Juno News - Liberal ministers joked about sending in tanks to break up Convoy

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

00:00:05.760 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.400 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:16.300 It is Wednesday, November 23rd, 2022.

00:00:20.000 This is another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show,

00:00:22.740 Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show on True North.

00:00:26.200 You got to be very careful.

00:00:27.160 Sometimes if you're typing that out, it auto-corrects you to irrelevant.

00:00:32.280 And I mean, that may actually be what the show is sometimes, Canada's most irrelevant show.

00:00:37.220 I try to be irreverent and never irrelevant, but sometimes you mix those up and you give your critics lots of ammunition.

00:00:43.240 But regardless, I thank all of you for tuning in as we stand up for your freedom.

00:00:49.260 That is really the theme of the show, I think, most days.

00:00:52.140 But certainly today, as we talk about your freedom to protest, your freedom from vaccine mandates, and also your freedom to own property, which is also under attack by a liberal amendment that will dramatically expand the guns on the list that the government wants to prohibit.

00:01:09.600 This was an amendment put forward on committee yesterday that has gotten virtually no.

00:01:15.440 I did a look at this about five minutes ago, and as of when I looked, it had not a single

00:01:22.180 mainstream media story about.

00:01:25.700 And I just saw like one minute before I went on air, Brian Lilly in the Toronto Sun published

00:01:30.180 something, but nothing in the Toronto Star, nothing in the Globe and Mail, not even in

00:01:34.180 the National Post.

00:01:35.320 We're going to talk about it here with Rod Giltaka from the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

00:01:40.600 And we're talking about a gun ban that eliminates, absolutely eliminates, any ability for the government to fall back on.

00:01:49.200 We're not going after hunters and sports shooters.

00:01:51.740 This latest change will effectively ban any semi-automatic gun that shoots anything larger than a 22-round bullet.

00:02:00.560 So we're not talking about a ban here that has anything to do with public safety.

00:02:04.560 it's broad and it's sweeping so that's coming up in about 15 minutes time i should say if you can't

00:02:10.240 tell already i still have not entirely gotten my voice back i feel slightly better than yesterday

00:02:15.840 but i'm still going to make my way through the show i should have found some like 10 minute long

00:02:20.040 clip that i could play just to give myself a bit of a break but we have a few smaller clips that

00:02:25.760 we'll get to uh but they are not enough they're not for my benefit they're for your benefit so

00:02:30.300 I do hope you enjoy. Before we get into all the firearm stuff, I want to talk a little bit about

00:02:36.000 the Public Order Emergency Commission today, where we're just like rotating through the

00:02:41.420 cabinet ministers that had portfolios which were adjacent to or directly involved in the

00:02:47.820 Emergencies Act. Yesterday, we had Marco Mendicino. Two days ago, we had Bill Blair. We also had

00:02:54.020 Dominic LeBlanc yesterday. And today, we had three ministers. We were getting spoiled.

00:02:59.480 Three is a crowd, they say.

00:03:01.180 I've already forgotten.

00:03:02.120 So many of them are still forgettable now.

00:03:03.640 I'm trying to remember who.

00:03:04.760 The first one was David Lemeny, the justice minister, who took us most of the day.

00:03:10.440 And then Anita Anand, the defense minister, just wrapped up.

00:03:14.080 And I believe right now we have Omar Elgabra, the transportation minister.

00:03:19.320 So if you'd rather hear Omar Elgabra than me, you have options.

00:03:24.080 But I don't think you want to do that.

00:03:25.940 And as with before, we have a couple of folks monitoring that.

00:03:29.180 So we can cut in if anything big happens while Omar El-Gabra is on the stand.

00:03:34.360 I will say I'm not optimistic.

00:03:36.200 And I don't say that as a slight against Omar El-Gabra.

00:03:39.660 I say that in general because the ministers that we're seeing,

00:03:43.760 you can tell have been very well prepped for this.

00:03:46.960 The ministers are coming with talking point binders.

00:03:50.040 The ministers are coming with their defenses already planned out.

00:03:54.240 They've had months and months and months in which they've had to defend the emergencies act.

00:03:58.360 So now there isn't really any real accountability when they're on the stand.

00:04:03.580 And some of the timeframes here are so condensed.

00:04:06.880 So the way it works is whenever a minister or someone is going to testify,

00:04:11.520 there's a process that goes on behind the scenes of deciding how long they're going to testify.

00:04:17.940 And then it becomes a question of who is going to question them for how long.

00:04:22.220 For example, when Peter slowly took the stand, he was on for two full days.

00:04:27.200 It was a Friday and a Monday, and on the Friday was all his examination, and then on Monday was

00:04:33.760 all the cross-examination. So everyone who cross-examined him got a fair bit of time.

00:04:39.060 You look at some other people that have been up there, like Anita Anand. She was on the stand for,

00:04:43.440 I think, maybe two hours, and in that time, there's maybe 30 to 45 minutes for her to be

00:04:49.120 questioned by commission counsel, 15 minutes to be cross-examined by this party, and some of them

00:04:54.480 get like five minutes with her and when she gives a long meandering answer like there was one

00:04:59.960 exchange that Anita Anand had with a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association I won't

00:05:05.200 play it for you because it already you know took two minutes off of my life I don't need you to

00:05:09.320 suffer through that as well but she was asked it was like a simple yes or no question you were out

00:05:14.580 of the country for the first week of the convoy protest right and Anita Anand goes I was in

00:05:20.640 Ukraine. I was in Latvia. I was in Belgium. I was talking to our partners of the Russia's invasion

00:05:26.780 of Ukraine. And we were preparing Canada's strong defense. And we were, and I was like, oh my good

00:05:31.300 ma'am, this is a Wendy's for crying out loud. It was a yes or no question. Were you in the country?

00:05:36.300 No, done, move on. But that eats up like, you know, 80% of the five minutes or whatever it was.

00:05:42.740 And, you know, the lawyer was able to ask a few more questions of Minister Anand. You start to be

00:05:48.560 very careful about what you ask and it's like you know checking your rhetorical ammo because you

00:05:54.760 only have you know three sentences that you can get out so you choose them very carefully and so

00:06:00.620 she does this thing and I'm like so somehow like the emergencies act will have lots of information

00:06:05.000 about Canada's strong commitment to supporting our Ukrainian ally which is very helpful in

00:06:10.080 navigating whether Justin Trudeau was justified in invoking the emergencies act for some reason

00:06:16.000 or maybe not but that's what happens so sometimes you have very compressed time frames and today

00:06:22.840 you were starting to see a little bit of jockeying going on where they're all like swapping time like

00:06:27.740 they're trading cards where you know the city of ottawa will give five minutes to the jccf and then

00:06:32.660 freedom convoy organizers will give five minutes to the jccf and then jccf actually gets 15 minutes

00:06:38.720 which uh lets anita and and answer like two questions about ukraine or something but what

00:06:43.800 was fascinating about all of this is that they're all coming and they can see where the questions

00:06:50.560 are going. And they try to preempt where it's going. Like there was one exchange just a little

00:06:56.540 while ago where Anita Anand was being asked a question that was, again, a very simple binary

00:07:02.400 question. Is the National Defense Act a law in Canada? And she just like she knew what was being

00:07:09.640 asked of her so she wouldn't give a straight answer and then you know kept trying to outsmart

00:07:14.440 i think it was rob kittredge who was the lawyer for the justice center for constitutional freedoms

00:07:19.320 and it ended up just becoming a repetitive game of 20 questions where you just want the car ride

00:07:24.440 to be over so the game can end but i do want to talk about some of the more substantive details

00:07:29.100 that came out of this because as always sometimes it's not the testimony that is the most revealing

00:07:35.640 but the documents and in particular the unfiltered raw document exchange that takes place between

00:07:42.620 cabinet ministers not in the scripted talking point laden question period answers or testimony

00:07:48.540 but how they actually engage with each other when they're just chatting us friends or colleagues

00:07:56.440 and the big one today that comes out is this text message exchange between the public safety

00:08:02.880 Minister Marco Mendicino and the Justice Minister David Lamedi. And I'll ask that we pull this up

00:08:08.380 on the screen here because this is actually quite a fascinating, fascinating display. So just for

00:08:15.900 context here, Marco Mendicino is in the gray and David Lamedi is in the blue. So David Lamedi says

00:08:23.120 to Marco Mendicino, you need to get the police to move and the CAF if necessary. That's the Canadian 0.73

00:08:28.480 Armed Forces. Too many people are being seriously adversely impacted by what is an occupation. I am

00:08:34.920 getting out as soon as I can. People are looking to us slash you for leadership and not stupid people.

00:08:42.180 People like Carney, Kath, my team. Okay, pull this down for a second. So just for context, this is on

00:08:49.800 February 2nd. So the convoy has not even been in Ottawa for a full week at this time.

00:08:56.480 February 2nd. So the reason I bring this up is because this exchange is happening. The convoy

00:09:03.420 got there earlier, like the early days of the convoy were on the Friday. And it's now been

00:09:10.100 Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, five days. And Marco Mendicino is now getting

00:09:14.740 like a call from Justice Minister David Lamedi, essentially calling on him to bring in the police,

00:09:21.280 to direct police, to send in the military, to do all of this stuff. But then the absolute best part

00:09:27.700 of this, people are looking to us and you for leadership, not stupid people, people like Mark

00:09:34.680 Carney. And I assume Catherine McKenna is Kath. It might be like Catherine McKenna, the non-binary

00:09:41.700 councillor and former mayoral candidate. And so it might've been them, but I think it was Catherine

00:09:48.640 McKenna and Mark Carney. So all of a sudden government policy in this country is being done

00:09:54.560 to pacify Mark Carney and Catherine McKenna. Not the rest of you idiots. You're all stupid people.

00:10:01.060 Your opinions don't matter. We got to keep Mark Carney and Catherine McKenna happy. Like this is

00:10:06.320 the sort of stuff that conservatives make fun of the liberals about, but the liberals actually talk

00:10:11.520 like this, that they're taking their marching orders in a way from people like Carney and

00:10:16.900 McKenna and my team and David Lamedi's staffers as well. So not the dumb people, but only those

00:10:23.140 little smart people here. And they're saying that they take their marching orders from them,

00:10:28.640 apparently. So that is, I think, part of it. But if we can throw the text message back up on the

00:10:32.800 screen there. So that's what David Lamedi says to Marco Mendicino. And then Marco says, how many

00:10:39.360 tanks are you asking for? I just want to ask Anita how many we've got on hand. And then a couple

00:10:47.600 hours later at 10 57 PM, David Lometti says, I reckon one will do. You got to like include the

00:10:53.880 inflection for the exclamation mark. I reckon one will do. So David Lometti says one tank is what

00:11:00.040 they think they'll need to go in and break up this group of peaceful protesters five days after

00:11:05.340 they arrived in Ottawa. Now, if you look at that on its face, you think, wow, this seems

00:11:10.940 pretty damaging that they were talking about sending in the military. Well,

00:11:15.760 you just need to get a sense of humor. Here's how David Lamedi explains it.

