00:00:00.000So the Liberal Party invents a news story that Justin Trudeau was somehow the victim of racial
00:00:18.080slurs while trying to attend an event in Surrey, British Columbia. And the entire legacy media ran
00:00:23.760with the story before even bothering to verify it. The only problem for them is that the story was
00:00:29.120never true it's fake news friday welcome to a special live edition of the candace malcolm show
00:00:34.800i'm your host candace malcolm and uh thank you so much for for tuning in it's great to be with
00:00:39.200you we had so much fun doing the live broadcast last week that we decided to do it again this
00:00:44.400week and i am joined as per usual by my producer turner producer and journalist harrison faulkner
00:00:50.320harrison welcome to the show thank you for joining us yeah thank you for having me candace always
00:00:54.720pleasure to be on the show so this this is one of those stories i we talk about this a lot on fake
00:01:01.280news friday that there's like fake news buried into fake news buried into fake news because
00:01:05.280there's so many interesting and delicious elements to this story but this this was the sort of main
00:01:10.880headline of the week uh through the legacy media which was this idea that justin trudeau had been
00:01:16.000the victim of racist slurs or that he had to cancel a fundraising event so there's this thousand
00:01:20.960dollar a plate uh fundraising event planned in serbish columbia on tuesday afternoon and before
00:01:27.120the event was even started uh basically the liberals claimed that trudeau couldn't go it
00:01:32.720was unsafe for him and they claimed that it was because a crowd of protesters were making racist
00:01:38.400slurs so there were racial slurs being uh being hurled at the attendees and at the fundraisers
00:01:44.480And Trudeau, who, you know, just got back from being in a war zone in Ukraine, well, he was told
00:01:51.600it was too unsafe for him to attend this in-person event. So he would attend by Zoom instead. You can
00:01:57.040see the headline there from the Canadian press. It says Trudeau cancels appearance at event in BC
00:02:01.520after protesters hurl racial slurs. And of course, you can see it's the Canadian press, which is a
00:02:07.680newswire service in Canada. So when something's written by the Canadian press, you're gonna see
00:02:12.240it all over the news, Harrison. You're going to see it on in pretty much every major newspaper
00:02:16.360in the country. You're going to see it on CTV, on Global. Basically, they all subscribe to the
00:02:21.540Canadian press and they all run the exact same nonsense. There's so many interesting, again,
00:02:26.960levels to this story because the entire thing wasn't verified. It wasn't a fact. I saw that
00:02:33.380you had tweeted, Harrison, something along the lines of, you know, Canadian press invents a
00:02:36.860story. It's even worse than that because the Liberals invented it. The Liberals made a claim
00:02:40.540And then the media ran with it without bothering to verify it, like, what do you mean the racial slurs? Who was saying them? What were the racial slurs? And I know you poured through, I think it was hours of video footage because there's lots of cell phone footage of this protest to verify exactly what was said and what these supposed racial slurs were, Harrison. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
00:03:05.680So the thing was, is that immediately as the story started to evolve and started to come out,
00:03:12.700the line from the legacy media, of course, the Canadian Press, the wire service, they put out
00:03:16.380the fact that there were racial slurs being thrown and hurled at attendees and at Trudeau.
00:03:23.380They kind of made Trudeau out to be the victim at the beginning of it as well. But of course,
00:03:28.300there was video evidence of all of this. There were journalists that were covering the protests.
00:03:32.220There were citizen journalists that were there, kind of half participating and half covering and documenting what was going on.
00:03:39.480And so, of course, when the reports came out, everyone started looking for video footage.
00:03:44.800And I'm sure the Liberal Party staffers that were tasked with coming up with this line were also looking at that footage, trying to find the video evidence that these anti-Trudeau protesters were being racist.
00:03:56.460Because, of course, Candice, we have seen these videos emerge from other protests, and we see how the media responds when accusations of racism get leveled at sort of anti-Trudeau protesters, anti-Jagmeet Singh protests.
00:04:12.120And whenever there's video footage, every Canadian basically has to see it because it gets put out on social media to show people just how bad these anti-Trudeau protesters are.
00:04:20.820But there was no video footage, Candace. There's no evidence of racial slurs being hurled, as they say, at attendees or at Liberal Party members. And that kind of became the story throughout the week, right, Candace? It was first, here are these horrible anti-Trudeau protesters once again being racist.
00:04:42.220again where have we seen the line of of anti-trude approaches being racist it seems to be their
00:04:46.780playbook now so that was what that was the original story then slowly uh journal outlets
00:04:53.260started to backtrack and started to change their story because they were there was no evidence to
00:04:57.500back any of it up so cbc the day after uh basically totally rewrote the story rewrote their headline
00:05:04.460took out the uh took out the line about them being racist and made it made it an allegation and john
00:05:10.380k uh over at quillette he he tweeted this and and and basically drew the arrows telling you
00:05:16.060how the cvc changed their story so it went from uh trudeau has to cancel the event because uh
00:05:21.980protesters were hurling racial slurs to trudeau candles appearance at surrey fundraiser over
00:05:27.340protest related safety concerns and then of course the rest of the story gets changed to
00:05:32.060try and cover their tracks the media goes out calls the anti-trudeau protesters racist without
00:05:36.620evidence runs with the story that the liberals uh were giving them liberal party staffers were
00:05:41.020giving them and now they're having to backtrack canvas i mean this just seems like something
00:05:45.340we've seen uh many times before this is a recycled playbook throw out the horrible accusations and
00:05:50.780then backtrack because there's no evidence to back it up it's not journalism it's like the
00:05:55.100liberals made a claim the liberals accused their opponents of being racist this is the thing that
00:05:59.420we have heard the liberals do 1 000 times over the past 10 years that's their go-to shtick uh people
00:06:05.660people don't like equate to racist. And it's almost become a joke or a meme on the political
00:06:11.740right that's like, the racist has completely lost all meaning. But typically the role of a
00:06:16.320journalist, Harris, you know this, you went to journalism school, is to verify. So you don't
00:06:20.800just run a headline based on what a liberal MP told you. You could at least write alleges and
00:06:26.800liberals, right? Liberals allege racial slurs. No, they ran it as fact, as truth, that there
00:06:33.620racial slurs even though there's no such evidence and it wasn't just the cbc that had to change
00:06:38.260their headline uh the canadian press also changed their headline pretty much exactly like the cbc
00:06:43.460one that you just showed uh you can see the side by side here it went from the protesters were
00:06:48.420hurling racial slurs which was unverified and untrue to trudeau cancels appearance at event in
00:06:53.620bc amid angry protests so so you know they're still trying to classify the protesters anyone
00:06:59.700who's anti-Trudeau is either a racist or just an angry conservative. And so those are sort of like
00:07:05.780the two boxes that they can put you in. This is Freedom Convoy over and over again. We're going
00:07:09.940to be seeing this a lot in our country because it's just the go-to media shtick. That's basically
00:07:15.980their favorite line of attack against Canadians. It's like, if you don't like our glorious prime
00:07:21.180minister and you have the gall to protest against him, then there must be something wrong with you.
00:07:26.960you must be deranged, you must be racist, you must be angry. And I just I want to show a clip
00:07:31.920because this is this is what it looked like, right? You have the prime minister of a country
00:07:34.720who is not very popular, right? He won with the lowest ever percentage of the vote in the last
00:07:40.840election 2021. People aren't happy with his programs, people aren't happy with the economy,
00:07:45.760people aren't happy with the way that he handled COVID. There is a lot of dissatisfaction.
00:07:50.520That's legitimate, Harrison, that's legitimate in democracy. Every prime minister, every politician
00:07:55.220gets protested. That's part of the job, right? But somehow the media is just so protective over
00:08:00.320Trudeau and they just treat him like this injured little bird that needs his protection. They run
00:08:05.460with his lies. They don't verify him. They don't push back. They don't question what he's saying.
00:08:09.920This is what the protests look like. People are angry. Sure, pretty much every protest is full
00:08:16.900of angry people. That's one of the defining characteristics of a protest is that people
00:08:21.360are angry enough that they're going to leave their home, go to a public place and show their
00:08:25.160political dismay as part of the democratic process again. So you can see with your own
00:08:30.340eyes. And then you can draw your own conclusions about the way that the media covered this.
00:15:16.060when i saw this story what i immediately thought of candace was when protesters on mayday which is
00:15:21.980this sort of uh i i don't i don't really know it's this celebration right uh for the socialists in
00:15:28.060our society and they came to queen's park in 2019 with a guillotine basically covered in like a prop
00:15:34.940guillotine as this was a prop noose they brought a guillotine to queen's park and they had a doug
00:15:40.700afford effigy basically i mean okay you take you take that and then you compare it to a some angry
00:15:48.380canadians um with a with a prop noose um saying that trudeau uh was committing treason obviously
00:15:55.540we're not going to sit here and say either is okay but the idea that this is some outstanding
00:16:01.020uh you know circumstances these are these are horrible circumstances that no politician has
00:16:05.260ever had to deal with candace that's just not at all true this is this is this is commonplace
00:16:09.560And it's disappointing that it is commonplace in Canada, but it is commonplace. The left does this just as much as the right. And at this point, I think opposition to Justin Trudeau is not even very political. It's kind of actually past left versus the left-right political divide.
00:16:25.900But that's what I immediately thought of, the fact that we've seen examples of this that have been way worse. And of course, we actually have a clip of this. Stephen Harper, who was giving a speech at a rally, was rushed by a protester on the stage, and he just brushed it off and kept talking and made a joke about it, because that's frankly what a leader should do.
00:16:47.480A leader should not be trying to wedge and divide people. He should understand that this is part of
00:16:53.360the job. This is part of the gig. People do not like you when you're the leader of a country.
00:16:57.900People love you. People hate you. But instead, of course, instead of wallowing in and needing
00:17:03.500the press to cover him and to make him feel better, Harper just goes along with it and goes
00:17:09.040on with his day because people want to hear what he has to say, like the people who paid Trudeau
00:17:13.020to hear what he had to say in Surrey. We have that clip. Let's play that clip just to show you
00:17:17.200the difference between Justin Trudeau, the way he responds to these incidents, and the way someone
00:17:21.540like Stephen Harper responded to an incident like this. Strong decisions at the national level
00:17:28.240on taxes, on spending, on deficits, they would significantly raise those risks.
00:18:04.720Well, it's the same location, Surrey, British Columbia.
00:18:07.160And, you know, Harper just takes it in stride and makes a quick joke about it.
00:18:11.020I mean, look, this happens at political events all over the political spectrum, all over the country, all over the world.
00:18:16.080Again, the media just treat Justin Trudeau with these little kid gloves like, oh, he's so precious. Oh, it's so dangerous for him to be around these angry, toxic right wingers. And you're right, they could just completely ignore the fact that this happens to politicians of all stripes. And it has been dating back to forever, basically.
00:18:36.580So, you know, that's that's pretty much what we've come to expect from the legacy media.
00:18:44.260Well, I want to talk about we reached sort of a dubious anniversary this past week, which was the one week, one year, sorry,
00:18:50.660anniversary of the story of the unmarked graves that were apparently discovered at a site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
00:18:59.560You all recall the sort of escalating events that happened.
00:19:02.820And so we had a chief put out a press release that went viral, went around the world.
00:19:07.000It made international headlines, got exaggerated, you know, a story about a supposed unmarked
00:19:13.560graves turned into mass graves, turned into evidence of genocide, turned into burning
00:19:17.480down churches and tearing down statues and cancelling Canada Day.
00:19:21.040And, you know, our flags being at half mass for, what, five, six months, the election
00:19:26.5402021, the media sort of forced this issue upon us, even though, according to polls, it was like a
00:19:33.240very low issue for Canadians. It wasn't even the top 10 in terms of what they cared about in the
00:19:37.720election. And yet, I think it was like, what was it, 27 minutes of the federal debate in 2021
00:19:43.800was focused on reconciliation. So this is a story that really, really took on a life of its own.
00:19:50.700Viewers of the show know that I was quite skeptical of the story, that the information
00:19:54.660within was never verified. It didn't really add up. A lot of the information was really
00:20:00.240very bare bones, let's just say, no pun intended. But it's interesting to see one year later,
00:20:07.680Harrison, how the story took life of its own. I did an interview with Tom Flanagan, who's a
00:20:13.480professor of political science, a retired professor who's basically studied this issue of First
00:20:18.720Nations relations his entire career. He called this the biggest fake news story in Canadian
00:20:23.440history the greatest fake news story in canadian history and it's interesting to see one year later
00:20:28.720how it's being covered because i think there's been a lot of people in the media coming around
00:20:34.080to the points that myself and some others made early on that this story doesn't really hold a
00:20:39.280lot of water and it uh doesn't really add up um and so it's it's sort of interesting to see so
00:20:46.480you have the national post terry glavin writing he he said the year of the graves how the world's
00:20:50.880media got it wrong on residential school graves and so he's sort of coming to the conclusion uh
00:20:56.960that the same again the same thing that myself and others were saying early on which is that okay he
00:21:02.160writes in the in the in the following weeks well the term mass graves generally uh gave way to
00:21:07.040unmarked graves a cascade of breaking news events purported to reveal several discoveries of what
00:21:13.200eventually added up to more than 1300 child burials burials at other residential schools
00:21:18.400across Canada, except that's not what happened in those places either. Glavin continues, he said,
00:21:27.680as for the most recent uproars, not a single mass grave was discovered in Canada last year.
00:21:33.200Several sites of unmarked graves that captured international headlines were either already
00:21:38.000known cemeteries or they remain sites of speculation even now unverified as genuine
00:21:42.960grave sites. And then he makes a point that I've made before that people in Coeses, the reserve
00:21:48.840in Saskatchewan, where Trudeau famously took that picture where he's taking a knee there.
00:21:53.460That wasn't a discovery. That was a known grave site. That was a known graveyard that included
00:22:00.260people who were both First Nations and non-First Nations who were buried there. So basically,
00:22:06.380there's just a lot of information that was never verified, a lot of stuff that wasn't true.
00:22:10.320And yet what you see on the other side, so you see a lot of sort of more sensible reporting, more sensible analysis saying, you know, I think that we probably over exaggerated a little bit and this led to all kinds of sad, unfortunate occurrences, including burning down churches and vandalizing churches.
00:22:28.500And also, you know, just this added feeling of victimization and hopelessness for people in First Nations community who now some of them truly believe that these residential schools were like Holocaust centers and that people were just being mass executed, which is not verified, not true.
00:22:46.000You know, you still have people on the political left who double down on the fake news narrative.
00:22:51.160So I want to go to Jagmeet Singh's tweets about this.
00:22:53.900He tweeted basically just, again, doubling down and verifying the nonsense.
00:22:58.740He says, one year ago, 215 unmarked graves of indigenous children were found at a former
00:23:22.620there are no confirmed children, and nothing has been covered because there haven't been any
00:23:26.640excavations, right? The only way that we know that these, or the only reason we suspect that
00:23:33.180these might be unmarked graves is because of a preliminary ground penetrating radar report that
00:23:39.440was put out. And it didn't even find that it was 215. It found that it was 200 Harrison,
00:23:44.720and that these were soil disturbances. They weren't necessarily graves. So again, you know,
00:23:50.840you have facts and then they just don't line up with the narrative. And so now you have these
00:23:55.720people out there pushing this narrative and it just, it just really falls flat. I just want to
00:24:00.160show one more piece and I'll get your reaction. There was an op-ed over in the Globe and Mail
00:24:05.140written by two individuals. The headline reads, reconciliation can't be achieved
00:24:09.900with only symbolic gestures. And they sort of double down on all of the narratives that this
00:24:14.500is genocidal and that this proved genocide. I just want to point out, this is sort of a funny
00:24:19.980aside. One of the authors of this piece is a First Nations professor. The other one describes
00:24:26.160himself, Ian Mosby, he describes himself as a settler scholar, an assistant professor of history
00:24:31.960at the Toronto Metropolitan University. So that is the university formerly known as Ryerson.
00:24:36.900And that's a new one to me. I've never seen anyone describe themselves as a settler scholar.
00:24:42.040But Harrison, what do you make of all this? Well, I mean, there's so much to talk about
00:24:46.820with this and we could really do we could do an hour long show on this i mean first i think the
00:24:51.700first thing we should look at is what a lot of journalists have refused to cover this story
00:24:56.420really to me is a failure of journalism we at true north you in particular candace did an excellent
00:25:01.540job at picking through the facts at picking through sorry the claims and getting to the facts
00:25:06.420about what was going on at a time when it was politically unpopular to do so so that we you
00:25:12.900you know, True North readers and other people were kind of seeing through a lot of this,
00:25:17.320but it was really a major failure in journalism. First, we should show people watching right now
00:25:22.100what the basis was for all these claims. Claims that basically led to a summer in which churches
00:25:29.080were burned across our country and vandalized. We had Queen Victoria toppled. Egerton Ryerson's
00:25:35.280statue at Ryerson was toppled. A summer of destruction, really, that was caused by
00:25:39.520ground penetrating radar findings that are not that are not conclusive whatsoever, Candace,
00:25:45.500and frankly, don't even show what is being claimed to what they're claiming to show. So
00:25:52.900why don't we show the audience what these ground penetrating radar findings even look like? So why
00:25:59.060don't we put those up on the screen? This is what a ground penetrating radar will show you. It'll
00:26:04.720show you soil disruptions which could be anything and even the even the first nations leaders
00:26:11.600admitted to this in the inquiry findings can is that these could have been tree roots these could
00:26:17.120have been graves that were of of adults nothing proves um nothing nothing proves that um you know
00:26:24.480children were buried here in in mass graves and especially if you take jagmeet singh's line it's
00:26:30.880not accurate to say that whatsoever. Now also it's the media coverage of this story that I think
00:26:38.480is so shocking. The idea that there was very little scrutiny from the legacy media candidates
00:26:44.400on this whatsoever. Obviously now a year later it's turning out to kind of unfold and most
00:26:50.560Canadians are starting to catch on. And it's a shame because what really happened was the emotions
00:26:56.080of canadians were swept up because of i think a lot of understandable uh sadness and disappointment
00:27:02.240about about this news no canadian was happy to read these stories and i think all of us wanted to
00:27:09.040feel as though there was something we could do but the fact is that if if the truth was just put out
00:27:13.840there at the very beginning i think canadians who who may now be much more skeptical of what they
00:27:20.880here in regards to reconciliation canadians would be in a better place i think canadians
00:27:26.080and and and first nations communities would have would have a better would be on would be on a
00:27:30.800better a similar page but now there's a lot of skepticism because i think most canadians feel
00:27:35.760they were basically being fed uh mistruths or uh or spun truths to try and whip up um
00:27:43.520a lot of a lot of division and frustration it's it's it's really it's real it's just
00:27:48.800disappointing to see and i want to point this out too the new york post um which is one of the
00:27:53.440oldest newspapers i think it's the oldest newspaper in the united states uh today they ran a story
00:27:58.880that calls the kamloops mass graves uh the biggest fake news story in canada and the headline says
00:28:05.360it it was it's been debunked by academics i mean this is devastating stuff and it's really being
00:28:11.280i think the people that it hurts the most are first nations canadians well you're right and
00:28:16.480And it's such a disservice to media, of the media, not just to all Canadians, it's a disservice to all Canadians because there was genuine remorse and contrition and people really just felt awful and wanted to do something.
00:28:26.740And I think that the sort of goodwill that was offered will be compromised when Canadians learn that, no, this is not actually what happened.
00:28:35.480And more Canadians are, I just noticed anecdotally from the comments, like a year ago when I was first sort of raising some questions about it,
00:28:41.860But I would say that 90% of the comments were people telling me I was wrong and I was on0.66
00:28:46.300the wrong side of history and it was evil to question this.
00:28:50.460And now when I read comments, it's like flipped.
00:28:52.720It's like 90% of people are skeptical of the story and 10% still remain genuinely remorseful.
00:28:58.800It's also obviously a major disservice to First Nations people, as I mentioned this
00:29:02.440idea that we're now teaching them that they are the victims of a genocide.
00:29:07.620And imagine trying to live a normal life in a society where you're told that your ancestors
00:29:11.760were targeted and murdered systematically by the state. Like, that's not a healthy environment
00:29:19.200for a society. Interestingly, so Jonathan Kaye, who we mentioned earlier in the program, he sent
00:29:24.560out a tweet basically just reiterating this stuff and pointing out that Jagmeet Singh was pushing
00:29:30.800misinformation. He says, these have always been described as suspected graves since no bodies have
00:29:35.280yet to be unearthed. And then he says, if Jagmeet Singh is information indicating otherwise you
00:29:39.280share with media otherwise um you know you shouldn't say that these bodies were on earth
00:29:44.400uh interesting so a local reporter in kamloops an individual called james peters he replied and i
00:29:50.080think that his replies are very sort of exemplary of the mindset of the media so he just says this
00:29:56.560particular brand of skepticism has become popular among certain strains of deniers and contrarians
00:30:01.280especially on twitter it's all theoretical until the remains are exhumed this is counterproductive
00:30:06.400and harmful uh so right off the bat he says like how dare you be skeptical of this story that's not
00:30:11.920verified he calls jonathan k a name deniers which you know we've heard that a lot before originally
00:30:18.720people who are called deniers were holocaust deniers then they became climate change deniers
00:30:22.560and now what they're a mass grave deniers like they're first nation um unmarked grave deniers so
00:30:28.320it's a name calling and then and then just saying anyone asking questions is counterproductive and
00:30:33.200harmful. And then he goes on to say, denies the efficacy of groundbreaking radar and the work done
00:30:38.440by scientists such as Sarah Bilyeu. Well, I watched Dr. Sarah Bilyeu's presentation and she was the one
00:30:44.880who said, she said during her presentation that first of all, there's no way to confirm. She said
00:30:51.180it wasn't 215. It was more like 200. And the only way to determine whether or not there are human
00:30:57.400remains down there and whether or not they belong to children, whether they're not belong to children
00:31:00.080the residential school the only way to determine any of that is through excavation i think a lot
00:31:04.240of canadians genuinely believe that there was going to be some kind of excavation that that
00:31:08.000we were going to be able to verify it and of course there's there's no plans for any of that
00:31:12.320um and so this is just going to be an ongoing case of people basically saying you know on the
00:31:19.440one side let's find some facts and let's verify them and the other side people basically saying
00:31:23.920how dare you? How dare you try to verify or try to get facts to prove the story because we all
00:31:32.220just have to take it as fact and then use it as a weapon to basically beat down Canadian society
00:31:38.660and say that Canada is a horrible, awful, racist, genocidal, colonialist society with new legitimacy.
00:31:44.160And that's pretty much where the left is these days. Yeah. And there's no way that the media
00:31:48.100and people in government who were pushing this narrative without any facts, there was no way
00:31:53.500they didn't know what the product what was going to come from this which was basically a an
00:31:58.540unprecedented wave of anti-canadian sentiment being spread by basically being spread throughout
00:32:02.980our society again labeling our country as this horrible evil place um and basically drawing
00:32:09.740connections to the very worst very worst uh countries in history to canada which is the
00:32:15.900best country i believe in the world one of the one of the places that is the freest place on earth
00:32:19.960a country that people all over the world would give an arm and a leg to come to. And we had our
00:32:25.160flag lowered for almost six months in a perpetual state of mourning for something that there was
00:32:32.760just no evidence to back up. And the assault on Christian communities in Canada throughout the
00:32:38.980summer that this caused was unbelievable. And the fact that it got so little attention compared to
00:32:44.660the uh compared to the unmarked uh burial claims that just didn't have any evidence to me there's
00:32:51.220no way candace that this the response that we saw from canadian society was not anticipated
00:32:59.700when people started putting this stuff out there without any fact without any without any evidence
00:33:04.740and leaving it up to to canadians to interpret and of course some people come to the very worst
00:33:09.780conclusions and some people want to get to the bottom of what was really going on i think i think
00:33:14.580you did that and we at true north did that and other journalists did that um but also several
00:33:20.340people several people several journalists and politicians and to this day jagmeet singh saying
00:33:24.980that it's it's unbelievable without evidence he knows what he's doing um these people knew what
00:33:30.100they were doing and it really it's i think it's a stain on canadian journalism and now we have new
00:33:35.540New York Post. We're going to have international outlets that were pushing this narrative,
00:33:41.020coming out and saying, actually, there's no evidence to back it up at all. So how does
00:33:44.520it make our country look? It makes us look, I think, it doesn't put us in great light.
00:33:49.340Well, and it's also part of a broader trend, right? This isn't just happening in Canada. I
00:33:52.340know Douglas Murray has a new book out called War on the West. And the idea that they go after
00:33:57.480sort of the national figures, the historical figures of a country to try to undermine the
00:34:01.880very legitimacy of that country. We see it happening in the UK with Winston Churchill.
00:34:07.260You see it happening in the US, even with Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln in Canada.
00:34:12.800Definitely happened with with John A. MacDonald, where he you know, he's just completely in the eyes of so many elites.
00:34:19.640He's just beyond the pale. You know, that that doesn't just hit John A. MacDonald.
00:34:24.640It hits at the core of Canada and our identity. And I want to stay with this topic, though, of sort of political culture wars.
00:34:31.880that are happening all over the West. And what we'll see this past week, I mean, you know,
00:34:37.120the biggest news story in the world was just the unspeakable, horrible tragedy that happened in
00:34:41.380Uvalde, Texas, still trying to put together the details of that Harrison. You and I were talking
00:34:46.040before air about this new timeline that came out that's just really unconscionable. The idea
00:34:49.720that the police waited over an hour before going in to stop this gunman and waiting for backup
00:34:55.580while parents were frantically urging them to go inside. For me, when I look at the story,
00:35:01.180I see, you know, a picture of a very isolated and disgruntled and mentally ill young man with no father in the picture, a mother who was using drugs.
00:35:12.820You know, he shot his own grandmother.
00:35:14.660Like there's severe dysfunction in this young man's life.
00:35:17.760Interestingly, you know, an 18 year old male shooter, exactly the same profile as the shooter in Buffalo, New York, in terms of age and gender.
00:35:26.620You know, it seems to me that there's a broader societal problems.
00:35:30.280There's probably policing problems. There's definite social breakdown. You know, this guy spent a lot of time on social media sites like Reddit and Instagram. There's so many things that you can analyze and try to understand. I mean, you can't understand a horrible, unspeakable tragedy. You never will.
00:35:48.460But it's interesting how the political left and the news media sort of knee jerk reaction is to go straight to gun control. In the case of Buffalo, they went straight to, you know, white supremacists, evil right wingers. They don't want to they take the most simplistic perspective and use it as a political weapon against the public instead of really trying to understand what happened or someone wrong.
00:36:12.820it seems like Uvalde was a pretty horrific case of police inaction. And I'm saying this is someone
00:36:18.340who is generally very pro-police. But when I read the details there, it's really just
00:36:22.760very difficult to understand what was going on in that chaotic scene.
00:36:27.320All this is just to say that whenever there's a big tragedy that's easily exploitable by Democrats
00:36:33.460in the US, it just seems to quickly make its way up to Canada. So we saw this a few weeks ago with
00:36:37.920roe versus wade uh case where all of a sudden justin trudeau used that as an example to say
00:36:42.400that he was gonna provide more abortions in canada and that they were gonna allow americans to come
00:36:47.840up to canada to have abortions um you know when it came to the buffalo shooter instantly they
00:36:53.200were trying to tie the trucker convoy and this guy pat king and then pier poliev to the murderer
00:36:59.440and then now with uvaldi almost instinct like knee-jerk reaction and the media around with it
00:37:04.240Of course, we saw the Ontario Liberal leader here in Ontario, Stephen Del Duca, putting out this tweet saying what happened at Robb Elementary School in Texas.
00:37:12.180Absolutely horrific. My heart breaks for his children and teachers who've lost their lives.
00:37:16.220The need for gun control has never been clearer.
00:37:19.880And, you know, calling for more gun control in Canada.
00:37:22.820Likewise, there's this CTV City News story saying new gun control measures coming in Canada.
00:37:28.160Trudeau says, so he's already, he doesn't have a specific policy in mind, but he's ready
00:37:32.960to pounce, ready to capitalize on the horrible tragedies that are happening in the United States
00:37:38.720by somehow pretending that the gun rules in Texas are anything remotely similar to the gun laws in
00:37:46.180Ontario, or that the underlying social problems that are occurring in the United States, look,
00:37:52.380some of them do occur in Canada. Some of them, you know, the problem with societal breakdown,
00:37:56.920with family breakdown uh the problem with isolation especially during coven these young
00:38:01.780isolated men uh you know being told whatever they're told that makes them go so deranged
00:38:07.400um and then spending a bunch of time on social media you know that that was a problem before
00:38:11.840it's been exasperated by the lockdowns um but but but to sort of import these culture wars
00:38:17.420into canada pretend it's the exact same thing it's just so callous like i don't know how else
00:38:22.680describe it harrison it's so callous it's like they're just manipulating people who have emotional
00:38:29.240takes on these issues that don't think very deeply about them their knee-jerk reaction is let's panel
00:38:33.000guns or let's you know make sure that abortions are codified in our in our charter rights and
00:38:38.920freedoms or something like that like they have a very superficial reaction and then and then the
00:38:43.880liberals capitalize on it and the media like cheers and applause for them it's it's it's just
00:38:47.880it's like a pet peeve it's it's it's so callous what do you think yeah and i think i think it's
00:38:52.440really i think it's a really bad practice i don't think it does anyone in in canada any good when
00:38:59.000politicians jump on horrible tragedies to push their narratives um when things are so fresh we
00:39:04.280we knew this was going to come because it always does right can i said all it always comes when
00:39:09.240there's something that is dominating the news cycle there's there's almost this need for
00:39:14.680figures in canada to to do something about it and to ride that wave um and we i mean the horrible
00:39:21.320takes on the on the shooting in in texas obviously don't just stop with with uh stephen del duca's
00:39:29.000comment about the need for more gun control the idea that there can be any comparison to
00:39:35.720the issues we're seeing in the united states these these ongoing horrible shootings at schools that
00:39:41.480that is that is a united states thing the idea that we can even compare um any of that to what
00:39:47.080happens in canada is just not accurate we don't have that problem in canada we have other problems
00:39:51.400significant problems but the idea that we can ride this and say well because of that because
00:39:56.200what happened in texas um we need to push for canadian stricter canadian gun laws it's it's
00:40:03.720i think i think it's frankly disgusting because the these parents and these students um who had
00:40:10.280classmates and family and children um taken from them um and and you know teachers who had lost
00:40:17.560their lives these people should be left alone their tragedies should not be used to push political
00:40:23.400narratives and and of course we can take you know we that's that's just the texas example of course
00:40:28.600there's the abortion example um which shouldn't surprise anyone that justin trudeau jumped on
00:40:33.240that to push his own narrative i just really wish in canada we set a standard candace where
00:40:39.400our politicians don't don't use awful tragedies to push their narratives it would really i'd really
00:40:46.360appreciate it if we could stop doing that i think everyone would be better off for it
00:40:51.320and i think if canadian politicians wanted to advance legislation and use use the media to
00:40:56.760advance legislation they should at the very least use canadian examples because that would actually
00:41:01.560make sense this frankly just doesn't make sense and i think del duca couldn't help himself he had
00:41:06.120the jump on it, right? Well, yeah, you're right. And I mean, the liberals are the king of this
00:41:12.960because it was after the horrific, horrible mass shooting in Nova Scotia that Trudeau very,
00:41:18.240very quickly came out with a sweeping ban on scary looking guns. And you recall that was the
00:41:25.080one that Aaron O'Toole originally opposed. And then as soon as he got a little bit of pushback
00:41:28.720from the media during the election, he flip flopped on it. But the liberals always use
00:41:32.540news stories to their advantage. But this is particularly callous, given that we're in the
00:41:43.000wake of just a horrible, horrible tragedy. Interestingly, though, just as a sort of local
00:41:48.140related story, there was a man who was roaming around a school area in the Scarborough area of
00:41:53.980Toronto yesterday, and he was fatally shot by police. He was holding a gun. Turns out it was
00:42:00.060a BB gun. But the police wasted no time, which is quite frankly, the opposite of what seems to
00:42:05.080have happened in Uvalde. Again, the timeline, you read through it, it's just mind boggling.
00:42:10.320This guy was outside the school for I think it was 14 minutes firing his weapon before he actually
00:42:15.980went into the school, Harrison. So the police had ample opportunity to take this guy out.
00:42:20.500The school had ample opportunity to lock down and lock their doors and prevent this deranged
00:42:25.900shooter from entering why none of that was done is beyond me and and uh it's again just just so
00:42:32.460unspeakable and so horrible but uh again there's no there's no political tragedy out there that
00:42:37.620Justin Trudeau and other liberals won't jump to take advantage of okay final story I want to talk
00:42:42.380about Harrison this is just almost good for a laugh this was a story that circled around this
00:42:47.720past week that apparently uh 15 16 percent of legacy media journalists are suffering from
00:42:53.140post-traumatic stress disorder. Headline says, alarming levels of stress are harming the mental
00:42:58.580illness, sorry, harming the mental health of Canadian journalists and media workers. So woe
00:43:03.760is me. It is so hard to be a journalist, Harrison. And you read some of these stats and wow, this
00:43:10.500explains so much. This explains so much of Fake News Friday and why we are here. So according to
00:43:16.280this anonymous online survey that was conducted in the end of 2021 by journalists themselves,
00:43:22.240self-reporting about themselves a full 69 percent of journalists in canada report anxiety okay 46
00:43:28.720percent report depression 15 report post-traumatic stress injury so so so the majority of journalists
00:43:37.680in this country self-report having some kind of mental duress or or instability uh that that that
00:43:45.360that really reflects in in their reporting i think in the way that they handle the news and the way
00:43:49.680that they try to victimize themselves and make it seem like they you know they have the most
00:43:54.400dangerous job in the country uh this one's kind of interesting media workers face rampant harassment
00:43:58.880online so 56 report online harassment and threats um i'm actually surprised it's not higher because
00:44:04.880my my assumption is is that you know almost all canadians could say they report some kind
00:44:10.640of online harassment people who spend a lot of time online uh realize that whenever you have
00:44:14.640a platform with anonymous users there's going to be some just nonsense that's tweeted or pushed out
00:44:20.480and you know the the fact that you would dwell on that is is just beyond me um but to go through a
00:44:26.640little bit more they say 35 experience harassment in the field 46 of journalists in canada report
00:44:32.880high risk drinking and 26 harrison describe themselves as heavy drinkers so so we have a
00:44:40.080heavy drinking group of journalists reporting the news 53 have sought medical help to deal with work
00:44:46.000stress and mental health and 85 have never received training on mental health or trauma at work so
00:44:54.000uh are you sure you uh you sure harrison that you want to enter this profession i mean it's not too
00:44:58.560late for you you can you can get out but it doesn't really paint a very rosy picture of life as a
00:45:03.440journalist in canada well it sure does explain quite a lot doesn't it with those figures what
00:45:08.160what is it, 60% are crippling with shaking anxiety, they can't do their jobs. Now, here's
00:45:14.820the thing. There's so many here. We could really make a lot of jokes, some probably not too
00:45:20.760appropriate for the show about these numbers. But we've seen this so often. Ever since the
00:45:28.880Trucker Convoy, there were all these events about journalists under attack and the threats to
00:45:35.920journalism and the war on the news. They really have, I think, found a new gear of trying to put
00:45:42.720themselves and make themselves out to be the victims. And, you know, I wonder, Candace, if
00:45:48.320maybe, just maybe, running with a story without verifying it and saying that Canadians who were
00:45:53.580upset at the prime minister were hurling racist insults at people, and then having to backtrack
00:46:00.020might have to do some little bit about some of the online harassment that these journalists are
00:46:05.700facing it might just be because their reporting has been so horrendous over the past what is it
00:46:11.640feels like over the past really the past year they've really gone to a few years since covid
00:46:15.920i mean it's just they've stopped reporting and just started becoming stenographers for the
00:46:19.680politicians yeah exactly so maybe that has to do with it uh just a little bit that that they
00:46:25.120basically are pitting canadians against each other and running with the government lines i mean what
00:46:30.200else can we pick out of here uh the 15 that report uh ptsd candace i wonder uh because i i would
00:46:37.560probably say that maybe uh getting pepper sprayed by uh riot cops and getting you know shot with
00:46:45.560tear gas uh as the independent journalists um as andrew laudan and as alexa lavoie were
00:46:52.040uh in ottawa during the trailer convoy i wonder if they uh suffer from any of that probably not
00:46:57.400because they're adults they understand what goes into being a journalist um but imagine if these
00:47:03.960legacy media journalists in their cushy corporate subsidy uh subsidy journalist offices they're the
00:47:10.680ones that are reporting ps ptsd imagine if those people who seem to be so thin-skinned and frankly
00:47:17.080weak imagine if they had to do the job that all like independent journalists like the ones that
00:47:21.640that we have at true north and the ones are at rebel imagine if they had to do that job i mean
00:47:25.640i don't know they probably couldn't even take a day of it canvas yeah i mean forget about independent
00:47:30.680journalists like i'd like to see them you know working on like an oil rig for a day or driving
00:47:35.720a truck like like these poor pampered little journalists yeah it's like it's like oh oh my life
00:47:43.240is so scary i i face mean tweets online it's like yeah it's because of your reporting the reason
00:47:49.000that people you know have pushback online and say things is because they don't like being called
00:47:54.920racist and they don't like the way you characterize them and there's no accountability in media they
00:47:59.960they say journalists sit there and hurl the craziest accusations of the canadian public
00:48:05.160and then they face the tiniest bit of pushback and they you know they do panels at ryerson
00:48:11.000university or carlton called the media versus the truckers like they they really see themselves on
00:48:16.440the front lines and you know this whole idea i mean i've spent a bit of time in ottawa and i've
00:48:21.960met many of the people the parliamentary press gallery and none of this is too surprising for me
00:48:26.200you know that these people lead very sad miserable lives um 46 are heavy drinkers or sorry or high
00:48:33.000risk drinkers whatever that means that 26 they're heavy drinkers yeah i i could have told you that
00:48:37.480uh you know from from going to a political event in ottawa so really kind of a sad profession again
00:48:44.360harrison i would i would just say it's it's not too late for you man you can you can go get a real
00:48:49.080job. You don't have to be a journalist. All jokes aside. If only I received mental health training
00:48:55.520at work, Candice, then maybe it might make it much easier for me. We should look into that at
00:48:59.240True North. Yeah, maybe True North will do some kind of program. It's all so fitting. And in all
00:49:08.100seriousness, though, we love what we do. And it's a lot of fun to poke fun at these journalists
00:49:12.520because they're just so clueless. And they're really bringing the worst kind of division to
00:49:17.980our society that they're importing us culture wars they're blatantly getting news stories wrong
00:49:23.440they're they're lashing out at canadians they're sneering at canadians they're dividing canadians
00:49:27.960they're saying that our very foundational history is racist and genocidal like you know all of all
00:49:35.300of the fury um that they faced they had coming so i'll just i'll just leave it at that uh for today
00:49:40.800harrison all right well thank you so much for joining us on the show it's always great to hear
00:49:44.360from you, Harrison. Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Candice. All right. That's True North
00:49:48.060journalist and producer Harrison Faulkner. I'm Candice Malcolm. It's Fake News Friday. This