Juno News - February 13, 2024


Less than four in 10 Canadians trust the media – surprised？


Episode Stats

Length

40 minutes

Words per Minute

165.90645

Word Count

6,644

Sentence Count

274

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

15


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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
00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all this is the andrew lotten show canada's most irreverent talk
00:01:30.720 show here on true north i am i was having a wonderful day this morning for like five minutes
00:01:37.340 so yesterday after the show i checked the mail i didn't even look at it i just threw it into a pile
00:01:42.000 and figured i'd get to it later today i got to it and uh the first thing i see on the pile is
00:01:47.860 the property tax bill. So anytime government is there with its ever-extending hand out,
00:01:54.800 it tends to put me in a bit of a foul mood. But at one point, I will pay the property tax bill,
00:02:00.260 and then I will really be in a foul mood. But that will not be today, because I want to come
00:02:04.840 on fresh. Although maybe the show benefits if I come on in a bit of a sour mood, because then I
00:02:08.680 just can lash out with full strength of reverence at whatever is aggrieving me on a given day. But
00:02:14.460 nevertheless hope you are all having perhaps a less sour day although maybe you all got your
00:02:18.460 property tax bills around the same time it is tax season and then we're gonna have to pay CRA
00:02:23.560 no no no I'm working myself up again I can't do it will not do it let's talk about the media that'll
00:02:29.900 surely calm my nerves right so this was a rather fascinating so the statistics Canada survey came
00:02:36.900 out I've come to enjoy statistics Canada reading by the way my wife is like a bit she reads the
00:02:42.280 Statistics Canada stuff. And she was telling me, oh, you should read Statistics Canada. So I did.
00:02:46.780 And lo and behold, I see this graph they've put out today as far as trust in institutions
00:02:52.400 is our concern. Now, here, I want to read the numbers to you because the graph doesn't give
00:02:58.060 you precise figures. The one on the bottom of each section there, the red line, that is the result
00:03:03.940 of this most recent survey. So fall of 2023, a few months ago, but they just came out today.
00:03:09.760 the middle line the light blue is spring so that's about six months earlier and then the blue is a
00:03:16.860 fall of 2022 so a year earlier so each of these sections is showing a progression the question
00:03:22.940 is about confidence in institutions trust in institutions now I want to focus on the bottom
00:03:30.720 section there for a moment because as you see trust in the Canadian media is at 37 percent
00:03:37.740 37% of Canadian surveyed say they have trust in the Canadian media.
00:03:42.420 Now, it's a bit of an increase because six months earlier, it was 28.
00:03:47.400 Sorry, no, it was 30.
00:03:49.520 And six months before that, it was 31.
00:03:51.680 So whether trust has increased by 6% or 7% in the past year,
00:03:56.420 or whether this is just an aberration on the survey, a statistical anomaly, I don't know.
00:04:01.300 But you contrast that with other institutions.
00:04:03.460 The only one of these that Canadians like less than the media,
00:04:07.220 we can take that off now, is federal parliament, which is 28. So when the only one people trust
00:04:15.360 less than you are federal politicians, that is, I think, a bit of a danger here. And then you have
00:04:23.560 above that more trust in the school system, the justice system, in the courts, and police. 65%
00:04:29.640 of Canadians trust police, 37% trust journalists. So when there is a big crime scene and the police
00:04:36.680 show up and then the journalists show up. Twice as many people like the uniformed guys and gals
00:04:41.920 than like the ones there with their notebooks and recorders. Now, these figures are obviously
00:04:47.820 a survey. They're not necessarily as precise as they could be, but I think trust in institutions
00:04:54.240 is a very significant issue that we've all seen in decline. Now, I remember asking in Davos,
00:05:01.780 Christine Lagarde, I played the clip, I think yesterday or on a previous show recently,
00:05:06.100 I asked her about how Canadians can have trust in digital currency when institutional trust
00:05:11.200 is in such a dismal state. And she just used that lovely line of, I can't take questions right now
00:05:17.000 because I'm in a quiet period. So not doing her part to re-instill trust in these institutions.
00:05:22.940 So let's dig into the why. I think the reason is, well, I think there are a couple of reasons here.
00:05:27.880 I think number one, Canadian media has not done a traditionally good job of earning trust. I think
00:05:33.380 in a lot of cases, and I'm not talking about individual reporters, I'm talking about the
00:05:36.980 institutions and corporate structures as a whole, have kind of been resting on their laurels for
00:05:43.080 many years and not giving a value proposition to Canadians as to this is why you should trust us.
