Juno News - Liberals have spent $42 million on gun ＂buyback＂ without getting a single gun

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

00:01:19.640 north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show here the

00:01:29.800 andrew lawton show on true north on this tuesday march 26 i i want to give you just on on a

00:01:35.920 programming note because coming up in about a week and uh two day no a week and one day

00:01:42.180 the canada strong and free networking conference will be once again taking place in ottawa the

00:01:48.300 Weston Hotel. Yours truly will be doing his show live from the, well, basically live from the

00:01:54.580 hallway, which doesn't sound luxurious or anything, but we have a True North booth that we'll have

00:01:58.560 there once again, and we'll be doing live shows over the course of the conference. It should be

00:02:03.340 a lot of fun, and I'm also going to be on stage. It was just announced this week doing one-on-one

00:02:09.280 fireside chats with Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, who I've had on the show a number of

00:02:15.520 times. I used to work with her and guest host for her. I know Premier Smith very well, and I'll also

00:02:20.520 be doing one with New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs. Now, I don't actually know Premier Higgs.

00:02:26.340 I've never spoken to him. I've never met him, but I am honored to be able to do the onstage

00:02:30.920 interview. Certainly, we'll be talking about parental rights. I suspect the carbon tax will

00:02:35.000 also come up, and if there are any other questions you want to hear from either Premier Smith or

00:02:40.120 Premier Higgs on, please do let us know in the comments. We won't ask the dumb ones, 0.98

00:02:45.520 but we'll try to, you know, come up with the good ones 0.98

00:02:47.880 and then I'll just take credit for them on stage.

00:02:49.520 It's actually the interviewer's prerogative.

00:02:51.480 So nevertheless, that is going to be in a week and a half.

00:02:54.140 Now, I don't know if we're going to be able to show

00:02:55.540 the full interviews on the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:02:58.080 So if you want to get the full experience,

00:02:59.840 definitely come in person if you're going to be in Ottawa

00:03:02.300 or you like to travel to Ottawa

00:03:04.100 or you're willing to tolerate Ottawa,

00:03:06.160 which, well, I won't tell you where I am on that one.

00:03:08.880 But also we will, well, I have another event coming up,

00:03:12.340 but I'll tell you about that later on

00:03:14.060 because it's not for a few weeks.

00:03:15.360 and it's also in Ottawa, so I don't want to start galvanizing. It's the only place that I'm booked

00:03:18.720 to speak apparently. But we will be talking later on in this show about the ballooning size of

00:03:25.000 government. Speaking of Ottawa, and as we know, it is getting much, much too big. We'll also be

00:03:30.360 talking about this controversy in a British Columbia city where it's actually quite interesting

00:03:36.400 here. They have decided to, well, they're deciding to twist themselves into knots because they were

00:03:46.600 exposed to a set of opinions they didn't like. And those opinions are contained in a book that

00:03:52.000 True North actually published called Grave Error. We'll have Tom Flanagan on the program. Oh,

00:03:56.880 there you go. Tom Flanagan, one of the co-editors of that book, will be on very shortly to talk

00:04:01.680 about what's going down in the city of quenelle british columbia i hope i'm saying that right or

00:04:07.120 if not that you'll correct me and by the time we get to 1 30 i will be corrected and able to say

00:04:12.040 it right i'll get that jordan peterson re-education camp but uh let's begin talking about this uh one

00:04:17.640 of the rare situations in which i tend to be a supporter of government ineptitude and government

00:04:24.100 incompetence it doesn't happen often in fact it might never happen except for on this and only

00:04:29.840 this issue. But let's go back in time first. So it was May 1st, 2020, when the Liberal government

00:04:37.180 imposed a sweeping order in Council that banned 1,500 types of firearm overnight. It just

00:04:44.180 instantly made it so that these guns, which were legally on store shelves, which were legally in

00:04:50.160 gun owners' cabinets at the shooting range, could no longer be used. One of these was the often

00:04:55.800 misrepresented a maligned AR-15 platform of firearm, and other non-restricted hunting guns

00:05:02.140 that were used without issue and have been used by law-abiding gun owners in Canada for years

00:05:07.240 overnight are prohibited. Now, the government did not have a plan. They did not know what they were

00:05:13.520 doing. They saw that there was a bit of public momentum on their side against firearms because

00:05:18.440 this was, you may recall, in the aftermath of that horrific, horrific killing spree starting

00:05:24.700 in portapique nova scotia and the liberals decided that they had to pounce at that moment to crack

00:05:30.940 down on lawful firearms owners now they do this and of course we learned that the guy did not

00:05:37.820 legally have guns he was not legally authorized to own them he had imported his guns illegally

00:05:43.420 from the united states and they were not coming out of the legal civilian market in canada none

00:05:49.020 of that mattered to the liberals they just wanted to say that guns were the problem and that this

00:05:54.140 measure which only targets the law-abiding gun owners in the country would somehow be justifiable 0.64

00:05:59.980 so that was may 2020 now it was a very aggressive plan they said these guns are prohibited but

00:06:06.860 we're putting a two-year amnesty period in place so if you legally own an ar-15 you actually get

00:06:12.700 to keep that for two years well we put together this buyback program buyback this is the language

