00:02:53.980about the Olympics. I said I had a couple of you know quick things to say about it and then that
00:02:57.620was that. Little did I know that this would end up taking such a huge life form over the course
00:03:04.300of the weekend. The Olympic opening ceremonies which was otherwise going to be quite beautiful
00:03:09.320and nice instead of just a parade around the track like they normally would with every country
00:03:14.160dressed up in its national garb and all the athletes happy to be there. They took advantage
00:03:19.300of the natural geography of France and they took these each country had its own boat and they just
00:03:24.880paraded all the I don't know if it's a parade with their boats but uh each country paraded its
00:03:29.460boats down the Seine and you had lots of fun to be had there but of course it's Paris and it's
00:03:35.980the Olympics and it's 2024 so it would have just been too simple to keep it like that instead what
00:03:41.520happened was they decided to go for broke and get really really arty with their opening ceremonies
00:03:47.960Now, 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.
00:04:05.680In fact, I've said Mike Lindell's name, so we might get vaporized for that.
00:20:46.280so let me just ask you first off before we get into the report as a physician is your position
00:20:54.000on this fairly common among doctors because i i often we hear the activists on this and we know
00:21:00.320what the activists want but but is that reflective of where the medical community is or are they more
00:21:04.920on your side here that this is not something we should be rushing minors into it's it's hard to
00:21:10.100say um a couple last year i went to um the endocrine society which is a meeting of the american
00:21:20.020endocrinologist group um six thousand endocrinologists and i i went with uh another
00:21:25.940one of the places i'm a senior fellow with do no harm and we just talked to endocrinologists
00:21:32.820and we we found that a lot of them uh did agree with what i was saying but a lot of them were
00:21:38.260afraid to say it out loud so what is the year's report has found as far as the reality in canada
00:21:45.860compared to elsewhere so the report basically has found that we are uh more permissive about
00:21:55.860these kind of procedures than pretty much anywhere else um both the u.s and canada but particularly
00:22:03.140canada um in the u.s many you know 22 of the states have uh um actually uh legislated on on
00:22:12.740this while in canada we we we limit uh things like the surgeries are pretty limited everywhere
00:22:21.540um though i sometimes think people get around these by you know some kind of trickery um but
00:22:28.340But things like puberty blockers, only two provinces have some restrictions on when you can give them, which are Alberta and Nova Scotia.
00:22:43.400And cross-sex hormones, three provinces have some limitations.
00:22:48.300Well, 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.
00:23:04.120And 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.
00:23:21.340and today the High Court ruled on a complaint saying that this was wrong and the law was reviewed
00:23:36.400and the High Court ruled in favor of the government saying that the puberty ban was correct legislation
00:23:45.100And 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.
00:24:03.440And I think that's pretty much a game changer in many ways.
00:24:08.120It found very little evidence for using the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
00:24:19.060And actually, it particularly said we should probably ban the puberty blockers, and we have, in the United Kingdom at least.
00:24:27.280Looking at Europe, though, Europe always has had this reputation of being this bastion of social progressivism.
00:24:34.140And I think in a lot of issues, certainly in Scandinavia, it is that way.
00:24:37.680So why are they so much more cautious than you'd expect on these issues?
00:24:44.820Because I think they're looking at the science.
00:24:47.240Many of these countries actually did their own systematic reviews.
00:24:50.660A 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.
00:24:57.840Because 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.
00:25:07.680And I think from that, they've all become quite a lot more cautious.
00:25:14.840This is true in Sweden. This is true in Finland.
00:25:18.200The Danes, to some extent, even the medical associations in places like Germany have said that, you know, caution is very much warranted.
00:25:29.840Because we're doing things that probably can't be reversed.
00:25:35.160If you give a puberty blocker, so what a puberty blocker is, is basically stops the process of puberty from happening until it's stopped.
00:25:47.520And what that can do is, in some cases, it will lead to infertility.
00:25:53.040It can lead to problems with bone density.
00:25:55.760You 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.
00:26:19.160these are fundamental things to human nature and you know that we can so easily do away with them
00:26:30.600is somewhat troubling. I want to talk about those and get your medical input on this Roy because
00:26:37.540there are a lot of these activists and including physicians I'll say it's not just you know
00:26:41.380screaming activists on the street but people with many letters behind their name have said that
00:26:45.400these are not in fact irreversible, that the effects of these things can be reversed later
00:26:50.260on. What's the position you take on that? You know, some of the things can be reversed,
00:26:56.220but puberty is an extremely complex process with many, many reactions that we were not even sure
00:27:04.480what all the reactions are going on. And, you know, even the people who did the original studies,
00:27:14.180the Dutch group, said that they were quite concerned about mental development in these
00:27:19.720children and said they were going to do a study about it, but they never did.
