Juno News - Leslyn Lewis pumps petition to pull Canada from United Nations

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:01:20.460 north. Hello and welcome to you all. The last day of the week insofar as the Andrew Lawton

00:01:31.540 show is concerned anyway. You've made it through. Welcome. It was a bit of an abbreviated week for

00:01:35.740 us, but we are here. It is Thursday, January 4th, 2023. No, I said yesterday I was going to do this.

00:01:43.660 It 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.

00:01:57.100 It 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.

00:02:08.240 Just before the holiday break, the Christmas break, I, you may recall, did a sit-down interview with Pierre Paulyevre, the leader of the Conservatives.

00:02:17.820 We did the interview in Mississauga, Ontario. I live in southwestern Ontario.

00:02:23.120 And 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.

00:02:34.740 and the 401 it was a four car accident no injuries thankfully uh we were all able to drive our cars

00:02:40.420 back but i i my car the insurance company was thinking is probably totaled and i i still it's

00:02:46.360 like weeks later and they only just told me this morning yes your car is totaled but they haven't

00:02:50.300 yet given me the magic number of how much they're uh going to give me for my car so i am uh to those

00:02:56.160 who asked i am still automobile list if you have any car recommendations i guess send them along

00:03:01.260 I'm going to get like a, anytime you ask people to recommend something, you get like a million

00:03:05.080 contradictory emails of, you know, always get this, never do this, never do this. But if you

00:03:09.560 have a good recommendation, I guess I will, we'll have to take it there. Right now, thankfully,

00:03:13.840 I 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

00:03:22.880 like this weird Chrystia Freeland loophole where she says she doesn't have a car, but manages to

00:03:27.760 put on more miles than most Canadian truckers do. You may have seen this story that came out this

00:03:33.840 week. Chrystia Freeland has been racking up thousands and thousands of dollars in limo 1.00

00:03:39.620 expenses in the greater Toronto area. Now, why this is important? If you're a cabinet minister,

00:03:45.260 if certainly a deputy prime minister, you cannot be expected to drive around like some pleb. So 1.00

00:03:50.300 cabinet ministers, conservative, liberal, doesn't matter. They get access to a car and driver. Now,

00:03:55.480 i'm not taking issue with that because to be honest if you've got work to do and you're on

00:03:59.900 the phone whatever that's fine i do take issue with it when christian freeland makes this big

00:04:05.280 whole stink about how uh she's doing what she can for the climate she is going without a car 0.99

00:04:10.940 and her whole line which you may recall well let's just play the clip what is it she said exactly

00:04:17.180 i right now am an mp for downtown toronto um a fact that still shocks my dad is

00:04:25.460 i don't actually own a car because i live in downtown toronto i'm like i don't know 300

00:04:31.980 meters from the nearest subway um i walk i take the subway i make my kids walk and ride their

00:04:39.840 bikes and take the subway it's actually healthier for our family i can live that way but you don't

00:04:48.180 live that way you choose not to live that way uh when i see in the toronto sun which built off of

00:04:55.180 reporting from Black Clock's reporter.

00:04:57.320 Krista Freeland spent $3,040 in Toronto for limo and taxi rides,

00:05:04.940 plus $6,736 in separate trips for her official chauffeur.

00:05:11.140 So like all middle-class Canadians, 1.00

00:05:13.460 she's got like the main chauffeur and then the auxiliary chauffeur. 1.00

00:05:17.260 And then like when she really has to slum it, she just takes a taxi.

00:05:20.380 So she's got like the three tiers of limo service 1.00

00:05:24.440 and taxi service she gets. Again, the issue here is that she's like, oh, I just take the subway. 0.97

00:05:29.680 Well, no, you don't. Maybe she's taking her limo to the subway station. Maybe that 300 meters gets

00:05:34.660 really, really tough in the winter months being in Canada. But even her living in downtown Toronto,

00:05:41.660 when she's like, oh, well, yeah, we can live without cars. You're not. You're choosing not

00:05:45.560 to. So maybe you lay off the judgment of families who have to make choices to get around when you

00:05:51.720 yourself are making those same choices except sending the taxpayer a rather steep bill for it

00:05:58.040 and as I've said in the past one thing about Chrystia Freeland here which is incredibly

00:06:01.900 noteworthy and hasn't ever really been reported and you may say well it's no big deal she does

00:06:07.940 not based on all that I've been able to figure out have an apartment or condo in Ottawa which

00:06:14.180 is what most MPs do she commutes back and forth and when she stays in Ottawa she stays in a hotel

00:06:21.420 Now, you're allowed to do that.

00:06:23.620 You have a budget, and if you want to use your budget as an MP on an apartment

00:06:27.300 or you want to use it on a hotel and rack up the Marriott points, you have that option.

00:06:31.460 But Chrystia Freeland goes back and forth multiple times during the week.

00:06:35.680 I saw her at the airport on one such run.

00:06:37.760 She was waiting for a porter flight, and when she saw me at the airport,

00:06:41.020 she put on her sunglasses and turned away,

00:06:43.440 which is about the best endorsement of my work I can think of.

00:06:46.620 And this is, I think, the fascinating thing here,

00:06:49.140 that she herself is not doing what she's demanding other Canadians do.

00:06:53.120 So maybe we can just lay off the climate judgment

00:06:56.360 that we seem to get from this government.

00:06:59.020 I wanted to talk for a few moments here about Leslyn Lewis,

00:07:02.320 who is the Conservative Member of Parliament in Haldeman, Norfolk.

00:07:05.760 She is a two-time leadership candidate,

00:07:08.500 and she has come under the media's and the Liberals' fire

00:07:11.920 in the last couple of days for a petition she has sponsored,

00:07:14.960 which is calling on Canada to withdraw from the United Nations

00:07:20.440 and related organizations like the World Health Organization and the like.

00:07:25.720 Now this is a petition that was first put forward in October

00:07:29.080 but I think after that one petition that we spoke about in December

00:07:32.900 calling for a recall of Trudeau which got like

00:07:35.300 I think it was nearly 400,000 when all is said and done.

00:07:39.060 Now like petitions are all the rage.

00:07:40.760 So Lesley Lewis has been pumping the tires on this petition

00:07:44.060 saying that 66,000 Canadians so far have signed it.

00:07:48.740 And because she's been reviving the attention on it,

00:07:51.460 it's attracted some renewed scrutiny, I will say,

00:07:54.880 from the Globe and Mail and as such

00:07:56.660 from a bunch of Liberal members of Parliament.

00:07:59.640 And I want to just read from the petition here

00:08:02.160 because the petition makes a sensible enough point.

00:08:04.620 It says,

00:08:05.360 Canada's membership in the United Nations

00:08:07.740 and its subsidiary organizations

00:08:09.300 imposes negative consequences on the people of Canada

00:08:13.080 far outweighing any benefits.

00:08:15.400 It talks about sustainable development goals,

00:08:17.900 Agenda 2030.

00:08:20.060 And it goes on to say that this body

00:08:23.260 and Canada's membership in it

00:08:24.680 has essentially given outsized influence

00:08:27.960 and power over Canada

00:08:29.500 by groups like the UN,

00:08:32.080 the World Health Organization,

00:08:33.460 the World Economic Forum,

00:08:35.000 Planned Parenthood, Bill and Melinda Gates.

00:08:36.620 It doesn't show its work on this,

00:08:38.120 but it says that Canada should have

00:08:40.800 an urgently implemented expeditious withdrawal from the UN and all its subsidiary organizations.

00:08:47.300 That's the petition. Now, this is a petition that any Canadian can put forward. You've heard me

00:08:51.880 say time and time again on this show that these things are not binding. They don't really do

00:08:55.780 anything except for give a bit of momentum around an issue. Again, 66,000 signatures is not nothing,

00:09:02.080 but it's not huge in the grand scheme of things in a country with pushing 40 million people.

00:09:07.040 But 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.

00:09:23.840 But Seamus O'Regan, who's a former cabinet minister, had this to say.

00:09:29.780 Withdraw trade with Ukraine, withdraw military aid to Ukraine, and now withdraw from the United Nations.

00:09:36.960 Seriously, what is up with the Conservative Party?

00:09:40.860 Cody Blaze, who is a member of parliament in King's Hance out on the East Coast, said,

00:09:47.260 I need to wait until it's up on the screen before I can read it.

00:09:49.380 I don't have it in my document in front of me here.

00:09:51.220 uh says good idea lesson let's take canada out of the international forum with 193 countries around

00:09:57.800 the world this stuff is bat bleep crazy uh cody didn't give the bleep there that was just uh from 0.91

00:10:04.500 yours truly and i don't know what is more ridiculous the fact that she is peddling this 0.95

00:10:08.340 stuff or that she sits in the conservative shadow cabinet and uh let's see what else do we have here

00:10:14.620 we will read uh charlie angus i mean i i never want to make the mistake of thinking charlie

00:10:18.720 angus is relevant but uh charlie angus who is with the ndp says two weeks ago polyev ordered

00:10:24.040 his mps to vote against support for ukraine now one of his front bench mps is leading the fight

00:10:29.700 to pull canada out of the un the conservatives are not playing to the conspiracy base they are

00:10:35.840 the conspiracy base dun dun dun and of course the liberal party itself weighs in never wanting to

00:10:43.360 let one of these little mini stories go to waste. The official line from the liberals here

00:10:48.980 references the far left rag press progress calling far right conspiracy groups. And they say

00:10:56.860 Polyev needs to denounce this reckless idea immediately. Now, there are, I mean, even people

00:11:02.180 on the left have a lot of criticisms for the United Nations. This is an organization that

00:11:06.260 elevates dictatorial regimes like Iran and Saudi Arabia and North Korea. It puts countries that

00:11:13.400 don't have women's rights on the women's rights committees. It puts countries that don't respect 1.00

00:11:17.780 free speech on the human rights committees. It puts countries that don't even ensure the

00:11:21.540 basic necessaries of life for their citizens on all of these committees where they then pass

00:11:26.980 resolutions that lecture everyone else for not doing more. So the United Nations is not and should

00:11:32.180 not be above scrutiny here and now whether the answer to that is to work within it or just

00:11:37.240 withdraw altogether people can decide for themselves let's be real it's never going to

00:11:43.000 happen there's not going to be without some larger current that exists in the world right now that

00:11:48.460 let's be real is probably going to involve the U.S. there isn't going to be a can exit if you will

00:11:53.840 from the United Nations or the WHO is a bit different I actually could see Canada conceivably

00:12:00.200 withdrawing or pulling back from the WHO. But we're not sitting out at the UN and you may think

00:12:05.580 we should, but we won't. So, but the idea that it's just such a terrible thing to do, that you

00:12:11.160 shouldn't be allowed to criticize the UN, you shouldn't be allowed to have this discussion.

