Juno News - Justin Trudeau is coming for your podcasts

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.320 north hello and happy monday it is according to the government of canada the day on which

00:01:31.040 the national day for truth and reconciliation is observed now i don't get the day off for this is

00:01:38.620 not a statutory holiday i realized that a lot of government bureaucrats are which is why it was all

00:01:44.060 the more noteworthy that the CRTC, the regulator of telecommunications in Canada, decided to drop

00:01:51.700 its little bombshell of regulatory expansion on the Friday before what is to the government a

00:01:58.480 long weekend. Welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True

00:02:04.400 North. The CRTC, which is the one that makes sure you get more Justin Bieber and Celine Dion in your

00:02:10.360 diets, the one that thinks you need more Little Mosque on the Prairie and less of whatever you

00:02:15.220 want to be watching, has decided to take its stab at regulating online discourse. We knew this was

00:02:22.920 coming. This is a great series of powers that were bestowed upon the CRTC by the Liberal government

00:02:28.880 under Bill C-11. It nominally takes all of the Canadian content requirements that exist for

00:02:35.920 radio and TV and dumps them onto the internet. So we get more Indigenous content on Netflix, 0.97

00:02:42.900 more French content on Netflix, more French Indigenous content on Netflix, more of that

00:02:48.120 CBC show where a gender non-binary tomato was explaining pronouns or colonialism. I think I'm 0.95

00:02:54.540 mixing up two shows. There was one of those CBC shows where we were like lectured about colonialism

00:03:00.280 by a tomato. I think the non-binary one might have been something. Maybe it was like a non-binary 1.00

00:03:04.700 host that was helping the tomato lecture us but this is like i shouldn't even have to know this

00:03:09.920 i only know this exists because cbc has decided this is important so this is what we need to see

00:03:16.060 more of once the government takes hold of your algorithm i've often joked on this that i don't

00:03:21.240 believe for a second that justin trudeau would pass a law that would give you more true north

00:03:26.940 content but we are as canadian as it comes we are rock ribbed true blue canadian content we bleed

00:03:32.840 red and white i don't think that true north is ending up on the winning side of bill c11 you

00:03:39.400 never know we will judge it when we get there but let me let you in on a little secret we don't want

00:03:44.520 to be we want to be able to compete for views the same way anyone else does in a free market

00:03:49.960 environment which the world of internet content was supposed to be so i'm telling you now the era

00:03:56.200 of the open internet has come to an end we are seeing at the very least the beginning of the

00:04:01.800 end of it with this announcement it starts with the crtc uh saying it is helping modernize that's

00:04:08.360 the term they use modernizing the broadcast system i don't know if we have a screen grab of the

00:04:13.720 website here but crtc has set its threshold for online streaming services and they have a little

00:04:20.440 checklist registration for online streaming services they say the criteria are the three

00:04:27.000 following things. If you operate in Canada, if you offer broadcasting content, by which they mean

00:04:34.500 any content, and if you earn 10 million dollars or more in annual broadcasting revenue. So those

00:04:40.260 three things must mean you have to, in the CRTC's view, register with the government. Now what are

00:04:47.040 you registering for? Oh well, it's just so that you can provide information about your activities

00:04:53.020 in Canada. If you say it with a menacing German accent, it sounds a little bit different, but

00:04:58.040 you will provide information about your activities in Canada. That is what the CRTC wants. They want

00:05:04.320 to see all of these organizations' documents. They want them to register, their address, and

00:05:10.160 eventually this is going to be the pool from which they draw their inspiration for how to slap down

00:05:15.740 regulations for non-compliance. Operating in Canada just means you are visible and accessible

00:05:22.440 to Canadians. So YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, these are not Canadian companies, but they operate in

00:05:28.580 Canada. Operating broadcasting content, offering broadcasting content, I should say, that simply

00:05:35.000 means is content available? And you earn $10 million or more in annual broadcasting revenue.

00:05:40.980 So this is the big players. Now, let me say firsthand, I wish to the high heavens for

00:05:46.140 monetary reasons that True North and the Andrew Lawton Show were going to be caught up on this.

00:05:50.600 We are not a $10 million a year organization.

00:05:53.500 Maybe in time we will be, who knows.

00:05:55.420 But I also am less convinced that this is as exculpatory as the government wants us to believe.

00:06:01.980 $10 million is really the budget of a relatively small media organization

00:06:07.900 by the standards of what these multinationals can rake in.

00:06:11.600 The Daily Wire, which I'll hold up as a useful example in a couple of moments for a number of reasons,

00:06:16.800 I believe I last saw brings in about $100 million a year.

00:06:21.680 Now, it's a streaming service that is predominantly American in nature.

00:06:25.460 Well, it has an audience of people around the world.

00:06:28.480 But Daily Wire would be caught up under this.

00:06:31.280 Now, I tried to get Ben Shapiro to weigh in on this.

00:06:34.060 I sent him a little message on Twitter.

00:06:36.300 I haven't heard back from him yet.

00:06:37.540 I'm curious how Daily Wire is going to deal with this

00:06:40.140 because it is an organization that checks all the boxes off.

00:06:43.640 It operates in Canada.

00:06:44.640 It offers broadcast content, and it earns $10 million or more in annual broadcasting revenues.

00:06:50.100 Now, maybe there's a technicality there about how their money comes in,

00:06:53.860 but Daily Wire Plus, which is a streaming service that I know is very popular,

00:06:58.100 even among a lot of True North audience members,

00:07:01.120 Daily Wire Plus would have to, under this, register with the Canadian government.

