Juno News - Online streaming regulations kicked back to after election

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:01:19.700 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lawton show

00:01:29.820 on true north although i've learned as of this morning i probably could have had another calling

00:01:37.000 now uh this i wasn't even going to talk about this this we're going to do this on off the record

00:01:41.460 tomorrow so if you want like the full reaction and the full experience of just talking about how

00:01:47.620 crazy and stupid this is, do it. But I also couldn't not talk about it because it landed on

00:01:52.060 my desk like, I don't know, 25 minutes ago. I mean, not literally, that would have been very

00:01:56.620 strange, but figuratively landed on my desk. So you may recall back in, I think it was December

00:02:02.480 or November, I think it was November, the federal government sent this massive delegation to Dubai

00:02:08.220 for COP28, which is like the big brand climate summit. And I just got back from Dubai. It's a

00:02:15.020 lovely, lovely city. It is very beautiful, very global. It's weird in a way. I'm actually writing

00:02:21.520 a column to this effect because it's this like post-national place where none of the people who

00:02:26.040 live there are actually from there. But I didn't know that Dubai had played home to what I think

00:02:31.860 is probably the worst musical performance since Sophie Gregoire Trudeau sang a song that no one

00:02:39.140 asked for about on martin luther king jr day but i don't know she's got nothing on uh what's

00:02:44.940 this guy's name his name is baba baba dirkman is it i it's not on my notes here i think his name

00:02:51.640 his name is baba something or other but uh you won't want to look it up because you're not going

00:02:54.920 to want to hear anything else from him after this banger do we not have the alleged banger

00:03:06.160 i guess we don't have the clip okay well we'll play the clip later i just said i set it up so

00:03:14.120 well okay uh we're gonna play this clip very shortly yeah it's the rap clip sean it's the

00:03:19.260 rap clip all right here we go all right i don't even know what it says

00:03:30.840 climate disinformation get that immunization the vaccine for bad meme infiltration climate

00:03:41.200 misinformation it leads to polarization which leads to radical conspiracy ideation simultaneous

00:03:47.740 translation between conspiracy theories and violent means of change embracement economic

00:03:54.000 incentives or ideological basis it doesn't matter because either way it's still disinformation

00:04:00.300 Climate change is upon us and emissions are like a bomb

00:04:03.420 As the wave of increasing heat carries on and on

00:04:06.640 The wave of disinformation keeps on getting shared online

00:04:10.400 Trapped by the lab of Marie-Yves Carignan

00:04:13.320 From Université Sherbrooke

00:04:15.240 According to her book, the anti-government left and right now share a yearbook

00:04:19.600 And when it comes to floods, droughts, and wildfires

00:04:22.420 Even today's environmentalists can be climate deniers

00:04:25.940 Those are the yoga QAnon people up in the mix

00:04:29.140 Marie Eve tracks the patterns with the acronym FLIC

00:04:32.720 False X words, fallacious logic, unrealistic expectations

00:04:36.500 Cherry picking and conspiracy theory ideation, that's FLIC

00:04:40.120 Advertisers can help us find a fix

00:04:42.440 The climate host is exposed, brought to you by Wix

00:04:45.680 From the false promotion of bad pollutions and tricks

00:04:48.860 To the outright denialism saying it doesn't exist

00:04:52.040 There's a reason for the IPCC

00:04:54.340 It doesn't make assumptions, make your advertising conscious

00:04:57.900 take it from jake dubbins yes we need free speech to get the facts in the fight

00:05:02.300 but like jake said ad revenue is not a human right

00:05:10.220 that i'm sorry so you paid for that i just like you as a canadian taxpayer paid for that that was

00:05:18.940 a guy his name i looked it up his name is baba brinkman uh not baba black sheep i believe they're

00:05:25.100 brothers. Baba Brinkman is a New York-based rap artist, and he does science-themed albums and

00:05:33.300 off-Broadway theater productions. Probably off-off-off-Broadway, like New Jersey off-Broadway.

00:05:39.020 Anyway, a little, you know, tiny little relevant tidbit, I think, worth mentioning. His mother is

00:05:45.440 a Liberal member of Parliament. His mother is Liberal MP Joyce Murray, which may or may not

00:05:51.580 have influenced the Canadian government's decision to fly him to Dubai to do a rap about climate

00:05:58.020 disinformation. You can probably make it all your ringtone. Give 99 cents to Al Gore and you can make

00:06:03.480 that your ringtone or David Suzuki. I can't remember which one. This was at the Canada

00:06:08.380 Pavilion, which according to our friends at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we paid, what was

00:06:14.040 it $1.3 million to put together. Sorry, $3 million. $3 million to put this together. This is the

00:06:24.180 $1.3 million. Oh, yeah, sorry. $1.3 million is for the, whatchamacallit, for the pavilion.

00:06:31.420 $3 million was the overall cost. But basically, we are to feel better about it because we've been

00:06:38.180 wrapped to by the son of a Liberal member of Parliament. The left loves talking about cultural

00:06:43.400 appropriation. I'm more offended by that than I am by anything that someone would wear as a

00:06:49.640 Halloween costume. But okay, we'll have more on that tomorrow in Off the Record. But like I said,

00:06:54.520 I could have had that career. I could have been flying around the world to rap about climate

00:06:59.120 disinformation. Instead, I'm here in my basement. So take from that what you will. It's a cruel,

00:07:03.640 cruel world. What I actually wanted to talk about today, and I still have left myself a few minutes

00:07:09.140 to do it was the CRTC's decision to delay implementation of the so-called Online Streaming

00:07:15.700 Act. Now this is the bill that the government uses to regulate what you see on the internet.

