Legacy media continues to spread misinformation about Freedom movement
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Summary
In this week's fake news filled edition of False News Friday, we discuss the Canada Day festivities and the media coverage of them, as well as the arrest of Tamara Leach and the charges brought against him. We also discuss the fallout from the Conservative leader Candace Bergen's appearance on Evan Solomon's show on CTV.
Transcript
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hello everyone and welcome along to another spectacular edition i hope anyway of fake
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news friday andrew lawton in for candace malcolm your rightful host who i promise will return to
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this chair at some moment just not in this show anyway unless she does like the kool-aid man and
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just barges in going oh yeah at some point midway through which you know what would make for good
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television but to keep some semblance of continuity we do have our trusty co-host harrison faulkner
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with us as always host of the true north show ratio to harrison good to have you here thanks
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very much good to see you andrew good to see that you're uh filling in for candace while she's away
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and uh hopefully it's hopefully the the show keeps on rolling that's a big big expectation for me in
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the summer and i like that i said it was good to have you here as though i'm not the one that's
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just like barged in unannounced to uh to guest co-host uh over the course of the next little
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while and i will say i mean just in the spirit of fake news the fakest news of all is that this is
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canada day because as many of you know if you've been long time subscribers to true north and you've
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heard my annual rant about this it's actually dominion day it's not canada day it shouldn't
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be canada day so i proudly say to you all if you say happy canada day it's fake news uh blessed
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dominion day to all of you and you too harrison so you're too young for dominion day but hopefully
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we can bring it back and make it uh make it cool again if uh it was ever cool i think it was cool
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uh we got lots of stuff happening though i mean right now on parliament hill we know that a lot of
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festivities are going on and surely we'll have lots of fake news to break down about that next week
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because we know that the media has just been relentless since the convoy originally in january
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of this year at mischaracterizing all of these people that are supporting freedom movement
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supporting the convoy we saw it with the arrest of tamara leach this week we saw it with the convoy
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we've seen it in the lead up to the canada day dominion day excuse me festivities this week and even
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now just looking at the way conservative leader candace bergen has been treated for this little exchange
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she had on evan solomon's show on ctv just in the last week over 20 members of your party met
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with two one person james top who was not part of the trucker convoy i've spoken to him he's a
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veteran he's marched across canada about mandates but he they also met with a guy named tom marazzo
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who was a spokesperson um also a veteran by the way who i've spoken to um this is a guy that stood in a
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press conference during the convoy and said he'd like to work in a coalition with your part party
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the bloc the nbp to try to form a government what does it tell canadians that someone like you were
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with the truckers who took pictures many of your members and now here we are 20 members almost 20
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percent of your caucus is out there essentially saying as one member said we're allies you have
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their support what does that tell you we very much support canadians who are were and still are
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against the mandatory vaccines we don't believe that they should be wedged called names stigmatized
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we don't think they should be set aside our job is to listen to canadians we don't always have to
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agree even with what they're talking about we don't agree with everything that they want to do
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obviously credibility to people who are who are holding press conferences that are that that are trying
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to say we we want to form a government that would not be democratically elected evan these these
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people obviously did not understand that i don't think any sedition charges were laid were they
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were were no where they they were not but it doesn't have to be but there are lots of charges
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laid against some of the some of the but i think i think this is the legislation this is the
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misinformation that what's misinformation the people who protested here in ottawa were there were as you
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know hundreds and thousands of them they were upset they wanted to be heard and we as conservatives
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believe that they deserve to be heard so what she's done there is taken a very strong position
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one that we wish aaron o'toole had done in january to say that yes conservative members of parliament
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and all members of parliament should be listening to the people they represent absolutely it was right
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for them to meet with james top and they can do whatever they want as far as attending these events
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and not attending the events whatever harrison i mean first off before we get to the media reaction
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where was this conservative leadership in the last election i know i mean it just felt in the last
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election andrew that every time there was an opportunity for a conservative leader for a
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conservative politician to stand up and and defend canadians who are rightfully upset who have
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real grievances with the government they would just fold and then of course as you said as you say
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at the beginning of the convoy protest aaron o'toole was completely unwilling to stand up for
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canadians who many of them were looking for a leader many of them were probably not partisan were not
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necessarily political not not wedded to one party or another but yet the conservatives didn't seem to
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see seize that opportunity to take the chance to grab new support by just saying you know what we
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actually stand with you we respect the issue that we respect your concerns and understand
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your your frustrations and finally it feels as though with candace bergen being the leader that
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there has been this sort of you know this sort of kick into high gear from the conservatives to say no
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we're done kind of tiptoeing around this we're going to firmly stand on the side of freedom we're going
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to firmly stand on the side of canadians who just have some legitimate concerns and i mean we're at
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a point now andrew where it's refreshing to hear a conservative leader a canadian politician say that
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canadians have a right to protest the government what how have we gone to this point it's just incredible
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yeah it is and i mean i i will say i've always had a lot of appreciation for evan solomon i don't agree
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with everything he says all the time nor would i with anyone else but i think he's very fair and and
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i think that you know he's playing devil's advocate in this context but a lot of the people that are
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watching that really agree with what he's saying fundamentally in his line of questioning there that
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the convoy was about people who were seeking to overthrow the government and i will say candace
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bergen had the great response to that she said well there were no sedition charges which is a bit glib
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but i think it's raising an important point here which is that all of these people want to say
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that this was a coup and this was treason well i mean no police have said that the government's
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not even said that we're not actually seeing that here it was people who might be expressing a
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position the government wasn't all that fond of and at the federal level certainly the government
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wasn't fond of the message of freedom and opposition to vaccine mandates but to say that
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there is something that a conservative leader needs to be held to account for that never happened which
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is this mass attempt at an insurrection is very disingenuous but a lot of people still reported
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as though that's fact well they do and you were in the press conferences with the organizers during
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the convoy and i was there too and they said explicitly they said multiple times tamara leach
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said it bj dichter said it keith wilson said it they were not there to overthrow the government they
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were not there to do what the do what the media is saying and you you just said it too
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even the government doesn't roll doesn't run with this narrative the police don't run with this
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narrative the only people peddling this sedition narrative this overthrowing the government
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narrative are journalists the legacy media journalists who are kind of holding on to that
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just that's their last thing they're holding on to to try and to try and continue their narrative
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and it's slipping away because the the facts are coming out and and the problem is the organizers
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never really stood a chance when the legacy media was always stacked against them they could have
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said anything they could have repeated themselves a hundred times andrew they could have said a
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hundred times they're not here to overthrow the government and that would not have changed anything
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in my opinion they would have rolled with this narrative regardless so there was really nothing
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that could be done and and in that interview with evan solomon candace bergen was or well not in the
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interview but in a ctv article candace bergen then had to basically say and defend conservative
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politicians going to a canada day event in ottawa we're now at the point where not only does a
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conservative leader have to uh have to be accountable for something that didn't happen
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a conservative leader then has to defend the right of their caucus members mps attending canada day
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celebrations in ottawa this is just this is just insane yeah because it i mean what they're doing
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here basically is saying that when a group of people who love freedom and wave canadian flags and are
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opposed to vaccine mandates get together to celebrate canada day that is an inherently bad
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place it's a bad thing to do it's you know filled with deplorables and bad people and again we're
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gonna see i suspect uh by the end of this weekend uh the bouncy castles the pig roast the song maybe
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not the saunas because it's july now but you're gonna see that same party-like atmosphere we saw in
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january and february which mps were attending especially once aaron o'toole was deposed and then
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you all of a sudden had mps with free reign to go out and talk to people and all that jazz but
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the one thing that was fascinating about seeing that this comment is that again people are treating
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this as news like this strikes me as the epitome of a non-newsworthy thing mps encouraged to meet
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with constituents on canada day and hear their concerns that strikes me as what should just be
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another day but again when you look at the media narrative of this this is some radical concept
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yeah and they of course put quotes they put they put you know the quotes around freedom protest i
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know it's it's it's so disingenuous it's so it's so ridiculous they've made freedom this swear word
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this this word you can't say and they have to journalists feel they have to qualify the word freedom
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with quotes around it it's it's it's incredible and of course as you said how is this news when when
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the leader says she supports uh she supports the right for mps to be at canada day protests it's um
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it's incredible and i i really hope we get to a point andrew where the word freedom is no longer
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this big scary word where you're actually allowed to say yeah you know what i support one of the core
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tenants of canada what it what it what it represents on the world stage is a free country
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yeah it's up there with the canadian flag now like these things these symbols that uh the left claims
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the right has appropriated and ruined forever whereas like you know if the right is the only
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group that's allowed to wave the canadian flag and talk about freedom i'm okay with that but i
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think they're they're they're relinquishing these things because they didn't like them all that much
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in the uh the first place uh what else do we have going on this week so well we've got of course and
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it was just a matter of time when they dropped the vaccine where they suspended i should say when the
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government suspended the travel mandate the vaccine mandate and they said many times we'll bring it back if we
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we knew the clock started ticking at that point until the media started to bring back the covet fear
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mongering andrew tell us that covet is coming it's just around the corner we have to prepare for a
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summer surge as the media setting the globe and mail just basically recycling headlines from the beginning
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of 2020 here the globe mail wrote on uh june uh on june 29th fears of a covet 19 summer surge
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prompt experts to call for a return to masking so here it is the the masks are going to come back
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the fear is going to come back and we're going to have to likely if this continues while the
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restrictions are going to come back to you and it was just as i said a matter of time so the article
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writes it's time to bring back indoor mask wearing requirements says some health professionals amid
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concerns of a potential surge in covet 19 cases this summer so all i say to these health officials
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andrew is good luck with that good luck convincing canadians to bring back masks indoors i don't
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think it's going to happen no this is the number one way to get another convoy to ottawa to just
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reimpose a wave of a wave of restrictions and it's not going to be like the bouncy castle one this time
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i think they're going to hold out longer than three weeks and they're going to do it in the summer
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too yeah yeah exactly when they don't have the weather working against them i saw this and my
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first response and i tweeted about this is that the experts nothing is stopping them from wearing
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their masks as long as they want they can double mask triple mask they can do a an n95 with some
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duct tape they can wear a full body suit do whatever they want that is absolutely their choice it's the
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idea of imposing this reimposing some national or at the very least province-wide mask mandate that i i find
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so absurd here and i was looking at this and just one example from this week and i know there are
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others like this western university in my neck of the woods london ontario they announced on i think
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it was wednesday that they're going mask free as of this week but their vaccine mandate their vaccine
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mandate they say well we're gonna we're not going to tell you what we're going to do about that in
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september 1st so if you're a student at western or a faculty member at western you can't actually plan
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the next year because you won't know until days before the school year starts what the vaccine policy
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is and the reason i bring that up in the context of this story is because it's that sort of damocles
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that's always dangling in front of people now that we're always just one day away from some new wave of
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restrictions coming back one wave away from more concerns more lockdowns more restrictions more vaccine
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mandates and and this could just come and hit us at any point and this is something that i feel i mean
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for the first you know 97 waves of restrictions and lockdowns and all that canadians did seem to
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welcome this all but i'm not convinced that patience is there because i just and i know it's anecdotal but
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people that dutifully went along with every lockdown they got double vax triple vax they did everything
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they hit a breaking point not long before uh this summer and in some cases a little bit earlier but i just
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don't think the will is there even among people that have followed every restriction up until this
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point to deal with any more of them no and the cat's out of the bag i mean what you're seeing now
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are you're seeing canadians traveling to europe where no mask basically no one is wearing any masks
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there were no restrictions months ago and they weren't getting covered they weren't getting infected
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they were coming back to places where there were masks people were wearing masks and there were some
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restrictions and they were ending up with covid so people are starting to realize that you know it's
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not the masks that are protecting them and and and now with everyone getting you know boosted and still
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getting wave after wave of covid i mean people like you said are just gonna are just gonna realize that
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this is not working this is not going to happen and if they try this people are just going to openly
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you know disagree with this they're not going to follow along and they're and they're going to kind
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of lose the respect from uh for the for the public health bureaucrats the institutions of these people
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telling us what to do and just to just to get into some of these absurd headlines we saw at the
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beginning of the week the fear-mongering has has come right back ctv wrote at the beginning of the week
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and i can't even believe this was a headline written by ctv they wrote people with covid19 can infect
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and sicken cats and dogs by cuddling them and they referenced a study they say that the research
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that they referenced published this month in the journal of emerging infectious diseases involves
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69 cats and 49 dogs including pets and animals from shelters and neuter clinics transmission from
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humans to animals can be minimized by owners keeping their distance wearing a mask and taking other
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precautions andrew so people in canada are supposed to distance themselves from their own pets and wear
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masks around their own pets do they really take us for total idiots it's crazy no you see you're being
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insensitive harrison this is the whole point is that they know that even the most cynical myopic
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misanthropic people love animals so now if you're not prepared to wear your mask to save grandma you have
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to wear your mask to save fido this is the rule now how dare you unbelievable it's uh it's it's really
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really just absurd stuff and i do think they they take us a good chunk of us for total chumps and and
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uh you know we we've seen we've seen data like this come out and it doesn't seem to affect or determine
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any of the rules we're forced with we saw a study that said um well we saw a study that completely
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ignored mental health and economic implications of canada's lockdowns and it said that canada's
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covid19 response was better than many comparable countries and this was of course published in the
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cbc but they don't mention the fact that the study they were referencing of canada's covid lockdowns
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doesn't talk about the dangers and harms of the lockdowns on mental health and on the economy of our
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country and all you have to do is look at true north's own reporting in july of 2021 we wrote a story
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that said lockdowns killed more canadians under 65 than covid and the majority of covid victims were
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very old and had serious health problems detailing exactly how the lockdowns and restrictions had
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severe damage on canadians and how the the lockdown measures just although they might have minimized
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covid numbers they they weren't overall positive and that's not going to be reported on and anytime it
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does get reported on they're going to hide it around studies that don't even touch on those important
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facets the reality of the situation where our lockdowns and our restrictions had severe problems in our
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society it doesn't seem to one it doesn't seem to register with the with the people who make the
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rules and and two it didn't seem like like journalists even care or want to talk about these things
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no and i think this was the big media malfeasance we saw and and to be fair i think some of it was
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not that journalists were getting it wrong i think some of it was that they were being fed bad
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information we were just told to trust the so-called experts and trust the doctors and all of that and
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people didn't have the scientific knowledge to challenge it and that is that we had this one track
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focus on case counts and and the term that people used early on which i think is a valid one as a
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case-demic when you have a pandemic and you're defining it solely in terms of what the cases are
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without looking at things like the severity of those cases hospitalizations and then you devote all
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your policy to getting to covet zero to getting cases down to zero and as a result you're locking
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people down you're ruining child development it's i mean we can look at mental health numbers addictions
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domestic violence all of that and i think that's important but it will take years years maybe even
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decades really or a decade to see the collateral damage that's been caused by lockdowns when you
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look at child development when you look at social integration and socialization and all of these
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other things and you're right when they do this study and they don't even look at oh people who have
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lost their jobs but it's okay yeah they had the sniffles for a couple of weeks uh and we prevented
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more people from getting the sniffles in some cases but those people lost their small business they lost
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their restaurant that doesn't strike me as a victory for a lockdown no it's it's not and and and but you
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know what it's it's this sort of reporting and it's these sorts of studies that are intentionally
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leaving out important facets of the pandemic key under-reported realities of the pandemic that will be relied
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on when as when as we're already seeing the fear-mongering ramps up and there is another excuse
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for governments to impose these restrictions i wouldn't be surprised to see research like this
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be the justification to say if covid cases come up again that say well we need to not basically we
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need to not learn from the reality situation where our lockdowns our rules and our restrictions
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caused major societal problems no we need to go back to minimizing cases looking only at how many
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people have the flu a mild flu and and just basically turn a total blind eye to all of the all the
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issues we know now from these brutal restrictions and andrew switching gears on uh on the show we came
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across this funny article in the toronto star from althia raj and this is this is sort of in line
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with the the perception of conservatives being negative and nasty and and it's sort of a carryover
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from the freedom convoy coverage of the people who are just wanting freedom who are lovely people
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who are people that you know would be your neighbors in your communities they're actually
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these sort of nasty and rude people and so we saw this article from althia raj which basically uh talks
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about her frustration with the anger and the nasty comments from the conservatives in the house of
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commons and the the title of this story is uh it starts off with bend over you're despicable name
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calling and disrespect are now all too common in the house of commons and so she starts off by saying
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from my my from my perch above the speaker's chair this week i witnessed a shocking level of name
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calling and disrespect you're despicable and bend over where some of the insults hurled from
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the conservative side toward the liberal benches so of course what a surprise andrew this article is
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criticizing conservatives the opposition in government for getting a little too rowdy in the
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house of commons i i've sat in in question period in in queens park and i've i've i've watched enough
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question period here at true north to know that name calling like you know some some uh some good
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jabs and and some some some good back and forth some good banter is what you do in the house of
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commons that's what it's always been and that's how it is in every westminster system yeah and i think
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the one thing that i found interesting here and she mentioned it i think in the very first paragraph is
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that every june this is the gripe journalists and politicians complain about the toxicity in the
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house of commons every june so if it's happening every year then it stands to reason that this is
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something that no one's had any interest in in doing anything about and that spans from government
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to government from opposition to opposition as these things change over time and again i'm not
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going to say politics is not a place that invites incivility i don't know if the conduct from mps is
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getting worse i think certainly political discourse on social media has gotten worse but at the end of
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the day if this is a recurring thing the people that are supposed to do something about it are the
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people that are in politics and you have the speaker of the house who right now is a liberal who has the
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ability to throw out anyone who's used unparliamentary language so i i think that a lot of the times
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people will take little excerpts and little words that yeah someone probably shouldn't have said or might
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not have been the most acceptable and we could say perhaps they should have expressed themselves a different
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way but you also were talking about a group of people that are thrown into a room 338 of them
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that is by design adversarial well they talk about things that affect people's lives so if there wasn't
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passion in that room i'd be very concerned exactly and this is what has been the case forever you can
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you can go back and read transcripts from question period since the very beginning of our country
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oh some of the old school ones are great like he's a lily livered cod swallow hoggler
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it's i made that up but it's something like that if we could if we could decipher it into into modern
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english i'm sure that they would uh they would they would really really get under the skin of uh
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liberal journalists like althea raj but i mean we have we have countless examples of our prime minister
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using rather unparliamentary language in the house of commons and in 2011 uh this is what
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justin trudeau said to conservative minister of the environment peter kent just watch this
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well mr speaker my honorable colleague if she had been in durban would have seen that in fact
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canada was among the leaders in creating the order
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so there you go andrew that's not what i would consider to be parliamentary language i wonder what
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althea raj would have said about that if she was sitting above or sitting in her perch above the
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speaker's chair as she said yeah i don't i see i i'll actually give i'll give althea credit i don't
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think althea is the problem here i think the problem that we have is outsiders looking into this
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and i'm not not like outsiders in the sense of people that aren't sitting in the chambers
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thinking it's bad but what do you propose is the solution and i think that's the issue here is that
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do we want to just police language more in there do we want to start taking them out to the woodshed and
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you know giving them a couple of penalties anytime someone heckles impolitely or something like that
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and i guess that's the issue is like it seems to be a problem that everyone kind of calls out as a
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problem but i don't see a solution that doesn't just make things a heck of a lot worse and i think
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anytime someone goes to the can't we all get along why aren't we nicer thing their natural instinct is
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to find that the the other side is meaner than their side when i suspect you'll find a lot of evidence
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this is going in every which direction oh yeah no absolutely and and no maybe it's not just althea
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raj putting this forward but again it's the idea that there the that the comment needs to be made
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about conservatives in the house of commons you know having you know unparliamentary language
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and and unsavory language as as you said it's been that way forever it goes both ways it's designed
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to be that way and everybody knows and that mps are passionate and like you said if you're not
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passionate about the issues especially in a time like right now that we're living through in which
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our government is taking massive liberty upon themselves to shrink the liberty of canadians
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that is a time in which i would expect most conservative mps or most opposition mps regardless
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of political stripe to get fired up to have you know to let them hear it to let the government hear it
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because that is kind of what the whole system is set up to do yeah very much so and we always try to
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end things on a bit of a lighter note so uh we're going to call you all racists if you have front
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lawns that's our version of a lighter note here on fake news friday because also the toronto star
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interestingly enough they're on on the greatest hits list this week as a column lawns are an outdated
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cultural norm let's lose them before we lose the pollinators and they say that being a lawn owner
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used to be a symbol of being rich rich enough to hold land and not need to farm on it but this is just
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an outdated cultural norm it's classist it's supposed to differentiate the aristocrats from
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the farmers and now it's just a sign of societal excess but this is actually part of a long-standing
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grievance that people have that we can go back to a globe and mail piece a couple of years ago
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about the need to decolonize the lawn we need to decolonize the lawn because a lawn is you saying that
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you're vanquishing nature which is a part according to one history professor of settler culture so if
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you have a lawn you are disenfranchising indigenous people and you are a classist aristocrat i think
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i've gotten it right i think you do and i'm reading this quote from the global mail piece from 2020 and
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it's at the back end of a longer quote from a canadian history professor and he says when he's
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talking about backyards this time not front lawns he says a backyard with a big lawn is like a classroom
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for colonialism and environmental hostility so i guess they're really upset about about about nice
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lawns and and this funny thing is from the toronto star when they talk about the time you know the lawn is
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an outdated cultural norm we should just i guess bulldoze the lawns and pave them over and they
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they say of course that the reason the lawn is a problem is because of biodiversity and climate
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crises so those competing biodiversity and climate crises what better way andrew to solve those climate
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crises than to just pave over your lawns yeah we got to do the joni mitchell song uh pave paradise and put
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up a parking lot so everyone needs a concrete front yard now in fairness there are people that have turned
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their lawns i forget the term i think it's like living lawns or something or they do like front
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lawn gardens and if you're going to tend to them that's very nice but i assure you if i were to turn
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my front lawn into a garden of some kind because i can barely grow grass so i i'm not decolonized i'm
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not colonizing anyone because i can't you know grow anything but weeds there not weed weeds uh and uh
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this is the thing that i find hilarious that we all need to just like let the bees take over
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apparently and that i mean this planet of the apes is going to be planet of the bees uh because
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that's the only way to outdate the outdated norm make it outdated whatever the case is who knows
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well yeah and and if you did that andrew you'd be following the toronto stars guideline you'd be
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following their manual in it they say to maintain natural debris including dead stems and dry leaves
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what may seem messy to some people is habitat to wildlife so you know if you have a lawn just let it go
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let it kind of be an awful mess let weeds grow in it and leave leave a bunch of of i don't know
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you know dead dead branches and dead stems in it i mean this is no this is great airs and when my wife
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asked me to rake the leaves in the fall i'll just say ah i'm uh i'm decolonizing i can't rake the leaves
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they've got to stay they've got to stay there and i'm just listening to the toronto star yeah well i won't
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use that because i don't think that's authoritative but i'll uh i'll appeal to our uh our greater goals
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as a society to move beyond colonization i the last year the issue was we couldn't fly the canadian
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flag this year you can't grow your grass so uh do whatever works for you there i hope you are all
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having an absolutely wonderful dominion day wherever you're celebrating whether you're in ottawa or at
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home uh thanks very much for indulging harrison faulkner on the other end of the virtual microphone
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host of the show ratioed and i'm andrew lawton harrison have a good dominion day
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and to you andrew all right to the rest of you we'll talk to you next week with more fake news
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friday thank you god bless and have a good weekend