Juno News - Poilievre pushes non-confidence motion in Trudeau over carbon tax

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

00:01:19.700 north hello and welcome to you all welcome back i should say we had a bit of an unannounced

00:01:30.980 unscheduled unforeseen disruption in the show yesterday but fear not all is well we are going

00:01:38.080 to hit you back and try to go full strength today to make up for lost time it is wednesday march

00:01:42.940 20th 2024 hope you're having a wonderful hump day i i think hump i don't think we hump day is

00:01:49.600 an explicit word. So I think we still get to keep the clean tag on Apple Podcasts here. But

00:01:54.780 nevertheless, we have a lot of ground to cover today. We'll be talking later on in the show

00:01:59.000 about that anti-Israel motion that was passed at the NDP's behest with support of almost all

00:02:05.520 liberals. We'll talk about that later on. And also a professor under fire for daring to stoke

00:02:11.980 debate among students. I know not something you can get away with in 2024. But let's begin with

00:02:18.920 the big news coming out of Ottawa today. The Conservative Party of Canada is pushing a motion

00:02:24.580 of non-confidence in Justin Trudeau's government. Yes, the government could fall tomorrow. It won't

00:02:31.840 because the NDP is going to continue to prop up the Liberals. But nevertheless, it is a bit of a

00:02:37.380 bold-sounding move from Conservative leader Pierre Paulyev, who unveiled it this morning

00:02:42.560 when he was giving a speech before his Conservative caucus. Take a look.

00:02:46.920 We're not going to put up with it anymore. We as Common Sense Conservatives are saying

00:02:52.360 no to Trudeau's 23% April Fool's Day increase. We are saying spike the hike until we Common

00:03:00.640 Sense Conservatives can axe the tax. The good news is Canadians are good and decent people.

00:03:13.380 They do not have to live like this.

00:03:16.260 They should not have to give up on the things that we all used to take for granted, like

00:03:21.380 affordable food and homes, all for the ego and incompetence of one man.

00:03:27.240 Life was not like this before Justin Trudeau.

00:03:29.800 It will not be like this after he is gone.

00:03:32.340 going to replace the hurt he has caused with the hope that Canadians need.

00:03:46.880 So now, today I am announcing that I am giving Trudeau one last chance to spike his hike.

00:03:52.860 One last chance, and only one more day.

00:03:56.700 Today I'm announcing that if Trudeau does not declare today an end to his forthcoming

00:04:01.860 tax increases on food, gas and heat, that we will introduce a motion of non-confidence

00:04:07.940 in the Prime Minister.

00:04:09.060 It will read that the House declare non-confidence in the Prime Minister and his costly government

00:04:15.020 for increasing the carbon tax by 23% on April 1st as part of his plan to quadruple the tax

00:04:21.960 while Canadians cannot afford to eat, heat, and house themselves,

00:04:26.220 and call for the House to be dissolved so Canadians can vote in a carbon tax election.

00:04:43.460 A carbon tax election.

00:04:51.960 And in that carbon tax election, there will be a very simple choice.

00:05:02.240 On the one hand, you will have the carbon tax coalition of the NDP and Justin Trudeau,

00:05:07.540 who take your money, punish your work, tax your food, double your housing costs, and

00:05:12.640 unleash crime and chaos in your community.

00:05:15.340 Or common sense conservatives, who will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget,

00:05:20.460 and stop the crime.

00:05:21.960 so he is saying there he wants to run on a cam well he wants to run in a carbon tax election

00:05:29.680 he wants that to be the ballot issue for canadians and increasingly it is looking like that is a very

00:05:34.980 popular position to take as i discussed on the show monday as we've discussed a lot of the last

00:05:40.100 few weeks the growing revolt against the carbon tax is a cross party lines now you've got the

00:05:45.860 liberal premier of newfoundland you've got conservative premiers you've got i mean even

00:05:50.920 Doug Ford, who's always been one to suck up to the federal liberals, he's come out against the

00:05:56.420 carbon tax. You also have beyond that, the Ontario Liberal Party, again, a party with a deep history

00:06:02.940 of spending a lot of money, of taxing a lot of money, saying there will be no carbon tax if

00:06:09.060 Bonnie Crombie, the new liberal leader in Ontario, has her way. So Justin Trudeau is very quickly

00:06:15.140 finding himself without a real coalition around this. And even a lot of his caucus colleagues,

00:06:20.740 You know, we're looking to him being like, come on, I'm already on thin ice with the conservatives doing so well in the polls.

00:06:26.220 How do you want me to sell this to my constituents?

00:06:29.120 And Trudeau has effectively said that he doesn't care.

00:06:32.220 That has largely been the position that the government has taken up on this.

00:06:36.600 Now, why it's important to talk about in this context here is because Pierre Paulyev knows that this isn't going to pass.

00:06:43.060 He knows that when push comes to shove, the liberals are going to rely on the support from the NDP.

00:06:47.860 The NDP is perennially broke. It cannot afford to go into another election.

00:06:53.180 And of course, Jagmeet Singh has not yet qualified for his pension.

00:06:57.500 That is not coming until early in 2025.

00:07:01.640 Now, one of the big challenges that I would bring up here for a lot of people

00:07:06.180 is that we are going to see this issue and this so-called pressure campaign

00:07:11.740 that Pierre Paulyev has announced kick up.

00:07:14.180 And I mean, the Liberals have so much invested in this program.

00:07:18.840 They have so much invested in this tax.

