Juno News - NDP members think Jagmeet Singh isn't getting enough out of deal with Liberals

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here this is the

00:01:30.500 andrew lawton show on true north i will start with a bit of a pop culture which i don't normally do

00:01:36.980 because i'm neither popular nor particularly well cultured but i saw over the weekend the

00:01:42.840 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

00:01:48.800 more times than is probably healthy. In fact, I've never even watched Cheers from start to finish,

00:01:53.840 but Frasier, I'm there for. So when I learned that Frasier was getting remade, I was very excited.

00:02:00.520 I like Kelsey Grammer. I like Frasier, all of that. And then I learned that like no one from

00:02:07.160 the original Frasier is going to be in Frasier. They like didn't cast Roz. They didn't cast Niles.

00:02:14.140 They didn't cast Daphne.

00:02:16.300 The father, John Mahoney, passed away, I think, last year or two years ago.

00:02:20.840 And they've, like, moved it from Seattle to Boston again.

00:02:24.000 But Cheers has been demolished.

00:02:25.600 And I was, like, so nervous.

00:02:26.980 I'm, like, I'm going to give you my money and I'm going to watch this thing.

00:02:30.140 But I was so nervous it was going to be terrible.

00:02:32.160 And I got to say, the first two episodes were absolutely splendid.

00:02:36.220 It's a different show.

00:02:37.560 Like, it's not the same show.

00:02:39.400 Was it Plato that did the allegory about the sailboat where he said,

00:02:43.100 if you replace the sail is it the same boat what if you replace the mast is it the same boat what

00:02:47.660 if you replace it was kind of that sort of thing like how many things can you replace while still

00:02:51.740 keeping the essence of what it is but uh nevertheless now the problem was is that it was

00:02:56.540 on paramount plus which i don't know if you i feel like christia freeland now talking about all the

00:03:01.860 streaming services but if you've ever seen like paramount plus is part of amazon prime and i'm

00:03:07.420 like oh that's great i have amazon prime so i can watch this then oh no you need to pay extra to

00:03:11.940 watch Paramount Plus. So now I actually need to do the Chrystia Freeland thing because now I'm

00:03:16.460 paying for Prime. I'm paying for this Paramount Plus thing, which I'll cancel, I guess, once

00:03:20.940 Frasier ends. And I've got, I don't have Disney Plus. I've already canceled that, you know,

00:03:24.900 inflation being as terrible as it is. But anyway, if you're a Frasier fan out there,

00:03:28.960 the two episodes that are out so far are actually quite delightful. Nevertheless,

00:03:34.160 real big news out there, not just my television viewing habits. Jagmeet Singh has held on to his

00:03:41.580 leadership of the New Democratic Party. Now, he had to face a leadership review because that's

00:03:47.400 what you do at a party convention after you lose an election. He's had to face three of these

00:03:53.880 things so far. And what was interesting about Jagmeet Singh getting 80%, which sounds impressive,

00:04:00.440 it's like, okay, 80% support from your party, that's wonderful. Well, the challenge there is

00:04:05.400 that it's less support than he had in the last leadership review and less further than the one

00:04:12.480 before that. Here was what he said upon claiming victory after the results. His confidence in you

00:04:19.740 has gone down about 20 points since 2018. What's not resonating with delegates?

00:04:26.840 Again, I want to say I feel really inspired and encouraged by receiving a strong mandate. I don't

00:04:31.200 take anything for granted. I never have my whole life. And to receive a strong mandate to continue

00:04:36.020 on gives me inspiration to continue to do the work that we're doing. I think there's also a clear

00:04:41.040 message, though, and I take this message to heart. New Democrats always want more. We're the party

00:04:46.680 that always say, you're not going far enough. We need more, and specifically more help to give

00:04:52.860 Canadians a break in these difficult times. And I take that message back. That message gives

00:04:57.580 actually me more inspiration and gives me more strength to go out and fight for more we've got

00:05:01.740 an opportunity now we're in a position of a minority government and we are being asked very

00:05:06.780 clearly by membership to go out and fight to fix the problems that people are dealing with i think

00:05:11.260 it's a it's clear that people are dealing with many challenges we've got a cost of living crisis

00:05:16.540 we've got groceries that are high we've got a lot of challenges and the liberals are not solving

00:05:21.980 these problems and the conservatives can't be trusted because they are not who they pretend

00:05:25.980 And they are. They're not going to actually fix these problems.

00:05:28.360 So New Democrats are turning to us and saying, hey, we need you to do more.

00:05:31.380 And I take that. I'm inspired by that. I'm going to get out and work even harder.

00:05:34.840 But how can you sell that message to the country when support for your own message is dwindling amongst the ranks here?

00:05:44.140 I would say I've got a strong mandate and New Democrats are saying, get out and work harder.

00:05:48.680 I'm going to get out and work harder.

00:05:51.560 So he's got a strong mandate. And look, 80% support is not nothing.

00:05:55.460 Most conservative leaders fail to get that in leadership reviews.

00:05:58.980 I'm thinking of John Tory, for example, back in Ontario in 2007.

00:06:03.400 But I also want to make a point of noting here

00:06:06.620 that Jagmeet Singh has not hysterically been...

00:06:09.900 Whoa, there's a Freudian slip.

00:06:11.820 I was going to say historically, not hysterically.

00:06:14.280 Well, maybe it is hysterical. Who knows?

00:06:16.260 He's not historically been the best judge of how well he's done.

00:06:20.780 You may recall this moment from the 2019 election.

00:06:25.460 in which the NDP went from actually having a pretty solid spot in the House of Commons

00:06:31.540 and just plummeted down to fourth-party status.

00:06:35.120 But you'd think Jagmeet Singh had won the election.

00:06:55.460 love the song good dance moves don't take anything away from that i do think it might not be

00:07:09.380 the most appropriate time to dance 2021 ndp as well has a humiliating show

00:07:16.260 uh the dance was a little bit more subtle but still he busted out the moves in 2021

00:07:21.820 I like by the way that Jagmeet Singh has just one dance like it's the same dance move it's like

00:07:36.100 two years past doesn't matter it's the same dance move it was like one of those Seth Rogen movies

00:07:41.180 he only had one move and it was like to do the dice throw across the dance floor uh so Jagmeet

00:07:46.240 Singh is the Seth Rogen of NDP dancing. But there is a category that is not a particularly

00:07:51.600 competitive one. In any case, Jagmeet Singh loves to do the dance. It's like the loser. I don't know,

00:07:56.740 there's a touchdown dance in football, where if you win, you do like a little touchdown dance.

00:08:02.320 There's no losers dance. You don't lose when the other team, or you don't dance when the other

00:08:07.360 team gets a touchdown, which is what Jagmeet Singh is doing. So this is the guy who fails to realize

00:08:12.980 that he is single-handedly the reason that Justin Trudeau is still the Prime Minister right now. He

00:08:19.400 treats every election as though it is a win. He is holding on to the leadership of the party

00:08:24.220 because he knows he needs his pension and he is done after the next election when he fails to get

00:08:29.280 any gains. But he is actually, despite not being a particularly competent or capable political

00:08:35.320 operator, a very powerful figure in Canadian politics right now. He is holding the government

00:08:41.820 hostage except he's not he could he could and he is not using that power and you may know by now

00:08:49.440 I always love pointing out the absurdity of whenever I should have pulled a few examples

00:08:53.520 today whenever Jagmeet Singh takes to Twitter or give some statement at a press conference in which

00:08:58.380 he talks about oh the liberals and conservatives are failing Canadians they're terrible everything

00:09:03.480 they do is awful and you know how dare Canadians need better and it's like hmm that's odd from the

