Juno News - Liberals invite Nazi veteran to House of Commons

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.

00:01:16.900 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:20.700 Wow! Fridays in Ottawa are normally the most boring thing imaginable.

00:01:31.720 The only thing more boring than a Friday in Parliament is any hour of CBC programming.

00:01:39.100 But boy, did last Friday change that up a little bit.

00:01:43.020 In fairness, it wasn't even what happened on Friday because no one quite noticed in real time

00:01:49.240 or at least no one said out loud what was happening.

00:01:51.820 It was only over the weekend when people started to digest

00:01:54.780 and wonder, did that really happen?

00:01:57.580 I'm referring, of course, to this moment.

00:02:01.040 We have here in the chamber today,

00:02:03.140 Ukrainian-Canadians, Ukrainian-Canadian world veteran

00:02:06.500 from the Second World War

00:02:08.840 who fought the Ukrainian independence against the Russians

00:02:12.200 and continues to support the troops today,

00:02:17.080 even at his age of 98.

00:02:19.240 His name is Yaroslav Hunka, and I was going to say he's in the gallery, but I think you

00:02:35.280 beat me to that.

00:02:37.300 But I'm very proud to say that he is from North Bay and from my writing of Nipissing

00:02:42.140 to Miskaming. He's a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service. Thank

00:02:55.020 you.

00:03:05.480 Ah, and just like that, everyone rises to their feet. A standing ovation for a Ukrainian hero

00:03:11.980 and a Canadian hero. Now that in and of itself is not news, but when you delve into the details a

00:03:18.620 bit and you listen closely to the introduction, a Ukrainian who fought against Russia in World

00:03:26.280 War II, you start to wonder, okay, well, I, you know, maybe you don't have to be a huge history

00:03:31.240 buff to realize that Russia or the Soviet Union as it then was, was inexplicably, well, not

00:03:37.240 inexplicably but was inexplicably to today's understanding of things in a modern context

00:03:42.960 the good guy in that conflict. Yes the Soviet Union was one of the allied forces against the

00:03:48.520 Nazis there was very good reason for that and as it stands things happened afterwards that

00:03:53.700 made us realize if we didn't already perhaps they weren't the good guys overall in history but in

00:03:58.740 that moment they were on the right side. So it stands to reason that those fighting against

00:04:03.880 the Soviets in World War II were on the wrong side. Now, history is complicated, and war is

00:04:12.520 complicated, and sometimes you can easily go down the road of believing that the enemy of your enemy

00:04:17.280 is your friend. And I point that out because I think for a lot of Ukrainians who saw and understood

00:04:23.340 the incredible genocide that had taken place against them at the hands of Stalin and the

00:04:28.540 Soviet Union, they would say that, well, maybe the Soviets are our enemies more than Nazi Germany. So

00:04:34.520 even if they are on the wrong side of history overall, you can understand how Ukrainians may

00:04:40.820 have looked at the Soviets and not been as fond of having them as an ally as Britain and the US

00:04:46.940 and Canada and France, etc. were. Now that is not excusing people who embrace Nazism, certainly not

00:04:55.220 today. And I think it's not excusing the things that were done by the 14th Waffen Grenadier

00:05:00.620 Division of the SS, the first Galician, which later on was rebranded for obvious reasons as

00:05:06.480 the first Ukrainian division. That was the unit in which this man, Yaroslav Hanka, was a member.

00:05:13.660 That is the division in which this man fought for his country, but ultimately fought for the Nazi

00:05:21.280 war efforts. And it is not something that a lot of people commenting on really knew about, I don't

00:05:28.480 think. I think people could have probably put two and two together, as you kind of saw House of

00:05:32.560 Commons Speaker Anthony Roda doing there, that if someone was fighting against the Soviets, they

00:05:38.160 must have been fighting with the Nazis. There are some people who knew history really, really well

00:05:42.820 that would have assumed when this came up that perhaps he was one of the Ukrainian nationalists

00:05:49.300 who were trying to establish an independent Ukraine in the 1930s and 40s

00:05:53.900 and were fighting against the Nazis and the Soviets.

00:05:56.340 That was the interpretation that I've seen from some people

00:05:59.260 who do know that chapter of history very well.

00:06:01.580 And they assumed that the vetting had been done.

00:06:04.000 They assumed that if we are looking at this guy in the House of Commons

00:06:06.740 and honoring him, that surely we're not putting up a guy there

00:06:10.540 who fought with the Nazis.

00:06:13.840 But alas, that did not, in fact, take place.

00:06:16.980 And it was really, really interesting to see the condemnation start to flow.

00:06:21.940 Now, Karina Gould, who decided to pose for this photo with Mr. Hanka,

00:06:29.040 was very indignant at this whole thing, urged anyone and everyone to not politicize it.

00:06:34.980 She ended up speaking in the House of Commons,

00:06:37.060 doing the number one two-step of the Liberal government,

00:06:40.580 which is to point the blame at someone else.

00:06:43.040 Mr. Speaker, I would just like to respond to my honourable colleague because I think

00:06:49.680 we both share the frustration about what happened on Friday, but I do want to reiterate, and

00:06:55.000 as you have made very clear in your statement, Mr. Speaker, that this was your initiative.

00:07:01.100 The Government of Canada had no knowledge of this individual coming to—the Government

00:07:08.040 had no knowledge. The Speaker is responsible for this chamber. He invited him of his own

00:07:14.200 accord, and he made the decision himself to recognize him. Neither the Government of Canada

00:07:22.100 nor the delegation of Ukraine had any knowledge of this. I would respectfully submit, Mr. Speaker,

00:07:29.000 that you clarify this for the members opposite, because it's important that this information be

00:07:34.340 clear and that these false allegations do not continue because they're not true thank you mr

00:07:40.740 that's right the honorable opposition house leader then the government house leader before anything

00:07:46.020 starts i just want to make it clear that it was my decision and my decision alone this was a

00:07:53.380 constituent who wanted to see what wanted to be here and i recognized him it was my decision and

00:08:02.340 i apologize profusely i cannot i cannot tell you how regretful it is and it may not be good enough

00:08:09.500 for some of you and for that i apologize and i'll let the honorable opposition house leader

00:08:16.640 take it from here and then we'll go to the government house leader he has faced a great

00:08:23.460 many criticisms over the last couple of days from the center for israel and jewish affairs

00:08:29.440 Seja, which has condemned this incident, from B'nai B'rith, which is another Jewish advocacy

00:08:35.520 group, also from the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, again, another group that does very good

00:08:42.320 work on this, and is actually led by a former Liberal member of Parliament in Michael Levitt.

00:08:48.480 And despite all of this condemnation, by the way, on Yom Kippur, when the Jewish people would love

00:08:54.780 to be focusing on that and instead have to feel very aggrieved by the standing ovation given for

00:09:00.660 a literal Nazi veteran in the House of Commons on Friday. Anthony Roda has apologized. He's taken

00:09:08.840 responsibility. He said it was his and his decision alone. The Liberal government knew nothing about

00:09:14.660 it. The Prime Minister knew nothing about it. Trudeau never met with the guy. Ignore that

00:09:18.860 little photo that Karina Gould took in the hallway. But then there was this post from one of the

00:09:24.160 members of the veterans family. Teresa Hanka, who shares this image of this man, Yaroslav,

00:09:32.080 waiting for Trudeau and Zelensky, waiting in the reception hall. Now, I've not seen a photo of him

00:09:39.540 with Trudeau and Zelensky. I don't know if any of them met. Maybe they were promised a meeting and

00:09:45.140 it never happened. Maybe they thought they were getting a meeting. But nevertheless, it's not

00:09:49.400 exactly something that we can just put at Anthony Roda's feet and say this has nothing to do with

00:09:55.060 anyone else, which is what the Liberals have been committing to. As it stands now, the NDP has called

00:10:01.140 for Speaker Anthony Roda to resign, as has the Bloc Québécois. The Conservatives have called for

00:10:06.700 accountability. They don't believe the Speaker is the problem. They believe Justin Trudeau is the

00:10:11.720 problem, and I think there's probably some good reason for that. Here's a guy who loves theatrics

00:10:16.500 at every turn a guy who has never seen a photo op he didn't like and what happens when he is caught

00:10:23.300 literally literally presiding over a moment in the house of commons in which there is a

00:10:28.980 veteran who served with the nazis up in the gallery not just there he didn't just sneak

00:10:33.460 in the back he was an invited guest and the liberals are saying well yeah this is we all

00:10:37.860 need to do they're doing their whole learning opportunity thing this is

00:10:41.540 Now a learning opportunity for everyone but the people responsible.

00:10:46.900 I will say two things on this that may be a little bit unpopular.

00:10:52.240 I am one of the most, I should back up and say that I actually had the great privilege

00:10:56.920 in 2011 of visiting Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Israel.

00:11:03.240 And I was able to build off of my high school civics and rudimentary, high school history

00:11:08.780 and rudimentary first-year university history by steeping myself in Holocaust history.

00:11:14.120 It was a very challenging week, but I learned a great deal that I have carried with me in

00:11:18.640 the interceding 12 years.

00:11:20.480 I am very, very keen on history and remembering the Holocaust and honoring those who lost

00:11:27.240 their lives in this, which means I have zero, zero sympathy whatsoever for Nazis.

00:11:34.840 And I say that while also understanding, as I mentioned earlier on in the show, the complexity

00:11:39.580 of history, that there are people who did not fight alongside the Nazis because they

00:11:43.820 had it out for the Jewish people.

00:11:45.720 They fought the Nazis because they believed, as many Ukrainians did, that Hitler was going

00:11:50.720 to be their liberator.

00:11:52.460 So when you look at the full history of this, and Canada went through this in the 1980s,

00:11:58.520 was something called the Deschenes Commission, which looked at Nazi war criminals in Canada.

00:12:04.100 And they ultimately decided, this commission, that they would not view the 14th Waffen Grenadier

00:12:10.400 Division as inherently criminal, despite the fact that it had been called such at Nuremberg.

00:12:16.080 In Canada, they didn't go that distance.

00:12:18.180 And they said that it was down to individual conduct.

00:12:21.560 And these people didn't hide that they were in this division like other Nazis did.

00:12:26.120 These people didn't lie about it.

00:12:27.760 And in this particular case, we have no evidence of what this man individually did during World

00:12:32.820 War II.

00:12:34.100 So we can say that perhaps he was not involved in anything that would make our skin crawl and

00:12:40.020 anything that would just have us calling for justice. But we can also say that he should not

00:12:44.880 be given a standing ovation in a hall of government in Canada. And in a lot of ways,

00:12:51.880 I don't know this man. I will never know this man. I don't know if the liberals have not just

00:12:59.120 hung him out to dry and now spend his dying days living with the shame and embarrassment and

00:13:05.640 humiliation of this when he just kept his head down. No one would have known who he was. No one

00:13:11.040 would have questioned his past and that would have been that. So I feel for his family who are going

00:13:16.320 through something now they probably never thought was going to happen to their father, their

00:13:19.800 grandfather, their great-grandfather. But this is exactly the situation we're in with a society that

00:13:25.500 does not know its history and a society that believes the enemy of your enemy is your friend

00:13:30.300 because we've decided in the Russia-Ukraine conflict for good reason as you've heard me say

00:13:36.100 that Russia is the bad guy anyone who fought against Russia irrespective of the circumstances

00:13:40.960 therefore must be a good guy that was what led to this horrendous and shameful display on Friday

00:13:48.540 now let me just before we go to our first guest on this show share a bit of a clip because we

00:13:54.480 have seen some denunciation from the folks involved here, like Jennifer O'Connell, the Liberal

00:14:01.160 Member of Parliament. I'm curious if she thinks there should be consequences or retrimand for

00:14:10.000 members of this House who meet with known Nazis, who spread misinformation, disinformation,

00:14:17.840 glorify the Holocaust, who speak against anti-Muslim rhetoric.

00:14:25.080 I'm just curious if she's talking about online hate and privacy of Canadians and regulation.

00:14:30.640 Does she condemn her actions by meeting with a known Nazi in this country

00:14:36.080 who spout anti-Muslim rhetoric?

00:14:40.500 Oh, wait, I'm sorry. That was the wrong clip.

00:14:43.180 No, no, no.

00:14:43.720 She was not talking about the literal Nazi that was in the House of Commons.

00:14:47.660 she was talking about a German member of the European Parliament, Christine Anderson, who

00:14:52.280 tweeted this morning that she is just rolling on the floor laughing at this whole thing after

00:14:57.400 the display that she got. But surely Justin Trudeau has denounced this Nazism, right?

00:15:03.980 Mr. Speaker, when did the Prime Minister lose his way? When did it happen?

00:15:08.240 The Right Honourable Prime Minister. Mr. Speaker, Conservative Party members can stand with people

00:15:17.420 who wave swastikas point of order uh the honorable member for thorn hill mr speaker i am a strong

00:15:24.080 jewish woman and a member of this house and a descendant of holocaust survivors and i have

00:15:28.200 never made to it's never been singled out and i have never been made to feel less except for today

00:15:33.480 when the prime minister accused me of standing with swastikas i think he owes me an apology i'd

00:15:38.420 like an apology and i think he owes an apology to all members of this house when conservative

00:15:44.520 members of parliament meet with a German member of the European parliament, that is greeting and

00:15:50.520 meeting a Nazi. When the conservatives support freedom convoy demonstrators, that is standing

00:15:57.140 with people who wave swastikas. When parental rights advocates descend on Parliament Hill and

00:16:02.480 locations across the country, the liberals, the activists, the media will all jump up and down

00:16:07.300 and say, these are Nazis. It's amazing how in this day and age, anyone and everyone is a Nazi,

00:16:13.080 except for someone who literally fought with the Nazis.

00:16:17.640 That is the level of dissonance here.

00:16:19.380 And you often hear the expression

00:16:20.740 that when everything is racist, nothing is racist.

00:16:23.620 When everyone's a Nazi, no one is a Nazi.

00:16:26.560 And that's, I think, the thing here that people forget

00:16:28.780 is that Nazi means something.

00:16:31.520 And we are not so far removed from history

00:16:33.900 that there are not Nazis who walk on this earth,

00:16:36.320 which is why Simon Wiesenthal and his followers

00:16:39.360 have become so dogged in their pursuit of justice

00:16:42.280 for aging Nazi criminals.

00:16:45.420 There will come a time

00:16:46.260 when there are none left on this earth

00:16:48.640 and some of those will have managed

00:16:50.240 to escape and evade justice.

00:16:52.360 I am not calling for justice

00:16:54.240 for Yaroslav Hanka.

00:16:56.080 I don't know enough about his history

00:16:58.140 to say whether that is warranted,

00:16:59.760 but I am saying that

00:17:00.640 at the very, very minimum,

00:17:03.360 the lowest, lowest bar possible,

00:17:05.420 so much that the seven dwarves

00:17:07.100 could play limbo under it,

00:17:08.900 is that we shouldn't honor them

00:17:10.380 and give them standing ovations

00:17:11.940 in the House of Commons.

00:17:13.880 Ezra Levant was one of the first people, if not the first person, to notice this.

00:17:18.600 He is the Rebel Commander at Rebel News and joins me now.

00:17:22.800 Ezra, it's always good to talk to you.

00:17:25.440 I mean, you're a Jewish man yourself, and I know you have a very high tolerance for

00:17:29.760 free speech and for people having controversial and even hateful opinions, but just on a personal

00:17:35.580 level, how did you feel when you saw this and clued in to what people in the House of

00:17:40.160 Commons didn't really clue into?

00:17:41.940 Yeah, I mean, talk about tricky language. I mean, the guy was a Nazi. I'm not saying he was like a regular GI, just a conscript in the army. He was a volunteer with Hitler's SS. That was the political hunter killers. Those are the folks who would go after the partisan resistance. Those are the folks who would hunt for Jews in the attics.

00:18:04.540 these were the vicious Hitler errand boys. They trained near Dachau. They were the division for

00:18:14.620 the battalion that would shoot Jews and bury them in mass graves. So he wasn't just fighting. He was

00:18:21.080 a Nazi, an SS officer. I'm curious if he has the telltale SS tattoo under their armpit. They would

00:18:28.260 have an SS tattoo and then their blood type. Now, I wonder if Yaroslav Hanke has that. It would be

00:18:33.760 terrifying to find out. This guy sort of sneaked into Canada. According to David Pagliese, Canada's

00:18:41.200 leading military journalist and historian, a lot of these guys sneaked into Canada by changing the

00:18:47.160 name of the battalion. They said instead of part of the 14th Vafin SS, they were with the 1st

00:18:53.240 Ukrainian Battalion. And about 2,000 of these folks managed to sneak into Canada. This guy,

00:18:58.200 Yaroslav Hanke kept a low profile for a long time. I mean, he's 98. Maybe he was worried that some

00:19:04.900 Mossad Nazi hunter would show up one day and get him, but he's 98. And imagine getting the phone

00:19:11.220 call. You're a Nazi. You've been living low key. You sort of lied to get into Canada. One day you

00:19:15.880 get a phone call from the government, not to prosecute you, but to champion you as this hero.

00:19:21.660 Anthony Roda literally called him a hero. I got a question for you. Do you think for one second

00:19:29.720 that being a guest of honor for the entire parliament, when the foreign president of

00:19:37.380 Ukraine is there, so you've got high security, everyone's been going through the metal detector

00:19:41.860 because this guy Zelensky is under an assassination risk. Do you think for one second that Yaroslav

00:19:48.500 hunker was not scrutinized by not just one but probably 10 people do you really think trudeau

00:19:55.700 the master thespian didn't know who was who and you think christia freeland whose own grandfather

00:20:02.340 was a ukrainian nazi who actually expropriated a newspaper from a jew and turned it into a

00:20:08.100 nazi propaganda machine do you think for a second that christia freeland didn't know exactly what

00:20:13.940 was going on and you were so right andrew these liberals call everyone a nazi it's projection

00:20:21.140 they are the nazi lovers and it wasn't until the internet including myself

00:20:28.420 connected the dots no regime media bothered to say oh who's that guy fighting against russia oh

00:20:35.220 that's our friend why did it take independent journalists like myself when not a single

00:20:40.980 regime journalists said, hmm, that's a bit weird. Who would have fought against Russia

00:20:46.880 in the early 40s? Well, on that note, I mean, the most charitable interpretation for this is that

00:20:54.900 they are idiots, is that you have people that don't understand the history or lack the logic

00:21:00.240 and reason to just put two and two together. You don't buy that, it sounds like. You know,

00:21:05.020 Jaspal Atwal, and you guys broke this story. He was the terrorist. The judge called him a terrorist

00:21:11.720 who was convicted of attempted murder when an Indian cabinet minister was visiting BC. Jaspal

00:21:17.520 Atwal tried to kill him. He was convicted, declared a terrorist. Justin Trudeau invited

00:21:22.720 him to go to India with him. Oh, I didn't know. You didn't know? Or you were playing domestic

00:21:28.120 politics. Just like Trudeau plays domestic politics with the Sikh community, he plays

00:21:32.980 domestic politics with the large Ukrainian-Canadian community. And by the way, my family's originally

00:21:37.660 from Ukraine as well, from the city of Dnipro. So I'm not hostile to Ukraine. I just think that

00:21:43.280 you got 2,000 Nazis who came from Ukraine to Canada. Most of them have passed away. You find

00:21:48.840 the one guy who's 98, he's probably one of the, I'd be surprised if there's five others in the

00:21:53.700 whole country. You found the one Nazi, not a fake Nazi, not a rhetorical Nazi, not a neo-Nazi,

00:22:01.440 but a real nazi who's probably got the ss tattoo under the armpit who probably if he was active for

00:22:09.120 so many years probably murdered a few jews and a few resistance fighters he probably did andrew i

00:22:16.320 mean i don't know you don't have any evidence specifically i don't man i i absolutely don't

00:22:22.880 and he will go to his grave unprosecuted and he's lived a charmed life andrew he's 98 the last 73

00:22:30.480 years or 72 years in this country imagine what a bizarre ending to his life he's invited to ottawa

00:22:37.360 the whole parliament jumps to their feet and applauds him and they call him a hero and he's

00:22:42.160 thinking i'm vindicated i'm redeemed adolf hitler's must be thrilled with them and then it all comes

00:22:48.480 undone what a bizarre bizarre life i i've seen i mean there was i can't remember the name of it now

00:22:54.240 There was a mini series on Netflix about John Dimanovich was, or Dimanovich, I recall the name, the one they thought was, you know, Ivan the Terrible.

00:23:04.540 And, you know, you watch this and you just see this horrible, horrible man, but to his family, he's grandpa.

00:23:10.020 He's the guy that they've known that has probably never committed any criminal wrong for the last 70, 80 years of his life.

00:23:16.800 And here we have a guy who's probably in a very similar boat.

00:23:19.900 He's known as a loving family guy, community guy.

00:23:22.300 if he had just kept his head down for two years he goes to his grave with nothing now this is his

00:23:28.460 legacy and i i mean i don't think that there was any 3d chess being played here to try to destroy

00:23:34.240 this uh family's life but my goodness that's the consequence of this because now no one will rest

00:23:39.320 until they understand this people that had never heard of this division are now asking questions

00:23:43.500 about whoa why did canada just open up its doors to people that had done this let me throw a few

00:23:49.020 quick things at you before I go. Number one, three months ago, Justin Trudeau went to Kiev and met

00:23:54.640 with Martin Melnick. He was Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, and he was fired by Zelensky for

00:24:06.560 denying the Holocaust. Fired by Zelensky. Trudeau met with him. Point two, Chrystia Freeland posed,

00:24:13.940 And you guys broke this story, too, with the scarf that was for Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Nazi.

00:24:21.880 How many, and by the way, if you look at David Paglia's story in The Ottawa Citizen,

00:24:28.600 Chrystia Freeland and the government have met with the Nazi as a battalion and instructed the Canadian Armed Forces to keep a low media profile.

00:24:37.580 So that's not one dalliance with Nazis.

00:24:40.140 That's two, three, four.

00:24:42.620 How many times does Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland get to hang out with Nazis and say, whoopsies, didn't mean to?

00:24:50.040 And remember, Chrystia Freeland's own grandfather was a Nazi, and she helped cover that up for years.

00:24:55.640 Well, and on the note of Freeland, too, I mean, if we go back to the ignorance argument, the ignorance plea here, Chrystia Freeland, if there is one person in the House of Commons that has no right to plead ignorant, it is Chrystia Freeland, because she knows this history intricately.

00:25:11.040 it is part of her family history she's got a i think it's like a condo or a house in you know

00:25:16.360 downtown kiev she knows ukraine well it's like most people like for example if someone had handed

00:25:21.280 me the bandera flag i wouldn't have known what it was christia freeland did and and that's the

00:25:25.880 thing is that if there's one person in that government that doesn't get to just hide behind

00:25:29.740 that it's her yeah you know what i it's amazing how the the regime media are rushing to give

00:25:37.320 Trudeau and Freeland the benefit of the doubt, when you have a real live SS officer in parliament,

00:25:44.220 but you call it, but they demonize every conservative, every trucker, everyone who's

00:25:50.260 worried about gender ideology in school, they call them Nazis. Never again, Andrew, can we accept

00:25:56.320 the accusation of bigotry or Nazism from the liberals. They are the only government in the

00:26:03.980 world that I know of that has brought Nazis into Parliament and cheered them. And Trudeau should

00:26:10.320 never be allowed to forget that for the rest of his days. You know what? Pierre Trudeau

00:26:16.040 motorcycled around Montreal with a Nazi helmet in the 40s. It was a big joke. Well, 80 years later,

00:26:23.180 his son brought a Nazi into Parliament. Justin Trudeau is a disgrace. We should never let him

00:26:29.680 forget that yeah and it makes it look quaint when a few years ago the liberals forgot to mention

00:26:34.680 jews on the plaque of their holocaust memorial i don't know if you remember that and you know

00:26:38.680 they were that was again another whoopsie uh well ezra i know you have to go i appreciate you coming

00:26:43.380 on your coverage on this started on twitter and i know we'll carry on into your show tonight at

00:26:48.300 rebel news so thank you very much thanks my friend bye-bye all right that was ezra levant the rebel

00:26:54.040 commander of Rebel News. And let me reiterate, as I pointed out to Ezra, I have zero evidence

00:27:00.140 or knowledge whatsoever of Yaroslav Hanka's individual conduct. We don't know anything

00:27:06.420 about his war record, and we wouldn't have known his name had he not been paraded, at least

00:27:11.340 metaphorically, in front of Canadians in such a large and public way. And here's the thing. I know

00:27:19.040 some people in this audience may have varying views on the Ukraine-Russia conflict. I believe

00:27:24.840 Ukraine is far from perfect, but I believe Russia is the aggressor. And it is interesting when you

00:27:30.840 look at Russia's prime argument that they needed to denazify Ukraine. Now, I do not believe Ukraine

00:27:37.020 has an active Nazi problem. I believe the Azov battalion is a problem, and I believe that we

00:27:43.160 should also acknowledge this is a country that elected a Jewish president in Zelensky. Nevertheless,

00:27:49.040 Ukraine's history does have Nazi problems, and there are certain pockets of the population,

00:27:54.560 of course, that will hold any number of views, which are reprehensible and should be called out.

00:28:00.100 But that aside, I'm just making sure you know where I'm coming from on this. Can you imagine

00:28:04.600 the propaganda win that has been given to Putin and given to Russia by literally Zelensky there

00:28:12.700 giving a fist up for a Nazi on the floor of the House of Commons of Canada,

00:28:18.560 one of the countries that's funneling huge amounts of money

00:28:21.200 into the fight against Russia, the fight for Ukraine.

00:28:23.740 Imagine how easy Justin Trudeau has made it for Vladimir Putin.

00:28:28.960 We will have more on this tomorrow, I am sure.

00:28:31.820 I was going to say we should segue into lighter things.

00:28:34.040 I don't exactly know how light it is,

00:28:35.620 but nevertheless, we will move on to a different topic here

00:28:38.340 because taxpayer waste is a perennial subject in this country.

00:28:42.980 And as such on the show, we always try to make note of it here.

00:28:45.980 And the one thing we can always agree on,

00:28:47.960 regardless of our perspectives on global geopolitical conflict

00:28:51.960 and all of that, is that we should probably defund the CBC here.

00:28:56.600 So this is an interesting story.

00:28:58.680 CBC, which has been under the boot potentially

00:29:01.100 because Pierre Polyev has pledged to defund it

00:29:04.260 and turn it into housing for Canadian families.

00:29:07.520 But CBC has been sitting on, we learned through the latest documents from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a $400 million real estate portfolio. $444 million in real estate. It's downtown Toronto headquarters on Front Street is about two-thirds of this, but you have other properties in various parts of the country.

00:29:30.800 and what's interesting about all of this is that we're looking at CBC which has a budget of about

00:29:37.600 well a taxpayer subsidy of about 1.3 billion dollars every year that's 1.3 billion that's a

00:29:43.940 lot of money so if you were to go into government and you were to do nothing else but get rid of

00:29:49.900 CBC's subsidy which doesn't mean shut it down it just means let it find money on its own or lay

00:29:55.660 people off and roll back operations to keep costs in check, you would save $1.3 billion a year.

00:30:03.220 That's astronomical. But then you also take into account CBC's holdings and you say, okay,

00:30:07.480 we're going to sell these all off. Well, boom, you make $444 million, which is not bad if you

00:30:16.260 are working towards balancing the budget, which admittedly does seem like it's going to take

00:30:20.840 the better part of two-thirds of a century to get to. So I was watching with interest when these

00:30:27.500 documents, which came out from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation originally, and were also

00:30:32.840 added by an order paper question that was submitted by Conservative MP Adam Chambers,

00:30:37.940 and they were looking at all of this and finding this is just for 12 properties,

00:30:43.100 12 corporation-owned properties across the country. Now you throw in other assets into the mix, like

00:30:48.440 perhaps their camera equipment and some of their audio equipment and Peter Mansbridge's old hair

00:30:54.920 piece I believe it's actually been donated to a museum but you never know all of this stuff is

00:30:59.120 part and parcel of where we are going to be getting the money from CBC if we decide to cut

00:31:05.480 the cord on this Chris Sims joins us every Monday from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation Chris not

00:31:11.900 that we want to go and start picking out the furniture here but have you set your eyes on

00:31:15.560 anything right some of those desks look pretty fancy the ones that light up from inside also

00:31:22.040 the nerd in me wants that robot I don't know if it's still in on duty but do you remember when

00:31:27.920 we were kids Andrew we found out about these two kind of roller robots that deliver all the mail

00:31:33.320 to all the CBC employees at that front street location so like you just pointed out it's the

00:31:40.720 downtown toronto location that takes the lion's share of this money i think it's something crazy

00:31:46.180 like 300 million dollars or so so yeah if they still have those two little bots that roll around

00:31:52.460 like r2d2 delivering uh people's mail uh i'd probably get my dibs on that one well to be

00:31:58.700 honest i mean the bots could probably do a better job anchoring i think than a lot of the people

00:32:03.140 they have on air so maybe we just you have to forgo the robot and you instead get rosie barton

00:32:08.140 And, you know, you'll just basically do a little swap there.

00:32:11.600 But, you know, I look at this and look, downtown Toronto real estate is important.

00:32:16.220 I mean, most media companies want to be downtown because they, you know, will get more access and it's easier than just like plopping it out in, you know, like Huntsville, Ontario or something.

00:32:25.940 But we know that CBC is incapable of doing anything affordably.

00:32:30.400 And this is a day and age in which, I mean, True North has been growing as a media organization with an all remote operation.

00:32:36.180 I know you're doing this show as you do a lot of your work from home in Alberta.

00:32:40.940 You know, it's not to say they could switch to all remote, but they could probably do with a lot less and choose not to.

00:32:46.800 Yeah, they really could.

00:32:47.980 We have different examples across Canada of journalist owned TV stations, for example.

00:32:53.980 There's one in Victoria where it was going to get shut down and the journalists got together and they said, hey, we don't feel like being unemployed.

00:33:01.260 How about we actually buy into this thing?

00:33:03.200 and it's a very humble modest operation but they get their news out every single day and it works

00:33:09.440 that way and that's what's funny about it is that whenever we start going after the cbc andrew

00:33:14.400 saying hey you guys take 1.2 billion dollars per year for folks who can't quite figure out

00:33:20.560 what a billion is picture a brand new hospital that's how much money this costs right building

00:33:26.560 a brand new hospital every single year that's what the cbc costs and when we start getting

00:33:31.120 onto them about that, they'll say something self-serving like, oh, well, what about, you

00:33:35.940 know, First Nations programming? Uh-uh. When you actually check the documents, they spend more on

00:33:42.080 their executive suite pay, Andrew, than they do on First Nations programming. And instead, when you

00:33:49.480 turn on something like APTN, for example, which takes a fraction of the taxpayer dollars and does

00:33:55.760 way more with it. I think they broadcast in 12 different First Nations languages. So the CBC

00:34:01.840 will try to cloak itself in this, you know, essential service, you know, Canadian fabric

00:34:06.600 thing. And it just isn't that anymore. And the example of that downtown Toronto location

00:34:12.040 is exactly it. Well, and the one thing I would point out too, is that CBC likes to hide behind

00:34:18.720 that. They like to hide behind their Northern coverage and their rural and remote coverage.

00:34:23.400 which by the way, most folks in rural parts of the country

00:34:25.380 want nothing to do with CBC,

00:34:26.700 but that's neither here nor there.

00:34:28.420 But you go to cbc.ca

00:34:29.940 and none of that stuff is what's on the homepage.

00:34:32.540 They've got their latest news story

00:34:34.400 in which they're competing with private media outlets.

00:34:36.580 They've got commercial advertising,

00:34:38.880 again, competing with private media outlets.

00:34:42.020 I'm scrolling down here.

00:34:43.280 They've got CBC Gem.

00:34:45.420 So, oh, I can watch some Dragon's Den

00:34:47.160 or some 22 Minutes.

00:34:49.820 Okay, well, you know, 22 Minutes is an example

00:34:52.040 of something the market wouldn't provide. So probably for other reasons, but the things that

00:34:56.820 they like doing are the things that are the popular stuff that competes with private players.

00:35:02.240 I mean, they want to play the Olympics and they want to hold the Oscars. That's what they want to

00:35:06.800 be doing. Because then, so you get into this, this vortex of them trying to do stuff that's

00:35:13.660 popular so they get people to watch them, but them also not providing the things that they

00:35:18.600 actually are supposed to through their mandate. And so it's this vicious little cycle that goes

00:35:23.100 round and round. And they've already lost Hockey Night in Canada. Why are they duplicating the

00:35:27.960 things that private enterprises are trying to now compete with them with? It goes back to,

00:35:33.080 you remember a few years ago before the COVID mess hit everybody, when it came to light that

00:35:38.340 it's their online print, it's their online physical typing that you can read on their website

00:35:43.860 that gets the most eyeballs. Well, that's not in their mandate. Their mandate was to broadcast,

00:35:50.240 that's why it's the Broadcasting Corporation, to Canadians. And then they really rubbed it in

00:35:55.800 the newspaper website's faces. They started saying things like, no paywall. Okay, so we've got private

00:36:03.440 media organizations, both right and left, we don't care, private media organizations that are paying

00:36:08.800 their journalists who are then having a subscription fee so you can read their news online

00:36:14.360 because they got to eat. They have to pay the bills. CBC takes money from government, takes

00:36:20.380 money from taxpayers, posts the same story, sometimes duplicating the same story, by the

00:36:25.820 way, and then actually rubs it in and says no paywall. So they're really eating the lunch

00:36:31.500 in many cases of private media organizations. And now again, this isn't the smoking gun,

00:36:37.180 but it really adds to the narrative that the CBC is big and bloated and it is not delivering the

00:36:44.240 programming that people expect them to. Yeah and I would also add to that as well that when we're

00:36:50.280 talking about the galvanizing of private media this is the government that as you and I have

00:36:56.060 spoken about is putting in Bill C-18 because they believe it's the responsibility of big tech

00:37:00.560 companies to save media in Canada and that the government is the one that should just you know

00:37:05.640 play with the puppet strings here. Well, if you were to take out this big competitor that's

00:37:10.320 basically bigfooting them, that would help them more than C18 will, which has effectively banned

00:37:16.240 them from social media. Yes. And to make it worse, C18 will actually give the CBC the lion's share

00:37:23.960 of that money. So at first this was basically- Oh no, no. I asked Pablo Rodriguez about that.

00:37:29.560 And he said, the Australian experts say it won't. Oh, well then if Australia is doing it,

00:37:34.500 then we don't need to discover it anymore.

00:37:36.340 Stop studying, everybody.

00:37:37.620 We're good.

00:37:38.700 Seriously, this is how this works.

00:37:40.280 I've spoken to the people who actually helped read and write the legislation.

00:37:43.760 It's the cumulative amount of links that are posted.

00:37:47.060 And so if you add all those up in like a little bucket,

00:37:49.280 like we were just describing with their eyeballs they get for online print,

00:37:52.680 guess what?

00:37:53.340 They get the lion's share.

00:37:54.840 Now, at first, this was big tech versus media.

00:37:57.820 So we're like, not exactly taxpayers.

00:37:59.960 But now it's big tech being forced to pay money to government media, to the CBC, which is just a wing of the federal government.

00:38:08.320 So now this is a tax issue.

00:38:11.200 Wanted to turn away from CBC for a moment, although I should point out that Pierre Polyev has said he can't wait until this Toronto real estate is given up to Canadian families as housing.

00:38:22.480 So if you're looking for a condo on Front Street, when Polyev's in there, you might be able to get one.

00:38:27.320 You can do the Man's Bridge suite and the Barton suite.

00:38:29.360 it'll be wonderful but i want to ask you about this cabinet retreat the liberals got together

00:38:34.480 in pei a little while back spent 275 000 on this retreat now this was cabinet this wasn't the big

00:38:43.840 caucus retreat for all 170 of them or whatever this was uh or no there weren't there aren't that

00:38:48.800 many now but however it is uh this was just the cabinet 275 like how much is lobster going for

00:38:55.120 this is what they were billing this was just brutal and so credit where it's due our folks

00:39:00.000 at black locks reporter dug up these documents and you're right this was get this folks so remember

00:39:05.760 last summer when inflation was really bad i mean it's really bad now but it was really bad at the

00:39:10.880 grocery store it was a real fight to try to afford even hamburger for your cart remember also that's

00:39:16.640 when interest rates started skyrocketing okay things were tough a year ago the cabinet of

00:39:22.400 prime minister justin trudeau's government got together and said holy smokes look at all this

00:39:26.400 wreckage let's have a an inflation summit okay that's a good idea but instead of having the

00:39:32.320 meeting in one of the dozen meeting rooms that they have access to in ottawa they jetted out

00:39:38.480 actually this one andrew was in vancouver oh this was the van this was last year sorry my mistake

00:39:43.280 yeah so this was at the hyatt in vancouver right they're not schlepping it on the east coast they're

00:39:47.760 on the expensive west coast here they blew like you said two hundred and seventy five thousand

00:39:52.640 dollars but get this forty six thousand dollars was on catering catering the the tone deafness

00:40:01.760 the let them eat cake level of this is almost vicariously embarrassing you're looking at it

00:40:07.840 saying people are struggling they're lining up at food banks they're cutting coupons they can barely

00:40:12.240 make it and you blow 46 grand on catering to yourself and there are 39 cabinet ministers so

00:40:19.740 that is more than a thousand dollars a person on food alone yeah that's a lot of money that's like

00:40:26.380 king henry the eighth level eating like we need to monitor them for gout because that's a lot of

00:40:32.900 shellfish that they'd be eating right i'm just picturing like the old medieval banquet style

00:40:37.700 of i don't know like you know uh pablo rodriguez just gnawing on like a giant turkey jump drumstick

00:40:43.620 and be like bring me bring me some more mead there's like a goblet in one hand and this big

00:40:48.560 bone meat in the other hand yeah that's what it would have been like and this is where it gets

00:40:52.880 gross king harry does canadian politics or something exactly this is their job to care

00:40:59.280 about the mess frankly they created through both money printing and carbon taxes so this is their

00:41:04.760 mess, inflation, and it's their job to deal with it. They make around close to $300,000 each for

00:41:12.400 salary. All of their expenses are always paid in Ottawa. But instead, to talk about this critical

00:41:18.380 issue of affordability, they jet out to Vancouver and stuff themselves with 46 grand worth of

00:41:23.620 catering. It's really bad. I should tell that this is a silly story, but I think it's an interesting

00:41:28.620 one. The Liberals in 2015 had a caucus retreat, so they weren't in government yet, in London,

00:41:34.380 Ontario. And this is when I had the opportunity to interview. The only time I've ever interviewed

00:41:38.020 Justin Trudeau was at this point. I remember that. And I didn't go too well for him. But

00:41:42.120 Sun News was around. They like played that tape until it broke. It was great. But I was out and

00:41:46.760 randomly I was at a mall, which is out uncharacteristic for me. And there was a liberal

00:41:50.700 MP, Judy Skrow there. And she was coming out of the Bay and I just, she didn't know me. I said,

00:41:55.600 oh, you know, Judy, I enter a lot and, you know, I'm a radio host in London. I didn't expect to

00:41:59.300 see you here. And she launched into this stump speech, but well, we're out here stimulating

00:42:03.700 local economies well i was like i was just saying hi but but it was interesting because it sort of

00:42:08.980 occurred to me that if we are going to have these retreats and we're going to spend money

00:42:12.980 why not spend the money in places where it's going to really help why are they not having their

00:42:17.620 retreat in some rural community where the factory is closed if they're really committed to it it's

00:42:22.980 because they're not actually interested in solving these problems they want to have a really really

00:42:28.340 glitzy getaway and that i mean there's no earthly reason that you should have a retreat in vancouver

00:42:33.620 which is going to cost you more

00:42:35.780 than anywhere else in the country.

00:42:37.680 Yeah, it's not so fun to go to Moose Town, right?

00:42:41.380 Why go there?

00:42:43.000 Yeah, we're in the caucus retreat in Lethbridge.

00:42:45.200 Exactly.

00:42:46.120 Don't give them ideas

00:42:47.360 and then I'll have to hammer them with questions.

00:42:49.520 But you're right.

00:42:50.300 They could be doing something like that

00:42:52.100 in order to do that.

00:42:53.160 But also we start worrying about costs there

00:42:55.420 because then you're hop, skip and jump flying.

00:42:57.840 Just have them in Ottawa, for goodness sake.

00:43:00.640 taxpayers pay a lot of money to maintain these buildings. They're all staffed. Everything's

00:43:05.820 transcribed. They already have hot meals delivered to them every day up on Parliament Hill. Why

00:43:11.920 outsource this to a different location and then charge people more money? And the very fact that

00:43:17.800 this was a special inflation summit in order to deal with the little people's problems. This was

00:43:24.080 straight out of Orwell. You know, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than

00:43:28.780 others. It's that scene at the end of the book where they're peeking through the window and they

00:43:32.320 can't tell the difference between the pigs and the farmers. You misunderstand, Chris. They're

00:43:36.200 trying to show us how bad inflation is by spending so much because this is just, it's tough for a

00:43:41.080 Liberal cabinet in this economy. I think we should actually just do full convergence here.

00:43:45.420 Next Liberal cabinet retreat, have it at CBC headquarters. We've already paid for it.

00:43:49.280 Done. I'm already catered to by the robots. All right. Before it gets kicked out and converted

00:43:53.800 to housing. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Always great to talk to you. We will

00:43:59.380 see you next Monday. You betcha. All right. That was Chris Sims. My thanks to her and to Ezra

00:44:05.240 Levant for coming on the show today. We will talk to you tomorrow in 23 hours and 15 minutes here on

00:44:11.340 The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show. Thank you. God bless and good day to

00:44:16.400 you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True

00:44:21.840 North at www.tnc.news.

00:44:51.840 We'll be right back.

00:45:21.840 We'll be right back.

Juno News - September 25, 2023

Liberals invite Nazi veteran to House of Commons

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript