Juno News - Police never asked Trudeau for the Emergencies Act

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.360 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.

00:00:10.480 Coming up, police didn't want the Emergencies Act, but you know who did?

00:00:14.000 Justin Trudeau, plus the malignant alliance between big government and big tech and survivors of socialism.

00:00:21.140 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:24.860 Hello and welcome to another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:29.520 This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on TrueNorth.

00:00:32.600 What day is it today? I have no idea now because we're getting into the summer months.

00:00:37.020 They're nearing anyway.

00:00:38.500 Wednesday, May 18th, 2022.

00:00:41.340 Hope you are all having a wonderful week.

00:00:43.720 I know we're doing things on a little bit of a different schedule this week,

00:00:46.120 but I am able to tell you why that is today.

00:00:49.260 A bit of an exciting day or exciting week because this week on Friday,

00:00:53.760 I am off to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum annual meeting.

00:01:00.980 Now, before you tune out, I have not been invited.

00:01:03.600 In fact, the World Economic Forum has gone through painstaking lengths

00:01:07.440 to prevent independent journalists like me from going to cover what's happening at the upcoming meeting.

00:01:14.360 And to be honest, if you know me, you know I'm a little bit stubborn and that has probably made me want to go more.

00:01:21.280 So I'm going to just take a step back here and explain a little bit of why this is.

00:01:25.680 So I get messages all the time, emails nonstop about the World Economic Forum, about the WEF.

00:01:32.100 Every little while, a video from Klaus Schwab, the chairman and founder of the WEF, will circulate

00:01:38.340 saying creepy things like how he's penetrated so much of the Canadian cabinet and politicians around the world.

00:01:45.540 And then you get clips from people like Justin Trudeau explaining how it's all about the Great Reset

00:01:51.040 or the need to reset and all of these things.

00:01:53.640 And all of the stuff that is coming out here tends to be dismissed as conspiracy theory.

00:02:02.100 And the problem with this is that if you read the World Economic Forum's own language,

00:02:07.040 they make it abundantly clear what it is they want, what it is they want to do,

00:02:11.340 and less so how they want to get there.

00:02:13.520 But to some extent, they're transparent about that.

00:02:15.860 So I think there are people that have very conspiratorial views of the World Economic Forum.

00:02:21.100 But I think that for the most part, the grievances that you can raise about them are using their own words,

00:02:26.340 the ideas that they put forward.

00:02:28.000 And more importantly, all of the politicians who, by their own admission,

00:02:31.860 are hitching themselves to these things.

00:02:34.340 When I went to cover the World Economic Forum's meeting in January 2022,

00:02:38.800 I didn't actually have to go anywhere because the meeting took place online.

00:02:43.260 And what happened is some of the sessions were public.

00:02:46.660 Anyone could watch them.

00:02:47.740 Others were behind closed doors, including one with Health Minister Patty Hajdu,

00:02:52.520 where as a Canadian taxpayer, I actually couldn't see her talking about,

00:02:56.240 I think the panel was cross-border mobility.

00:02:59.320 That seems like a bit of a problem.

00:03:01.040 Maybe she wasn't talking about anything of substance.

00:03:03.440 Maybe she was. 0.97

00:03:04.700 But you have politicians that go to this conference and all of a sudden are putting their thoughts and ideas,

00:03:10.260 and perhaps their government's thoughts and ideas, behind closed doors.

00:03:14.280 So for all that the World Economic Forum says, it's not a secretive organization.

00:03:18.080 It is an organization that prides itself on being the place where discussions happen,

00:03:22.620 the place where things happen, and when they're having it in the mountains of Switzerland,

00:03:26.760 most people who are going to be affected by these decisions and these discussions

00:03:31.160 don't actually have the ability to be there for it.

00:03:34.860 So we decided at True North months ago that we were going to cover this,

00:03:38.380 and because of COVID, it's taken a little bit of time for them to actually have another in-person meeting,

00:03:43.420 and the next one they have is scheduled for next week.

00:03:46.460 So I'm getting there a couple days early to get my bearings.

00:03:50.060 And again, this is not about feeding into conspiracy.

00:03:53.420 It's actually about shining a light on what it is the World Economic Forum actually wants to do,

00:03:59.240 and how it will affect Canada, how it will affect the Western world.

00:04:03.240 And I just want to, to this point, explain a little bit about what they're promising for this event.

00:04:07.660 Again, in their own words.

00:04:09.660 They have a number of themes set out.

00:04:11.260 You can see it on their website here.

00:04:12.360 Climate and nature, fairer economies, tech and innovation, jobs and skills, better business,

00:04:18.360 health and healthcare, global cooperation, society and equity.

00:04:22.840 And again, all of these things, for the most part, sound pretty innocuous.

00:04:26.580 They sound pretty benign.

00:04:28.060 You click on one of them like, oh, I don't know, society and equity here,

00:04:31.480 and you see that all of the things they talk about,

00:04:34.760 systemic oppression of people of color, a widening gender gap, social injustice,

00:04:39.620 these are all the things that they're putting up as the backdrop.

00:04:43.160 But here's the interesting thing.

00:04:44.920 They promote these ideas along the lines of which of the United Nations sustainable development goals

00:04:52.560 they think discussions about these ideas will fulfill.

00:04:55.980 So a lot of these global institutions, they're not discrete entities that exist

00:05:00.240 without a huge amount of overlap.

00:05:02.880 So UN priorities form the backbone for the World Economic Forum,

00:05:07.260 which is technically a private sector group,

00:05:09.480 but it gets all of this fawning and adoration from governments, including from Canada.

00:05:14.260 And so far, we don't know what the Canadian delegation, if anything, is going to be.

00:05:18.960 And that's one of the reasons I want to be on the ground.

00:05:21.220 Who's there from Canada?

00:05:22.760 What are they talking about?

00:05:24.580 And I mentioned a moment ago that the World Economic Forum doesn't want us there.

00:05:28.380 Well, when they announced this date, I happened to be at my computer,

00:05:31.860 and immediately, like that second, I went and said I got to book a hotel.

00:05:35.800 Well, and didn't I find that every hotel for a considerable radius

00:05:39.700 had already been booked up before they even announced it?

00:05:42.740 Because anytime they announced the forum,

00:05:44.820 before they announced it, have all of the hotels under their control.

00:05:48.200 So you can't actually stay there unless you go through them

00:05:51.520 and you book through their accommodations platform,

00:05:53.820 which you can't do if you're not a registered attendee.

00:05:57.160 So I said, okay, great.

00:05:58.400 Let's just start and look at Airbnb.

00:06:00.740 So I looked at an Airbnb.

00:06:01.800 Airbnb, and Airbnb has, in a lot of cases, this process where you have to request a room,

00:06:08.020 and then they have to approve your reservation.

00:06:10.120 And I would request it, it would be turned down.

00:06:12.260 I requested it, it would be turned down.

00:06:13.960 There were a couple of bookings that I actually got, secured bookings.

00:06:17.460 And then after I booked them, they got canceled by the host.

00:06:21.320 And one of them was very transparent with me because he said,

00:06:24.100 listen, the World Economic Forum, I have a contract with them

00:06:27.720 that whenever they say they want it, I have to give it over to them.

00:06:31.920 And if I don't rent them my own home,

00:06:34.940 they have very steep penalties that they'll heap on me.

00:06:38.340 So I don't think the World Economic Forum was specifically saying,

00:06:41.400 oh, we heard Andrew Lawton booked an Airbnb and we don't want him there.

00:06:44.640 But I do think what the World Economic Forum does

00:06:47.100 is they try to take over the whole town,

00:06:49.700 which can accommodate far more people than they bring in, as I understand it.

00:06:53.360 But they try to take over the whole town and the neighboring towns

00:06:56.220 for the sole purpose of making sure that only those they want there are there.

00:07:02.180 And they have a portal on which you can apply for accreditation as media.

00:07:06.480 But only those who are given a password,

00:07:09.000 only a select invited group can even apply for accreditation.

00:07:14.120 And I asked a number of times over the last few months for that password.

00:07:17.900 I said, I don't even, I'm not even looking for a guarantee of accreditation.

00:07:21.380 I want you to give me the chance to seek accreditation.

00:07:24.620 I want you to let me ask you and not a single response.

00:07:29.100 So this is, I think, very important.

00:07:30.940 So people have asked me,

00:07:32.140 because we sent out an email to our subscribers yesterday,

00:07:34.720 telling them that, hey, we're going to cover this thing.

00:07:36.880 And people said, well, if you're not accredited, why are you going?

00:07:39.420 And that is a very fair question.

00:07:41.720 As you know, if you've been following me for a while,

00:07:44.080 you know I've covered things that I haven't been invited to in the past.

00:07:47.200 And you can get crafty with it.

00:07:48.700 And I'm not talking about doing anything illegal,

00:07:50.260 but you start to find other ways to figure out what's happening.

00:07:53.500 And in some cases,

00:07:54.320 reporting on who's going in and coming out of a meeting is a value.

00:07:58.400 In other cases, these things are not actually all that closed off.

00:08:02.080 Once they get there,

00:08:02.820 they're just trying to scare people away from doing exactly what I'm doing.

00:08:06.960 And in other cases, it's talking to the people in these communities.

00:08:09.940 What do they think about when this group comes to town?

00:08:12.560 So I don't exactly know what the coverage is going to look like,

00:08:15.940 because this is going to be a very fluid situation.

00:08:18.160 But the whole point is, is that there's a story here,

00:08:21.020 and a lot of people don't want to talk about it.

00:08:23.100 And we are unafraid to talk about it.

00:08:24.900 So that's going to be what's coming up next week.

00:08:27.660 As I said, I'm going to be going up on Friday,

00:08:29.920 but I'll be there by next week.

00:08:31.880 And I don't know what, again, like I said,

00:08:33.620 I don't know if I'll be able to do whole shows,

00:08:35.100 or if I'll do video reports, or written content.

00:08:37.840 Again, you'll have to bear with us as we try to navigate through this.

00:08:40.680 But certainly, and maybe I'll get a one-on-one with Klaus Schwab.

00:08:43.680 You never know.

00:08:44.480 That would be absolutely wonderful.

00:08:46.280 So thanks to all of you who have supported that coverage.

00:08:48.960 And I will say, it is expensive.

00:08:51.180 And again, I know it sounds like,

00:08:52.880 oh, you're sending Andrew Lawton to Europe.

00:08:54.200 This is not a vacation.

00:08:55.540 This is going to be very busy.

00:08:56.880 It always is.

00:08:57.700 If you want to chip in to support our coverage, please do.

00:09:00.860 You can do that at donate.tnc.news.

00:09:04.080 And we are trying to keep costs down.

00:09:05.600 I'm going alone.

00:09:06.200 I'm not going with a cameraman or anything like that.

00:09:08.740 I'm going alone.

00:09:09.680 Just me, my phone, my microphone, and my tenacity.

00:09:13.960 I don't know if you can quantify that, but we will do our best.

00:09:18.340 Just shifting gears into the actual news of the day here.

00:09:20.880 I want to talk about the Emergencies Act.

00:09:23.300 Because the Emergencies Act is the gift that keeps on giving.

00:09:26.320 Not if you're a Canadian who likes freedom,

00:09:28.180 but as far as taxpayer interests are concerned.

00:09:31.040 Because this is the government's attempt to do an end run around civil liberties.

00:09:36.320 And we were told, the government told us, that we need to invoke the Emergencies Act

00:09:42.020 because those truckers have brought the country to its knees.

00:09:44.840 They've brought the city of Ottawa to its knees.

00:09:46.640 And police don't have enough resources to do it.

00:09:50.340 And this never had what we call the ring of truth.

00:09:53.360 It never had the ring of truth.

00:09:54.620 Because obviously, obviously, obviously, obviously,

00:09:58.620 what was happening was the government was looking at this and saying,

00:10:03.120 okay, we need to get out of this.

00:10:05.320 We need to stop this because it's making us look really, really, really bad.

00:10:09.720 The border blockades had already been cleared up without the use of the Emergencies Act.

00:10:14.400 But government said, no, no, no.

00:10:15.880 Law enforcement needs us to give them extra resources.

00:10:19.500 Well, then we have these admissions this week.

00:10:22.720 First, from the RCMP.

00:10:24.900 Commissioner Lucky, we've heard multiple times from ministers and others

00:10:28.280 that the Emergency Act and the tools provided were specifically requested by police leadership.

00:10:34.580 As a law enforcement agency with primacy for national security,

00:10:38.160 did you ask the government or representatives for the invocation of the Emergencies Act?

00:10:44.560 No, there was never a question of requesting the Emergency Act.

00:10:48.540 There was a question that we consulted with.

00:10:49.400 Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I'm sorry.

00:10:51.900 So you never asked for it.

00:10:53.260 Do you know of any other police leadership that asked specifically the government for the invocation?

00:10:59.680 No, we actually reached out to various police agencies

00:11:02.220 when there was talk about some of the authorities within that they were proposing.

00:11:06.540 And, of course, we were consulted because we were the ones who would be using those authorities.

00:11:11.480 So we were consulted to see if they would be of any use to police in the context of the Freedom Convoy.

00:11:18.600 Okay.

00:11:19.220 I mean, yeah, that's just the RCMP saying they didn't ask for the Emergencies Act.

00:11:22.940 I mean, we know it was Ottawa police.

00:11:24.940 It was the Ottawa police service that was really in charge.

00:11:27.180 So maybe the Ottawa police asked for the Emergencies Act.

00:11:30.920 One final question.

00:11:31.780 Did the Ottawa police make a request to the federal government to invoke the Emergencies Measures Act?

00:11:36.400 Yes or no?

00:11:37.300 So we were involved in conversations with our partners and with the political ministries.

00:11:44.800 We didn't make a direct request for the Emergencies Act.

00:11:49.040 Oh, no.

00:11:49.860 Okay.

00:11:50.220 So if the RCMP didn't, the Ottawa police didn't, maybe the OPP did, but that doesn't really make sense because they weren't in charge here.

00:11:58.340 So maybe it's that no one asked for it.

00:12:01.280 Maybe it's that no police asked for the Emergencies Act and Justin Trudeau just wanted to do it.

00:12:07.800 The Trudeau government just wanted this power for themselves.

00:12:11.340 It wasn't about capitulating to police.

00:12:13.420 And by the way, even if police had asked for it, that doesn't mean it would have been a right to give it.

00:12:17.500 But in this case, no one asked for it, it seems like.

00:12:20.080 Maybe this is why Justin Trudeau's government doesn't want to access, doesn't want to hand over its cabinet documents and its cabinet records to the independent inquiry.

00:12:29.880 Because they'll see that perhaps this process emerged and emanated entirely from cabinet without law enforcement requesting it when law enforcement was always the government's shield.

00:12:41.100 It was always the body that government was using to say, oh, no, no, no, we're doing this for them.

00:12:45.920 We don't want to do this.

00:12:47.360 It's a last resort.

00:12:48.240 Well, if police didn't ask for it, maybe it wasn't actually a last resort.

00:12:55.100 Now, I can't give you the definitive answer as to why the government wanted to do it.

00:12:59.940 I think that, again, it was making them look bad.

00:13:02.320 I also think they wanted to just go after the truckers where it hurt.

00:13:05.800 And it was the Emergencies Act that allowed them to bring in this absolutely insane and Orwellian financial regime that froze hundreds of bank accounts and protected banks from any liability for doing this.

00:13:20.060 So, again, it was this malignant alliance between government and big banks that Canadians are still paying for.

00:13:26.960 Peter Sean Taylor had a great piece in the C2C Journal about this called Frozen, how Canada's banks betrayed their customers during the Emergencies Act.

00:13:36.200 And I should just apologize in advance.

00:13:38.000 There's a bit of construction going on around my house, so there might be a bit of background noise.

00:13:42.560 I apologize to the audience and to Peter for this, but nonetheless, we'll try to get through it.

00:13:47.280 Peter, it's good to talk to you.

00:13:48.440 Thanks for coming on today.

00:13:49.960 My pleasure.

00:13:50.400 Thanks for having me.

00:13:51.060 I was mentioning earlier, just to set the stage here, that, you know, it's easy to blame the government, and I think justifiably so for the Emergencies Act.

00:13:58.800 But as you note in your column here, the government wasn't really forcing banks to do things.

00:14:04.760 The big problem was that it was giving them this tremendously wide latitude to do what they wanted.

00:14:10.360 Well, I don't know if they weren't forcing them.

00:14:12.580 I think the banks thought they were forced to freeze the accounts.

00:14:18.580 I think the real issue, if you want to blame the banks, and I think there's lots of blame to go around with the Emergencies Act, is that they never pushed back.

00:14:25.900 It's more a sin of a mission here.

00:14:27.880 They dutifully did what the government said they had to do.

00:14:31.440 The government even kind of said it in sort of cloaked terms, and the banks kind of went along with it.

00:14:38.080 But, you know, if we're making a chart here, certainly the federal government is the most to blame for how the Emergencies Act played out.

00:14:47.240 And I think the banks let their customers down, and probably let Canada down, by not pushing back against what we now see as some real flaws in the application of the Emergencies Act.

00:15:01.200 I mean, I don't think they took the reins, but they never stood up for their customers in the way I think, certainly their marketing suggests they do.

00:15:13.160 You know, if you watch bank ads, you know, they love their customers, and, you know, they want you to feel comfortable leaving your money with them.

00:15:21.240 And that is their job, right?

00:15:22.700 They hold other people's money.

00:15:25.500 And I think that's where they let down both their customers and the country.

00:15:29.940 Yeah, I think you're right about that.

00:15:31.500 And one thing I would point out, too, is that for a lot of people, they had a tremendous amount of lacking confidence in banks and in traditional banking through this.

00:15:40.760 And I think a lot of that might have been bluster online.