00:06:18.620 the government uses as though the gun was once theirs to begin with they will just buy it back

00:06:23.900 from you that's all uh we're supposed to believe that it's going to be fair market value and all

00:06:28.220 that but as it happened there was no buyback there is no buyback there has never been a single gun

00:06:34.220 bought back nor for that matter has there been a firearm confiscated under this program yet as we

00:06:41.740 learned i got it from brian passive human the national post but it actually came from an order

00:06:46.220 of paper an order paper question in the house of commons or the the senate rather the government

00:06:51.740 has spent 42 million dollars on a buyback program that doesn't exist they have spent 42 million

00:06:59.980 dollars and with that have not purchased confiscated acquired destroyed relocated adopted

00:07:07.980 they have not touched a single firearm under this program and they have spent 42 million dollars to

00:07:15.180 do it so this is not in the cost of the guns themselves this is just in the bureaucracy

00:07:20.860 and management and maintenance of a program that does not exist now as a taxpayer i think this is

00:07:27.340 egregious as a taxpayer i think it's offensive i think it's destructive as a gun owner i'm kind

00:07:31.820 of happy about this i actually love the idea that the government has not in four years been able to

00:07:37.500 do this that the government has not actually in four years managed to collect a single firearm

00:07:42.460 because that is exactly the problem here the government is trying to do something that is not

00:07:47.820 going to amount to a hill of beans when it comes to real gun crime so there are no victims when we 0.62

00:07:54.860 talk about the lawful gun owners who would never hurt a fly who would only well maybe they'd hurt 0.98

00:08:00.700 a fly if it's you know fly season but they never hurt a human they never break the law they're so

00:08:05.420 diligent about the regulations and how they have to store the guns we we all are because we don't

00:08:10.140 want our guns to be taken away our property to be seized we don't want to be criminally charged the

00:08:15.020 stakes are very high if you are a licensed gun owner in this country and you screw up and the

00:08:21.340 reality is that the people that comply with regulations are the people who are not breaking

00:08:25.820 the law it's not as we talk about time and time again the case that the guns picked up on the

00:08:31.340 streets after some gang shootout in surrey or toronto were coming from the civilian market in

00:08:37.660 In fact, they were coming from organized crime.

00:08:40.420 They were smuggled in across the border.

00:08:42.180 Some of them were stolen, but most of them are coming across the longest unprotected

00:08:46.320 border in the world, which we share with a country that has much wider access to firearms.

00:08:52.700 And the idea that we can, in Canada, regulate away gun crime without dealing with gun crime 0.51

00:09:00.980 at the border is absurd, but it's what the federal government has tried to do.

00:09:05.160 So as a result, they spend $42 million.

00:09:07.380 Legal taxpayers in this country are the ones forced to pick up that bill.

00:09:11.460 Legal gun owners are the ones who will eventually be targeted by this.

00:09:15.120 And one of the core problems here is that the government presented this.

00:09:19.740 I didn't want to force you to listen to Bill Blair, so we didn't pull the Bill Blair clip.

00:09:23.440 But when he presented this and when Justin Trudeau presented this, they used language that was very extreme,

00:09:28.720 as though there was a crisis, as though every day these guns were out in the country, people

00:09:33.760 were losing their lives. These guns, Trudeau said, were designed to kill as many people as possible,

00:09:39.280 as quickly as possible. That was a near direct quote of Justin Trudeau. If it was that dire,

00:09:46.520 and if they pose that much of an emergency and that much of a public safety risk,

00:09:52.060 you wouldn't think the government would drag its heels for two years to do something about it.

00:09:56.980 We saw in the COVID era, also in 2020, by the way, how swiftly government can move when it

00:10:03.240 feels it has to. Now, that doesn't mean it makes the right calls, but they're capable of moving

00:10:07.220 quickly when they want to. Now, in this case, maybe they're not. Is it that they're trying to

00:10:12.220 just delay it, delay it, delay it so they can campaign on it in the next election? Quite

00:10:16.220 possibly. Or is it that they are just woefully inept? It's always that divide in government of 1.00

00:10:21.380 do you attribute it to malice or incompetence? Or is it malicious incompetence, which I think

00:10:26.580 increasingly describes things that our government does. I wanted to share with you a brief clip

00:10:31.640 because I did a documentary about this in 2021. So it came out just a year after the order in

00:10:37.640 council. And at the time, there were already grave concerns about the effect this was having

00:10:44.040 on firearms businesses. Take a look. How is a business like yours supposed to operate when

00:10:51.020 anything that you sell could one day be illegal on eggshells take it a day at a time i visited

00:10:57.960 jeff's store one year after the liberals order in council and there in his warehouse were tens

00:11:03.180 of thousands of dollars of now prohibited firearms they're illegal to sell or to use and

00:11:08.100 cannot even be sold back to the government despite the promise of a buyback it's a rule of retail if

00:11:13.980 you're not moving inventory you're losing money something felt by a lot of the gun store owners i

00:11:19.140 heard from is that this is a feature not a bug of the liberals gun measures you know we're we're

00:11:24.500 sitting on inventory right now that we can't sell and that's tying up a lot of dollars which in

00:11:29.280 retail is is a cardinal sin the the biggest sin in retail is not to turn your inventory over