00:05:49.240 Instead, they just turn around and say that everyone should. Now, my colleague Cosman Georgia
00:05:55.040 had a great piece this week at True North in which the VP of the Toronto Star was saying that unless
00:06:01.360 government subsidizes media and unless government forces the big tech companies to subsidize media
00:06:08.980 then pseudo-journalists are going to take over so he said the only way to protect real journalism
00:06:15.640 the Toronto Star sorry I I didn't mean I meant to say that with a straight face the only way to
00:06:20.920 protect the real journalists of the Toronto Star is through government funding otherwise the evil
00:06:25.000 scary dark web pseudo journalists are going to be the ones who come on. Now, this is, I think,
00:06:33.020 a fascinating, fascinating development here. And it's one of these things that we see more and more
00:06:40.620 in Canada, because in Canada, you throw the subsidization approach in to the mix, and that
00:06:45.980 makes it so that journalists all of a sudden have this pitch. Whenever you hear people talking about
00:06:51.000 misinformation and disinformation. What you have are people trying to make there be gatekeepers
00:06:55.800 on truth, gatekeepers on what real journalism is. And look, some guy with a blog in his basement,
00:07:02.820 realizing full well, the place from which I'm broadcasting right now, is not the same as
00:07:07.840 someone that has an established operation where there are checks and balances and editors and
00:07:12.160 all of these things. But I think journalists have tried to use that contrast to the point where it's
00:07:18.020 no longer believable for a lot of people because you've had big stories that have been broken
00:07:21.820 by bloggers in their basements. Look at the Harvard, look at the Harvard plagiarism scandal
00:07:27.300 with Claudine Gay. That was broken by two sub stackers, two independent journalists without
00:07:32.060 any institutional backing. And it was only after they broke the ground that mainstream media outlets
00:07:37.120 eventually followed them because they realized that it would look too bad if they were left out
00:07:41.280 of that story. So it isn't just enough to say, well, you know, we have our own processes and
00:07:46.860 procedures. We're the real journalists, not these guys, because Canadians are flocking to those
00:07:51.820 guys. And I pardon the gendered language, but Canadians are flocking to independent media who
00:07:56.360 are doing this sort of work. So it really isn't all that surprising that the trust is in decline.
00:08:02.580 And then you look at interactions like this. Now, I realize these are polarizing to people,
00:08:06.820 but I share them because they're revealing one way or another. This was Pierre Polyev yesterday
00:08:11.660 in the foyer of the House of Commons,
00:08:14.580 scrapping with a journalist yet again,
00:08:17.180 this one from the Canadian press.
00:08:20.380 Why did your party want to grant over $100 million
00:08:24.580 in regulatory relief to the mainstream media?
00:08:28.720 We don't want to give any tax dollars to the mainstream media.
00:08:31.740 Our belief is that the mainstream media and all...
00:08:34.740 Did you grant your party's decision to grant regulatory relief?
00:08:38.260 So I'll answer your question.
00:08:39.660 the media that is bought and fade poor which where are you from by the way which which outlet are you
00:08:45.900 in which outlet which outlet Canadian press ah okay Canadian press so you're talking about tax
00:08:53.500 dollars for media isn't CBC your biggest right isn't no I can answer yeah you want an answer
00:08:59.980 100 million dollars in regulatory relief to the mainstream media when would you like me to respond
00:09:06.520 Okay, good. Okay, great. So, of course, you are a tax-funded media outlet and spreading Justin Trudeau's message.
00:09:15.520 Why did you...
00:09:16.520 So, you're interrupting me again. You're interrupting me again. I am answering the question.
00:09:21.520 Why do you regret granting $100 million in regulatory relief to the mainstream media?
00:09:28.520 Your question is false. So, if you can allow me to correct your falsehoods, then we can answer the question directly.
00:09:33.520 so false Canadian conservatives do not believe in giving tax dollars to media
00:09:39.160 outlets that's Justin Trudeau that's Justin Trudeau that's Justin Trudeau
00:09:42.760 okay if you if you don't want me to answer the question I'll move on to
00:09:45.560 someone else you're a tax you're a tax funded mouthpiece to the PMO that's the
00:09:50.240 reality so I'm trying to I'm trying to but you're heckling are you gonna are
00:09:57.040 you gonna let me answer the question are you just going to heckle on behalf of
00:09:59.800 Justin Trudeau? Which is it? I would love the answer. Great. So our party does not support tax
00:10:05.960 dollars for media outlets because that's when we end up with biased media like you who come here
00:10:10.520 and articulate the PMO talking points rather than delivering real news to the Canadian people.
00:10:18.440 Justin Trudeau gave Bell Media and other media tax dollars supposedly to protect media jobs
00:10:24.880 And then what happened? They all got laid off. So the supposed justification for giving Bell all this money was that it was going to save media jobs.