00:07:22.740 They are saying that there isn't enough Canadian content on YouTube, on Netflix, on Spotify,

00:07:28.980 so the Canadian government is going to force these platforms to rejig their algorithms

00:07:33.620 to show you more Canadian content which means government picking and choosing

00:07:38.180 what you see on the internet now they've also said that these platforms will have an obligation to

00:07:43.540 produce more to invest in more so we now have the government basically exacting money from

00:07:49.780 the netflix's and spotify's of the world and doing so because they believe we need more canadian

00:07:55.860 content more canadian content like that rap i just showed you so the government will make it

00:08:00.340 so that youtube produces far more of that and less of i don't know some spanish soap opera

00:08:06.580 you want to watch clips of on YouTube. But all of that notwithstanding, what's interesting here is

00:08:11.780 that we have a delay. The CRTC is the one that's forced to actually make this work. And according

00:08:18.600 to the CRTC itself, they are going to be pushing further and further down the pipeline. So they've

00:08:25.720 actually published a timeline here. They've published a roadmap and they're now saying

00:08:31.180 full implementation isn't going to be until late 2025. Late 2025. Now what is 2025? What is the

00:08:39.920 significance of that? Well that also happens to be when we have scheduled a federal election. That

00:08:44.820 federal election is coincidentally enough later in 2025. It is in October unless there is an

00:08:51.840 earlier election which is always a possibility although we don't yet know for certain. But let's

00:08:57.040 just run the timeline here. The CRDC is still building a regulatory framework. They're having

00:09:01.920 consultations. They're talking to this group and that group. They're going to have a consultation

00:09:06.660 on closed captioning in the summer of 2024. So that's sure to be a riveting thing that we won't

00:09:13.580 be live streaming, I promise you. And it's not until when we talk about implementing it, they

00:09:19.240 say targeting launch late 2025. So they're going to make all these decisions. Then they're going to

00:09:25.880 focus on implementing them in late 2025. And this is how they describe it. The CRTC will finalize

00:09:32.560 the contributions online streaming services and traditional broadcasters will have to make to

00:09:38.000 support Canadian and Indigenous content. We will also start to issue conditions of service that

00:09:42.960 reflect how each TV station, radio station, and streaming service should support the goals of the

00:09:48.540 broadcasting system. More details will be included in future updates. So this is predicated on

00:09:54.440 government even being able to do this all by the end of next year which I think is a big big

00:09:59.860 question mark as to whether government is capable of doing that but it also coincidentally means

00:10:04.600 that the government is going to be the liberal government is going to be forced to defend this

00:10:10.000 throughout the next election campaign and again the beleaguered liberal government I don't think

00:10:15.880 wants to run on a platform where they've got to defend the carbon tax which is already going to be

00:10:21.140 a big pressure point for them, and also have to defend why they're focusing, while Canadians are

00:10:26.220 struggling with cost of living, on regulating podcasts. If you're to go door to door, as many

00:10:31.620 political candidates in this country are and will, and ask people, what are your top 10 concerns from

00:10:36.300 Canada? I don't think anyone, certainly anyone outside of Quebec, is going to list it all in

00:10:41.780 the top 10. You know, I really don't like my YouTube homepage. So when you get to Ottawa,

00:10:48.680 I really want to make sure that you tackle what I see when I log on to YouTube. Now,

00:10:53.700 when I go to YouTube now, I'm not going to read what's there because you'll learn about my taste

00:10:58.000 in music and you will forever judge me more harshly than you already do. Let's say I've got

00:11:03.200 a Gordon Ramsay clip there. I've got a couple of clips from Penn and Teller's show. I've got

00:11:08.500 the Guantanamera song because someone mentioned Guantanamo the other day and it made me think of

00:11:13.400 the song. I've got my own show. That's good. My own show. I see myself right now talking

00:11:18.580 back to me. Let's see. I see a clip of Justin Trudeau and I see a comedian I like who I don't

00:11:24.640 think is Canadian. So right now there is a selection of videos available to me on YouTube,

00:11:30.240 which has been curated based on things that I like and things that I click on. One of them is

00:11:36.440 Canadian. Well, two of them, the clip of Justin Trudeau, which I could take or leave and the live

00:11:41.520 stream that I'm doing right now are the two Canadian things well below the statutory threshold

00:11:47.460 that we are going to get for Canadian content

00:11:49.460 and the regulatory threshold from the CRTC.

00:11:53.400 So already we have by design a policy

00:11:56.140 that is aimed at manipulating this.

00:11:58.740 Now, what forms of Canadian content

00:12:01.360 do you think the government is going to be putting

00:12:03.000 on people's homepage?

00:12:04.000 Do you think they're gonna be forcing

00:12:05.460 the Andrew Lawton show onto Mabel's YouTube homepage?

00:12:09.960 No, they're gonna be forcing some crappy CBC sitcom.

00:12:13.800 They're gonna be forcing some hackish standup comedian.

