Juno News - Liberals might let illegal immigrants stay in Canada

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.

00:01:16.260 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:24.440 I'm back, baby!

00:01:26.180 Hello, welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show,

00:01:28.660 Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:01:32.680 The Andrew Lawton Show hosted once again by Andrew Lawton.

00:01:36.520 Yeah, that's me. Hi there. Howdy ho.

00:01:38.580 Thank you so much to the great Chris Sims for filling in in my absence.

00:01:44.700 We will have Chris back on the show.

00:01:46.840 You have to wean yourself off of Chris Sims.

00:01:49.660 You can't go cold turkey on quitting Chris Sims.

00:01:53.080 So she'll be back on for her regular Monday spot in just about, I don't know, 13 minutes or so.

00:01:58.240 as we enter Monday afternoon, at least Monday afternoon in Eastern Canada.

00:02:03.240 Don't hold that against me here.

00:02:04.840 It's been a busy week.

00:02:06.480 So I was in Taiwan last week, and I've never been to the country before.

00:02:11.580 I was supposed to go at the invitation of the Taiwanese government in 2020,

00:02:16.080 but you may recall there was a little, you know, just minor tiny disruption

00:02:20.300 to international travel that took place then.

00:02:23.680 I got postponed, postponed, postponed, and then I was supposed to go last year

00:02:28.060 or it might have been early this year.

00:02:29.980 And I had to cancel, there was something I had to cancel.

00:02:32.040 I can't remember what it was.

00:02:33.260 And Harrison Faulkner, my colleague at True North,

00:02:35.960 went as well and he had such a wonderful time.

00:02:38.880 I was very grateful the Taiwanese government had me back.

00:02:41.620 So over the next few days,

00:02:42.540 I'll have some written coverage from my time there

00:02:45.720 talking to a very resilient people

00:02:47.840 in a part of the world where they live every day

00:02:50.400 with the threat of China entering,

00:02:53.880 the threat of Chinese invasion.

00:02:55.420 And the fact that that is just a thing

00:02:57.360 that they talk about as flippantly as we talk about the carbon tax in Canada. Like, oh yeah,

00:03:02.120 just, you know, China could invade any day now is quite remarkable. And I met some amazing people

00:03:07.320 there. I learned a lot about semiconductors, about the Taiwan Strait, about defense, and a little bit

00:03:12.500 about stinky tofu, which I did not try. I didn't chicken out. It was just that I didn't have an

00:03:18.940 opportunity and I didn't create an opportunity. But anyway, if you've been to Taiwan or familiar

00:03:23.460 with stinky tofu you'll know i did smell stinky tofu and let me tell you it very much lives up to

00:03:28.980 its name but we'll have some more updates on that as over the course of the week i do want to talk

00:03:34.340 about this bonkers bonkers story that i came back to canada to where mark miller this is the

00:03:40.980 immigration minister that's like finally along with justin trudeau conceding that maybe just maybe

00:03:47.620 they've had too much in the way of immigration to this country to not strain the system and

00:03:56.100 mark miller is now talking about a very novel idea he is uh finding a weird way of making the

00:04:02.820 immigration system work so take undocumented migrants and let them stay in canada now uh this

00:04:10.580 is when we are seeing just put that headline up again there if you don't mind sean so i just want

00:04:15.860 want to point out, this is the Globe and Mail taking the Liberal government's framing on this.

00:04:25.540 You see how they say undocumented migrants. So undocumented, you hear this in the United States

00:04:30.860 as well, it actually means illegal. These are people who are in the country illegally. Maybe

00:04:35.680 they came in legally on a visitor visa, on a student visa, the visa expired, they never left.

00:04:41.060 they are without legal status. They are illegal, you might say, but the government euphemistically

00:04:47.180 calls them undocumented. So Mark Miller is putting a plan to cabinet, to the Trudeau government to

00:04:52.760 let illegal migrants in Canada stay in Canada legally. So all of a sudden people that maybe

00:04:59.460 cut the line, people that wouldn't have been eligible to come in through existing permanent

00:05:03.960 residence streams, didn't want to wait, people that just had no disregard for the law, we're

00:05:08.320 going to perhaps give them legal status. Now, it's not happening yet. It's still a potential

00:05:14.120 proposal. It's a thing the government is mulling doing, but I wouldn't put it past them. And in

00:05:19.700 fact, it would be very par for the course on this government, a government that has at every turn

00:05:23.880 just decided to crap all over the integrity of the immigration system and have no regard for the

00:05:30.920 many, many, many immigrants that did everything right, that played by the rules because they

00:05:36.260 believe in the rules and they believe in Canada and they don't want to, again, I don't want to

00:05:41.540 use a crass term here, but they don't want to just, I'm not coming up with anything that's not

00:05:48.540 crass. They don't want to piss all over the laws of this country when they come here. So this is,

00:05:54.860 I think, quite devastating. Again, not all that surprising and I wouldn't be surprised to see it

00:05:59.800 come to fruition in the next few months. And again, what better way to generate some new voters

00:06:05.320 then all of a sudden taking people who are in here illegally and saying ta-da you're going to

00:06:10.120 be legal you can be a citizen in just a couple of years and then hey you can vote liberal what

00:06:15.400 what do you know vote for the government that let you stay here when you were probably on track to

00:06:21.800 be deported not that canada is doing much in the way of deportations even among those who have had

00:06:26.920 deportation ordered now i this is a clip from a press conference this morning by a group called

00:06:32.520 the Migrant Rights Network, making this demand that Mark Miller is now seeking.