00:10:36.200 Well, they all got fired. So I guess that wasn't the real reason for giving tax dollars to the media.
00:10:42.060 The real reason was for him to buy support from the media, which is what it actually did.
00:10:46.520 So we believe that media should be driven by readership, viewership and listenership.
00:10:54.080 And that's what allows it to represent the Canadian people rather than taking marching orders from the PMO.
00:11:01.800 Now, just to give you a bit of context there before I show the Liberal government's response to that, what the reporter was asking about was a story.
00:11:10.780 It wasn't 100 million. It was 40 million.
00:11:12.760 The Conservatives, along with the NDP and Bloc Québécois, voted in favor of, according to the framing of this Canadian press story, $40 million in regulatory relief for Bell.
00:11:23.900 Or I guess it was $100 million to companies in general, but of that, $40 million went to Bell.
00:11:28.400 Now, this is, I think, relevant here because what happened was there was a conservative motion to a liberal bill, to the Online News Act, actually, to abolish licensing fees that companies had to pay.
00:11:43.200 So regulatory relief kind of masks it was government not collecting this money.
00:11:48.180 And the rationale from the conservatives, from the NDP, from the Bloc Québécois, I believe at the time was, well, hang on, we're just trying to have a level playing field here.
00:11:55.700 So we're not going to pick and choose who has to pay what.
00:11:57.660 So it was made to sound as though there was a bailout of some kind and it was trying to expose a hypocrisy.
00:12:05.080 Now, I would have appreciated it if Pierre Pauliev had just addressed the question, but he was trying to scrap with the premise of it.
00:12:12.020 And I think that's a fair thing to do in general.
00:12:15.440 I know these sorts of stunts, to call them that without any judgment one way or another, tend to do very well.
00:12:21.340 because he is diverging from how conservatives have in the past handled the media where they
00:12:26.580 get bludgeoned but still try to appease and bend over backwards and make friends where he's saying
00:12:31.460 listen I'm just I'm not going to be afraid to call you out and we're going to do this now
00:12:35.920 what's interesting is the way the liberals are responding the liberals want to be the great
00:12:39.860 media defenders they even dispatched heritage minister Pascal Saint-Ange today to go out and
00:12:46.980 give this talking point. I just want to get back on the altercation between Pierre Poiliev yesterday
00:12:54.620 and a journalist from Canadian press. First of all, I want to say that he's pretty thin-skinned.
00:13:01.260 It's our job when we're politicians to answer questions from journalists. We're accountable
00:13:06.460 to the Canadian population and it's the journalist's job to ask those questions.
00:13:10.880 Some questions are difficult. Some questions are easy. Yesterday's question was pretty easy.
00:13:15.860 He was just asked to explain why his party introduced an amendment to lift fees for Canadian broadcasters.
00:13:24.680 It's a pretty easy question. It's his party that brought that forward.
00:13:29.320 So, yes, when you're a politician, you need to answer questions.
00:13:32.700 And when you're attacking the press, when you're attacking our free press, you're also attacking democracy.
00:13:37.440 It's unworthy of a leader.
00:13:39.240 Sorry, I was just doing some statistical debating here because our friend Chris Sims, who thankfully is watching the show, hello Chris, had sent along the footnote of that chart that I showed and the chart had showed, and I shared these numbers with you live, that trust in the media was at, if I recall the exact number here, 37% by Canadians.
00:14:05.560 But weirdly, the footnote is kind of confusing here because it says that in provinces, trust in media had very, very low trust in Atlantic Canada, where only 15% trusted the media, Ontario and BC where 13% did, and the Prairie Provinces where 12% did.
00:14:26.300 So in order for those numbers to make sense, Quebec's trust in the media would have to
00:14:31.280 be sky high, so I'm not exactly sure how they get to that because Quebec has high confidence
00:14:38.960 in institutions overall.
00:14:40.220 So I'll drill into these numbers a little bit, but I think that's incredibly relevant
00:14:43.940 here that, you know, yeah, even if we accept at face value that overall trust in media
00:14:48.580 that Canadians have, 37% here, you go outside of Quebec and we're talking about 12, 13,
00:14:55.640 15% trust in media, which is absolutely abysmal. And I think understandably so. And look, we saw
00:15:04.320 that clip from Pierre Polyev and the CP reporter. There was one last week. This has become just a
00:15:09.380 regular occurrence, oftentimes with either Canadian press or CBC. Those are the two that he seems to
00:15:15.220 get into it with. And there are people that don't like it. I get it. There are people that do the
00:15:19.500 whole, oh, this is not prime ministerial. But at a certain point, you have to look at why trust is
00:15:24.860 declining in the first place, and I think it's because journalists have oftentimes, not all
00:15:30.560 journalists, but many journalists have kind of wanted to hide behind the question mark. Now,
00:15:36.200 if someone else has made up this term before, I've never heard it, so maybe I'm coining it for the
00:15:40.280 first time, but they want to hide behind the question mark. You say you frame something as
00:15:43.820 a question, and whatever you said before that question mark is defensible because, oh, I'm just
00:15:49.080 I'm just asking questions. But really, journalists are in many cases making arguments. They are
00:15:54.960 belligerents in the political fight, not just these passive, neutral, truthful observers.
