Juno News - Liberal desperation showing on Toronto byelection day

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

00:01:19.640 north hello and welcome to you all this is the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent talk

00:01:30.340 show here on true north i had a moment of pain if i was late starting by like two seconds uh it's

00:01:35.340 because on the weekend i was cleaning up on my desk and i unplugged the cable that connects the

00:01:40.860 monitor i look into from the computer and i was staring at a blank monitor and didn't quite

00:01:46.580 realize that oh yeah there's nothing going to be on there because it's not plugged in so I'll plug

00:01:50.620 that back in once we get going and I am doing something else like playing a clip but we have

00:01:55.700 a clip for you that won't be ready for a couple more seconds well it's ready I'm just not ready

00:02:00.500 happy Monday everyone seriously this is Canada's most irreverent talk show it is the big day if

00:02:06.760 you live in Toronto St. Paul so for you know one in 338 of you that may be true it is the by-election

00:02:13.900 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?

00:02:24.120 Is it Uptown? It's not downtown, although now I have that old song, downtown. It's not there anyway.

00:02:30.320 But it is going to be a momentous day, I think.

00:02:33.520 Look, I've been clear any time this has come up. The Liberals, I suspect, are going to win.

00:02:38.260 I don't think it's going to be by the margins they've been pulling.

00:02:41.620 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.

00:02:49.880 They're not lifting a finger to help Leslie Church, who is the liberal candidate.

00:02:53.440 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.

00:03:03.960 But in this particular case, it's kind of close.

00:03:07.620 People are suspecting the Conservatives could win.

00:03:10.460 People are getting panicked about this.

00:03:12.020 The Liberals have been sending Cabinet Minister after Cabinet Minister after Cabinet Minister to St. Paul's.

00:03:17.120 They're all knocking on doors and desperately trying to whip up votes in the 11th hour for the Liberal candidate.

00:03:23.720 One of these is Ahmed Hassan, who is from a Toronto riding himself.

00:03:28.060 So York Southwestern, I think, is his riding.

00:03:30.420 He didn't have to go too, too far.

00:03:32.100 But he has been going, knocking on doors, talking to constituents.

00:03:35.080 put up this tweet here from Minister Hassen. He talks about important news. Polls are open. Today

00:03:42.760 is the day to vote. Leslie Church to be your next community leader. If you don't know where to vote,

00:03:48.480 check out. And then he links to Elections Canada. Let's just start with a technical note here.

00:03:52.860 Your next community leader. We call them members of parliament. You don't vote someone to be a

00:03:57.700 community leader. But let's take a look at the reception. Ahmed Hassen is getting at the doors.

00:04:02.820 Oh yeah, there we go. I'm not making fun of the woman, by the way. That's the face I would be

00:04:08.200 making if Ahmed Hassen were to knock on my door as well. Of all the canvassing he did,

00:04:14.100 this was the photo that his team took. This was the photo that his team thought was the one that

00:04:20.220 really showed off the reception the liberals are getting at the door. Put her back up. This is like

00:04:25.680 the face of a nation right now. No, no, do the close-up. Yeah, that is the face of a nation

00:04:30.340 right now. When Justin Trudeau and his MPs knock on your door, that is the face you have to give

00:04:35.400 them. And if that's the best face they're getting, if that was the best photo from Ahmed Hassan's

00:04:40.160 day of canvassing, then the Liberals are in for an absolute blow up tonight. They are getting a

00:04:45.920 little bit desperate. Here was Chrystia Freeland at a press conference this morning talking about

00:04:50.300 the stakes of this by-election. This is an important by-election because it is about a choice between

00:04:58.500 two visions of Canada, two sets of values. I really want to encourage people to vote for our

00:05:07.780 outstanding, hard-working candidate, Leslie Church, our hard-working Liberal candidate,

00:05:13.600 Leslie Church. What she stands for is the values we are talking about here today.

00:05:20.620 She stands for a vision of Canada, which is about investing in Canada, investing in essential

00:05:28.420 industries like our car sector, being sure that Canada can own the podium, investing in Canadian

00:05:34.380 workers like the amazing workers who are here, investing in Canadian families. That is Leslie's

00:05:42.440 vision. That's the liberal vision. That's why I'm really calling on the people of St. Paul's to go

00:05:47.600 out there and vote for her because the alternative is really cold and cruel and small the alternative

00:05:58.560 is cuts and austerity not believing in ourselves as a country not believing in our communities

00:06:06.660 and in our neighbors if you vote conservative you are supporting an alternative that is as

00:06:14.800 Christian Freeland says, cold and cruel and small.

00:06:20.000 Well, the reality is, as we talked about a fair bit last week,

00:06:22.600 Justin Trudeau is 20 points behind Pierre Polyev in the polls right now.

00:06:26.720 Canadians are overwhelmingly, in every poll done for pretty much the past year,

00:06:31.760 supporting that cold, small, cruel alternative that Christian Freeland says is at stake

00:06:37.780 if the Liberals don't hold Toronto St. Paul's.

00:06:40.840 Now, again, there is an expectations game being played here.

00:06:44.200 Every conservative I've spoken to has said, yeah, we're working hard, we're trying.

00:06:48.000 But again, at the end of the day, this is a liberal stronghold.

00:06:50.360 The liberals are going to win.

00:06:51.920 Man, it is amazing to look at how much the expectations are being lowered by the liberals

00:06:57.620 and by the PMO.

