Juno News - Poilievre calls on supporters to protest carbon tax at Liberal MP offices

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

00:01:19.640 north hello and welcome to you all happy monday this is canada's most irreverent talk show on

00:01:30.400 true north the andrew lotton show on this monday march 11th 2024 i just realized that my weird

00:01:37.040 space age charging contraption is visible it's uh it's not it looked like some weird uh little

00:01:43.240 i don't actually know what it looked just looked weird and my i didn't even know what it was and

00:01:46.440 it's on my desk but anyway all that uh notwithstanding it keeps my devices charged which

00:01:51.460 is i'm very grateful for because i got tired of like having one charge sure for this thing and

00:01:55.600 one charger for that one it's a little nifty uh desktop i should just like i i should actually go

00:02:00.120 to the company and be like i was about to plug you on my show but i didn't uh send us a sponsorship

00:02:04.280 check and then i will but anyway lots of fun hope you had a good weekend i was gonna lay low for a

00:02:09.380 bit and then i i realized on sunday uh just a little bit down the road from me i mean a couple

00:02:14.880 hours down the road. Pierre Paulyev was holding a rally at the Toronto Congress Centre in Tobacco.

00:02:22.340 And the, I don't normally, rallies are not generally sources for news because it's not a

00:02:27.460 press conference. It's the stump speech. I mean, even yesterday I heard Pierre Paulyev tell a lot

00:02:32.260 of the same stories and jokes that I've already heard before. And then what was happening though,

00:02:37.000 is they decided to bill it as a massive rally. Now that is a lofty, ambitious adjective to

00:02:44.860 put in front of an event. I mean, it could end up being massive, but they were promoting it as a

00:02:49.080 massive rally. So I was like, all right, well, if it's going to be massive, maybe I should go.

00:02:53.880 And certainly the police presence was massive. I have covered for the last, I don't know, 14 years

00:02:59.620 in this country, a number of political events, liberal conservatives, events at which the prime

00:03:04.220 minister, whether it was Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau has been there. And I've never seen at a

00:03:09.720 political event that wasn't a state summit of some kind, having the number of police officers

00:03:16.720 on site as were at Polyev's rally yesterday. I mean, it's a giant congress center, convention

00:03:23.280 center in Toronto, but you go in and there are just tons of police cars in the parking lot,

00:03:29.220 police officers inside. There were some very non-convincing undercover police officers

00:03:34.400 walking around in the crowd, like pretending to be spectators, but like you could just tell.

00:03:38.760 And 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.

00:04:03.880 But apart from that, I get why they're doing it.

00:04:05.900 I mean, we've seen massive anti-Israel protests against Justin Trudeau,

00:04:09.440 against members of parliament, against Jewish community centers and schools.

00:04:12.940 So it stands to reason that they probably would have shown up

00:04:16.580 or could have shown up at this rally.

00:04:18.220 Maybe there were a few outside, but it didn't end up that it was all that necessary.

00:04:22.320 But all that notwithstanding, I was wrong about my expectation

00:04:26.380 because there was a little bit of news in this rally.

00:04:28.680 He deviated from the standard stump speech

00:04:31.420 in which he whipped out greatest hits such as how it would warm his heart to see a family move into

00:04:36.780 the former CBC headquarters as their new home, and talking about when Anna Polyev, Pierre's wife,

00:04:42.400 used her hair elastic to fix up their car when they were on a road trip. I've heard all those

00:04:46.800 stories before. Not everyone there might have, but then he said something new. Take a look at this.

00:04:53.160 In fact, that's why I'm making an announcement today.

00:04:57.940 It is now 21 days, 9 hours, 28 minutes and 53 seconds until Trudeau's April Fool's Day tax hike kicks in on you.

00:05:09.920 So here's my announcement.

00:05:11.020 Common 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.

00:05:29.480 and but it involves all of you i can't do it myself politics is a is not a spectator sport

00:05:39.060 it is a participation sport if you're not at the table you're on the menu so you need to be at the

00:05:46.900 table so this i'm going to be asking some things from all of you i'm going to be asking we are

00:05:52.860 going to start a massive pressure campaign in parliament but you need to back me up on the

00:05:57.760 ground? How many of you are going to write your Liberal NDP members and demand they vote

00:06:02.760 with common sense Conservatives to axe the tax? How many will organize protests out of

00:06:10.820 Liberal constituency offices to pressure them to do the right thing? How many of you

00:06:21.020 are going to send emails to all of your networks and post on all of your social media so that

00:06:26.840 every one of your neighbors know about the upcoming april fool's day tax hike

00:06:33.800 how many of you will bombard liberal ndp offices with phone calls

00:06:38.440 to make sure that they understand their constituents cannot afford to pay anymore

00:06:44.120 so the term massive pressure campaign he's used before polyev in november of last year had called

00:06:51.160 for a massive pressure campaign on very similar issues it was on the carbon tax and specifically

00:06:56.760 trying to remove it from fuels used in agriculture or at least some agricultural activity so

00:07:02.520 the idea of him launching and lauding this massive pressure campaign is not new but pushing people

00:07:08.920 to protest at members of parliament's offices their constituency offices is quite interesting

00:07:14.520 i was standing beside a relatively senior person on polyev's team when he said that because i did

00:07:20.760 a bit of a double take and i i asked this person i said that's new right and they they nodded and

00:07:26.120 Now, 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.