00:16:01.880 And this is where Pascal Saint-Age, I just have to roll my eyes because she comes out and says
00:16:06.040 this is an attack on democracy. It's an attack on a free press. No, it's an attack on questions
00:16:11.340 that Pierre Polyev thinks, and people can decide for themselves, are off base. Questions he thinks
00:16:16.620 are loaded and does not want to answer. And the system works when both sides are putting pressure
00:16:22.900 on the other. Politicians shouldn't be deferential to the media. Journalists should not be deferential
00:16:27.860 to politicians. You know, the liberals are in no position to complain about this because what
00:16:33.540 the liberals do, they just ban reporters. They don't want to take questions from the press
00:16:38.320 conference. What would you rather? I would rather Justin Trudeau say, you know what, we're going to
00:16:43.100 let the rebel at our press conferences. And if they ask a question I don't like, I'm going to
00:16:46.880 give it to them. That's what Pierre Polyev does. He can say, yeah, you know what? We don't want
00:16:52.160 government funded media at our press conferences. That would be wrong because then you are banning
00:16:56.860 access. Debating and arguing are not attacks on press freedom. They are the system working. A
00:17:03.640 free press is a press in which the media is held accountable and the political class is held
00:17:08.960 accountable. And the consumers, Canadians are the ones who can decide for themselves which they
00:17:14.540 like better, which they feel has the moral high ground, if either of them. And I mean, looking at
00:17:18.980 these trust figures from Six Canada, I think Canadians are generally speaking saying they
00:17:24.260 like neither. I wanted to pivot to this rather horrendous display in Toronto yesterday, Mount
00:17:31.440 Sinai Hospital, a renowned hospital. It's obviously Jewish in origin and focus, as the name would
00:17:37.560 suggest, but it is not a hospital staffed by only Jewish people or serving only Jewish people.
00:17:43.060 Apparently, Sean was born at Mount Sinai, and to my knowledge, Sean confirms he is not Jewish. So
00:17:47.940 there we go. Mount Sinai Hospital gave this show its producer. We're very grateful for that. But
00:17:54.220 for the anti-Israel, and I would say in many cases, outright anti-Semitic activists, Mount Sinai
00:18:00.580 is a fair target in their hatred of Israel and Jews.
00:18:05.640 Just yesterday, we had a mob targeting this hospital.
00:18:09.840 Take a look.
00:18:30.580 Right there, you have a Palestinian flag being hoisted on the entrance, the front facade of the hospital by people who have no business being there.
00:18:43.740 This is trespassing at the very least.
00:18:46.220 And interestingly enough, when the pandemic was on and you had people protesting COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates at hospitals,
00:18:52.940 you had no shortage of condemnation from the political class saying this is terrible.
00:18:57.520 You had laws being passed by provincial governments to criminalize or severely restrict the disruption and blocking of hospitals, of these pieces of critical infrastructure.
00:19:09.680 But there has been nary a peep from a lot of those folks who condemned this sort of action during the COVID era, which, by the way, was never as aggressive as what we just saw there.
00:19:19.680 Just as a reminder, this is what Justin Trudeau said at the time.
00:19:22.600 The Liberal Party of Canada, if re-elected to form government, will make it a criminal
00:19:29.340 offense to block access to buildings that provide health care, whether that's hospitals,
00:19:36.880 clinics, abortion clinics, pharmacies, testing centers.
00:19:43.500 It is not okay that across the country, hospitals are having to put up barricades today to manage
00:19:51.680 the mobs coming their way and further we're going to make it a criminal offense for anyone
00:19:57.920 to threaten or intimidate any health care practitioner on their way into work
00:20:04.800 in the practice of their exercise of their duty or a patient on their way to get medical services
00:20:11.940 so there are two stories here number one is i think the establishment silence on this relative
00:20:19.480 to their condemnation when it was a different type of protester, but also the blame that goes
00:20:24.980 squarely on the protesters themselves. Barbara Kay is a phenomenal columnist at the National Post
00:20:30.800 and the Epoch Times and has been one of my favorite guests on this show over time, and she joins us
00:20:35.320 again. Barbara, always good to talk to you. Let's just get this right out of the way here. The
00:20:40.360 pretense that this is anti-Zionism and not anti-Semitism is long gone, is it not?
