00:01:00.000welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:20.460north. Hello and welcome to you all. The last day of the week insofar as the Andrew Lawton
00:01:31.540show is concerned anyway. You've made it through. Welcome. It was a bit of an abbreviated week for
00:01:35.740us, but we are here. It is Thursday, January 4th, 2023. No, I said yesterday I was going to do this.
00:01:43.660It is 2024. January 4th, 2024. We haven't just transported back in time 365 days. No, I don't think so anyway. I mean, who knows? This is all a simulation, you might even say.
00:01:57.100It is good to have you aboard the program. If you were following along, I had a few emails asking about this, which I'm very grateful that you take such an interest in my otherwise boring life.
00:02:08.240Just before the holiday break, the Christmas break, I, you may recall, did a sit-down interview with Pierre Paulyevre, the leader of the Conservatives.
00:02:17.820We did the interview in Mississauga, Ontario. I live in southwestern Ontario.
00:02:23.120And I told you, I think it was the day after or whatever, on the way back from that interview, I got into a four-car accident on the 401, which was Ontario's major parking lot or highway, rather.
00:02:34.740and the 401 it was a four car accident no injuries thankfully uh we were all able to drive our cars
00:02:40.420back but i i my car the insurance company was thinking is probably totaled and i i still it's
00:02:46.360like weeks later and they only just told me this morning yes your car is totaled but they haven't
00:02:50.300yet given me the magic number of how much they're uh going to give me for my car so i am uh to those
00:02:56.160who asked i am still automobile list if you have any car recommendations i guess send them along
00:03:01.260I'm going to get like a, anytime you ask people to recommend something, you get like a million
00:03:05.080contradictory emails of, you know, always get this, never do this, never do this. But if you
00:03:09.560have a good recommendation, I guess I will, we'll have to take it there. Right now, thankfully,
00:03:13.840I am doing my best to not leave home because when I say I don't have a car, I mean it. I'm not doing
00:03:22.880like this weird Chrystia Freeland loophole where she says she doesn't have a car, but manages to
00:03:27.760put on more miles than most Canadian truckers do. You may have seen this story that came out this
00:03:33.840week. Chrystia Freeland has been racking up thousands and thousands of dollars in limo
00:03:39.620expenses in the greater Toronto area. Now, why this is important? If you're a cabinet minister,
00:03:45.260if certainly a deputy prime minister, you cannot be expected to drive around like some pleb. So
00:03:50.300cabinet ministers, conservative, liberal, doesn't matter. They get access to a car and driver. Now,
00:03:55.480i'm not taking issue with that because to be honest if you've got work to do and you're on
00:03:59.900the phone whatever that's fine i do take issue with it when christian freeland makes this big
00:04:05.280whole stink about how uh she's doing what she can for the climate she is going without a car
00:04:10.940and her whole line which you may recall well let's just play the clip what is it she said exactly
00:04:17.180i right now am an mp for downtown toronto um a fact that still shocks my dad is
00:04:25.460i don't actually own a car because i live in downtown toronto i'm like i don't know 300
00:04:31.980meters from the nearest subway um i walk i take the subway i make my kids walk and ride their
00:04:39.840bikes and take the subway it's actually healthier for our family i can live that way but you don't
00:04:48.180live that way you choose not to live that way uh when i see in the toronto sun which built off of
00:04:55.180reporting from Black Clock's reporter.
00:04:57.320Krista Freeland spent $3,040 in Toronto for limo and taxi rides,
00:05:04.940plus $6,736 in separate trips for her official chauffeur.
00:08:40.800an urgently implemented expeditious withdrawal from the UN and all its subsidiary organizations.
00:08:47.300That's the petition. Now, this is a petition that any Canadian can put forward. You've heard me
00:08:51.880say time and time again on this show that these things are not binding. They don't really do
00:08:55.780anything except for give a bit of momentum around an issue. Again, 66,000 signatures is not nothing,
00:09:02.080but it's not huge in the grand scheme of things in a country with pushing 40 million people.