00:06:59.480 On one hand, they're all desperate.

00:07:00.880 They're sending out cabinet ministers.

00:07:02.380 They're trying to say, yes, Leslie Church is the future.

00:07:05.020 Rah, rah, rah, huzzah.

00:07:06.640 But on the other hand, it's amazing when you look at the talking points that are seeping

00:07:10.420 into other coverage.

00:07:11.300 Now, Susan Delacorte, who is a columnist with the Toronto Star, she's a self-described liberal.

00:07:16.560 I'm not making an accusation against her that she doesn't own herself.

00:07:20.680 She has this piece in the Toronto Star.

00:07:23.280 It's like a back and forth between her and Matt Gurney, who's more conservative inclined.

00:07:27.960 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.

00:07:37.020 she says I spent some time in Toronto St. Paul's earlier this month and my sense was that it was

00:07:42.700 looking pretty bad for the liberals lawn signs may not be an accurate predictor well they're not

00:07:48.000 but on the streets where I was roaming the blue ones far outnumber the red ones there's no sugar

00:07:52.540 coating that I talked to someone who had been knocking on doors who reported many people saying

00:07:57.200 that Justin Trudeau had to go carries on one thing that surprised me was the conservative

00:08:03.240 of strategists who said they still expected to lose Toronto St. Paul's. That sounded like spin

00:08:08.520 to me, laying groundwork for Conservatives to claim in victory that Pierre Polyev had somehow

00:08:13.600 defied the odds. Last time I checked, the odds were massively in favor of a Conservative win.

00:08:19.060 They're 20% ahead in the latest abacus poll, for heaven's sake. I'm not buying the suggestion that

00:08:24.700 they're the underdogs in this by-election. So Susan Delacorte's view here is that because the

00:08:31.020 conservatives are 20 points ahead nationally, they are not the underdogs in a midtown, we determined

00:08:37.680 it is midtown, by the way, in a midtown Toronto riding that the liberals have held for decades.

00:08:42.540 That's like saying that if the liberals were ahead in the polls, it wouldn't be like that.

00:08:47.400 But literally, that's like saying that in 2015, when Justin Trudeau was ahead in the polls,

00:08:51.240 you could call the conservatives the underdogs in, you know, Peace River, Ritaskawin in northern

00:08:57.460 Alberta or something like that it doesn't quite work like that yes the Conservatives nationally

00:09:01.940 are polling very well but we're still talking about an urban Toronto riding that has never been

00:09:06.980 a place where the Conservatives would look if you were to say you know to the Conservatives you have

00:09:11.860 to just take five ridings and agree to not run candidates in them I guarantee you Toronto St

00:09:17.300 Paul's would be one of those ridings they would just say if they weren't allowed to run a candidate

00:09:21.460 in five ridings they'd say yeah that there's no point we're not going to do it historically

00:09:25.620 so again it's going to be close it absolutely is going to be close but i think even when we

00:09:32.340 say close closer than expected closer than people are used to in this riding but my goodness it's

00:09:39.540 an absolutely fascinating fascinating development and we're going to be talking about this tomorrow

00:09:44.500 because no matter what the expectations for the liberals have been pushed to such a low point

00:09:50.020 they've been pushed to such a low point that if they get more than like four percent of the vote

00:09:56.340 the liberals are going to be uh spinning it as a win they're going to say oh well the deck was

00:10:00.020 stacked against us i saw people uh daryl bricker the pollster i saw him talking earlier about

00:10:05.220 trudeau's boxing match against patrick brazo some years back and how everyone thought justin

00:10:10.020 trudeau wasn't going to win but he came back and he won as though this is going to be some great

00:10:14.100 comeback story for justin trudeau but i don't think there's any result here that works well

00:10:18.900 for the liberals because even if they win even if they win by 15 points it's well it's toronto

00:10:24.740 saint paul's what did you expect this was always going to be a liberal win this was always going

00:10:30.020 to be something that the liberals were going to have their basically a clear runway to victory

00:10:35.540 it's only really a story if the liberals lose or if it seems like they're coming close to losing

00:10:43.860 and i think that's going to be what happened so what i'm interested in and it's it's hard to

00:10:47.700 identify this on a micro level because voter intentions are never entirely clear from how

00:10:53.540 people vote is what liberal voters are feeling because susan delacorte's observation about lawn

00:10:59.060 signs i actually saw it myself i don't know if it was last week or two weeks ago driving through that

00:11:02.900 riding i saw oh wow i'm seeing more conservative signs than liberal signs but that just means that

00:11:08.100 liberal enthusiasm is waning it means that there are people that will probably still vote liberal

00:11:13.540 but they certainly aren't proud enough about it that they want to put like a team trudeau

00:11:17.300 sign on their lawn and by the way i don't even think they do team trudeau on the signs anymore

00:11:21.460 i think like team trudeau got pulled off at some point in 2021 because that's no longer a brand

00:11:26.740 that is outperforming the conservative brand so i we're going to talk about this a little bit more

00:11:31.540 later in the show we're going to have the results for you tonight at tnc.news i realize this is

00:11:36.820 overlapping with the oilers game which uh you know even for me as a non-hockey fan i must admit when

00:11:43.780 you have a canadian team in the finals in game seven i still don't care but i know that a lot

00:11:50.260 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

00:11:57.540 are rioting in the streets tomorrow because you didn't win that's probably not good where was it

00:12:02.340 was that vancouver that had some big sporting riots after now if you want to ride over the

00:12:06.980 st paul's by-election i still don't encourage it but uh we're more we're more my speed there anyway

00:12:12.740 But Sean was saying it was Vancouver versus Boston that had the riot.

00:12:17.220 Well, Boston, they're a rioting bunch in Boston normally anyway.

00:12:21.340 So anyway, all right, let's talk about Alberta for a few moments here.

00:12:25.220 On the weekend, one election that took place was that of Nahed Nenshi

00:12:29.800 as the new leader of the Alberta NDP.

00:12:32.580 Not exactly a big surprise going into this.

00:12:35.220 It ended up being, though, an absolutely trouncing defeat.

00:12:38.920 It was a larger margin than even Pierre Polyev had in his pursuit of the conservative leadership

00:12:43.860 in 2022, which was itself seen as an absolutely insane margin of victory.

00:12:49.780 Just to put this in context here, Nahed Nenshi, who is the former mayor of Calgary, he is

00:12:55.520 elected as the leader of the Alberta NDP with 86% of votes, 86% of votes, 72,930 votes

00:13:06.280 cast overall. He'll now be going up against Danielle Smith in October 2027. What does this

00:13:12.260 mean for Albertans and for Canadians, I might even say? Lindsay Wilson is the president of

00:13:17.000 Alberta Proud and joins us now. And Lindsay was a tremendous emcee and hostess when I had my book

00:13:23.780 launch in Calgary, which Alberta Proud so graciously sponsored and put together in Alberta

00:13:29.040 for Pierre Polyeva Political Life. Lindsay, good to see you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:13:33.460 Oh, good morning, Andrew. Thank you for having me.

00:13:35.380 Well, it's afternoon for us dirty Easterners, but I hope you won't hold that against us.

00:13:40.120 So this wasn't a surprise, but now we're going to see him settle into this role.

00:13:45.360 He'll have to take a seat in the legislature at some point in the next little while.

00:13:49.040 And I've already heard some rumors circulating about where he might do that.

00:13:52.700 But what do you think this will mean overall for the tone of the NDP?

00:13:57.120 Because the NDP in Alberta has always been a little bit different from the NDP federally in some ways.

00:14:02.240 And they haven't been as far left as some of their counterparts elsewhere.

00:14:06.940 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.

00:14:15.800 There's a bit of a war, as you may have heard, with Alberta versus the feds.

00:14:19.920 And we really consider this to be an NDP liberal federal coalition.

00:14:24.900 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.

00:14:32.800 The latest one, of course, being Bill C-59 that's come forward, just another layer of censorship.

00:14:39.020 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,

00:14:49.340 which is not a popular thing out here in Alberta and certainly elsewhere around the country right

00:14:54.600 now. So as far as that party goes, I mean, obviously they had their moment in the sun

00:15:01.620 with Rachel Notley, which was a tremendous victory for them. And I think has left a relatively sour

00:15:07.420 taste in a lot of Albertans mouths. Is he the guy that can turn it around? Because I know when he

00:15:11.820 first ran for mayor of Calgary, he had that almost Trudeau like appeal. He was really seen as the

00:15:16.940 fresh face. He had a lot of popularity coming in. I've not seen a lot of that on the back end of his

00:15:22.200 time as mayor. Yeah, certainly. I think Nenshi is one of the most brilliant campaigners. He's

00:15:28.800 very charismatic. I've seen him speak up close and personal many, many times. He's an incredible

00:15:34.500 debater, and we can't take any of those things away from him. Now, the thing is, is in his 10-year

00:15:40.860 reign with Calgary as the mayor he he had this this high during 2013 hearken back to the flood

00:15:48.840 days where he came out looking like the hero and then the end of his term you know it wasn't so

00:15:54.320 snazzy right we had an emptying out of the downtown core we had slush funds picking winners and

00:16:00.740 losers in business crime and safety soaring business taxes that's one of the things that

00:16:06.600 really you know hits hard the most when i look back to that i i shared a post in alberta proud

00:16:11.720 yesterday and it was um a conglomeration there's four signs for four well-known businesses a range

00:16:17.320 of businesses from you know a gas station to a restaurant and just putting how much their their

00:16:23.000 business taxes had gone up we're talking tripling and quadrupling and this was all with him at the

00:16:28.200 leadership so yeah you've got that one up there and i mean those are really staggering numbers

00:16:33.160 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.

00:16:46.580 So, you know, I think for Calgary business owners, they would be hard pressed to put a lot of faith back in him.

00:16:52.660 so calgarians seem to have a really short memory but i would encourage people you know don't don't

00:16:58.100 so quickly forget don't be distracted by um someone who's a candidate a very smart intelligent

00:17:03.940 man and a great speaker let's remember the last few years when he was the mayor of calgary wasn't

00:17:09.940 such a good time for our businesses our property owners as well um it was it was difficult times

00:17:15.220 in calgary and and certainly that leaves a very unsettling tone as to how he would that's how he

00:17:20.260 he left the city how would he govern the province yeah and I think that's an important point here

00:17:26.600 and I'm I'm also wondering in terms of that idea of of unified opposition to to Danielle Smith I

00:17:33.260 mean obviously in Alberta the only opposing party right now is the NDP so they get to sort of pick

00:17:38.880 up the support of anyone who's discontented with that what I'm interested in it do you think he's

00:17:43.200 going to be further to the left or further to the right of Notley that's really interesting I think

