Juno News - May 24, 2024


Liberals resort to abortion scare tactics


Episode Stats


Length

41 minutes

Words per minute

197.36618

Word count

8,108

Sentence count

7

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this week's Off The Record Friday's Fun Show, the guys discuss the latest in the anti-choice movement in Canada, and what it means for the future of the pro-life movement in the country. Plus, we play a clip of a wild press conference that broke out in Ottawa this week in which the liberal press conference callers challenged the Prime Minister on abortion.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 all right noah you're supposed to be the funniest on the team so you can uh start us off i'm the
00:00:06.380 funniest on the team i don't know you know what makes you think that is it just you know my
00:00:10.560 appearance that's what andrew that's what andrew designated you wasn't this supposed to be andrew
00:00:14.420 show and i feel like he's never actually here on fridays yeah he's always on vacation in different
00:00:19.780 countries and stuff you know living the living his best life i don't even really think that he works
00:00:24.040 yeah i'm a bit concerned that he's in taiwan right now while china is engaged in unprecedented war
00:00:31.060 games surrounding the island with ships and planes so we're a little bit worried about getting
00:00:37.000 andrew lotten back safe and sound into one piece not on that it's not a maybe a low-key chinese agent
00:00:43.500 who knows no maybe we i feel bad maybe we shouldn't be saying uh unkind things about him while he's in
00:00:49.440 a dangerous dangerous zone sorry andrew yeah i understand he's getting on a plane home today so
00:00:55.700 i'm i think he'll be okay all right well in that case andrew this is your show you need to come back
00:01:01.040 and you need to start hosting it more regularly we're happy to all be guests but it's your show
00:01:04.900 your responsibility all right everyone let's get it started
00:01:08.560 hey everyone welcome back to off the record friday's fun show andrew lotten is out of town
00:01:23.040 in taiwan as you may have heard so i am filling in in his absence and i am joined by william mcbeth
00:01:28.380 and noah jarvis thanks folks for joining me today guys happy to be here it's a pleasure to be on
00:01:33.960 so it's been a spicy week in canadian politics actually it seems like there is probably not much
00:01:40.520 going on and you always know that it's been a slow news week and when they're down in the polls
00:01:44.860 when the liberals start talking about abortion the liberals are once again fear-mongering over
00:01:49.560 abortion saying that the conservative leader pierre polyev if he was in government if he was in power
00:01:55.540 he would make abortion illegal personally i'm pro-life i don't have a problem with this
00:02:00.620 unfortunately pierre polyev has actually said he would do nothing to legislate
00:02:03.720 it so the liberals don't really have much of an argument but they always seem to bring this up
00:02:07.380 when they're down the polls and we have many polls showing them down by as many as 20 points
00:02:12.140 still this has been what they've chosen to make the issue of the week about and there was a pretty
00:02:17.060 crazy press conference that broke out in ottawa this week we're going to play a clip to show you
00:02:20.880 what the liberals sounded like this week in ottawa i'm here representing the women's caucus and
00:02:25.380 members of the little party and we've sent a letter to the leader of the opposition
00:02:29.140 asking him to be very clear with canadians and in particular with canadian women on what he would
00:02:35.360 do to defend a woman's right to choose we've seen that his caucus there are many anti-choice
00:02:41.980 caucus members we've seen some of their actions recently including mp kathy wagenthal who at the
00:02:48.600 pro-life rally held here last week said that women who have abortions end up needing redemption
00:02:54.480 forgiveness and needing god we as women want to know whether the leader of the opposition will
00:03:02.240 ensure that his caucus does not put forward legislation that in any way impinges on women's
00:03:11.120 frights and freedoms in particular bodily autonomy so of course now the liberals are saying they're
00:03:16.480 putting forward the dreaded letter which is what politicians always do when they don't really
00:03:19.920 have anything else to do william what do you make of this why is this coming up again yeah i mean
00:03:25.740 you've heard of the little boy who cried wolf well this is the little party that cried abortion 0.97
00:03:30.160 it's every single time they're faced with uh policy criticism or sagging popularity they go to their
00:03:37.080 only weapon left they try and claim that the conservative party in government would outlaw abortion
00:03:43.520 but unlike in previous times i think you're seeing that even the legacy media aren't believing it now
00:03:49.900 they're saying look uh we had 10 years of harper government there were no changes to abortion under
00:03:55.160 that the leader pierre polliver has been very clear about uh where he scanned saying he won't
00:04:01.080 like slain on abortion so they pushed back a bit which was good to see i i also have to laugh and say there
00:04:06.540 seems to be an awful lot of men in the liberal women's caucus based on that photo uh or maybe they
00:04:12.000 choose to identify as women now that that could be i guess uh what it is too i think you raise a good
00:04:18.360 point and also you're correct the mainstream media actually did push back on this they don't often
00:04:22.400 push back on this but there's actually some good questions let's go a little bit to that back and
00:04:26.280 forth that we saw between the minister speaking and the liberal mp speaking and some of the questions
00:04:31.880 from reporters in the room were actually really challenging the uh women's caucus as you mentioned
00:04:36.260 and some of their points let's play that clip now is it he was here harper government had 10 years i know
00:04:42.420 you weren't here many of us were 10 years in power they had four years of the majority didn't move
00:04:47.280 one bit and they had private members who wanted to do things and do things gosh you are all 30 points
00:04:53.680 down the polls i'm looking at some of you will not get re-elected if there was an election this fall
00:04:57.760 how this is the most cynical play to just throw the abortion scare tactic would you like to respond
00:05:03.220 to that observation absolutely it's not a scare tactic we've seen what's happened in the states
00:05:07.340 do people really think roe versus way would have been overturned do we think what was happening there
00:05:11.380 was going to happen i've been in the women's movement for over 50 years it is not a scare tactic
00:05:16.420 things are going backwards not only in canada but around the world and these are real risks for
00:05:21.780 canadians we need to know very clearly that that party politics put for the convention individual
00:05:28.460 members are not going to introduce things because we do not want to go the same way as the united states
00:05:33.320 so it is not a scare tactic it is a very strong concern and i may not have been here then but i was
00:05:38.860 other places working on women's rights okay so do not use that as a as a reason why it's not a scare 0.95
00:05:45.660 attack last question let's just put it back the other way the government hasn't also legislated to
00:05:49.980 protect abortions either right so why doesn't your government introduce legislation to make it harder
00:05:55.180 for that to get rolled back in when there if there is a conservative government thank you you do not
00:06:01.260 want to legislate woman's body you do not legislate woman's body that is not you make sure that you
00:06:10.940 have access to abortion you don't want to legislate anybody's body particularly women's 1.00
00:06:16.940 even if that is to protect the right to choose like you're calling no you don't want to legislate your
00:06:23.020 ovaries your readers no that is not the way that you protect women's rights 0.95
00:06:28.860 i find these clips so difficult to listen to you don't want to legislate women's bodies they always 1.00
00:06:34.620 forget when they make these arguments that when we're talking about abortion there's two bodies
00:06:38.380 at play here there's also the little baby that's growing inside its mother totally innocent helpless
00:06:43.500 little child but of course the liberals don't want to acknowledge that reality that first question
00:06:48.140 there from the reporter was very interesting though he was actually very indignant you could see that
00:06:51.260 even the legacy media is tired of this ploy from the liberals he actually even said to them
00:06:55.420 you know you guys are down 30 points i mentioned earlier they're down pretty consistently 20 points
00:06:59.740 but he even went to say 30 points now what do you think that this is simply just the liberals trying
00:07:04.140 to distract because they are doing so poorly in the poll numbers or do you think there's something
00:07:08.460 more at play here oh yeah absolutely they're trying to distract i mean if an election were held
00:07:13.900 today more than half of the liberal caucus would lose their seat so it is within their best interest
00:07:19.740 to try and uh lie and portrayed the conservatives as you know some crazy uh christian radicals who want
00:07:26.780 to roll back women's rights but the fact of the matter is this uh on uh pure polio's campaign trail 1.00
00:07:32.620 when he was campaigning for the conservative leadership he made it very clear that he would not
00:07:37.180 seek to legislate uh abortions in any way shape or form and to my dismay and your dismay uh he will not
00:07:44.140 be taking on uh this issue and you know for good it's for good reason i think the pro-life movement
00:07:49.260 in canada has a lot of work to do uh to make uh abortion restrictions more popular in canada but
00:07:56.060 yeah pure polio has never said at all that he wants to uh legislate abortions he said the opposite
00:08:02.060 and uh in fact and when the reporters question um that liberal mps on this they just talk about you
00:08:08.940 know not not making uh not trying to scare the canadian public and then they immediately talk about
00:08:13.900 the united states a completely different country with you know you know different legal jurisdiction
00:08:18.460 and a different judicial system uh you know they talk about roe v wade where canada doesn't really
00:08:23.500 have an equivalent of roe v wade you could point to rv morgenthaler in 1988 and 1993 but those uh
00:08:31.340 court decisions don't necessarily say that uh you can't uh legislate abortion in any way whereas
00:08:37.740 roe v wade it was sort of the the gates that held back the flood of democratic choice
00:08:43.180 uh in the united states so i don't think that a there is a really big constituency that wants to
00:08:48.540 see abortion regulated even if you and i want to see that rachel and b uh pure polio has no desire 1.00
00:08:54.460 to do this uh and you know even if one of his private uh private members bill hits the house of
00:09:00.060 commons uh and the government votes against it uh and i'm pretty sure all liberal mps and ndp mps would
00:09:06.140 vote against it uh there's just no way uh that sort of bill would pass um in parliament so it is a
00:09:12.780 liberal scare tactic no matter what they say yeah so those liberals mps are saying you know
00:09:18.060 pure polio if in government he would use the notwithstanding clause to ban abortion he personally
00:09:22.380 wants to legislate to make abortion illegal of course his office has responded and said that isn't
00:09:26.220 the case but i think you raise a really good point here noah that the liberals are saying that you
00:09:30.940 know the liberals are being accused of fear-mongering and they say no no we're not fear-mongering look at
00:09:34.380 what's happening in the united states and by doing that they themselves are fear-mongering because