00:09:07.040But the fact that Lesla Lewis was promoting this, people do not like. I'll give you a few examples of this here. I did the horrendous task of going over liberal members of parliament's Twitter accounts. I had to take a shower right before the show, almost missed the show.
00:09:23.840But Seamus O'Regan, who's a former cabinet minister, had this to say.
00:09:29.780Withdraw trade with Ukraine, withdraw military aid to Ukraine, and now withdraw from the United Nations.
00:09:36.960Seriously, what is up with the Conservative Party?
00:09:40.860Cody Blaze, who is a member of parliament in King's Hance out on the East Coast, said,
00:09:47.260I need to wait until it's up on the screen before I can read it.
00:09:49.380I don't have it in my document in front of me here.
00:09:51.220uh says good idea lesson let's take canada out of the international forum with 193 countries around
00:09:57.800the world this stuff is bat bleep crazy uh cody didn't give the bleep there that was just uh from
00:10:04.500yours truly and i don't know what is more ridiculous the fact that she is peddling this
00:10:08.340stuff or that she sits in the conservative shadow cabinet and uh let's see what else do we have here
00:10:14.620we will read uh charlie angus i mean i i never want to make the mistake of thinking charlie
00:10:18.720angus is relevant but uh charlie angus who is with the ndp says two weeks ago polyev ordered
00:10:24.040his mps to vote against support for ukraine now one of his front bench mps is leading the fight
00:10:29.700to pull canada out of the un the conservatives are not playing to the conspiracy base they are
00:10:35.840the conspiracy base dun dun dun and of course the liberal party itself weighs in never wanting to
00:10:43.360let one of these little mini stories go to waste. The official line from the liberals here
00:10:48.980references the far left rag press progress calling far right conspiracy groups. And they say
00:10:56.860Polyev needs to denounce this reckless idea immediately. Now, there are, I mean, even people
00:11:02.180on the left have a lot of criticisms for the United Nations. This is an organization that
00:11:06.260elevates dictatorial regimes like Iran and Saudi Arabia and North Korea. It puts countries that
00:11:13.400don't have women's rights on the women's rights committees. It puts countries that don't respect
00:11:17.780free speech on the human rights committees. It puts countries that don't even ensure the
00:11:21.540basic necessaries of life for their citizens on all of these committees where they then pass
00:11:26.980resolutions that lecture everyone else for not doing more. So the United Nations is not and should
00:11:32.180not be above scrutiny here and now whether the answer to that is to work within it or just
00:11:37.240withdraw altogether people can decide for themselves let's be real it's never going to
00:11:43.000happen there's not going to be without some larger current that exists in the world right now that
00:11:48.460let's be real is probably going to involve the U.S. there isn't going to be a can exit if you will
00:11:53.840from the United Nations or the WHO is a bit different I actually could see Canada conceivably
00:12:00.200withdrawing or pulling back from the WHO. But we're not sitting out at the UN and you may think
00:12:05.580we should, but we won't. So, but the idea that it's just such a terrible thing to do, that you
00:12:11.160shouldn't be allowed to criticize the UN, you shouldn't be allowed to have this discussion.
00:12:15.160That's really what the liberals are doing here. The liberals are saying that this is the kind of
00:12:19.900thing that is above scrutiny. It's above reproach. You're not allowed to talk about it,
00:12:24.680no discussion whatsoever. And if you do, if you dare to talk about it, you are just an evil,
00:12:31.200dirty, scary conspiracy theorist. That is the point that they're making here. And look, I just
00:12:35.800saw a few moments before I went on air, a press release from the liberals. They're announcing
00:12:40.180their candidate for Durham. So this is a riding in the GTA. Jamil Giovanni is the conservative
00:12:45.400candidate. It's replacing Aaron O'Toole. They haven't called a date for the by-election yet,
00:12:49.920but the liberals now have their candidate. And I was skimming through it and there's a line here.
00:12:54.200I'll see if I can find it. Here we go. With Pierre Polyev and conservative politicians
00:12:59.680trying to import far-right American politics to Canada and pushing for deep cuts to public
00:13:06.240health care, $10 a day child care and dental care and support for the middle class now more than
00:13:11.380ever, Durham needs a community champion, yada, yada. I love the equivalence, by the way.
00:13:16.400The conservatives are A, challenging the $10 a day child care and B, importing far-right American
00:13:23.380politics. These are their great sins. They're challenging a liberal child care policy and
00:13:28.360they're being populist demagogues or whatever the liberals are accusing them of. But this is
00:13:34.700what's happening here. And again, I think we should allow the discussion to criticize the UN
00:13:38.900and the WHO. And anyone who says after the last three years that there are no criticisms you can
00:13:45.240make at the WHO clearly was not paying attention or is just so far in the bag. They're like that
00:13:50.900Tedros Adhanom guy at the WHO that just wants to, you know, suck up to Chairman Xi more than doing
00:13:56.540anything else. So that is straight out of the Politburo if you want to say that you're not
00:14:00.740allowed to have these discussions and make these criticisms. So I wanted to turn to the left coast
00:14:06.940or the west coast, depending on how you refer to it, with all due respect to our friends and
00:14:11.000followers in British Columbia. But in BC, there was a rather dismal Supreme Court ruling, the BC
00:14:17.920Supreme Court the other day, in which they effectively said that if you try to get drug
00:14:23.940users out of playgrounds where children are congregating, it's somehow a violation of the
00:14:30.640drug users' constitutional rights. This is not just a reasonable concession that you could make
00:14:36.140while letting people do their drugs everywhere else in BC, which is the province's policy. No,
00:14:40.540it's a violation of their constitutional rights. So what more backwards and I will say authentic
00:14:45.840display of how British Columbia is viewing this than that ruling. And this comes at a time where
00:14:51.680there was a rather unique report that came out from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute by National
00:14:57.040Post columnist Adam Zeebo, who's been on the show before, looking at the effects of BC's so-called
00:15:02.980safe supply policy. And if you've followed this issue on this show or elsewhere in the past,
00:15:07.540you know that the word safe is a misnomer if ever there was one. But figured we'd delve into both
00:15:13.120of these issues. Adam Zivo returns here. Adam, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming back on.
00:15:17.940Good to talk to you too. Thanks for having me back.
00:15:20.280So let's just start with the Supreme Court ruling. This is a system in Canada, the legal system
00:15:25.740that will say that any constitutional right, if you want free speech, if you want freedom of
00:15:31.120expression, all of that is subject to all of these caveats and exceptions and carve outs and
00:15:35.940balancing against other people's. And here we have an example where to say that we don't want
00:15:41.280drug users on playgrounds, you can just go 50 meters away. It doesn't seem like that big a
00:15:47.360concession, but they're saying, oh, no, no, no, drug users have rights. Well, so their argument
00:15:51.880essentially is that if you ban people from using drugs in public spaces, that will encourage them
00:15:58.220to use alone. And then if they use alone, they're more likely to die of an overdose. Therefore,
00:16:03.660banning public drug consumption endangers drug users' lives in a way that is just not acceptable.
00:16:11.280that's a very questionable argument uh i think that there isn't really any strong evidence behind
00:16:16.160that argument from my understanding uh and i think that if it really were the case that allowing
00:16:21.760people to use drugs in public decreased overdoses and deaths you'd see that reflected in the overdose
00:16:26.560data in bc uh since they began their decriminalization experiments back about a year ago but
00:16:32.720we haven't seen that so i really questioned how the judge is coming to the conclusion
00:16:37.040that the argument made by harm reduction activists is a persuasive one yeah and i i would say going
00:16:42.960back a year is uh one area but bc has had for many many years the most permissive approach to drugs
00:16:50.640anywhere in the country we've had i mean the original fight over so-called harm reduction was
00:16:55.520a center in british columbia insight and that's going back close to 20 years now maybe at least
00:17:00.72015 16 years uh you've got these safe supply programs that have been in effect and yet bc
00:17:06.080is still the worst as far as overdoses are concerned. So, I mean, the stated goal behind
00:17:11.980a lot of these programs just isn't panning out in the data. Well, the problem is that for many
00:17:17.640BC addiction policymakers, they don't seem to actually care about real research. A lot of the
00:17:22.500research in this space is very low quality or, you know, has often sometimes been biased. Even,
00:17:29.320for example, Insight, a lot of the research that was produced around that in 2003 to 2007
00:17:34.460was produced by individuals who had lobbied for the creation of Insight to begin with.
