Juno News - Liberal members want Trudeau to restrict free speech online

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.800 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:14.480 Hello everyone and welcome to you all.

00:00:17.520 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:22.120 On this Tuesday, May 9th, just after 4.02 Eastern Time.

00:00:27.200 Every now and then we had, well, maybe it just happened the once, but I'm going to roll with it as every now and then we get like the truthers that think it's not actually live.

00:00:35.220 And I keep meaning to get like a print copy of a newspaper, except I try to avoid leaving the house and I don't want to get a subscription to have one delivered here.

00:00:43.980 So I can instead show you the, I can't show you the date on my phone because I have like texts that I don't want you to read that are on my home screen.

00:00:51.200 There we go. So we are actually live today, and we try to be as much as possible simply because things happen at such a breakneck speed, it's difficult to otherwise keep up with them.

00:01:02.240 But I do want to today take a little bit of a look back at the Liberal Convention this weekend and some of the policy resolutions that the Liberal Party members of Canada have decided to call on their government and their Prime Minister to put into effect.

00:01:18.420 I also want to talk about some other things that are happening.

00:01:20.520 We'll get our friend Rachel Emanuel back on for a check-in on what's happening in Alberta politics

00:01:25.360 and the politicization of the horrific wildfires that are taking place there.

00:01:30.480 But I want to begin by talking about something that I hope, in spite of everything else in the world,

00:01:35.900 we can all unite on, and that is that the World Health Organization needs to just butt out,

00:01:41.060 shut up, and go take a long walk off a short pier.

00:01:45.040 I don't know if you criticize the World Health Organization, if you get like the misinformation label slapped on you now, but we'll see. 0.77

00:01:51.420 It might even be appearing in real time below on YouTube and Facebook. 0.61

00:01:55.780 But the Killjoys at the World Health Organization came out with this observation just this past weekend.

00:02:04.500 They say there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

00:02:09.400 Their argument is that the risk of cancer increases even with low levels of alcohol consumption.

00:02:16.740 So you are not allowed to have any alcohol, apparently, even just a little bit.

00:02:21.200 You were supposed to keep that graphic up.

00:02:23.300 Oh, goodness.

00:02:24.420 Well, OK, well, we've already just dispensed with the idea.

00:02:27.280 This is not a World Health Organization edition, approved edition of The Andrew Lawton Show here.

00:02:32.640 So I'm going to raise a glass to the killjoys at the WHO and be utterly ignorant of their advice.

00:02:39.400 Let me just take a sip here so I can get through the rest of the show.

00:02:44.060 Oh, lovely.

00:02:46.000 Buttery, a little bit oaky, not too much.

00:02:49.060 And best of all, not approved by the World Health Organization.

00:02:53.180 The argument that, by the way, normally I guess I could fill up this thing with wine.

00:02:57.740 There has been a bit of a controversy on the True North team.

00:03:01.220 One of our colleagues thinks that the mugs are too heavy.

00:03:04.120 So he's actually, when it's full, not sufficiently strong to like lift the mug up to drink it.

00:03:09.480 So we thought we maybe need to add like a second handle on it.

00:03:12.600 Or you can just fill it with wine.

00:03:14.280 But I'm going with the coffee in the mug, wine in the glass,

00:03:17.040 and Klaus Schwab and Dr. Ted Ross standing over heckling me on the sidelines here.

00:03:22.580 But the reason I want to bring up that World Health Organization tweet is twofold.

00:03:26.940 Number one, I wanted an excuse to sip my wine in the middle of the show.

00:03:31.920 Lovely.

00:03:33.040 And number two, there are going to be some of you like assessing how much it goes down

00:03:37.460 as the show progresses.

00:03:38.520 And like when it gets to zero, I might need to like throw on a commercial break and like

00:03:42.080 go and refill it.

00:03:42.840 So you don't know.

00:03:43.400 But that was the number one.

00:03:44.780 Number two, and this is, I think the most important thing, the World Health Organization

00:03:49.300 bureaucrats were the ones who largely were responsible for making it.

00:03:53.420 So we couldn't travel, we couldn't work, we couldn't leave our homes for much of the

00:03:58.160 last three years.

00:03:58.900 So the one little joy that someone might have, which is being able to, I don't know, just sit back and have a cocktail with a friend or have a glass of wine over dinner or have a beer when you sit at the side of the pool because you're not allowed to go anywhere else, to which they now say, even that you shouldn't do.

00:04:14.820 That's just too dangerous, too much of a risk.

00:04:16.860 Well, the one way we delegitimize authority is by not abiding by authority.

00:04:21.100 I'm not even a drinker.

00:04:21.900 I'm like drinking on principle right now just to spite the World Health Organization, and I would encourage you to do the same.

00:04:28.560 Let's talk about some of the more pressing issues of our time, though.

00:04:31.980 If you follow British media, which is sometimes very significant,

00:04:36.200 I mean, I know we have our own problems here,

00:04:37.780 but you get a lot of a glimpse of what comes ahead and what comes down the road

00:04:44.860 if you pay attention to other countries and specifically Europe.

