Juno News - April 12, 2022


Justin Trudeau claims to support the right to protest


Episode Stats

Length

49 minutes

Words per Minute

170.93796

Word Count

8,382

Sentence Count

375


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.
00:00:30.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:00:57.800 north hello and welcome to you all this is another live edition of canada's most irreverent talk show
00:01:08.880 you are tuned into the andrew lawton show here on true north it is uh i have no idea when it is i
00:01:14.300 was off for a week and i just realized that i have no idea what day it is what time it is i think it's
00:01:20.000 four o'clock eastern i think it's a tuesday and my computer is telling me it is april 12th so
00:01:25.320 I hope you are alive. Believe it or not, some people listen to me because they think I have my
00:01:30.160 stuff together. Well, hopefully I will on the things we discuss in the time we have together
00:01:35.460 today. We're going to be joined later on in the program live by conservative leadership candidate
00:01:40.100 Joseph Borgel, who is a Saskatchewan entrepreneur and business owner. We'll talk about the leadership
00:01:46.420 race with him. And I also want to talk about the never-ending story right now, which is governments
00:01:51.940 wanting to impose more restrictions and more lockdowns, even when you think you're in the
00:01:56.700 clear. This has been the story of the pandemic, is that you're never in the clear, you're never
00:02:01.320 out of the woods, you are never free from the grasp of government that wants to plunge you
00:02:06.260 back into the same fear and panic and paranoia that were ubiquitous and pervasive across the
00:02:12.020 country and the world circa March, April 2020. And to this end, I want to share a clip of Kieran
00:02:19.380 Moore. Now, if you're not in Ontario, this is not your chief medical officer of health, but for
00:02:23.620 Ontarians, this is the guy, the so-called top doctor, which by the way, was a line that no one
00:02:28.600 had heard of before 2020, which is now like the, it's now a job title in and of itself. You know,
00:02:33.560 Ontario's top doctor, Saskatchewan's top doctor, Canada's top doctor, and take from all that what
00:02:39.120 you will. But Kieran Moore says, now just to set the stage here, Ontario has been mask-free for,
00:02:46.300 I think, less than a month now.
00:02:49.380 Ontario got rid of the vaccine passports, maybe it was six weeks ago, so it hasn't even been two
00:02:54.520 full months that Ontarians have been free of masks and free of vaccine passports, notably because I
00:03:00.960 suspect Ontario's government is heading into re-election mode. That is probably why people
00:03:06.180 get a little taste of freedom, the so-called crumbs of liberty. But we haven't even had two
00:03:10.440 months of freedom yet, and this is what Kieran Moore says in his first briefing.
00:03:15.160 we will not be reinstating a broad mask mandate at this time we should all be prepared that we
00:03:23.620 may need to resume a requirement for mask wearing in indoor public spaces if a new variant of
00:03:29.760 concern emerges a threat to our health care system or potentially during the winter months
00:03:36.700 when COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses are likely to circulate again
00:03:41.660 ooh did you hear that it's well we're not doing it at this time we're not doing it right now
00:03:49.260 maybe do it later we're not doing it right now but the part of that that i want you to focus in on
00:03:54.780 is the part at the end where he says well yeah new variants might bring back the mask mandate
00:04:00.220 but also the winter months when we're dealing with covid and other respiratory illnesses
00:04:07.140 So all of a sudden, the mask mandate will become part of the annual flu season, I fear.
00:04:13.620 And anyone that says, oh, you're being a conspiracy theorist, just cut that.
00:04:16.940 I think at this point, we've determined that conspiracy theorists are just people that
00:04:20.660 happen to be right before everyone else is.
00:04:23.060 So the one thing that is going to happen here, inevitably, is that more and more of these
00:04:28.540 things that we warned were conspiracy theories, like the return of vaccine passports, like
00:04:33.140 the return of mask mandates are things that just become the norm. So it's basically the Alberta
00:04:38.960 situation where you may have recalled Alberta last year was open for summer. Canada Day in Alberta
00:04:44.060 was great. The Calgary Stampede was great. You had no masks. You had no vaccine passports, none of
00:04:49.560 that. And then come the fall, come the fall, all of a sudden Alberta is plunged into restrictions
00:04:55.460 that had previously been sworn off. So this is what it's looking like is taking place in Ontario
00:05:01.580 where you get to enjoy your summer, you get to have a mask-free, vaccine-passport-free
00:05:06.620 election season, and then once the election's over, all of a sudden the new variant of concern
00:05:11.760 comes out, and we're right back into the paranoid mode. Now, the whole point of this, and the reason
00:05:16.620 I focus on Kieran Moore here, because what he's saying is, I think, something that is probably
00:05:22.200 speaking for leaders of other provinces as well. I think this idea that a mask mandate, a return of
00:05:28.060 the mask mandate being around the corner is not limited to Ontario, but also because he's been
00:05:33.480 in the middle of his own miniature conspiracy of sorts, or controversy, I should say, not a
00:05:38.540 conspiracy, not yet anyway. Although actually, no, I shouldn't say that because people are turning
00:05:43.140 this into a conspiracy. So Kieran Moore, according to, I think it was City News in Ontario, was away
00:05:49.880 in the Dominican Republic last week. And he was there because, you know, he's been the so-called
00:05:55.880 top doctor. It's stressful. You want to kick back in the Caribbean. That's his MO. He wants to do
00:06:01.440 that. No issues. I'd rather be in the Dominican right now than in Canada, I assure you. But he
00:06:07.760 comes back. City News reports on the fact that he was in the Caribbean. And I want to read the story
00:06:13.640 for you. The first two lines. Ontario's top doctor. There it is. Top doctor. Ontario's top doctor was
00:06:20.580 on vacation in the Dominican Republic last week. City News has learned, while there are no travel
00:06:27.060 advisories to prevent Dr. Kieran Moore or anyone else from traveling to the Caribbean, his trip came
00:06:33.480 as the sixth wave gained steam in Ontario, and as calls grew for him to address Ontarians about
00:06:39.540 surging COVID-19 case counts. So this is called, I mean, the lead, he went on holiday. The second
00:06:46.240 line, there is no restriction in place, no recommendation or advisory in place that should
00:06:51.680 prevent him from going on holiday. But we're in the midst of a sixth wave, the article declared.