00:12:16.760 they're going to be forcing that rap about climate disinformation. That's the type of

00:12:20.860 Canadian content they're going to be pushing. So if you don't think this is a significant issue,

00:12:25.740 you're not paying attention and you should because it's not benign. It's not just about

00:12:30.840 supporting Canadian content and Canadian artists. It's about manipulating what every single Canadian

00:12:36.700 can do and see on the internet. And I'll use myself as an example here. When my Freedom Convoy

00:12:43.580 book came out a couple of years ago indigo didn't put it on the shelves and we you know criticized

00:12:49.020 them for it and that's fine but they made the decision to not do it and they said well it's

00:12:53.900 still available on our website if someone really wants it they can get it but the point is there

00:12:59.660 is a tremendous value in a book being on the shelves to expose itself to people that otherwise

00:13:05.660 wouldn't know it was there you walk into a store you see a book oh wow i didn't know there was a

00:13:10.060 book about the freedom convoy i'm going to buy it that's what home pages for streaming services are

00:13:15.420 as well spotify serves up music they'll think i like based on music they know i like they're not

00:13:22.380 going to do that as well if they're focused on serving up a mandatory quota of canadian music

00:13:28.380 not to say there isn't amazing canadian music but sometimes that's not what i'm after or you're

00:13:33.820 disproportionately choosing these things and that's the problem with this so to bring it

00:13:38.540 it back to why it's relevant now. The fact that the CRTC is delaying it, I actually think is a

00:13:43.820 tremendous source of relief for Canadians. Keep delaying it, keep delaying it, let this be an

00:13:49.180 election issue so that you could have a conservative government say, if this is what the conservatives

00:13:53.540 choose to campaign on, that says the first thing we're going to do is dismantle this, go right back

00:13:58.240 to the old way, and all of a sudden the CRTC, yes, will have wasted the work, but it means that

00:14:03.200 Canadians will be further in control of their podcast, their streaming, because again, it's

00:14:08.700 going to limit what podcasts you see. This is a policy that says we need more of, I don't know,

00:14:15.000 Canada land and less of Joe Rogan, which may or may not be true, but it's a choice that consumers,

00:14:20.660 that viewers and listeners to podcasts should decide, not bureaucrats and regulators in the

00:14:26.440 CRTC. We'll move from this issue to a much more real constitutional matter, and that is the

00:14:33.060 decision that came down yesterday from the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upholding a ban

00:14:38.720 that the government had on gatherings outdoors. Now, one of the things that I, this came up the

00:14:45.700 other day, there was a gentleman who I've interviewed in the past, Kevin Gaudet, who

00:14:48.860 was fined for not staying in a quarantine hotel. And he had shared about this on a thread on X.

00:14:55.360 And I had said when I retweeted it or quote tweeted it, that how surreal it seemed that

00:15:00.180 this was something we went through, that the government was locking people up in quarantine

00:15:03.520 hotels and giving massive, massive fines. I said, but it's not surreal. It was very real. Government

00:15:08.320 did it. And they have tried to basically forget this. But the legal process moves slowly at times.

00:15:14.680 These things are still working their way through the courts. And with the exception of maybe a

00:15:19.620 small handful of cases, courts have made absolutely abysmal decisions on this. The one in Saskatchewan,

00:15:25.620 which we'll talk about shortly. And also this week in British Columbia, the BC Supreme Court

00:15:30.440 has upheld the healthcare workers vaccine mandate, which is pretty much as unscientific at this stage

00:15:37.740 as a gathering restriction on outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people. Joining me on the line

00:15:44.520 now is Marty Moore. He leads a team of lawyers across Canada funded by the Justice Centre

00:15:49.720 for Constitutional Freedoms. And just as a matter of disclosure, I sit on the board for the JCCF,

00:15:55.060 although that has no bearing on this interview.

00:15:58.100 Marty, good to talk to you.

00:15:59.040 Thanks so much for coming on today.

00:16:00.960 Good to talk to you.

00:16:01.940 Thank you, Andrew.

00:16:03.200 Let's start with what the actual decision was in Saskatchewan.

00:16:06.700 I mean, this was a clear-cut constitutional freedoms case,

00:16:11.660 your right to assemble, your right to gather outdoors.

00:16:15.340 And the Court of Appeal has still said the justifications

00:16:18.360 that the government held were reasonable.

00:16:21.200 That's right.

00:16:21.900 and the word reasonable there is obviously doing a lot of work the court has upheld the lower court

00:16:27.740 decision that found that it was just fine for the government to prohibit people from protesting

00:16:33.100 outdoors with uh any more than 10 people and if you have a gathering of 10 people outdoors

00:16:38.780 then you call that a protest you're really stretching already while simultaneously the

00:16:43.660 government was in fact allowing much greater uh people to gather indoors and the facts in this

00:16:50.380 case Andrew were not controversial this was not a great battle of the experts if you will

00:16:54.860 everybody was admitting it's much safer to be outdoors in fact there was no evidence whatsoever

00:17:00.460 of a single COVID transmission linked to an outdoor protest during the entire period of COVID

00:17:06.300 in Saskatchewan but yet when it came to restaurants and bars the public health officer there was

00:17:11.820 estimating 30 cases a day from those restaurants and bars and guess what had the restrictions

00:17:17.740 outdoor protest did and in a bar you could gather as long as you only have four people at a table

00:17:23.660 you were fine in Saskatchewan but don't gather with more than 10 people outdoors in a park

00:17:27.260 regardless of how far you are apart so this is the current decision that's come down the court says

00:17:32.060 well government is required deference and the precautionary principle needs to be respected

00:17:37.900 here as well Andrew. And what is that for people that haven't had to spend their lives immersed

00:17:43.580 in this like you have well the precautionary principle is designed to allow for government to

00:17:49.980 make uh decisions where there's a lack of evidence uh and there's a high risk of harm if they don't

00:17:56.460 act well here in this case it's been known for decades and decades that respiratory viruses