00:17:49.780 i think he's going to be a little maybe slightly more center than notley was yeah i shouldn't have

00:17:55.300 said to the right center is a better way of putting it i mean center to them is far right

00:17:59.380 a lot of the time but it's certainly uh i think nenshi's generally perceived as quite centrist

00:18:04.660 now i think when you compare the ndp in general to the ucp they're they're very far left and and

00:18:09.940 you've got some ardent supporters of communist marches and that sort of thing you've got some

00:18:14.580 extreme eco radicals that are within the alberta ndp party and i don't think he aligns there but

00:18:20.260 it's a funny space for nancy right because he's not perceived as being pro union as well as he

00:18:25.540 was called out on stage i think it was last month i attended the ndp leadership debate in downtown

00:18:30.500 and that was the weekend before gil mcgowan he couldn't raise enough money so he he's he was no

00:18:35.700 longer a candidate but he had called nancy out on stage for that so it'll be interesting to see how

00:18:41.300 Nancy can can unite those that really left-wing faction of the party which is certainly a big

00:18:49.540 part of the party so I'm interested to see what will happen there or will there be more of an

00:18:54.660 opportunity for something that's perceived as a little bit more middle of the road like the

00:18:59.620 Alberta party to come up the middle I'm not really sure yet I guess it depends which way then she

00:19:04.980 goes if he tries to focus on that center or if he goes more to the left in order to keep that union

00:19:11.220 sentiment and those folks which are big driver and a lot of this that's behind that party uh happy

00:19:18.020 for those listening to the podcast i've been told i need to like do descriptions when someone does

00:19:21.940 like a hand gesture on the show you were talking about money there right talking about money i'm

00:19:26.020 sorry it's like they they're you know the the left has always been funded by a giant union war trust

00:19:30.820 and we've seen that time and again in albert and throughout the country so that's yeah i know that

00:19:34.340 happened the other day i because i had mentioned you know oh yeah and as you can see on your screen

00:19:37.700 there and then someone came up to me i said you know i listen to the podcast anytime you say that

00:19:40.980 i don't know what you're talking about so when i saw lindsay do the little uh money gesture with

00:19:44.820 her fingers i'm like i'll have to do the the descriptive video effect that they have on uh

00:19:49.140 not closed captioning but you know the alternative to it but uh all right well uh we'll keep an eye

00:19:53.380 out for this lindsay wilson from alberta proud thanks so much for coming on today and thanks

00:19:56.820 again for all your support with that book launch a couple of weeks ago it was a great evening in

00:20:00.260 calgary thank you we're so happy to host you and all the best with the book thank you for having

00:20:04.420 me on today all right thank you lindsay yeah we had that was the event we had pierre pauliev's

00:20:08.740 mother and father and his father's partner and Pierre's brother and uncle and aunt it was a great

00:20:14.420 old thing and that was when i realized okay well i guess maybe they're not too upset with the book

00:20:17.460 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

00:20:22.420 got the chance to go to winnipeg last week i finally broke my streak of never having been

00:20:27.380 there it was the only province and confederation i had not been to manitoba and i went there and

00:20:31.460 i met some great true north supporters and candace bergen came out the former leader of the

00:20:36.580 the Conservative Party of Canada. So that was great fun. And I'm doing one more event for the

00:20:41.080 book this week. Let's put up that graphic there. It's in Norwich, Ontario at The Bookshop, which

00:20:47.800 is about the best name for a bookshop you can come up with. That is Wednesday, June 26th at 7.30pm.

00:20:53.220 So I'll be out there. If you are in southwestern Ontario, I would welcome you to do that and say

00:20:59.860 hello there. It'll be a lot of fun. So anyway, let's turn to our Alberta Monday maven, Chris

00:21:05.580 Sims, the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Just bouncing off of that

00:21:10.400 discussion we had there with Lindsay Wilson. Chris, from a taxpayer perspective, what's your

00:21:15.640 big concern or thing that you're looking for with Nenshi? Yeah, our big concern clearly is about the

00:21:22.400 amount of high taxes that went through the city of Calgary and the amount of spending also. So here

00:21:28.120 in the province of Alberta, we now just recently have an excellent law which was passed along with

00:21:33.720 balanced budget legislation. And that keeps our rate of spending increases below the rate of

00:21:38.500 inflation plus population growth. That sounds super nerdy and wonky and boring. But if they

00:21:44.780 had done this a generation ago, Andrew, we'd have like $300 billion in the bank right now with a B.

00:21:51.360 That's not including resource revenue windfalls. That's just like prudent spending. So we're pretty

00:21:56.940 concerned about that. So I'm in the middle of doing a deep dive into what Mayor Nanshi did

00:22:02.160 when he was at the helm of the city of Calgary.

00:22:05.380 Now, there's a little bit of a blip there in 2014

00:22:07.720 where they drastically changed their accounting practices,

00:22:10.640 which is right in the middle of his tenure.

00:22:12.600 So it's a little bit harder to scale,

00:22:14.240 but that's the main thing we're looking at

00:22:15.900 is how much taxes went up

00:22:17.560 and how much spending went up when he was in charge

00:22:20.540 and how we can potentially compare that

00:22:22.760 when he could potentially be the NDP Premier of Alberta someday.

00:22:27.360 So definitely something to keep an eye on.

00:22:29.040 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.

00:22:39.600 It's across the Cooleys, across the bridge.

00:22:41.880 And that's, of course, because a very prominent MLA, Shannon Phillips, within the NDP, has stepped down there.

00:22:48.560 So there's going to be an open seat.

00:22:50.840 She was the one who left and said conservatives were too mean, and that's why she was getting out of politics, right?

00:22:56.040 Yes. And I was surprised there.

00:22:59.040 I thought she was going to run for NDP leader, but then she said conservatives are too mean

00:23:03.880 and then threw her support behind Nenshi.

00:23:06.780 So now things are really kind of shaping up to be quite a skirmish and it actually happens

00:23:11.420 to be here in Lethbridge, which works out great because this means I can be at all of

00:23:14.960 his press conferences.

00:23:16.200 I'm sure he'll be happy to see me.

00:23:17.720 If that alone doesn't keep Nenshi out of Lethbridge, I don't know what will.

00:23:21.140 Explain this to me because federally Lethbridge is a conservative stronghold and provincially

00:23:25.380 it's like the blip of orange in Southern Alberta.

00:23:28.240 How the heck does that happen? Yeah, great question. So federally, that's, of course,

00:23:32.540 Rachel Thomas is writing. And so federally, it includes all of the city of Lethbridge

00:23:36.680 and this big honking swath of rural area, including Warner County down to Sterling.

00:23:42.820 I was just there last night. So that's a bit, you know, very, very dark blue conservative.

00:23:47.320 But provincially speaking, there's a riding boundary that we're basically we have this

00:23:52.380 little kind of depression where it's like a big river valley. It's called the Cooleys. They're

00:23:56.380 ancient dinosaur bones, actually. You can dig for them. But it's this depression. And so that's the

00:24:01.840 west side. That's where the university is. That's where all the profs live over there. That's where

00:24:07.080 all the students have all their housing and stuff. And so that's actually why you'll often see the

00:24:11.880 election date bump back and forth, depending on when the school year is ending at the university.

00:24:17.160 So yeah, that is why that's a bit more orange over there. But to be fair, when Jason Kenney first won

00:24:23.500 as premier I think the NDP won there by like 240 votes like a weekend of door knocking so it's not

00:24:31.840 hard orange and if you dig dig way way down there uh beside the dinosaur bones it's actually the

00:24:38.640 NDP plan to balance the budget believe it or not uh it is uh just as fossilized and actually I think

00:24:43.780 the dinosaur bones are a little bit uh fresher uh let's talk about uh something uh you don't want

00:24:49.140 dinosaur bones so i can't do a natural segue to this but i i was on so i went to winnipeg last

00:24:54.580 week as i just shared and i was flying on air canada and i got to the airport at pearson airport

00:25:00.420 and everything was fine then my flight gets cancelled and this was at four o'clock well

00:25:04.740 first it was delayed so i was supposed to leave at four uh it got delayed to 5 45 and then it got

00:25:09.700 cancelled and i was speaking the next day at noon and they had said oh well we can book you on a

00:25:14.820 a flight that leaves Toronto at noon tomorrow and goes to Montreal. And then when you're in

00:25:19.260 Montreal, you can get to Winnipeg by, you know, sometimes next year. And there were like five

00:25:23.600 other flights going to Winnipeg before then, and every single one of them was full. So they're

00:25:28.220 like, so Air Canada says, well, we can put you on WestJet. And I said, okay, fine, do that. They're

00:25:33.760 like, oh, I actually can't, but book it yourself and send us a receipt. So I did. And all that was

00:25:37.860 left at WestJet was, you know, a middle seat on row, like, you know, 157. And which I took and

00:25:44.420 went to Winnipeg and everything was fine. It was not like the high flying experience that you get

00:25:50.080 if you fly with Justin Trudeau to a global summit. Tell me what was on the menu for the PMO and the

00:25:57.020 delegation that went with him to the G20. Yeah, this is really bad. So I'm going to laugh through

00:26:03.680 a little bit of this, but I wanted to give a preface. I'm laughing because otherwise you'd

00:26:07.260 cry. I know this gets depressing. I know the government blows your money, taxpayers. So I'm

00:26:12.980 not laughing at you. I'm trying to mock the Prime Minister for being such an elitist, out-of-touch

00:26:18.880 dingbat when it comes to wasting your money. So folks might remember this big, long overseas trip

00:26:25.800 that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his entourage went on. The entourage varied from

00:26:31.080 around 72-ish people all the way down to 37-ish people, give or take, depending on which leg of

00:26:37.640 journey they were on, they hopscotched over through Indonesia, they went to India, all that

00:26:42.620 fun stuff. Now, you might remember a couple of years ago, about a year and a half ago, when the

00:26:48.500 governor general went on this mid-east junket trip for some random reason. There's no reason for the

00:26:54.260 governor general to leave Canada. So, she went over there, and they blew about $100,000 on airplane

00:27:00.320 food. Now, back then, the bureaucrats seemed to forget where the receipts were, even when they

00:27:06.660 were being questioned in committee. Turns out the Taxpayers Federation had the receipts. That's where

00:27:11.540 folks might remember they were eating things like beef wellington, right? Like super fancy. Now this

00:27:17.380 is the issue, Andrew. They promised, Pinky swore, that they wouldn't do this again. That they realized

00:27:23.760 this was out of touch with regular Canadians. They were not going to eat high on the hog while flying

00:27:27.800 around. So fast forward, now the Trudeau government goes flying around. They doubled it. So they blew

00:27:35.200 around $220,000, thereabouts, on airplane food. The food included things like beef brisket,

00:27:44.760 lamb shanks, this fancy sort of cheesecake that I can't even pronounce, which has like a pistachio

00:27:52.420 crumble or something attached to it. Pistachio brittle. Pistachio brittle. Sorry. I'm sorry.

00:27:58.880 I am a peasant. You've offended the, you know, Michelin-starred chef that the liberals hired

00:28:03.360 to do that menu. This is it exactly. And so it is so much money, Andrew. And also there was a

00:28:10.160 little detail in there that made me gag. Apparently the prime minister's dinner had to be served on

00:28:16.120 China plate and not just regular dishes like the rest of us. So I'm highlighting this, of course,

00:28:23.520 because we are dealing with massive inflation, like a 40 something year high in inflation.

00:28:28.600 we are dealing with runaway budget spending. This government has no plans to ever balance the

00:28:34.720 budget. We've got about a $40 billion deficit. They've doubled the debt. What we pay in the GST

00:28:41.660 across Canada is now our interest payment on this debt. We've got food bank lines that wrap around

00:28:48.660 the buildings and these guys are not getting the message. They're still flying around eating

00:28:54.440 lamb shanks off china plate and shout out to tristan hopper at the national post

00:28:59.400 because he sat there and did the math i can picture him he figured out that this is equivalent to

00:29:04.700 nine bathtubs full of bev oda level orange juice

00:29:09.800 yeah i i did a i did a more rudimentary math calculation because on as i understand it on

00:29:16.960 one of the flights or one of the legs of the flight if i let me just pull up my numbers here

00:29:21.780 for that one particular flight, the catering bill was $85,000. Now, as I understand it,

00:29:29.820 there were different numbers of passengers, depending on the leg of the journey.

00:29:33.260 The maximum was 72 passengers. So let's assume that that was the flight that had the $85,000

00:29:39.480 bill. That is $1,180 and 55 cents per person. For that one part of the trip.

00:29:48.280 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

00:29:54.320 much do you need to charge for food to rack up that much on a flight I don't know how much how

00:29:59.100 long the flight was I'm trying to think of how long a flight would have to be for me to eat and

00:30:02.860 drink twelve hundred dollars worth of food and drink and I'm a big guy like I don't even think

00:30:07.560 I could do that readily that's this is it and I'm glad you pointed it out that way because even try

00:30:13.220 to use like regular brain math how do you do that over a thousand bucks in one day like that is like

00:30:19.720 that's a lot of those west jet pretzels that i had come to think of it bro that is like lobster

00:30:24.960 with saffron sauce and champagne you and i probably don't know the origin of like that is a crazy

00:30:30.980 amount of spending and it is so out of touch like i think i don't know if it was tristan as well but

00:30:36.180 they figured out that was like 11 000 of the fanciest subway sandwiches you could imagine

00:30:41.300 And I'm talking the roast chicken.

00:30:42.860 Not the $5 footlongs.

00:30:44.760 Those are like the full, okay.

00:30:46.140 No, this is not your Wednesday special.

00:30:47.440 Yeah, one of the menu items, pan-fried beef tenderloin with port wine sauce,

00:30:50.600 and the beef brisket came with mashed parley potatoes with truffle oil.

00:30:54.720 Truffle oil, yes.

00:30:55.840 See, that's going to run you some dough.

00:30:57.700 When was the last time you were served that on an airplane?

00:31:00.280 A friend of a friend of mine was on a flight once, I think it was Air Canada,

00:31:04.600 and they had said, you know, do you want something to eat?

00:31:06.160 And he said, what are my options?

00:31:07.680 And the flight attendant said, yes or no.

00:31:11.300 Okay, that's a pretty good line.

00:31:13.140 That's what you usually get when you're traveling by air.

00:31:15.400 Yes, exactly.

00:31:16.440 It's like that old...

00:31:16.900 Actually, even then, I don't even think yes is an option, typically.

00:31:19.180 I think it's no.

00:31:20.720 Exactly, exactly.

00:31:21.860 Which kind of dry pretzels do you want?

00:31:23.340 And this is what we're pointing out here.

00:31:24.860 And some people might be saying, oh, well, they're the prime minister.

00:31:27.320 What do you want them to eat?

00:31:28.380 You know, some pork rinds out of a bag, like I do when I used to try to ride the Greyhound with my grandma.

00:31:34.320 No, but they could at least try to keep things within reason.

00:31:38.040 and spending more than a thousand dollars a person for one leg of your trip while being

00:31:42.720 insisting on eating off China plate while you are bankrupting the country is not within reason.

