00:01:00.000welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:19.640north hello and welcome to you all happy monday this is canada's most irreverent talk show on
00:01:30.400true north the andrew lotton show on this monday march 11th 2024 i just realized that my weird
00:01:37.040space age charging contraption is visible it's uh it's not it looked like some weird uh little
00:01:43.240i don't actually know what it looked just looked weird and my i didn't even know what it was and
00:01:46.440it's on my desk but anyway all that uh notwithstanding it keeps my devices charged which
00:01:51.460is i'm very grateful for because i got tired of like having one charge sure for this thing and
00:01:55.600one charger for that one it's a little nifty uh desktop i should just like i i should actually go
00:02:00.120to the company and be like i was about to plug you on my show but i didn't uh send us a sponsorship
00:02:04.280check and then i will but anyway lots of fun hope you had a good weekend i was gonna lay low for a
00:02:09.380bit and then i i realized on sunday uh just a little bit down the road from me i mean a couple
00:02:14.880hours down the road. Pierre Paulyev was holding a rally at the Toronto Congress Centre in Tobacco.
00:02:22.340And the, I don't normally, rallies are not generally sources for news because it's not a
00:02:27.460press conference. It's the stump speech. I mean, even yesterday I heard Pierre Paulyev tell a lot
00:02:32.260of the same stories and jokes that I've already heard before. And then what was happening though,
00:02:37.000is they decided to bill it as a massive rally. Now that is a lofty, ambitious adjective to
00:02:44.860put in front of an event. I mean, it could end up being massive, but they were promoting it as a
00:02:49.080massive rally. So I was like, all right, well, if it's going to be massive, maybe I should go.
00:02:53.880And certainly the police presence was massive. I have covered for the last, I don't know, 14 years
00:02:59.620in this country, a number of political events, liberal conservatives, events at which the prime
00:03:04.220minister, whether it was Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau has been there. And I've never seen at a
00:03:09.720political event that wasn't a state summit of some kind, having the number of police officers
00:03:16.720on site as were at Polyev's rally yesterday. I mean, it's a giant congress center, convention
00:03:23.280center in Toronto, but you go in and there are just tons of police cars in the parking lot,
00:03:29.220police officers inside. There were some very non-convincing undercover police officers
00:03:34.400walking around in the crowd, like pretending to be spectators, but like you could just tell.
00:03:38.760And then you also had the mounted unit. So the Toronto Police Service horseback unit, which were the ones in Ottawa for the Freedom Convoy. They were out walking around. And ultimately, the massive protests they must have been expecting didn't materialize. There was one lone Greenpeace protester inside that unfurled a banner and was promptly arrested and removed by police from the venue.
00:04:03.880But apart from that, I get why they're doing it.
00:04:05.900I mean, we've seen massive anti-Israel protests against Justin Trudeau,
00:04:09.440against members of parliament, against Jewish community centers and schools.
00:04:12.940So it stands to reason that they probably would have shown up
00:05:11.020Common sense conservatives are unleashing a massive pressure campaign on NDP and liberal MPs to vote against Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh and in favor of spiking the hike and axing the tax.
00:05:29.480and but it involves all of you i can't do it myself politics is a is not a spectator sport
00:05:39.060it is a participation sport if you're not at the table you're on the menu so you need to be at the
00:05:46.900table so this i'm going to be asking some things from all of you i'm going to be asking we are
00:05:52.860going to start a massive pressure campaign in parliament but you need to back me up on the
00:05:57.760ground? How many of you are going to write your Liberal NDP members and demand they vote
00:06:02.760with common sense Conservatives to axe the tax? How many will organize protests out of
00:06:10.820Liberal constituency offices to pressure them to do the right thing? How many of you
00:06:21.020are going to send emails to all of your networks and post on all of your social media so that
00:06:26.840every one of your neighbors know about the upcoming april fool's day tax hike
00:06:33.800how many of you will bombard liberal ndp offices with phone calls
00:06:38.440to make sure that they understand their constituents cannot afford to pay anymore
00:06:44.120so the term massive pressure campaign he's used before polyev in november of last year had called
00:06:51.160for a massive pressure campaign on very similar issues it was on the carbon tax and specifically
00:06:56.760trying to remove it from fuels used in agriculture or at least some agricultural activity so
00:07:02.520the idea of him launching and lauding this massive pressure campaign is not new but pushing people
00:07:08.920to protest at members of parliament's offices their constituency offices is quite interesting
00:07:14.520i was standing beside a relatively senior person on polyev's team when he said that because i did
00:07:20.760a bit of a double take and i i asked this person i said that's new right and they they nodded and
00:07:26.120Now, conversely, I should point out, I asked one of Polyev's communication staffers, as is pretty common from journalists when a politician's giving a speech, if I could get a copy of the speech, and they said, well, I would, but he's kind of just winging it up there, but we can give you the transcript after.
00:07:41.900So he wasn't, according to his office anyway, reading from a prepared, I mean, he wasn't reading from anything, there was no teleprompter, he had no script, but he wasn't even going from prepared remarks.
00:07:52.580So I would assume that that was something that at least he thought of, at least he understood what he was saying.
00:07:59.620And we've seen MPs' offices bombarded with protests on Israel and Gaza stuff right now, and some of those have gotten quite nasty.
00:08:07.200Now, to be clear, he's not telling people to do that, although there is a concern that I think people might raise as to whether you are inviting some sort of a problem
00:08:17.660when you're asking people, when you're rallying your troops literally and figuratively to go and
00:08:22.180protest MP offices. But at the same time, he's also raising attention to a very important issue
00:08:27.020right now. There was beside him up on the big screen there, a countdown to April 1st when the
00:08:32.400carbon tax increase goes into effect. We'll be talking about this in a few moments with our
00:08:37.220friend Chris Sims. But what was happening there is he's saying, listen, we're staring down this
00:08:43.680increase canadians can't afford it affordability and cost of living issues are out of control this
00:08:49.120is one thing that the government can very directly control it's nothing to do with supply chain or
00:08:54.000inflation or money supply this is a very explicit direct thing the government could do which is say
00:08:59.760we are deferring or scrapping the increase of the carbon tax and they're not doing it
00:09:04.320instead they're doing this oh we're gonna you know give a little carve out for home heating oil and
00:09:08.320we're going to help Atlantic Canadians, but not Western Canadians. And that lovely,
00:09:13.100lovely line that if Western Canadians want to get relief, they should just elect liberal
00:09:17.820members of parliament. Oh, such a heartwarming display of democracy in action. But that has
00:09:22.540been the liberal government's line on this. So what Polyev is doing there is saying he is going
00:09:27.280to push liberal and new Democrat MPs to vote for a conservative motion to scrap this. They added a
00:09:34.080new slogan last week to spike the hike. So it's not, you have to spike the hike and ax the tax
00:09:39.640and then do the hokey pokey. Oh, I know that's a different one, but you have to spike the hike
00:09:43.480and ax the tax. Those are the two rhyming schemes that we now have from the, from the,
00:09:48.520the conservatives here. But what's interesting is the house of commons is practically like not
00:09:53.640sitting at all. Uh, they were off, uh, until, uh, for the Christmas break until January 29th,
00:09:59.400they returned for three weeks, off for a week, on for one week, and then off for two weeks again.