00:06:39.540 Speaking to you from the unceded and never surrendered territory of the Algonquin

00:06:43.580 Unisputed Peoples, and my pronouns are she, her, L. So I'm here today to show union solidarity

00:06:49.940 with undocumented workers and their families, women, 2SL, LGBTQI, plus migrants, all who have

00:06:57.440 living in fear of being detected and being deported. Undocumented people live here and

00:07:03.280 build our communities and our economy. But without status, they are vulnerable to abuse and

00:07:08.720 exploitation. And growing racism and xenophobia are making them even more vulnerable. Employers

00:07:16.480 can violate their rights of undocumented workers, stealing wages, forcing them into unsafe working

00:07:22.400 conditions stopping workers from asserting their rights under the threat of deportation.

00:07:28.800 This abuse results in an overall worsening of wages and working conditions for migrants

00:07:33.440 and citizens alike. Regularization will allow workers to leave bad jobs and punish bad actors.

00:07:40.720 It's leveling the playing field of improving working conditions for everyone. That is why in

00:07:46.080 in 2019, we as a CLC and our affiliated unions launched a small pilot to give permanent residency

00:07:52.860 to undocumented workers in the greater Toronto area. A broad regularization program means that

00:07:59.720 people can now contribute to the fullest potential to Canada's economic and social future. We,

00:08:05.740 the Canadian Labour Congress, call on the government to do what is right. Bring in regularization now.

00:08:12.140 i i love the term regularization not uh not legalization not amnesty regularization take

00:08:20.860 people who are remember when the liberal government was talking about irregular border

00:08:24.280 crossers no they they mean illegal border crossers undocumented immigrants irregular immigrants no

00:08:30.100 you mean people who are in the country illegally all of the fears that she just describes the fear

00:08:36.220 of being detected and deported well those are fears that could be allayed by wait hang on it's

00:08:44.780 just on the tip of my tongue there's there's there's got to be a solution by not being in the

00:08:50.100 country illegally look i i love canada i love this country and i love that so many people from around

00:08:55.760 the world love this country which is why we have one of the most generous generous approaches to

00:09:03.020 immigration in the world. We allow so many opportunities for people from all around the

00:09:08.540 world to come here on a temporary basis and even on a permanent basis. We have 500,000 new permanent

00:09:15.400 resident slots a year, a number the Liberal government has committed to increasing over the

00:09:21.080 last several years. And the next couple of years, we have pathways because we believe that we should,

00:09:26.940 as a country share in the bounty. So I have very little regard and respect. In fact, I'll say I

00:09:34.260 have no respect for people that simply do not want to follow the law. And by the way, when she talks

00:09:41.700 about the contributions of undocumented migrants to Canada, what she's missing here is that these

00:09:51.300 are people who their first order of business as potential Canadians is to disregard the laws of

00:09:56.920 the country. Their first order of business. How much can you build yourself up as a would-be

00:10:03.440 citizen of a country when your foray into Canadian-ness is built on a lie? It's built on you

00:10:10.520 violating the laws, not respecting the laws. Now, these are people, they have not sought asylum

00:10:17.220 necessarily. In some cases, maybe they've sought asylum and have had their requests rejected again

00:10:22.500 because we determined that that was not a way they were supposed to come into the country.

00:10:25.900 these are in many cases people who have had an international student visa then they just never

00:10:31.720 return home they just try to sort of hide and hope no one notices and she says they're vulnerable to

00:10:36.920 abuse yeah because they don't have status they're not legally able to work here so the fact that

00:10:42.140 the government's answer to that is all right well yeah you beat us you did it one way or another

00:10:47.420 we're gonna let you stay now like what motivation is there for other people to not do the same thing

00:10:54.280 you know there was a reason that joe biden's big giant like magic wand disappearance of federal

00:11:00.020 student loans was so concerning because all the people who had paid their student loans were

00:11:04.160 looking around and being like well hang on what why did i do it right where's my gift where's my

00:11:08.480 great privilege and and what a slap in the face this proposal is that the government is even

00:11:13.180 considering this to every single hard-working immigrant in this country who came here and did

00:11:19.440 everything right, who waited years to come to this country, who did everything right to start a

00:11:25.780 business, to get a job, to bring their family in here, to support their family, to contribute to

00:11:29.880 the Canadian economy. And now they realize, oh, well, all we had to do was just come here,

00:11:34.340 oversee our visa, hang out, lie low for a little bit. And then ta-da, the government would just

00:11:39.520 say, well, it doesn't really matter. That's what these activists are seeking. This is what the

00:11:44.500 Liberal government is entertaining. Now, I don't know if this was exactly the reason that some

00:11:50.280 Liberals have started to sour on their government. I suspect the timing is just coincidental there,