00:07:06.720 They would have to register with the Canadian government because,

00:07:10.520 and here's where it gets interesting.

00:07:11.980 I was looking at Michael Geis' commentary on this.

00:07:14.440 He's one of the preeminent internet lawyers in Canada, a very vocal critic of Bill C-11.

00:07:19.620 Michael Geist just pointed out that the CRTC has not excluded from its definition

00:07:24.980 individual content creators on self-hosted websites.

00:07:29.960 So we think of streaming services as being places that basically offer a catalog of other people's content.

00:07:35.500 Like on Spotify, I can go if I'm so inclined and listen to the latest Celine Dion tracks.

00:07:40.420 I can listen to the Andrew Lawton show.

00:07:42.340 I can listen to Joe Rogan.

00:07:43.520 I can do all of that.

00:07:45.020 And those are, I mean, that's a weird day

00:07:47.160 if you're like popping from Celine Dion

00:07:48.940 to Andrew Lawton to Joe Rogan.

00:07:50.420 I recommend you start with Joe Rogan

00:07:52.080 and do an interlude of Celine Dion

00:07:54.020 and then round it all off with the Andrew Lawton show.

00:07:56.700 But you can mix and match.

00:07:57.860 You can even take a break as I stop through the segments

00:08:00.340 to hear my heart will go on.

00:08:02.120 You can even do it perhaps in both official languages

00:08:04.560 if you'd like to.

00:08:05.480 But that's the whole point.

00:08:06.780 You as a user get to decide.

00:08:09.800 And you don't get to decide anymore

00:08:11.480 when the government is forcing these companies to manipulate their algorithms.

00:08:16.200 When I mentioned that catalog, YouTube is a vehicle by which you can access content from

00:08:20.820 around the world. On Netflix, you can watch a Canadian show, a Spanish show, a Norwegian show,

00:08:25.460 a Danish show. You get that choice. But what if you are self-hosting content?

00:08:31.860 Rebel News, for example, has a paywall. Much of its content is self-hosted. That,

00:08:36.260 based on my reading of Bill C-11, makes it a streaming service. Daily Wire Plus is a streaming

00:08:43.740 service. True North, we at this point post most of our content on Facebook and YouTube. Well,

00:08:49.940 Facebook to a lesser degree now, but this maybe will immunize us from it. But we know two things.

00:08:56.100 The government has not excluded self-hosting publishers. The government has not excluded

00:09:00.660 individuals despite their claims to the contrary. And the government has not excluded online

00:09:06.240 news services. So we have a massive expansion here. This $10 million threshold may be the

00:09:13.980 threshold the government uses right now for deciding which news outlets it wants or which

00:09:19.900 media providers or streaming services it wants to register now. But we're talking from this point on

00:09:25.720 about a matter of degrees. They could very easily lower that threshold. What if they get everyone to

00:09:31.080 register, and they only apply really restrictive measures or expectations on ones over 10 million.

00:09:38.360 So let me go back to the Daily Wire. Daily Wire is a company that could probably survive and

00:09:43.520 thrive without needing to worry about the Canadian market. Daily Wire, and I am completely speculating

00:09:48.460 here, I have no inside knowledge of what decisions they'll make, if any, is probably, as an American

00:09:54.360 focused entity, relatively unconcerned with foreign regulations. It would be easier for them

00:10:00.180 to just not operating Canada than it would be to bend over backwards to put some Indigenous 1.00

00:10:07.000 non-binary show on there. Although boy, would I love to see Ben Shapiro try that one. To put some 1.00

00:10:13.560 Indigenous non-binary show on just to comply with this weird Canadian content regulation. Maybe 1.00

00:10:19.620 they're fine. Maybe Jordan Peterson's show, which is on Daily Wire, constitutes enough Canadian 0.99

00:10:24.280 content and we can all just head for the hills and not need to worry about this. But what's

00:10:29.840 happening here is the government is, despite its claim that this is all just about bolstering

00:10:34.680 Canadian content, making values judgments. The upside of this, the upshot, I should say,

00:10:42.300 definitely not upside, the upshot of this is that if they deem an outlet, even a foreign outlet,

00:10:48.420 to be in non-compliance, there will have to be some sanctioning that takes place or some blocking

00:10:54.480 where all of a sudden a Canadian cannot access certain types of content

00:10:59.440 that the government has deemed to be unapproved.

00:11:02.960 So we are going to see unequivocally, unequivocally,

00:11:06.720 we are going to see if this bill follows to its logical conclusion

00:11:10.120 some form of censorship.

00:11:12.780 This isn't just about modernizing.

00:11:15.020 And whoever came up with the modernizing catchphrase in the CRTC

00:11:18.940 is attempting to put more lipstick on a giant pig-shaped turd than I have ever seen anyone

00:11:27.060 try to do. This is not modernizing. When was state control ever something that we called

00:11:32.900 modernity? How did state control, how did nationalizing internet content become something

00:11:38.920 that we can just spruce up and call modern? This is absolutely an attempt for the federal

00:11:44.960 government of Canada, the bureaucracy, Justin Trudeau, you name it, to seize control of what

00:11:50.560 you see and access on the internet. And there are some players like Netflix, which are large enough

00:11:56.900 that they can navigate these global regulatory environments and will, because for the most part,

00:12:01.520 it's not that big a deal. But there are a lot of other people that will not be able to. I mentioned

00:12:06.440 Daily Wire as one obvious example. What about Rumble? Rumble is a video platform that has made

00:12:11.520 a name for itself as a pro-free speech platform. Now, it's not the Wild West. Rumble will still,

00:12:17.420 in compliance with American regulations, take down copyright infringing content under the DMCA,

00:12:23.880 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Rumble will comply with basic regulations. Chris Pavlosky,

00:12:31.540 who is the head of Rumble, who is himself Canadian, has tweeted about this saying it is basically a

00:12:38.660 disaster he has expressed a view on this that i think is an incredibly reasonable one for someone

00:12:44.180 who is in the online publishing business and he writes canada is no longer part of the free world

00:12:51.220 as a canadian i've never been more embarrassed than i have been in the past few weeks elon musk

00:12:57.060 himself has also jumped in on this he has said of the crtc's threshold announcement that trudeau

00:13:03.300 is trying to crush free speech in canada calling it shameful uh twitter another great example of

00:13:09.620 this is a streaming service by a lot of metrics because it offers video content will x i should

00:13:15.860 say not twitter will x go along with these regulations will it have to so the government

00:13:21.460 could be bluffing i have a very hard time believing that they have even the capacity let alone the

00:13:26.820 interest in banning canadians from visiting x websites from watching rumble videos from

00:13:33.060 watching daily wire from doing all of this other stuff but who knows

00:13:36.500 the whole point of this the underlying point of this is that the government feels

00:13:40.420 it should control internet content everything else is a matter of degrees and everything else

00:13:46.180 is a matter of good graces and just hoping the government won't use this power on which

00:13:50.980 it's bestowed itself for evil. Well, let me just say I do not trust it in the least. Every Monday,

00:13:58.040 we like to check in with our friend Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. This is not a

00:14:03.300 simsulation. She is here in the flesh, well, virtually anyway. Chris, always good to talk to

00:14:08.580 you. Thanks for coming on today. Hey, Andrew. Thanks for covering this. You know, we cannot

00:14:12.680 understate the importance of this. And you know, the CRDC can spruce it up as much as they want.

00:14:17.440 They can talk about modernizing. They can talk about holstering Canadian content. But at its core, not even incidentally, at its core, Bill C-11 and the regulations that follow are about government manipulating what Canadians can see online and by extension, what people can publish online.

00:14:33.500 Yes. And I think sometimes because you've been in both, you know, mainstream media for a long time, alternative media, and now what this is, I think those of us who've been in the game for this long, sometimes don't realize that normal people don't realize how powerful the CRTC is.

00:14:51.340 Okay. The CRTC regulates broadcasting. So think of your mainstream networks, things like CTV or CBC in some cases, global. That includes radio as well, by the way.

00:15:05.280 And through doing that, if you run afoul of CRTC regulations, as they interpret it, keep in mind, there's always an argument.

00:15:15.320 If you run afoul of CRTC regulations and they get mad enough at you, they will pull your broadcasting license.

00:15:22.920 And the sentence that concerned me most in this release that, as you rightly point out, was put out on a Friday before a government long weekend was online services that offer podcasts must register.

00:15:39.020 So to your point, YouTube, Spotify, any of the others, Apple, any of the other online services that host a podcast like this one must now register.

00:15:51.840 Well, what does that mean? What does that look like? Do they need to give the CRTC a list of

00:15:57.900 all of the podcasts that are going to be there? And then after that, are all those podcasts

00:16:03.420 monitored to see if they run afoul of any CRTC regulations? This is where we're getting to the

00:16:10.860 crux of free expression. And this is why the Canadian Taxpayers Federation was fighting tooth

00:16:16.420 nail against c11 because if you can't express yourself freely and air ideas that might be

00:16:22.900 controversial or not in line with government narrative it's impossible to hold your government

00:16:28.180 to account you have no voice so this is why people outside of media really need to take this

00:16:35.140 seriously they gotta phone their mp just to build off of your point chris on the crtc you worked for

00:16:42.100 Sun News Network, as I know a lot of our viewers will be well familiar with. And, you know, in the

00:16:47.980 end, Sun News Network lives on in spirit through independent online media. We had Ezra Levant found

00:16:54.080 the rebel in the wake of it. We've had True North, which was founded by Candace Malcolm, who I know

00:16:58.760 was also very involved in Sun. A lot of the personalities have popped up in all of these

00:17:03.320 other fora. Sun News died in large part because of the CRTC, because the CRTC would not issue the

00:17:10.600 same treatment that Sun News wanted that everyone else in media got in Canada. That was the issue.

00:17:16.460 It wasn't that Sun wanted special treatment. It was that Sun wanted equal treatment. And just

00:17:21.180 imagine the CRTC exercising that same level of judgment and latitude on online media services,

00:17:28.060 where CBC Gem is going to get one treatment from CRTC in a way. And I don't know Rebel News's

00:17:35.120 financials, but let's say Rebel makes $10 million a year or fits the criteria, the criteria change,

00:17:40.100 whatever. Is CBC Gem going to get the same shake from the CRTC as Rebel News? Absolutely not,

00:17:46.040 because we know how CRTC has treated CBC versus Sun News. Yes, exactly. And to give you an example,

00:17:54.140 to your point, we were asking for what was called a mandatory carriage, which wouldn't have incurred

00:17:59.220 any cost to taxpayers, but it was a carriage service that the CRTC had given to all the other

00:18:05.800 news networks. It had given it to CBC News World, as it was called back in the day, CTV News Channel,

00:18:12.040 BNN, which is the business news network. All sorts of Canadian networks had been given mandatory

00:18:18.360 carriage for years on end. Sun News Network had said, hey, we literally had our desks made in

00:18:24.600 Calgary. All of our reporters are reporting from Canada. We even cover local elections in Canada.

00:18:31.640 we are Canadian, as you said before, as maple syrup. And they still said no. And we got shut

00:18:39.240 down. And you run into this problem when you're dealing with government control of broadcasting.

00:18:46.840 And I can hear some of the folks right now, especially in government, saying, oh, well,

00:18:52.280 safety, alluding to those things. I'm going to hit stop on that right now because it is already

00:18:57.880 illegal to distribute or talk about or promote horrific things like terrorism or keep the kids

00:19:06.920 out of the room images of child sex abuse okay you cannot do that those are against the criminal

00:19:13.680 code of canada for a good reason we are not talking about that that would be an issue to

00:19:19.980 take up with the minister of justice no c11 is the minister of heritage this is about

00:19:27.140 content and judgment of Canadian content. The issue here is a human being is judging what is

00:19:35.340 and is not worthy Canadian content. And this is not a right or left issue. If I could just reach

00:19:41.860 out to, as the late President Ronald Reagan used to say, our friends on the left. Imagine you're

00:19:48.220 back in the early 2000s. Imagine that the United States is gearing up to invade Iraq. Remember

00:19:55.120 then, back in Canada, a lot of the protests, Andrew, you might recall, were organized online.

00:20:01.940 They were internet chat groups and blogs. It was before the days of podcasting. And they were all

00:20:07.080 open. Everybody could read them. This was part of the open internet. And they formed massive protests

00:20:13.060 against Canada's participation in that war. They had a huge protest on Parliament Hill,

00:20:19.060 all organized online through communications. A few days later, then Prime Minister Chrétien

00:20:24.040 stood up and said, you know what? We're sitting this one out. No thanks. Imagine if the government

00:20:29.500 of the day found that to be problematic and didn't want that content promoted. What would have

00:20:36.720 happened? So if you're fine with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's judgment of everything and

00:20:42.500 you're one of those voters, okay, put your shoe on the other foot. Imagine if Pierre Polyev were

00:20:48.480 prime minister would you want his government dictating what you can and can't see online

00:20:53.520 you shouldn't i think you're right about that and i would also talk about the unintended

00:21:00.200 consequences here or maybe intended i this actually came up in a housing context recently

00:21:05.500 so italy as a country for whatever reason i i don't know has a policy of reciprocity where if

00:21:11.720 an italian citizen would be prohibited from buying property in a foreign country someone from that 0.99

00:21:17.420 country will be prohibited from buying property in Italy. And you take what's a very reasonable

00:21:22.760 approach on its face. Italy is fine letting foreign investment run rampant in the country,

00:21:27.960 but if your country is going to ban Italy, Italians from doing it, they're going to ban

00:21:31.460 Canadians. And how I learned about this was because Canada has put in restrictions on

00:21:35.740 foreign home ownership, and Italy is now looking at how to respond to that, I'm told. But just take

00:21:40.400 that and put it into a content lens. Canada believes that we need to start basically restricting

00:21:46.900 the inflow of foreign media content to Canada. That's their stated purpose. So that's not even

00:21:53.540 like a conspiratorial thing. That's their deliberate reason. If I were a country that is

00:21:59.160 wanting to export its media productions, why on earth would I ever want to import Canadian 1.00

00:22:05.560 content in this? If Canada is banning, you know, Money Heist, which is a Spanish show,

00:22:10.740 or Borgen, which is Denmark, and by banning, I mean restricting it and throttling it,

00:22:15.340 why would those countries want to import Canadian content? So we're really taking this form of

00:22:20.160 entertainment protectionism here, which Canada would never settle for if another country were

00:22:25.440 to do it to us. That's a great point. We could easily get in to that sort of tit for tat war 0.95

00:22:30.280 just on the cultural entertainment level. We're talking about, you know, sitting back and chilling

00:22:35.960 with Netflix for a little bit, as they say. When you talk about news content and information

00:22:42.080 sharing, again, things get pretty twisted pretty fast. I'll give you a perfect example. And it's

00:22:47.400 right within the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We call the carbon tax a carbon tax. We don't

00:22:53.400 call it a fee. We don't call it a price on pollution or whatever else the government calls

00:22:57.560 it. The government gets super mad at us for that. They get really ornery over it. And especially

00:23:04.240 when we point out that it's not reducing emissions and that people on average are paying out more

00:23:09.800 than they get back. That's in direct contradiction to what the government message is. They've gone

00:23:15.900 so far as to call it, I think they've called that misinformation. Don't think it's been

00:23:20.360 disinformation so far. Do a thought process. Imagine then that they decide that misinformation

00:23:26.500 is no longer allowed under CRTC content rules. Guess what? We can't have conversations about

00:23:34.500 the carbon tax anymore then like folks this is really important and if you don't care about the

00:23:40.180 carbon tax pick whatever issue is most important to you and apply that lens this is why we need

00:23:47.060 free expression in Canada we need to be able to air out our issues and we need to be able to talk

00:23:52.320 to each other so we can organize and push back on government based on our topics this is a major

00:23:58.020 major threat to that well I'm glad you bring up the misinformation aspect here Chris because I

00:24:03.620 I feel one of the most important aspects of this is that we can't look at all of the liberal

00:24:07.820 government's internet regulations in isolation. There's a whole suite of them that are being

00:24:11.900 pushed through right now. We have C-11 and C-18, which have passed. We also have

00:24:16.480 the Online Hate Act, which is going to be reintroduced at some point. And then there's

00:24:21.680 going to be another online safety component, which may or may not be part of it that I've

00:24:26.800 been talking about. And we see examples of this in the UK and EU. So we know how the Canadian

00:24:32.560 government is being informed and influenced. And as I've talked about on the show in the past,

00:24:37.520 the most dangerous thing about this is that they're lumping all of these so-called online

00:24:41.540 harms under one regulatory banner, which is just harm. And within that, they're having hate speech,

00:24:47.840 misinformation, child pornography. And if you stand up and say, ah, you know, I don't like this,

00:24:52.700 they're going to say, well, you're an apologist for child pornography. Like that's going to be

00:24:55.700 the debate when we already have laws on that. And if we need to strengthen those, let's absolutely

00:25:01.020 do it. But all of this is incredibly important. And I'm glad you brought it up, Chris, because

00:25:06.200 the government is basically trying to extend its net to capture all of these outlets. The forced

00:25:12.500 registration is not benign. It means that all of a sudden there's a designated contact person

00:25:17.200 so that when all of these other things pass, they know who they have to talk to at each company

00:25:21.140 to get content taken down. Correct. And to your point, this could affect, based on what you were

00:25:27.320 reading this could affect the standalones as you've described if you're self-hosting but also

00:25:32.620 keep in mind how much of a headache do you think these big guys these big tech companies that do

00:25:38.540 platform these podcasts how much of a headache do you think they want like you really think that

00:25:44.400 they want to put up with constant phone calls from the crtc because they're giving like a relatively

00:25:49.780 tiny canadian voice a tiny canadian podcast no they just won't bother look at what's happened

00:25:56.640 with c18 this is why when you go to facebook you can no longer post or paste a news link anymore

00:26:03.440 because before it was a fight between the government of prime minister justin trudeau

00:26:07.920 and big tech and big tech said no we are not going to pay media organizations based on links

00:26:14.880 that are posted on our sharing platforms well they called their bluff and now they no longer allow

00:26:20.400 those links to be posted because they don't want to pay that fee extrapolate this down the road

00:26:26.320 and apply this new element that's coming out here with C11. And keep in mind, to your point,

00:26:32.240 that this is not happening in isolation. So we've got all of this happening with online content,

00:26:37.840 whether it's podcasts or whatever this would be called, an online show, whatever you want to call

00:26:42.640 it, typically called alternative media. Okay, they're doing that. At the same time, the government

00:26:49.680 is funding mainstream media now. And it's not just the CBC. Yes, the CBC gets more than $1.2

00:26:56.960 billion from taxpayers every year. So it is government funded media. They're also paying

00:27:04.000 mainstream media. And the last report we saw out of our great good journalists out of Blacklock's

00:27:09.600 reporter who do excellent work and have their own independent website is that the mainstream media

00:27:15.200 is looking to double its payment coming from the government. This is why journalists mustn't be

00:27:22.420 paid by the government, because you can't hold somebody to account if you're counting on them

00:27:26.720 for your paycheck. So this is happening on one side, they're going on to government payroll,

00:27:32.080 and on the other side, in what we would call independent media, we're getting more and more

00:27:37.300 severe restrictions let's take that c18 comparison a step further if we can chris because i i agree 0.51

00:27:46.100 entirely predictable i don't blame meta for making the decision it made i blame the government for

00:27:50.580 you know forcing it and not listening to them be honest about what they were going to do the the

00:27:55.380 one silver lining for an independent media outlet like true north is that when meta says we're going

00:28:00.820 to ban links to your website we still have our website and we spend a lot of time and effort

00:28:04.900 building up our own mailing list telling our audience please go to our website directly join

00:28:09.940 our email list so we can communicate with you directly when we talk about what crtc is doing

00:28:15.460 so those companies were offering a way to promote our content the companies that the crtc is going

00:28:21.700 after under c11 are the companies that actually hold the content in some ways so they're actually

00:28:28.500 talking about websites where the podcast is hosted which means there is no direct way for

00:28:34.580 the consumer to circumvent that once they're gone they're gone and if some of these companies like

00:28:39.540 rumble is a great example rumble has an ideological commitment to this so i could understand them not

00:28:44.900 wanting to play by canada's rules and saying we are effectively blocking access to our platform

00:28:50.100 in canada and if you're a russell brand or a stephen crowder whose show lives on rumble

00:28:55.300 boom that show's gone yes exactly and then what happens next right i've noticed that they keep

00:29:02.340 pushing more and more like the goalposts keep moving farther down the field so do a little

00:29:08.100 thought experiment and this is speculation but it's based on observation of the government's

00:29:13.940 behavior and you know i don't care what color jersey they're wearing this is not a liberal

00:29:18.540 conservative thing i'm talking about the federal government that happens to be in charge right now

00:29:22.620 i'd be saying the exact same thing if this were a conservative government pulling this nonsense

00:29:26.380 so take that thought experiment an extra step what happens then if they decide to go after

00:29:32.140 self-generated, self-hosted content in a way that, hey, your server should no longer be hosting you

00:29:38.680 because your server now needs to comply as a broadcaster under the CRTC. That is not that

00:29:46.680 much of a jump away from a big podcast hosting website like Apple or YouTube.

00:29:54.240 Well, and that was the thing that happened with Parler. Now, I used Parler when it first launched

00:29:59.660 and didn't really do much with it.

00:30:01.500 But that was an outlet that ultimately was taken offline by its web host.

00:30:07.600 And, you know, at that level of web host,

00:30:09.180 I'm told there are only a handful of companies that even provide the service.

00:30:12.460 So if all of them are playing ball with these government regulations,

00:30:15.440 the government would have access to the kill switch.

00:30:18.600 Exactly.

00:30:19.300 And so, again, this is why.

00:30:21.000 So, for example, if you want lower taxes, less waste,

00:30:24.200 and more accountable government,

00:30:25.280 the way we do here at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,

00:30:27.800 we do our own podcast.

00:30:29.120 We put our podcasts out on all sorts of these platforms.

00:30:33.120 Again, this is not even a thought experiment.

00:30:35.500 It's come directly from the federal government.

00:30:37.380 If the federal government decides that calling it a carbon tax and telling people the truth,

00:30:42.920 saying on average, you're paying more than you get back from the government,

00:30:46.580 if they decide that is now misinformation and no longer allowed, what then, folks?

00:30:52.660 What then?

00:30:53.240 And if the CTF isn't your cup of tea, pick whatever issue is important to you.

00:30:59.440 If, for example, you're opposed to the gun grab, right, the seizure of lawfully owned firearms by law-abiding people, and they have their own podcast, but the government decides for whatever reason that they don't like it and it violates this certain list of rules.

00:31:15.820 Again, this is where it becomes really problematic.

00:31:18.780 and 100% if you actually violate the criminal code in Canada it doesn't matter if you're on a podcast

00:31:24.940 you're going to get in deep trouble right you're going to have to face a jury of your peers or a

00:31:29.160 judge etc you wind up in the justice system this is not we're talking about we're talking about

00:31:34.300 expression through the Canadian Heritage Ministry and through the CRTC which is again why I strongly

00:31:41.020 recommend people read uh Professor Michael Geist on this he's a brilliant academic he does deep

00:31:46.720 dives and a lot of thinking on this. He's been in the room, apparently, when they've tried to

00:31:51.800 discuss these topics, when they're drafting this legislation, so he can see where the puck is

00:31:56.080 going. And all earnestly, all honestly, contact like left-wing podcasts too. Say, folks, do you

00:32:04.160 want to live under this kind of regulation coming from the federal government? Probably not. And

00:32:09.960 link arms and defeat this stuff. Yeah. And there have been some left of center groups that have

00:32:16.360 been sounding the alarm on this and I'm very glad for, but I think we need a lot more. And

00:32:20.660 basically this is, I mean, I hate that old Niemöller quote that's like adapted to every stupid 0.92

00:32:25.260 context, but at first they came for the podcasters does seem appropriate here. Chris Sims, Alberta 0.95

00:32:30.820 director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And I don't, I don't know if we've announced it,

00:32:35.500 so maybe we can announce it now. You're going to be, are you coming to our event?

00:32:38.580 I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to.

00:32:40.540 Okay. Well, we hope to, to see you there. Either way, anyone should come to that event,

00:32:45.100 October 21st, True North Nation in Calgary.

00:32:48.120 Chris Sims, thank you so much.

00:32:49.600 Thank you.

00:32:50.500 All right, all the best to you, Chris.

00:32:52.320 And yeah, let me just say before we move on

00:32:54.620 to our next topic and guest here,

00:32:56.620 that this is an incredibly important thing.

00:32:59.240 And I think a lot of Canadian outlets

00:33:00.660 will go along with the regulations

00:33:02.240 because they have to or feel they have to.

00:33:04.600 But I'm very concerned about what non-Canadian outlets,

00:33:08.080 which let's be real, if you are global in nature,

00:33:10.700 it's not hard to make $10 million a year

00:33:13.420 in the media industry, especially if you're in the US market, the UK market, the EU. I mean,

00:33:18.820 you pick any one or two of those and that's going to be incredibly dangerous. I keep going back to

00:33:24.320 the Daily Wire because they're an example of one that really wouldn't by any reasonable measure

00:33:29.900 care about what Justin Trudeau wants them to do. But I got to say, there's a part of me that would

00:33:34.420 love to see Ben Shapiro do like the woke Justin Trudeau approved content just to like check the

00:33:40.140 box on the CRTC regulations. So let's all start a petition and get Daily Wire Plus to register with

00:33:47.520 the CRTC just for the laughs. But nevertheless, we will carry on with this as the week progresses

00:33:52.760 and try to get a bit more clarity about what this is going to look like. This is obviously the death

00:33:58.140 of free speech is incredibly important, but it is an issue that pales in comparison to some of the

00:34:03.920 very real and very mounting deaths that are taking place across the country because of MAID,

00:34:09.500 the euphemistic name for doctor-assisted suicide, which is quickly making Canada a very unlikely,

00:34:17.320 and I would say unpleasant, capital around the world, even more than many places in Europe.

00:34:22.260 And when you compare the Canadian story to that of, say, California, it is particularly egregious

00:34:27.960 that this has been something that Canadians have embraced, except maybe not. The Canadian

00:34:32.580 government seems to be putting forward an approach on this that is incredibly liberal and incredibly

00:34:37.620 open but Canadians are even generally socially progressive Canadians finding themselves a little

00:34:43.540 bit uncomfortable with the status quo certainly as we move to further this liberalization by

00:34:49.620 expanding assisted dying to those who have solely mental illness as we have stories of people whose

00:34:55.380 issues are not even medical in nature but to do with housing or inequality or poverty

00:35:01.300 this was put under the microscope in a fantastic but i i will also say chilling piece in the

00:35:07.800 national review by alexander rakin how death care pushed out health care alexander joins me on the

00:35:15.400 line now it's good to talk to you thanks so much for coming on today it's a pleasure to be on so

00:35:21.120 i mean you've written about this in the past and this is one of these issues i mean the freedom

00:35:26.480 convoy was one these internet regulations we were talking about are one but this issue is one that

00:35:31.080 I'm getting people that I know from around the world coming to me and saying, what's going on

00:35:35.700 in your country? Is that similar to reaction you've seen from National Review readers?

00:35:41.720 Oh, 100%. I mean, the earlier speakers said that if you violate the criminal code,

00:35:47.740 you'll face repercussions. There's an exemption to it. If you're a physician in Canada who provides

00:35:52.820 medical assistance in dying, you don't face any repercussions for talking or even violating the

00:36:00.640 criminal code. So one of the cases that I talk about is a patient who was, it's a group of

00:36:07.740 physicians flippantly discussing sedating a patient into MAID. This would be unthinkable

00:36:14.400 just a couple of years ago. And yet, no repercussions, no investigations, no apologies.

00:36:21.440 And this is part of the course for how MAID functions in Canada. 0.96

00:36:26.140 one of the things and you touched on this and i'm glad you did because it's often missing from the

00:36:31.980 story is that there is the letter of the law and the letter of the regulations and then there's

00:36:36.780 the actual practice on the ground and it's long been established even when maid restrictions were

00:36:42.140 fairly stringent in nature that there were situations where these rules were being bended

00:36:48.220 where capacity rules eligibility rules were and if you keep that pattern in place and you expand

00:36:54.620 the regulations it stands to reason that it will become even more permissive as time goes on

00:37:01.340 exactly every day in 2021 and i'm saying 2021 because we're still waiting on the 2022 data

00:37:08.460 but every day in 2021 more than 29 canadians died by the hands of their physicians or nurses

00:37:14.380 that's double the official suicide rate if we were talking about any other group of people

00:37:19.340 if we were talking about any other people besides people with disabilities who were being impacted

00:37:25.580 by this, this would be a national tragedy. And yet, I don't really see this being recorded in

00:37:31.260 mainstream media in Canada. No, and I'm kind of curious about this,

00:37:36.460 and I'm not second guessing your approach to publish it in an American outlet, but I'm

00:37:40.700 wondering why you think Canadian media has not been as interested to do this deep dive?

00:37:45.260 that's a good question i mean we definitely know that there is an element of bias in all of this

00:37:52.380 uh cbc uh they had a pretty good investigative report on the fifth estate uh that looked into

00:37:59.660 all the ways that made was falling short in canada and yet unlike other fifth estate investigations

00:38:05.900 it was never pushed on cbc's website it was only on cable which is pretty jarring now like they

00:38:12.060 have other reports that are pushed to their uh uh to their online newspaper and yet with made

00:38:20.700 for some reason editors decided not to do that um and you can see this throughout the whole gamut

00:38:25.740 of conversations around made one of the things that that i found interesting was situating

00:38:31.660 canada in the global context because i used to when this issue came up look to the netherlands

00:38:37.260 and switzerland i think and be like oh although like we're we're never gonna i don't know if i

00:38:41.340 would have ever said we're never going to be like that, but I certainly would have said we're far

00:38:44.920 off from that. Whereas, how would you actually, having done the research and the legwork, rank

00:38:50.000 Canada against some of those really permissive approaches to this in Europe? Oh, I mean, we

00:38:55.920 already have the largest and most permissive assisted suicide program in the world. In the

00:39:02.060 Netherlands and Belgium, they have additional safeguards where if a patient wants to apply

00:39:06.500 for euthanasia-assisted suicide. They have to at least try some acceptable level of medical

00:39:13.460 treatment first, right? This is a very commonsensical safeguard. In the Netherlands,

00:39:18.560 physicians would not push MAID onto patients. And yet we have stories of exactly that.

00:39:25.200 In the Netherlands, there were review processes. There are no such review processes in Canada.

00:39:30.080 So it's, I mean, we're already far ahead. I mean, just look at the numbers, right? Between,

00:39:34.080 you know, over a span of seven years, we're on track to have a 13 fold increase in the number

00:39:39.720 of euthanasia and the number of deaths from euthanasia. We have never seen that anywhere

00:39:44.460 in the world. Amanda Act, actually, Sean, if you could get that picture that I sent you from Amanda

00:39:52.300 Actman in the queue, I want to show that in a couple of moments here, because I'll ask you about

00:39:58.280 where you think this goes from here, because I do feel like the government, when it loosened

00:40:03.460 the restrictions and put that change in place on the mental illness aspect, that was a turning

00:40:10.320 point. And that was what moved this into a territory where a lot of people were very

00:40:17.200 uncomfortable with this. And even people that you wouldn't call social conservatives or pro-life

00:40:21.560 activists. Do you see that continuing? Or do you think like anything else, people will talk about

