Juno News - June 24, 2024


Liberal desperation showing on Toronto byelection day

Topics
liberal desperation Toronto St. Paul's by-election
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Leslie Church Andrew Mehdi Hassan Lindsay Wilson Pierre Poilievre Robert Walker Susan Delacorte Nahid Nenshi Toronto St Paul Danielle Smith Andrew Lawton Rachel Notley Chris Sims Pistachio Chrystia Freeland York Southwestern Shannon Phillips Caitlin Bennett Midtown Toronto and 14 more
McGill anti-Israel encampment promotes “revolutionary” youth camp Does Conservative upset mean end of Trudeau？

Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

182.22

Word count

8,378

Sentence count

364

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

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

It's the day to vote in the St. Paul's By-Elections by-election, and there's no question that the Liberals are going to lose. But who's going to win? And how will they do it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30 Thank you.
00:01:00 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:19 north hello and welcome to you all this is the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent talk
00:01:30 show here on true north i had a moment of pain if i was late starting by like two seconds uh it's
00:01:35 because on the weekend i was cleaning up on my desk and i unplugged the cable that connects the
00:01:40 monitor i look into from the computer and i was staring at a blank monitor and didn't quite
00:01:46 realize that oh yeah there's nothing going to be on there because it's not plugged in so I'll plug
00:01:50 that back in once we get going and I am doing something else like playing a clip but we have
00:01:55 a clip for you that won't be ready for a couple more seconds well it's ready I'm just not ready
00:02:00 happy Monday everyone seriously this is Canada's most irreverent talk show it is the big day if
00:02:06 you live in Toronto St. Paul so for you know one in 338 of you that may be true it is the by-election
00:02:13 They are going to elect a replacement for Carolyn Bennett, the longtime Liberal MP, in the longtime Liberal stronghold in, I want to think, Midtown Toronto?
00:02:24 Is it Uptown? It's not downtown, although now I have that old song, downtown. It's not there anyway.
00:02:30 But it is going to be a momentous day, I think.
00:02:33 Look, I've been clear any time this has come up. The Liberals, I suspect, are going to win.
00:02:38 I don't think it's going to be by the margins they've been pulling.
00:02:41 And I think voter turnout is going to crater because even the ones that can't quite bring themselves to voting conservative are probably just going to stay home.
00:02:49 They're not lifting a finger to help Leslie Church, who is the liberal candidate.
00:02:53 Dawn Stewart has been doing a great job as the conservative candidate, taking up what used to be the post that would be more readily described as being a sacrificial lamb than a candidate.
00:03:03 But in this particular case, it's kind of close.
00:03:07 People are suspecting the Conservatives could win.
00:03:10 People are getting panicked about this.
00:03:12 The Liberals have been sending Cabinet Minister after Cabinet Minister after Cabinet Minister to St. Paul's.
00:03:17 They're all knocking on doors and desperately trying to whip up votes in the 11th hour for the Liberal candidate.
00:03:23 One of these is Ahmed Hassan, who is from a Toronto riding himself.
00:03:28 So York Southwestern, I think, is his riding.
00:03:30 He didn't have to go too, too far.
00:03:32 But he has been going, knocking on doors, talking to constituents.
00:03:35 put up this tweet here from Minister Hassen. He talks about important news. Polls are open. Today
00:03:42 is the day to vote. Leslie Church to be your next community leader. If you don't know where to vote,
00:03:48 check out. And then he links to Elections Canada. Let's just start with a technical note here.
00:03:52 Your next community leader. We call them members of parliament. You don't vote someone to be a
00:03:57 community leader. But let's take a look at the reception. Ahmed Hassen is getting at the doors.
00:04:02 Oh yeah, there we go. I'm not making fun of the woman, by the way. That's the face I would be
00:04:08 making if Ahmed Hassen were to knock on my door as well. Of all the canvassing he did,
00:04:14 this was the photo that his team took. This was the photo that his team thought was the one that
00:04:20 really showed off the reception the liberals are getting at the door. Put her back up. This is like 0.71
00:04:25 the face of a nation right now. No, no, do the close-up. Yeah, that is the face of a nation
00:04:30 right now. When Justin Trudeau and his MPs knock on your door, that is the face you have to give
00:04:35 them. And if that's the best face they're getting, if that was the best photo from Ahmed Hassan's
00:04:40 day of canvassing, then the Liberals are in for an absolute blow up tonight. They are getting a
00:04:45 little bit desperate. Here was Chrystia Freeland at a press conference this morning talking about 0.99
00:04:50 the stakes of this by-election. This is an important by-election because it is about a choice between
00:04:58 two visions of Canada, two sets of values. I really want to encourage people to vote for our
00:05:07 outstanding, hard-working candidate, Leslie Church, our hard-working Liberal candidate,
00:05:13 Leslie Church. What she stands for is the values we are talking about here today.
00:05:20 She stands for a vision of Canada, which is about investing in Canada, investing in essential
00:05:28 industries like our car sector, being sure that Canada can own the podium, investing in Canadian
00:05:34 workers like the amazing workers who are here, investing in Canadian families. That is Leslie's
00:05:42 vision. That's the liberal vision. That's why I'm really calling on the people of St. Paul's to go
00:05:47 out there and vote for her because the alternative is really cold and cruel and small the alternative
00:05:58 is cuts and austerity not believing in ourselves as a country not believing in our communities
00:06:06 and in our neighbors if you vote conservative you are supporting an alternative that is as
00:06:14 Christian Freeland says, cold and cruel and small.
00:06:20 Well, the reality is, as we talked about a fair bit last week,
00:06:22 Justin Trudeau is 20 points behind Pierre Polyev in the polls right now.
00:06:26 Canadians are overwhelmingly, in every poll done for pretty much the past year,
00:06:31 supporting that cold, small, cruel alternative that Christian Freeland says is at stake
00:06:37 if the Liberals don't hold Toronto St. Paul's.
00:06:40 Now, again, there is an expectations game being played here.
00:06:44 Every conservative I've spoken to has said, yeah, we're working hard, we're trying.
00:06:48 But again, at the end of the day, this is a liberal stronghold.
00:06:50 The liberals are going to win.
00:06:51 Man, it is amazing to look at how much the expectations are being lowered by the liberals
00:06:57 and by the PMO.
00:06:59 On one hand, they're all desperate.
00:07:00 They're sending out cabinet ministers.
00:07:02 They're trying to say, yes, Leslie Church is the future.
00:07:05 Rah, rah, rah, huzzah.
00:07:06 But on the other hand, it's amazing when you look at the talking points that are seeping
00:07:10 into other coverage.
00:07:11 Now, Susan Delacorte, who is a columnist with the Toronto Star, she's a self-described liberal.
00:07:16 I'm not making an accusation against her that she doesn't own herself.
00:07:20 She has this piece in the Toronto Star.
00:07:23 It's like a back and forth between her and Matt Gurney, who's more conservative inclined.
00:07:27 But this is what she says about the by-election, which I find, I mean, Susan, I've always gotten along well with her, but I find this is just woefully, woefully naive on her part.
00:07:37 she says I spent some time in Toronto St. Paul's earlier this month and my sense was that it was
00:07:42 looking pretty bad for the liberals lawn signs may not be an accurate predictor well they're not
00:07:48 but on the streets where I was roaming the blue ones far outnumber the red ones there's no sugar
00:07:52 coating that I talked to someone who had been knocking on doors who reported many people saying
00:07:57 that Justin Trudeau had to go carries on one thing that surprised me was the conservative
00:08:03 of strategists who said they still expected to lose Toronto St. Paul's. That sounded like spin
00:08:08 to me, laying groundwork for Conservatives to claim in victory that Pierre Polyev had somehow
00:08:13 defied the odds. Last time I checked, the odds were massively in favor of a Conservative win.
00:08:19 They're 20% ahead in the latest abacus poll, for heaven's sake. I'm not buying the suggestion that
00:08:24 they're the underdogs in this by-election. So Susan Delacorte's view here is that because the
00:08:31 conservatives are 20 points ahead nationally, they are not the underdogs in a midtown, we determined
00:08:37 it is midtown, by the way, in a midtown Toronto riding that the liberals have held for decades.
00:08:42 That's like saying that if the liberals were ahead in the polls, it wouldn't be like that.
00:08:47 But literally, that's like saying that in 2015, when Justin Trudeau was ahead in the polls,
00:08:51 you could call the conservatives the underdogs in, you know, Peace River, Ritaskawin in northern
00:08:57 Alberta or something like that it doesn't quite work like that yes the Conservatives nationally
00:09:01 are polling very well but we're still talking about an urban Toronto riding that has never been
00:09:06 a place where the Conservatives would look if you were to say you know to the Conservatives you have
00:09:11 to just take five ridings and agree to not run candidates in them I guarantee you Toronto St
00:09:17 Paul's would be one of those ridings they would just say if they weren't allowed to run a candidate 0.79
00:09:21 in five ridings they'd say yeah that there's no point we're not going to do it historically
00:09:25 so again it's going to be close it absolutely is going to be close but i think even when we
00:09:32 say close closer than expected closer than people are used to in this riding but my goodness it's
00:09:39 an absolutely fascinating fascinating development and we're going to be talking about this tomorrow
00:09:44 because no matter what the expectations for the liberals have been pushed to such a low point
00:09:50 they've been pushed to such a low point that if they get more than like four percent of the vote
00:09:56 the liberals are going to be uh spinning it as a win they're going to say oh well the deck was
00:10:00 stacked against us i saw people uh daryl bricker the pollster i saw him talking earlier about
00:10:05 trudeau's boxing match against patrick brazo some years back and how everyone thought justin
00:10:10 trudeau wasn't going to win but he came back and he won as though this is going to be some great
00:10:14 comeback story for justin trudeau but i don't think there's any result here that works well
00:10:18 for the liberals because even if they win even if they win by 15 points it's well it's toronto
00:10:24 saint paul's what did you expect this was always going to be a liberal win this was always going
00:10:30 to be something that the liberals were going to have their basically a clear runway to victory
00:10:35 it's only really a story if the liberals lose or if it seems like they're coming close to losing
00:10:43 and i think that's going to be what happened so what i'm interested in and it's it's hard to
00:10:47 identify this on a micro level because voter intentions are never entirely clear from how
00:10:53 people vote is what liberal voters are feeling because susan delacorte's observation about lawn
00:10:59 signs i actually saw it myself i don't know if it was last week or two weeks ago driving through that
00:11:02 riding i saw oh wow i'm seeing more conservative signs than liberal signs but that just means that
00:11:08 liberal enthusiasm is waning it means that there are people that will probably still vote liberal
00:11:13 but they certainly aren't proud enough about it that they want to put like a team trudeau
00:11:17 sign on their lawn and by the way i don't even think they do team trudeau on the signs anymore
00:11:21 i think like team trudeau got pulled off at some point in 2021 because that's no longer a brand
00:11:26 that is outperforming the conservative brand so i we're going to talk about this a little bit more
00:11:31 later in the show we're going to have the results for you tonight at tnc.news i realize this is
00:11:36 overlapping with the oilers game which uh you know even for me as a non-hockey fan i must admit when
00:11:43 you have a canadian team in the finals in game seven i still don't care but i know that a lot
00:11:50 of you do so i i am happy if you care and i hope the team that you want to win wins and if you uh
00:11:57 are rioting in the streets tomorrow because you didn't win that's probably not good where was it
00:12:02 was that vancouver that had some big sporting riots after now if you want to ride over the
00:12:06 st paul's by-election i still don't encourage it but uh we're more we're more my speed there anyway
00:12:12 But Sean was saying it was Vancouver versus Boston that had the riot.
00:12:17 Well, Boston, they're a rioting bunch in Boston normally anyway.
00:12:21 So anyway, all right, let's talk about Alberta for a few moments here.
00:12:25 On the weekend, one election that took place was that of Nahed Nenshi
00:12:29 as the new leader of the Alberta NDP.
00:12:32 Not exactly a big surprise going into this.
00:12:35 It ended up being, though, an absolutely trouncing defeat.
00:12:38 It was a larger margin than even Pierre Polyev had in his pursuit of the conservative leadership
00:12:43 in 2022, which was itself seen as an absolutely insane margin of victory.
00:12:49 Just to put this in context here, Nahed Nenshi, who is the former mayor of Calgary, he is
00:12:55 elected as the leader of the Alberta NDP with 86% of votes, 86% of votes, 72,930 votes
00:13:06 cast overall. He'll now be going up against Danielle Smith in October 2027. What does this
00:13:12 mean for Albertans and for Canadians, I might even say? Lindsay Wilson is the president of
00:13:17 Alberta Proud and joins us now. And Lindsay was a tremendous emcee and hostess when I had my book 0.70
00:13:23 launch in Calgary, which Alberta Proud so graciously sponsored and put together in Alberta
00:13:29 for Pierre Polyeva Political Life. Lindsay, good to see you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:13:33 Oh, good morning, Andrew. Thank you for having me.
00:13:35 Well, it's afternoon for us dirty Easterners, but I hope you won't hold that against us.
00:13:40 So this wasn't a surprise, but now we're going to see him settle into this role.
00:13:45 He'll have to take a seat in the legislature at some point in the next little while.
00:13:49 And I've already heard some rumors circulating about where he might do that.
00:13:52 But what do you think this will mean overall for the tone of the NDP?
00:13:57 Because the NDP in Alberta has always been a little bit different from the NDP federally in some ways.
00:14:02 And they haven't been as far left as some of their counterparts elsewhere.
00:14:06 Well, the interesting thing is, is I think that Neheg Nanshi is going to have his work cut out for him because we've got a really big problem happening in this country right now.
00:14:15 There's a bit of a war, as you may have heard, with Alberta versus the feds.
00:14:19 And we really consider this to be an NDP liberal federal coalition.
00:14:24 And the thing is, is this fellow is going to have a really tough time separating that with everything that's going on with all these eco-radical regulations.
00:14:32 The latest one, of course, being Bill C-59 that's come forward, just another layer of censorship.
00:14:39 And he's going to have his work cut out for him, I believe, over the next two years in differentiating the Alberta NDP from the federal NDP Liberal Coalition,
00:14:49 which is not a popular thing out here in Alberta and certainly elsewhere around the country right
00:14:54 now. So as far as that party goes, I mean, obviously they had their moment in the sun
00:15:01 with Rachel Notley, which was a tremendous victory for them. And I think has left a relatively sour
00:15:07 taste in a lot of Albertans mouths. Is he the guy that can turn it around? Because I know when he
00:15:11 first ran for mayor of Calgary, he had that almost Trudeau like appeal. He was really seen as the
00:15:16 fresh face. He had a lot of popularity coming in. I've not seen a lot of that on the back end of his
00:15:22 time as mayor. Yeah, certainly. I think Nenshi is one of the most brilliant campaigners. He's
00:15:28 very charismatic. I've seen him speak up close and personal many, many times. He's an incredible
00:15:34 debater, and we can't take any of those things away from him. Now, the thing is, is in his 10-year
00:15:40 reign with Calgary as the mayor he he had this this high during 2013 hearken back to the flood
00:15:48 days where he came out looking like the hero and then the end of his term you know it wasn't so
00:15:54 snazzy right we had an emptying out of the downtown core we had slush funds picking winners and
00:16:00 losers in business crime and safety soaring business taxes that's one of the things that
00:16:06 really you know hits hard the most when i look back to that i i shared a post in alberta proud
00:16:11 yesterday and it was um a conglomeration there's four signs for four well-known businesses a range
00:16:17 of businesses from you know a gas station to a restaurant and just putting how much their their
00:16:23 business taxes had gone up we're talking tripling and quadrupling and this was all with him at the
00:16:28 leadership so yeah you've got that one up there and i mean those are really staggering numbers
00:16:33 And now when you couple that with the current, what we call just inflation, the current inflation that businesses are under and the cost of doing business and everything just keeps on rising.
00:16:46 So, you know, I think for Calgary business owners, they would be hard pressed to put a lot of faith back in him.
00:16:52 so calgarians seem to have a really short memory but i would encourage people you know don't don't
00:16:58 so quickly forget don't be distracted by um someone who's a candidate a very smart intelligent
00:17:03 man and a great speaker let's remember the last few years when he was the mayor of calgary wasn't
00:17:09 such a good time for our businesses our property owners as well um it was it was difficult times
00:17:15 in calgary and and certainly that leaves a very unsettling tone as to how he would that's how he
00:17:20 he left the city how would he govern the province yeah and I think that's an important point here
00:17:26 and I'm I'm also wondering in terms of that idea of of unified opposition to to Danielle Smith I
00:17:33 mean obviously in Alberta the only opposing party right now is the NDP so they get to sort of pick
00:17:38 up the support of anyone who's discontented with that what I'm interested in it do you think he's
00:17:43 going to be further to the left or further to the right of Notley that's really interesting I think
00:17:49 i think he's going to be a little maybe slightly more center than notley was yeah i shouldn't have
00:17:55 said to the right center is a better way of putting it i mean center to them is far right
00:17:59 a lot of the time but it's certainly uh i think nenshi's generally perceived as quite centrist
00:18:04 now i think when you compare the ndp in general to the ucp they're they're very far left and and
00:18:09 you've got some ardent supporters of communist marches and that sort of thing you've got some
00:18:14 extreme eco radicals that are within the alberta ndp party and i don't think he aligns there but
00:18:20 it's a funny space for nancy right because he's not perceived as being pro union as well as he
00:18:25 was called out on stage i think it was last month i attended the ndp leadership debate in downtown
00:18:30 and that was the weekend before gil mcgowan he couldn't raise enough money so he he's he was no
00:18:35 longer a candidate but he had called nancy out on stage for that so it'll be interesting to see how
00:18:41 Nancy can can unite those that really left-wing faction of the party which is certainly a big
00:18:49 part of the party so I'm interested to see what will happen there or will there be more of an
00:18:54 opportunity for something that's perceived as a little bit more middle of the road like the
00:18:59 Alberta party to come up the middle I'm not really sure yet I guess it depends which way then she
00:19:04 goes if he tries to focus on that center or if he goes more to the left in order to keep that union
00:19:11 sentiment and those folks which are big driver and a lot of this that's behind that party uh happy
00:19:18 for those listening to the podcast i've been told i need to like do descriptions when someone does
00:19:21 like a hand gesture on the show you were talking about money there right talking about money i'm
00:19:26 sorry it's like they they're you know the the left has always been funded by a giant union war trust
00:19:30 and we've seen that time and again in albert and throughout the country so that's yeah i know that
00:19:34 happened the other day i because i had mentioned you know oh yeah and as you can see on your screen
00:19:37 there and then someone came up to me i said you know i listen to the podcast anytime you say that
00:19:40 i don't know what you're talking about so when i saw lindsay do the little uh money gesture with 1.00
00:19:44 her fingers i'm like i'll have to do the the descriptive video effect that they have on uh 0.87
00:19:49 not closed captioning but you know the alternative to it but uh all right well uh we'll keep an eye
00:19:53 out for this lindsay wilson from alberta proud thanks so much for coming on today and thanks
00:19:56 again for all your support with that book launch a couple of weeks ago it was a great evening in
00:20:00 calgary thank you we're so happy to host you and all the best with the book thank you for having
00:20:04 me on today all right thank you lindsay yeah we had that was the event we had pierre pauliev's
00:20:08 mother and father and his father's partner and Pierre's brother and uncle and aunt it was a great
00:20:14 old thing and that was when i realized okay well i guess maybe they're not too upset with the book
00:20:17 if they're they're all coming out to it but that was a fun day a couple of weeks ago and also i i
00:20:22 got the chance to go to winnipeg last week i finally broke my streak of never having been
00:20:27 there it was the only province and confederation i had not been to manitoba and i went there and
00:20:31 i met some great true north supporters and candace bergen came out the former leader of the
00:20:36 the Conservative Party of Canada. So that was great fun. And I'm doing one more event for the
00:20:41 book this week. Let's put up that graphic there. It's in Norwich, Ontario at The Bookshop, which
00:20:47 is about the best name for a bookshop you can come up with. That is Wednesday, June 26th at 7.30pm.
00:20:53 So I'll be out there. If you are in southwestern Ontario, I would welcome you to do that and say
00:20:59 hello there. It'll be a lot of fun. So anyway, let's turn to our Alberta Monday maven, Chris
00:21:05 Sims, the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Just bouncing off of that
00:21:10 discussion we had there with Lindsay Wilson. Chris, from a taxpayer perspective, what's your
00:21:15 big concern or thing that you're looking for with Nenshi? Yeah, our big concern clearly is about the
00:21:22 amount of high taxes that went through the city of Calgary and the amount of spending also. So here
00:21:28 in the province of Alberta, we now just recently have an excellent law which was passed along with
00:21:33 balanced budget legislation. And that keeps our rate of spending increases below the rate of
00:21:38 inflation plus population growth. That sounds super nerdy and wonky and boring. But if they
00:21:44 had done this a generation ago, Andrew, we'd have like $300 billion in the bank right now with a B.
00:21:51 That's not including resource revenue windfalls. That's just like prudent spending. So we're pretty
00:21:56 concerned about that. So I'm in the middle of doing a deep dive into what Mayor Nanshi did
00:22:02 when he was at the helm of the city of Calgary.
00:22:05 Now, there's a little bit of a blip there in 2014
00:22:07 where they drastically changed their accounting practices,
00:22:10 which is right in the middle of his tenure.
00:22:12 So it's a little bit harder to scale,
00:22:14 but that's the main thing we're looking at
00:22:15 is how much taxes went up
00:22:17 and how much spending went up when he was in charge
00:22:20 and how we can potentially compare that
00:22:22 when he could potentially be the NDP Premier of Alberta someday.
00:22:27 So definitely something to keep an eye on.
00:22:29 And the last little scuttlebutt rumor I heard is that he might be looking at Lethbridge West, which is not my riding provincially, but it's like over there.
00:22:39 It's across the Cooleys, across the bridge.
00:22:41 And that's, of course, because a very prominent MLA, Shannon Phillips, within the NDP, has stepped down there.
00:22:48 So there's going to be an open seat.
00:22:50 She was the one who left and said conservatives were too mean, and that's why she was getting out of politics, right?
00:22:56 Yes. And I was surprised there.
00:22:59 I thought she was going to run for NDP leader, but then she said conservatives are too mean
00:23:03 and then threw her support behind Nenshi.
00:23:06 So now things are really kind of shaping up to be quite a skirmish and it actually happens
00:23:11 to be here in Lethbridge, which works out great because this means I can be at all of
00:23:14 his press conferences.
00:23:16 I'm sure he'll be happy to see me.
00:23:17 If that alone doesn't keep Nenshi out of Lethbridge, I don't know what will. 0.98
00:23:21 Explain this to me because federally Lethbridge is a conservative stronghold and provincially
00:23:25 it's like the blip of orange in Southern Alberta.
00:23:28 How the heck does that happen? Yeah, great question. So federally, that's, of course,
00:23:32 Rachel Thomas is writing. And so federally, it includes all of the city of Lethbridge
00:23:36 and this big honking swath of rural area, including Warner County down to Sterling.
00:23:42 I was just there last night. So that's a bit, you know, very, very dark blue conservative.
00:23:47 But provincially speaking, there's a riding boundary that we're basically we have this
00:23:52 little kind of depression where it's like a big river valley. It's called the Cooleys. They're
00:23:56 ancient dinosaur bones, actually. You can dig for them. But it's this depression. And so that's the
00:24:01 west side. That's where the university is. That's where all the profs live over there. That's where
00:24:07 all the students have all their housing and stuff. And so that's actually why you'll often see the
00:24:11 election date bump back and forth, depending on when the school year is ending at the university.
00:24:17 So yeah, that is why that's a bit more orange over there. But to be fair, when Jason Kenney first won
00:24:23 as premier I think the NDP won there by like 240 votes like a weekend of door knocking so it's not
00:24:31 hard orange and if you dig dig way way down there uh beside the dinosaur bones it's actually the
00:24:38 NDP plan to balance the budget believe it or not uh it is uh just as fossilized and actually I think
00:24:43 the dinosaur bones are a little bit uh fresher uh let's talk about uh something uh you don't want
00:24:49 dinosaur bones so i can't do a natural segue to this but i i was on so i went to winnipeg last
00:24:54 week as i just shared and i was flying on air canada and i got to the airport at pearson airport
00:25:00 and everything was fine then my flight gets cancelled and this was at four o'clock well
00:25:04 first it was delayed so i was supposed to leave at four uh it got delayed to 5 45 and then it got
00:25:09 cancelled and i was speaking the next day at noon and they had said oh well we can book you on a
00:25:14 a flight that leaves Toronto at noon tomorrow and goes to Montreal. And then when you're in
00:25:19 Montreal, you can get to Winnipeg by, you know, sometimes next year. And there were like five
00:25:23 other flights going to Winnipeg before then, and every single one of them was full. So they're
00:25:28 like, so Air Canada says, well, we can put you on WestJet. And I said, okay, fine, do that. They're
00:25:33 like, oh, I actually can't, but book it yourself and send us a receipt. So I did. And all that was
00:25:37 left at WestJet was, you know, a middle seat on row, like, you know, 157. And which I took and
00:25:44 went to Winnipeg and everything was fine. It was not like the high flying experience that you get
00:25:50 if you fly with Justin Trudeau to a global summit. Tell me what was on the menu for the PMO and the
00:25:57 delegation that went with him to the G20. Yeah, this is really bad. So I'm going to laugh through
00:26:03 a little bit of this, but I wanted to give a preface. I'm laughing because otherwise you'd
00:26:07 cry. I know this gets depressing. I know the government blows your money, taxpayers. So I'm
00:26:12 not laughing at you. I'm trying to mock the Prime Minister for being such an elitist, out-of-touch
00:26:18 dingbat when it comes to wasting your money. So folks might remember this big, long overseas trip
00:26:25 that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his entourage went on. The entourage varied from
00:26:31 around 72-ish people all the way down to 37-ish people, give or take, depending on which leg of
00:26:37 journey they were on, they hopscotched over through Indonesia, they went to India, all that
00:26:42 fun stuff. Now, you might remember a couple of years ago, about a year and a half ago, when the
00:26:48 governor general went on this mid-east junket trip for some random reason. There's no reason for the
00:26:54 governor general to leave Canada. So, she went over there, and they blew about $100,000 on airplane
00:27:00 food. Now, back then, the bureaucrats seemed to forget where the receipts were, even when they
00:27:06 were being questioned in committee. Turns out the Taxpayers Federation had the receipts. That's where
00:27:11 folks might remember they were eating things like beef wellington, right? Like super fancy. Now this
00:27:17 is the issue, Andrew. They promised, Pinky swore, that they wouldn't do this again. That they realized
00:27:23 this was out of touch with regular Canadians. They were not going to eat high on the hog while flying
00:27:27 around. So fast forward, now the Trudeau government goes flying around. They doubled it. So they blew
00:27:35 around $220,000, thereabouts, on airplane food. The food included things like beef brisket,
00:27:44 lamb shanks, this fancy sort of cheesecake that I can't even pronounce, which has like a pistachio
00:27:52 crumble or something attached to it. Pistachio brittle. Pistachio brittle. Sorry. I'm sorry.
00:27:58 I am a peasant. You've offended the, you know, Michelin-starred chef that the liberals hired
00:28:03 to do that menu. This is it exactly. And so it is so much money, Andrew. And also there was a
00:28:10 little detail in there that made me gag. Apparently the prime minister's dinner had to be served on
00:28:16 China plate and not just regular dishes like the rest of us. So I'm highlighting this, of course,
00:28:23 because we are dealing with massive inflation, like a 40 something year high in inflation.
00:28:28 we are dealing with runaway budget spending. This government has no plans to ever balance the
00:28:34 budget. We've got about a $40 billion deficit. They've doubled the debt. What we pay in the GST
00:28:41 across Canada is now our interest payment on this debt. We've got food bank lines that wrap around
00:28:48 the buildings and these guys are not getting the message. They're still flying around eating
00:28:54 lamb shanks off china plate and shout out to tristan hopper at the national post 0.80
00:28:59 because he sat there and did the math i can picture him he figured out that this is equivalent to
00:29:04 nine bathtubs full of bev oda level orange juice
00:29:09 yeah i i did a i did a more rudimentary math calculation because on as i understand it on
00:29:16 one of the flights or one of the legs of the flight if i let me just pull up my numbers here
00:29:21 for that one particular flight, the catering bill was $85,000. Now, as I understand it,
00:29:29 there were different numbers of passengers, depending on the leg of the journey.
00:29:33 The maximum was 72 passengers. So let's assume that that was the flight that had the $85,000
00:29:39 bill. That is $1,180 and 55 cents per person. For that one part of the trip.
00:29:48 that yeah for one leg of the flight like I'm like how do you pot how much do you need to eat or how
00:29:54 much do you need to charge for food to rack up that much on a flight I don't know how much how
00:29:59 long the flight was I'm trying to think of how long a flight would have to be for me to eat and
00:30:02 drink twelve hundred dollars worth of food and drink and I'm a big guy like I don't even think
00:30:07 I could do that readily that's this is it and I'm glad you pointed it out that way because even try
00:30:13 to use like regular brain math how do you do that over a thousand bucks in one day like that is like
00:30:19 that's a lot of those west jet pretzels that i had come to think of it bro that is like lobster
00:30:24 with saffron sauce and champagne you and i probably don't know the origin of like that is a crazy
00:30:30 amount of spending and it is so out of touch like i think i don't know if it was tristan as well but
00:30:36 they figured out that was like 11 000 of the fanciest subway sandwiches you could imagine
00:30:41 And I'm talking the roast chicken.
00:30:42 Not the $5 footlongs.
00:30:44 Those are like the full, okay.
00:30:46 No, this is not your Wednesday special.
00:30:47 Yeah, one of the menu items, pan-fried beef tenderloin with port wine sauce,
00:30:50 and the beef brisket came with mashed parley potatoes with truffle oil.
00:30:54 Truffle oil, yes.
00:30:55 See, that's going to run you some dough. 1.00
00:30:57 When was the last time you were served that on an airplane?
00:31:00 A friend of a friend of mine was on a flight once, I think it was Air Canada,
00:31:04 and they had said, you know, do you want something to eat?
00:31:06 And he said, what are my options?
00:31:07 And the flight attendant said, yes or no.
00:31:11 Okay, that's a pretty good line.
00:31:13 That's what you usually get when you're traveling by air.
00:31:15 Yes, exactly.
00:31:16 It's like that old...
00:31:16 Actually, even then, I don't even think yes is an option, typically.
00:31:19 I think it's no.
00:31:20 Exactly, exactly.
00:31:21 Which kind of dry pretzels do you want?
00:31:23 And this is what we're pointing out here.
00:31:24 And some people might be saying, oh, well, they're the prime minister.
00:31:27 What do you want them to eat?
00:31:28 You know, some pork rinds out of a bag, like I do when I used to try to ride the Greyhound with my grandma.
00:31:34 No, but they could at least try to keep things within reason.
00:31:38 and spending more than a thousand dollars a person for one leg of your trip while being
00:31:42 insisting on eating off China plate while you are bankrupting the country is not within reason.
00:31:49 So I'll give you good examples here. So back in the day when Preston Manning became the leader
00:31:54 of the opposition and leader of the Reform Party of Canada, before he came along, it was standard
00:31:59 operating procedure for every member of parliament to fly the equivalent of first class. So whatever
00:32:05 the terminology was back in the late 80s early 90s they always flew that way preston looked at
00:32:10 the bill he's like why why are you flying first class all the way you're flying coach so every
00:32:15 member of parliament within the reform party had to fly coach back earlier than that in the 1950s
00:32:22 1960s wac bennett very famous premier of british columbia used to make his staff come to him to
00:32:30 ask if they could make a long distance phone call. For real. Because it was incurring cost
00:32:36 to the taxpayer. And so if you actually start paying attention to not eating lamb shanks while
00:32:42 you're eating off China plate and flying around the world for some reason, while you're bankrupting
00:32:47 the country, you will suddenly start paying attention to the big stuff too. And it might
00:32:51 lead them to, I don't know, balancing the budget, not being tone deaf, not realizing that their
00:32:58 people are really struggling to afford basic groceries right now like struggling to afford
00:33:04 hamburger maybe you shouldn't go jet around the world and fly like this just hats off to the media
00:33:10 to uh both alternative and mainstream they did pick this up and i'm glad they did because it
00:33:15 lets people really understand where the money's going yeah and whenever you talk about expenditures
00:33:20 for mps or salaries for mps you always end up in this situation and that it's hard to put the
00:33:25 optimal number it's hard to come out and say what's the optimal salary but we can all look at
00:33:30 this as reasonable people and say it's not this yes it's a lot lower than this it's a lot less
00:33:35 than this well a great work on this as always we'll talk to you next monday chris sims from
00:33:39 the canadian taxpayers federation keep up the fight bon appetit all right yes indeed thank
00:33:44 you very much i have a hankering for some of that uh pmo airplane uh truffle what was it the truffle
00:33:49 oil uh came with the beef bris i didn't eat lunch today that's the problem all right maybe i should
00:33:53 start flying on g20 delegations and indo-pacific voyages uh we were talking earlier on in the show
00:34:00 about the by-election underway in toronto st paul's now this is a part of the country that has
00:34:05 a significant jewish population which is one of the reasons the liberals have done some things
00:34:10 that i think are more readily described as pandering to collect votes some cynics among us
00:34:15 might even say that the liberals decision to finally classify the irgc as a terrorist organization
00:34:22 was involved in trying to whip up votes in the by-election because they've previously declined
00:34:27 to do this and only now in the middle of the by-election did they all of a sudden say well
00:34:30 on second thought maybe maybe the irgc is a terrorist organization and we can call them that
00:34:35 very clearly now if you look at the polls i don't think jewish voters in canada are all that
00:34:42 convinced by this because they've seen tremendous hostility towards them and towards certainly
00:34:48 israel for the last uh i mean the last several decades but certainly since october 7th i wanted
00:34:55 to talk about this some of the misinformation we've seen on the israel file a lot of it peddled
00:35:01 in the legacy media picked up unquestioningly by politicians who accuse israel of things like
00:35:07 genocide and war crimes without providing any evidence and one of the claims they use in support
00:35:12 of that is that israel is starving the people of gaza there is a quote unquote famine underway
00:35:18 Well, if you look at the facts on that, they simply do not support that conclusion.
00:35:23 There was a great piece in the National Post written by Mike Fegelman of Honest Reporting Canada.
00:35:28 His colleague, the assistant director of the organization, Robert Walker, is back with us now.
00:35:33 Robert, good to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on today.
00:35:36 Thank you for having me, Andrew.
00:35:37 So let's just talk about what the claims are, because this is something that's been quite pervasive,
00:35:42 really going back to, I think, Israel's first moves against Gaza right after October 7th.
00:35:48 Well, that would be against Hamas specifically, of course, but that is exactly the allegation that anti-Israel detractors making that Israel has been carrying out this kind of indiscriminate attacks and starving the Gazan population. It's complete nonsense.
00:36:04 A lot of this really does come from, you know, doctored images and photos and video footage and so on.
00:36:12 But a lot of it also comes from a report back in March from an agency which claimed that there was going to be imminent famine in Gaza.
00:36:20 Now, this was not based on actual firsthand evidence.
00:36:23 This was based on a lot of assumptions.
00:36:25 Now, assumptions are, you know, sometimes all you can work with.
00:36:29 But what happened in this particular situation was that they really over-promised and under-delivered.
00:36:34 In other words, they really made maximal claims based on minimal evidence.
00:36:38 And then, of course, you know, those who were paying attention more closely pointed out that there was actually no famine.
00:36:43 There was more food aid coming into Gaza post-October 7th, about one and a half times as much than was coming in pre-October 7th.
00:36:50 So we're talking just about a vicious, scurrilous lie that was being peddled and then being uncritically regurgitated by a lot of the mainstream media, politicians, and so on and so forth throughout the world.
00:37:02 But then what happened about three weeks ago, the same body came out with a report basically backtracking and said, you know, there's no evidence of famine.
00:37:12 And again, nobody paying attention would be surprised by that.
00:37:15 There's no shortage of footage online that you can find of bustling markets in Gaza.
00:37:20 You know, if Israel was trying to carry out a famine, it was the worst attempt possible.
00:37:25 There's simply no evidence to suggest that.
00:37:27 But not only is there a huge amount of food coming into Gaza, there's also, you know, a tremendous amount of food being produced in Gaza,
00:37:34 something along the lines of 2 million PETA being created, you know, every single day within Gaza.
00:37:41 Something like 75 percent of the greenhouses in Gaza are still functioning.
00:37:45 That's according to none other than the United Nations.
00:37:47 So I think that those who have been claiming for months that there is some kind of a shortage of food in Gaza really ought to have egg on their faces.
00:37:56 Yeah, and when Israel, just to do the brief history on this, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza close to 20 years ago,
00:38:03 they left an incredibly, incredibly vibrant and robust system there so that Gaza and Gazans could produce food,
00:38:11 including many of those greenhouses you just mentioned.
00:38:13 And, you know, if they weren't using those, that's up to Hamas, which we know has previously put its citizens in the line of fire, literally and figuratively, as propaganda tools.
00:38:23 And so, I mean, my view on this early on was that if there is starvation taking place, it's because Hamas is blocking aid.
00:38:30 But now it seems like there isn't even this starvation taking place en masse.
00:38:33 The food is there.
00:38:34 In fact, there's not only sufficient food, there's far more than sufficient food.
00:38:39 There was a recent report, actually, by a couple professors at Columbia University who really crunched the numbers, both in terms of how much food is coming in and what's being disseminated, how much is being grown and so on.
00:38:51 And they identify that there's actually more than enough food that's coming in.
00:38:54 So there's definitely not a shortage.
00:38:56 If there's any criticism at all, it's really on the perspective of how much is actually being distributed.
00:39:03 Now, that's not up to Israel, of course, right?
00:39:05 That's up to agencies connected to the United Nations like none other than UNRWA,
00:39:10 which you and I as Canadian taxpayers are helping to foot the bill of.
00:39:13 This is, of course, organizations which help to fement ongoing terrorism,
00:39:17 the disgraced United Nations agency.
00:39:19 Right now, there are something along the lines of 4,000 pallets of aid
00:39:24 sitting in Gaza that have been delivered into Gaza,
00:39:27 but at a weight distribution, and that's because of the incompetence
00:39:31 or the deliberate malfeasance on the part of UNRWA.
00:39:35 It's not for me to say whether they're doing this intentionally as a public relations, you know, you know, war on Israel.
00:39:41 This is just complete and utter incompetence, again, paid for by you and I as Canadian taxpayers.
00:39:46 But either way, it's irrelevant.
00:39:48 There is more than enough food coming in.
00:39:50 And to the degree that there is any kind of a shortage, it is not on, you know, how much his food is actually being delivered, but what is actually being sent into Gaza.
00:40:00 And again, the finger, as you said, has to be pointed not just at Hamas or the Islamic, you know, jihadist terrorist organization running Gaza, but really the organizations that are being funded in part by Canadian taxpayers like UNRWA.
00:40:13 So I think that we as Canadians should be outraged to be very upset that our taxpayer funds are going to an organization that is helping to perpetuate not just any kind of humanitarian issue that may be present in Gaza.
00:40:30 again, I reiterate once again that there is no famine in Gaza, but to the degree that there is
00:40:35 any kind of shortage in Gaza. But furthermore, that there, you know, this is the agency that
00:40:40 really in no small part helps to perpetuate the misinformation and ultimately the conflict that
00:40:44 is happening. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And, you know, one of the challenges here is that
00:40:50 Hamas has always weaponized humanitarian aid and humanitarian channels for its aims. I mean, 0.64
00:40:57 we recall very many years ago when these so-called flotillas were coming in of, you know, people that
00:41:03 were trying to, you know, support Hamas, basically, under the guise of supporting the people of Gaza.
00:41:07 And despite this, Israel has always ensured those humanitarian channels were there. And Israel has, 0.66
00:41:13 you know, a number of programs, not just to bring resources into Gaza, but to pull people out and 0.86
00:41:17 get them health care and surgery. So like none of this is new. But of course, in the era of
00:41:21 propaganda against Israel, there's no credit for doing the right thing. Not just that. I mean, 0.84
00:41:26 listen, that Hamas actively bombs some of these humanitarian crossings. I was in Israel about
00:41:32 five weeks ago, and in southern Israel, you know, near the boundary with Gaza. And one of the days
00:41:40 we heard these loud bangs. And it turns out later on that what had happened was actually Hamas had
00:41:45 fired mortar shells, killing four Israeli soldiers, specifically at a crossing which had been sending
00:41:51 humanitarian aid into Gaza. And as I said, four soldiers were killed as a result. Hamas does this 0.74
00:41:58 because it works. When I say it works, it's because not only do they use their own people 0.85
00:42:03 as cannon fodder, but they know that there is a very eager, enthusiastic even body around the 1.00
00:42:11 world, the quote-unquote humanitarian, so-called humanitarian organizations, useful idiots marching 0.98
00:42:16 in the streets, politicians and so on, who will take what Hamas is saying at face value 0.98
00:42:21 and then essentially use that weaponized propaganda to their benefit. So Hamas does this 0.73
00:42:27 not because they're idiots, quite the opposite, because they're very intelligent and they know 1.00
00:42:31 very, very cleverly how to manipulate public opinion. And ultimately, I think it's up to us 1.00
00:42:36 as Canadians to be able to push back aggressively on that, because that's the kind of disinformation
00:42:42 that creates discord in our streets,
00:42:44 that creates pressure for more Canadian taxpayer dollars
00:42:48 to go funding groups like UNRWA,
00:42:50 which help to perpetuate the war
00:42:52 and ultimately which help create conditions
00:42:55 which only perpetuate suffering on all sides.
00:42:57 So we as Canadians should be royally angry
00:42:59 and very frustrated and upset
00:43:01 as to how we as a collective society
00:43:03 are being manipulated by Hamas.
00:43:05 I mean, it's just obscene.
00:43:07 Robert Walker, Assistant Director of Honest Reporting Canada.
00:43:10 Thanks for coming on, Robert. Good to talk to you.
00:43:11 Thanks, Andrew.
00:43:12 All right. That does it for us for today. But let me just say on a final note here, the Toronto St. Paul's by-election is tonight. If you're in St. Paul's, get out and vote. But if you're not, we will eagerly await the results while others are eagerly awaiting finding out what happens between the Edmonton Panthers and the Florida Oilers, is it? Anyway, I hope one of them scores a touchdown.
00:43:35 One of the things that I wanted to bring up, though, on that is that the by-election doesn't
00:43:39 change anything. We have a government right now that is very stable with the support of the NDP.
00:43:44 The by-election will not change the fundamental fabric of the legislature in Canada or of
00:43:49 politicians, but it will say a lot. And by-elections can at times be meaningless. They can at times
00:43:54 have a symbolic value. I think this is one in the latter category. I think it matters a heck
00:44:00 of a lot more than the by-election in Durham did or the by-election in Oxford last year or the
00:44:05 by-election in Winnipeg South Centre or other ones because a lot is riding on this for Justin
00:44:10 Trudeau. If you cannot win a Liberal stronghold or if you cannot get your people out to vote for
00:44:15 a Liberal candidate in a Liberal stronghold, how the heck are you going to get Canadians in your
00:44:19 corner come the general election next year? So that's what we're looking out for. We'll have a
00:44:24 breakdown tomorrow and lots more going on. But in the meantime, thank you for tuning in. Hope you
00:44:28 have a great rest of the day thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to
00:44:33 the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news
00:44:58 We'll be right back.
00:45:28 We'll be right back.