Juno News - Olympic committee sorry for offending Christians – but are they really？

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

00:01:19.180 by true north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:28.900 The Andrew Lawton Show on True North on this Monday, July 29th, 2024, in case you've been in

00:01:35.020 a slumber and are just awakening to it right now. It could have been 2020. In fact, if you fell

00:01:40.260 asleep before 2020, around March, and just woke up now, you didn't miss anything. Nothing happened

00:01:47.220 in the last few years. The world has been entirely normal. Nothing to see here. Welcome back. We'll

00:01:51.760 get you back into normalcy. But if you have been with us every day, you will know things are in

00:01:55.220 pretty dire straits. We'll just be talking a little bit later in the show about exactly how

00:02:00.360 bad things are in cities across the country. One example of this is in downtown Edmonton where our

00:02:08.080 good friend Chris Sims chanced upon it while she was trying to just take a quick picture and found

00:02:13.400 herself having to navigate through what ended up being a dank and fetid swampy area around

00:02:18.560 the statue of Sir Winston Churchill that sits near City Hall. So that's going to be coming up

00:02:24.220 a little bit later on in the show.

00:02:26.020 Nothing like starting the show

00:02:27.660 with a talk of a dank feeded sewer.

00:02:30.220 What else do we have?

00:02:31.160 Our good friend, Dr. Roy Eapin,

00:02:32.780 will be back on the show

00:02:33.700 to talk about a new report

00:02:34.900 from the Aristotle Foundation

00:02:36.380 on why Canada has among

00:02:38.300 the most aggressive medical policies

00:02:40.300 in the Western world

00:02:41.740 when it comes to how to deal

00:02:43.360 with transgender identifying youth.

00:02:46.580 So that's an interesting report

00:02:47.880 and I suspect it will be

00:02:49.320 an interesting interview.

00:02:50.300 But I started talking last week

00:02:52.520 about how I wasn't going to talk

00:02:53.980 about the Olympics. I said I had a couple of you know quick things to say about it and then that

00:02:57.620 was that. Little did I know that this would end up taking such a huge life form over the course

00:03:04.300 of the weekend. The Olympic opening ceremonies which was otherwise going to be quite beautiful

00:03:09.320 and nice instead of just a parade around the track like they normally would with every country

00:03:14.160 dressed up in its national garb and all the athletes happy to be there. They took advantage

00:03:19.300 of the natural geography of France and they took these each country had its own boat and they just

00:03:24.880 paraded all the I don't know if it's a parade with their boats but uh each country paraded its

00:03:29.460 boats down the Seine and you had lots of fun to be had there but of course it's Paris and it's

00:03:35.980 the Olympics and it's 2024 so it would have just been too simple to keep it like that instead what

00:03:41.520 happened was they decided to go for broke and get really really arty with their opening ceremonies

00:03:47.960 Now, we're not going to play any video clips of this because the International Olympic Committee has among the most aggressive copyright protections in the world, which means that if I play like five seconds of the Olympic opening ceremonies, our whole YouTube will be vaporized, just like when I accidentally interviewed the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell.

00:04:05.680 In fact, I've said Mike Lindell's name, so we might get vaporized for that.

00:04:09.440 But we do, excuse me.

00:04:11.940 See, that's what YouTube does.

00:04:13.300 You say Mike Lindell's name and you just start choking.

00:04:15.540 That's how they get you.

00:04:16.540 But we do have some still images I can show you here.

00:04:21.000 Ah, yes, there's one.

00:04:22.500 That is a tableau.

00:04:24.500 Let's do the before and after.

00:04:26.260 Do Leonardo da Vinci's version there, Sean.

00:04:31.200 Yeah.

00:04:31.640 that is one of the most iconic images of christianity captured by leonardo da vinci

00:04:38.900 the renaissance painter from italy this is to go back to the paris 2024 version uh yes that is

00:04:45.500 a fat acceptance activist named dj barbara butch who is standing in for jesus the apostles

00:04:55.660 are being played by drag queens. 1.00

00:04:59.200 I don't know which one is supposed to be Peter.

00:05:02.040 I don't know which one.

00:05:03.280 I just don't know which one is supposed to be which.

00:05:05.520 There seems to be a child there inexplicably.

00:05:09.180 And then you have the man with a beard in blue

00:05:13.840 who is supposed to be on the menu.

00:05:17.340 He has dinner in some way.

00:05:20.600 Yeah, that wasn't actually Celine Dion's comeback performance,

00:05:23.680 believe it or not.

00:05:24.140 That came a bit later.

00:05:25.420 The Olympic Committee first said, no, no, no, it's not.

00:05:28.140 He was the Greek god Dionysus.

00:05:30.840 I think that's how you say it.

00:05:33.180 They said, no, no, no, the interpretation of the Greek god Dionysus

00:05:36.500 makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.

00:05:40.740 So when you look at this, you're supposed to scream passivism.

00:05:45.440 That's the message you're supposed to get, passivism.

00:05:47.900 Well, this, of course, made huge, huge waves all around the world.

00:05:52.020 the Catholic Bishops' Conference was among those who condemned it, found it to be a horrendous and

00:05:57.140 blasphemous display. Christians around the world were mortified by this. What was supposed to be a

00:06:03.400 unifying display ended up becoming something that really just was a profound mockery of what it is

00:06:11.620 that they were all about. And that was where I found to be, as a Christian, I am also a free

00:06:18.440 speech activists. So I believe they have the right to do it. But I also believe we can talk about the

00:06:22.780 cultural implications of this and why this would never happen with another religious group. Now,

00:06:28.740 to be clear, I'm not suggesting the Olympics should be used as a platform to mock different

00:06:34.000 religions or mock different people of faith. I will say that the Olympic Committee finally

00:06:39.160 apologized for this, finally apologized. This was one of the organizers of the Olympics here.

00:06:45.020 Clearly, there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group.

00:06:55.020 On the contrary, I think that Imaginelli really tried to really intend to celebrate community

00:07:01.020 tolerance.

00:07:02.020 That was his word yesterday.

00:07:04.020 And looking at the result of the polls that we shared, we believe that this ambition was

00:07:10.220 achieved if people have taken any offense we are of course really really sorry

00:07:17.180 ma volonté n'est pas d'être subversif ni de me moquer ni de choquer ma volonté est

00:07:22.460 simplement de de dire que nous sommes ce grand nous et que hier soir c'était des

00:07:30.340 idées républicaines c'était des idées d'inclusion c'était les idées de bienveillance

00:07:37.820 of generosity, of solidarity, in short, of what I believe we need.

00:07:46.820 In France, we have the right to love as we want, with whom we want.

00:07:50.820 In France, we have the right to believe or not.

00:07:53.820 In France, we have a lot of rights.

00:07:56.820 And it was the idea to make these values transparent.

00:08:02.820 So that gentleman there, Thomas Jolly, is a French actor and he was the artistic director

00:08:11.060 of the performance, but I love the positive spin on it. No, yeah, Sean is saying I should

00:08:15.220 apologize to the podcast listeners who don't speak French. There were subtitles there,

00:08:19.060 but I'll paraphrase it. He was saying that, oh, no, no, no, it was all about inclusivity

00:08:24.100 and solidarity. And these were the values. These were great values. So she's saying,

00:08:28.720 the first woman there, Anna Deschamps, that, oh, yes, you know, this didn't really miss the mark.

00:08:34.360 He's saying, no, this was fine. What's your problem? This was all about inclusivity. It

00:08:38.760 was celebrating a positive value. Well, the IOC has now come out, and they've kind of lined up

00:08:43.900 with Medel Deschamps' position on this. They say, the IOC has taken note of and welcomes the

00:08:50.900 clarification given by the Paris 2024 Olympic Organizing Committee regarding the opening

00:08:57.300 ceremony. In the daily press briefing, the organizing committee said that there was never

00:09:00.880 any intention to show disrespect towards any religious group or belief. They reiterated that

00:09:05.900 their intention with the opening ceremony was always to celebrate community intolerance. The

00:09:10.580 organizing committee also said that if anyone was offended by certain scenes, this was completely

00:09:15.500 unintentional and they were sorry. Now, this is the old we're sorry you were offended by it thing.

00:09:23.320 it's no we're not sorry we did it we're not sorry we said it we're sorry you felt that way it's like 0.93

00:09:28.500 the real passive aggressive apology you do that basically means you're being a big old wimp and 0.91

00:09:33.680 look i i would say that some people should just let it roll off their shoulders i i think as a

00:09:38.240 christian i can say this was in poor taste and it was callous and i can point out the cultural 0.75

00:09:42.320 significance of it but it didn't hurt me it didn't destroy me i'm not losing sleep over it

00:09:48.000 it just revealed what i've always known and have talked about for years which is how important it

00:09:52.580 is to start turning culture around and start telling your stories in a positive light.

00:09:57.940 Because let's talk about the history of France here.

00:10:00.480 It wasn't that long ago that Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper which is a very far left newspaper,

00:10:06.280 says vile things about all sorts of people and all sorts of religions had most of its

00:10:11.320 team killed in cold blood by an Islamic terror attack because of all of their depictions

00:10:17.400 of Jews, of Christians, of Muslims, of politicians. It was one particular religious group that had

00:10:23.500 people motivated to commit violence against them. And in the case of Charlie Hebdo, it was Muslims. 0.79

00:10:29.440 Now, I do not extrapolate from that that Muslims are inherently violent, but I will say that it 1.00

00:10:33.900 proved safe for them to criticize other groups, and it did not prove safe for them to depict

00:10:39.340 in offensive ways that one particular group. And the takeaway from that is, again, not to talk

00:10:45.720 about any group. It's just to talk about why making fun of Christians is easy. You know that 0.92

00:10:51.940 you will ultimately find a lot of support from the late night comedy shows. You're not going to get

00:10:56.480 many politicians condemning you. You're certainly not going to get your offices shot up and killed. 0.76

00:11:01.500 It's the epitome of punching down. You're talking to people who are already mocked and maligned by

00:11:07.120 much of the culture. Being a Christian is an incredibly unpopular thing in 2024, even in a

00:11:12.920 country such as France, which is so traditionally Catholic as some of those beautiful churches in

00:11:17.840 the world. Its art was so beautiful at capturing religion throughout the ages, but it's a country

00:11:24.100 that has no interest in religion in any form. And obviously France takes its commitment to

00:11:30.560 secularism serious, and they apply that somewhat evenly across the board, but it was punching down.

00:11:36.620 Now, I'm not saying that there should have been some Olympic opening ceremony mockery of Islam

00:11:41.140 or some Olympic opening ceremony mockery of Judaism or Buddhism or Shintoism or Taoism.

00:11:47.400 No, I'm saying that why can we not leave people of faith alone? 0.99

00:11:50.600 Why is that not something that they felt able to do in that few moments?

00:11:55.420 And you could even see it in Thomas Jolie's comments when he's defending this.

