Juno News - Liberal ministers rally behind Justin Trudeau

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.680 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lawton show

00:01:29.780 on this wednesday june 26 2024 just after one o'clock eastern time that makes it a rather

00:01:37.560 convivial still 10 a.m for you folks on the west coast and 11 a.m in just getting to lunchtime if

00:01:44.580 you are in Alberta, and I think Saskatchewan is two hours right now. Yeah, Saskatchewan's the

00:01:50.240 weird one, and the time always bounces around, and don't even get me started on the crazy

00:01:53.700 Newfoundlanders with your 30-minute time zone. But anyway, wherever you are, whether you're

00:01:57.500 listening live or tuned in on our podcast or YouTube, or I don't really think you're allowed

00:02:02.900 to get us on Facebook anymore, but maybe you found the way around Bill C18, I welcome you to

00:02:08.220 the show. I want to begin today by talking a little bit more about the conservative upset

00:02:13.700 in Toronto St. Paul's Monday night.

00:02:15.840 This was the tremendous and rather unforeseen victory

00:02:19.460 by Conservative candidate Don Stewart,

00:02:22.000 now MP-elect Don Stewart,

00:02:24.520 over the Liberals' hand-picked Leslie Church

00:02:27.140 in a riding that the Liberals have held for more than 30 years.

00:02:31.980 This is a Liberal stronghold,

00:02:33.900 as we said time and time again throughout the show yesterday

00:02:36.180 and as other commentators have pointed out.

00:02:39.080 And the big question, which I knew the answer to already,

00:02:41.900 but the pundits nevertheless were asking it was,

00:02:44.580 ooh, will Justin Trudeau resign over this?

00:02:47.240 Will he resign?

00:02:48.200 Will he finally take the hint and go?

00:02:50.520 Well, the answer is basically no.

00:02:53.420 This is what he said yesterday at a press conference

00:02:55.400 that took place during this very show

00:02:57.160 in which he decided not to take any questions from reporters.

00:03:01.280 Oh, we don't have that.

00:03:02.080 Nevermind.

00:03:03.000 Basically, Justin Trudeau said,

00:03:04.600 wait, we do or we don't?

00:03:08.200 I don't know if we, oh, we don't.

00:03:09.600 Okay.

00:03:10.160 Sean said, we don't have,

00:03:11.220 oh never mind we don't and i didn't know if he was never minding the uh we don't or never minding

00:03:15.780 that we do anyway uh maybe well you don't want to hear justin trudeau anyway so uh justin trudeau

00:03:20.580 was uh basically saying he's not going to go anywhere there's work to do and yada yada yada

00:03:25.140 and as if to drive home the point he has had all of the little trained monkey cabinet ministers

00:03:31.620 uh coming out in the course of their press conferences across the country yesterday and

00:03:37.140 and today, telling us that they have confidence in Justin Trudeau.

00:03:41.680 Here was Karina Gould on with Vashti Capellos.

00:03:45.360 Minister, should the Prime Minister resign as leader of your party?

00:03:49.320 No, no.

00:03:50.960 Why not?

00:03:52.680 Well, look, I mean, yes, yesterday was definitely a tough loss for us as Liberals.

00:03:58.760 I mean, we certainly didn't expect to lose in Toronto St. Paul's.

00:04:03.080 Start by congratulating Mr. Stewart on his win.

00:04:06.480 He obviously worked very hard and thanking Leslie Church, our fantastic candidate, who ran an excellent campaign.

00:04:14.200 But, you know, it was it was a message for us, certainly, that we need to do better, that we need to listen more closely to what the voters, not just in Toronto, St. Paul's, but right across the country are telling us.

00:04:27.900 But no, I don't think it means that the prime minister needs to resign.

00:04:33.420 Oh, we're going to listen.

00:04:34.980 Yeah, no, it hadn't actually occurred to anyone before now to listen, but that's Karina Gould's

00:04:40.180 great promise. We're just going to listen. And Mark Miller decided to, he used some weird

00:04:46.180 wrestling analogy at one point, but he decided the immigration minister, Mark Miller, to go on

00:04:51.480 the offensive and take aim at Pierre Polyev when he was asked. Now, he used some dirty words here,

00:04:58.420 so we had to bleep it for our delicate ears, but this was Mark Miller on Pierre Polyev this morning.

00:05:04.980 How can the government appeal to voters who support Mr. Prodiev when members of the government, including yourself, have called them things like a snake oil salesman or, as you said earlier, a wrestling manager from the 80s?

00:05:16.960 Look, I've been quite clear. I think the guy's a fake. We shouldn't focus too much on this guy. 0.82

00:05:22.960 I think Canadians are smart. And as I've said, Canadians have pretty good bullet detectors and they know when they're being bulleted.

00:05:29.300 And that's just the reality of things.

00:05:31.220 i think over the course of the year people will realize that and and and i you know i trust you

00:05:37.060 got to trust canadians they sent us a note they sent us a message on uh well earlier yesterday

00:05:43.700 morning and that's a message that we can't ignore so yes uh yes we have someone that uh is peddling

00:05:54.340 politics that we have not seen in canada in my lifetime but i don't think in the history of

00:05:59.460 canada he's imported it from the south in his own style and it works for him so let it work for him

00:06:06.020 let canadians be the judge we also have a job to govern over the next year and that means

00:06:10.500 actually doing the work canadians are frustrated with us for their own reasons that have nothing

00:06:14.100 to do with pierre polyev he's uh he's weaponizing that let's be clear about that but let's also talk

00:06:20.420 about visions of canada i love my country i'm gonna fight for every inch of it he's a bs-er 0.95

00:06:25.780 he's a snake oil salesman he's a wrestler wrestling manager from the 80s i'm sure that

00:06:30.660 reference means something to someone but uh he says oh well you know canadians don't like that

00:06:35.300 canadians aren't really fond of that we shouldn't even pay any attention to uh him mark miller said

00:06:40.580 now let me first off say here that i think people should very very much pay attention and and they

00:06:47.140 should pay attention so much that they might be interested in perhaps reading a biography that's

00:06:52.260 It's been written about Pierre Pauly.

