Juno News - Plagiarism is okay when the left does it

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:01:20.400 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lotton show

00:01:30.640 on true north on this wednesday january 3rd 2024 as always i'm probably going to say that wrong for

00:01:38.800 about a good 11 and a half months and then i'll finally realize it's 2024 by uh basically 2025

00:01:45.540 That's typically how these things work.

00:01:48.020 Just moments before I went on air, Twitter is bad for my health.

00:01:52.260 It's bad for everyone's health or X now.

00:01:54.160 But 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.

00:02:03.500 And there's a photo of him on, it looks like a Zoom call with a citizenship judge.

00:02:09.700 and he's like in his own office or home like leaning over and taking a selfie with

00:02:14.580 the zoom box of the citizen judge holding the Canadian flag and I'm like in 2024 can we not

00:02:21.120 actually have in-person citizenship ceremonies now like that I mean congratulations and all that but

00:02:26.520 that is crazy I'm just imagining the way zoom calls are you click the raise hand button and

00:02:31.740 type out your oath that's presumably all it takes to be a Canadian citizen now my goodness that I

00:02:36.980 thought we had gotten rid i mean i'm doing this show virtually i can't be in all your homes at

00:02:40.740 once but i tried once it didn't go well but i didn't know we were still doing stuff like this

00:02:45.700 with zoom so one of the many ways that covet has killed anything and everything good in the world

00:02:51.060 or at least most of it but that's a bit of a dark note to start off on all right we'll hopefully

00:02:55.380 turn things around a little bit great to have you tuned in to the program today if you are a

00:03:01.540 plagiarist now i don't know if you want to identify or out yourself as such but if you are

00:03:06.500 a plagiarist who likes taking other words other people's words and passing them off as your own

00:03:10.740 today is a very good day because we've learned there is an excuse for plagiarism that is a very

00:03:16.420 compelling one which is to do it well being one of the good guys if you are a lefty you are allowed

00:03:23.620 to engage in plagiarism because it's only bad if the right does it that's apparently how things

00:03:28.740 are going here you may have seen the news this week claudine gay who is the very highly paid 0.55

00:03:33.540 president of harvard or at least was until yesterday has announced she is resigning it 0.99

00:03:39.140 wasn't the anti-semitism that did iran it wasn't the turning a blind eye to a very rabid jew hatred

00:03:45.620 on her campus no it was being outed by two independent journalists for in her very few

00:03:52.340 public works uh engaging in plagiarism now people have looked through and said well you know it's

00:03:57.860 minor play, you know, you took this sentence here, this sentence here, but plagiarism is plagiarism.

00:04:03.420 And I'll say as someone who has been to university and someone who has spent my life working in a

00:04:09.200 creative space, by which I mean just a space where I have to use my words some days better than

00:04:14.700 others, I assure you, I take plagiarism very seriously to the point where I've even been

00:04:19.600 nervous when I'm typing something out and I fear I'm accidentally plagiarizing because there are

00:04:25.620 some sentences that there are really no other ways to word. I remember yesterday, for example,

00:04:31.820 or two days ago, I was writing something and I had been looking it up on Wikipedia and I typed

00:04:37.240 it out the way I normally would and realized that there was like a string of five or six words that

00:04:42.520 were identical to the words that were describing something on Wikipedia. And I was like terrified

00:04:47.500 because I'm like, these words don't even really have synonyms. Like how else can I describe what

00:04:52.140 this is. So I end up rearranging things, going out of my way to not plagiarize because I know

00:04:58.640 it is the unforgivable sin in media and even worse in academia. So for Claudine Gay to go 1.00

00:05:05.600 through this, she has done what you would be potentially expelled for doing if you were an

00:05:11.220 undergraduate student, but she's done it and has continued to fall upwards to the point of getting

00:05:15.620 her PhD and landing a plum gig, making I think 900,000 US a year at Harvard. But the good thing

00:05:22.020 is, they probably just copied and pasted her salary from someone else's. Do you see what I

00:05:26.240 did there? Yeah. Anyway, so she is now gone. It was the plagiarism that did her in. But because

00:05:31.340 of this, because she is the good guy and the right are the bad guys, people have decided in the media

00:05:37.320 now that plagiarism is not a bad thing at all. You may have seen this headline in the Associated

00:05:43.220 Press, which CTV in Canada picked up. And if we put this tweet up, you will see this.

00:05:48.840 harvard's harvard president's resignation highlights new conservative weapon against

00:05:56.580 colleges plagiarism and i obviously it got community noted there so you see well actually

00:06:02.400 plagiarism is a breach of the rules plagiarism uh is not a weapon and she was forced to resign

00:06:07.420 for being a serial plagiarist uh but no conservatives are the ones to blame because

00:06:12.720 conservatives have weaponized her plagiarism by exposing it. And then there was this gem on

00:06:19.560 television. I don't make a general point of watching Mara Gay and what she has to say,

00:06:25.460 but it was interesting, the mental gymnastics that she engaged in to defend Claudine Gay.