00:10:05.020So MPs right now are in their second of two break weeks this month. They're only actually
00:10:09.600sitting for one week in March, and that's the week of March 18th. And once the MPs go back,
00:10:16.140they're only there for a week before they're off again for, I think, two weeks. So all of that is
00:10:21.280to say, if you followed that, basically it means that the MPs are only in Ottawa for one week in
00:10:25.720entire month of march and then taking two weeks off and coming back april 8th but what i'm pointing
00:10:31.560out there is that this increase to the carbon tax on april 1st only one week of parliamentary
00:10:37.240sitting stands between us and that increase so if anything is going to happen it's not going to be
00:10:43.160this week but it's going to be next week and the conservatives are clearly hoping that this
00:10:48.920pressure they're trying to mount on liberal and new democrat mps will amount to them doing the
00:10:54.760right thing now i'm not particularly optimistic we had that one guy from newfoundland ken hardy
00:11:01.160that spoke up and and did the right thing at one point but for the most part uh he was kind of
00:11:05.880bought they bought his silence by giving that home heating oil exemption for the the benefits uh
00:11:10.760predominantly atlantic canadians and now all of a sudden people like ken hardy don't care about the
00:11:15.480effect on the rest of the country when you had a toronto mp saying whoa whoa what about us and
00:11:19.960western mp saying what about us the liberals have just said no the carbon tax is imperative to the
00:11:24.520the fight against climate change yada yada yada and canadians are just expect to expected to spend
00:11:30.040money spend their money our money on this eco virtue signaling by the liberals so we'll talk
00:11:36.920about that in a couple of moments i did want to share one more clip from pauliev speech because
00:11:41.400he i wouldn't say this was hugely newsworthy but it was a bit of a departure from his past
00:11:47.400comments on this now you may have heard previously pierre pauliev and we've talked about it on this
00:11:51.720show, say that there is going to be a ban if he's elected on his cabinet members going to Davos. He
00:11:58.840even said at one point that if they go, it will be a one-way ticket because they won't be coming
00:12:03.660back. Well, he reiterated that pledge, but seemed to extend it a little bit. Take a look.
00:12:09.940We're going to bring it home. We're going to bring home our freedom again. We will
00:12:13.020We will repeal Liberal Censorship Law C11.
00:12:20.220We will ban all of our ministers and members of parliament from any involvement in the
00:14:55.140So we look at this and generally speaking, generally speaking, saw that Canadians were
00:15:01.700probably more, they had bigger fish to fry than the carbon tax in 2021. But contrast is still
00:15:09.160very important here. And in the 2021 election, you had Justin Hudeau saying, we want the carbon tax,
00:15:14.200we need to increase the carbon tax, we need to keep taxing you until we solve the climate.
00:15:18.500And then you have the conservative saying, okay, we don't like that carbon tax, but how about this other carbon tax? And you'll remember the O'Toole Bucks rewards program, which was where when you buy something that would have a carbon tax, a portion of it is hived off into your own personal low carbon savings account.
00:15:41.020and then you go and use that personal low carbon savings account when you want to make
00:15:45.760eco-friendly purchases. So you want to buy a solar panel to put on your home and you then
00:15:52.540have to go and tap into your account that you would have filled up when you were gassing up
00:15:57.860your Hummer at Petrocan. That was basically the Aaron O'Toole strategy there. And again,
00:16:04.040I mean, they tried to say, oh, it's not a tax, but Canadians were like, all right, well,
00:16:08.100if I'm going to vote for the party that is going to make me pay more on fuel, or the party that's
00:16:14.220going to make me pay more on fuel, that distinction just doesn't really seem to be there. So that was
00:16:21.340why I think it was so important. And I think it's probably from that, because remember,
00:16:25.140Polyev was a conservative candidate in 2021. He had to run, at least implicitly, on that platform.
