Juno News - October 16, 2023NDP members think Jagmeet Singh isn't getting enough out of deal with Liberals
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Summary
In this episode of The Lawton Show, host Andrew Lawton talks about his thoughts on the Frasier reboot, Jagmeet Singh's leadership challenge at the party convention, and why he thinks the New Democrats are not going far enough.
Transcript
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welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
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north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here this is the
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andrew lawton show on true north i will start with a bit of a pop culture which i don't normally do
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because i'm neither popular nor particularly well cultured but i saw over the weekend the
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fraser reboot so i don't know if i'm alone in this i'm a big fan of the show fraser i've watched it
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more times than is probably healthy. In fact, I've never even watched Cheers from start to finish,
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but Frasier, I'm there for. So when I learned that Frasier was getting remade, I was very excited.
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I like Kelsey Grammer. I like Frasier, all of that. And then I learned that like no one from
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the original Frasier is going to be in Frasier. They like didn't cast Roz. They didn't cast Niles.
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The father, John Mahoney, passed away, I think, last year or two years ago.
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And they've, like, moved it from Seattle to Boston again.
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I'm, like, I'm going to give you my money and I'm going to watch this thing.
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But I was so nervous it was going to be terrible.
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And I got to say, the first two episodes were absolutely splendid.
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Was it Plato that did the allegory about the sailboat where he said,
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if you replace the sail is it the same boat what if you replace the mast is it the same boat what
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if you replace it was kind of that sort of thing like how many things can you replace while still
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keeping the essence of what it is but uh nevertheless now the problem was is that it was
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on paramount plus which i don't know if you i feel like christia freeland now talking about all the
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streaming services but if you've ever seen like paramount plus is part of amazon prime and i'm
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like oh that's great i have amazon prime so i can watch this then oh no you need to pay extra to
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watch Paramount Plus. So now I actually need to do the Chrystia Freeland thing because now I'm
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paying for Prime. I'm paying for this Paramount Plus thing, which I'll cancel, I guess, once
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Frasier ends. And I've got, I don't have Disney Plus. I've already canceled that, you know,
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inflation being as terrible as it is. But anyway, if you're a Frasier fan out there,
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the two episodes that are out so far are actually quite delightful. Nevertheless,
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real big news out there, not just my television viewing habits. Jagmeet Singh has held on to his
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leadership of the New Democratic Party. Now, he had to face a leadership review because that's
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what you do at a party convention after you lose an election. He's had to face three of these
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things so far. And what was interesting about Jagmeet Singh getting 80%, which sounds impressive,
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it's like, okay, 80% support from your party, that's wonderful. Well, the challenge there is
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that it's less support than he had in the last leadership review and less further than the one
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before that. Here was what he said upon claiming victory after the results. His confidence in you
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has gone down about 20 points since 2018. What's not resonating with delegates?
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Again, I want to say I feel really inspired and encouraged by receiving a strong mandate. I don't
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take anything for granted. I never have my whole life. And to receive a strong mandate to continue
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on gives me inspiration to continue to do the work that we're doing. I think there's also a clear
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message, though, and I take this message to heart. New Democrats always want more. We're the party
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that always say, you're not going far enough. We need more, and specifically more help to give
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Canadians a break in these difficult times. And I take that message back. That message gives
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actually me more inspiration and gives me more strength to go out and fight for more we've got
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an opportunity now we're in a position of a minority government and we are being asked very
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clearly by membership to go out and fight to fix the problems that people are dealing with i think
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it's a it's clear that people are dealing with many challenges we've got a cost of living crisis
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we've got groceries that are high we've got a lot of challenges and the liberals are not solving
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these problems and the conservatives can't be trusted because they are not who they pretend
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And they are. They're not going to actually fix these problems.
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So New Democrats are turning to us and saying, hey, we need you to do more.
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And I take that. I'm inspired by that. I'm going to get out and work even harder.
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But how can you sell that message to the country when support for your own message is dwindling amongst the ranks here?
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I would say I've got a strong mandate and New Democrats are saying, get out and work harder.
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So he's got a strong mandate. And look, 80% support is not nothing.
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Most conservative leaders fail to get that in leadership reviews.
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I'm thinking of John Tory, for example, back in Ontario in 2007.
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that Jagmeet Singh has not hysterically been...
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I was going to say historically, not hysterically.
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He's not historically been the best judge of how well he's done.
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You may recall this moment from the 2019 election.
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in which the NDP went from actually having a pretty solid spot in the House of Commons
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and just plummeted down to fourth-party status.
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But you'd think Jagmeet Singh had won the election.
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love the song good dance moves don't take anything away from that i do think it might not be
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the most appropriate time to dance 2021 ndp as well has a humiliating show
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uh the dance was a little bit more subtle but still he busted out the moves in 2021
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I like by the way that Jagmeet Singh has just one dance like it's the same dance move it's like
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two years past doesn't matter it's the same dance move it was like one of those Seth Rogen movies
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he only had one move and it was like to do the dice throw across the dance floor uh so Jagmeet
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Singh is the Seth Rogen of NDP dancing. But there is a category that is not a particularly
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competitive one. In any case, Jagmeet Singh loves to do the dance. It's like the loser. I don't know,
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there's a touchdown dance in football, where if you win, you do like a little touchdown dance.
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There's no losers dance. You don't lose when the other team, or you don't dance when the other
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team gets a touchdown, which is what Jagmeet Singh is doing. So this is the guy who fails to realize
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that he is single-handedly the reason that Justin Trudeau is still the Prime Minister right now. He
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treats every election as though it is a win. He is holding on to the leadership of the party
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because he knows he needs his pension and he is done after the next election when he fails to get
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any gains. But he is actually, despite not being a particularly competent or capable political
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operator, a very powerful figure in Canadian politics right now. He is holding the government
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hostage except he's not he could he could and he is not using that power and you may know by now
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I always love pointing out the absurdity of whenever I should have pulled a few examples
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today whenever Jagmeet Singh takes to Twitter or give some statement at a press conference in which
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he talks about oh the liberals and conservatives are failing Canadians they're terrible everything
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they do is awful and you know how dare Canadians need better and it's like hmm that's odd from the
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guy who votes to keep them in. That's odd from the guy who voted to approve the liberal budget
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without whom there would not be right now a liberal government most likely. But nevertheless,
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he has managed to secure this great deal. It's called a supply and confidence agreement. It's
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actually a coalition government. It is a deal in which the NDP will agree to support liberals on
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confidence motions and bills in exchange for a few concessions. Now, the problem is that he hasn't
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actually gotten any of the concessions. The Liberals have given the NDP absolutely nothing
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that the Liberals weren't already campaigning on. You know, you may look and say, well, hang on,
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I think Canada is already a socialist hellscape. Maybe this is Jagmeet Singh's fault. No,
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Justin Trudeau was already going to make Canada a socialist hellscape on his own. He didn't need
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the NDP to do that. But the NDP believes he should go even further to the left than he is.
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We have not yet seen, however, national pharmacare. We've not yet seen national dental care. I mean,
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these are things the liberals promise, but they're like the bread and butter for the NDP
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and they don't exist. Now, I'm not complaining about that. I'm not saying that Canadians deserve
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or want or can afford these things. I'm saying that if you're Jagmeet Singh and you've been
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keeping this government alive for several years now and you don't have anything to show for it,
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what on earth are you doing? Like trade your Rolex or something, like do something to give
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yourself a shred of wiggle room here in political capital because you're squandering everything that
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you have right now. So the reason I bring this up is as a lengthy preamble to what NDP members also
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have voted for. They may have voted to keep Jagmeet Singh at the helm of the party, but they
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also passed a resolution calling on the NDP to withhold its support from the Liberals if the
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Liberals don't deliver on Pharmacare. The Liberals promised this in 2015. This has been a pillar of
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their existence as a party, but they've never really made any moves on it. For the NDP, this is
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what they want. It socialized everything. The NDP would love nothing more than to take all of the
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inefficiencies and bureaucracies and inequalities of the healthcare system now and expand that in
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to pharmacare. Like they would love to make everything in Canada as inefficient as the
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healthcare system goes, but they've not managed to do that. So Jagmeet Singh could very easily
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have said to the Liberals, listen, we're not going to vote for your budget unless you do this.
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But he's not. He's not actually done that because he is a weak political leader. And it's odd that
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the NDP membership have not seemed to realize this in as large numbers as you would expect them to,
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that they are still believing he is their champion. Now, obviously, we've seen in the last
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week a bit of a schism among the organized left on Israel issues. Jagmeet Singh did like the bare
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minimum. He came out with the condemnation of Hamas and then, of course, the anti-Semitic wing
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of the NDP. No, it's not the whole party. It's a wing comes out and says, we're ashamed of you
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They got crashed by a bunch of union representatives
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who wanted to call out Israeli apartheid war crimes
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They just sub in the same words over and over again
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So the whole point of this is that Jagmeet Singh
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And I have no interest in voting for the NDP or running for the NDP.
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I mean, I think, generally speaking, we have a two-party system and we pretend it is not that.
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But I will say the NDP could be a powerful force.
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And here's the thing, is that we can talk about majority governments versus minority governments.
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But in most of Canada's history, governments have been comprised of parties that have won a majority of the seats
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and have had essentially an unchecked power over what they do.
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It is only relatively recently that minorities have started to feel like they were the norm.
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It was a liberal minority in 2004, a conservative minority in 2006,
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and in 2008, you then had a liberal minority in 2019 and 2021.
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And these have meant that smaller parties actually wield a tremendous influence.
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Now, in the case of the Liberals right now, they need the support of the NDP to do anything,
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or the Bloc Québécois or the Conservatives, but the NDP have been the willing and able dance
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partners. But the NDP has, in its historic context here, a unique moment, and they have done nothing
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with it. And NDP members seem to have bought in to the fact that their party has less power than
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it does. But nevertheless, that is exactly where we are now. I want to also point out, speaking of
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NDP, I get every now and then criticized or not criticized. Sometimes it's criticism, but some
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people don't like that I don't cover Manitoba politics as often on this show. And I did get
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this emailed to me by a listener this morning, Louis Riel, who I'm not going to go on. I promised
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myself I wouldn't do a historical tangent about this. But Louis Riel, a very controversial figure
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in Canadian politics. He's got some popularity in Manitoba, but generally speaking in Ontario
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and in English Canada, he's seen as a traitor. He was sentenced to death for high treason,
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but he was an influential figure in Manitoba and Western Canadian politics. Now, he never
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was the premier of Manitoba because Manitoba ceased to be a province when Louis Rial was
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waging his rebellions in Manitoba. But the thing that's interesting is Wab Kanu, who is the
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premier designate of the province, has said that he is going to honorarily recognize Louis Riel
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as the first premier of Manitoba. So like, we're completely rewriting history here. And it's
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interesting that the NDP, whose members and supporters will oftentimes go around and tear
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down statues, behead statues, it was in Winnipeg where a statue of her late majesty was toppled by
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people that believe we need to judge historical figures by today's standards rather than their
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own. And it's interesting that that same party in that same province is overlooking a lot of very,
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very nasty things about Louis Riel to hold him up as being some revolutionary icon. It is proof
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that the standards are only different. Cancel culture only applies if you are not on the left.
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But if you're Che Guevara, you can kill as many people as you want and you'll be a hero to the
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left. If you are a Louis Riel, same sort of deal. Now I realize I should, I should, that's what we
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should do on the Andrew Lawton show. Do like a debate over Louis Riel's legacy. It'll be a great
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fun. Four people will watch it and one of them will be me, but we'll have a great deal of fun
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with that. I do want to talk a little bit more about the Canadian political landscape just
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briefly before we move on to the next topic. More polling came out, I believe it was today,
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it might have been yesterday, showing the Conservatives in like absolutely majority
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territory. Like this projection had them at well over 190 seats. And again, if there is a way for
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conservatives to lose an election, they will find it. That's the one thing we've learned about
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conservative politics, is that if there's a way to lose, they will absolutely snatch defeat from
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the jaws of victory. But it also means that the leaders and supporters alike of the liberals and
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the NDP should all be asking themselves some really deep questions right now of why they're
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failing to gain any traction. And that's exactly the NDP conundrum here. And the NDP shockingly
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does not seem to want to look inward and do it. I mean, I mentioned that resolution saying they're
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going to pull support from the liberals without a national pharmacare, but even that is just
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barely scratching the surface of why the NDP are not being a trusted and legitimate and reliable
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messenger for a group of people who are disillusioned by Trudeau. Like the thing,
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Trudeau's lack of popularity should be a gold engraved invitation to the NDP to be a relevant
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and viable left-wing alternative. Like look at how in Ontario the NDP replaced the Liberals as being
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the left-wing party. We've seen in Saskatchewan as well it's the NDP that are the prime opponents
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to the Saskatchewan party. You've seen in BC how the BC Liberals just completely cratered and now
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you have the NDP on one side and really the BC Conservatives on the other. But all of this is to
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say that right now, the left is, there's just a complete vacuum. You've got Justin Trudeau,
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who no one really trusts or relies on to get the job done. And you have Jagmeet Singh, who has
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not succeeded in getting any job done except perpetually nailing the, I just lost the election,
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but I'm happy anyway, dance move. So nevertheless, remember SNC-Lavalin, big scandal a few years back,
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the media cared about it for all of five minutes, and then the RCMP decided it would investigate,
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but didn't really get anywhere. It didn't result in any charges. Now, we've got for the first time
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some information about exactly why they didn't push that probe further. Documents obtained by
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Democracy Watch show that it was actually the government that blocked a lot of very key
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documents from the RCMP, hiding it under the veil of cabinet confidence. Joining me now is
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the co-founder of Democracy Watch, Duff Conacher. Duff, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on
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today. My pleasure. So let's start first off with what these documents really reveal. I know you
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have to contend, as anyone who has experience with ATIPS does, with a litany of redactions,
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but there was actually a fair bit of information in these. Yes, and what the documents reveal
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is from my opinion the RCMP rolled over like a lapdog did a very superficial investigation
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only interviewed three people relied a lot on the ethics commissioner's report that found
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Trudeau guilty of violating the federal ethics law didn't really try to get the cabinet
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communications internal and secret that the cabinet refused to give them could have gone to
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court to get a court order, a warrant for that, but decided not to for, I think, unjustifiable
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reasons. And then there was a two-year delay by the top officers after they received the
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initial assessment report, which really was an investigation. The RCMP just didn't want to call
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this an investigation publicly, but it was an investigation and they should have announced
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that they were investigating way back in 2020. And the top officers essentially didn't make a
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decision on that assessment report for almost two years and then rolled over and let everyone off
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without even allowing an open court to to make that decision instead made it behind closed doors
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very secret and unjustifiable you touch on a number of important aspects of this the one i
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think it's just the lack of curiosity i mean i would hope that if the rcmp were investigating
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a murder or a fraud of some kind and they they run up against a bit of a roadblock someone doesn't
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to hand over information they they wouldn't just say oh okay well thanks anyway we tried and move
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on but that's really what they did here i mean they had tools available it wasn't just that they
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were up against this impenetrable forces that they didn't even really try from start to finish
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there's lots of questions about this uh especially when you compare it to for example um the rcmp's
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investigation of jason kenney's leadership race and allegations about wrongdoing in that in alberta
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they announced that it was an investigation, they've been given regular updates.
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Doug Ford and the Greenbelt scandal in Ontario, RCMP after having it referred to them by the OPP
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just a couple of months later, announced an investigation. Presumably they're going to,
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and are in Alberta and are going to in Ontario, use subpoenas, try and get search warrants,
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because you have to check all the communications on every device for everyone involved in these
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decisions to determine whether it crosses the line and if you don't do it it's essentially a cover-up
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and then a two-year delay on the assessment report they accepted all the cabinet's claims
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that everything they were doing was for good reasons not for wrong reasons reasons i mean
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it just raises a lot of questions about whether the rcmp is independent enough to actually
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investigate political wrongdoing in canada especially at the federal level we saw just to
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bring another story into this for a moment during the public order emergency commission the
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government hide behind solicitor client privilege which is sacrosanct in in the legal system as it
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should be but there was really no mechanism to challenge that they kind of just assert it and
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that's that and and we see cabinet confidence increasingly used in the same way where like
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there's not really a powerful arbiter of whether cabinet confidence is being appropriately invoked
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in a way that is is kind of keeping with transparency as suppose as what's supposed
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to be i think the basis of a democracy it's the most abused loophole in the the so-called freedom
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of information laws across the country they really should be called the guide to hiding information
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from the public that the public has a right to know acts because that's what they are and uh
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we are still chasing after the documents more than half of the documents that the rcmp determined are
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covered by our request by democracy watch more than 4 000 pages more than half of them have not
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been disclosed because they are reviewing whether they are cabinet confidences and if they then
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send us a bunch of redacted documents claiming cabinet confidence then we plan to go to court
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to challenge that because i doubt that most of them are actually and uh the supreme court is
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reviewing this issue right now uh and and reviewing the scope of that in a case that
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came out of ontario and requests the ontario government and uh it hopefully they will narrow
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the scope of that because most of the things that are claimed as cabinet confidence
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really are not. And advice to cabinet and other very much abused
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loophole in our so-called freedom of information laws across the country.
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You've got the cabinet confidence loophole, and then you also have the RCMP, which has historically
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been, I think, one of the worst institutions in Canada for its own access to information
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obligations. And I'm wondering, kind of in your sense, you had access to these documents, yes,
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but if this is what was unredacted, I always have to wonder, well, what's in the redacted stuff?
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Yes, and as you had mentioned before, a lot of the documents, really only seven documents,
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had not been disclosed before out of the 19 they disclosed to us. And again, we filed this request
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in July 2022. They responded in May saying there's only 96 pages, 86 of them have to be redacted
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because the investigation is still ongoing. Turns out actually the investigation had ended in January
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2023 four and a half months before so it was just a false claim and also there weren't just 96 pages
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we received a letter in july saying actually there's more than 4 000 pages and now we're
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reviewing them now we have uh 1815 of those more than 4 000 the rest still being withheld
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to be reviewed for cabinet confidence just to remind people documents are supposed to be
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disclosed within 30 days and you can get it up to 60 day extension if you have a lot of documents to
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review we're now we've filed this request in july 2022 we're now in october 2023 and still waiting
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for more than half the documents and again on under this blanket loophole for cabinet confidence
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when most of them probably are not cabinet confidences the other ones that were withheld
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and what they have disclosed cited the solicitor-client privilege loophole
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And this is not the way these things should be done.
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There should have been a special prosecutor selected by all the party leaders,
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So you get someone independent overseeing these investigations
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with a commitment to issue a public report at the end explaining,
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if no one's prosecuted, why they were not prosecuted.
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And the RCMP just refuses to do things that way,
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even though in several provinces special prosecutors have been appointed
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in these kind of situations in the past. So just to put a fine point on that you think there needs
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to be basically a public inquiry and I mean not the disclosure aspect but the core actions that
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are at the core of this disclosure of you know why the RCMP seem to so easily abandon one might
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even say cover up this abandonment of its investigation into the government. Yes needs
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be a public inquiry uh also going forward we need a dedicated anti-corruption police force
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that is far more independent from uh the the federal cabinet or any provincial cabinet than
00:26:52.640
the rcmp is quebec has one came out of their construction uh scandal corruption in the
00:26:59.440
construction industry scandal and uh the other provinces need it and so does the federal level
00:27:06.320
and the head of that police force and everyone's staff there have to be appointed not by the ruling
00:27:12.800
party but by all party leaders and in this case we need a special inquiry a public inquiry with
00:27:20.000
an inquiry commissioner selected by all party leaders in the same way that the inquiry commissioner
00:27:24.920
has been for the inquiry into foreign interference in our politics that's how these appointments have
00:27:31.780
to be made. If someone hands you a job, then you owe them. And the ruling party hands out the jobs
00:27:37.140
for all the key watchdog positions at the federal level in several provinces. Only a few provinces
00:27:43.040
is in an all-party committee that makes these appointments. And that's the way it has to be
00:27:46.760
done to have independent and effective enforcement of key democratic government laws.
00:27:52.640
Duff, Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, thanks for coming on and for your work on this,
00:27:57.060
Duff. Thank you. I'll keep you updated as we continue to chase after those other
00:28:01.360
more than 2,000 pages. Please do. And it might be a couple of years before the next release comes,
00:28:07.000
but we'll have you back on then. Thanks very much. And I should just tell people on the access to
00:28:11.080
information side of things, it's insane. I mean, Duff knows this very well because he's filed
00:28:16.080
many of these things. But if you've never had to do this yourself, there can be years. Like
00:28:20.760
Lindsay Shepard, my colleague at True North, I might be getting the dates wrong, but I believe
00:28:25.920
she filed an access to information request and they gave her like an estimated return time
00:28:40.600
Maybe she'll get the documents that no longer matter.
00:28:43.260
I had, it actually showed up to my door two days ago
00:28:53.560
that I filed three years ago that I had forgotten about.
00:28:56.240
And I was, and even then it was like mostly incomplete
00:29:02.400
You have a system and then COVID they use as an excuse
00:29:07.940
They'd say, oh, well, we've all been working remotely
00:29:09.780
and we need to get into the office to access the server
00:29:20.680
The access to information laws were still there.
00:29:22.880
I'd file ATIPS in, I don't know, like April of 2020.
00:29:25.780
money. And then I'd get an email two weeks ago, four weeks ago saying, oh yeah, we just got back
00:29:31.260
into the office. Oh, great. Have you finished my request yet? No, no, no. I just wanted to see if
00:29:36.200
you still wanted us to start looking into it. You think I'm joking, but this is not actually a joke
00:29:42.260
at all. It's years and years and years. So it's actually no longer a useful tool for journalists
00:29:49.640
because you spend all your time arguing with the government about whether you'll ever even get the
00:29:54.560
documents and no time with the opportunity to review and let alone publish something of the
00:30:00.000
documents. So access to information is severely severely broken and desperately needs to be
00:30:05.680
reformed. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Bit of good news on the court side of things which
00:30:11.620
we don't often have. The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday issued a decision on Bill C-69 which is
00:30:18.240
often referred to by its critics in Alberta and elsewhere as the no more pipelines law,
00:30:24.620
they found it to be largely unconstitutional. They said the government's expanded review process for
00:30:30.880
infrastructure projects, including pipelines, was intruding outside of federal jurisdiction.