00:06:31.400 I don't, I know Sean's asking if they're related. I don't think they're related. Although to be

00:06:36.140 honest, Claudine Gay, I think is actually more of an intellectual who wouldn't want to claim

00:06:39.920 being related to Mara Gay. But this is what Mara had to say. The thing that really disturbs me is

00:06:46.280 the unrelenting campaign from the right and from some conservative activists to slander, discredit,

00:06:56.520 and ultimately, I guess, you know, somebody used the phrase, we've claimed a scalp, I said, I think,

00:07:04.640 on social media, you know, to essentially unseat gay and other presidents as well when

00:07:12.580 they don't like, you know, not just the handling of the horrific attacks on Israel on October

00:07:21.460 7th, the way that that was handled on campus, but really anything else that they don't like

00:07:26.740 about not just these presidents, but actually what they would call wokeism.

00:07:32.620 And I think that's why these presidents are under attack. That's why Claudine DeGay was under attack.

00:07:38.560 The 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. 1.00

00:07:51.340 And, 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.

00:07:57.480 when people like Vivek Ramaswamy say, you know, okay, this is a problem about diversity and

00:08:04.720 hiring. I mean, this is racism as well. So there's a lot of different layers here,

00:08:09.520 but I don't want to miss the attacks on academic freedom.

00:08:13.960 I mean, there was a lot going on there. Now, I do not think that Mara Gay is a plagiarist. I think

00:08:20.020 those are her original thoughts, because I don't think anyone else would have tried to pass those

00:08:24.480 off as their own. So she probably can lay claim to those words without anyone accusing her of

00:08:29.440 plagiarism. But now if you expose it, you are anti-diversity, you're anti-black, you're racist. 0.99

00:08:36.720 And, you know, she could have made any point she wanted. She could have come up with any example 0.92

00:08:41.580 when she talks about the racism that's self-evident. And she mentioned one name of someone

00:08:47.480 she thinks is passing off racism. And I don't know who this person is. He sounds very much like

00:08:54.660 a white supremacist neo-Nazi type. I believe the name was Vivek Ramaswamy. Yeah, the white 0.87

00:09:02.640 supremacy just drips off that name, Vivek Ramaswamy. We don't have a picture of him,

00:09:07.440 but I bet he's some blonde haired, blue eyed Aryan skinhead who is just so racist against

00:09:12.640 that Claudine Gay for saying that he rejects diversity hiring. Now, one of the reasons I've 1.00

00:09:18.420 always been so fervently against affirmative action and diversity-based hiring is because 1.00

00:09:24.860 it's unfair to everyone. It's unfair to people who would otherwise deserve a spot but don't get

00:09:30.000 it because they're the wrong skin color. But it's also unfair to people who are the right skin color 0.97

00:09:35.560 for these programs who would have earned a spot otherwise because now they have clouding over

00:09:41.240 their appointment, this concern that, oh, well, maybe they just got there because of their skin

00:09:46.180 color. And I mean, Claudine Gay, I would have loved to have been able to say this is a woman

00:09:50.060 who deserved it. Her race had nothing to do with it. But a lot of people have pointed out,

00:09:54.400 people within academia, that she did not have the depth of her academic record and CV that you would

00:10:00.540 expect to have from someone in that role. So was she a product of diversity hiring? I have no idea.

00:10:06.460 But clearly she was not vetted the way

00:10:08.540 and her work has not been vetted the way it was supposed to.

00:10:12.040 And there is a reason that people like Elizabeth Warren

00:10:15.160 used to always check the box off for being Native American

00:10:18.540 when going through the hiring process and all that

00:10:21.300 because they thought it was going to get them a better shot,

00:10:24.340 a better deal in wherever they were going.

00:10:27.260 And I think this is why it's so dangerous.

00:10:29.320 But now when someone exposes this,

00:10:31.660 again, we're talking about the cardinal sin of academia here,

00:10:34.540 The 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.

00:10:50.440 So we cannot say that this is now some hatchet job that is entirely a conservative attack on the left.

00:10:57.880 So 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.

00:11:08.820 You should never say, oh, well, the left is a double standard.

00:11:11.020 She said, because they know they do.

00:11:12.460 They don't care.

00:11:13.140 They do.

00:11:13.900 And kind of the approach that she took to the world was liberals.

00:11:16.980 It's different when they do it.

00:11:18.060 And that's basically what they're doing now on plagiarism.