00:09:38.300 it's a totally different country it's run very differently the pro-life movement is much stronger
00:09:42.460 in the u.s and the liberals always seem to revert back to this when they are trying to scare canadians
00:09:47.580 oh we've got trumpism style canadians we all remember that sort of infamous video when peer
00:09:52.220 polio was being interviewed while he was in western canada and you know he was accused of bringing trump
00:09:57.900 style politics to canada and he was saying oh who's saying this who's saying that i'm like trump
00:10:01.980 and the reporter had really had no basis no way of backing this up one of the other things that
00:10:06.620 kind of comes to mind with this is that we know peer polio in the polls has struggled a little bit
00:10:10.780 with sort of uh middle class women in the toronto gta area of course that's always a battleground in 1.00
00:10:16.380 federal elections we know the conservatives are going to be looking to that after we saw those poll
00:10:19.900 numbers come out we sort of saw peer polio get a makeover stopped wearing the glasses maybe was
00:10:24.140 wearing a little bit of face makeup there were some accusations that i have no idea if this is true
00:10:28.300 not that he was even wearing one of those like under coatings under his shirt that has like the
00:10:31.900 fake muscles and stuff you know all this from from liberals probably isn't true it was sort of funny
00:10:36.380 to watch at the time but william what do you make of this is this really just more of the liberals
00:10:39.980 tactics tried to make peer polio unpopular with a specific group of people in canada because they
00:10:45.420 are seeing their poll numbers and they're getting a little worried for the next federal election
00:10:49.900 yeah i mean i think you're absolutely right and it's interesting the liberal government has always
00:10:54.780 reached for it seems two issues when they were trying to quote unquote scare back their supporters
00:11:00.540 one was abortion the other was guns and gun control and i think you've seen in both cases those wells
00:11:06.860 have run dry there is no legitimate fear on the part of everyday canadians uh on either of the
00:11:13.260 conservative approach to uh either gun control or abortion uh you are completely right count is very
00:11:19.500 different than the united states we have a much less uh influential and uh wide-ranging pro-life
00:11:26.380 movement we don't have the same uh pro-life politics that exist uh in the republican party
00:11:33.420 that does in the conservative party and uh less of a canadian appetite for any change on this so for
00:11:39.180 the liberals to keep going back to it it really shows how out of ideas they are they they put forward
00:11:44.860 their budget it was an absolute flop that didn't move a single supporter back into their camp they've
00:11:50.220 said they're all about building houses not a single house has been built under new liberal programs
00:11:54.860 so what they're going to is what's always worked before but i think this time again as i said that
00:11:58.940 well has just run dry and as a government let me just say as a government that's been in power for
00:12:06.140 over nine years uh you know and the reporter mentioned this they had so much opportunity to legislate
00:12:11.820 abortion rights uh into canadian law but uh they have not done that and uh you know the really
00:12:17.260 crappy retort that one of the mps gave is oh we will not uh legislate uh women's bodies and you know
00:12:23.260 starts mentioning uh specific parts but you know we did this all the time you know with the canada
00:12:28.060 health act and uh various other laws we legislate people's bodies all the time you know i mean that's
00:12:33.820 what they did during the pandemic when they're forcing people to uh get uh vaccines much unless they
00:12:39.980 want to you know have their rights severely restricted i mean we legislate people's bodies
00:12:44.540 all the time so to act like this is something that is beyond the pale that we cannot you know uh reach
00:12:51.740 this uh measure as a canadian society it is ridiculous we do this all the time uh and you
00:12:58.300 know just saying it over and over again we will not legislate women's bodies i'm not going to do 0.94
00:13:02.380 anything you're just wrong you know yeah it's just one of their classic talking points completely ignoring
00:13:07.820 the fact that the right to life is one of the most basic human rights whether that's in stride
00:13:11.740 in a constitution or a charter or whatever that is a basic right that we all inherently have and that
00:13:16.620 right is stolen from babies before they're even out of the womb but of course as we mentioned they 0.72
00:13:20.460 conveniently ignore these realities time and time again of course ignoring reality is sort of
00:13:24.460 becoming more commonplace for the liberals now we've talked a lot about this story being a
00:13:28.300 distraction for their low polling numbers they also had some other bad news from meta this week
00:13:32.940 william why don't you break down that story for us yeah well as you know um the liberal government's
00:13:38.700 online news act came in force last year and it sought to make big tech companies specifically google
00:13:45.580 and meta who owns facebook and instagram have to pay news publishers for the privilege of having
00:13:52.620 their content posted on their platforms google said well we don't really like this but okay we'll give
00:13:58.620 you 100 million dollars a year in order to uh get you off our backs i think meta simply decided they've
00:14:04.940 had enough and meta said fine we won't include any canadian news content on our platforms and here we are
00:14:11.580 now you know coming up on eight or nine months after that law was implemented and the clear winner here
00:14:17.820 uh has been meta and the reasons we can cite is first of all uh canadians and record numbers are still
00:14:24.220 signing up to meta properties to facebook instagram viewership readership usership of these platforms
00:14:30.380 hasn't declined and advertising revenue has continued to grow i think something like 19 year over year uh
00:14:37.500 compared to it because meta's always said it isn't a news platform it doesn't really see a lot of traffic
00:14:44.460 because of news content and in fact the people who really benefit from uh having news content posted on
00:14:51.180 instagram and facebook are the news companies who get vast more amounts of exposure and that's true
00:14:56.460 if you look at especially small and independent media outlets they've seen massive drops you know
00:15:02.940 calamitous drops in their exposure after the meta and in-depth ban getting them off facebook and instagram
00:15:10.060 so i think the government should pat itself on the back say job well done our our new law to help the
00:15:16.540 news industry has massively hurt the news industry that's a great job everybody gets a cigar the really
00:15:24.300 ridiculous thing about this story is that we all knew exactly how this was going to play out because
00:15:29.020 the same thing happened in australia a few years back when they wanted to legislate this type of thing
00:15:33.820 you know have facebook pay news companies for already giving them a benefit by me by being able to share
00:15:39.260 their you know their work on facebook's platform and receiving lots of clicks and visits to the
00:15:44.060 website that way when that happened you know facebook in australia just said okay we're not
00:15:47.820 going to allow link sharing anymore and they briefly banned it now they were able to come to a deal with
00:15:52.220 facebook at the time now meta and sort of work through that but here in canada we've just been
00:15:56.620 we haven't been able to overcome that we can share our news now i know a lot of people have been able to
00:16:01.020 find little work rounds a lot of people i know i maybe shouldn't even say them so meta doesn't get
00:16:05.020 wind but you know you might post a a picture on facebook and then post the link in the comments or
00:16:09.420 something and just say look in the the comments below but obviously you know for an outlet like
00:16:13.340 true north who we did get a lot of business from facebook we did get a lot of clicks from facebook
00:16:17.820 now we have to find all these silly workarounds the reality is when people are scrolling on social
00:16:21.660 media they're just looking very quickly and you got to have that attention you got to have that
00:16:25.500 headline that's going to grab their attention and cause them to actually click on that story and take
00:16:29.340 a look so i would assume that this has just been a massive blow for us as well as some of the other
00:16:34.060 independent media outlets that you mentioned sure rebel has experienced you know um drawbacks western
00:16:38.940 standard william obviously you sort of run the operations maybe you could speak to specifically
00:16:43.100 what the impact has been for us at true north not being able to share our work easily on platforms
00:16:48.220 like facebook yeah i you know it's interesting we obviously like everybody else used meta tools we used
00:16:55.260 facebook we used instagram to reach uh large swaths of canadians with our content uh i i would say uh one of
00:17:02.300 the things that was great about uh facebook is that it allowed you to get in front of a very large
00:17:08.700 audience uh millions and millions and millions of canadians use it every day and it allowed you to
00:17:13.900 drive traffic to your videos to your news stories and to your other content but when we saw this bill
00:17:20.620 coming we realized that it would be a problem for us that if we were too reliant on meta properties
00:17:27.100 uh for our for our content we would be in trouble so we invested in uh building up our email list in
00:17:33.660 growing on properties like x and on making sure that people were visiting our website directly rather
00:17:39.420 than simply linking through to it through facebook and instagram posts and as a result we've been far
00:17:44.540 less impacted than i think some other organizations have it's it's still an it's still an issue we're still
00:17:50.940 seeing a decline in some of our key metrics but overall we've been far less badly hurt than than
00:17:57.980 some other entities you have to ask yourself if the if the bill is hurting news companies why wouldn't
00:18:04.220 the government recall it why wouldn't they drop it or at least retool it substantially uh in order to
00:18:11.820 deal with some of these problems and it seems now that they're just locked in a in a bitter personal
00:18:16.460 feud with meta and uh in between a liberal government on life support and meta who has
00:18:22.700 record-breaking profits my money is on meta who's going to win this fight no one so william obviously
00:18:28.940 mentioned a personal feud there but obviously with independent media being so impacted by this band
00:18:34.380 do you think there's more of this do you think this is actually maliciousness on the liberal
00:18:37.580 government's part actively trying to harm independent media which has been so critical of their government
00:18:42.780 well i think it might be malicious on on behalf of the mainstream media who lobbied for this
00:18:50.060 legislation uh but i think it certainly is incompetence on the trudeau government's part i i
00:18:55.180 believe that you know no matter what they touch you know it just turn they have the reverse might
00:18:59.420 is touch instead of turning into gold it turns into uh human defecation so you know i i really think that
00:19:05.420 the the the liberals they tried their best uh to make this legislation help canadian news i mean that's what
00:19:11.580 they they claim to you know be trying to do as much as possible you know giving millions of dollars
00:19:17.180 in media bailouts uh and you know passing bill c11 and you know this bill c18 i think they generally
00:19:24.540 genuinely thought that you know meta and google would just you know dump their pockets in front of them
00:19:30.140 and you know give out a bunch of checks to news media who are failing but at the end of the day
00:19:35.260 you know this is legislation that uh hurts local news outlets first and foremost the trudeau government
00:19:41.100 they claim uh to want to be able to support uh local news and you know they give billions of
00:19:46.780 dollars to the cbc to you know support local news who actually don't support local news but that's
00:19:51.740 besides the point uh but you know the the studies show that uh local news outlets have seen a decline
00:19:57.660 in their audience by 86 percent uh and mainstream media they've only seen a decline about half that so it is
00:20:06.060 is definitely not a bill not left legislation uh that is helping uh local news outlets like the trudeau
00:20:12.380 government says uh and i think that you know the mainstream media when they lobbied for this
00:20:17.340 legislation they have their own lobby uh that uh sites like our companies like post media and four
00:20:23.340 star uh they all contribute to you know this organization that lobbies the government i believe that they
00:20:28.460 knew that you know even if uh meta banned um uh being being able to see canadian news on their platforms
00:20:35.900 they still have their newspaper subscriptions uh people still know who they are from their reputation
00:20:41.340 build up built up over decades so they're more likely to just directly visit their website uh there's
00:20:46.540 a lot of other uh areas in which uh these legacy media outlets can make money uh and they know that outlets
00:20:53.660 like true north and other local media outlets uh they don't have the same resources as them so uh
00:20:58.940 it's sort of like how when you increase the minimum wage walmart uh generally benefits because uh they
00:21:04.940 have less competition in the mom-and-pop shops and the small to medium-sized businesses so so i think
00:21:10.620 that you know if the trudeau government had sort of any integrity and wanted to follow through on their
00:21:16.140 plan to help uh news media they wouldn't uh you know continue uh making this uh legislation law they
00:21:23.180 would try and revoke this legislation and bring something forward that would actually help uh news
00:21:28.300 media although i don't want them to try and help news media anymore they've done enough uh they've
00:21:33.020 destroyed trust in these institutions by giving them hundreds of millions of dollars and they've
00:21:38.140 destroyed their ability to actually reach an audience so maybe if they didn't touch this file
00:21:42.380 anymore that'd be for the best and when you talk about how this has been so detrimental for
00:21:47.900 local news the irony of is of course that the liberals are spending so much particularly to bolster
00:21:52.940 local news we know they spend a lot on news media in general as you mentioned but they have sort of
00:21:56.540 a local journalism initiative you guys have probably seen this in the paper for audience if you're ever
00:22:00.780 reading a newspaper and you see beside the author's names it says in brackets local journalism initiative
00:22:06.220 that means that reporter salary is directly paid for by the federal government so while news media in
00:22:11.260 general receives hundreds of millions in funding and subsidies those positions are actually being paid
00:22:16.700 for directly so you know have to always take everything that you read legacy media with a grain of salt
00:22:21.660 but those positions are just being paid by the feds i think it's so wrong that we're seeing that and
00:22:26.140 yes now the federal government's spending all this money on these positions and at the same time that
00:22:30.700 they're making it impossible for canadians to find the work they're spending money paying for that
00:22:34.620 we're spending money to pay for because we're actually the taxpayers thank you this doesn't make
00:22:38.220 any sense at all william what do you think yeah i mean we've always said that if your job salary
00:22:45.500 is dependent on the government how on earth can you possibly fairly cover that government and hold
00:22:51.420 them to account your media outlet who relies on government subsidies government transfers government
00:22:56.700 funding in order to keep the lights on and make payroll how on earth can you critically cover that
00:23:02.380 government hold them to account because you know you you need them it's it's an abusive relationship
00:23:08.620 almost like between a drug addict and a drug dealer so um as you know speaking for true north we would
00:23:15.740 love nothing more than the government to fully get out of the news business to leave us alone to let us do
00:23:22.460 our thing and to uh stop meddling in something they clearly don't understand but uh i'm not optimistic
00:23:29.580 that we'll see any changes from this government they've they've said that uh you know they have no plans
00:23:34.780 on doing it but i'm optimistic that a future government may decide to roll back some of these
00:23:39.980 truly disastrous changes and let us get on with the business of uh reporting the facts and the truths
00:23:44.940 of canadians we're on the topic of social media we have a big story from tiktok about from the tip
00:23:51.660 from about tiktok this week a new report recommends that the canadian government forced tiktok to divest
00:23:57.260 from its chinese parent company bite dance or announce a national ban to secure canadians from surveillance 0.68
00:24:04.140 propaganda and predatory data collection from the communist regime the mcdonald laurier institute
00:24:10.300 reporter report titled china's glaring trojan horse recommends that the federal government mimic
00:24:15.500 the united states tiktok ban legislation by giving bite dance the option to either sell tiktok
00:24:19.980 to a suitable buyer or face a ban of the app in the country okay so we all know that tiktok has been
00:24:25.100 controversial because you know china's collecting so much data on the people that have it downloaded on
00:24:29.340 their phones and are using it do you think a ban would be in the best entrance of canadians no i'm
00:24:35.020 going to let you go first well i think this is a really uh a controversial issue because on one hand
00:24:43.260 we have to balance uh two principles one principle being order and the other being liberty the the on
00:24:48.540 the order side uh we do need to ensure that canada's national security is uh is its integrity is solid
00:24:56.140 um and when we have uh countries like china uh that are seeking to undermine canada's democracy canada's
00:25:02.700 institutions uh and undermine even sometimes the safety of certain canadians especially chinese
00:25:07.980 canadians when we have a government uh doing that in our country we need to take every step possible in
00:25:12.460 order to secure uh the integrity of our elections and the security of our people and one of the steps
00:25:17.660 that can be taken is by actually uh getting tiktok to be divested or banned and the reason being
00:25:24.060 is that tiktok uh they have a lot of mechanisms that is controlled by the ccp either directly or
00:25:30.380 indirectly that would allow them to manipulate sort of the information that is being promoted on that
00:25:35.660 platform for for example i think a lot of people have noticed that a lot of pro-palestinian content
00:25:40.940 is being promoted on tiktok and a lot of pro-israel content is not being promoted on tiktok and i believe
00:25:47.500 that one of the reasons for that is that it is in with it's within the chinese communist party's interest
00:25:53.580 to promote pro-palestinian content content that would divide canadians and uh get them to uh support
00:26:01.660 uh or autocratic islamic regime that uh you know engages in terrorism uh you uh in a unique uh in
00:26:09.660 a uniquely um often uh sort of manner so i think that yeah tiktok does pose a threat however there is
00:26:16.860 the uh the the the principle of liberty in that canadians should ought to be free to download
00:26:22.940 whatever apps and use whatever services that they want to use uh and i think that you know when uh
00:26:29.100 governments are going around banning certain uh social media platforms especially you know social
00:26:33.740 media is supposed to be uh the sort of new public square where people get together and share ideas
00:26:39.660 uh and share you know all sorts of things so when uh canadians are being restricted from accessing a
00:26:45.900 public square uh that is sort of uh something that should uh raise some concerns so i don't necessarily
00:26:52.140 have strong opinions uh on this i think you know if i were you know gun to my head you know choose
00:26:58.060 something i think i would uh go ahead with uh getting tiktok to be divested or have it banned but uh at the
00:27:05.180 the end of the day i think that this is something that canadians need to be uh yeah this is a process
00:27:10.460 that canadians need to be brought into i think that um canadians ought to be informed about the
00:27:14.860 benefits and the risk of keeping tiktok uh legal in canada uh and an informed decision should be made
00:27:20.540 from there yeah i mean and we talk about social media sort of being the new public square i feel
00:27:25.500 like that's mostly true of x where there is so many different types of opinions and freedom of expression
00:27:29.420 is actually allowed you know conservatives can actually speak on x without worry about their accounts
00:27:33.740 being banned the same can't really be said for facebook or obviously then as instagram and
00:27:37.820 certainly not tiktok in which conservative accounts are usually banned very quickly upon making an account
00:27:43.500 but one of the things to consider here is you know this report is sort of lauding the efforts in the
00:27:47.020 u.s to ban tiktok when we look at why the u.s wants to ban tiktok the we also have to look at
00:27:53.740 facebook if tiktok was banned that gives just that much more power to facebook which owns instagram as
00:27:58.780 we've mentioned you know a lot of young people are on instagram a lot of people are on facebook
00:28:02.940 without tiktok facebook basically controls everything and in the last u.s election cycle
00:28:07.500 we know that facebook was actively basically campaigning for the democrats they actively
00:28:11.340 suppress the hunter biden lap stop story on facebook so this would actually probably be a
00:28:15.980 bad thing for the republicans long term i wonder if the same thing can be said for canada would it be
00:28:21.340 a bad thing for the conservatives if tiktok was banned here william what do you think
00:28:26.460 you know it's such an interesting topic whether or not uh you know we should be looking at
00:28:31.420 banning or limiting one social media company versus the other i think probably the user base for
00:28:36.620 almost all of them is probably more skewing uh left than right more uh progressive than conservative
00:28:44.380 but uh occasionally i get invited to speak to grade 12 classes in social studies on uh politics and
00:28:51.580 government and uh you know one of the things i'm often told by by students they say well nothing
00:28:56.940 that's debated by politicians really matters to me i don't really care about this and i say well
00:29:01.900 what if they what if they ban tiktok how many of you have tiktok on your phone and of course every
00:29:07.900 single person in the class has tiktok on their phone so if you ever think the government can't impact your
00:29:13.340 your day-to-day life or something you personally enjoy wait till the government takes away one of your
00:29:18.140 your favorite apps and then see uh about it but just in terms of uh the security risk of tiktok
00:29:25.180 we know china is a bad actor we know that this is a country uh that has interfered in our elections 1.00
00:29:31.180 that has been caught spying on other companies through technology that was one of the big concerns we
00:29:37.660 had about huawei and their activities uh you know both here in canada and other places it isn't
00:29:44.220 beyond imagination that they could use an app like tiktok to um for nefarious purposes to collect
00:29:51.740 information and then to go ahead and use it in some way that is detrimental to uh canada and canadians
00:29:57.500 so you know on balance i think we we have to look and see what can be done to keep canadians safe and
00:30:04.540 we have to start approaching china more from the perspective that this is not a friendly government this
00:30:10.700 is not a government who wants to be an honest partner with canada this is government with an
00:30:15.580 agenda and uh it will move forward with that you know and if it means uh bad things for canada in
00:30:22.460 the process well then they're going to go right ahead and do that so china is not our friend china 1.00
00:30:27.420 is a foreign government that we need to be taking far more seriously than we have been up until now
00:30:33.260 i don't know if we're going to necessarily see that serious tone come from the liberal government
00:30:37.660 um this report also had an interesting note the prime minister and his cabinet could enforce this
00:30:42.620 measure without needing to pass any legislation through parliament they could instead simply invoke
00:30:46.860 the investment canada act which would bar investment considered an injurious to national security so it
00:30:53.260 wouldn't be that difficult for them to do this but we know that trudeau particularly hasn't taken
00:30:57.660 china seriously noah do you think we're going to see any movement from the federal government on this report
00:31:02.940 well i don't think so because i i don't think it's within the liberal government's political
00:31:08.620 interest uh and if it's not within their political interest they're not going to do within the best
00:31:13.180 interest of canadians and the reason being is that the trudeau government they're seen as being very
00:31:18.060 fickle uh and being very soft on matters of foreign interference and for them to uh you know stand up
00:31:25.180 at a press conference one day and say you know on on the switch of a dime we're taking this uh
00:31:30.060 issue very seriously you know we're coming uh and we're going to bad tick tock i think it would
00:31:34.940 you know magnify scrutiny over some of their uh actions to for example not deal with uh the hand
00:31:41.580 dong situation very seriously they knew uh that he was probably you know put in that position with the
00:31:48.620 help of the chinese government and they didn't take any action they didn't take any action against
00:31:53.500 foreign interference in the 2019 and the 2021 uh general elections so uh just to put a magnifying
00:32:00.700 glass on the foreign interference issue especially uh with china at this time where their government is
00:32:06.860 already facing a lot of scrutiny i think that it is not within uh their political interest so they're
00:32:12.060 not going uh to move on this issue but if the the trudeau government they have more information about
00:32:18.220 this than any of us uh so they they probably know more than anyone whether or not this is a genuine
00:32:24.700 uh issue uh to national security if this is there's a general threat to national security that tick tock
00:32:31.100 poses uh and if they knew that this was a threat to national security they probably ought to have acted
00:32:38.700 on this already just like they knew uh that foreign interference from china and iran and russia was a
00:32:44.140 threat um many many years ago so i think it would just uh put a magnifying glass on why they haven't
00:32:49.900 acted on this sooner why they haven't acted uh strongly on other uh matters of foreign interference
00:32:56.060 and ultimately i think it would tank their polling numbers uh even harder if that's even possible
00:33:03.020 all right we've talked about national security we've talked about meta we've talked about abortion
00:33:07.180 and i promised you guys that it was going to be a lighter show we haven't really delivered
00:33:10.380 luckily we did save one hilarious story for the very end that should make up for all the heavy
00:33:14.940 content that we had earlier in the show noah take it away all right so i'm glad to be talking about
00:33:22.380 this story because uh we're talking about group sex parties uh that's right there is this club in
00:33:29.100 calgary uh in 2015 that received a complaint uh to the city uh basically there was a complaint that there
00:33:36.060 was sex parties and it took the uh the city four years to act but after four years they they were
00:33:42.540 given a stop order because uh they were hosting at someone's home as someone's calgary home uh group
00:33:48.380 sex parties um you know the i guess the specific term is ethical non-monogamous uh sex parties at
00:33:55.260 uh this health house in the northwest uh community of silver springs and they called it club menage
00:34:01.020 um so on a bi-weekly basis every two weeks uh about 20 to 50 people will gather to this house
00:34:08.300 and um really uh duke it out you know that uh they'd go to town on one another uh and you know i think
00:34:15.660 this uh raises a lot of different concerns first of all about the type of um let's just say uh diseases
00:34:23.660 uh the type of uh uh immunity uh compromising sort of uh viruses that might be going around the
00:34:31.500 community uh but also just raises concerns that um you know your neighbor perhaps could just one day
00:34:38.140 decide to open a club uh beside your house and on a bi-weekly basis yet here strange noises coming out of
00:34:45.180 the top floor of their um home so i i believe a uh court they uh found that uh the city uh is not
00:34:56.380 necessarily allowed to if this was uh an establishment uh put up on commercial uh on a commercial property
00:35:03.820 that there would be no problem uh with club menage be opening the only problem with club menage is that
00:35:08.780 um they opened this uh this establishment uh in a residential uh area so uh guys i i don't necessarily
00:35:17.420 have much experience with sex parties so maybe you guys could provide some more insight into this uh
00:35:22.540 maybe uh you you can but william but um what what do you guys believe uh think of uh the sex parties in
00:35:30.140 uh resident in calgary's uh residential area well to start the judge actually ruled that these can