00:31:49.580 So I'll give you good examples here. So back in the day when Preston Manning became the leader

00:31:54.380 of the opposition and leader of the Reform Party of Canada, before he came along, it was standard

00:31:59.760 operating procedure for every member of parliament to fly the equivalent of first class. So whatever

00:32:05.480 the terminology was back in the late 80s early 90s they always flew that way preston looked at

00:32:10.700 the bill he's like why why are you flying first class all the way you're flying coach so every

00:32:15.780 member of parliament within the reform party had to fly coach back earlier than that in the 1950s

00:32:22.840 1960s wac bennett very famous premier of british columbia used to make his staff come to him to

00:32:30.840 ask if they could make a long distance phone call. For real. Because it was incurring cost

00:32:36.600 to the taxpayer. And so if you actually start paying attention to not eating lamb shanks while

00:32:42.520 you're eating off China plate and flying around the world for some reason, while you're bankrupting

00:32:47.080 the country, you will suddenly start paying attention to the big stuff too. And it might

00:32:51.680 lead them to, I don't know, balancing the budget, not being tone deaf, not realizing that their

00:32:58.580 people are really struggling to afford basic groceries right now like struggling to afford

00:33:04.420 hamburger maybe you shouldn't go jet around the world and fly like this just hats off to the media

00:33:10.020 to uh both alternative and mainstream they did pick this up and i'm glad they did because it

00:33:15.060 lets people really understand where the money's going yeah and whenever you talk about expenditures

00:33:20.180 for mps or salaries for mps you always end up in this situation and that it's hard to put the

00:33:25.380 optimal number it's hard to come out and say what's the optimal salary but we can all look at

00:33:30.260 this as reasonable people and say it's not this yes it's a lot lower than this it's a lot less

00:33:35.540 than this well a great work on this as always we'll talk to you next monday chris sims from

00:33:39.300 the canadian taxpayers federation keep up the fight bon appetit all right yes indeed thank

00:33:44.100 you very much i have a hankering for some of that uh pmo airplane uh truffle what was it the truffle

00:33:49.460 oil uh came with the beef bris i didn't eat lunch today that's the problem all right maybe i should

00:33:53.860 start flying on g20 delegations and indo-pacific voyages uh we were talking earlier on in the show

00:34:00.740 about the by-election underway in toronto st paul's now this is a part of the country that has

00:34:05.700 a significant jewish population which is one of the reasons the liberals have done some things

00:34:10.740 that i think are more readily described as pandering to collect votes some cynics among us

00:34:15.780 might even say that the liberals decision to finally classify the irgc as a terrorist organization

00:34:22.500 was involved in trying to whip up votes in the by-election because they've previously declined

00:34:27.140 to do this and only now in the middle of the by-election did they all of a sudden say well

00:34:30.820 on second thought maybe maybe the irgc is a terrorist organization and we can call them that

00:34:35.780 very clearly now if you look at the polls i don't think jewish voters in canada are all that

00:34:42.820 convinced by this because they've seen tremendous hostility towards them and towards certainly

00:34:48.900 israel for the last uh i mean the last several decades but certainly since october 7th i wanted

00:34:55.620 to talk about this some of the misinformation we've seen on the israel file a lot of it peddled

00:35:01.460 in the legacy media picked up unquestioningly by politicians who accuse israel of things like

00:35:07.140 genocide and war crimes without providing any evidence and one of the claims they use in support

00:35:12.420 of that is that israel is starving the people of gaza there is a quote unquote famine underway

00:35:18.660 Well, if you look at the facts on that, they simply do not support that conclusion.

00:35:23.520 There was a great piece in the National Post written by Mike Fegelman of Honest Reporting Canada.

00:35:28.560 His colleague, the assistant director of the organization, Robert Walker, is back with us now.

00:35:33.620 Robert, good to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on today.

00:35:36.480 Thank you for having me, Andrew.

00:35:37.920 So let's just talk about what the claims are, because this is something that's been quite pervasive,

00:35:42.220 really going back to, I think, Israel's first moves against Gaza right after October 7th.

00:35:48.660 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.

00:36:04.080 A lot of this really does come from, you know, doctored images and photos and video footage and so on.

00:36:12.600 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.

00:36:20.360 Now, this was not based on actual firsthand evidence.

00:36:23.320 This was based on a lot of assumptions.

00:36:25.660 Now, assumptions are, you know, sometimes all you can work with.

00:36:29.440 But what happened in this particular situation was that they really over-promised and under-delivered.

00:36:34.600 In other words, they really made maximal claims based on minimal evidence.

00:36:38.520 And then, of course, you know, those who were paying attention more closely pointed out that there was actually no famine.

00:36:43.700 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.

00:36:50.740 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.

00:37:02.640 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.

00:37:12.240 And again, nobody paying attention would be surprised by that.

00:37:15.340 There's no shortage of footage online that you can find of bustling markets in Gaza.

00:37:20.060 You know, if Israel was trying to carry out a famine, it was the worst attempt possible.

00:37:25.600 There's simply no evidence to suggest that.

00:37:27.600 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,

00:37:34.820 something along the lines of 2 million PETA being created, you know, every single day within Gaza.

00:37:41.180 Something like 75 percent of the greenhouses in Gaza are still functioning.

00:37:45.280 That's according to none other than the United Nations.

00:37:47.540 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.

00:37:56.380 Yeah, and when Israel, just to do the brief history on this, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza close to 20 years ago,

00:38:03.120 they left an incredibly, incredibly vibrant and robust system there so that Gaza and Gazans could produce food,

00:38:11.080 including many of those greenhouses you just mentioned.

00:38:13.160 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.

00:38:23.340 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.

00:38:30.000 But now it seems like there isn't even this starvation taking place en masse.

00:38:33.480 The food is there.

00:38:34.860 In fact, there's not only sufficient food, there's far more than sufficient food.

00:38:39.080 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.

00:38:51.180 And they identify that there's actually more than enough food that's coming in.

00:38:54.460 So there's definitely not a shortage.

00:38:56.480 If there's any criticism at all, it's really on the perspective of how much is actually being distributed.

00:39:03.320 Now, that's not up to Israel, of course, right?

