Juno News - December 06, 2021Omicron panic is causing more lockdowns and more vaccine mandates
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Summary
Coming up, the Omemron panic is causing more lockdowns and more vaccine mandates, plus Maxime Bernier on his leadership review. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now, and is a rare Monday edition of the program.
Transcript
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Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, the Omicron panic is causing more lockdowns and more vaccine mandates.
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Should we lower the voting age, plus Maxime Bernier on his leadership review?
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Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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This is the rare Monday edition of the program.
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I'm working on a little bit of a project that's going to have me out of town on Tuesday.
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Hopefully you'll know all about it in the coming day.
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I don't want to jinx it by announcing it and then having to change it or perhaps cancel it altogether.
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But hopefully by the time the next show rolls around, you'll know why I did the show on a different day this week.
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You probably wouldn't, if I didn't say anything, you probably wouldn't have even noticed.
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You would have thought, oh, I guess it's a Monday show, whatever.
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In any case, I think sometimes hosts think that people pay closer attention to scheduling and programming stuff than they actually do.
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Who knows, if you like the show better on Mondays, maybe we'll keep it going.
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But nonetheless, hope your start of the week is, well, I hope it's a good start to the week and not a bad one.
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There are a lot of bad starts to the week, like if you're in the Czech Republic or Germany, for example.
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In the Czech Republic, they are going the way of Greece, as we talked about last week, and mandating vaccination for anyone over the age of 60.
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So this story, if you look at it here, is fascinating.
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And they're saying that if you're 60 plus, vaccination is going to be mandatory.
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Now, in Greece, if you don't get vaccinated and you're 60 plus, you've got to pay a fine of 100 euros a month.
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So 1,200 euros a year for as long as the vaccine mandate is in effect.
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I'm not actually sure what the punishment is going to be in the Czech Republic if you don't go along with the vaccine mandate.
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What I do know, there was just this bizarre story last week.
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It's actually a picture's worth a thousand words where the president was swearing in the prime minister.
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And the president had COVID, so he had to do it from this, like, plexiglass prisoner's box in a wheelchair, surrounded by people in hazmat suits, instead of just, I don't know, having it by Zoom or Skype or something.
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It's the epitome of this could have been an email.
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And now they're going and deciding that citizens in the Czech Republic are not deserving of their own freedoms.
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If they're 60 plus, vaccination is the choice of the government, not of the individual.
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And in Germany, which has put in sweeping restrictions on the unvaccinated, if their cases don't go down, the German government is now considering making vaccination mandatory population-wide.
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Lars Klingbeil, who is the secretary general of Germany's SPD party, said that if the new lockdown measures for the unvaccinated didn't lower case rates sufficiently, politicians would have to take immediate action.
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Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, on her way out, has said that legislation will be drafted to make COVID vaccination mandatory, and that politicians in Germany will vote on it in February.
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Now, February is when Austria's sweeping vaccine mandate is going into effect, and her successor, Olaf Scholz, CNBC says, is expecting the proposal to be approved because he personally supports introducing a vaccine mandate.
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Now, I want to make a broader point here, and to quote Norm Macdonald about Germany, I don't know if you all are history buffs or not, but Germany, believe it or not, has a bit of a sordid past when it comes to dictators and autocrats.
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Now, I am not comparing Angela Merkel to Hitler, not in the least.
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What I am saying is that countries that have been through the past that Germany has, you think would be very, very motivated to ensure that the government does not start making decisions that trample on the rights of the individual.
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I look at the decision being made in the Czech Republic, for example.
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Greece, whatever, Greece just does what they want.
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They're overly reliant on government because no one likes working there.
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The Czech Republic has seen a communist government in the past, and typically formerly communist countries are the most conservative, the most liberty-minded.
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You talk to conservatives in Estonia and in places like, oh, I don't know, Kosovo, and these are the most freedom-loving people you'll find.
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And so it's shocking to see how many of these people just go along with the government trampling on their rights as though they've forgotten.
