Juno News - LAWTON： Gerald Butts is back. No one should be surprised.

00:00:00.000 Good afternoon, Canada. Welcome to another True North report. My name is Andrew Lawton, fellow with True North, here for another one of our weekly updates, broadcasting live on Facebook, or if you're seeing it after the fact, we are here from the live stream's digital grave, where you get to partake in all of the glory and splendor of the cast, just without being able to ask questions live.

00:00:21.860 But you can still watch it, so whether you're tuning in live or tuning in after the fact, it's good to have you. Thanks very much for watching in the heat of the summer, which certainly I think has been worse depending on where you are. I think we had a minus, or not a minus, minus 40 degree is like what it is in probably Alberta right now, but we had a plus 40 degree day, I think a little over a week ago, but we're back to like a good, you know, nice chilly and breezy plus 34 today, so that's all good.

00:00:49.620 Regardless, thanks very much everyone for tuning in. I want to expand today on a video that I did yesterday, a little two and a half minute video, which was really just an immediate reaction to the news that Gerald Butts was back.

00:01:06.020 And I think that the first question that I asked, and I think that a lot of Canadians asked, when we saw the news that Gerald Butts was taking on a senior role with the Liberals, was did he even leave in the first place?

00:01:18.620 Because no one really bought it, and I certainly talked about it, and I think a pre-recorded video, or even one of these live videos, that I didn't believe he was going anywhere, and I believe, and I don't want to claim that I was totally the oracle.

00:01:32.180 But I'm pretty confident that I even said at one point, he'll be back in time for the campaign, and I recall thinking it, I think I said it, I hope I said it, because if not, I'll sound like really ridiculous, just pretending that I've predicted something with perfect accuracy.

00:01:49.160 It doesn't happen often, but it does happen from time to time, because I was confident that he'd be back in time for the election, because Justin Trudeau does not even know how to tie his shoes without Gerald Butts, so I certainly don't think he knows how to win an election without Gerald Butts.

00:02:04.920 I think the question was always going to be how visible was Butts going to be in what he was doing, not whether he'd be doing something in the first place.

00:02:14.620 And this brings us to what's been happening in the Prime Minister's office going back to July.

00:02:21.480 It was in May. Thank you very much. Maggie's my new favorite person today. Maggie says, you did say that, I heard it. Okay, good.

00:02:28.220 So Maggie is proof that I said at some point four months ago or five months ago that Butts will be back in time for the election.

00:02:35.820 So I'm not crazy. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Maggie. I'm even going to give you a like as my show of gratitude, which took very little effort,

00:02:44.220 but it's all I can do right now. So thank you. So there we go. It's Maggie Dick approved that I did predict this months ago.

00:02:52.140 But again, it also wasn't that ridiculous or contrived a prediction, because as I mentioned, Trudeau does not know how to do anything without Gerald Butts there.

00:03:02.180 So what I assumed would happen is that he'd become a little bit more of a behind the scenes guy, more than he was already.

00:03:11.000 What he has done instead is decided to embrace with gusto his new role.

00:03:17.000 And the Liberals, again, were very proud of his return. The Liberals were very proud of his return.

00:03:22.540 It was a party official saying that he's going to play a role. And they weren't hiding it. They were not at all secretive of it.

00:03:32.240 They were saying that he's going to be a great member of the team. And it shouldn't be a surprise.

00:03:37.840 You know, Lauren Gunter had a great column in The Sun where he said, you know, he asked the same question I did.

00:03:44.260 Number one, did you really think he was gone? And number two, are you really all that surprised he's back?

00:03:50.040 And Gunter arrives at his conclusion through very similar means to my own, which is that Trudeau and Butts have been friends for years.

00:03:56.960 He managed Trudeau's leadership campaign. He managed the Liberal campaign. He managed the election.

00:04:02.660 And then he served in the Prime Minister's office.

00:04:05.100 So the connections between the two are not at all surprising to people.

00:04:13.300 Where I come in here with my frustration is the brazenness of the Liberals in bringing him back after he, quite honestly, resigned in disgrace.

