00:01:00.000welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:20.400north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lotton show
00:01:30.640on true north on this wednesday january 3rd 2024 as always i'm probably going to say that wrong for
00:01:38.800about a good 11 and a half months and then i'll finally realize it's 2024 by uh basically 2025
00:01:45.540That's typically how these things work.
00:01:48.020Just moments before I went on air, Twitter is bad for my health.
00:01:52.260It's bad for everyone's health or X now.
00:01:54.160But I was looking and there's a gentleman by the name of Nasser Hadar who says after 10 years of living in Canada, today he became a Canadian.
00:02:03.500And there's a photo of him on, it looks like a Zoom call with a citizenship judge.
00:02:09.700and he's like in his own office or home like leaning over and taking a selfie with
00:02:14.580the zoom box of the citizen judge holding the Canadian flag and I'm like in 2024 can we not
00:02:21.120actually have in-person citizenship ceremonies now like that I mean congratulations and all that but
00:02:26.520that is crazy I'm just imagining the way zoom calls are you click the raise hand button and
00:02:31.740type out your oath that's presumably all it takes to be a Canadian citizen now my goodness that I
00:02:36.980thought we had gotten rid i mean i'm doing this show virtually i can't be in all your homes at
00:02:40.740once but i tried once it didn't go well but i didn't know we were still doing stuff like this
00:02:45.700with zoom so one of the many ways that covet has killed anything and everything good in the world
00:02:51.060or at least most of it but that's a bit of a dark note to start off on all right we'll hopefully
00:02:55.380turn things around a little bit great to have you tuned in to the program today if you are a
00:03:01.540plagiarist now i don't know if you want to identify or out yourself as such but if you are
00:03:06.500a plagiarist who likes taking other words other people's words and passing them off as your own
00:03:10.740today is a very good day because we've learned there is an excuse for plagiarism that is a very
00:03:16.420compelling one which is to do it well being one of the good guys if you are a lefty you are allowed
00:03:23.620to engage in plagiarism because it's only bad if the right does it that's apparently how things
00:03:28.740are going here you may have seen the news this week claudine gay who is the very highly paid
00:03:33.540president of harvard or at least was until yesterday has announced she is resigning it
00:03:39.140wasn't the anti-semitism that did iran it wasn't the turning a blind eye to a very rabid jew hatred
00:03:45.620on her campus no it was being outed by two independent journalists for in her very few
00:03:52.340public works uh engaging in plagiarism now people have looked through and said well you know it's
00:03:57.860minor play, you know, you took this sentence here, this sentence here, but plagiarism is plagiarism.
00:04:03.420And I'll say as someone who has been to university and someone who has spent my life working in a
00:04:09.200creative space, by which I mean just a space where I have to use my words some days better than
00:04:14.700others, I assure you, I take plagiarism very seriously to the point where I've even been
00:04:19.600nervous when I'm typing something out and I fear I'm accidentally plagiarizing because there are
00:04:25.620some sentences that there are really no other ways to word. I remember yesterday, for example,
00:04:31.820or two days ago, I was writing something and I had been looking it up on Wikipedia and I typed
00:04:37.240it out the way I normally would and realized that there was like a string of five or six words that
00:04:42.520were identical to the words that were describing something on Wikipedia. And I was like terrified
00:04:47.500because I'm like, these words don't even really have synonyms. Like how else can I describe what
00:04:52.140this is. So I end up rearranging things, going out of my way to not plagiarize because I know
00:04:58.640it is the unforgivable sin in media and even worse in academia. So for Claudine Gay to go
00:05:05.600through this, she has done what you would be potentially expelled for doing if you were an
00:05:11.220undergraduate student, but she's done it and has continued to fall upwards to the point of getting
00:05:15.620her PhD and landing a plum gig, making I think 900,000 US a year at Harvard. But the good thing
00:05:22.020is, they probably just copied and pasted her salary from someone else's. Do you see what I
00:05:26.240did there? Yeah. Anyway, so she is now gone. It was the plagiarism that did her in. But because
00:05:31.340of this, because she is the good guy and the right are the bad guys, people have decided in the media
00:05:37.320now that plagiarism is not a bad thing at all. You may have seen this headline in the Associated
00:05:43.220Press, which CTV in Canada picked up. And if we put this tweet up, you will see this.
00:05:48.840harvard's harvard president's resignation highlights new conservative weapon against
00:05:56.580colleges plagiarism and i obviously it got community noted there so you see well actually
00:06:02.400plagiarism is a breach of the rules plagiarism uh is not a weapon and she was forced to resign
00:06:07.420for being a serial plagiarist uh but no conservatives are the ones to blame because
00:06:12.720conservatives have weaponized her plagiarism by exposing it. And then there was this gem on
00:06:19.560television. I don't make a general point of watching Mara Gay and what she has to say,
00:06:25.460but it was interesting, the mental gymnastics that she engaged in to defend Claudine Gay.
00:06:31.400I don't, I know Sean's asking if they're related. I don't think they're related. Although to be
00:06:36.140honest, Claudine Gay, I think is actually more of an intellectual who wouldn't want to claim
00:06:39.920being related to Mara Gay. But this is what Mara had to say. The thing that really disturbs me is
00:06:46.280the unrelenting campaign from the right and from some conservative activists to slander, discredit,
00:06:56.520and ultimately, I guess, you know, somebody used the phrase, we've claimed a scalp, I said, I think,
00:07:04.640on social media, you know, to essentially unseat gay and other presidents as well when
00:07:12.580they don't like, you know, not just the handling of the horrific attacks on Israel on October
00:07:21.4607th, the way that that was handled on campus, but really anything else that they don't like
00:07:26.740about not just these presidents, but actually what they would call wokeism.
00:07:32.620And I think that's why these presidents are under attack. That's why Claudine DeGay was under attack.
00:07:38.560The fact that she's a black woman and the first person who is a black American to lead Harvard only added to their thirst to dethrone her.
00:07:51.340And, you know, those attacks, you don't have to I don't have to say that they're racist because you can hear and see the racism, the attacks.
00:07:57.480when people like Vivek Ramaswamy say, you know, okay, this is a problem about diversity and
00:08:04.720hiring. I mean, this is racism as well. So there's a lot of different layers here,
00:08:09.520but I don't want to miss the attacks on academic freedom.
00:08:13.960I mean, there was a lot going on there. Now, I do not think that Mara Gay is a plagiarist. I think
00:08:20.020those are her original thoughts, because I don't think anyone else would have tried to pass those
00:08:24.480off as their own. So she probably can lay claim to those words without anyone accusing her of
00:08:29.440plagiarism. But now if you expose it, you are anti-diversity, you're anti-black, you're racist.
00:08:36.720And, you know, she could have made any point she wanted. She could have come up with any example
00:08:41.580when she talks about the racism that's self-evident. And she mentioned one name of someone
00:08:47.480she thinks is passing off racism. And I don't know who this person is. He sounds very much like
00:08:54.660a white supremacist neo-Nazi type. I believe the name was Vivek Ramaswamy. Yeah, the white
00:09:02.640supremacy just drips off that name, Vivek Ramaswamy. We don't have a picture of him,
00:09:07.440but I bet he's some blonde haired, blue eyed Aryan skinhead who is just so racist against
00:09:12.640that Claudine Gay for saying that he rejects diversity hiring. Now, one of the reasons I've
00:09:18.420always been so fervently against affirmative action and diversity-based hiring is because
00:09:24.860it's unfair to everyone. It's unfair to people who would otherwise deserve a spot but don't get
00:09:30.000it because they're the wrong skin color. But it's also unfair to people who are the right skin color
00:09:35.560for these programs who would have earned a spot otherwise because now they have clouding over
00:09:41.240their appointment, this concern that, oh, well, maybe they just got there because of their skin
00:09:46.180color. And I mean, Claudine Gay, I would have loved to have been able to say this is a woman
00:09:50.060who deserved it. Her race had nothing to do with it. But a lot of people have pointed out,
00:09:54.400people within academia, that she did not have the depth of her academic record and CV that you would
00:10:00.540expect to have from someone in that role. So was she a product of diversity hiring? I have no idea.
00:10:06.460But clearly she was not vetted the way
00:10:08.540and her work has not been vetted the way it was supposed to.
00:10:12.040And there is a reason that people like Elizabeth Warren
00:10:15.160used to always check the box off for being Native American
00:10:18.540when going through the hiring process and all that
00:10:21.300because they thought it was going to get them a better shot,
00:10:24.340a better deal in wherever they were going.
00:10:27.260And I think this is why it's so dangerous.
00:10:31.660again, we're talking about the cardinal sin of academia here,
00:10:34.540The thing that is drilled into students, if you look in the syllabus of any undergraduate course, graduate course, postdoctoral, anything, you're going to see an academic code of conduct in which in big, bold, all caps, they're telling you about what happens if you plagiarize.