00:18:01.340 don't transmit outdoors with any significant uh or or real risk there um but yet in the case of

00:18:09.100 covid we threw all of our past knowledge out the window and claimed that the precautionary

00:18:14.460 principles needed to be used to ban things that the government really you know had problems with

00:18:18.940 like an outdoor protest which you know obviously is the only way for people to really voice their

00:18:23.660 objections to the government's current policy though now the precautionary principle was applied

00:18:27.980 you know in a bizarre way in saskatchewan because as i mentioned when you could gather indoors and

00:18:33.740 much more risky settings where there's lots of case spread happening on a daily basis

00:18:37.740 we don't apply the precautionary principle to that that's economic activity but when it comes

00:18:42.800 to these pesky protesters outdoors well we'll apply rigorously the precautionary principle

00:18:48.300 because one of them could get sick Andrew even though we have no evidence that anybody got sick

00:18:52.540 despite mass protests going on during COVID as we know from the Black Lives Matter protest

00:18:58.660 I haven't read the full decision yet so I didn't see it there but I wanted to ask you about it

00:19:04.180 because in some of these decisions in other courts and other similar fact patterns, but different

00:19:09.420 cases, judges will hedge by saying, well, based on the information at the time, and they'll kind

00:19:15.340 of give government a bit of a weasel way out there by saying, well, it might have been reasonable

00:19:19.360 for them to think that this was a reasonable policy. Is that something that was engaged here

00:19:23.520 as well? Well, certainly the decision tries to say we can't, you know, second guess decisions

00:19:28.820 made during the time. But these were decisions that were months and months in the making. The

00:19:33.100 The 10-person limit was initially in place during the Black Lives Matter protests.

00:19:37.520 It was never enforced during that time, of course.

00:19:40.420 Then it was reimposed in the winter there.

00:19:43.960 That entire time period, we have statements from the Chief Medical Health Officer in Saskatchewan

00:19:48.420 saying it's much safer to be outdoors, please gather outdoors, and even statements commenting

00:19:52.620 on protests that look, you know, it's a restriction, it's guidance not to gather with more than

00:19:58.920 10 people, but we totally get people's desire to be outdoors protesting for Black Lives

00:20:03.100 Matter. That was not applied, of course, when it came down to people protesting government

00:20:07.400 restrictions, in which case the weight of the law was brought down with full force and

00:20:11.420 a vigor actually unmatched in any other province, more national across the country. I have not

00:20:17.680 seen a greater prosecution and zeal to punish those who prosecuted or who protested government

00:20:24.180 restrictions than I've seen in Saskatchewan. And those prosecutions are actually going on

00:20:28.380 in this state. We had dozens of cases there in Saskatchewan on that basis, but only those

00:20:33.460 protesters against the government. No one that was protesting other issues, Black Lives Matter,

00:20:37.640 Palestinian Israel issues, or even LGBTQ matters. All of those things were going on as well. They

00:20:42.340 were all subject to the same restrictions, but only one group was targeted. So there's a real

00:20:45.780 rule of a law issue here in Saskatchewan as well. There's a part of this that I find particularly

00:20:50.920 insidious. Now, I think any restriction on freedom to protest is a very serious thing, but it's

00:20:57.120 especially concerning when government puts a policy in place that innately and directly

00:21:03.420 prohibits protest of that policy. Because you're basically saying that you should not be allowed to

00:21:09.000 express legally your displeasure with the very thing that we're using to prevent you from doing

00:21:13.740 it. Absolutely. And that's why the courts are there. That is why under the Canadian Charter

00:21:21.360 rights and freedoms it's a fundamental freedom to peacefully assemble and express publicly in this

00:21:28.080 very powerful medium your opposition to government action and when we see in this case the courts

00:21:34.640 repeatedly uh using deference to the government for this kind of direct prohibition uh it is

00:21:43.120 shocking and it's very much a concern and to be honest andrew the the courts in canada on the

00:21:48.560 issue of COVID restrictions have really failed to earn Canadians' trust. And when they say, look,

00:21:56.160 just quoting from the decision itself, it's like, even if the differential treatment between

00:22:00.400 unstructured outdoor gatherings and retail settings could not be justified on an entirely

00:22:05.200 public health rationale, which is an understatement, the court says, well, that's not

00:22:09.520 really determinative of whether it's justified because the government has deference to, quote,

00:22:14.160 preserve economic activity and other social benefits and so in other words if the government

00:22:19.360 chooses to violate your rights and allow economic activity which is more risky to go forward

00:22:23.920 the courts are right now saying we're fine to turn a blind eye to that yeah i wanted to take

00:22:28.800 a bigger picture look at this i mentioned in the preamble the bc case this week and i i don't think

00:22:33.440 you were engaged in that case but i i'm sure you followed this in other similar ones and you're

00:22:38.400 right when you say that there's been this overwhelming attitude of deference and i i'm

00:22:43.200 really hard-pressed to come up with any wins i mean obviously the the federal court uh did shut

00:22:47.920 down the emergencies act which was a positive i think decision emanating from that era but that

00:22:53.120 wasn't actually a coveted restriction or a coveted policy the emergencies act was problematic for

00:22:57.920 other reasons i mean where have been the wins on anything else coveted related well yeah and i mean

00:23:03.440 actually we were involved there in the vc cases and with the medical health workers and there's

00:23:08.640 there is a small win there of course uh we do have an order from the court saying dr henry now must

00:23:15.760 reconsider this prohibition of uh virtual workers they should be hired back uh so there's there's

00:23:23.920 something there to laugh but that's the way is that maybe maybe just maybe it's not reasonable

00:23:29.200 to force people who work from home to get a vaccine that that's about that's about as low

00:23:33.360 a bar as we get in canada right and we've we've now found the courts this is the first time as

00:23:38.080 i'm aware of a court actually being willing to essentially say that we've seen some arbiters

00:23:42.240 yeah the canada post uh arbitration said something very similar this week there uh when it comes to

00:23:47.200 covert restrictions of course we filed a case in bc against the ban on outdoor protests the

00:23:52.480 government actually conceded that violation and then in alberta we struck down uh the restrictions

00:23:57.760 on the covert restrictions on the basis not of the charter but on the basis they are illegally

00:24:01.680 issues by Dr. Dina Hinshaw rather than what they were in fact the cabinet regulations and so

00:24:07.840 the when the winds come uh they're far and few between on the covert restrictions themselves of

00:24:12.320 course we've had many victories at trial many dropped charges but on the charter merits themselves

00:24:18.480 the courts have really let Canadians down to this point the supreme court has yet to weigh in

00:24:23.520 uh we have seen the Taylor case from Newfoundland recently being granted leave it's hard to say

00:24:29.120 whether the Supreme Court is going to get to the merits of COVID or whether they're going to get

00:24:32.720 to this issue of mootness where we've seen courts refuse to even consider COVID restrictions because

00:24:37.680 oh well that was in the past Andrew. So that's a live issue in the Taylor case and maybe the

00:24:42.640 court will get past the mootness issue and get to the merits we're not sure but it's a possibility

00:24:47.520 that here this protest restriction case from Saskatchewan would also be seeking lead from

00:24:52.560 the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's been rather not too generous in granting lead to appeal but

00:24:57.760 But it does, I think, behoove the courts to fight back and actually seek to regain Canadians' trust.

00:25:05.080 Because the courts are the ones under the Charter through Section 1 that are there to defend Canadians' fundamental rights and freedoms.

00:25:13.280 And when they fail to do that, they lose Canadians' trust.

00:25:15.840 And I think we've seen that significantly in Canada and a lot more discussion of, well, maybe if the courts are losing Canadians' trust,

00:25:22.880 it's going to fall to the legislatures to now be the defenders of people fundamental rights and

00:25:27.680 freedoms and if the courts agree or not uh politicians are going to have more latitude

00:25:31.340 to regard or disregard court decisions yes i've got a long-standing frustration with with mootness

00:25:38.280 which conveniently allows governments to uh skirt accountability and then do the same thing again

00:25:43.780 elsewhere and i mean i would not being a lawyer but i would point out if the government uses this

00:25:47.540 that uh the government at every opportunity talks about the need to prepare for the next pandemic so

00:25:52.760 They clearly are aware of the fact that this could replicate itself in some form.

00:25:58.520 So absolutely, having on record the actually you can't do this would be would be very important.

00:26:03.740 Although, as we've been discussing, in fact, the government may end up having on the record a permission slip.

00:26:09.820 Right. And this is where Canadians really need to.

00:26:12.280 Obviously, we're going to continue to press these matters through the courts.

00:26:14.880 But Canadians can also press their politicians.

00:26:17.700 But the current Saskatchewan government is the government that put these measures in place.

00:26:21.700 What is that government going to do to promise its citizens to say, look, we're not going to be so unscientific and, quite frankly, just completely ignoring common sense on these issues in the future?

00:26:33.800 What restrictions is the government going to put on itself to ensure that itself or a subsequent government will not be violating Canadians' rights with such impunity?

00:26:42.820 Legislatures are, you know, for example, in Alberta are making some changes in that regard.

00:26:46.900 Public health acts need to be changed.

00:26:48.220 This idea that the government can, based simply on a potential line of reasoning, however tortured, to restrict your fundamental rights and freedoms, well, why should we allow that?

00:27:01.680 We can obviously press this through the courts.

00:27:03.980 I think legislatures have a job to do on this as well.

00:27:07.740 Marty Moore, always good to get your legal analysis and chat with you in general.

00:27:12.100 Thank you for coming on, sir.

00:27:13.180 We'll see you soon.

00:27:15.020 Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:27:16.040 All right. Yeah. The JCCF's Big George Jonas Freedom Award dinners are coming up. So I think

00:27:20.780 I'll be at the one in, definitely I'll be at the one in Toronto. I think I'll be at the one in

00:27:24.440 Calgary as well. So we will hopefully catch up with Marty at at least one of those and maybe

00:27:28.800 some of you as well. I know many of you are supporters of that organization and its work.

00:27:33.680 One thing that I will say just before moving on here, which I think is crucially important to

00:27:37.920 point out is that, yes, you need to look at all of the mechanisms available to you. Use the legal

00:27:43.560 tools and use the political tools. But this is where I get very pessimistic, because let's look

00:27:48.580 at the post-pandemic electoral record. We have had a handful of elections in the last few years,

00:27:54.760 and they have revealed that Canadians are willing to give further mandates to the people responsible

00:28:01.380 for some of these policies. Justin Trudeau re-elected in 2021 with effectively the same

00:28:06.980 size of government that he had going into that election. Doug Ford in 2022 re-elected.