00:04:48.380 But the British broadcast regulator, which is the British answer to the CRTC,

00:04:53.640 It's called Ofcom, has decided to sanction GB News over a broadcast it did in October featuring my friend who's been on this show in the past, Mark Stein and Naomi Wolf, who is formerly a darling of the left, a feminist author and scholar who's now become very endeared to the right because she has gone against much of the progressive orthodoxy on things like vaccines and individual choice and your health care decisions and all of that.

00:05:21.420 And Mark and Naomi Wolf, who I suspect disagree on a great many things, had a discussion in October about what they were arguing were the harms of vaccination.

00:05:31.240 And Naomi Wolf, a practicing Jewish woman, said that I'm not even actually, to be honest, I don't even want to say what she said because then I'm going to get this show banned from YouTube.

00:05:40.040 But she made claims, which you can look up for yourself in the full context.

00:05:44.480 And I'm not talking about those things here.

00:05:46.720 I want to talk about what happened.

00:05:48.020 So this discussion seven months ago, seven months ago, is subject to this prolonged investigation by Ofcom, which this morning issued a finding that their conversation was essentially unlawful, that it violated the British broadcast regulations on protecting the audience from harmful opinions, effectively.

00:06:09.720 That is what they said, that the audience must be protected from her views and that radio stations, TV stations have an obligation to protect people from their views.

00:06:19.960 Now, this, I wrote a substack about which you can check out today.

00:06:23.600 And I mentioned in the headline there, soon only official narratives will remain.

00:06:28.480 And I believe wholeheartedly in that because we are seeing the decreasing bounds of debate.

00:06:34.420 You are allowed to have the official narrative, the official position, the government-approved position, and anything else is misinformation.

00:06:42.440 Again, YouTube, for example, outsourced for much of the pandemic, and I think to a large extent still today,

00:06:48.540 its decisions on misinformation and what you're allowed to say in YouTube videos to the World Health Organization.

00:06:54.920 So if you are in noncompliance with the—I mean, maybe just by drinking wine I'm in noncompliance with the YouTube World Health Organization regulations.

00:07:03.300 But this is, I think, a huge problem that right now we are seeing and we are going to see more of.

00:07:08.880 So why do we as Canadians, mostly Canadians, care?

00:07:12.360 Because Ofcom is, I think, what Justin Trudeau wants the CRTC to be.

00:07:17.360 An organization that doesn't just deal with the bare decisions to do with compliance.

00:07:22.960 And are you setting up the right wattage for your transmission tower?

00:07:26.920 And are you making sure that you're on Channel 7 and someone else is on Channel 8 and we don't have three people on the same channel?

00:07:32.640 but actually regulating content, which is what the CRTC is now able to do thanks to Bill C-11.

00:07:40.400 They are expanding just from being a facilitator and to being an active participant in content,

00:07:47.780 manipulating the algorithms as the CRTC now expands its power from the realm of TV and radio to the realm of the internet.

00:07:56.800 And CRTC, if you look at this from the CRTC website, this was yesterday,

00:08:02.280 C11 passed a week ago, and CRTC has already announced its plans to modernize the broadcasting system.

00:08:09.840 They did not waste any time at all.

00:08:12.560 This was adopted. It was passed by the Senate, received royal assent,

00:08:16.540 and without waiting a week even, the CRTC is launching public consultations

00:08:22.000 to figure out how exactly it's going to use all of its newfound powers.

00:08:26.500 And we should be very concerned about this, especially when you look at what people want to have happen from here.

00:08:33.540 To focus on the UK for a couple more moments, they are in the midst of the Conservative government,

00:08:39.120 Conservative government, passing something called the Online Safety Bill.

00:08:44.120 Now, the Online Safety Bill is largely what the Liberal government wants to do with its proposed Online Harms Bill

00:08:53.300 or online hate speech bill, whatever you want to call it, in Canada.

00:08:56.780 They want to put in more tools, more mechanisms

00:08:59.060 to regulate what they view as being online harms.

00:09:03.840 Now, this is a very, very broad category.

00:09:06.020 Included in it are things like hate speech

00:09:08.500 and things like child pornography and things like misinformation.

00:09:12.420 And child pornography, I think we can all safely agree, is terrible

00:09:15.560 and should not have a place on the internet or anywhere else.

00:09:18.920 That's why it is criminal.

00:09:20.020 but you get to misinformation and hate speech

00:09:23.040 and these things are a little bit trickier to define

00:09:25.280 and a suspicious person like myself

00:09:27.780 would wonder why the liberals want to include

00:09:30.220 hate speech and misinformation in the same bill

00:09:32.660 and the same discussion as child pornography.

00:09:35.500 Perhaps it's because they know that anyone like me

00:09:37.620 who's going to say,

00:09:38.520 actually, I don't think you should regulate

00:09:40.320 what people say online.

00:09:42.300 They're going to turn around and say,

00:09:43.360 oh, you like child pornography, 0.96

00:09:44.580 which is absolutely absurd, 0.99

00:09:46.420 but mark my words,

00:09:47.660 that's going to be the discussion.