00:39:05.440 That's up to agencies connected to the United Nations like none other than UNRWA,

00:39:10.640 which you and I as Canadian taxpayers are helping to foot the bill of.

00:39:13.980 This is, of course, organizations which help to fement ongoing terrorism,

00:39:17.580 the disgraced United Nations agency.

00:39:19.660 Right now, there are something along the lines of 4,000 pallets of aid

00:39:24.200 sitting in Gaza that have been delivered into Gaza,

00:39:27.280 but at a weight distribution, and that's because of the incompetence

00:39:31.120 or the deliberate malfeasance on the part of UNRWA.

00:39:35.140 It's not for me to say whether they're doing this intentionally as a public relations, you know, you know, war on Israel.

00:39:41.780 This is just complete and utter incompetence, again, paid for by you and I as Canadian taxpayers.

00:39:46.840 But either way, it's irrelevant.

00:39:48.300 There is more than enough food coming in.

00:39:50.360 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.

00:40:00.320 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.

00:40:13.240 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.

00:40:30.360 again, I reiterate once again that there is no famine in Gaza, but to the degree that there is

00:40:35.220 any kind of shortage in Gaza. But furthermore, that there, you know, this is the agency that

00:40:40.460 really in no small part helps to perpetuate the misinformation and ultimately the conflict that

00:40:44.980 is happening. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And, you know, one of the challenges here is that

00:40:50.120 Hamas has always weaponized humanitarian aid and humanitarian channels for its aims. I mean,

00:40:57.140 we recall very many years ago when these so-called flotillas were coming in of, you know, people that

00:41:03.020 were trying to, you know, support Hamas, basically, under the guise of supporting the people of Gaza.

00:41:07.760 And despite this, Israel has always ensured those humanitarian channels were there. And Israel has,

00:41:13.140 you know, a number of programs, not just to bring resources into Gaza, but to pull people out and

00:41:17.200 get them health care and surgery. So like none of this is new. But of course, in the era of

00:41:21.640 propaganda against Israel, there's no credit for doing the right thing. Not just that. I mean,

00:41:26.720 listen, that Hamas actively bombs some of these humanitarian crossings. I was in Israel about

00:41:32.940 five weeks ago, and in southern Israel, you know, near the boundary with Gaza. And one of the days

00:41:40.020 we heard these loud bangs. And it turns out later on that what had happened was actually Hamas had

00:41:45.480 fired mortar shells, killing four Israeli soldiers, specifically at a crossing which had been sending

00:41:51.900 humanitarian aid into Gaza. And as I said, four soldiers were killed as a result. Hamas does this

00:41:58.760 because it works. When I say it works, it's because not only do they use their own people

00:42:03.400 as cannon fodder, but they know that there is a very eager, enthusiastic even body around the

00:42:11.440 world, the quote-unquote humanitarian, so-called humanitarian organizations, useful idiots marching

00:42:16.680 in the streets, politicians and so on, who will take what Hamas is saying at face value

00:42:21.400 and then essentially use that weaponized propaganda to their benefit. So Hamas does this

00:42:27.600 not because they're idiots, quite the opposite, because they're very intelligent and they know

00:42:31.000 very, very cleverly how to manipulate public opinion. And ultimately, I think it's up to us

00:42:36.400 as Canadians to be able to push back aggressively on that, because that's the kind of disinformation

00:42:42.460 that creates discord in our streets,

00:42:44.620 that creates pressure for more Canadian taxpayer dollars

00:42:48.280 to go funding groups like UNRWA,

00:42:50.400 which help to perpetuate the war

00:42:52.420 and ultimately which help create conditions

00:42:55.380 which only perpetuate suffering on all sides.

00:42:57.880 So we as Canadians should be royally angry

00:42:59.700 and very frustrated and upset

00:43:01.520 as to how we as a collective society

00:43:03.960 are being manipulated by Hamas.

00:43:05.500 I mean, it's just obscene.

00:43:07.140 Robert Walker, Assistant Director of Honest Reporting Canada.

00:43:10.040 Thanks for coming on, Robert. Good to talk to you.

00:43:11.840 Thanks, Andrew.

00:43:12.460 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.

00:43:35.820 One of the things that I wanted to bring up, though, on that is that the by-election doesn't

00:43:39.140 change anything. We have a government right now that is very stable with the support of the NDP.

00:43:44.120 The by-election will not change the fundamental fabric of the legislature in Canada or of

00:43:49.840 politicians, but it will say a lot. And by-elections can at times be meaningless. They can at times

00:43:54.940 have a symbolic value. I think this is one in the latter category. I think it matters a heck

00:44:00.860 of a lot more than the by-election in Durham did or the by-election in Oxford last year or the

00:44:05.860 by-election in Winnipeg South Centre or other ones because a lot is riding on this for Justin

00:44:10.200 Trudeau. If you cannot win a Liberal stronghold or if you cannot get your people out to vote for

00:44:15.120 a Liberal candidate in a Liberal stronghold, how the heck are you going to get Canadians in your

00:44:19.600 corner come the general election next year? So that's what we're looking out for. We'll have a

00:44:24.020 breakdown tomorrow and lots more going on. But in the meantime, thank you for tuning in. Hope you

00:44:28.640 have a great rest of the day thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to

00:44:33.860 the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:44:58.640 We'll be right back.

00:45:28.640 We'll be right back.

Juno News - June 24, 2024

Liberal desperation showing on Toronto byelection day

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