00:17:39.280So there was a lot of conflict of interest there, and they were criticized for coming
00:18:28.920And so essentially, you know, since your listeners aren't fully familiar with this
00:18:32.560whole issue. Starting in August, BC permitted the province-wide prescription of safe-supplied
00:18:39.140fentanyl tablets and sous-fentanil. And they did this really quietly. There was no press release.
00:18:48.640There's been no media on it, which is really odd because usually harm reduction advocates
00:18:53.840advertise when they expand safer supply. And so I started looking into it and I realized that the
00:18:58.980that they were expanding safer supply fentanyl was grossly irresponsible uh so the current system
00:19:04.980that we have today where we distribute hydromorphone which is basically heroin is already
00:19:09.540broken because we don't require supervised consumption so people sell their safer supply
00:19:13.620drugs on the streets so we decided to give out fentanyl and we decided to put in no no requirement
00:19:19.780for safer like for supervised consumption so now we're creating a system that is set up to
00:19:24.420essentially flood communities with fentanyl in addition to government heroin which you know i
00:19:29.140personally think is irresponsible and i think many people would agree with me and i will say it's not
00:19:34.740just a theoretical issue that these are ending up in the illegal uh drug trade i mean there have been
00:19:40.500a number of demonstrable cases in bc and also in ontario where people can pretty well prove how
00:19:47.140these drugs are ending up uh just being trafficked well that's the thing is that so here's the thing
00:19:53.780When it comes to scientific and formal studies of diversion, that's what they call it when this is
00:19:57.540sold to the streets, none of these studies are happening because harm reduction activists aren't
00:20:03.380interested in exploring this issue. And the federal government, despite throwing $100 million in
00:20:09.380safer supply, has not funded one study that seriously looks at diversion. The only research
00:20:14.100that's being done in diversion is essentially asking drug users who are on safer supply,
00:20:18.260do you divert and if so why so obviously that's incredibly biased you know hey are you selling
00:20:25.140your drugs if so why are you doing it um and they'll you know they'll whitewash it they'll say
00:20:29.940oh it's just mutual aid or whatever um so what i've been doing is i've been you know for the past
00:20:34.420year speaking to different stakeholder groups about safer supply and i've just consistently
00:20:38.740been hearing from people that yes this diversion is happening you know i heard that from over 30
00:20:44.500addiction physicians i interviewed former drug users in london ontario i interviewed
00:20:50.180online drug users on reddit who were openly selling safer supply and posting photos with
00:20:54.740prescriptions and validating that safer supply i've spoken with over 50 youth who talk about
00:20:59.860how hydromorphin is a big issue in their schools and how their peers are getting it from safer
00:21:03.780supply so it's it's ridiculous to me that people are saying that this is not a big problem but the
00:21:09.140thing is that our federal government and the bc government and these harm reduction activists do
00:21:12.500not care. It's like pointing to the sky and saying the sky is blue and they say, well, how do you
00:21:18.600know that? It's completely irrational. I may know the answer to this, but I may not. When you were
00:21:27.000on the show previously, we had you alongside two experts who have themselves been very gung-ho for
00:21:33.980harm reduction and then eventually had a bit of buyer's remorse about that when they followed the
00:21:38.960data but i'm wondering if among the people that are still advocates in general for harm reduction
00:21:45.200if they're all the same if they're all about this you know this sort of wasteland approach
00:21:49.760that we see in bc or are there moderates that i guess for lack of a better term that are saying
00:21:54.320well hang on i kind of agree in principle but i can't go that far well i mean so here's the thing
00:21:59.040there's a lot of moderate people who are in for harm reduction harm reduction itself is not a bad
00:22:03.520thing you know it is a key pillar for addressing the opioid crisis in addition to let's say
00:22:08.400prevention and treatment and education but it is a very big umbrella that includes a wide scope of
00:22:14.480intervention some of which are better than others well yeah i mean just to interject there it used
00:22:18.480to be that harm reduction was about the needles and the pipes you use not the giving out drugs
00:22:25.200yeah look harm reduction was championed in the late 80s and 90s primarily by hiv researchers who
00:22:31.360wanted to decrease hiv infection rates because people were using dirty needles and that was
00:22:36.400very effective and you know you had needle exchange programs that demonstrably decreased
00:22:41.120rates of transmission for hiv and other blood-borne illnesses and then these researchers
00:22:46.160ended up rebranding themselves as addiction experts in the 2000 and 2010s and they started
00:22:51.200you know implementing more questionable interventions uh many of the people i've spoken to
00:22:56.000there are almost all of them accept the need for harm reduction in some capacity and even some of
00:23:01.680them accept the need for safe supply in some capacity where it's much much much more tightly
00:23:07.440controlled than what we see today um so there's this wide gradients of approaches to harm reduction
00:23:14.080but bc has taken the most extreme and most irresponsible one and then vilified anyone who
00:23:20.560opposes it as being i don't know some kind of backwards troglodyte despite the fact that most
00:23:26.560of these people support harm reduction in some capacity what are their benchmarks for success
00:23:33.760because again even no matter how cynical i get there must be some target that they're pointing
00:23:38.400to as evidence that it's working what is that oh okay so there's three different kinds of studies
00:23:45.200that support safer supply all of which are deeply flawed so the first one is where they just interview
00:23:50.160drug users on safer supply and when the drug users say oh this is great it makes me happier
00:23:54.960i'm overdosing less they say oh that's subjective evidence that this works it's basically it's a
00:24:00.000customer testimonial uh so that's not valid at all the second level is doing uh quantitative studies
00:24:08.160but the underlying data is still self-reported so essentially they had a whole bunch of surveys say
00:24:12.960you know right from the scale of one to ten uh how you feel about x or has this happened to you
00:24:18.480in the past have you overdosed yada yada yada um and so you can crunch those numbers so there's
00:24:24.240they're less open to misinterpretation than let's say you know an interview but ultimately
00:24:29.600self-reported data you know the drug users know what kind of results they need you know to get to
00:24:36.080continue having access to their drugs so it's also not trustworthy the the third level and this is
00:24:41.440the one that's more complicated for people to wrap their heads around so there's a recent study that
00:24:45.760came out last year in ontario that used ontario's administrative health data to show that safer
00:24:50.640supply programs did have positive impact on their clients but there's a huge caveat here
00:24:57.360so safer supply programs don't just give you free drugs they also give you access
00:25:01.920to significant wraparound supports like social housing uh primary care uh
00:25:08.080uh sorry blanked out there's a few other ones on top of that uh but the the study made no attempt
00:25:16.480to discern whether positive impacts came from the wraparound supports or the free drugs so uh I'll
00:25:23.440just finish this monologue uh the comparison would be like imagine a really obese man and you you put
00:25:30.460him on a diet plan and you give him access to a personal trainer and you give him access to a
00:25:35.260coach and a psychologist and then you give them a free piece of cake once a week and he loses weight
00:25:41.700and you say well obviously giving cake is what caused him to lose weight well no well that's
00:25:46.360what this kind of study is like yeah yeah there goes my there goes my new year strategy for weight
00:25:51.860loss there a cake cake a week keeps the pounds off well no that's quite fascinating and and you
00:25:56.800know the one thing i will also point out is that i don't hear in the rhetoric a lot of discussion
00:26:01.800about trying to get people off drugs as even being a goal i mean there's a fair bit of resignation
00:26:06.920that i think underlies a lot of these programs which as well they're using them so we just have
00:26:11.240to try to get the best outcomes within that well that's the thing is that many people think that
00:26:16.120safer supplies is compassionate response it's not compassionate we're giving up on people
00:26:21.000uh we're we're basically giving them palliative care right we're keeping them comfortable until
00:26:26.200they die uh or until we can give them made um and then how is that compassionate and look theoretically
00:26:35.320theoretically safer supply is meant to keep people alive until they seek treatments but in practice
00:26:41.720safer supply programs rarely push people towards recovery i mean it exists in the guidelines of the
00:26:47.800theoretical thing but people just take their drugs and they sell it and then they buy fentanyl until
00:26:53.000they die. And that's just horrific. I know that your work on this in the past has been shared
00:26:58.860notably by Pierre Polyev, the conservative leader who's taken an interest in this. And
00:27:03.080I'm wondering though, if there were a change in the federal government, how much of what's
00:27:07.600happening in BC could even change versus how much of it is squarely within the provincial jurisdiction?