00:27:23.860Dr. Baxendale, a professor at the University College London, tried to publish a paper saying
00:27:30.700that she had concerns about this. And, you know, she was literally blocked from publishing the
00:27:36.200paper. She finally did. But, you know, I think we need to do a lot more studies before we can say
00:28:06.020You know, the person who wrote our guide
00:28:12.340You 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.
00:28:32.760And many other countries have done systematically, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, the United States, and none of them have found good evidence.
00:28:43.980So shouldn't we use the evidence that the others have found?
00:28:47.720Because 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.
00:28:57.020But presumably a Danish teen is not going to present differently from a Canadian teen.
00:29:02.760in this context. No. Interesting. Well, I think you've either fallen asleep or your image has
00:29:11.420frozen at the worst possible time, Roy. So we'll let you go there as we are at a time anyway, but
00:29:15.960people can read this report for themselves. And I certainly hope they do over at the Aristotle
00:29:21.480Foundation. It's a new study, Teenagers, Children, and Gender Transition Policy, a comparison of
00:29:26.700transgender medical policy for minors in Canada, the United States, and Europe. One of the authors,
00:29:31.440Dr. Roy Eapin. Always good to talk to you. And I thank you so much for your time and insight here.
00:29:36.420That is an interesting topic. And again, I always defer to the people on this that are interested
00:29:43.440in protecting children. And it's amazing when you see how many activists have really co-opted
00:29:49.180a lot of these spaces. And again, Roy was saying there, made people that otherwise are on the side
00:29:54.880of science just fearful of speaking out. And you look at Ken Zucker, who's one of the cautionary
00:29:59.720tales here. He was with, I believe, Cam H. And he ran a clinic that treated youth that were
00:30:04.220identifying with gender dysphoria. And he believed, yes, we should at some points facilitate
00:30:09.720them, but let's use that as a last resort. Let's use that as a last resort. And that was the
00:30:16.880interesting thing about it is that he was the most progressive minded person in that role. He wasn't
00:30:22.680some you know dirty stinking scary transphobe that was saying okay if we don't actually uh you
00:30:29.800know help them then we'll get we'll get our way no he was saying let's actually help them extra
00:30:35.240let's make sure that what we're doing is in their best interest and then he gets maligned as a
00:30:39.880transphobe by activists that have not done with what he has done for patients that have not done
00:30:45.800what he has done ends up losing the funding for his clinic gets shut down and he becomes
00:30:49.640a pariah and i think james canter who i mentioned a few moments ago has also similarly been in a
00:30:55.880situation where he's faced like calls for his cancellation and people calling for his grants
00:31:00.120to be taken away because he takes the view that okay a lot of these people are not actually
00:31:03.960transgender so let's not treat them like they are and do something that we can't take back
00:31:08.680that sounds like an entirely reasonable point and to be fair we are not talking here about adults
00:31:14.360we're not talking about making any legal restrictions on one's ability to live their
00:31:18.520own life we are talking about making sure that children are getting adequate care they need and
00:31:24.600this is why what danielle smith proposed in alberta scott moen saskatchewan blaine higgs in new
00:31:30.360brunswick what people in some other provinces have as well have become such tremendously popular
00:31:34.840policies because a lot of people don't want to force kids into irreversible situations under
00:31:40.680the offices of science which fundamentally just does not exist we are going to turn from this
00:31:47.480issue to one that's a little bit less hot button here which is what's happening in canadian cities
00:31:51.720so last week a conservative leader pierre polyev was in london ontario i went to that press conference
00:31:57.160and he was standing in a park as he talked about rising drug and crime issues and much as it was
00:32:03.160very specific to london in some ways people watching that press conference from around the
00:32:07.720world well around the country certainly but even around the world to some extent we're saying yep
00:32:12.280i see that in vancouver i see it in regina i see it in winnipeg i see it in halifax i see it in
00:32:17.000in this, I see it in that, because this is just now a fact of life. This is now the world we live
00:32:22.360in. And our good friend, Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, she learned this
00:32:27.120the hard way. She took a stroll through Edmonton. She was trying to take a picture, a stock photo
00:32:33.260of Edmonton City Hall. And I don't know Edmonton too, too well. I usually, when I'm out West,
00:32:38.240I'm more in Calgary, but I've been to Edmonton. I know it a little bit. There's a statue of Sir
00:32:42.460Winston Churchill one of many across the country that she was near and she took this picture and
00:32:48.400the garbage around it might not surprise you that liquid that is on the front of it she didn't think
00:32:54.960that was water she didn't think it was someone who had just dumped out the extra coffee she didn't
00:33:00.860think it was anything of the sort no it smelled a lot like urine so this was what was one of the
00:33:07.020most or should have been one of the most preserved spots in the city you'd think after all if City
00:33:11.900hall can't use its tax dollars to keep its own front yard clean or maybe it's a backyard how on
00:33:17.300earth can they do that in any other city so this is why i think it's important to have these
00:33:22.700conversations chris managed to make it out hopefully she was able to get and have a shower
00:33:26.660after that uh she joins us once again canadian taxpayers federation alberta director chris how'd
00:33:32.460you manage yeah it was actually pretty depressing because uh we had just finished this kind of quick
00:33:38.060debt clock tour of most places in Alberta. We hit a few spots. We hit Lethbridge, Calgary,
00:33:43.800Red Deer, and Edmonton. Had huge turnout, basically sounding the alarm over Prime
00:33:48.240Minister Justin Trudeau's doubling of the federal debt later on this year and his addiction to money
00:33:53.080printing. And so trying to do all things at once, I wanted an updated photo just of Edmonton City
00:33:59.000Hall because we often will put out a report about property taxes, for example. So I went down there
00:34:04.440and i was pretty shocked andrew um it actually not to be gross i'm just going to be honest
00:34:11.080um there's a big planter there that's right next to city hall if you're facing the fountains
00:34:16.360looking at city hall with like kind of the big pyramid thing over to your right is this big
00:34:20.840planter that's full of trees and wood chips um that smelled like feces like i'm sorry to be
00:34:27.960gross but it did and i was like wow that's exceptionally gross and then so i walked
00:34:32.440around a little bit just trying to get my bearings because I'd never been right out in front of City
00:34:36.520Hall before and I went and saw the statue of Sir Winston Churchill because I'm a big fan and so
00:34:41.160wanted to go look and yeah there was garbage all around it and it smelled really strongly of urine
00:34:46.760it actually reminded me a lot of the state of the Byward Market in downtown Ottawa which as you know
00:34:53.640is like a tennis balls hit away from Parliament Hill and yet there's garbage everywhere there's
00:34:59.320human excrement on the sidewalk. It's disgusting. And I say this as someone who loved living in
00:35:04.680Ottawa for the most part and was a taxpayer there in Ottawa. And so if I were a taxpayer in the city
00:35:10.760of Edmonton, I would have been pretty appalled. Now, I live here in Lethbridge. Nothing is perfect,
00:35:17.800but it's a darn sight better than downtown Edmonton was. Again, they have increased property
00:35:23.720taxes there. I think it's by more than 8% now. And get this, Andrew, there's actually some survey
00:35:30.480that the city has put out, basically pushing for the mayor to get a pay increase. The mayor of
00:35:38.060Edmonton is already paid more than $200,000 per year. He makes more than Premier Daniel Smith,
00:35:44.600Andrew. So if I don't know, man, I'd be livid if I were a rate payer there.
00:35:50.020Yeah, and that's, I guess, the point that I've raised.
00:35:53.300I think you and I raised it actually not that long ago
00:35:55.120when we were talking about MPs getting a hike in their pay.
00:35:58.020It's like, okay, sure, what have you done for us?
00:36:17.920The 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.
00:36:29.620Basically saying the role of the mayor, not him personally, the role of the mayor is super duper important for Edmonton.
00:36:36.240And so you should be paying a big salary.
00:36:38.240What 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?
00:36:47.920Not should they be paid less. The options are like, you know, $230,000, $260,000. And it just
00:36:54.460goes up from there. Even more than $300,000 is actually an answer you can click on that survey,
00:37:00.160which is absurd for them to be pushing for. Another element of this, Andrew, and again,
00:37:05.600I was trying to be fair because over where it smelled like excrement near the planter,
00:37:11.140I was wondering, like, is there a problem with the sewer just today? Are they trying to fix
00:37:16.240something maybe my heart really went out to the folks though because there is actually some sort
00:37:21.040of street food festival getting set up that day this was on sunday morning and there's tents and
00:37:26.880tents and rows of actual business people who are getting ready to like you know sell their specialty
00:37:33.600foods sell their shawarma shell sell their ribs a bit of art like they were trying to have a festival
00:37:39.360getting rolling there on Sunday morning and the air was gross. And so again, if Edmonton City Hall
00:37:47.060thinks they deserve a raise, they better bloody well prove it. I just did a deep dive into their
00:37:52.640spending actually over the last 15 to 20 years or so. And what was really remarkable is that
00:37:59.540their full-time equivalent, their full-time jobs that they've added to Edmonton police