00:11:56.080 but I think it's interesting to note that Liberals are not exactly feeling the love when it comes to

00:12:01.800 Justin Trudeau. So, unrelated story, but I saw in the Hill Times this morning, this is the headline,

00:12:07.300 crappy polling numbers make some Liberal MPs uneasy about electoral prospects, but still consider

00:12:13.480 next election worth fighting oh that was a quote i'm glad liberal mps still think the next election

00:12:18.840 is worth fighting interesting but here is the interesting part for me sean casey who's a

00:12:26.440 liberal mp from atlantic canada he was doing an interview with the hill times and he's doing the

00:12:32.120 big rah-rah-rah we've got a year to turn it around the campaign's gonna matter we've got to get

00:12:36.520 people engaged canadians we owe it to canadians to keep plugging to keep working so he's really

00:12:41.480 trying to rally the troops and say the liberals can turn it around. And then we go to this

00:12:45.900 paragraph here. Well, a few paragraphs. When asked whether given low public support for the

00:12:51.140 Liberal Party and the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau is the right person to lead the party

00:12:55.560 in the election, Sean Casey declined to say. That's his decision, he said. My opinion doesn't

00:13:04.300 matter pressed again he said i'm not going to share my opinion with the public never have three

00:13:12.460 paragraphs said so much about the state of canadian politics so for starters we have a liberal mp

00:13:17.660 saying his opinion doesn't matter his opinion of his own party's leader does not matter he says

00:13:22.700 it's not not up for him as a caucus member as a liberal to decide no no it is up to justin trudeau

00:13:28.940 alone to decide so justin trudeau yeah maybe technically trudeau is the guy that has to

00:13:34.860 decide whether he's going to stay or go before the next election but it's hardly a ringing

00:13:40.380 endorsement of justin trudeau that liberal mps are not even able to utter the words i support

00:13:46.460 him or not able to utter the words i think he can do a good job sean casey is one of these guys

00:13:51.580 that's probably going to lose his seat probably going to lose his seat in large part due to

00:13:58.380 the liberal government's just horrendous approach right now it's horrendous track record

00:14:03.100 and it's horrendous campaign because justin trudeau is and this may come as a shock to

00:14:07.180 everyone well basically it may come as a shock to justin trudeau he is not that popular right

00:14:12.940 now people that have been liberals for years people that were inspired by him in 2015 are

00:14:17.820 now saying okay can we just get like just get rid of the guy for crying out loud and it's why pierre

00:14:22.860 Paulie have that guy behind me there is doing so well because he is now capturing into an energy

00:14:29.820 and a hope and an optimism that Trudeau by the way a decade ago had harnessed he did that when

00:14:35.420 he was up against Stephen Harper so this is where we talk about the declining fortunes of the

00:14:41.500 liberals but even the liberal so if you have a liberal MP ask them on the record film it what

00:14:47.100 they think of Justin Trudeau as leader and see if they're as equivocal as Sean Casey is there

00:14:52.860 Just since I mentioned the book, my book, Pierre Polyev, A Political Life,

00:14:57.060 technically comes out tomorrow, although like everyone's been reading it now.

00:15:01.260 Indigo put it on shelves early.

00:15:03.080 Amazon's been shipping it out.

00:15:04.300 My publisher has been shipping it out.

00:15:05.640 So I was kind of when I was away last week in Taiwan, I was caught off guard because

00:15:09.900 I was expecting I'd have that week and not have to worry about it.

00:15:12.840 And then all of a sudden I'm fielding like interview requests every which way because

00:15:16.380 the book was basically out.

00:15:18.340 But several of you have already said you've gotten a copy and have started reading it.

00:15:22.180 thank you so much if that's the case. If not, you can grab your copy from Amazon, from Indigo,

00:15:28.040 from your local neighborhood bookstore. You can also grab it from, well, where else? From

00:15:33.120 Sutherland House, the publisher directly. And they, not that this is the reason you should do it,

00:15:37.500 but they have like the neatest packaging job they ever do that anyone could do if you order a book

00:15:42.080 from there. But anyway, all that out of the way, we will have a lot on this book. And I have an

00:15:47.920 excerpt in the line today, which is Jen Gerson's and Matt Gurney's publication about the story of

00:15:53.620 Pierre and Anna Polyev. So if you're interested on how that dynamic duo got coupled up in the

00:15:59.720 first place, read that excerpt and the full details are in that book there. But all of that

00:16:04.820 aside, we were very well looked after last week with Chris Sims, regularly our Monday guest,

00:16:11.020 but last week she took the reins in my Taiwanese absence. Chris, welcome back. Thank you so much

00:16:16.660 for uh holding down the fort last week well it was an honor to be asked andrew truly and thank

00:16:20.960 you so much to yourself and the team and all of your viewers and listeners they were very kind on

00:16:24.740 their youtube comments so thanks so much for that i i'm glad i i didn't get a chance to i didn't get

00:16:29.340 a chance to watch any whole shows because of the uh the time difference but i saw some clips you

00:16:32.740 did a bang up job as always and let me ask you about this cbc business so i woke up uh franco

00:16:39.080 terrazzano your colleague and our regular guest here uh from the ctf has decided to put the gears

00:16:45.920 to CBC for, shockingly, not being transparent about the money it's dishing out. What's going

00:16:51.620 on there? Yeah, for sure. Franco actually just went home because his mom famously lives around

00:16:55.660 the corner from me here in Lethbridge. So he actually did an interview from this chair like

00:17:00.520 last week. So that would have been a little bit funny for people to see. But yeah, Franco

00:17:04.700 Terrazzano and our team there at the Ottawa Bureau for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,

00:17:09.560 we are quite often demanding transparency and accountability from the state broadcaster,

00:17:15.280 from the CBC because, of course, they take about $1.4 billion from us every year. That's a heck

00:17:21.680 of a ton of money. And quite often we find a lot of funny answers, right? They're playing fast and

00:17:28.880 loose with some numbers quite often, especially at the CEO and the managerial level. So we wanted

00:17:35.100 to know, Andrew, how much the seven top executives were paid out in bonuses. So we filed an access

00:17:43.640 to information request. Now they were due to release that information within a certain window

00:17:49.960 of time but what the CBC did is they filed a 30-day extension. That extension just so happened to kick

00:17:57.240 that information down past CEO Catherine Tate's appearance at committee. We wonder why. But it's

00:18:04.200 worse than that, Andrew, because when they did finally cough up some information about the

00:18:09.480 executive pay scale on May 10th, they didn't mention how much of this was bonuses, which is

00:18:16.520 exactly what we were asking for. All they gave us was this overall number. So out of the seven

00:18:22.840 executives at the CBC, we paid around $3.7 million with an M. That works out to about $540,000 per

00:18:33.800 person but we don't know how much of that is bonuses like we don't have the actual details

00:18:39.240 so we have launched a legal challenge with the office of the information commissioner

00:18:44.040 and we hope the cbc will be much more forthcoming now yeah i mean the problem with the the access

00:18:50.680 to information system in canada is that it's incredibly incredibly broken it's incredibly

00:18:55.240 backlogged and because so many government departments are terrible at managing their

00:18:59.960 a tip request the oic the office of the information commissioner is uh typically i mean i i more often

00:19:05.880 than not when i file complaints with them about uh these issues uh they'll respond like six months

00:19:10.920 later after the department i was complaining about has responded and said oh it seems like it's all

00:19:15.560 sorted out now okay great so are you gonna let them off the hook is what i'm asking no this is

00:19:21.080 one of those things that i think our supporters uh with the taxpayers federation and i'm guessing a

00:19:26.040 a lot of your viewers, we don't have patience for that.

00:19:29.440 So the CBC is not a private company, okay?

00:19:32.480 If they were a private company, the Taxpayers Federation wouldn't care what the CEOs are

00:19:36.820 making in bonuses or salary.

00:19:38.840 This is not.

00:19:39.840 It is government-funded media to the hilt.

00:19:42.360 So again, taxpayers are handing over $1.4 billion.

00:19:46.620 That could build a state-of-the-art super fancy hospital.

00:19:50.180 could pay for 7,000 paramedics and 7,000 cops every year on our streets. But instead, we're

00:19:57.460 handing it to the CBC, which, by the way, of course, is tanking in its ratings. So a tiny

00:20:02.840 little fraction of Canadians are now watching their supper hour news. They won't even come

00:20:07.780 clean, frankly, about their ratings that way. Do you remember, Andrew, the last time that Tate was

00:20:12.300 at committee? She said something to the effect of, oh, yes, we know that the TV ratings are

00:20:17.460 are nosediving that we're really losing viewers there, but we're making up for it in GEM subscriptions,

00:20:23.620 which is their online app or something. And it's like, okay, how many GEM subscriptions do you have?

00:20:29.160 Oh, we don't share that information. Like it's so secretive and they have no right to be because

00:20:34.720 this is taxpayer's money. So that is again, why we are going kind of elbows up here. Like we asked

00:20:40.460 nicely, there was an extension. And even then when they coughed up some information, they didn't give

00:20:46.300 us the exact amount of the bonuses, which is what we want. And to be clear, this isn't just the CBC,

00:20:53.000 right? The CBC is the one that is not behaving properly here. When we asked Canada Mortgage

00:20:57.680 and Housing Corporation this kind of information, they told us. When we asked the Bank of Canada,

00:21:02.740 another crown, this sort of information, they told us. But it's the CBC that is playing funny

00:21:08.200 with these numbers. I remember years and years ago, you'd probably remember better than I am,

00:21:13.340 CBC had given, because they were really getting dragged for not being transparent about salaries.

00:21:18.340 And they had published this ridiculous, like fake list of salaries that had like their top people making like, you know, four and a half dollars a year.

00:21:26.080 It was not that bad, but it was like, they were basically saying that everyone was working for, I think it was like $80,000 a year.

00:21:31.440 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:32.320 Including like people like Peter Mansbridge.

00:21:34.840 Yeah.

00:21:35.020 Like he was making under $200,000 based on this scale.

00:21:38.220 I remember that coming out.

00:21:39.280 I think that was just after Sun News Network was shut down or around that same time.

00:21:43.340 It was laughable because, of course, anyone who's worked in the news industry knows for a fact that that's not true.

00:21:50.760 OK, especially back in the day of when anchormen and I use that term affectionately when anchormen were paid the big bucks.

00:21:58.300 OK, that included in both private and in government funded news media.

00:22:03.980 If you anchored the evening news, you were pulling in the dough.

00:22:06.880 Now, that has changed dramatically, of course, especially in the private sector, as viewership has completely fallen off of a cliff.

00:22:14.380 From what I understand, anchors are now making a fraction of what they used to back in the day.

00:22:20.100 And by the day, I mean like 10 years ago.

00:22:23.340 And interesting, I would love for, so I know that there's some people who watch your show for fun who probably still hold down jobs within the mother corp.

00:22:31.260 I really want to know, Andrew, how much their at-issue panel is paid.

00:22:35.480 because we've asked several different ways. And of course they try to say, oh,

00:22:39.040 that's commercially sensitive, blah, blah, blah. We can't let that out because it's kind of like

00:22:43.260 a talent fee. But back when I worked at CTV a billion years ago, the rumor was that those

00:22:49.460 ad issue panel hits were between 250 and 350 per hit. Meaning every time they opened their mouths

00:22:58.660 on like a weeknight show, they were getting paid that amount of money. I would love to know if

00:23:03.560 that's still the same or if it has declined no and i i recall that because i know someone that

00:23:08.780 went on that didn't want money and they literally didn't have a mechanism to let them do it for free

00:23:14.400 and it was because they're a union shop that was basically why so it's like guests are getting like

00:23:19.800 like i'm typically lucky like i'll like i've never paid to be a guest but you know getting paid to be

00:23:24.880 a guest is an incredible rarity i'm not even sure if it's ever uh come to think of it happened so

00:23:28.860 i'm getting paid what i'm worth i guess in that sense but uh it's it's brutal and i'll ask you

00:23:33.960 chris about this do you think it's time for a federal sunshine list oh yeah yeah big time so

00:23:40.020 here in alberta all of these issues would go away if the federal government did what say they're

00:23:44.000 doing in ontario every year yes exactly so ontario does it well alberta has a version of a sunshine

00:23:49.900 lift i list i think it's at 125 000 it used to be at 100 000 but you know inflation and so now i

00:23:57.760 believe it's 125,000. In fact, Andrew, it's funny you should mention that. The CTF just finished

00:24:02.920 presenting at committee a few weeks ago, where the NDP opposition here in Alberta was pushing

00:24:09.040 really hard to have unionized jobs within the government within the provincial government

00:24:14.960 exempt from the sunshine list. So you know, that's just basically all of them. Like you could just

00:24:20.640 imagine. Basically, they want managers only not these bureaucrats at the lower level that are

00:24:24.780 cashing $150,000 a year salaries. Exactly. You're working for AHS and just pulling in the dough,

00:24:30.580 you know, sitting at a desk and handing paper around to your other four friends all day. Yeah,

00:24:34.080 they want them exempt from the sunshine list as if, right? And normal people don't go after

00:24:39.620 like a super hardworking frontline paramedic. Like that just doesn't pass the taste or smell

00:24:44.860 test with most people. What people want to know is exactly to your point, are there, there's this

00:24:50.620 huge glut of middle management that is raking in the money. So yes, we definitely need a federal

00:24:56.800 sunshine list and it should cover all these sort of things. But again, we want the granular data

00:25:01.840 here, especially when it comes to the executive pay at the CBC. And again, it's really simple.

00:25:07.360 There's seven of them. How much of that was bonuses? To give you an idea, CEO Catherine

00:25:14.240 Tate of the CBC is listed as CEO level seven. In federal government talk, they have a grid.

00:25:22.000 You can find it on the Treasury Department website. She's number seven. As of right now,

00:25:27.280 2024 to 2025 budget year, she is now making between $468,000 and $551,000. She's also entitled

00:25:39.600 to up to 28% bonus.

00:25:43.860 They call it performance pay, but it's a bonus.

00:25:46.600 So again, that's an awful lot of money.

00:25:49.020 And taxpayers want to know how much of that money is she paid

00:25:52.560 and how much of that money is bonuses.

00:25:55.200 Especially because, again, their viewership is going downhill.

00:25:58.440 So few people are watching it.

00:25:59.900 You usually just get a bonus when you're doing a good job.

00:26:04.620 Brutal.

00:26:05.100 And no one who's watched CBC can say that would at all be a term

00:26:09.220 we'd use to describe them.

00:26:10.580 Well, great work.

00:26:11.440 Keep us posted

00:26:11.960 if you get an update on that.

00:26:13.920 I expect it'll be any time

00:26:15.120 in the next decade

00:26:15.800 that you'll get

00:26:16.640 that information there.

00:26:18.140 Chris Sims,

00:26:18.740 always good to talk to you.

00:26:19.760 Thanks again for last week

00:26:21.280 and thanks for coming on today.

00:26:23.000 You bet.

00:26:23.420 Thanks, Andrew.

00:26:25.120 Always good to check in

00:26:26.420 with our friend Chris Sims.

00:26:28.220 And of course,

00:26:28.760 a big thank you once again

00:26:30.140 to Chris for filling

00:26:31.200 into my absence last week.

00:26:32.860 Hopefully you are still

00:26:34.100 happy to have me back

00:26:34.980 and she didn't do

00:26:35.540 like such a good job

00:26:36.680 that you just don't want

00:26:38.720 me to return. The one little bit of baseball trivia I know is that I believe that's what

00:26:43.800 happened to Lou Gehrig, where he was like the fill-in for Wally Pip and then did better than

00:26:48.360 Wally Pip. And I don't know that because I follow sports. I know that because I heard it referenced

00:26:52.080 in a sitcom I like. So anyway, don't worry about that. Let's take a look at the bigger picture.

00:26:57.020 I always like doing that from time to time, especially in this country. And when it comes

00:27:01.580 to legal matters anyway, there are a few people, in fact, I'd say probably no one better to do it

00:27:07.080 with then Bruce Pardee, who is the executive director of Rights Probe and also a professor

00:27:13.200 that is probably worth anyone in law going to Queens just so they have a chance at getting

00:27:19.260 Bruce Pardee as a prof. Bruce, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:27:22.820 Great to see you, Andrew. Thank you. That's very kind of you.

00:27:25.200 You had this great piece in C2C Journal, Canada's constitutional mistake, how the rule of law gave

00:27:32.460 way to the managerial state and normally with these sorts of things i do like a bit of a wind

00:27:37.500 up before i bring the guest on but i actually thought it would be more prudent here to let you

00:27:42.140 describe what is your thesis here what is it you're saying okay here's here's the core of the idea

00:27:49.980 we we've gone through centuries of legal and political reform in starting in england to go back

00:27:58.540 to the original problem the original problem was these kings who ruled for centuries and

00:28:05.420 some of the kings were bad and some of the kings were better but essentially the kings

00:28:10.060 had absolute power whatever they said was the law and then slowly starting perhaps with the magna

00:28:17.660 carta in 20 in 1215 we started this long process of taking power away from the king and giving it

00:28:26.300 to legislatures and eventually we got to the stage in the british system of arriving at this

00:28:34.700 idea called legislative supremacy meaning the legislature is supreme not the king the

00:28:40.540 legislature can enact any laws that it wants because after all it has democratic legitimacy

00:28:47.500 but the problem was this that legislatures turned out that they could be tyrannical as well

00:28:54.060 as kings and then the americans came along and the newly independent americans said okay we're

00:29:00.300 going to fix this problem as well we're going to enact a bill of rights and they put that

00:29:04.380 in their constitution and then 200 years later we did the same thing in canada with the charter of

00:29:08.300 rights so what they did was take power away from legislatures and give it to courts

00:29:16.220 problem is that the courts now kind of abuse their power by doing policy and making decisions that

00:29:22.780 are not based upon the text and the living tree and all these kinds of things you'll hear people

00:29:27.340 complain about this all the time so here's the problem all we've done from the very beginning

00:29:34.060 is move power around from place to place to place to place from king to legislature to courts and

00:29:41.420 now from courts and legislatures back to if you like the king in the in the form of the administrative

00:29:48.060 state. And so we proceed with this idea that the final word has to rest somewhere, but nowhere

00:29:57.140 seems to work. And that's the mistake. The mistake is, instead of moving power around,

00:30:04.880 we should have taken power away, so that the power rests with us individually.

00:30:11.000 It's a fascinating thesis. And I'm glad I had you explain it, because you did it so eloquently

00:30:16.800 there. And what strikes me when you describe that there and also in your essay in C2C Journal is

00:30:22.860 that at every stage, we've been told that the shift is to give power to the people. When power

00:30:29.800 is taken from the king and given to legislatures, going back to running me to Magna Carta, it's

00:30:34.060 because, oh, well, the legislators are the representatives of the people. When it's taken

00:30:37.760 away and you have a constitution, I mean, the sales pitch from the founding fathers of the United

00:30:41.920 States. And I believe them to, with my knowledge of history, be authentic in this desire was that

00:30:46.860 we need to put a constraint on the state's power. But you cannot do that without an intermediary,

00:30:53.600 without an adjudicator. And that's where we go to the courts. Now, I'd say in the United States,

00:30:58.040 the courts have done a better job at keeping to the intent of the Constitution. But in Canada,

00:31:03.280 we have the opposite. I mean, the quote that I bring up from our former Chief Justice from time

00:31:08.280 to time, Beverly McLaughlin, is where she described in her memoir her job as being to take a step back

00:31:13.420 and hear the facts of the case and then decide what's best for society, which is actually more

00:31:18.820 dangerous than just letting the legislature have free reign, I think, is to have someone for whom

00:31:23.460 there is no accountability trying to really, by very definition, socially engineer. So we have

00:31:30.880 this libertarian utopia that we seek of wanting individuals to be sovereign. How is that possible?

00:31:38.280 Right. So if you start with the opposite premise, so the premise that we have now essentially is

00:31:46.000 that the state and the state comprised of these various institutions, legislatures, courts and

00:31:51.060 administration, that the state has the authority to govern. And these various branches of the state

00:31:59.760 are supposed to act as checks and balances on each other, but they're all basically on the same page

00:32:03.820 now. So they don't really act as checks and balances very effectively anymore. So the opposite

00:32:07.880 premise would be instead of authority of those who govern it would be the consent of those who

00:32:17.460 are governed and by that I mean not the will of the majority I don't mean consent as a group

00:32:23.300 I don't mean I don't mean by vote or referendum I mean every person gets to give their individual

00:32:30.700 consent to be subject to laws. Now, if we're going to premise the system on consent, you start with

00:32:39.200 that idea, which means by definition, if you like, that no one, whether your fellow citizen or the

00:32:46.840 state, can impose force against you. They can't coerce you. And that becomes the first rule of

00:32:54.720 the legal system. No force, no coercion, no threat of force. And then from that, we get all kinds of

00:33:00.320 rules about theft and battery and assault and all those lots of things that we already know and love

00:33:08.280 in our legal system. But then once you get beyond that rule, then for all the other rules that have

00:33:15.880 nothing to do with force, each of those laws requires the individual consent of each individual

00:33:22.700 citizen without which those citizens are not subject to those laws. Now, that's a radically

00:33:29.340 different system and people will obviously have lots of questions and and and understandably so

00:33:35.660 and those questions can be worked out but let's not throw away the idea just because it's strange

00:33:42.620 because it needs to be strange because the system we have right now isn't working very well

00:33:50.780 i think there might be some minor steps that have been i i don't want to say missed but really

00:33:56.700 sub steps that have taken place in this trajectory that you explain and one of them that i studied in

00:34:01.980 school and i should probably have ted morton on the show to talk about it uh is the establishment

00:34:06.860 of what i mean you're well aware of it he called the court party which was basically courts

00:34:10.940 becoming overly deferential to social justice groups and activists and this was like the 1990s

00:34:17.500 that he wrote this and i think the problem has gotten much worse since then so you even have

00:34:22.060 within that this subcategory of disproportionate weight being given to special interest groups

00:34:27.900 which has i guess fallen under the the banner of the judiciary and i i wonder if the next stage of

00:34:33.740 this the where we're heading is not necessarily ruled by the mob but but ruled to this this even

00:34:41.260 more obscure and malleable group that is really embedded in the courts embedded into the political

00:34:49.020 class embedded into the bureaucracy which i mean at its core is really dei

00:34:55.660 sure yes well what we would say we we have a we have a huge managerial state problem

00:35:03.180 the way i would put it and the bureaucracy and well frankly all three of them the bureaucracy

00:35:09.180 the courts and the legislatures uh are are working together essentially i don't mean that they don't

00:35:15.420 have their disputes and quarrels they do and i don't say i'm not saying that the courts never

00:35:20.060 overturned decisions of the legislature and or the bureaucracy that's not true either

00:35:25.100 but in a general sense in a broad sense they all fundamentally agree believe in the need

00:35:33.740 to manage society and they all work towards that end and so you're not going to have a genuine

00:35:41.420 check and balance from any of these outfits so you can you can see the way people react

00:35:47.100 to bad decisions when a court makes one of these creative decisions uh based upon the living tree

00:35:54.460 or uh you know a interpretation of the words that the words don't really seem to reflect

00:35:59.340 then they'll complain about the courts having power and fair enough but then you know when

00:36:04.700 legislatures say that they're going to invoke the notwithstanding clause they react kind of the same

00:36:10.060 way which is well the the legislature is abusing my charter rights and i want the court to have

00:36:16.140 the final say but you just finished saying that the court wasn't doing a very good job

00:36:19.900 and then when we have a bureaucracy bureaucracy making the final call like during covid you know

00:36:25.100 you'll wear a mask here and take a vaccine there and so on people complain that the that the

00:36:29.580 bureaucracy is making the calls and not the legislature okay well come on people make up

00:36:34.540 your mind the problem is there is no good answer to this they're all also it's it's it's word they

00:36:40.300 want the outcome and they don't really care how they get to the outcome so there's no desire

00:36:45.420 to be consistent on when they want legislative supremacy and when they want judicial supremacy

00:36:50.540 it's whatever gets them where they want to go see you you are getting now to the nub of the

00:36:56.460 difference between what the law actually is and what it actually does compared to what it's thought

00:37:02.460 to do so one could go so far as to say this the role of the law in society maybe maybe is not

00:37:12.300 reasoning to a result it's justifying a result that they want to reach and those two things are

00:37:19.660 quite different and where we may be giving the law too much credit for being you know objective and

00:37:26.140 solid and immovable and and and immune to the currents of cultural change it's an institution

00:37:34.460 it's none of those things it's this it's it's liable to be influenced by culture in the same

00:37:39.420 way that any other of our political institutions are and so we have to acknowledge the reality of

00:37:45.420 the way the thing works i think there are and you and i have spoken about this in the past

00:37:50.540 some structural issues in how canada's charter was created this idea of having the section one

00:37:56.620 which really nullifies much of the rest of the charter the notwithstanding clause itself is

00:38:01.660 problematic and and i say that to contrast it with the united states which has had a i i think their

00:38:07.180 bill of rights is a much stronger and more rigid document but but even so the problems between the

00:38:13.420 two are i think the same in that you know i used to look at the u.s constitution in a much more

00:38:18.940 favorable light than i do now not because the document itself is flawed but as my friend mark

00:38:23.900 stein says waving it around in the air doesn't really get you all that much and and that's when

00:38:28.940 we we go to the point that all of these things are not worth the paper they're printed on literally

00:38:34.060 if you don't have institutions that are upholding them and we've seen that the institutions are not

00:38:39.340 as rooted in what they need to be and i guess the question that i i fear asking about is can that

00:38:46.140 come back well the point that you made about the u.s constitution is quite right i think in many

00:38:51.820 respects i mean i think it has fared better as of right now than the canadian charter has but

00:38:56.460 it's not been a straight line i mean like the canadian charter the american bill of rights has

00:39:00.540 been subject to digital interpretation which is waxed and waned over time and some of the decisions

00:39:05.020 under the u.s bill of rights have not been decisions that you and i would like over time

00:39:09.980 so yes your point is quite right that it depends upon the institutions who are applying it

00:39:14.140 which makes the point that the document itself does not govern it's the people who are making

00:39:19.660 the decisions who govern and and that and you know it's a funny thing because people instinctively

00:39:26.380 understand that they make jokes about it you know it depends upon the judge i get

00:39:30.060 but there's actually more truth to that than they think and you can't language has inherent

00:39:37.260 ambiguities and so the idea that we're going to fix the charter or fix the bill of rights

00:39:42.540 by simply drafting it better you know more precisely now don't get me wrong there are

00:39:47.260 some really vague provisions in the cart in the charter that could have been done much better

00:39:51.020 but nevertheless it's it's unlikely that you can ever draft a document that compels every single

00:39:59.340 answer for every case under the sun it doesn't work that way so you're going to have to acknowledge

00:40:03.820 the fact of the ambiguity and and and acknowledge the idea that the way the system runs is in fact

00:40:10.700 going to depend upon the ideas and the heads of the people who run the institutions

00:40:16.860 so we have then two problems one of which is can the law be well i guess they're all really coming

00:40:23.020 under this one question which is can the law be safeguarded against people and it's ironic that

00:40:29.980 the law which at its core we want to be there to protect people is you know still being weaponized

00:40:36.460 by another group of people whether you want to call them the elites the state the institutions

00:40:40.380 the courts whatever the case is and it's a very strange dilemma because at its core we're back to

00:40:47.020 the original problem we have in a way which is that uh there is the need to save people from

00:40:54.620 other people and there isn't really the answer to how to do that well so it's funny you should put

00:41:00.620 it that way because if you if you like you can contrast the two competing ideas this way you can

00:41:06.460 say look if we stuck to the idea that the that the role of the law and the courts and so on

00:41:13.660 was to save people from other people from the interference of other people if we all agreed

00:41:18.060 about that then we might not have such a big problem but we don't agree about that the other

00:41:24.860 competing purpose that a lot of people think that the law should serve is to protect people from

00:41:31.500 themselves to put rules in place to prevent people from making their own decisions about

00:41:37.560 their own lives because other smarter people think oh that's not a very good idea you know

00:41:42.460 for my money that's a terrible thing but but a lot of people thoroughly believe that you know

00:41:48.520 i've said that those people who think they believe in liberty need to come to two epiphanies

00:41:54.140 not one but two and the first one is easy and the second one is not the first one is well i don't

00:42:00.980 want to be told what to do well that's that's easy anybody can come to that conclusion but the second

00:42:06.740 one is i don't want to tell other people what to do even though i think i'm more challenging yeah

00:42:15.620 until you get until you get there and until you get the people inside the system running our

00:42:19.780 governments to believe that as well then you're gonna have a problem and and that is where i

00:42:27.540 The one little bit of hope that I try to find in all of this is that there's always the hearts

00:42:32.240 and minds approach, is that what's on paper, what's in the institutions doesn't matter if people

00:42:38.300 are behaving the way we need people to, and that is embracing freedom, embracing free speech,

00:42:43.480 embracing the ability to self-govern in this sense. So it was a very, very thoughtful piece.

00:42:49.680 It's in C2C Journal. You can read it for yourself, and I would encourage you to do so.

00:42:53.180 Canada's Constitutional Mistake

00:42:55.100 How the Rule of Law Gave Way

00:42:57.060 to the Managerial State. Bruce

00:42:59.120 Party, always a delight. Thanks for coming on

00:43:01.220 today. Great to see you, Andrew. Thank you.

00:43:03.200 Alright, thank you. And that does it for us

00:43:05.260 for today. We'll be back tomorrow

00:43:07.120 with more of Canada's Most Irreverent

00:43:09.120 Talk Show here. Thank you, God bless

00:43:11.040 and good day to you all.

00:43:13.020 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:43:15.340 Support the program by donating to

00:43:16.960 True North at www.tnc.news.

00:43:23.180 We'll be right back.

Juno News - May 27, 2024

Liberals might let illegal immigrants stay in Canada

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