00:11:21.180 If a conservative professor at some university, I don't know if Alan Dershowitz is still a law

00:11:25.900 prof, but some conservative professor does something like this, they're going to be out 0.51

00:11:31.160 on their rear end. It's going to be exposed. They're going to be, oh, well, they only coasted

00:11:34.480 through because they were a white male. But when Claudine Gay does it, one of the left's chosen 0.85

00:11:39.880 ones at this particular moment, we decide that plagiarism is no longer a sin. In fact, it might

00:11:45.160 even be virtuous and who are you to dare call it out now as i said earlier it was not this this is

00:11:52.080 not what i thought would be her undoing i thought it would probably be her handling of the anti-semitism

00:11:57.340 issue you may recall uh this little exchange between her and i believe it was congresswoman

00:12:01.940 elise stephanik before a congressional committee just a few weeks back dr gay at harvard does

00:12:10.220 Is calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?

00:12:16.620 It can be, depending on the context.

00:12:19.460 What's the context?

00:12:21.160 Targeted as an individual, targeted at an individual.

00:12:24.540 It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals.

00:12:28.700 Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

00:12:31.940 Do you understand that dehumanization is part of antisemitism?

00:12:35.680 I will ask you one more time.

00:12:40.120 Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment?

00:12:45.980 Yes or no?

00:12:48.020 Anti-Semitic rhetoric.

00:12:49.480 And is it anti-Semitic rhetoric?

00:12:51.620 Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation,

00:12:58.780 that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.

00:13:03.060 So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's code of conduct.

00:13:09.700 correct again it depends on the context it does not depend on the context the answer

00:13:17.380 is yes and this is why you should resign these are unacceptable answers across the board

00:13:24.340 in retrospect in retrospect i'm a little bit more forgiving of claudian gay's poor performance 0.97

00:13:30.340 before that committee you see uh she was waiting for someone else to come up with the answer so

00:13:34.740 that she could repeat it and no one else came up with the answer so she was there stumbling and

00:13:39.060 and just had to resort to, it depends, it depends, it depends.

00:13:42.180 Now, let me point out here that I am a big believer in academic freedom.

00:13:46.160 I believe in the academic freedom and the freedom of speech to say horrendous things on campus, off campus.

00:13:52.140 That doesn't mean I agree with those things.

00:13:54.740 Sean says he loves the plagiarism jokes.

00:13:57.160 A shame they're not actually mine.

00:13:59.660 They just keep on coming today.

00:14:02.400 They keep it.

00:14:02.780 I'm never going to talk about this sort of stuff.

00:14:04.280 So 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.

00:14:11.640 That doesn't mean it's comfortable or whatnot, but it's protected.

00:14:15.740 There are some things that go well beyond that, though.

00:14:17.940 This 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.

00:14:34.280 So there you had an example of not just speech, it wasn't someone putting up a sign,

00:14:41.760 shouting a slogan. You had people physically disrupting, making physical barriers, blocking

00:14:47.100 access to Jewish students. And all of this is part and parcel of what has become a very 0.70

00:14:52.500 inconsistent defense of academic freedom from a lot of the Ivy League set. And this was the

00:14:57.300 problem here is that it was the double standard that was an issue. These are not people who would

00:15:02.120 stand up for your academic freedom to use the wrong pronoun, but they'll stand up for your 0.98

00:15:06.760 academic freedom to say death to the Jews. And anyone who says that they are big free speech 0.96

00:15:12.700 defenders at Harvard because of their defense of Claudine Gay is an absolute hypocrite through 0.99

00:15:18.360 and through. We'll move on from this for now. Yesterday on the show, we had a rather interesting 0.98

00:15:24.340 discussion, I thought, with our good friend Chris Sims about the move that Saskatchewan has made.

00:15:30.100 This 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.

00:15:42.220 Sorry, 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.

00:15:54.880 So 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.

00:16:13.940 so Saskatchewan just did the one thing it could do

00:16:17.040 which is say alright well

00:16:18.020 the agency responsible for this

00:16:20.660 SaskEnergy is a provincial agency

00:16:23.040 maybe we just stop collecting

00:16:25.200 the carbon tax

00:16:26.420 that is the move they have put in place

00:16:28.480 starting as of the beginning of the year

00:16:30.860 so that would make it starting Monday

00:16:33.260 I wanted to chat about this

00:16:34.860 with the Saskatchewan Minister

00:16:36.340 responsible for Crown Corporations

00:16:38.340 Dustin Duncan Minister

00:16:40.160 it is wonderful to have you on the show

00:16:41.880 thanks for coming on today

00:16:43.940 well thanks for having me and happy new year to you as well now correct me if i'm wrong minister

00:16:47.860 but i i mean this isn't a surprise move obviously premier scott mo announced this was coming in the

00:16:52.740 fall and as i understand it you've sent letters i believe plural to the government federally saying

00:16:58.580 this is what's happening here's the day and you've not received a reply am i understanding

00:17:02.820 that correctly yeah we haven't received a response yet both sask energy and myself as

00:17:07.780 the minister have written to the federal minister of national revenue essentially saying that sask

00:17:13.220 energy will be deregistering as the gas distributor in saskatchewan i essentially on behalf of the

00:17:19.300 government will be registering as the gas distributor we haven't received a response

00:17:24.820 from that but that's after a unanimous vote in the house here in in saskatchewan where all

00:17:30.820 parties agreed that we would essentially move that responsibility from sask energy move it to

00:17:36.660 the government to me as the minister for both essentially collecting the carbon tax but more

00:17:42.820 specifically for the remittance of the carbon tax so in the event that we get to a point where we

00:17:47.620 are no longer remitting a carbon tax that'll be a decision that i will make it won't be a decision

00:17:52.580 that will be made at the executive level at the officer level or at the board level at sask energy

00:17:59.620 that's really a government decision to make especially because sask energy is a government

00:18:04.420 owned entity so we're the shareholder of the government the duly elected government

00:18:08.260 we're the shareholder we have unanimous support of all members of the legislature to do

00:18:12.820 to do this and so right now we're awaiting a response from the federal government

00:18:17.940 is your government confident that this is a legal tactic that you're employing

00:18:23.860 so we're confident that legally what we did by legislation in saskatchewan that we can do because

00:18:30.740 sask energy is an entity of the provincial government it's an entity of the provincial

00:18:34.900 legislature it's created in statute and so what we're essentially saying what we said in that

00:18:39.700 legislation that did pass in the assembly before our house recessed for the winter for Christmas

00:18:46.740 is that essentially for all of the parts that are related to that one very narrow specific

00:18:53.300 part of the greenhouse pollution pricing act that essentially is the carbon tax that for that

00:19:02.500 section of the federal act that the government not the crown corporation will be responsible

00:19:09.060 for essentially remitting a carbon tax so because of that sask energy has now um taken the step to

00:19:17.140 notify the federal government that they wish to deregister as the gas distributor

00:19:22.100 i in turn have registered the government as the gas distributor going forward after january 1st

00:19:29.140 that's what we're still waiting on whether or not the government will accept that so

00:19:32.900 what we did in legislation we can do that we're still waiting whether or not the federal government

00:19:38.260 will acknowledge the change that we've made i i mean if they don't is this an issue where you've

00:19:44.340 kind of checkmated them and they don't have a way to do this or are there concerns that you're

00:19:49.140 having to preempt of how they might respond with this i i know cbc for example ran a story that

00:19:54.340 there are some concerns about whether the government will claw back uh carbon tax rebates

00:19:58.740 that it's the canada revenue agency that is responsible for sending out well first of all

00:20:04.580 it's not the provincial government in saskatchewan or in any other province or sask energy or sask

00:20:09.540 power that is responsible for determining the rebates that's fully at the discretion of the

00:20:14.740 federal government they can choose how to distribute the rebates and keep in mind in

00:20:18.660 atlantic canada where they've been exempt from the carbon tax on home heating fuel

00:20:23.460 residents still there are getting a rebate and in fact the federal government announced at the

00:20:27.620 same time that they were topping up the rebate for rural residents which would be you know a

00:20:32.420 large number of residents not only in atlantic canada but the rest of the country so they made

00:20:37.300 the decision to not only uh keep in place the rebate for those residents but also top up those

00:20:43.380 uh the rebates for rural residents regardless of the fact that they uh have not implemented

00:20:49.620 the carbon tax on home heating fuel for some residents in the country. So the two, I don't

00:20:55.880 think are linked. The federal government can continue to supply a rebate to people across

00:21:01.780 the country, regardless of what we do here in Saskatchewan in terms of collection or eventually

00:21:06.280 remitting or not remitting a carbon tax. I just wanted to, I mean, you mentioned in this interview

00:21:11.320 and I've seen it elsewhere that you're taking the responsibility for this. You're not making

00:21:15.420 SaskEnergy do anything. And I think that's a very interesting move here because you're

00:21:20.300 prepared to own this, whatever happens, are you not? Yeah, absolutely. I'm the minister

00:21:25.340 responsible for Crown Investments Corporation, which includes SaskEnergy and SaskPower.

00:21:30.440 What we have wanted to do and signal to first and foremost, the people of Saskatchewan is that we

00:21:36.120 are continuing to fight for fairness when it comes to the carbon tax. The prime minister has given a

00:21:40.420 carve out to some Canadians, but not to all Canadians. The other thing to keep in mind is

00:21:44.680 that Saskatchewan, particularly rural Saskatchewan, used to rely largely on home heating oil like

00:21:50.540 they do continue to do in Atlantic Canada or large parts of Atlantic Canada. And we went

00:21:55.260 through a process in the 1980s of moving to rural gasification, where SaskEnergy moved

00:22:01.420 into rural areas where now the vast majority of residents in Saskatchewan, both farm, small

00:22:06.940 town and large communities, are on the gas system, natural gas system. That was at a

00:22:11.880 considerable cost. In today's dollars, that would have been close to half a billion dollars. So we

00:22:16.080 already made that move. We shouldn't be penalized for having been early adopters to gas, natural gas

00:22:22.820 here in Saskatchewan. So as minister responsible, if the decision is made to not remit a carbon tax,

00:22:29.860 and again, that decision has not been made, but if a decision is made to not remit a carbon tax to

00:22:34.560 the federal government, that will be the government making that decision. That will be me as the

00:22:38.120 minister, my cabinet colleagues. And so in terms of ministerial responsibility, whatever consequences

00:22:44.400 are borne by that action or potentially inaction should be borne by us, the elected members and me

00:22:50.740 as minister responsible. They shouldn't be borne by the board of directors who are Saskatchewan

00:22:56.440 residents, Saskatchewan citizens. They shouldn't be borne by the officers and senior staff,

00:23:03.320 uh frankly any employee at sask energy um who are just doing their job uh to provide for

00:23:09.840 uh heat this winter so people can keep their uh keep their um families warm uh and uh and and so

00:23:18.200 that that's the decision that we've made so if there are consequences uh to be borne by this

00:23:22.240 uh they will be uh by me as the minister i mean i mentioned earlier and you were discussing the

00:23:28.080 federal government's non-response to you and i i guess in a perverse way no news is good news here

00:23:32.180 Because 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.

00:23:43.460 Well, 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.

00:24:01.880 And so potentially any actions against SaskEnergy is still the consequences would be their consequences.

00:24:10.220 We want to shift that. That was the intent of the bill.

00:24:13.120 Again, 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.

00:24:23.820 the shareholder the government of Saskatchewan on behalf of the people of this province

00:24:28.220 not by anybody at SaskEnergy's head office or around the board table and so

00:24:33.580 while no news is usually good news we do need that certainty from the federal government whether or

00:24:38.620 not they will accept the changes that we've made and the change to that registration so that we

00:24:44.540 can then as a government make further decisions. As of now SaskEnergy has been collecting the

00:24:50.940 carbon tax until the end of December. And depending on people's billing cycles, they'll see the

00:24:56.700 carbon tax come off or either in January or potentially February, depending on their billing

00:25:01.660 cycle. But we've made the decision that any carbon tax on consumption after December 31st would no

00:25:08.540 longer be billed to the rate payers at SaskEnergy. So we're technically still in compliance.

00:25:17.500 we'll make a payment that those dollars have been collected on the december bills

00:25:21.740 we'll make a payment uh here in january we'll then have a decision to make in basically february

00:25:28.060 depending on what uh what the answer comes back from the federal minister of national revenue

00:25:33.740 minister dustin duncan thank you very much for your time sir thanks for having me andrew

00:25:40.300 he is the minister responsible for crown corporations like those in saskatchewan

00:25:45.580 when they're tasked with doing this.

00:25:46.840 And I appreciate, I mean, look,

00:25:48.180 I don't want to get too much into the ins and outs

00:25:50.080 of the manner in which they're doing this.

00:25:52.720 But he's saying, no, this is a ministerial decision.

00:25:54.780 This is a ministerial responsibility.

00:25:56.920 He is seizing control, basically,

00:25:58.840 of those government departments,

00:26:01.120 those crown corporations and saying,

00:26:02.920 I, as the minister, will make this decision.

00:26:04.680 So we do have a standoff

00:26:06.540 between the provincial government in Saskatchewan

00:26:09.100 and the federal government.

00:26:10.040 And as I was chatting about yesterday with Chris Sims,

00:26:12.980 one thing that I find interesting here

00:26:14.940 is that Alberta has not been going to war for tax reduction as much as Saskatchewan has in a

00:26:22.400 couple of key ways, notably the fuel tax, which is different. But again, I think to a lot of

00:26:26.620 Canadians, a tax is a tax is a tax. Whether it's on this thing or that thing, they don't really

00:26:30.800 know or care as long as they are not the ones that have to keep paying more and more to government

00:26:36.340 and in government coffers here. So that is where things are in Saskatchewan. Obviously, we'll follow

00:26:41.180 that. And I actually, we've had trouble in the past. This isn't a complaint. It's more just an

00:26:46.540 observation because I know we have some viewers and listeners from Saskatchewan. We have had

00:26:51.200 difficulty in the past getting members of the Saskatchewan government on the show. And part of

00:26:57.060 it is just, we don't have the contacts there. We've not built the relationships with those people

00:27:01.140 and other parts of it. When we have tried to reach out, I've tried to have Premier Mo on in several

00:27:05.540 locations. I've tried to have other ministers on and we've just not managed to get replies. So

00:27:09.600 I was very pleased yesterday when we reached out to Minister Duncan's office that they replied very

00:27:15.040 quickly and we had him on and hopefully this can become the beginning of a long-standing relationship

00:27:20.340 with the good people of Saskatchewan. I've been to Saskatchewan on several occasions. I've been to

00:27:26.120 Moose Jaw. I've been to Regina a couple times. Haven't been to Saskatoon. When I was in Regina

00:27:31.520 the first time in a very Saskatchewan way, I recall there was like a controversy and someone

00:27:36.360 told me this it might not entirely be true this would have been like uh 10 12 years ago or so

00:27:42.680 and apparently like the city logo had like a silhouette of the skyline of regina which i

00:27:49.160 didn't know regina had a skyline but there you go and there was like a weird sort of uh regina

00:27:54.120 controversy where they had built a building and they were wondering if they needed to update the

00:27:59.240 city logo because the skyline now had a third building in it and i don't know what they ended

00:28:04.040 up doing on that. But I know that Regina ended up getting into a bit more trouble more recently when 1.00

00:28:07.920 they decided to play off of the fact that Regina rhymes with vagina as a tourism slogan, or as they

00:28:14.820 said, Regina, the city that rhymes with fun. And then of course, like anything else, the Killjoys 0.65

00:28:20.500 took it away from them. So all that notwithstanding, there are plenty of Killjoys, not just

00:28:24.780 Saskatchewan Tourism Board officials, but also federal court judges. And there was one ruling

00:28:30.660 over the holidays that we have followed this case for a little while on. And it was on this sign

00:28:37.260 that you may have seen in an election campaign, the Libranos, Libranos.com by the book. The book

00:28:45.200 is, well, as it's called there, the Libranos was written by Ezra Levant of Rebel News. And the

00:28:52.200 elections bureaucrats, the commissioner of Canada elections came down hard and said that sign

00:28:57.740 wasn't actually a book advertisement, but it was an election campaign sign. It was an election

00:29:03.880 campaign sign, and you aren't allowed to do it without going through all of these rules

00:29:07.180 that we have for election advertisers, for third parties and political parties. Now,

00:29:12.620 Ezra pointed to a section of the law, which specifically says advertising books, like it

00:29:20.420 literally says advertising books is in a category of its own and are exempt from this. So he

00:29:25.620 challenged this, brought it to federal court, and a judge ultimately signed on to the narrative put

00:29:31.580 forward by the Commissioner of Canada Elections and found that those signs were illegal. Ezra

00:29:36.540 Levant is the author of The Lebranos and the founder of Rebel News and joins us now. Ezra,

00:29:41.880 I mean, you and I have had a number of conversations over the years about our

00:29:44.760 dissatisfaction with the judicial status quo, so I don't want to say that I'm totally shocked by

00:29:50.420 this, but this is like a clear-cut example of when the court is finding that the law doesn't

00:29:55.560 say what the law says. I have to tell you, I was completely shocked by this for two reasons. First

00:30:01.580 of all, the plain words in the Kenda Elections Act exempt books and the promotion of books

00:30:09.160 from their election finances, which makes sense. I mean, it also exempts news and speeches and

00:30:17.860 letters. Because imagine if every newspaper article that was an endorsement of this party

00:30:24.360 or a criticism of that party were to be banned or regulated by the government. It would be madness.

00:30:30.840 So it applies to books or the promotion of books. And as you can see, because you just showed your

00:30:36.000 viewers there, the promotion of books was very simple. That was the front cover of our book

00:30:42.160 called The Libranos with three added words, buy the book. But that enraged Elections Canada.

00:30:50.520 they were obsessed by that book cover and that title they were obsessed by the drawings on it

00:30:57.640 of trudeau and his friends and so they thought it was so critical that the book and the title of the

00:31:06.060 book they said were banned and the judge agreed and so i suppose technically the book itself is

00:31:13.060 not banned but if you've banned the title of the book and you ban the cover of the book

00:31:19.340 you sort of banned the book and by the way you can buy that book right now on amazon.ca

00:31:27.620 but if there were an election called tomorrow it would be banned again or at least the cover of it

00:31:34.600 and the title of it and i couldn't show it and i don't know i was really surprised conceivably you

00:31:40.460 couldn't run like online ads for it as i mean without being am i do i read that correctly

00:31:45.700 Yeah, 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.

00:32:08.020 But I want to tell you, Andrew, there were 23 other books published about Justin Trudeau during the exact same time period.

00:32:18.360 I'm talking about right before the election in 2019.

00:32:21.820 23 other books.

00:32:23.620 And they were positive towards Trudeau.

00:32:26.600 They were boosting him.

00:32:28.740 It would be like a campaign ad for them.

00:32:31.280 But, of course, they're exempt because they're books, so they were not prosecuted.

00:32:35.220 I 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?

00:32:52.760 And 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.

00:33:01.620 But I don't want to complain about those 23 other books.

00:33:04.240 i mean i could complain about them but i don't want to prosecute them and you know what the

00:33:09.040 judge said and i if you don't mind i wouldn't mind reading very quickly from the actual ruling

00:33:14.640 please the judge said it yeah the judge says it was no big deal all i had to do was act like a

00:33:21.680 political party register with the government disclose my finances to the government and comply

00:33:27.760 with the government and i could have the lawn sign in my book all i like basically become one

00:33:33.120 those registered third party political activist groups like lead now or you know whatever here

00:33:39.280 let me i'm just going to read uh very quickly here's one sentence from the judge even if the

00:33:45.680 promotion of a particular book is election advertising such promotion is not prohibited

00:33:53.600 she's saying my book wasn't banned quote the third party that would be me must simply comply

00:34:00.560 with the requirements of the act that apply to all third-party election advertisers authors or

00:34:06.480 publishers comply with the spending registration and disclosure requirements so oh it's no big

00:34:13.200 deal all i have to do is register my book with the government but just let me say that again

00:34:19.680 all i have to do is an author duh just register with the government let me read one more sentence

00:34:25.360 from the judge when we argued, well, that would be a kind of chilling effect to require authors

00:34:31.060 to say, hello, government, we'd like to register our book with you. The judge said, quote,

00:34:38.500 it should not be overly onerous for an author or a publisher to demonstrate what their intention was

00:34:46.360 as to the timing of the promotion. As in, I had to justify publishing the book during an election

00:34:54.800 And because I did so, that's what made it an illegal book.

00:34:59.840 But every political book is published during election.

00:35:03.320 You don't publish a book after the election about the election.

00:35:06.720 That's a totally different book.

00:35:07.940 And like I say, 24 publishers, 24 authors all had the same idea.

00:35:13.440 Let's talk about Justin Trudeau in the 2019 election.

00:35:17.120 The judge says, I had to, I just read it to you.

00:35:20.280 The judge said, I should have justified to the government why I did it during the election.

00:35:27.160 I don't know.

00:35:28.020 I'm really surprised by this.

00:35:29.580 My fine is $3,000 plus $10,000 for the court case.

00:35:35.620 So I have to pay the government $13,000.

00:35:39.080 That's not the end of the world, although that's a very stiff fine for publishing a book.

00:35:44.200 But both the judge and Elections Canada had a warning for me.

00:35:47.560 They 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.

00:36:09.360 and i say again it was the fact that i was critical of him that bothered them they said so again and

00:36:16.880 again and and if you read the ruling it's 85 pages long we put up we put up a website for those who

00:36:21.620 want to see it and see my side of the story the website is save rebel news.com because i think

00:36:28.660 that this is really goes to our freedom if let me just jump in there ezra was your uh legal case i

00:36:36.260 know you weren't the you weren't fighting it yourself you had a lawyer but was your case

00:36:39.380 a constitutional free speech uh you know freedom of expression case or was it just listen your own

00:36:45.660 law says that the promotion of books is fine uh therefore your application of the law against us

00:36:51.320 is uh completely made up it was both and the judge dismissed the that second one very quickly

00:36:58.540 too quickly i mean and then and again how did the judge rationalize that because literally you can

00:37:03.720 see the words right there. Yeah. Well, there's three parts. Your book has to be published at

00:37:10.280 a commercial price. My book was $14, which is commercially fair. And it has to be published

00:37:17.860 whether or not there was an election. Well, we would have published my book,

00:37:22.200 whether or not there was an election. Of course, we were going to publish it. And I don't even know

00:37:26.500 what it means that there wouldn't be an election. Well, and in Canada also, I mean, the 2019 election

00:37:32.220 was fixed in 2015 but in our system there can be an election i mean there could be an election in

00:37:36.380 40 days that you have no idea is coming right and listen i was honest with the with the judge and i

00:37:42.060 was honest with the cops who interrogated me i said we did what every other author did is we

00:37:47.500 coincided with the election but we would have published it whether or not i mean i've published

00:37:52.220 more than 10 books um and we publish them during an election we do publish them when it's not an

00:37:57.340 election i have another book coming out about justin trudeau ideally i would publish it

00:38:02.860 right before the election it would be terrible if i was late until after the election but the

00:38:08.300 judge sorry the law does not stop me from timing it it doesn't it just says i have to publish it

00:38:14.780 whether or not there's an election she thought that was a silly uh difference that there was no

00:38:19.740 difference and then oh we have uh elections canada has to oh there we go i thought elections canada

00:38:28.860 was coming after you but we appear to have gotten you back now ezra sorry about that i'm i'm on the

00:38:33.180 road i've had the judge the judge said the timing of the publication is what one of the things that

00:38:39.500 made it illegal but like i say 23 other authors time their books the exact same time i'm worried

00:38:45.420 about this and well you mentioned you have another book coming out i mean what are you

00:38:49.820 not that i would ever say that you are a generally compliant person with government edicts but uh

00:38:54.700 what is your plan going to be if you've gotten that far on on what to do about that book well

00:38:59.580 i'm going to publish it and i don't want to be charged and i don't want to be convicted and i

00:39:04.380 certainly don't want to be fined and i absolutely don't want to register with the government right

00:39:08.700 I'm absolutely not going to. And, you know, I remember during the COVID times, the lockdowns,

00:39:16.280 I made some personal decisions that I was not going to comply. Now, they never came down hard

00:39:21.560 on me like a ton of bricks, but I was on their no-fly list because I was unjabbed. I didn't get

00:39:27.140 a vaccine passport, and I just decided I was not going to comply. And I am not going to register

00:39:32.720 my next book with the government. I'm just not going to. In terms of the exact timing of the

00:39:37.180 book obviously it's going to be before the next election um we don't know when that next election

00:39:42.180 will be but if it comes if we are at the point andrew in canada when a critic of the government

00:39:49.260 when an author is prosecuted and god forbid convicted of a crime and jailed for writing a

00:39:55.760 book about him then that person should be mean because i i i say i believe in freedom and i say

00:40:03.780 I believe in fighting back. And just like I felt an obligation to walk the walk during the lockdowns,

00:40:09.680 I feel an obligation here. And if it's not me, who would it be? I mean, God, I don't want you

00:40:15.240 to be prosecuted for your book. I don't want anyone else, but I know that I've got the fighting spirit

00:40:19.960 and our viewers generally like to crowdfund these battles. So I am going to publish another book

00:40:27.320 before the next election, critical of Justin Trudeau. It's going to be a real book. It's

00:40:31.760 be sold at a real price it's going to be published whether or not there's an election but we're going

00:40:35.920 to time it before the election i'm just going to do that and if that sends me to jail and god

00:40:42.160 forbid it i hope it doesn't um canadians ought to know that's the country we live in now will i just

00:40:49.360 on the note of this one are you going to bring this to the federal court of appeal yes we've hired

00:40:54.720 a great lawyer sarah miller is she's been on the show a number of times yeah i think she's really

00:41:01.520 smart. I chose her because she's had good luck in the court of appeals. She was the one who took

00:41:06.800 Arthur Pavlovsky's case, the Christian pastor who was jailed in Alberta for keeping his church

00:41:13.280 open. She won that on appeal. And I thought, boy, I need a smart lawyer who'll do well in the court 0.94

00:41:19.420 of appeals. So she's already, at least she's shown me the notice of appeal. I think she's filed it

00:41:24.160 already. It's an uphill battle. I got to tell you, most appeals in court fail. It's just a

00:41:31.180 statistical thing i think two out of three lose and this was a well crafted ruling by the judge

00:41:39.780 she wasn't i mean 85 pages she took to make her case so i'm not optimistic it's not about the

00:41:46.480 fine i mean the fine does bother me it's about the law itself it's crazy we would and what it

00:41:52.500 says to people that don't have your spirit and frankly your finances to fight this stuff i mean

00:41:57.720 you're just some you know self-published author that wants to make a point and maybe you want to

00:42:02.200 you know spend a couple thousand dollars promoting your book this does have a chilling effect

00:42:06.760 absolutely and i just can't get over the fact that the judge said that oh it's no big deal

00:42:11.560 it's not onerous i mean i was i was called to the headquarters of elections canada and two 30-year

00:42:18.920 rcmp veterans interrogated me for an hour now you know me i don't mind that i like the sparring of

00:42:25.080 You enjoy it. You're bored when you're not being interrogated by some bureaucrat or police officer.

00:42:30.340 But 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.

00:42:44.180 And the fine, the $13,000 fine, I think that that would dissuade a lot of people.

00:42:50.980 not everyone has $13,000 to pay the fund. Now, we're going to crowdfund this appeal,

00:42:56.580 and hopefully we won't have to pay it in the end. But for the judge to pretend there was no chilling

00:43:01.140 effect here, that really is one of the worst parts of this ruling. I'm just going to read that again

00:43:06.420 for 30 seconds. Quote, it should not be overly onerous for an author or publisher to demonstrate

00:43:13.620 what their intention was. As in, you've got to go to the government and say, no, no, no,

00:43:19.940 this is we're not trying to criticize you uh saint trudeau please this is just a book you know to

00:43:27.780 you know what that the judge was wrong there i'm just i don't want this to become a legal precedent

00:43:33.700 i fear it will be but we've got to fight it very well said ezra levant the rebel commander himself

00:43:39.460 thank you so much and best of luck thanks bye-bye all right that does it for us for today we'll be

00:43:45.220 be back in just 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of canada's most irreverent talk show here on true

00:43:50.540 north thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:43:56.180 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:44:15.220 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 03, 2024

Plagiarism is okay when the left does it

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript