Juno News - Justin Trudeau extends gun buyback by 18 months (feat. Rod Giltaca)

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

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

00:00:51.780 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:00.000 Hello and welcome. This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. It's great to have

00:01:05.900 you tuned into the program. And one of the things I am always going to say on this day

00:01:10.840 to anyone, Irish or not, is happy St. Patrick's Day. Although that is not the real thing that

00:01:16.420 we're celebrating today. That's not the real thing we're commemorating. It is the two-year

00:01:20.780 anniversary of two weeks to flatten the curve. And that in and of itself, I think, is a very

00:01:26.740 odd thing right now two weeks to flatten the curve has become two years and my goodness is

00:01:33.940 it's uh on like it's just ongoing now we still have restrictions in place we still have all of

00:01:40.920 these things that are happening right now especially if you're unvaccinated we're going

00:01:44.700 to be talking about a lot of that later on but first and foremost i want to talk about the big

00:01:49.040 news on the beat that i've been covering and that is the firearms beat you might have gotten a

00:01:52.820 glimpse of our first guest there we uh we don't get to present him in a great show of surprise

00:01:57.460 right now but uh the government did something i don't want exactly want to give them credit for

00:02:03.140 doing it because they didn't do it for the right reasons but at this point i'll take the right

00:02:07.060 policy for the wrong reasons because the government has extended the amnesty that it set for guns that

00:02:14.960 it banned uh summarily in may of 2020 notably the ar-15 but a lot of other firearms as well about

00:02:20.560 1500 and then a couple of weeks later they added more to the list and all that jazz

00:02:24.880 and what the government has done because that amnesty was put in place for two years

00:02:28.980 so originally in may of 2022 so six weeks from now those guns were going to be prohibited outright

00:02:36.960 and if you were holding one you would have been a criminal and the little token the little bread

00:02:41.680 crumb that the government gave you when they announced that ban was well we'll buy them back

00:02:45.880 from you. And you may remember I did a documentary about this that was released in the summer called

00:02:51.560 Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners. Let's play the trailer of that if you don't mind.

00:03:04.040 We are closing the market for military-grade assault weapons in Canada.

00:03:09.300 it really is my identity it really is my culture and it's every bit as legitimate as anyone else's

00:03:20.380 culture we're just regular people that go out and and have this as part of our being

00:03:29.280 we are not the problem the guns are not the problem right it's the public's perception

00:03:37.700 that has become the problem.

00:03:43.660 On one hand, I'm literally, I'm going to the Olympics,

00:03:46.580 I get to represent Canada.

00:03:47.520 It's one of the greatest privileges that I ever get to do,

00:03:51.140 that I get to wear the maple leaf and represent Canada.

00:03:53.300 It is such a privilege.

00:03:55.160 And on the other hand, I'm so devastated that I have no idea

00:03:58.540 if at some point I'm going to get thrown in jail

00:04:00.740 because I've missed something.

00:04:07.700 They actually pulled up, they got out, they had their guns drawn, and it was pretty much

00:04:13.540 I opened the front door and they're like, you're under arrest and you need to come with us.

00:04:37.700 now it's no longer coming soon you can watch the whole thing over at assaulted.ca and even though

00:04:44.480 it came out in the summer it's still very much a real problem and the reason i'm playing that and

00:04:50.080 talking about that now is because part of the government's prohibition has been that a lot of

00:04:55.200 gun owners and also gun business owners have been saddled with inventory they purchased in good faith

00:05:00.460 lawfully inventory which is now in limbo they can't sell it they can't use it many of them

00:05:05.680 can't return it to the distributors or the point of sale. And this kicking the can down the road

00:05:11.000 to October 2023 solves one problem, but it prolongs another. So let's talk about this

00:05:16.240 with Rod Yiltaka, who you saw in that trailer there, the executive director of the Canadian

00:05:21.640 Coalition for Firearm Rights. Rod, good to talk to you, sir. Thanks very much for coming on today.

00:05:26.860 Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:05:29.720 So obviously you have been pushing, the CCFR has been pushing in a very costly lawsuit

00:05:35.200 for an injunction that would basically stop this in its tracks.

00:05:41.000 Now, this is not exactly what you want because the policy is still in place,

00:05:44.040 but what's your immediate reaction to the delay of it,

00:05:46.860 to the delay of that amnesty expiring?

00:05:49.880 Well, it's what a responsible government would do.

00:05:53.760 And when I say a responsible government,

00:05:55.680 you know, in relation to the current liberal government,

00:05:59.440 it's, you know, I use that term loosely.

00:06:01.540 But this is what you'd expect, right?

00:06:03.140 This amnesty was to protect law-abiding gun owners that purchased their firearms legally, and by virtue of that, as a community that is in full compliance with the law at all times, and that continuing to hold these firearms, you'd expect that they would extend that to not make us criminals while they get their act together with their buyback.