00:30:37.220
This is exactly what the government of Alberta has been saying. And the government of Alberta
00:30:42.040
had a bit of a victory lap on this that it decided to take and do we have the I don't see it on the
00:30:48.480
clip list I think we might have had a clip of Danielle Smith though. Now today Minister of
00:30:54.840
Environment and Climate Change Stephen Gibault the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources
00:30:58.700
Jonathan Wilkinson responded to this historic decision upholding the rights of provinces to
00:31:04.440
develop their resources. They tried to position this as a win. It is not. They confirmed their
00:31:10.040
plans to bring legislation back to Parliament to amend it. Clearly, they simply aren't listening.
00:31:16.480
Guilbeau does not seem to acknowledge how badly he lost. And Wilkinson, I heard him say that he
00:31:22.260
hopes that this is the last time that we end up going to court. Well, there's one way to assure
00:31:27.400
that. They need to drop their clean electricity regulations and they need to drop their emissions
00:31:31.660
cap. Yeah, it was a bit of a weird thing. Actually, to be honest, Stephen Guilbeau was doing the
00:31:37.920
Jagmeet Singh dance thing. He was like, he loses, but he's like somehow trumpeting it as a big
00:31:42.540
victory. The federal government said, oh yes, we welcome the guidance from the Supreme Court on,
00:31:48.640
you know, how we can better tweak this and refine this and we'll continue to build on it. No, you
00:31:54.060
lost. You lost and you were called on trying to trample into provincial jurisdiction with abandon.
00:32:01.420
So what does this mean for Canada and for the oil and gas sector? Chris Sims joins us every Monday.
00:32:07.080
She is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and it is always a delight to start our week off with her.
00:32:14.000
Chris, this was a rare win from the Supreme Court. We don't get many of those.
00:32:18.320
No, and we absolutely need to pause and celebrate it, Andrew, for exactly this reason.
00:32:22.700
Well, number one, it's just a win, so it's really good to see.
00:32:25.460
Number two, it's a huge win, not just for people who work in our natural resources industries, but it's also a big win for taxpayers.
00:32:33.580
So we did the math a few years back and we figured out that because Canada does not have its full pipeline capacity up and running, we've lost out on roughly $13 billion in taxes just over the past 10 years.
00:32:51.000
And Andrew, that's just in federal income taxes of people who would otherwise have been working in the industry.
00:32:57.560
That's not even touching like municipal property taxes or any other sort of revenue that the government would get from such projects.
00:33:04.460
And when you try to think of what that kind of money would do, 13 billion, roughly speaking, would pay the salaries of about 60,000 police officers and about 60,000 nurses combined.
00:33:17.000
So we're talking big money here for taxpayers. But more importantly, I think what you highlighted there was really important. That statement from Guibo, the guy's just not taking no for an answer. And so there was language in there that is a little bit concerning, where he says we're going to quickly bring this back to the House of Commons and improve the legislation.
00:33:42.400
So there seems to be this zealous attachment to this sort of no, you can't do that within your own provincial jurisdiction coming from the federal government, coming from the Trudeau government.
00:33:56.480
So while we think Premier Smith is right in celebrating this, this is definitely a huge win for provincial jurisdiction.
00:34:02.400
We still need to keep an eye on these folks because they don't seem to be taking this no as a no.
00:34:09.000
Yeah, I want to read one line from this that jumps out here.
00:34:13.520
We are heartened that the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed our role on these core principles.
00:34:19.860
This is of respecting the environment, Indigenous rights, and ensuring projects get assessed in a timely way.
00:34:25.760
We will now take this back and work quickly to improve the legislation through Parliament.
00:34:30.260
When the Supreme Court tells you that it is unconstitutional, and there were some parts that were upheld as constitutional,
00:34:37.360
but the core aspect that was at issue was found unconstitutional.
00:34:41.660
They weren't saying, well, if you just did this, you would be fine,
00:34:45.040
because the court took issue with the core purpose of this.
00:34:50.280
It's not just, well, if you left out that paragraph, it would have been fine.
00:34:53.640
They said, no, you don't have a right to do this.
00:34:55.620
But that's the part that the federal government has missed here.
00:34:58.520
And I don't know how they're going to get around that,
00:35:00.580
but I fear that the lawyers working around the clock
00:35:03.280
on the federal government's dime will find a way.
00:35:06.600
So that's a concern as well. And then going forward, if you just read the way the Supreme Court explained it, it just sounds like a straight up win for things like what Premier Smith was referencing there, the so-called clean electricity caps that they're trying to impose on Albertans here.
00:35:22.700
But also things like so-called just transition. So just transition is basically an idea coming from the federal government that they are going to transition Canadians away from our natural core, natural resources and to something else.
00:35:40.100
And the transition part is for the workers and the employees within things like energy, trucking, construction, all of the stuff that keeps us warm and builds our things and makes this whole country function.
00:35:53.480
That would have cost hundreds of billions of dollars just in the salaries alone.
00:35:59.180
And so we were, at least I am, reading the Supreme Court decision saying, oh, well, maybe this is a good indicator that the federal government needs to stay in its lane.
00:36:07.840
but their reaction to it sounds like they won this case so it's still probably a big uphill fight
00:36:14.340
one thing that i think is important to note here as well is that we've effectively given provinces
00:36:21.040
a veto on this if a province like british columbia where you used to live says you know what screw
00:36:26.060
this we don't want pipelines here if quebec does that we basically give them the right to do that
00:36:31.420
and it's it's actually quite astonishing that the federal government has tried to make a regime
00:36:55.800
to have complete carte blanche on these projects,
00:37:03.020
It's almost like the federal government has an agenda
00:37:05.200
and they're picking winners and losers in this what was really good about this fight is that it
00:37:11.140
wasn't just the province of Alberta it wasn't just the Canadian taxpayers federation we were
00:37:15.680
actually an official intervener uh saying you know yes Bill C-69 is bad for Canada we had our lawyer
00:37:22.180
in court and all of that stuff it was other provinces as well it wasn't just Alberta out
00:37:27.620
there fighting its lonesome fight in the wilderness this time we had other major provinces on board
00:37:33.240
So this means, if you can picture it, the province of Quebec could not be told no if they want to have a new hydroelectric program.
00:37:42.080
The maritime provinces, if they ever decide to, for some reason, use the natural gas resources that they are sitting on provincially, they wouldn't be able to be told no by the federal government.
00:37:53.920
So it wasn't just one of those lone voice in the wilderness by Albertans fighting this.
00:38:00.740
It was really good to see this decision. Hopefully it is precedent setting. And that means things
00:38:07.100
like just transition in these strange electricity energy caps will hopefully go away.
00:38:13.460
Yeah. And I think that's the important part in the common law system. We want to really hold
00:38:17.900
to that precedent here because right now there is a federalism question at play. And I mean,
00:38:22.700
when we saw the carbon tax come up before the Supreme court, which did not go the way you and
00:38:27.880
I wanted it to go. It wasn't really, does the federal government have a right to impose a
00:38:32.440
carbon tax? It was, I mean, it was, but it was, does the federal government have a right to
00:38:36.540
manage this or does the provincial government have a right to manage this? And the case was
00:38:40.840
really about finding where we put the carbon tax in that federalism divide. Whereas on this issue,
00:38:46.880
I think the government pretty clearly said, we believe this is a federal responsibility. And
00:38:51.920
the court said, well, no, that's encroachment. That's mission creep. So I think in that sense,
00:38:56.240
it will be helpful. And I mean, obviously the government's going to try to navigate around it.
00:39:00.500
I mean, my concern is that they're going to really grasp at straws here because one area where the
00:39:05.740
federal government does have a right to act is in criminal laws. And that's basically what they're
00:39:10.800
doing with like to shoehorn in some other environmental regulations and also under
00:39:15.680
emergency powers. And we've heard some of the really radical environmentalists say that the
00:39:20.260
government should have defended the carbon tax under emergency powers because of the climate
00:39:24.500
emergency. Yeah, I've run into that as well. So that was at the federal level. They were making
00:39:29.360
that argument. I've actually even heard that sort of argument at municipal levels. So a few years
00:39:35.520
back when I was back in British Columbia, I was sitting in on an online, you know, discussion
00:39:40.920
program with the city of Vancouver and the city of Vancouver was trying to do many things all at
00:39:46.720
once. They were trying to install a virtual toll wall around downtown to nail people with fines
00:39:53.420
and fees every single time they crossed it they were trying to impose brand new mega parking taxes
00:39:59.660
on any new vehicles that were parked on the street rather than ones parked in the driveway
00:40:04.540
so they were penalizing renters the people who can least afford it the ones who were living in
00:40:08.700
the basement suites and before me in the queue there were several people who were interveners
00:40:15.340
who were saying exactly that that in their view they were in such a moment of crisis and emergency
00:40:22.620
for the entire planet that all of our other arguments were moot, and nobody was allowed
00:40:28.060
to bring up anything like financial hardship, fairness, the freedom to own your own vehicle.
00:40:32.380
All of that wasn't relevant to these folks. They said all that mattered was the emergency. Now,
00:40:38.380
do we have people in that same thinking and line of thinking within the federal government?
00:40:43.340
Probably. Hopefully they have other things to do, though, instead of coming back quickly
00:40:49.020
in rewriting this legislation, but that sentence jumped out at me and I'm concerned that they are
00:40:54.960
going to do just that. Go back and try to rewrite it, but hopefully the Supreme Court would say,
00:40:59.620
you know what? We said what we said and go away now. Yeah. I mean, if Vancouver were given
00:41:04.860
completely free reign, they would just like put snipers up on the living Shangri-La and anyone
00:41:09.920
that drives a diesel or gas powered vehicle just gets like shot on their way into downtown. So you
00:41:15.220
don't want to give them emergency powers. But the thing that I find so shocking about this,
00:41:20.080
and just to bring it back to the Emergencies Act of the federal government, that was a useful
00:41:24.360
exercise in showing us what the government thinks is appropriate when there is an emergency. And we
00:41:29.880
should all be very, very terrified of the day the government does adopt the emergency rhetoric to
00:41:35.260
deal with climate, because all of a sudden, oh, well, no gas powered vehicles, you can't drive
00:41:39.560
to work through the way. I mean, these are things that would sound absurd three years ago. But now
00:41:44.080
we wouldn't find to be out of left field. No. And especially if you look at other countries
00:41:49.660
that are debating things like this, especially in their downtown. I mean, France banned domestic
00:41:54.400
air travel. It is illegal to take a flight within France now. See, and this is where you get this
00:41:59.380
mission creep so quickly. And this is why at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we want smaller,
00:42:04.340
more accountable government. One, because it's bad for people's freedom to have this ever
00:42:09.320
encroaching, ever burgeoning government. And two, we just can't flat out afford it. Vancouver was
00:42:14.900
going to hire parking cops to go around with these special iPads, I'm not kidding, and scan the
00:42:21.880
vehicles to see what make and model and how new they were and decide whether or not they then
00:42:27.040
need to be fined. Can you imagine the bureaucrats tasked with that sort of policing? And so imagine
00:42:33.100
that now on a federal scale. We're already flat broke. We're already more than a trillion dollars
00:42:38.760
in debt. We have un-money right now. But that wouldn't stop a lot of these ideologues,
00:42:44.720
unfortunately, from cracking down on things like this. So this is, again, bringing it back to the
00:42:48.960
Supreme Court decision. This is why this is such a huge win, is because it was a clear correction
00:42:53.940
to the feds saying, nope, these provinces are correct. They are able to produce and refine
00:43:00.180
their natural resources as they see fit. And folks, it wasn't just pipelines. Based on how
00:43:05.580
you could read the interpretation of this law, Bill C-69, it could be argued that a gravel pit
00:43:12.540
or a new highway or even a transit system built within the province's own borders could somehow
00:43:20.060
be subject to federal approval. And so this is where this is such a good win for the Supreme
00:43:25.860
Court to correct the Trudeau government here. Yeah, and very much vindication for the Alberta
00:43:31.600
government, not just Danielle Smith, but also Jason Kenney, because this is, I mean, the Supreme
00:43:36.160
Court literally took at face value effectively what the Alberta government had been saying about
00:43:40.940
this from the get-go. So well said, Chris Sims, we will talk to you next Monday. Thank you so much
00:43:46.060
for coming on as always. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And speaking of Danielle Smith,
00:43:50.800
the Premier of Alberta, she will be at True North Nation this Saturday, which is, well,
00:43:57.240
it's on Saturday. And it's in Calgary. I would hope you will be able to come out to that. I know
00:44:02.060
a number of you have already bought tickets. I don't have the latest number, but I think over
00:44:06.440
the weekend, we only had like 20 some odd tickets left. So if you want to go and haven't gotten your
00:44:10.840
ticket yet, you can do so at truenorthevents.ca, truenorthevents.ca. And also Candice Malcolm
00:44:18.340
will be there. I know she's been on maternity leave. So we haven't seen a huge amount of her
00:44:23.220
on True North lately, but she is going to be making a very, very popular and desired appearance.
00:44:29.980
I am looking forward to being on stage with her. And I know you will all enjoy what she has to say
00:44:34.740
as well. I don't know what she has to say, but I know you'll enjoy it. So that's going to be coming
00:44:38.700
up on Saturday. TrueNorthEvents.ca is where all the details are. And if it goes really well,
00:44:43.820
we might just do another one. We'll do it like live from, well, from somewhere else anyway.
00:44:53.360
We'll talk to you all tomorrow at 1 o'clock Eastern, 11 a.m.
00:45:02.860
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:45:04.900
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.