Juno News - Liberals promise bill regulating ＂online harms＂

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

00:01:16.200 this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true north

00:01:20.700 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:28.100 This is Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:01:31.780 A big thank you to all of you who signed up to attend True North Nation on Saturday in Calgary.

00:01:40.260 It was our first event ever of this kind.

00:01:43.000 We've got Danielle Smith there. 1.00

00:01:44.660 We've got Stephanie Cusey.

00:01:46.620 We've got, well, you've got me, but I don't, I'm like lower tier billing.

00:01:49.800 Candice Malcolm will be there it'll be great fun and we sold out so if you missed it you will have

00:01:54.840 to come to our next one which we hope to do again I said we would repeat it if we were successful

00:02:00.300 and I feel like because we sold out we probably can say it was a success but anyway that will be

00:02:06.020 lots of fun that's coming up on the weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing those of you who

00:02:11.280 are coming gotta start the show off though on a bit of a more I don't want to say angry note I

00:02:19.060 actually try not to get mad. I try not to be an angry person because I find it's not always the

00:02:24.680 most constructive emotional state to be in but sometimes news and circumstances push us to the

00:02:31.680 point where we have no other option. Now this is the moment that I knew was coming and it's a moment

00:02:36.460 I have warned is coming for some time now but it is semi-official in that the Liberal government,

00:02:42.660 The Justice Minister specifically has promised the Liberals' much-vaunted bill on online harms will be coming soon.

00:02:51.820 Now, online harms is a bit of a euphemism. It's a bit of a catch-all as well.

00:02:55.960 There are five categories of online harms as the Liberals conceptualize them,

00:03:01.480 and I want to list them so you can decide if there is something in this list

00:03:05.740 or maybe a couple of things that are not exactly like the other.

00:03:10.920 One is terrorism, terror content.

00:03:14.840 One is incitement to violence.

00:03:18.140 One is hate speech.

00:03:19.280 One is child sexual exploitation.

00:03:22.020 And the other is non-consensual sharing of intimate images,

00:03:26.680 or non-con as it's often called. 0.68

00:03:29.120 So we've got child porn. 0.99

00:03:31.360 We've got revenge porn. 0.99

00:03:33.680 We've got terrorist content.

00:03:35.840 Now, all three of these things are illegal on their own.

00:03:39.640 There are laws prohibiting those things.

00:03:42.980 And then you've got hate speech and incitement to violence.

00:03:45.900 Now, why are those in two separate categories?

00:03:49.040 You see, if the criminal code definition is to be taken as authoritative in Canadian law,

00:03:53.460 which I would hope it is, incitement is itself a criminal code violation.

00:04:00.180 So if it's illegal to incite offline, it is also illegal to incite online.

00:04:07.200 And the reason that's important here is because when the government starts talking about hate speech

00:04:11.440 in the context of regulating online harms,

00:04:14.380 they are talking about a lower threshold than what exists in law right now.

00:04:20.420 They're talking about the return of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:04:25.040 Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act was the bill that, or the provision rather,

00:04:29.700 that was often referred to as the blogger ban.

00:04:32.640 It was a section of law that allowed the Canadian Human Rights Commission to prosecute conservative bloggers.

00:04:39.120 They went after them with abandon.

00:04:40.540 My late dear friend Kathy Shadle had to bear the brunt of this when she ran her very popular and acerbic and witty blog, Five Feet of Fury.

00:04:50.480 We also saw this provision attempt to go after people like Ezra Levant and Mark Stein,

00:04:55.600 although in the end it was the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal that took up the prosecution of Mark Stein in Maclean's magazine,

00:05:01.660 and it was the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal that went after Ezra Levant and the Western Standard.

00:05:06.860 But all of them were attempting to enforce the very same idea,

00:05:10.180 which is that online hate is a problem in need of a government solution.

00:05:15.340 Now, the Liberals made this announcement, and the timing is very important here,

00:05:19.100 at a massive conference dealing with anti-Semitism in Ottawa.

00:05:23.120 Now, this is a conference hosted by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, CEJA.

00:05:27.380 It was scheduled long before we knew what was going to happen about 10 days ago in Israel.

00:05:35.040 It was a conference that was going to exist because anti-Semitism exists.

00:05:38.900 It's the most pervasive form of hate and is continuously.

00:05:41.820 But we saw in the last week and a half exactly why that is the case.

00:05:46.160 We've seen rampant anti-Semitism.

00:05:48.380 I saw someone on Twitter point out, and in fact, I should have just pulled the tweet to put on the show today, but I didn't.

00:05:54.000 So I'll just read it for you.

00:05:55.440 it's currently more socially acceptable to say death to the jews than to say men cannot get

00:06:03.020 pregnant now there is a lot to unpack in that tweet but it is remarkably accurate that now if

00:06:09.540 you say death to the jews on a university campus you'll probably be elected student council president 1.00

00:06:14.840 if you say men cannot get pregnant you will probably be expelled this is exactly why anti-semitism is 0.95

00:06:21.100 important. It's why hate is something that we need to deal with. I do not excuse or tolerate

00:06:26.800 hate or anti-Semitism. However, the answer to these things is not and never should be censorship.

00:06:35.660 And this is the problem that we have now. The government is doing what it does best. They take

00:06:40.080 advantage of a crisis when there is a lot of emotion, which understandably exists on this

00:06:45.580 issue, and they use it as an opportunity to shoehorn in bad legislation. It's why gun control 0.98

00:06:52.220 is always introduced in the wake of a shooting, because they know that it becomes very difficult,

00:06:57.340 if not callous, to stand up for guns when someone has just been shot. In the same way, it's very

00:07:03.320 difficult to make the principled stand for free speech, as I do, when someone has shown, as I have

00:07:10.220 on this program myriad examples of really hateful, nasty speech that most people would argue is

00:07:16.780 probably worth society getting rid of. And I should say, as I've discussed in the context of

00:07:23.680 these pro-Hamas rallies, I believe that existing laws should be enforced. If someone is using their

00:07:29.400 speech to violate other people's liberties, to call for violence, to support violence,

00:07:35.680 Absolutely, we should enforce existing laws, but we don't need new laws for this.

00:07:41.480 And that's the problem with this.

00:07:42.820 Now, the Liberals introduced this first in 2021, not long before the election,

00:07:48.020 and they introduced it kind of as a bit of a flex, the last day of Parliament.

00:07:52.500 And then, of course, they suspend Parliament.

00:07:54.180 We have an election.

00:07:54.980 The Liberals promised to bring this back in the first 100 days of their mandate.

00:07:59.580 Now, the reason they have not brought it back, and this is, I think, the most concerning part,

00:08:04.400 is because they've spent the last two years trying to broaden it.

00:08:08.500 It was originally just going to be about so-called online hate speech.

00:08:13.700 And in the last two years, they've expanded it to talk about all these other things,

00:08:17.720 to talk about terrorist content and child porn and non-consensual imaging.

00:08:22.220 And as I've discussed on the show time and time again, 0.96

00:08:24.700 look, I am a victim of child sexual abuse.

00:08:27.240 Maybe I should use the better word.

00:08:28.860 I'm a survivor of child sexual abuse.

00:08:31.420 Thankfully, there are no photos of it, of which I'm aware.

00:08:33.900 I don't know if anyone wants to see photos of me in any compromising position.

00:08:37.740 So I guess I'm saved by the bell in that way.

00:08:40.200 But I take this very seriously.

00:08:42.700 So when I stand up against this bill and against the idea of regulating so-called online harms,

00:08:48.920 the government is going to have a hard time turning around and saying,

00:08:51.420 oh, you must be OK with child sexual exploitation.

00:08:53.860 I say, no, I am not.

00:08:55.780 But I am not OK with lumping all of these things under one umbrella

00:08:59.500 so that they can use someone's objection to the bill as some weird roundabout way of justifying

00:09:06.720 everything else that they're doing there. And that's the thing. Like, I'm against terror content.

00:09:11.340 Let's hive that off in a separate section. I'm against child porn. Let's hive that off into a 1.00

00:09:16.240 separate section. Why do we need to put the uncontroversial things in the same bill as

00:09:21.840 something that is highly contentious and subject to debate, which is what hate speech is? And,

00:09:27.460 you know, it's easy for me to take the principled stand on free speech because I've just decided

00:09:31.840 and I would encourage anyone to that free speech is my hill to die on. It is the most important

00:09:37.360 freedom apart from, I'd say, the right to enter into contracts and decide for yourself about,

00:09:42.640 you know, who should have the right to speak at this podium and who should have the right to

00:09:46.360 be in your house and stuff like that. But when it comes to the government's role here,

00:09:51.640 they are censoring like we can talk about whether bill c11 is a censorship bill and whether c18 has

00:09:58.360 resulted in censorship bill but this is literally by design a bill that will regulate online speech

00:10:06.180 that is a feature and not a bug of what the liberals want to do and beyond what section

00:10:12.880 13 did the first time around which was really written in an era in which they were regulating

00:10:17.900 fax machines and photo like phone calls. This is something that is being written with the internet

00:10:23.820 in mind specifically. This is a bill that is written to regulate online companies. So not

00:10:30.340 only will it be illegal for you to post something online that the government deems hateful, but

00:10:36.560 Facebook and X or Twitter as it used to be called and YouTube and Rumble, they will be legally

00:10:43.140 compelled to get rid of that content. So all of a sudden, government has deputized big tech

00:10:50.540 companies to be the enforcers of its definition of hate speech, of its redefinition of hate speech.

00:10:58.660 And I think this is where we get into a very important and very dangerous terrain here,

00:11:03.300 and one that I would hope all of the principled people in the world, left or right, and certainly

00:11:08.680 in Canada will speak up against. And I'm not optimistic. When the original free speech battles

00:11:14.140 of 2012-2013 were taking place, there were actually a large contingent of principled

00:11:20.400 journalists, principled liberals, including a couple of liberal politicians that stood up and

00:11:25.040 said, yeah, free speech is important. People at CBC, people at the Globe and Mail, even the Toronto

00:11:30.380 Star, all of those principled free speech voices, or I should say most of them, have vanished. Most

00:11:37.080 people are no longer willing or able to take up the mantle of defending unpopular, hateful,

00:11:43.460 cringeworthy, despicable, and vile speech, which is important in a climate in which we have free

00:11:49.500 speech. If I were to get on this show and say, I love kittens, if I were to go meow, meow, meow,

00:11:55.160 if I were to do my own rendition of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and I were to replace like meow, meow,

00:11:59.540 meow, meow, meow, meow, that's my right as an individual. But no one's going to object to that.

00:12:03.800 It's not controversial. Why would you censor saying meow? Why would you censor talking about

00:12:08.320 kittens? If I get up and say, well, a biological man cannot be a woman. Ooh, that's the kind of 0.98

00:12:16.140 thing that might actually get censored. That's the type of speech where we need free speech

00:12:21.660 protections. And if you think I'm being extreme, just look at in Britain where police officers

00:12:27.560 have knocked on people's doors and questioned them for daring to assert biological sex is a

00:12:33.500 fundamental and inalienable reality. This has happened in the UK, a supposedly freedom-loving

00:12:39.560 country. I wouldn't say that term has necessarily applied for the last several years, but nevertheless,

00:12:45.380 it is a liberal democratic nation that has as a core foundation freedom of expression.

00:12:51.320 You look at other examples of this where human rights commissions in Ontario, like the Earthy 0.97

00:12:57.260 Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario says that deadnaming someone using their biological sex-based

00:13:04.440 name could be an act of hate, could be illegal discrimination. It's the human rights industrial

00:13:13.080 complex that is going to be responsible for upholding and enforcing these laws. So these

00:13:20.460 people who believe that you should have a right to demand this based on your identity group or

00:13:27.760 that based on your identity group are going to be the ones adjudicating speech. They're going to be

00:13:32.240 the ones adjudicating what you can and cannot say online. While we do not have the text of the bill

00:13:38.380 just yet, the Liberal government's reminder that it is committed to putting this forward should

00:13:44.940 make us sound the alarms right away. We should never even let this bill get tabled. We should

00:13:51.900 be calling out the government, calling out every member of parliament that free speech is sacrosanct

00:13:56.300 and you do not have the right to redefine terms like hate speech, which are already legislated,

00:14:01.620 already governed. We do not have the right and you do not have the right to redefine those

00:14:07.120 to erode our free speech rights as Canadians. And we can take whatever issues we have with

00:14:13.960 the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And we can point out, as critics of my free speech diatribes

00:14:18.940 often do, oh, but we have freedom of expression in Canada, not free speech. That's an American

00:14:23.560 concept, yada, yada, yada. Yes, but as humans, as humans, we have the right to engage in discourse.

00:14:29.700 As humans, we have the right to speak and we have the right to debate. And it is not love speech

00:14:35.400 that needs protection. It is speech that some people will accuse of being hateful that needs

00:14:41.500 protection because the issue is not that I can stand up here and say I like hate and I want hate

00:14:46.620 to be disseminated. The issue is that I do not want or trust the government to define what is

00:14:53.380 hate speech and what is not. That is what is at stake here. It's not about whether we like hate.

00:14:58.220 It's about whether we trust the government to define what hate is when doing so defines what

00:15:05.160 speech will be legal and illegal. I assure you I am not letting this issue up and I hope you do not

00:15:11.060 either. With that, I want to get to some economic pocketbook issues because we might not find

00:15:16.340 ourselves facing the barrel of the Canadian Human Rights Commission gun, but we are facing the

00:15:21.340 grocery store price tags. And have you noticed things getting better? Francois Philippe Champagne

00:15:26.460 a couple of weeks back came out and gave this big, long kind of, he had like the Mission

00:15:31.040 Accomplished banner behind him basically of saying, I've summoned all the grocers to Ottawa

00:15:35.520 and they've all committed to lower their prices. They all had a plan out by Thanksgiving. Well,

00:15:39.900 it's now a couple of weeks beyond and you know I haven't been hearing any ringing success stories

00:15:45.080 from Canadians telling me wow you know what I uh you know wasn't originally going to buy a turkey

00:15:50.240 but now they've been slashed to 60% off and I got the turkey I got the stuff and I got everything

00:15:55.380 I haven't heard much of that and now Francois Philippe Champagne has been taking aim at the

00:16:01.300 grocery stores and saying well I need a firm plan we need a firm plan where's your plan

00:16:06.980 now it was a little odd because a couple of weeks back he said that he had seen the plans take a

00:16:12.320 look from the perspective of consumer you're talking about flyers like they're a new thing

00:16:17.720 how is what you are saying not deeply offensive to canadians who cannot afford the prices

00:16:23.020 they're seeing now and what you're proposing is plans that the grocery stores already do

00:16:28.880 every winter and that one professor just told me is business as usual so how would you know

00:16:34.280 what's in the plan because I'm the only one to have the plans in Canada no no I'm saying don't

00:16:38.960 no no let's let's go back you want to go to transcript I'm saying those are examples of

00:16:44.060 what we see in the plans because I want the market to compete I cannot say I received that from

00:16:50.000 Loblaws I received that from Metro I received that from Costco I received that from Walmart

00:16:55.460 or Sobase what I'm saying is that example no one is suggesting that Flyers is new no one is

00:17:02.040 suggesting that. But the question was, when are you going to see impact? Well, I say when I read

00:17:06.900 what I see from what I have in my plans or the plans that I've received, I already see things

00:17:11.720 that's in the plan that are being put in action. So people responding to measures that they intend

00:17:16.820 to do. I feel like I was like, I feel like there was a translation needed for me to understand

00:17:24.780 that, although he's speaking in English. I don't actually know what he said. But the one part I

00:17:29.060 got was him saying there's a plan. He's the only one in Canada that's seen the plan. He has the

00:17:32.760 plan. He sees the plans already in effect. And then yesterday he comes out and he says, oh,

00:17:36.440 these grocery stores need to be more forthright with their plans. Maybe it's because the government

00:17:41.360 has dropped the ball once again. Franco Terrizano joins me, federal director for the Canadian

00:17:46.840 Taxpayers Federation. Franco, did that look like a man with a plan to you? It's a plan about making

00:17:53.420 a plan sometime in the future. You know, it's like political theater, but it's like embarrassing

00:17:58.400 political theater. I wanted to make an analogy that this kind of looks like, I don't know,

00:18:02.560 your kid's grade two theater program, but even this is worse than going to maybe your grade

00:18:09.220 school, your kid's grade school theater production. It's embarrassing.

00:18:13.980 Yeah. I mean, look, I was skeptical at the beginning when, you know, Canadians are looking

00:18:18.060 at the government and saying, you know, you have to deal with inflation here. I can't afford to

00:18:22.220 get by. And the government immediately just finds as its scapegoat Galen Weston and the head of

00:18:27.180 sobeys and the head of costco and uh that's not to say these people are perfect but they made this

00:18:31.780 big huge show of summoning them to ottawa and uh demanding they produce a plan and then again he

00:18:37.860 comes out and wants to claim victory oh yes they've given the plan it's great we won and then

00:18:42.260 canadian like that you can only keep up that scam for a few days before canadians are like well the 0.69

00:18:47.060 prices haven't really changed yeah every time you go to the grocery store you know that the

00:18:52.880 government has failed to bring down prices right prices going up everything feels like it's getting

00:18:56.780 more expensive and you know this is actually worse than political theater because this could

00:19:01.260 have real consequences for Canadians. We think things are bad now but wait until Trudeau brings

00:19:07.880 forth his so-called solution. Remember when he first started this theatrical play he threatened

00:19:13.700 quote tax measures. What do you think that means Andrew? It means that Trudeau is musing about a

00:19:20.900 grocery tax. Now look, I'm not losing a second of sleep over these grocery store owners. In fact,

00:19:27.520 it is okay to go after grocery store owners. What I would do is how about we stop giving them

00:19:32.980 buckets of taxpayer cash, like the time the government gave Loblaws 12 million bucks to buy

00:19:39.140 some fridges. But the problem is that if the government were to bring in a grocery tax,

00:19:44.500 guess who would end up paying it? All of us ordinary Canadians, every time we go to the till

00:19:49.880 because that tax would be passed on to the price of food.

00:19:54.380 Yeah. And I mean, that was the one thing. I mean, he says a lot of things that I have trouble

00:19:58.500 reconciling or understanding, like when Justin Trudeau tried to explain what a water bottle was

00:20:03.720 or something like that. But when he tried to, you know, threaten a grocery store tax, I'm like,

00:20:08.560 how on earth it like, like no one has ever saved money with a tax. Like, let's just go back to

00:20:13.840 first principles here a tax by definition is a tax so the idea that like a tax measure was going

00:20:20.860 to lower the price of anything I've never like I was really interested in saying let's just dispense

00:20:26.240 with partisanship like literally explain to me your logic in saying that yeah I mean another tax

00:20:33.500 isn't going to make the box of cereal more affordable it's going to make everything more

00:20:37.020 expensive and you know what's the craziest part of all of this less than a year ago CBC News

00:20:42.700 asked Trudeau about a grocery tax and Mr. Trudeau rightly responded that a grocery tax would just

00:20:50.380 be passed on to the consumer. That was less than a year ago. So what has changed? Well,

00:20:56.160 the economic realities that Trudeau first described haven't changed. If the government

00:21:00.440 hammers these stores with a new tax, that new tax would be passed on to the consumer in the

00:21:05.920 form of higher prices. So what has changed is the political realities. It's the political science,

00:21:12.100 right trudeau is grasping for a scapegoat to take the pressure off his own failed policies that is

00:21:18.020 making your life more expensive and he's looking for the scapegoat right and the scapegoat of

00:21:22.480 course is the grocery stores but the real problem that the government could fix today with a snap

00:21:28.280 of the finger is the taxes that are already in place that are making food more expensive

00:21:32.740 case in point the government's own carbon tax andrew yeah and that's the thing like i anytime

00:21:40.140 I think you and I have actually had this discussion in the past on the show.

00:21:43.420 Like, there are a lot of things that the government cannot control.

00:21:46.440 There are a lot of things with inflation that are happening globally.

00:21:49.960 There are global economic trends.

00:21:51.500 Now, that's not to say that governments can't do better things and weather it better.

00:21:55.040 But the government has some levers that it has not even tried to pull.

00:21:59.720 And one of those is the carbon tax.

00:22:02.260 And people like the Conservatives in the past have rightly said this is a tax on everything.

00:22:06.860 because there's the direct tax that you pay when you pay your home heating, you fuel up your car,

00:22:11.440 and then there's the indirect tax that you have to pay because when you get that papaya,

00:22:15.700 that papaya that had to be flown or shipped and then driven and the grocery store that needs to 0.51

00:22:21.060 power its operations, and you pay that carbon tax, a little fraction of that carbon tax at

00:22:26.480 every step of the life cycle and supply chain of a product. You know what is so crazy? Less than 24

00:22:35.000 hours after Trudeau held that press conference, threatening tax measures on the grocery store

00:22:40.100 owners, less than 24 hours, the parliamentary budget officer, thank goodness for their work,

00:22:45.900 came out with a report that shows exactly how the government could reduce prices, scrapping

00:22:50.680 the carbon tax. Okay. The PBO's report shows that the carbon tax in Canada is costing Canadian

00:22:56.180 farmers a billion dollars through 2030. Okay. By making it more expensive for them to use the dry

00:23:02.680 the natural gas and propane they use to dry grain or heat their barns. Well, guess what? When you

00:23:08.900 make it more expensive for farmers to produce food, you make it more expensive for Canadians

