Juno News - November 23, 2022Liberal ministers joked about sending in tanks to break up Convoy
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Summary
In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show: Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, we talk about your freedom to protest, your freedom from vaccine mandates, and your right 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.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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This is another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show,
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Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show on True North.
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Sometimes if you're typing that out, it auto-corrects you to irrelevant.
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And I mean, that may actually be what the show is sometimes, Canada's most irrelevant show.
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I try to be irreverent and never irrelevant, but sometimes you mix those up and you give your critics lots of ammunition.
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But regardless, I thank all of you for tuning in as we stand up for your freedom.
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That is really the theme of the show, I think, most days.
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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.
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This was an amendment put forward on committee yesterday that has gotten virtually no.
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I did a look at this about five minutes ago, and as of when I looked, it had not a single
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And I just saw like one minute before I went on air, Brian Lilly in the Toronto Sun published
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something, but nothing in the Toronto Star, nothing in the Globe and Mail, not even in
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We're going to talk about it here with Rod Giltaka from the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.
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And we're talking about a gun ban that eliminates, absolutely eliminates, any ability for the government to fall back on.
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We're not going after hunters and sports shooters.
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This latest change will effectively ban any semi-automatic gun that shoots anything larger than a 22-round bullet.
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So we're not talking about a ban here that has anything to do with public safety.
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it's broad and it's sweeping so that's coming up in about 15 minutes time i should say if you can't
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tell already i still have not entirely gotten my voice back i feel slightly better than yesterday
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but i'm still going to make my way through the show i should have found some like 10 minute long
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clip that i could play just to give myself a bit of a break but we have a few smaller clips that
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we'll get to uh but they are not enough they're not for my benefit they're for your benefit so
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I do hope you enjoy. Before we get into all the firearm stuff, I want to talk a little bit about
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the Public Order Emergency Commission today, where we're just like rotating through the
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cabinet ministers that had portfolios which were adjacent to or directly involved in the
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Emergencies Act. Yesterday, we had Marco Mendicino. Two days ago, we had Bill Blair. We also had
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Dominic LeBlanc yesterday. And today, we had three ministers. We were getting spoiled.
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The first one was David Lemeny, the justice minister, who took us most of the day.
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And then Anita Anand, the defense minister, just wrapped up.
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And I believe right now we have Omar Elgabra, the transportation minister.
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So if you'd rather hear Omar Elgabra than me, you have options.
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And as with before, we have a couple of folks monitoring that.
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So we can cut in if anything big happens while Omar El-Gabra is on the stand.
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And I don't say that as a slight against Omar El-Gabra.
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I say that in general because the ministers that we're seeing,
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you can tell have been very well prepped for this.
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The ministers are coming with talking point binders.
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The ministers are coming with their defenses already planned out.
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They've had months and months and months in which they've had to defend the emergencies act.
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So now there isn't really any real accountability when they're on the stand.
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And some of the timeframes here are so condensed.
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So the way it works is whenever a minister or someone is going to testify,
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there's a process that goes on behind the scenes of deciding how long they're going to testify.
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And then it becomes a question of who is going to question them for how long.
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For example, when Peter slowly took the stand, he was on for two full days.
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It was a Friday and a Monday, and on the Friday was all his examination, and then on Monday was
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all the cross-examination. So everyone who cross-examined him got a fair bit of time.
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You look at some other people that have been up there, like Anita Anand. She was on the stand for,
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I think, maybe two hours, and in that time, there's maybe 30 to 45 minutes for her to be
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questioned by commission counsel, 15 minutes to be cross-examined by this party, and some of them
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get like five minutes with her and when she gives a long meandering answer like there was one
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exchange that Anita Anand had with a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association I won't
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play it for you because it already you know took two minutes off of my life I don't need you to
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suffer through that as well but she was asked it was like a simple yes or no question you were out
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of the country for the first week of the convoy protest right and Anita Anand goes I was in
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Ukraine. I was in Latvia. I was in Belgium. I was talking to our partners of the Russia's invasion
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of Ukraine. And we were preparing Canada's strong defense. And we were, and I was like, oh my good
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ma'am, this is a Wendy's for crying out loud. It was a yes or no question. Were you in the country?
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No, done, move on. But that eats up like, you know, 80% of the five minutes or whatever it was.
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And, you know, the lawyer was able to ask a few more questions of Minister Anand. You start to be
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very careful about what you ask and it's like you know checking your rhetorical ammo because you
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only have you know three sentences that you can get out so you choose them very carefully and so
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she does this thing and I'm like so somehow like the emergencies act will have lots of information
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about Canada's strong commitment to supporting our Ukrainian ally which is very helpful in
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navigating whether Justin Trudeau was justified in invoking the emergencies act for some reason
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or maybe not but that's what happens so sometimes you have very compressed time frames and today
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you were starting to see a little bit of jockeying going on where they're all like swapping time like
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they're trading cards where you know the city of ottawa will give five minutes to the jccf and then
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freedom convoy organizers will give five minutes to the jccf and then jccf actually gets 15 minutes
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which uh lets anita and and answer like two questions about ukraine or something but what
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was fascinating about all of this is that they're all coming and they can see where the questions
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are going. And they try to preempt where it's going. Like there was one exchange just a little
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while ago where Anita Anand was being asked a question that was, again, a very simple binary
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question. Is the National Defense Act a law in Canada? And she just like she knew what was being
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asked of her so she wouldn't give a straight answer and then you know kept trying to outsmart
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i think it was rob kittredge who was the lawyer for the justice center for constitutional freedoms
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and it ended up just becoming a repetitive game of 20 questions where you just want the car ride
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to be over so the game can end but i do want to talk about some of the more substantive details
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that came out of this because as always sometimes it's not the testimony that is the most revealing
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but the documents and in particular the unfiltered raw document exchange that takes place between
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cabinet ministers not in the scripted talking point laden question period answers or testimony
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but how they actually engage with each other when they're just chatting us friends or colleagues
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and the big one today that comes out is this text message exchange between the public safety
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Minister Marco Mendicino and the Justice Minister David Lamedi. And I'll ask that we pull this up
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on the screen here because this is actually quite a fascinating, fascinating display. So just for
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context here, Marco Mendicino is in the gray and David Lamedi is in the blue. So David Lamedi says
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to Marco Mendicino, you need to get the police to move and the CAF if necessary. That's the Canadian
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Armed Forces. Too many people are being seriously adversely impacted by what is an occupation. I am
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getting out as soon as I can. People are looking to us slash you for leadership and not stupid people.
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People like Carney, Kath, my team. Okay, pull this down for a second. So just for context, this is on
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February 2nd. So the convoy has not even been in Ottawa for a full week at this time.
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February 2nd. So the reason I bring this up is because this exchange is happening. The convoy
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got there earlier, like the early days of the convoy were on the Friday. And it's now been
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Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, five days. And Marco Mendicino is now getting
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like a call from Justice Minister David Lamedi, essentially calling on him to bring in the police,
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to direct police, to send in the military, to do all of this stuff. But then the absolute best part
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of this, people are looking to us and you for leadership, not stupid people, people like Mark
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Carney. And I assume Catherine McKenna is Kath. It might be like Catherine McKenna, the non-binary
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councillor and former mayoral candidate. And so it might've been them, but I think it was Catherine
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McKenna and Mark Carney. So all of a sudden government policy in this country is being done
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to pacify Mark Carney and Catherine McKenna. Not the rest of you idiots. You're all stupid people.
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Your opinions don't matter. We got to keep Mark Carney and Catherine McKenna happy. Like this is
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the sort of stuff that conservatives make fun of the liberals about, but the liberals actually talk
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like this, that they're taking their marching orders in a way from people like Carney and
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McKenna and my team and David Lamedi's staffers as well. So not the dumb people, but only those
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little smart people here. And they're saying that they take their marching orders from them,
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apparently. So that is, I think, part of it. But if we can throw the text message back up on the
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screen there. So that's what David Lamedi says to Marco Mendicino. And then Marco says, how many
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tanks are you asking for? I just want to ask Anita how many we've got on hand. And then a couple
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hours later at 10 57 PM, David Lometti says, I reckon one will do. You got to like include the
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inflection for the exclamation mark. I reckon one will do. So David Lometti says one tank is what
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they think they'll need to go in and break up this group of peaceful protesters five days after
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they arrived in Ottawa. Now, if you look at that on its face, you think, wow, this seems
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pretty damaging that they were talking about sending in the military. Well,
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you just need to get a sense of humor. Here's how David Lamedi explains it.
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Remember, I'm interacting here as a colleague and Minister of Justice around the Cabinet table. I'm
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not interacting as Attorney General. Minister Mendigino and I have a close relationship.
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There's some banter here. There's some humor here. That's a reference to my favorite Christmas movie,
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the quick, quick, quick part. And so I think we could take the temperature down here.
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Oh, it's just a little bit of banter, just a little bit of banter, just a little bit of humor.
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You know, when I banter with my friends, I always talk about sending in the tanks. But the great
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thing is when you actually have the power to do it this banter takes a little bit of a different
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tone it's like just a matter like in fairness to david lametti i can't believe i'm about to say
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this if i were the cia director and i were to have like a casual conversation with friends
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i would probably just like joke about having people assassinated like that sounds like something
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that would be fun to do for the first three weeks of your job not actually doing it but i'd be like
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you know you want me to have him whacked or something i know a guy but then i'm like it's
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different if you actually do it after so i don't buy the this is just playful joking banter when
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the government actually came perilously close to sending in the military and certainly when the
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government later used wartime powers which is what the emergencies act bestows upon them
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to crack down on protesters so it's not a joke when you actually start living the punchline of it
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which is what David Lamedi and Marco Mendicino and their colleagues around the cabinet table did
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in about two weeks from that message being sent. So yeah I'm all for gallows humor but you can't
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just retreat to this oh I'm just kidding when it sounds like you're seriously considering those
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policies and I mean all these comparisons to Tiananmen Square that have been going rampant
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on Twitter today I kind of get those I absolutely get those because the government was using that
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kind of rhetoric. And remember when there were those leaked WhatsApp messages from RCMP officers
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talking about how, oh, don't, don't arrest them all. We want to get in and get our overtime. And
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oh, you know, wait till they hear our jackboots on the ground. And oh, you know, I love how you
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trampled that indigenous lady. Maybe we can practice that maneuver when we get back to camp
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or I'm paraphrasing, but that was the sentiment in those messages that were leaked. So I get when
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you have a high stress, tense job and you're in a tense situation, you crack jokes about things,
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But these don't actually sound like jokes when you see how the government responded.
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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.
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Now, this is a text message exchange about the Emergencies Act one day before the Emergencies Act was invoked.
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And it's between Greg Fergus, who's a backbench Liberal MP, and David Lamedi.
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so what e is being said here that is greg fergus on the left and he in the gray and he's referring
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to the caucus call that the liberals just had here's the consensus use the emergencies act
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close down coventry and baseline bases of operations put a solid rcmp or caf spokesman
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oh justin trudeau would not approve of the use of the word spokesman anyway rcmp or caf spokesman
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before the press since we politicians have pissed away our credibility now after that i will just
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say uh david lametti has a bit of self-awareness as well no solid rcmp spokesperson so uh clearly
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a belief on his part that brenda lucky was not earning her poutines if you will uh but greg
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fergus says we politicians have pissed away our credibility so there was an understanding by
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February 13th that a by one Liberal member of Parliament anyway that the Liberals could not
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capably sell the Emergencies Act and their response to protesters to the protests in Ottawa
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that they had no credibility and that they were responsible for it and I think this was actually
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a remarkable bit of self-awareness now Greg Fergus has said a lot of things with which I disagree he
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was one of the ones that went up there and made these sweeping accusations of racism in the convoy
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protests and obviously it sounds like there was consensus the liberal caucus was on board with
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use of the emergencies act but a lot of them we know were kind of coerced into it there were
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people that raised some frustrations like nathaniel erskine smith and joelle lightbound
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and they only went along with it because they had to thanks to justin trudeau's declaration that
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this was going to be a confidence vote and ergo one that he needed to whip but all of this is right
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now part of a liberal strategy, it seems like, that was moving towards it. David Lamedi was
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talking about the Emergencies Act going back to February 3rd. So the convoy hadn't even been there
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a week and he was already talking about Emergencies Act powers. And that's why I actually don't think
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it was just in jest when he talks about sending in a tank, which, by the way, reminded me of this
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like 16-year-old fear-mongering campaign ad that the Liberals used against Stephen Harper
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in the 2006 election. It's a famous one, but take a look.
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Stephen Harper actually announced he wants to increase military presence in our cities,
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Canadian cities, soldiers with guns in our cities.
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Now, I think what's interesting here is that the government has positioned itself as being incredibly transparent about all of this.
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But yesterday, as we saw, they were fighting tooth and nail to maintain redactions of documents that they've published.
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They're not entirely waiving cabinet confidence, and they're still holding firm on solicitor-client privilege.
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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.
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And the government's lawyer actually, sorry, the lawyer representing the government in the committee hearing, so not Lamedi,
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preemptively asserted solicitor-client privilege to prevent David Lamedi from speaking about things that involved his advice to the government that was legal advice.
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Thank you. Good morning, Commissioner. It's Andrea Gonzales, counsel for the Government of Canada.
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The next witness will be Minister of Justice David Lamedi. In addition to being Minister of Justice, of course,
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the Minister is the Attorney General of Canada, the lawyer to the Government of Canada.
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And I wanted to put on the record that the Government of Canada continues to assert and maintain
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all of its claims of solicitor client privilege in respect of all legal advice and opinions.
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Minister Lametti's attendance here as a witness is not a waiver of any claims of privilege by
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the government of Canada, which he has an obligation to protect. We will be objecting
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to and Minister Lametti will be refusing to answer all questions that would delve into
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areas of solicitor client privilege. So I just wanted to put that on the record at the front end.
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And hopefully examinations can be appropriately tailored to keep the objections to a minimum.
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Okay, well, it will be an interesting maneuver throughout the testimony, but I'm sure everyone will be on their guard.
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So with that, perhaps we can swear the witness.
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Now, at the end of Minister Lamedi's testimony, the commissioner was very measured about it,
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but he was raising issues about how all of a sudden this privilege is blocking what's become
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a pretty significant part of this inquiry, which is what legal advice the government had on the
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Emergencies Act. Now, I am not a lawyer, which is probably a very good thing for would-be clients
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of mine. But the thing that's interesting about this is that I realize solicitor-client privilege
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is sacrosanct. It's very important. And even the government is entitled to solicitor-client
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privilege. But we're talking about legislation that is under investigation right now. And we're
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talking about legislation where the government's legal advice is very important to what information
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the government had about the applicability of the Emergencies Act. Because remember, if you do a
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plain text reading of the Emergencies Act, it says that a threat to the security of Canada has a
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definition that is the one set out in the CSIS Act. And if you read the CSIS Act, you don't see
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anything there supporting the government's interpretation that that existed in Canada.
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And the government has now said, and we've heard from a couple of witnesses, that, well,
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there's sort of a broader definition than just the CSIS Act, but nowhere in the legislation does it
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say that. So if the government went to its lawyer, David Lamedi, and said, Councillor, tell us,
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where is our legal basis for this i think his advice is entirely material and it's despicable
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that this government claims to be transparent they're like oh we're so transparent we're even
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sharing joking text messages between ministers but they're not sharing the stuff that actually
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matters the stuff that gets to the core of why the government thought it could pull one over on
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canadians suspend their civil liberties all the while claiming they were not and this was another
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takeaway today from david lametti's testimony that infuriated me because the government's line
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about this has been that oh the emergencies act is charter compliant yes it says right in there
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it's charter compliant it can say whatever it wants it can say that the sky is purple
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that doesn't mean it's true because we know the police went in and removed protesters that were
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on sidewalks that were behaving peacefully that didn't have trucks and threatened them with arrest
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if they did not leave. Lamedi was questioned about that. Watch.
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When Minister Mendicino was here yesterday, he said that he believed that, although he would
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characterize, I think, at the same way that the protest was illegal, that there were thousands
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of people who were aiming to protest lawfully, and thousands of people who were. So not people
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who were blocking trucks, people who were simply on the streets, on their feet, protesting peacefully.
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Okay. And the orders that were put in place under the Emergencies Act required those people
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They always had the option to go somewhere else to protest legally. When the blockade
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was cleared, people moved down the street, Wellington Street in Ottawa, towards Booth,
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and they protested on the side of the road, not impeding traffic, not impeding pedestrians,
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manifesting their political beliefs, waving signs. That was completely legal. Throughout
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all of this, those people had an option to move to protest legally, and they didn't.
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okay so you had a right to protest you just couldn't protest there so yeah this is actually
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a great strategy the government can just say no no no you're not allowed to protest on wellington
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street but if you want to go up to like baffin island and protest you are free to do so and
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yeah no you can protest uh down the road keep going yeah no keep keep going i'll tell you when
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you get there no no no keep yeah keep keep going if i can still see you you're too close yeah okay
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yeah more more more just just go so far away we can't see you that is not defending the right of
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lawful assembly so minister lametti's point here is that oh and anyone could keep protesting they
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just had to move well that doesn't deal with the question that first off government never
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communicated to that police never communicated that which is why there were stories of folks
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being threatened with arrest or actually arrested who had no vehicles that were just walking down
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Albert Street. And this was something that even if the government intended it, which I don't
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believe it did, was not filtering down to the situation on the ground. So we are going to talk
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about this more in future shows. But again, the man does not live on Public Order Emergency
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Commission alone. I want to talk about this story, which has not gotten a lot of coverage. In fact,
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as of last look, had no coverage in the mainstream media. And that is the amendment put forward by
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the liberals in committee to bill c-21 this is the firearms regulation bill that's coming down
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the pipeline and this amendment i just want to read directly from the amendments that were put
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forward before committee changes the definition or adds to the definition of a prohibited firearm
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the following a firearm that is a rifle or shotgun that is capable of discharging center
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fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner and that is designed to accept a detachable cartridge
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magazine with a capacity greater than five cartridges of the type for which the firearm
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was originally designed. Now, if you're a gun owner, you're seething right now. If you're not
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a gun owner, you're like, what the hell did he just say? It is a firearm that has a round of
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ammunition that's basically anything other than a .22, which is a little tiny cartridge and has
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a magazine that takes more than five rounds of ammunition. Let's talk about why this matters.
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Rod Giltaka is here, head of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights. Rod, good to talk to you as
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always. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me. So what types of guns are we talking
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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
0.91
00:28:06.440
are unlikely to vote for the liberals. Yeah. And, and, you know, this abandons in my view,
0.90
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
00:34:47.460
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
00:34:59.080
which means that if you have a license, you buy one.
00:35:02.920
Something like this, I feel is just logistically impossible to prohibit because you can't enforce
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.
00:35:42.520
And what happens is reasonable, law-abiding people are just like, well, wait a minute.
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.
00:35:56.540
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.
00:37:48.440
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.
00:38:06.140
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
00:43:38.620
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:43:40.780
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.