00:11:25.240 Remember, I'm interacting here as a colleague and Minister of Justice around the Cabinet table. I'm

00:11:30.600 not interacting as Attorney General. Minister Mendigino and I have a close relationship.

00:11:35.660 There's some banter here. There's some humor here. That's a reference to my favorite Christmas movie,

00:11:40.080 the quick, quick, quick part. And so I think we could take the temperature down here.

00:11:49.800 Oh, it's just a little bit of banter, just a little bit of banter, just a little bit of humor.

00:11:54.700 You know, when I banter with my friends, I always talk about sending in the tanks. But the great

00:11:58.300 thing is when you actually have the power to do it this banter takes a little bit of a different

00:12:04.600 tone it's like just a matter like in fairness to david lametti i can't believe i'm about to say

00:12:09.760 this if i were the cia director and i were to have like a casual conversation with friends

00:12:17.420 i would probably just like joke about having people assassinated like that sounds like something

00:12:22.120 that would be fun to do for the first three weeks of your job not actually doing it but i'd be like

00:12:26.220 you know you want me to have him whacked or something i know a guy but then i'm like it's

00:12:30.060 different if you actually do it after so i don't buy the this is just playful joking banter when

00:12:36.280 the government actually came perilously close to sending in the military and certainly when the

00:12:41.260 government later used wartime powers which is what the emergencies act bestows upon them

00:12:47.540 to crack down on protesters so it's not a joke when you actually start living the punchline of it

00:12:55.360 which is what David Lamedi and Marco Mendicino and their colleagues around the cabinet table did

00:13:00.140 in about two weeks from that message being sent. So yeah I'm all for gallows humor but you can't

00:13:07.420 just retreat to this oh I'm just kidding when it sounds like you're seriously considering those

00:13:13.500 policies and I mean all these comparisons to Tiananmen Square that have been going rampant

00:13:17.760 on Twitter today I kind of get those I absolutely get those because the government was using that

00:13:23.080 kind of rhetoric. And remember when there were those leaked WhatsApp messages from RCMP officers

00:13:28.940 talking about how, oh, don't, don't arrest them all. We want to get in and get our overtime. And

00:13:32.780 oh, you know, wait till they hear our jackboots on the ground. And oh, you know, I love how you

00:13:37.000 trampled that indigenous lady. Maybe we can practice that maneuver when we get back to camp 1.00

00:13:41.060 or I'm paraphrasing, but that was the sentiment in those messages that were leaked. So I get when

00:13:46.960 you have a high stress, tense job and you're in a tense situation, you crack jokes about things,

00:13:52.880 But these don't actually sound like jokes when you see how the government responded.

00:13:58.760 And that is so critical.

00:14:00.240 And I will say, there was a remarkable bit of self-awareness that came from one of the exchanges that we saw in the evidence here.

00:14:09.540 Now, this is a text message exchange about the Emergencies Act one day before the Emergencies Act was invoked.

00:14:15.980 And it's between Greg Fergus, who's a backbench Liberal MP, and David Lamedi.

00:14:21.000 Why don't you take a look at this?

00:14:22.880 so what e is being said here that is greg fergus on the left and he in the gray and he's referring

00:14:30.620 to the caucus call that the liberals just had here's the consensus use the emergencies act

00:14:36.360 close down coventry and baseline bases of operations put a solid rcmp or caf spokesman

00:14:43.680 oh justin trudeau would not approve of the use of the word spokesman anyway rcmp or caf spokesman

00:14:49.480 before the press since we politicians have pissed away our credibility now after that i will just

00:14:54.800 say uh david lametti has a bit of self-awareness as well no solid rcmp spokesperson so uh clearly

00:15:01.160 a belief on his part that brenda lucky was not earning her poutines if you will uh but greg

00:15:07.040 fergus says we politicians have pissed away our credibility so there was an understanding by

00:15:14.280 February 13th that a by one Liberal member of Parliament anyway that the Liberals could not

00:15:20.000 capably sell the Emergencies Act and their response to protesters to the protests in Ottawa

00:15:26.580 that they had no credibility and that they were responsible for it and I think this was actually

00:15:33.440 a remarkable bit of self-awareness now Greg Fergus has said a lot of things with which I disagree he

00:15:38.860 was one of the ones that went up there and made these sweeping accusations of racism in the convoy

00:15:43.720 protests and obviously it sounds like there was consensus the liberal caucus was on board with

00:15:49.240 use of the emergencies act but a lot of them we know were kind of coerced into it there were

00:15:54.820 people that raised some frustrations like nathaniel erskine smith and joelle lightbound

00:16:00.580 and they only went along with it because they had to thanks to justin trudeau's declaration that

00:16:06.960 this was going to be a confidence vote and ergo one that he needed to whip but all of this is right

00:16:13.080 now part of a liberal strategy, it seems like, that was moving towards it. David Lamedi was

00:16:18.740 talking about the Emergencies Act going back to February 3rd. So the convoy hadn't even been there

00:16:25.080 a week and he was already talking about Emergencies Act powers. And that's why I actually don't think

00:16:30.620 it was just in jest when he talks about sending in a tank, which, by the way, reminded me of this

00:16:37.260 like 16-year-old fear-mongering campaign ad that the Liberals used against Stephen Harper

00:16:43.500 in the 2006 election. It's a famous one, but take a look.

00:16:51.040 Stephen Harper actually announced he wants to increase military presence in our cities,

00:16:58.140 Canadian cities, soldiers with guns in our cities.

00:17:05.040 in Canada.

00:17:10.480 We did not make this up.