00:40:26.120 it for a couple of moments and then kind of forget about it and move on? I don't think people are

00:40:30.700 going to be able to forget about this or move on i mean just look at the just look at the disability 0.97

00:40:35.660 community you have over 140 over 140 disability organizations nationwide saying that the latest

00:40:43.340 expansion to made was a direct threat to their lives over 140. you have the united nations uh

00:40:50.700 several human rights experts at the united nations condemning canada for expanding made to

00:40:56.060 those who are not terminally ill and even those who are terminally ill are dying at a later stage

00:41:01.260 than in other jurisdictions so it's it's pretty fascinating to think about this right we had over

00:41:09.100 again over 140 disability organizations pretty much every single major disability organization

00:41:13.820 in canada made a firm statement against made you had another letter that came out of earlier this

00:41:21.100 year and yet the reaction from canadian media has been pretty abysmal and the reaction from the

00:41:28.220 government has been even less so i i don't think that people are going to be able to forget this

00:41:33.100 or move on um when we're talking about the massive normalization that certain lives are not worth

00:41:38.860 living amanda actman who's a pro-life uh advocate and speaker i forget where she's based now she's

00:41:46.700 moved around she shared this image that i i wanted to uh show you in the audience this is an 88 year

00:41:52.620 old woman from calgary named christine nagel who if you can make that out had tad never had a tattoo 0.75

00:41:59.260 in her life but at 88 got tattooed in her arm don't euthanize me and you can say it's a bit

00:42:05.180 cheeky and uh feisty sorry she's 81 not 88 my apologies you can say it's a bit cheeky and feisty

00:42:10.940 but you know at a certain point there must be some people that genuinely live with a sense of fear

00:42:16.700 that their life will be ended when they're no longer in a position to say, I don't want this.

00:42:24.220 Right. I mean, the impact is not just on physicians who are being censored, and we can

00:42:28.560 discuss that, or hospitals that are effectively being defunded because they're choosing health

00:42:34.040 care over deaf care. The largest impact is on patients. Patients like Rachel, who I spoke to,

00:42:41.060 and I talk about in my piece. She's someone who is someone with disabilities. She has chronic

00:42:46.660 disability. She has a chronic pain condition. She has depression. And yet when she tried to get help

00:42:52.600 for her depression by calling suicide hotlines, she was instead being advised to look up Dying

00:42:59.360 with Dignity Canada. Like think about what that means. You call it a suicide prevention hotline

00:43:04.280 and instead you're getting recommended ways for you to die from assisted suicide. And she said,

00:43:11.180 and I'll read this quote, I've been afraid, you know, over those last couple of years to go to

00:43:15.760 just my local hospital because I was afraid that if any doctor either brought up MAID

00:43:19.960 themselves or met my kind of ambivalent desire for MAID, all I needed was a push and I'll be dead

00:43:25.360 right now. What she ended up needing to do was to purchase a bus ticket for an hour, like for an

00:43:32.000 hour and a half away. She had to go all the way to Toronto to CAMAGE, which is a mental health

00:43:36.280 hospital, the largest mental health hospital in Canada that does not allow MAID on site in order

00:43:42.660 for her to attempt to get healthcare. And we know how broken the healthcare system is. So it doesn't 1.00

00:43:48.400 seem to be kind of a coincidence that you have the largest expansion of euthanasia ever seen in the

00:43:54.500 world in a voluntary euthanasia system happening at the same time that Canada's healthcare system

00:43:59.920 is disintegrating. Well, it's a very important story. And you've touched on Rachel's story and

00:44:05.800 many others in the feature you wrote for the National Review, which is in this month's issue

00:44:10.440 and also online, how death care pushed out health care.

00:44:14.460 Alexander Raikin, very good work on this,

00:44:16.680 and thank you for coming on today.

00:44:18.720 Thank you for having me on.

00:44:20.520 Thank you, and I will also point out to people,

00:44:23.340 we have coming up later this week,

00:44:25.480 I believe, debate on a private member's bill from Ed Fast,

00:44:29.460 which we'll have a story on later at tnc.news,

00:44:32.880 which is attempting to roll back at the very least

00:44:36.040 the mental illness aspect of this,

00:44:38.040 which as you know, if you are familiar with my story

00:44:40.680 as a suicide survivor is very near and dear to my heart.

00:44:43.840 And I'll perhaps talk about that a little bit more

00:44:46.160 in detail for those who haven't heard the story.

00:44:48.400 But I try not to end on such a dire note.

00:44:50.720 I should have just gotten like a picture

00:44:51.860 of like a kitten riding a unicycle or something

00:44:54.040 to play us out.

00:44:55.100 But I do have some laughs.

00:44:56.700 The world is a dark and dismal place,

00:44:58.380 but we only fight through that in joy and laughter.

00:45:01.280 So I try to find the lighter side

00:45:03.320 of even the darkest topics we talk about here,

00:45:06.200 which is to say that maybe the left

00:45:07.640 would have loved it if Maid were around when I was going through my troubles. There, I can make

00:45:11.780 a joke about my own suicide. Take that. We will wrap things up there. My thanks to you all for

00:45:17.220 tuning in. I will return in 23 hours and 15 minutes here on Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. Thank

00:45:23.800 you, God bless, and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support

00:45:29.620 the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:37.640 We'll be right back.

00:46:07.640 We'll be right back.

00:46:37.640 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 02, 2023

Justin Trudeau is coming for your podcasts

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