00:06:57.420 And yes, Theresa Tam this morning declared that we are in the midst of a sixth wave. Kieran Moore
00:07:02.060 has said we're in the midst of a sixth wave. And people want to keep that over you like the
00:07:06.780 sword of Damocles. They don't want you to feel like everything is normal again. There was a guy,
00:07:12.320 I won't share it because I just have no interest in giving him any airtime, but there was one of
00:07:17.060 these COVID paranoid, COVID zero loons that was tweeting that Kieran Moore should be strung up
00:07:23.260 on Quarantine Act charges because he has been back in Canada and isn't masking for 14 days. So they
00:07:29.060 believe that you should be wearing a mask. And I actually looked it up and it is technically true.
00:07:34.040 The Quarantine Act says even if you're vaccinated and exempt from quarantine, you have to wear a
00:07:39.140 mask in any public spaces for the first 14 days when you've returned home. So they're saying they
00:07:44.120 want him charged with violating the Quarantine Act because he dared to be in public for this
00:07:49.400 COVID briefing, this press conference without wearing a mask. But that's what people are up
00:07:54.860 against. Now, when I shared that clip on Twitter yesterday of Kieran Moore, I had some people
00:08:00.160 saying, well, he's just trying to throw a little bone to the people that don't want COVID to end,
00:08:05.180 that don't want COVID restrictions to end, people that were very optimistic, very trusting,
00:08:10.200 giving the government the benefit of the doubt, saying, no, no, no, they're committed to reopening.
00:08:14.720 They just know that some people are uncomfortable with it. So, you know, they want to just tell
00:08:18.600 them that, yeah, they're monitoring it. And I'm, at this point, going to say that we should never
00:08:24.080 give the government the benefit of the doubt about anything. Certainly not COVID related,
00:08:30.100 certainly not civil liberties related. But I think that, I mean, of all the things that I
00:08:34.020 would say with certainty that we shouldn't give the government the benefit of the doubt
00:08:37.180 is something I think we can own and stand by very much very significantly and all of these
00:08:44.220 restrictions here all of these restrictions still exist and I know I've harped on this point in the
00:08:50.420 past but it's still very much in force right now since I've been back for off for a week and back
00:08:55.680 in that people are trying to claim restrictions don't exist they're trying to claim that oh yeah
00:09:00.360 you can come into the country without quarantining. You can go into a restaurant without a mask. You
00:09:04.260 can go into a restaurant without flashing your vaccine passport. Life is back to normal.
00:09:09.760 First off, it's not back to normal if you are unvaccinated. So the idea of doing what Kieran
00:09:16.460 Moore did of coming back into the country and not having to quarantine, you can't do that if you're
00:09:21.040 unvaccinated. If you're unvaccinated, you have that restriction in place. If you are American,
00:09:25.620 You can't come into the country unvaccinated.
00:09:28.380 So in that way, you're not back to normal at all.
00:09:31.780 You can't board a plane if you are unvaccinated.
00:09:34.880 You can't board a train.
00:09:35.960 You can't go back to work, working for the federal government.
00:09:39.260 You can't do all of these things if you're unvaccinated.
00:09:42.520 So life is not back to normal for everyone.
00:09:45.760 And I'm going to keep bringing that up because there are a lot of people that have just been
00:09:49.440 completely satisfied cementing this segregation in place because they either don't see or don't care
00:09:55.660 that life is not back to normal business as usual for a segment of the population who
00:10:01.040 like them or not deserve and have rights as humans as Canadians so that's a big part of it
00:10:08.200 and also it's the the sort of Damocles analogy I mentioned earlier when government is dangling
00:10:14.120 over your head the threat of more restrictions the threat of reimposing things that from which
00:10:19.320 are now supposedly free that ain't freedom you can say well yes we're free of vaccine passports
00:10:25.960 and mask mandates but when governments are saying well you know if another variant comes along we're
00:10:29.880 going to put them back in you're really not free from them it's like oh you know you put your left
00:10:34.200 hand in your left hand out your left hand in you shake it all about like maybe we'll do restrictions
00:10:38.680 maybe not maybe we'll that's not freedom that's not life that's not normalcy and i know that
00:10:45.960 government cannot legislate its ability to legislate. I've heard people say, well,
00:10:52.440 government needs to put in a law saying there are no vaccine passports ever again. The whole point
00:10:56.860 of that is that it doesn't matter because government can just as easily pass the law
00:11:00.100 reversing that. It's unless you bake it into the constitution or unless you have a right
00:11:05.840 recognized as constitutional, which may happen in the course of some of these court challenges.
00:11:11.480 But unless you do that, government has to just basically be told by people, we will not abide by this.
00:11:19.980 Government has to be told by citizens, we will not stand for this.
00:11:24.560 And that's a big part of what the trucker convoy protest was about.
00:11:28.800 There's a reason that a lot of these convoy protesters are still protesting.
00:11:32.900 They're having these family gatherings in towns and cities across Canada.
00:11:37.140 They're doing drive-bys.
00:11:38.680 they're keeping the spirit of the convoy alive because they realize that there is a cultural
00:11:44.700 shift that still needs to take place. And I want to talk about the importance of this.