00:16:31.680He had to run in part on that conservative plan, which was going to put a carbon tax there. Now,
00:16:36.380I assure you, I did one interview with Polyev in the 2021 election and he was not talking about the
00:16:41.740carbon tax. He was not exactly proud that this was a part of the conservative platform. But of course,
00:16:47.520MPs didn't really want to have a, didn't really want to have a, whatever you call it. They didn't
00:16:52.440want to have a caucus revolt of any kind. But what was fascinating here, and I think really,
00:16:58.460really fascinating is that conservatives, there are not a lot of them, but there are some of them
00:17:03.560that think that you can just outflank the liberals on these sorts of issues, that you can just
00:17:09.260outflank the left, you can be the ones that are going to be the more credible alternative while
00:17:14.880putting forward a markedly or remarkably, I'd say, similar policy. And that was kind of what
00:17:19.420was happening when we looked at that debate in the 2021 election. So Pierre Polyev, I think it's
00:17:25.880incredibly, incredibly important to note this is likely looming large on why he is making such a
00:17:32.840huge deal on this carbon tax. We have Chris Sims joining us, our Monday commentator, the Alberta
00:17:38.880Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Chris, you've seen, and you and I have been
00:17:44.640talking about this for weeks now, Canadians are not on board with this. What do you make of this
00:17:49.600call to action to actually go and protest MP offices that Pierre was giving his supporters
00:17:55.820yesterday? I think it's really smart, and it's, you know, spoiler alert, it's something that the
00:18:01.200Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been encouraging now for many years. Old photos of our magazines
00:18:06.720include us, you know, planting pig-shaped lawn signs on the front of Parliament Hill. So we're
00:18:12.500all for a peaceful demonstration. In fact, we just finished protesting a couple of months ago
00:18:17.720in front of Liberal members of Parliament constituency offices in chicken suits. Because
00:18:23.300as of course you remember, it was the Atlantic caucus of the Liberal Party who had the spine,
00:18:28.020who weren't chickens and who stood up for their constituents and they got an exemption for the
00:18:33.100carbon tax on their home heating bills for three years. Curious amount of years there to put them
00:18:38.680past the next election. But it was only for Atlantic Canadians because they're basically
00:18:43.200the only ones who use home heating oil. And it was just nothing but crickets. We couldn't hear
00:18:47.520anything from the rest of the Liberal caucus across the rest of the country. So we think it's
00:18:52.280really great idea for Mr. Polyev to call to action, to email, to phone, to protest peacefully outside
00:18:59.480of constituency offices, because this is what makes them move, right? Every now and then,
00:19:05.960I know you've covered this on Parliament Hill yourself, Andrew, everything seems like it's
00:19:10.520going to stay the same until it suddenly doesn't, right? Everything kind of breaks loose at once.
00:19:33.680And that's all it took. All hell broke loose. And then there was a leadership race and everything kind of fell into place.
00:19:39.680So this is why we're urging and agreeing that all Canadians who oppose the carbon tax should
00:19:45.560definitely protest outside of the offices peacefully. Don't give the anti-carbon tax
00:19:51.020movement a bad name, please. And send in letters and emails. If I can, though, I'd like to tack a
00:19:57.960little rider to that bill because something else is happening on April 1st, and that is MP pay
00:20:03.880raises. They're automatically getting a big pay hike. So this means that the Prime Minister,
00:20:10.360I think, is going to be making over $400,000-ish. A backbench Member of Parliament is going to be
00:20:16.320making around $200,000. And it's a huge pay hike. We're talking thousands of dollars per year.
00:20:22.820That's also happening April 1st. And that's, of course, people joke and call it April Fools.
00:20:27.660It's, of course, because it's the start of the fiscal year. That's why all these things change
00:20:31.140on April 1st, but I will put a bug in Pierre Polyev's ear. We need some leadership from
00:20:37.740members of parliament in the House of Commons to oppose these MP pay hikes. Prime Minister
00:20:43.100Stephen Harper froze MP pay hikes, and we think it's really important to encourage other MPs,
00:20:51.080in particular the opposition MPs, to speak out against MP pay hikes right now.
00:20:56.540Yeah, I would say that it's very valid, and I want to dig into that and also talk about the
00:21:00.440governor general in a moment, but, but just going back to the carbon tax increase here for,
00:21:04.200for a moment, uh, Chris, there was a poll that came out now, obviously polling, you have to
00:21:09.140take with, you know, 3000 grains of salt here, but main street poll, 46% support for the
00:21:15.200conservatives, 25% liberal, 15% NDP. MPs are people. I, it pains me to say that because a
00:21:22.920lot of the time they don't act like it, but MPs are people. And a lot of them are, despite however
00:21:27.660partisan and ideological they are they're very very concerned about their future right now and
00:21:32.540if you're a liberal member of parliament in a toronto riding let's say you're in mississauga
00:21:37.820you're in whitby your new market whatever like you know that these numbers are bad news for you so
00:21:43.420when you have people that are outside your office saying hey we can't afford to live right now
00:21:49.420stand up and do the right thing i i do think that some liberal mps insecurity about their seats may
00:21:55.180actually allow for some action here. The caveat is that Justin Trudeau has done a very good job
00:22:00.480in the last eight years of quelling any dissent. I think you're bang on there. And it takes years
00:22:06.800of observation to notice this. And you're right. I can't remember the last time I saw
00:22:12.820the conservatives at over 40%. Like you said, polls are polls. There's always give and take.
00:22:19.240But that is a huge number. And so polls like that make other MPs feel like dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And they've looked in the sky and here comes the asteroid. That's what those feel like. And it ripples through the office on Parliament Hill. People start phoning the consent saying, hey, is anybody coming in to meet with the MP over the break week? Anything like that happening?
00:22:46.000that's what gets them really nervous. And to your point, I think that polls like this really matter
00:22:52.100and I think it's things like the carbon tax that really matter. So keep in mind that we've got the
00:22:57.660carbon tax that he's hiking up that of course makes our food more expensive because it increases
00:23:03.100the cost for farmers. It increases the cost for shipping. Just imagine diesel, diesel fuel,
00:23:09.620which is the lifeblood of our economy. It moves everything we eat and use is now going to have
00:23:15.90021 cents per liter tacked onto it. If you take a look underneath a trucker's door, they've got
00:23:22.580those huge cylindrical tanks. Those things hold more than a thousand liters. Do the math times
00:23:28.84021 cents. Like this is a huge cost for people and it trickles down and ripples down through the rest
00:23:35.060of the economy. And here we have people to your point who are literally saying we can't afford
00:23:41.280the basics of life so energy heat shelter and food like wakey wakey folks this is a participation
00:23:49.740sport politics and these mps are going to have to respond to this so i think you're right andrew i
00:23:55.600think that they could break rank on this issue yeah and when you mentioned 40 i i should just
00:24:01.400give a bit of context here stephen harper uh won his majority in 2011 and it was a pretty strong
00:24:07.100decisive majority, that was 39.62% of the vote. So that majority was, I mean, yeah, if you round
00:24:13.600it up, it's at 40, but was less than 40% in absolute votes. So when you have conservative
00:24:18.560polling at 46%, we're getting like Brian Mulroney, John Diefenbaker, super majority territory there,
00:24:24.780depending on the distribution of it. But you mentioned MP pay raises going up. Governor
00:24:30.260General also, that quintessential, incredibly important, valuable, relevant figure in Canada,
00:24:36.580she's getting a raise. Yes. And I want to be very clear. This isn't about the person. This is about
00:24:44.060the office. All that being understood. Now, I think I might be alone at the Taxpayers Federation.
00:24:51.380I don't want to tell tales out of school, but I think I'm one of the only quasi-monarchists
00:24:56.380among us. And that is only because in the same way that Winston Churchill basically said,
00:25:01.840democracy, you know, it's ugly, but it's the best system we've got, better than all the others.
00:25:06.580very similar here because we have a constitutional monarchy. This is how things work in Canada. I
00:25:12.420understand folks for who are monarchists. I understand the role, okay? The governor general
00:25:17.860is His Majesty the King's representative in Canada. In order to pass law, we need this royal
00:25:23.220literal stamp of approval. But, but we should not have to be paying through the nose like this.