00:04:25.140 He resigned amid scandal.

00:04:27.200 Gerald Butts was one of the two people who was really fingered out by Jody Wilson-Raybould

00:04:33.980 as being responsible for trying to pressure Jody Wilson-Raybould into taking a particular decision to settle with SNC-Lavalin

00:04:44.660 as part of his ongoing prosecution.

00:04:47.820 So Jody Wilson-Raybould says, yeah, I was definitely pressured.

00:04:50.980 It came from Butts and it came from Michael Wernick.

00:04:55.700 Now, as far as Michael Wernick is concerned, he was the one that she had audio of.

00:05:01.780 That audio tape of their phone call where she's saying, listen, I'm not comfortable with any of this.

00:05:07.380 And he's saying, well, you know, the Prime Minister's in a get-it-done mood, so get it done.

00:05:12.900 She didn't have that with Gerald Butts, but she did have contemporaneous notes and records of meeting with Butts, of talking to him.

00:05:19.540 Butts tried to say, oh, no, no, no, this never happened.

00:05:22.180 But, you know, ultimately this whole thing came about because Trudeau had his two henchmen, Gerald Butts and Michael Wernick,

00:05:32.420 try to put pressure on the supposedly independent attorney general.

00:05:36.480 And that was how the SNC-Lavalin scandal started in the first place.

00:05:40.540 What Butts' return indicates is that this operates with impunity,

00:05:45.240 that no one has faced any penalty or punishment for this.

00:05:50.380 Gerald Butts, even when he resigned in February, said he was doing so without any acknowledgement or admission of wrongdoing.

00:05:56.800 Just that, well, you know, I didn't do anything wrong, but, you know, maybe, just maybe if I'm around,

00:06:03.660 it'll be a distraction and I'm leaving.

00:06:05.660 But no, no, no, I didn't do anything, but I'm leaving anyway, which was less believable.

00:06:10.060 I mean, if you didn't do anything, just stick around.

00:06:12.280 And Michael Wernick, same thing.

00:06:13.540 He said, oh, no, no, the political opposition has made it so that I can't effectively do my job.

00:06:18.980 So he blamed his critics instead of looking inwardly at his own conduct and his own actions.

00:06:24.500 And Wernick and Butts were very similar in that sense, whereas they said, oh, no, no, no, everyone else is the problem.

00:06:30.700 Everyone who criticizes us of doing things is the problem.

00:06:34.000 Everyone who blames us for our complicity in this is the problem.

00:06:36.980 And the prime minister's office, the Privy Council office, all of the people in these offices squeaky clean.

00:06:43.840 And then it became the he said, she said, Jody Wilson-Raybould versus Justin Trudeau.

00:06:50.180 But Justin Trudeau does not weather this without Gerald Butts.

00:06:55.200 He doesn't weather this without Gerald Butts making the calculation that I've got something has to give now.

00:07:00.740 Because in January and February, there was sustained and relentless interest in this case.

00:07:05.680 In July, there isn't.

00:07:08.480 It is not surprising that Butts decided to return or announce the return during the summer months.

00:07:15.360 No one's paying attention to news in the summer.

00:07:17.660 And more importantly, the election is still just shy of three months away, which means Butts' return is literally a one-day news story right now that everyone's going to forget by the time Civic Holiday on Monday rolls around.

00:07:28.840 People won't care. People won't know.

00:07:30.920 And by the time the election rolls around, no one will even care.

00:07:34.040 It'll be Jerry who? And that's the way he wants it.

00:07:37.960 So what Butts has accomplished here is not difficult, but it is very shrewd.

00:07:42.940 Because he's made it so that there's going to be a little blip of criticism and then everyone moves on.

00:07:47.460 And the reason everyone moves on is because everyone has gotten over the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

00:07:54.220 And this was the thesis of the video that I put out on this yesterday.

00:07:58.060 And I had a little bit of negative pushback from people on Twitter that were accusing me of saying that...

00:08:06.000 Well, they were basically accusing me of making it so that the SNC-Lavalin thing should be old news.

00:08:11.760 And I'm saying, no, no, no, I don't want it to be old news. I'm saying that it is.

00:08:15.820 I'm taking an analytical stand and saying that this is, in fact, old.

00:08:21.640 Canadians have moved on. Canadians don't care. 0.60

00:08:25.160 And what was so interesting about this case is that it was the biggest scandal in Canadian politics in quite some time.

00:08:31.920 Certainly the biggest scandal of Justin Trudeau's premiership.

00:08:35.560 And I'd say it eclipses and outpaces the Bahamas' vacations, any broken policy promises.

00:08:42.340 This was the big scandal that Justin Trudeau had to weather.

00:08:46.140 Bigger than any scandal that Stephen Harper did.

00:08:48.180 I'd say bigger than ad scam, going back to Jacques Chetien.

00:08:52.320 So this story should have been enough to disrupt the political discussion, maybe even disrupt an election, had it happened during the election.

00:09:04.800 But it didn't.

00:09:06.440 It happened 10 months out, 9 months out.

00:09:11.000 And in politics, that is a lifetime.

00:09:12.960 And I said in a column that I'm writing on the subject here, which will be out pretty soon, that three months away for the election might as well be three years away for a lot of voters because people fundamentally aren't paying attention.

00:09:27.660 So I'm not glad.

00:09:29.120 I'm not glad that SNC-Lavalin is old news.

00:09:31.600 But as a Canadian who cares about it, who cares about politics, who pays attention to this stuff, I have to accept that it is.

00:09:39.100 And the Liberals know that it is.

00:09:40.820 The Liberals know that people have moved on from it, which is how they can justify bringing back Gerald Butts, who resigned in the midst of the SNC-Lavalin scandal the first time around.

00:09:50.440 I want to read a snippet here, if I may, of a National Post piece written by Brian Platt.

00:09:57.240 And the headline, Liberals Gamble, that bringing Gerald Butts back for election campaign is worth reviving SNC-Lavalin scandal.

00:10:06.020 And he says that, you know, Gerald Butts is back, the lab scamsters are reunited and nothing has changed.

00:10:12.900 That's a quote from Pierre Poilievre, who added,

00:10:16.020 If Trudeau and Butts are returned to power, we will see more SNC-Lavalin scams.

00:10:20.800 The modus operandi that we saw in this scandal will continue, and it will worsen.

00:10:26.300 For the Liberals, bringing back Butts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's longtime friend, confidant, and indispensable advisor for the election campaign,

00:10:34.400 is a gamble that his political skills are worth the cost of giving the opposition parties the gift of resurrecting the scandal.

00:10:42.300 But I think the devil is in the details here, in that this article quotes Pierre Poilievre doing a press conference about this.

00:10:49.980 How many Canadians do you think know or care that Pierre Poilievre has condemned this?

00:10:55.960 Jagmeet Singh has condemned it, Andrew Scheer has condemned it, Pierre Poilievre have.

00:11:00.300 I mean, the condemnations are irrelevant to most Canadians,

00:11:04.040 and they are footnotes to a story that itself seems to be a bit of a footnote in Canadian politics right now.

00:11:12.300 And when you want to understand how Lab Scam, which is a great name for it, quite frankly,

00:11:18.680 but how the SNC-Lavalin scandal became a footnote,

00:11:23.320 you'd have to understand a bit about how people in Canada that are outside of the bubble,

00:11:29.020 that are outside of, you know, the group of us, which is a small but dedicated group,

00:11:33.520 that just live for this stuff and immerse ourselves in this.

00:11:36.240 But you have to, I guess, ask the question of how on earth something so big could go by the wayside.

00:11:44.880 And the answer to that is simply that people don't live and breathe politics.

00:11:50.580 They don't.

00:11:51.800 I mean, I'm convinced that if something happens in week one of an election campaign that's damning to a party,

00:11:56.980 that people will have forgotten it by week three, let alone by election day.

00:12:00.860 And even something huge like this, even something huge like this,

00:12:06.360 it may take a little bit longer for people to get over, but people will in fact get over it.

00:12:10.420 And I don't, I'm not happy that my prediction ended up being correct.

00:12:16.140 I'm not happy that my prediction ended up being something that came to pass.

00:12:22.560 I'm not happy that Canadians forget about this thing and it was just old news.

00:12:26.800 But this is the reality.

00:12:28.300 And, you know, there was a story in my own city.

00:12:30.000 I'm from London, Ontario.

00:12:31.980 And I was hosting a radio show in London, a daily show.

00:12:35.140 And the mayor of London at the time was having an affair with his deputy mayor.

00:12:41.640 And this is like the political incest world coming to roost,

00:12:45.900 where the mayor and the deputy mayor both cheat on their respective spouses. 0.63

00:12:49.980 And this was a big story.

00:12:51.440 It is.

00:12:51.840 I mean, there was an abuse of, a breach of trust, an abuse of power.

00:12:54.660 There was an integrity commissioner investigation, all of this.

00:12:57.480 People were calling for the mayor and the deputy mayor to resign.

00:13:00.700 People were outraged.

00:13:02.920 And then a few weeks later, nothing.

00:13:06.940 And probably about four weeks after the story, or maybe even two months, but it was in that range,

00:13:16.160 CBC London ended up publishing a story that was a follow-up to it.

00:13:21.740 That was saying, you know, it seems like, you know, despite the mayor claiming that, you know,

00:13:25.880 he and his wife are working through it, they've actually called it splits.

00:13:29.140 That was the story.

00:13:30.340 And the backlash that people put on CBC for that was insane.

00:13:36.140 It was insane.

00:13:37.220 And the reason was, the reason was that people had moved on.

00:13:43.000 It ceased to be outrageous and shocking to people.

00:13:46.580 So any update at that point just became gratuitous.

00:13:51.120 And that was that.

00:13:52.880 And people actually not just moved on from the story, but pushed back against anyone that kept it alive.

00:13:59.700 So if we were to, as a conservative-minded media organization, and I use a small C, not a capital C there,

00:14:09.520 start talking about SNC-Lavalin, I don't think people would be all that outraged.

00:14:13.220 But if CBC or the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star were to keep going,

00:14:18.400 their readers, their viewers would likely push back at them and say,

00:14:22.920 come on, we've heard that it's old news now, we've got to move on for the good of the country.

00:14:26.660 And this is how people are.

00:14:27.800 This is how politics works.

00:14:29.220 And I'm not saying this to be condescending or patronizing.

00:14:31.960 I'm saying it to tell you what we are up against.

00:14:36.120 I think we do need to keep it alive.

00:14:38.200 I do think that even if you sound like a broken record bringing it up, you've got to bring it up.

00:14:42.760 But we also have to be wary of the idea that most Canadians just don't care anymore,

00:14:49.760 or at least don't care enough that it's going to sway their decision one way or another.

00:14:53.540 It's not going to allow Andrew Scheer or Maxine Bernier or Jagmeet Singh to coast to victory just because of the scandal.

00:15:01.620 You've got to do a lot more than that.

00:15:04.360 And the Liberals are aware of this.

00:15:06.540 And them bringing back Gerald Butts to run the campaign or to take a senior role in the campaign

00:15:11.680 proves they're aware of this because it proves that there is, in fact,

00:15:17.580 a recognition, a recognition, if not an endorsement, of the idea that no one cares.

00:15:27.480 But I think the Liberals want to think that they've dealt with this.

00:15:30.800 And that's where the liberal arrogance bothers me here.

00:15:33.640 I think the Liberals would love nothing more than to say and probably are thinking,

00:15:37.360 oh, yeah, yeah, we apologize.

00:15:38.760 It was a little blip.

00:15:39.420 We've moved on.

00:15:40.020 And Canadians cannot give them the courtesy or the gift of having that. 0.98

00:15:47.640 Canadians cannot let them get away with that.

00:15:51.680 Maggie writes, again, and Jody is still gagged, is she not?

00:15:54.840 Yeah.

00:15:55.320 I mean, Trudeau let her speak her truth about a few key issues.