00:11:58.620 And he says, no, no, no, we were celebrating Republican values and inclusivity.

00:12:02.900 I believe that he genuinely is of the mind that attacking Christianity is inclusive, 1.00

00:12:08.740 that Christians are the problem and they're the ones that need to be mocked in a display that 1.00

00:12:13.260 brings together people from all around the world, from Muslim countries, from countries with majority 0.98

00:12:17.840 Christian populations, from the Jewish state of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world.

00:12:23.140 And it's supposed to bring all of those people together in a unifying display. And that's always

00:12:27.880 been how the Olympics as a display and as a national or international experiment has been

00:12:33.060 sold. It's a way to put aside differences and grievances and conflict because sport itself

00:12:38.900 can be unifying. Now, I'm not a sporting person. I try to be a good sport, but I don't do the whole

00:12:43.900 sports thing. So I'm completely lost. Like my wife and I last night were just flipping through

00:12:49.540 the channels and we started watching Olympic surfing. And I didn't even know Olympics had

00:12:53.940 surfing until I read a news story this week about how the surfing challenges are taking place like

00:12:58.780 4,000 kilometers from Paris. They're in Tahiti and I was watching and I had no idea what was

00:13:03.180 happening. I could appreciate it and enjoy it and respect it. I just saw guys like sitting out in

00:13:07.940 the water for 25 minutes doing nothing and then they look out and I see nothing there but they

00:13:13.280 see something and they start swimming towards it and then ta-da there's a wave. So that to me was

00:13:18.320 exciting. That to me was fun to watch. Why do I need to see drag queens pretending to be the 1.00

00:13:24.500 apostles of Jesus Christ and a fat acceptance activist pretend to be Jesus Christ to appreciate

00:13:30.420 the guy surfing in Tahiti or the woman doing her flips and whatever on the uneven bars or the guy 0.77

00:13:37.600 the woman this morning the Canadian who got a gold medal in judo why do I need to see drag queens in 1.00

00:13:42.900 the last supper to appreciate these feats of human accomplishment and achievement and that's the

00:13:48.840 point of this it is gratuitous it is offensive and even if Christians can perhaps develop a 0.96

00:13:54.220 thicker skin about this, as I think they've had to in the past. That is not to say that there is 0.99

00:13:59.420 not a bigger picture that needs to be explained here, which is how we have a culture that sees

00:14:03.120 no problem with going after people of faith, no problem with going after Christians. And it 1.00

00:14:07.560 explains why some of the problems in society have gotten to where they have been. And that's

00:14:13.180 effectively the attitude on this. And I think that more people need to stand up against this. And this

00:14:18.780 is why I don't want to pit different groups against each other and say, oh, they should have

00:14:22.300 attacked this group or that group? No. I think in general, one of the things we saw, and we've seen

00:14:26.940 this in Canadian politics, is that people of faith oftentimes have more in common with each other,

00:14:31.960 despite their differences, than they do with a society that is increasingly hostile to them.

00:14:37.880 And that, to me, was quite a fascinating development. And it was why I think Muslims 1.00

00:14:42.900 and Jews and Christians should have all been lockstep together in opposing the lockdowns of

00:14:47.600 houses of worship during COVID. Because let's face it, the government declaring worship non-essential

00:14:53.580 was far more of a war on religion itself than it was a war on any individual religion. But when you

00:15:00.900 look down culturally, you see that governments are only interested in going after one particular

00:15:05.400 group. It's always the Catholics and Christians who are pro-life, Catholics and non-Catholic 0.78

00:15:11.760 Christians that are pro-life, who are subjected to the maligning from Justin Trudeau when he goes

00:15:17.420 on and brings up abortion. It's always the churches that we're seeing lockdowns, not other

00:15:21.880 houses of worship as well. And if you start denigrating people of faith, you're going to

00:15:26.180 very quickly find a race to the bottom from which society will not rebound in any good way. And I

00:15:33.380 think what's happening in Paris is just a reflection of how confident the people who hate

00:15:39.400 those of faith, the people who hate those who believe in God, how confident they are

00:15:44.240 that they occupy this, you know, culturally hegemonic position, this position of dominance

00:15:50.220 in society, that they feel they can do that with impunity and generally will be right. And the

00:15:55.800 Olympic apology, I actually don't buy as being all that genuine because they're not saying,

00:15:59.920 we're sorry, we missed the mark. They're saying, we're sorry if anyone was bothered by it. But

00:16:04.420 yeah, you're still defending it. You're still defending why you think this was some bizarrely

00:16:10.360 inclusive display. So I say that's all I'll have to say on the Olympics. That's what I said last

00:16:16.200 time, and then this came up. So I won't make a promise that I can't necessarily keep on this,

00:16:22.500 but I do want to move to another topic here. This was one. The Aristotle Foundation, we've had their

00:16:28.800 head, Mark Mielke, on the show a couple of times. They produced an interesting report today that

00:16:34.040 actually looked at Canada's place in the world on a very key issue, one that's been getting a lot

00:16:39.620 of coverage around the world, not just in here, this country, but in the UK, in many Western

00:16:44.420 European nations, in the United States, to some extent. And it's the way that countries choose

00:16:49.180 to deal with transgender children, transgender minors. And this is something so key. You may

00:16:55.680 recall there was not that long ago, a report by CBC's French language arm, which was quite good,

00:17:00.760 where they sent someone in undercover to a clinic that offered gender affirming care. 0.99

00:17:06.740 and they found that gender-affirming care,

00:17:09.180 hormone treatments were being offered

00:17:10.800 almost instantly to minors,

00:17:15.400 irreversible procedures being offered to minors

00:17:17.720 and this was something that was happening.

00:17:19.760 And again, CBC, I have a lot of criticisms for them.

00:17:22.620 They did real journalism here and exposed this.

00:17:24.980 It was something that the Quebec government came out

00:17:26.880 and I think they've promised to look into it

00:17:29.180 or make some changes or whatnot.

00:17:31.160 But the reason I bring this up

00:17:32.820 is because this new report has found

00:17:34.700 that Canada is actually the most liberal in the world

00:17:38.880 when it comes to the way it deals with this.

00:17:40.800 The report compares Canada against the United States,

00:17:44.080 against Europe and the United Kingdom

00:17:46.020 and finds that Canada is one of the countries,

00:17:50.740 in fact, alongside the United States

00:17:52.260 has the most permissive approach to this

00:17:54.100 when it comes to putting children,

00:17:56.560 putting minors through the gamut

00:17:58.940 of irreversible medical procedures,

00:18:01.700 hormone treatments and whatnot.

00:18:02.780 up. And I think this is an incredibly important study. And it's one that will, I believe, become

00:18:08.220 front and center in the debate and even the UK for how cautious it's been as a country and how

00:18:13.480 cautious the conservative government was there on a number of issues. Even the UK conservatives

00:18:18.720 under Rishi Sunak looked at this issue and said, okay, we have to do something. And they had a

00:18:23.420 major report there called the Cass Review, which looked at the so-called gender affirming care

00:18:29.140 situation. We've seen that review cited by Danielle Smith in Alberta, which has, I think,

00:18:35.360 as far as Canadian jurisdictions gone, been probably the most forceful in wanting to protect

00:18:41.320 children away from these sorts of, I don't even want to call them treatments, because a lot of

00:18:45.980 these things are quite, I mean, they're not treatments. They're not medical care at all.

00:18:51.300 And I remember years ago, I interviewed James Cantor, who's a gay man himself, a professor,

00:18:56.540 I believe at the University of Toronto, or he was at the time. And he said that when you look at the

00:19:00.800 data, most youth who identify, most minors who identify with a different gender than their

00:19:06.580 biological sex, especially in the case of boys, will outgrow it. It will literally be a phase

00:19:13.180 and they'll end up being gay men. And he said there's a profound risk in treating these people 0.97

00:19:17.720 as though they need to be made into a woman, made into a girl. And this is what we have, 0.89

00:19:24.740 an increasing number of activists pushing for. And it is about what is in the best interest of

00:19:29.880 children. It's not about religion. It's not about morality. This is about science and it's about

00:19:34.160 medicine. And when you look at how Canada stacks up against other countries, that's where I thought

00:19:41.460 this was an important topic to go into. And this is where, I mean, just to bring it into another

00:19:45.860 issue for a moment, we're seeing Canada do this with assisted dying as well. Canada has quickly

00:19:50.480 outpaced a lot of European jurisdictions in terms of permissibility, in terms of the expansion of

00:19:56.180 euthanasia. We have Canada right now looking at expanding this to people with mental illnesses as 0.68

00:20:01.820 well, an issue that is near and dear to my heart as someone who's dealt with mental illness and

00:20:06.020 someone who was dealing for a time in my life with the desire to end my life. And the fact that

00:20:12.180 government could have been assisting me in that is mortifying as it would be to those around me.

00:20:18.700 So why is Canada putting itself on the radar in all of these wrong ways?

00:20:26.540 So let's talk about this in the context of this report from the Aristotle Foundation.

00:20:30.940 One of the authors is Dr. Roy Eepin, who's an endocrinologist at a hospital in Montreal

00:20:35.620 and also a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation.

00:20:38.940 And I've known him for many, many years.

00:20:40.460 He's a great guy.

00:20:41.380 We're glad to have him back on the show.

00:20:43.120 Dr. Roy, good to talk to you.

00:20:44.400 Thanks for coming on today.

00:20:46.000 Hi.

00:20:46.280 so let me just ask you first off before we get into the report as a physician is your position

00:20:54.000 on this fairly common among doctors because i i often we hear the activists on this and we know

00:21:00.320 what the activists want but but is that reflective of where the medical community is or are they more

00:21:04.920 on your side here that this is not something we should be rushing minors into it's it's hard to

00:21:10.100 say um a couple last year i went to um the endocrine society which is a meeting of the american

00:21:20.020 endocrinologist group um six thousand endocrinologists and i i went with uh another

00:21:25.940 one of the places i'm a senior fellow with do no harm and we just talked to endocrinologists

00:21:32.820 and we we found that a lot of them uh did agree with what i was saying but a lot of them were

00:21:38.260 afraid to say it out loud so what is the year's report has found as far as the reality in canada

00:21:45.860 compared to elsewhere so the report basically has found that we are uh more permissive about

00:21:55.860 these kind of procedures than pretty much anywhere else um both the u.s and canada but particularly

00:22:03.140 canada um in the u.s many you know 22 of the states have uh um actually uh legislated on on

00:22:12.740 this while in canada we we we limit uh things like the surgeries are pretty limited everywhere

00:22:21.540 um though i sometimes think people get around these by you know some kind of trickery um but

00:22:28.340 But things like puberty blockers, only two provinces have some restrictions on when you can give them, which are Alberta and Nova Scotia.

00:22:43.400 And cross-sex hormones, three provinces have some limitations.

00:22:48.300 Well, in many European countries, most notably the United Kingdom, which has a system of health care very similar to our own, puberty blockers are basically banned except in research purposes.

00:23:04.120 And in fact, that temporary ban, which was put in by the Tory government, which was defeated recently and replaced by a Labour government, is being continued by the Labour government, also in Scotland, also in Finland and Sweden.

00:23:21.340 and today the High Court ruled on a complaint saying that this was wrong and the law was reviewed

00:23:36.400 and the High Court ruled in favor of the government saying that the puberty ban was correct legislation

00:23:45.100 And the evidence for that is the Cass review, which was a four-year review of the literature and a series of systematic reviews by Dr. Cass, who was the former head of the Royal College of Pediatricians.

00:24:03.440 And I think that's pretty much a game changer in many ways.

00:24:08.120 It found very little evidence for using the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

00:24:19.060 And actually, it particularly said we should probably ban the puberty blockers, and we have, in the United Kingdom at least.

00:24:27.280 Looking at Europe, though, Europe always has had this reputation of being this bastion of social progressivism.

00:24:34.140 And I think in a lot of issues, certainly in Scandinavia, it is that way.

00:24:37.680 So why are they so much more cautious than you'd expect on these issues?

00:24:44.820 Because I think they're looking at the science.

00:24:47.240 Many of these countries actually did their own systematic reviews.

00:24:50.660 A systematic review is basically looking at the literature on the subject and seeing if there is evidence to go ahead with these kind of things.

00:24:57.840 Because if you're going to treat someone, you have to show that there must be overwhelming benefit when there, in this case, can be terrible harm.

00:25:07.680 And I think from that, they've all become quite a lot more cautious.

00:25:14.840 This is true in Sweden. This is true in Finland.

00:25:18.200 The Danes, to some extent, even the medical associations in places like Germany have said that, you know, caution is very much warranted.

00:25:29.840 Because we're doing things that probably can't be reversed.

00:25:35.160 If you give a puberty blocker, so what a puberty blocker is, is basically stops the process of puberty from happening until it's stopped.

00:25:47.520 And what that can do is, in some cases, it will lead to infertility.

00:25:53.040 It can lead to problems with bone density.

00:25:55.760 You know, one of the members of WPATH, the organization that pretends to be a scientific organization but is really an activist organization, their president actually said that, you know, giving a boy a puberty blocker to under stage two will probably lead to never having an orgasm in their lives.

00:26:19.160 these are fundamental things to human nature and you know that we can so easily do away with them

00:26:30.600 is somewhat troubling. I want to talk about those and get your medical input on this Roy because

00:26:37.540 there are a lot of these activists and including physicians I'll say it's not just you know

00:26:41.380 screaming activists on the street but people with many letters behind their name have said that

00:26:45.400 these are not in fact irreversible, that the effects of these things can be reversed later

00:26:50.260 on. What's the position you take on that? You know, some of the things can be reversed,

00:26:56.220 but puberty is an extremely complex process with many, many reactions that we were not even sure

00:27:04.480 what all the reactions are going on. And, you know, even the people who did the original studies,

00:27:14.180 the Dutch group, said that they were quite concerned about mental development in these

00:27:19.720 children and said they were going to do a study about it, but they never did.

00:27:23.860 Dr. Baxendale, a professor at the University College London, tried to publish a paper saying

00:27:30.700 that she had concerns about this. And, you know, she was literally blocked from publishing the

00:27:36.200 paper. She finally did. But, you know, I think we need to do a lot more studies before we can say

00:27:42.420 that these are safe and reversible.

00:27:46.700 I think the opposite is probably the case.

00:27:49.720 And the stakes are obviously quite high

00:27:51.800 if we get it wrong.

00:27:53.080 We're talking about children here.

00:27:54.880 And when you talked about the systematic reviews

00:27:57.500 that have been done elsewhere,

00:27:58.660 the inference I take from that

00:27:59.840 is that Canada has not done any such thing.

00:28:01.720 Is there any effort to?

00:28:04.700 No.

00:28:06.020 You know, the person who wrote our guide

00:28:12.340 You see, the problem is this organization WPATH, which has had quite a lot written about it recently, because a lot of what they've said is they have done their own systematic reviews, and they've kind of hidden the systematic reviews because they also have found no evidence.

00:28:32.760 And many other countries have done systematically, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, the United States, and none of them have found good evidence.

00:28:43.980 So shouldn't we use the evidence that the others have found?

00:28:47.720 Because we're not going to find, if we do our own, and there have been some done at McMaster, which haven't been released as published as of yet.

00:28:57.020 But presumably a Danish teen is not going to present differently from a Canadian teen.

00:29:02.760 in this context. No. Interesting. Well, I think you've either fallen asleep or your image has

00:29:11.420 frozen at the worst possible time, Roy. So we'll let you go there as we are at a time anyway, but

00:29:15.960 people can read this report for themselves. And I certainly hope they do over at the Aristotle

00:29:21.480 Foundation. It's a new study, Teenagers, Children, and Gender Transition Policy, a comparison of

00:29:26.700 transgender medical policy for minors in Canada, the United States, and Europe. One of the authors,

00:29:31.440 Dr. Roy Eapin. Always good to talk to you. And I thank you so much for your time and insight here.

00:29:36.420 That is an interesting topic. And again, I always defer to the people on this that are interested

00:29:43.440 in protecting children. And it's amazing when you see how many activists have really co-opted

00:29:49.180 a lot of these spaces. And again, Roy was saying there, made people that otherwise are on the side

00:29:54.880 of science just fearful of speaking out. And you look at Ken Zucker, who's one of the cautionary

00:29:59.720 tales here. He was with, I believe, Cam H. And he ran a clinic that treated youth that were

00:30:04.220 identifying with gender dysphoria. And he believed, yes, we should at some points facilitate

00:30:09.720 them, but let's use that as a last resort. Let's use that as a last resort. And that was the

00:30:16.880 interesting thing about it is that he was the most progressive minded person in that role. He wasn't

00:30:22.680 some you know dirty stinking scary transphobe that was saying okay if we don't actually uh you 1.00

00:30:29.800 know help them then we'll get we'll get our way no he was saying let's actually help them extra 0.99

00:30:35.240 let's make sure that what we're doing is in their best interest and then he gets maligned as a

00:30:39.880 transphobe by activists that have not done with what he has done for patients that have not done

00:30:45.800 what he has done ends up losing the funding for his clinic gets shut down and he becomes

00:30:49.640 a pariah and i think james canter who i mentioned a few moments ago has also similarly been in a

00:30:55.880 situation where he's faced like calls for his cancellation and people calling for his grants

00:31:00.120 to be taken away because he takes the view that okay a lot of these people are not actually

00:31:03.960 transgender so let's not treat them like they are and do something that we can't take back 1.00

00:31:08.680 that sounds like an entirely reasonable point and to be fair we are not talking here about adults

00:31:14.360 we're not talking about making any legal restrictions on one's ability to live their

00:31:18.520 own life we are talking about making sure that children are getting adequate care they need and

00:31:24.600 this is why what danielle smith proposed in alberta scott moen saskatchewan blaine higgs in new

00:31:30.360 brunswick what people in some other provinces have as well have become such tremendously popular

00:31:34.840 policies because a lot of people don't want to force kids into irreversible situations under

00:31:40.680 the offices of science which fundamentally just does not exist we are going to turn from this

00:31:47.480 issue to one that's a little bit less hot button here which is what's happening in canadian cities

00:31:51.720 so last week a conservative leader pierre polyev was in london ontario i went to that press conference

00:31:57.160 and he was standing in a park as he talked about rising drug and crime issues and much as it was

00:32:03.160 very specific to london in some ways people watching that press conference from around the

00:32:07.720 world well around the country certainly but even around the world to some extent we're saying yep

00:32:12.280 i see that in vancouver i see it in regina i see it in winnipeg i see it in halifax i see it in

00:32:17.000 in this, I see it in that, because this is just now a fact of life. This is now the world we live

00:32:22.360 in. And our good friend, Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, she learned this

00:32:27.120 the hard way. She took a stroll through Edmonton. She was trying to take a picture, a stock photo

00:32:33.260 of Edmonton City Hall. And I don't know Edmonton too, too well. I usually, when I'm out West,

00:32:38.240 I'm more in Calgary, but I've been to Edmonton. I know it a little bit. There's a statue of Sir

00:32:42.460 Winston Churchill one of many across the country that she was near and she took this picture and

00:32:48.400 the garbage around it might not surprise you that liquid that is on the front of it she didn't think

00:32:54.960 that was water she didn't think it was someone who had just dumped out the extra coffee she didn't

00:33:00.860 think it was anything of the sort no it smelled a lot like urine so this was what was one of the

00:33:07.020 most or should have been one of the most preserved spots in the city you'd think after all if City

00:33:11.900 hall can't use its tax dollars to keep its own front yard clean or maybe it's a backyard how on 0.55

00:33:17.300 earth can they do that in any other city so this is why i think it's important to have these

00:33:22.700 conversations chris managed to make it out hopefully she was able to get and have a shower

00:33:26.660 after that uh she joins us once again canadian taxpayers federation alberta director chris how'd

00:33:32.460 you manage yeah it was actually pretty depressing because uh we had just finished this kind of quick

00:33:38.060 debt clock tour of most places in Alberta. We hit a few spots. We hit Lethbridge, Calgary,

00:33:43.800 Red Deer, and Edmonton. Had huge turnout, basically sounding the alarm over Prime

00:33:48.240 Minister Justin Trudeau's doubling of the federal debt later on this year and his addiction to money

00:33:53.080 printing. And so trying to do all things at once, I wanted an updated photo just of Edmonton City

00:33:59.000 Hall because we often will put out a report about property taxes, for example. So I went down there

00:34:04.440 and i was pretty shocked andrew um it actually not to be gross i'm just going to be honest

00:34:11.080 um there's a big planter there that's right next to city hall if you're facing the fountains

00:34:16.360 looking at city hall with like kind of the big pyramid thing over to your right is this big

00:34:20.840 planter that's full of trees and wood chips um that smelled like feces like i'm sorry to be 0.98

00:34:27.960 gross but it did and i was like wow that's exceptionally gross and then so i walked

00:34:32.440 around a little bit just trying to get my bearings because I'd never been right out in front of City

00:34:36.520 Hall before and I went and saw the statue of Sir Winston Churchill because I'm a big fan and so

00:34:41.160 wanted to go look and yeah there was garbage all around it and it smelled really strongly of urine

00:34:46.760 it actually reminded me a lot of the state of the Byward Market in downtown Ottawa which as you know

00:34:53.640 is like a tennis balls hit away from Parliament Hill and yet there's garbage everywhere there's

00:34:59.320 human excrement on the sidewalk. It's disgusting. And I say this as someone who loved living in 0.99

00:35:04.680 Ottawa for the most part and was a taxpayer there in Ottawa. And so if I were a taxpayer in the city

00:35:10.760 of Edmonton, I would have been pretty appalled. Now, I live here in Lethbridge. Nothing is perfect,

00:35:17.800 but it's a darn sight better than downtown Edmonton was. Again, they have increased property

00:35:23.720 taxes there. I think it's by more than 8% now. And get this, Andrew, there's actually some survey

00:35:30.480 that the city has put out, basically pushing for the mayor to get a pay increase. The mayor of

00:35:38.060 Edmonton is already paid more than $200,000 per year. He makes more than Premier Daniel Smith,

00:35:44.600 Andrew. So if I don't know, man, I'd be livid if I were a rate payer there.

00:35:50.020 Yeah, and that's, I guess, the point that I've raised.

00:35:53.300 I think you and I raised it actually not that long ago

00:35:55.120 when we were talking about MPs getting a hike in their pay.

00:35:58.020 It's like, okay, sure, what have you done for us?

00:36:01.660 What have you done to earn it?

00:36:03.100 What have you done to earn the increase?

00:36:04.420 And the thing with Edmonton is that

00:36:06.000 if they were doing such a great job,

00:36:08.040 this wouldn't be an issue.

00:36:08.960 If they were doing such a great job,

00:36:10.260 parks would be cleaned up.

00:36:11.260 You wouldn't have tent cities and encampments,

00:36:12.940 but they're not doing that.

00:36:14.120 So yeah, what's their argument

00:36:15.340 for why they deserve more money?

00:36:16.940 There isn't an argument.

00:36:17.920 The initial preamble basically says something fluffy like, oh, the mayor is an internationally known person and he has to go through all sorts of meetings and sit on all sorts of boards and blah, blah, blah.

00:36:29.620 Basically saying the role of the mayor, not him personally, the role of the mayor is super duper important for Edmonton.

00:36:36.240 And so you should be paying a big salary.

00:36:38.240 What I found fascinating is the opening question on this survey, which I encourage everybody in Edmonton to partake in, is basically like how much more should they be paid?

00:36:47.920 Not should they be paid less. The options are like, you know, $230,000, $260,000. And it just

00:36:54.460 goes up from there. Even more than $300,000 is actually an answer you can click on that survey,

00:37:00.160 which is absurd for them to be pushing for. Another element of this, Andrew, and again,

00:37:05.600 I was trying to be fair because over where it smelled like excrement near the planter,

00:37:11.140 I was wondering, like, is there a problem with the sewer just today? Are they trying to fix

00:37:16.240 something maybe my heart really went out to the folks though because there is actually some sort

00:37:21.040 of street food festival getting set up that day this was on sunday morning and there's tents and

00:37:26.880 tents and rows of actual business people who are getting ready to like you know sell their specialty

00:37:33.600 foods sell their shawarma shell sell their ribs a bit of art like they were trying to have a festival

00:37:39.360 getting rolling there on Sunday morning and the air was gross. And so again, if Edmonton City Hall

00:37:47.060 thinks they deserve a raise, they better bloody well prove it. I just did a deep dive into their

00:37:52.640 spending actually over the last 15 to 20 years or so. And what was really remarkable is that

00:37:59.540 their full-time equivalent, their full-time jobs that they've added to Edmonton police

00:38:04.080 has generally sort of kind of kept up

00:38:06.900 with the rate of population growth, if you squint.

00:38:09.900 But the increase in their communication staff

00:38:12.840 was something like 300% increase.

00:38:18.080 So the comms people, the narrative whittlers,

00:38:20.640 all of those folks, they're seeing big pay increases

00:38:24.340 and they're seeing a lot more bodies on their team.

00:38:27.140 But the state of the city downtown,

00:38:29.940 there's litter on the streets,

00:38:31.300 the streets aren't in great repair,

00:38:32.660 and the smell was atrocious.

00:38:34.660 If I, again, were a business owner

00:38:36.080 or a property taxpayer in Edmonton,

00:38:38.320 I'd be pretty fit to be tied.

00:38:40.640 Yeah, and I'm surprised

00:38:42.500 you didn't have people in that shot,

00:38:44.280 just given how a lot of these areas have become.

00:38:46.660 And look, we can all point to our own city

00:38:48.900 and say it's happening here, it's happening here.

00:38:50.600 And in which part of me says,

00:38:51.740 okay, we can't entirely put the blame

00:38:53.920 just on municipal governments

00:38:55.180 because there's something bigger than that.

00:38:57.000 But I do think that governments are right now

00:38:59.260 enjoying that a little bit too much.

00:39:01.320 that municipalities can say it's happening everywhere.

00:39:04.240 The feds can say, oh, it's a municipal problem.

00:39:06.400 Provinces can say, oh, yes, well,

00:39:08.280 the municipalities have to deal with it

00:39:09.780 and the fed are like,

00:39:10.280 everyone wants to blame another level for this, it seems.

00:39:13.000 Yeah, it's really easy to pass the buck,

00:39:15.000 to turn around and say, oh, well, you know,

00:39:16.620 it's not my problem, it's the province's problem

00:39:18.780 or, oh, it's not my problem, it's Ottawa's problem.

00:39:21.960 Now, we have some sympathy for things like that.

00:39:24.120 Like, for example, you know,

00:39:25.360 causing inflation by printing $300 billion out of thin air.

00:39:29.600 Yeah, that's a big problem.

00:39:31.320 uh, imposing a federal carbon tax on everybody in Alberta. Also a big problem, doubling the debt.

00:39:36.840 We get you, but you're literally on the front lawn of Edmonton city hall in the middle of what is

00:39:43.480 apparently supposed to be a big food festival. And it stinks like human sewage. There's garbage 0.98

00:39:51.960 everywhere in front of your city hall while you're turning around and asking for a pay raise

00:39:58.680 while you're increasing property taxes so andrew i find the big city mayors and big city councils

00:40:05.880 almost all of them are now getting way out of their lane they're getting too big for their

00:40:10.680 britches they think that it's their job to solve global issues instead of doing three main things 0.98

00:40:17.720 that taxpayers want them to do keep the streets safe keep them clean and keep them in good repair

00:40:24.120 that's usually the end of the list but they're so full of these you know ideas of grandeur for

00:40:31.440 themselves that they want to blow taxpayers money while traveling all over the world

00:40:35.220 and we just can't afford it the average taxpayer in Edmonton cannot afford these things

00:40:40.640 while they're getting terrible public service just on a slightly less icky note I know you've

00:40:47.780 been traveling around with the Alberta debt clock which is relevant because a lot of the debt is

00:40:51.520 coming from governments spending more and more money,

00:40:54.320 but things have not been getting better.

00:40:55.580 Services have not been getting better.

00:40:57.200 What's the big story of Alberta's debt right now?

00:41:00.740 Yeah, so federally, we're doing very poorly.

00:41:04.280 Federally, later on this year,

00:41:05.820 the Trudeau government will have doubled

00:41:07.680 the national debt since it took power.

00:41:10.700 And that kind of soundbite can kind of slip past you,

00:41:13.000 but just kind of picture all of the prime ministers

00:41:15.580 through history down like a long hallway,

00:41:18.200 add them all up for their debt, now double it.

00:41:21.520 That's what the Trudeau government will have done in less than a decade. It's astonishing. So now

00:41:25.600 we're roughly at about $1.2 trillion. It's going up $1,200 a second. And to get an idea of how big

00:41:33.100 a trillion is, Andrew, if you started right now, like Scrooge McDuck counting up your loonies,

00:41:37.780 it would take you 30,000 years to count to $1 trillion. Provincially, it's not perfect,

00:41:44.600 but we're doing better. So provincially, the Daniel Smith government, the UCP government now

00:41:50.200 has a law that they have to put 50% of their cash surpluses down to pay down the debt. They also

00:41:56.520 have to keep their spending increases restrained below the rate of inflation plus population

00:42:01.320 growth, and they have to balance the budget. So they've added a lot of their own kind of bearing

00:42:05.620 reins to this budget chariot on themselves, which is a great thing. And it's showing results. We've

00:42:11.860 recently gotten two credit upgrades from international lending agencies and rating

00:42:16.020 agencies. So that's a good thing. But the debt is still going up because the amount of interest

00:42:22.240 that we have to pay and some capital spending. So we do still need to be really vigilant about

00:42:27.680 the provincial debt here in Alberta, but compared to Ottawa, doing much, much better.

00:42:32.920 How long until someone can do the Ralph Klein move and hold up the paid in full banner?

00:42:37.920 That's a great question. So as of right now, knock wood, I'm a pretty hopeful person when

00:42:42.640 comes to Alberta, things are looking pretty good. They currently have a surplus in the billions of

00:42:47.920 dollars. They're doing smart things like not trying to strangle the energy industry. They are for now

00:42:53.980 keeping their spending in check. So I think it's entirely possible to have that happen within the

00:42:59.180 next decade. So we've got a debt. It depends on how you look at it. It's roughly around 70-ish

00:43:05.800 billion dollars. That sounds like a crazy amount of money. But when you consider our surplus this

00:43:11.740 year, I think is around $4 billion right now, maybe a little bit more based on the last quarterly

00:43:16.220 update. This is doable. And I'll put it this way. So if the Alberta government had had this

00:43:23.740 spending restraint that we'd been pushing for since the mid-90s, which is keep your spending

00:43:28.520 increases below the rate of your inflation plus your population growth every year. So we've been

00:43:34.740 pushing for this since the mid-90s. Spice Girls topping the charts, Taxpayers Federation telling

00:43:39.460 the government do this one rule. If they had done that, we would have $300 billion in the bank

00:43:47.420 saved right now. That's not investment. That's not with interest. That's like stuffed under the

00:43:52.060 mattress. So that's within a generation. So I think it's entirely possible for her to be able

00:43:57.840 to hold up that sign paid in full. We would love to see it. All right. Well, we'll keep our eyes

00:44:02.420 peeled. It would be a great point of contrast there. And again, shows the damage of electing

00:44:06.560 an NDP government when you exacerbate that, you know, zero dollar debt to what we have now.

00:44:13.700 Chris Sims, Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Alberta director. Always a pleasure. We will see you next

00:44:17.780 time. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much, Chris. That does it for us for today. One more little

00:44:23.360 shameless plug here. My book is Pierre Polyev, A Political Life, nine weeks now on the bestseller

00:44:28.620 list. But if you want to get that and see for yourself what all the fuss is about with this guy

00:44:33.220 riding high in the polls, you'll learn a great deal in that book. I've had a few kind people on

00:44:37.520 social media share pictures of them on their vacations reading it. So particularly ambitious

00:44:41.700 if you consider it as a hardcover. So if you decide to bring that with you, you're showing

00:44:45.520 true dedication. So thanks very much. You can get that on Amazon and Indigo or at Sutherland House

00:44:50.500 Books. But we will talk to you tomorrow, 23 hours and 15 minutes from now. Thank you. God bless and

00:44:55.720 good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by

00:45:01.060 donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:31.060 We'll be right back.

00:46:01.060 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 29, 2024

Olympic committee sorry for offending Christians – but are they really？

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