00:15:42.900 But there were talks, and I certainly heard anecdotally from people, that said, yeah, they want to take their money out of the banks.

00:15:47.660 They just don't trust it, knowing what can happen with this.

00:15:51.280 Yeah, it was a big surprise to a lot of customers.

00:15:53.780 The banks haven't really admitted that, if it was a fact.

00:16:00.840 What was interesting about the Finance Committee hearings at the House of Commons was both the banks showed up and also the credit unions.

00:16:08.900 And the credit union association told a very different story from the banks when asked about, you know, how did your customers react to this news that all of a sudden your accounts could be frozen?

00:16:20.220 And the credit unions said that there was widespread panic, that some of their clients, customers took out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:16:29.280 They said a couple of people took out millions of dollars.

00:16:31.820 So there was there was a lot of concern among credit union customers about this new power.

00:16:38.700 And so it's it's kind of strange then to hear the bank say, no, it was no big deal.

00:16:44.460 You know, we didn't really notice much.

00:16:45.780 No, no material change is what they said there.

00:16:49.140 You know, you could make an argument that credit union customers are completely different species from bank customers.

00:16:54.540 But I don't I don't know that I buy that.

00:16:56.920 I think those are their their competitors in a lot of people's minds.

00:17:00.080 And I would be very surprised if a bank customer was was that different from a credit union customer in terms of finding out this new power that the government and their financial institution had to to freeze their accounts.

00:17:13.180 Yeah. And I mean, certainly for corporate banking and investors and the really big accounts, the big ticket customers, there might be a difference.

00:17:21.920 But I think for, you know, Joe or Jane Smith, who just has their banking account at the neighborhood institution, whether it's a bank or a credit union, I'd agree.

00:17:29.500 They're probably very similar in this.

00:17:31.120 And there were a lot of people that I don't think knew it was as easy as it was ultimately for government and banks to just flip the switch.

00:17:38.180 And I mean, we talk about this in a tech context with cancel culture.

00:17:40.980 But but in a banking context, I mean, you could, again, just overnight in this case, without even a criminal charge, let alone a conviction, have your account frozen.

00:17:49.560 Well, without a court order at all.

00:17:52.840 And no ability to sue, no recourse.

00:17:55.340 No, nothing. No due process at all.

00:17:58.160 I don't think it was many.

00:18:00.300 I think every Canadian was surprised to find out how easy their financial life could be put out of reach.

00:18:10.740 So, yeah, a big surprise, big, big surprise.

00:18:14.260 And and I think that the disappointment here is, as I said at the start, is that the banks never pushed back.

00:18:21.320 And you mentioned my column in C2C Journal.

00:18:24.020 I look at a case in 2014 where the cell phone companies were put in a similar situation.

00:18:31.420 Law enforcement came.

00:18:32.740 They said, we want you to do this.

00:18:35.580 It was a production order for cell phone data that would have essentially they were trying to solve this jewelry robbery ring.

00:18:43.960 But basically, they wanted cell phone data on thousands and thousands of customers from dozens of cell phone towers in Peel region near Toronto.

00:18:54.920 And to their credit, Tellus and Rogers said, no, this makes us uncomfortable.

00:18:58.480 This is a violation of our customers' privacy rights.

00:19:01.660 And they went to court and they won.

00:19:03.860 They won.

00:19:04.380 And then it was found that this production order was unconstitutional.

00:19:09.940 And also the judge laid out a whole set of new rules that would henceforth prescribe these sorts of production orders by police.

00:19:20.200 So that's a case where a private business went to bat for their customers and won.

00:19:26.500 And the judge noted in that cell phone case that if Rogers and Tellus hadn't gone to court, probably no one would have.

00:19:34.060 Because you need, you know, a big legal budget to take on the government in this regard.

00:19:40.440 So my question is, where were the banks?

00:19:43.720 Where was the bank's legal budget?

00:19:45.720 There was no, there's not a peep.

00:19:47.980 They didn't ask for an injunction.

00:19:49.660 They didn't make any kind of public outcry.

00:19:52.900 They didn't question the legality of it.

00:19:55.060 They said the RCMP handed them this list.

00:19:58.120 And they said, well, we've got a legal obligation to do this.

00:20:00.620 And they went ahead and did it.

00:20:02.200 It wasn't their idea to freeze these accounts.

00:20:05.040 It was always the government and the RCMP.

00:20:07.680 But they never pushed back.

00:20:09.040 And you can see from other examples, like the cell phone company, sometimes companies do push back.

00:20:15.000 And their customers really depend on it because there's no one else to do that.

00:20:19.640 I know it's difficult to kind of infer or speculate definitively.

00:20:23.840 But do you have any idea why?

00:20:26.220 Because, again, companies have customers.

00:20:28.300 And I think customers would probably reward a company that was publicly and defiantly going to the mat to protect their privacy, protect their interests.

00:20:36.420 In this case, is it banks that don't want to be seen as defending the convoy?

00:20:40.480 Is it banks that are afraid of government regulating them if they don't just go along with what government does?

00:20:45.300 I mean, do you have any idea what would make them go along with this without publicly anyway putting up a fight?

00:20:51.600 Well, quite right.

00:20:52.680 And as I said, you know, their marketing efforts is always how much they love their customers.

00:20:57.580 As you say, you would have expected them, someone who's in the business of safeguarding other people's money, put up a bit of a fight.

00:21:04.100 I would switch my accounts over to a company that did that.

00:21:06.720 If there was one that stood out and said, we're not doing this, I would say, yep, that's where I'm going.

00:21:11.080 Yeah, so it's a great question.

00:21:14.180 Why did the banks go along with this?

00:21:17.040 You look at the lobbying data, you know, the banks are enormous.

00:21:20.760 They're very big, one among the biggest lobbyists in Ottawa in terms of how many times they make contact with the federal government,

00:21:27.920 how many registered lobbyists they have on their payroll.

00:21:31.540 If you ask me for my speculation, I think they've simply been captured by the federal government, right?

00:21:38.880 The Canadian banks have a very comfortable business model.

00:21:42.800 You know, they're protected from foreign competition in the retail sector, very lucrative.

00:21:48.480 They make lots of money and they depend on federal regulators have created this sort of business model for them

00:21:57.440 and they could make life very difficult for them if there were problems.

00:22:04.000 And so maybe the banks have just kind of lost sight of who they do serve.

00:22:10.120 Maybe they're thinking now they serve Ottawa in their regulatory masters rather than paying customers.

00:22:17.000 And I would just add that if that is the case, I don't have any proof for that, but it certainly seems to fit the narrative.

00:22:23.740 You know, the banks haven't been very well served by this loyalty.

00:22:28.920 I mean, they showed tremendous loyalty to Ottawa, right?

00:22:32.460 I mean, they didn't push back at all, not a peep.

00:22:35.560 And what do they get in return?

00:22:36.980 Well, the 2022 budget has a $6 billion in extra taxes on banks and life insurance companies.

00:22:44.100 So it's pretty much a slap in the face for being such a loyal servant.

00:22:48.740 But that may be the case.

00:22:50.900 They may simply see that they know where their bread is buttered.

00:22:54.880 And as long as they stay on the side of the federal government, life will continue to be good for the big banks.

00:23:01.520 Yeah, it could have been billions more if they didn't do it.

00:23:04.240 Well, it's hard to imagine, but who knows?

00:23:06.680 Yeah.

00:23:07.040 And you quoted Adam Chambers, the Conservative MP, as saying you just can't function in society without financial services.

00:23:13.220 And that's true.

00:23:14.380 And, you know, and again, these convoy organizers, when they were targeted, it wasn't just their checking account.

00:23:19.240 It was their savings account, their lines of credit, their credit cards.

00:23:22.620 You know, basically anything they had, if they had a joint account with a spouse, that was also frozen.

00:23:27.560 I mean, I heard just from some of the convoy organizers whose accounts were frozen about issues they had paying for medication for their children.

00:23:34.480 So, I mean, the consequences of this are very significant.

00:23:38.840 Yeah, and the numbers, you know, the Mounties and the feds will say it was only 257 accounts.

00:23:45.840 But it could have been.

00:23:47.080 It could have been.

00:23:48.080 That's exactly true.

00:23:49.600 Because if you look at the way that emergency order was written, it talks about anyone directly or indirectly supporting what is defined as an illegal activity.

00:24:01.540 So, you know, that apocryphal tale of, you know, someone who gave $20, they might not have had their accounts frozen, but they certainly could have.

00:24:11.220 Anyone who showed up on the RCMP's list, and, you know, the RCMP was the one who got to decide who goes on that list, anyone directly or indirectly connected could have had their accounts frozen.

00:24:23.860 So it's so, it was so broadly written, it may have been narrowly applied, but the possibility was there for, you know, a huge amount of damage done to thousands of people, not just hundreds.

00:24:37.800 Now, trying to look into the crystal ball here, Peter, do you think that the longer term implications of this will be now the cork has been popped?

00:24:44.880 So this is just a tool available with precedent, or do you think because of this, it will make people a lot more resistant in the future?

00:24:53.100 Well, I certainly hope, you know, what do I see and what do I hope?

00:24:56.880 Maybe two different things.

00:24:58.840 Yeah, that's my life.

00:24:59.840 I certainly hope that this will reveal to people this kind of dormant power that has been lying there that hasn't been used yet, and to mobilize, certainly all the hearings and inquiries that are being launched in Ottawa, and, you know, looking at the, you know, how convincing was the federal government's narrative about the necessity of the Emergencies Act, you know, all the things that are all sort of falling away as, as untruths about,

00:25:27.900 you know, arson, and whether the police requested it, or weapons, and, you know, all these sorts of things.

00:25:37.380 So, there's certainly a lot of scrutiny, and I think the government is going to be held to a much higher standard the next time it tries to do this, and I would hope that any government in the future thinks twice about it, and especially in the way it writes, like, that emergency order that, you know, was authorized under the

00:25:57.900 Emergencies Act, and that order was what directed the financial institutions to freeze accounts and stuff, and as we've just discussed, it was so broadly written, so I would hope that we would see much more specificity.

00:26:10.740 But this, this new threat of being frozen out of your entire digital financial life is so powerful, and everyone instantly recognizes how important your credit cards and everything is, so I certainly hope that people are sort of now aware of what's lying out there, and are going to demand much greater scrutiny in the future.

00:26:32.980 Yeah, and like anything, I always have to tell people, don't, don't view this just in the parameters of the circumstances here, and you may say, well, I don't like the truckers, there's no skin off my back, I don't care, it's the power itself that's matter, that matters here.

00:26:46.840 Oh, and we're saying, this is, this is the precedent for future use, right?

00:26:51.540 Yeah.

00:26:51.680 If this, if, if society says, well, that's, you know, if a bunch of people we don't like hunker down in a road somewhere, yeah.

00:27:00.920 Yeah, the next anti-oil blockade, oh, oh, let's, let's go after the Tides Foundation's bank account or whatever.

00:27:07.220 Interestingly, during the, you know, most of my research came out of this House of Commons Finance Committee hearings, and the head of the First Nations Assembly, Roseanne, I forget her last name.

00:27:21.680 She said, she said, you know, we're quite concerned, the Indigenous community uses crowdfunding to support their protests, very concerned about the ability to sanction, you know, how are we defining an illegal activity here?

00:27:40.520 So, not just one side of the political spectrum, I think everybody who might have a bone to pick with, with the status quo, now realizes that they, this nuclear option is there for them as well as, as their opponents.

00:27:59.800 It's a great piece over at the C2C Journal, Frozen, how Canada's banks betrayed their customers during the Emergencies Act.

00:28:06.800 Peter, Sean Taylor, great piece, and thanks so much for coming on today.

00:28:09.780 It was a pleasure, Andrew.

00:28:11.220 Peter, Sean Taylor, that was phenomenal.

00:28:13.340 And yeah, I think banks were the ones that had a tremendous failing here on their part.

00:28:18.680 And I go back to the weekend before Justin Trudeau announced the Emergencies Act, the knowledge that came out that Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, had been meeting with the CEOs of Canada's big banks.

00:28:32.060 I use the word plotting.

00:28:33.260 I mean, they were, yeah, they were plotting, clearly.

00:28:35.920 She was apparently asking them what they could do about this situation.

00:28:39.160 And I would, I mean, why do the banks care?

00:28:41.240 It doesn't matter to the banks.

00:28:42.260 If all this money is flowing through, they're making their money.

00:28:45.040 They're taking their cut.

00:28:46.020 I don't think they cared about what was happening in Ottawa.

00:28:50.080 But government told them they had to care.

00:28:52.760 And government told them, government, this body that can regulate them up the wazoo, is saying that, well, we think you should do this.

00:29:01.020 And you'll note when government gave this power, it technically didn't force the banks to do anything.

00:29:06.760 It just said, you can, you can.

00:29:09.160 And if you look at records, you know, it was police that were providing the lists of whose account to freeze to the banks.

00:29:16.620 And a lot of this has been filed in court records, will continue to come out.

00:29:20.660 It's that, it's like I've always said about big tech.

00:29:22.780 You can take issue with big tech.

00:29:24.340 You can take issue with big finance and all of this.

00:29:26.920 But the worst is when government is getting into bed with these entities.

00:29:30.980 That's when it is absolutely this just insane and insurmountable power that an ordinary citizen cannot go up against and come out from unscathed.

00:29:41.600 So I'm so glad Peter Sean Taylor wrote that.

00:29:44.240 I want to shift to a different topic here.

00:29:46.400 And you may think all of this is, as the C2C Journal says, an example of creeping authoritarianism.

00:29:51.580 And I'd say that there is a big, big, big, big wealth and trove of evidence supporting that.

00:29:57.820 There are people in this country who know what authoritarianism is, who know what dictatorships are,

00:30:03.200 all too well because they came to Canada to escape those.

00:30:07.300 They came to Canada to get out of that and to find freedom.

00:30:10.740 And a lot of the people that were supporting the Freedom Convoy, either in Ottawa or from home,

00:30:16.580 were people who came, a lot of them from Eastern Europe, a lot from Latin America,

00:30:20.580 people that had a very keen understanding of what it meant to be a citizen in a country where the state has the power.

00:30:28.440 The state is that fundamental building block of society rather than the individual.

00:30:34.680 And I was struck by a lot of these stories.

00:30:36.420 And I know that Rupa Subramania of the National Post did a great job talking to people.

00:30:41.700 A lot of them she included in her piece that she wrote for Barry Weiss's Substack.

00:30:46.020 But there was something clear there that Canadians, that all the Canadians saying,

00:30:50.740 oh, you know, what are these people complaining about, didn't really understand.

00:30:54.560 And that was something that I felt was, I think, missing from this.

00:30:58.420 Now, this is not related to the convoy,

00:31:00.320 but it is related to that broader trend of people in this country that fled communism,

00:31:04.960 that fled dictatorships, that fled unfree societies and the experiences that they're having in Canada.

00:31:12.580 And there was a great feature put together by our friends over at secondstreet.org delving into this.

00:31:17.900 The series is called Survivors of Socialism.

00:31:20.880 They interview people that have, as the title of the series would suggest, have survived socialism.

00:31:25.800 They've come to Canada because they think it's going to be better and freer.

00:31:29.160 And this is not saying Canada is a socialist dictatorship.

00:31:31.820 It's just pointing out what people who have lived through that feel when they see certain things happening here.

00:31:38.800 And I just personally think the convoy is a great example of that.

00:31:42.480 Joining me now from secondstreet.org is President Colin Craig.

00:31:46.540 Colin, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:31:49.360 Well, thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:31:51.160 So let's start off with the kind of the thrust behind the series here.

00:31:55.580 What is it you're trying to do with this Survivors of Socialism feature?

00:31:58.360 Yeah, there's two things, really.

00:32:01.080 One is we're always interested in public policy and sharing good ideas and, you know, shining a light on bad ideas.

00:32:07.820 And so one thing we thought that would be interesting was that just given that socialism and communism have had such a horrendous impact on countries around the world,

00:32:19.180 and many Canadians have come from those countries, we thought it'd be interesting to survey some Canadians who came from those countries to say,

00:32:26.000 are there any policies in Canada right now that concern you as they remind you of the countries that you fled?

00:32:31.960 And we really didn't know what to expect when we started the survey, but one thing we heard back was that a lot of people from those countries,

00:32:42.000 the top concern was efforts to restrict freedom of speech.

00:32:46.360 And I thought, oh, this is pretty interesting, because like I say, I didn't know where it was going to go,

00:32:49.280 but that was something that a lot of respondents raised was the most common response.

00:32:53.240 Many noted two pieces of legislation that were before the House of Commons in Ottawa prior to the last election.

00:33:01.260 That was Bill C-10 and C-36.

00:33:03.720 So that was the one part was to do that survey.

00:33:06.100 And the other part was to really talk, tell the stories of Canadians who have come from these countries

00:33:13.600 and let them share their experiences, because so often, you know, academics and university professors,

00:33:19.360 some politicians, some activists, they really paint socialism and communism with a nice bright flowery kind of light.

00:33:29.740 And obviously, they're not telling the full story.

00:33:32.220 So we thought, well, it's important to give a voice to people that have come from those nations

00:33:36.320 to learn more about what it was that they experienced.

00:33:39.880 I'm reticent to ask this, because I don't want anyone at all to think that I'm, you know, shilling for socialism here.

00:33:45.680 But is there a difference, in your view, between the broader economic socialism that you see in Scandinavia

00:33:53.480 or even in the NDP platform in Canada, in many cases,

00:33:56.760 and the political socialism that we associate with dictatorships?

00:34:00.580 Because they are in different categories, or are they just on one spectrum in the same, you know, just at different degrees?

00:34:08.500 Yeah, and it's an interesting topic, because I think when you talk to different people,

00:34:12.600 you'll get different definitions on socialism and communism, when I, when we think about sort of the historic cases,

00:34:19.280 when it comes to Scandinavia, I mean, those countries are not socialists, despite what people will try and say about them.

00:34:28.520 And in fact, Denmark's former Prime Minister was speaking at Harvard, and he made that point quite clearly.

00:34:35.500 He said, look, Denmark is not a socialist country.

00:34:38.620 It's a market economy. And if you think about it, one of the one of the key distinctions between a socialist country

00:34:45.300 and what we have here in Canada is, you know, people often talk about the means of production,

00:34:50.140 the factories, the farms, who owns them, who operates them, and in a socialist country, it's operated collectively,

00:34:57.140 usually by the government. And so obviously, in a country like Canada, that's, that's generally not the case.

00:35:03.740 We have some government programs and crown corporations operating different things.

00:35:07.920 But for the most part, we're a market economy. Scandinavian countries are the same.

00:35:13.160 In fact, they have, they have lower business taxes. And in many respects, they're more free than Canada.

00:35:20.080 But where they differ, is that they impose higher taxes on their citizens.

00:35:24.420 So the sales taxes are quite a bit higher, personal income taxes are higher, and that funds the social welfare state.

00:35:31.940 So it's, you know, if people want to say, well, let's copy Scandinavia, I mean, that's something they can say,

00:35:37.120 but it's incorrect to say that, let's copy them. They're a great example of socialism.

00:35:41.300 And in a lot of ways, that makes sense. Because if you're going to talk about a system, a government that controls a free enterprise,

00:35:49.520 it's not a big leap to control other aspects of what normally and what in a free country would be part of the private sphere.

00:35:56.740 And I mean, you mentioned speech at the beginning, that's a great example.

00:35:59.060 If government wants to control the free market to the point where it's not free, free, well, yeah,

00:36:05.160 why wouldn't they do that with the marketplace of ideas?

00:36:07.200 Yeah, well, that's what we've seen in true socialist and communist countries, is it's not just means of production that they control.

00:36:14.780 It's they own people's homes. You don't own your house. You live in a state-owned house or state-owned apartment building, whatever.

00:36:23.180 And then there's that clamping down on human rights. Democracy is usually quashed.

00:36:31.900 Or if there are elections, they're fake. You know, we talked to someone from the former USSR. 0.86

00:36:36.640 I said, oh, no, no, there were elections, but you could only choose from one candidate.

00:36:40.720 So it, you know, it's essentially a fake system.

00:36:44.560 We've talked to people who were thrown in jail for speaking out, speaking their mind.

00:36:49.900 We talked to a Venezuelan who, you know, talked about how he was put in jail for a few days

00:36:54.780 because he was trying to lead some protests and speak out against what the government was doing.

00:36:59.880 A lady from Cuba described how her friend there was doing similar activities and he was thrown in prison.

00:37:08.960 So there is that clamping down on freedom of speech and that.

00:37:13.100 And, you know, if you go back to the readings of Marx and Engels, I mean, they even talk about the need for violence to make the transition and then to uphold it.

00:37:23.080 So I think that's probably one of the main reasons why it's so common in these countries to have violence and restrict freedom of speech

00:37:30.760 because you want immense, immense, immense state control. You can't have any dissent.

00:37:35.020 The people that were raising alarms about things they see in Canada compared to things in the country they fled to get to Canada,

00:37:44.320 was the concern that they feel Canada is going down a road from which there is no coming back?

00:37:49.780 Or was it really just more frustration that they came to Canada thinking it was one country

00:37:55.160 and now the longer they're here, they're realizing that all these things they thought were great and free aren't actually as much?

00:38:02.660 Yeah, you know, that's a very good question.

00:38:04.160 I mean, there was there were some sort of some dark responses that felt that we were kind of heading down this road.

00:38:12.300 We weren't going to turn back. Things are going to get really bad.

00:38:15.720 And then I think on the whole, people recognize that right now in Canada, things are not like they are, say, in a country like Venezuela or Cuba.

00:38:23.860 Well, you know, even even China. Right.

00:38:27.000 It's not really a communist country anymore, but it's still authoritarian.

00:38:31.300 It's kept that that feature. But we're not like that.

00:38:34.760 We have more freedom of speech than what we have in those nations.

00:38:37.880 But a lot of people say it said that the country has changed over the past 20, 30 years

00:38:44.140 and that they don't have the same freedoms that they once had, but that it's still generally a free country.

00:38:50.020 Right. And I think that's so frustrating.

00:38:53.240 And I've always been inspired when I've heard from people oftentimes.

00:38:56.220 I mean, it used to be just based on demographics and ages, people from Eastern Europe that were among the most patriotic, freedom loving people you'd ever met because they had a very fresh and a very raw memory of what it was like living in a country that wasn't like that.

00:39:11.340 And it isn't just Eastern Europe.

00:39:12.480 You mentioned Cuba, one gentleman who's fairly well known in right of center circles in Canada, Marco Navarro.

00:39:18.520 He fled Nicaragua. And there's a great video of him on SecondStreet.org in this.

00:39:23.960 But it is often the case, I think, that people that understand what unfreedom is like are far more aware and far more conscientious about freedom.

00:39:32.300 In a way, I think a lot of native born Westerners aren't.

00:39:35.060 Yeah, I mean, that's a very good point. And that was something that we noticed in the research was that I think there really was the alarm bells were going off with the survey respondents more so than I think average everyday Canadians that had were born and raised here because they hadn't experienced, you know, where things could go.

00:39:57.340 And so these people that came from these countries were acutely aware of the need for freedom because they didn't want to lose anything that they've had since they've been here.

00:40:08.240 So that was an interesting point to see that. I mean, there were a lot of concerns raised with the pandemic and some of the restrictions that have been imposed because of it too.

00:40:18.840 And so, I mean, that's a different topic, which ones were warranted and which ones went too far.

00:40:24.040 But that was interesting to see just how sensitive people in the survey were to those those types of restrictions.

00:40:30.040 I've got to say, overall, the stories were really interesting.

00:40:34.280 They were not pleasant stories, but it was it was fascinating to to see what would happen in these different countries because we can't relate here in Canada.

00:40:42.340 We've never been a socialist or communist country.

00:40:44.540 We we haven't seen the type of oppression that these people have lived through.

00:40:49.140 I mean, one of the interesting stories was something that Boris Rassen shared with us about how living under the USSR, they ended up destroying cookbooks. 0.92

00:40:57.740 And the reason was, is that because under the Soviet Union, it was just such a disaster that there was such restrictions on food that they didn't want people opening up the cookbooks and seeing all these ingredients that their ancestors would have used.

00:41:14.540 Wow.

00:41:15.540 Because then they'd wonder, well, why don't we have access to those anymore?

00:41:19.140 And it would kind of pull back the curtain as to how incompetent that structure of government was.

00:41:25.940 I've told this story on my show before.

00:41:28.940 I was in 2019 in the UK for the media freedom conference or the global conference for media freedom that Canada and the UK were co-hosting.

00:41:37.440 And one of the things that I found so striking is how they were looking at all of these other countries around the world where I mean, obviously, if you're a journalist, you're taking your life into your own hands.

00:41:46.740 Some African dictatorships, even some countries in Asia.

00:41:50.740 And I was obviously sympathetic to those plights, but it was interesting how looking at places that are worse than you becomes a very convenient way to not look inward and to not be introspective.

00:42:02.740 And I think with what you're describing here about socialist and communist authoritarian countries, it's very similar.

00:42:08.740 Canada and Canadians would say, well, our country is not like Cuba, our country is not like Nicaragua, our country is not like China.

00:42:14.740 And you can say, well, no, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking very critically at things that you're doing that would be welcome in those countries.

00:42:21.740 Exactly. And that was something that was raised as a concern is that we have to defend the freedoms that we have.

00:42:27.740 We don't want to go down this road of allowing the government the ability to restrict freedom of speech and so forth.

00:42:34.740 So the respondents were very sensitive to that.

00:42:37.740 And, you know, I think part of going through these stories and talking to people and reading their survey responses, it makes me feel grateful for where I do live.

00:42:48.740 We do not live in those under the same type of aggressive regime that these many of these respondents came from.

00:42:55.740 But at the same time, there are concerns here and we should always strive to be better and improve our public policy environment and make sure that we defend freedom of speech so that we can have these good thoughtful discussions about things rather than just sort of closing in the walls and leading everyone to one potential solution.

00:43:15.740 From a policy perspective, what would the main takeaways be?

00:43:19.740 Because you're talking about not one or two specific things, but really a basket or a bundle of policies here.

00:43:25.740 So what would you want the takeaway to be if you were a lawmaker that had your report in front of them?

00:43:30.740 I think if I'm a lawmaker, the first thing that I would take note of is the importance of protecting freedom of speech.

00:43:36.740 You absolutely need that. That was the number one concern raised by survey respondents.

00:43:41.740 And if you don't have freedom of speech and you don't have that free flow of ideas and contrasting the pros and cons of different policies and ideas, then that's very concerning.

00:43:54.740 That would be number one.

00:43:56.740 I think another thing to take away and one of the reasons why we created this project was because, like I said, so often academics and some politicians and activists, they paint socialism and communism in a nice bright light, whereas it's been so troublesome.

00:44:14.740 I mean, there's been millions and millions of people that have died under these regimes.

00:44:18.740 There's six million Venezuelans right now that have left the country and something like the average Venezuelan has lost something like 20 pounds because of the lack of food.

00:44:28.740 The country's just in disarray since Hugo Chavez instituted his socialist paradise.

00:44:35.740 So the thing that we've done here and we're continuing to work on is creating a resource so that people can see and hear about the end results of this type of ideology.

00:44:49.740 So that hopefully we can avoid not just the clamping down on human rights and the restrictions on freedom of speech, but the centralization of government control when it comes to the means of production, running factories and farms and so forth, because it doesn't work.

00:45:04.740 And, you know, we talked briefly before about China.

00:45:06.740 It's an interesting case because of the past, whatever it is, 70 years, it's gone from this very collective society where lots of people were living in poverty and starving to today.

00:45:18.740 I mean, China's been such a much more successful economy and people are rising out of poverty because it's going in a different direction when it comes to the economy.

00:45:29.740 There's a lot more private property in China.

00:45:32.740 There's businesses that are driving that economy rather than the state.

00:45:36.740 So I think it's a good example of a success story that people need to be mindful of.

00:45:40.740 Yeah.

00:45:41.740 And I know that when you're talking about a report like this, obviously quantitative data is what we're used to seeing in things.

00:45:47.740 But I think the qualitative data here is so important because you're talking about people's stories that can't really be distilled into numbers.

00:45:54.740 So I'm glad you've done this in a way that actually has the stories and lets people see what it is that these people are saying, because I think it's so tremendous and it paints a very vivid portrait.

00:46:03.740 So I appreciate that.

00:46:05.740 The brief from secondstreet.org is Survivors of Socialism.

00:46:09.740 Very snappy title there.

00:46:10.740 Colin Craig joins me.

00:46:11.740 Colin, thanks so much.

00:46:12.740 Thanks for having me.

00:46:13.740 And if your listeners want to go and show their kids and teach them about these stories and that, all the videos and that, they're on our website, secondstreet.org slash socialism.

00:46:22.740 And if any of them ever come back with a Che Guevara t-shirt, you have my authorization to confiscate it from them.

00:46:28.740 Sounds good, Andrew.

00:46:29.740 Thanks a lot.

00:46:30.740 That was Colin Craig here on The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:46:33.740 That'll do it.

00:46:34.740 We will have more of The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show for you later this week.

00:46:39.740 Hope you have a great rest of the week regardless.

00:46:41.740 And we'll talk to you soon, folks.

00:46:42.740 This is True North.

00:46:43.740 Thank you.

00:46:44.740 God bless.

00:46:45.740 A good day to you all.

00:46:46.740 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:46:48.740 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 19, 2022

Police never asked Trudeau for the Emergencies Act

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