00:27:13.780I'm actually not entirely sure about the distinction between the federal and
00:27:17.220provincial jurisdiction here. It's murky. That's the best I've been able to unearth myself on this.
00:27:21.720Well, here's the thing. So safer supply is provided in two main ways. So way one is through federally funded programs. And these can be forced into provinces. There are provinces that have resisted safer supply. And the federal government is still funded programs operating within them.
00:27:37.940um though i think alberta has effectively banned safer supply regardless of the federal government's
00:27:42.920intentions um and then on the second level the provincial government can incentivize people to
00:27:49.360uptake safer supply or they can for example create uh protocols that allow regular prescribers
00:27:54.480to prescribe safer supply so you just you know your regular doctor it's outside of a specialized
00:27:59.140program if the federal government changes you know all the fucking sorry all the funding uh
00:28:04.660for uh for saying there goes our clean tag on itunes it's been a good run uh all the funding
00:28:10.480federal funding for safer supply will go away and all of these projects which create really
00:28:13.960terrible research will be take you know they'll be offline which will be great um and what i would
00:28:19.280love to see is a federally funded investigation into safer supply and federally funded studies
00:28:23.980into the harms of safer supply and i think it'll be politically difficult for provinces
00:28:28.540to defend safer supply once they lose federal support, because what that'll mean is that
00:28:35.140addiction physicians will start speaking out more. Many of them are worried about losing access to
00:28:39.400federal grants. It means that as more knowledge comes out, more people are going to sue provincial
00:28:43.960governments. I know that there are people who are looking into lawsuits right now.
00:28:48.340And number three, just, you know, once you have more kids and drug users and more evidence coming
00:28:53.440out, this is a disaster. You know, no one wants to lose their government. I know that the BCNDP
00:28:58.020is very worried about a conservative resurgence. So I think that if safer supply starts imploding,
00:29:02.860they would definitely abandon ship. Yeah, no, I think that's a very good point. And even just on
00:29:07.320the playground topic that we started on, I mean, that's an issue where parents that otherwise don't
00:29:12.320care about this are going to all of a sudden become very concerned when they can't even take
00:29:17.320their kids to the playground. And already I hear from people emailing and saying, oh, my son or
00:29:21.660daughter is in university in Toronto and is scared to take the subway. Like these are, this has just
00:29:27.600become a fact of life now in Canada. And that is not sustainable. Adam Zeevo, great report for
00:29:33.300the McDonnell-Laurier Institute on this and also great work in the National Post always. Thank you
00:29:37.340so much. Thank you for having me. All right. Always a pleasure to chat with Adam. No one
00:29:42.880asked me to commission reports for anyone. It's everyone else that I have on the show. There are
00:29:47.620all these like great journalists that are getting asked to do these like big 40 page academic
00:29:51.260reports. I just, well, I have a book, so I can't complain too, too much. But anyway, by the way,