00:11:48.980 Justin Trudeau has been giving me just talk radio gold this week, just completely ignorant to his
00:11:56.080 own track record. I'm going to play two clips. The first one is the one of him. Well, I'm going to
00:12:03.420 do it in two different ways. First off, I'm going to play the clip of him in Victoria because he was
00:12:07.280 in Victoria, B.C. and a bunch of anti-vaccine mandate protesters. I don't know how many of them,
00:12:11.620 but they showed up to tell him, hey, you know, we're not fans of what your government is doing.
00:12:16.800 And a reporter asked him about it. And this is what happened.
00:12:22.260 An expectation that there'll be protesters this afternoon at City Hall. The mask mandates and
00:12:28.360 vaccine mandates are essentially over. And yet there remains this cultural divide, if you'll
00:12:33.780 you'll call it how what would you say to those protesters today uh first of all i don't know if
00:12:40.660 this is a good thing but i i can't remember a trip to victoria city hall in which there weren't
00:12:45.140 uh a few people expressing their uh concerns about about some issue or other and it's really
00:12:51.380 important that canadians continue to be able to come out and express their views express their
00:12:57.060 disagreement with uh with government uh protests should always uh be legal they should be legal in a
00:13:03.700 a safe and uh and responsible way and that's exactly what we're going to continue to encourage
00:13:08.260 so i'm uh looking forward to seeing what's on people's minds as i i uh go to meet with
00:13:12.900 the mayor and and uh and see people at city hall protests he encourages people should always be
00:13:21.700 able to say what's on their mind and protesting should always be legal okay um i feel like he's
00:13:31.100 forgetting something i'm trying to remember was there like a story a couple of months ago there
00:13:35.860 was something that oh yeah remember when he invoked the emergencies act to crack down
00:13:40.840 on a peaceful protest that was taking place steps from his office remember that remember when he had
00:13:48.400 police going in and arresting journalists, arresting protesters, using a wartime law,
00:13:55.460 the Emergencies Act, the Update of the War Measures Act, to stop peaceful protests.
00:14:02.380 And before you say, I mean, I've had people that have said to me on Twitter, well, it wasn't
00:14:05.820 peaceful. They were honking horns. It wasn't peaceful. They were blocking streets. I'm like,
00:14:09.800 well, first off, none of those things are violent. And the horn honking was kind of a red herring
00:14:14.240 because it had by and large stopped.
00:14:17.620 He does not respect the right to protest.
00:14:20.860 He only respects the right to protest
00:14:22.480 when it's not directed at him in any substantive way.
00:14:25.740 He supports the right of Indian farmers to protest.
00:14:28.560 He supports the right of radical environmentalists
00:14:31.180 to protest, even when it's not peaceful.
00:14:33.640 He supports the right of a few dozen people
00:14:36.260 outside Victoria City Hall to protest,
00:14:38.600 but he doesn't support the right to protest
00:14:40.740 when people are genuinely raising alarm bells.
00:14:44.240 in a way that's making everyone across the country and across the world notice like the
00:14:50.040 trucker convoy was doing. He doesn't support that protest. There's a reason that other people still
00:14:56.540 to this day in the United States and Europe remind Trudeau and remind Canadians and remind their own
00:15:02.300 citizens of what happens when these phony freedom lovers, these phony freedom lovers like Justin
00:15:08.500 Trudeau speak up and say, oh yes, we're all about rights. We're all about human rights, human
00:15:12.500 dignity, the right to free speech, the right to free protest, well, they behave in ways that are
00:15:18.200 antithetical to those values. And again, this is how Trudeau pontificates without looking in the
00:15:25.520 mirror. This is another clip of him warning of what he says is the real threat to free societies.
00:15:32.400 When Canadians and friends from around the world stand for Ukraine, we are standing for Ukraine,
00:15:40.780 But we are also standing for ourselves, for these values that have been undermined over
00:15:49.860 the past years with the rise of authoritarianism, with attacks on the social cohesion because
00:15:57.820 of excessive populism and over nationalism.
00:16:03.540 We have an opportunity now as a world to stand for what is right.
00:16:10.780 So now, again, everything is a learning opportunity.
00:16:14.340 Everything is a growth opportunity.
00:16:16.180 It's a lesson for someone else.
00:16:17.680 He can't just stand up to Ukraine or standing up for Ukraine.
00:16:20.740 There's a Freudian slip because it's the right thing to do.
00:16:23.260 It has to be this dramatic stand against populism and nationalism.
00:16:26.940 By the way, there's nothing as nationalistic.
00:16:30.460 There's nothing as nationalistic about, you know,
00:16:33.300 waving flags and making your profile picture a country's flag and slaying.
00:16:37.440 What is it?
00:16:37.900 My Ukrainian is terrible, but like Slava, Ukrainian,
00:16:40.040 Like that is the epitome of nationalism, of rallying behind a country. So again, there's
00:16:44.840 good nationalism and bad nationalism. If you're standing up for Ukraine, that's good nationalism.
00:16:50.620 If you're standing up for Canada and freedom, it's bad nationalism. It's good nationalism when
00:16:55.220 people do it for the reasons Trudeau likes. It's bad nationalism if, you know, Trump supporters
00:16:59.780 stand up for freedom in the United States. Then it's, oh, populism and over-nationalism and all
00:17:05.160 of that, there are degrees of it. There's, you know, under-nationalism, there's national
00:17:09.520 nationalism, there's regular old nationalism, and then there's over-nationalism. And any protest,
00:17:14.740 you have to figure out where it fits in Trudeau's hierarchy of nationalism and populism. And I would
00:17:21.600 encourage you to look at Candace Malcolm's interview, when was it, last week, I think,
00:17:25.580 with Preston Manning, because they talk about populism. And a lot of people do not, I don't
00:17:31.000 want to get, you know, insanely boring on this, but a lot of people don't understand that populism
00:17:36.040 is not a morally negative word. It's not as charged a term as people like to think. Populism
00:17:43.700 is politics for the people. And it's not inherently right-wing either. I mean, that's the great irony
00:17:49.860 is that you can be a left-wing populist. You can be a right-wing populist. You can be a populist
00:17:54.660 that defies branding on the political spectrum because the policies are rooted in the people.
00:18:01.000 And Rick Bell in the Calgary Sun had a great column about this just, I think it was a week ago or so. And Danielle Smith mentioned it in her newsletter that if you look at the history in Western Canada, and we'll be talking to a Saskatchewan would-be politician very shortly, but a lot of the populist movements were farmers movements.
00:18:20.040 They were, in many cases, politically on the left.
00:18:23.320 If you go back to the progressives of, I think, like, what, 1920 or 1919 or something like
00:18:28.840 that, the Progressive Party of Alberta, the Progressive Party of Saskatchewan, and then
00:18:33.000 the United Farmers, and even the CCF, not the Canadian Constitution Foundation, but
00:18:38.760 the, what was it, the Commonwealth Cooperation Federation, the precursor to the NDP.
00:18:44.100 It was a populist party.
00:18:46.220 the NDP has been historically a populist party not as much now it's more ideological Bernie
00:18:52.620 Sanders very much a populist socialist there's a reason that there was so much overlap between
00:18:58.360 Bernie Sanders supporters and Trump supporters because this idea the left-right divide that
00:19:04.120 we've structured our political discourse around just does not cut it solutions for people have
00:19:10.280 to be a lot more complex than well it's a left-wing policy a right-wing policy and the
00:19:16.120 vaccine mandates have been a reshaping of that. A lot of the people who have come out of the
00:19:21.620 woodwork to support the PPC in the last federal election, to support the Freedom Convoy, to some
00:19:27.600 extent people that have supported Pierre Polyev's leadership campaign, these are not people that are
00:19:32.720 traditional conservatives, certainly not capital C conservatives. These are people who are allure,
00:19:39.380 they find the idea of freedom alluring in terms that aren't conventionally
00:19:45.420 politically conservative. I mean, there's a story I've told and I'll share it again. A woman I met
00:19:51.860 in Edmonton, it would have been September when I was out West or might've even been August,
00:19:55.700 but I think it was September. And she was at a Maxime Bernier rally. I think she might've had
00:20:00.120 a PPC shirt on or someone there did. And I spoke to her and she looked like just an old school
00:20:06.640 hippie she had like a gemstone on her forehead she told me she's like i'm married to a woman my
00:20:12.480 kids are homeschooled because we teach them about new earth education and it's very spiritual and
00:20:17.600 i'm listening to this and then she she's talking about why she's voting ppc and i said have you
00:20:22.160 ever voted conservative in your life and she laughed never never in a million years because
00:20:27.040 she's not a conservative but the media would have looked at her and said oh you're far right
00:20:31.440 because she's voting for the PPC.
00:20:33.720 And the media had decided to call the PPC far-right,
00:20:36.680 just like they're deciding to call
00:20:38.020 Pierre Polyev's campaign far-right.
00:20:41.240 And this is something that we need to see
00:20:43.240 a great discussion of in Canada.
00:20:46.040 I wasn't going to talk about it in too much detail today,
00:20:48.440 but over the weekend, Jean Charest's campaign,
00:20:51.300 and we had Jean Charest on the show.
00:20:52.840 He's been very good to this program.
00:20:54.740 He appeared very early on in his campaign.
00:20:56.980 And he said that Pierre Polyev's support
00:20:59.540 for the trucker's convoy disqualifies him from being a party leader. And it wasn't just a slip
00:21:06.640 of the tongue. It was something that he owned and he put out clips on and put out statements on,
00:21:11.620 and he's continued to post on social media. Jean Charest's position is that if you are
00:21:15.540 for the trucker convoy, you do not support the rule of law and therefore you don't get to be
00:21:20.120 the chief lawmaker in Canada. That's basically his view. And listen, I don't know if it's going
00:21:26.760 to work? Is it strategy? Is it what he believes? Is it a bit of both? It's clearly deliberate. It's
00:21:31.180 clearly a position that he's prepared to own. So Jean Charest is trying to be the anti-convoy
00:21:37.040 conservative in a time which all of the other candidates, well, maybe not all, but most of the
00:21:42.220 other candidates were very convoy sympathetic. I mean, I last interviewed, with the exception of
00:21:47.720 my interview with her on the show a couple of weeks ago, I last interviewed Leslie Lewis when
00:21:51.720 I literally just saw her walking the streets of Ottawa during the convoy. Pierre Polyev was out
00:21:56.980 there, I think, giving coffee to truckers. Roman Babber, I don't know if he was ever there, but he's
00:22:01.220 certainly been speaking out on the same message of them, criticizing vaccine mandates and vaccine
00:22:07.500 passports. So all of this is to say that right now, the Conservative Party is desperately trying
00:22:14.100 to figure out which space of Canadian society it's going to occupy. And remember, Erin O'Toole did
00:22:20.720 not do this particularly well. He was not giving an answer. He was unable to give a clear answer
00:22:26.740 early on of whether he supported the truckers or not. And this was very important because clearly
00:22:32.100 in his caucus, there was an understanding that we cannot be on the sidelines as this uprising,
00:22:37.640 this movement takes hold. Because they understood either because they genuinely believed it or just
00:22:43.060 saw that the conservative base was a key part of this. They understood they couldn't be at the
00:22:47.300 side of the road while the truckers were going by. And this was why Aaron O'Toole was outflanked
00:22:52.820 by members of his own caucus. I think it was Martin Shields, who was the first one. He did
00:22:56.600 this video at the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill, and he said, I'm here. Truckers, come and
00:23:01.360 get me. We're here. We're ready to greet you. And then it was just a cascading effect, and Aaron
00:23:06.380 O'Toole just didn't have the ability to resonate with this thing that was taking place. And I know
00:23:13.500 when you see Jean Charest take aim at the convoy, you just know that this is going to become the
00:23:20.060 chief attack that a lot of the people on the left are going to try to throw at the Conservatives,
00:23:24.660 maybe not in 2025. Admittedly, maybe this won't be top of mind in three years or two years or
00:23:32.140 whenever the campaign starts. But I do know that this is something that the left now sees as a
00:23:37.780 liability. They see what Jean Charest was saying. Support for the convoy is disqualifying of being
00:23:44.700 a leader. And I don't know if that's going to cut it. And I've always been very distrustful of
00:23:51.560 polls that have been done on this because I find that polling very much lacks the nuance.
00:23:57.780 Polling lacks the nuance that is so necessary when you're talking about these things. And again,
00:24:04.380 like a lot of the polling or, you know, do you think the truckers are being disruptive to life
00:24:08.020 in Ottawa or something like that? It's like, well, yeah, when you frame things in certain ways
00:24:12.040 like that, you're going to get a skewed result. And it's why there were, I mean, there were polls,
00:24:16.460 I should have pulled them for the discussion today, but sometimes I just go in directions
00:24:20.420 that I don't know I'm going to go. But one of the things that was fascinating
00:24:24.040 is that there were polls that were saying, I think two thirds of Canadians support the truckers.
00:24:31.520 And then there were polls that said, you know, two thirds of Canadians oppose the truckers.
00:24:35.320 And it's like, well, how can you look at, I mean, are the samples just that wildly different?
00:24:40.740 Do you have the same questions that are being asked and it's just being asked to different
00:24:46.080 people? Or is it that you're just not capturing into the sentiment? You're not adequately
00:24:50.900 capturing people. And this is, I think the huge section of this discussion that's missing
00:24:57.560 is that you have these political elites,
00:25:00.140 you have these people in the media
00:25:01.520 that are just unwilling to talk to the people
00:25:05.480 in a way that they are understood.
00:25:09.220 And when I was going out and interviewing people
00:25:11.360 at the Trucker Convoy protest,
00:25:13.100 you wouldn't believe how many people were so nervous
00:25:15.100 because, you know, I go up and I had a cameraman
00:25:16.700 and I had a microphone and some people knew who I was
00:25:19.320 because they watched True North,
00:25:20.480 other people didn't, that's fine.
00:25:22.460 I was going there to say to people, why are you here?
00:25:26.920 And their immediate fear is that they're about to be attacked.
00:25:31.420 Because that was the perception.
00:25:32.880 That was the perception that people have when they see a reporter that, oh, this is someone
00:25:36.880 who just is not interested in my story.
00:25:40.400 And I do not support what we saw of people harassing and heckling reporters.
00:25:45.940 It made them look bad.
00:25:47.920 It's not kind to do.
00:25:49.160 The way you make your point is by selling your point, not by berating others.
00:25:53.040 And all it means is that, you know, people like Evan Solomon and David Aiken and Sean O'Shea,
00:25:56.800 they just have all of these footage, all of this footage of people yelling at them,
00:26:02.480 which makes the convoy look bad.
00:26:04.000 So I thought that was wrong, but I understood with all the media coverage we saw,
00:26:10.680 all the dishonest coverage about the convoy, why people were so distrustful of the media.
00:26:17.360 Because you have these people that genuinely, genuinely do not get it.
00:26:22.780 There's a story I tell when I do public speaking sometimes, depending on the topic.
00:26:27.980 Book me for your event, by the way.
00:26:29.800 And it's Selena Zito is the name of the reporter who was a lecturer at Harvard a couple of
00:26:37.680 years ago.
00:26:38.020 I don't know if she still is.
00:26:38.840 And she was also a journalist and columnist with the New York Post.
00:26:42.240 And she took all of these students in her class to a town in Massachusetts.
00:26:47.620 It was like an hour from Harvard.
00:26:49.020 I forget the name of the town, but a small town.
00:26:50.640 And they spent a weekend there.
00:26:51.720 it's called the main street project and they spoke to the you know people at the gun range they spoke
00:26:56.500 to the people that own the restaurant the people that go to the local church and afterwards they
00:27:01.500 all come back and break down and everyone says oh yeah i loved it they were all so nice they were
00:27:05.160 all so friendly i love their way of life oh grandma's pie was great i'd never shot a gun that
00:27:10.060 was interesting and then the teacher tells them okay well that town you know 90 of them or whatever
00:27:15.040 voted for Trump. And all of these urban coastal liberals who are studying journalism, studying
00:27:22.420 politics, they've never in their lives knowingly talked to a Trump supporter. And they not only
00:27:30.060 did, but enjoyed talking to them. They had a good time with them. They found them to be human.
00:27:37.000 And there's a significant part of this that we need to see. Sometimes it's coming from a place
00:27:42.280 of ignorance. Sometimes it's coming from a place of ignorance where what happens is you just again
00:27:47.540 have grown up in a little urban bubble where you have no idea that there's this other world that
00:27:52.380 exists. And other times it's coming from a place of malice. Just on the firearms thing, I've
00:27:58.060 obviously as a gun owner have tried to be an ambassador for gun owners to other people that
00:28:03.520 have never encountered it. And there are people that know a heck of a lot more about guns than I
00:28:07.760 do that have made a point of this as well. I did my firearm safety program, which you need to get
00:28:13.240 your gun license through an initiative of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, where what
00:28:17.480 they do is they bring journalists out and for free, they teach them firearm safety. And it's
00:28:23.240 great. And I thought that more and more journalists needed to do this. So there was a time when
00:28:27.940 someone I knew was going to do the same thing. And I reached out to a bunch of lefty journalists
00:28:32.640 that I knew and said, hey, you know, do you want to come out to the gun range for a day and, you
00:28:36.540 know, handled guns. And a couple of people were like, yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. I think
00:28:40.100 it would be good to do that. And there was one person who said, nope, I don't like guns. I don't
00:28:45.240 want to like guns. I don't want to touch them. I don't want anything to do with guns. I don't want
00:28:49.660 anything to do with guns. That was basically his position. And he's, of course, the most anti-gun
00:28:56.800 of the bunch. And he's the one most prone to making factual errors about guns in his reporting.
00:29:04.580 And I'm not going to say where this took place.
00:29:06.480 I'm not going to say which outlet.
00:29:08.360 But the reason I share that story is so you know that there are some people that have
00:29:13.360 just never had the opportunity to be exposed to a way of life or a type of person.
00:29:19.100 And there are others that deliberately want to close themselves off to this.
00:29:23.360 And there were reporters that were doing great work at the convoy, that were going out actually
00:29:26.860 talking to people, actually trying to understand them.
00:29:29.600 I mean, some of the most tremendous work to come out of the convoy was Rupa Subramanias' report.
00:29:36.180 Rupa was, well, he is a National Post columnist, but she also is someone who wrote for Barry Weiss's
00:29:42.640 Substack. And what Rupa did was go out there and just talk to the people. She just spoke to the
00:29:50.300 people. It was so simple. And it was at the same time so subversive as a result. Because you had
00:29:56.980 these people whose stories simply weren't being told. And that's why I've always enjoyed the
00:30:02.640 platform that we have at True North, telling people whose stories are often not told by the
00:30:07.180 mainstream media. And we'll certainly have more of that as the week goes on. I'm going to be doing
00:30:11.420 an in-focus look at, well, I hope it's in focus. It's going to be in-depth anyway on Western
00:30:17.500 alienation and the brewing fight over Jason Kenney's leadership. That's going to be coming
00:30:21.280 up later in the week. But we are continuing to cover the conservative leadership race as well.
00:30:26.980 And in that, I want to talk to one of the candidates who's not gotten a lot of coverage at all.
00:30:32.220 And in our invitations, we had said, you know, once you submit your paperwork to be a candidate, we'll have you on the show to talk about why it is that you're running.
00:30:39.600 And it's my privilege to have on Joseph Borgel, who is an entrepreneur from Saskatchewan, who joins us now.
00:30:46.340 Joseph Borgel, good to talk to you, sir. Thanks very much for coming on today.
00:30:50.960 You're welcome, Andrew. Good to meet you.
00:30:53.800 Likewise.
00:30:54.360 So you've not held elected offices, I understand, correct?
00:30:58.300 No.
00:30:59.340 Why are you running to be the next prime minister?
00:31:03.640 Because the country is headed in the wrong direction and has been for a long time now.
00:31:09.800 and I feel that I have the strength of moral character, the vision, the competency skills,
00:31:21.340 the executive leadership skills to be able to get the country back on the right track again.
00:31:28.740 We often hear this idea, and I ask all the candidates this, that we have a big tent
00:31:34.080 Conservative Party of Canada in this country that has in it the social Conservatives,
00:31:38.240 the libertarians, the populists, the foreign policy conservatives, the red Tories, the blue Tories.
00:31:43.360 Where do you put yourself in that so-called tent? What's your brand of conservatism that you'd bring
00:31:48.580 as leader of the CPC? Well, I describe myself as an honest, truth-seeking, principled,
00:31:56.400 fiscal and social conservative. That's how I would describe myself. Wherever the truth goes,
00:32:02.820 that's where I go, you know. So I think, and truth is above left, right, center, you know,
00:32:11.740 planes fly with a left wing and a right wing and a fuselage. And so that's how truth is,
00:32:18.000 you know, the principles of flight matter. And, you know, for a plane to try to just fly with
00:32:24.040 a right wing, I think it's going to be in a lot of trouble. So one of the things I noticed,
00:32:30.060 and we've been talking about the the convoy effect in canadian politics here you've been
00:32:34.140 very clear i think you were in ottawa for the convoy for part of it if memory serves and you
00:32:38.860 you've said you know no to vaccine mandates no to digital id you're certainly speaking to a lot of
00:32:43.980 these issues that have come up why is it you feel that they are not being adequately represented
00:32:49.900 by other candidates or in canadian politics in general well i've always learned you know don't
00:32:56.700 look at what a person says, look at what they do. When we were in Ottawa, we were trying to get a
00:33:05.180 hold of, we had prepared a PowerPoint presentation for the government, for the Liberal NDP or
00:33:13.260 Conservative politicians, anybody that would want to see what the kind of the demands of the truckers
00:33:21.420 were and it was all had to do around ending the mandates and the logic why the science why we were
00:33:28.460 in touch with all attempted to contact all those politicians including Pierre Polyev and none of
00:33:36.140 them returned our calls or got back to us so you know actions speak louder than words you can talk
00:33:44.780 about freedom and just keep repeating the word freedom but if you don't know how you're going
00:33:49.100 going to give Canadians their freedom back. And if you've done nothing in your past to stand up
00:33:54.000 for Canadians' freedoms, I just have a little bit of trouble with understanding how Canadians would
00:33:59.820 support people who talk the talk, but don't walk the talk. And I walk the talk. Now, you've been a
00:34:06.380 member of the Conservative Party of Canada for quite some time. About how long? 46 years.
