Juno News - Poilievre hints at using notwithstanding clause to pass tough-on-crime laws

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 canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lawton show

00:01:29.580 on true north on this tuesday april 30th hope you are all having an absolutely wonderful day a

00:01:36.040 wonderful week so far we will have some have some real goodies for you we'll be talking about

00:01:40.760 british columbia's failed drug decriminalization in just a little bit also want to touch on this

00:01:46.660 capital gains tax increase that the federal government is pushing and a little bit of

00:01:51.380 interesting news that just came down like I don't know 10 minutes before I went on air

00:01:55.140 the well we'll talk about it in 15 minutes when we have Jake Fuss on but you won't want to well

00:01:59.980 maybe you want to miss that but I hope you don't want to miss that but I want to begin talking

00:02:04.360 about crime now I had the well actually I've been in a couple of cities in the last few days I was

00:02:09.980 in Vancouver I was in Ottawa and in both cities I you know get to the airport you take an Uber from

00:02:16.080 the airport to where you're going and both times I landed I was finding it increasingly the case

00:02:24.020 before then but it happened again in this last few days that uber drivers love to talk about

00:02:31.380 what's happened to their city and what was interesting is that the uber driver in Vancouver

00:02:37.260 was telling me that oh Vancouver's worse than ever now and the uber driver in Ottawa said Ottawa is

00:02:42.620 like Vancouver now and this has happened actually the last time I was in Ottawa something very

00:02:46.960 similar happened where I was just chatting with the Uber driver and I don't even like I don't

00:02:50.240 even like those words because it's always so fake sounding when a politician says oh I was talking

00:02:54.500 to a cab driver the other day and but these are true these are honest bona fide stories that have

00:02:59.360 happened from my travels as of late and people are noticing what's happening in their communities and

00:03:05.900 this is no longer just it used to be with drug stuff we'd look at it and say this is a Vancouver

00:03:09.780 issue. But drugs, crime, homelessness, this is now the norm in pretty much every city and many towns

00:03:16.080 across the country. And people have had enough. It's not just a left-right issue. This is an issue

00:03:21.260 that's affecting families, businesses, individuals, and no one is really seeing in federal politics

00:03:27.700 right now, in the government, a leader or cabinet who are taking things seriously. So it's provided

00:03:33.780 a massive opening for Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservatives, who has come out and said,

00:03:38.960 we're going to basically keep jails, keep prisoners behind bars. We're going to keep

00:03:43.420 criminals behind bars. We're going to get rid of this easy bail, this revolving door approach that

00:03:48.700 has people out of jail on Monday and back in jail by the evening Monday because they were just

00:03:56.040 committing crimes on with such frequency that the second they're released, they get put back in

00:04:01.940 bars. That's what he's saying is not working for Canadians. It's not working for communities.

00:04:06.520 And just yesterday, for example, there was this horrendous case, the news was announced this morning, of a high-speed police chase down the 401 in Ontario, down the wrong lane, as police were chasing a vehicle that had fled a robbery at an LCBO in Bowmanville.

00:04:23.340 and the police are following this car down the wrong way on the 401 and in the end this car

00:04:29.640 collides with a vehicle that had two grandparents and an infant. All of them as well as the driver

00:04:35.840 police were pursuing have died. Now again I don't know the details of the person that police were

00:04:42.480 pursuing. I don't know if this was a repeat offender or not but the whole point is these stories

00:04:47.040 are just coming at a time when we are seeing such frequency to them that every day crime is taking

00:04:54.060 up more of your newspaper if you still have a print edition of your newspaper than it ever has

00:04:59.380 before in our lifetimes and this is something that a lot of people I don't think are comfortable

00:05:03.540 just accepting as business as usual now and this brings us to well it was a bit of context that

00:05:10.340 brings us to this speech that Pierre Polyev gave to the Canadian Police Association yesterday and

00:05:15.060 And in it, he laid out his plan, his roadmap for crime.

00:05:19.820 And one of the things that I'll point out here

00:05:21.820 is that he was kind of dancing around and hinting here,

00:05:25.400 but it was very clear what he was saying.

00:05:28.240 And I think it's very important to note

00:05:30.280 that what Pierre Polyev has been talking about on this

00:05:32.960 is resonating with a lot of Canadians.

00:05:36.020 It is resonating with a lot of Canadians.

00:05:38.620 And it's something that, well, okay, we have one clip.

00:05:42.740 I don't know if we have the right clip.

00:05:43.660 This is, I believe, what he said previously on this, when he's been asked about what he's going to do on crime stuff, when the Supreme Court, if you look back through the Harper years, had always been or often been very resistant to this and had been striking down these things as unconstitutional.

00:05:59.680 This is what, Polly, I've told a reporter previously.

00:06:01.920 You've talked about the imposition of mandatory minimums for many of these crimes, but mandatory minimums have consistently been struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

00:06:13.800 How would you reconcile that policy with the court's findings in cases like that?

00:06:19.740 Many of our mandatory prison sentences have been upheld by the courts.

00:06:26.580 And all of our proposals are charter-proof.

00:06:29.780 They respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:06:32.600 And we want laws that respect the rights of all Canadians, including and especially victims of crime.

00:06:41.680 So it's a violation of your charter rights if you get your head smashed in with a baseball bat.

00:06:48.340 It's a violation of your charter rights if somebody throws a firebomb into your child's bedroom in the middle of the night.

00:06:55.580 It's a violation of your charter rights if you open a small business and you pour your life into it

00:07:02.980 and somebody comes along and says, give me a million dollars or I'll blow up your family.

00:07:06.920 That's a violation of charter rights.

00:07:08.440 so the 218 increase in extortions under Justin Trudeau has violated the charter rights of all

00:07:17.660 of the victims and so we know the courts will uphold our proposals today we'll make sure of it

00:07:23.840 thank you we won't need to because it's all everything I'm proposing is constitutional

00:07:29.040 so he was saying there it sounded like at the end and I couldn't quite hear the question that

00:07:35.320 he was being asked perhaps about the notwithstanding clause which is a part of the

00:07:39.060 constitution a part of the charter that lets provincial or the federal government pass

00:07:43.320 legislation notwithstanding the charter implications and it basically shields it

00:07:48.480 from being stricken down by the supreme court but now he is singing slightly a different tune this

00:07:56.060 was a clip from a speech he gave to the canadian police association in which he touches on this

00:08:01.860 and everyone in the room and everyone watching knew exactly what he meant.

00:08:06.120 All of my proposals are constitutional, and we will make sure we will make them constitutional

00:08:11.940 using whatever tools the Constitution allows me to use to make them constitutional.

00:08:18.940 I think you know exactly what I mean.

00:08:21.360 So they will happen, and they will stay in place,

00:08:24.560 and I will be the democratically elected prime minister,

00:08:28.660 democratically accountable to the people,

00:08:30.680 and they can then make the judgments themselves on whether they think my laws are constitutional.

00:08:37.040 So one thing that I have learned about Pierre Polyev in the last eight months or so,

00:08:42.020 actually more than that now, because I started writing a book about him quite a while back,

00:08:46.400 is that he's very deliberate with his word.

00:08:49.100 So when he talks about the people who elected him making judgments,

00:08:53.100 he is saying there, and not that it's all that subtle, I should point out,

00:08:56.820 that he has more regard for what Canadians think of his agenda than what the Supreme Court of

00:09:02.580 Canada might think of his agenda. And that's why he's hinting there again, not so subtly at the

00:09:07.140 use of the notwithstanding clause. And more importantly, he's talking about how it's the

00:09:11.480 democratically elected government that ultimately has to be accountable to Canadians, not to

00:09:17.440 unelected judges. That's the point he's making there. Now, the notwithstanding clause, just to

00:09:22.440 you civics 101 here it was put in the charter basically because there were provinces that

00:09:27.320 weren't comfortable with everything and it was the federal it was the bargaining chip that said to

00:09:31.960 provinces okay fine we'll give you this little thing so that we're not superseding your legislative

00:09:37.800 authority as provinces now for most of the charter's history for basically 40 years

00:09:42.920 quebec was the only province to have used it and then ontario used it ontario took the hammer broke

00:09:48.600 the glass case, pressed the button, and now it's been a little bit more normalized in political

00:09:54.100 discourse. And I think the notwithstanding clause has become more relevant in the political

00:09:58.440 discussion as the Supreme Court and as the courts in general have gotten more activist and more

00:10:04.160 antagonistic towards the will of democratically elected governments. And the Supreme Court was

00:10:10.500 incredibly hostile to much of what Stephen Harper did, especially on the crime file, not the least

00:10:15.800 of which was striking down mandatory minimums. So Paulieva is saying we want to bring back

00:10:21.060 mandatory minimums. We want to restrict bail. We don't want that revolving door. And he's saying

00:10:26.540 we'll use any constitutional means necessary, hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, if you get my

00:10:31.700 meaning. And then everyone in the room chuckles because they get his meaning. And that's what

00:10:35.140 he's doing. Now, there's going to be a little bit of pearl clutching here. CBC already has the

00:10:39.740 constitutional lawyer being quoted saying, oh, well, we know we can't just have this normalized

00:10:45.260 and this is going to be terrible and it'll be the disintegration of the Charter and all of that.

00:10:49.400 But as my friend Ginny Roth, who's been on this show before, pointed out on Twitter,

00:10:54.040 anyone who's shocked by this simply hasn't been paying attention.

00:10:57.540 This is not new, she said.

00:10:59.060 Remember, when Polyev tells you what he's going to do, you should really just listen to him.

00:11:05.080 And she linked there to a statement Polyev put out during his leadership campaign.

00:11:09.620 So this is back in 2022.

00:11:11.040 and it was a statement while he was again campaigning for the conservative leadership

00:11:15.460 in which he talks about the reduced sentence of the man who killed six people in a brutal attack

00:11:22.940 on a mosque in Quebec City back in January of 2017 and he says I will use the notwithstanding

00:11:30.040 clause to restore the law so that every life taken counts again in a killer sentence and that the

00:11:35.600 worst murderers stay behind bars for life and he takes aim at the Supreme Court and says because

00:11:40.680 of them, multiple murderers will be eligible to have their sentences reduced. So he was very

00:11:46.000 unequivocal there. Yeah, I will use the notwithstanding clause. So obviously, now that

00:11:50.960 he is the leader, he equivocates a little bit more on this. I shouldn't say equivocates, but he

00:11:55.520 dampens the language a little bit. But his agenda has been crystal clear on this. And I don't think

00:12:02.000 most Canadians care about the constitutional hand-wringing. I don't think most Canadians care

00:12:07.000 about what the professor of the University of Ivory Tower says about this. I think most Canadians

00:12:12.660 care about results. And when you've got a guy that's saying, listen, all these criminals that

00:12:16.880 are on your streets, do you want them off the streets? Yes, great. That's what I'm going to do.

00:12:20.100 And they probably don't care how it's going to take hold and how he's going to do it.

00:12:25.780 One thing I'll point out, though, that I found quite interesting is that while he is doing this,

00:12:30.600 and if you look at the poll numbers, it's clearly resonating with Canadians. The federal government

00:12:35.880 is just completely in denial on this.

00:12:39.100 Justin Trudeau, he gave an interview on a fireside chat

00:12:42.780 at the Canada Building Trade Union,

00:12:45.320 and he basically said that anyone who doesn't support what he's doing

00:12:49.200 must be succumbing to misinformation.

00:12:51.700 Literally, this is what he said.

00:12:54.440 One of the challenges we have is the level of misinformation,

00:13:00.660 disinformation, nonsense out there on social media.

00:13:05.880 means that your members are being convinced not to vote in their own interest but to lash out in

00:13:16.540 anger. And I will continue to try and have reasonable conversations and not fall into the

00:13:22.380 misinformation, disinformation game. I'm not going to try and fit the solution to all our problems

00:13:26.800 on a bumper sticker or in a seven-second TikTok video. I'm going to continue to have real

00:13:33.700 conversations with people, but you all need to be part of those conversations because your members

00:13:38.560 trust you more than they trust any given politician. And your role in making sure

00:13:45.480 Canadians are thoughtful about the kind of future we're building, the kind of country we're building

00:13:49.640 is more important than it ever has been. So it's actually quite brazen that he is saying to

00:13:59.820 Canada's Building Trades Union that, well, you know what, if you guys are the victims here,

00:14:05.040 you're getting all this misinformation. And basically, the argument is that if you have

00:14:10.280 misinformation, you'll vote conservative. But if you have all the information, you'll vote liberal.

00:14:14.140 That's the point. Now, what's notable is that I was talking about this on the show last week,

00:14:18.200 that very same union, that very union was the one who was writing a letter to the federal

00:14:23.080 government last week saying, hey, by the way, all of those jobs that you promised us for the

00:14:29.360 Stellantis plant in Windsor. Yeah, why are they going to foreign workers? Why are you bringing 1.00

00:14:33.260 in foreign workers to do jobs that we want to do ourselves? So that's the union to which he's 0.96

00:14:38.520 speaking, that he's now saying, oh yes, but you're all victims of misinformation. So a little bit of

00:14:43.020 hidden context there that you might have missed. And again, I'm sure anyone who criticizes the

00:14:47.700 federal budget is also most certainly falling victim to misinformation, including perhaps those

00:14:53.860 who oppose the capital gains tax.

00:14:56.360 There were hundreds, well over a thousand people

00:14:58.420 from the business and tech and entrepreneurial space

00:15:01.340 that signed an open letter to the federal government

00:15:03.440 calling out this increase to the capital gains tax.

00:15:06.920 We have a number of experts that are saying

00:15:09.220 this is going to kill off

00:15:11.060 or severely curtail innovation in this country.

00:15:14.720 And now you have a piece that I wanted to highlight

00:15:17.320 from our friend Jake Fuss of the Fraser Institute.

00:15:20.960 Ottawa's capital gains tax hike is the final nail in the business investment coffin.

00:15:27.040 Jake is the Director of Fiscal Studies for the Fraser Institute,

00:15:29.960 and it's always good to have him back on the show.

00:15:31.640 Jake, welcome. Thanks for coming on.

00:15:33.940 Thanks very much for having me back on.

00:15:35.760 So this can be very abstract for a lot of people.

00:15:38.800 There are a lot of Canadians, especially as they're doing their personal income tax,

00:15:41.820 that don't know if they have capital gains, that may never have capital gains,

00:15:46.720 and they think, okay, well, this doesn't really affect me.

00:15:48.840 but it does affect everyone if it is stifling business and growth does it not well absolutely

00:15:55.240 i mean right now we have a business investment crisis in canada from 2014 to 2022 um our per

00:16:01.960 worker business investment has fallen by almost four thousand dollars even after we account for

00:16:06.360 inflation that's not the situation in other countries like the united states where they're

00:16:11.400 actually increasing their per worker business investment right now and this is really critical

00:16:16.360 to actually equip workers with the tools and technology that we need to improve productivity

00:16:21.240 and ultimately to actually increase people's wages over time because when businesses become

00:16:25.720 more profitable and more efficient and more innovative over time this actually benefits

00:16:30.200 workers and living standards in canada but a measure like increasing capital gains taxes is

00:16:34.840 only going to make the situation worse for business investment over the long run yeah and i was

00:16:41.160 pointing or i would point out to this one section in your piece here where you talk about how it is

00:16:48.280 reducing the return on investment encouraging an exodus of capital and that part is so key because

00:16:53.160 capital is not restricted by geography at this point i mean you can make whatever claims you

00:16:57.880 want about globalization but the reality is we do have a globalized economy people can put their

00:17:02.440 billions of dollars their millions of dollars basically anywhere in the world and countries

00:17:06.520 do need to be competitive absolutely and we're not competitive already on on many forms of taxation

00:17:12.520 whether that's business taxes personal income taxes capital gains taxes you know this is only

00:17:17.560 going to exacerbate the issue now and capital is very mobile and one of the most economically

00:17:23.080 damaging sources of taxation is taxes on capital so people just take their money elsewhere they're

00:17:28.440 either just not going to invest in canada at all or they won't invest as much as they would have

00:17:32.760 in another scenario where taxes were lower on capital and this is the very capital that we need

00:17:38.160 to actually improve living standards and wages for Canadians so this this is ultimately going

00:17:43.400 to be a detrimental policy to towards attracting investment and retaining it in Canada as well.

00:17:50.680 So is there a way to quantify exactly how much damage this will do or does that really depend

00:17:58.060 on does it depend on things we don't really know right now? I mean I think it's gonna be

00:18:02.560 tough to quantify exactly, you know, how this is going to affect it. But even when we look at

00:18:07.840 already the changes on business investment and productivity in Canada, you know, we've either

00:18:12.700 had stagnant or declining investment and productivity. And that has a big correlation

00:18:17.720 or causation from government policy. So when we're having increased regulations, high taxes,

00:18:24.360 and also massive uncertainty for businesses when you're consistently running deficits,

00:18:28.880 That creates uncertainty for businesses in the future that they could face future tax increases.

00:18:34.480 I mean, and this is already something that we're seeing now.

00:18:36.400 Capital gains taxes are essentially being used as a revenue generation tool to pay for a lot of the spending that the federal government is currently taking on.

00:18:45.180 So this is this is one of the many things that is just going to affect businesses and individuals as well and deter more investment in Canada.

00:18:52.760 one one point here that i i think is incredibly incredibly important to note is that a lot of the

00:18:59.000 criticism uh is coming from people that are not in that uber one percent category i think there's

00:19:05.140 a way to frame this where you think okay a capital gains tax increase this is about the uber wealthy

00:19:09.280 family doctors one example one group not an uber wealthy group yes they're upper middle class

00:19:14.760 sometimes beyond that uh but they've structured their businesses in a way where they have corporate

00:19:18.800 capital gains that they rely on. So there are a lot of middle class people that are pretty directly

00:19:24.940 affected by this. Yes, and I think it's very misleading to just say that, you know, the rich

00:19:29.960 are the only ones that are going to be paying the capital gains taxes. I mean, my colleagues did

00:19:33.700 analysis a few years ago, where they found if you remove kind of these one time capital gains

00:19:39.480 amounts, and just look at people's normal annual incomes, less than half of the capital gains

00:19:44.540 taxes that are paid in Canada are paid by people with $150,000 or more of annual income. So it's

00:19:51.200 very misleading to just say, oh, this is only going to impact the rich. It's going to impact

00:19:55.900 many Canadians that are not just in that wealthy income group as well. And we're already seeing,

00:20:01.160 you know, a lot of people coming out against this policy as well.

00:20:04.560 I know you alluded to this earlier as well, but we weren't exactly in a great place even before

00:20:09.520 this budget when it came to business investment. I mean, this was already something where we've

00:20:13.040 seen a fair bit of decline. I mean, really going back almost a decade, isn't it?

00:20:17.320 Exactly. I mean, we've been seeing this collapse in business investment really since

00:20:20.820 the end of 2014. We also have a situation now where our GDP per capita is, it was lower at

00:20:26.680 the end of 2023 than it was at the end of 2014. And then we had, you know, Carolyn Rogers from

00:20:32.700 the Bank of Canada raising the alarm about our productivity challenges in Canada. So we have

00:20:38.060 big problems going into the federal budget and now not only are we not addressing those problems

00:20:43.160 we're actually making a lot of the problems even worse in terms of innovation productivity

00:20:47.640 economic growth improving living standards for Canadians job creation all of these things that

00:20:53.180 we needed more of we're now likely going to get less of those due to some of the government

00:20:57.540 policies that are being undertaken currently. The piece in business in Vancouver Ottawa's

00:21:02.880 capital gains tax hike final nail in the business investment coffin thanks so much Jake good to talk

00:21:07.760 to you. Thanks for having me on. Thank you. And one point I'll raise on this, and this just came

00:21:12.800 out just shortly before I went on air, is that the federal government is partitioning the capital

00:21:18.140 gains section of the budget from the budget. So it's not even going to be in, it looks like from

00:21:23.720 the reports I read, in the main budget that MPs vote on and debate and discuss. It's going to be

00:21:28.840 its own thing. And I wondered, some people were saying on Twitter, oh, is this the government

00:21:33.080 backtracking on this? I say, no, no, no, quite the contrary. This is the government trying to make it

00:21:37.020 a standalone issue to force the conservatives to defend the evil, scary, uber-wealthy 1%, 0.74

00:21:43.220 to defend, I don't know, Galen Weston and Loblaws or something like that.

00:21:46.680 And they do that in a way because they simply do not understand or refuse to accept at least

00:21:52.940 all of the people that are looking at this saying, well, hang on, I want people to invest

00:21:57.220 in this country.

00:21:57.920 This isn't just about eating the rich, as the old saying goes.

00:22:01.800 Now, speaking of the budget, I'm convinced the budget's going to pass.

00:22:05.340 I'm convinced the NDP will eventually roll.

00:22:07.620 But I find it funny that even to this day, Jagmeet Singh cannot say whether he's going

00:22:12.280 to support the Liberal budget.

00:22:14.200 He's clearly going to, but he's not willing to say it.

00:22:17.520 This was a clip, I think, from yesterday of him just equivocating on this, despite having

00:22:22.180 previously told reporters he would unveil his stance on the budget at this media scrum.

00:22:28.700 Mr. Singh, media were told earlier today that you were going to stand here and tell us your

00:22:33.400 definitive position on whether or not you were going to support the budget then we were told

00:22:36.760 you weren't ready to make that decision what happened today why was that switch up so rapid

00:22:42.200 there are some outstanding elements that we're still waiting on there were some commitments

00:22:46.040 made and i want to be very clear i'm particularly concerned about the the two elements that i raised

00:22:51.080 just earlier the the disability benefit as well as jordan's principle on those two there were

00:22:56.360 some commitments made but i want some more clarity around those commitments again some progress has

00:23:01.000 been made but i wanted some more clarity before i can make my final before we make our final

00:23:05.160 decision clear what were those commitments uh without getting into the negotiations

00:23:14.040 in public i can say that there was some progress made there were some positive steps but there's

00:23:17.800 additional elements that required clarification and i need to hear that clarification before i

00:23:22.920 can move forward is it more money like is it are the feds offering more money for this well what's

00:23:28.200 clear to me, I can answer that directly, what's clear to me is that the federal

00:23:30.660 government is not signaling an intention to increase the amount so we're going to

00:23:34.860 keep on fighting on that. Where more progress is being made is around

00:23:38.640 ensuring that the clawback question is being addressed so we're looking to see

00:23:42.600 more commitments around that and we're going to continue to fight back though.

00:23:46.140 We disagree with them strongly on the fact that the amount is so small and

00:23:50.480 they're not seeming to move on that. We'll continue to fight back because we

00:23:54.060 know the people in the disability community have raised this concern. I

00:23:57.240 I know the Liberals have heard those same concerns, so we'll continue to fight for a more fair amount.

00:24:02.800 We're seeing some progress on the clawback question.

00:24:07.840 Oh, yes, I don't want to tell you we're really, really negotiating hard behind closed doors.

00:24:12.880 We're really getting all of this stuff from the, yeah, we keep fighting.

00:24:15.900 That's why he doesn't want to say his stance on the budget,

00:24:17.960 because he wants people to think that he's going back there and he's having this big old fight.

00:24:22.200 I forget, there was a movie where someone did that.

00:24:24.920 They go into a room and they're alone in the room and they just start like, you know, beating themselves up basically and making noises and grunts to sound like there's a fight.

00:24:32.700 And then they periodically pop their head out and be like, I've almost got him just, you know, I need a couple more minutes.

00:24:37.140 And then they go back in. And at a certain point, of course, the door opens and it's revealed that they're the only one in the room.

00:24:43.640 Pretty sure that's Jagmeet Singh doing his negotiations with Justin Trudeau.

00:24:47.460 He goes into the room, he grunts, he makes some noises, he screams a little bit, he does his best Trudeau impression.

00:24:52.860 and then he comes out and just dusts himself off

00:24:55.600 and he's put the double-breasted suit back on

00:24:58.180 and the button fell off

00:24:59.300 and everything's all askew on his pants

00:25:02.880 and he pulls the leg down and all of that

00:25:04.560 and then he just comes out and says,

00:25:06.540 all right, we really wore them down

00:25:08.720 and we've gotten them to agree to

00:25:10.740 and then he makes up something

00:25:11.720 that they had already agreed to.

00:25:14.260 Phil is asking if I'm talking about Ocean's 11.

00:25:16.780 No, Ocean's 11 did a little similar bit, I guess,

00:25:19.240 where they did like a fake fight in the room 0.91

00:25:21.400 but that wasn't the one.

00:25:22.360 And now just my colleagues are all just talking about movies instead of the show.

00:25:26.440 So I guess I should.

00:25:27.960 Oh, it's a common trope, Sean said.

00:25:29.440 Well, Sean's actually a film guy.

00:25:30.760 So I trust him on that.

00:25:32.400 So, all right, next episode, we'll have to find like a clip of that.

00:25:35.240 And we'll put that out as like a live shot of Jagmeet Singh negotiating with Justin Trudeau

00:25:39.940 over the budget.

00:25:40.720 But again, he's not saying that maybe he'll vote for it.

00:25:43.440 Maybe he won't.

00:25:44.960 Meanwhile, the liberals, I shared that clip a few moments ago of Justin Trudeau talking

00:25:49.160 about how misinformation is the only reason that you would basically not vote for him.

00:25:54.480 The interesting dynamic now is that the Liberals are still committing to this whole Alex Jones

00:26:00.400 white supremacy radicalism narrative, which is a difficult narrative to sell when you

00:26:06.080 guys are at 20 something percent and the Conservatives are at over 40 percent.

00:26:09.620 But nevertheless, the government's House leader, Stephen McKinnon, gave it the old college

00:26:14.040 try in the House of Commons.

00:26:15.380 Mr. Speaker, last week we saw the Leader of the Opposition once again visit with supporters of white supremacy, anarchy and misogyny.

00:26:26.800 This has been a regular occurrence.

00:26:29.680 He draws the admiration of people who dismiss the slaughter of children in schools.

00:26:34.880 The Leader of the Opposition now has 30 seconds to speak to this House and to Canadians once I sit down.

00:26:42.400 I ask him to clearly disavow the views of these dangerous people.

00:26:47.520 Will he do that?

00:26:55.340 Order.

00:27:03.800 The Honourable Leader of the Opposition.

00:27:09.500 I unequivocally disavow the guy who spent the first half of his adult life as a practicing

00:27:16.340 racist dressing up in blackface, and since I accepted the support of Hamas, and now he's

00:27:29.500 brought on the extremist and radical position of allowing legal drug use in playgrounds,

00:27:38.080 in hospitals, in coffee shops that has led to the mass death of our people.

00:27:44.160 Will he refuse the demand of Toronto to replicate the decriminalization nightmare in DCEP?

00:27:53.680 The Honourable Government House Leader.

00:28:04.700 Mr. Speaker, I'm sad to say the leader of the Conservatives, the opposition, has shown us his true colors.

00:28:11.920 He speaks without conviction and clarity on a question that should be very, very, very simple for him to address.

00:28:19.500 His silence speaks volumes.

00:28:21.500 This is not leadership, Mr. Speaker.

00:28:23.720 This is political cowardice.

00:28:28.560 So Paulyev has just gotten so comfortable doing the old blackface throwback. 0.95

00:28:33.100 anytime he gets these questions from the liberals and they still keep doing it. So I guess they

00:28:38.320 think it's working for them. But again, look at the polling numbers, read the room, and then we

00:28:42.480 can go back to that admonition Trudeau gave his caucus members the other day of, no, no, no,

00:28:46.720 we're not going to go up to the polls this year. Next year, I've got a plan. Next year, it's going

00:28:50.780 to work. So, and if you believe that, again, you've got that old oceanfront property in Saskatchewan

00:28:55.700 I've been raving about for quite some time. All right, well, let's talk about British Columbia.

00:29:00.400 I was in Vancouver for a very brief period of time last week and actually got the chance

00:29:05.360 to see my next guest speaking.

00:29:07.400 He's been following this issue in a way that very few in the media are, and I would say

00:29:13.100 having a little bit of success.

00:29:14.460 Now, British Columbia did a significant about face last week on this three-year decriminalization

00:29:20.620 project they have in their province, where for three years you cannot be criminally

00:29:25.660 charged for using drugs in most public spaces.

00:29:29.540 We're one year into the three years, and B.C. has had enough and said, no, no, no, please, please, we don't want to do this anymore.

00:29:35.900 They've now asked the federal government to essentially reverse this project, and the federal government is not yet committing to it.

00:29:43.700 This is a clip from Yara Sachs, who is the federal addictions and mental health minister, talking about how, well, this isn't even really a criminal issue.

00:29:53.360 I'd like to know what your reaction is to B.C. pulling back on the criminal.

00:29:56.380 Well, at this point in time, I met with Minister Whiteside in BC on Friday and we are reviewing the request to the exemption that they put forward to us.

00:30:06.840 We're sitting with Health Canada officials at this time, but we are wholeheartedly committed to continue to work with BC.

00:30:12.440 They requested this exemption from the federal government with a full plan for a suite of tools to address the illicit toxic drug supply and the overdose crisis.

00:30:21.200 our commitment is to keep this firmly in the frame that this is a health care

00:30:25.440 crisis and it is not a criminalization issue so sir BC has asked you to take

00:30:32.000 these actions and as you said you met with the minister how quickly can you

00:30:35.660 respond and give them what they're looking well considering I only received

00:30:39.380 the letter on Friday and today is Monday we are it is under review with officials

00:30:43.460 are you committed to decriminalization if another jurisdiction I know Toronto

00:30:47.520 for example has an application to allow for decriminalization but the

00:30:51.180 federal government be in the position given bc's experience to be granting more exemptions for

00:30:56.060 decriminalization so i think we need to go back to first principles of policy here in addressing the

00:31:01.180 illicit toxic drug supply and the overdose crisis we know as a federal government that we work with

00:31:05.820 jurisdictions on a case-by-case basis making sure we have a full suite of tools available

00:31:11.580 to help vulnerable populations that includes prevention that includes harm reduction that

00:31:15.660 includes treatment and that includes a full set of health considerations at this time

00:31:21.020 toronto's request is under review we look at this case by case it's not an apples to

00:31:25.100 apple situation and we continue to partner and work with restrictions to be clear you

00:31:28.780 would still decriminalization is still something you would be prepared to go forward with and

00:31:33.260 grant in a jurisdiction the overdose crisis as i've said before and i say again is a health

00:31:37.740 crisis issue it is not a criminal one not a criminal issue well british columbia is saying

00:31:44.860 well we kind of think it should be a criminal issue again and BC this is not some like ravaging

00:31:50.100 right-wing conservative government here this is the NDP government which has been one of the most

00:31:55.480 effectively drug permissive governments in the western world on this certainly in Canada and

00:32:02.520 Minister Yarra Sachs is now fine with just slow walking BC's request to get out of this and still

00:32:08.020 actively considering the request from Toronto this was another clip from that same scrum that

00:32:13.340 I found interesting when well let's just hear it from her words. What does this tell us about the

00:32:19.560 decriminalization tool though? I take your point it's a suite of tools but this is one of the tools

00:32:23.700 what's the lesson here about that? We are one year into a three-year pilot and we continue to work

00:32:28.100 with the BC government to evaluate. What went wrong in your mind because one year in BC is already

00:32:32.580 saying we got to pull back and it's too much so what went wrong here? One year in we're still

00:32:36.800 evaluating the data and working with BC. Thank you. Oh, it's just one year in. We don't have

00:32:44.700 the data yet. Okay. Well, do you want to do two more years of this, Minister Sachs? Is that

00:32:48.420 really what you think people need? Joining me is Adam Zeevo, founder and director of the Center

00:32:53.880 for Responsible Drug Policy. Adam, I know that there are people whose lives and livelihoods

00:32:59.580 are at stake here, but you must have a bit of I told you so with your work on this and now even

00:33:05.140 bc really seeing the error of its ways to some extent well so i mean the the failure of this

00:33:11.540 experiment in bc was completely predictable i actually wrote an article for the washington

00:33:15.180 examiner uh predicting everything that we saw and there's a clear reason for this there are a variety

00:33:21.760 of ways that you can decriminalize drugs and and some models of decriminalization are actually

00:33:26.120 fairly sensible and have had positive results in the past for example portugal but what bc did

00:33:32.300 is decriminalize drugs in the least responsible and laziest way possible.

00:33:38.500 So I'm going to go back to Portugal and explain what they did 0.95

00:33:40.700 and how that contrasts starkly with what we saw in Canada.

00:33:44.840 So Portugal, in the lead-up to decriminalization in the early 2000s,

00:33:49.760 they spent years investing into their treatment capacity

00:33:53.100 to ensure that anyone who wanted to get better could easily get into rehab.

00:33:57.560 Then, when they decriminalized drugs,

00:33:59.520 they didn't just let people do whatever they wanted,

00:34:01.340 like we saw in bc uh what they did is they created a parallel justice system where if you were caught

00:34:08.300 openly using drugs or possessing the small amounts you were sent to a non-criminal dissuasion

00:34:14.380 commission composed of a social worker a lawyer and a psychologist and that commission could use

00:34:20.460 punitive measures including fines to coerce you into treatment so what this does is it ensures

00:34:25.980 that there is some level of accountability for people's actions and that there is a mechanism

00:34:30.380 in place to push you into rehab which is very available bc did none of that uh didn't invest

00:34:36.840 in treatments they had no mechanism in place to divert people into into recovery they basically

00:34:41.480 said well if you know you destigmatize drugs that'll increase treatment uptake and there's

00:34:46.160 no real evidence behind that hypothesis which turned out to be spectacularly incorrect

00:34:50.340 yeah and i mean the fact that they're seeing this so early on i think is noteworthy because this was

00:34:57.200 a three-year trajectory. So they, I guess, assumed that it was going to take them three years to be

00:35:01.300 able to see if this was working or not. And now a year in, they're basically tapping out. Now,

00:35:06.180 maybe there is a genuine conversion here, or maybe they're realizing, hey, we've got an election

00:35:11.180 coming up in October, and this isn't working, or maybe a little bit of both. But do you think the

00:35:17.360 election is more of a driver to a recognition of wrong? Because they haven't been showing any real

00:35:22.260 contrition on their approach, even as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

00:35:25.260 I would say so, because when you look at the BC NDP, they've basically done the bare minimum to roll back decriminalization, safe supply.

00:35:35.120 You kind of have to force them to do a kicking and screaming.

00:35:37.820 For example, decriminalization was immediately disastrous.

00:35:41.840 And last year, throughout the summer of 2023, people expressed a lot of concerns about public disorder.

00:35:46.860 Only when those concerns became impossible to ignore did the provincial government try to amend decriminalization, recriminalize open drug use in public places through provincial law.

00:35:58.620 Then, of course, the Harm Reduction Nurses Association launched a lawsuit against the provincial government and managed to get an injunction, which prevented Bill 34, which was the law that recriminalized drugs at the provincial level, from being enforced.

00:36:12.420 And that injunction was granted in January.

00:36:14.720 uh so at that point at that point david eby could have asked the federal government to step in he

00:36:21.940 could have been proactive but instead he's like well you know what like it's in front of the

00:36:25.600 courts now what can we do and i think it's notable that he only went to the federal government now

00:36:31.260 when there is polling showing that support is consolidating behind the bc conservatives who

00:36:37.260 have a serious shot of displacing the BC NDP in the October election. Yeah, and I was wondering

00:36:45.220 if you could then go to the federal perspective on this and why the federal government is not

00:36:49.720 really being responsive, it seems like, to the same polling. I mean, we heard from

00:36:53.200 Minister Sachs in that clip I played a couple of moments ago, and they're basically not even

00:36:57.040 committing to granting BC's request, and they still have this active request from Toronto to

00:37:02.200 do the same thing. Well, I'm going to be really blunt here. Oh, sorry about the noise. I'm at

00:37:07.320 an airport. No, I appreciate you squeezing us in. Yeah. So so Yara Sachs, the Minister of

00:37:14.460 Addiction Mental Health is incompetent and an ideologue. And this is something, you know,

00:37:18.720 I know a lot of people who know her as well. She doesn't have a strong grasp of the evidence base.

00:37:24.140 She's unwilling to listen. She has a certain idea of what we should do in Canada. And she wants to

00:37:32.000 pursue that goal regardless of what we see on the ground. So I don't think we're going to see any

00:37:36.680 real change as long as she's the federal minister of addiction and mental health, given her background

00:37:41.660 and given her lack of knowledge on this issue. I mean, for God's sakes, she used to be a yoga 1.00

00:37:46.420 teacher. And her only qualifications here is that she had a nonprofit based on addiction and mental

00:37:52.700 health. That's how they try to sell it. And when you go to the website, you see that she was

00:37:56.040 advocating for mindfulness meditation. I'm sorry, we need someone who actually has experience on the

00:38:01.140 job running this file. Yeah, I think that's an incredibly valuable point here and or the very

00:38:06.880 least someone who's listening to the evidence and listening to the experts on this and is not so

00:38:11.200 driven by ideology. Well, it's a bit of a victory hopefully for the people of BC who I know have

00:38:16.560 been pushing for this and we'll see if the federal government ultimately goes along with it. Adam

00:38:20.740 Zeevo, National Post and more crucially on this file, the Center for Responsible Drug Policy. Good

00:38:26.220 to talk to you, Adam, and safe travels wherever you're going. Thanks for having me back on the

00:38:30.160 All right. Thanks, Adam. And that does it for us. That is dedication right there. Calling in from

00:38:36.060 the airport. And I'm actually amazed the Wi-Fi cooperated because, well, it rarely does. But

00:38:40.220 actually, to be honest, unrelated to anything, I was at the airport and I was trying to use Air

00:38:45.380 Canada's Wi-Fi. And there's this little board game. Well, it's not little. It's a big board

00:38:49.920 game I like called Diplomacy. And you can play it online. And when I tried to log on to the

00:38:54.820 Diplomacy website where I was playing, Air Canada said it was inappropriate content. So I couldn't

00:38:59.980 get my moves in in time. But anyway, that's my grievance. Of all the grievances with Air Canada,

00:39:05.200 probably one of the more minor ones. But nevertheless, we will talk to you tomorrow,

00:39:09.000 Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North. This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:39:13.320 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:39:18.680 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:39:29.980 We'll be right back.

00:39:59.980 We'll be right back.

00:40:29.980 Thank you.

Juno News - April 30, 2024

Poilievre hints at using notwithstanding clause to pass tough-on-crime laws

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