00:06:54.000 Oh, well, you look at here.

00:06:56.220 Oh, my God, I forgot I wrote one of these things.

00:06:58.360 So it's already been on the bestsellers list for, I hope, today it will be five weeks.

00:07:03.900 The list hasn't come out today.

00:07:05.220 So unlike what Mark Miller says there, Canadians are actually paying attention to him and do care what he has to say.

00:07:11.860 The reason that the Conservatives did so well in Toronto St. Paul's on Monday is because, in part, they are not buying the Liberal doomsaying about Pierre Paulyev.

00:07:21.180 They are not buying the Liberal attacks and smears about him.

00:07:24.420 They're finding him at worst for the Liberals likable or at best just not as unlikable as the Liberals have been trying to pretend.

00:07:32.820 But what's interesting here is that all of these MPs and ministers that have been coming out are saying the same thing.

00:07:38.120 Yes, I have confidence. Yes, I have confidence. Yes, he's going to be great. It's awesome.

00:07:42.040 I mean, no, of course he doesn't need to step down.

00:07:44.320 Now, Ryan Turnbull, who's a backbench MP, had said that he'll, well, he's, he, he, let

00:07:50.900 me just hear what he said in his words.

00:07:52.740 It was a little bit more tepid than it was from Mark Miller.

00:07:56.980 To follow up to that, since you mentioned the by-election last night, what does it say

00:08:02.680 about your leader's ability to lead the party to a general election win next fall?

00:08:07.860 Well, I think that's hard to predict, right?

00:08:10.120 I mean, I think from my perspective, we've had a leader of the Liberal Party and the Government of Canada

00:08:18.600 that's done an impeccable job for many years now, and it's hard for me to pronounce on his leadership ability.

00:08:28.420 All I've seen is great leadership coming from him, from my perspective.

00:08:32.900 And so, you know, I continue to support our Prime Minister,

00:08:35.900 and I know that he'll have to re-evaluate

00:08:39.020 and look at the results of last night by election

00:08:41.880 and do some reflecting, but that's up to him.

00:08:46.100 Ah, he'll do some reflecting.

00:08:48.020 So when he's finished doing the listening

00:08:49.940 that Karina Gould has prescribed,

00:08:52.340 he'll do some reflecting, he'll do some soul searching

00:08:55.300 and then all roads will lead to Mark Miller's view

00:08:57.540 that, ah, well, Pierre Polyev is a BSer,

00:08:59.740 no Canadians like him, even though, well, what's this?

00:09:02.720 Oh yeah, a new poll came out today

00:09:04.260 and showed him up 19 percent so it's not as good as the 20 he was up in the abacus poll last week

00:09:10.740 now he's up only 19 so maybe the liberals will get to you know keep one more toronto seat the

00:09:15.700 way things are going right now so the liberals don't get that they are the problem sarah stock

00:09:21.700 who is a young relatively new reporter with rebel news went over to leslie church's campaign office

00:09:28.100 as they were packing things up i don't know if it was yesterday or today and she heard a remarkably

00:09:33.780 fascinating explanation from one of leslie church's campaign volunteers for why leslie church

00:09:40.020 and the liberals really lost and uh would you believe if if i said they think it's foreign

00:09:45.620 interference surprise she was leading by 700 and then uh woke up this morning and uh it was about

00:09:56.060 590 for Stuart.

00:09:58.760 Why do you think that is?

00:10:00.960 I think there was electoral interference by Melissa Lansman. 1.00

00:10:05.380 She sent letters to the Jewish community to vote for Conservative.

00:10:11.320 What are your guys' thoughts on the election results from last night?

00:10:19.900 Oh, when I said foreign interference, I didn't mean from China or India.

00:10:24.140 No, no, no. It was Thornhill interference. Melissa Lansman, the deputy leader of the

00:10:30.100 Conservative Party, an MP for Thornhill, which is, I don't know, like 15 minutes from this writing,

00:10:35.600 she was interfering by sending out a letter supporting the Conservatives. This is why on

00:10:40.840 campaigns you want to give your volunteers a basic level of media training. This poor guy,

00:10:45.400 I mean, good for him. He's getting involved in democracy. He's doing the work of dismantling

00:10:49.040 signs, volunteering on a campaign after you've lost would be incredibly demoralizing. So good

00:10:55.160 on him. And you know what? He spoke to the media. Good for him as well. But the answer is remarkably

00:11:00.960 revealing. There's no way the Conservatives could have just won that election fair and square.

00:11:05.480 There had to have been nefarious interference from that foreign hostile state actor that is 0.64

00:11:11.660 the riding of Thornhill. Frank Graves, who is a Liberal pollster, had posted this this morning.

00:11:18.380 And again, my position on this is that the liberals are just so baffled that anyone could not vote for them.

00:11:23.860 They have to come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories for why not.

00:11:27.220 So Frank Graves is trying to say that conservative voters are all prone to disinformation.

