Juno News - Mark Steyn on trial for criticizing climate alarmist

00:00:00.900 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.440 Hello and welcome to you all. It is Monday, January 29th, 2024. This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:00:21.760 I am playing with the laws of time and space here. I'll just concede because I'm not actually in my home studio.

00:00:29.080 I am in for reasons that will become apparent in just a few moments. Washington, D.C. right now, where over the course of the week,

00:00:35.360 I will have a great many updates about what's going on in a trial that has been 12 years in the making.

00:00:42.760 Now, if you are a Canadian, as most of you are and as I am, you may wonder how on earth this is the case.

00:00:48.920 But in the United States of America, this is what passes for justice, which is a discussion we probably can and should have at another occasion.

00:00:57.680 But the reason I am in D.C. is because my good friend and longtime colleague Mark Stein is on trial for daring to call a climate scientist who he believes is a fraud, a fraud, and daring to call that scientist's seminal work, the hockey stick graph, a fraudulent piece of science.

00:01:16.780 Now, I'm not going to get into the scientific debate here because at its core, this is, I believe, a free speech question.

00:01:24.320 Michael Mann, that scientist, made this hockey stick graph that showed that for basically the entirety of the world, I'm being a bit dramatic there,

00:01:33.340 but for a tremendous period of time, like a thousand years, there had been no warming in the temperature at all.

00:01:38.560 And then the Industrial Revolution hits and it just shoots right up there.

00:01:42.540 You can see that graph on your screen.

00:01:44.740 And this is a graph that's been tremendously influential.

00:01:48.800 It was sent out to many Canadian households, I believe, under Paul Martin.

00:01:52.900 It might have been under Jean Chrétien, so don't quote me on that.

00:01:55.480 I'm not making an authoritative scientific statement.

00:01:58.300 But the reason it's important to talk about here is because we have a one-size-fits-all narrative on a lot of things that are passed off as science.

00:02:08.500 We saw this during COVID and we've certainly seen it during climate.

00:02:11.820 There's no room for dissent.

00:02:13.080 There's no room for debate.

00:02:14.640 And in this case, when someone puts forward an alternative, they have been mired in litigation for more than a decade, for 12 years.

00:02:22.800 Well, it's finally gone to trial.

00:02:24.600 We've wrapped up the first two weeks of the trial in Washington, D.C., and I wanted to head down for the grand finale.

00:02:31.060 So I'll be giving you reports because this is not just a Canadian, American, British issue.

00:02:36.140 This is something that affects a global debate and discussion that, quite frankly, is never allowed to take place.

00:02:43.240 Well, there has been some tremendous coverage from the courtroom that I've been following, courtesy of Anne McElhenney and Phelan McAleer.

00:02:50.420 They've been on the show in the past.

00:02:51.620 They have this podcast called Climate Change on Trial.

00:02:55.900 Now, this isn't just a recap where they parse and discuss what happened in each day's proceedings.

00:03:01.520 They do something which is so tremendous, and I'm not aware of anyone ever doing this apart from them.

00:03:07.120 They take the transcripts, the court transcripts that stenographers are furiously writing all day,

00:03:11.900 and they get them reenacted by actors, again, on a very incredibly tight turnaround so that you can literally hear what went down in court that day and hear the highlights of it.

00:03:24.420 So I wanted to talk about this on the eve of my arrival in Washington with Phelan McAleer.

00:03:30.120 Phelan, always good to talk to you.

00:03:31.400 Thanks for coming on today from Washington.

00:03:33.740 Thank you, Andrew.

00:03:34.640 A pleasure to be on your show.

00:03:35.820 I mean, how are you managing to be in Washington?

00:03:40.200 I know this is very difficult for people, and you're two weeks in now.

00:03:45.380 Yes, Washington.

00:03:47.340 I mean, we spent a year of our lives in Washington.

00:03:50.820 Actually, when we were doing our documentary on global warming, I don't know, 13 years ago, we spent a year in Washington to launch it.

00:03:59.500 And I'll tell you, it hasn't improved any.

00:04:02.640 It's just got quieter, actually.

00:04:04.300 It's kind of a dead city now.

00:04:05.760 There was a lot of life about it back then.

00:04:07.740 But I think the COVID lockdowns have really killed this city.

00:04:13.700 Yeah, and it's one of these places like, I mean, Ottawa in Canada is slightly better, but it just is a dismal city.

00:04:21.620 And the people there who work there, not the locals, are not particularly tolerable in a lot of cases.

00:04:27.440 But you're in the courtroom.

00:04:28.540 You've been covering this.

00:04:29.680 Just before we get into the case itself, tell me about the way you're packaging it.

00:04:34.740 Because this was literally a medium that you pioneered, was it not?

00:04:39.120 Yes, yes.

00:04:39.940 And I expect the New York Times to invent it in a few years' time and to be in credit for it.

00:04:45.900 But, yes, so what we do is we get the transcripts every day.

00:04:51.080 And we work out what was the most dramatic clashes of that day, what was the most interesting evidence.

00:04:58.300 And we parse, we break that down.

00:05:00.620 We send it over to voice actors in Los Angeles who are three hours behind.

00:05:05.460 And they reenact it under a director.

00:05:09.460 I mean, of course, you've got these amazing Hollywood voice actors.

00:05:14.860 And then it goes to an editor in an undisclosed location who works fiercely overnight to edit it.

00:05:20.680 And it's in your inbox the next morning, hopefully, or early morning.

00:05:25.960 And you can hear what happened that day, the previous day, in the courtroom.

00:05:31.340 And if you're in Australia, Mark Stein knows more about time zones than I do.

00:05:35.740 But it means you're getting a reenactment of the drama of the courtroom almost just after it happens.

00:05:43.540 So, you know, we do comment on it, but really we let people speak for themselves because that's what people want to hear.

00:05:50.840 So, no one has done it before.

00:05:55.800 It's a medium for the new podcast world.

00:06:01.820 To me, it's the way all court cases should be covered.

00:06:06.300 And, you know, the response has been amazing.

00:06:09.920 I mean, opinion, I would say, is divided on our reenactment of Mark Stein.

00:06:18.640 Huge praise and huge criticism.

00:06:21.440 But, hey, everyone's a critic.

00:06:23.620 Yeah, well, the problem, I mean, Mark himself has joked about this.

00:06:26.280 He says no matter where he is in the world, he sounds like he's from somewhere else.

00:06:29.660 Like his accent doesn't quite fit into any particular mold.

00:06:33.760 So it's like I don't even know how you cast that.

00:06:35.400 A voice actor that has to do a Stein accent is basically the only nationality. 0.87

00:06:39.320 There's no nationality. 0.82

00:06:40.420 It's just Stein.

00:06:41.220 But we'll allow some forgiveness there.

00:06:44.320 Yeah, well, I mean, our actor, I think, was born in Australia, kind of grew up in England, and now lives in America.

00:06:50.620 So it's almost like...

00:06:51.720 Yeah, so he actually maybe can do the Steinian accent there.

00:06:56.120 Or let's talk about the case itself here, because it's a defamation case.

00:07:00.740 But one of the issues that has reared its head in a lot of the proceedings up to this point,

00:07:05.400 and we've seen glimpses of it in the trial, is that Michael Mann wants to make this a trial about climate change.

00:07:11.860 He wants to basically, it seems, say, I'm the expert, I'm the scientist, and we're going to debate the science,

00:07:18.880 when that's really not what the case is even about.

00:07:23.080 Yeah.

00:07:26.120 Definitely, he wants, I am the expert, that's right, and I shall be unchallenged, God and man, in Washington.

00:07:34.740 And, you know, that's not the way it should work, but that's, as you're right, that's not even what this case is about.

00:07:42.100 This case is about whether you have the right to challenge authority, whether you have the right to challenge scientists,

00:07:48.440 whether you have the right to challenge scientists about a huge matter of public policy.

00:07:53.080 I mean, maybe Michael Mann's right about the science, but he's not a politician, he's not a public policy person.

00:08:00.160 He doesn't get to tell you what you should do with the science.

00:08:03.940 There's so much, I mean, if you listen to the reenactment from Thursday, you know, there was a huge, Mark Stein and Michael Mann had a huge debate about the science.

00:08:15.040 I mean, that in itself shows there is a debate to be had, and that's where free speech comes in, that's where the right to challenge authority comes in.

00:08:25.660 And what Michael Mann is saying is what I say must go unchallenged, what the scientists I agree with must go unchallenged.

00:08:35.420 And that is just a recipe for disaster, for society, for free speech, just for a productive, progressive society going forward.

00:08:46.600 How are we ever going to progress if what people are saying now is what we must obey and must only, and is unchallengable?

00:08:56.040 And I don't want to get into the ins and outs of defamation law, but there is at its core a set of criteria you need to prove if you want to sue someone for defamation.

00:09:06.920 And one of these in pretty much any common law jurisdiction is that you have to have actually suffered.

00:09:11.480 It's not enough to say someone said this mean defamatory thing.

00:09:14.620 It actually had to have landed, so to speak.

00:09:16.560 This was something quite fascinating on Thursday, and I know there had been a buildup to it, but Michael Mann was on the stand, and he has to account for something very difficult, which is how he can claim to have been irreparably defamed when his career has only gotten better in the interceding 12 years.

00:09:36.220 He was at a state college in Penn State before.

00:09:39.280 Now he's in the Ivy League at University of Pennsylvania.

00:09:41.920 He's a star in the media.

00:09:43.680 He's published books.

00:09:44.740 He's well-regarded in the climate world.

00:09:46.400 And correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like at its core, the only example of his character being maligned in his community was someone gave him a dirty look at a grocery store once.

00:09:57.840 Well, clean up an aisle nine.

00:09:59.980 You know, actually, it came out, and we must be grateful to Mark Stein for this, because in his initial evidence, he did say that he had a really mean stare from a man, from a stranger in Wegmans Supermarket in Penn State.

00:10:16.400 It was close to Penn State.

00:10:18.120 Mark got more details.

00:10:19.960 It actually happened in aisle nine.

00:10:23.220 Mark asked him to demonstrate it, but that got struck down on objection, I believe.

00:10:27.040 Yeah, he wanted to demonstrate it.

00:10:28.000 I was looking forward to Michael Mann sort of demonstrating the odious stare that affected him so badly.

00:10:34.680 Yes, it was aisle nine, and he remembers it well.

00:10:39.880 Yeah, this is a problem, and I suspect – now, the jury might not get that, but the judge is very interested in the damages question, because there are no damages.

00:10:51.180 Mark's man's career, as Mark said, has wafted from, you know, up the stairs.

00:10:57.240 As you say, he's promotion after promotion.

00:11:00.060 He won a prize where he got – he won a prize for $100,000, and he's made so much money in the intervening years, he didn't remember getting the $100,000.

00:11:10.080 That is how well he's been doing.

00:11:12.360 He's been on book – and they produced his own self-evaluations of his career that he has to submit to his college every year.

00:11:20.500 They quoted his self-evaluations back to him.

00:11:23.440 He never mentioned the damage of this appalling defamation.

00:11:27.240 But – and then, you know, parties with Leonardo DiCaprio.

00:11:30.900 He actually said, I have a bromance with Leonardo DiCaprio.

00:11:34.260 Oh, that was – I heard someone reference bromance.

00:11:36.680 That was his word?

00:11:37.960 That was his word.

00:11:38.960 Wow.

00:11:39.540 Okay.

00:11:40.180 Yes.

00:11:40.760 So, you know, and it's funny.

00:11:43.380 He's Michael Mann, after all.

00:11:44.860 So even when he's claiming that he's suffered irreparable damage, he can't help the self-promotion, right?

00:11:52.220 So this is, you know, oh, woe is me.

00:11:54.220 I've had a miserable time.

00:11:55.160 But that party with Leo, oh, my God, it was wonderful.

00:11:58.340 That was a great – he actually said, I think, that was a great party.

00:12:00.840 Wow.

00:12:01.260 And that time I introduced Clinton at the Terry McAuliffe fundraiser.

00:12:05.060 Wow, that was fun, you know.

00:12:06.240 And, yeah, and Al Gore, you know, and book tours.

00:12:09.520 I've been to Iceland.

00:12:10.480 I've been to Austria.

00:12:11.600 I've lectured in Canada.

00:12:13.220 He's even been to Canada.

00:12:14.820 Yeah.

00:12:15.280 And that was described as a perk, you know.

00:12:19.500 Jury's out whether going to Canada is a perk or not.

00:12:22.160 So, yes, it was a tough one.

00:12:26.260 Cleanup in aisle nine was terrible.

00:12:28.400 Don't forget, you're forgetting, and I hope you're not going to face another defamation trial for this, Andrew.

00:12:35.720 But he also received three upsetting emails.

00:12:39.620 Two from MustafaOverlord.com.

00:12:43.660 Sorry, MustafaOverlord at gmail.com. 0.77

00:12:46.500 And a third email from someone, I think his name was Eric, who called him a loser.

00:12:52.720 I received three emails worse than that in the last hour, I think, to be honest.

00:12:57.480 So, three nasty emails is, I'd say, a win.

00:13:00.920 Yes, yes.

00:13:01.680 No, no.

00:13:02.180 I mean, look, Ann and I were just talking.

00:13:04.780 When we made our Not Evil, Just Wrong documentary, Questioning Climate Science, we and Climate Change Activism, we got an email.

00:13:14.060 I remember it, but we were kind of new to the game, right?

00:13:17.340 And we got an email from someone saying, you and your wife love pollution so much, I hope your children are born handicapped.

00:13:25.600 Wow.

00:13:25.760 And it's like, wow, wow.

00:13:28.900 And it's like, okay.

00:13:29.980 I mean, to me, I mean, as I, you know, I mean, I don't know, but I've had worse on a Tuesday night outside a Belfast pub, you know?

00:13:38.900 So, like, to me, this is not damages.

00:13:42.820 This is just, you know, these are just people with laptops saying nasty things.

00:13:49.100 And, you know, Mark made the point yesterday in his questioning, how do you know that, you know, Michael Mann said, I lost all this grant money, and as Mark said, you didn't lose it.

00:13:59.580 The university lost it.

00:14:00.720 But why don't you think that the university lost its grant money? 0.70

00:14:04.700 Because its senior football coach, one of its senior football coaches, was in prison for raping children.

00:14:12.000 Its president was fired and convicted of child endangerment for covering that up, as was the vice president for finance.

00:14:20.440 Can you imagine the vice president for finance being prosecuted for child endangerment and going to prison?

00:14:33.580 Can you imagine all the alumni writing, you know, thinking, I don't think I want to write checks to that institution just yet.

00:14:39.260 So, Mark was saying, surely it was the Sandusky affair that affected financing, not Mark Stein's blog, or Ron Simberg's blog that got 17,000 views over eight years.

00:14:53.160 Yeah, and this is the thing as well that came up, because, and again, not to rehash the, it is hard to cover adequately a case that has taken this long, but Penn State was going through a tremendous scandal.

00:15:04.420 And there was an aspect there where Mann was talking about, oh, he's lost all this grant funding.

00:15:08.240 And Mark, in his cross-examination of Mann, because Mark's self-representing, so he gets to do the honors instead of a lawyer, was pointing that to basically say, I mean, how do you know Penn State wasn't just losing grant funding?

00:15:19.640 Because it was mired in all of this controversy.

00:15:22.100 And Mann didn't really have a great answer.

00:15:25.700 Yes, that's it.

00:15:26.980 And, you know, so there was the Sandusky scandal.

00:15:31.220 And then, by the way, but Michael Mann, you know, as they pointed out, he was, you know, defamed in lots of other, Mark Stein and Mark and Ron Simberg weren't the only people.

00:15:42.240 In fact, they were almost late to the show comparing, what they did was they said, look, any university that would cover up for a child rapist like Jerry Sandusky, why wouldn't they cover up for their star climate grant getter called Michael Mann?

00:15:58.520 And they were saying the investigation into Michael Mann after climate was a whitewash.

00:16:05.300 And there was lots of emails, by the way, from Mann to kind of back that up.

00:16:08.820 But they were saying, if they cover up for this guy, why wouldn't they cover up for that guy?

00:16:12.960 And it was the chronicle of higher education, which is like...

00:16:18.520 It's not one of these right wing, you know, rags like this show or National Review or anything, yeah.

00:16:24.320 But it's also, it's read by every university administrator on the planet.

00:16:28.180 It's read by every university professor on the planet.

00:16:30.840 There's nowhere more damaging for...

00:16:32.920 It's like, you know, it's like the Columbia Journalism Review talking about a senior journalist in America.

00:16:39.220 They would be devastated.

00:16:40.360 Their career might not recover from it.

00:16:42.040 That's what the chronicle of higher education is.

00:16:44.320 It's that respected among those elites.

00:16:47.520 And they had a whole article, Culture of Evasion, and they linked the Jerry Sandusky cover-up

00:16:53.800 to a possible cover-up of the Michael Mann climate gate emails and dodgy signs.

00:16:59.560 Because that was the linkage that Mann found so extraordinarily offensive and defamatory.

00:17:04.880 It wasn't linking him and what he's done to what Sandusky has done.

00:17:08.460 It was about linking the school's treatment of both.

00:17:10.900 Yes.

00:17:11.440 Now, Michael Mann keeps saying, you compared me to Jerry Sandusky.

00:17:15.000 Or you called me a child molester, he said.

00:17:17.520 At one point yesterday.

00:17:18.500 And Mark Stein quite rightly says, we did not.

00:17:21.300 We compared the investigations into you.

00:17:23.940 And you know that.

00:17:25.400 So, you know, that's the crux of the case, actually.

00:17:28.700 But, you know, and I have to add, there was quite a moment in the court yesterday or on Thursday

00:17:34.680 when Rand Simberg's lawyer produced all these defamatory articles, including one by my wife

00:17:46.860 and colleague Anne McElhinney, who wrote about, who's had the headline on her blog post was

00:17:54.140 Sandusky and Michael Mann, much in common, question mark.

00:17:58.420 And that was six months before Rand Simberg and Mark Stein wrote about it.

00:18:02.900 So hopefully she's out of the statute of limitations now and she can't be sued for that. 0.77

00:18:07.540 Actually, it's funny.

00:18:08.420 We don't know the statute of limitations.

00:18:10.240 I assume there is.

00:18:10.900 But you never know in America.

00:18:12.660 I mean, they're very fond of overturning their statute of limitations.

00:18:16.400 Oh, they reopened it for, was it Bill Cosby, where they just like passed a law, like changing

00:18:20.320 the statute of limitations, basically.

00:18:21.680 And Kevin Spacey, actually, in New York, they did, they just said, oh, well, that old statute

00:18:26.980 of limitations, we're going to give you a couple of years now where you can refile about

00:18:31.820 your sexual assault on the 14th of September, 1973.

00:18:35.660 And shock, horror, all these really rich celebrities are now being accused of sexually assaulting

00:18:41.320 somebody on the 9th of November, 1967, you know, or 1972.

00:18:46.920 And how do you defend against that?

00:18:48.720 Anyway, Ann McElhinney, apparently, he famed Michael Mann six months before, in 2011, before

00:18:55.980 Mark Stein dained to do it.

00:18:59.220 One thing I'm going to be looking out for when I'm there this week that you can't really

00:19:03.020 capture in the podcast adequately, so I wanted to ask you about, was the jury reaction to

00:19:07.700 this?

00:19:07.940 Because you never know.

00:19:09.260 I mean, Washington, D.C., to pick a jury of D.C. residents is not going to inherently

00:19:13.640 favor a conservative commentator who's on trial.

00:19:17.740 And I know that Mann's team has talked about, oh, they've name dropped like Rush Limbaugh

00:19:21.920 and Sean Hannity and Fox News to, I think, drive a wedge between Mark and the jury.

00:19:26.000 But do you see any reaction from the jury at all that suggests what they're interested

00:19:30.880 in or what they're paying attention to?

00:19:34.740 Funny, the jury are very good at playing, at having a poker face.

00:19:39.080 They haven't really reacted to much, which is very interesting.

00:19:42.860 Now, of course, they're a D.C. jury, and that's going to be tough.

00:19:46.040 I mean, what's the D.C., the population of D.C.?

00:19:47.940 92% Democrat.

00:19:52.540 And Bill Nye, I should say, Bill Nye was like out there in the crowd, a friend of Michael

00:19:58.400 Mann.

00:19:58.980 So like, and see his name dropping Bill Nye and Leo DiCaprio and all these lefty

00:20:02.800 celebrity types.

00:20:03.700 Yeah, and Bill Nye was out polluting, allegedly out polluting the jury pool.

00:20:07.920 Look, I just said that in court.

00:20:09.360 When the jury were outside waiting to be called, Bill Nye was out sitting among them saying,

00:20:14.500 I'm a great fan of Bill Nye, allegedly, which is, talk about polluting the jury pool.

00:20:19.900 But one thing I felt that got them really interested, and we haven't got to that in the evidence

00:20:26.100 yet, is Michael Mann's fake Nobel Prize, Michael Mann's propensity to frequently and falsely

00:20:33.620 claim he won the Nobel Prize.

00:20:36.500 Talk about stolen valor, right?

00:20:38.880 So this is in a court case where he is claiming to be defamed for his scientific valor and expertise.

00:20:47.960 In the very complaint to the court, he falsely claimed to have won a Nobel Prize on three

00:20:52.940 occasions.

00:20:53.400 He falsely claimed in the complaint to have won it three times.

00:20:58.140 And he has frequently and falsely since then claimed to have won the Nobel Prize.

00:21:03.800 Now, the jury, I could see the jury when they were, during the opening speech, when that

00:21:08.000 was put up on screen, I could see the jury going, you know, going like this, really?

00:21:12.740 You know, it's like, wow.

00:21:13.900 You know, and they're kind of looking at him going like this.

00:21:15.800 Now, interestingly, when Mann was questioned by his own lawyer, they failed to mention that

00:21:22.240 because I think it's indefensible, right?

00:21:24.560 I don't think there's any answer to it.