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In the case of communism, they've forgotten their lives just 30-some-odd years ago.
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Austria, I think one of the reasons we see in Austria such pushback to the government's vaccine mandate is for that very reason,
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because you've got a generation of Austrians that actually does know their history,
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that doesn't want a government that's going to just march all over their individual rights and freedoms as though it's no big deal,
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because they understand, these people that are protesting understand what happens
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when you give up the most fundamental basic rights that you have, such as what goes into your body.
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And I actually, believe it or not, when we've talked about these things in the past,
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I get a bit of pushback from people saying, why are you talking about Austria?
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And I don't actually care about it, because I'm going to keep talking about these things,
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because if you don't think that what's happening in Canada is connected to this,
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you are missing the big story that's taking place
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on how interconnected a lot of these countries and their government's responses truly are.
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I mean, the Austria vaccine mandate is going into effect in February,
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And it's no surprise that this is all coming within the span of a couple of weeks.
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I mean, Turkmenistan, as I've said, they were the trendsetter.
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Turkmenistan back in the summer had the vaccine mandate.
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And I won't even try to say the president's name again,
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because I think that was like 20 minutes of the show was me trying to
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figure out the syllables of his name last week.
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But aside from Turkmenistan, you had Austria, then you had Greece,
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And now you've got Germany just on the precipice of it.
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And so if this is four developed European nations in the span of a couple of weeks
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that are talking about widespread mandatory vaccination,
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I don't think it's going to take all that long for there to be a couple of more
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And all of a sudden, all of these Canadians that say,
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oh, why are you wasting my time talking about things that are going on in other countries
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are going to be wondering, oh, wait, how did that?
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And this is the whole point is that we we've spent the last much of the last two years,
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people that are concerned about civil liberties trying to push back on some of these unscientific
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and unfree measures being championed by governments, especially travel restrictions.
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And then Omicron comes along, you know, skipping new and skipping the Xi variant or the Xi variant.
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Omicron comes along and it's as though we've taken two steps back for every one step forward
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And there haven't been a lot of step forwards in the last few months, it feels like.
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But nevertheless, it feels like we are headed backwards.
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And if you look at some of these travel restrictions, this story jumped up because
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at first the government tried to throw a net over some of these African countries.
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It was South Africa that got scapegoated for this variant that had actually been circulating
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And there was this family, Leonard and Charlotte Sked or Skied of Brandon, Manitoba,
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have been quarantined involuntarily in a hotel in Toronto because they came home from South
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Africa just a couple of days after the new restrictions were announced.
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They say they feel criminalized for these measures.
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Not only have they been tested for COVID, they've been tested six times, six times.
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And every one of these tests came back negative.
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And then they were allowed to reenter the country, but still shoved in a hotel.
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Well, they have had to spend just to get back $23,500 on flights, COVID tests and hotels
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just to navigate around new travel restrictions.
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And then once they get in the country, they're not even allowed the courtesy of going home.
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And then to add insult to injury, all of these regular travel measures or travel inconveniences
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like their bags being lost and terrible food that they're being served in the quarantine hotel
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But the government says, oh, that we've got to protect Canadians.
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We've got to protect Canadians against Omicron.
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And once Roe comes along and what comes after Roe?
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Roe and Psy and Kai and all of these other variants will come around and it'll feel like
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This headline, I think, needs to be shared with you because the headline encapsulates what
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Planning a trip over the holidays, expect airport delays and sudden travel restrictions, experts
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Now, I don't know what kind of expertise you need to say that government could just screw
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But if noting that makes you an expert, then so be it.
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But this is what the government's trying to do.
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They're trying to make travel so unstable and so unpredictable and so unpleasant that no one
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And you see some restrictions coming in through the back door.
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Remember, I just noticed on the weekend, the Windsor-Essex Public Health Office has put
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in gathering restrictions stricter than what Ontario has.
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So they've invoked their power as a local health region to start imposing gathering restrictions,
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mandating social distancing in restaurants, starting to roll back some of the reopening
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And all of this just makes us feel like we are in the midst of the never-ending emergency,
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the permanent lockdown about to start the third year of our two weeks to flatten the
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So it does feel like we are all being hoodwinked here because people that have done everything
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they've been asked to, people that did the self-isolation, people that got their two shots
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and are about to get their third shot, people that didn't see grandma, people that did all
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of these things that the government asked them to do and then later made them do.
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We had government project its great reopening plan.
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We were supposed to drop the mask mandate in the new year.
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We were supposed to drop masks, I think, by about March or maybe it was November.
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So what we are seeing unfolding now is part of a global effort by governments to roll back
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any of the reopening plans we've seen, all for a variant that hasn't actually given us
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All of the early evidence we're seeing shows that Omicron is more infectious and less severe.
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That is what you want in a pandemic, something that everyone's going to get to acquire some
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natural immunity and most people are not going to be hit all that hard by.
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If we could turn COVID into a cold, a seasonal cold, we could all just get on with our lives.
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But natural immunity is like a big swear word to lawmakers.
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And they pretend despite this that, oh, well, we don't know anything.
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And we've got to plunge right back into the overreactive uncertainty of March 2020, which
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may have been justified when we genuinely didn't know what was happening.
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But now that we do know and can see what's happening is being used to justify more infringements
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And if a government, if a Canadian government tries to impose another lockdown, my message
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Because I do not think most Canadians have it in them to go along with it.
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And I know last week I talked about that poll of Canadians that found a lot of people didn't
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And I had a lot of you listening that didn't buy the poll.
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I actually believe that that's where most Canadians are on this.
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I believe that people that want to cling to their civil liberties are increasingly a minority
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But even in spite of that, I think if the government says we're going into lockdown again, it's going
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to turn a lot more people into fire-breathing libertarians.
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You know, there was a line I saw in some article a while ago that said there are no libertarians
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And my response to that is I think eventually you have only libertarians in a pandemic.
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And it's taken a little bit longer to reach that point than I thought it would initially.
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But I do believe genuinely that another lockdown is going to do that.
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That people simply are not going to play ball if this is what government is demanding of them.
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So if you don't like looking around the world, well, you should start.
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You should start looking around the world because a lot of this is the model for what more and
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And then it is only a matter of time before it shows up on your doorstep.
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When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show.
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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There is a group of teenagers that has filed an application with the Ontario Superior Court
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arguing that the Canada Elections Act is discriminating against their right to be free
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from discrimination based on age by barring Canadians under 18 from voting.
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There are 13 of them in the claim, according to a press release from Children First Canada
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calling for the unconstitutional restriction on minor voting to be repealed.
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One of the challenges whenever this has come up is that the response that typically people
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But if you try to have the debate logically, you'll find that any line really is arbitrary
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because you could be a youth and still be working and contributing.
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And even if you don't have to pay income tax, you're still paying tax when you go and purchase
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And more importantly, adults who don't pay tax still have the right to vote.
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So making voting a condition of paying taxes doesn't really work.
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If we talk about maturity, there could be a mature 16-year-old who is probably more
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adept at parsing what politicians are saying than an immature 18, 19, 20, or perhaps even
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And there are other things as well that we would look at and say, well, you know, they're
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And when you try to go through this, all you're left with is really the idea that we have to
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And wherever we choose to draw it is going to be arbitrary.
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For example, the voting age being at 18 was reduced, I think it was in 1970 or 1972, from
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We have the drinking age, which varies depending on where in the country you are.
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In some provinces it's 18, other provinces it's 19.
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You head south to the U.S. and it is 21 most places.
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So all of these ideas of trying to come up with an age of majority for somewhere have to
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Now, the way the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is worded, they have a claim.
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Under Section 3, you have a claim that says every Canadian citizen has the right to vote,
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And under Section 15 of the Charter, you have voting rights, which guarantee people freedom
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from discrimination based on a number of criteria, including age.
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So if you look at the plain text reading of the Charter, which is part of the Canadian
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Children are being denied the right to vote in an unconstitutional way.
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But oddly enough, you look at this and they're not actually asking for the voting age to be
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So under that same argument, the voting age shouldn't exist at all.
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Infant voting should be allowed if you take the plain text view of the Charter that they're
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Now, I know politically why people on the right would not want there to be underage people
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voting, because we know that the older you get, the more conservative you get statistically.
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So the more youth turnout is there in an election, the better it seems to work out for the left.
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Although, if you are taking the view that children are just going to be proxies for their parents,
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you know, I think conservatives tend to have bigger families.
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So it might work out that way as well, where you get some of these like 7, 8, 9, 10 kid families.
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And imagine walking into a polling station with 12 votes or something like that.
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But in any case, the point is that there are practical reasons where a lot of people on
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the right do not want and would not want the voting age lowered.
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But if you're trying to actually have a discussion about it and come up with a silver bullet legal
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debate or legal argument, it's difficult to come up with one that doesn't really just appeal
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If we are going to reopen voting, we have to reopen a lot of other things.
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And I would be completely fine having a general discussion about age of maturity and age of
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majority in the context of paying taxes, in the context of having to make decisions for
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yourself and being able to make decisions for yourself.
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We say that a 19-year-old, you have to be 19 to make the decision to drink alcohol for
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yourself, we have to be 19 to make the decision to smoke for yourself, but you can vote at 18,
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but you can get a job at 14, and you can work on the family farm even when you're younger than 14.
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And even though that attaches with it some risk, we have lots of things that you can do.
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All of these things are different, and they're all based on the fact that people have tried to draw
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arbitrary lines for things that are just intuitive for quite some time.
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And that's why we should be trying to take government out of the equation on these things and allow
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parents and their kids to make decisions that are right for them when kids are mature enough to do
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There are lots of kids that you might be comfortable with doing something at 14 that other kids you
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wouldn't trust doing it until 15 or even 16 or perhaps never.
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But that's why this debate is such an annoying one, because there is no right answer.
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And it bothers me, because I value above all else when you're having these sorts of discussions,
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And whenever I'm confronted with an inconsistency in a view that I hold, I have to go back to the
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drawing board and say, OK, hang on, is that actually an inconsistency?
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And if it is, do I have to change the view or do I have to amend the value that I hold?
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And that's a practice that I'm happy to partake in.
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That's why free speech and open debate are so important, because you have to be able to
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Whereas voting age is like, yeah, if I want to be consistent, the voting age shouldn't exist at all.
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So it's one of these situations that just has no right answer.
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That is just going to be dealt with warring factions who are really battling over something
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The people that are saying this is great are inherently left-wing people that love the idea
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The people that are against this are conservatives who are mortified by the idea of having more
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So if we can at least be honest about people's motivations, I feel we could see past the fact
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that there isn't perhaps a moral high ground we can cling to on either side of this debate.
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When we come back, though, we'll talk to Maxime Bernier about the leadership review that he
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Well, we've talked about it at great length on this program, the significant rise in People's
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Party of Canada support from the 2019 election, where the party got 1.62% of the vote, to this
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past election in September, where they nearly tripled that, coming up at 4.94% of the vote,
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Nevertheless, after two unsuccessful elections, Maxime Bernier, the founding PPC leader, put
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himself through a leadership review, and the results came in this past weekend, and of
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57.5% of the PPC members who voted in the leadership review, Maxime Bernier had the support
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Do you support Maxime Bernier remaining as leader of the People's Party of Canada?
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So PPC leader Maxime Bernier has said he has a renewed mandate, and he's forging ahead into
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the next election, whenever that may come, and he joins us now.
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I'm very pleased to be with you, and very proud with that result.
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I believe that we have a strong mandate to go on and push our ideas.
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So why did you decide to have a leadership review?
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Because, you know, after three years, yes, like you said, I fronted that party, and after
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three years, I didn't win the last election, I didn't win my own former riding in both in
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2019, didn't win my own riding in both in 2021, and I said it must be the time to have a leadership
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And I think, yeah, to have a mandate to do what we need to do as a political party that
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is growing, and we decided to do that with an independent firm based in Montreal.
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The process started early November up to last Friday.
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So very pleased, good result, and now we're ready for the future.
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Now, I know that when the leadership review was announced, there was a cutoff point.
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No one who became a member after September 20th, the election, could vote in it.
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Did that exclude people that may have previously left the party because they might have had
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Well, you know, we decided we needed a date for that.
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So we decided the election date would be a good date just to do the cutoff, and we did
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No, when we said that publicly and on social media, we didn't have any members that called
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us or sent an email about, oh, you know, I didn't have time to renew my membership.
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So moving ahead, you've got this mandate, 95.6% of those who said they supported you.
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What do you believe is the benchmark for success moving forward?
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Because I know you've talked about in the past how it took the Green Party 30 years to get
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to the point where they're at now, which a lot of those gains tend to have been rolled
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But for you, looking ahead to the next election, where do you need to go to convince your members
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and your supporters that the PPC is still on the right track?
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I believe that the next election, it will be important for us as a political party to have
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a seat and actually for me as a leader to have a seat.
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And I can tell you that I don't know where I will run, but I believe that maybe it won't
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We will look at all the ridings and take the best one for me where I have the better chances
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And my goal is to move in that riding that we will choose a couple of months before the
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And so I wish I'll be able to be back in Parliament.
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That would be an important goal for me personally.
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And for the party, I believe that, you know, from 5%, 4.9%, like you said, you know, if
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Actually, right now in the polls, we are around 10%.
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And that's what we are doing right now, actually, and do what we want to do.
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We want to re-approve or approve candidates as soon as possible, early next year.
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So we don't want to do like we did before the last general election.
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We were rushing to approve our candidates at the last minute.
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We will do that in the beginning of next year with an open and fair process.
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And our candidates will be able to be active on social media to campaign in their riding.
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That will help us to be ready for the next general election that can be in two years or
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What you just described of looking for a seat that might be a little bit more winnable than
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We saw in the last election, Derek Sloan decide to run in a seat that he thought was safe out
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There are a lot of Albertans said they were very frustrated with someone trying to sort
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of jump into Alberta, despite not being from there.
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Are you concerned that would be your reception if you tried something like that?
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But first, we must say that he was not a member of the party.
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And we are a real political party all across the country.
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We have an organization all across the country.
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So that's why I said also it must be important for me personally to move in that riding, not
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just being there a week before the election like Derek did, but to be serious about that
00:26:04.720
Actually, I had that discussion when I was in Florida with my wife, Catherine, and she
00:26:10.480
understands that as a leader, my goal will be to be elected.
00:26:14.500
So that's why I believe that moving there before the election, people will look at me
00:26:20.900
as being a real candidate and a real member of parliament if I'm elected for them in that
00:26:28.920
You and I talked about this during the last election when I was out with you in Alberta,
00:26:33.540
and I saw, to your credit, a lot of huge support in places that aren't even traditional
00:26:38.040
conservative strongholds like downtown Edmonton.
00:26:40.900
But one of the things that I've noted and a lot of people have seen throughout the last
00:26:45.140
election was that there was a lot of PPC support from people that might not have been historically
00:26:52.540
They might have even been green or NDP voters, but they were very against vaccine mandates
00:26:56.760
and vaccine passports and found the PPC to be the only party pushing for these things.
00:27:02.540
If in two or three years, vaccine passports are not a thing, COVID is not a thing, we hope,
0.81
00:27:08.220
how do you recapture or maintain those supporters?
00:27:13.780
I hope it won't be a subject of the next election in three years.
00:27:18.040
We are living in a kind of a totalitarian state here in Canada.
00:27:22.720
So, but you're right saying that all these people, because we were and we are still the
00:27:27.460
only party that is fighting for individual freedom and personal responsibility.
00:27:31.400
So, at the next general election, if it's not the main subject, I believe that the economy
00:27:39.820
You know, I spoke about it a long time ago, and inflation is a hidden tax.
00:27:44.320
It's hurting mostly the poor people in our country.
00:27:53.660
They're speaking about inflation right now, but the solution is to stop government spending,
00:28:01.360
The national campaign, they had a plan not to balance the budget in 10 years, so that
00:28:07.860
wasn't serious, and they had a lot of spending.
00:28:15.500
And we have a concrete plan to bring back the economy in a way that it won't hurt Canadians.
00:28:24.280
So, we have a plan to fight inflation, and I believe that can be the subject.
00:28:29.680
If it's not inflation, it can be Western alienation.
00:28:33.160
You were there, Andrew, in Alberta, and you know that there's a lot of Albertans and Western
00:28:37.640
Canadians that are not happy with the Constitution.
00:28:40.380
They are not happy with climate change, with the equalization formula.
00:28:44.640
We are still the only political party that is speaking about that, have a solution for
00:28:49.540
the equalization that must be less generous and fair for every province.
00:28:53.840
Climate change, we're the only one that won't do anything about climate change.
00:28:59.220
So, there's a lot of many subjects and policies, and I don't know which one will be the subject
00:29:07.360
of that election, but we will be ready, and I believe that we'll be able to grow our support.
00:29:12.020
Let's talk a little bit about the numbers here, because in the last election, the Green
00:29:16.680
Party, as I mentioned earlier, had 2.3%, but still was able to turn that into two seats
00:29:22.180
because of the distribution, whereas the PPC more than double that, but zero seats.
00:29:26.720
So, a lot of this in Canada comes down to where the support is and how centralized or
00:29:32.780
I know you and I spoke during the election, and you said that the PPC might re-evaluate
00:29:38.260
its position on electoral reform and proportional representation after the election.
00:29:45.540
No, we didn't look at it right now, but that must be something that we'll look at.
00:29:50.640
But actually, also, our goal for the next election will be to have a candidate in every
00:29:55.620
riding to be able to increase our percentage of the vote.
00:29:58.780
We had only 312 candidates at the last general election, so we'll need to have a full slate,
00:30:09.480
But also now, after two elections, the 2019 and the 2021, we know where we are stronger.
00:30:17.760
And yes, it's in rural Alberta, rural Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
00:30:22.260
So, we will put more focus on these regions to be able to have some candidates elected also.
00:30:29.720
So, we know that the electoral system won't change before the next general election.
00:30:35.860
So, we will do our best to be able to elect somebody under the present system.
00:30:40.780
You saw, I know, in the last election, and I think you told this story on the campaign trail,
00:30:46.760
that a whole bunch of reporters were there when you kicked off your campaign.
00:30:50.220
They asked you questions for quite a while, and then at the end of it didn't really run any stories.
00:30:54.520
And it wasn't until the very end of the election that a lot of media started talking about the PPC.
00:31:00.320
But again, at the same time, you look after the election.
00:31:03.520
The PPC has run twice, has not elected any candidates twice.
00:31:08.820
How do you get your message out when you don't have any seats in the House of Commons?
00:31:23.860
We have a person in charge of our social media, director in charge of our social media now.
00:31:29.300
We have a director in charge of the organization across the country.
00:31:34.940
And as you know, we spent about $1.3 million at the last general election.
00:31:41.600
And because we had 4.9% of the vote, we'll be able to have half of these expenses reimbursed.
00:31:48.120
So we'll have about $600,000 in the bank in a couple of months.
00:31:54.020
We don't, we didn't have, and we don't have any deficit.