00:09:49.220 And that's going to be the caliber of the discourse.

00:09:52.020 But to bring it back to the UK, what's happening right now is WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta,

00:09:57.660 the parent company of Facebook, is huge in Europe.

00:10:00.480 I use WhatsApp as well, but everywhere else in the world, it's used a lot more fervently

00:10:05.020 and frequently than it is for Canadians. 0.99

00:10:07.580 And this is true among Brits.

00:10:09.380 It's true among Europeans, Asians.

00:10:11.740 I believe Africans as well are fairly large WhatsApp users.

00:10:15.440 And it's a messaging app.

00:10:17.200 It works similar to a text message, except it's going over IP protocols.

00:10:21.860 And the thing about WhatsApp is that it is encrypted from end to end.

00:10:25.840 And this is a big selling point.

00:10:27.200 It's supposed to be more secure than your cell phone SMSs are.

00:10:31.720 It is probably not as secure as Signal, if you're a user of Signal, but very similar idea.

00:10:37.100 And this means that even WhatsApp is unable to read your messages.

00:10:41.200 This is the pitch that they make to users.

00:10:44.480 Well, WhatsApp is saying that when the UK's regulations come in, which will put reporting requirements in place for so-called unlawful content for social media companies, they're saying that they would actually no longer be able to use end-to-end encryption because all of a sudden they have to start spying on what people are saying in their private messages in order to officially endorse what the government is expecting them to do,

00:11:09.920 which is report if so-and-so sends an illicit or illegal missive to someone else.

00:11:17.440 And when WhatsApp said to the UK government,

00:11:20.780 listen, we may have to pull out of the UK market over this,

00:11:23.980 you had a bunch of conservative MPs, again,

00:11:26.800 who are predisposed to online censorship, apparently,

00:11:30.280 saying this is all misinformation.

00:11:31.880 You don't need to get rid of end-to-end encryption.

00:11:33.620 There's no privacy risk.

00:11:35.180 One MP, I think it was Damian Collins was his name, said,

00:11:38.180 no, no, no. All we're saying is that they need to report illegal content that they see. Well,

00:11:45.820 how does this work unless they start policing what their users are using WhatsApp for?

00:11:52.140 But this is the era we are entering into. It's an era in which the internet is not a free place.

00:11:58.080 The internet is going to be subject to regulation, surveillance, and oversight to a larger degree

00:12:03.260 than we have today. And we look no further than the Liberal Convention on the weekend to bring

00:12:09.500 it back home here, where of the many policy resolutions passed by Liberal MPs, one of them

00:12:15.160 in particular was to combat what the Liberal members behind this policy resolution, members

00:12:22.300 from British Columbia, which I guess shouldn't surprise you, say is combating disinformation

00:12:26.860 in Canada. We talked about this a little bit last week. They view disinformation as, quote,

00:12:32.060 an existential risk to humanity.

00:12:35.000 This is like the same language they use for climate change,

00:12:37.740 three-page earlier, if I'm not mistaken.

00:12:40.420 They say that online information sources

00:12:42.420 are the source of most disinformation aimed at Canadians.

00:12:46.200 They say that those who produce misinformation

00:12:48.280 undermine trust in people and institutions.

00:12:52.380 They say that the demand for information 24-7

00:12:55.300 has increased the need for programming

00:12:57.040 contemporaneously with the loss of ad revenue

00:13:00.320 to online platforms.

00:13:02.060 And they say that mainstream media no longer has as many reporters as they used to.

00:13:07.520 So all of this is bringing us to their resolution.

00:13:10.280 Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada request the government provide additional public funds

00:13:16.260 to support ad-free news and information reporting by Canadian media

00:13:20.520 through an arm's-length non-partisan mechanism.

00:13:23.500 So be it resolved that the Liberals subsidize media more than they already are today.

00:13:28.820 And more importantly, request that the government explore options to hold online information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platforms and to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.

00:13:43.560 So the two prongs of that, number one, that we hold online platforms accountable for the veracity of material.

00:13:51.920 So when someone says, well, actually, World Health Organization, you can stuff it.

00:13:56.440 I'm going to enjoy a glass of wine.

00:13:59.700 Oh, delicious.

00:14:01.580 Then what happens is the government is to go to that person and say,

00:14:05.860 hey, you know what?

00:14:06.320 We're going to hold the social media company and you do account

00:14:09.260 because we don't believe this is sufficiently voracious or true.

00:14:12.960 And then you have the other part of this.

00:14:14.480 Limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.

00:14:18.500 So right now, you can trace this if you really want.

00:14:21.420 I'm in my little home office, True North.

00:14:24.080 You know where we're headquartered.

00:14:25.160 But if someone decides to post something anonymously, this may not be traced.

00:14:30.700 So perhaps it needs to get taken down.

00:14:32.800 This is what the Liberals want.

00:14:33.940 Anything whose origins they cannot trace, they do not want to see the light of day, basically, they can have pulled down.

00:14:42.800 And it's easy to dismiss this as the Liberal commentary it has.

00:14:47.160 As well, this is, I mean, it's just a policy resolution.

00:14:50.300 It's not policy for the party officially.

00:14:52.800 It's not platform.

00:14:54.540 It's not a liberal government bill.

00:14:56.140 It's just what the members say.

00:14:57.360 But this is like the unrestrained id

00:14:59.840 of what liberal members of parliament want.

00:15:02.480 This is if you leave liberals to their own devices

00:15:04.500 and you put them in a room and say,

00:15:06.440 come up with what you believe is the vision for Canada.

00:15:09.680 This is what they come up with.

00:15:11.440 This is what Justin Trudeau and a majority government

00:15:13.560 would have to do to keep his party's members happy.

00:15:17.520 And if you look at the list,

00:15:18.700 there are some things here that are bonkers.

00:15:21.020 One of them is the,

00:15:21.860 I mean, the word climate appears like 72 times, but it's like more times than Trudeau has been

00:15:26.340 in black, but well, not that many. But it says climate crisis. Whereas we are living in a climate

00:15:32.960 emergency and the 2022 intergovernmental panel on climate change report made it clear that any

00:15:38.220 further delay and concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure

00:15:43.660 a livable future. Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urges the government of Canada

00:15:50.100 to require public investment funds to divert from fossil fuels.

00:15:55.160 So they don't think that CPP or any public investment funds

00:15:59.740 should have any investment whatsoever in anything to do with traditional oil and gas.

00:16:05.900 So the Liberals say we need to divest from one of the most significant industries in Canada

00:16:12.660 and be it further resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urges the government

00:16:18.280 to ensure the end of all subsidies to the fossil fuel sector before 2025.

00:16:23.240 Now this, I'm actually for if we eliminate all green energy subsidies as well.

00:16:28.420 How about we put all our cards on the table?

00:16:30.280 We'll get rid of the oil and gas subsidies.

00:16:32.000 You get rid of the green energy subsidies.

00:16:33.540 And how do you like that?

00:16:34.900 But they're never going to go for that.

00:16:36.140 And that's exactly why these arguments are so disingenuous.

00:16:40.320 But this is what Liberal members want.

00:16:42.800 And I think it probably speaks to where the Liberal Party is

00:16:46.320 and where Justin Trudeau is more than he may admit

00:16:49.460 when you see Liberal members coming out and saying this.

00:16:52.140 And the best response that the Liberal commentators have is,

00:16:55.540 oh, well, I mean, they're just members doing their little thing.

00:16:59.060 They're not really, we pay no heed to the man behind the curtain.

00:17:02.700 So right now, the Liberals would love nothing more

00:17:05.300 than to see in Canada what we were describing in Britain,

00:17:08.280 where you can't actually say what you want in a broadcast.

00:17:11.320 You can't say what you want online.

00:17:13.180 You can't perhaps as an anonymous source talk to the Globe and Mail because, oh, well, this is information whose source cannot be traced by the government.

00:17:21.440 It's almost as though sources that can't be traced by the government are the great selling point of the Internet.

00:17:27.540 And, you know, there's a bigger picture problem here.

00:17:30.440 And when I said in that substack of mine that only official narratives will remain in the future, I'm talking about both a cultural problem and a legal problem.

00:17:40.160 The cultural problem is one that I spoke about a couple of weeks ago, the decline of debate, the dwindling confines of debate.

00:17:48.660 But the legal problem is when things that would normally be rejected and denounced by people,

00:17:55.240 things like misinformation and hate speech, become terms that are weaponized against dissent.

00:18:01.340 I mean, I'm against hate speech, I'm against misinformation, I'm against dishonesty, I'm against all of these things,

00:18:06.560 and I deplore these things, but I'm also very distrustful of government's ability to define

00:18:12.800 these things in a way that is fair and not weaponized or politicized. Like I had a conversation

00:18:19.900 with someone, not a particularly pleasant conversation a few weeks ago, who very much

00:18:24.300 does not believe in free speech and was completely open about this. And what this person said is that,

00:18:30.020 well, you don't get to debate facts, which fair enough. I mean, if you have two people that are

00:18:34.880 standing in the street in a torrential downpour, soaking wet, and they're debating whether or not

00:18:40.000 it's raining. You may look at this and be like, well, this, I mean, this is, why are we giving

00:18:43.640 false equivalents to this, these two positions? Why are we letting someone say it's not raining?

00:18:48.720 But the only way that you, if you take that argument to its natural end, you get to really

00:18:54.480 do anything about that is if you decide to make someone the arbiter of what is true and make

00:19:01.440 someone the arbiter of facts and give someone the power to decide which things cannot be debated so

00:19:07.600 i would say as a free speech lover let the two people in the street in the rain debate whether

00:19:11.660 it's raining and let us all laugh at the guy who's soaking wet trying to tell us that it's not raining

00:19:16.240 because every now and then you may find out that guy ended up right maybe someone was dumping

00:19:20.160 buckets from above and we couldn't see it at the time but even if not even if not what we see here

00:19:26.380 is the only way to avoid government shrinking free speech and shrinking debate is to allow

00:19:32.200 the debate and allow the debates about things, even when we are offended by an argument that

00:19:37.180 someone puts forward, or even when we believe that they're so wrong, they don't even deserve

00:19:41.600 a fair hearing. Because the alternative is Justin Trudeau and his liberal cronies getting to decide

00:19:48.120 this issue is settled. You don't get to debate it. It's Ofcom saying, well, actually, Naomi Wolf,

00:19:53.720 you don't get to talk about vaccine harms.

00:19:55.500 You don't get to do that

00:19:56.300 because it is going to be harmful for people

00:19:58.900 to hear your perspective.

00:20:00.720 That is the outcome that these internet regulators want

00:20:04.320 and we absolutely cannot let them have it.

00:20:07.900 One thing that I said I would do a couple of weeks ago

00:20:10.640 is cover the Alberta election as it goes on.

00:20:13.860 I mean, this is going to sneak up on us.

00:20:15.060 The election day is in just 20 days,

00:20:17.760 less than three weeks time.

00:20:19.360 And we haven't seen too much movement in the campaigns.

00:20:22.640 They're still mostly staying in Calgary, although Danielle Smith did do a press conference in Edmonton.

00:20:28.980 But the campaign has had a bit of a hitch with the wildfires raging in parts of Alberta.

00:20:35.260 Obviously, if you listen to the Daily Brief, you heard Rachel Emanuel and I chat about this a little bit yesterday.

00:20:40.920 But it's become a bit of a political issue as to campaigning in the midst of crisis.

00:20:47.140 Danielle Smith was criticized by Rachel Notley for talking about this at a campaign event.

00:20:52.780 And then Rachel Notley went along and did a campaign event.

00:20:55.260 And my colleague, Rachel Emanuel, asked her how she squared campaigning herself during a tragedy.

00:21:00.260 Take a look.

00:21:01.240 Rachel Emanuel, to more with Ms. Notley, how is the Premier showing insensitivity

00:21:05.020 when you're here in Calgary today hosting a campaign event and she's up at Edmonton dealing with the wildfires?

00:21:11.940 I believe that we are both continuing to work on the campaign.

00:21:15.180 Indeed, we've seen both of us do that, and so that's what we're doing.

00:21:22.660 But in the meantime, when it comes to making announcements that impact the victims of the wildfires,

00:21:31.100 then that should be done in a political way.

00:21:33.800 So is the criticism the Premier is receiving for the campaign event she attended over the weekend

00:21:38.020 or other campaign events she might choose to hold inappropriate,

00:21:40.880 Is it right for her to continue campaigning, considering, as you said, we are in an election period?

00:21:46.480 My concern is only that she chose to announce the provincial state of emergency to her campaign workers

00:21:54.180 before she announced it to the victims, the tens of thousands of victims of the one fire.

00:22:00.400 And that's all the time we have today. Thank you so much.

00:22:02.240 We have questions from seniors here in the room who have some questions for Rachel.

00:22:06.620 That was just at the tail end there, Jonathan Bradley of the Western

00:22:36.600 Standard, not having the forcefulness of our very own Rachel Emanuel. He gets blocked and

00:22:42.100 accused of hate speech, which admittedly is probably all in a day's work for an NDP campaign

00:22:47.460 staffer. But nonetheless, Rachel Emanuel lived to tell the tale. She joins us now. Let's just talk

00:22:53.500 about that little exchange there first, Rachel, because obviously Rachel Notley has been dogged 0.99

00:22:58.760 for not talking to independent media on this campaign. But you did get your question in there.

00:23:04.300 You didn't encounter any roadblocks yourself?

00:23:07.760 Well, there were certainly some roadblocks.

00:23:10.100 When I got to the press conference, I could tell they didn't maybe recognize me or maybe they did.

00:23:14.920 One of the NDP staff or the one that was featured at the end of the video came up, introduced himself.

00:23:20.120 I let him know that I was from True North.

00:23:21.680 That's when you saw the whispering among the NDP staffers beginning.

00:23:25.360 What were they going to do?

00:23:26.560 How were they going to deal with me?

00:23:28.440 I was surprised when the press conference began and they didn't ask me to leave.

00:23:32.220 you might remember a couple weeks ago kian bexty of the counter single and alex dollwell of rebel

00:23:37.820 news were actually asked to leave to the point that security was even called up called on them

00:23:42.700 and they were escorted out of the premises but no the press conference began and i realized the

00:23:47.740 problems were going to begin afterwards when all the legacy media reporters lined up to get their

00:23:53.500 question and i noticed i was at the tail end of that and in between asking their questions the

00:23:57.980 legacy media reporters would hand the microphone back to the ngp staffer who would decide who would

00:24:03.260 get it next i was second last in line behind me was jonathan bradley and when it was my turn to

00:24:09.340 ask a question they decided to take questions from the phone so after taking one question from the

00:24:14.700 phone i thought this is ridiculous you and i have both experience not being able to ask questions

00:24:19.740 when we call into ndp press conferences or when we video in over the zoom and so i thought no this is

00:24:26.460 is my chance so I just sort of yelled my question out I thought she can answer it or she can't but

00:24:31.160 everyone's going to hear it I know this is being live streamed and I certainly have it on video

00:24:35.160 and to her credit Rachel Notley did have the ability and was willing to answer my question

00:24:40.060 I don't know why they felt the need to make such a stink out of it I think it would have been a lot

00:24:43.880 easier for everyone if they just handed me the microphone and then they decided to end questions

00:24:48.100 from the press after I got my questions in unfortunately Jonathan Bradley was blocked

00:24:52.400 as you saw in the video and was unable to get his questions in.

00:24:55.820 Yeah, he hesitated because you just like continued with the question.

00:24:59.000 He like faltered, which sort of gives them the window to get in there.

00:25:02.280 But let's talk about the actual substance of it here,

00:25:04.820 because I think you're raising an important point.

00:25:06.900 I mean, whenever there is a fixed election as there is now,

00:25:10.460 obviously the campaign is going, people are going to be voting,

00:25:12.980 you need to get your message out.

00:25:14.140 But having the wildfires throws a wrench in that,

00:25:17.400 especially if you are the premier and you actually have a governmental role

00:25:21.740 and you have emergency services to deal with and she's been doing this i mean she declared the

00:25:26.460 provincial state of emergency she's spoken to justin true in this capacity so what was rachel

00:25:31.420 notley's issue really so rachel notley decided to continue her campaign and i asked her about that

00:25:38.620 you know she's allowed to do that it is a fixed election campaign we're voting on the 29th it

00:25:42.700 would be very difficult i'm not even sure how entirely possible it would be to move that

00:25:46.540 election day it looks like the chief electoral officer would have the power to delay the vote

00:25:50.860 in certain writings but you know in a country like canada you expect to have your election in

00:25:55.500 a timely manner you expect to have the votes results in a timely manner and so rachel notley

00:25:59.980 said she was asked before me by a ctv reporter if she had considered delaying her campaign and she

00:26:05.340 said you know it's a difficult situation for albertans but ultimately we are in an election

00:26:09.500 period and then i asked her about it again because she started criticizing danielle smith just before

00:26:14.300 i asked my question there calling the premier insensitive now the reason she called danielle

00:26:19.020 Smith insensitive is because on Saturday, Daniel Smith announced a state of emergency in the

00:26:23.940 province due to the ongoing wildfires. There were over 100 at the time. But before she announced it

00:26:29.420 to the public, she just let a group of UCP supporters at a fundraising event, she let them

00:26:33.720 know she was going to be announcing that she was going to be emergency. And there was a video of

00:26:38.720 this circulating online. So it was revealed that Daniel Smith had announced this incoming emergency

00:26:43.120 to UCP supporters before announcing it very shortly after at a actual press conference.

00:26:50.560 And so Rachel Notley was criticizing the premiers without calling it insensitive.

00:26:54.820 Now, let's be honest, I don't know that anyone actually really cares about the fact that

00:26:58.280 Daniel Smith let a couple UCP supporters know that she was going to be calling a state of

00:27:02.500 emergency an hour before she announced it to the province. I think the people who have actually

00:27:06.600 been displaced by the fires and have lost their homes are quite a bit busier with other things

00:27:10.660 at this time and I think it's disappointing to put make a partisan issue out of something that

00:27:15.560 is a natural disaster which is really a crisis in the province and which is affecting Albertans you

00:27:20.640 know imagine waking up one day to the news your home has been burned down all your lively possessions

00:27:25.700 they are gone that would be extremely difficult news this is really when Albertans look to their

00:27:30.220 leaders to sort of rally together and so I couldn't help but take note of the fact that well

00:27:35.060 Danielle Smith other than that one fundraising dinner she attended on Saturday afternoon has 0.89

00:27:39.000 completely stepped back from campaigning. She is dealing entirely in her role as premier to address

00:27:44.360 the fires over these past couple of days. Meanwhile, Rachel Notley is out campaigning,

00:27:48.680 as is her right to do. You know, that's her decision. And yet she's criticizing the premier 0.55

00:27:52.620 from the sidelines. Well, the premier has made the decision not to campaign. So I felt I needed

00:27:56.380 to ask her about that. You know, I asked her why she thought it was fair to call the premier

00:28:00.000 insensitive while she's out campaigning. And, you know, you heard her response there.

00:28:04.780 Now, neither has actually like officially suspended their campaign, correct? 0.99

00:28:08.940 Danielle Smith, in her case, she's just more taken a lower key approach the last few days. 0.91

00:28:13.900 Exactly.

00:28:14.500 Neither of the leaders have officially suspended their campaign.

00:28:17.400 Candidates in ridings where the fires are out of control or where evacuation orders

00:28:21.020 have been issued have suspended their campaigns.

00:28:23.200 But those decisions are being made at a local level at this time.

00:28:26.000 And I don't suspect we are going to see a total suspension of either of the campaigns.

00:28:30.420 Danielle Smith did end up making an announcement earlier today.

00:28:32.820 that was her first announcement as party leader rather than premier since friday so far and again

00:28:39.300 you you can you can duck this question if you want i shouldn't have given you a note but i'm giving

00:28:43.060 you a note but do you think that when push comes to shove this crisis helps hurts or makes no

00:28:47.780 difference to danielle smith it ultimately will come down to how danielle smith responds to this

00:28:53.460 crisis i think she's done a very good job i've even seen shockingly some craze from left-wing

00:28:59.060 twitter you would twitter users and call them this you know saying she's showing herself to

00:29:04.100 be a real premier a real leader in this situation i think her decision to ultimately step back from

00:29:09.700 campaigning will be seen as the right one you know albertans and canadians at large they don't

00:29:15.220 really like election campaigns it gets very dirty it's very vicious it gets very personal and it's

00:29:19.780 tiring to listen to you're hearing these constant attack ads they all kind of seem to be saying the

00:29:24.420 same thing no one's being convinced of anything but here we have a natural disaster this is a

00:29:28.660 crisis that needs to be dealing with. So if a leader like Danielle can stand up and show that

00:29:33.080 she's moving forward and dealing with this crisis effectively, ultimately, I think it will be a good

00:29:37.480 thing for her in the long run. And I'm just not sure that Rachel Notley's decision to attack the

00:29:41.680 Premier while she continues her own campaign is going to prove to be the right one in the end.

00:29:46.280 All right, well, we appreciate the update. We'll let you get back to the campaign trail. Rachel

00:29:50.260 Emmanuel, our Alberta correspondent and host of the Alberta Roundup. And also we'll have an

00:29:55.620 announcement in the coming days about our coverage plans for election day so uh stay tuned for that

00:30:00.440 thanks very much rachel really appreciate it yeah thanks for having me all right uh rachel

00:30:05.280 emmanuel keep up with her work and other alberta election coverage over at tnc.news i just want to

00:30:12.360 mention as we uh wind down here i i didn't i've neglected to mention the coronation the problem

00:30:17.780 with doing the show on tuesday is that sometimes things that happen over the weekend just feel

00:30:22.860 like old news, whereas if we were on Monday, we'd be able to talk about them. And there was a big

00:30:27.460 one, which is the coronation of King Charles III. Now, I should say here, I know he is a very

00:30:35.060 polarizing figure to our audience. There are photos of King Charles and Klaus Schwab. He's

00:30:41.000 been very much an activist as Prince of Wales in a way that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II never

00:30:46.460 was. And I think as someone who values the traditions of the constitutional monarchy we

00:30:51.880 have in Canada. The big question will be, does he become a kingly version of Prince Charles or does

00:31:00.320 he adopt the role and embrace the role and be a king who is not an activist? And he has said

00:31:06.260 in the past that he realized that he needs to be a king for everyone. So perhaps his proclamations

00:31:11.180 on environmental catastrophe, which he makes when he gets off the private jet and gets into the car

00:31:16.280 and gets onto the other private jet, he realizes that perhaps he doesn't get to make those.

00:31:21.360 But nevertheless, surely we can all get together

00:31:24.400 and disagree with the way the woke respond to this.

00:31:27.660 There was one woman in particular who I had not heard of.

00:31:30.600 I mean, I shouldn't even say she's a woman

00:31:31.720 because you never know these days. 0.81

00:31:33.120 She does say she's a recipient of Women in Law Awards.

00:31:36.220 But Dr. Charlotte Proudman or Proudman, proud person?

00:31:40.900 Dr. Charlotte Proudman says she tweets this picture

00:31:43.980 of King Charles being crowned.

00:31:46.440 Coronated is not a word, I remind you.

00:31:48.300 And she writes,

00:31:49.320 what a beautiful photograph of white male privilege and entitlement

00:31:53.020 sums up who rules our country.

00:31:55.840 Now, this sort of stuff you can kind of roll your eyes at in general,

00:32:00.740 but as Twitter reminded people in the little context box before it,

00:32:05.840 for 134 of the last 200 years,

00:32:09.960 the United Kingdom's head of state, and that of Canada, by the way,

00:32:13.700 has been a woman.

00:32:16.080 So Charles is the guy right now, and she's saying it's a symbol of white male privilege and entitlement.

00:32:23.540 I should have just pulled up the picture of her late majesty's coronation,

00:32:28.220 which I don't think you would look at and see as being evidence of male privilege. 0.68

00:32:32.320 Certainly Queen Victoria, I think, would be mortified to learn that her reign,

00:32:36.340 which prior to that of her late majesty Queen Elizabeth II was a record,

00:32:41.080 was also a bastion of white male privilege and entitlement.

00:32:44.760 So it's basically like these people play Mad Libs using the same word in every slot.

00:32:51.400 And whether it works or not, they're just going to keep using it where it's like you would just be like on Jeopardy and you'd be like, you know, this was the longest river in Asia.

00:33:01.020 And they would say, what is white male privilege?

00:33:03.380 And you say, well, OK, you lose on that one.

00:33:05.340 This is the bestselling novel by Margaret Atwood set in a dystopian land.