00:17:15.120 Choose your Canada.

00:17:18.100 No, you weren't making it up,

00:17:20.020 except you were the ones doing it.

00:17:21.960 Tanks in our streets, in our cities.

00:17:25.100 We are not making this up.

00:17:27.000 Well, no, you're not.

00:17:27.700 You're doing it.

00:17:28.460 You're actually doing it

00:17:29.960 or talking about doing it.

00:17:31.540 So my goodness,

00:17:32.600 this is a fascinating, fascinating display.

00:17:34.840 Now, I think what's interesting here is that the government has positioned itself as being incredibly transparent about all of this.

00:17:43.980 But yesterday, as we saw, they were fighting tooth and nail to maintain redactions of documents that they've published.

00:17:50.480 They're not entirely waiving cabinet confidence, and they're still holding firm on solicitor-client privilege.

00:17:57.900 And I want to play this clip from David Lamedi, who is both the Justice Minister and the Attorney General, which means he is the Government of Canada's lawyer.

00:18:07.100 And the government's lawyer actually, sorry, the lawyer representing the government in the committee hearing, so not Lamedi,

00:18:15.560 preemptively asserted solicitor-client privilege to prevent David Lamedi from speaking about things that involved his advice to the government that was legal advice.

00:18:25.780 Take a look.

00:18:26.220 Thank you. Good morning, Commissioner. It's Andrea Gonzales, counsel for the Government of Canada.

00:18:31.880 The next witness will be Minister of Justice David Lamedi. In addition to being Minister of Justice, of course,

00:18:39.980 the Minister is the Attorney General of Canada, the lawyer to the Government of Canada.

00:18:46.320 And I wanted to put on the record that the Government of Canada continues to assert and maintain

00:18:51.440 all of its claims of solicitor client privilege in respect of all legal advice and opinions.

00:18:59.300 Minister Lametti's attendance here as a witness is not a waiver of any claims of privilege by

00:19:05.180 the government of Canada, which he has an obligation to protect. We will be objecting

00:19:11.000 to and Minister Lametti will be refusing to answer all questions that would delve into

00:19:15.780 areas of solicitor client privilege. So I just wanted to put that on the record at the front end.

00:19:21.440 And hopefully examinations can be appropriately tailored to keep the objections to a minimum.

00:19:29.620 Okay, well, it will be an interesting maneuver throughout the testimony, but I'm sure everyone will be on their guard.

00:19:38.520 So with that, perhaps we can swear the witness.

00:19:43.900 Now, at the end of Minister Lamedi's testimony, the commissioner was very measured about it,

00:19:50.780 but he was raising issues about how all of a sudden this privilege is blocking what's become

00:19:55.620 a pretty significant part of this inquiry, which is what legal advice the government had on the

00:20:03.860 Emergencies Act. Now, I am not a lawyer, which is probably a very good thing for would-be clients

00:20:09.220 of mine. But the thing that's interesting about this is that I realize solicitor-client privilege

00:20:14.300 is sacrosanct. It's very important. And even the government is entitled to solicitor-client

00:20:19.420 privilege. But we're talking about legislation that is under investigation right now. And we're

00:20:25.100 talking about legislation where the government's legal advice is very important to what information

00:20:32.160 the government had about the applicability of the Emergencies Act. Because remember, if you do a

00:20:37.720 plain text reading of the Emergencies Act, it says that a threat to the security of Canada has a

00:20:43.480 definition that is the one set out in the CSIS Act. And if you read the CSIS Act, you don't see

00:20:49.760 anything there supporting the government's interpretation that that existed in Canada.

00:20:55.300 And the government has now said, and we've heard from a couple of witnesses, that, well,

00:20:58.740 there's sort of a broader definition than just the CSIS Act, but nowhere in the legislation does it

00:21:04.520 say that. So if the government went to its lawyer, David Lamedi, and said, Councillor, tell us,

00:21:10.860 where is our legal basis for this i think his advice is entirely material and it's despicable

00:21:17.760 that this government claims to be transparent they're like oh we're so transparent we're even

00:21:21.980 sharing joking text messages between ministers but they're not sharing the stuff that actually

00:21:27.800 matters the stuff that gets to the core of why the government thought it could pull one over on

00:21:33.340 canadians suspend their civil liberties all the while claiming they were not and this was another

00:21:40.920 takeaway today from david lametti's testimony that infuriated me because the government's line

00:21:46.540 about this has been that oh the emergencies act is charter compliant yes it says right in there

00:21:51.380 it's charter compliant it can say whatever it wants it can say that the sky is purple

00:21:56.040 that doesn't mean it's true because we know the police went in and removed protesters that were

00:22:03.280 on sidewalks that were behaving peacefully that didn't have trucks and threatened them with arrest

00:22:09.140 if they did not leave. Lamedi was questioned about that. Watch.

00:22:19.100 When Minister Mendicino was here yesterday, he said that he believed that, although he would

00:22:25.900 characterize, I think, at the same way that the protest was illegal, that there were thousands

00:22:30.560 of people who were aiming to protest lawfully, and thousands of people who were. So not people

00:22:36.460 who were blocking trucks, people who were simply on the streets, on their feet, protesting peacefully.

00:22:42.220 Yeah, I grant you that possibility.

00:22:44.140 Okay. And the orders that were put in place under the Emergencies Act required those people

00:22:50.760 to leave the area as well.

00:22:53.100 That's correct.

00:22:54.100 Thank you.

00:22:54.560 They always had the option to go somewhere else to protest legally. When the blockade

00:22:58.660 was cleared, people moved down the street, Wellington Street in Ottawa, towards Booth,

00:23:03.320 and they protested on the side of the road, not impeding traffic, not impeding pedestrians,

00:23:09.080 manifesting their political beliefs, waving signs. That was completely legal. Throughout

00:23:14.400 all of this, those people had an option to move to protest legally, and they didn't.

00:23:21.120 okay so you had a right to protest you just couldn't protest there so yeah this is actually

00:23:29.840 a great strategy the government can just say no no no you're not allowed to protest on wellington

00:23:34.040 street but if you want to go up to like baffin island and protest you are free to do so and

00:23:38.380 yeah no you can protest uh down the road keep going yeah no keep keep going i'll tell you when

00:23:43.540 you get there no no no keep yeah keep keep going if i can still see you you're too close yeah okay

00:23:50.200 yeah more more more just just go so far away we can't see you that is not defending the right of

00:23:57.060 lawful assembly so minister lametti's point here is that oh and anyone could keep protesting they

00:24:02.520 just had to move well that doesn't deal with the question that first off government never

00:24:06.900 communicated to that police never communicated that which is why there were stories of folks

00:24:12.460 being threatened with arrest or actually arrested who had no vehicles that were just walking down

00:24:18.020 Albert Street. And this was something that even if the government intended it, which I don't

00:24:23.260 believe it did, was not filtering down to the situation on the ground. So we are going to talk

00:24:30.040 about this more in future shows. But again, the man does not live on Public Order Emergency

00:24:34.760 Commission alone. I want to talk about this story, which has not gotten a lot of coverage. In fact,

00:24:39.660 as of last look, had no coverage in the mainstream media. And that is the amendment put forward by

00:24:45.920 the liberals in committee to bill c-21 this is the firearms regulation bill that's coming down

00:24:52.300 the pipeline and this amendment i just want to read directly from the amendments that were put

00:24:58.680 forward before committee changes the definition or adds to the definition of a prohibited firearm

00:25:05.700 the following a firearm that is a rifle or shotgun that is capable of discharging center

00:25:11.740 fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner and that is designed to accept a detachable cartridge

00:25:18.960 magazine with a capacity greater than five cartridges of the type for which the firearm

00:25:24.240 was originally designed. Now, if you're a gun owner, you're seething right now. If you're not

00:25:28.480 a gun owner, you're like, what the hell did he just say? It is a firearm that has a round of

00:25:33.060 ammunition that's basically anything other than a .22, which is a little tiny cartridge and has

00:25:37.820 a magazine that takes more than five rounds of ammunition. Let's talk about why this matters.

00:25:43.360 Rod Giltaka is here, head of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights. Rod, good to talk to you as

00:25:49.120 always. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me. So what types of guns are we talking

00:25:54.380 about here that are not prohibited already by the Liberals that would be caught by this amendment?

00:25:59.580 Well, for all intents and purposes, it's a centerfire, semi-automatic rifles and shotguns

00:26:04.740 they can take a detachable magazine. So there's some nuance there when you talked about a magazine

00:26:09.320 that could, that was, uh, or a firearm that was originally designed to take a magazine that could,

00:26:14.160 uh, hold more than five rounds. There's, there's a lot of nuance there, but basically any magazine

00:26:20.620 fed firearm could take a magazine that could hold more than the prescribed number of rounds.

00:26:25.480 If you get ahold of it and who knows what it was designed for in the first place, it was just

00:26:29.380 magazine fed. So I guess for purposes of our discussion, all semi-automatic rifles and

00:26:36.200 shotguns that are center fire that accept removable magazines, and that's probably around

00:26:39.620 2 million firearms that are now going to be prohibited if that amendment

00:26:44.260 is passed into the bill and the bill is passed through the Senate and receives royal assent.

00:26:50.840 One of the things that I find interesting about this is that there's been a lot in Canada of

00:26:55.500 haggling over magazine limits. And oftentimes on firearms, there's a pin in a magazine,

00:27:00.380 so it could theoretically take more rounds, but a government regulation has capped it at five

00:27:06.040 rounds. Would a magazine that is pinned to five rounds, but could theoretically, if you were to

00:27:11.240 illegally remove that pin, take more, would that satisfy this in your view? Well, the way that it's

00:27:17.600 worded is quite ambiguous. And those are the kinds of laws that the government seems to love. They

00:27:21.740 don't like, you know, straightforward stuff. But the way that it's written, it's like, I guess

00:27:27.440 we'll use the most infamous rifle ever, which is the AR-15, which is just another semi-automatic

00:27:32.880 rifle, just like any other. It was designed originally to have a 30-round magazine. But of

00:27:38.840 course, in Canada, we can't have those. It's apparently too dangerous. So we have a pin

00:27:43.120 inserted, a rivet, to limit it to five rounds. But that firearm was originally designed to hold

00:27:50.440 a 30 round to use a 30 round magazine. And so thus it would now be prohibited. If the original

00:27:56.080 design had some stubby little five round magazine, it would apparently be okay. So again, more

00:28:01.660 completely nonsensical, ridiculous rules designed for one reason, it's just to punish people that

00:28:06.440 are unlikely to vote for the liberals. Yeah. And, and, you know, this abandons in my view,

00:28:11.180 the pretense, I mean, it was long gone. I'm sure you and I could agree, but really abandons the

00:28:15.420 pretense that nothing that the liberals are doing target sport shooters and firearms owners that

00:28:20.240 are there that own guns for hunting which has always been their line because you know justin

00:28:24.480 trudeau's uh explanation no one needs an ar-15 to take down a deer okay well when they're talking

00:28:29.660 about shotguns and other semi-automatic centerfire rifles that are used for hunting people i mean

00:28:36.560 who don't know guns don't realize that they're just blatantly misinforming people yeah it's it's

00:28:42.780 it's uh it's all gaslighting um yeah long gone are all the promises that they they're not going

00:28:48.720 to affect hunters or sports shooters or anyone else. They're coming for everything. So I have a

00:28:56.760 few firearms of my own and I'm not unique in that. If I look through my gun cabinet, I'm probably

00:29:03.260 going to have a couple of guns left after all the dust has settled. So they're coming after

00:29:08.160 basically everything other than lever actions. There may be some pump action shotguns that will

00:29:15.520 be prohibited too which is a dangerous precedent so all of those will end up going uh you may have

00:29:20.320 single shot like break action you know shotguns left and some bolt action rifles and and for some

00:29:25.360 people that's enough um for most people there isn't but there's always a question how do you

00:29:31.600 justify doing this like why are you doing this to all these people and they keep saying public safety

00:29:36.960 and of course it's you know they don't offer any proof of that um so yeah just the gaslighting

00:29:42.320 continues. And why they're doing this, it's anyone's guess. Well, I think it's important

00:29:47.960 to not look at C-21 in isolation either. And I think for that, we go back to 2020 and that

00:29:53.460 initial prohibition of 1,500 types of mostly semi-automatic rifles. And then you follow that

00:30:01.360 with their efforts to ban handguns. And then you follow that with this latest amendment to C-21.

00:30:07.200 and and you are right that at a certain point they're attacking in very rapid succession uh

00:30:12.980 almost every type of firearm except for like at the end of it it's going to be you can have

00:30:18.320 a revolutionary war musket and that'll be it and then that'll go well it's uh apparently they're

00:30:24.440 going to include the sks in this and some rimfire rifles as well just because they look scary uh

00:30:31.680 this is this is there you know it's funny even one of those like tactical looking 22s which i

00:30:38.400 think most gun owners think are kind of ridiculous but but those those 22s that look scary they could

00:30:42.920 be prohibited in your view well yeah and i mean i think the the salient point here is everything

00:30:48.680 that the liberal government says and let's not forget the culpability of the ndp and um and the

00:30:56.020 block québécois because they're supporting this too everything they say to you is a lie it is it

00:31:01.960 is a lie top to bottom um and you know first at first it's like oh it's only these guns just these

00:31:08.200 dangerous assault weapons are they assault weapons no but we have we're going to call them assault

00:31:11.640 style so that's close enough so they had that whole thing we're going to buy them back it's

00:31:15.520 like no we're not going to buy them back almost three years later nothing's coming nothing's

00:31:19.220 forthcoming they have nothing then it's like well handguns oh we're not and then i of course i went

00:31:23.680 to committee on bill c21 and i have the ndp mp um alistair mcgregor say well nobody's really

00:31:30.760 banning your handguns right it's a freeze let's let's uh let's be clear and i'm like what do you

00:31:35.000 mean if i i have handguns so if i die the rcmp are going to come to the house they're going to

00:31:39.720 take them from my grieving window and my kids that are licensed and they're going to take them

00:31:44.240 without any compensation and destroy them and they'll take them by force they'll be like well

00:31:48.260 either you give them up or you go to jail so but it's not a ban don't call it a ban so i think you

00:31:52.940 were just talking about the the the Emergencies Act inquiry and how they keep saying these things

00:31:58.340 even though they're demonstrably untrue and I mean this is this this is a government these are

00:32:03.640 a group of people I don't think that we've ever seen before not at this level no and and you and

00:32:08.940 I have talked about this in the past and you were very graciously a big supporter of and star in the

00:32:14.060 documentary I did about this a year and a half back you know and the public education about guns

00:32:20.680 has always been I think very poor and it's not for for lack of effort on the part of gun owners

00:32:24.720 it's that gun owners are a very small minority relatively speaking of the Canadian population

00:32:29.920 and you have a lot of urbanites in this country that have never encountered a gun and to their

00:32:34.860 knowledge have probably never met a gun owner that really buy into the narrative that they're fed by

00:32:40.600 the government and fed by a lot of the mainstream media in this country and when stuff like this

00:32:46.680 happens it's terrible that if a conservative leader puts forward a very sensible opposition

00:32:52.080 to this they get cast into that oh he wants everyone walking around you know with an ar-15

00:32:57.080 on the streets it's like no that's not what's being debated here yeah they want to make assault

00:33:01.080 weapons legal again and i mean it's such a misleading it's such a misleading statement

00:33:05.520 on its face because assault weapons have been banned since 1977 so they'd actually have to

00:33:11.220 clarified and say assault style weapons legal again so it's it's a it's it's the reason why

00:33:16.580 it's so effective is it's a fear-based narrative right it's they they they are always and when i

00:33:21.920 say i mean the liberals again with the ndp right alongside them and the bloc quebecois they're

00:33:27.640 marching the public using the government's resources educational resources and media

00:33:32.640 resources marching them along saying there's a direct connection between somebody like me that

00:33:36.700 has a firearms license that gets background checked every day that has legal storage that

00:33:41.380 could have my home searched to make sure I'm storing my firearms properly whose handguns are

00:33:45.260 registered whose AR-15s were registered can only shoot those at an approved shooting rate all that

00:33:49.620 stuff they're always trying to draw a line between people like me and the shootings that they see in

00:33:54.480 downtown Toronto or downtown Vancouver their entire narrative is hung on that so it's it's

00:34:00.900 incredibly deceptive but it is very effective because their side of the story can be told

00:34:05.020 with taglines like more guns equal more death it's like well for me to for me to debunk that

00:34:10.020 it takes about 10 sentences and you'll never get that on a mainstream legacy media format

00:34:15.400 so it's very effective that way and that's what we're up against and uh yeah it's it's it's it's

00:34:20.160 it's a difficult fight but we're not gonna just lay down and let them take them you mentioned the

00:34:25.360 sks now just for for people that don't know the sks they're mass-produced soviet you often rifles

00:34:33.000 that you could just buy for dirt cheap

00:34:35.920 because they're surplus.

00:34:36.980 I mean, I think a lot of people get them

00:34:38.280 for like under 200 bucks back in the day.

00:34:40.060 Maybe they're a little bit more now.

00:34:41.660 They're semi-automatic.

00:34:42.920 They're not particularly accurate.

00:34:44.320 They're dirty, but they're fun to shoot.

00:34:45.760 They're fun.

00:34:46.300 They look cool.

00:34:47.460 And there are, I don't know if there's an exact number,

00:34:50.160 but I would assume there have to be tens of thousands

00:34:52.220 of these in Canada right now, correct?

00:34:54.340 About a million of them.

00:34:55.740 A million SKSs.

00:34:56.760 And they're non-restricted,

00:34:59.080 which means that if you have a license, you buy one.

00:35:01.180 It's not registered to you.

00:35:02.920 Something like this, I feel is just logistically impossible to prohibit because you can't enforce

00:35:09.380 it when you don't know where these things are.

00:35:11.300 And so if the law abiding, dutiful, diligent citizens will hand theirs back into the government

00:35:15.980 and the people that don't have regard for the law will still have them.

00:35:19.560 Well, there's a problem occurring here, Andrew.

00:35:22.420 And the problem is, is that laws have to be reasonable and they have to be justified.

00:35:26.540 When the government says we're going to use the capacity to project force that you've paid for, it has to be justified.

00:35:37.400 So what they're saying is we're going to use that force on you.

00:35:39.780 It doesn't matter.

00:35:40.440 This is part of our political agenda.

00:35:42.520 And what happens is reasonable, law-abiding people are just like, well, wait a minute.

00:35:47.220 This isn't fair.

00:35:48.180 This is wrong.

00:35:49.140 I'm actually, you're extracting money and taxes from me in order to be able to do this to me.

00:35:54.640 I'm going to consider noncompliance.

00:35:56.540 and the minute that you start looking at a scenario that like right now what the government's doing

00:36:00.860 and you're like a reasonable person might start considering non-compliance like that is that is

00:36:05.300 creating cracks that's a violation of the social contract is what they're doing right now but it's

00:36:10.300 creating cracks in in in our society and that's that's bad so you know while this seems to be a

00:36:16.920 big joke to liberal mps and liberal supporters while they think this is funny doing this to

00:36:21.380 well probably a roughly a million Canadians are licensed to own these firearms well I guess I

00:36:28.180 guess 2.2 million but a million Canadians probably own these firearms they seem to think this funny

00:36:32.820 but it's not funny it's very corrosive to our society it's destroying the relationship and an

00:36:36.980 important one at that between uh productive citizens and the government and productive

00:36:42.520 citizens and law enforcement because somebody's going to come looking for those guns and it's

00:36:45.920 not going to be Justin Trudeau he'll be hiding in the cottage right just like he did during COVID

00:36:49.900 that's that's very corrosive to our society so you got to really think about when you want to

00:36:54.400 use government force and and laws um and make sure that's justified so if you say it's for public

00:36:59.680 safety it has to be and you have to prove that or you're just you're just destroying the social

00:37:04.840 fabric of our country and i think i think people forget that in this hyper-partisan time up until

00:37:10.360 a couple of months ago i i thought that the main ways you could combat this was uh the legal route

00:37:16.440 which I know the CCFR has taken and is taking about that order in council back in 2020,

00:37:21.820 the political route, getting political leaders to enact change, and to a lesser extent,

00:37:26.760 the public education route, which you hope then people will call on their politicians.

00:37:30.980 But there's a new avenue that opened up in the last couple of months, which I think is a fascinating

00:37:35.780 one, and that is provinces declaring that they will not enforce these laws. Alberta was the first,

00:37:42.460 and then there was Manitoba, and then there was New Brunswick and Saskatchewan.

00:37:46.340 So you've got four provinces here.

00:37:48.440 I believe Yukon, I can't remember, there was a nuance with Yukon,

00:37:51.940 but you've still got four provinces there that have said

00:37:53.780 they do not believe this is an adequate use of police resources.

00:37:57.160 And the federal government has really had to admit

00:37:59.340 that it has no way of forcing them to enforce this law.

00:38:03.840 So is that something you're optimistic about

00:38:06.140 really driving in the future with other provinces?

00:38:08.380 Well, Alberta and Saskatchewan have both already put out statements that they are condemning this new amendment that was brought through in Bill C-21 or that was presented. It hasn't passed. They have the votes to pass it because, of course, the Bloc and the NDP will support them.

00:38:23.260 um but so there's a there are some green shoots there as well but i think the fact going back to

00:38:29.000 what you said in the beginning of of your question the fact that four provinces in a territory have

00:38:34.460 said you know what we're not even going to cooperate with you that should be another

00:38:37.140 indication to the federal government they should be like well wait wait a minute maybe we should

00:38:40.940 rethink what we're doing maybe what we're doing isn't right if we're actually having provinces

00:38:45.160 rebelling against us so but this is again right this is not this is not your your father or your

00:38:51.700 grandfather's liberal party this is an entirely alien group of people um that i think are very

00:38:58.100 dangerous for the country and they these these kinds of people they wouldn't think twice about

00:39:01.860 what they're doing they're like well i guess we got to put i guess we got to push harder

00:39:05.300 anyway we have to we have to people have to bend the knee to us and and normally you and i have

00:39:10.720 known each other for a while right like i don't usually like to use language like this but it's

00:39:14.600 getting to the point where it's like you know i i find myself almost in the past defending

00:39:19.520 the government and saying, well, maybe they just know not what they do, but man, this is just

00:39:23.300 getting really crazy. Yeah. And I mean, and a lot of police officers too, that I've spoken to

00:39:28.640 are themselves civilian gun owners. And, uh, you know, some of them for very practical reasons,

00:39:33.180 because, you know, they don't get enough range time as police. So they train on their own and,

00:39:36.480 and are enthusiasts and they have no interest in, in enforcing these laws. And obviously they will

00:39:41.640 ultimately, if that's the direction, but I'm hopeful that more provinces will step up because

00:39:46.240 again we clearly the federal government is entrenched in this position and i don't think

00:39:50.480 justin trudeau or bill blair or marco medicino are going to wake up one day and say you know

00:39:54.300 what maybe the law-abiding gun owners aren't the problem but i if they if they're finding a

00:39:58.220 resistance from the police uh that are supposed to uphold this and by that i mean the provinces

00:40:04.480 that are responsible for allocating those police resources they'll have a law with no enforcement

00:40:09.260 and i think they'll have to kind of retreat with their tails between their legs i don't know i don't

00:40:13.740 I, again, I, I take no pleasure in, you know, being in the position right now where I'm like,

00:40:19.300 I wouldn't put anything past them. I mean, we just heard that they were, they were considering,

00:40:22.720 uh, using, uh, you know, bringing tanks in to clear protesters, but it was not a semi-automatic

00:40:27.680 tank. It was fine. Yeah. It was a manually operated tank. Yeah. It was a bolt action tank.

00:40:32.320 Exactly. Right. Like it's just, it's such a strange time. I, and I, I, I just will,

00:40:37.700 I've been wrong as often as I've been right about, you know, how far they'll go. I don't think,

00:40:41.660 I don't think we can put anything past them. But as an organization, we're going to continue to

00:40:45.560 fight against them. We're going to continue to try to get our message out to Canadians, right? 1.00

00:40:49.060 That's really important. I'm hoping that Canadians, mainstream, middle of the road,

00:40:53.640 centrist Canadians, which most of us used to be, right? In the days before we were labeled

00:40:58.760 extremist. I'm hoping most people will come to their senses and go, these are not liberals.

00:41:04.260 This is a very dangerous group of people and they shouldn't be anywhere near power. And they're all

00:41:08.460 going to show up and bring their friends and family in the next election and get rid of these

00:41:12.140 people once and for all. That's what I'm hoping. I know the CCFR has a lot of business members.

00:41:17.540 Just anecdotally, have you heard about any upticks in sales of semi-automatics today? And I ask that

00:41:23.000 because I know every other time the Liberals have tried to ban something, they become impossible to

00:41:26.740 get because there's just a run on them. Well, it's, see, that puts, I mean, there probably would

00:41:33.080 be. I haven't heard anything. It's only been a day. But yeah, a lot of people might run out

00:41:37.920 and buy those by those guns that that may or may not be on the list, but certainly would fit the

00:41:42.820 the description of centerfire semi-automatic with a detachable magazine. But at the same time,

00:41:47.860 the liberals have instituted a backdoor gun registry, which, of course, they promised not

00:41:54.420 to do, but they've they've done it. So the government will know where all of those guns are

00:41:59.420 and they will just, I guess, in theory, send people to come and take those guns away if people don't

00:42:06.240 give them up voluntarily. So I don't know, that's going to temper sales quite a bit.

00:42:13.360 But one interesting point of this whole thing, if you watch the meeting at committee for Bill C-21

00:42:20.840 yesterday, the Liberals did not include a buyback for any of these firearms. So their intent as it

00:42:28.560 stands today is just to prohibit them all and that's it, you get nothing. Wow, just licensing

00:42:34.500 themselves to do an all-out confiscation terrible stuff uh we'll certainly follow this rod giltaka

00:42:39.480 from the canadian coalition for firearm rights always a pleasure and keep up the fight sir

00:42:43.580 thanks andrew thank you rod i yeah i mean when i looked at that and i was like in my looking at my

00:42:49.640 gun cabinet i'm like oh man this is gonna i'm gonna need a smaller cabinet at the end of this

00:42:53.760 because they're going after basically everything in it and i don't even have one of those like

00:42:57.000 revolutionary war muskets which at a certain point will be the only thing you're allowed to and

00:43:01.140 heck of a lot more risky to fire a musket than your average semi-automatic rifle but maybe we

00:43:08.240 need to do like a true north range day or something that would be fun good to bring

00:43:11.680 everyone out to the gun range the liberals would love that that does it for us for today we will

00:43:16.820 be back next week with more of the andrew lawton show friday with fake news friday and all the

00:43:22.600 public order emergency commission coverage you love and know and crave is going to be at tnc.news

00:43:28.380 So do check that out.

00:43:29.800 But I'll bid you adieu for now.

00:43:31.160 This is Canada's most irreverent talk show,

00:43:34.020 The Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:43:35.660 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:43:38.620 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:43:40.780 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - November 23, 2022

Liberal ministers joked about sending in tanks to break up Convoy

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