00:32:06.120
Annual financial statement will be at the end of December.
00:32:11.180
So we have, we are in a strong financial position.
00:32:14.460
We are building a new team at the head office and also our organization across the country.
00:32:20.580
So the challenge, and I'm a little bit more active on social media.
00:32:27.280
But also I will test the mainstream national media.
00:32:30.980
I'll do a press conference for the end of this session at mid-December and our position
00:32:38.840
and our vision of what happened in parliament since they started that session.
00:32:49.120
And my goal also is to be able to travel across the country.
00:33:04.320
But I'm not able to travel by plane or by train across the country.
00:33:12.980
So my goal is to be on the ground, active on social media.
00:33:17.080
And also I'm doing, I will do some press conference, not one or two every session.
00:33:22.140
We'll see if the mainstream media will be there to cover us.
00:33:25.440
They must be because we are at 10 percent right now in the polls and the Green Party is around 2, 3 percent.
00:33:32.400
So and the Green Party is, they're going bankrupt.
00:33:36.340
And we have money in the bank and we're ready to go and grow this party at the next step.
00:33:42.580
And that would be my challenge for the next two years.
00:33:46.940
And one interesting dilemma here, and I don't know if they're going to change the rules,
00:33:50.820
but if they keep the same rules the Leaders Debates Commission had in the last election,
00:33:55.780
you would be on the debate stage next time, as I understand it,
00:33:58.680
because the party received 4 percent of the votes nationally in the previous election.
00:34:04.720
And, you know, I don't expect that they, I don't think that they will change the rules.
00:34:10.840
So, and I'll be there, I'll be on the stage, and that would be interesting.
00:34:15.660
I'm looking forward for that, because that would be a real debate.
00:34:19.480
We are right now the only real opposition in Ottawa.
00:34:23.540
Look what happened last week with the conversion therapy.
00:34:29.120
The Conservatives, the Liberals, everybody unanimously, they voted for that deal.
00:34:36.120
So, I believe that that debate, when it will happen, will be very interesting,
00:34:41.100
because on climate change, on equalization, on conversion therapy, on inflation,
00:34:46.840
you can name it, we'll have a different position.
00:34:49.800
And Canadians will be able to listen, to have an opportunity to see me debating.
00:34:56.380
But also, I will have an opportunity to reach more people that are not maybe on social media.
00:35:01.940
So, I believe the next election would be another important step for the growth of our party.
00:35:11.960
You decided to take a few weeks away with your lovely wife in Florida.
00:35:16.340
And I know you just came back, I think, about a week ago.
00:35:21.160
Yes, I did for the freedom, because, you know, we are not able to go to a cinema.
00:35:28.980
We are not able to participate in civil society.
00:35:32.300
I can tell you, when I was in Florida, we enjoyed that, and with friends, so that was fun over there.
00:35:38.380
Now, like I said, I'm going back in a kind of a jail.
00:35:41.960
And actually, for me, as a leader of a party, my goal is to build this party across this country.
00:35:49.000
And if I'm not able to travel, that would be a big challenge for me.
00:35:57.200
And it's like we are in the election campaign when I did rallies against lockdown and mandates.
00:36:03.520
And I believe that I'll have to go back and I'll be on the street with our people to fight that and try to preserve the freedom that we must have in this country, as a democratic country, that we don't have right now.
00:36:19.000
People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier is staying on as leader after receiving 95.6% of the vote in the leadership review, which just wrapped up on the weekend.
00:36:39.100
I've been trying to do a year-end interview with Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole to talk about very similar things, how the last election went, what the plans are for 2022.
00:36:51.120
So hopefully we'll be able to have Aaron O'Toole on the show very shortly.
00:36:57.280
It hasn't been for about six, I guess, coming up on seven years now.
00:37:08.700
We will be back in a few days' time with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:37:12.980
This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:37:16.800
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:37:19.140
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.