00:33:10.200 And they say, what is white male? 0.81

00:33:11.220 Well, that one actually works, I guess. 0.61

00:33:12.420 But you get the you get the gist.

00:33:14.000 They kind of just only have one line and that is the line.

00:33:18.320 So whether Charles is there or Elizabeth is there or, I mean, surely William is not going

00:33:24.500 to be white privilege.

00:33:25.400 I mean, white male privilege.

00:33:26.740 William is just, I don't even, well, William is not even privileged. 0.71

00:33:30.580 He's just boring now.

00:33:31.640 But anyway, we will revisit that.

00:33:35.480 I know he's polarizing, but he is your king.

00:33:37.900 So I'm not going to make you a bow or curtsy before him, but I will say that you can respect

00:33:41.960 the institution well, being a little bit skeptical of the man himself. As we talk about white male

00:33:48.560 privilege, let's talk about Mother's Day and Father's Day, which are approaching. If you haven't

00:33:53.340 gotten a Mother's Day present, you have until basically Sunday at whatever time you're meeting

00:33:59.060 with your mother, which is hopefully early on. And the reason this is relevant is because there

00:34:03.800 was a school I learned of in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which decided that it was just too offensive to

00:34:10.040 have Mother's Day and Father's Day. So they actually did a more inclusive shift away to a

00:34:17.580 commemoration that they say is about celebrating all people. They want to kind of celebrate all

00:34:23.220 people that are involved in raising children, not just mothers and fathers. This is the Kildonan

00:34:29.720 East Collegiate School in Winnipeg. The memo says they're going to encourage non-gender specific

00:34:35.940 observations of all those who support our students and like most public school uh public school

00:34:42.420 environments they misspelled the word students which is a really really great step here maybe

00:34:47.140 they should spend more time on staff literacy and less on trying to wokeify mother's day and

00:34:53.180 father's day but i thought this was a bad enough story and then today i find out that one toronto

00:34:59.540 Public School made the horrendous, horrendous mistake of celebrating Mother's Day. This is the

00:35:05.640 Q Beach Junior Public School in Toronto. They put a lovely sign up front ahead of Mother's Day. They

00:35:12.100 say, life does not come with a manual. It comes with a mom. Oh, that's so lovely. That's so lovely. 0.98

00:35:18.400 The sentiment there is that your mother guides you through life. There's no handbook. Your mother

00:35:22.480 will, and certainly in my case, tell you how to do a lot of things. She's been a wonderful woman.

00:35:26.560 Not everyone was raised with a mother, but I don't think we are sufficiently required

00:35:31.380 to dis-celebrate people that did have mothers that were influential in their lives.

00:35:36.720 Well, one person, it seems like, complained on Facebook about this.

00:35:41.060 And now the Toronto school has pulled the sign and they've replaced it with something else.

00:35:48.900 Now, this is just like laughably hilarious.

00:35:51.600 The sign they put up has nothing to do with mothers, nothing to do with parents.

00:35:55.460 it's a celebration of may they say make this month count that's for m accomplish your goals

00:36:02.340 that's a and you can do this which is why although hang on let's uh take a closer look uh it's not

00:36:08.740 accomplish your goals it's accomplish your goals um so perhaps they used all their m's on the first

00:36:16.660 line with m and make and month but now we are to accomplish our goals so i go back to perhaps

00:36:23.700 Top school administrators need to learn things themselves

00:36:26.600 instead of spending so much time.

00:36:29.120 See, Sean, you should work.

00:36:30.900 Sean, my producer, just said they could have used an upside-down W.

00:36:34.720 So they actually don't have any Ws in that sign.

00:36:36.880 They could have used a W.

00:36:37.760 Yeah, they could have used the upside-down W.

00:36:40.320 So I agree.

00:36:41.180 Or you even could do a sideways E.

00:36:43.160 If you're really, really, really desperate, you can do a sideways E.

00:36:46.520 So surely, if they didn't have an M, they had an E or a W.

00:36:50.640 or they could just, you know, get lost and not change the sign in the first place

00:36:55.460 because the Mother's Day sign was perfectly adequate.

00:36:58.440 Now, Sean says that he knows this psychology very well

00:37:03.080 because he went to a leftist beaches school in Toronto,

00:37:05.980 but he somehow came out and is working on The Andrew Lawton Show,

00:37:10.340 which I'm sure would mortify his former classmates.

00:37:12.580 But if you stuck around, Sean, you could have been the sign maker in chief.

00:37:16.760 You would have done a better job because you actually know how to spell,

00:37:19.600 unlike the the principal or vice principal there so i i think now you can be subversive in many

00:37:25.820 ways and my guidance to you is to be subversive by celebrating mother's day and celebrating

00:37:31.260 mothers that is uh i didn't think that would be a contentious or controversial point but apparently

00:37:36.320 it is so that does it for us for today we will be back tomorrow with more of canada's most

00:37:41.560 irreverent talk show here on true north this is the andrew lotton show thank you god bless and

00:37:46.400 Good day to you all.

00:37:49.060 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:51.700 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 09, 2023

Liberal members want Trudeau to restrict free speech online

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