00:15:59.760 But she said there's a lot more that she wanted to say and couldn't because of things that happen outside of the pertinent window.

00:16:05.860 And there were people that were saying, well, you know, she could probably say more anyway.

00:16:11.780 Whether that's true or not, she was under the perception or at least relaying the perception to Canadians that she had more to say.

00:16:18.160 Trudeau could have, with a stroke of a pen, let that happen and didn't,

00:16:21.200 which suggests that Trudeau may be afraid of what was going to be said.

00:16:27.500 Rhonda writes, did S&C not just get awarded a contract to fix water problems in northern Ontario?

00:16:32.880 I don't know about a specific contract, but I do know that it is business as usual for them.

00:16:38.020 And this is why I argue that they long ago should have been banned from bidding on federal contracts,

00:16:44.340 given how many issues they've had with corruption, criminal charges, allegations of criminality.

00:16:52.860 You know, the idea that they are still operating as a private company, fine.

00:16:59.780 The idea that they're operating as a private company that's getting millions of dollars or at the very least hundreds of thousands of dollars on certain government contracts is unconscionable.

00:17:09.200 And no one, except for Charlie Angus of the NDP, was prepared to raise that discussion.

00:17:14.860 So I thank you for bringing that up, Rhonda.

00:17:16.640 It doesn't surprise me.

00:17:19.000 Let's see.

00:17:19.880 Darren writes, you're right, Andrew. 0.99

00:17:21.180 Canadians by and large seem politically ignorant and apathetic. 0.95

00:17:23.980 I fear the socialist fabric of our society has lulled people to sleep. 0.98

00:17:28.820 Well, whenever there's a vacuum of knowledge, liberalism and socialism tend to thrive.

00:17:34.420 They thrive when there's no thought.

00:17:37.560 I mean, it sounds like I'm being mean, but, you know, it's the reality that any mentality that is based in groupthink,

00:17:44.400 and I'm talking about the major progressivism, any mentality based in groupthink will thrive when you can't have any individual thought or knowledge.

00:17:53.360 And this is why free speech is such an important issue.

00:17:57.200 But the SNC-Lavalin case is relevant and pertinent to that dialogue because no one wants to be the one that risks standing alone to say,

00:18:10.240 hang on, I won't stand for this.

00:18:13.860 Because remember, let's go back to the Bahamas vacation.

00:18:17.100 I say Bahamas vacation, you know what I'm talking about.

00:18:19.720 Trudeau vacationing on the billionaire Aga Khan's private island, taking the private air travel,

00:18:26.180 a different vacation that his wife took that Trudeau wasn't on.

00:18:29.140 I mean, this is, again, the stuff that was the subject of an ethics commissioner investigation

00:18:35.480 and an ethics commissioner's finding of guilt.

00:18:38.840 An ethics commissioner's finding that Trudeau became the first prime minister in the history of the confederated Canada

00:18:45.560 to violate federal law while in office.

00:18:49.280 He paid a fine that was a slap on the wrist.

00:18:51.260 I think it was like $500.

00:18:53.140 And this is something that no one talks about now.

00:18:57.180 No one talks about it.

00:18:58.260 And if Andrew Scheer were to run up there and film an ad that was airing on television, an ad saying,

00:19:04.720 oh my goodness, can you believe that he vacationed on the private island of the Aga Khan and broke the ethics, people would shrug.

00:19:11.540 People would shrug.

00:19:12.420 So as much as we may want to blame political leaders for the issues we're seeing in Canadian political discourse,

00:19:19.680 you have to blame, as Darren writes, voter apathy as well.

00:19:24.040 And I don't blame people, by the way.

00:19:26.540 You know, if you're a middle class suburbanite or someone living in rural Canada,

00:19:30.800 whether you live in downtown Vancouver or you live in rural Quebec or you live on an acreage in Alberta,

00:19:38.280 whatever the case may be, you've got a life to live.

00:19:40.640 You've got jobs.

00:19:41.820 You've got commitments.

00:19:42.720 You've got family things.

00:19:43.760 I mean, most people do not have the benefit that I do of being paid to consume the news,

00:19:49.440 talk about the news, write about the news, analyze the news, break the news.

00:19:52.680 Most people can't do that.

00:19:54.740 And I get that.

00:19:55.700 And some people really are interested in it.

00:19:58.100 They're news hounds.

00:19:58.680 Most people, it's barely enough to get them to check the weather.

00:20:03.000 That's hard enough every day.

00:20:05.040 They're not going to get immersed in reading, you know, multiple page reports on, you know,

00:20:10.160 someone in Ottawa doing this.

00:20:12.240 And that's the reality.

00:20:13.340 So how do we fight back against apathy?

00:20:15.760 I think the big question is how do we make people understand how these things are relevant to them?

00:20:23.020 And this has been something that I've tried to do in the past when writing about government debt.

00:20:27.320 When you say that in the case of Ontario, which just had a recent election,

00:20:31.640 that, you know, the Ontario government had a debt level that cleared $300 billion,

00:20:37.700 that's such an abstract number to people.

00:20:39.520 How do they put into terms they can understand what a $300 billion debt is and why they should care about it?

00:20:45.440 And if you say that the province has had, you know, $290 billion debt and $280 billion and all of that,

00:20:52.680 and people think, all right, so what?

00:20:53.860 Clearly it works.

00:20:54.940 Well, you have to tell them the impact it has on them.

00:20:57.340 And in the case of debt, the more you spend on debt maintenance,

00:21:01.080 which I think in Ontario's case was the third largest or is the third largest line item in the budget

00:21:06.060 between health care and education,

00:21:08.160 you tell people every dollar you spend on debt is a dollar that's not going towards hospitals,

00:21:12.940 schools, roads, social services, tax breaks, whatever the case may be.

00:21:17.320 And I was a candidate in that election.

00:21:19.860 That message does translate to people.

00:21:22.120 People do understand that.

00:21:23.560 But you have to tell them how it's relevant to them.

00:21:28.200 You have to tell them how it matters to them and what the impact is on their lives.

00:21:33.520 SNC-Lavalin, same sort of thing.

00:21:35.640 Everyone beats up on the 1%.

00:21:37.740 Trudeau beats up on the 1% and the far left doesn't like, you know,

00:21:41.540 big corporations and multi-billionaires.

00:21:43.780 Well, here we have SNC-Lavalin, which is a giant multi-billion dollar company.

00:21:48.220 That is the 1%. 0.85

00:21:49.520 I mean, SNC-Lavalin is the 1% and instead of condemning the 1% as Trudeau loves doing

00:21:55.960 when talking about tax policy, he decides to get into bed with them.

00:22:00.900 With a company that has broken the law and had many of its officers break the law on numerous

00:22:06.080 occasions, whether it's bribing officials in Libya or whether it's illegally funneling money

00:22:12.780 to mostly liberals here in Canada, internationally, the only thing consistent about this is that

00:22:18.220 internationally, they tend to break the law and get away with it.

00:22:23.560 And the tragic reality is that that lawlessness has not been met with condemnation by the federal

00:22:29.960 government.

00:22:30.920 Stephen Harper has to shoulder a bit of this as well.

00:22:33.080 I mean, the illegality of this company has been going on for quite a length of time and

00:22:38.040 they were getting government contracts under the liberals, the conservatives, the liberals

00:22:41.640 again.

00:22:42.660 So I do think that the conservatives could have done a lot more to nip this in the bud.

00:22:48.120 At the same time, I also realized that it didn't reach a boiling point.

00:22:51.840 There was no catalyst to look into SNC-Lavalin during the Harper years like there has been in

00:22:57.820 the last little while and it would be, it would go a long way if Justin Trudeau were to stand

00:23:03.200 up and say, you know what, this company does not have the right to bid on federal contracts

00:23:07.820 anymore.

00:23:08.600 Instead, it was taking lobbying meetings.

00:23:11.360 The government was putting representatives of the Ministry of Finance and other government

00:23:15.440 departments and the PMO in the same room with SNC and doing nothing to stop this company's

00:23:22.860 pervasive influence in the federal government.

00:23:25.580 The only person who put a stop to it is Jody Wilson-Raybould and what does she get kicked

00:23:31.140 out of cabinet?

00:23:32.120 That's her reward for standing up for due process in the rule of law, getting kicked out of cabinet 1.00

00:23:36.860 and when she tried to sound the alarm about this and did, ultimately getting kicked out

00:23:41.560 of the Liberal Caucus.

00:23:44.240 Now, Jody Wilson-Raybould is running as an independent, as is Jane Philpott.

00:23:50.420 I think it's going to be very fascinating to see what happens in those ridings.

00:23:54.600 You know, I'm not optimistic about Jane Philpott because she's in a battleground riding. 0.98

00:23:59.300 I think Markham Unionville is the name.

00:24:01.260 Jody Wilson-Raybould is in BC where really weird things tend to happen in politics.

00:24:06.960 BC politics is just a kind of a unique animal in and of itself.

00:24:11.020 They have elected two Green Party MPs and it's entirely possible she may, on name recognition

00:24:18.500 and a good ground game, win and be re-elected as an independent MP, which would be quite amazing

00:24:24.300 because she's not accountable to the Liberals anymore.

00:24:28.220 She's accountable only to her own conscience, to her creed and ethos, and also to her voters,

00:24:34.700 to her constituents.

00:24:36.620 But the reason I bring that up is because she really is the anti-Trudeau in so many ways.

00:24:44.340 I mean, Trudeau said he was going to be a leader on Aboriginal issues.

00:24:48.780 Here's an Aboriginal woman who's sidelined by the Liberals. 0.95

00:24:51.820 He says he's going to be the first feminist Prime Minister.

00:24:54.860 Here's a strong woman that is sidelined by his government.

00:24:58.380 He says he's going to run a new type of politics that is focused on honesty and openness and transparency.

00:25:05.140 Here's a woman who's fired for speaking out about the rule of law not being followed. 1.00

00:25:10.820 And he says he's going to have an open door.

00:25:13.260 And here's a woman, again, has concerns and she ends up getting kicked to the curb 1.00

00:25:17.220 and removed from her position as Attorney General because of speaking out with those concerns. 0.95

00:25:24.580 And she's still a Liberal.

00:25:26.060 I mean, any Conservatives that were saying, and I made this point back then,

00:25:29.680 that, you know, she should cross the floor and join the Conservatives. 0.99

00:25:32.140 That would be a terrible idea.

00:25:33.040 She's not a Conservative.

00:25:34.000 She's a Liberal.

00:25:35.360 She's on the left side of the Liberal Party.

00:25:37.420 She's a very progressive person.

00:25:39.860 But she's a woman of integrity and a woman of conscience.

00:25:42.860 And if she were to stand up with that integrity and with that conscience

00:25:47.700 and win as an independent, I would support her type of person,

00:25:52.540 that type of person being in politics.

00:25:56.060 Especially in B.C. where, you know, in Vancouver, Granville,

00:25:59.280 the Conservatives aren't going to win anyway.

00:26:00.800 So if you're going to get a Liberal or an NDP,

00:26:02.940 I'd rather someone who has a demonstrated track record of doing the right thing

00:26:06.920 and of speaking truth to power than someone who's just your garden variety shill

00:26:11.320 that will go along with whatever the party leader says

00:26:13.740 and whatever the Politburo demands.

00:26:16.320 So that is going to be the choice for people.

00:26:18.340 And she may well be rewarded.

00:26:20.460 But she's going up against the Gerald Butts approach.

00:26:23.120 She's going up against the smooth political operator 1.00

00:26:25.520 that is the departed and now revived advisor, Jerry Butts.

00:26:32.960 And here's a guy who, again, I don't want to fall into this trope 1.00

00:26:40.480 of, oh, Justin Trudeau's dumb and Justin Trudeau's an idiot 1.00

00:26:43.420 because he is capable of imposing his agenda in Canada. 1.00

00:26:47.960 He has been doing that.