00:20:45.900 I would think so. I would think that October 7th kind of stripped that veil and shredded it. There is no difference when people are screaming free Palestine and they're carrying that flag, which is not the flag, by the way, of a state. It's the flag of an intention. And the intention is to eradicate Israel. So, yeah, we're talking anti-Israel, but also anti-Semitism, really of a very hardcore kind.
00:21:15.020 And it's not even veiled.
00:21:16.840 I mean, if someone wants to protest at the Israeli consulate in Toronto, I may disagree
00:21:21.560 with it, but I'd say have at it because you're at least protesting the thing that you claim
00:21:25.680 to object to if they want to protest at the Israeli embassy.
00:21:29.220 When we saw Jewish-owned businesses being targeted very early on, I mean, some of the
00:21:33.620 footage looked like, to be frank, a new Kristallnacht.
00:21:36.840 And then you see the protesting at Mount Sinai Hospital.
00:21:39.520 Now, I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of Mount Sinai's leadership, but I've
00:21:43.560 never heard of this hospital having any connection to the Israeli government or Israeli politics or
00:21:49.600 foreign policy. It just happens to be Jewish and have Sinai in the name. Am I missing something
00:21:54.600 here? No, you're not missing anything. I know very well the origins of the Mount Sinai Hospital
00:21:59.460 because if you go back far enough in Canadian history, you don't because you're very young.
00:22:04.980 but back in the day there were quotas on Jews in medical school and it was very difficult for
00:22:14.440 Jewish doctors to get internships or residencies in the other hospitals and the Jewish community
00:22:22.660 said you know what let's start our own hospital same as the Jewish general hospital in Montreal
00:22:26.820 so they did but obviously these hospitals hire everybody they're very multicultural places of
00:22:34.360 course and uh they're open to the community so everybody uh their patients come from
00:22:41.560 the entire community and so it represents its legacy uh and it does mean that you can get kosher
00:22:48.360 meals there if that's your inclination but aside from that it's uh and rooms for you know uh
00:22:55.080 uh circumcision for you know ceremonies and that sort of thing that's that's what's jewish about
00:22:59.640 and there's a chapel i think um but apart from that it's a community hospital like all the others
00:23:06.280 but you know these clowns they they see a name that sounds jewish they just i mean they don't
00:23:13.640 really do their homework on this they they just see it as a target because it has a jewish name
00:23:19.560 or a jewish uh you know implication or like heather reisman's store uh it's owned by a jew
00:23:26.280 delicatessen owned by a jew i mean they don't care if the clientele or the staff or everybody else is
00:23:31.800 nothing to do with uh being jewish so yeah that's yeah and and you know i go back to
00:23:38.200 for years and years ago we have seen the bds movement the boycott divestment sanctions movement
00:23:43.560 which is in and of itself i think rooted in anti-semitism and it would historically protest
00:23:48.680 uh anything that had even a peripheral relationship to israel i mean aroma coffee is a coffee shop
00:23:54.680 that's israeli owned they do a wonderful job whenever i'm in toronto i try to go to aroma
00:23:59.080 it's not a political operation it just happens to be by virtue of geography an israeli company so
00:24:05.000 you've got you know activists that boycott that we've now taken this bds movement which i think a
00:24:10.360 lot of people thought was just this little corner of the university thing that didn't really affect
00:24:15.240 anyone and we've now seen the export of this to hospitals like like i've always been a cynic
00:24:21.000 about these things but i i never imagined that bds would extend to hospitals well just to make
00:24:27.240 you a little more cynical andrew i can tell you that uh it's very common practice for uh even
00:24:33.800 hamas leaders uh just recently for example i think it was ismail honey as he's the head political
00:24:41.880 honcho for hamas who lives in qatar uh his daughter or his sister or somebody in his family
00:24:48.280 was just in Hadassah Hospital in Israel for a life-saving operation. Very common for the big,
00:24:55.640 you know, the big cheeses in the most anti-Semitic movements. When they want expert medical care,
00:25:03.560 they send them to Israeli hospitals. And where they are, by the way, treated with exactly the
00:25:08.600 same professionalism and concern and care and compassion as anybody else. Even terrorists,
00:25:14.360 by the way who end up in israeli hospitals are very well treated uh palestinians routinely they
00:25:19.320 can't get away if their child has a um a heart condition for example that's too sophisticated
00:25:26.120 for the hospitals in in the west bank that they bring them they're treated they go home in some
00:25:31.720 cases um they have treated people who have been very grateful at the time and then came back to