00:10:50.440So we cannot say that this is now some hatchet job that is entirely a conservative attack on the left.
00:10:57.880So basically what they're doing now, my old friend, dear friend, as she's now passed away, Kathy Shadle once said, you should never try to do the whole exposing hypocrisy.
00:11:08.820You should never say, oh, well, the left is a double standard.
00:14:02.780I'm never going to talk about this sort of stuff.
00:14:04.280So anyway, the thing that I'll point out here is that a lot of what we've seen on campuses, I think, is actually protected speech.
00:14:11.640That doesn't mean it's comfortable or whatnot, but it's protected.
00:14:15.740There are some things that go well beyond that, though.
00:14:17.940This was a clip we played when we talked about this pushing a month ago of just what Jewish students at Harvard had to deal with.
00:14:34.280So there you had an example of not just speech, it wasn't someone putting up a sign,
00:14:41.760shouting a slogan. You had people physically disrupting, making physical barriers, blocking
00:14:47.100access to Jewish students. And all of this is part and parcel of what has become a very
00:14:52.500inconsistent defense of academic freedom from a lot of the Ivy League set. And this was the
00:14:57.300problem here is that it was the double standard that was an issue. These are not people who would
00:15:02.120stand up for your academic freedom to use the wrong pronoun, but they'll stand up for your
00:15:06.760academic freedom to say death to the Jews. And anyone who says that they are big free speech
00:15:12.700defenders at Harvard because of their defense of Claudine Gay is an absolute hypocrite through
00:15:18.360and through. We'll move on from this for now. Yesterday on the show, we had a rather interesting
00:15:24.340discussion, I thought, with our good friend Chris Sims about the move that Saskatchewan has made.
00:15:30.100This is like the big, big move, the power move, the boss move from the Scott Moe government to tell the feds we are not going to collect your carbon tax anymore on home heating oil.
00:15:42.220Sorry, on home heating and on fuel because the government gave this very narrow exemption to Atlantic Canadians effectively by saying you don't need to pay a carbon tax on home heating oil.
00:15:54.880So all of a sudden, Saskatchewan was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You said this was an issue of national concern. You said it was crucial for the climate. And now you are saying that on our natural gas and electrical heating and our fuel that we still have to pay the carbon tax, but all those Newfoundlanders and Nova Scotians with their home heating oil don't.
00:16:13.940so Saskatchewan just did the one thing it could do
00:16:43.940well thanks for having me and happy new year to you as well now correct me if i'm wrong minister
00:16:47.860but i i mean this isn't a surprise move obviously premier scott mo announced this was coming in the
00:16:52.740fall and as i understand it you've sent letters i believe plural to the government federally saying
00:16:58.580this is what's happening here's the day and you've not received a reply am i understanding
00:17:02.820that correctly yeah we haven't received a response yet both sask energy and myself as
00:17:07.780the minister have written to the federal minister of national revenue essentially saying that sask
00:17:13.220energy will be deregistering as the gas distributor in saskatchewan i essentially on behalf of the
00:17:19.300government will be registering as the gas distributor we haven't received a response
00:17:24.820from that but that's after a unanimous vote in the house here in in saskatchewan where all
00:17:30.820parties agreed that we would essentially move that responsibility from sask energy move it to
00:17:36.660the government to me as the minister for both essentially collecting the carbon tax but more
00:17:42.820specifically for the remittance of the carbon tax so in the event that we get to a point where we
00:17:47.620are no longer remitting a carbon tax that'll be a decision that i will make it won't be a decision
00:17:52.580that will be made at the executive level at the officer level or at the board level at sask energy
00:17:59.620that's really a government decision to make especially because sask energy is a government
00:18:04.420owned entity so we're the shareholder of the government the duly elected government
00:18:08.260we're the shareholder we have unanimous support of all members of the legislature to do
00:18:12.820to do this and so right now we're awaiting a response from the federal government
00:18:17.940is your government confident that this is a legal tactic that you're employing
00:18:23.860so we're confident that legally what we did by legislation in saskatchewan that we can do because
00:18:30.740sask energy is an entity of the provincial government it's an entity of the provincial
00:18:34.900legislature it's created in statute and so what we're essentially saying what we said in that
00:18:39.700legislation that did pass in the assembly before our house recessed for the winter for Christmas
00:18:46.740is that essentially for all of the parts that are related to that one very narrow specific
00:18:53.300part of the greenhouse pollution pricing act that essentially is the carbon tax that for that
00:19:02.500section of the federal act that the government not the crown corporation will be responsible