00:06:21.680 yeah and there was a story i was working on as recently as last week that this kind of sucked

00:06:27.580 the wind out of here but i'll share it on the show because i learned that a lot of businesses

00:06:31.920 that have been saddled with inventory that's now prohibited so a lot of the businesses that we

00:06:36.420 talked about in assaulted which the ccfr was a very generous supporter of the production of

00:06:41.800 that for two years now almost have had in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars of firearms

00:06:47.700 They cannot do anything with.

00:06:50.100 And what was interesting is that I got a hold of messages that the government sent out to

00:06:54.540 some of these businesses within the last month, inviting them to participate in a consultation

00:06:59.440 process.

00:07:00.320 Now, this is, again, coming about 22 months after the amnesty was put in place, and they're

00:07:06.520 only just now getting around to the idea of asking the people affected by this what it's

00:07:11.380 going to mean for them and what a buyback should look like.

00:07:13.940 So it says to me that this whole thing, which the government said was deliberate evidence-based policy, was drawn up on the back of a napkin when they had some political capital in the wake of the horrific Port-A-Peak shootings.

00:07:27.880 Well, yeah, it was, right?

00:07:29.160 It was never let a good, you know, a good crisis go to waste.

00:07:33.120 And they weren't ready.

00:07:34.380 And a gun buyback is not an easy thing to construct.

00:07:37.500 And it's not a moral thing to do.

00:07:39.960 So in the interim, if you if you have been paying attention out there is they've been trying to wag the dog with all of these television commercials, like, you know, fire related violence equal, you know, is a result of civilians owning firearms, right? Licensed individuals owning firearms. So definitely our gun ban is, you know, it's good policy. So make sure you vote for us next time. There's a there's an election. So, you know, it's it's it's a big mess. It's really just a political effort.

00:08:07.720 And I think this is the trouble implementing a buyback, the trying to wag the dog with all of this tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising, the focus groups, right?

00:08:21.540 It's a political exercise, and they're trying to save that effort, I think.

00:08:26.840 Yeah, and they've spent millions and millions of dollars without buying back.

00:08:30.620 I mean, I have issues with the word buying back because it was never the government's in the first place.

00:08:34.480 But semantics aside, they've spent millions and millions of dollars on this without so far buying back a single one of these firearms.

00:08:41.440 Yeah, well, they're still doing focus groups, right?

00:08:43.080 We had a member that is on the board of a gun club in eastern Canada, and he sent us the questionnaire, right?

00:08:52.220 The survey, you know, would you be interested in mailing through Canada Post, mailing your AR-15 in and us sending you a check?

00:09:00.520 i'm like what mailing mailing so-called assault style you know uh firearms uh in the mail system

00:09:08.760 i you know i've got i've got mail that's gotten lost i haven't gotten t4s before you know much

00:09:14.140 less my ar-15 so yeah your ar-15 mail will become the new slogan you know yeah right you can see

00:09:21.320 them running around in a panic trying to trying to get this done but the delay does not does not

00:09:27.320 bother me at all the longer it's delayed the better our our property is still in our possession

00:09:32.260 it gives time for the ccfr's lawsuit against the government that all of this is against the

00:09:37.740 against the charter of rights and freedoms and also against the law administratively that gives

00:09:41.900 us time to get that done you know i don't mind the delay at all yeah and also i mean we're talking

00:09:47.160 about a minority parliament here october 2023 could bring us into election territory as well

00:09:52.840 and that I think is an important part of this timing.

00:09:57.000 I'm leery to you advance this argument

00:09:59.020 because I don't want to make it seem

00:10:00.780 like I at all agree with this

00:10:02.200 but just to use the government's messaging for a moment.

00:10:04.800 They believe as Bill Blair has said

00:10:06.460 and as Justin Trudeau has said

00:10:08.220 and as Bill Blair's replacement Marco Mendicino has said

00:10:10.880 that these guns are killing machines.

00:10:12.900 That's all they are.

00:10:13.700 They're weapons used for murder. 1.00

00:10:15.200 They're meant to kill all these people 0.93

00:10:16.620 and they need to be taken off the streets 1.00

00:10:19.000 and taken out of law-abiding gun owners hands 0.53

00:10:20.880 because there's no lawful reason

00:10:22.640 to have one of these if that is what you think letting someone keep it for an extra 18 months

00:10:28.460 longer would suggest that maybe there isn't this firearms emergency that involves guns owned by the

00:10:33.660 law abiding well well of course right i mean we've canadians have had these guns for up to 60 years

00:10:39.920 right we've had these guns for a long time they're legitimate you legitimately used for hunting and

00:10:44.840 sports shooting contrary to what the government says and they have been for decades and decades

00:10:49.880 yeah I mean this was completely unnecessary and you know like I said you know the big thing to

00:10:55.360 look for from the government in their behavior right now is them running around trying to

00:11:00.160 legitimize what they did because there's there's really not a lot there. So let's talk a little

00:11:05.840 bit about the lawsuit here now you were not successful in getting the immediate injunction

00:11:10.200 at that very early stage but as you noted then and I think we talked about it on the show the

00:11:14.500 case is still ongoing so where is it now and what's the main argument because you said there's

00:11:19.740 a charter argument there and also an administrative law argument so when when when we're talking about

00:11:26.080 the charter argument itself it's it gets really gets really detailed so i'll just use plain

00:11:31.420 language we're asking the court to consider the canadian charter of rights and freedoms

00:11:36.120 um and an answer can the government take whatever it wants from anybody anytime for any reason

00:11:44.740 um without explanation or justification and if and if just if justification is there like

00:11:50.060 what does that really mean like it doesn't have to be based on facts or based on statistics or

00:11:55.240 what that is so because right now the government in our opinion illegally banned those guns so the

00:12:01.860 administrative side is that in the criminal code in section 117 it says you cannot ban a gun that

00:12:08.580 is reasonably used for hunting or sporting sport shooting right and of course these guns not only

00:12:13.400 are reasonable for that they've been used that way for 60 years right like it's not even that

00:12:17.980 we're making that claim it's like it's it's like history right there so that's the administrative

00:12:22.480 part and the charter challenge really is about property rights can you own anything and if you

00:12:27.900 remember elizabeth may proudly stood up in the in the in the house of commons and crowed to everybody

00:12:34.560 how mistaken we are with our name you know firearm rights having firearm rights in in uh in our name

00:12:40.980 that you don't have firearm rights and can in fact you have no rights to own anything at all

00:12:46.620 no rights to property she she she wears that like a badge of honor so we're trying to say

00:12:51.480 at least you know federal court give us an answer do you have the right to own anything

00:12:58.240 at all yes or no because if the answer is no we just want to know that once and for all if that

00:13:04.060 if that answer is no and we at least we know what kind of country we live in and we know what needs

00:13:09.100 to be fixed. Yeah, I think that's an important point. And I've always appreciated how you do

00:13:14.220 approach it from the property rights point of view, because there are a lot of people that don't get

00:13:19.120 guns and they may never get guns. They may never be interested in them, but they understand owning

00:13:23.340 something. They understand having something. And then the government saying, this is no longer

00:13:27.980 yours. This is no longer something you get to enjoy. And it bothers me immensely that more

00:13:35.440 people don't see that, the more people don't understand the precedent here of what's happening

00:13:39.240 if you do license government to do one thing. I mean, not to compare things that are not related,

00:13:44.040 but the Emergencies Act is a great example of this. You can hate the convoy, you can hate what

00:13:48.340 they stand for, but that doesn't mean you have to set aside your discomfort about the longer term

00:13:54.280 implications of this. And the same is true of government confiscation of your property. I mean,

00:14:00.420 compensation or not, if they are forcing you to sell it to them, it's confiscation.

00:14:05.440 Well, it is. Right. And this should be, you know, it's very hard because it has to do with guns. And you're right. Not the majority of Canadians don't understand guns because they don't own them. Right. But this this has everything to do with just fundamental, like very fundamental level freedoms. Like, can you own anything? Yes or no.

00:14:24.120 and and you know it's it's issues like this don't come to the forefront until the government does

00:14:30.540 something you know so kind of egregious that at least a large group of people stand up and be

00:14:35.880 like well that's not consistent with your promise that I can own things and that I can live my life

00:14:41.500 as long as I'm not bothering anybody I have liberty right I can associate with people that

00:14:46.300 I want to it's not up to you who I'm friends with like these are fundamental things and people don't

00:14:52.060 really think about those things until those things are being infringed upon so in this case property

00:14:56.460 rights have been infringed upon we have a very clear-cut case and i'm curious you know i don't

00:15:02.020 i don't blow smoke in any direction um so i'm not telling people you know we're going to take the 0.98

00:15:06.160 government to court we're going to kick their butt or whatever because it's in the charter

00:15:08.880 i want to know how fair and how honest you know the canadian system is both the judicial system 0.98

00:15:16.080 and whether the charter actually means anything like that's what this is really about because

00:15:20.780 like I say, win or lose, I just want the answer because that's really important to know.

00:15:25.680 Yeah. And the problem is you're not dealing with a government that is conveying this issue

00:15:30.120 honestly at all. And it's not just about the odd person you encounter that has never handled a gun,

00:15:35.520 so they don't know them. It's not a world they know. It's about people that are being willfully

00:15:39.280 obtuse. I want to play a clip here and get your response to it of Marco Mendicino. So

00:15:43.800 he's the public safety minister now. He's replaced Bill Blair, who I think was your

00:15:49.060 prime nemesis in government for quite some time. But I want you and the folks listening in to hear

00:15:54.100 how he describes this. We've also introduced stronger and responsible gun controls, including

00:16:02.840 a ban on assault-style weapons like AR-15s, which guns have no other purpose than to kill.

00:16:10.520 Now, this Order in Council, which was issued in May of 2020, has already seen more than 1,500 different firearms being prohibited from being sold in Canada.

00:16:27.260 And in the near future, we will be launching a mandatory buyback program to now get these guns out of our communities and off our streets.

00:16:36.740 today we're here to talk about how we're going to build safer communities

00:16:43.460 again that link between guns that are lawfully owned and the gun crime that is plaguing the

00:16:51.980 streets of toronto and surrey and other communities in canada how do you go up against

00:16:57.680 that when this is just said so easily so readily despite how devoid of a fact basis it is

00:17:04.000 Well, it's incredibly difficult, right? And especially when it comes from legacy mainstream media and it comes from the government, those two entities are very, well, the most powerful forces in the country. So it's very difficult. I mean, the key for us, as far as our organization is, we just, we have to, we have to communicate directly with everyday Canadians. And somehow, somehow we have to educate them that Marco Mendicino was talking about firearms that were prohibited back in 1977, right?

00:17:33.520 There are no assault weapons in civilian hands other than a handful of people like movie armors and manufacturers that make guns for the military or whatever.

00:17:42.140 Right. Normal people do not have assault weapons and they will use those terms interchangeably.

00:17:48.020 But yeah, I mean, to answer your question, it's it's incredibly difficult.

00:17:52.040 Right. Because we're just everyday gun owners saying like, well, we responsibly own these guns.

00:17:56.340 We haven't done anything wrong. We've done nothing but comply to every ridiculous rule because a lot of the rules are ridiculous. 0.95

00:18:01.900 and we've complied without, you know, without exception. Now, you know, and our effort really

00:18:08.960 is just to be left alone. So it is a really difficult thing, but we do a lot of work in

00:18:13.780 public relations. We do, you know, television shows and explainer videos and we take out ads

00:18:18.700 and billboards and, and marches and, you know, tours and all kinds of different things, but

00:18:23.500 it's, it's a real challenge. Yeah. And one of the things that I found very striking when

00:18:29.420 assaulted came out because I was worried, is this just going to go into that echo chamber that a lot

00:18:33.660 of pro firearms content does? And certainly the firearms community was a big booster of it. And

00:18:38.480 I'm grateful for that. But I was very touched by the number of emails I got specifically on the

00:18:43.620 episodes focusing on business owners, because people understood in the midst of the pandemic,

00:18:49.440 the idea of businesses that were facing these just very unfair hurdles from the government,

00:18:55.000 things that made no sense beyond bureaucracy, beyond fair dealing, but actually things that

00:19:00.640 just came across as punitive. And I felt that people were receptive to that when they heard

00:19:05.720 the stories. But again, you can only have so many of those conversations. You can only have so many

00:19:10.880 one-on-one discussions with people to get those stories in front of them. And then all it takes

00:19:15.540 is one shooting. The government gets up there and just starts spouting off blatant misinformation,

00:19:20.940 and to which which they've still never accounted for i mean i go back to the government

00:19:25.300 linking canada's gun laws to the guns used in in portepic even though we learned after they

00:19:30.740 issued this prohibition that none of them were legally owned none of them were legally acquired

00:19:36.180 well yeah they were all illegally acquired i'm i'm i'm a participant was standing in the public

00:19:43.140 inquiry the the mass casualty uh commission right so i know exactly what went on there i have access

00:19:48.940 to all of the evidence and none of the guns were legally acquired um all but one were obtained

00:19:54.860 through smuggling through the you know from the united states this guy was a very well-known

00:19:59.580 criminal and smuggler and abuser and known as a nut in the community and i should just say that

00:20:05.820 that's where all gun owners are completely happy to devote resources and money which is to stop

00:20:11.500 smuggling well well yeah it's just called basic problem solving right but this is it's not problem

00:20:17.740 solving it's it's a it's a political operation and you know the police let this guy circulate

00:20:23.120 i mean they may not they may they may have been helpless to stop him maybe there wasn't the right

00:20:27.060 laws or whatever to charge him with offenses um and then on top of that he disguised himself as

00:20:32.300 an rcmp officer so everyone had their guard down and the police left him alone as he went through

00:20:37.440 his rampage because they thought he was one it's so point being is this to to to lay gun you know

00:20:44.600 further gun regulation or gun bans on this particular situation is it's absurd it's lunacy

00:20:52.480 and and unfortunately i can't blame everyday canadians for not understanding that because

00:20:57.520 they're busy and they don't want to deal with and it's very negative too but it's just the

00:21:02.460 injustice is is is terrible and we're doing everything that we can to stop it very well said

00:21:08.240 just before i let you go rod i know it's early days but curious if you have any early thoughts

00:21:12.040 from a firearms advocate's perspective on the conservative leadership race?

00:21:17.400 I don't.

00:21:18.880 We try to stay out of the process of the leadership election as best we can.

00:21:26.480 But I don't know all the candidates good enough to provide an opinion.

00:21:31.140 But we're just hoping that somebody like the candidate doesn't have to give us everything

00:21:35.720 we ever wanted.