00:07:20.620 They don't want to show weakness.

00:07:21.700 They aren't going to show weakness.

00:07:23.020 So that means they will have to defend this carbon tax through the increase point on April 1st.

00:07:28.220 They're going to defend it through the next election.

00:07:30.860 And Canadians have just had enough of it.

00:07:33.160 But I wanted to talk about for a moment that carbon tax election question, that idea of a carbon tax election.

00:07:39.880 Because one may remember that in 2021, when Justin Trudeau was facing accusations that the 2021 election was unnecessary because it did come two years earlier than anticipated, he gave a rather impassioned plea for why Canadians should be comfortable with the election.

00:07:58.340 And I wanted to go back into memory lane and play a clip of that.

00:08:01.640 I think Canadians know that we are coming through this pandemic, that it's not over yet and people need to continue to step up and get vaccinated to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

00:08:14.800 And that's certainly something I'm going to keep reminding people about every single day over the coming weeks, that people need to continue to do their part, protect their communities, protect each other, protect our kids who can't yet get vaccinated because they're under 12.

00:08:31.640 I think this is a moment where Canadians can and should be able to weigh in on what we're going through and on how we're going to build a society that is stronger and better and learns from the challenges we've all experienced and the sacrifices we've all made through the worst of this pandemic.

00:08:52.160 the pandemic is not over and we're going to be taking consequential decisions on

00:08:57.820 how we finish with this pandemic and I think it's Canadians right to weigh in on that

00:09:03.900 an election is an opportunity for Canadians to have a right to weigh in on the government's

00:09:11.580 conduct now I'm not going to compare COVID to the carbon tax one was far more disruptive and

00:09:16.980 destructive certainly in terms of the government's response to it than the other but the carbon tax

00:09:21.660 is destructive in its own way the carbon tax is putting businesses into untenable positions

00:09:27.820 especially businesses that only barely got through if they got through at all the pandemic and justin

00:09:33.500 trudeau when it came to covid and the polls were more favorable to him said okay well everyone has

00:09:38.700 a right to weigh in on this but now it's uh well now it's a bit of a different story now it's not

00:09:43.740 about canadians having a right to weigh in now it's about demagoguery and disruption and political

00:09:48.940 tricks and partisanship this is what the liberals say now when Pierre Polyev is coming out and

00:09:54.960 saying actually I believe that Canadians do have a right to weigh in I believe Canadians do have a

00:10:00.620 right to have a say so what has happened is Polyev has put the liberal government on notice he has

00:10:06.940 said to Justin Trudeau you've got one day and one day only to scrap the impending increase in the

00:10:13.300 carbon tax and then that is of course not going to do anything and then tomorrow the conservatives

00:10:18.540 will put forward their motion of non-confidence now i'll read the motion for you just because

00:10:23.900 it's probably not going to get a lot of coverage in the legacy media that the house declare

00:10:30.300 non-confidence in the prime minister and his costly government for increasing the carbon tax 23

00:10:36.140 on april 1st as part of his plan to quadruple the tax while canadians cannot afford to eat heat and

00:10:42.460 house themselves and call for the house to be dissolved so canadians can vote in a carbon tax

00:10:47.900 election. Now, if this motion does somehow pass, if the NDP are, they suddenly find a spine or

00:10:55.920 perhaps the NDP is homesick tomorrow and the Bloc Québécois votes with the Conservatives, again,

00:11:00.620 strange things happen. But if for whatever reason this motion passes, yeah, the government will

00:11:05.740 fall. It will cease to have the confidence in the House. There will be no choice but to have an

00:11:10.840 election and Canadians will be going to the polls. And the carbon tax probably would be at this point

00:11:16.540 the ballot issue because it's one of the most demonstrable and clear ways that government can

00:11:22.680 control the cost of living. And this is the thing. It is easy to point fingers in every direction

00:11:29.660 when you are dealing with inflation. You can say, oh, grocery store CEOs are greedy. And you can say,

00:11:35.180 oh, but the government, oh, but the banks, oh, but the central bank, oh, but Tiff Macklem and the

00:11:38.820 governor of the Bank of Central Canada and all of that. And yeah, everyone has played a role in this

00:11:43.260 to some extent. There are larger economic trends that aren't in someone's control. But the carbon

00:11:49.180 tax is the insult to injury. It is the fuel to the fire. I can probably come up with another

00:11:54.280 a few cliches if you need, but I think you get the point right now. So it is a mechanism by which

00:11:59.860 government could offer very simple, very tangible relief to Canadians. And even that to the federal

00:12:05.520 liberals is not something they're interested in doing. Again, provincial liberals get it. Provincial

00:12:10.680 liberals are far more connected to their constituents right now than the federal liberals

00:12:15.820 led by Justin Trudeau are, which is why you have Andrew Fury in Newfoundland, Bonnie Crombie

00:12:20.020 in Ontario, and basically even the liberals in New Brunswick, I forget the name of the

00:12:25.960 liberal leader there, but the opposition in New Brunswick came out late last week and said

00:12:32.300 something very similar. So you don't just have unanimity among seven of 10 premiers, but you have

00:12:38.000 basically crossed the aisle unanimity from government and opposition in a majority of

00:12:44.180 provinces here, left and right, with just three holdouts. Quebec, which has a very expensive

00:12:49.700 cap-and-trade system. BC, which is like they had a carbon tax before it was even cool. And I don't

00:12:55.020 know that it's ever been cool to have one, but you know what I mean. BC had one even before the

00:12:58.600 federal government required it. And Manitoba, which has been very wishy-washy. I think Wab 0.95

00:13:03.080 Canoe is like trying to suck up to the federal government so he doesn't want to make his 0.89

00:13:07.320 criticism known publicly, but he's played very coy about privately whether he has raised any issue 0.69

00:13:13.580 at all. So we will keep on this, but keep your eyes peeled tomorrow. Again, sometimes weird

00:13:18.080 things happen in politics, probably not going to pass, but you never know. Well, just as taxes are

00:13:24.700 inevitable, so too is a clapdown on debate and dissent in the Academy in Canada. You may have

00:13:31.780 seen this fantastic demonstration that takes place. It's published all over the internet by

00:13:37.600 Peter Boghossian. It's called Spectrum Street Epistemology. And I have one clip of it just

00:13:44.800 to get a sense of what this looks like that you can watch here.

00:13:48.740 Hey, we're going to do some Spectrum Street Epistemology. And my first claim to you is as

00:13:54.580 follows i am optimistic that peace will be achieved in the israeli-palestinian conflict

00:14:03.540 five four three two one move

00:14:07.340 okay why are you not optimistic because i have relatives who my grandfather was originally

00:14:18.480 from the middle east he's a lebanese um i don't think people in the west or people who have not

00:14:24.520 lived in that uh particular part of the world understand the depths of hatred that those groups

00:14:30.840 of people feel for one another particularly the arab slash muslim world towards the israelis 1.00

00:14:36.360 okay and why are you neutral well i hate to sound like jordan peterson here but it depends what you

00:14:41.000 mean by peace i mean eventually the fighting will stop you mean though it could stop over millions

00:14:46.520 of corpses yes so is that peace if that's peace then yeah i mean eventually peace like on a 10

00:14:53.400 15 20 year time scale the fighting will stop so i strongly agree but i don't know if that's what

00:14:59.160 you meant by peace sorry to be a no no no it's always good to to ask for clarity in terms all

00:15:04.080 right i'm gonna say another claim and you walk to the other the line the israeli the current

00:15:09.520 israeli-palestinian conflict 2023 has a more than 50 chance that it will lead to world war three

00:15:16.440 watch up mate you both disagree why do you disagree that is just one snippet now uh those

00:15:28.500 two are francis foster and constantin kishin who are the co-hosts of triggernometry which is a very

00:15:34.340 great podcast out of the uk uh now constantin he didn't do it right you're supposed to not even

00:15:40.040 think you're supposed to just go somewhere i actually as it happened uh played that game

00:15:45.640 with Peter Boghossian in London, England back in November.

00:15:50.980 I was there for the ARC forum that Jordan Peterson was holding

00:15:53.780 and Bruce Party played with me as well.

00:15:57.260 He was on there.

00:15:57.920 James Lindsay was on there, but I couldn't find the video of it.

00:16:01.020 They never published it.

00:16:01.980 So I guess we weren't sufficiently epistemological

00:16:04.480 to make the final cut

00:16:06.660 or maybe they're keeping it in the can for something.

00:16:08.540 But anyway, it's a great game.

00:16:10.240 It forces you to confront your gut instincts

00:16:12.900 about a particular issue.

00:16:15.020 and then it forces you to engage with other people.

00:16:17.820 One of the questions that Peter will ask participants is,

00:16:20.460 okay, what would it take to move you

00:16:22.560 from agree to strongly agree?

00:16:25.020 Or what would it take to move you away from neutral?

00:16:27.560 And you end up having very spirited debates and discussions.

00:16:31.140 And it was a lot of fun,

00:16:32.580 but in the University of 2024,

00:16:35.080 this is just not the type of thing you can get away with.

00:16:38.140 As learned by Professor Lee Revers,

00:16:40.820 who's an associate professor

00:16:41.880 at the Institute of Management and Innovation

00:16:44.180 at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, was reprimanded by his department chair for daring

00:16:50.360 to do this with students. Lee, it's good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

00:16:56.520 Well, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

00:16:58.860 So, I mean, what is the value in this? What is the pedagogical value of this that you were going

00:17:05.640 for in the first place? And then we'll get into what happened.

00:17:08.520 Yeah, well, because I really think university is a holistic experience. You know, I think students

00:17:13.720 should go and not just study their subject but also learn how to think so I'm on a committee or

00:17:20.520 I was I should say on a committee which sorts it prioritizes doing social events for students so

00:17:26.920 this was one of the events and we were all asked to come up with an activity and I thought what

00:17:31.400 Peter Boghossian was doing was terrific and I've played this game with colleagues and and students

00:17:36.840 in the past and it's a lot of fun as you pointed out with that brilliant clip there so we did this

00:17:42.440 but of course it led to complaints I mean students feel uncomfortable I think you know

00:17:48.260 there are quite a few young people at the university now especially after the pandemic

00:17:53.160 and I would describe them as the young identitarians right so these are the people that

00:17:59.480 you know they enter a room and in this case if they find that there may be people in the room

00:18:05.040 that don't hold the same opinion that they hold then they make a fuss about it and like to

00:18:12.220 complain and that's exactly what happened so quite disappointing really what were the the

00:18:18.060 oh i think we lost you but it appears you're back what statements did you use when you

00:18:30.440 set set this game up right well i thought you know i'd i'd look at the overton window and see

00:18:36.020 and that's just the window of like the discussion points that people are reasonably discussing and

00:18:41.560 started with something fairly simple such as vegetarians are morally superior to omnivores

00:18:50.360 right so what do you think to that and and a countdown and they moved to the lines and so we

00:18:56.340 had some spirited discussion because some people you know think yes and others no and we moved on

00:19:02.300 and of course it gets more interesting as it gets a little bit more political I was actually told

00:19:07.140 my colleagues don't get too political and by that I thought I'd avoid things like the Trudeau carbon

00:19:12.420 tax that you were discussing earlier but right but we went on to things like professor Jordan

00:19:20.100 Peterson requires media training which I thought was topical but according to my department chair

00:19:27.780 that's outside of the Overton window that's not acceptable students aren't prepared they might

00:19:35.220 have a manic episode for instance by being challenged and feeling uncomfortable so you

00:19:41.920 know and those were just warm-up claims so you can see how it might have got out of hand in that

00:19:48.160 sense I mean what I found to be honest with you were the students were really engaged when I

00:19:52.940 started with a vegetarian thing I had only a couple of students playing and by the end of this

00:19:58.160 we had about 15 to 20 people playing it was not enough room on the lines for you know because

00:20:04.380 people actually enjoy doing this well and they were they were active in it too like one of the

00:20:09.420 examples you gave here western science is hampered by a political bias you had a student who identified

00:20:14.920 as muslim and a woman of color who stood in the strongly agree line and explained uh things that

00:20:20.620 i disagree with and that you disagreed with about science but but she was clearly selling her 0.85

00:20:25.040 position on this which is the point of it so i'm curious where the complaints came from did students

00:20:30.900 not like that they were being forced to expose their beliefs or did they not like that certain

00:20:36.180 questions were being put up as being debatable i think a bit of both uh i think students who

00:20:42.900 don't want to express an opinion on any particular claim because they haven't seen the claims at the

00:20:47.140 beginning um so they stay on the neutral line and i think that's reasonable uh you know you don't

00:20:52.580 have to express an opinion or you can stop playing at any point um but i think some people just don't

00:20:58.820 like the idea that there are disputes i mean once i got to men can become women uh you know i think

00:21:06.180 which i think is a very reasonable discussion topic that's now everywhere on the internet and

00:21:12.100 in the media um i think some folks think that isn't up for discussion at all there is no dispute

00:21:18.980 um but i find that hard to believe because i keep hearing uh from both sides on that so there are

00:21:25.140 two sides to that discussion. There are different opinions and differing ideas. And so my job was

00:21:31.400 simply to be as neutral as possible and not express my own beliefs at all. And that was one

00:21:38.140 that your chair very clearly said should never have happened. That question never should have

00:21:43.160 been put out there. Yeah, that's right. I mean, if I wanted to do that, I can do it on the university

00:21:48.800 property on the campus but i would need to um kind of flag that up first so that people could

00:21:57.040 be suitably prepared now now my view first of all the game is no fun if you you know what the claims

00:22:03.360 are going to be part of the fun is yeah but it relies on that gut instinct of just immediately

00:22:08.560 stand on because and i'll say just for my own part when i played it some of my answers surprised me

00:22:13.600 which you may think is kind of silly because you're the one that's choosing it but when you

00:22:17.220 when you don't think about something, when you just are drawn to a mat, it actually is a very

00:22:22.100 useful self-exploration tool, I think. Absolutely it is. I find the same, which is why I like

00:22:28.700 hosting, just to see how people respond themselves. And, you know, even people I'm

00:22:33.580 inclined to agree with, but I don't express that when I ask them, why do you stand there and tell

00:22:38.720 me why you're standing on that line? They have to think quite hard because of course they weren't

00:22:43.180 expecting uh the follow-up uh in that sense i mean they have to think and that is the whole point

00:22:49.900 of doing this right and think about the claims take a position and then try to back up uh your

00:22:57.420 stance uh preferably with evidence i mean a lot of people say well i just feel um i don't think

00:23:03.820 that commands a lot of of sway you know from the audience necessarily i think obviously and we want

00:23:09.660 students to be better at this right because in life uh you know later on there's going to be

00:23:15.100 the opportunity to debate these things whether it's around a dinner table or maybe it's at work

00:23:19.740 um and if they haven't really been governed by the skills they haven't acquired the skills

00:23:25.260 uh university then why are we here um so so for me anyway i mean i teach chemistry normally so

00:23:31.420 this is not something that i would do in a chemistry class um but we're hearing a lot about

00:23:36.140 this at the university as you know i mean i've been asked to decolonize my chemistry and i'm

00:23:40.860 working towards possibly a way of doing that but that could be quite tricky um so my view is we

00:23:47.580 need to let students make up their own minds and provide an environment where they can actually

00:23:52.220 have fun doing this and to reassure them that they can take any position they want

00:23:58.300 one of the the challenges that that i have always wondered about here and and i don't know if you

00:24:02.620 have any insights on this or not do you believe that your department chair is a true believer in

00:24:08.460 what was being meted out to you or do you think that there is just that governance of fear and

00:24:14.860 the governance by the administrators that are forcing people that don't really think all of

00:24:19.900 what you did was unreasonable to kind of pretend it was unreasonable yeah i think i think amongst

00:24:26.860 colleagues that they fall into two camps i mean i'm in stem so i think the inherent bias in stem

00:24:33.340 is this is all rather silly and a bunch of nonsense let's concentrate on doing some science

00:24:39.420 um i think i think that's very clear but i think people are afraid to express that opinion 0.80

00:24:44.460 and then there are some uh who seem to be uh the ones that get promoted to positions of

00:24:51.180 of, you know, power and influence at the university and the administration, who really have drunk

00:24:57.580 the Kool-Aid, actually. I find it surprising. They're usually not the hard scientists, I would

00:25:04.800 say. You know, we all believe in the Enlightenment and the idea that you back up all your ideas with

00:25:11.220 evidence. And I'm a progressive, but I would call myself a rational progressive. But there

00:25:18.220 are some colleagues here I think they really do believe this, that they hook

00:25:23.140 line and sinker actually. So I think those are the ones that will be promoted

00:25:27.220 to chairships, to be deans and ultimately to be presidents and

00:25:32.720 principals of the University and I think we've seen that. I mean we only have to

00:25:36.820 look to Claudine Gay and across the border to see that that has in fact

00:25:41.440 proven true and I don't think Canada is immune at all. So and U of T is the top

00:25:46.780 university in terms of science right so even here and one of the things i mean obviously it's a

00:25:52.940 social event and it's light-hearted and i think you fused academia with a game and with something

00:25:58.860 social pretty well i i was reading your national post op-ed about this which i would encourage

00:26:04.220 everyone tuned in to do as well and if you take away your contribution to this i i want to read

00:26:09.980 your paragraph about what was left there were jigsaws arranged on a raid on one table a professor

00:26:15.820 playing a variant of snap with students at another and on a third no word of a lie were coloring

00:26:20.940 sheets and crayons aliens arriving from vega would be forgiven for mischaracterizing the event as a

00:26:26.940 daycare for human 20-something so you can't have any game that is more intellectually provocative

00:26:35.260 than coloring or a card game with university students in 2024 is basically what i take away

00:26:41.820 from this well well when i walked into that room i mean i'd made some preparations to have a big tv

00:26:47.500 screen and you know pa system and all of this set up i couldn't believe my eyes right i mean i saw

00:26:54.060 a table and i genuinely thought what why are the crayons on that table this must be for this must

00:27:00.540 be for the the you know something else uh preceding event yeah we're doing the day camp early this

00:27:05.980 year exactly which we do at the university in the summer um and so i i just couldn't understand this

00:27:13.180 at all i mean this is not what university is about i mean these people these young people who

00:27:19.420 i care a great deal about i mean they can vote right so these these are these they're the age

00:27:26.780 of majority and they'll be making decisions about the future of canada will they not so uh yeah i

00:27:32.140 find it shocking genuinely shocking quite upsetting really that that was even countenanced as an

00:27:37.740 alternative activity my feeling is what i did was the only adult activity going on in the room

00:27:44.380 um and actually i think uh you know people voted with their feet when they came to play i mean i

00:27:50.380 not my fault that some people don't like the claims um but they can absent themselves you

00:27:55.580 know but i was i was told the chair told me this was transphobia essentially um the the you know

00:28:02.620 she didn't say that i i i should clarify um that the complaints indicated that it was transphobic

00:28:09.580 uh for example to say um safeguarding of children is more important than gender ideology excuse me

00:28:19.340 you've got you've got a cameo a cameo on the screen now well welcome uh i mean so basically

00:28:25.100 though i mean your cat actually provides a natural segue here because essentially the only things

00:28:29.980 you'd be allowed to do uh would be you know cats are better than dogs agree or disagree yeah exactly

00:28:36.620 cats are better than dogs it would be a perfect claim but it's not terribly exciting is it it

00:28:42.540 doesn't require great it comes down to personal choice very subjective i like cats other people

00:28:47.900 like dogs great um there's not a lot of engagement to be had there and i think you know my favorite

00:28:53.100 of course which is my chair's favorite is why not stick to uh pineapple belongs on pizza uh and i

00:29:00.380 know that was literally the example they gave of you could do this but only if this is your

00:29:05.100 this is your question or your claim yeah yeah otherwise get it run past some politically uh

00:29:10.700 you know sort of sensitive group that you know that would kind of decide you know somebody is

00:29:15.980 making these decisions uh i thought i had academic freedom in fact according to my uh

00:29:22.540 union which is university of toronto faculty association according to them i am supposed to

00:29:28.140 have academic freedom not just in the teaching i do in a classroom but but also in all the

00:29:33.180 activities that i engage on the campus with students so that would include this and you

00:29:39.340 know i didn't get to the end of the session because a colleague actually told me to stop

00:29:43.820 and they just thought it was getting really really too much and that's a shame because i

00:29:48.940 had some other claims i was quite excited to to present and i didn't get to to show those um but

00:29:55.100 yeah i i i think this is problematic uh for any serious university uh there is an organization

00:30:03.820 um at the university now a working group that's all about uh encouraging civil discourse on the

00:30:10.140 campus so i think they really want to uh to try to turn the boat around a little bit so i'm very

00:30:15.900 hopeful but it it's definitely something i think stem we and stem are concerned about all right

00:30:23.240 well worst case scenario you'll have to team up with uh peter bogosian and start doing it just

00:30:27.300 outside of the university perimeter and maybe you'll avoid the the sanctions then all right

00:30:32.400 well fascinating display i'm sorry you went through this but i'm glad you're speaking out

00:30:35.860 about it the way you are professor lee revers thank you thank you very much all right uh yeah

00:30:41.780 it was a fun game. I hope, uh, Peter Brugosi inputs mine, uh, in Bruce parties. And, uh,

00:30:45.780 there was another guy, I think he was from Australia whose name I didn't catch and James

00:30:49.360 Lindsay. We had lots of fun with it. And I believe what was our, our, cause it starts with

00:30:53.400 one core claim and then you, you do derivative claims. And I think the core claim, it was

00:30:58.320 something to do with what the greatest, I wasn't globalism is the greatest threat to freedom.

00:31:04.140 It was something, something along those lines. Um, and we had, well, anyway, you'll, no one

00:31:08.120 ever know now so uh but maybe we need to take uh spectrum street epistemology uh canadian and do a

00:31:14.680 true north version of it sometime harrison harrison faulkner yeah something you can do we can even

00:31:19.000 splurge for some of those floor mats that people can stand on ahead around toronto and uh take this

00:31:24.360 take this up all right we have to turn from what is a lighter subject to a far more serious one

00:31:30.520 uh there was this week a debate in the house of commons over a motion from the ndp

00:31:35.240 which originally called for recognition of Palestinian statehood

00:31:41.080 but was watered down somewhat, not hugely

00:31:44.860 to a number of other claims that have become commonplace

00:31:48.440 from many activists in the anti-Israel set

00:31:51.540 but some people were not convinced by these amendments

00:31:54.980 which the Liberals and New Democrats trumpeted as some great cooperative effort

00:31:58.700 one of those people that was not convinced was Anthony Howe's father

00:32:02.240 a Liberal member of Parliament who himself is Jewish

00:32:05.020 from Montreal, who gave an impassioned speech opposing the motion.

00:32:10.660 Mr. Speaker, I am a Canadian, I am a Jew, and I am a Zionist. I am proud to have been born in

00:32:17.480 this country. I am proud that my family came here in the 19th century and helped build this country.

00:32:21.600 My family members fought in the World War I and World War II. We are part of Canada and lucky to

00:32:27.560 be so. I've represented Canada in swimming internationally. I've represented Canada as

00:32:31.900 parliamentarian, and there's no place in the world I want to be other than in

00:32:35.560 Canada. The Jewish community, of which I am part, is a religious community that has

00:32:40.680 existed for thousands of years, but we're also a people. And we, since we've been

00:32:45.520 here in 1760, have helped build this country. We got enormous opportunities,

00:32:50.460 more than we've received anywhere else in history. But we've also, in academia, in

00:32:55.420 law, in medicine, in physics, in science, in sports, in journalism, we have helped

00:33:00.580 build this country. And 95% of Canadian Jews are Zionists. Zionism means we 0.93

00:33:08.580 believe that we have a right to have one Jewish state in our ancestral homeland.

00:33:13.540 Jews are indigenous to Israel. And we have had a history where Jews have faced

00:33:20.680 persecution in every country in the world. We were expelled from England in

00:33:25.240 1290. We were expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s. We faced the

00:33:30.320 crusades where people were killed. We were put in ghettos throughout Europe. We faced the Holocaust.

00:33:36.640 Jews were expelled from Arab lands in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. And we needed one place where

00:33:44.100 every Jew in the world knew if things went wrong in their country that they could go. And that is 0.87

00:33:49.860 Israel and that's what Zionism means. So when I get horrible, horrible threats and emails saying

00:33:56.100 I'm a dirty Zionist instead of a dirty Jew. 1.00

00:33:59.060 That's what Zionism means. 1.00

00:34:00.580 So in all these demonstrations around the country,

00:34:02.680 outside of synagogues and outside of Jewish schools

00:34:05.680 and outside of Jewish community centres, 0.95

00:34:07.900 where people are screaming about how horrible Zionists are, 0.87

00:34:11.580 well, I am a Zionist. 0.66

00:34:12.920 And I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of being a Zionist.

00:34:20.340 And Canadian Jews should not have to live

00:34:23.140 through what we're living through right now.

00:34:25.160 my community is terrified that went on for about seven and a half more minutes i would encourage

00:34:34.180 you if you're interested to watch the whole thing he posted it on his uh social media page he posted

00:34:39.920 it i think i saw it on x but he posted it elsewhere and uh then he sat down and eventually

00:34:46.340 when that vote took place there were just two of his liberal colleagues who joined him one was

00:34:52.720 Marco Mendicino, who was sitting, I think, right beside him. The other was Ben Carr from Winnipeg.

00:34:57.740 Even Yara Sachs, who is the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, a Jewish woman from a 1.00

00:35:03.680 Jewish, well, very heavily Jewish riding in Toronto, was last week holding hands with Mahmoud Abbas

00:35:10.220 in the West Bank, and this week voted against the Jewish community of Canada by supporting 0.67

00:35:17.740 that resolution. Now, imagine you saw the emotion, you heard the emotion in Anthony

00:35:23.400 Howe's father as he gave those remarks. He sat down and then everyone around him pretty much

00:35:29.300 voted against him. Voted against him. And I mean that. They voted against him as a Jew. They voted 0.98

00:35:34.620 against him as a member of the Liberal Party with a conscience on the question of Israel and what

00:35:40.680 the Jewish community in this nation is facing. And I wanted to share another clip of him in the House

00:35:47.060 of Commons foyer in which he seems to be very well aware of what happened after he sat down

00:35:53.840 and MPs voted. Is this the first time you're actually kind of reflecting on your role within

00:35:59.900 this party? I mean, this has been going on for a number of months now. There's been tensions in

00:36:03.580 Canada rising in 1970s and you've seen your government struggle to sometimes or, you know,

00:36:08.040 come up with a position that satisfies everybody. And you've kind of been at the forefront of this,

00:36:12.960 but is this the first time you're actually kind of reflecting on your future here?

00:36:17.060 I think it's the first time in my parliamentary career that I've had a reflection like this where I truly felt last night that a line had been crossed.

00:36:29.040 When my party members got up and cheered and gave a standing ovation to Heather McPherson and the NDP, I started reflecting as to whether or not I belonged.

00:36:41.960 And I will let you know further how I feel over the coming days. For the moment, I'm still there.

00:36:47.060 that was a very strong language from someone who's typically been a team player with his party

00:36:54.600 joining me on the line now is robert walker who's the assistant director for honest reporting canada

00:37:00.540 robert good to have you on the show here i mean we heard that speech from anthony house father in

00:37:05.380 which he takes aim at what is one of the most i'd say dishonest portrayals we see that that you

00:37:14.240 could separate zionism from judaism and this is what we see in a lot of the media coverage what

00:37:19.000 we see in a lot of the protests i wanted to get your thoughts on this well um thank you andrew

00:37:24.140 for the uh for the question and for covering this because i think this is an angle that

00:37:27.420 this term this concept has been completely abused and and and bastardized uh by uh by the far left

00:37:35.440 and those who seek to demonize uh israel and the jewish people writ large which is we talk about

00:37:40.100 this indigenous movement is that Zionism is the indigenous movement of the Jewish people,

00:37:45.400 that the, you know, this return to their ancestral homeland where they have lived for three

00:37:49.820 millennia, practicing the same faith, speaking the same language, walking in the same steps.

00:37:55.340 But if you listen, of course, to, you know, ideological extremists today in Canada and

00:38:00.780 indeed around the world, you know, they are this colonialist people who have invaded and 0.93

00:38:06.580 kicked out the locals um and it's it's not just an inversion of reality uh it is a moral outrage

00:38:12.560 and i mean one of the things that i i think is so difficult here is that you have this language

00:38:19.640 of colonial resistance that's being appropriated and applied to what's happened in the middle east

00:38:26.280 and parties like the ndp will wear their kafias in the house of commons as they are are voting

00:38:31.920 on this and they pretend this is benign. Well, it certainly isn't because I think what we've seen

00:38:38.400 is not just the legitimization, if you will, of Hamas terrorism. And then that was pointed out

00:38:46.740 by a number of parliamentarians who said that although the initial extreme motion as proposed

00:38:54.220 by the NDP was a unilateral calling for the government to unilaterally recognize the Palestinian

00:38:59.000 a state, which of course, anybody with a pair of eyes can look and say, listen, if October 7th

00:39:03.120 hadn't happened, if Hamas's October 7th attacks hadn't happened, then very clearly that wouldn't

00:39:07.880 have happened. So it's very clearly a reward for terrorism. And if you're sitting there

00:39:11.900 and you're a Hamas leader, whether sitting on top of billions of dollars in Qatar,

00:39:17.700 whether you're sitting underneath the tunnels of Gaza, you're sitting there thinking,

00:39:21.860 my goodness, you know, the more terrorism that we perpetrate, the more legitimacy we get,

00:39:26.620 the more legitimacy we get and the more credibility we get from certain individuals in Canada,

00:39:32.260 and perhaps worst yet, was that this wasn't just, you know, voted on by the NDP, but of course by

00:39:38.860 the governing party of this country, the Liberal Party. And I think that sends a very, very powerful

00:39:44.620 message, not just to Hamas, but indeed to Jewish Canadians and indeed to the majority of moral

00:39:49.300 Canadians who look and say, you know, you're allowed to have, this is a free country and we

00:39:53.880 have a diversity of opinion and you're allowed to believe one thing or another, but this legitimizes

00:39:59.040 not just Hamas terrorism, but indeed the scourge and rise of anti-Jewish hate here, which is of

00:40:05.060 course not just a threat to Jewish Canadians, but to any Canadians who values the peace and security

00:40:11.540 and order that we've come to value in this country. And when we have a government, when we

00:40:17.280 have parliamentarians who vote in favor of a motion which glorifies and which excuses Hamas

00:40:23.540 terrorism uh that's that's an extraordinarily dangerous precedent well and then for people that

00:40:29.460 are not as people that don't spend their lives immersed in in this issue and pour over all the

00:40:35.140 coverage like certainly you do with your work and me to to some extent although i'd probably say not

00:40:39.620 as much as you do they they are easily duped by no fault of their own by certain language and

00:40:45.620 ceasefire i think is a great example of this because a ceasefire if you're just someone that

00:40:49.940 doesn't like that war is taking place this sounds like a very uh virtuous thing why is that not the

00:40:55.780 case well everybody wants in theory a ceasefire at one point the question is under what conditions

00:41:00.980 hamas wants a ceasefire once the jews are dead uh israel wants a ceasefire of courts once hamas 0.74

00:41:06.260 is defeated and the hostages are returned so everybody's talking about a ceasefire but the

00:41:09.780 major issue that we see among those the extremists who talk about a ceasefire is very rarely uh that

00:41:16.580 really there's a lot of context here, which is of course we want a ceasefire, but a ceasefire that

00:41:21.300 keeps Hamas in power is ultimately nothing less than a capitulation. I really, I shudder to think 0.57

00:41:27.780 of what this dialogue would look like 80 years ago during World War II. You know, people were

00:41:33.660 talking about facing this scourge of, you know, the Nazi Germany and saying, well, ceasefire, 0.78

00:41:38.840 ceasefire. Ultimately, I think of anybody who looks at, you know, the Hamas casualty numbers,

00:41:43.780 And this was pointed out last week by a statistician of the Wharton School who said that Hamas's numbers are essentially statistically impossible, that Hamas's numbers are fake, that Israel takes steps unprecedented in modern history to minimize civilian casualties.

00:41:59.320 And ultimately, most importantly, this war could be over in five minutes if Hamas surrenders the hostages and surrenders its leaders. 0.59

00:42:07.520 And until we have parliamentarians and protesters who refuse to call for that, I think it's very clear that anything short of that is ultimately a capitulation, not just of Israel, but every value that we as Canadians hold dear. 0.64

00:42:21.880 And I think that what we've seen from the demonstrations, whether they're blocking hospitals, attacking synagogues, blocking roads, preventing G7 leaders from speaking, is that we can have a small minority of people.

00:42:34.580 And as long as they're loud, they can have a bigger impact than 10 million people who are quiet.

00:42:39.960 And I think this is perhaps the most chilling thing is that 100 loud people can have a greater voice than 10 million quiet people.

00:42:46.100 And this should be really the the message for all of us is to say, you know, we I read on Twitter and acts and the comments and people are angry and they're upset.

00:42:54.660 And they're saying, listen, even if we don't all have the same view here, how dare you try to, you know, you see the polls showing the liberals 15, 20 points ahead.

00:43:02.640 People are upset. People are angry. But rather than identifying and addressing the issues that are of concern to Canadians, we have this kind of politics of division and people can be upset.

00:43:14.420 But ultimately, unless we speak out and we demand better from elected officials, from the news media, who then give unflattering, pardon me, flattering coverage to this kind of content, ultimately, we're going to see more of the same.

00:43:26.580 The silent majority at some point needs to become the vocal majority.

00:43:29.920 Otherwise, it really doesn't matter what the majority think.

00:43:33.560 I'd be remiss to not ask you as well, Robert, about this La Presse cartoon this morning that was published.

00:43:40.560 I don't even want to put the image up, but it depicted, you know, look, editorial cartoons are never flattering.

00:43:46.840 We know that. But this depicted Netanyahu as a bloodsucking vampire, which is itself an old anti-Semitic trope here.

00:43:55.960 And I believe they've pulled the cartoon, but only sort of in the face of backlash here.

00:44:01.280 But my goodness, I mean, you'd never see this level of stereotype in a cartoon on any other group in Canadian media.

00:44:08.960 No, and nor should you. I mean, this cartoon, of course, borrowed from the 1922 silent German film, which extremely anti-Semitic, certainly in commentators today, depicted Jews as, first of all, as a stereotypical, you know, hook-nosed Jew, depicted Jews as being carriers of disease, as bloodsuckers of virtuous young Christian children. 0.52

00:44:33.240 And, of course, this is imagery that was gladly and enthusiastically then mimicked and taken by the Nazis. 0.64

00:44:39.700 So it's not only that we had this columnist decide to use this imagery, A,

00:44:45.500 then he uses it to depict perhaps the most famous or the most prominent Jew in the world,

00:44:51.160 the prime minister of the world's only Jewish state.

00:44:53.280 That's crazy enough.

00:44:54.800 But then at what point did the leadership of La Presse, a prominent French-language newspaper,

00:45:01.000 see no problem with this whatsoever?

00:45:02.560 So at best case scenario, we have here profound ignorance, which honestly beggars belief is how these people were in journalism at all.

00:45:10.920 That's one. And that's best case scenario. Worst case scenario was the embrace of vocal Nazi like right caricature of Jews. 0.52

00:45:19.680 I mean, it's just it's obscene here and it's akin to sort of describing, you know, any other group with the kind of cartoons that we would expect, you know, would remain in the dustbin of history.

00:45:31.360 And so it's great that they've removed it. But honestly, it's like whack-a-mole here. And I think the more that we see the legitimization of anti-Semitism or really the excusal of it, when politicians stay quiet, news media organizations stay quiet, it becomes normalized, it becomes excused.

00:45:47.020 And it becomes really normalized because those who seek to propagate this kind of stuff become emboldened, whether it's putting out anti-Semitic cartoons, whether it's blocking roads, synagogues, highway overpasses, or whether it's passing legislation or motions in the House of Commons, which are a one-sided defamation of a democratic country, all while downplaying really a genocidal Islamic terrorist organization. 0.55

00:46:12.320 So I think that we as a society, you know, we hear from our prime minister that this isn't who Canadians are, but ultimately we're seeing that that's exactly what Canadians are and what Canada is.

00:46:21.620 And I think that it's high time. Five months ago was high time.

00:46:24.500 But now that the silent majority speak out and really say absolutely no more.

00:46:28.920 This absolutely cannot continue a day longer.

00:46:31.820 Very well said. Robert Walker, Associate Director of Honest Reporting Canada.

00:46:35.720 Thank you for coming on.

00:46:37.140 Thanks, Andrew.

00:46:38.080 Thank you. That does it for us for today.

00:46:40.600 We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show to close out the week.

00:46:44.880 This is True North.

00:46:45.880 Thank you.

00:46:46.360 God bless and good day to you all.

00:46:49.180 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Vaughn Show.

00:46:51.500 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:47:10.600 We'll be right back.

00:47:40.600 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 20, 2024

Poilievre pushes non-confidence motion in Trudeau over carbon tax

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