00:11:33.440 If you opposed vaccine mandates, he believes you are disinformed.

00:11:37.960 And he's trying to basically say that conservatives are all knuckle dragging rubes who are injecting disinformation into their veins.

00:11:44.180 because that's the only way to explain how the Conservatives could possibly win in Toronto St. Paul's. 0.75

00:11:51.540 It is absolutely absurd.

00:11:54.020 And what's interesting is that this is just, I mean, this, what's the word that I'm looking for

00:11:59.740 that I can say in an audience that might have a few children?

00:12:02.740 I'll tone it down a little bit.

00:12:04.560 The utter deference to Justin Trudeau is only coming from federal Liberal MPs and Cabinet Ministers.

00:12:10.400 other people in the broader liberal family are not all on team Trudeau in fact Bonnie Crombie

00:12:16.720 who's the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party and she is formerly a Liberal MP she served

00:12:22.500 alongside Justin Trudeau and she was in federal politics before she became the mayor of Mississauga

00:12:27.460 and now she's in provincial politics and I went to school with her son as a fun fact it was actually

00:12:32.840 at a house party hosted by him so not everyone can be it was like a liberal conservative thing

00:12:37.740 on campus everyone got along it was a simpler time but uh bonnie cry now i brought it adam alex

00:12:42.760 crombie is going to get canceled now because uh you know people learned he was hanging out with

00:12:46.020 me in university but anyway or maybe bonnie crombie will be canceled uh but anyway so bonnie

00:12:51.380 crombie she was asked about the justin trudeau brand by a reporter colin de bello at queen's

00:12:57.900 park and it was interesting how much distance she was trying to put between herself and justin

00:13:02.900 Trudeau as a liberal. Do you think that at this point your personal support in Ontario would be

00:13:10.820 better off if the prime minister was no longer the prime minister? You know I respect our prime

00:13:16.460 minister. I've worked very closely with him. I'm not going to make any comment about our federal

00:13:20.960 party. The progressive conservatives have already deployed commercials trying to paint Crombie as a

00:13:26.380 Trudeau liberal. Oh the new Ontario liberal leader. Of course friends with Justin Trudeau. Crombie

00:13:32.660 is hitting back i think the bigger friend is is is doug ford is the closer friend of justin trudeau

00:13:38.340 you see them um in photographs and in meetings together uh quite often i probably speak to the

00:13:45.140 prime minister less than once a year i love that the ontario election if it's called early is

00:13:50.900 going to be like who knows justin trudeau better vote against that person so bonnie crombie is

00:13:55.700 basically hanging up on justin trudeau just so she can say no no no doug ford's out there with him

00:14:00.340 he's the Trudeau guy, not me. So if you're an Ontarian, I mean, you've heard Doug Ford do this

00:14:05.400 at press conferences. Oh yeah, Chrystia Freeland's a real champ. She's a friend. She's a real champion.

00:14:10.080 He says all sorts of nice things. We'll get back to the Jewish aspect of this, of Toronto St. Paul's

00:14:16.100 a little bit later on in the show and how anti-Semitism did motivate a lot of votes

00:14:20.320 towards the Conservatives that historically have not gone there. But I first want to talk about

00:14:24.800 something that should be able to unite us all, which is our hatred of dissolving paper straws.

00:14:29.620 I know the plastics ban is something that the federal court ruled was unconstitutional, but the Liberal government is still defending it.

00:14:37.880 And in fact, this very week, the Liberals are defending it in the Federal Court of Appeal.

00:14:43.840 Intervening on the anti-ban side of the equation is Christine Van Gein's group, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, where she is the litigation director.

00:14:53.320 And she joins us now. Christine, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:14:57.420 Thanks for having me on, Andrew. 0.99

00:14:58.920 Now, I mean, I'm just against like the ban on principle because I despise the stupid paper straws. You're actually taking an argument that is far more rooted in the Constitution than just, you know, your honor, the paper straws are crap. So what's the argument here? 0.99

00:15:12.160 Yeah, I mean, so the case is about plastics. It's about this federal plastics ban. You know,

00:15:17.440 as an organization, I don't feel especially strongly about the issue. I mean, I like sea

00:15:23.640 turtles. I don't like paper straws. But what bothered me about this federal plastics ban

00:15:30.540 isn't just that it isn't really the paper straws. It's a much bigger issue. It's that the federal

00:15:36.420 government, the Trudeau government seems obsessed with trying to overregulate the lives of Canadians

00:15:42.140 by meddling in provinces' businesses, contrary to our constitutional division of powers.

00:15:47.640 And we've seen this happen before.

00:15:49.540 I mean, the Impact Assessment Act reference was all about this.

00:15:54.120 But basically what happened in this case was the federal cabinet, by way of regulation,

00:16:01.080 so there was no debate in parliament about this, they deemed every single plastic product

00:16:06.120 from safety helmets for construction site workers to life jackets to pipes to plastic straws and

00:16:16.020 store sticks. Every single one of them has been deemed toxic under a federal cabinet order. And

00:16:24.520 I think a lot of Canadians would be surprised to learn that this was done through Parliament's

00:16:29.500 power to regulate the criminal law. So they signed this order claiming that this is under

00:16:34.840 their criminal law authority the problem is that is not how the federal criminal law authority

00:16:40.120 works you don't just say something is under criminal law under federal criminal law power

00:16:45.560 and suddenly that is like an incantation and you say those words and it makes it so

00:16:52.040 it's not like bibbidi-bobbidi plastic man uh it doesn't make saying it doesn't make it so

00:16:57.480 so they actually need to show that it it would be an actually dangerous substance uh which of course

00:17:04.840 plastics, which are ubiquitous in our society, are not. There are varying levels of potential harm

00:17:14.020 and potential safety. So it was overly broad. I spoke about this a few weeks back with a plastics

00:17:20.820 expert who, he was approaching this from the science perspective, which is that calling

00:17:25.060 plastics toxic is in and of itself incredibly wrong. And he had a litany of evidence and

00:17:31.620 research and studies he showed the reality is we wrap medical products in plastic we make medical

00:17:37.880 products out of plastic we eat and drink with plastic and out of plastic so if this was all

00:17:43.500 toxic that is probably going to spell a much greater problem here I'm curious in this case

00:17:48.460 how much of that argument is relevant or is this strictly an up and down constitutional question

00:17:53.880 of is this a criminal matter no so that was a big part of it it's just not what our particular

00:17:58.640 interest is. Yeah, you're an intervener in the case, just for context. You're not the litigant.

00:18:04.520 So the first day of the hearing, the federal government spent a lot of time describing

00:18:08.860 the potential harms from plastics. And there were some environmental regulators like animal justice

00:18:15.600 and eco justice who talked about the hypotheticals about animals. Frankly, they're not hypotheticals,

00:18:24.060 the ring carriers that can harm birds and things like that.

00:18:28.200 The problem is, it's this wildly expansive argument

00:18:32.740 to say that every single plastic item

00:18:37.120 has the same level of potential danger

00:18:39.980 and therefore they are all toxic.

00:18:42.660 I mean, the council for the plastics coalition

00:18:46.580 who brought this challenge,

00:18:48.140 she talked about how she wears contact lenses

00:18:51.660 And these are quite different in nature from a plastic straw.

00:18:55.620 And with the government, if they want to regulate some specific harm, for example, this this this issue that people are always bringing up of the plastic straws being stuck in sea turtles noses, that it's it's actually more about the shape and the the the way the plastic straws are disposed of than it is about the fact that they're made of plastic.

00:19:20.140 Yeah, like a metal straw that would be reusable that, you know, got lodged in a sea turtle, I imagine, would be just as bad, if not worse.

00:19:26.300 Yeah, so, I mean, what they need to do is actually show that there's potential harm, there's some level of harm that could justify putting plastics as an entire category of items onto the list of toxic substances.

00:19:43.100 And we argued that it's just wildly expansive, that you can't just say something is harmful.

00:19:51.780 You need to actually have some evidence that it's harmful and that this expansive approach

00:19:58.080 is inappropriate.

00:19:58.900 And it's an abuse of the federal government's criminal law power.

00:20:03.620 I remember with the carbon tax case that you were involved in with another organization,

00:20:08.700 you had some interveners that were really trying to push the emergency angle.

00:20:12.600 say the federal government can act on climate policy because it's an emergency are we hearing

00:20:17.320 any of that on the plastics case no that it wasn't on on those grounds that's good i was it was but

00:20:23.400 that problem is a lot of environmental policy it tends to be uh you know defended on i think some

00:20:28.600 some grounds that are just absolutely absurd and here you have a government that's just being very

00:20:32.360 ideological about it and as you know they're just trying to will this constitutional basis

00:20:37.880 and authority into reality when there doesn't seem to be a basis for it yeah i think what we

00:20:42.280 need to think about is when the framers of our original constitution in the 1860s decided that

00:20:49.400 they were going to give the federal government and not the provinces control of criminal law

00:20:55.080 it was premised on the idea that parliament would be using that authority to prevent actual harm

00:21:01.640 not just meddling in in the day-to-day lives of Canadians and when the government overreaches like

00:21:08.120 this when the federal government overreaches like this they are um what it's referred what lawyers

00:21:14.120 call ultra veras it's outside of the scope of their authority and that makes it the the use

00:21:19.080 of the power in this way unconstitutional that's why the lower court struck down this plastics ban

00:21:26.600 as unconstitutional it was it there was not evidence that these products are harmful uh as

00:21:33.000 as an entire category and why there is a stay in place.

00:21:38.400 So I think that we need to think about the broader problems,

00:21:44.840 the bigger threat of allowing the federal government

00:21:48.360 to overreach this way,

00:21:49.500 because Canadian federalism is a genius,

00:21:53.360 brilliant innovation.

00:21:55.440 It prevents the concentration of power

00:21:58.620 within any single institution or level of government.

00:22:01.560 And it creates these sort of laboratories of democracy across Canada where different jurisdictions can tailor different policy solutions and figure out what works best.

00:22:10.380 And waste management has been under the scope of authority of provincial and municipal jurisdictions.

00:22:16.940 And some provinces, some municipalities have decided to take one approach to plastics regulation or plastic recycling or waste management.

00:22:26.060 And other provinces have taken different approaches.

00:22:28.220 it's not for the federal government to come in then and use a sweeping authority to claim

00:22:34.580 their ability to regulate every single type of plastic imaginable under the

00:22:41.620 claim that it's a criminal law issue i'm always curious in why people advocate against their own

00:22:48.400 self-interest and their own autonomy and and in this i'm looking at british columbia

00:22:53.120 which as a province has said regardless of what happens with this case they're going to continue

00:22:58.040 to regulate things at the provincial level they've got the right to do that yet they're in this case

00:23:02.780 defending Ottawa's right like why are they as a province not seeing the concerns with this imagine

00:23:07.620 if perhaps a conservative government that is more hostile to the agenda of the BC NDP government

00:23:12.980 comes in and wants to trample into jurisdiction in a different direction I mean sometimes people

00:23:19.200 intervene or make arguments on an outcome-based approach they just like a particular outcome

00:23:24.940 It's really difficult to take a position like we do at the Canadian Constitution Foundation, where you need to think about the big picture, and not just your immediate self interest. So yes, British Columbia typically sides with more stringent environmental regulation. So if they're looking at it at an outcome based approach, then that's why they would argue this, but it isn't looking at the big picture.