00:21:25.900 You know, the lawyer was throwing himself.

00:21:27.400 It's relatable to people.

00:21:28.560 They understand that idea.

00:21:30.100 I mean, anyone who's served in the military understands that idea of a stolen honor.

00:21:34.880 No one could get away with doing that on their resume for a job at Starbucks, let alone in

00:21:39.940 the scale that Mann has.

00:21:41.400 Yeah.

00:21:41.520 Yes.

00:21:42.380 And this is Mann who's saying, I suffered.

00:21:44.880 You know, this is Mann.

00:21:45.840 And Mann, I think he put up a 97-page CV to show how wonderful he was.

00:21:50.480 And, of course, if you have a 97-page CV, how can you say you suffered?

00:21:53.480 But, yes, no, this is, and I think, you know, the D.C. jury, they're probably professionals.

00:21:58.640 They probably are credentialed in some way.

00:22:02.480 They understand credentials.

00:22:04.060 They understand resumes.

00:22:05.480 They understand honors.

00:22:06.560 They understand medals.

00:22:08.520 They may, you know, some of them may work for the military-industrial complex.

00:22:12.040 You know, they understand ranks.

00:22:14.760 So, to, for, I mean, I'm kind of gobsmacked by it.

00:22:20.980 And then it came out on Thursday.

00:22:24.080 He basically, to a leading Wikipedia editor and to a NASA scientist, he accused another

00:22:33.000 female scientist, Judith Curry, of sleeping her way into her Ph.D. 1.00

00:22:39.260 And I'm going, and everyone's going, like, and I'm thinking, the D.C. jury, and then he

00:22:43.340 pretended it was kind of, oh, I'm actually on her side.

00:22:46.060 I was actually, in that email, I was condemning the man who did it because that's whatever.

00:22:51.240 And I'm looking, I'm going, no, everyone knows that in this situation, it's not the

00:22:55.420 man who comes out worst, not the superior man.

00:22:57.800 It's the, you know, nowadays, of course, we're all me too.

00:22:59.620 But everyone still thinks, wow, that woman slept her way to the top, right? 1.00

00:23:03.640 That's, that's what, you know, that's a major part.

00:23:06.320 So, he was trying to smear a fellow female scientist. 0.96

00:23:09.920 Now, and not only smear her with, you know, by innuendo, he got all the facts wrong.

00:23:17.640 He said Judith Curry went to Penn State to, as a, to do her Ph.D. 0.90

00:23:23.700 and slept with her advisor or slept with a member of staff.

00:23:28.380 She went, she had her Ph.D. completed before she went to Penn State.

00:23:35.420 She went there as an employee.

00:23:37.500 And I didn't, wasn't quite spoken clearly enough in court, but it seems she started a relationship

00:23:43.920 with a unmarried man, a man who had separated from his wife a year previously, another colleague.

00:23:52.960 So, he, he completely, he, he smeared her with, with, not with no evidence, not with, not misrepresentation.

00:24:01.840 He, he completely got it wrong.

00:24:03.700 And I suppose he deliberately got it wrong.

00:24:05.560 And this is a man who claims details matter and integrity matters and importance matters.

00:24:10.940 And when you look at the Michael Mann behind the laptop, it's a very different Michael Mann

00:24:16.720 from the one in the witness box.

00:24:19.160 And maybe the jury is going to see that.

00:24:21.500 Well, if you want to get up to speed, do head over to wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:24:25.700 You're listening to this show, so you must have a preferred podcast platform.

00:24:28.760 And check out Climate Change on Trial, presented by Phelan McAleer and Anne McElhenney.

00:24:34.540 And I'll have updates throughout the course of the week.

00:24:36.820 And we'll have to get Phelan and or Anne back for a recap at the end there.

00:24:40.520 But Phelan, well done.

00:24:41.860 And we will see you soon.

00:24:43.660 Thanks, Andrew.

00:24:44.200 All the best.

00:24:44.820 Bye.

00:24:45.740 Thank you, Phelan.

00:24:46.940 Always enjoy talking to Phelan and his other half, Anne McElhenney.

00:24:50.480 I actually had the great privilege of staying with them at their place in, I was, I was going

00:24:56.520 to say Northern Ireland.

00:24:57.600 That, that means something different. 0.89

00:24:59.120 I meant like the North of the Republic of Ireland, but now I'm going to get like shot by someone.

00:25:03.520 So anyway, ignore that, disregard that.

00:25:06.000 Anne and Phelan, lovely people.

00:25:07.480 Looking forward to seeing them in DC.

00:25:09.760 As I mentioned, we're flirting with the boundaries of time and space, if not outright pushing

00:25:15.120 them.

00:25:15.640 But we are still going to keep with a tradition as, well, that's what we do here on the Andrew

00:25:20.480 Lawton Show anyway, or so I've declared just now.

00:25:23.240 And on the Monday shows, we always check in with our very good friend, Chris Sims, who

00:25:27.760 is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:25:32.040 And Chris, it is always, always wonderful to talk to you.

00:25:35.480 This is, I mean, you and I, the carbon tax is the gift that keeps on giving, not for Canadian

00:25:39.440 taxpayers, but certainly for shows that try to respect the Canadian taxpayers.

00:25:44.420 This report came out late last week that the Parliamentary Budget Office, as I understand,

00:25:49.820 has confirmed.

00:25:50.940 I mean, I think you could probably intuit this, but they've confirmed that it will cost Canadians

00:25:56.580 half a billion this year.

00:25:59.140 That's not the carbon tax.

00:26:00.900 That's the GST on the carbon tax.

00:26:04.540 I feel like I'm misreading that number, but that's the 500 million a year just on the tax

00:26:09.980 on the tax.

00:26:10.760 That's correct.

00:26:12.220 And there's certain evergreen things that we get through email at the Taxpayers Federation.

00:26:17.700 Most of it is about accountability or somebody personally, you know, struggling with their

00:26:22.440 tax load.

00:26:23.380 But one of the frequent flyers is, oh my goodness, I'm paying a tax on the tax.

00:26:30.080 Yes, you are.

00:26:31.200 So it's quite easy to see on your home heating bill, for example, or if you get propane tanks

00:26:37.620 filled up outside of your trailer.

00:26:39.060 If you live in a mobile home, take a look at the receipt.

00:26:42.680 The sales tax, the GST is added after the carbon tax.

00:26:48.180 That means that the GST is on top of the carbon tax in addition to.

00:26:54.560 And so we've been preaching and teaching about this now for years, but it feels really validating

00:26:59.940 to have the Parliamentary Budget Office, which is an arm's length, independent, nonpartisan

00:27:04.720 group that is supposed to watchdog the government, saying, yes, Canadians are spending close to

00:27:11.480 half a billion dollars per year with the GST on the carbon tax.

00:27:17.560 And by the year 2030, Andrew, this made my eyes pop out.

00:27:20.780 It's going to be around a billion dollars a year.

00:27:24.720 Well, I mean, the idea of a tax on a tax is incredibly offensive because the point of

00:27:30.720 a sales tax, if we're going to endorse that that's a legitimate revenue collection tool

00:27:35.960 for government, is that it is taxing a good or a service of which a tax is neither.

00:27:41.180 So to tax a tax undermines it.

00:27:43.180 I mean, just go back to in Ontario, where I'm from, before we had the harmonized sales

00:27:47.220 tax, you had a PST, which was the Ontario sales tax of 8%.

00:27:51.480 And then you had the GST, which for a time was was 7%.

00:27:55.660 Imagine if they did not apply those taxes simultaneously, they put the GST on.

00:28:01.480 So your $100 purchase is now $105.

00:28:05.300 And then they put the PST on top of that.

00:28:08.320 So now you're paying 8% on the 105 instead of 8% on the 100.

00:28:13.980 People would be outraged about that on the carbon tax.

00:28:16.700 I think the government's trying to just conceal this from people because there is no real

00:28:20.440 justification for it.

00:28:21.760 Yes, exactly.

00:28:22.720 To really put it like, okay, if I bought this piece at this roll of tape, okay, at the store,

00:28:27.920 I pay not in Alberta, I don't pay provincial sales tax, but I pay 5% federal sales tax because

00:28:34.460 this is an object in time and space.

00:28:36.480 Yeah, so if that was $1, you pay $1.05 because of that 5% GST.

00:28:40.920 Correct.

00:28:41.460 But a tax is just this amorphous, blood-sucking action of government.

00:28:47.600 And they're now taxing you on that tax.

00:28:50.580 In fact, a lot of people ask us, isn't this illegal?

00:28:53.860 It sure feels illegal.

00:28:55.220 It sure feels unfair and unconstitutional.

00:28:57.840 I personally would love to see a clear declaration or a ruling coming from a high court somewhere

00:29:03.220 saying you cannot tax on a tax.

00:29:05.900 I think what they're trying to get around here is that the government tries to call this

00:29:10.820 a carbon pricing mechanism or a pollution reduction mechanism.

00:29:15.960 We had part of that fight at the Supreme Court a few months ago.

00:29:19.460 Is this really a tax?

00:29:20.900 Well, anybody who's paying the carbon tax certainly knows that this is a tax.

00:29:25.000 And now, again, having the PBO come out and say in cold dollars and cents, this is how

00:29:31.500 much people are paying, this should have people outraged.

00:29:35.060 They should be emailing their member of parliament, phoning their member of parliament saying, how

00:29:39.140 dare you be fleecing us for an extra half billion dollars per year so you can go waste it on

00:29:45.640 some nonsense like hockey rinks or overseas trips?

00:29:49.000 On a tax, it's gross.

00:29:51.440 And so people should definitely speak up.

00:29:53.880 I find right now that the opposition is very susceptible and very open to listening to people

00:30:00.080 when it comes to affordability and tax ripoffs.

00:30:03.020 So now is the time to get your opposition MPs up in arms over this stuff to make them commit

00:30:08.980 to scrapping this stuff once they're in government, if they become government.

00:30:12.520 Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is an explicit tax on a tax here.

00:30:15.980 But there's also a more hidden and admittedly more oblique tax on a tax because the whole

00:30:22.200 point of the carbon tax is that it increases the price of everything.

00:30:25.460 There are a lot of down market carbon taxes that are baked in.

00:30:28.840 So, for example, if you buy an orange from the grocery store that had to be shipped there

00:30:32.940 and the vessel and the truck that had to ship you those oranges, they had to pay more in

00:30:37.980 fuel.

00:30:38.260 Well, that carbon tax that they paid is buried in the apple driving up that price.

00:30:42.960 And then again, the sales tax on that increased price.

00:30:45.340 So the point of that is not to just confuse people, but to say it compounds.

00:30:49.500 I mean, at every level of the supply chain that has a carbon tax that it has to pay,

00:30:55.600 that's all getting past the consumer.

00:30:57.640 And then the sales tax is getting put on all of that.

00:31:00.320 Yes, exactly.

00:31:01.640 As Andrew just explained, folks, keep like picture it in your mind.

00:31:04.600 Grocery costs, I realize, aren't always sales tax, but the point stands generally.

00:31:09.020 Oh, for sure.

00:31:09.740 Because you've baked in the carbon tax there, for sure.

00:31:12.220 So like picture an apple coming from the Okanagan of British Columbia, okay?

00:31:16.820 Picture that person who has to drive there when they're picking it, paying the carbon tax.

00:31:20.820 And now keep in mind that quite often we'll use barns, right?

00:31:24.720 If you're a farmer, say you've got a poultry barn or a pork barn, farmers right now still need

00:31:30.940 to pay the carbon tax on their barn heating, and they have to pay it for drying their grain.

00:31:36.700 What eats grain?

00:31:37.760 Well, everything, okay?

00:31:39.400 There's the baseline of your food chain where the carbon tax kicks in.

00:31:43.420 And now you add the trucking to the grocery store.

00:31:45.820 Now add the natural gas to keep the lights on and the heat running or the air conditioning

00:31:50.120 running at the grocery store.

00:31:51.400 Now add the carbon tax of driving there.

00:31:54.220 And that's not even including trains.

00:31:56.240 A lot of people forget that our trains, which haul so many things across our country, use

00:32:01.900 diesel for locomotive fuel.

00:32:03.900 That is also carbon taxed.

00:32:06.480 So this is where you're getting this layer cake from hell when it comes to the carbon tax.

00:32:10.760 And so this is why it's really important that the parliamentary budget officer has done two

00:32:14.620 very good things mathematically here.

00:32:16.880 Again, the CTF has been sounding the alarm for years, but coming from an independent watchdog

00:32:21.400 like this is so valuable, even with the rebates factored in, the average family in Alberta for

00:32:29.120 the year 2024 is going to be out more than $900 this year, net.

00:32:36.540 That is net.

00:32:37.840 And that is relating to everything Andrew and I just described.

00:32:41.280 Of all that layer cake coming from the carbon tax and applying it to the average family in

00:32:46.880 Alberta, you're out almost a thousand bucks.

00:32:50.320 And again, that's with those rebates factored in.

00:32:52.960 The very idea that we could give money to the government and they could magically somehow

00:32:58.600 increase its wealth and make it worth more and give more back than you pay in is nonsense.

00:33:03.960 But to have the PBO do these two things of pointing out the net cost of the carbon tax

00:33:08.680 and the GST ripoff on top of the carbon tax is really important.

00:33:13.340 And in fact, we'd like to see all parties get on board with this.

00:33:17.240 A little note, we're noticing some movement at the provincial level from the NDP.

00:33:22.700 We're seeing, for example, in Saskatchewan, the opposition NDP saying, you know what,

00:33:27.280 we shouldn't be carbon taxed on our home heating.

00:33:29.600 We're seeing Wob Canu, the NDP premier of Manitoba saying very similar things and fully

00:33:35.040 suspending his provincial.

00:33:36.220 Oh, I mean, look, when the government's carve out for Atlantic Canada was one of its biggest

00:33:41.660 tactical blunders because they had basically beaten the provinces into submission on the

00:33:47.000 carbon tax.

00:33:47.760 And then when they did that, all of a sudden, everyone who had an NDP government in Manitoba

00:33:51.940 and even, you know, NDP leaners in Alberta, Saskatchewan were looking at their leaders

00:33:55.400 being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up.

00:33:57.180 Why do they get a pass on this?

00:34:00.140 Jack Layton, the late leader of the federal NDP, said it would be wrong to punish people

00:34:06.380 with a carbon tax on their home heating fuel.

00:34:09.060 Folks should go back and read that, including sitting members of parliament within the NDP

00:34:13.120 who are propping up this government and supporting home heating fuel carbon taxes.

00:34:18.280 I wanted to turn to a bit of a better story here.

00:34:21.780 I began the show talking about this climate change free speech trial I'm covering in Washington,

00:34:26.620 D.C. this week.

00:34:27.380 But we have this vilification of the oil and gas sector by a lot of sectors of the Canadian

00:34:33.740 political establishment, certainly by the federal government and by many in the media.

00:34:39.440 Well, it was a bit refreshing for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to declare that she wanted to

00:34:45.900 double oil production in Alberta.

00:34:48.500 She did this in her sit down with Tucker Carlson last week.

00:34:51.640 I think it was in Edmonton.

00:34:52.780 It might have been in Calgary or it might have been both for all I know.

00:34:55.100 But a really, really bold plan here.

00:34:57.840 Now, first off, can the Premier make that commitment?

00:35:01.560 Sure, if she wants to.

00:35:03.240 So the government doesn't, you know, we don't have crown corporations that are solely monopolistically

00:35:09.060 pulling oil out of the ground or mining it as bitumen.

00:35:13.040 But if so, it would never make it out.

00:35:14.920 Could you imagine?

00:35:15.680 No, forget it.

00:35:16.400 They would get into squabbles and yeah, it wouldn't work.

00:35:18.920 So she can declare this as a goal and say that's what she wants to see and encourage

00:35:24.300 private companies to just go for it here.

00:35:27.600 The problem here, though, is how much of an obstacle is the federal government going to

00:35:32.180 make of itself?

00:35:33.480 We've already seen that the government fully thinks that they have full control over natural

00:35:38.120 resources in Alberta and we're just supposed to bow to their bidding.

00:35:42.040 Spoiler alert, that's not true.

00:35:43.540 And we recently had a great Supreme Court decision on the pipelines issue there, too.

00:35:48.220 It was in Alberta's favour.

00:35:50.000 So for her to say that is great.

00:35:51.900 And it also inspires confidence in companies because, of course, they want to come here

00:35:56.240 and then do business.

00:35:57.340 Or if they're already here, they want to realise that they have a pro-business Premier

00:36:01.900 and they want to do more business.

00:36:04.360 Again, though, the devil's always in the details.

00:36:06.580 Can we actually get this happening without the federal government trying to strangle us?

00:36:12.420 What I just like from a tactical point of view is how much attention that gets.

00:36:19.240 So for her to sit there with somebody with the reach of Tucker Carlson and obviously triggering

00:36:26.000 the reactions of some members of parliament and ministers in the federal government to

00:36:31.780 the point where they have to hold a press conference.

00:36:34.600 I actually heard, by the way, I don't know if you saw this, Andrew.

00:36:37.120 I actually heard it was an NDP strategist say that he should have been stopped at the

00:36:42.640 border.

00:36:44.460 Like, prevented from coming into Canada.

00:36:46.860 Like, whoa.

00:36:47.980 Yeah.

00:36:48.560 Well, it's the Emergencies Act approach, basically.

00:36:51.500 We don't like what they're going to say, so let's just use these weird legal tools to

00:36:55.100 prevent them from saying it.

00:36:56.860 But just use a thought process experiment here.

00:36:58.980 Imagine Rachel Motley is still leader of the NDP.

00:37:03.560 Imagine she invites MSNBC's Rachel Maddow up to Alberta and they have a talk and there's 0.65

00:37:09.680 people that come to the arena and they listen to, I don't know, solar blenders and e-bikes

00:37:13.680 and whatever it is they want to talk about.

00:37:15.740 Can you imagine like people saying she should be stopped at the border?

00:37:19.400 Like, I don't care if you agree with the person saying that's the whole point of free

00:37:22.960 expression.

00:37:23.400 But to say somebody should be stopped at the border really opened my eyes quite a bit.

00:37:28.520 So I think this is part of the reason why Premier Smith made that statement was to say

00:37:34.080 Yeah, I'm inclined to agree.

00:37:35.720 And look, when I was in Davos, not this year, but last year, I ran into Joe Manchin, who's

00:37:40.960 a senator who is a Democrat in West Virginia, but he's the most right-leaning Democrat, certainly

00:37:47.540 on energy issues.

00:37:48.440 He was one Jason Kenney brought him up to tour the oil sands.

00:37:51.520 And I had spoken about that and he was saying, Senator Manchin, like, yeah, you know, I would

00:37:56.320 love it if the United States were saying we want to buy all this Canadian oil.

00:37:59.740 So that's the real danger here is that you have a Premier, Daniel Smith, who's saying,

00:38:04.240 yes, let's get it to market.

00:38:05.400 You've got buyers out there, but you have these, I mean, to appropriate Paul Leif's

00:38:09.560 term, these gatekeepers, both at the Canadian government federally, the provincial government

00:38:13.840 in BC and provincial government in Quebec that are doing everything they can to landlock

00:38:18.000 Canadian energy.

00:38:18.820 They are.

00:38:20.480 And for the folks who are watching this, for whom emissions is their key issue, like it

00:38:26.420 keeps them up at night, this is actually one of the best paths to reducing global emissions.

00:38:32.820 So the United States of America reduced its emissions without carbon taxes.

00:38:39.180 They did so largely by expanding natural gas production, which has far fewer emissions than

00:38:45.860 other forms of fuel.

00:38:47.400 And again, this is something Premier Smith has said independently.

00:38:49.960 This is something other political leaders have said independently.

00:38:52.980 Places like India are desperately asking to purchase our natural gas.

00:38:58.240 And that will also have the great benefit of reducing their very heavy global emissions.

00:39:03.880 So this is the non-carbon tax path forward to doing that exactly.

00:39:10.180 And as a great side bonus, you're employing lots of Canadians under very strong labor laws

00:39:16.020 and very strong environmental laws.

00:39:17.800 So it was really interesting to see her smile and say, yeah, let's double the production.

00:39:23.180 I think she was trying to provoke a little bit more conversation there.

00:39:26.920 Yeah, fair enough.

00:39:29.100 And she certainly did it.

00:39:30.280 I mean, all of the people that were, you know, clutching their pearls about how dare she take 0.95

00:39:33.680 the stage with a guy that filled out two stadia there was actually like they weren't even

00:39:39.800 debating and discussing the things that she was saying there, because I think there was

00:39:43.860 nothing uncontroversial.

00:39:45.100 And if you're in Alberta and your lifeblood is the thriving of that sector, absolutely.

00:39:49.720 You're like, yeah, come on, I'm all in on this.

00:39:51.880 So, all right.

00:39:52.580 Well, great to talk to you as always, Chris Sims.

00:39:54.480 We will check in with you next week, but my pleasure.

00:39:57.060 Thank you.

00:39:57.780 Have fun.

00:39:58.920 All right.

00:39:59.860 That does it for us for today.

00:40:02.460 Keep in, I was going to say, keep in mind and keep tuned in at the same time.

00:40:06.280 And it was just going to be this amorphous mass of words, but I will say stay tuned for

00:40:10.660 the remainder of the week.

00:40:11.740 We'll have trial updates and also some modified additions.

00:40:15.340 We're still going to do the show.

00:40:16.300 They're going to look a little bit differently, but we'll have the Andrew Lawton show continue

00:40:20.300 in its own way over the next few days.

00:40:22.180 And we'll be back into the studio before long.

00:40:24.840 We hope you have a wonderful rest of the day, though.

00:40:26.980 This is Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:40:30.080 Thank you.

00:40:30.560 God bless.

00:40:31.140 And good day to you all.

00:40:32.720 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show.

00:40:34.980 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:40:40.460 www.tnc.news.com.

Juno News - January 29, 2024

Mark Steyn on trial for criticizing climate alarmist

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