00:07:41.900 So 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.

00:07:52.580 So I would assume that that was something that at least he thought of, at least he understood what he was saying.

00:07:59.620 And we've seen MPs' offices bombarded with protests on Israel and Gaza stuff right now, and some of those have gotten quite nasty.

00:08:07.200 Now, 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

00:08:17.660 when you're asking people, when you're rallying your troops literally and figuratively to go and

00:08:22.180 protest MP offices. But at the same time, he's also raising attention to a very important issue

00:08:27.020 right now. There was beside him up on the big screen there, a countdown to April 1st when the

00:08:32.400 carbon tax increase goes into effect. We'll be talking about this in a few moments with our

00:08:37.220 friend Chris Sims. But what was happening there is he's saying, listen, we're staring down this

00:08:43.680 increase canadians can't afford it affordability and cost of living issues are out of control this

00:08:49.120 is one thing that the government can very directly control it's nothing to do with supply chain or

00:08:54.000 inflation or money supply this is a very explicit direct thing the government could do which is say

00:08:59.760 we are deferring or scrapping the increase of the carbon tax and they're not doing it

00:09:04.320 instead they're doing this oh we're gonna you know give a little carve out for home heating oil and

00:09:08.320 we're going to help Atlantic Canadians, but not Western Canadians. And that lovely,

00:09:13.100 lovely line that if Western Canadians want to get relief, they should just elect liberal

00:09:17.820 members of parliament. Oh, such a heartwarming display of democracy in action. But that has

00:09:22.540 been the liberal government's line on this. So what Polyev is doing there is saying he is going

00:09:27.280 to push liberal and new Democrat MPs to vote for a conservative motion to scrap this. They added a

00:09:34.080 new slogan last week to spike the hike. So it's not, you have to spike the hike and ax the tax

00:09:39.640 and then do the hokey pokey. Oh, I know that's a different one, but you have to spike the hike

00:09:43.480 and ax the tax. Those are the two rhyming schemes that we now have from the, from the,

00:09:48.520 the conservatives here. But what's interesting is the house of commons is practically like not

00:09:53.640 sitting at all. Uh, they were off, uh, until, uh, for the Christmas break until January 29th,

00:09:59.400 they returned for three weeks, off for a week, on for one week, and then off for two weeks again.

00:10:05.020 So MPs right now are in their second of two break weeks this month. They're only actually

00:10:09.600 sitting for one week in March, and that's the week of March 18th. And once the MPs go back,

00:10:16.140 they're only there for a week before they're off again for, I think, two weeks. So all of that is

00:10:21.280 to say, if you followed that, basically it means that the MPs are only in Ottawa for one week in

00:10:25.720 entire month of march and then taking two weeks off and coming back april 8th but what i'm pointing

00:10:31.560 out there is that this increase to the carbon tax on april 1st only one week of parliamentary

00:10:37.240 sitting stands between us and that increase so if anything is going to happen it's not going to be

00:10:43.160 this week but it's going to be next week and the conservatives are clearly hoping that this

00:10:48.920 pressure they're trying to mount on liberal and new democrat mps will amount to them doing the

00:10:54.760 right thing now i'm not particularly optimistic we had that one guy from newfoundland ken hardy

00:11:01.160 that spoke up and and did the right thing at one point but for the most part uh he was kind of

00:11:05.880 bought they bought his silence by giving that home heating oil exemption for the the benefits uh

00:11:10.760 predominantly atlantic canadians and now all of a sudden people like ken hardy don't care about the

00:11:15.480 effect on the rest of the country when you had a toronto mp saying whoa whoa what about us and

00:11:19.960 western mp saying what about us the liberals have just said no the carbon tax is imperative to the

00:11:24.520 the fight against climate change yada yada yada and canadians are just expect to expected to spend

00:11:30.040 money spend their money our money on this eco virtue signaling by the liberals so we'll talk

00:11:36.920 about that in a couple of moments i did want to share one more clip from pauliev speech because

00:11:41.400 he i wouldn't say this was hugely newsworthy but it was a bit of a departure from his past

00:11:47.400 comments on this now you may have heard previously pierre pauliev and we've talked about it on this

00:11:51.720 show, say that there is going to be a ban if he's elected on his cabinet members going to Davos. He

00:11:58.840 even said at one point that if they go, it will be a one-way ticket because they won't be coming

00:12:03.660 back. Well, he reiterated that pledge, but seemed to extend it a little bit. Take a look.

00:12:09.940 We're going to bring it home. We're going to bring home our freedom again. We will

00:12:13.020 We will repeal Liberal Censorship Law C11.

00:12:20.220 We will ban all of our ministers and members of parliament from any involvement in the

00:12:24.220 World Economic Forum.

00:12:30.960 There will be no mandatory digital ID, no central bank digital currency.

00:12:39.400 We'll ban the IRGC terrorists to protect our people. 1.00

00:12:45.560 We're going to get people back control of their lives here in this country.

00:12:51.360 So normally when he, and again, I'm not saying that he has never said it.

00:12:56.900 I have never heard him extend that to all his MPs.

00:13:00.420 I've heard him say cabinet ministers, ministers will not be allowed to go to Davos.

00:13:03.840 But he's saying now, not only will it extend to members of parliament in the conservative

00:13:08.140 caucus as well but also it isn't just about attending davos he says no involvement in the

00:13:13.820 world economic forum that's the pledge that he put forward at the rally yesterday so i i will say i

00:13:19.740 mean people online the true and on types the the justin trudeau loyalists of which there are you

00:13:24.540 know four or five left i think uh they're always saying oh where's the conservative platform where's

00:13:29.500 the conservative platform well you listen to when he speaks he gives a pretty clear indication of

00:13:34.700 what his government's going to do just because it isn't in like a nifty pdf with a picture of him on

00:13:39.900 the front cover like aaron o'toole on the men's health magazine ripoff in 2021 uh just because

00:13:45.260 it's not in a nice little neatly bound swish book doesn't mean they haven't given a pretty clear

00:13:51.180 indication of what it is they would like to do if they are elected but uh the one key issue

00:13:57.900 and you can tell this this wasn't just some general pierre pauliev rally this was a spike

00:14:02.220 I forget the order.

00:14:04.140 I think it was Spike the Hike, Axe the Tax, not Axe the Tax, Spike the Hike.

00:14:07.480 But it was the Spike the Hike, Axe the Tax rally.

00:14:10.440 So this was an entire rally framed around the abolition of the carbon tax,

00:14:15.880 the deferral or cancellation of the carbon tax increase.

00:14:18.760 So this is clearly an issue.

00:14:20.240 And again, I'm very cynical.

00:14:21.960 I don't believe the conservatives are going on this limb without having done

00:14:26.680 at least to some extent polling on it.

00:14:29.000 But they're clearly confident that this is going to be a winnable issue for them.

00:14:34.020 And, you know, in the last election, I would remind people that the Conservatives ran on their own carbon tax alternative.

00:14:42.440 So inflation was mounting in fall of 2021, not to mention all the COVID issues and whatever.

00:14:49.020 But inflation was absolutely a huge deal.

00:14:51.740 And the carbon tax was exacerbating that.

00:14:53.700 It was straining that even further.

00:14:55.140 So we look at this and generally speaking, generally speaking, saw that Canadians were

00:15:01.700 probably more, they had bigger fish to fry than the carbon tax in 2021. But contrast is still

00:15:09.160 very important here. And in the 2021 election, you had Justin Hudeau saying, we want the carbon tax,

00:15:14.200 we need to increase the carbon tax, we need to keep taxing you until we solve the climate.

00:15:18.500 And 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.

00:15:41.020 and then you go and use that personal low carbon savings account when you want to make

00:15:45.760 eco-friendly purchases. So you want to buy a solar panel to put on your home and you then

00:15:52.540 have to go and tap into your account that you would have filled up when you were gassing up

00:15:57.860 your Hummer at Petrocan. That was basically the Aaron O'Toole strategy there. And again,

00:16:04.040 I mean, they tried to say, oh, it's not a tax, but Canadians were like, all right, well,

00:16:08.100 if I'm going to vote for the party that is going to make me pay more on fuel, or the party that's

00:16:14.220 going to make me pay more on fuel, that distinction just doesn't really seem to be there. So that was

00:16:21.340 why I think it was so important. And I think it's probably from that, because remember,

00:16:25.140 Polyev was a conservative candidate in 2021. He had to run, at least implicitly, on that platform.

00:16:31.680 He had to run in part on that conservative plan, which was going to put a carbon tax there. Now,

00:16:36.380 I assure you, I did one interview with Polyev in the 2021 election and he was not talking about the

00:16:41.740 carbon tax. He was not exactly proud that this was a part of the conservative platform. But of course,

00:16:47.520 MPs didn't really want to have a, didn't really want to have a, whatever you call it. They didn't

00:16:52.440 want to have a caucus revolt of any kind. But what was fascinating here, and I think really,

00:16:58.460 really fascinating is that conservatives, there are not a lot of them, but there are some of them

00:17:03.560 that think that you can just outflank the liberals on these sorts of issues, that you can just

00:17:09.260 outflank the left, you can be the ones that are going to be the more credible alternative while

00:17:14.880 putting forward a markedly or remarkably, I'd say, similar policy. And that was kind of what

00:17:19.420 was happening when we looked at that debate in the 2021 election. So Pierre Polyev, I think it's

00:17:25.880 incredibly, incredibly important to note this is likely looming large on why he is making such a

00:17:32.840 huge deal on this carbon tax. We have Chris Sims joining us, our Monday commentator, the Alberta

00:17:38.880 Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Chris, you've seen, and you and I have been

00:17:44.640 talking about this for weeks now, Canadians are not on board with this. What do you make of this

00:17:49.600 call to action to actually go and protest MP offices that Pierre was giving his supporters

00:17:55.820 yesterday? I think it's really smart, and it's, you know, spoiler alert, it's something that the

00:18:01.200 Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been encouraging now for many years. Old photos of our magazines

00:18:06.720 include us, you know, planting pig-shaped lawn signs on the front of Parliament Hill. So we're

00:18:12.500 all for a peaceful demonstration. In fact, we just finished protesting a couple of months ago

00:18:17.720 in front of Liberal members of Parliament constituency offices in chicken suits. Because

00:18:23.300 as of course you remember, it was the Atlantic caucus of the Liberal Party who had the spine,

00:18:28.020 who weren't chickens and who stood up for their constituents and they got an exemption for the

00:18:33.100 carbon tax on their home heating bills for three years. Curious amount of years there to put them

00:18:38.680 past the next election. But it was only for Atlantic Canadians because they're basically 0.99

00:18:43.200 the only ones who use home heating oil. And it was just nothing but crickets. We couldn't hear

00:18:47.520 anything from the rest of the Liberal caucus across the rest of the country. So we think it's

00:18:52.280 really great idea for Mr. Polyev to call to action, to email, to phone, to protest peacefully outside

00:18:59.480 of constituency offices, because this is what makes them move, right? Every now and then,

00:19:05.960 I know you've covered this on Parliament Hill yourself, Andrew, everything seems like it's

00:19:10.520 going to stay the same until it suddenly doesn't, right? Everything kind of breaks loose at once.

00:19:17.080 I remember when I was at the CTV Bureau many eons ago, when then Finance Minister Paul Martin hesitated slightly in giving his support out loud verbally for Prime Minister Chrétien during a press conference.

00:19:33.680 And that's all it took. All hell broke loose. And then there was a leadership race and everything kind of fell into place.

00:19:39.680 So this is why we're urging and agreeing that all Canadians who oppose the carbon tax should

00:19:45.560 definitely protest outside of the offices peacefully. Don't give the anti-carbon tax

00:19:51.020 movement a bad name, please. And send in letters and emails. If I can, though, I'd like to tack a

00:19:57.960 little rider to that bill because something else is happening on April 1st, and that is MP pay

00:20:03.880 raises. They're automatically getting a big pay hike. So this means that the Prime Minister,

00:20:10.360 I think, is going to be making over $400,000-ish. A backbench Member of Parliament is going to be

00:20:16.320 making around $200,000. And it's a huge pay hike. We're talking thousands of dollars per year.

00:20:22.820 That's also happening April 1st. And that's, of course, people joke and call it April Fools. 0.57

00:20:27.660 It's, of course, because it's the start of the fiscal year. That's why all these things change

00:20:31.140 on April 1st, but I will put a bug in Pierre Polyev's ear. We need some leadership from

00:20:37.740 members of parliament in the House of Commons to oppose these MP pay hikes. Prime Minister

00:20:43.100 Stephen Harper froze MP pay hikes, and we think it's really important to encourage other MPs,

00:20:51.080 in particular the opposition MPs, to speak out against MP pay hikes right now.

00:20:56.540 Yeah, I would say that it's very valid, and I want to dig into that and also talk about the

00:21:00.440 governor general in a moment, but, but just going back to the carbon tax increase here for,

00:21:04.200 for a moment, uh, Chris, there was a poll that came out now, obviously polling, you have to

00:21:09.140 take with, you know, 3000 grains of salt here, but main street poll, 46% support for the

00:21:15.200 conservatives, 25% liberal, 15% NDP. MPs are people. I, it pains me to say that because a

00:21:22.920 lot of the time they don't act like it, but MPs are people. And a lot of them are, despite however

00:21:27.660 partisan and ideological they are they're very very concerned about their future right now and

00:21:32.540 if you're a liberal member of parliament in a toronto riding let's say you're in mississauga

00:21:37.820 you're in whitby your new market whatever like you know that these numbers are bad news for you so

00:21:43.420 when you have people that are outside your office saying hey we can't afford to live right now

00:21:49.420 stand up and do the right thing i i do think that some liberal mps insecurity about their seats may

00:21:55.180 actually allow for some action here. The caveat is that Justin Trudeau has done a very good job

00:22:00.480 in the last eight years of quelling any dissent. I think you're bang on there. And it takes years

00:22:06.800 of observation to notice this. And you're right. I can't remember the last time I saw

00:22:12.820 the conservatives at over 40%. Like you said, polls are polls. There's always give and take.

00:22:19.240 But 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?

00:22:46.000 that's what gets them really nervous. And to your point, I think that polls like this really matter

00:22:52.100 and I think it's things like the carbon tax that really matter. So keep in mind that we've got the

00:22:57.660 carbon tax that he's hiking up that of course makes our food more expensive because it increases

00:23:03.100 the cost for farmers. It increases the cost for shipping. Just imagine diesel, diesel fuel,

00:23:09.620 which is the lifeblood of our economy. It moves everything we eat and use is now going to have

00:23:15.900 21 cents per liter tacked onto it. If you take a look underneath a trucker's door, they've got

00:23:22.580 those huge cylindrical tanks. Those things hold more than a thousand liters. Do the math times

00:23:28.840 21 cents. Like this is a huge cost for people and it trickles down and ripples down through the rest

00:23:35.060 of the economy. And here we have people to your point who are literally saying we can't afford

00:23:41.280 the basics of life so energy heat shelter and food like wakey wakey folks this is a participation

00:23:49.740 sport politics and these mps are going to have to respond to this so i think you're right andrew i

00:23:55.600 think that they could break rank on this issue yeah and when you mentioned 40 i i should just

00:24:01.400 give a bit of context here stephen harper uh won his majority in 2011 and it was a pretty strong

00:24:07.100 decisive majority, that was 39.62% of the vote. So that majority was, I mean, yeah, if you round

00:24:13.600 it up, it's at 40, but was less than 40% in absolute votes. So when you have conservative

00:24:18.560 polling at 46%, we're getting like Brian Mulroney, John Diefenbaker, super majority territory there,

00:24:24.780 depending on the distribution of it. But you mentioned MP pay raises going up. Governor

00:24:30.260 General also, that quintessential, incredibly important, valuable, relevant figure in Canada,

00:24:36.580 she's getting a raise. Yes. And I want to be very clear. This isn't about the person. This is about

00:24:44.060 the office. All that being understood. Now, I think I might be alone at the Taxpayers Federation.

00:24:51.380 I don't want to tell tales out of school, but I think I'm one of the only quasi-monarchists

00:24:56.380 among us. And that is only because in the same way that Winston Churchill basically said,

00:25:01.840 democracy, you know, it's ugly, but it's the best system we've got, better than all the others.

00:25:06.580 very similar here because we have a constitutional monarchy. This is how things work in Canada. I

00:25:12.420 understand folks for who are monarchists. I understand the role, okay? The governor general

00:25:17.860 is His Majesty the King's representative in Canada. In order to pass law, we need this royal

00:25:23.220 literal stamp of approval. But, but we should not have to be paying through the nose like this.

00:25:29.940 A governor general literally lives in an all-expenses-paid mansion. They have a team

00:25:35.140 of housekeepers drivers and cooks they like the place is just opulent and now the governor general

00:25:42.100 just because they exist they're getting an eleven thousand dollar pay hike this year again so this

00:25:50.420 is well over three hundred thousand dollars now per year that this position is now paid

00:25:55.540 it's a huge waste of money this is um yes it's important legally to get our laws passed

00:26:01.300 but it's largely ceremonial. This does not require, you know, massive law degrees and a ton

00:26:07.780 of heavy lifting and, you know, wise, sober second thought. And so this is why we're encouraging

00:26:13.640 people to, and I don't know why my camera just went out on you again, Andrew. I'm blaming Bill

00:26:19.440 C11. I don't know if we can, but there we go. Honest, I'm not kidding. This only happens on

00:26:25.320 your show and one other and it ain't on ctv i'll put it that way this is so yeah but the thing

00:26:32.280 when you mentioned the quality of life though chris like they're living like monarchs themselves 0.97

00:26:37.540 but they're career bureaucrats and washed up journalists i mean that's the bizarre part is

00:26:42.920 that you know she was a diplomat i mean very well decorated uh julie payette was an astronaut

00:26:47.720 i mean mikhail jean was a journalist but i mean all these people like they're just average

00:26:51.780 ordinary people that all of a sudden get to live a royal life that's the part that i find offensive

00:26:55.940 is that they they want to do all the ceremony and we're paying for it and and look the issue that

00:27:01.700 the ctf has been quite strong on in this regard is the lifetime of payouts which often we don't

00:27:06.820 realize i mean adrian clarkson is still uh cashing checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for

00:27:11.620 all this administrative support uh meanwhile she's making money as a public speaker for you know being 1.00

00:27:17.300 a former governor general but we're still supporting that yeah exactly um once you get

00:27:22.180 that gig you're rolling in it for life uh courtesy of the taxpayer and to your point

00:27:27.460 we understand this is administrative look at the provincial levels the left tenants which occupy

00:27:33.860 the same role they rubber stamp as well they don't spend a fraction of what they don't have

00:27:39.220 official residences in most province i mean uh you know elizabeth doubts or whoever it is in

00:27:43.780 Ontario now. I mean, just lives where they lived before they were appointed. And that seems to work

00:27:47.740 fine. Exactly. Which gets us, can I shamelessly promote our current campaign? Go for it. Gets us

00:27:54.640 to the point of what would you need to be the governor general? And so we've got these t-shirts,

00:27:59.840 they're at cost. Oh, that's a better one. So that's in front of our left bridge, which is

00:28:03.960 the longest trestle train bridge in Canada, which is in North America. In fact, it was on The Last

00:28:08.860 of us. So if you've seen that weird post-apocalyptic gross zombie movie, and there's

00:28:13.180 that burning bridge that's halfway across, that was in Lethbridge. So all this is to say, we've

00:28:18.920 got this cool thing going on where you can go to our website, taxpayer.com. We're not making the

00:28:23.280 money off of it. It's all just at cost. And you can order t-shirts like this. I would be governor

00:28:28.940 general for a loony. So I would skim over what the Senate- And I'll even pay the loony. It won't 0.95

00:28:34.500 even go on taxpayer dime there for free really then and so i hear i i as soon as i told sean to

00:28:40.760 get that picture i was thinking you know we probably won't even need the picture she's

00:28:43.380 probably just gonna wear the shirt but anyway well i'm glad you grabbed the picture because

00:28:47.000 i had to dig this out the laundry monster is crazy in this house right now so yes so you can

00:28:52.000 get this one for a loony i think franco says i would do it for a poutine as they pronounce it

00:28:56.660 out here in western canada yeah but you can't get a poutine for a loony in this economy no you sure

00:29:01.080 can't it's largely because of the carbon tax so we're encouraging people this is why we're doing

00:29:06.040 this because you either laugh or cry because of everything being so expensive right now and this

00:29:10.680 is key politicians and hoity-toity bureaucrats hate it when you mock them like they get really

00:29:18.200 upset really fast and so we should mock them a lot and so the average joe and sally six-pack

00:29:24.680 canadian should go to our website find this t-shirt pick the one they like take a picture of yourself

00:29:31.080 posted on the interwebs and this is our way of sticking a thumb in the eye of the elites and

00:29:37.520 saying you know what the governor general should not be paid this kind of crazy amount of money

00:29:41.700 and they certainly shouldn't be getting an 11 000 raise just this year i'll have to whip out my i

00:29:47.740 mean it's a dated reference now but i have uh one of the old 2000 uh well i don't know what

00:29:51.940 would have been 2008 the stefandion shrug uh t-shirts that uh say do you think it's easy

00:29:57.080 you can't see my shrug there. Nevermind. I've got that on a shirt. I'll have to whip that out and

00:30:03.600 we'll do like, you know, novelty, political lore, a t-shirt day on casual Friday on the

00:30:07.660 Andrew Lawton show. Is a puffin involved in that one? I can't remember. Oh, I can't remember. I

00:30:11.820 have to, I have to dig it. It's like way at the bottom of the hamper now. Cause I don't want to,

00:30:14.860 you know, I don't want to actually wear it to, uh, you know, cause then it will, you know,

00:30:18.340 lose out the color and the shine. And also I don't want to have to see Stefan Dion's face every time

00:30:22.980 I look in the mirror. It's bad enough seeing my own face when I look in the mirror. So,

00:30:25.680 All right, Chris Sims, we will see you next Monday.

00:30:29.320 You betcha.

00:30:30.400 All right, thanks for that.

00:30:31.840 I wanted to move from that no natural segue to a more serious note here.

00:30:36.760 We've seen in the last several days and weeks and, to be honest, months, a mounting of anti-Semitism,

00:30:44.160 of incidents of anti-Semitism on city council and politicians' offices and Jewish community centers and schools.

00:30:52.240 and what's happening throughout all of these instances is we've seen the liberal government

00:30:58.440 in particular be very equivocal on its position you may remember it was very slow to start talking

00:31:04.500 about a lot of the horrific atrocities that Hamas committed when it came to protesters calling for a

00:31:10.940 ceasefire the government didn't say well we support Israel's right to defend itself Justin

00:31:14.960 Trudeau turned around to protesters and says oh no no but I am calling for a ceasefire basically

00:31:18.960 saying, yes, I agree with you. Stop protesting. Well, one of the things that is really interesting

00:31:24.920 here is that the government, when it learned that UNRWA, which is the UN refugee agency for

00:31:31.340 the Palestinian territories, had been turning a blind eye to members of its own staff, literally

00:31:36.740 its own staff, assisting Hamas and joining the Hamas attack, they said, all right, we're going

00:31:42.520 announce a pause but now they've reinstated it before the next payment was due so the federal

00:31:49.800 government in canada has basically not deprived unra of a dollar by my count brian lee crowley

00:31:56.840 here is here he is from the mcdonald uh laurier institute and we're so glad to talk to him as

00:32:02.120 always brian thanks so much for coming on today uh andrew it's always a pleasure to be with you

00:32:06.760 you. And just before we get underway, I want everybody to see my mug with the Queen's profile

00:32:13.360 on it in the context of your last conversation. Yeah, Chris said she's a quasi-marnicus. You're

00:32:19.420 not doing the quasi on your part, are you? I'm the real thing.

00:32:24.620 All right, duly noted. This was purely window dressing when the government said it was going

00:32:31.220 to pause this funding. And the fact that they've reinstated it just weeks later tells us as much,

00:32:36.220 doesn't it? Well, it does, Andrew. And let's be even clearer about this. What Canada and most

00:32:43.260 other countries have done is, who have taken action on this, they've suspended additional

00:32:50.360 funding. They have not cut the basic funding, which is about $1.1 or $1.2 billion. That's the

00:32:59.020 base budget paid for mostly by Western democracy. I think the United States pays about literally

00:33:05.580 three quarters of the budget of UNRWA. But there's now, because of the conflict obviously

00:33:15.940 that's going on between Israel and Hamas, carried out on the territory of Gaza, people are putting

00:33:22.520 extra money into UNRWA. And it's that extra money which a number of countries promised to suspend

00:33:29.420 And while an investigation was carried out about whether we could find credible evidence

00:33:36.660 to support the allegation that there are staff members of UNRWA, as well as family members,

00:33:45.600 associates, and other people close to UNRWA very much involved in not only the armed conflict

00:33:53.300 since the 7th of October, but in the heinous attacks on Israel on the 7th of October.

00:33:58.800 people, staff members who have actually boasted online and elsewhere about their involvement in

00:34:04.900 this. So, you know, Canada has, first of all, said, okay, we're going to suspend extra payment,

00:34:12.420 not the basic payment. Yeah, that's fair. And we're going to suspend it until we have an

00:34:18.740 investigation that tells us whether these allegations are founded. They've now reversed

00:34:23.820 themselves completely. Basically, they've said, oh, well, it doesn't, we're not going to wait for

00:34:28.640 results of the investigation we may be funding uh uh an organization that aids and abets terrorism

00:34:35.760 but hey uh you know we got to get that funding in there and the idea that um there is no other way

00:34:44.160 for canada to provide humanitarian relief to the people of gaza except through unra is complete

00:34:50.320 nonsense so uh i'm not very impressed well nor should you be and i should point out i mean unra

00:34:57.040 itself has even conceded that this allegation was accurate. Now, they've done the whole Casablanca

00:35:03.300 thing of like, we're shocked to find gambling in here, but they've not refuted it at this point.

00:35:09.060 And I want to play and get your reaction to this, Brian. This is a clip from an Israeli official

00:35:14.200 responding to Canada's decision this week. Let's roll that. A similar question. Canada announced

00:35:21.860 on Friday that funding to UNRWA will be resumed after being paused. Does the PMO have comment

00:35:27.560 on that and why should the Canadian taxpayers and what should they know about the links

00:35:34.160 between UNRWA and Hamas?

00:35:36.340 So I think what the taxpayers should know is that their money is funding terror, as simple

00:35:43.200 as that. And do they want their money to help terrorists build tunnels, educate children

00:35:51.620 how to kill and that they should kill and train them how to do so. Is that the best way for the 0.60

00:35:58.000 taxpayers' money to be used? We think that there are much better ways. If we want Gaza to have the 0.94

00:36:04.280 bright future that it can't, you can't keep on giving the money to an organization that taught

00:36:10.520 hate, facilitated, and was part of a massacre. And it's not just a few. We have evidence of a lot of

00:36:17.980 people and there's no way that the people who are running this organization did not know this so

00:36:23.660 that means that there has to be another solution and the taxpayers money should be for a better

00:36:29.740 and future for gaza which does not include in any way she is not talking about iran or lebanon or

00:36:40.140 saudi arabia or qatar when she's talking about funding terror she is talking about canada and

00:36:44.300 And that was a question that was asked by our friends over at the News Forum.

00:36:48.760 Quite a far cry from the relationship Canada had with Israel up until, well, basically up until the Liberals took over.

00:36:56.580 You're absolutely right that the historic relationship that Canada has had with Israel has been a very supportive one.

00:37:03.360 Canada was one of the countries that voted for the creation of Israel in 1948 at the United Nations,

00:37:08.780 in case people have forgotten that the creation of the state of Israel was mandated by the United

00:37:15.000 Nations and carried out by a majority vote of the member states. So the next time somebody tells

00:37:20.120 you that, you know, Israel is an illegitimate state, they've got several birth certificates 1.00

00:37:24.560 of which the UN issued one. I think it was the only pro-Israel vote that ever passed at the UN,

00:37:29.160 to be honest, but it was the important one. Well, it's the one that matters, I think. And,

00:37:34.920 um uh you know canada has been a strong supporter of israel uh over many years and i have to say

00:37:42.520 that um i i think this decision by the government of canada to restore the extra funding to unra

00:37:49.320 is entirely in keeping with the behavior of this government over pretty much every foreign policy

00:37:56.680 national security national defense issue which is they're playing to a domestic audience this

00:38:01.720 is diaspora politics they're looking to and seeing you know tens of thousands of palestinian and

00:38:09.320 hamas supporters in the streets and cities of canada uh and looking at the fact that there's

00:38:15.480 now a million muslims in canada more uh and uh saying to themselves hmm uh there's an electoral 0.81

00:38:24.280 calculation here uh we don't want to be on the wrong side of and i think that's a shocking and

00:38:29.800 shameful way to conduct the foreign policy of this country i would agree i mean obviously

00:38:34.680 politicians i i think should be beholden to you know the everything they do should be to serve

00:38:39.880 canada and canada's interests and i and i think that domestic policy is actually very relevant to

00:38:45.000 foreign policy but i also believe that fundamental questions of right and wrong are and and those are

00:38:49.320 not majoritarian decisions and we're talking here about a very clear-cut case about terrorist

00:38:55.640 aggressors, assaulting civilians. And we've seen equivocation. And the liberals, I mean,

00:39:00.300 it used to be historically that the Jewish vote, insofar as it existed, and it was never monolithic,

00:39:06.260 it isn't with any group, but that a lot of the Jewish vote went to the liberals. And when did

00:39:11.280 that change happen? When did, because there are a lot of liberals that I've, or lifelong liberals

00:39:16.240 who are Jewish that I've heard from, that don't really have much in the way of high expectations

00:39:21.300 from the liberals now but a couple of years ago did and a couple of years ago kind of wouldn't

00:39:25.700 have would never have expected what's happening now from this party that they've been part of for

00:39:29.620 in some cases decades is well i mean of course i i i can't speak to uh what's going through the mind

00:39:36.740 of uh members of the canadian jewish community i i can tell you what's going through my mind

00:39:43.220 which is that if i were jewish and i were looking at the equivocation of the government of canada

00:39:49.380 their complete unwillingness to be crystal clear about the fact that Canada as a Western democracy

00:39:55.540 supports the only Western democracy in the Middle East, which is Israel, one that is under the rule 0.99

00:40:02.080 of law, that makes its decisions by democratic means, that is entirely legitimate under international

00:40:07.640 law, and is being attacked by people who do not share those values. If I were a Jewish Canadian,

00:40:15.940 and I were looking at the government of Canada fumbling the ball over and over again when being

00:40:20.980 asked to confirm that they are going to support Israel and the values that Israel represents in

00:40:27.100 the Middle East. And the government of Canada said, well, maybe until someone makes me

00:40:34.060 uncomfortable politically and then maybe not. This is completely at odds with the historical

00:40:41.740 behavior of the government of canada and with i believe uh the the values that the government of

00:40:47.580 canada and the and canadians have pursued uh for generations so where do you see it going from here

00:40:55.020 i mean the situation domestically has gotten very ugly i mean we we've just abandoned any pretense

00:41:00.860 that this is about israel or zionism when you have jewish schools and neighborhoods being targeted

00:41:05.820 We have police that have been, I think, very, very shy about getting involved.

00:41:10.960 And 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.

00:41:18.060 And 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.

00:41:23.600 So where do you see this going?

00:41:24.840 Because I fear, and every Jewish person I've talked to about this says it's going to get a heck of a lot worse.

00:41:30.480 Yeah, well, I think you really touched on something very important there, Andrew.

00:41:35.540 And 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.

00:41:53.140 that is what the that is what the police are for uh uh the the the the that the police have learned

00:42:01.940 that if they do not follow the line that the the government wants them to follow that the the

00:42:08.020 government will not be there to support them and that means that they are quite reluctant i think

00:42:15.380 to get into the uh get into the dirty business and it will be it will be unpleasant there is no way

00:42:23.620 to uh deal with you know tens of thousands of people in the street shouting hateful slogans

00:42:30.500 uh uh you know intimidating citizens this is completely different than the hot tubs of the

00:42:36.020 uh of the of the freedom i gotta tell you uh completely different uh and and many laws uh

00:42:44.580 are being broken that the laws that police traditionally use to police unruly demonstrations

00:42:50.900 they're not being uh pursued the government the police are hanging back and i think one of the

00:42:56.420 main reasons is that they do not think they will be supported by public authorities if they

00:43:01.540 uh if they exercise their legitimate authority in these in these situations and the people

00:43:07.220 who are paying the price uh are of course the vulnerable members of our jewish community

00:43:12.500 who feel completely unprotected and unsupported by the rest of the country.

00:43:18.080 And I don't know how we can do something about this

00:43:23.920 in the absence of public authorities

00:43:26.520 who are willing to take responsibility for what's going on.

00:43:30.020 And I just don't see that right now.

00:43:32.160 No, you're quite right, Brian.

00:43:34.220 I mean, it's an absolute tinderbox.

00:43:35.880 And I think it's incredibly dangerous and disheartening.

00:43:38.960 And I'm glad people like you are lending your voice to speaking up against it.

00:43:42.500 uh brian lee crowley mcdonald laurie institute i feel you frozen or are deep in thought so

00:43:47.180 fitting that we have to bring it to an end here but thank you so much for coming on sir

00:43:50.520 thanks andrew all right we still had your audio at least uh thank you for that brian and we will

00:43:56.460 certainly check in with him as this unfolds uh we have to end things there my thanks to all of you

00:44:01.940 for tuning into the show today we'll be back in 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of canada's

00:44:07.260 most irreverent talk show here on true north thank you god bless and good day to you all

00:44:12.500 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:14.840 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:44:42.500 We'll be right back.

00:45:12.500 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 11, 2024

Poilievre calls on supporters to protest carbon tax at Liberal MP offices

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