00:26:49.000 So you can't just shrug him off and laugh at him, 0.99

00:26:51.680 even when he looks ridiculous doing his little Bollywood bridesmaid thing. 0.93

00:26:55.220 Trudeau legitimately has impacted the Canadian political system. 0.85

00:27:01.180 So even if you do laugh at him, he's done a lot.

00:27:05.180 Jerry Butts is the one to credit for a lot of that, though.

00:27:09.620 Gerald Butts is the one that you can bring a lot of these major legacy moves

00:27:14.560 by Trudeau and put them in Butts' lap.

00:27:17.620 And that is where most Canadians need to know who this guy is.

00:27:23.620 I'd say probably don't know who he is because we're not, again,

00:27:27.380 to go back to the divide between insiders and outsiders,

00:27:29.980 the average person couldn't even name their local MP necessarily,

00:27:34.440 let alone naming this guy who occupies this position they've never heard of

00:27:38.460 in the prime minister's office, you know, on the other side of the country, in Ottawa.

00:27:43.140 And that's the reality.

00:27:44.900 So this is what we're up against.

00:27:46.300 Am I optimistic?

00:27:47.340 No.

00:27:48.200 Am I still hopeful?

00:27:50.240 Yes.

00:27:50.760 I see a message from Joe here that says,

00:27:56.220 Jody Wilson-Raybould is not as ethical.

00:27:58.680 She's slightly more ethical than her liberal peers, and that's all.

00:28:01.920 If she was ethical, we would have the whole story by now,

00:28:04.280 and she would have laid a criminal information against the offenders. 0.98

00:28:08.140 I'm assuming you mean a criminal charge.

00:28:10.180 Well, no.

00:28:11.620 She's tried to give the whole story.

00:28:13.600 This is the problem, Joe, is that she is barred by law because of solicitor-client privilege 0.75

00:28:19.180 and cabinet confidentiality from giving the whole story.

00:28:22.700 So Trudeau needs to, and again, he could do it very easily.

00:28:25.400 He already did it for a slight snippet of time.

00:28:28.380 Could say, all right, you are hereby released from this confidence,

00:28:33.120 and you can talk about what you want.

00:28:35.480 And as far as laying a charge, remember,

00:28:38.460 she was removed from the post of Attorney General,

00:28:41.040 and it's not clear that anything illegal happened.

00:28:43.940 It's very clear that things that were unethical happen.

00:28:47.400 It's not a given that the law has been broken.

00:28:52.300 You know, I know we were talking about this,

00:28:53.880 and Leo Knight talked about this a while ago,

00:28:56.160 True North fellow Leo Knight,

00:28:57.840 about, you know, the definition,

00:28:59.500 the plain text reading of the criminal code charges

00:29:01.840 on interference in a prosecution.

00:29:04.360 So there is a possibility,

00:29:06.480 and you want to hope that law enforcement has investigated that,

00:29:09.420 but that was never her job as a politician to lay a charge.

00:29:13.560 That's the job of the people who do that,

00:29:15.540 the police and the law enforcement community in Canada.

00:29:19.920 But she risked a lot.

00:29:23.360 She risked a political career she could have had

00:29:26.000 for years to come to stand up for what's right.

00:29:29.720 So I am going to say she's as ethical as people suggest,

00:29:32.240 because if you're prepared to put principles above personal ambition,

00:29:36.740 that is, I think, a pretty good indicator of having a strong moral compass.

00:29:41.440 So I still, again, have a great deal of respect for her,

00:29:43.980 even if that comes with disagreement on a great many political issues.

00:29:47.980 That's all we have for today.

00:29:49.080 I want to give a big thanks to all of you for tuning in.

00:29:51.940 We will have lots more, I'm sure, of this in the coming days and weeks,

00:29:56.220 with just less than three months from the election.

00:29:58.620 But I hope you all have a great rest of the week.

00:30:00.840 Thank you.

00:30:01.260 God bless.

00:30:02.000 And good day, Canada.

00:30:02.860 And good day, Canada.

Juno News - July 29, 2019

LAWTON： Gerald Butts is back. No one should be surprised.

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