00:19:09.060for essentially remitting a carbon tax so because of that sask energy has now um taken the step to
00:19:17.140notify the federal government that they wish to deregister as the gas distributor
00:19:22.100i in turn have registered the government as the gas distributor going forward after january 1st
00:19:29.140that's what we're still waiting on whether or not the government will accept that so
00:19:32.900what we did in legislation we can do that we're still waiting whether or not the federal government
00:19:38.260will acknowledge the change that we've made i i mean if they don't is this an issue where you've
00:19:44.340kind of checkmated them and they don't have a way to do this or are there concerns that you're
00:19:49.140having to preempt of how they might respond with this i i know cbc for example ran a story that
00:19:54.340there are some concerns about whether the government will claw back uh carbon tax rebates
00:19:58.740that it's the canada revenue agency that is responsible for sending out well first of all
00:20:04.580it's not the provincial government in saskatchewan or in any other province or sask energy or sask
00:20:09.540power that is responsible for determining the rebates that's fully at the discretion of the
00:20:14.740federal government they can choose how to distribute the rebates and keep in mind in
00:20:18.660atlantic canada where they've been exempt from the carbon tax on home heating fuel
00:20:23.460residents still there are getting a rebate and in fact the federal government announced at the
00:20:27.620same time that they were topping up the rebate for rural residents which would be you know a
00:20:32.420large number of residents not only in atlantic canada but the rest of the country so they made
00:20:37.300the decision to not only uh keep in place the rebate for those residents but also top up those
00:20:43.380uh the rebates for rural residents regardless of the fact that they uh have not implemented
00:20:49.620the carbon tax on home heating fuel for some residents in the country. So the two, I don't
00:20:55.880think are linked. The federal government can continue to supply a rebate to people across
00:21:01.780the country, regardless of what we do here in Saskatchewan in terms of collection or eventually
00:21:06.280remitting or not remitting a carbon tax. I just wanted to, I mean, you mentioned in this interview
00:21:11.320and I've seen it elsewhere that you're taking the responsibility for this. You're not making
00:21:15.420SaskEnergy do anything. And I think that's a very interesting move here because you're
00:21:20.300prepared to own this, whatever happens, are you not? Yeah, absolutely. I'm the minister
00:21:25.340responsible for Crown Investments Corporation, which includes SaskEnergy and SaskPower.
00:21:30.440What we have wanted to do and signal to first and foremost, the people of Saskatchewan is that we
00:21:36.120are continuing to fight for fairness when it comes to the carbon tax. The prime minister has given a
00:21:40.420carve out to some Canadians, but not to all Canadians. The other thing to keep in mind is
00:21:44.680that Saskatchewan, particularly rural Saskatchewan, used to rely largely on home heating oil like
00:21:50.540they do continue to do in Atlantic Canada or large parts of Atlantic Canada. And we went
00:21:55.260through a process in the 1980s of moving to rural gasification, where SaskEnergy moved
00:22:01.420into rural areas where now the vast majority of residents in Saskatchewan, both farm, small
00:22:06.940town and large communities, are on the gas system, natural gas system. That was at a
00:22:11.880considerable cost. In today's dollars, that would have been close to half a billion dollars. So we
00:22:16.080already made that move. We shouldn't be penalized for having been early adopters to gas, natural gas
00:22:22.820here in Saskatchewan. So as minister responsible, if the decision is made to not remit a carbon tax,
00:22:29.860and again, that decision has not been made, but if a decision is made to not remit a carbon tax to
00:22:34.560the federal government, that will be the government making that decision. That will be me as the
00:22:38.120minister, my cabinet colleagues. And so in terms of ministerial responsibility, whatever consequences
00:22:44.400are borne by that action or potentially inaction should be borne by us, the elected members and me
00:22:50.740as minister responsible. They shouldn't be borne by the board of directors who are Saskatchewan
00:22:56.440residents, Saskatchewan citizens. They shouldn't be borne by the officers and senior staff,
00:23:03.320uh frankly any employee at sask energy um who are just doing their job uh to provide for
00:23:09.840uh heat this winter so people can keep their uh keep their um families warm uh and uh and and so
00:23:18.200that that's the decision that we've made so if there are consequences uh to be borne by this
00:23:22.240uh they will be uh by me as the minister i mean i mentioned earlier and you were discussing the
00:23:28.080federal government's non-response to you and i i guess in a perverse way no news is good news here
00:23:32.180Because if the federal government says nothing and does nothing, they're basically endorsing that you have a right implicitly to do this and your citizens, your residents are still getting that break.
00:23:43.460Well, I mean, that certainly is a view. We do need, though, some certainty on this because technically as of today, as of January 2nd, we are, well, technically as of January 1st, the beginning of this year, SaskEnergy is still the registered distributor because they have not been notified.
00:24:01.880And so potentially any actions against SaskEnergy is still the consequences would be their consequences.
00:24:10.220We want to shift that. That was the intent of the bill.
00:24:13.120Again, if this decision is going to be made and it hasn't been made, but if there was to be a decision made around the remittance of the carbon tax, that'll be our decision to make.
00:24:23.820the shareholder the government of Saskatchewan on behalf of the people of this province
00:24:28.220not by anybody at SaskEnergy's head office or around the board table and so
00:24:33.580while no news is usually good news we do need that certainty from the federal government whether or
00:24:38.620not they will accept the changes that we've made and the change to that registration so that we
00:24:44.540can then as a government make further decisions. As of now SaskEnergy has been collecting the
00:24:50.940carbon tax until the end of December. And depending on people's billing cycles, they'll see the
00:24:56.700carbon tax come off or either in January or potentially February, depending on their billing
00:25:01.660cycle. But we've made the decision that any carbon tax on consumption after December 31st would no
00:25:08.540longer be billed to the rate payers at SaskEnergy. So we're technically still in compliance.
00:25:17.500we'll make a payment that those dollars have been collected on the december bills
00:25:21.740we'll make a payment uh here in january we'll then have a decision to make in basically february
00:25:28.060depending on what uh what the answer comes back from the federal minister of national revenue
00:25:33.740minister dustin duncan thank you very much for your time sir thanks for having me andrew
00:25:40.300he is the minister responsible for crown corporations like those in saskatchewan
00:26:10.040And as I was chatting about yesterday with Chris Sims,
00:26:12.980one thing that I find interesting here
00:26:14.940is that Alberta has not been going to war for tax reduction as much as Saskatchewan has in a
00:26:22.400couple of key ways, notably the fuel tax, which is different. But again, I think to a lot of
00:26:26.620Canadians, a tax is a tax is a tax. Whether it's on this thing or that thing, they don't really
00:26:30.800know or care as long as they are not the ones that have to keep paying more and more to government
00:26:36.340and in government coffers here. So that is where things are in Saskatchewan. Obviously, we'll follow
00:26:41.180that. And I actually, we've had trouble in the past. This isn't a complaint. It's more just an
00:26:46.540observation because I know we have some viewers and listeners from Saskatchewan. We have had
00:26:51.200difficulty in the past getting members of the Saskatchewan government on the show. And part of
00:26:57.060it is just, we don't have the contacts there. We've not built the relationships with those people
00:27:01.140and other parts of it. When we have tried to reach out, I've tried to have Premier Mo on in several
00:27:05.540locations. I've tried to have other ministers on and we've just not managed to get replies. So
00:27:09.600I was very pleased yesterday when we reached out to Minister Duncan's office that they replied very
00:27:15.040quickly and we had him on and hopefully this can become the beginning of a long-standing relationship
00:27:20.340with the good people of Saskatchewan. I've been to Saskatchewan on several occasions. I've been to
00:27:26.120Moose Jaw. I've been to Regina a couple times. Haven't been to Saskatoon. When I was in Regina
00:27:31.520the first time in a very Saskatchewan way, I recall there was like a controversy and someone
00:27:36.360told me this it might not entirely be true this would have been like uh 10 12 years ago or so
00:27:42.680and apparently like the city logo had like a silhouette of the skyline of regina which i
00:27:49.160didn't know regina had a skyline but there you go and there was like a weird sort of uh regina
00:27:54.120controversy where they had built a building and they were wondering if they needed to update the
00:27:59.240city logo because the skyline now had a third building in it and i don't know what they ended
00:28:04.040up doing on that. But I know that Regina ended up getting into a bit more trouble more recently when
00:28:07.920they decided to play off of the fact that Regina rhymes with vagina as a tourism slogan, or as they
00:28:14.820said, Regina, the city that rhymes with fun. And then of course, like anything else, the Killjoys
00:28:20.500took it away from them. So all that notwithstanding, there are plenty of Killjoys, not just
00:28:24.780Saskatchewan Tourism Board officials, but also federal court judges. And there was one ruling
00:28:30.660over the holidays that we have followed this case for a little while on. And it was on this sign
00:28:37.260that you may have seen in an election campaign, the Libranos, Libranos.com by the book. The book
00:28:45.200is, well, as it's called there, the Libranos was written by Ezra Levant of Rebel News. And the
00:28:52.200elections bureaucrats, the commissioner of Canada elections came down hard and said that sign
00:28:57.740wasn't actually a book advertisement, but it was an election campaign sign. It was an election
00:29:03.880campaign sign, and you aren't allowed to do it without going through all of these rules
00:29:07.180that we have for election advertisers, for third parties and political parties. Now,
00:29:12.620Ezra pointed to a section of the law, which specifically says advertising books, like it
00:29:20.420literally says advertising books is in a category of its own and are exempt from this. So he
00:29:25.620challenged this, brought it to federal court, and a judge ultimately signed on to the narrative put
00:29:31.580forward by the Commissioner of Canada Elections and found that those signs were illegal. Ezra
00:29:36.540Levant is the author of The Lebranos and the founder of Rebel News and joins us now. Ezra,
00:29:41.880I mean, you and I have had a number of conversations over the years about our
00:29:44.760dissatisfaction with the judicial status quo, so I don't want to say that I'm totally shocked by
00:29:50.420this, but this is like a clear-cut example of when the court is finding that the law doesn't
00:29:55.560say what the law says. I have to tell you, I was completely shocked by this for two reasons. First
00:30:01.580of all, the plain words in the Kenda Elections Act exempt books and the promotion of books
00:30:09.160from their election finances, which makes sense. I mean, it also exempts news and speeches and
00:30:17.860letters. Because imagine if every newspaper article that was an endorsement of this party
00:30:24.360or a criticism of that party were to be banned or regulated by the government. It would be madness.
00:30:30.840So it applies to books or the promotion of books. And as you can see, because you just showed your
00:30:36.000viewers there, the promotion of books was very simple. That was the front cover of our book
00:30:42.160called The Libranos with three added words, buy the book. But that enraged Elections Canada.
00:30:50.520they were obsessed by that book cover and that title they were obsessed by the drawings on it
00:30:57.640of trudeau and his friends and so they thought it was so critical that the book and the title of the
00:31:06.060book they said were banned and the judge agreed and so i suppose technically the book itself is
00:31:13.060not banned but if you've banned the title of the book and you ban the cover of the book
00:31:19.340you sort of banned the book and by the way you can buy that book right now on amazon.ca
00:31:27.620but if there were an election called tomorrow it would be banned again or at least the cover of it
00:31:34.600and the title of it and i couldn't show it and i don't know i was really surprised conceivably you
00:31:40.460couldn't run like online ads for it as i mean without being am i do i read that correctly
00:31:45.700Yeah, exactly. I mean, they didn't like the lawn sign because they thought it sure felt like a political campaign. And it's true. Lawn signs are something that are used in political campaigns. But we also had online ads. We also had a billboard. We also made videos. We also did emails. Elections Canada only prosecuted this image.
00:32:08.020But I want to tell you, Andrew, there were 23 other books published about Justin Trudeau during the exact same time period.
00:32:18.360I'm talking about right before the election in 2019.
00:32:28.740It would be like a campaign ad for them.
00:32:31.280But, of course, they're exempt because they're books, so they were not prosecuted.
00:32:35.220I asked the Elections Canada people, and my lawyer asked the judge, how is it that those 23 pro-Trudeau books are fine, but my one anti-Trudeau, it's anti-Trudeau, book is not?
00:32:52.760And both the Elections Canada staff and the judge agreed, well, if I didn't like those 23 other books, I should have complained about them.
00:33:01.620But I don't want to complain about those 23 other books.
00:33:04.240i mean i could complain about them but i don't want to prosecute them and you know what the
00:33:09.040judge said and i if you don't mind i wouldn't mind reading very quickly from the actual ruling
00:33:14.640please the judge said it yeah the judge says it was no big deal all i had to do was act like a
00:33:21.680political party register with the government disclose my finances to the government and comply
00:33:27.760with the government and i could have the lawn sign in my book all i like basically become one
00:33:33.120those registered third party political activist groups like lead now or you know whatever here
00:33:39.280let me i'm just going to read uh very quickly here's one sentence from the judge even if the
00:33:45.680promotion of a particular book is election advertising such promotion is not prohibited
00:33:53.600she's saying my book wasn't banned quote the third party that would be me must simply comply
00:34:00.560with the requirements of the act that apply to all third-party election advertisers authors or
00:34:06.480publishers comply with the spending registration and disclosure requirements so oh it's no big
00:34:13.200deal all i have to do is register my book with the government but just let me say that again
00:34:19.680all i have to do is an author duh just register with the government let me read one more sentence
00:34:25.360from the judge when we argued, well, that would be a kind of chilling effect to require authors
00:34:31.060to say, hello, government, we'd like to register our book with you. The judge said, quote,
00:34:38.500it should not be overly onerous for an author or a publisher to demonstrate what their intention was
00:34:46.360as to the timing of the promotion. As in, I had to justify publishing the book during an election
00:34:54.800And because I did so, that's what made it an illegal book.
00:34:59.840But every political book is published during election.
00:35:03.320You don't publish a book after the election about the election.
00:35:29.580My fine is $3,000 plus $10,000 for the court case.
00:35:35.620So I have to pay the government $13,000.
00:35:39.080That's not the end of the world, although that's a very stiff fine for publishing a book.
00:35:44.200But both the judge and Elections Canada had a warning for me.
00:35:47.560They both said that they could have come after me criminally. And theoretically, I could have been jailed. And they both hinted to me that if I do this again, I will be prosecuted criminally. No one in Canadian history has ever been prosecuted for publishing a book critical of a politician.
00:36:09.360and i say again it was the fact that i was critical of him that bothered them they said so again and
00:36:16.880again and and if you read the ruling it's 85 pages long we put up we put up a website for those who
00:36:21.620want to see it and see my side of the story the website is save rebel news.com because i think
00:36:28.660that this is really goes to our freedom if let me just jump in there ezra was your uh legal case i
00:36:36.260know you weren't the you weren't fighting it yourself you had a lawyer but was your case
00:36:39.380a constitutional free speech uh you know freedom of expression case or was it just listen your own
00:36:45.660law says that the promotion of books is fine uh therefore your application of the law against us
00:36:51.320is uh completely made up it was both and the judge dismissed the that second one very quickly
00:36:58.540too quickly i mean and then and again how did the judge rationalize that because literally you can
00:37:03.720see the words right there. Yeah. Well, there's three parts. Your book has to be published at
00:37:10.280a commercial price. My book was $14, which is commercially fair. And it has to be published
00:37:17.860whether or not there was an election. Well, we would have published my book,
00:37:22.200whether or not there was an election. Of course, we were going to publish it. And I don't even know
00:37:26.500what it means that there wouldn't be an election. Well, and in Canada also, I mean, the 2019 election
00:37:32.220was fixed in 2015 but in our system there can be an election i mean there could be an election in
00:37:36.38040 days that you have no idea is coming right and listen i was honest with the with the judge and i
00:37:42.060was honest with the cops who interrogated me i said we did what every other author did is we
00:37:47.500coincided with the election but we would have published it whether or not i mean i've published
00:37:52.220more than 10 books um and we publish them during an election we do publish them when it's not an
00:37:57.340election i have another book coming out about justin trudeau ideally i would publish it
00:38:02.860right before the election it would be terrible if i was late until after the election but the
00:38:08.300judge sorry the law does not stop me from timing it it doesn't it just says i have to publish it
00:38:14.780whether or not there's an election she thought that was a silly uh difference that there was no
00:38:19.740difference and then oh we have uh elections canada has to oh there we go i thought elections canada
00:38:28.860was coming after you but we appear to have gotten you back now ezra sorry about that i'm i'm on the
00:38:33.180road i've had the judge the judge said the timing of the publication is what one of the things that
00:38:39.500made it illegal but like i say 23 other authors time their books the exact same time i'm worried
00:38:45.420about this and well you mentioned you have another book coming out i mean what are you
00:38:49.820not that i would ever say that you are a generally compliant person with government edicts but uh
00:38:54.700what is your plan going to be if you've gotten that far on on what to do about that book well
00:38:59.580i'm going to publish it and i don't want to be charged and i don't want to be convicted and i
00:39:04.380certainly don't want to be fined and i absolutely don't want to register with the government right
00:39:08.700I'm absolutely not going to. And, you know, I remember during the COVID times, the lockdowns,
00:39:16.280I made some personal decisions that I was not going to comply. Now, they never came down hard
00:39:21.560on me like a ton of bricks, but I was on their no-fly list because I was unjabbed. I didn't get
00:39:27.140a vaccine passport, and I just decided I was not going to comply. And I am not going to register
00:39:32.720my next book with the government. I'm just not going to. In terms of the exact timing of the
00:39:37.180book obviously it's going to be before the next election um we don't know when that next election
00:39:42.180will be but if it comes if we are at the point andrew in canada when a critic of the government
00:39:49.260when an author is prosecuted and god forbid convicted of a crime and jailed for writing a
00:39:55.760book about him then that person should be mean because i i i say i believe in freedom and i say
00:40:03.780I believe in fighting back. And just like I felt an obligation to walk the walk during the lockdowns,
00:40:09.680I feel an obligation here. And if it's not me, who would it be? I mean, God, I don't want you
00:40:15.240to be prosecuted for your book. I don't want anyone else, but I know that I've got the fighting spirit
00:40:19.960and our viewers generally like to crowdfund these battles. So I am going to publish another book
00:40:27.320before the next election, critical of Justin Trudeau. It's going to be a real book. It's
00:40:31.760be sold at a real price it's going to be published whether or not there's an election but we're going
00:40:35.920to time it before the election i'm just going to do that and if that sends me to jail and god
00:40:42.160forbid it i hope it doesn't um canadians ought to know that's the country we live in now will i just
00:40:49.360on the note of this one are you going to bring this to the federal court of appeal yes we've hired
00:40:54.720a great lawyer sarah miller is she's been on the show a number of times yeah i think she's really
00:41:01.520smart. I chose her because she's had good luck in the court of appeals. She was the one who took
00:41:06.800Arthur Pavlovsky's case, the Christian pastor who was jailed in Alberta for keeping his church
00:41:13.280open. She won that on appeal. And I thought, boy, I need a smart lawyer who'll do well in the court
00:41:19.420of appeals. So she's already, at least she's shown me the notice of appeal. I think she's filed it
00:41:24.160already. It's an uphill battle. I got to tell you, most appeals in court fail. It's just a
00:41:31.180statistical thing i think two out of three lose and this was a well crafted ruling by the judge
00:41:39.780she wasn't i mean 85 pages she took to make her case so i'm not optimistic it's not about the
00:41:46.480fine i mean the fine does bother me it's about the law itself it's crazy we would and what it
00:41:52.500says to people that don't have your spirit and frankly your finances to fight this stuff i mean
00:41:57.720you're just some you know self-published author that wants to make a point and maybe you want to
00:42:02.200you know spend a couple thousand dollars promoting your book this does have a chilling effect
00:42:06.760absolutely and i just can't get over the fact that the judge said that oh it's no big deal
00:42:11.560it's not onerous i mean i was i was called to the headquarters of elections canada and two 30-year
00:42:18.920rcmp veterans interrogated me for an hour now you know me i don't mind that i like the sparring of
00:42:25.080You enjoy it. You're bored when you're not being interrogated by some bureaucrat or police officer.
00:42:30.340But unless you're a lawyer or a real tough cookie who's used to fighting, I mean, I wasn't terrified, but I think 99% of people would have been really scared by that.
00:42:44.180And the fine, the $13,000 fine, I think that that would dissuade a lot of people.
00:42:50.980not everyone has $13,000 to pay the fund. Now, we're going to crowdfund this appeal,
00:42:56.580and hopefully we won't have to pay it in the end. But for the judge to pretend there was no chilling
00:43:01.140effect here, that really is one of the worst parts of this ruling. I'm just going to read that again
00:43:06.420for 30 seconds. Quote, it should not be overly onerous for an author or publisher to demonstrate
00:43:13.620what their intention was. As in, you've got to go to the government and say, no, no, no,
00:43:19.940this is we're not trying to criticize you uh saint trudeau please this is just a book you know to
00:43:27.780you know what that the judge was wrong there i'm just i don't want this to become a legal precedent
00:43:33.700i fear it will be but we've got to fight it very well said ezra levant the rebel commander himself
00:43:39.460thank you so much and best of luck thanks bye-bye all right that does it for us for today we'll be
00:43:45.220be back in just 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of canada's most irreverent talk show here on true
00:43:50.540north thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show
00:43:56.180support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news