In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, host Andrew Lawton is joined by his good friend and long-time supporter, Peter Mansbridge, to discuss the current state of the New Democratic Party of Canada.
00:06:25.680that's that's quite the response there not even a mr speaker no just a no just to stand up say no
00:06:38.200and sit back down what a way to neutralize and basically deflate this big lengthy sputtering
00:06:45.420rage induced wind up that pierre polyev she implies if he gets in he's going to like turn
00:06:51.720Canada into the Republic of Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale. This is from the Margaret Atwood
00:06:57.460novel, then the, I think it was a Hulu show in the US. It's now on Crave. Don't give me any
00:07:03.080spoilers. My wife and I are still watching Handmaid's Tale, but I don't look at The Handmaid's
00:07:07.060Tale and think like, you know, Pierre Polyev, this seems to be what he wants. Yeah, Pierre
00:07:15.160Polyev, you know, I actually think this is what he wants. So the premise of it is that you have
00:07:19.160these any fertile women in Gilead become or not any of them but most of them become handmaids
00:07:26.220and these handmaids are assigned to you know people whose wives can't get pregnant and then
00:07:30.560you know they do this weird ritual where every month the commander of the household does a
00:07:36.880ceremony with the handmaid which you can probably glean what it is from and if the handmaid gets
00:07:42.720pregnant everyone celebrates it but it's no longer the handmaid's child so you know again it's a
00:07:47.380weird thing to have to describe. And I'm curious exactly what about that Benita Zerillo thinks
00:07:53.060Pierre Polyev is doing to Canada. I'm not quite getting from like A to Z there like she is. And
00:08:03.740by the way, I mean, her only bit of evidence is there are some Americans who are pro-life. Ergo,
00:08:09.900Pierre Polyev wants to turn Canada into a religious fundamentalist cult-like country.
00:08:14.000OK, yeah, I see how you got there. This is, I think, a bit of a bizarro world thing. But then again, you go to the more substantive point of this, which is that there is this fear, this terror, this fear that Pierre Polyev is going to roll back abortion in Canada.
00:08:31.820Now, there are a great many pro-life Canadians, and I'm pro-life myself, who would probably
00:08:36.340love a government that would do something like this.
00:08:38.760But Polyev himself has been so unequivocally clear, he has no interest in doing this.
00:08:44.660This came up last week or two weeks ago when Arnold Beerson, the Conservative Member of
00:08:48.620Parliament, did a podcast interview, and he talked about his own view on social conservative
00:08:53.680And Polyev came out not long after with a statement saying, listen, we're going nowhere
00:08:57.700near, I've been clear, we are not going to reopen this matter.
00:09:01.820But the Liberals are getting desperate. The New Democrats are getting desperate. We may recall
00:09:08.240this one press conference where the Liberals just trotted out, again, inexplicably. It had no basis
00:09:14.300in anything other than they were pointing to the United States and just trying to import this into
00:09:19.720Canada. But they came out and had this massive press conference of Liberal MPs. Again, the same
00:09:25.260sort of unhinged attacks on Pierre Polyev. Take a look. We've sent a letter to the leader of the
00:09:30.940opposition, asking him to be very clear with Canadians, and in particular with Canadian women,
00:09:36.900on what he would do to defend a woman's right to choose. We've seen that his caucus, there are many
00:09:43.340anti-choice caucus members. We've seen some of their actions recently, including MP Kathy
00:09:49.580Wagenthal, who at the pro-life rally held here last week, said that women who have abortions end
00:09:55.740up needing redemption, forgiveness, and needing God. That caucus and that leader has made women
00:10:02.780wonder about the risk that they're going to be taking with this leader. And I want him to come
00:10:08.260out and unequivocally say that they do everything to defend a woman's right to choose, that they
00:10:12.740will not allow their members to come forward with private members' bills and put forward bills that
00:10:17.220suggest that a fetus is a person, which is a backdoor way of, again, addressing this issue.
00:10:21.460The Harper government had 10 years. I know you weren't here. Many of us were. 10 years in power. They had four years as a majority, didn't move one bit. And they had private members who wanted to do things and do things. Gosh, you are all 30 points down the polls. I'm looking at some of you will not get reelected if there was an election this fall. How this is the most cynical play to just throw the abortion scare tactic. Would you like to respond to that observation?
00:10:44.880Absolutely. It's not a scare tactic. We've seen what's happened in the States.
00:10:48.760Do people really think Roe versus Wade would have been overturned? Do we think what was
00:10:51.660happening there was going to happen? I've been in the women's movement for over 50 years.
00:11:00.780Very, very offended she got when she was called on this. It's not a scare tactic.
00:11:05.780No, just look at what's happening in the United States. Yes, that is a different country,
00:11:10.620believe it or not, with a different government, with different political parties,
00:11:14.560with different priorities. And again, I'm one of these people who believes Canada should be able
00:11:20.600to have a discussion about abortion. It should not be as the liberals have made it, as the media has
00:11:25.480made it, this tremendous third rail issue where we're not allowed to talk about an issue that a
00:11:29.600great many Canadians of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist faith, people of no faith at
00:11:35.200all have a variety of opinions on. This idea that it should be instantly disqualifying in the
00:11:41.240liberal's eyes or the NDP's eyes, if someone happens to, oh, shockingly believe that life is
00:11:46.760important, I find to be a tragedy. But as we talk about this issue, and we need to, you have to look
00:11:54.680at how the liberals are approaching this. And to them, it's not about, they don't even care about
00:11:59.840supporting women. They do not care about supporting women. They love driving a wedge that makes
00:12:05.640conservatives get all antsy because they don't know how to talk about these issues. That's what
00:12:10.280liberals want to do it's why it's like the first thing they reach into in their bag of tricks
00:12:15.800when they are down in the polls it's basically just this little sack that they carry around
00:12:20.360and uh you've got oh abortion uh assault rifles uh they're like 19 cards that just have stephen
00:12:26.600harper's name scrawled uh out in red ink uh and uh but what else do we have there uh trump trump
00:12:32.600has a few as well so uh you know basically it's like mad libs they just you know take uh you know
00:12:37.480insert name of country name of leader name of political issue and then they come up with this
00:12:42.840ai generated line of attack in which they say pierre polyev is going to turn canada into
00:12:49.400handmaid's tale because carrots oh no put the wrong word there uh because like and they do this every
00:12:56.280single time now whatever you think of polyev's position on this and i i get like look i'm pro
00:13:02.760life so people that don't like his position i i understand why they want to take aim at that but
00:13:08.680he has a clarity about this he has a clarity about this that even aaron o'toole who was similarly
00:13:13.960pro-choice and aaron o'toole who was pro-life did not have and that i think sets polyev up in a much
00:13:20.920better way to deal with this and i think it's clear that all of these attacks just are not
00:13:25.640landing which is why the rest like no one asked andrew sheer no one said andrew sheer was going
00:13:29.880going to turn Canada into the handmaid's tale. So this is where you get into Polyev. They're just
00:13:36.660so desperate to make something stick. They just keep on going with it, keep on ratcheting it up.
00:13:42.480And we're going to see a heck of a lot more of this as the electioneers, especially if current
00:13:47.360polling holds up. Now, as far as why I'm so aghast by, maybe that's a strong word, certainly why I'm
00:13:55.300so frustrated by the inability of Canadian society to have this conversation is because
00:14:01.800when you do have issues where social conservatives have been the ones leading the charge on very
00:14:07.960significant issues, like for example, against the expansion of assisted suicide in Canada,
00:14:13.200you get the same people who just completely do not want to engage in any question about life
00:14:18.840that try to shut it down. This is an issue just to remind you of some context. I've talked about
00:14:24.640this in the past, so I'm going to give the 45-second summary here. I have a belief in life
00:14:30.720as a Christian, but I also, as someone who survived a very nearly successful suicide attempt more than
00:14:36.82014 years ago, or almost 14 years ago, I have a hugely, hugely deep connection to this idea that
00:14:45.120what the liberals are doing is atrocious and trying to expand access to assisted suicide,
00:14:50.560to euthanasia, to MAID, whatever you want to call it, to people who are struggling only with a
00:14:55.740mental illness. Not someone with MS whose life is coming to its natural end as it is, but people who
00:15:02.400may get up one day and decide they don't want to end their life, and instead of them being treated
00:15:06.380for that, they are met with the government helping them with it. This is my concern about someone with
00:15:12.140a serious depression, for example, in a regime like what the Liberals are pushing Canada towards.