00:25:29.940A governor general literally lives in an all-expenses-paid mansion. They have a team
00:25:35.140of housekeepers drivers and cooks they like the place is just opulent and now the governor general
00:25:42.100just because they exist they're getting an eleven thousand dollar pay hike this year again so this
00:25:50.420is well over three hundred thousand dollars now per year that this position is now paid
00:25:55.540it's a huge waste of money this is um yes it's important legally to get our laws passed
00:26:01.300but it's largely ceremonial. This does not require, you know, massive law degrees and a ton
00:26:07.780of heavy lifting and, you know, wise, sober second thought. And so this is why we're encouraging
00:26:13.640people to, and I don't know why my camera just went out on you again, Andrew. I'm blaming Bill
00:26:19.440C11. I don't know if we can, but there we go. Honest, I'm not kidding. This only happens on
00:26:25.320your show and one other and it ain't on ctv i'll put it that way this is so yeah but the thing
00:26:32.280when you mentioned the quality of life though chris like they're living like monarchs themselves
00:26:37.540but they're career bureaucrats and washed up journalists i mean that's the bizarre part is
00:26:42.920that you know she was a diplomat i mean very well decorated uh julie payette was an astronaut
00:26:47.720i mean mikhail jean was a journalist but i mean all these people like they're just average
00:26:51.780ordinary people that all of a sudden get to live a royal life that's the part that i find offensive
00:26:55.940is that they they want to do all the ceremony and we're paying for it and and look the issue that
00:27:01.700the ctf has been quite strong on in this regard is the lifetime of payouts which often we don't
00:27:06.820realize i mean adrian clarkson is still uh cashing checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for
00:27:11.620all this administrative support uh meanwhile she's making money as a public speaker for you know being
00:27:17.300a former governor general but we're still supporting that yeah exactly um once you get
00:27:22.180that gig you're rolling in it for life uh courtesy of the taxpayer and to your point
00:27:27.460we understand this is administrative look at the provincial levels the left tenants which occupy
00:27:33.860the same role they rubber stamp as well they don't spend a fraction of what they don't have
00:27:39.220official residences in most province i mean uh you know elizabeth doubts or whoever it is in
00:27:43.780Ontario now. I mean, just lives where they lived before they were appointed. And that seems to work
00:27:47.740fine. Exactly. Which gets us, can I shamelessly promote our current campaign? Go for it. Gets us
00:27:54.640to the point of what would you need to be the governor general? And so we've got these t-shirts,
00:27:59.840they're at cost. Oh, that's a better one. So that's in front of our left bridge, which is
00:28:03.960the longest trestle train bridge in Canada, which is in North America. In fact, it was on The Last
00:28:08.860of us. So if you've seen that weird post-apocalyptic gross zombie movie, and there's
00:28:13.180that burning bridge that's halfway across, that was in Lethbridge. So all this is to say, we've
00:28:18.920got this cool thing going on where you can go to our website, taxpayer.com. We're not making the
00:28:23.280money off of it. It's all just at cost. And you can order t-shirts like this. I would be governor
00:28:28.940general for a loony. So I would skim over what the Senate- And I'll even pay the loony. It won't
00:28:34.500even go on taxpayer dime there for free really then and so i hear i i as soon as i told sean to
00:28:40.760get that picture i was thinking you know we probably won't even need the picture she's
00:28:43.380probably just gonna wear the shirt but anyway well i'm glad you grabbed the picture because
00:28:47.000i had to dig this out the laundry monster is crazy in this house right now so yes so you can
00:28:52.000get this one for a loony i think franco says i would do it for a poutine as they pronounce it
00:28:56.660out here in western canada yeah but you can't get a poutine for a loony in this economy no you sure
00:29:01.080can't it's largely because of the carbon tax so we're encouraging people this is why we're doing
00:29:06.040this because you either laugh or cry because of everything being so expensive right now and this
00:29:10.680is key politicians and hoity-toity bureaucrats hate it when you mock them like they get really
00:29:18.200upset really fast and so we should mock them a lot and so the average joe and sally six-pack
00:29:24.680canadian should go to our website find this t-shirt pick the one they like take a picture of yourself
00:29:31.080posted on the interwebs and this is our way of sticking a thumb in the eye of the elites and
00:29:37.520saying you know what the governor general should not be paid this kind of crazy amount of money
00:29:41.700and they certainly shouldn't be getting an 11 000 raise just this year i'll have to whip out my i
00:29:47.740mean it's a dated reference now but i have uh one of the old 2000 uh well i don't know what
00:29:51.940would have been 2008 the stefandion shrug uh t-shirts that uh say do you think it's easy
00:29:57.080you can't see my shrug there. Nevermind. I've got that on a shirt. I'll have to whip that out and
00:30:03.600we'll do like, you know, novelty, political lore, a t-shirt day on casual Friday on the
00:30:07.660Andrew Lawton show. Is a puffin involved in that one? I can't remember. Oh, I can't remember. I
00:30:11.820have to, I have to dig it. It's like way at the bottom of the hamper now. Cause I don't want to,
00:30:14.860you know, I don't want to actually wear it to, uh, you know, cause then it will, you know,
00:30:18.340lose out the color and the shine. And also I don't want to have to see Stefan Dion's face every time
00:30:22.980I look in the mirror. It's bad enough seeing my own face when I look in the mirror. So,
00:30:25.680All right, Chris Sims, we will see you next Monday.
00:35:36.340So I think what the taxpayers should know is that their money is funding terror, as simple
00:35:43.200as that. And do they want their money to help terrorists build tunnels, educate children
00:35:51.620how to kill and that they should kill and train them how to do so. Is that the best way for the
00:35:58.000taxpayers' money to be used? We think that there are much better ways. If we want Gaza to have the
00:36:04.280bright future that it can't, you can't keep on giving the money to an organization that taught
00:36:10.520hate, facilitated, and was part of a massacre. And it's not just a few. We have evidence of a lot of
00:36:17.980people and there's no way that the people who are running this organization did not know this so
00:36:23.660that means that there has to be another solution and the taxpayers money should be for a better
00:36:29.740and future for gaza which does not include in any way she is not talking about iran or lebanon or
00:36:40.140saudi arabia or qatar when she's talking about funding terror she is talking about canada and
00:36:44.300And that was a question that was asked by our friends over at the News Forum.
00:36:48.760Quite a far cry from the relationship Canada had with Israel up until, well, basically up until the Liberals took over.
00:36:56.580You're absolutely right that the historic relationship that Canada has had with Israel has been a very supportive one.
00:37:03.360Canada was one of the countries that voted for the creation of Israel in 1948 at the United Nations,
00:37:08.780in case people have forgotten that the creation of the state of Israel was mandated by the United
00:37:15.000Nations and carried out by a majority vote of the member states. So the next time somebody tells
00:37:20.120you that, you know, Israel is an illegitimate state, they've got several birth certificates
00:37:24.560of which the UN issued one. I think it was the only pro-Israel vote that ever passed at the UN,
00:37:29.160to be honest, but it was the important one. Well, it's the one that matters, I think. And,
00:37:34.920um uh you know canada has been a strong supporter of israel uh over many years and i have to say
00:37:42.520that um i i think this decision by the government of canada to restore the extra funding to unra
00:37:49.320is entirely in keeping with the behavior of this government over pretty much every foreign policy
00:37:56.680national security national defense issue which is they're playing to a domestic audience this
00:38:01.720is diaspora politics they're looking to and seeing you know tens of thousands of palestinian and
00:38:09.320hamas supporters in the streets and cities of canada uh and looking at the fact that there's
00:38:15.480now a million muslims in canada more uh and uh saying to themselves hmm uh there's an electoral
00:38:24.280calculation here uh we don't want to be on the wrong side of and i think that's a shocking and
00:38:29.800shameful way to conduct the foreign policy of this country i would agree i mean obviously
00:38:34.680politicians i i think should be beholden to you know the everything they do should be to serve
00:38:39.880canada and canada's interests and i and i think that domestic policy is actually very relevant to
00:38:45.000foreign policy but i also believe that fundamental questions of right and wrong are and and those are
00:38:49.320not majoritarian decisions and we're talking here about a very clear-cut case about terrorist
00:38:55.640aggressors, assaulting civilians. And we've seen equivocation. And the liberals, I mean,
00:39:00.300it used to be historically that the Jewish vote, insofar as it existed, and it was never monolithic,
00:39:06.260it isn't with any group, but that a lot of the Jewish vote went to the liberals. And when did
00:39:11.280that change happen? When did, because there are a lot of liberals that I've, or lifelong liberals
00:39:16.240who are Jewish that I've heard from, that don't really have much in the way of high expectations
00:39:21.300from the liberals now but a couple of years ago did and a couple of years ago kind of wouldn't
00:39:25.700have would never have expected what's happening now from this party that they've been part of for
00:39:29.620in some cases decades is well i mean of course i i i can't speak to uh what's going through the mind
00:39:36.740of uh members of the canadian jewish community i i can tell you what's going through my mind
00:39:43.220which is that if i were jewish and i were looking at the equivocation of the government of canada
00:39:49.380their complete unwillingness to be crystal clear about the fact that Canada as a Western democracy
00:39:55.540supports the only Western democracy in the Middle East, which is Israel, one that is under the rule
00:40:02.080of law, that makes its decisions by democratic means, that is entirely legitimate under international
00:40:07.640law, and is being attacked by people who do not share those values. If I were a Jewish Canadian,
00:40:15.940and I were looking at the government of Canada fumbling the ball over and over again when being
00:40:20.980asked to confirm that they are going to support Israel and the values that Israel represents in
00:40:27.100the Middle East. And the government of Canada said, well, maybe until someone makes me
00:40:34.060uncomfortable politically and then maybe not. This is completely at odds with the historical
00:40:41.740behavior of the government of canada and with i believe uh the the values that the government of
00:40:47.580canada and the and canadians have pursued uh for generations so where do you see it going from here
00:40:55.020i mean the situation domestically has gotten very ugly i mean we we've just abandoned any pretense
00:41:00.860that this is about israel or zionism when you have jewish schools and neighborhoods being targeted
00:41:05.820We have police that have been, I think, very, very shy about getting involved.
00:41:10.960And part of this is because they don't want to be in the middle of some, you know, ethnic turmoil, basically, or some, you know, cultural spat.
00:41:18.060And police in general don't want to be the ones in the line of fire when government comes and second guesses whatever decision was made.
00:41:24.840Because I fear, and every Jewish person I've talked to about this says it's going to get a heck of a lot worse.
00:41:30.480Yeah, well, I think you really touched on something very important there, Andrew.
00:41:35.540And that is that I think one of the reasons, not the only reason, I think one of the reasons the police have been so ineffectual, in my view, in protecting the Jewish community in Canada and asserting the right of all Canadians to carry out their ordinary lives free from fear and intimidation.
00:41:53.140that is what the that is what the police are for uh uh the the the the that the police have learned
00:42:01.940that if they do not follow the line that the the government wants them to follow that the the
00:42:08.020government will not be there to support them and that means that they are quite reluctant i think
00:42:15.380to get into the uh get into the dirty business and it will be it will be unpleasant there is no way
00:42:23.620to uh deal with you know tens of thousands of people in the street shouting hateful slogans
00:42:30.500uh uh you know intimidating citizens this is completely different than the hot tubs of the
00:42:36.020uh of the of the freedom i gotta tell you uh completely different uh and and many laws uh
00:42:44.580are being broken that the laws that police traditionally use to police unruly demonstrations
00:42:50.900they're not being uh pursued the government the police are hanging back and i think one of the
00:42:56.420main reasons is that they do not think they will be supported by public authorities if they
00:43:01.540uh if they exercise their legitimate authority in these in these situations and the people
00:43:07.220who are paying the price uh are of course the vulnerable members of our jewish community
00:43:12.500who feel completely unprotected and unsupported by the rest of the country.
00:43:18.080And I don't know how we can do something about this