00:12:15.160 That's really what the liberals are doing here. The liberals are saying that this is the kind of

00:12:19.900 thing that is above scrutiny. It's above reproach. You're not allowed to talk about it,

00:12:24.680 no discussion whatsoever. And if you do, if you dare to talk about it, you are just an evil, 0.96

00:12:31.200 dirty, scary conspiracy theorist. That is the point that they're making here. And look, I just 0.99

00:12:35.800 saw a few moments before I went on air, a press release from the liberals. They're announcing

00:12:40.180 their candidate for Durham. So this is a riding in the GTA. Jamil Giovanni is the conservative

00:12:45.400 candidate. It's replacing Aaron O'Toole. They haven't called a date for the by-election yet,

00:12:49.920 but the liberals now have their candidate. And I was skimming through it and there's a line here.

00:12:54.200 I'll see if I can find it. Here we go. With Pierre Polyev and conservative politicians

00:12:59.680 trying to import far-right American politics to Canada and pushing for deep cuts to public

00:13:06.240 health care, $10 a day child care and dental care and support for the middle class now more than

00:13:11.380 ever, Durham needs a community champion, yada, yada. I love the equivalence, by the way.

00:13:16.400 The conservatives are A, challenging the $10 a day child care and B, importing far-right American

00:13:23.380 politics. These are their great sins. They're challenging a liberal child care policy and

00:13:28.360 they're being populist demagogues or whatever the liberals are accusing them of. But this is

00:13:34.700 what's happening here. And again, I think we should allow the discussion to criticize the UN

00:13:38.900 and the WHO. And anyone who says after the last three years that there are no criticisms you can

00:13:45.240 make at the WHO clearly was not paying attention or is just so far in the bag. They're like that

00:13:50.900 Tedros Adhanom guy at the WHO that just wants to, you know, suck up to Chairman Xi more than doing

00:13:56.540 anything else. So that is straight out of the Politburo if you want to say that you're not

00:14:00.740 allowed to have these discussions and make these criticisms. So I wanted to turn to the left coast

00:14:06.940 or the west coast, depending on how you refer to it, with all due respect to our friends and

00:14:11.000 followers in British Columbia. But in BC, there was a rather dismal Supreme Court ruling, the BC

00:14:17.920 Supreme Court the other day, in which they effectively said that if you try to get drug

00:14:23.940 users out of playgrounds where children are congregating, it's somehow a violation of the

00:14:30.640 drug users' constitutional rights. This is not just a reasonable concession that you could make

00:14:36.140 while letting people do their drugs everywhere else in BC, which is the province's policy. No,

00:14:40.540 it's a violation of their constitutional rights. So what more backwards and I will say authentic

00:14:45.840 display of how British Columbia is viewing this than that ruling. And this comes at a time where

00:14:51.680 there was a rather unique report that came out from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute by National

00:14:57.040 Post columnist Adam Zeebo, who's been on the show before, looking at the effects of BC's so-called

00:15:02.980 safe supply policy. And if you've followed this issue on this show or elsewhere in the past,

00:15:07.540 you know that the word safe is a misnomer if ever there was one. But figured we'd delve into both

00:15:13.120 of these issues. Adam Zivo returns here. Adam, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming back on.

00:15:17.940 Good to talk to you too. Thanks for having me back.

00:15:20.280 So let's just start with the Supreme Court ruling. This is a system in Canada, the legal system

00:15:25.740 that will say that any constitutional right, if you want free speech, if you want freedom of

00:15:31.120 expression, all of that is subject to all of these caveats and exceptions and carve outs and

00:15:35.940 balancing against other people's. And here we have an example where to say that we don't want

00:15:41.280 drug users on playgrounds, you can just go 50 meters away. It doesn't seem like that big a

00:15:47.360 concession, but they're saying, oh, no, no, no, drug users have rights. Well, so their argument

00:15:51.880 essentially is that if you ban people from using drugs in public spaces, that will encourage them

00:15:58.220 to use alone. And then if they use alone, they're more likely to die of an overdose. Therefore,

00:16:03.660 banning public drug consumption endangers drug users' lives in a way that is just not acceptable.

00:16:11.280 that's a very questionable argument uh i think that there isn't really any strong evidence behind

00:16:16.160 that argument from my understanding uh and i think that if it really were the case that allowing

00:16:21.760 people to use drugs in public decreased overdoses and deaths you'd see that reflected in the overdose

00:16:26.560 data in bc uh since they began their decriminalization experiments back about a year ago but

00:16:32.720 we haven't seen that so i really questioned how the judge is coming to the conclusion

00:16:37.040 that the argument made by harm reduction activists is a persuasive one yeah and i i would say going

00:16:42.960 back a year is uh one area but bc has had for many many years the most permissive approach to drugs

00:16:50.640 anywhere in the country we've had i mean the original fight over so-called harm reduction was

00:16:55.520 a center in british columbia insight and that's going back close to 20 years now maybe at least

00:17:00.720 15 16 years uh you've got these safe supply programs that have been in effect and yet bc

00:17:06.080 is still the worst as far as overdoses are concerned. So, I mean, the stated goal behind

00:17:11.980 a lot of these programs just isn't panning out in the data. Well, the problem is that for many

00:17:17.640 BC addiction policymakers, they don't seem to actually care about real research. A lot of the

00:17:22.500 research in this space is very low quality or, you know, has often sometimes been biased. Even,

00:17:29.320 for example, Insight, a lot of the research that was produced around that in 2003 to 2007

00:17:34.460 was produced by individuals who had lobbied for the creation of Insight to begin with.