00:23:13.540 to buy food, right? Very simple, not rocket science. The carbon tax, as you rightly also

00:23:19.720 described, is hammering the truck drivers every time they fuel their big rigs with diesel. And

00:23:25.500 when you make it more expensive for truckers to deliver the food, you make it more expensive for

00:23:30.220 Canadians to buy the food. Now, what is so frustrating is that the carbon tax is making

00:23:36.420 life more expensive in Canada and is doing absolutely nothing, zero zilch, for the environment,

00:23:43.100 right? Because making it more expensive for Canadians to fuel up our cars or to fill up

00:23:47.680 our grocery carts does absolutely nothing to reduce emissions in places like China or Russia

00:23:53.640 or India or the United States. I'm told by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland,

00:23:59.820 and we're being a little bit too gloomy here.

00:24:01.780 Let's get her to weigh in. 0.99

00:24:04.400 Calgary Forest Lawn.

00:24:05.440 Finance Minister is known for speeding up just for the wrong reasons.

00:24:08.200 By adding more debt than every government before them combined,

00:24:11.720 she put the pedal to the metal on her deficits and revved up inflation. 0.74

00:24:15.300 And unlike an Alberta highway,

00:24:16.880 the consequences of her spending isn't just the speeding tickets.

00:24:19.640 It's a bigger deficit, higher inflation that led to higher interest rates,

00:24:23.240 putting Canada most at risk in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis.

00:24:27.220 After eight years, they're definitely not worth the cost.

00:24:29.820 Is the Finance Minister going to blow through her budget deficit projections again by more than $6 billion, yes or no?

00:24:42.660 The Honourable Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.

00:24:46.000 Mr. Speaker, our government will provide an update on our fiscal position on expenses

00:24:57.900 and on revenues in the fall economic update in due course this fall.

00:25:04.180 But I do want to be very, very clear on Canada's fiscal position.

00:25:09.200 I was at the IMF World Bank Finance Minister's meeting just last week.

00:25:15.180 that is where it was so clear that canada has the best the lowest deficit the lowest debt to gdp

00:25:23.280 ratio in the g7 our position is enviable mr speaker well what do you think franco are we in

00:25:30.980 an enviable position financially i think anyone who has been to a grocery store a gas station

00:25:38.440 or just left their house in the last what couple weeks knows that we are not i mean come on the

00:25:45.100 parliamentary budget officer again just produced another report okay it's fiscal update seeing

00:25:50.300 where the government's finances are and as bad as the budget was from freeland everything's even

00:25:55.320 worse uh it's been six months since freeland tabled her last budget and her deficit is already

00:26:01.840 16 percent higher interest charges those are up folks we're paying almost four billion dollars

00:26:07.920 every single month just to cover the interest charges on the on the government credit card

00:26:13.020 Almost $4 billion a month, not going to hospitals, not going to roads, not hiring more teachers, not lowering taxes, going to the bond fund managers on Bay Street.

00:26:21.280 Does that sound good to you? $4 billion a month wasted on interest charges.

00:26:25.140 Oh, how about this? Their fiscal anchor, right? Debt to GDP ratio going down.

00:26:29.860 Freeland broker, fiscal anchor, debt to GDP ratio going up.

00:26:33.700 We're now, what, $1.2 trillion in debt by the end of this year, which is almost $30,000 for each and every Canadian.

00:26:40.500 we've seen the carbon tax go up. We've seen a second carbon tax come in. We've seen alcohol

00:26:45.100 taxes go up. We've seen payroll taxes go up. Now the government says it's going to hit us with a

00:26:49.520 digital services tax. Folks, does this sound like good news to you? No, of course not. The only

00:26:55.960 person who could think that we're in a good situation is a person on a minister's salary

00:27:00.620 who has taken not one, not two, not three, but four pay raises over the last couple of years.

00:27:05.960 yeah and uh very well said on all counts there and i think that you know the the envy like it's

00:27:12.480 really interesting because everyone made fun of christopher freeland for that old disney plus

00:27:16.780 comment she made a little while back but i think that was like that was a picnic compared to the

00:27:22.180 tone deafness of saying how enviable canada's fiscal situation is franco terrizano federal

00:27:27.360 director for the ctf always a pleasure sir thanks so much andrew all right actually i was in ottawa

00:27:33.120 last week and ran into Franco it's always always good to see him in person and then I I had to

00:27:37.260 like I had to rebuff him because I was I had such a busy day and he's like oh we should get together

00:27:40.940 and then I said I'm sorry I'm back to back and then flying back home so uh next time I will uh

00:27:44.960 put him on my dance card earlier I don't even when did I get a dance card I'm a nobody but

00:27:48.960 anyway uh one thing I wanted to shift to before we uh move on with this Polyev clip that I want

00:27:55.780 to talk about a little later on in the show is Alberta politics which I feel I've been neglecting

00:28:00.780 in the last couple of weeks, but the UCP has its convention coming up, its annual general

00:28:06.840 meeting. It's first since Danielle Smith became the party's leader. And one of the resolutions

00:28:12.700 that's coming up is going to be very familiar because it's similar to what was debated and

00:28:17.460 passed with a resounding margin at the Conservative Party of Canada's convention in Quebec City.

00:28:23.200 And True North has a story up about this you could read, which came out yesterday.

00:28:26.880 but basically the UCP membership will be debating on whether to take a very similar approach to

00:28:33.180 gender in schools as is in as is the case in Saskatchewan in New Brunswick as the Ontario

00:28:39.940 government has kind of spoken about but hasn't really done yet and that is to basically adopt

00:28:45.480 a policy saying you need parental consent if you are under 16 and want to change your gender in

00:28:51.020 schools. Now, this is something that Conservative members in Quebec City voted for in a huge,

00:28:58.600 huge margin. It's been a hugely popular policy in New Brunswick. It's been popular nationally

00:29:04.140 when it's been polled. But Alberta, despite being the Conservative heartland, has been very hesitant

00:29:10.420 to weigh in on this. Danielle Smith has been non-committal. She says, well, you know, we'll

00:29:15.980 look into it and whatnot. This is what she said when asked about it last week.

00:29:21.020 So Premier Moe next door in Saskatchewan has said he's going to use the notwithstanding clause to essentially support provincial legislation that says similar things to this separate school board policy.

00:29:32.880 I'm just curious for the Premier, what do you think about Premier Moe's decision to do that?

00:29:36.940 And would you support similar legislation provincially if it was supported by the grassroots of your party?

00:29:42.540 As I said, we haven't made a decision as a caucus.

00:29:45.500 We're still watching to see what policies are in place in other parts of the country.

00:29:51.020 I do think, though, that we have to understand that children can't be in a position where they're forced to have two identities, one at home and one at school.

00:29:59.940 And so I think it's incumbent upon all of us to find an avenue where we can support a child as they're making these decisions.

00:30:06.840 Because I think if we're concerned about the mental health and wellness of a child, making sure that they're not being torn in two directions has got to be the direction that we support as a government.

00:30:17.580 I'll wait and see how the legal process plays out in Saskatchewan,

00:30:21.680 but at the moment we haven't made any decisions to legislate here.

00:30:26.240 Basically what she's saying there is we're not going into it.

00:30:29.320 She was asked as well, I think around the time of the Million Person March,

00:30:32.560 and gave a very similarly tepid answer on that issue.

00:30:37.680 And I should just say for context here,

00:30:39.240 Danielle Smith has never pretended to be a social conservative,

00:30:42.060 although in the last few years when governments were shutting down churches

00:30:45.820 and arresting pastors, the libertarian position was very much in alignment with the social

00:30:51.180 conservative position on a lot of issues. But on this, it is an issue that I think is putting her 0.93

00:30:56.220 at odds with a lot of the conservatives in her party, and I'd say around the country,

00:31:00.600 and not even just conservatives, a lot of parents. I want to welcome into this discussion William

00:31:05.380 Macbeth. He is the COO of True North, but before that he has been a longtime Alberta politico and

00:31:11.660 actually worked on Danielle Smith's campaign when she was running as the Wild Rose leader back

00:31:17.400 over a decade ago. William, it's good to talk to you about this. Just hit the stage here. I mean,

00:31:22.120 Danielle Smith's relationship with social conservatives and social conservatism has

00:31:26.160 been a very interesting one in political history. Yeah, no, I think you're right. And I would say

00:31:33.460 there might even be a little bit of a misconception about Alberta when it comes to

00:31:38.860 social conservatism. As a whole, Alberta is pretty happy to live and let live on most issues.

00:31:46.440 The polling I've seen, and it is from about 10 years ago, showed strong majorities in favor of

00:31:52.400 things like same-sex marriage, equality and rights for LGBTQ people. So there isn't really

00:32:01.040 a lot of disagreement on that. I think where it comes up against a hard line, though,

00:32:07.700 is on issues related to children, the role of teachers and the role of parents in being

00:32:15.040 those who make decisions in the best interest of their kids. And I think that's where we're now

00:32:19.860 seeing a lot of division and debate and where they're going to find a lot of agreement with

00:32:24.240 Danielle Smith, who I think ideologically believes that the real child care experts aren't

00:32:29.680 the education bureaucrats or even the teachers in schools. The real child care experts are called

00:32:35.140 mom and dad. And that's who should have the decisions and being charged of those decisions

00:32:39.420 for their own kids. Yeah, I think that's an important point. And I should, I wouldn't say

00:32:44.300 walk back, but I should add some additional context to my approach to this issue, which is

00:32:49.100 that the parental rights discussion is one that is far broader than the category we generally refer

00:32:55.120 to as social conservatives. And I think we're seeing that in polling around the country. Like

00:32:59.540 this is an issue that's galvanizing people that aren't just conventionally conservative, let alone

00:33:04.040 SOCON. So with that in mind, why do you think the UCP government has been so hesitant on this when,

00:33:10.940 I mean, even Blaine Higgs in New Brunswick, who's hardly a firebrand, has really made this

00:33:15.020 his hill to die on? You're absolutely right. I mean, part of it could be a little bit of shell

00:33:21.680 shock from times they've wandered into the issue, perhaps unprepared, perhaps without thinking

00:33:27.280 through all of the fallout or the communications necessary around it. I mean, I can recall

00:33:32.260 specifically when the issue of gay-straight alliances in schools came up and the fact that

00:33:38.260 Walrose at the time under Daniel Smith didn't fully support those, that caused a lot of

00:33:44.020 consternation, was widely seen as one of the reasons why Walrose wasn't able to get over the

00:33:48.500 top and win an election. What we're really talking about is, you know, putting a party or a government

00:33:55.480 really offside with enough voters that it hurts their ability to win an election. I think there's

00:33:59.840 a perception that in big cities like Calgary, there could be problems if you took too hard a

00:34:06.240 line. That being said, I think we're being pushed towards having to make a choice. I think we're

00:34:11.500 reaching a point rapidly where there are those who believe that parents are generally a negative

00:34:19.100 influence on their own children's lives, that parents are not to be trusted, that teachers

00:34:23.480 know far better than parents how to raise kids.

00:34:27.800 And the people who believe that believe it full-throatedly.

00:34:31.060 But I think it's not what Alberta parents believe.

00:34:33.360 It's not what the vast majority of Albertans believe.

00:34:35.360 It's not what the vast majority of people who live in Calgary or in Edmonton believe.

00:34:39.260 And I think you will see movement on the part of Danielle and her government on this

00:34:44.160 because she won't have a choice.

00:34:45.240 She will have to say where the government stands.

00:34:48.140 So as I mentioned, in a couple of weeks, the UCP members will have the right to weigh in on this.

00:34:53.140 along with other issues. We saw the numbers federally with the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:34:58.140 And, well, I think there needs to be that caveat that party policy is not binding on a leader or

00:35:03.720 a government. It does provide a pretty useful barometer of where the grassroots stands. And I

00:35:08.920 think it also kind of throws the ball into Danielle Smith's court. If there is some resounding 0.76

00:35:14.020 majority for this and they're looking to the government, which has a majority right now,

00:35:17.780 How responsive do you think the party will be to its members on this or in general?

00:35:25.020 Yeah, I mean, I think the last couple of years in Alberta politics, which have not been dull, are instructive when it comes to this issue.

00:35:33.420 Because, you know, if you look at Premier Kenney, Premier Kenney wasn't thrown out by the voters of Alberta.

00:35:41.240 He was thrown out by his own party members.

00:35:43.360 And Danielle remembers well that when party leaders lose the support of their own party or their own caucus, it's almost untenable for them to stay on.

00:35:53.240 I mean, I'm old enough to remember back when Alberta was governed or misgoverned by Premier Alison Redford, who never lost an election, but she did lose the support of her own caucus and her own party.

00:36:04.820 So she'll be very cautious about adopting policy positions that run contrary to where her own party members were, her own caucus stand on this.

00:36:13.520 And I would say she's often stated publicly that her position on issues is informed by where her party's membership is.

00:36:21.500 She is a Democrat. She believes that if her party and they're going to have something like 3000 members attending their their next AGM.

00:36:29.600 If her party stakes out a bold claim or a solid claim on one of these issues, I don't think she'll feel she has any form of mandate to really ignore what the party is telling her.

00:36:40.680 And she would do so at her own peril.

00:36:42.960 Well, I know Danielle Smith quite well, as you certainly do.

00:36:46.840 I don't pretend to be inside her head or to have had any conversations with this.

00:36:50.400 I'm purely speculating.

00:36:51.680 And, you know, there is a part of me that wonders if that's part of a play here, though, which is to say that, well, if I hold back now and wait for caucus or the membership to decide, now I've got a bit of cover to go in on this.

00:37:04.540 Where I don't look like an ideologue, I'm saying, well, the members have spoken and that's the basis for it.

00:37:09.320 Again, I don't know if that's the chess game at play here, but if she is that Democrat, as you've articulated, that may be the plan rather than just deciding out of the blue or seemingly out of the blue we should do this because Saskatchewan did.

00:37:21.680 Absolutely. And I think you're right. Particularly on this issue, I think she would prefer to approach it from a position of she has some sort of mandate, she has some sort of guidance from her members, her caucus, her party.

00:37:36.100 Overwhelmingly, though, I can say that the public research, the polling I've seen from Albertans makes it clear that they think that parents should be making decisions about their own children, not so-called education professionals, teachers, education bureaucrats or school boards.

00:37:53.960 And you only have to look at how crazy some of these school board people are for why Albertans are coming to that conclusion.

00:38:02.080 The school boards elected across the province, particularly in the two major cities, are woke factories churning out outrage and insanity at an unprecedented level.

00:38:14.800 I mean, Alberta always likes to think we've cornered the market on conservatism. 1.00

00:38:20.160 But if you look at our two local governments in Edmonton and Calgary, those are a hotbed of crazy right there.

00:38:26.000 We've got Amarjit Sohi in Edmonton, Jody Gondek in Calgary, school boards and city councils that are incredibly left wing, right at home in Toronto and Vancouver.

00:38:36.080 So for her not to take a position on this, I think is going to be problematic when so many parents have already decided.

00:38:43.640 And if I can just say, I think ideologically, the idea that parents are overwhelmingly bad for their own kids doesn't fly with, I mean, not just Albertans.

00:38:54.760 I think that doesn't fly anywhere in our country. The vast majority, the crushingly overwhelming

00:39:00.460 majority of parents love their own children and wants what's best for them. So for the left to

00:39:05.920 suggest otherwise, I think puts them offside with a massive amount of voters. Yeah, very well said.

00:39:11.400 William Macbeth is the COO of True North. And for the last 15 minutes, our staff have been running

00:39:15.820 up expenses because you weren't here to approve them and deny them. So I'll let you get back and

00:39:19.940 rein in that. William, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.

00:39:23.700 all right one thing i wanted to get i wasn't going to bring this up i saw this on the weekend

00:39:28.940 pierre polyev on the break week in the house of commons was out in bc and he was uh campaigning

00:39:34.460 in an apple orchard which is like a very retail politics thing to do and there were a bunch of

00:39:38.720 photos of him uh chatting with people and videos of him meeting with people and there was this one

00:39:44.100 video that i saw that he posted and the caption i think was how do you like them apples so take

00:39:49.980 from that what you will but it was this long exchange that i thought at first was with a

00:39:56.380 constituent or with a voter and and it was really kind of uncomfortable because the voter was like

00:40:01.380 talking about things and you could tell they didn't really understand them and polyev was being

00:40:05.460 very polyev like in pushing back and saying well who says that and who says that uh this is a snip

00:40:11.340 it was a long video but this is a i think a two minute snippet of it um on the on the topic i mean

00:40:18.500 In terms of your sort of strategy currently, you're obviously taking the populist pathway.

00:40:24.980 What does that mean?

00:40:27.080 Well, appealing to people's more emotional levels, I would guess.

00:40:33.100 What do you mean by that?

00:40:33.860 Certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently.

00:40:39.400 Like what?

00:40:41.820 Left wing, you know, this and that, right wing, you know, I mean, it's that type of ideological thing.

00:40:47.240 I never really talk about left or right.

00:40:48.820 I don't really believe in that.

00:40:51.300 A lot of people would say that you're simply taking a page out of the Donald Trump book.

00:40:56.540 Probably like which people would say that.

00:40:58.800 Well, I'm sure a great many Canadians.

00:41:02.120 Like who?

00:41:03.820 I don't know who, but...

00:41:05.400 Well, you're the one who asked the question, so you must know somebody.

00:41:08.840 Okay.

00:41:09.840 I'm sure there's some out there, but anyways, the point of this question is,

00:41:14.100 i mean why should why should canadians trust you with their vote given you know not not just the

00:41:22.620 sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page of donald trump's book but

00:41:27.080 what are you talking about what page what page can you give me a page give me the page

00:41:30.520 you keep saying in terms of turning things quite dramatically in terms of of trudeau and and the

00:41:36.700 left wing and all of this i mean you you you make quite a you know it's it's quite a play that you

00:41:41.220 make on it so i'm i'm not sure i don't know i don't know what your question is then forget that

00:41:46.460 why should canadians trust you with their vote common sense common sense for for a change

00:41:54.880 we're going to make common sense common in this country we don't have any common sense in the

00:42:00.640 current government you know the guy print 600 billion dollars grows our money supply by 32

00:42:06.700 percent in three years that's growing the money eight times faster than the economy no one

00:42:15.740 i so i don't know if you could hear me when it was on i forgot i don't know if i muted i was like

00:42:20.460 laughing hysterically i should have brought a prop apple to i don't know why i held up nothing

00:42:24.460 to refer to my prop apple that doesn't exist i should have brought an apple just like because

00:42:27.980 that was i think the best part of the clip is just like poly f just crunching the apple

00:42:32.620 And just staring at this guy smugly.

00:42:34.600 Anyway, the first time I saw that clip, I was thinking it was like just really awkward.

00:42:39.920 This voter that was just outmatched, like not making eye contact, not prepared.

00:42:44.440 And then I learned he is not just some random voter from Kelowna,

00:42:48.720 but he's actually a reporter and editor with Castanet,

00:42:53.020 which is an outlet in British Columbia.

00:42:55.960 And it's a smaller local outfit, but established anyway, by the name of Don Urquhart.

00:43:01.320 So his, that was an interview, like, and, and, you know, when it's, he's asking about Trump and populism and this, and Polyev's the one that publishes the video, like, you know, they're proud of how they come across in that.

00:43:15.260 And I still like I still kind of cringy because it's like this guy brought a dull apple to a gunfight.

00:43:23.240 That's basically the metaphor if I decide to mix them up for you here.

00:43:27.600 But he's like, well, populism, Trump, left wing, right wing, populism, Trump.

00:43:32.960 And then when he gets called on it, it's, well, let's just move on from that.

00:43:35.840 So why are you running? Oh, my goodness.

00:43:38.820 So this is it's funny. I've had some debates with reporters about this.

00:43:42.560 one mainstream media reporter in the parliamentary press gallery who told me that this keeps every

00:43:48.900 reporter on their toes. They don't want to show up unprepared. And I've had others that think this

00:43:53.560 guy is, you know, undermining the fifth estate or the fourth estate or the ninth estate or Babylon

00:43:58.740 five or whatever it is. But basically, I think what's happening here is Polyev is flipping the

00:44:05.040 script. And if you're going to go in there with people say, you better be able to cite one single

00:44:09.760 person who may have said something to that effect. There's my lesson to any reporter that is going to

00:44:14.820 interview Pierre Polly. Yeah. But what was interesting is that clip I saw recirculating

00:44:20.120 today because American conservative media had picked it up. Town Hall was going after it. I saw

00:44:25.600 Ron DeSantis as press secretary sharing it. I saw a bunch of American conservatives that were DMing

00:44:30.700 me being like, do you know this, you know, Pierre guy, this, you know, French guy, whatever. I said,

00:44:35.320 well, boy, do I have a story for you about Canadian politics. And then they unfollowed me.

00:44:39.280 But anyway, that is basically what happened here.

00:44:42.020 So it's starting to get noticed, perhaps by people that like how Trump and DeSantis have tried to flip the script as well.

00:44:48.040 But nevertheless, that does it for us for today.

00:44:50.880 We'll be back with more of The Andrew Lawton Show in 23 hours and 15 minutes here on True North.

00:44:55.980 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:44:59.300 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:45:01.840 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:09.280 We'll be right back.

00:45:39.280 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 17, 2023

Liberals promise bill regulating ＂online harms＂

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