00:23:52.440 And I think if you think about this issue from the big picture perspective, there's all kinds of things that the federal government may use to or will try to claim are under the federal criminal law power in order to sweep in their ability to regulate.

00:24:09.080 So it's widely assumed that Canada is going to uphold oil and gas emissions caps and the Clean Electricity Regulation, which are both currently in draft form, through the criminal law power under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

00:24:25.100 There's concern that the federal government would try to regulate things like the electricity market or technology options using the criminal law power.

00:24:35.720 And Ottawa would essentially, in this regard, become master of all environmental policy in our country.

00:24:41.680 And when you think about it in a big picture like that, that may not be in British Columbia's best interest, even though siding with the federal government in this particular case may get them the outcome that they prefer.

00:24:56.240 Well, we'll certainly keep an eye out for this. I know the wheels of justice tend to move quite slowly. Do you anticipate when a decision will be made, keeping in mind that it could very well go to the Supreme Court beyond that?

00:25:08.380 Yeah, so typically we say in appeals, we expect a decision within six months.

00:25:14.460 Sometimes it's sooner, sometimes it's longer.

00:25:16.880 So that's the only guidance I can give you.

00:25:20.160 Yeah, it'll come when it comes is basically the less polished answer there.

00:25:25.220 Christine Van Gein, Litigation Director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

00:25:28.740 Keep up the great work and thanks for coming on today.

00:25:31.460 Always a pleasure, Andrew.

00:25:32.920 All right, thanks very much, Christine.

00:25:34.640 I wanted to take a bit of a different spin on this.

00:25:37.180 Obviously, the results of the Toronto St. Paul's by-election are well known by now.

00:25:41.900 But there was mobilizing behind the scenes a campaign that even I had only peripherally been made aware of closer to the end of it.

00:25:49.760 And it was a campaign to advocate in the riding at a riding level for Jews and allies of Jews to realize that, hey, anti-Semitism is a big problem and you need a political change to deal with that.

00:26:03.460 that was a campaign called jewishally.ca, and it was the brainchild of a gentleman who's been a

00:26:10.920 guest on this show a couple of times, Andrew Kirsch, who's a former CSIS intelligence officer,

00:26:16.140 also author of the book I Was Never Here, which is a fantastic book, and you should go back and

00:26:21.440 look at my long-form interview with Andrew. I think it was a couple of years back now when

00:26:25.400 that book came out, and he had reached out to a longtime friend of mine, Stephen Taylor,

00:26:30.340 who is a longtime conservative activist as well

00:26:33.380 and has experience setting up

00:26:34.800 what are called third party groups.

00:26:36.860 These are groups that are not political parties,

00:26:39.520 but they're engaged and regulated

00:26:41.200 and registered with Elections Canada

00:26:42.920 to mobilize on issues.

00:26:45.580 So I wanted to delve into exactly what this was,

00:26:48.160 why it was important

00:26:48.960 and what it might mean for the future

00:26:51.100 with an election coming up

00:26:52.720 in potentially 15 months or less.

00:26:55.600 Andrew Kirsch and Stephen Taylor join me now.

00:26:58.140 Andrew, Stephen, thank you so much for coming on today. Good to talk.

00:27:01.900 Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Now, I'll start with you, Andrew, because you and I

00:27:06.620 were candidates for the provincial election in 2018 at the same time. And I would have said at

00:27:12.400 the beginning of the election that I had a much greater shot at getting elected than you because

00:27:16.120 you were running in St. Paul's, which at the time was, you know, I'm curious about your sort of sense

00:27:21.940 of what your chances of winning were going in. Of course, in the end, we both lost. So, you know,

00:27:26.480 the joke is on me, but you've still very much stayed involved in this, I think. And especially

00:27:32.540 now that you're out of CSIS, you've got the ability to be a lot more forceful and forthright

00:27:37.360 about your political leanings, of course. But explain to me why you wanted to get involved in

00:27:42.960 this campaign. Well, I'm born and raised in Toronto St. Paul's. I live in Toronto St. Paul's

00:27:48.640 right now, raising my family here. So, and I ran in 2018. People said, you know, why Toronto St.

00:27:55.320 calls because of that kind of long shot well that's that's where i live that's where i wanted

00:27:59.640 to represent so i'm very familiar with how challenging uh a riding that it is i had to

00:28:06.440 obviously take a step back from involvement formal involvement when we did this third party

00:28:11.800 and really i wanted to organize around an issue that was important to me that had

00:28:17.560 particular resonance in in the riding we toronto st paul's does have i think the fifth largest

00:28:22.040 Jewish population, member of the Jewish community. And since October 7th, not just the events of

00:28:29.540 October 7th, really the response since then, there's been growing, the Jewish community's

00:28:35.020 been upset, disappointed by the response of the liberal government to rising anti-Semitism. I

00:28:42.380 say that the Jewish community has diverse views on Israel, on the conduct of the current conflict,

00:28:48.560 But we're very united in the concern about anti-Semitism, that there are protests coming through our neighborhood, that our Jewish day schools and synagogues are being shot at and firebombed.

00:28:59.360 And so I kind of want to take a step back from the campaign to start this, to think of what a way to raise awareness of this issue in a riding where it was uniquely affected by it and had an opportunity in the by-election to raise awareness of it.

00:29:15.700 And of course, this campaign takes the form of what's called Jewish Ally, the website's still online, jewishally.ca. How did you get involved, Stephen?

00:29:27.500 Well, Andrew reached out in January and said, look, he wanted to obviously react to this

00:29:34.860 rising anti-Semitism that, you know, we've all seen. And again, he, you know, he mentioned the

00:29:41.400 violence in the community and, you know, by-election is a perfect time to register your

00:29:48.460 distaste with how things are going and how the government is handling these affairs and its

00:29:55.840 reaction to the rising anti-semitism and violence against the jewish community

00:29:59.920 so he reached out and um i said let's let's build something that's first of all um positive it it

00:30:08.160 kind of re reaffirms some hope within the community and and uh its friends so uh i pitched the idea

00:30:16.480 jewishally.ca as a way to sort of uh rally uh the jewish community and its allies so you don't

00:30:25.440 necessarily have to be jewish to uh support it uh but uh it is especially you know to support the

00:30:31.200 jewish community and and allow its allies a venue to do so so i'll go back to you on on this andrew

00:30:38.400 i mean your experience here is obviously based on you being very committed to toronto saint paul's

00:30:44.320 is there an extrapolation that you could do or plan to do with this beyond because

00:30:49.280 well not every riding is going to have the jewish population of toronto saint paul's

00:30:53.360 the anti-Semitism issue is still pervasive very much across the country.

00:30:58.840 Absolutely. You know, I think that the community was very upset, very mobilized by what we were

00:31:07.800 seeing on our streets. And I think, not to be overly cynical, but, you know, the Jewish community

00:31:13.220 is only a large community in a small number of ridings, and that there may have been a political

00:31:17.300 calculation done by the government that, well, if we're very forceful in support of Israel,

00:31:22.140 then maybe there are other ridings that we will upset where you know there are different communities

00:31:28.540 who react differently so that's why i felt it was important for our community to have a voice and

00:31:34.460 to be able to speak out about the issues that are important to us where you know unfortunately just

00:31:40.620 by numbers that that might not always have the opportunity or might not always resonate or may

00:31:44.940 not always find an audience so we need to be a little a little stronger uh together absolutely

00:31:50.700 do i think that there unfortunately is a growing need for this not less and how that you know

00:31:56.700 goes going forward i'm not sure but this issue still remains that we are seeing rising anti-semitism

00:32:03.900 we are seeing on our streets we can debate the the criminal code definitions of hate but

00:32:09.340 intimidation of this community of my community of our community in our neighborhoods it seems like

00:32:15.740 daily if not at least weekly these these incidents are happening so until we see change we're gonna

00:32:21.180 need all the voices out there calling for it now this isn't just uh you know a website with you

00:32:26.940 know some lofty goals this was actually a campaign and third-party advertising can sometimes get a

00:32:33.100 bit of a bad rap but it's a part of the democratic process and there are a bunch of rules governing

00:32:37.180 how it's supposed to go about so i'll go to you steven because i know you've been in the trenches

00:32:41.100 on a lot of political fights over the years.

00:32:42.860 What were you tactically doing with this?

00:32:45.420 And how do you think that you actually did move the needle in the riding?

00:32:50.180 Yeah, well, being a by-election, we were quite limited by Elections Canada

00:32:54.060 and sort of the scope of what we could do.

00:32:56.720 I mean, if you're running a federal campaign,

00:32:59.180 third parties have much larger budgets that they're allowed to spend.

00:33:03.000 But I think in this by-election, Elections Canada had us at a cap

00:33:07.620 of about just over $5,000.

00:33:09.440 dollars. And so we wanted to make sure that every dollar that we spent on advertising in the

00:33:16.720 campaign was most effective. So we targeted, it was the first local election campaign where

00:33:25.400 when I targeted ads, I targeted less than the whole riding geographically. So targeted basically

00:33:32.760 the blocks with high Jewish population to remind them of the failures of the Trudeau government 1.00

00:33:42.600 with respect to addressing the concerns of the community. And we focused all of our resources

00:33:49.060 essentially in that area. And while the cost to reach such a small area might have been a little

00:33:56.880 higher. We think that the dollars spent on advertising to that very small. You talk about

00:34:03.040 microcasting, microcasting to a few blocks for GOTV is intense when it comes to online digital

00:34:12.220 advertising. And were you, with your targeting efforts, and I know that Facebook and other

00:34:18.160 platforms have changed what you can do over the years, but were you trying to target people you

00:34:22.680 believed were Jews in St. Paul's? Or were you just targeting anyone in that riding, knowing that

00:34:27.600 it was going to have a disproportionately larger group of Jewish voters than other parts of the

00:34:31.940 country might? No, there was no demographic targeting. It was geographic targeting. So we

00:34:36.640 really just kind of dropped a pin on the map and said, you know, higher likelihood that, you know,

00:34:43.080 Jewish individuals and Jewish families live here. So we wanted to get them out to vote

00:34:48.200 because we knew that that would register quite a message and a verdict against the government

00:34:56.000 with respect to its dealings since the events of October 7th. Yeah. And if I can add kind of