00:15:17.260This has been, among other issues connected to assisted suicide, been put under the microscope by a new documentary produced by the Rebel News crew, specifically Kian Simone and Sheila Gunn-Reed.
00:15:48.160There is a startling new development in the ongoing controversy around veterans being offered medical assistance in dying.
00:15:56.080Instead of help, are you familiar with their MAID program?
00:15:58.840They said, well, it's better than blowing your brains out against the wall.
00:16:01.860They essentially evicted us from our buildings because we would not participate in this government euthanasia program.
00:16:08.860Canadians are expecting us to get the job done.
00:16:11.160Fraser Health is refusing to give information, and because of that, the police investigation had to close.
00:16:20.300Therefore, Fraser Health is covering information up.
00:16:22.960And we know for a fact that our people in power do not take responsibility for anything.
00:16:28.980So it's a financial save, a lack of responsibility, and then it's completely easy to just offer it to vulnerable individuals, and then they're going to take it.
00:16:38.620that is a clip of the trailer for made the dark side of canadian compassion it came out a couple
00:16:46.120of weeks ago the reason i didn't want to do an interview about it is because i wanted to see it
00:16:49.900first and i had to wait to do that because i knew they were coming to elmer ontario a lovely little
00:16:55.200town not far from me and i saw it last week at long last and i didn't make the trailer but i am
00:17:00.000in the documentary i did an interview with sheila and kian which i was very grateful to do talking
00:17:06.000about my own experience here. Sheila Gunn-Reed, the editor-in-chief of Rebel News, joins us now.
00:17:12.220Sheila, I know you've done quite the tour on this, so congratulations and thanks for coming on.
00:17:17.340Yeah, it's been a grueling tour, but I think the documentary has been well-received and sometimes
00:17:22.960we're sort of met with shock because people who are fundamentally opposed to the government
00:17:28.180helping you off this mortal coil are surprised at just how bad it is out there. When we decided
00:17:35.880to make this documentary. And we put a call out for stories, but we also put a call out for
00:17:41.240fundraising. We did this all entirely without any government help, unlike many documentaries made in
00:17:48.540this country. But our emails were sort of inundated with people from two sides of the debate. We had
00:17:56.120people saying, you guys, it's definitely not as bad as you say it is. This is just for people who
00:18:03.660are in unbearable suffering at the end of their life? And who are we to say that they should
00:18:08.740suffer more? And then the other 50% of our emails were saying, it's so bad, but it's much worse than
00:18:16.420you think. And here's my outrageous story. And we thought, boy, we've got to use the 50% of these
00:18:22.540people to inform the other 50%. And it was the reason the documentary sort of came to life the
00:18:28.060way it did. You touch on this there. And I think documentary deals with this complexity to some
00:18:33.460extent as well. There's more of a spectrum of opinions on this than a binary. I mean,
00:18:38.300you certainly have your people that are against any made whatsoever, any assisted suicide
00:18:42.940whatsoever. And then you get people on the other side that, you know, the quote unquote dying with
00:18:47.580dignity people that basically think it should be no different than, you know, ordering a book off
00:18:51.380Amazon. You just one day say, I want it. There are a lot of shades of gray in this. And, you know,
00:18:56.660people that, for example, would have no issue or at least no legal issue with someone that fits how
00:19:03.320was originally presented of someone who is terminally ill they're in a lot of pain people
00:19:09.000know with near certainty they're going to die things will not improve and they voluntarily
00:19:14.840and of sound mind make the decision versus what we're seeing now which is an expansion to minors
00:19:20.520potentially an expansion to people who have a mental illness which is by definition a disease
00:19:25.320of the mind so you've raised your hand there and acknowledge you know where you fit on this but
00:19:30.280But how do you deal with that issue of where there are people that, you know, are fine with it to a point, but not the point that the government is taking it?
00:19:38.980You know, we included their voices in the documentary.
00:19:41.440We tried to make the documentary as accessible as possible.
00:19:47.640Well, I should think your co-producer himself is not as black and white as you are on this.
00:19:58.940And, you know, as I do with everything at Rebel News, I lead with my chin. I tell you exactly where I'm coming from. But we did include the voices of the people who would be OK with made under the first track that where death is imminent, people are suffering from a terminal illness and their suffering is, according to them, unbearable.
00:20:22.980We included, for example, Michelle Sterling. People may know her as the communications director of Friends of Science.
00:20:30.520And her story was so important because her brother was suffering from a terminal degenerative illness and he chose MAID.
00:20:38.680And the family was very involved. They were not shut out of it.
00:20:42.400There were interviews to make sure there were no evidence of coercion taking place.
00:20:48.380It was a very holistic approach. Now, whether you agree with that or not,
00:20:52.980that's up to the individual but even for michelle where her brother access made versus where it is
00:21:00.240now she says in the documentary i'm mortified i'm horrified that this is where it's gotten and so
00:21:05.520for you know religious pro-lifers like me we were always talking about the slippery slope
00:21:12.140we have to show where it started and now we're showing where it's ending
00:21:16.120yeah and i think that's one of the responses to this which is that the second category that we
00:21:22.640described as an inevitability from the first. And I think you look at a lot of the activists
00:21:26.880on this, you know, originally when this was coming up before the Supreme Court, I mean,
00:21:31.300going back to the Rodriguez case, but more recently, the charter case, they kept it so
00:21:36.460narrow. And then the second, the second they got that, it all of a sudden expanded. This is too
00:21:42.240restrictive. It's too difficult. We need to bring it more. And at a certain point, I mean, what's
00:21:46.600the next frontier? Because I actually don't believe we've hit rock bottom on this. Not even close.
00:21:51.140Not even close. So the next frontier, I think, is probably mature minors. We've seen some precedent for that in recent Canadian history where we have activists saying, yes, it is completely up to a 16 year old to make all sorts of irreversible medical decisions about their body with regard to gender transition.
00:22:11.720So that's already out there. We also know that during the pandemic, there was this push to say that kids can go behind their parents' backs and get vaccinated. And if you look at what's happening in some of the other extreme MAID regimes of the world, I hate even calling it MAID. I mean, it's euthanasia. It's government killing is what it really is. MAID is just a euphemism to hide exactly what this is.
00:22:35.160But if we look at some of these other jurisdictions, we have followed in their footsteps almost directly. And so in Holland and Belgium, they're already euthanizing mature miners, and they're also euthanizing people who are just done with living. There's nothing wrong with them. They're not depressed. They're not anything. They're just over it.
00:22:56.920And so they are euthanizing those people too. And what we've seen Belgium and Holland take
00:23:04.020two decades to get to, we've accelerated into it in five, six years.
00:23:08.820It's easy to look at Justin Trudeau and say all sorts of things about him and his government on
00:23:13.480this. But do you get a sense from your research of the why? Of what is it about the fabric of
00:23:20.220Canada that made us, you know, basically the leader in a category I don't think we want to
00:23:25.900be leaders in on this issue, even surpassing in some cases, certainly catching up to these
00:23:30.780European countries that always used to seem a world away when we did that comparison.
00:23:35.840Yeah, I think, and I'm speculating here, I don't really know what's going on in the mind of Justin
00:23:42.460Trudeau. I don't know if Justin Trudeau knows what's going on in the mind of Justin Trudeau
00:23:46.180most days. But I think we've got a couple of different things at play here. So we've got a
00:23:51.220socialized healthcare system where rationing is built in. And with rationing comes delays in care
00:23:56.960and with delays in care comes suffering. And so there has to be a solution to that suffering.
00:24:02.340And so a lot of people are opting to die rather than continue to wait and languish in the pain
00:24:11.360and suffering that our socialized medical system is offering them. So that's the thing that this
00:24:18.320tidies up some wait lines with access to care. But also we've got this extreme focus on equality
00:24:25.780at all costs. And what I mean by that is the reason that MAID is being expanded to encompass
00:24:33.080the mentally ill is this idea of recognizing the equality of suffering. So we've already said,
00:24:41.380Look, if you're suffering from a physical, biological illness that is irremediable, then you should have access to government-assisted suicide.
00:24:51.960And so the health minister has said, well, we recognize that your mental suffering is completely on par with this irremediable physical suffering.
00:25:02.100And so thanks to this radical equality, we have to consider both illnesses to be the same.
00:34:22.400So we've had a huge cycle of these sorts of national security crises.
00:34:29.020But I mean, the Winnipeg lab scandal to me is really quite concerning and speaks to many
00:34:37.900disconcerting things going on in Canada right now. And it's a bit of a shame, perhaps, that
00:34:43.060it's dropped so low on the attention span of the country. One of the things, not that I believe
00:34:49.840Canada should ever aspire to be like China, the old line of Justin Trudeau's admiring their
00:34:54.980basic dictatorship. But there is an incredible double standard there. And the way China deals
00:34:59.720with, as you note in your piece, even minor security infractions. I mean, remember, the
00:35:03.840whole two Michaels thing came about because China accused these men of spying. And then you contrast
00:35:09.640that with the way that Chinese espionage attempts in Canada are treated. And it is an afterthought.
00:35:16.540I mean, police are still investigating with no sign of whether they'll ever do anything resembling
00:35:20.860a charge. And again, I'm not saying we should strive to be like China, but man, if the roles
00:35:25.500were reversed, I would be praying nonstop for whatever Canadian was implicated in spying in a
00:35:33.240Chinese lab? Well, I don't know that it's aspiring to be like China, but surely any country that's
00:35:40.340concerned for its own well-being is going to want to crack down on spies, at least send a signal to
00:35:47.980the rest of the world that this isn't behavior that we condone. But what did happen in the
00:35:53.240example of these two scientists? Well, we found out in 2018 that there was something suspicious
00:36:01.920going on. It took us a year and a half to take away their security clearance. It took two and
00:36:11.020a half years to actually fire them. And then when we had what seems to me pretty clear proof that
00:36:17.940they were spies in the conventional sense, that they were taking Canadian secrets and giving them
00:36:23.500to another country, we didn't even bother to arrest them. And it appears that we just let
00:36:30.880them go back to China, where they seem to be living quite comfortable lives, working in their
00:36:36.000preferred occupations. The fact that they did leave during a COVID lockdown, when China had
00:36:43.660claimed its borders were closed, actually suggests that there must have been,
00:36:49.080there could have been some kind of deal between Canada and China to quietly let them
00:36:53.520depart. So, I mean, that's really concerning. Any country, you know, spying should be unacceptable
00:37:03.760to any country. You don't have to aspire to China to say that we should crack down on spies.
00:37:09.660We're just sort of failing at the very basic level of protecting our own national security.
00:37:15.160Well, and one thing we've seen in the past, and I'd say the government has become
00:37:20.080reluctantly harsher on china in the last couple of years probably post to michael's but but going
00:37:25.360back as early as you know basically the beginning of the trudeau government there so much was
00:37:30.720overlooked because the government just wanted to get this trade deal with china and china was you
00:37:38.080know not won over by this china exploited this as they do every other vulnerability in the world
00:37:42.560Absolutely. And I think you could argue that deference is still ongoing today. When you look at the foreign interference inquiry, is it deliberate or is it inadvertent?
00:38:00.840And just briefings, CSIS briefings seem to be just routinely ignored within the bureaucracy and the liberal government because they don't put very much interest in it.
00:38:15.180So whether that's deferring to Chinese interests or it's simply dropping the ball, it's unclear.
00:38:23.720But there is no real attention in Canada to take national security issues seriously.
00:38:29.680And that's what really comes through strongly in this Winnipeg lab scandal.
00:38:34.420I spoke to Sam Cooper, formerly of Global News, now with the Bureau about foreign interference last week.
00:38:40.380And one of the points he raised is that we just don't have the legal mechanisms available to do what we need to do to protect Canada from foreign interference.
00:38:48.920Now, that's looking at it in an election context, in a democracy context.
00:38:52.920But if we apply that same thesis here, do we have here a breakdown of the system or do we have a system that is just not built to deal with this?
00:39:03.460Well, I mean, the easiest way to answer that question is look what they do in the US and ask your counterfactual not what China would have done if they had discovered this breach at their highest security biohazard laboratory.
00:39:18.300but ask what would have happened in the U.S. if it had been discovered that a couple of Chinese
00:39:23.940researchers were sending secrets back to China. They would have been arrested. There would have
00:39:30.460been DOJ and FBI news releases. There would have been all sorts of attention paid. It would have
00:39:38.380properly been treated as a scandal. There's a long list of, you know, one of the background
00:39:45.480issues in this was whether the two scientists were participants in the what's called the
00:39:50.540Thousand Talents program in China, where Western researchers are paid quite handsomely to transfer
00:39:57.820knowledge they gain back to China by whatever means. It's a thinly veiled form of industrial
00:40:03.980espionage. The FBI has a very active campaign cracking down on anyone. And the former head of
00:40:14.120Harvard's chemistry department was recently, last year, was sentenced for participating in a talents
00:40:21.920program. So during the Trump era, they canceled the visas of a thousand Chinese researchers who
00:40:30.520had connections back to Chinese military institutions, which was again the case in
00:40:36.940the winnipeg scandal here um so look at uh our closest neighbor and they don't have any uh
00:40:45.020time for this kind of business uh they deal with it very harshly and i think that's the example we
00:40:53.020should should be following um there's no question that the americans wouldn't stand for this at all
00:40:59.100so moving forward here are you an optimist or a pessimist on this because i know you're doing
00:41:05.660your I think very important work in drawing attention to this but you know even from the
00:41:09.800conservatives we just don't hear this issue discussed anymore as you mentioned there have
00:41:13.880been a lot of sexier and fresher issues that have taken the oxygen out and you know do you think
00:41:19.180this is possible to fix basically that's I mean I like to think of myself as an optimist in general
00:41:26.340uh maybe my my work uh experience intrudes on that um uh well i guess you know the government
00:41:36.480itself claims that they've fixed all the uh security lapses that have been identified by
00:41:41.820this issue and that they're checking uh people's security clearance much more tightly so perhaps
00:41:47.820there's been a within the bureaucracy itself because that's one of the parts of this scandal
00:41:52.540is the bureaucracy basically let these two scientists, particularly Hsu, do whatever they
00:41:59.100want because they valued the research and the international collaboration much more highly than
00:42:04.260they did their role as a national security institution. So perhaps there's been some
00:42:09.860salutary effect on the bureaucracy. I find it hard to believe that there's been a real change
00:42:17.360of thinking at the federal liberal level. They're so wedded to this idea that China
00:42:23.400is going to let them in, so to speak, at some point, and they're going to
00:42:29.060reap all the benefits from all the deference for all this time. So at that broader level,
00:42:37.720I think it's going to take a change in government to really elevate national security
00:42:42.360it um matters in canada but but it is possible that at the micro level um security procedures
00:42:48.840have been toughened up at not only the winnipeg lab but perhaps other uh sensitive federal
00:42:54.200institutions around the country yeah and and i think people need to understand at the very least
00:43:00.120the institutional vulnerabilities that do exist to china i mean academia is a tremendous example
00:43:05.240of this the number of these so-called research partnerships that have uh put chinese researchers
00:43:11.400and again, state-affiliated, military-affiliated researchers on key projects here.
00:43:16.780And I noted that when the foreign registry was floated in politics,
00:43:21.580you had universities in Canada last week saying,
00:43:23.860well, we think this might jeopardize our research partnerships.
00:43:26.940You're like, exactly, that's the point of it.
00:43:30.340Yes, I mean, it's certainly not just government.
00:43:36.560I mean, Xu and Chang were also jointly appointed at the University of Manitoba.
00:43:44.560Interestingly enough, though, Manitoba University cut ties with them almost immediately after these revelations were made.
00:43:54.280And they were escorted off the lab property, whereas it, you know, as we discussed, it took two and a half years to actually fire them from the federal government.
00:44:03.340So, yeah, it's not just the federal government. It's all over Canada. I mean, it's all over all Western nations. There was a study out of Australia about the level of Chinese collaboration with universities.
00:44:21.340universities and Canada ranked third in total after the U.S. and the U.K. So we are certainly
00:44:28.220an object of interest from China at the university level. And yeah, as you say,
00:44:34.060there's all sorts of things, not just access to Ebola virus, but all sorts of sensitive
00:44:39.680and cutting edge technology that may be vulnerable. It is a fascinating read. It's a lengthy read,
00:44:47.280but I think a very important one in C2C Journal