00:17:39.280 So there was a lot of conflict of interest there, and they were criticized for coming

00:17:43.160 to misleading conclusions.

00:17:44.900 So you can look at the numbers here and you can say, well, obviously this isn't working,

00:17:48.960 but these harm reduction activists don't seem to really care, right?

00:17:52.880 All they'll say is that, well, that just means that we need more harm reduction.

00:17:56.020 They don't see a lack of success as anything against them.

00:18:00.020 They just see it as evidence that we need more drugs.

00:18:05.100 Yeah, and you did in your report, impeccably researched, by the way, it's like 36 pages.

00:18:10.360 Now there's, you know, credits and cover and all of that.

00:18:12.240 But you did this report from McDonnell Laurier Institute looking specifically at the safe

00:18:16.800 supply fentanyl tablet program here.

00:18:19.840 And first off, why did you focus in on that issue?

00:18:23.820 Well, I focused on the issue because I was emailed by two addiction physicians who thought

00:18:26.900 the whole thing was ludicrous, right?

00:18:28.920 And so essentially, you know, since your listeners aren't fully familiar with this

00:18:32.560 whole issue. Starting in August, BC permitted the province-wide prescription of safe-supplied

00:18:39.140 fentanyl tablets and sous-fentanil. And they did this really quietly. There was no press release.

00:18:48.640 There's been no media on it, which is really odd because usually harm reduction advocates

00:18:53.840 advertise when they expand safer supply. And so I started looking into it and I realized that the

00:18:58.980 that they were expanding safer supply fentanyl was grossly irresponsible uh so the current system

00:19:04.980 that we have today where we distribute hydromorphone which is basically heroin is already

00:19:09.540 broken because we don't require supervised consumption so people sell their safer supply

00:19:13.620 drugs on the streets so we decided to give out fentanyl and we decided to put in no no requirement

00:19:19.780 for safer like for supervised consumption so now we're creating a system that is set up to

00:19:24.420 essentially flood communities with fentanyl in addition to government heroin which you know i

00:19:29.140 personally think is irresponsible and i think many people would agree with me and i will say it's not

00:19:34.740 just a theoretical issue that these are ending up in the illegal uh drug trade i mean there have been

00:19:40.500 a number of demonstrable cases in bc and also in ontario where people can pretty well prove how

00:19:47.140 these drugs are ending up uh just being trafficked well that's the thing is that so here's the thing

00:19:53.780 When it comes to scientific and formal studies of diversion, that's what they call it when this is

00:19:57.540 sold to the streets, none of these studies are happening because harm reduction activists aren't

00:20:03.380 interested in exploring this issue. And the federal government, despite throwing $100 million in

00:20:09.380 safer supply, has not funded one study that seriously looks at diversion. The only research

00:20:14.100 that's being done in diversion is essentially asking drug users who are on safer supply,

00:20:18.260 do you divert and if so why so obviously that's incredibly biased you know hey are you selling

00:20:25.140 your drugs if so why are you doing it um and they'll you know they'll whitewash it they'll say

00:20:29.940 oh it's just mutual aid or whatever um so what i've been doing is i've been you know for the past

00:20:34.420 year speaking to different stakeholder groups about safer supply and i've just consistently

00:20:38.740 been hearing from people that yes this diversion is happening you know i heard that from over 30

00:20:44.500 addiction physicians i interviewed former drug users in london ontario i interviewed

00:20:50.180 online drug users on reddit who were openly selling safer supply and posting photos with

00:20:54.740 prescriptions and validating that safer supply i've spoken with over 50 youth who talk about

00:20:59.860 how hydromorphin is a big issue in their schools and how their peers are getting it from safer

00:21:03.780 supply so it's it's ridiculous to me that people are saying that this is not a big problem but the

00:21:09.140 thing is that our federal government and the bc government and these harm reduction activists do

00:21:12.500 not care. It's like pointing to the sky and saying the sky is blue and they say, well, how do you

00:21:18.600 know that? It's completely irrational. I may know the answer to this, but I may not. When you were

00:21:27.000 on the show previously, we had you alongside two experts who have themselves been very gung-ho for

00:21:33.980 harm reduction and then eventually had a bit of buyer's remorse about that when they followed the

00:21:38.960 data but i'm wondering if among the people that are still advocates in general for harm reduction

00:21:45.200 if they're all the same if they're all about this you know this sort of wasteland approach

00:21:49.760 that we see in bc or are there moderates that i guess for lack of a better term that are saying

00:21:54.320 well hang on i kind of agree in principle but i can't go that far well i mean so here's the thing

00:21:59.040 there's a lot of moderate people who are in for harm reduction harm reduction itself is not a bad

00:22:03.520 thing you know it is a key pillar for addressing the opioid crisis in addition to let's say

00:22:08.400 prevention and treatment and education but it is a very big umbrella that includes a wide scope of

00:22:14.480 intervention some of which are better than others well yeah i mean just to interject there it used

00:22:18.480 to be that harm reduction was about the needles and the pipes you use not the giving out drugs

00:22:25.200 yeah look harm reduction was championed in the late 80s and 90s primarily by hiv researchers who

00:22:31.360 wanted to decrease hiv infection rates because people were using dirty needles and that was

00:22:36.400 very effective and you know you had needle exchange programs that demonstrably decreased

00:22:41.120 rates of transmission for hiv and other blood-borne illnesses and then these researchers

00:22:46.160 ended up rebranding themselves as addiction experts in the 2000 and 2010s and they started