00:35:02.680 Jewish allies, it's not, you don't have to be Jewish. And we were saying that the Jewish

00:35:06.400 community was not feeling safe. And our message was no safe seats until the Jewish community feels 1.00

00:35:12.700 safe. Your neighbors are not okay. Your Jewish friends are not okay. And this is a way to show 1.00

00:35:16.840 some support for the community. And I also want to say, as a former candidate, all credit should

00:35:22.760 go to Don Stewart and his team and the amazing, incredible work that they did in the by-election

00:35:28.600 to get turnout and all those things. We were doing our kind of separate thing. I don't want

00:35:33.080 to take anything away from all they did, but just to say that what motivated kind of me and us,

00:35:40.280 and ultimately I think a lot of people in the riding, was this issue. And we felt that by

00:35:45.160 shining a light on it and kind of raising awareness of the by-election you know when

00:35:49.240 people by elections come and go by elections in the summer a big concern that people would know

00:35:53.560 about it that that we could raise some awareness and say this is an issue that's important you

00:35:57.720 passionate to you and support for your neighbors in the community this is an opportunity to raise

00:36:03.000 to raise that concern and to you know to vote accordingly and you know we'll see what comes

00:36:09.000 back but i you know i hope i hope uh we had an impact andrew you mentioned that uh could this

00:36:17.720 campaign essentially extend beyond this election in sort of other facets well we we're still taking

00:36:24.120 uh signups on the website so if you want to go to jewishally.ca and uh sign up and sort of be a

00:36:29.480 member of uh of our movement uh please go ahead and again it's for the jewish community and their

00:36:35.160 allies so uh we're we're casting a large net to essentially put out a verdict against uh you know

00:36:43.240 not just the trudeau government but any any sort of government's um you know failures to address

00:36:48.280 the concerns of the jewish community getting aside from the political dimension of this for

00:36:53.000 a moment i wanted to ask you andrew just on a personal note as a you know as a jew in toronto

00:36:57.560 saint paul's as a jew in canada right now you have seen antisemitism and i mean in your past

00:37:04.200 life working with CSIS. I know you had to sit down and talk to people that would have, if they knew

00:37:09.960 your background, would have hated you for it. And you talk about that in your book. I think it was

00:37:14.080 one case in particular. So you're aware of this, but do you feel that pre-October 7th others were

00:37:21.440 as well? Or do you think that it was something that was only really or has only really been

00:37:25.680 reckoned with in a substantive way in the last nine months? I have had a unique view and insight

00:37:33.100 into the threats that we face, the Jewish community faces, you know, here and abroad,

00:37:38.800 you know, in my role with CSIS, seeing down with folks investigating threats to the Jewish

00:37:43.200 community or threats to Canada that arise because of, or antisemitism being a part of that threat

00:37:48.940 landscape. So yeah, I've absolutely seen it up front in a way that many haven't. I think the

00:37:54.820 events of October 7th were very, I don't know what the word is, I don't want to say clarifying,

00:37:59.300 but we saw a horrific attack, the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust. And the response

00:38:05.220 online was protests against Israel and protests against the Jewish community and, you know,

00:38:11.380 social media, you know, calling, calling things out. And I think the community was surprised,

00:38:16.820 but aghast or just, you know, the reaction and then the lack of support that came forward

00:38:22.660 to support the Jewish community from our leaders and people who we look to

00:38:26.260 for that support and defense i think was also shocking to many because of my background as i

00:38:32.100 said i sent my kids a jewish day school if you remember very early on there was the there was

00:38:36.020 the uh the day of rage that they they wanted to organize and people were very concerned and i got

00:38:41.060 i get phone calls from parents saying should i send my kids to school i'm worried about sending

00:38:44.900 my kids to school chat was just outside the neighborhood um you know they are having bomb

00:38:49.620 threats they've been evacuated a few times and so i said because of my background people call

00:38:55.940 me up and ask me for advice what do i do with my home do i take down my mezuzah what are we

00:39:00.180 going to do about these protests and the funding that's coming in that's supporting these things

00:39:05.620 many phone calls i'm on where the people on the other end are crying and they just say i don't

00:39:10.100 feel safe i'm not okay and i don't know what to do um and and as i said uh that feeling is out

00:39:17.300 there if people do not understand or uh aren't aware or the depths of it i'm telling you your

00:39:23.860 the Jewish community is not okay. And if this can be a wake-up call for more support, geez, I hope 1.00

00:39:29.620 that's what it is and that we will see it. Because I'll tell you, it is not politically,

00:39:36.400 like it's not a right, left, center thing. There are many people in Toronto, St. Paul's will bear

00:39:42.080 that out on the left who also feel abandoned by their leaders. So yeah, I think October 7th was

00:39:49.420 a wake-up call. I think the protests we've seen since is a wake-up call. And the fact that we're

00:39:55.300 looking around saying, well, is this okay with everybody? Why is this not being condemned?

00:40:02.240 Why are people that I thought were my friends and neighbors kind of supporting it? That has been

00:40:09.140 a wake-up call, I think, to many. So I have to put you both on the spot here as we close.

00:40:14.300 without jewishally.ca does don stewart still win

00:40:18.900 yeah look i i i think so i i don't know like i don't know um it's a narrow race it's it's it's

00:40:28.880 in a narrow race i think anything anything can count so it's it is very tough and and see i

00:40:34.160 don't even will kill me in his you know you gotta say yeah i know steven's just like

00:40:38.800 let me just rescue andrew here for a second i've been a candidate and they had a lot hard fought

00:40:47.600 he was out there knock on doors in the sun you know the team is out working hard putting everything

00:40:52.880 that happened to it they deserve all the credit in the world um so this is what i'll say and i'll

00:40:58.000 turn it over if we were able to support them in any way raise awareness for what they were doing

00:41:02.560 uh i i hope that we did that um and also for this effect of liberal voters but i don't want

00:41:09.280 to take any credit away from the candidate having been one by having been one myself

00:41:12.960 yeah well let's just say the the right well the the answer is that every vote counts and every

00:41:19.760 effort in an election counts and um so uh whether we were able to nudge uh people in one direction

00:41:28.880 or the other um i think we did so and i think that um yeah that certainly had an effect you

00:41:35.360 know might have actually tipped uh some liberal voters to vote ndp uh i would discuss uh if they

00:41:41.040 were somehow misinformed uh as to the what they what the what the right answer was so yeah um

00:41:47.600 no i do think that like our effort was certainly um focused and pronounced and i think that uh yeah

00:41:54.560 every effort in an election counts whether you're knocking on doors or you're handing out literature

00:42:00.080 or you're making phone calls or um you're you're running ads and i will fully concede with a semi

00:42:08.240 apology to andrew and stephen that it's a very unfair question because the whole point of an

00:42:11.920 election is that you do everything for your 36 days your 40 days your 60 days and you really

00:42:17.840 don't know what worked and what didn't you know i think it's tony clement that has a story about

00:42:23.040 you know canvassing this one part of the riding that was very difficult to get to and it was hilly

00:42:28.000 and no one ever canvassed there and you know he won by like you know 12 votes or something like

00:42:33.120 that and you know that's the story and it's a great story and you know maybe it was that canvas

00:42:37.520 that did it or maybe it was something else that did it but i think you're right steven that there

00:42:40.480 are a lot of different inputs there are different things that alert people there are different

00:42:44.160 things that motivate people and your your campaign i think you can both agree was definitely a part

00:42:48.480 of that it was a part of what voters in that riding were being hit with on again on any given

00:42:52.880 day yeah well i'll just uh give give some uh advertising facts on sort of what we were able

00:42:57.760 to do we we targeted a very limited uh number of people as i mentioned earlier we did reach

00:43:04.160 uh 32 000 people in the riding uh over five times uh during the um the advanced polling period and

00:43:13.840 And the, you know, the day or two before Election Day.

00:43:19.720 So, I mean, those metrics are indisputable.

00:43:23.820 We did reach that many people with a message that said,

00:43:26.820 send Trudeau a message that he's failed the Jewish community

00:43:30.220 and that you won't be silent.

00:43:34.880 And I'll just, I'll give you the last word on this, Andrew,

00:43:38.420 just because you're obviously the brainchild of this,

00:43:40.960 as Stephen was very gracious to point out as well when he and I were chatting about this before.

00:43:45.520 But what would you like to see as the next step, not just for this campaign, but for others that

00:43:51.060 are watching this that might be saying, yeah, you know, I could make a difference without

00:43:54.380 necessarily being a candidate myself? Yeah, I think the most impressive thing is that people

00:44:00.520 turned out. It's a by-election where everybody was thinking we're going to see 20% and low

00:44:04.740 voter turnout, and we saw 44% in a by-election in June, right? And I think that was... So I hope

00:44:13.000 we raised some awareness about what was going on, although, my goodness, the by-election ended up

00:44:17.140 getting a lot of coverage before and during and after. But yeah, get involved. Like, this is a

00:44:22.900 democracy. It's important. We could talk foreign interference and strengthening democracy the other

00:44:28.200 time. But this is an opportunity for our community to have a very unique opportunity to have an

00:44:35.620 outsized impact on the conversation, on a possible result. In a national campaign, many issues are

00:44:43.840 able to take over. You don't know which way they're going to go. Well, in Toronto St. Paul's,

00:44:48.440 we want to raise this one, and hopefully it's on the agenda that the government and other

00:44:53.500 political parties are all taking the concerns to heart and will act appropriately to say,

00:45:00.640 okay, well, maybe we haven't done enough. Maybe we need to do more. Maybe the people need more

00:45:04.740 support. So I hope that's what comes of it. And yeah, it's been interesting to see. Kind of a

00:45:10.600 first time for me to try to do this. And Stephen, obviously, thank you for his support. I thank

00:45:15.520 everybody for their support. You know, it's a Jewish ally, it's Jews and Jewish allies and

00:45:21.560 people who are concerned and want to support the community so thank you uh thank you all for your

00:45:26.760 support andrew kirsch stephen taylor the men behind jewishally.ca and also unrelated to this

00:45:34.840 you should definitely check out andrew's book i was never here a great glimpse into uh the life

00:45:39.800 of a cesus intelligence officer very it's the good kind of canadian content because there are

00:45:44.760 lots of like american spy stories and i think you're like the first uh canadian spy story

00:45:49.800 certainly writing it in that way. So Andrew, Stephen, well done on this campaign and good

00:45:53.860 to talk to you both. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That does it for us

00:45:59.040 for today. We'll be back with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show tomorrow, doing a deep

00:46:03.480 dive into Alberta's relationship with Ottawa, with Rebecca Schultz. That'll be tomorrow. But

00:46:09.000 in the meantime, thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew

00:46:13.900 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:46:43.900 We'll be right back.

00:47:13.900 We'll see you next time.

Juno News - June 26, 2024

Liberal ministers rally behind Justin Trudeau

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript