560 different route with this which of course uh gives us time to fight it gives us time to stretch it

00:08:20.580 out um suggest amendments to it in the house of commons and the senate and see where we go from

00:08:26.540 here but in the meantime yeah go shopping you you mentioned one very compelling stat i want to play

00:08:32.760 a clip for you tracy of something justin trudeau said this morning about how the criticism of this

00:08:39.320 is all coming from a place of misinformation your message be to um firearms groups that are saying

00:08:46.360 you know this handgun ban continues to just target lawful gun owners and you

00:08:50.680 know it's you know similar criticism to other gun legislation saying it's not

00:08:53.560 going to target people that are breaking the law anyways. I think people need to

00:08:56.680 be careful about misinformation and disinformation in this. We've explicitly

00:09:01.060 and specifically not targeted law-abiding firearms owners because those

00:09:06.520 who currently own and operate handguns safely and store them safely are not at

00:09:11.380 at all targeted by this legislation. We're simply saying that we are freezing the market and in the

00:09:17.400 future it'll not be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns in Canada. There have been too

00:09:23.400 many tragedies. Canadians need to see safer communities and this is a comprehensive multi-step

00:09:29.940 path towards that. So I mean the relevant part of that law-abiding gun owners are not targeted by

00:09:37.800 this yet as i understand it and you can correct me if i'm wrong tracy once this bill passes

00:09:42.920 if i go to a gun store i will not be able to buy a handgun which strikes me as targeting a

00:09:48.040 law-abiding gun owner so am i missing something here no in fact this legislation solely targets

00:09:54.120 legal gun owners and here's the other thing andrew like i'm a middle-aged mom and a grandma

00:09:58.840 you know i i do a lot of sports shooting maybe i decide i'm not going to do that anymore i'm

00:10:03.080 not really into it i haven't been out to the range in over a year myself let's say i decide i want to

00:10:08.920 sell my handguns i want to move on to something else i'm just not interested in it anymore

00:10:13.080 i can't so now not only can you not buy anymore but you're forced to keep the ones you've got

00:10:19.000 at the same time if i say okay fine i'll keep them i take them to to my deathbed then what

00:10:24.840 my family is going to be forced to turn them over to the police for destruction or have them

00:10:29.960 deactivated those are the options zero compensation and i mean i've got thousands of dollars of

00:10:34.920 handguns here right so yeah i i think he he missed an opportunity to really be a hero here

00:10:42.200 he he gave away a really important self-own at the very beginning of his press conference

00:10:47.800 when he said you know for seven years we've enacted all these measures all this gun control

00:10:53.000 including the may 2020 gun ban and yet gun crime continues to rise in this country

00:10:57.960 well doesn't that tell you that what you're doing isn't being it's not effective it's not working

00:11:04.220 and his that's a cell phone right so his response to his own issue is to enact more of it you know

00:11:12.060 that he missed the opportunity here he could have said you know what we're going to get tough on

00:11:16.360 criminals we're going to get tough on the border we're going to reduce smuggling we're going to

00:11:23.360 invest in at-risk communities, initiatives for kids to keep them out of gangs. We're going to

00:11:29.240 do a whole slew of really important measures. And that's how we're going to keep Canadians safe.

00:11:35.460 The reason he doesn't do it is it takes more than one short election cycle to show positive change.

00:11:40.820 If we talk about the longer term aspect of this, if handguns are going to be essentially closed

00:11:46.740 off, that market's going to be closed off, plus a huge amount of semi-automatic rifles were caught

00:11:52.760 up in the order and council in May 2020. Does this look, I mean, how I predict this is going,

00:12:00.160 and you may have a different perspective, is that they're basically trying to phase out

00:12:03.560 the restricted category of firearms. So for people that don't know, you've got your non-restricted,

00:12:08.440 your hunting rifles and so on, your restricteds, which are handguns and some long guns,

00:12:13.240 and then you've got your prohibiteds, which for all intents and purposes are the ones you can't

00:12:16.900 get. And it seems like that restricted category is getting very, very small now.

00:12:20.900 Yeah, well, that's exactly it. And you know what happens when that restricted category gets smaller and obsolete is so do gun ranges. You know, we've got 4,600 gun ranges across this country. A lot of them are community owned. Some of them are privately owned. You've got an entire industry that contributes $8.2 billion to the Canadian GDP. That is basically, literally just got cut in half, if not more.

00:12:49.660 in the last two years under the Trudeau regime.

00:12:53.240 And for what?

00:12:54.420 For political opportunity to punish people

00:12:56.920 that aren't likely to vote for him anyways.

00:12:59.740 You know, like I said, he had a real opportunity here

00:13:02.440 to do something credible to make Canada a safer country.

00:13:05.920 And he failed.

00:13:08.500 Let's just talk about the way we go after this.

00:13:11.020 I mean, we don't have, as everyone knows,

00:13:12.380 the Second Amendment in Canada

00:13:14.280 that protects in a constitutional way firearms rights.

00:13:17.720 i know you've got a legal challenge against the order and council but is your view on this that

00:13:22.200 there is a legal solution or does there have to be a political solution a politician that's

00:13:26.440 prepared to stand up and speak out against the media that don't seem to understand or want to

00:13:30.920 understand guns against a lot of the bad faith activists and just say no we are standing up for

00:13:36.120 this law-abiding community yeah i mean ultimately a political solution of course is a is a more

00:13:41.960 permanent longer solution there is no way to evergreen this even in c21 there's a measure

00:13:47.480 there to um you know to prevent future governments from um reclassifying firearms to a lesser class

00:13:55.800 um but with enough political will of course that can always be changed over there is

00:14:00.120 no such thing as evergreening um if there is a way to challenge this in the courts of course the ccfr

00:14:07.960 always says that we will do whatever it takes to stand up for legal Canadian gun owners,

00:14:12.120 and we mean it. When we say it, we mean it. But ultimately, I think going through the

00:14:17.480 parliamentary process itself is long and arduous. C-71 took 14 months to get through the system.

00:14:25.000 Sorry, I've had a lot of interviews today, so I'm losing my voice.

00:14:28.840 But we're going to be pushing against it. We're going to be testifying against it.

00:14:34.520 we're going to be proposing amendments, you know, we'll see what happens. But of course,

00:14:38.520 with the NDP liberal coalition, they can basically do whatever they want to anybody

00:14:42.520 they want in this country. And there's not a lot we can do about it. So yeah, we do need we need a

00:14:47.060 new government. Well, I do want to let you go because I think your voice is an important one.

00:14:50.940 So I don't want to take it away from you here. But just in closing, Tracy, let me ask you one

00:14:55.640 final question here. Because the government said and I thought this was another cell phone that

00:15:00.340 They don't expect there to be a run on handguns because they're so difficult to get and so

00:15:05.260 heavily regulate, which I think proves that we don't need the regulation, but it also

00:15:09.580 proves how out of touch they are.

00:15:10.940 I know you have a lot of members who are gun owners, gun business owners.

00:15:14.040 Tell me what they're experiencing in the last 24 hours.

00:15:17.520 Well, it's funny, actually, SFRC in Kingston, which is a great gun shop, they were at the

00:15:23.220 shop until four o'clock in the morning last night processing orders.

00:15:27.140 Shooting supplies was there until midnight last night.

00:15:29.640 calgary shooting center has a six hour lineup outside the store just to get in and look there

00:15:36.220 are shipments of handguns coming in and not even getting unloaded off the skid they're just gone

00:15:41.080 they're gone before they even hit the floor so uh yeah i i don't think this is going the way he

00:15:47.100 thought it would and this is day one so you know if if it does take until fall of 2020 or even

00:15:53.960 longer with our, with the work that we'll do to have this passed. I mean, we may double our number

00:16:00.120 of handgun ownerships in this country, which already sits at 1.1 million legal handguns.

00:16:05.140 So that's great. I always said that Bill Blair was probably like the greatest Canadian AR-15

00:16:08.880 salesman. And I think now Marco Mendicino is the greatest Canadian handgun salesman. So the

00:16:13.500 liberals, the liberals are great for the gun business in a roundabout way. Tracy Wilson,

00:16:17.440 keep up the fantastic work and thanks so much for coming on today.

00:16:20.920 Thanks for the opportunity.

00:16:23.200 Thanks.

00:16:23.480 Have some tea and lemon before your next interview.

00:16:26.360 Yeah, I emailed Tracy, I think at like, I don't know, like 5.45 this morning, and she

00:16:29.820 emailed me like five minutes later, and she's been just doing nonstop interviews.

00:16:33.080 So we're glad she was able to take the time with us today.

00:16:36.240 Just before we go on to our next segment here, I want to play one more clip of Justin Trudeau.

00:16:40.140 And this just shows how rhetoric, political rhetoric, verbal rhetoric is so fascinating

00:16:45.940 to watch, especially if you know it's a load of nonsense.

00:16:48.500 He is somehow positioned going after law-abiding gun owners and their legally owned property as being a matter of freedom.

00:16:57.100 Take a look.

00:17:00.000 This is about freedom.

00:17:05.220 People should be free to go to the supermarket, their school, or their place of worship without fear.

00:17:13.620 People should be free to go to the park or to a birthday party without worrying about

00:17:22.120 what might happen from a stray bullet.

00:17:25.720 Gun violence is a complex problem, but at the end of the day, the math is really quite

00:17:31.920 simple.

00:17:32.920 The fewer the guns in our communities, the safer everyone will be.

00:17:43.620 You know, ultimately, the math isn't that simple, because the fewer the legal guns, the less safe, or at least no difference in safety, the society and community is. But again, facts don't matter on this issue, just rhetoric.

00:17:56.960 I want to turn back to Ontario politics, which we're focusing a fair bit more on in the last couple of weeks, because the Ontario election is coming up on Thursday. Yesterday, we had New Blue leader Jim Carahalios on to talk about the new blueprint, which is his party's platform.

00:18:12.600 And we want to cover all the bases here and speak to the conservative movement more broadly.

00:18:17.160 So today we invited back Derek Sloan, leader of the Ontario Party, and he joins me now.

00:18:23.380 Derek, it's good to talk to you here.

00:18:24.920 I know that you've put with the Ontario Party conscience rights front and centre on your platform, among other issues we'll get to.

00:18:31.780 But let's just start there.

00:18:33.100 Why do you think that's such a critical issue in the province right now?

00:18:36.900 Right.

00:18:37.200 Well, you know, there certainly is a freedom issue in this province.

00:18:39.780 But what we're seeing simultaneously is people's conscience is getting trampled.

00:18:44.920 So whether it's, you know, a vaccine, perhaps, that somebody doesn't want to take, whether

00:18:49.060 it's an attestation that somebody doesn't want to say to be registered to be some kind

00:18:54.360 of profession, or whether it's a medical treatment that maybe somebody doesn't want to be involved

00:18:58.280 in, like abortion or euthanasia, we're seeing conscience rights of Canadians and Ontarians

00:19:03.060 being trampled.

00:19:04.720 Now, conscience rights are often things we hear, I mean, at any level of politics,

00:19:09.140 associated with social conservatism,

00:19:11.560 whether it's conscience rights for healthcare workers,

00:19:13.780 conscience rights for MPs or MPPs.

00:19:16.660 Do you approach this as a socially conservative party?

00:19:20.380 Is that what the Ontario party is?

00:19:21.740 Or is it just a party that is in part

00:19:24.320 made of social conservatives?

00:19:26.640 Yeah, I mean, I think many of our policies

00:19:28.220 appeal to social conservatives,

00:19:29.560 but I think our reach is much broader than that.

00:19:32.820 You know, our view of conscience doesn't, you know,

00:19:35.720 doesn't necessarily go down to a strict religious

00:19:37.800 or moral issue, we're saying we don't want people to be forced to do things that they don't want to

00:19:42.720 do. The vaccine, for example, to me is not a religious issue. I know for some people it is.

00:19:48.700 For me, it's an issue of personal health autonomy, personal health freedom to choose

00:19:52.780 what gets put into your body and what doesn't. So I think a lot of what we're saying here is we

00:19:58.540 don't want the government telling people what to do. And we don't want the government penalizing

00:20:03.260 people for not doing things that they really, really don't want to do.

00:20:09.320 One of the things that we've seen, obviously, in the last two and a bit years now in politics

00:20:14.400 is that COVID has overwhelmed everything.

00:20:16.680 We've seen it very much reshape politics.

00:20:19.240 The traditional left-right axis has changed a bit as well on this.

00:20:23.120 We hope, and I mean, obviously, it's not a given that we will put these issues behind

00:20:27.060 us and be able to move on to other things in society.

00:20:30.240 So let me ask you, because I know you do have a platform that has things beyond COVID and beyond vaccine mandates on, what do you see from an Ontario Party perspective as being the top issues moving forward?

00:20:42.420 Yeah, so just to summarize, I think that, again, the freedom issues, the government surveillance issues are very important.

00:20:48.500 So we did a petition against the digital ID that's promoted by the World Economic Forum and others.

00:20:55.280 We think that a digital ID and expanding government surveillance is a very bad idea.

00:21:00.900 There's all kinds of other discussion about collection of biometric data and other forms of tracking people, carbon footprint trackers.

00:21:10.560 We want to make sure that the government is not in the business of tracking its citizens, of controlling its citizens.

00:21:15.800 We saw what happened after the tracker convoy where people had bank accounts shut down, licenses revoked, property taken.

00:21:22.940 And we want to make sure that the government does not have the ability to do that.

00:21:26.640 And when you have a digital ID paired with perhaps a digital currency in the future, it's very easy to turn the light switch off on people that are doing things that the government doesn't like.

00:21:37.080 These are very much important issues, and I don't want to undercut them, but do you feel they are the ones that are front and center for the province as a whole?

00:21:44.240 Or do you feel that people are more motivated by things like affordability, taxes, the carbon tax, cost of living issues in general?

00:21:51.280 So cost of living is certainly front and center. And I mentioned the government surveillance aspect is one of the things. Cost of living is a major issue. And of course, we have a plan to deal with the housing market as best as we can here in Ontario. One thing we've proposed is a complete ban of foreign purchasing. That's something that I proposed when I was running for leader of the Conservative Party.

00:22:13.200 We know the Liberals have actually finally said they were going to do the same thing, but we don't trust them to implement it in the right way or in a timely fashion.

00:22:21.120 That's one thing we want to do with respect to housing.

00:22:23.680 As far as the gasoline prices, we've proposed taking off PST and the Ontario gas tax, which would lower the price of fuel about 20 cents based on current prices.

00:22:34.120 But we're also looking into the future.

00:22:35.700 We would like to propose an energy corridor between here and Alberta.

00:22:39.860 Obviously, that would require other provinces, even the federal government to be involved with that.

00:22:44.780 But we want to make sure that we, you know, once and for all cement a movement forward to make Canada or at least a good chunk of it energy independent and, you know, get prices down and make sure that we're using our own products here in Canada.

00:22:57.440 Yeah, I mean, right now we're seeing a global energy crisis.

00:23:00.500 And a lot of this, I think, has been led by the Russia issue, if you're talking about European companies, European countries.

00:23:06.700 But in Canada, this has been an ongoing challenge where you have provinces that are anti-energy, that stymie a development of the energy sector.

00:23:14.960 And the result of it is an increased reliance on foreign oil.

00:23:18.320 But how do you, I mean, just look at the federal government right now.

00:23:21.100 How do you, if you were the premier of Ontario, move forward on this when you have a federal government that is so hostile to that agenda?

00:23:28.480 Yeah, that's a really good question.

00:23:29.760 And so you'll note that I said between here and Alberta, which, you know, right now, all of those governments would be friendly, I think, to, you know, increased energy infrastructure.

00:23:38.520 You're right. We're fighting against the federal government.

00:23:41.180 I think, though, the liberals, as much as their agenda points them in one direction, if enough people are clamoring for something, they eventually will have to, you know, do something if it makes sense.

00:23:50.440 So we want we're not going to wait for them to do that.

00:23:52.820 we're going to make sure that we have a proposal. Maybe we get the other provinces on board as well

00:23:57.000 and, you know, propose it and get the public to buy into it as well. But I think there's a lot

00:24:01.500 of things we can do. I mean, even strategic oil reserves is something that, you know, our province

00:24:06.280 has never done. Our country doesn't really do. There's a lot of things that we can do to cushion

00:24:10.220 ourselves against shocks that can and will come. Just when we're talking about Ontario's place

00:24:16.520 outside of Ontario and just in the country and in the world, there was a radio ad of yours that I

00:24:21.560 heard a couple of times and I don't have the clip to play, but you talk and I have the transcript

00:24:25.620 here in front of me that Doug Ford answers to the World Economic Forum, to the United Nations and

00:24:32.120 to the World Health Organization, but never to you. And you say, I'm Derek Sloan, leader of the

00:24:37.080 Ontario Party, and I will never allow the globalists to rule Ontario. Vote down globalism,

00:24:42.800 vote for the Ontario Party. There are a lot of people online right now listening that are

00:24:47.580 probably like yeah that's great and rah rah rah but do you think that is a message that resonates

00:24:52.080 with Ontarians more broadly if you're talking about expanding the base expanding your support

00:24:56.520 beyond those who are already on side yeah so surprisingly we've you know we've done some

00:25:01.180 broad-based issues polling and believe it or not some of these uh you know world economic digital

00:25:05.900 digital id issues poll very high poll poll as high as some of any other issues that we've been

00:25:11.180 fighting on. So, you know, that's a surprise to me. I mean, you know, now, do they know every

00:25:18.140 detail as much as perhaps some of your listeners do? Probably not. But this idea about, you know,

00:25:23.960 being tracked and, you know, international organizations does actually hit a nerve.

00:25:28.560 Of course, our party is, you know, talking about other things, you know, indoctrination in the

00:25:32.280 school system, you know, general affordability, all of these kinds of things. But, you know,

00:25:37.140 that particular issue actually does have a very strong uh appeal to men to to many people here in

00:25:43.340 this province so let's move to health care which i think is perennially one of the big issues

00:25:49.660 in ontario and oftentimes whenever a politician is approaching this they only want to tiptoe

00:25:55.860 around it they'll admit that it's broken but no one actually does a solution and i think one of

00:26:00.240 the biggest things ontario needs is uh to have private alternatives which is like the kiss of

00:26:05.540 death to campaigns, or at least conventional wisdom says it is. You have it like on your

00:26:09.780 website in big, bold letters that you want private alternatives in healthcare. So what would that

00:26:13.840 actually look like? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, you know what, there's various ways to go

00:26:18.040 about it. What we did say is that we would permit private organizations to build hospitals and

00:26:23.380 provide other services. We've also said that people would be permitted to have supplemental

00:26:28.340 private health insurance if they choose to do it. You know, out of the OECD countries, Canada spends

00:26:34.540 pretty much the most per capita on healthcare. And we have poor outcomes compared to many other

00:26:39.360 countries. One thing that pretty much every other country that scores well on that list does

00:26:44.040 is have private alternatives like what we're talking about here. So that's something that

00:26:49.540 obviously we could flesh out further and there's different ways to talk about it. But that's one

00:26:54.440 major thing that we basically have to look into doing. Another, of course, is again, I think

00:27:00.780 you know people always talk about you know uh uh credential equivalency from you know people that

00:27:06.060 come here and are trained and they're not able to work in the field that they're they're trained in

00:27:10.380 i think that's important i mean anecdotally i know about seven or eight people in my rough sphere

00:27:16.060 here that are going to medical school in other countries and then working in other countries

00:27:21.260 as doctors these are canadians who who wanted to go to school in canada they couldn't make it in

00:27:25.740 so i think there's something to be said about increasing spots at our medical schools but we

00:27:29.820 We have to do a major change here in the system and allowing private alternatives while maintaining the public system as well, like they do in many European countries, I think is critical to that.

00:27:40.400 I don't know how much of the interview with Tracy Wilson you caught before you came on the show, but generally we were talking about the bill that Justin Trudeau introduced yesterday on handguns, trying to ban ownership and new purchase of them.

00:27:54.080 And obviously, you were in federal politics, so I know you know the firearms file somewhat.

00:27:58.320 But is there a way that a province can flex a little bit of muscle on this?

00:28:02.980 I know Alberta has tried by appointing its own chief firearms officer.

00:28:07.100 Is that something you would want to do in Ontario and anything else you could do on firearms?

00:28:12.020 Yeah, I think there are.

00:28:13.160 I mean, you know, we've bandied about different ideas.

00:28:15.860 And one idea I've had, and frankly, I haven't fleshed it out enough, but I think there would be a way for a province to potentially classify,

00:28:22.860 classify a special category of peace officers that would not really be keeping the law per se,

00:28:29.200 but could be enabled to still own handguns. So for example, if the government bans handguns

00:28:34.880 completely, the government could potentially say, hey, you know, all you guys who had a

00:28:39.460 restricted license, you know, up until two days ago when it was banned, hypothetically,

00:28:43.440 if that happens, well, now you're a class C peace officer, and we need to make sure that you,

00:28:48.620 have a handgun in storage at your home in case we need reservists in the police force or something

00:28:55.120 like this. I feel like there is a way to get around this. Again, that's just an idea that's

00:29:00.580 been percolating in my head, but I feel that there are ways. I just want to make sure I

00:29:04.560 understand. So basically turning Ontario gun owners into like a standing militia of sorts?

00:29:10.100 Well, I wouldn't call it a militia. I would call it peace officers. And again,

00:29:13.860 we could use a similar vetting system as was already in place. But if the government were

00:29:19.480 to get to a spot where they were just banning handguns completely or anything like this,

00:29:25.360 I think there is some provincial jurisdiction to enable ownership to still happen.

00:29:31.020 So one thing that I would bring up, and I asked this to Jim Carajalios, your opponent in the

00:29:36.640 New Blue yesterday. We know that smaller parties that are upstarts have a significant hurdle ahead

00:29:43.340 them if they want to win seats certainly to win a large enough number of seats to form a government

00:29:48.220 or wield influence would you as the leader of one of these upstart parties support electoral reform

00:29:54.220 that would i mean like for example like ontarians voted on in 2007 mixed member proportional that

00:29:59.020 would actually give some proportional representation so that smaller parties like yours can have some

00:30:04.460 more influence you know that's a really good question i i've always been a fan of first

00:30:09.180 past the post. And, you know, I understand the appeal to some of these other forms of voting as

00:30:15.180 well. You know, at this point, obviously, being in a smaller party, there is more appeal to it.

00:30:21.640 I frankly think that, you know, a party like ours or a movement like ours, as it grows, could win

00:30:27.960 anyways down the line. So I understand that the proportional system might allow for some early

00:30:33.920 gains, but it would also work against actually forming a government. I mean, when you have

00:30:38.560 these kinds of, the more proportional it is, the lesser odds are of actually forming, you know,

00:30:43.720 say a majority government, for example. So I think there's pros and cons to it. It's not an

00:30:49.080 axe that our party particularly grinds, but, you know, you're right, it is a way to get in the door

00:30:53.580 a little bit easier. We'll leave that up to the parties in power. You know, again, there's pros

00:30:59.360 and cons to that whole debate. And of course, you would have, you know, if you went 100%

00:31:04.720 proportional. You'd have, you know, a hundred different choices at the ballot. You'd have,

00:31:08.760 you know, the seniors party and the, this party and the, that party. So, um, it may not be quite

00:31:13.980 as advantageous as some people say, but I'm, you know, I'm, I'm agnostic about it.

00:31:18.860 Obviously we don't know what the exact breakdown of seats is going to be on, on Thursday. If we

00:31:23.880 did, we could make a lot of money on the betting market. But, uh, if you were in a situation where

00:31:28.040 the Ontario party had a couple of seats in the legislature, maybe held the balance of power at

00:31:33.020 the very least held enough of a block to have some influence. What are the deal breakers? What are

00:31:38.480 the things that you would absolutely not compromise on and the issues where you think you might be

00:31:43.180 able to work with other parties? Yeah, well, some of the things that we've been very clear on from

00:31:48.400 the beginning. So we're against a digital ID. We're against mandates and passports and things

00:31:55.600 like this. We're against indoctrination in our school system. So anything that would be promoting,

00:32:00.760 you know for example critical race theory or or you know age inappropriate sex education uh or

00:32:06.600 you know digital ids digital currencies these things are very you know very much a fabric of

00:32:11.320 who we are um you know i think obviously we're in favor of you know balanced budgets and that kind

00:32:17.080 of thing but uh when it comes to uh more you know issues about you know should a road go here or

00:32:22.760 there uh you know exactly how much money should go into the health care system i mean obviously we

00:32:26.680 can be a bit flexible but i mean you know our voters voted on us because of the policies that

00:32:31.880 we have and we're going to make sure that we stick uh stick to those uh and frankly there's only a

00:32:37.320 few of us in parliament in the light in the provincial parliament there we've been elected

00:32:42.040 to kind of be a thorn in the side of the governing of the governing parties so i mean obviously we're

00:32:46.680 not uh there just to be protesters but we're there to you know to stick to our values as well

00:32:52.800 Derek Sloan, leader of the Ontario Party.

00:32:55.060 I know you got an election coming up in a couple of days,

00:32:57.160 so I appreciate you taking the time to come back.

00:32:59.320 Thanks very much, Derek.

00:33:00.500 Glad to be here.

00:33:01.160 Thank you.

00:33:02.780 Thank you, Derek Sloan, leader of the Ontario Party.

00:33:06.200 And again, I know it's funny.

00:33:07.320 I had, maybe it's not funny,

00:33:08.680 but I had a bunch of complaints from people in Alberta.

00:33:12.840 I think there was one from BC saying,

00:33:14.560 why are you focusing on Ontario politics?

00:33:16.340 And I said, you didn't complain

00:33:17.500 when I focused on Ontario politics

00:33:18.980 and all the Ontarians put up with it.

00:33:20.500 So now we have to do it. And I apologize to like PEI and New Brunswick people. I haven't done too, too much on your politics yet. But if you have an election coming up and you've got some people you want us to talk to, do let us know. That's the problem. I mean, you can't do it in like a 50 state context if we're in the US. We're like, you know, today we do Wyoming and tomorrow we do Idaho and Wednesday we do California and all that.

00:33:41.080 But what we are going to do on this show is try to talk about the conservative movement and the freedom movement, which has been, I think, very much subjected to a bit of a resurgence or some might say just an initial surgence, to coin a word, in the last couple of years.

00:33:55.560 And COVID has done that. COVID has. And I restate this again. COVID has reshaped dramatically the political fault lines in this country. And it's changed so that conservatives can't just rely, as they so often do, on pocketbook issues.

00:34:11.440 And this was one of my big criticisms of Aaron O'Toole is that he wanted to be like a 1980s, 1990s conservative leader in the 2020s, which doesn't exactly work because the complexities of the voters are a lot more varied than they were when cost of living and balanced budgets were the top issues.

00:34:31.340 Don't get me wrong. These are important issues now. We have an inflation crisis. Gas is over

00:34:36.020 two bucks a liter. I think pretty much anywhere in Eastern or Western Canada, like West Coast

00:34:41.220 Canada. And I know Alberta, you guys get some cheaper gas. So ha ha ha Ontario, right? But

00:34:46.040 ultimately what we're looking at right now is one of many crises. And you can't just be the

00:34:53.260 chief auditor or the chief bookkeeper and expect to govern with a national coalition. And that's

00:34:59.280 what conservatives do that irks me so much. They assume that you have to just retreat to economic

00:35:04.640 issues and not talk about anything else. And that's the way you're going to win. And let's

00:35:08.560 face it, voters see through it. It just doesn't work. You've got to have answers to a number of

00:35:13.160 other questions that come up, to free speech questions, to civil liberties questions, to

00:35:17.380 conscience questions, to general liberty, to hope, to national unity, to faith, not necessarily

00:35:24.080 religious faith, although sometimes. And voters want more than just, yeah, I'd like to balance

00:35:30.260 the budget and here's some tax credits. Because if that's all they wanted, the Conservatives

00:35:34.720 would have won every single election. The fact that they've lost several in a row would suggest

00:35:38.580 maybe, just maybe, that is not cutting it. So that's a message to anyone seeking provincial

00:35:43.920 or federal, or heck, even municipal leadership in this country. That'll do it. We've got to wrap

00:35:49.060 things up here. My thanks to all of you for tuning into the program. We'll have more of

00:35:53.220 The Andrew Lawton Show later in the week. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:35:58.640 For listening to The Andrew Lawton Show, support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:36:23.220 Thank you.

00:36:53.220 We'll be right back.

00:37:23.220 We'll be right back.

Juno News - May 31, 2022

Justin Trudeau claims handgun ＂freeze＂ doesn't target law-abiding gun owners

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