00:25:37.240 try to blow up a pizza parlor you know so it's it's a sort of strange world we we uh inhabit when
00:25:43.800 we get into the you know the the the the lower reaches of uh cynicism promoting facts this world
00:25:54.360 yeah well and that's always been i mean the most glaring hypocrisy from from you know dictators
00:25:59.720 islamist and otherwise is that they're all about death to the west but where do they send their
00:26:03.960 kids to go to school i mean kim jong-un i think he you know north korea if i recall he was educated in
00:26:09.000 either in Europe or somewhere like that. You have Iranian dictators and mullahs. They send
00:26:14.540 their family members to Switzerland, the United States, France for medical treatment. And you're
00:26:19.560 right. And you mentioned that he lives in Qatar. For people that don't realize this, even they
00:26:24.060 don't want to live in this Gaza that they say is such a wonderful, wonderful place were it not for
00:26:30.340 the evil Zionist Jews that are wreaking havoc on it when they haven't even been there for 15 years
00:26:36.140 now so where do you think this is going because i saw this display at the hospital wasn't all that
00:26:42.300 surprised by it now uh but i i did note that conspicuous silence from people that uh if you
00:26:47.660 know those who are critical of vaccines were protesting a hospital would have wanted to send
00:26:51.820 in the police and now are silent well i'm glad you showed that clip of what uh justin trudeau said
00:26:58.940 some years ago, and he was lending his moral authority to an idea and to what he thinks is
00:27:09.540 the moral, you know, let's have some moral clarity here. It is not acceptable. This is not acceptable.
00:27:16.320 This is not who we are, blah, blah, blah. But when we have an incident like this, and we've had many
00:27:21.120 similar incidents, that's his moment to get up and say, I'm distressed by this. I'm upset by this.
00:27:27.140 as a Canadian, this disturbs me greatly. This is not who we are. And all the shibboleths that he
00:27:33.240 says with all the other stuff, he's, he's not in the frame here. He should be going down to
00:27:40.340 the Mount Sinai hospital and holding a press conference outside it and say, this is one of
00:27:44.980 our great hospitals in this city. There is no way that anybody inside this hospital, staff,
00:27:52.900 um patience anybody should feel one minute you know i mean the speech writes itself all he has
00:28:00.440 to do is is you know and and by the way not say uh and islamophobia islamophobia is bad too like
00:28:07.860 not even if he does the first thing you know he's gonna i know he's gonna tack it on but if he could
00:28:12.660 just for once forbear to tack on that little you know and we're equally you know upset about
00:28:18.680 Islamophobia, because there are no Muslim schools or mosques or at the moment that are
00:28:24.940 being targeted for hatred by anybody, let alone Jews. And that's where you get the message
00:28:33.540 trickling down. And all he has to say is, you know, if he, just what you said, if you have a
00:28:41.040 problem uh you have you have free speech here and you have uh the right to your opinion if you have
00:28:48.600 a problem with what's going on in the middle east and you think it's israel's fault go to the israeli
00:28:54.020 embassy and protest there do not like i mean why am i writing the speech for him i you know he's
00:29:00.440 not going to pay me but wouldn't somebody in the pmo think that up and say hey come on uh let's
00:29:06.300 let's write a sort of a nifty little you know perky speech for and and take you know fly into
00:29:12.860 toronto for the day and make a day of it like put on some other speeches elsewhere he could stop
00:29:20.400 this i mean let's let's put it this way he might not be able to stop all of it but he could
00:29:25.440 certainly muffle the uh uh the the cheering squad who might be just a little embarrassed after their
00:29:36.400 prime minister has told them this is not who we are as canadians uh to say you know i think i'll
00:29:41.120 skip this demonstration so he could certainly bring the temperature down on this and he hasn't
00:29:45.040 yeah and at the very least i think the moral clarity would be incredibly important barbara
00:29:49.680 kay always enjoy your work in the national post the epic times and wherever else you pop up thank
00:29:53.760 you so much for coming on today thanks andrew all right thank you and just before we move on
00:29:58.480 to the next subject i wanted to bring up this related thing here because canada has decided
00:30:03.120 it's going to open its doors metaphorically to people from gaza who have connections to canadian
00:30:08.800 citizens and uh look i think absolutely there are many many many people in gaza who understandably
00:30:14.960 want to flee hamas they are people who have been trapped there by hamas hamas itself has been the
00:30:21.120 greatest barrier and also because other Arab countries want nothing to do with this. Egypt,
00:30:26.400 you want to see a well-secured border. Take a look at the border between Egypt and Gaza. The
00:30:32.320 Egyptians want nothing to do with this. Jordan, which is made up of ethnic Palestinians, wants
00:30:38.000 nothing to do with people from Gaza. So a lot of the blame is put on Israel, but it should be put
00:30:42.960 on these Arab neighbors that are doing nothing. But nevertheless, I do believe that understandably
00:30:48.000 innocent people in Gaza that want to flee this, they have the right to avail themselves of the
00:30:53.380 refugee and asylum systems elsewhere in the world. Now, Canada has decided it's going to allow some
00:30:58.880 of these people in. Whether you agree with that decision or not, we have protocols in place and
00:31:04.340 we should have protocols in place to make sure that anyone who's coming to our country belongs
00:31:08.860 here. They are going to comply with our laws. They have not done any of the things that make
00:31:12.640 them ineligible for entry. Now a liberal appointed senator from PEI, Percy Down, had tweeted and I
00:31:19.740 couldn't find the original tweet but he tweeted what I think is the obvious here which is that
00:31:23.980 you know people in PEI are nervous about terrorists. They're nervous about terrorism. I've been to PEI
00:31:29.860 twice. I've never felt the terror threat there but I understand that people there might be like any
00:31:34.440 other Canadian concerned about terrorism. He was saying if anyone from Gaza is coming to Canada I
00:31:39.180 just want to make sure we've done our security checks so that they are not Hamas agents. Hamas
00:31:44.080 is not using other countries' generosity as a way to sneak into the country and bypass checks.
00:31:50.000 That's what he said. Is that controversial? I don't think so. I think that is an entirely
00:31:54.600 commonplace position to hold and to espouse. But he gets called Islamophobic. The PEI BIPOC
00:32:01.720 alliance or whatever it's called says it's racist. And what does he do? He capitulates. He puts up
00:32:07.200 this tweet. It's a bit of a half-hearted apology, but he says, upon reflection, the tweet I sent out
00:32:12.440 on Gaza was wrong. My apologies for my mistake. Not convinced it is the most thoughtful apology,
00:32:19.080 but nevertheless, he deleted. And then he issued a longer apology because he saw people were upset
00:32:24.420 about this apology. So he tried to do the whole middle ground thing. And he said, okay, no, no,
00:32:29.840 we need security checks for all international students. But he is still being called racist
00:32:36.100 and Islamophobic by the PEI advocacy group.
00:32:40.920 It's called BIPOC Usher or BIPOC USHR.
00:32:45.480 I think BIPOC, well, Usher was the guy
00:32:47.320 that did the Super Bowl halftime show.
00:32:48.740 So I don't think Usher from PEI was the one that,
00:32:52.200 I don't think it was the same Usher here,
00:32:53.540 but they're still saying it's racist, it's Islamophobic.
00:32:56.240 He's saying, no, no, no,
00:32:56.860 I'm not talking about specific groups.
00:32:58.220 I'm just saying that in general, we need to do this.
00:33:00.860 So he's tried to find a middle ground there
00:33:02.780 and gets absolutely no credit for it.
00:33:06.100 So what's happened here is you have someone saying the obvious.
00:33:11.240 He's saying what Canadians think, which is that, well, you know,
00:33:13.900 we know that Hamas has a lot of people in Gaza.
00:33:17.060 We know that they're all trying to get out of Dodge
00:33:19.080 because none of these Hamas operatives want to be killed by Israel
00:33:21.900 as they're going through Gaza trying to destroy and obliterate Hamas.
00:33:25.720 So it stands to reason that, yeah, some of the people that are claiming,
00:33:28.480 oh, but I'm an international student or, oh, I'm a refugee,
00:33:31.020 oh, I'm seeking asylum, are probably going to be aligned with Hamas.
00:33:34.720 I mean, even UNRWA, which is the, well, not even UNRWA, I think UNRWA's connection to terrorism is well established by now.
00:33:41.860 There were tunnels and a operations center and headquarters underneath the UNRWA headquarters, tunnels that Hamas people were using to get from the UNRWA headquarters around, tunnels they used to get into Israel as well.
00:33:56.360 This is exactly what's happening here. And what is it that the UN does? Oh, we into gambling in
00:34:03.060 this establishment? No, we had no idea. Nothing, no clue any of this was happening, even though
00:34:08.480 people have been saying for years that terrorists had co-opted and Hamas had co-opted UNRWA and
00:34:14.960 many people in UNRWA. So the reason I bring that up is that we know that anyone coming in who is
00:34:21.680 from Gaza to Canada or another country has a higher likelihood than, you know,
00:34:29.760 whoever, random person A coming from, let's say, Ethiopia or coming from another part of the world
00:34:37.160 to Canada and seeking asylum of being a terrorist because the terrorists are running like rats on a
00:34:44.420 sinking ship here and their way out, their way out is to get into a place like Canada.
00:34:50.600 so it's shameful that you had a a member of the senate i mean i don't hold the senate in
00:34:58.360 tremendously high esteem but a member of the senate who's been in politics for a long time
00:35:02.800 who was one of the few people to come out and speak independently about justin trudeau
00:35:06.640 he had said i think it was a couple of months ago it's time for a new liberal leader if memory serves
00:35:11.360 i think that was uh percy down and he was he worked for jean chretien he was the chief of
00:35:17.820 staff to Jean Chrétien from, I think it was 2000, I'm just looking here, 2001 to 2003. So he's a guy
00:35:24.900 that knows politics very well and he gets shamed into submission for saying the obvious, saying
00:35:31.420 what's on everyone's mind when he dares to speak up and criticize and condemn the terrorist
00:35:38.980 co-option of the immigration system. So this is what happens when you try to do the right thing
00:35:46.000 and you apologize and you try to find a middle ground,
00:35:48.620 there are some people with whom you simply cannot find middle ground.
00:35:52.860 There are some people that you simply cannot find any source of agreement with.
00:35:57.420 And when you see this, you know, I've actually gotten,
00:36:00.760 I know this is a polarizing subject for people.
00:36:03.060 I've had emails when I have spoken about this issue,
00:36:06.780 people who say, oh, you know, I don't like the whole pro-Israel thing.
00:36:09.120 And I say, well, I don't really care.
00:36:10.840 We can disagree and I welcome people who agree on some things
00:36:13.840 and disagree on others to listen to the show.
00:36:15.600 but this is too important an issue for me to be silent and I'm not going to both side something
00:36:21.600 where there is no both sidesing. Now absolutely I think we can criticize the Israeli government
00:36:26.200 absolutely if you feel like it you can criticize the way Israel has chosen to respond to what's
00:36:32.320 happened on October 7th but when you start saying that the real bad guys here the real bad guys are
00:36:39.000 the Israelis and when you start protesting hospitals and when you start saying anything
00:36:43.820 with a Jewish name, a Jewish owner is fair game. Do I support your right to freedom of speech?
00:36:50.340 100% absolutely. Do I support scaling the front of the hospital to fly the Palestinian flag? No.
00:36:56.400 Do I support standing out front of the hospital and shouting? No. Do I think it is legal and should
00:37:03.460 be legal to do that? Yes, providing you're not blocking entry or exit. But the legality and
00:37:10.680 the morality are very, very different. And I can absolutely, as a free speech, well, frankly,
00:37:16.580 as a free speech absolutist, I can say, yeah, I support your right to say and believe and protest
00:37:21.760 vile things, but I will not hesitate to call you out when you're using that freedom in an absolutely
00:37:28.140 disgusting and despicable way. And that's precisely what's happened on the, is precisely
00:37:34.900 what's been happening on uh j on this hospital situation and on other jewish-owned businesses
00:37:41.700 in toronto and you know people have said this is not a new phenomenon but it's been an awakened
00:37:46.580 phenomenon and the anti-semites have clearly decided that they no longer feel the need to
00:37:51.460 hide there's no shame or stigma in holding these beliefs and holding these views and that is a
00:37:58.580 profoundly profoundly dangerous and i'll say quite sad development so uh one of the things
00:38:04.020 that one thing that we will do on this
00:38:05.780 is cover it continuously.
00:38:07.920 We were hoping to have another guest come on
00:38:10.260 to follow up on the ban on oil and gas advertising
00:38:14.160 that Charlie Angus has proposed.
00:38:15.540 But we've had some technical issues with our guests
00:38:18.240 and unfortunately we're not able to get her on.
00:38:19.860 So we will, I don't know if they're technical issues actually.
00:38:22.800 She just didn't show up.
00:38:23.960 So hopefully we will be able to reschedule that
00:38:26.460 at a later opportunity.
00:38:27.780 But my thanks to all of you for tuning into the show today.
00:38:30.500 We will talk to you tomorrow on the,
00:38:32.820 well, what was I going to say? I was going to say on Canada's
00:38:35.020 most irreverent talk show. Then I just dropped
00:38:37.100 the Canada's on the most irreverent
00:38:39.280 talk show. We'll talk to you tomorrow. This is True North.
00:38:41.320 Thank you. God bless and good day
00:38:43.080 to you all. Thanks for listening
00:38:45.200 to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:38:46.900 Support the program by donating to True North
00:38:48.960 at www.tnc.news.
00:39:02.820 We'll be right back.
00:39:32.820 We'll be right back.