Juno News - Liberal MP compares Poilievre to Nazis – again

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

00:01:19.180 by true north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the

00:01:29.200 Andrew Lawton's show on True North on this Wednesday, March 27th. Sometimes you need to

00:01:34.560 break through the midweek doldrums. Hopefully this show will help you do exactly that. Although I must

00:01:41.200 admit, I got very much sidetracked this morning. We've still prepped the show out. We've still

00:01:46.240 booked it. I've still planned everything and researched and all of that. But I learned, I don't

00:01:51.320 know, maybe like 90 minutes ago or so of this program I had never heard of called Suno, S-U-N-O.

00:01:59.200 and it is an AI. So AI is all the rage now. You can do AI-generated news, AI-generated words,

00:02:06.140 content writing, AI-generated photos, AI-generated videos. And this was the first time I heard of

00:02:12.280 AI-generated music. Now, people have used ChatGBT, which is one of the AI programs, to come up with

00:02:18.440 lyrics. And quite frankly, if you listen to most of the crappy songs that are put out now, AI-generated

00:02:23.720 is generally better than a song with one line about doing unspeakable things to people's bodies.

00:02:29.060 that's basically pop radio now but this app which was like free uh you could they only got a certain

00:02:34.580 number of credits which i burned through in like half an hour this morning when i wasn't working

00:02:38.980 you could make songs and i was like all right let's actually just have some fun with this so

00:02:44.420 i i decided to play around and and see if this could come up with a theme song for true north

00:02:50.820 And this is what we got.

00:03:07.740 Beacon of light, I like it.

00:03:17.520 True, we do.

00:03:20.820 All right, here's the chorus. 0.99

00:03:47.420 All right, then it's just, you know, an exit.

00:03:49.240 It's just a little guitar solo at the end there,

00:03:51.500 which normally I would never cut out the guitar solo,

00:03:53.680 except in this case, it's not a real person playing.

00:03:55.880 It is an AI.

00:03:56.740 That is AI generated.

00:03:57.800 So that is the new True North.

00:03:59.460 We're not actually adopting it,

00:04:00.680 but the new True North theme song, Voices of Truth,

00:04:03.720 which I quite like.

00:04:04.860 And I think I gave it like a one-line prompt.

00:04:06.620 I just give it like an energetic rock ballad

00:04:09.240 about the Canadian media organization, True North.

00:04:12.600 And this is what we got.

00:04:13.880 Honest journalism, a beacon of light,

00:04:15.580 True North strong, shining so bright.

00:04:18.200 Well, that's lovely.

00:04:18.940 but you know we can't all just go to jingles and that stuff you have to have some fun with a

00:04:25.580 program like this so i thought it might be good might be to get a song about canada's prime

00:04:32.460 minister now we could do any so we could do a song about the carbon tax we could do a song about snc

00:04:37.980 lavalin we could do a song called experiencing it differently although i don't know what rhymes

00:04:43.020 with experiencing it different what rhymes with experiencing it differently yeah i don't know

00:04:47.900 potently and see i couldn't kind of this is why we leave it to ai so this is the song that we landed

00:04:53.900 on oh dear old justin with charm and grace a little beloved by his canadian base what a tale

00:05:03.340 resurfaces causing quite a stir apartments in blackface so how the rumors blur in a world of

00:05:11.180 cancel culture where mistakes never cease our man trudeau tries to find some peace he apologizes

00:05:22.460 but the damage is done a spotlight on his past overshadowing the fun oh justin dear justin what

00:05:33.980 have you done in blackfish you dance your reputation undone but let's not forget or

00:05:41.040 let's not ignore that people can grow and change ever more

00:05:47.640 so that was it sounded like al jolson doing it although to be honest i could actually picture

00:06:00.260 Justin Trudeau doing that song himself in one of his old outfit that is uh it's called a Canadian

00:06:06.200 our colleague Artem says that should be the new outro music for the no no no we don't want to

00:06:10.740 make that the outro music I actually got uh now now everyone on the show is just making requests

00:06:15.720 uh Sean's asking if I can like get one in the style of Cole Porter so uh well basically anything

00:06:21.140 goes which is you know one of the great Cole Porter shows that's basically Justin Trudeau's

00:06:24.820 government as it is in olden days a glimpse of stalking was looked on to something shocking but

00:06:29.720 now god knows anything goes that's basically trudeau's whole approach right now where anything

00:06:35.960 goes although it's finally catching up with him with the poll numbers we've been talking about

00:06:40.440 over the last our numbers probably just plummeted when i started singing although believe it or not

00:06:45.480 i have i have actually performed before not well uh but my my friend tal bachman who's the

00:06:50.920 fantastic singer songwriter uh he was uh doing a musical night on the mark stein cruise and he's

00:06:57.240 He's invited me to sing along with him a couple of times.

00:06:59.480 So I performed with, I'll say, Rock Loyalty, no, Rock Royalty in Canada.

00:07:05.520 See, I should just get AI to generate the show and we'll go from there.

00:07:09.840 Sean is asking if Tal Bachman is related to Michelle Bachman.

00:07:12.660 No, he has, she has two N's on Bachman.

00:07:15.840 He has one.

00:07:16.440 Although, believe it or not, I have sung with her as well.

00:07:19.240 We sang on a previous cruise, Sway, in the style of Michael Buble.

00:07:24.180 So there you go.

00:07:24.920 You're learning all sorts of stuff about me on The Andrew Lawton Show today.

00:07:28.100 Have to start off on a fun note, although we have a little something planned for the end of the show we'll get to on that as well.

00:07:34.140 But I don't think it beats the Al Jolson, Justin Trudeau number there.

00:07:38.740 But let's talk about the Liberal government in free fall here.

00:07:43.180 As I mentioned, their poll numbers have not been favourable.

00:07:46.080 The polls are showing, at the very least, a massive Conservative majority.

00:07:50.600 but more importantly reducing the liberals to some polls are saying third party in some ways

00:07:56.780 it might conceivably end up where they are the fourth party behind the NDP and the Bloc Québécois

00:08:02.660 but what's fascinating about this is the way they behave there's a particular amount of hubris we're

00:08:09.140 seeing and one example of this comes from Ken Hardy who is a British Columbia Liberal member

00:08:14.180 of Parliament who is kind of like the Mark Gerritson of Twitter I mean I guess Mark Gerritson is the

00:08:19.220 Mark Garrison of Twitter, but he's very Mark Garrison-like in that he just spends his time 0.85

00:08:23.440 saying these ridiculous and absurd things online. Now, unlike Garrison, Hardy will get called on it

00:08:29.340 and will apologize for it, and then we'll do the same thing a little bit later on. In particular,

00:08:34.000 one of the things he loves doing is comparing Pierre Polyev and the conservatives to Nazis.

00:08:40.960 Now, this is a tweet, this is the original tweet, so not the one from this week. This is the original

00:08:46.440 tweet where Ken Hardy says, if Joseph Goebbels can pick up question period down there, he will

00:08:51.900 be so proud of conservatives spouting a lie often enough and loudly enough. It is a tried and true

00:08:58.420 tactic, spouting multitudes of them. The Tories have perfected this. This is Ken, I mean, Joseph

00:09:05.960 Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, one of the most horrific people of that era of history. And Ken

00:09:11.580 hardy is just making that comparison rather freely it's the old line godwin's law that all

00:09:17.400 internet arguments will eventually devolve into an invocation of hitler uh invoking hitler is kind

00:09:22.240 of the starting point for uh people like ken hardy now he apologized for this this was him in

00:09:28.880 the house of comments yes mr speaker uh i did go elbows up on twitter and i apologize for that

00:09:37.920 I did, though, attempt to raise the issue the other day of the frequent misrepresentation

00:09:43.540 coming from the conservative side, but elbows up was a little too much in this case, and I do apologize.

00:09:51.340 So he gets called on it. He apologizes.

00:09:54.520 We're all supposed to believe that everything is fine.

00:09:57.720 Everything is fair game here.

00:09:59.620 And then we see this tweet from him just this week.

00:10:04.880 He references the previous controversy.

00:10:07.460 Now, I got into a bit of trouble a while back

00:10:10.140 by invoking an awful historical figure

00:10:12.360 when pointing out Pierre Polyev's use of the big lie strategy.

00:10:16.100 But, oh no, he went, he did the but.

00:10:18.760 But day by day, there's more and more proof

00:10:21.500 that this is exactly what he does

00:10:23.620 because he doesn't have much else to offer.

00:10:27.340 So once again, we have Ken Hardy again,

00:10:30.360 aware of this, aware of the previous controversy.

00:10:32.680 He's saying, yeah, I know I said it

00:10:33.940 and I know I apologize for it,

00:10:35.400 but every day it's seeming more and more appropriate.

00:10:38.640 Now, Melissa Lansman, who is a,

00:10:40.460 she's been on the show before.

00:10:41.620 She's the deputy leader of the conservative.

00:10:43.360 She is a very prominent and outspoken member

00:10:46.400 of the Jewish community as well.

00:10:48.780 The type of person who is, as a result,

00:10:51.140 I think particularly sensitive to Nazism 0.96

00:10:53.300 and Nazi comparisons.

00:10:54.800 Now, Melissa Lansman herself,

00:10:57.780 you may recall during the Freedom Convoy,

00:10:59.960 was accused by Justin Trudeau of standing with swastikas

00:11:03.640 or standing with people who wave swastikas.

00:11:05.400 whatever his line was. She jumped on Ken Hardy's comments here, and I wanted to share that with

00:11:10.540 you. She says, does this guy have no one in his life that will tell him to stop invoking Nazis,

00:11:15.480 especially now? Are you serious, Ken Hardy? I'm glad I won't have to sit in a room with you after

00:11:21.660 the next election. I'm sure there are a few of your colleagues who feel the same way after this

00:11:25.820 tweet. Read the room. And she's referring, of course, to the fact that Ken Hardy is likely to

00:11:31.080 be ousted next year. His riding, he carried it pretty decisively the last couple of elections,

00:11:36.640 but it's historically been conservative. And if you look at some of the polling numbers

00:11:40.700 in and around BC, I think he's in the Surrey area. It's particularly not hospitable to the

00:11:47.120 liberals. So he's apologized once again, sort of. Some folks object to my invoking unsavory past

00:11:55.940 figures when noting Pierre Polyev's habit of lying. Okay, I apologize. As for the widespread

00:12:01.600 view that he lies, well, some free advice from Cicero. Oh, he's dropping another historical

00:12:07.160 figure now. When people speak ill of you, live so that none would believe them. So, I feel he just

00:12:13.760 like, yeah, Sean is saying it's very cryptic. I feel he just like searched for a quote about lying

00:12:18.280 and he basically just used an AI generated tweet machine for that, I think. He actually, actually,

00:12:23.240 I should have gotten Ken Hardy's tweet done as a song.

00:12:26.380 Maybe I'll do that for tomorrow.

00:12:28.560 Because it would be more entertaining to listen to Ken Hardy

00:12:30.900 in some AI-generated pop ballad

00:12:33.200 rather than some AI-generated member of parliament talking.

00:12:36.640 But that is basically his approach here.

00:12:39.320 He's going to call Pierre Polyev a senior Nazi,

00:12:42.560 apologize, reference it, do it again, apologize again.

00:12:46.880 So basically, we just need in Ken Hardy's office,

00:12:49.340 like one of those old factory things,

00:12:50.700 If it's been zero days since our last accident, it's been zero days since our last Nazi reference.

00:12:56.040 And you won't even need to buy a lot of numbers because you're probably not going to get more than one or two days before he does it again at the rate that he's going.

00:13:04.480 Absolutely absurd.

00:13:06.380 And what we're seeing here, though, is a very desperate liberal party.

00:13:10.860 Now, look, there are always going to be some people in caucus that are a bit more outspoken, that are a bit prone to foot and mouth disorder.

00:13:17.580 but what we see here is that when the liberals are as desperate as they are they go i mean they

00:13:24.340 literally go nazi they that's the line that they go to with conservatives are nazis because they

00:13:30.200 genuinely believe it and this is the problem we hear all the time from people like justin trudeau

00:13:35.340 for example about the need to reinstill civility in politics and we need to build bridges we need

00:13:41.400 to work across the aisle, all of that. And where is that attitude? Where is that desire to be

00:13:47.680 conciliatory and magnanimous when you have liberal MPs that are accusing people of being Nazi

00:13:53.740 propagandists because they disagree with them about the carbon tax? It is an absurd, absurd

00:13:59.300 development here. Yet it's the kind of thing that they get a pass on. Now, Ken Hardy, look, he's not

00:14:06.060 a senior member of the Liberal caucus by any stretch. He's not a cabinet minister, but he is,

00:14:12.260 I don't think, saying anything that he doesn't truly believe. And that's the most important

00:14:16.880 point here, is that we're not talking about someone who made some errant slip of the tongue

00:14:20.520 in a debate. We all get heated. We all say things that maybe we wish we could take back. We're

00:14:25.100 talking about someone who is being very transparent about what it is that he genuinely believes,

00:14:30.240 what it is that he thinks of conservatives and you expect conservatives or I mean let me back

00:14:38.300 up and say it another way do you expect people to reach across the aisle and work with folks

00:14:42.680 who think they are Nazis so it's only people on the right that tend to be criticized for not being

00:14:50.120 as collaborative and cooperative people say oh well Pierre Polyev he's just a name caller he

00:14:55.520 doesn't have a plan. Well, he's not the one calling people a Nazi because he disagrees with

00:15:00.940 them. This is, I mean, there's that old meme that's been circulating for a while. I don't

00:15:04.380 know how old it is, but for a few years right now, there's a meme that's been circulating where

00:15:08.180 it's basically the fake cover of a children's book. And it's, you know, everyone I don't like

00:15:12.980 is Hitler or everyone I dislike is Hitler. And that's basically the liberal campaign platform 0.58

00:15:17.920 in this country. It's just, if you don't like them, they are Hitler, they're Nazis, they're 0.93

00:15:22.240 far right they're going to you know do xyz and historically you've had a media in this country

00:15:29.300 that i think is willing to adopt this language at least in part willing to adopt the language at

00:15:35.960 least in part now i wanted to turn to uh the i mean again we have to talk about the carbon tax

00:15:41.880 because everyone on the internet everyone in the country seems to be talking about this because it

00:15:45.880 is coming into effect the increase is coming into effect on Monday a 23% hike in the carbon tax

00:15:53.100 which is adding insult to injury for Canadians who are already grappling with rising cost of

00:15:58.220 living you're going to see instantly an increase in the cost of fuel and you'll also see the

00:16:02.860 trickle-down increases in the cost of groceries the cost of your gas bill and all the like but

00:16:09.500 one of the things that I will point out about this is that the liberals have not listened to

00:16:16.380 anyone. They don't want to listen to anyone. They are purely ideological on this. Now, Justin

00:16:22.480 Trudeau has been faced with mounting criticism from premiers, not just conservatives, from

00:16:27.080 premiers, from provincial party leaders saying, we've got to give people some release. We just

00:16:31.880 can't deal with this. He sent a letter to premiers, a letter to premiers thanking them for raising the

00:16:39.380 issue of Canada's carbon pricing system. He says, our government is acutely aware of the increasing

00:16:44.660 financial pressure facing Canadians. We know that they want to make life more affordable.

00:16:50.320 This is what we're doing. This is why we made this revenue neutral. He claims that the Parliamentary

00:16:55.640 Budget Officer has confirmed that, which is, by the way, simply untrue. The Parliamentary Budget

00:16:59.700 Officer has not given any confirmation of that whatsoever. And it goes on and on. But then here

00:17:06.520 is the kicker of this. He says, since Canada's carbon pricing system was first introduced in

00:17:14.060 2019, we have made it clear that we are open to working with any and all provinces and territories

00:17:18.640 that want to establish their own pricing systems as long as they meet or exceed the national

00:17:23.880 benchmark. British Columbia, Quebec, and Northwest Territories continue to operate their own systems

00:17:29.020 and are not subject to the federal backstop. When we engaged with you in 2022, all of your

00:17:36.260 governments either did not propose alternative systems or proposed systems that didn't meet the

00:17:40.140 minimum standards. So he's saying, well, it's your fault because you haven't come up with your own

00:17:46.280 alternative, except the problem is provinces have very little latitude and autonomy because there

00:17:51.440 is a federal minimum. So the only latitude provinces have is to actually come up with a

00:17:56.440 higher carbon tax than what the federal government is doing. So Justin Trudeau is taking aim at

00:18:02.200 provinces. He's blaming provincial governments. We can take that down now. He's blaming provincial

00:18:07.740 government, unless it's already down, and I'm just seeing it on my screen as a holdover from when it

00:18:11.400 was up, so don't mind me. But thank you. We can see what Justin Trudeau is doing here. He is

00:18:16.980 blaming other provinces, blaming other leaders, blaming provinces for not coming up with ideas

00:18:21.820 when he has literally been the reason that provinces do not have the ability to come up

00:18:27.120 with their own climate plans, because the government has said you have to have this

00:18:31.160 minimum standard. And I forget what the dollar value is, but it's the one that keeps going up

00:18:34.980 and is increasing yet again on Monday. So it's a particular level of brazenness here and

00:18:43.020 shamelessness, I'd also say, to look at provinces and premiers as the problem. They're supposed to 0.63

00:18:48.080 be members of confederation that have not quite equal, kind of equal standing. They're supposed

00:18:53.300 to be partners in confederation, partners in the federation of Canada. But Justin Trudeau has

00:18:58.540 decided to basically kick federalism to the curb and tell the provinces it's his way or the highway

00:19:05.900 and then turn around and blame them for inexplicably not being able to do something that

00:19:11.300 he has not allowed them to do. And this is why we have, I think, increasingly frustrations from

00:19:18.520 people that have previously gone along with it or even people who are at their core on board with

00:19:23.860 the idea of a carbon tax. But Justin Trudeau has a number of positions on this that just don't seem

00:19:30.020 to align with the reality. He says that this is a market-based, he basically says it's a market-based

00:19:37.160 product, which I simply don't get altogether. And we also have the idea that he is claiming

00:19:44.420 it's revenue neutral, which again, it is not entirely clear. And it's certainly not revenue

00:19:48.760 neutral for individual Canadians who are ending up in many cases spending more on this than they're

00:19:53.740 receiving, despite government's claims to the contrary. And it's perhaps why you see this issue

00:19:58.560 being weaponized politically by Pierre Polyev, who's going around the country having rallies with

00:20:03.900 hundreds or thousands of people, depending on where he is in the country, all rallied around

00:20:09.820 this idea of spike the hike, axe the tax, whatever the rhyming scheme is he's using in any given

00:20:15.500 protest. There was a great piece in the Financial Post by our friend Ross McKittrick, who is a

00:20:20.760 professor of economics at the University of Guelph. Wanted, a federal leader who will be

00:20:26.160 honest about climate policy. Ross McKittrick joins us once again. Ross, always good to talk

00:20:32.020 to you. Thanks for coming on today. You are muted there, or maybe I'm muted. No, you're muted.

00:20:40.700 Yeah, I'm not able to hear you, Ross. Hopefully we'll get that sorted out in a moment.

00:20:45.640 But one of the things that I find fascinating here is that the Liberal government, and I'll just

00:20:49.960 pluck from Ross's point on this in the column. He says, the conservatives would rely on the heavy

00:20:55.820 hand of government through regulation and subsidies to pick winners and losers in the

00:20:59.900 economy as opposed to trusting the market. And this is a complete rejection of the reality,

00:21:06.460 which is that his program insists on heavy regulations. The emission reduction plan

00:21:11.800 has 240 pages of regulations, subsidies, mandates, and winner picking grants. And he is saying that

00:21:20.880 his product is simple. His program is simple. It's the conservative one that's going to be causing

00:21:26.680 all of those problems. So this is where you see this weird sort of illusion work that's being

00:21:33.940 done by the government on this. Now, sometimes you get leaders like Stephen Gilboa who are

00:21:38.560 remarkably transparent about this. They just want this punitive, heavy-handed approach that targets

00:21:43.920 what they believe is the great culprit of climate change. But Justin Trudeau tries to have the best

00:21:49.560 of both worlds. On one hand, he tries to pretend that this is this minimally disruptive, revenue

00:21:55.840 neutral thing. I mean, the line they've been committing to in the last little while is, oh,

00:21:59.160 you're all better off with it. You're all making more money. You are better off with the carbon tax.

00:22:03.880 You're profiting from this.

00:22:05.940 And then you have Canadians saying,

00:22:07.460 well, it sure doesn't look like that.

00:22:08.940 You know, my price of gas is going up.

00:22:10.860 And if it is actually the case

00:22:12.680 that most people are getting their money back,

00:22:14.340 then what's the point of the whole thing?

00:22:16.180 So it doesn't actually really incentivize

00:22:19.180 the behavior the government is trying to incentivize

00:22:22.440 or purporting to incentivize.

00:22:24.420 And the reason for that is that

00:22:26.160 so many of these emitting activities

00:22:28.560 are not optional for Canadians.

00:22:31.080 Driving to work for a lot of Canadians 1.00

00:22:32.600 is not optional.

00:22:33.420 picking your kids up from school is not optional going to the grocery store to buy food not

00:22:39.180 optional so where are you supposed to cut back we i believe we have ross mckittrick back on the line

00:22:45.180 now ross uh good to talk to you here what does it feel is really the the misdirection taking place

00:22:50.780 here where the government is saying on one hand that this is not a heavy-handed regulatory process

00:22:56.060 on its part? Well, the comment that I made in my op-ed was that it's one thing for Trudeau to say

00:23:04.760 we believe in the economic principles of efficient climate policy, but his actual policies are

00:23:11.060 anything but. Yes, he's got this elegant little carbon tax going, but the real cost of his policy

00:23:18.600 are all the other regulations, the clean fuel standard, the EV mandate, the building energy

00:23:24.780 efficiency codes all these other regulations massively increase the costs of his climate policy

00:23:31.340 so the carbon tax itself it's costly there's no question about it but there's actually much worse

00:23:38.060 stuff in his policy mix and and he was talking as if none of that is there now on the conservative

00:23:44.780 side it's legitimate for them to point people to the high cost of the climate policy but

00:23:51.180 But what they need to do is say, well, explain how can they be committed to things like the Paris Treaty and the net zero goals without actually planning to incur any costs of meeting them?

00:24:04.420 That doesn't square up. So what I'd like is for some politicians somewhere to be honest with the public and either say, we're going to do this and it's going to cost a fortune.

00:24:17.680 So just get used to it or say, okay, we've heard from the public that there's an upper limit to

00:24:24.200 what they're willing to pay. This is the most we can hope to accomplish and we'll stick with that.

00:24:29.020 Yeah, I think that's a valid point on all fronts because it's easy to target. And certainly for

00:24:34.020 political reasons, I understand why you target the consumer carbon tax, that retail carbon tax

00:24:38.880 that you see, that's a line item on your gas bill that you see buried in the price of fuel,

00:24:44.280 for example but even i mean if we look at what the alberta government did under jason kenney where

00:24:49.400 they said let's go after the industrial side of things that makes a very much more convoluted and

00:24:55.640 as you're saying their complex process and they're still doing in effect one of the same things but

00:25:00.680 it's a lot more opaque how it's happening sure yeah when uh when they don't like taking heat

00:25:05.960 from consumers and they say well we'll make industry pay i think by now everybody realizes

00:25:12.200 that's just a shell game it all ends up for the consumer one way or the other

00:25:16.680 it's either buried in the price that you pay at the pump in the case of gas

00:25:22.280 or you you pay it directly out of your own pocket but there's as economists

00:25:28.040 as economics textbooks always say costs can be shifted around but they can't be avoided

00:25:33.960 so what is the i i mean just from an economics perspective here let's just say that we agree

00:25:39.800 with the core premise and we agree with the core goal which is debatable on how much we need to

00:25:44.840 reduce emissions by what is from your perspective the path that a government should take to do that

00:25:50.120 if that is its stated objective here well if it wants to meet the paris target and then go from

00:25:56.760 there down to some kind of net zero target uh later in the century we would uh to get to paris

00:26:05.240 I would estimate we'd need maybe a $200 ton carbon tax and then to get to net zero,

00:26:14.680 something more like a $500 a ton carbon tax. I'm not sure even that would do it. And so

00:26:25.160 the current policy mix that we have, even the federal liberal policy makes more,

00:26:29.080 I don't think it'll get us to the Paris target and it certainly won't get us to

00:26:32.600 to net zero beyond that but that's a conversation that no one's having that i mean none of the

00:26:38.840 political leaders are willing to talk to people about the costs of what they're proposing to do

00:26:44.280 so and that i guess gets at what i was hoping to touch on here which is that

00:26:48.840 this commitment itself is boxing us in in effect like there's no way to get to that without some

00:26:55.400 sort of really aggressive plan that even the conservatives who i mean again to be fair to

00:27:00.200 critics of pierre paulia he has not he has committed to this he has committed to paris he

00:27:04.760 has not talked about uh changing the core target right and so there's an incoherency there because

00:27:13.320 uh he's justified in in saying to people look we we hear you the cost of fuel is too high

00:27:20.120 cost of living is too high all these policies are are um are driving up the cost of living in

00:27:26.920 unacceptable ways um but there's no magic alternative if at the same time you're going

00:27:33.400 to remain committed to hitting the paris targets so um if for instance they think that you can get

00:27:40.360 rid of the carbon tax and there'll be a whole bunch of far cheaper ways of doing it then

00:27:45.720 they're wrong that is not the case and people have tried including past conservative governments and

00:27:52.200 it just doesn't work one of the the challenges and a lot of the green energy activists i find

00:27:57.640 are guilty of this where they commit to policies and that are based on technologies that don't

00:28:02.840 really exist yet or don't do what they say they're going to do but i also feel that a lot of people

00:28:07.880 that try to say market-based solutions are the solution are also doing the same thing because

00:28:14.600 you and even mentioned at the bottom of your piece there you know yeah maybe there's a technology

00:28:18.120 that will come along that will change the math on this but right now that hasn't happened um

00:28:25.080 yeah so and that's exactly the point that given the current technology that we have

00:28:31.560 um we're fairly limited in what we can do and um we don't know maybe a new technology will come

00:28:39.480 along five years or 10 years from now the key is if you can um if you can decouple emissions from

00:28:49.560 combustion basically if you can find a way to burn fossil fuels without releasing co2

00:28:54.360 we've decoupled lots of other emissions from combustion we've decoupled sulfur dioxide

00:28:59.560 and carbon monoxide and lots of other types of lots of other types of emissions from combustion

00:29:07.400 but there's no technology that does that for co2 at least not yet as far as we know now how much of

00:29:14.360 a because the government says it is looking at that as well and they say that all of these uh

00:29:20.120 solutions are going to be part of the overall plan but but how much have they actually committed to

00:29:23.880 r d on that or is it really just left to industry to come up with it on its own uh i think that uh

00:29:30.280 um i think there is some some um uh funding for that kind of research much more in other countries

00:29:39.780 i mean canada is not a big player in research in any case but um sure people are thinking about

00:29:45.840 it working on it but um there's no easy answer for it so um uh because of that um you know it's

00:29:54.700 right now it's kind of a lot of talk but um there's uh as far as i know there's

00:30:01.740 people have been thinking about it for 50 years and there hasn't been any breakthrough on it so

00:30:05.820 it's not like put a billion dollars up and someone's going to figure it out right now all

00:30:10.300 we have is carbon caption storage which is very limited in its applicability we uh we lost your

00:30:17.420 video there but as it happens we're coming to the end of our time anyway so if it's going to happen

00:30:20.940 that's the best moment for it uh ross mckittrick from the university of guelph great piece in the

00:30:25.500 financial post wanted a federal leader who will be honest about climate policy hopefully you'll

00:30:30.380 get your wish there thank you very much all right thanks andrew for talking to you all right thank

00:30:34.380 you that was well ross mckittrick you can even see on the screen there rm uh one thing i will say on

00:30:39.820 this is that you can't i mean dilithium crystals i believe was the old star trek term you can't base

00:30:45.580 your policy on things that don't exist yet and a lot of people have all of these great ambitions

00:30:50.460 about, oh, solar will do this and wind will do this, and they just don't. And the really efficient

00:30:55.920 and effective and clean sources of energy that we do have, like, for example, nuclear, they never

00:31:02.900 seem to want to talk about. So with that, we'll, I'm sure, revisit this as we get closer to the

00:31:08.680 weekend, and then big protests are going to be on Monday. And I think we just learned this morning,

00:31:14.980 Pierre Polyev, he'll be doing his own rally in Nanaimo, but there are protests in Lloyd Minster

00:31:19.820 outside Alberta, Ottawa, Toronto, all over the place.

00:31:23.220 So do send in your footage of those.

00:31:26.140 Wanted to shift gears here to healthcare,

00:31:29.560 the other hot button issue.

00:31:30.800 Now, this is such an infuriating one for so many people

00:31:34.100 because virtually every Canadian who's had some exposure

00:31:36.900 with the healthcare system has experienced something

00:31:41.100 that didn't work the way it was,

00:31:42.780 or the way they thought it was supposed to.

00:31:45.040 Whether it is cases of people being treated in hallways,

00:31:48.880 people who have been on waiting lists for months and months and months to see a specialist not to

00:31:53.440 mention to you know actually be treated by that specialist so we all defend the ideal of the

00:31:59.540 healthcare system in Canada but not the application of it so how do we get to that ideal or is it that

00:32:05.740 our core expectation is flawed well one of the things that's quite interesting and I'm actually

00:32:10.900 surprised to see this is that most Canadians would be open to and welcome major changes to

00:32:16.920 the health care system. There was a Leger survey of 2,000 Canadian adults, that's quite a large

00:32:22.240 sample size for a poll of this nature, that found health care ranks among the top three priorities

00:32:26.820 for politicians, and that two-thirds of those respondents said they wanted significant changes

00:32:33.700 to the system. Now, these obviously have, in some cases, come up against challenges in the courts.

00:32:40.720 Most recently, the Canby Surgical case in British Columbia, which I'm sure we can talk about in this

00:32:46.240 context, but let's just talk about what Canadians want here and what's standing in the way. Joining

00:32:50.800 me is a counsel for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, Josh DeHaz. Josh, good to have you

00:32:55.820 back on the show. This is a little bit encouraging. I must say it was a pleasant surprise to see this

00:33:00.600 because so often this is treated as just this third rail political issue that you're not allowed

00:33:04.960 to do anything with. Yeah, absolutely. So in one sense, it's really bad news because Canadians see

00:33:11.580 healthcare system that's in crisis but what i did find encouraging is the fact that canadians are

00:33:17.980 saying they're ready for major change so like you said two-thirds say they want major change

00:33:23.340 and only five percent of people actually say that they want to do the thing that uh you most often

00:33:30.620 hear in the media which is you know just throw more public funding at this problem right so

00:33:35.980 uh people are are presented with those options more public just more public funding or some

00:33:40.620 major change and everyone is basically saying we want major change and uh one really interesting

00:33:47.100 part of this too was it was kind of kind of counterintuitive to us at the ccf but

00:33:51.980 women in particular are saying that they are worried about the healthcare system and want 1.00

00:33:56.700 major change 72 percent of women surveyed said that they think the healthcare system is going

00:34:02.860 to be worse for future generations if we don't get those major changes and that was a lot higher than

00:34:08.380 men and we're trying to figure out why that was but uh we we think the reason might be that women 1.00

00:34:13.900 just make a lot more of the health care decisions they do a lot more of the sort of caregiving and

00:34:19.020 so that might explain uh why they're more worried about it simply because they you know interact

00:34:25.260 with the system a lot more you have in this country a relatively small group of activists

00:34:31.420 that care very much about the structure of the system like canadian doctors for medicare for

00:34:35.740 example but most canadians i feel care more about outcomes and you look at some of the priorities

00:34:41.340 that were listed here uh 46 say they want more family doctors as a top priority uh shorter

00:34:48.060 emergency room wait times was behind that shorter times for common surgeries and other treatments

00:34:53.180 those have nothing to do with who delivers it with how they access it those are just outcomes those

00:34:58.140 are things that people want and and i believe that if you were to put forward a system that says

00:35:02.540 listen you're not going to go bankrupt looking for health care that's not what we're pushing here

00:35:06.620 but you will get a better quicker product canadians would be on board with that but

00:35:12.380 but you have again this very small group that stands in the way of that yeah you're completely

00:35:17.820 right uh one thing a lot of people i don't think realize is that you know a lot of the opposition

00:35:22.860 to any sort of reform or change in the canadian health care system a lot of that's sort of funded

00:35:27.740 by sort of special interest groups like, you know, health care unions. And what the message

00:35:33.000 that a lot of Canadians are not hearing is that, you know, Canada is just one country in the world.

00:35:38.400 And we've chosen to have a very strict restrictions on private payment for health care. But, you know,

00:35:46.620 if you look at all of Europe, they have universal health care. You don't have to pay with your

00:35:50.560 credit card if you need health care, if you're poor, if you're middle class, if you want to

00:35:54.980 access the public system. And most people are getting their health care through the public

00:35:58.820 system. But they also have this sort of release valve, which is that they have a private system

00:36:03.780 where if things aren't working, some wealthier people can go and they can pay to get health

00:36:08.620 care. And that takes pressure off the public system. And the sort of the proof is in the

00:36:12.940 pudding. You know, if you look at all the rankings that look at outcomes and wait times and even

00:36:18.060 equity, all of the European countries are basically doing better than Canada. So I think we really

00:36:23.600 need to start, you know, pushing back against that, that sacred cow that we can't allow any 1.00

00:36:29.740 sort of private payment in Canada. Just to bring the legal context here, I know the CCF

00:36:35.580 had taken up the long, long running Canby case in British Columbia there, which I spoke about,

00:36:42.020 I think it was with, I can't remember if it was with Joanna Barron or Christine Van Gein or both,

00:36:45.840 but when the decision came up, but as a bit of a primer there, how does that decision stand in the

00:36:51.400 way of what you and I are talking about and Canadians seem to want here?

00:36:56.120 Well, so British Columbia, like most provinces, has some restrictions on, you know, doctors

00:37:03.160 work on offering private surgeries or doctors or health insurance.

00:37:08.600 And each province is a little bit different.

00:37:10.560 But the idea is that Canadians supposedly want a government monopoly on health care.

00:37:16.700 And so we've got all of these restrictions.

00:37:18.740 And in that particular case, we said, you know, if you're waiting on a waiting list for a surgery and you're in physical pain and you could pay to relieve that.

00:37:29.000 But it's just a law standing in the way, you know, an arbitrary law that is supposed to guarantee you reasonable access to health care, but is actually forcing you to wait on a wait list.

00:37:40.060 That's violating your constitutional rights and that shouldn't be allowed to stand.

00:37:43.940 And, you know, there's a 2005 case that found that to be the case in Quebec, but it doesn't apply in the rest of Canada.

00:37:51.700 So we thought that in British Columbia we would be successful.

00:37:55.100 But the courts there said, no, this is a reasonable limit on people's charter rights, even though people suffer and in some cases die on waiting lists.

00:38:04.820 And so right now it's still apparently acceptable to do this in British Columbia.

00:38:11.140 And we don't really know what the status is in the rest of the provinces.

00:38:15.540 So, you know, we're always sort of looking for our next can be case.

00:38:19.280 The fight certainly isn't over.

00:38:21.520 Well, and there I think underscores how the ideology is getting in the way of the outcomes

00:38:26.480 here, because, you know, if someone pays out of pocket to take themselves off a wait list

00:38:30.940 and there's an available doctor, an available surgical center, no one is worse off.

00:38:36.640 Like absolutely.

00:38:37.540 know, in fact, the public system is better off because one more person has come off that wait

00:38:41.740 list, which helps the person behind them. So I really don't get how you like, it's such an

00:38:48.220 inexplicable decision, just not even looking at the law, just on the logic of it. Yeah, that's

00:38:54.380 right. Yeah. So, so I also don't understand that, like you can look at, for example, look at Norway

00:39:00.660 And it's the country that ranks better than any other country in the OECD for its health care

00:39:08.340 outcomes, for its health care equity. And it does better on cost than Canada. Canada has a very,

00:39:13.800 very expensive system. And they have only about 10% of people there have private insurance and

00:39:19.980 they get some specialist appointments quicker. They do get some surgeries quicker, but it's

00:39:26.580 optional and 90% of people are happy with the public system and stay in that system. But just

00:39:32.360 taking that, you know, half million Norwegians out of the public system makes the waiting lists in

00:39:37.900 the public system shorter for everyone. And, you know, Norway can actually do a lot more in their

00:39:42.720 public system because they're not, because they don't have to look after 100% of the population

00:39:48.460 all the time. An interesting sort of result from this survey that we did with Second Street and

00:39:55.280 uh mei was that canadians actually rank pharma care extremely low their priority it's it's like

00:40:02.400 ninth out of nine options only three percent set as their top priority and that's because canada

00:40:08.020 can't seem to figure out the basics like getting you your family doctor or uh reasonable er wait

00:40:14.580 times uh norway or they they can afford to actually do pharma care uh because they also

00:40:21.820 allow some sort of private money into the system so i think it's pretty clear at this point that

00:40:27.420 uh canada's system isn't working that it's you know violating canadians constitutional rights

00:40:32.140 and the survey that we've we've just done seems to show that the public is kind of had ahead of the

00:40:38.220 the media and some of the sort of politicians on this particular topic because canadians are ready

00:40:43.580 for change one thing i mean maybe i i'm i'm a bit of adult so it's probably easier for you than for

00:40:49.100 me here but it's navigating this issue of what is legal and what is just tradition has been

00:40:55.180 incredibly difficult i mean ontario is a great example of this where you've got a couple of

00:40:59.500 literally private hospitals that are there because they've just been grandfathered in

00:41:03.740 you have federal regulations but health care is provincial and and i think a lot of that

00:41:08.540 jurisdictional uh ambiguity is used by politicians that don't want to touch this issue provincial

00:41:14.380 leaders will say oh well the federal government handcuffs us on universal health care the federal

00:41:18.540 government will say, oh, well, health care is a provincial issue. So at its core, if we wanted to

00:41:23.700 have some progress on this issue, where's the starting point? Where's the way into that? Is

00:41:29.200 it at federal level with the core Canada Health Act or is it provincial? Yeah, I think it's

00:41:34.540 actually both. So the Canada Health Act is not as clear as people think it is. So just for a little

00:41:40.260 bit of background. I'm glad I'm not alone in being utterly confused when I look at it. I was reading

00:41:45.400 about uh certain aspects of it last night and it's it's confusing so the basic idea behind the

00:41:51.000 canada health act is that the federal government is going to give provinces money to spend on

00:41:56.600 health care even though health care is a provincial jurisdiction right so uh but to do so canada in

00:42:03.560 exchange for that money wants certain guarantees from the provinces for example that you know

00:42:10.520 people are not going to be charged user fees or things like that. But there's so much ambiguity

00:42:16.260 in it. One really good example is diagnostic services. So, you know, getting an MRI. Most

00:42:24.500 of Canada, you can walk into a private clinic, put down your credit card and get off the public

00:42:30.800 wait list if you want to by paying for that MRI. Well, one of the places you can't do that is

00:42:36.780 ontario unfortunately so you know we're stuck going to gatuneau or to buffalo if we are are

00:42:43.340 worried about uh being stuck on a wait list so oh yeah so i live just on that i live an hour from

00:42:48.700 port here on michigan you cross the border and billboards advertising to canadians you know get

00:42:53.260 your mri you know 129 or whatever you know go here open 24 7. yeah we we have them i'm in toronto and

00:43:00.860 we have them on the subway saying you know go to buffalo for all your surgeries or services but

00:43:05.020 But anyway, the point is that the federal government and the provinces don't even seem to know whether that is supposed to be covered under the Canada Health Act.

00:43:13.440 And the Trudeau government in 2018 said suddenly, actually, you know, this should be something that provinces are required to not only pay for, but stop anyone from buying privately.

00:43:25.660 And so in our opinion, this is contrary to the Canada Health Act, and they started fining provinces like Quebec and Alberta and British Columbia just for allowing people to get out of the public waitlist line, go to a private clinic and pay to have the health care that they need.

00:43:42.620 So there's a lot of ambiguity.

00:43:44.700 And I think you could clarify the Canada Health Act.

00:43:48.540 You know, I think it allows provinces to do a lot more than they say that it does.

00:43:53.020 But there's no reason why the federal government couldn't clarify the Canada Health Act and say, look, we're still going to fund universal health care.

00:44:01.180 We're still going to give you just as much money, but we're going to let provinces innovate to some degree because the status quo just isn't working.

00:44:08.540 So, you know, if I was in charge, I'd probably start with just clarifying that Canada Health Act.

00:44:14.560 Well, yeah, there we go.

00:44:15.840 And obviously, with polling, I mean, the cynic in all of us says politicians are responsive to polls more than their core convictions sometimes.

00:44:23.620 So if that's the case, your move, political class.

00:44:26.680 You can read more about this at theccf.ca.

00:44:30.100 Josh Dehas, always good to talk to you.

00:44:31.820 Thanks for coming on today.

00:44:33.360 Thanks, Andrew.

00:44:34.420 All right.

00:44:34.860 Thank you.

00:44:35.720 Let me know what you think.

00:44:36.820 so many Canadians have absolute horror stories. I had interviewed on the show a few years ago,

00:44:41.500 a woman, I want to say she was from Nova Scotia. It was somewhere out east where she and a friend

00:44:46.200 of hers had started a company where they literally just were concierges connecting Canadians who were

00:44:53.060 having trouble getting healthcare services with treatment programs in the U.S. And they did

00:44:57.640 incredibly well on this because there are so many Canadians that said, yeah, yeah, I want to spend

00:45:01.020 money and go to the U.S. I just don't know how to do it. And that itself reflects a pretty big

00:45:05.320 problem with the so-called universal offerings in the Great White North. All right, I said we'd have 0.87

00:45:11.280 some fun on the end. So at the beginning, I started off the show with a couple of these AI-generated

00:45:15.380 songs. I have not even listened to this one. This is completely new to me, but I asked for a little

00:45:21.780 bit of a PSA telling you all to listen to The Andrew Lawton Show, and I wanted it to sound

00:45:26.280 authentically Canadian. So here you go. Speaking of the East Coast. Oh, where did it go?

00:45:46.020 There we go.

00:46:16.020 make you laugh at no listen too long let the truth arrows be thrown the truth arrows be thrown

00:46:23.780 the shores of true north is signal strong he navigates for the voices wrong

00:46:32.180 with irreverence and facts he sails along tune in to long join his courageous

00:46:46.020 that part scared me all right tune into lawton join his courageous throng uh don't join my

00:46:53.480 courageous thong by the way you don't want to be there all right that does it for us for today we

00:46:57.960 will be back tomorrow to close out the week here on canada's most irreverent talk show i like that

00:47:04.040 the little the andrew lawton uh show sea shanty we'll have i i like our our current one which was

00:47:08.420 not uh to my knowledge ai generated anyway uh we will talk to you all tomorrow thank you god bless

00:47:13.760 and good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:47:17.840 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:47:43.760 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 27, 2024

Liberal MP compares Poilievre to Nazis – again

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