00:11:34.240 um so you know it it's created some financial hardship and uh but i i try not to complain

00:11:41.860 about it too much because i know i'm not alone i know that every other business whether you're

00:11:45.480 wholesaler or distributor in the country has been affected. I liken it to the automotive industry

00:11:50.840 and imagine you own a car lot and Environment Canada walks onto your lot one day and says

00:11:56.140 we're banning V8s and by the way you can't sell them they have to sit on your lot 1.00

00:12:01.200 and maybe someday two or three maybe four years down the road we might pay you cost we might pay

00:12:06.980 you retail or we just might be a flat amount we're going to give you but in the meantime all the

00:12:11.060 parts that you have for them and your vehicles are tied up so as retailers and wholesalers that's

00:12:15.940 where we're at right now our inventory inventory is tied up that we can't sell it your entire

00:12:20.740 business model has been destroyed and there's a lot of people out there unfortunately in this

00:12:24.120 country we're in that situation right now because of the OIC. That last gentleman was Scott Carpenter

00:12:33.240 who is the owner of International Shooting Supplies in Surrey and one thing that I mentioned

00:12:38.760 surrey earlier surrey bc has incredible incredible issues with organized crime you've got gang fights

00:12:44.920 there you've got issues with shooting and those issues do not have anything to do with firearms

00:12:49.800 that are sold on the shelves of international shooting supplies quite the contrary those are

00:12:54.920 the guns going to people that are interested in sport shooting collecting hunting they are

00:13:01.080 firearms that are used by people who have nothing to do and actually deplore the issues with

00:13:07.240 organized crime in their community and once again when government says we listen to the experts

00:13:12.760 they're not interested in the law enforcement experts they're not interested in the firearms

00:13:16.360 experts they're not interested in all of the people who have universally pretty much come out

00:13:21.320 except for a narrow subset who are activists committed to ending civilian gun ownership in

00:13:26.440 canada they don't listen to the people who are saying hey you're not going to do anything about

00:13:31.640 crime but the government knows the liberals know that firearms restrictions play well in the polls

00:13:38.600 they know that overwhelmingly canadians are not gun owners gun owners represent i think about two

00:13:43.800 million people in this country i don't know what the adult population is specifically but it is a

00:13:48.600 minority of canadians that own guns of the people who don't some are sympathetic to gun owners

00:13:54.200 married to a gun owner others are indifferent and others are hell-bent against guns but it's

00:13:59.720 a group that is not itself a sizable enough voting block to sway elections most of the time

00:14:06.120 and we also see the government really love to just stoke those fears they use misinformation

00:14:11.800 loaded language like assault rifle assault weapons things that the average person doesn't really

00:14:17.160 understand are loaded and they do this so i'm convinced that yes there's probably some

00:14:22.840 bureaucratic incompetence here but the liberals are also wanting to extend this debate protract

00:14:28.280 this debate so that it comes up in the polls once again, and they can go into their old bag of tricks

00:14:33.140 and say that, oh, the evil, scary boogeyman conservatives with their gun fetish are the

00:14:38.140 problem. That's going to be the liberal government's strategy. You can take that to the bank. I mean,

00:14:43.680 don't cash it for a couple of years until you know I'm right, but that's the check. You can

00:14:47.040 probably cash that in a couple of years, and who knows with inflation what it'll be worth. But

00:14:51.140 speaking of which, we'll talk about the ballooning size of government, and it's actually a rather

00:14:56.340 natural segue because government tends to just spend money that it doesn't have that isn't its

00:15:02.580 own and not do it in a particularly efficient way i mentioned that they've spent 42 million dollars

00:15:08.020 without confiscating a single gun but you know that money is going towards staff they're

00:15:13.060 administering a bureaucracy they're commissioning reports they're doing all of this stuff that

00:15:17.700 government does that private sector enterprise would never want to do nor would it be able to

00:15:22.420 get away with doing it but it times well with this report that came out from the fraser institute

00:15:28.580 just on how large government has gotten and this is not just a federal problem but you see it at

00:15:34.340 the provincial level as well a new study says that uh in 2000 from 2007 to 2022 government spending

00:15:42.580 in 8 out of 10 provinces so 80 percent of the country in terms of uh provinces uh and went up

00:15:50.260 government spending increased in these provinces and also public sector employment rose not just

00:15:54.900 an 8 out of 10 but rose across the board in all provinces so government is getting fatter

00:16:00.340 and more costly even if we have a lot of economic situations in that that would not necessarily

00:16:06.580 support such growth jake fuss is back with us he is the fiscal studies director for the fraser

00:16:12.180 institute jake always good to have you on thanks for coming back today good afternoon thanks for

00:16:16.420 for having me on. So just to talk about what is at stake here and what you're seeing, is this the

00:16:22.200 normal growth to keep up with growth in the country or is this a disproportionate growth

00:16:26.800 that you're tracking here? Yeah, what we're seeing is that the size of government as measured by

00:16:31.260 spending is growing faster than the Canadian economy, like you mentioned, in eight out of

00:16:35.540 10 provinces, but also nationally. So when we're looking at local, provincial and federal levels

00:16:40.220 of government, we're now seeing government spending representing more than 40% of the

00:16:44.800 Canadian economy, whereas it was about 37% in 2007. So there's been a pretty substantial increase

00:16:51.640 in government spending as a share of the economy over the last 15 years or so. And it's been a

00:16:56.660 pretty much across the board change in all provinces across Canada, except for PEI in

00:17:02.060 Saskatchewan, which saw small declines in the size of government in that 2007 to 2022 period.

00:17:08.520 Do you know what it is that accounts for that, for those two?

00:17:12.440 It's a good question. There have been some changes over time. So I think some of it might

00:17:16.900 have to do with some changes during the pandemic as well, because generally we were seeing, you

00:17:21.560 know, Saskatchewan actually had a higher spending in 2019 than it does in 2022, for instance.

00:17:27.240 So there might be some certain temporary programs being removed or other things. So we'll have to

00:17:33.460 keep track of Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island over the long run to see if this is

00:17:37.760 actually a trend or just a blip on the radar. But in PEI's case, even though they had a declining

00:17:43.300 size of government, their size of government is still about 58% of the size of the economy,

00:17:47.980 for instance. Whereas a province like Alberta, which yes, increased in terms of size of government,

00:17:53.660 their size of government is about 27% the size of the economy. So there's a marked difference here

00:17:58.400 between a lot of the provinces in Canada, especially Western provinces compared to

00:18:03.060 eastern provinces. We're generally seeing smaller governments in western Canada relative to eastern

00:18:08.760 Canada. Obviously in that range a couple of events I think have to be noted here. 2007-2022 you've got

00:18:16.640 the the 2008 recession and we know that was just an example for government or of governments

00:18:21.780 shoving money out the door as quickly as they could. You also mentioned the pandemic another

00:18:26.200 situation in which governments were racking up insane amounts of spending. How much do those if

00:18:31.740 at all skew the overall trajectory you're looking at?

00:18:35.100 I think they definitely have an impact.

00:18:37.040 I mean, especially when you look at the 2020 COVID pandemic, for instance, you do see a

00:18:42.300 huge spike in government size during that time.

00:18:45.300 But what was interesting is that it basically became a permanent increase, maybe not to

00:18:50.080 the levels that we saw at the height of the COVID pandemic, but we basically had a permanent

00:18:54.760 increase in the size of government between 2019 and 2022.

00:18:58.420 So that really tells us that, yes, COVID does have an impact, but governments are actually

00:19:02.980 just increasing in size over time anyways.

00:19:06.520 And we had seven out of 10 provinces increase their size of government between that three

00:19:10.660 year period between 2019 and 2022.

00:19:13.480 And of course, you know, the financial crisis in 2008 also has an impact on the size of

00:19:17.640 government as well.

00:19:18.800 But, you know, in the years when you're winding down temporary programs or other things, we're

00:19:23.300 still seeing that permanent ramp up in government spending that really has nothing to do with

00:19:27.640 the pandemic is just simply increase bureaucracy, increase government spending over time.

00:19:33.300 Yeah, and I was kind of curious about the public sector growth. Now, I know this study doesn't

00:19:38.200 doing a public-private sector contrast, but I think we do know that private sector employment

00:19:42.860 is not immune to economic trends. Private sector employers that don't have a taxpayer to lean on

00:19:48.840 have to make very difficult decisions. They all slash their workforce, not all, but many of them

00:19:53.060 slash their workforces during COVID. But we see a continual increase in, as we were talking about

00:19:58.220 earlier, every single level of government, every single province here over that span.

00:20:03.140 Yeah, that's right. I mean, essentially what we've seen from 2007 to 2022 is an increased

00:20:08.020 share of the workforce employed in the public sector, for instance.

00:20:12.000 So not just raw numbers, it's the share that's going up.

00:20:14.680 Yeah, exactly. So it's basically growing faster than private sector employment, for instance.

00:20:19.720 So if we look at 2007, about 19 percent of total employment in Canada was in the public sector.

00:20:26.740 Now in 2022, it's about 21 percent.

00:20:30.120 And we've seen that across the board in all provinces.

00:20:32.540 All 10 provinces had increases in public sector employment relative to total employment in Canada.

00:20:38.560 So, yes, private sector employment is still increasing over time, but it's not growing as fast as public sector employment is what these numbers show us.

00:20:46.200 One of the challenges, and I know it's going outside the scope of this study, but you can

00:20:51.120 look at these numbers, and again, just to pull them out here, in Nova Scotia, government's size

00:20:56.520 relative to the economy, 63%, and in Alberta, 26.8%. So, you know, even if it's going up in

00:21:03.200 Alberta, it's still nowhere near the size in Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada generally. So,

00:21:10.400 if you're looking at this as a taxpayer, not an economist, and you're trying to figure out

00:21:14.180 what's the sweet spot? Is there a sweet spot? Is there a size that it should be or is supposed to

00:21:19.240 be? Yes. So we know from empirical research that generally the optimal size of government is

00:21:24.800 generally between 26 to 30 percent of the size of the economy. And this is when you get historically

00:21:30.320 maximizing your economic growth rates when you start to exceed these levels and you can actually

00:21:35.580 start hindering your economy and then you can ultimately start hindering living standards for

00:21:40.660 citizens as well. So Alberta is the only province that is actually within that optimal range of 26

00:21:46.360 to 30%. All other provinces are well above 30%. In fact, most provinces are well above 40%

00:21:53.260 and some of them are even exceeding 50 or 60%. So they're well above that optimal range.

00:21:58.520 And they're at that point where they're likely harming their economies and harming the living

00:22:03.140 standards in those provinces as well, rather than helping the citizens by having that optimal range

00:22:08.640 of government in that 26 to 30 percent of the size of the economy that's actually quite interesting

00:22:14.240 so i i wasn't familiar with that that data you referenced so basically we do see an inverse

00:22:19.920 relationship between size of government and overall economic prosperity or health yeah exactly

00:22:25.680 and that analysis is based on a whole bunch of oecd countries very advanced countries around

00:22:30.400 the world it's a historical analysis you can even extend the analysis a little bit more if you want

00:22:35.440 to punch it out a little bit more to about 24 to 32% of the size of the economy. But generally what

00:22:41.040 we've seen is that these countries around the world have actually maximized their growth rates

00:22:45.680 when it is within that range. So it provides a good barometer for governments to actually

00:22:50.400 track their progress and to ultimately see, you know, is there ways that we can actually

00:22:55.280 improve economic growth and can we address this through government spending as the size of our

00:22:59.280 economy? Are we too high, too low? Are we in the optimal range? And I think that's an important

00:23:03.760 metric for governments to track over the long term so if we took the national picture here

00:23:08.720 canada has a government at 40.5 percent the size of the economy what's needed to take that down to

00:23:15.600 that uh range that we're talking about well it's certainly a complicated question because it's not

00:23:20.480 just one level of government um you know when we're looking at the federal level of government

00:23:24.960 we also have provincial governments and local governments included in that so really it's a

00:23:29.440 a cohesive effort between all three levels of government to actually track their progress on

00:23:34.520 this. Right now, we're really seeing an explosion in government spending and debt at really all

00:23:38.820 levels of government. And that's certainly a concern moving forward. So I think it's going

00:23:43.500 to be important and imperative for governments to begin to review the amount of spending,

00:23:48.860 what they're spending on. Are we getting value for this money? Is this actually leading to

00:23:52.440 economic growth? Is it leading to improved living standards for Canadians? Because right now,

00:23:56.660 what we're really seeing is economic stagnation. And we're not seeing those improved living

00:24:00.980 standards for Canadians. And just because we have more government spending isn't necessarily

00:24:05.340 leading to better results for us. So I think we need to rethink what we're ultimately doing

00:24:10.280 on government spending as a share of the economy and what we're spending this money on too.

00:24:15.760 All right. Well, fascinating numbers. As always, Jake Fuss, Director of Fiscal Studies

00:24:19.960 for the Fraser Institute. Thanks so much, sir. Thanks very much for having me.

00:24:23.420 All right, we will talk to you soon as the problem is sadly not going away.

00:24:28.600 One of the problems with government spending, of course, has been a question that I think goes along with government priorities.

00:24:35.300 Government loves to look at ways to collect revenue, not as keen on looking at ways to stop spending.

00:24:41.800 For example, the carbon tax, which I will continue beating the drum on, is going up once again on April 1st.

00:24:49.400 this is an increase that the liberals have decided to make their political hill to die on

00:24:54.200 and i think electorally speaking it may well be the hill they die on but let me talk about this

00:25:00.760 very briefly because the left the pro-carbon tax lobby is bringing out the big guns yes here is an

00:25:08.280 open letter oh yes an open letter from economists on canadian carbon pricing yes they're rebuffing

00:25:17.640 the and why are they rebuffing or are they rebutting i think they're they're both they're

00:25:21.160 rebutting with buffery they're they're rebuffing with buttery i don't know they are rebuffing and

00:25:26.520 rebutting the carbon tax critics claims that carbon pricing won't reduce greenhouse gas emissions

00:25:33.160 uh that it drives up the cost of living and is a major cause of inflation and i you can't see it

00:25:38.360 in that screenshot but underneath their rebuttal of claim two uh they say oh well no you can see

00:25:44.840 into the bottom there oh no no carbon taxes uh carbon pricing has caused less than 1 20th of

00:25:49.960 canada's inflation well uh for starters those figures are disputed but i would also point out

00:25:54.920 that it is a mechanism that is entirely optional and adds insult to injury when you are trying to

00:26:01.800 get to the bottom of why the cost of living is increasing no one has said the carbon tax is

00:26:06.520 single-handedly uh stoking inflation we have said that it is exacerbating it it is aggravating it

00:26:12.920 It is doing more to basically strain Canadians' ability to spend money.

00:26:19.860 And my goodness, we are finding time and time again examples of people that are trying to defend what is increasingly the indefensible.

00:26:27.500 And this is why you have premiers in a majority of provinces, including liberal leaders, liberal premier Andrew Furey, saying, yeah, the carbon tax is not working.

00:26:36.280 It's why conservative leader Pierre Polyev, of all the issues he could be talking about, he right now is doing a national tour of rallies.

00:26:45.480 And he, of all of these issues, is speaking on the carbon tax.

00:26:49.200 That is what he's decided to make the entire focal point of his tour, of his campaign.

00:26:54.800 He's doing the axe, the tax, the spike, the hike, the, you know, say no to the car.

00:26:59.380 I was trying to think of another rhyme, but I couldn't.

00:27:01.600 This is, I think, quite an interesting development.

00:27:05.020 it. And again, he's bringing out thousands and thousands of people collectively. I don't know

00:27:10.040 if this is an issue that, like if these people would come out for anything. If he were to say

00:27:16.360 this is the corned beef hash rally, if people would come out to celebrate corned beef hash just

00:27:21.400 because they like Gare Polyev, or if they're coming out because it's a carbon tax. But we do know

00:27:25.580 that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people that online at least have

00:27:30.360 said they are going to show up to a series of rallies that are being held across the country

00:27:35.720 on april 1st this is the day the carbon tax is uh the increase is going into effect and there's a

00:27:42.360 i don't have the url handy but there's some website which is tracking uh basically the

00:27:47.240 national network of these protests sean do you have that url by chance i'll read it to people

00:27:52.280 if they want to check it out but uh there's going to be a big one in ottawa there's going to be a

00:27:56.280 big one in lloydminster which uh one of one of our alberta reporters isaac lamaru had said oh i'm

00:28:02.200 going to this because he's in edmonton and he's like oh i'm gonna go to this rally in lloydminster

00:28:06.680 and i'm like surely they're doing one in edmonton that you could go to that's closer he said oh no

00:28:10.920 no no and i thought he was crazy and then i looked into it oh no no lloydminster is actually going to

00:28:15.560 be the the big giant one here so and lloydminster is fun because it's a city that is half well i

00:28:21.880 I don't know half, but it's part in Saskatchewan and part in Alberta. So you get to just like,

00:28:27.080 if you're in Lloydminster, you get to just like have one foot in each province. And I mean,

00:28:30.720 I guess you could do that anywhere on the border, but I don't know. I like Lloydminster,

00:28:33.580 but the thing about it is that they're going to have a big thing there. And I think they're

00:28:37.640 going to be trucks involved because everyone has a bit of a convoy spirit now. Here it is. It's a

00:28:43.040 nationwide, I guess I could have just guessed the name of the website. It's nationwide protest

00:28:48.600 against the carbontax.ca, which is they, they went for the most literal interpretation possible,

00:28:54.220 but nationwide protest against the carbontax.ca. And again, I don't even know who's involved with

00:28:59.780 this. So I'm not endorsing the individual people. But if you look at the map, you've got, let me

00:29:05.400 just see, there's one in Vancouver, there's one in Lucerne, BC, which I'm not as familiar with.

00:29:12.260 uh you've got a couple in southern alberta one in coleman one in uh highway 1 and 22 interchange

00:29:19.720 uh which is perhaps not the name of the town uh lloydminster cypress county all of these uh great

00:29:26.220 great well i've never been to some of them but i'm assuming they're great places if if the people are

00:29:29.900 assembling to fight the carbon tax these are surely great places and then in uh toronto and

00:29:35.400 a lot of convoy spirit here a lot of these are not just individual locations these are

00:29:40.140 our roots. But the point is that Canadians have been, this has been a galvanizing issue for

00:29:45.060 Canadians. Canadians have been keen to get involved and are incredibly, incredibly frustrated

00:29:50.480 with what the government is doing. So I mean, what I said, this will be the hill that the

00:29:55.000 government wants to die on. And electorally, I think it very much will. So we'll certainly keep

00:30:01.000 tabs on that. And we've got reporters covering in at least three cities, the carbon tax protests

00:30:06.120 going on on monday but send in your footage send in your uh your photos your videos if you're at

00:30:12.040 one of these and let us know what is going on there i want to turn our attention to a

00:30:17.560 controversy in british columbia where a city council is reeling after people in the community

00:30:23.400 were exposed to heterodox views the uh setting for this is the city of quenelle where the mayor's

00:30:30.680 wife decided to hand out to some people copies of a book that was as it happened published by 0.83

00:30:35.640 true north the book is called grave error it was written well it was edited by cp champion and

00:30:42.440 professor tom flanagan it features a number of essays from uh some incredibly esteemed scholars

00:30:48.520 and contributors that are talking about canadian history a version of canadian history that you

00:30:53.720 aren't really getting even though it is a version that is supported by volumes and volumes of

00:30:59.880 evidence so it's put in a book a book that was a bestseller on amazon has sold thousands of copies

00:31:05.560 but has been blacklisted by several libraries and, as it happened,

00:31:09.320 is now facing this ridiculous investigation, inquiry, apology by a city council.

00:31:16.840 Tom Flanagan joins me now.

00:31:19.020 Tom, always good to talk to you.

00:31:20.400 Thanks for coming on, and congratulations for all the success of the book, too.

00:31:24.240 Oh, thanks, Andrew.

00:31:25.560 So what on earth happened in this British Columbia community?

00:31:30.180 Well, the mayor's wife, her name is Pat Morton.

00:31:33.340 I don't know what her professional designation is, but her business is filing tax returns.

00:31:42.300 She read the book. She liked it, so she bought 10 copies and was giving them to

00:31:49.820 people or places where she thought it might do some good. There are four small Indian bands in

00:31:57.260 the area around the town of Quenelle and they heard of what was going on, that she was giving

00:32:04.700 out these books. So they sent a letter to city council, said they wanted to meet to discuss the

00:32:11.420 book. So they showed up and basically they bullied the council into voting to condemn the book,

00:32:20.460 even though none of them had ever read the book. They all said, no, no, we haven't read it. First

00:32:24.940 First time we've seen it, but we'll vote to condemn it anyway.

00:32:30.900 Then the same thing happened with the school board.

00:32:33.840 Pat had given a copy to the school board.

00:32:35.800 All this took place without the knowledge of myself or any of the other authors.

00:32:41.200 She just did it on her own.

00:32:44.160 So the school board voted to condemn it as well.

00:32:46.480 I still don't know if anybody's actually read the book out there.

00:32:50.580 Yeah, even some of the comments you hear are basically from people saying,

00:32:54.480 well, you know, I started reading it and I didn't like it, or, oh, I heard so-and-so said,

00:32:58.760 you know, this was offensive. You know, when I first heard of this controversy, you know,

00:33:03.100 distributed in the community, it sounded like someone had bought, like, you know, the entire

00:33:07.060 inventory on Amazon and was just like going out distributing them door to door. And then you learn,

00:33:11.440 as you've just shared, that a woman who liked the book bought a handful of copies and handed

00:33:16.180 them out. And I still fail to see how this is a city council matter. Well, it's because she's 0.99

00:33:22.600 the wife of the mayor, I guess.

00:33:25.920 Which has no

00:33:26.660 official, I mean, there's no first lady 0.98

00:33:28.580 of Quesnel. I mean, she has no official status

00:33:30.840 with the city, as I understand it.

00:33:32.080 Of course not, but they claim that because she's married 0.99

00:33:34.740 to the mayor that it makes a

00:33:36.620 difference. I should

00:33:38.620 say, in passing, that the

00:33:40.520 whole ruckus has been

00:33:42.500 a boost for our sales of the

00:33:44.640 book. You can track your

00:33:46.540 not the actual number of sales, but you can

00:33:48.300 track your ranking on

00:33:50.580 the Amazon website of where you

00:33:52.080 stand relative to other books and um we we shot up over 90 places in the books category once this

00:34:01.680 uh once this happened we had slipped down below 100 and the next day we shot up to seven

00:34:09.260 so um yeah it's been great for us well fair fair enough i mean you can embrace the silver lining

00:34:16.700 of that tom but let me ask you about kind of the context here because one of the terms that that

00:34:22.460 has been used in in coverage of this even and certainly cbc's narrative on what happened in

00:34:27.660 quenelle is that this is residential school denialism and they basically make claims about

00:34:33.580 the book or they make claims about what the book says that the book doesn't actually say no uh much

00:34:39.740 Much of the book is devoted to examining the announcement that came out of Kamloops, the

00:34:48.180 notorious announcement about 215 unmarked graves.

00:34:52.420 We also look at a couple of other similar announcements as well, like one from Blue

00:34:57.720 Quills.

00:34:58.720 There have been multiple from Blue Quills, but we looked at one of them that was available

00:35:02.960 at the time, and some others as well.

00:35:06.340 Trying to look at actual evidence.

00:35:07.740 The first thing to understand is that there is no physical evidence of unmarked graves.

00:35:16.460 The only evidence, if you could call it that, is the results of ground-penetrating radar,

00:35:21.300 which at best can show soil disturbances or soil anomalies.

00:35:27.620 It doesn't tell you what's there.

00:35:30.480 In order to know what's there, you have to dig.

00:35:33.020 And there had been a few digs around the country, most recently at Pine Creek Reserve,

00:35:39.820 on the border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in the basement of the Mission Church there.

00:35:45.820 Didn't find anything. None of the digs have turned up any, you know, no bones, no shrouds,

00:35:52.140 no caskets, nothing that could be linked to a burial.

00:35:57.580 So absolute absence of physical evidence.

00:36:03.320 I'm not saying that no child was ever buried near a residential school.

00:36:07.580 You know, you can't say that, but I think the burden of proof is on the other side to say, yeah, there were burials and they haven't come forward with any evidence that is at all persuasive.

00:36:17.740 They just demand that you believe on the basis of a combination of ground-penetrating radar and memories.

00:36:25.740 You know, at this point, these memories are really quite old schools.

00:36:31.740 The last school shut down in 1996, but most of them were shut down long before that.

00:36:36.740 So when you're hearing memories, they're usually actually something that somebody heard from his father or his grandfather.

00:36:43.740 You know, it could be 60, 70, even 100 years old.

00:36:49.260 So they're demanding that you believe this.

00:36:51.700 And if you don't believe it, you're called a denialist.

00:36:54.780 But we're not denying anything.

00:36:57.080 We're just saying, show us the evidence.

00:36:59.080 So that's a big part of the book, is looking at these claims about unmarked graves.

00:37:03.320 Now, related to that is the claim about missing children.

00:37:07.720 This is a related claim.

00:37:09.040 These unmarked graves supposedly hold the bodies of the missing children.

00:37:15.860 But just as there are no unmarked graves, there are no missing children.

00:37:20.940 The children were all carefully accounted for in the schools.

00:37:23.460 They had to be because the government was paying a per capita payment

00:37:29.620 to the religious bodies that ran the schools,

00:37:33.440 and the government wasn't going to fork over money

00:37:36.200 without some evidence that the kids were there.

00:37:39.940 So, and the churches weren't going to let the kids go missing

00:37:43.540 because they needed to proffer the evidence

00:37:46.800 so they could continue to get the money.

00:37:49.080 So there are no missing children.

00:37:50.600 Again, these allegations have been made.

00:37:54.360 Excuse me, Andrew, I'm getting over a cold

00:37:56.160 and it's not the greatest, but I'm doing the best I can.

00:38:01.080 Did children die at schools?

00:38:03.120 Well, absolutely.

00:38:04.320 um most of this took place before there was a cure for tuberculosis and tuberculosis was rampant

00:38:12.020 not only well in all of canada actually but particularly in native communities

00:38:18.160 uh was probably worse on the reserves than in the schools but it was bad enough in the schools and

00:38:25.160 yes kids died but there are there are death certificates um which you can get from the

00:38:31.480 Department of Vital Records of the provinces, you know, and they show cause of death and where the

00:38:37.000 child is buried. So, you know, there are no missing children. Now, there are some records that are

00:38:42.440 missing in the sense that over the course of 150 years, sometimes not everything gets kept,

00:38:49.400 but basically you can see what was going on. And once streptomycin was discovered, then the death

00:38:56.840 rate cratered phenomenally. Now, sadly, occasionally a kid would die, there'd be accidents, you

00:39:04.980 know, skating on thin ice, different things can happen over the course of 150 schools

00:39:11.720 over 150 years. There's going to be some tragic accidents, but there's no mass disappearance

00:39:18.880 of children. So much of the book is, you know, kind of prosaic, looking at the documentary

00:39:24.900 evidence about these claims of unmarked graves and missing children. Another claim is that

00:39:31.140 children were forced to attend. Well, again, this doesn't hold water.

00:39:37.540 Indian children were not required to attend any school until 1920,

00:39:43.620 amendment to the Indian Act at that time. Prior to that, all attendance was voluntary. And

00:39:49.700 And after 1920, attendance at a residential school was required only if there was no day

00:39:56.820 school convenient in a convenient location.

00:40:02.600 Just to bring it back, Tom, to the issues that sort of have come from you raising these

00:40:09.880 points is that people are not willing to engage in a debate on the facts.

00:40:15.260 They're not willing to engage in a debate on the merits.

00:40:19.060 because i mean you're a political scientist by by training and you have quite a lengthy career in

00:40:23.220 academia i mean i would assume that your hope would be that you put a book like this out and

00:40:27.300 if people dispute it they publish their own book they publish their own response and and we're

00:40:31.700 seeing now increasingly that people don't want to do that instead they say you know how dare you and

00:40:37.220 without actually arguing with a single premise or conclusion yeah very true it's sad the the

00:40:44.660 The contributors to the book are people whose careers involve dealing with facts, retired

00:40:56.060 professors in various fields like history or political science or sociology, lawyers,

00:41:03.660 judges, journalists.

00:41:06.780 That's the common denominator for almost all the contributors is a focus on fact, and that's

00:41:12.460 what we've tried to do in the book.

00:41:14.580 what's happening at cornell is a refusal to look at facts and just try and uh shout down the book

00:41:20.340 before anybody gets a chance to read it so well i'm glad i'm glad that it's been beneficial on

00:41:26.020 the sales front at least so a bit of a i i don't know maybe a bit of a pyrrhic victory for the

00:41:32.260 council in winning there well i appreciate you straining your voice to join us today tom always

00:41:38.660 good to talk to you drink some uh drink some nice honey and lemon tea or something and hopefully

00:41:42.980 you recover but appreciate your time as always thanks bye-bye all right and by the way i i just

00:41:47.780 read uh pivot or pirouette by tom flanagan which i picked up at a conference last year and uh even

00:41:54.340 he i believe he signed it i got him yeah he signed it for me which was quite nice uh and this was a

00:41:59.300 book not a new book but about the 1993 election which was a rather pivotal one in canadian

00:42:04.740 politics it was the election that brought uh kim campbell's progressive conservatives down to just

00:42:09.220 two seats and saw the reform party just absolutely explode onto the scene and i uh referenced it a

00:42:15.860 little bit in my own book which is coming out which is about pierre polyev called pierre polyev

00:42:21.220 a political life the first so far biography of the conservative party of canada leader that's coming

00:42:27.860 out on may 28th you can get details online about that it's on amazon indigo actually indigo has it

00:42:34.020 it on sale right now. So Indigo didn't carry my last book on store shelves. So we had a bit of a

00:42:38.860 negative relationship there, but they seem to be enthusiastic about this one. So if you have

00:42:43.160 already pre-ordered it, thank you very much. Hopefully you enjoy it when it comes. That does

00:42:47.440 it for us for today. We will be back in just 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of Canada's

00:42:52.860 most irreverent talk show. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to

00:42:58.380 The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:42:59.940 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:43:28.380 We'll be right back.

00:43:58.380 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 26, 2024

Liberals have spent $42 million on gun ＂buyback＂ without getting a single gun

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