00:35:36.460 continue so long as it's not called a club if they're just sort of parties and not labeled club
00:35:40.700 they're allowed to continue but uh you know stories like these are pretty much why i'm a social
00:35:46.940 conservative not a libertarian i think that this should just be banned especially in a residential
00:35:51.660 area i can't imagine you know you've got a young family raising kids and this is sort of the depraved
00:35:57.260 activity that's going on next door you know as i said on my show alberta roundup uh today i think uh
00:36:02.940 you might see some homes go up for sale in silver springs and you might get one for cheap
00:36:07.020 because uh probably no one's going to want to live around this but uh you're certainly going
00:36:10.940 to be taking your share of hits for living there william what do you think yeah i mean if you walked
00:36:16.620 into that house i bet there's a home that has plastic on all the furniture uh 20 to 50 people
00:36:22.460 in a single home engaged in group sex activity that's uh that is definitely not a recipe for hygiene
00:36:28.940 uh look i i think that um you know generally we ask government to stay out of our our personal lives
00:36:37.020 and out of our homes and you know have they simply been having uh extracurricular fun with a smaller
00:36:45.180 group of people and not calling it a club uh i'm not sure anybody even would have noticed what was going
00:36:52.220 on it could have just looked like uh someone having a a party but uh you know the fact that there
00:36:58.620 are 20 to 50 people that's an awful lot of people think of the traffic uh i mean that's the size of a
00:37:05.420 of a university house party 50 people crammed into a single a single place that's quite a
00:37:10.700 disruptive activity and then to operate as a commercial enterprise um in a private home means
00:37:16.700 they're not having to adhere to any of the any of the rules that are established for commercial
00:37:21.820 enterprises with regards to to cleanliness and you know do you have enough bathrooms for 50 people
00:37:27.740 do you have uh all of the things that businesses would be held to so i'm not convinced that the
00:37:33.660 biggest issue was uh their choice of activity so much as the number of people involved and how
00:37:41.180 they charge to do it i mean they were charging is my understanding too they were charging quote unquote
00:37:46.140 membership fees to participate uh so it's interesting i guess um you know you never really know what goes
00:37:53.900 on in your neighbor's house you uh uh but if you see 50 people showing up every two weeks and uh
00:38:00.940 coming out with big smiles on their faces i guess maybe you should have an idea of what's going on
00:38:04.940 in northwest calvary i want to like i would have a council or a provincial legislature could legislate on
00:38:12.460 this matter i mean first of all the person drafting up the legislation would just be tearing their hair out and
00:38:19.180 you know it would it wouldn't be a great fun unless you're you're into this kind of thing then uh
00:38:24.060 you know it might be great fun but like do you just like if you're a neighbor of these people do
00:38:29.020 you like file a noise complaint like once once every two weeks do uh you know perhaps a lobby for a
00:38:35.580 bylaw to be passed where you're only allowed to have sex parties up to 25 people or something like
00:38:40.140 that you know to really keep it down if you're attending a sex party you're not allowed to park on the street
00:38:45.980 something like that maybe that'd be a a good way to discourage uh this sort of behavior but
00:38:52.140 you know what's even more concerning to me about the rather than just the sex parties that it took
00:38:56.540 the city four years to get around to this issue i mean the original complaint by neighbors was filed
00:39:02.380 in 2015 and then it took all the way until 2019 for a stop order uh to be issued by by the city i mean
00:39:09.900 imagine you're the neighbor you had to deal with that for four years straight and you ask the city four
00:39:14.860 years ago to to take some action on this and they just haven't done anything so you know uh once a
00:39:20.380 week on uh uh on every other friday night you know you're trying to sit down with your wife have some
00:39:26.060 wine eat a nice dinner and then you know you hear strange noises come from the left it's like oh yeah
00:39:31.580 that is well the good news is that they had they had four years to put their house up for sale and
00:39:36.780 even longer before this you know address the neighborhood became public before anyone else
00:39:40.620 what they were getting themselves into i think we need to support values yeah but if it decreases
00:39:46.300 proper value once everyone knew about it but beforehand i mean people who are coming to view
00:39:50.300 your home probably aren't coming to view it in the hours of 12 a.m to 4 a.m so still could have gone
00:39:55.980 out of there pretty easily all right everyone we're gonna have to come up with some more lighter
00:39:59.980 stories for you guys if you drop some suggestions in the comments below we'll take a look at that for
00:40:03.500 next week don't forget that everything you heard today was off the record
00:40:15.740 william if i made a tick tock account realistically how long do you think it would take before it got
00:40:19.660 banned well i my understanding is tick tock doesn't ban for political reasons very often in fact the
00:40:28.780 biggest thing that gets people banned from tick tock is nudity or sexually explicit content as with
00:40:35.740 every app there is a large cohort of people who use tick tock to sell adult services only fan
00:40:42.540 subscriptions and everything else like that so tick tock spends an awful lot of its time issuing
00:40:47.260 takedown orders to uh people who violate its nudity and sexuality things so as long as you're not doing
00:40:53.100 that you're probably fine i can't live during the sex parties that's that's unfortunate those ethical
00:40:58.780 non-monogamy parties are in trouble