00:21:36.600 the candidate has to actually walk a line between you know leaving people like us alone

00:21:43.160 and being able to win a general election and i think a lot of gun owners they get so angry at

00:21:48.440 their own situation they forget that we need someone that has a chance to win in order to get

00:21:52.220 anything so to where to find that middle line is is difficult but uh but we'll see in the days to

00:21:57.840 come as we get to know those candidates better rod giltaka canadian coalition for firearm rights

00:22:03.080 Thank you so much as always, Rod.

00:22:04.700 Thank you, Andrew.

00:22:06.600 Always great to talk to Rod Giltaka.

00:22:08.840 And again, if you haven't seen it,

00:22:09.880 go back assaulted.ca, four episodes.

00:22:12.380 I think none of them is longer than 17, 18 minutes

00:22:15.180 and a couple are shorter.

00:22:16.140 So you can do the whole thing

00:22:17.000 in a little over an hour if you'd like.

00:22:18.780 And not only would I love for you to do that,

00:22:20.740 but I'd love for you to,

00:22:21.620 if you haven't encountered firearms in your life,

00:22:23.460 to take something away from that.

00:22:25.160 Because again, there are about 2 million

00:22:27.000 licensed gun owners in Canada, if memory serves.

00:22:29.720 And that is a minority.

00:22:31.540 That is a minority of a minority.

00:22:33.480 So there are obviously going to be in the country,

00:22:36.260 34 million people that do not have a firearms license.

00:22:39.780 And of those, sure, some of them may be in families

00:22:41.900 where someone does,

00:22:42.860 some of them may have handled a firearm.

00:22:44.840 But for the most part, people in Canada,

00:22:47.560 especially in cities, in many cases,

00:22:50.000 don't even know that you can own guns in this country.

00:22:53.300 They just have a life that is completely detached from that.

00:22:56.380 And I will say, I have never met someone

00:22:58.900 who had shot a gun that didn't understand why people liked them. So I think that if you're

00:23:03.600 ever having a debate with someone, if you can somehow get a gun in their hands and get them

00:23:06.660 to a range, you might not win them over on everything, but you'll certainly win them over

00:23:10.500 on something. So my thanks again to Rod. We're going to be covering that. And like I said,

00:23:14.780 it was only in the last month that the government started inviting some businesses to consult in

00:23:19.880 this program that they said was all ready to go almost two years ago. And again, I'm not

00:23:25.640 I'm not dissatisfied with the delay. I'd rather they scrap the whole thing. But if they are going

00:23:30.240 to keep it going, yeah, keep kicking the can down the road. Keep extending it another year and a

00:23:34.300 half, two years. Extend it five years. Take until 2046 if you want, Justin Trudeau. I don't care.

00:23:39.760 But at this point, they are now extending this so the amnesty, if you have an AR-15, a Mini-14,

00:23:46.360 if you've got one of those 1,500 guns that was prohibited, you still can't do anything with it.

00:23:51.360 you still can't use it. If you're a business owner, you still can't sell it. But at least you

00:23:55.600 don't have to surrender it to the government, at least not until October 2023. So we'll cover that

00:24:02.540 as it develops there. This is a fun story. I was going to do a whole Ukraine segment.

00:24:08.340 But oftentimes, if you haven't seen, people comment on the books all the time. And if you've

00:24:12.280 noticed, I got through a big stack of them here. But what a lot of these books are is for something

00:24:16.700 that I've been working on recently, just kind of a bit of a leisure activity because I have no life

00:24:21.480 and nothing is fun in the world anymore. COVID has ruined it all. They're books about Canadian

00:24:26.620 foreign policy. So I'm actually quite fascinated by the history of Canadian foreign policy

00:24:31.100 and by some of the ways that Canadian foreign ministers in the past have characterized what

00:24:37.080 Canada is and where it is that Canada's influence, if such a thing exists, comes from. And this goes

00:24:43.180 right back to Pearsonian democracy in the 50s with Pearson, Lester B. Pearson, his pursuit of

00:24:49.300 peacekeeping, and later on, the record he tried to establish of Canada as a middle power.

00:24:55.460 So this is the buzzword, that Canada is a middle power. And this is where you get it from a lot of

00:25:00.220 liberals, that Canada can be punchy and scrappy, and we can be the one that really packs a punch,

00:25:05.080 even if we're not one of these great powers, like, well, like China and the US at this point.

00:25:10.320 But then you get Melanie Jolie that distills this down to a caricature, but she doesn't quite know why it's a caricature.

00:25:17.860 She's not in on the joke as she describes what Canada can contribute to the world stage.

00:25:23.180 Take a look.

00:25:25.780 Canada has played its role to support one of its best friends, which is Ukraine, because of our people-to-people ties, because of our common history, but because it was the right thing to do.

00:25:38.380 and we'll continue to work with our G7 countries partners because we all know that Canada is not

00:25:47.720 a nuclear power. It is not a military power. We're a middle-sized power and what we're good at is

00:25:54.000 convening and making sure that diplomacy is happening and meanwhile convincing other countries

00:26:01.120 to do more. Canada is good at convening. So Canada, Canada is the Hilton ballroom of world

00:26:11.260 powers. Canada, I'm actually good. That would be a good title. That would be a good title for a

00:26:15.600 blog post. The Hilton, the Hilton ballroom of, of world powers. Well, that's what we do. We have a

00:26:20.040 table. That's all we can do. We've got a table that people can meet at. We can't say anything

00:26:23.700 at the table. No one wants to come to our table, but by golly, we have a table at which the adults

00:26:29.720 in the room can sit. Does anything from that strike you as Canada being an adult in the room?

00:26:36.740 And it's not just Melanie Jolie. I mean, this is the entire Trudopian foreign policy here.

00:26:41.240 This is a guy that was going around trying to court votes from tin pot dictators so Canada could get

00:26:45.840 a seat on the UN Security Council and lost. He lost, plain and simple, I think, to Norway and

00:26:51.200 Ireland, if memory serves. Stephen Harper tried to get a UN Security Council seat. Now, he didn't

00:26:56.600 make it a significant a plank of his career to do it it was relatively early on but even then

00:27:03.060 Canada did not get it Canada didn't get it no one around the world is looking at Canada and seeing

00:27:08.580 a serious player on the world stage and one thing that Harper did quite well in his foreign policy

00:27:15.440 approach I found was that he didn't generally try to punch above our weight he he tried to see

00:27:21.280 places where canada could make an impact and he did it but he focused significantly on arctic

00:27:26.800 sovereignty he focused significantly on relationships with the united states even across

00:27:31.120 partisan lines by all accounts harper and obama had a very close relationship counterterrorism

00:27:36.880 again a lot of the connections between canadian and american intelligence agencies went back to

00:27:41.920 there so all of this is to say that being someone that has a realistic approach to canadian foreign

00:27:49.360 policy doesn't mean you think that Canada should just do nothing, that it's a total joke.

00:27:54.320 It's about not looking like you're trying to be more than you are and do more than you are.

00:28:00.440 And one of my favorite stories about Justin Trudeau was the one from the G7 in Brussels. Oh,

00:28:05.660 I don't know, whenever it was less than a year ago. And it was that Trudeau's advisors were like

00:28:09.880 going around talking to all these people at the G7, trying to pump Justin Trudeau up as having

00:28:14.940 his reputation as being the dean of the g7 and they thought that since angela merkel the chancellor

00:28:20.540 of germany was retiring justin trudeau was the longest serving of the g7 leader so they thought

00:28:25.900 that that would put him at the head of the table step aside emmanuel macross step aside boris

00:28:32.300 johnson step aside oh jen stoltenberg of nato step aside ursula von der leyen of the european

00:28:38.220 commission no justin trudeau was the dean of the g7 because he had been kicking around since 2015

00:28:43.660 And there was a great line in the story, which was in Bloomberg, about how Justin Trudeau was

00:28:48.960 trying to insert Canada as a negotiator in the UK's dispute with the EU over trade in Northern

00:28:56.060 Ireland and Ireland. And it was like Canada kept offering to help and no one wanted to take Canada

00:29:02.280 up on the offer. So Melanie Jolie says, oh, Canada's great at convening. Well, a load of good

00:29:07.160 that is if no one trusts you and no one wants to sit at your table. I wrote in my column last week

00:29:13.000 that Justin Trudeau's trip to Europe, where he decided he was going to go to Latvia and Germany

00:29:20.040 and the UK, accomplished nothing. I said it was a win for Canadians in the sense that he didn't

00:29:26.080 manage to dress up in lederhosen, a beef eater outfit or Latvian folk dress. So in that sense,

00:29:31.480 it was costume free. So Canada emerged somewhat more victorious than most other trips he goes on.

00:29:37.340 But the reason I point that trip out is because at a certain point, if you're going to go to Europe

00:29:41.700 during a war in Europe,

00:29:43.440 it should be not because you just want to be seen,

00:29:46.400 but because you have something to contribute.

00:29:49.200 And I have yet to see one single thing

00:29:51.520 that Canada contributed to the war effort in any case.

00:29:55.320 I mean, whether it's to Latvia or to NATO or to Ukraine.

00:29:59.300 And I'm not saying that Canada should be doing X, Y, and Z.

00:30:01.760 I'm saying that if Justin Trudeau was going to go there

00:30:03.920 and have this multi-stop, multi-country photo op tour,

00:30:08.980 it would be nice to know he was doing something there.

00:30:11.700 and again he took a significant amount of his members of cabinet and staff there this was not

00:30:18.340 just one simple jaunt over by Trudeau or the foreign minister he was there Chrystia Freeland

00:30:23.300 was there who's the finance minister who's still I think cosplaying as the foreign minister

00:30:27.700 Melanie Jolie who's the actual foreign minister ostensibly Harjit Sajjan I don't know if he was

00:30:32.760 on this trip but he took a parallel trip of some kind so you have some pretty high-ranking Trudeau

00:30:37.820 officials that are going over there. And at the end of it, it's, well, Canada is committed to

00:30:42.400 helping take in refugees. Well, Canada was doing that anyway. So part of being a leader means 1.00

00:30:49.080 understanding your country's own limitations. And I don't think being, to use the term I used a few

00:30:54.820 moments ago, being the Hilton ballroom of world powers is all that much to brag about if no one

00:31:00.460 wants to sit at your table in the first place. But oh yeah, we're good at convening. Just before we

00:31:06.720 wrap things up here let's talk a little bit about the two-year anniversary of two weeks to flatten

00:31:12.680 the curve I was going to play a clip of it and then I was just so depressed I'm like no no I

00:31:16.560 don't want to go back in time there because so much has not changed a lot has changed and a lot

00:31:22.440 has not changed if I can speak out of both sides of my mouth here because at the time everyone was

00:31:27.020 on the same team government didn't need to impose a sweeping lockdown for a lot of people because

00:31:32.500 they were prepared to hashtag do the right thing, to hashtag stay home, save lives, to

00:31:37.400 clang and bang the pots and pans for healthcare workers. You had Italian opera singers that were

00:31:42.480 singing from their balconies as they were totally locked in their homes. And in Canada, you had

00:31:48.020 people that were seeing the carnage coming out of China, horror stories coming out of Italy, 0.53

00:31:53.620 Iran, and saying, you know, we need to just do the right thing. Look out for our neighbors. We

00:31:57.400 don't know what we're dealing with. And a lot of people did step up. A lot of people did rise up.

00:32:01.560 I was never fear mongering about it, but I took it very seriously. I was very concerned because again, we were trusting the experts. And the one thing that I would say has come out of the last two years is that the veil has dropped on a lot of public health leadership roles and public health affiliated politicians like the health minister, things we thought were agencies that conferred a level of authority that we've seen go down the road of being very political.

00:32:32.140 If someone had told you more than two years ago

00:32:34.500 the government had assembled a science table

00:32:36.300 that was going to give recommendations and advice on science,

00:32:39.320 I presume you'd probably be pretty receptive to whatever they spit out.

00:32:43.640 But as we've seen in the last two years,

00:32:46.040 science tables have made projections that are wildly wrong.

00:32:49.080 They've made recommendations to solve one problem

00:32:51.520 that create a host of others.

00:32:53.380 And they have overseen policy that has absolutely devastated

00:32:57.120 mental health, businesses, family well-being, child development. They've created all of these

00:33:04.940 problems. And anyone who criticized these, anyone who said early on, and even to this point,

00:33:10.020 you know, I'm not sure that was the right approach. It's called a crackpot. It's called

00:33:13.200 a science denier. The last two years is not yet over. This is not just something we amusingly

00:33:21.740 look back on like, oh yeah, remember that time for two weeks we all stayed in our homes and

00:33:25.160 we all ordered uber eats and we all sang from our balconies and then we went back that wasn't it

00:33:29.640 because two weeks turned into two weeks longer and then two weeks longer turned into well once

00:33:36.440 the case count goes down and then it turned into well once there's a vaccine and then well once

00:33:41.380 there's a 60 vaccination rate to once there's 90 vaccination rate to once everyone is vaccinated

00:33:47.640 to then where we are now once everyone is triple vaxxed and the case counts go down and maybe we'll

00:33:52.980 still keep the masks around just for the heck of it. I saw a video two days ago from British Airways

00:33:59.040 in which they were ripping off their mask. The flight attendant was ripping them off and saying

00:34:03.260 that it was now going to be voluntary unless it's a requirement of a place that you are flying to

00:34:08.700 or from. And they said, please respect anyone who chooses to wear one voluntarily, but they won't

00:34:14.280 force it. And I said to that, I mean, a lot of people said, well, Air Canada, where are you on

00:34:18.460 this. Don't look at Air Canada and WestJet yet. This is so far in Transport Canada's hands.

00:34:23.860 Justin Trudeau is talking often about wanting to get back to normal. He's saying about how

00:34:28.480 important it is for us to move past COVID and get back to normal, but he's only wanting to extend

00:34:33.720 this to a certain class of citizens, to the vaccinated. If you're unvaccinated, you can go

00:34:39.620 to eat at a restaurant in most provinces in this country now, but you still can't get on a plane.

00:34:43.660 You can get into the country without a COVID test as of April 1st, only if you're vaccinated.

00:34:50.920 If you're unvaccinated, society has not fully reopened to you.

00:34:54.720 Some people who lost their jobs for being unvaccinated may never get those jobs back.

00:34:59.620 Students who lost a year of education in universities and colleges because of their vaccination status may never be allowed to go back.