00:34:11.800 so okay so even the the pc party originally yes and and when the split happened were you
00:34:20.380 a reform alliance supporter uh yeah i would i wanted to see what i wanted to see them come
00:34:28.440 back together around principles you know i think unless we govern our country in a principle in an
00:34:35.100 honest truthful and principled way i cannot see how we will ever get our country back on the right
00:34:40.760 track and what I see with the current crop of politicians, and I've seen that for years and
00:34:45.720 I'm learning even that about Stephen Harper. The question is, are you loyal? Are you there to serve
00:34:51.280 the Canadian people? Or are you there to serve some foreign entities, corporations? So, you know,
00:34:58.960 I would be there to serve the Canadian people, not the World Economic Forum or the UN or the
00:35:05.860 World Health Organization. As a matter of fact, I feel all of those organizations are corrupt right
00:35:11.340 now. Now, when you talk about serving, are you talking about your belief that Canadian politicians
00:35:17.580 are, you know, ideologically on side with these organizations? Or do you think they're actually
00:35:22.460 beholden to them, that these institutions, these groups are pulling the strings in a direct way
00:35:27.580 on Canadian leaders? Well, you know, it's like when it comes to some of the members of the
00:35:33.480 Conservative Party, I don't have personally any hard factual evidence that they're affiliated
00:35:39.860 with the World Economic Forum. But I would ask them in a debate, I would ask them,
00:35:45.380 you can't serve two masters. Are you going to be there to 100% committed to serving the Canadian
00:35:51.100 people? Or are you going to be serving the World Economic Forum, the UN agenda, the World Economic
00:35:58.080 form because the country has really been run over the last two years what we've dealt with with
00:36:04.400 covid the you the world economic uh the world health organization was calling a lot of the shots
00:36:11.600 in terms of uh pardon the pun the shots uh in terms of all these mandates that we dealt with
00:36:18.480 and if you'll ask me some questions about that i'll answer we would have never under my leadership
00:36:24.160 we would have never shut the country down. That was outrageous. I don't even know the words to
00:36:32.640 describe what went on. There has to be a criminal investigation, is to put it simply. I believe
00:36:37.440 there was criminality behind that. Now, I'm not one of these people that cares about other
00:36:43.420 people's vaccination status. You can disclose or not disclose. That's up to you. But just as a
00:36:48.280 matter of practicality, right now, unvaccinated people cannot board planes. And I know Maxime
00:36:52.940 Bernier has said the leader of the PPC that he can't run a national campaign right now as a
00:36:58.480 national party leader because he's not able to travel the country in the most convenient way
00:37:03.440 is that an issue that you think you'll have to contend with well it absolutely is uh you know
00:37:10.260 thank god I love to drive but I think it's an unfair aspect of it and I would I would not take
00:37:19.380 an experimental and you know just like i never put guns to my head with bullets in them i'm not
00:37:24.300 going to take an experimental injection that is known to kill and severely injure people so why
00:37:30.340 would i do something like that i'm not going to risk my health or my life uh to travel the country
00:37:35.300 i'd rather drive all night than do that so your belief is that the covid vaccine is uh basically
00:37:42.540 your belief is that people are taking their life into their own hands if they take it well i just
00:37:46.740 follow the science. I'm pro-truth in science. So I've done my research on it. And just off the
00:37:51.420 VAERS system, the VAERS and European system, over 65,000 people died within taking two weeks of
00:37:58.980 taking the injection and millions have been injured. So these aren't out of my lips. These
00:38:05.400 are the statistical facts. Most of the people that I've spoken to, and I don't want to generalize too
00:38:12.280 much here, but they've said their position is against mandates, that it should be an individual
00:38:16.240 choice, whether someone gets vaccinated or not, whether someone does any number of things that
00:38:22.120 are of medical suggestion or recommendation or advice to them. But you're taking a view that
00:38:27.840 the vaccine itself is a problem. Well, you know, I respect like the view I take is I'm all about
00:38:36.760 upholding the rule of law. And I believe that the rights to make medical decisions and all rights
00:38:44.260 are rights given to us by our creator and not by governments.
00:38:49.420 The Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins,
00:38:51.840 whereas Canada was founded upon principles
00:38:54.000 that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.
00:38:57.820 And all those rights that are in there,
00:38:59.960 those rights were given to us by our creator, not by government.
00:39:03.360 And so government has no right to take those rights away from us.
00:39:07.340 If people believe that they want to take,
00:39:10.580 if they believe the government that they want to and they want to take on that experimental gene
00:39:18.000 therapy, I go for it. I 100% respect every Canadian's freedom of choice, but don't try to
00:39:26.120 force me to make medical decisions against my free will. I consider that violations of the
00:39:32.620 Criminal Code of Canada. And under three sections, you know, extortion, assault, and consent. And I
00:39:41.180 think that that's what's happened in this country, forcing people to make decisions, medical
00:39:46.420 decisions, experimental medical decisions against their free will. I believe that's criminal.
00:39:53.260 On economics, you've also taken a view that government should not have a carbon tax. I mean,
00:39:59.660 that was one that you came right out with here. But I want to also give you an opportunity to
00:40:04.000 explain, just from a Western perspective, because I know that you are, with the exception of Mark
00:40:08.920 Dalton in BC, the only candidate, I think, from Western Canada here. How are you going to speak
00:40:14.120 up for this part of the country? Well, like if I were a premier, unlike the politicians we have
00:40:20.660 today, I would be governing for all Canadians based on a set of principles, recognizing God
00:40:26.360 is our creator, the relentless pursuit of truth on every issue that we deal with, gathering the
00:40:32.820 facts to discern the truth of the matter. And so as it relates to Western Canada, if there are
00:40:39.760 in fact injustices taking place, and I believe that they are, what the energy sector primarily
00:40:47.660 based in Western Canada has been under attack ever since Trudeau took office. And so there are
00:40:55.920 some bills there, C-69, C-48, to me, I would be, we would take a close look at them and anything
00:41:05.900 that is, any legislation that is out of alignment with our core values and principles and out of
00:41:12.380 alignment with the truth and out of alignment, core value and principle is justice and fairness.