00:09:08.100 guy who votes to keep them in. That's odd from the guy who voted to approve the liberal budget

00:09:14.380 without whom there would not be right now a liberal government most likely. But nevertheless,

00:09:20.240 he has managed to secure this great deal. It's called a supply and confidence agreement. It's

00:09:26.140 actually a coalition government. It is a deal in which the NDP will agree to support liberals on

00:09:32.140 confidence motions and bills in exchange for a few concessions. Now, the problem is that he hasn't

00:09:39.620 actually gotten any of the concessions. The Liberals have given the NDP absolutely nothing

00:09:46.340 that the Liberals weren't already campaigning on. You know, you may look and say, well, hang on,

00:09:51.960 I think Canada is already a socialist hellscape. Maybe this is Jagmeet Singh's fault. No,

00:09:56.620 Justin Trudeau was already going to make Canada a socialist hellscape on his own. He didn't need

00:10:00.940 the NDP to do that. But the NDP believes he should go even further to the left than he is.

00:10:07.860 We have not yet seen, however, national pharmacare. We've not yet seen national dental care. I mean,

00:10:13.700 these are things the liberals promise, but they're like the bread and butter for the NDP

00:10:17.700 and they don't exist. Now, I'm not complaining about that. I'm not saying that Canadians deserve 1.00

00:10:22.700 or want or can afford these things. I'm saying that if you're Jagmeet Singh and you've been

00:10:27.460 keeping this government alive for several years now and you don't have anything to show for it,

00:10:34.440 what on earth are you doing? Like trade your Rolex or something, like do something to give

00:10:41.100 yourself a shred of wiggle room here in political capital because you're squandering everything that

00:10:47.200 you have right now. So the reason I bring this up is as a lengthy preamble to what NDP members also

00:10:53.040 have voted for. They may have voted to keep Jagmeet Singh at the helm of the party, but they

00:10:58.140 also passed a resolution calling on the NDP to withhold its support from the Liberals if the

00:11:04.260 Liberals don't deliver on Pharmacare. The Liberals promised this in 2015. This has been a pillar of

00:11:12.240 their existence as a party, but they've never really made any moves on it. For the NDP, this is

00:11:16.860 what they want. It socialized everything. The NDP would love nothing more than to take all of the 0.99

00:11:21.620 inefficiencies and bureaucracies and inequalities of the healthcare system now and expand that in

00:11:28.380 to pharmacare. Like they would love to make everything in Canada as inefficient as the

00:11:33.100 healthcare system goes, but they've not managed to do that. So Jagmeet Singh could very easily

00:11:37.800 have said to the Liberals, listen, we're not going to vote for your budget unless you do this.

00:11:42.960 But he's not. He's not actually done that because he is a weak political leader. And it's odd that

00:11:49.460 the NDP membership have not seemed to realize this in as large numbers as you would expect them to,

00:11:55.880 that they are still believing he is their champion. Now, obviously, we've seen in the last

00:12:01.420 week a bit of a schism among the organized left on Israel issues. Jagmeet Singh did like the bare

00:12:07.540 minimum. He came out with the condemnation of Hamas and then, of course, the anti-Semitic wing

00:12:11.900 of the NDP. No, it's not the whole party. It's a wing comes out and says, we're ashamed of you

00:12:18.460 and embarrassed by you.

00:12:19.540 They got crashed by a bunch of union representatives

00:12:23.220 who wanted to call out Israeli apartheid war crimes

00:12:27.740 or whatever.

00:12:28.640 They kind of just, it's like mad libs.

00:12:30.120 They just sub in the same words over and over again

00:12:32.440 in different configurations.

00:12:34.140 But the NDP, to its credit,

00:12:36.360 held firm in the leadership of it anyway

00:12:39.080 that Israel is not the bad guy here. 1.00

00:12:42.900 So the whole point of this is that Jagmeet Singh

00:12:45.700 has delivered absolutely nothing.

00:12:48.460 And I have no interest in voting for the NDP or running for the NDP.

00:12:53.300 I mean, I think, generally speaking, we have a two-party system and we pretend it is not that.

00:12:58.560 But I will say the NDP could be a powerful force.

00:13:02.120 And here's the thing, is that we can talk about majority governments versus minority governments.

00:13:06.680 But in most of Canada's history, governments have been comprised of parties that have won a majority of the seats

00:13:14.980 and have had essentially an unchecked power over what they do.

00:13:20.760 It is only relatively recently that minorities have started to feel like they were the norm.

00:13:25.880 It was a liberal minority in 2004, a conservative minority in 2006,

00:13:31.200 and in 2008, you then had a liberal minority in 2019 and 2021.

00:13:36.800 And these have meant that smaller parties actually wield a tremendous influence.

00:13:40.600 Now, in the case of the Liberals right now, they need the support of the NDP to do anything,

00:13:46.840 or the Bloc Québécois or the Conservatives, but the NDP have been the willing and able dance

00:13:52.400 partners. But the NDP has, in its historic context here, a unique moment, and they have done nothing

00:14:01.340 with it. And NDP members seem to have bought in to the fact that their party has less power than

00:14:08.500 it does. But nevertheless, that is exactly where we are now. I want to also point out, speaking of

00:14:14.720 NDP, I get every now and then criticized or not criticized. Sometimes it's criticism, but some

00:14:20.340 people don't like that I don't cover Manitoba politics as often on this show. And I did get

00:14:24.860 this emailed to me by a listener this morning, Louis Riel, who I'm not going to go on. I promised

00:14:32.600 myself I wouldn't do a historical tangent about this. But Louis Riel, a very controversial figure

00:14:38.220 in Canadian politics. He's got some popularity in Manitoba, but generally speaking in Ontario

00:14:43.820 and in English Canada, he's seen as a traitor. He was sentenced to death for high treason,

00:14:49.960 but he was an influential figure in Manitoba and Western Canadian politics. Now, he never

00:14:56.140 was the premier of Manitoba because Manitoba ceased to be a province when Louis Rial was

00:15:02.460 waging his rebellions in Manitoba. But the thing that's interesting is Wab Kanu, who is the

00:15:09.560 premier designate of the province, has said that he is going to honorarily recognize Louis Riel

00:15:16.600 as the first premier of Manitoba. So like, we're completely rewriting history here. And it's

00:15:25.500 interesting that the NDP, whose members and supporters will oftentimes go around and tear

00:15:32.960 down statues, behead statues, it was in Winnipeg where a statue of her late majesty was toppled by

00:15:39.140 people that believe we need to judge historical figures by today's standards rather than their

00:15:44.080 own. And it's interesting that that same party in that same province is overlooking a lot of very,

00:15:50.120 very nasty things about Louis Riel to hold him up as being some revolutionary icon. It is proof

00:15:56.720 that the standards are only different. Cancel culture only applies if you are not on the left.

00:16:02.480 But if you're Che Guevara, you can kill as many people as you want and you'll be a hero to the 0.82

00:16:07.280 left. If you are a Louis Riel, same sort of deal. Now I realize I should, I should, that's what we 0.98

00:16:12.920 should do on the Andrew Lawton show. Do like a debate over Louis Riel's legacy. It'll be a great

00:16:17.520 fun. Four people will watch it and one of them will be me, but we'll have a great deal of fun

00:16:23.020 with that. I do want to talk a little bit more about the Canadian political landscape just

00:16:28.680 briefly before we move on to the next topic. More polling came out, I believe it was today,

00:16:33.900 it might have been yesterday, showing the Conservatives in like absolutely majority

00:16:39.380 territory. Like this projection had them at well over 190 seats. And again, if there is a way for

00:16:45.320 conservatives to lose an election, they will find it. That's the one thing we've learned about

00:16:49.240 conservative politics, is that if there's a way to lose, they will absolutely snatch defeat from

00:16:54.660 the jaws of victory. But it also means that the leaders and supporters alike of the liberals and

00:17:02.360 the NDP should all be asking themselves some really deep questions right now of why they're

00:17:09.000 failing to gain any traction. And that's exactly the NDP conundrum here. And the NDP shockingly

00:17:15.680 does not seem to want to look inward and do it. I mean, I mentioned that resolution saying they're

00:17:20.140 going to pull support from the liberals without a national pharmacare, but even that is just

00:17:24.040 barely scratching the surface of why the NDP are not being a trusted and legitimate and reliable

00:17:31.760 messenger for a group of people who are disillusioned by Trudeau. Like the thing,

00:17:37.200 Trudeau's lack of popularity should be a gold engraved invitation to the NDP to be a relevant

00:17:44.760 and viable left-wing alternative. Like look at how in Ontario the NDP replaced the Liberals as being

00:17:51.640 the left-wing party. We've seen in Saskatchewan as well it's the NDP that are the prime opponents

00:17:56.680 to the Saskatchewan party. You've seen in BC how the BC Liberals just completely cratered and now

00:18:01.880 you have the NDP on one side and really the BC Conservatives on the other. But all of this is to

00:18:08.240 say that right now, the left is, there's just a complete vacuum. You've got Justin Trudeau,

00:18:14.320 who no one really trusts or relies on to get the job done. And you have Jagmeet Singh, who has

00:18:19.340 not succeeded in getting any job done except perpetually nailing the, I just lost the election,

00:18:25.620 but I'm happy anyway, dance move. So nevertheless, remember SNC-Lavalin, big scandal a few years back,

00:18:31.520 the media cared about it for all of five minutes, and then the RCMP decided it would investigate,

00:18:37.660 but didn't really get anywhere. It didn't result in any charges. Now, we've got for the first time

00:18:43.900 some information about exactly why they didn't push that probe further. Documents obtained by

00:18:50.440 Democracy Watch show that it was actually the government that blocked a lot of very key

00:18:55.600 documents from the RCMP, hiding it under the veil of cabinet confidence. Joining me now is

00:19:01.940 the co-founder of Democracy Watch, Duff Conacher. Duff, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on

00:19:07.400 today. My pleasure. So let's start first off with what these documents really reveal. I know you

00:19:13.860 have to contend, as anyone who has experience with ATIPS does, with a litany of redactions,

00:19:18.620 but there was actually a fair bit of information in these. Yes, and what the documents reveal

00:19:25.180 is from my opinion the RCMP rolled over like a lapdog did a very superficial investigation

00:19:32.940 only interviewed three people relied a lot on the ethics commissioner's report that found

00:19:40.060 Trudeau guilty of violating the federal ethics law didn't really try to get the cabinet

00:19:48.000 communications internal and secret that the cabinet refused to give them could have gone to

00:19:52.680 court to get a court order, a warrant for that, but decided not to for, I think, unjustifiable

00:19:59.680 reasons. And then there was a two-year delay by the top officers after they received the

00:20:05.600 initial assessment report, which really was an investigation. The RCMP just didn't want to call

00:20:10.300 this an investigation publicly, but it was an investigation and they should have announced

00:20:14.680 that they were investigating way back in 2020. And the top officers essentially didn't make a

00:20:22.400 decision on that assessment report for almost two years and then rolled over and let everyone off

00:20:27.620 without even allowing an open court to to make that decision instead made it behind closed doors

00:20:33.980 very secret and unjustifiable you touch on a number of important aspects of this the one i

00:20:40.760 think it's just the lack of curiosity i mean i would hope that if the rcmp were investigating

00:20:45.720 a murder or a fraud of some kind and they they run up against a bit of a roadblock someone doesn't

00:20:51.100 to hand over information they they wouldn't just say oh okay well thanks anyway we tried and move

00:20:55.500 on but that's really what they did here i mean they had tools available it wasn't just that they

00:21:00.460 were up against this impenetrable forces that they didn't even really try from start to finish

00:21:06.460 there's lots of questions about this uh especially when you compare it to for example um the rcmp's

00:21:13.580 investigation of jason kenney's leadership race and allegations about wrongdoing in that in alberta

00:21:19.820 they announced that it was an investigation, they've been given regular updates.

00:21:24.220 Doug Ford and the Greenbelt scandal in Ontario, RCMP after having it referred to them by the OPP

00:21:30.940 just a couple of months later, announced an investigation. Presumably they're going to,

00:21:35.260 and are in Alberta and are going to in Ontario, use subpoenas, try and get search warrants,

00:21:40.940 because you have to check all the communications on every device for everyone involved in these

00:21:45.580 decisions to determine whether it crosses the line and if you don't do it it's essentially a cover-up

00:21:52.860 and then a two-year delay on the assessment report they accepted all the cabinet's claims

00:21:58.860 that everything they were doing was for good reasons not for wrong reasons reasons i mean

00:22:05.100 it just raises a lot of questions about whether the rcmp is independent enough to actually

00:22:10.300 investigate political wrongdoing in canada especially at the federal level we saw just to

00:22:17.740 bring another story into this for a moment during the public order emergency commission the

00:22:22.060 government hide behind solicitor client privilege which is sacrosanct in in the legal system as it

00:22:27.660 should be but there was really no mechanism to challenge that they kind of just assert it and

00:22:33.340 that's that and and we see cabinet confidence increasingly used in the same way where like

00:22:37.900 there's not really a powerful arbiter of whether cabinet confidence is being appropriately invoked

00:22:44.380 in a way that is is kind of keeping with transparency as suppose as what's supposed

00:22:49.020 to be i think the basis of a democracy it's the most abused loophole in the the so-called freedom

00:22:56.060 of information laws across the country they really should be called the guide to hiding information

00:23:01.580 from the public that the public has a right to know acts because that's what they are and uh

00:23:07.340 we are still chasing after the documents more than half of the documents that the rcmp determined are

00:23:13.820 covered by our request by democracy watch more than 4 000 pages more than half of them have not

00:23:19.740 been disclosed because they are reviewing whether they are cabinet confidences and if they then

00:23:26.540 send us a bunch of redacted documents claiming cabinet confidence then we plan to go to court

00:23:32.300 to challenge that because i doubt that most of them are actually and uh the supreme court is

00:23:38.860 reviewing this issue right now uh and and reviewing the scope of that in a case that

00:23:45.180 came out of ontario and requests the ontario government and uh it hopefully they will narrow

00:23:51.740 the scope of that because most of the things that are claimed as cabinet confidence

00:23:55.900 really are not. And advice to cabinet and other very much abused

00:24:00.780 loophole in our so-called freedom of information laws across the country.

00:24:06.620 You've got the cabinet confidence loophole, and then you also have the RCMP, which has historically

00:24:11.100 been, I think, one of the worst institutions in Canada for its own access to information

00:24:16.740 obligations. And I'm wondering, kind of in your sense, you had access to these documents, yes,

00:24:21.760 but if this is what was unredacted, I always have to wonder, well, what's in the redacted stuff?

00:24:26.700 Yes, and as you had mentioned before, a lot of the documents, really only seven documents,

00:24:32.780 had not been disclosed before out of the 19 they disclosed to us. And again, we filed this request

00:24:38.700 in July 2022. They responded in May saying there's only 96 pages, 86 of them have to be redacted

00:24:45.980 because the investigation is still ongoing. Turns out actually the investigation had ended in January

00:24:51.420 2023 four and a half months before so it was just a false claim and also there weren't just 96 pages

00:24:59.500 we received a letter in july saying actually there's more than 4 000 pages and now we're

00:25:03.340 reviewing them now we have uh 1815 of those more than 4 000 the rest still being withheld

00:25:11.740 to be reviewed for cabinet confidence just to remind people documents are supposed to be

00:25:16.540 disclosed within 30 days and you can get it up to 60 day extension if you have a lot of documents to

00:25:23.100 review we're now we've filed this request in july 2022 we're now in october 2023 and still waiting

00:25:29.900 for more than half the documents and again on under this blanket loophole for cabinet confidence

00:25:38.220 when most of them probably are not cabinet confidences the other ones that were withheld

00:25:42.220 and what they have disclosed cited the solicitor-client privilege loophole

00:25:47.380 that you've cited before.

00:25:48.840 And this is not the way these things should be done.

00:25:51.180 There should have been a special prosecutor selected by all the party leaders,

00:25:55.240 not by the ruling party attorney general.

00:25:57.560 So you get someone independent overseeing these investigations

00:26:00.560 with a commitment to issue a public report at the end explaining,

00:26:04.420 if no one's prosecuted, why they were not prosecuted.

00:26:07.080 And the RCMP just refuses to do things that way,

00:26:10.320 even though in several provinces special prosecutors have been appointed

00:26:14.460 in these kind of situations in the past. So just to put a fine point on that you think there needs

00:26:20.700 to be basically a public inquiry and I mean not the disclosure aspect but the core actions that

00:26:26.820 are at the core of this disclosure of you know why the RCMP seem to so easily abandon one might

00:26:32.800 even say cover up this abandonment of its investigation into the government. Yes needs

00:26:38.240 be a public inquiry uh also going forward we need a dedicated anti-corruption police force

00:26:45.760 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

00:28:30.220 of like five years in the future.

00:28:32.620 So she like set a calendar invite for,

00:28:34.640 I don't know, like 2057.

00:28:35.940 And, you know, when, you know,

00:28:37.340 three, five, seven governments from now,

00:28:39.340 they finally get around to it.

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

00:28:49.380 or no, sorry, it was a week ago,

00:28:52.280 an access to information request

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

00:28:58.960 and I couldn't really do much with it.

00:29:00.920 But this is the reality of it.

00:29:02.400 You have a system and then COVID they use as an excuse

00:29:04.960 to not actually fulfill any of these things.

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

00:29:13.680 that is required for it.

00:29:16.720 And I had people like, I filed ATIPS

00:29:18.720 because the law was not suspended.

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.

00:34:49.520 That was the thing.

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.

00:35:06.000 Yes, exactly.

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

00:36:35.900 in which provinces that want this

00:36:38.460 don't actually get the same level

00:36:40.420 of control and autonomy over it.

00:36:43.180 Because when Alberta's saying,

00:36:44.180 yep, build it, we want it.

00:36:45.160 Yes, yes, yes.

00:36:45.700 The federal government's like,

00:36:46.540 well, now listen here.

00:36:48.280 I don't know.

00:36:50.280 And that's really what's happened here.

00:36:52.360 So they've given the right to the naysayers 0.97

00:36:55.800 to have complete carte blanche on these projects,

00:36:58.660 but they've not given the analogous right

00:37:00.900 to those who want pipelines.

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.

00:37:58.580 It was other provinces in on it, too.

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 0.95

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 0.99

00:44:23.220 on True North lately, but she is going to be making a very, very popular and desired appearance. 0.56

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.

00:44:49.980 I don't know where the next one will be.

00:44:51.300 Yellowknife?

00:44:52.100 Maybe in the summer.

00:44:53.360 We'll talk to you all tomorrow at 1 o'clock Eastern, 11 a.m.

00:44:56.660 Mountain.

00:44:57.160 This is Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:45:00.040 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

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.

00:45:19.860 We'll be right back.

00:45:49.860 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 16, 2023

NDP members think Jagmeet Singh isn't getting enough out of deal with Liberals

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