00:22:51.200 you know implementing more questionable interventions uh many of the people i've spoken to

00:22:56.000 there are almost all of them accept the need for harm reduction in some capacity and even some of

00:23:01.680 them accept the need for safe supply in some capacity where it's much much much more tightly

00:23:07.440 controlled than what we see today um so there's this wide gradients of approaches to harm reduction

00:23:14.080 but bc has taken the most extreme and most irresponsible one and then vilified anyone who

00:23:20.560 opposes it as being i don't know some kind of backwards troglodyte despite the fact that most

00:23:26.560 of these people support harm reduction in some capacity what are their benchmarks for success

00:23:33.760 because again even no matter how cynical i get there must be some target that they're pointing

00:23:38.400 to as evidence that it's working what is that oh okay so there's three different kinds of studies

00:23:45.200 that support safer supply all of which are deeply flawed so the first one is where they just interview

00:23:50.160 drug users on safer supply and when the drug users say oh this is great it makes me happier

00:23:54.960 i'm overdosing less they say oh that's subjective evidence that this works it's basically it's a

00:24:00.000 customer testimonial uh so that's not valid at all the second level is doing uh quantitative studies

00:24:08.160 but the underlying data is still self-reported so essentially they had a whole bunch of surveys say

00:24:12.960 you know right from the scale of one to ten uh how you feel about x or has this happened to you

00:24:18.480 in the past have you overdosed yada yada yada um and so you can crunch those numbers so there's

00:24:24.240 they're less open to misinterpretation than let's say you know an interview but ultimately

00:24:29.600 self-reported data you know the drug users know what kind of results they need you know to get to

00:24:36.080 continue having access to their drugs so it's also not trustworthy the the third level and this is

00:24:41.440 the one that's more complicated for people to wrap their heads around so there's a recent study that

00:24:45.760 came out last year in ontario that used ontario's administrative health data to show that safer

00:24:50.640 supply programs did have positive impact on their clients but there's a huge caveat here

00:24:57.360 so safer supply programs don't just give you free drugs they also give you access

00:25:01.920 to significant wraparound supports like social housing uh primary care uh

00:25:08.080 uh sorry blanked out there's a few other ones on top of that uh but the the study made no attempt

00:25:16.480 to discern whether positive impacts came from the wraparound supports or the free drugs so uh I'll

00:25:23.440 just finish this monologue uh the comparison would be like imagine a really obese man and you you put

00:25:30.460 him on a diet plan and you give him access to a personal trainer and you give him access to a

00:25:35.260 coach and a psychologist and then you give them a free piece of cake once a week and he loses weight

00:25:41.700 and you say well obviously giving cake is what caused him to lose weight well no well that's

00:25:46.360 what this kind of study is like yeah yeah there goes my there goes my new year strategy for weight

00:25:51.860 loss there a cake cake a week keeps the pounds off well no that's quite fascinating and and you

00:25:56.800 know the one thing i will also point out is that i don't hear in the rhetoric a lot of discussion

00:26:01.800 about trying to get people off drugs as even being a goal i mean there's a fair bit of resignation

00:26:06.920 that i think underlies a lot of these programs which as well they're using them so we just have

00:26:11.240 to try to get the best outcomes within that well that's the thing is that many people think that

00:26:16.120 safer supplies is compassionate response it's not compassionate we're giving up on people

00:26:21.000 uh we're we're basically giving them palliative care right we're keeping them comfortable until

00:26:26.200 they die uh or until we can give them made um and then how is that compassionate and look theoretically

00:26:35.320 theoretically safer supply is meant to keep people alive until they seek treatments but in practice

00:26:41.720 safer supply programs rarely push people towards recovery i mean it exists in the guidelines of the

00:26:47.800 theoretical thing but people just take their drugs and they sell it and then they buy fentanyl until

00:26:53.000 they die. And that's just horrific. I know that your work on this in the past has been shared

00:26:58.860 notably by Pierre Polyev, the conservative leader who's taken an interest in this. And

00:27:03.080 I'm wondering though, if there were a change in the federal government, how much of what's

00:27:07.600 happening in BC could even change versus how much of it is squarely within the provincial jurisdiction?

00:27:13.780 I'm actually not entirely sure about the distinction between the federal and

00:27:17.220 provincial jurisdiction here. It's murky. That's the best I've been able to unearth myself on this.

00:27:21.720 Well, 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.

00:27:37.940 um though i think alberta has effectively banned safer supply regardless of the federal government's

00:27:42.920 intentions um and then on the second level the provincial government can incentivize people to

00:27:49.360 uptake safer supply or they can for example create uh protocols that allow regular prescribers

00:27:54.480 to prescribe safer supply so you just you know your regular doctor it's outside of a specialized 0.79

00:27:59.140 program if the federal government changes you know all the fucking sorry all the funding uh 0.95

00:28:04.660 for uh for saying there goes our clean tag on itunes it's been a good run uh all the funding 0.89

00:28:10.480 federal funding for safer supply will go away and all of these projects which create really

00:28:13.960 terrible research will be take you know they'll be offline which will be great um and what i would

00:28:19.280 love to see is a federally funded investigation into safer supply and federally funded studies

00:28:23.980 into the harms of safer supply and i think it'll be politically difficult for provinces

00:28:28.540 to defend safer supply once they lose federal support, because what that'll mean is that

00:28:35.140 addiction physicians will start speaking out more. Many of them are worried about losing access to

00:28:39.400 federal grants. It means that as more knowledge comes out, more people are going to sue provincial

00:28:43.960 governments. I know that there are people who are looking into lawsuits right now.

00:28:48.340 And number three, just, you know, once you have more kids and drug users and more evidence coming

00:28:53.440 out, this is a disaster. You know, no one wants to lose their government. I know that the BCNDP

00:28:58.020 is very worried about a conservative resurgence. So I think that if safer supply starts imploding,

00:29:02.860 they would definitely abandon ship. Yeah, no, I think that's a very good point. And even just on

00:29:07.320 the playground topic that we started on, I mean, that's an issue where parents that otherwise don't

00:29:12.320 care about this are going to all of a sudden become very concerned when they can't even take

00:29:17.320 their kids to the playground. And already I hear from people emailing and saying, oh, my son or

00:29:21.660 daughter is in university in Toronto and is scared to take the subway. Like these are, this has just

00:29:27.600 become a fact of life now in Canada. And that is not sustainable. Adam Zeevo, great report for

00:29:33.300 the McDonnell-Laurier Institute on this and also great work in the National Post always. Thank you

00:29:37.340 so much. Thank you for having me. All right. Always a pleasure to chat with Adam. No one

00:29:42.880 asked me to commission reports for anyone. It's everyone else that I have on the show. There are

00:29:47.620 all these like great journalists that are getting asked to do these like big 40 page academic

00:29:51.260 reports. I just, well, I have a book, so I can't complain too, too much. But anyway, by the way,

00:29:56.020 I finished it.

00:29:57.000 I was working on it for the last six months.

00:29:59.020 I submitted my second book and hopefully not my last to my publisher on Tuesday of this

00:30:07.400 week at like 7.30 PM.

00:30:09.180 So I finally get to have a life again.

00:30:11.000 Hopefully I'll be able to share with you in the coming days, if not weeks, a little bit

00:30:15.020 more about that.

00:30:16.300 Some people know, someone emailed me and they had somehow figured out what I was working

00:30:20.580 on.

00:30:20.840 Maybe someone I had interviewed for the book tipped them off.

00:30:23.320 But nevertheless, that is coming out in just hopefully, hopefully in May, I believe it will be coming out.

00:30:30.560 But the details should be coming out before then.

00:30:32.800 So we are going to have lots more about that in the future.

00:30:36.800 But I wanted to pivot to another issue here.

00:30:40.360 And this is one not connected to any news of the day, not connected to politics.

00:30:44.200 But as well, I shouldn't say not connected to politics, not directly connected to politics and political news.

00:30:50.920 but I think it underlies a lot of the problems we see in our political system.

00:30:55.580 One of the biggest trends of the last 20 years, I'd say, has been the proliferation of cancel culture.

00:31:02.160 We have this great political divide where people on the left and right no longer wish to talk to each other.

00:31:07.480 We have a fair bit of nastiness about that, not just in the House of Commons

00:31:11.340 when politicians are lobbing their rhetorical grenades across the aisle at each other,

00:31:16.100 but in civil society. We have people that are getting torn apart in their family dinners

00:31:21.020 because they are unable to discuss things in a civil manner. But what is civility? This is a

00:31:28.340 topic that I, again, I've heard a lot of people call for civility, but I've never heard that

00:31:33.200 underlying discussion from a philosophical and spiritual and cultural perspective of what it is

00:31:38.640 and why it's so important until I read a book that came out in the fall called The Soul of

00:31:44.380 civility written by alexandra hudson who i am very pleased to have joining me right now alexandra

00:31:49.820 good to talk to you thanks very much for coming on andrew thanks for having me thrilled to be here

00:31:55.020 so why i i kind of gave a political lead into this this is not a political book but i certainly

00:32:00.460 think it's applicable to the political climate in a lot of ways why did you decide to delve into

00:32:06.060 civility first and foremost i came to my interest in this topic honestly my mother is called the 0.90

00:32:13.740 manners lady so i was raised in this home it was very attentive to social norms and social

00:32:18.220 expectations i am constitutionally allergic to authority andrew that might not surprise me i

00:32:23.900 hate rules i hate being told what to do and so i remember always questioning these rules and

00:32:29.420 expectations my mother always uh you know i'm asking my brothers and i to comply with you know

00:32:33.900 why do we do things the way we do them and is the way that we're asked to do them is that the best

00:32:37.900 way is it just because some self-appointed authority at some point in history said we

00:32:41.500 we should do it. And I just hungered for a why behind our norms and expectations. But my mother

00:32:47.040 said that they would lead to success in work, school, life, and if I followed them. And she

00:32:51.820 was generally right until I found myself in federal government. I actually served in the

00:32:58.140 prime minister's office in Canada and in Washington, D.C., in a presidential administration

00:33:03.000 there as well. And I saw and experienced this kind of a challenge to this conventional wisdom

00:33:11.120 my mother had raised me with in both environments i saw these two extremes on one hand i saw people

00:33:17.280 who were um hostile they had sharp elbows they they um there were no secrets about you know

00:33:23.920 that they were willing to dispense with anyone step on anyone to get ahead on the other hand i

00:33:28.160 saw people who at first i thought they were my people they were polished and poised and polite

00:33:33.040 yet ruthless and cruel and this second contingent really threw me because at first

00:33:39.920 um you know they disarmed me i thought they were my friends but one thing my mother had said to me

00:33:44.080 growing up was that manners mattered because they were an outward expression of our inward character

00:33:49.360 and yet here i was surrounded by people who are well-mannered but ruthless and cruel so part of

00:33:53.760 the argument is that there's this essential distinction between civility and politeness

00:33:58.080 that civility is more than just manners because as i learned you could smile and and be polished and

00:34:03.600 well-poised but not be respectful of others so part of the argument of the book is disambiguating

00:34:09.200 disentangling these ideas arguing we need actually less politeness less the faux respect the tone

00:34:14.960 policing the worrying about saying and doing the right thing and more actual respect more more the

00:34:21.280 disposition of actually respecting others that sometimes requires telling a hard truth offending

00:34:26.640 people engaging in robust debate yeah and i found that politeness civility contrast to be a

00:34:34.000 fascinating one because we see it i'm glad you used the word tone policing because we see how

00:34:38.800 civility or appeals to civility are used as as a tool to quell dissent uh to quell uh challenging

00:34:46.720 certain ideas behaviors whatnot and i think young women are probably uh particularly susceptible to 0.97

00:34:53.680 this young women and girls where you're told to to be civil but the the issue is not actually one

00:34:59.280 of civility no you're exactly right i was i was raised in canada i i grew up in canada and i am

00:35:06.160 a strong woman and i'm from a family of strong women and that often rub people the wrong way 0.99

00:35:11.440 canada prides itself on being this polite society i mean i have friends that um you know wear

00:35:17.280 canadian pins when they travel abroad because they canadians are beloved we're so nice you know but

00:35:22.720 there is such thing as too much of a good thing you know that that actually being niceness being

00:35:27.040 nice is not all it's cracked up to be like there were times where i was told like people didn't you

00:35:31.920 know male figures in my life didn't know what to do with me because i spoke my mind and and that

00:35:36.000 like i didn't fit their mold their norm of what and how a woman should canadian woman should should

00:35:41.120 behave and actually so it's possible to to that that to you know value um you know tone and as

00:35:48.320 you as you mentioned um that these norms can be a tool of of silencing of repressing and that

00:35:55.360 actually if we want a society of of openness of tolerance of pluralism it's actually essential

00:36:01.280 that we make these norms of propriety matter less

00:36:04.820 in order to have open, honest discussion

00:36:07.060 and to have an open society.

00:36:10.500 How universal is this idea in your research of civility?

00:36:15.580 And how much does this change from a North American context

00:36:18.960 to a European context to, say, an Asian context?

00:36:22.640 It's a great question.

00:36:23.740 So what I found in my research,

00:36:25.220 and I did approach this question from a global perspective,

00:36:27.880 a universal perspective,

00:36:29.340 of um and and what i what i discovered is that that the norms of politeness the manner is the

00:36:35.900 etiquette the technique the external stuff of manners and etiquette they tend to be very

00:36:40.780 changeable across history and across culture and even within a culture between classes often manners

00:36:47.660 uh have been used and they are still used as a way to define in group out group you know keep

00:36:53.420 keep the nouveau riche the outsider outside it's a way to distinguish who you know we're okay as

00:36:58.460 long as we're doing and doing and saying the right things and this is actually an all-too-human

00:37:02.460 tendency uh that we see across history and across culture whereas the timeless principles of

00:37:08.460 civility restraint of the ego so that the social can flourish that we can become fully human in

00:37:13.820 friendship and relationship with others that is those norms are remarkably timeless and in fact

00:37:19.580 i opened my book with uh the epic of gilgamesh the oldest story in the world in my chapter one

00:37:25.340 and then move to the oldest book in the world which is a manners book a civility handbook from

00:37:31.260 ancient egypt giving to given to us 2400 bc and so i really try to do uh justice to this subject

00:37:37.820 matter this is my book is about the most important question of our day how do we flourish across

00:37:42.380 difference even we deeply disagree but as i learned even though it's the most important question now

00:37:47.660 it's also the defining question of democracy of the classical liberal project also the defining

00:37:53.020 question of our species we've been trying to do this thing called life together across difference

00:37:58.060 as long as we've been around and i bring to bear the wisdom of the human tradition to help us do

00:38:02.460 life better together now we're just thinking of asia for a moment i think it's japan where i i

00:38:08.380 learned of this i've never been but a friend of mine his wife is from japan and he's been there

00:38:12.620 many times and he had said that there was a culture there where it's considered rude to not

00:38:17.900 have the answer if someone asks so if you say ask for directions uh in some context and someone

00:38:23.900 doesn't know they'll give you the wrong directions because they think that's the polite thing but

00:38:27.500 that's not actually helping you in any way they're just pointing you down some random street so

00:38:31.580 you are right about how manners and civility i mean and that that's an extreme example of your

00:38:37.020 being done a disservice right in the interest of being polite and respectful and i think that's

00:38:42.300 one of the areas where i would say is the core distinction and that manners is how you behave

00:38:47.500 civility requires a respect of other people that manners doesn't. I mean, being well mannered in

00:38:52.940 any context is just something you do. So can you have civility without respect? And how do you get

00:38:58.920 to the point where there is respect, which also seems to be in short supply, certainly in politics,

00:39:04.280 but I'd say in society in general? It's a great question about the relationship between civility

00:39:09.360 and politeness. Can you have one without the other? And I think at its ideal, the disposition

00:39:15.240 of civility, the inner orientation that honestly respects others, the dignity and irreducible value

00:39:21.680 of others, out of that disposition will flow kind actions, polite actions that are actually

00:39:27.780 other oriented, but they come, they are an outgrowth of that earnest respect and esteem

00:39:33.200 for the other. But the problem is when as a society, we value just the external, just what

00:39:40.320 we do and say, and we insufficiently seek to cultivate that inner disposition of really

00:39:45.840 respecting others, really respecting the gift of being human. That's a problem. It sets us up for

00:39:52.800 hypocrisy. It sets us up for disingenuousness. And so as a society in the West, as Canadians,

00:40:00.460 it's essential that we care less about the norms that make us seem good and instead shift our

00:40:07.060 focus to what actually makes us good and what is actually truly respectful of others.

00:40:13.360 One of the things, if we were to take a more forward-looking view on this, that a lot of

00:40:18.180 people will struggle with is the, how do we get there? Because civil people engaging in a civil

00:40:23.940 discussion like you and I are, and I hope our audiences can say, oh yeah, this is great. This

00:40:27.100 is a good thing. But that doesn't deal with the shortage of it. So, I mean, you talked about your

00:40:31.280 experience in politics and government, where you have people that are very ruthless, maybe they're

00:40:35.940 ambitious, maybe they're sociopaths, whatever it is, but clearly they don't have or tap into in

00:40:42.140 themselves what it is that they need to be more civil. So how do we as a society deal with this

00:40:48.980 without just pointing the fingers and saying, well, I'm not the problem, he is or she is?

00:40:52.880 No, it is the most human and natural thing in the world to want to blame. Our public leader is the

00:40:58.460 other side. And my book is all about the power that we each have to be a part of the solution.

00:41:05.940 that we can't blame media, we can't blame, you know,

00:41:08.720 who's prime minister, who's president,

00:41:10.160 what's going on around the world,

00:41:11.440 that all we can control is ourselves.

00:41:13.440 And we vastly underestimate the power we each have

00:41:17.060 to be part of the solution.

00:41:18.160 So I call myself a refugee from federal government.

00:41:21.820 So when I was in Washington, DC, I fled,

00:41:23.780 I came home from work one day and said to my husband,

00:41:25.680 I am done with government, I'm done with DC,

00:41:27.700 done with politics, let's move to Indiana.

00:41:30.680 And my husband's from the Midwest, from Indiana originally,

00:41:33.320 so he was thrilled to hear this.

00:41:34.540 said okay sounds good let's do it no take backs and that was almost six years ago we've been we've

00:41:39.900 been in indiana since then and um one of my first friends here her name was joanna taft and she came

00:41:45.580 up to me after church one day and said hi i'm joanna would you like to porch with us sometime

00:41:51.500 and i never heard i didn't know that was a verb by the way that's right i'd never heard i didn't

00:41:56.060 either i'd never heard that before but we were curious to know many people we went to her home

00:41:59.580 one afternoon and i realized that she was staging this quiet revolution against our atomized and

00:42:04.940 divided status quo from her front porch that she had curated people across class race ethnicity 0.99

00:42:11.420 politics just to inhabit a shared space not to you know have a curated conversation across

00:42:16.300 difference but to build trust and friendship that is so lacking today in our public life

00:42:21.740 and is in fact one reason why we're not able to have conversations across difference well at all

00:42:26.060 if we don't have that basic respect trust affection for our fellow citizens our fellow human beings

00:42:31.260 and i actually had the privilege of studying and researching and visiting people like joanna across

00:42:37.660 north america who are doing the exact same thing they're saying i can't control what's happening

00:42:43.500 in my nation's capital or around the world but i can control myself and i'm going to double down

00:42:48.620 and make my community better my family stronger and there's tremendous power in that i met people

00:42:53.660 who are doing that with and without a porch from their local coffee shop from their you know hosting

00:42:58.620 supper clubs dinner parties from uh using a front stoop or front lawn that is not about you know big

00:43:03.660 city small town it's just about a way of engaging others in the world with civility with hospitality

00:43:09.660 which is a high and noble expression of civility and wanting to transform the outsider to the

00:43:14.940 inside of the stranger into the friend and this is something that is too important and too

00:43:20.140 too sophisticated and complex to be left to our public leaders to be and it can't be scaled either

00:43:24.900 it's only something that can be individual micro um at the at the one-on-one level and it's a

00:43:29.400 decision we have to make every moment of every day are we going to make the world a better and

00:43:33.060 brighter place for for future generations to live in i mean that's why i wrote this book for my

00:43:37.300 children or are we going to be part of the problem by it and how we live our lives and i hope that

00:43:42.260 readers come away encouraged that that that we again we have far more power to be part of the

00:43:46.580 solution of restoring the soul of civility in our world today than we then we realize well and even

00:43:52.360 got the title in there the uh we'll put the cover up to augment that in people's minds it is called

00:43:57.440 the soul of civility by alexandra hudson people can catch it on amazon or elsewhere and you've

00:44:03.200 actually had quite a bit of critical acclaim for this now that's been out a few months which is

00:44:07.780 quite good so congratulations on that alexandra thank you so much for coming on such a pleasure

00:44:12.880 Andrew thank you for having me all right all the best to you and to all of you tuning in that does

00:44:18.380 it for us for today we will be back on Monday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:44:23.320 irreverence and civility we might need to do another episode to explore whether those can

00:44:27.740 coexist although I got an email saying I'm being insufficiently irreverent as of late so I'll try

00:44:32.920 to boost up the irreverence when we return on Monday but always good to talk to you folks have

00:44:37.460 a good weekend. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew

00:44:42.660 Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:07.460 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 05, 2024

Leslyn Lewis pumps petition to pull Canada from United Nations

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