00:41:17.980 And I think every region of the country has to be treated justly and fairly, because otherwise
00:41:23.820 we're going to have what we have now, western alienation. That was created by the Trudeau
00:41:29.620 Liberal NDP coalition. And so to me, wherever there's injustice and unfairness, and wherever
00:41:35.640 we're out of alignment with the truth in science, or we would get rid of that, any of that type of
00:41:43.080 legislation. And I am 100% against the carbon tax, because as a businessman that has been working
00:41:49.660 diligently for 40 plus years to keep jobs in Canada, all the carbon tax is doing is it's
00:41:57.020 making Canadian manufacturers, Canadian companies, Canadian oil and gas sector uncompetitive with the
00:42:03.120 rest of the world. And so what's happening, it's driving the jobs over to China. China produces
00:42:10.820 over 60% of its electricity with coal-fired power plants that are not nearly as regulated
00:42:17.160 to prevent pollution of the natural, of the atmosphere.
00:42:23.260 And so what we're doing is,
00:42:25.020 all we're doing is actually increasing pollution in China
00:42:28.680 with the carbon taxes that we have here in Canada.
00:42:31.700 It doesn't add up.
00:42:34.500 It makes no rational or logical sense,
00:42:37.400 but I wouldn't expect anything different from Justin Trudeau.
00:42:41.440 You mentioned Western alienation,
00:42:43.240 the growing Western independence movement,
00:42:45.520 I think it's something that Justin Trudeau, to his great detriment and to Canada's detriment,
00:42:50.020 has not been paying attention to.
00:42:51.400 You've got the Maverick Party federally, which didn't really achieve all that much in the
00:42:55.680 last election.
00:42:56.300 But I think provincially, through the Wild Rose Independence Party, you see a little bit
00:43:01.900 more of this sentiment growing here.
00:43:03.960 What's your view of the Western independence movement?
00:43:07.080 And how do you, assuming you do want to keep the Canadian Federation together, how do you
00:43:10.980 tell Albertans that, no, you can still trust in Canada as a country?
00:43:15.520 Well, obviously, the only way you build trust with people is by telling the truth. And we've had the exact opposite out of, you know, out of Justin Trudeau's lips, you know, how do you tell he's lying when his lips are moving? You know, there's been so much. And so that's breaking the trust of Canadians, period.
00:43:33.960 Whenever you have politicians that are not telling the truth and not there to serve the Canadian people, of course, you're going to have Western alienation.
00:43:44.940 And so I feel that it's on us, those of us who are rational, logic, honest people with integrity, with a moral compass, who work off of deductive reasoning and logic.
00:43:59.320 It's up to us to get our message out to Canadians and to convince the majority of Canadians to elect honest, truth-seeking, moral, principled politicians.
00:44:08.800 And that's what I'm standing for.
00:44:11.240 And I think that that's what's required to unify the country.
00:44:14.460 No one region of the country should be treated more fairly.
00:44:21.960 But it's beyond that, Andrew, if I may.
00:44:24.280 I believe that Justin Trudeau and the NDP Liberal Coalition,
00:44:29.180 if any of the information we're gathering is true at all,
00:44:33.140 they're there serving the World Economic Forum, the UN agenda, and the World Health Organization.
00:44:39.320 And so right there, you have a major conflict of interest.
00:44:42.380 These politicians are not there to serve the Canadian people, and unlike them, I would be there to serve the Canadian people. No foreign entity. I'm not a member of the World Economic Forum. I have zero interest in being a member of them. They would never control me, nor would the UN or the World Health Organization.
00:45:02.600 We would be making decisions in Canada with our own doctors and scientists and our own professionals doing what's right for the Canadian people, not what's right for some bunch of globalists or, you know, or foreign organizations that are unelected that are not there to serve the Canadian people.
00:45:25.340 on housekeeping the conservative party of canada has six official candidates that it's approved to
00:45:33.620 run in the race and candidates have to put forward i think three hundred thousand dollars plus
00:45:38.380 hundreds of signatures from members i understand you've submitted your your initial application but
00:45:43.120 where are you in the leadership process as a prospective candidate well the the application
00:45:49.580 went in last week and so I had no trouble going through the application. There's nothing in there
00:45:58.400 that would disqualify me. The signatures were about 65% of the way, 60 to 65% of the way on
00:46:09.680 the signatures. So I think there's a good chance we're going to get there on the signatures. If
00:46:14.880 there's a bit of a challenge it's on the fundraising uh we're probably we may be uh about
00:46:21.880 25 to 30 25 percent of the weight so to anybody that uh likes what i'm you know the message that
00:46:31.560 i'm speaking um you know i would really appreciate the donations because i'd love to stay in the race
00:46:37.500 I'd love to be on the, well, I'm in it to win it for one thing, but to get past the April 29th, Canadians that are hearing my message are going to have to open their wallets and donate to my campaign if they want to see me stay in the campaign past April 29th.
00:46:58.860 Joseph Borgel, Conservative Leadership candidate from Saskatchewan. Thanks very much for coming on today, sir.
00:47:03.980 thank you on andre andrew for having me i appreciate it very much no that we should
00:47:09.700 do andre actually i should do an entire french version of the show thanks very much sir for
00:47:13.760 for coming on good to speak to you and as i've mentioned time and time again we're going to
00:47:17.960 continue to interview all of the leadership candidates and going to have this and also
00:47:23.360 some announcements uh in the next little while about how we're going to be covering this race so
00:47:26.880 my thanks to joseph for coming on and all of you for tuning in let me know what you think about this
00:47:32.140 or anything else, we will make sure to keep you up to date on all that's happening in Canadian
00:47:37.420 politics and beyond and try to be a continued voice standing up for freedom here. But we'll
00:47:42.080 talk to you all soon. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show here
00:47:46.220 on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:48:02.140 I'll see you next time.
00:48:32.140 We'll be right back.