00:35:08.120 Schools, for example, mainly in Ontario where I've seen it, but elsewhere as well, that are in

00:35:12.860 provinces that are lifting mask mandates are still keeping those mask mandates in place.

00:35:18.220 Now, I've said on the show in the past, I support the right for private businesses to make their

00:35:22.140 own decisions. But there are two caveats there. Number one, universities, colleges, public sector

00:35:27.860 employers, these are not private businesses. These are arms of the government, tentacles

00:35:32.400 of the government. The other caveat is that we can still support someone's right to make a

00:35:37.980 decision while rejecting the culture around it. And I support the British Airways position. You

00:35:43.920 know what? Wear your mask. Don't wear your mask. That's on you. But we're not going to force

00:35:47.220 everyone else on the plane to stay masked just to keep you happy. Life has risk. I woke up this

00:35:54.960 morning with a bit of a stuffy nose. I'm like, have I got the Omicron variant? Have I got the

00:35:59.820 Roe variant? Is this the, you know, the thigh delta oopsalon variant? Who knows what it is.

00:36:05.760 I don't even know if we got to Omega yet, but I woke up and then I was fine.

00:36:09.840 Did I pick up something?

00:36:11.300 Do I have like a really, really, really minor strain of something?

00:36:14.280 I don't know.

00:36:15.640 But at a certain point, you can't live in fear just because someone tells you to.

00:36:22.020 And that's where we are now.

00:36:23.920 We are not seeing bodies piling up in the streets.

00:36:26.700 We are not seeing hospitals overrun.

00:36:29.220 We are not seeing a society that is unable to function.

00:36:32.500 Quite the contrary.

00:36:33.220 We're seeing a society in which people are fed up.

00:36:35.200 people are getting back to their lives. You had in Ottawa for three weeks, a lot of people who

00:36:40.360 were vaccinated and a lot of people who are unvaccinated all hanging out to support the

00:36:44.340 convoy. You know, I've looked at the numbers, not a single uptick in Ottawa's hospitalizations

00:36:49.380 for COVID. So maybe it's time to say that we can move on with our lives, but don't fall into this

00:36:56.400 trap of thinking that just because life has moved on for you as a vaccinated person, that everyone

00:37:01.900 else is able to move on as well. And I make no secret about it, I'm vaccinated, but I do this

00:37:07.460 because I supported myself making a choice just as I support anyone else making a choice whichever

00:37:13.020 way they choose to go. And all of these politicians, especially at the federal level,

00:37:19.200 that are talking about how things are getting back to normal, they're only extending normalcy

00:37:23.180 to a certain class, which in and of itself is not normal. Segregating society like that is not

00:37:29.220 normal. Imposing mask mandates is not normal. Absolutely not. So let's stop pretending that it

00:37:38.840 is. And I have to make a point about this because I'm so fed up with people when it comes to masks

00:37:45.160 saying, well, it's no big deal. It's just a little thing over your face. I saw someone on Twitter.

00:37:50.980 Maybe it's not the most original thought, but I liked it nonetheless. They say there'd be

00:37:54.380 something minimally obtrusive about forcing everyone to wear a clown nose in their day-to-day

00:38:00.220 life, but that still is not something we would accept as a reasonable requirement to put on

00:38:05.060 society. Intrusions are intrusions. No matter how big or small, minor or major, intrusions are

00:38:13.700 intrusions. And remaking, reshaping the way society functions is a big deal. Saying that

00:38:21.620 you can no longer see someone's face saying that you can no longer eat your pretzels on a plane

00:38:26.540 without like getting yelled at by the flight attendant because the mask was down and you

00:38:30.240 had finished chewing that one particular pretzel that is not a normal way to live and never let

00:38:35.620 anyone tell you that it is we've got to end things there we will be back tomorrow with a very special

00:38:42.480 episode as we continue talking to conservative party of canada leadership candidates we'll have

00:38:47.040 Roman Babber, who's the most recent entrant into the race. We'll have a full chat with him, I think

00:38:51.660 about 30 minutes or so. And we also have extended an invitation to Patrick Brown and will soon to

00:38:57.240 Scott Asheson, who's expected to announce his bid for the Conservative leadership on Sunday or Monday

00:39:03.340 if memory serves. So we're inviting anyone in the Conservative leadership race to come on the show.

00:39:08.260 Let me know what you think about all those. Do comment. And again, if you can support this,

00:39:11.860 this work that we're doing to cover the Conservative leadership race or anything else

00:39:16.100 that we're doing, please head on over to donate.tnc.news. Andrew Lawton for True North with

00:39:21.600 Canada's most irreverent talk show. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you. God bless and good day to

00:39:26.220 you all. For listening to The Andrew Lawton Show, support the program by donating to True North

00:39:32.820 at www.tnc.news.

00:39:46.100 We'll be right back.

00:40:16.100 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 17, 2022

Justin Trudeau extends gun buyback by 18 months (feat. Rod Giltaca)

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