00:28:12.520 uh danielle smith is the one exception and that was a case of the internal mechanism the leadership

00:28:18.360 uh process in the united conservative party getting rid of jason kenney apart from that

00:28:23.600 in manitoba yes the pc government lost and was replaced by the ndp but that really wasn't a

00:28:28.860 rebuke of the manitoba the former manitoba government's handling of covid so at pretty

00:28:34.260 much every opportunity when canadians have been able to vote out a government that violated their

00:28:40.320 civil liberties, they have in fact reelected it, or they've, in the case of Manitoba, voted it out

00:28:45.580 without really dealing with that issue. So yes, I think Canadians need to wake up. If we talk about

00:28:51.180 politics as being downstream of culture, it's exactly why we need to keep having these

00:28:55.700 conversations like we are now. But tell your friends too, I never let anyone tell you that

00:29:00.680 a Christmas dinner should be banned or something, because when government drives that wedge

00:29:04.200 between your ability to assemble, they're doing exactly what we were talking about in Saskatchewan

00:29:09.100 there which is making it so you can't find that you aren't alone and you can't find there are

00:29:12.620 other people like you that think this is all bonkers and you certainly can't get together in

00:29:16.560 a group and wave your signs and placards and stand outside a hall of government and say no

00:29:20.840 so when governments prohibit you from doing that there's a big big problem and you should just

00:29:24.980 protest on principle because they don't want you to so with that being said let's talk about another

00:29:31.160 issue where certainly the legal issues have not been solved by the court so we perhaps have to

00:29:37.780 look for political solutions and health care is a tremendous example of that health care choice

00:29:43.120 it's not really something we have universally available to Canadians if you are in Quebec you

00:29:48.680 have that option because the Supreme Court has decided you do but only in Quebec not if you live

00:29:53.880 in another province certainly not in British Columbia we view health care rightfully so as

00:29:59.420 a provincial issue but there was a piece from Colin Craig who's the president of secondstreet.org

00:30:05.080 that says we need to put some of the blame on federal gatekeepers as well. He says we should

00:30:10.500 demand healthcare choice from federal political leaders. Colin Craig joins me now. Always good

00:30:16.420 to talk to you, Colin. So yeah, let's just explain the basics here. Why is this an issue that is

00:30:21.520 federal? Well, it's a reality that the federal government gives provincial governments billions

00:30:28.480 of dollars every single year for health care. It is a minority position. So when you go to a

00:30:35.960 hospital and you get care or you visit your family doctor, the bulk of the bill is paid for by the

00:30:42.540 provincial government using tax dollars. But they still receive a decent portion. I don't know the

00:30:48.080 exact percentage offhand, but they still receive a decent enough portion that they certainly want

00:30:54.040 keep ottawa happy because they don't want to lose those dollars and so uh sometimes when provincial

00:30:59.320 governments go to do things that ottawa doesn't like they threaten or they actually come in with

00:31:03.560 funding cuts in terms of how much they're giving for health care so that's how ottawa is tied into

00:31:08.040 this and it's done through the canada health act which is basically a funding mechanism

00:31:13.960 in terms of how ottawa agrees to give provincial governments money for health care so one of the

00:31:19.560 the things that I find just so baffling here, and again, we just had Marty Moore on to do the legal

00:31:24.020 stuff, so you and I don't have to go down the legal road, but the Supreme Court has said, yeah,

00:31:28.460 access to a wait list is not access to healthcare. They've said that you should have the right if you

00:31:33.000 have the means available to go and do something else. They've just said this is the case only in

00:31:36.800 one province alone. You know, it would arguably be more of an easy pill to swallow if they had

00:31:43.240 said no across the board. But in this case, someone in British Columbia can't go to the

00:31:47.640 can be clinic but someone in Quebec can go wherever they want to go yeah and just make a

00:31:52.460 distinction for your listeners because this can get a bit confusing sometimes and what people

00:31:57.580 don't always pick up on is that it's getting private or non-government care locally this is

00:32:04.060 the sticking point as a Calgarian if I need a hip operation I cannot pay in Calgary or anywhere else

00:32:11.680 in Alberta. I can't fly to British Columbia and pay to get one there. I can fly to certainly

00:32:17.600 Quebec and other provinces. So you actually have the same problem in BC. Someone in Vancouver

00:32:24.300 cannot pay at a private clinic in Vancouver. They can in Calgary. So you see this happening

00:32:30.480 where people- And it's the same doctors that could have just served the person in their own

00:32:35.300 province if legal yeah it's it's crazy no other country on the planet does what canada does in

00:32:42.260 this regard it makes no sense in terms of cost you're increasing cost for patients you're

00:32:47.360 inconveniencing them at a time that usually this is the last thing they need if you've got chronic

00:32:52.240 pain because they're waiting uh for hip operation like last thing you want to do is jump on an

00:32:56.920 airplane and go somewhere else to get it done so it makes no sense at all uh you know if if you're

00:33:03.040 federal government i would point out it's bad for the environment right to force people to have to

00:33:07.360 travel even further to get the care that you need but i certainly wouldn't criticize any patient for

00:33:12.880 doing what they can to improve the health of their bodies when you talk about this in level-headed

00:33:19.920 terms you know i think wow you know this is easy why isn't every canadian getting on board with

00:33:23.840 this but you bring it into the public realm certainly if a politician were to ever say

00:33:27.680 what you're saying and as just passionate and mild-mannered away they're going to have the

00:33:31.680 activists jumping, saying they're privatizing health care, American health care. You're going

00:33:35.480 to be no longer served. If you don't have money, people are going to go broke. You have all of

00:33:40.500 these doom and gloom scenarios, which how do you push back against that? I mean, how do you tell

00:33:45.860 people that actually, no, it increases care for everyone? Yeah. So, I mean, that's really the

00:33:51.980 debate that dominated 20, 30 years ago. And this is why we didn't see any changes back then. The

00:33:58.580 public has shifted and in credit to groups that were around before us and certainly we've been

00:34:04.260 talking about it for several years now but reality is there's not two systems on the planet it's not

00:34:09.860 just canada or the us there are lots of countries that have universal systems like canada norway

00:34:16.820 sweden france you know throughout the european union australia new zealand and uh you know many

00:34:24.180 many reports show that they're doing better than canada and the key difference is that they give

00:34:28.820 patients the choice between using their public systems or using non-government options whether

00:34:35.140 it's a non-profit clinic a private clinic whatever patients have that choice we don't typically have

00:34:40.500 that choice as we've just discussed in canada so i think more and more canadians understand that

00:34:45.940 they're on board with it the polls show that a large majority of canadians understand that

00:34:51.300 that throwing money at the system is not the solution.

00:34:54.240 We spend a lot of money on healthcare in this country.

00:34:57.960 That's not the problem.

00:34:59.200 The problem is that we don't get good results

00:35:00.940 because of the structure of the system.

00:35:03.020 And giving patients choice,

00:35:05.200 it helps take pressure off of the public system.

00:35:09.220 My bet is if we did that across the country,

00:35:11.380 made it easier,

00:35:12.700 the vast majority of people would still use the public system

00:35:15.200 and that's fine.

00:35:16.300 But you'd probably have maybe around 10, 15%

00:35:19.380 that would use non-government options.

00:35:22.040 I mean, that's kind of been the Swedish experience.

00:35:25.140 And who wouldn't want to take 10 or 15% of pressure

00:35:29.020 off of our healthcare system right now?

00:35:31.680 It'd be a significant benefit.

00:35:34.420 And combined with other reforms,

00:35:35.920 we could ultimately deliver better care for patients.

00:35:40.460 But the response you get to that is what happens

00:35:42.520 if 10% or 15% of the doctors decide to leave the public system

00:35:46.740 and go to the private system?

00:35:47.760 you've not really helped anything and what's the answer to that yeah i'm glad you raised that

00:35:51.840 because a lot of people raise that point and and what i always respond with is well how does sweden

00:35:56.240 do it how does norway do it how does australia do it i mean all these other countries that perform

00:36:01.600 better than canada they have found a way to do it and and often the solution is that they will cap

00:36:07.840 in the united kingdom for example they cap how much time some in the public system can work in

00:36:12.720 in the private system. The second thing to keep in mind is that when you have more employers,

00:36:18.640 you end up with more employees. This is something that the Swedes told us when we were in their

00:36:23.800 country last year talking with people about healthcare. And I thought this is a great way

00:36:27.340 of explaining it. Because when you have a more vibrant healthcare sector, you have more choices

00:36:33.360 for people in the healthcare sector in terms of where they want to work. Right now in Canada,

00:36:37.980 you often have doctors and nurses graduating, and they look around, and often the option is,

00:36:44.440 well, I work in the government system, or I go somewhere else. Well, if they had more choices

00:36:50.100 in Canada, then we could retain more doctors, we could retain more nurses, we wouldn't have the

00:36:54.100 shortages that we have right now. And I know it's not perfectly analogous, but I would also say that

00:37:00.060 we could look at the education system. It's another regulated professional designation to be a

00:37:04.400 teacher. We have private schools. We have not seen this mass exodus of public school teachers to

00:37:10.240 private schools because we also forget that people are motivated by different things. People that go

00:37:14.380 into healthcare are motivated by different things. You may really want to be in a hospital, in a

00:37:18.820 family medicine practice, and you'll stay in the system because it offers you something.

00:37:23.240 Yeah, I mean, I love that example. We've used it too, Andrew, because it's such a good comparison.

00:37:28.340 You, across Canada, we have choices for parents. You can put your kids in the government-run system

00:37:34.300 or you can pay for a private school, independent school, whatever. And the vast majority of

00:37:40.340 Canadians still choose the public system and that's totally fine. But when those do decide,

00:37:44.520 some parents decide on private options, again, they're taking pressure off of those public

00:37:49.480 school systems. The point about choice for workers is important. Here's a crazy number

00:37:56.920 that we were able to calculate using some data from the state of Michigan is that there's nearly

00:38:02.380 2,000 nurses who live in Ontario and get up each day for work and they cross the border into

00:38:09.760 Michigan, primarily working in the Detroit area. Like that is huge. And we talked to them,

00:38:16.660 we surveyed them, we said, well, why are you doing this? And the number one reason it actually

00:38:20.440 wasn't compensation. It was the availability of work. They had the types of work, like positions

00:38:27.800 that they wanted but the second reason was compensation and right behind it was working

00:38:33.560 conditions and many of them noted that they could get these jobs in uh michigan they were the way

00:38:40.920 that they wanted them they had uh they were full-time came with benefits they came with um

00:38:47.080 a predictable schedule i mean you you had a competitive environment in michigan where they

00:38:52.920 They were having employers competing to attract these workers and finding ways to give them

00:38:59.380 the type of work arrangements that they wanted.

00:39:02.340 Whereas in Ontario, they were looking at it and they're looking at the government system

00:39:05.780 and saying, no, I just don't want to work there.

00:39:08.720 And this has been a problem for a long time.

00:39:10.380 You can't blame the current government.

00:39:11.840 You can't blame even, I don't think, the former government, because it's the problem when

00:39:16.100 you have this monopolistic environment.

00:39:18.080 to be honest i i wonder why i i should i i understand why but if you really think about it

00:39:27.020 it's quite surprising provinces haven't seen the opportunity in this because if you're a provincial

00:39:31.960 government and you can come up with a pitch that you can make to voters which is you will not pay

00:39:37.460 more in taxes you will not have any reduction in your care but you will have this added option

00:39:42.940 and at the very least even if you can't afford to use it there will be fewer people on the wait

00:39:47.240 list ahead of you in the public system to get it because you know two or three of those folks will

00:39:51.180 go to the system you've actually eased the health care crisis without having to spend a dollar and

00:39:58.740 i really don't know why provincial governments have not been the ones to take the lead and call

00:40:02.800 for that they're uh they're concerned about funding cutbacks from ottawa and but to bring

00:40:08.560 the fight to ottawa let us do it i mean we see provinces on drug decriminalization saying not

00:40:13.860 not as much anymore, but saying, hey, give us the right to do this. They could do the same

00:40:19.740 thing provincially if they wanted to expend the political capital doing so. They could. I think

00:40:24.740 it would be wise for patients for them to do this. And the easiest, I think, argument they can make

00:40:30.940 going into Ottawa is, look, Ottawa, you're allowing Quebec to do this. Quebecers get more healthcare

00:40:36.860 rights than anyone else in the country. We need to even the playing field and give all Canadians

00:40:41.760 the same rights that Quebecers have. I think that's the argument that needs to be made if

00:40:45.840 you're in BC, Alberta, wherever. I mean, the BC government obviously isn't going to make that

00:40:50.840 argument, but certainly others could in Ontario. You know, Doug Ford could stand up and make that

00:40:56.360 argument. We don't really look at this through a partisan lens, but the bottom line is it would

00:41:01.740 help patients. And it makes sense for elected officials to do it. The public is behind them.

00:41:08.660 this is like say this isn't the debate from 20 years ago the public has heard they've seen

00:41:12.980 governments do the same tired old approach of throwing money at the system hoping something's

00:41:17.700 going to work it hasn't worked it's failed it's time to start looking at what these countries

00:41:23.300 that perform better than canada what they do and then we can start copying them and bring our

00:41:28.980 standards up and this is one thing among several changes that could be made to improve results for

00:41:35.380 patience. Colin, Craig, always good to talk to you from SecondStreet.org. Thanks so much for coming

00:41:40.620 on today. Thanks for having me, Andrew. All right, thank you. Well, that does it for us for today. I've

00:41:46.160 been plugging it all week, so just to keep the whole set intact, let me tell you here what we

00:41:51.280 have coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm going on a book tour. We are launching the release of

00:41:57.220 my biography. You can see it back there. Well, you can't anymore, but you could see it back there.

00:42:00.380 Pierre Polyev, A Political Life, a biography that has had a fair bit of media interest.

00:42:05.560 We'll be doing a launch event in Calgary on Wednesday, May 29th at the Ranchman's Club.

00:42:11.220 Ooh, fancy.

00:42:12.140 Going to Toronto at the Albany Club May 30th, and that is going to be at 4 p.m.

00:42:17.860 That is at the Albany Club, and we're going to do something in Ottawa, I think, June 5th.

00:42:21.680 We're still finalizing those details, but you can get tickets,

00:42:24.940 of which there are only a limited number left at modernmiraclenetwork.org

00:42:31.220 slash Lawton, modernmiraclenetwork.org slash Lawton.

00:42:35.480 And I hope to see you out there, get your copy.

00:42:37.340 And I'll sign it if you want.

00:42:38.660 It reduces the value, though, considerably if I sign it.

00:42:41.420 But nevertheless, you have that option available to you.

00:42:45.120 I'm going to be back tomorrow for Off the Record,

00:42:48.480 which we'll be doing with a couple of cast of characters from True North.

00:42:52.180 Next week, I am going to be away and I'll be giving you updates.

00:42:56.440 I'm going to be in Taiwan.

00:42:58.120 We have been invited by the Taiwanese government and part of the trip will be there for the

00:43:03.500 presidential inauguration, which should be quite fun.

00:43:06.100 I'm banned from covering government events in Canada, but I'm getting like nice invitations

00:43:10.400 to government events in Taiwan.

00:43:12.540 So take from that what you will.

00:43:13.980 But as we look at this country being a bulwark for freedom and democracy and a resistance

00:43:20.880 against China.

00:43:22.360 It is incredibly important.

00:43:23.580 I'm glad to be able to go

00:43:24.700 and I'll have some updates

00:43:26.100 sent back for you.

00:43:27.520 But you will be in good hands

00:43:28.900 because our good friend Chris Sims

00:43:30.420 is going to be guest hosting

00:43:32.540 next week from Tuesday to Thursday

00:43:34.920 because we've got the holiday Monday.

00:43:36.680 So I trust you will greet her

00:43:38.600 with the enthusiasm

00:43:39.660 that I greet her

00:43:40.420 when she's on every Monday.

00:43:41.420 But Chris Sims will be filling my shoes,

00:43:44.460 my novelty size shoes

00:43:45.600 as a guest host next week.

00:43:47.260 And then I'll be back

00:43:48.020 in a couple of weeks time.

00:43:49.180 But all that being said,

00:43:50.100 thank you so much for tuning in, everyone. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. God bless and good

00:43:54.280 day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Vaughn Show. Support the program by donating to

00:44:00.300 True North at www.tnc.news.

00:44:20.100 We'll be right back.

Juno News - May 16, 2024

Online streaming regulations kicked back to after election

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