Juno News - Policing the Police State

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.840 Coming up, Ontario police say no to a police state, the perils of the COVID-0 strategy, and the media's war on social conservatives.

00:00:23.280 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:26.840 Welcome to the Andrew Lawton Show. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:00:35.160 Tuesday, April 20th, 2021. 420, as the kids say, or at least as the kids said when I was a kid.

00:00:42.000 I think there was a distant version of me that would have been snickering at the idea of doing a 420 show.

00:00:47.220 But alas, here we are. No snickers to be had, not in the province of Ontario at least, in which the police fought back against the police state.

00:00:56.840 This is a very good narrative to emerge when police are finding that the enforcement powers that are being heaped upon them by the province are just too much and they don't want to play ball.

00:01:06.940 It all started on Friday with this announcement.

00:01:10.080 We have made the difficult but necessary decision to give police and by-law officers special authorities to enforce public health measures for the duration of the stay-at-home order.

00:01:21.960 Special authorities, hmm? Well, what might those special authorities be, Premier?

00:01:26.040 Here's Solicitor General Sylvia Jones.

00:01:28.420 As a government, it is our responsibility to take action to address non-compliance and prevent further transmission of COVID-19.

00:01:37.140 That is why, after consulting with public health experts, we have made the deliberate decision to temporarily enhance police officers' authority for the duration of the stay-at-home order.

00:01:48.620 Moving forward, police will have the authority to require any individual who is not in a place of residence to, first, provide their purpose for not being at home and provide their home address.

00:02:02.860 Police will also have the authority to stop a vehicle, to inquire about an individual's reason for leaving their residence.

00:02:10.300 So the Ontario government's antidote to COVID-19, warrantless detention, baseless questions, fishing expeditions, demanding people tell the law enforcers why they dare to be outside their homes.

00:02:24.260 Now, this adoption of a police state is not something that the police asked for, nor is it something the police wanted.

00:02:31.900 And this was something on Friday I saw starting to break down.

00:02:36.260 I think the very first was the Waterloo Regional Police, which is a large police agency across the region in southwestern Ontario, Waterloo, Kitchener area, etc.

00:02:46.180 And they came out and said, we have no interest in doing random stops.

00:02:50.300 We have no intention of doing random stops.

00:02:52.400 And this started a cascade throughout multiple police agencies, big and small, in Ontario.

00:02:58.880 The London Police Service, the York Regional Police Service, Halton Police Service, all of these other regional and municipal police departments.

00:03:06.960 Whereas on Saturday morning, I woke up and I saw a few of these and I said, you know what, let me try to put these into a list.

00:03:14.040 And I did.

00:03:14.680 I actually got a list of every single one of the 44 municipal and regional police departments in Ontario, every one of them.

00:03:21.860 And I started finding their tweets and when they didn't have a public statement, I went to their websites.

00:03:27.280 And when they didn't have anything there, I reached out to the chiefs myself, emailed them and said, what are you going to do?

00:03:32.760 And by Saturday evening, 42 of 44 had said, we are not going to do this.

00:03:41.120 42 of 44, almost every single one said, we have no intention of doing random stops.

00:03:46.700 Our goal is education.

00:03:48.460 We only use enforcement as a last resort.

00:03:52.060 A lot of them were saying that, listen, we respond to complaints.

00:03:55.000 We are not going to be proactively questioning people.

00:03:58.300 They did the right thing.

00:03:59.720 And by Sunday, the province had backtracked.

00:04:03.500 They said they were going to, quote, refocus, unquote.

00:04:08.180 And under the amended regulation, which they put into effect Saturday evening, they said, OK, law enforcement will only be able to stop people

00:04:15.320 if they have a reasonable grounds to suspect that someone has attended an illegal gathering.

00:04:21.400 Now, I would say that's not great, but it's better than presumption of guilt if someone is outside their homes,

00:04:27.840 which is what that initial enforcement mentality communicated and conveyed to people.

00:04:32.380 And I should say, by Sunday morning, the remaining two, the Chatham-Kent Police Service and the Deep River Police Service,

00:04:39.260 one in southwestern Ontario, the other in eastern Ontario, had put out their own statements saying that they weren't going to do it either.

00:04:45.440 Now, they were kind of a day late and a dollar short, but small town police departments, I guess,

00:04:49.760 didn't have people working on the weekend to respond to these sorts of queries.

00:04:53.500 But when all was said and done, 44 of 44 municipal and regional police departments said to the government,

00:05:00.640 no, we are not going to be your police state enforcers.

00:05:05.020 Only one police, and by the way, there were also First Nations police on top of that that similarly said it,

00:05:10.440 like RAMA and Six Nations police.

00:05:12.920 Only one police agency in the province said, we're going to go along with this.

00:05:17.180 And that was the Ontario Provincial Police, the OPP.

00:05:20.840 But even then, by Sunday, the OPP had backtracked and said, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do this.

00:05:26.260 Don't worry, we're not doing any random stops.

00:05:28.380 And what I've heard is that the OPP was actually dealing with concerns within its own ranks of frontline officers.

00:05:35.700 I had a few email me that were saying, listen, this is not what we are going to do in our local detachments.

00:05:43.120 So the OPP very quickly found itself with no legitimacy as the government found itself with no legitimacy.

00:05:50.040 But even with this, the government has not acknowledged it was wrong.

00:05:55.220 I don't know if you heard that clip closely from Sylvia Jones, the Solicitor General,

00:06:00.040 but what she said is that this came about from public health advice.

00:06:05.100 What about legal advice?

00:06:06.240 You're the Solicitor General.

00:06:07.440 Did you get any input from law enforcement?

00:06:09.760 Did you get any input from a constitutional lawyer?

00:06:12.180 Did you at all run it by a lawyer to think, hey, you know, maybe this might not be something that's legal or constitutional?

00:06:19.460 And at the very least, did you think for a moment about the message this would send to people?

00:06:25.280 The message this would send to people in Ontario that on one hand, you're saying, get out, go for a walk, get exercise.

00:06:30.820 But on the other hand, police can stop anyone for no reason and say, why are you out of home?

00:06:36.560 And they would have to prove that they are out of home for a state permitted reason.

00:06:42.680 This is disgusting. 0.69

00:06:44.720 This is absolutely disgusting. 0.96

00:06:46.500 It's not just Ontario, by the way.

00:06:48.320 British Columbia, even after seeing this colossal screw up in Ontario, has done the same thing.

00:06:54.220 British Columbia now has inter-provincial travel restrictions and also intra-provincial travel within British Columbia is now very much challenged.

00:07:05.100 You cannot book a campsite in an area of BC that is different from the one in which you live.

00:07:11.280 You cannot book a hotel room in an area of BC which is different than the one in which you live.

00:07:17.600 If you're in Vancouver and you want to go to Victoria for the weekend, you are not allowed to do that.

00:07:22.380 If you want to go camping, which in this day and age is actually one of the safest activities for someone to engage in,

00:07:30.340 an outdoor activity in the wilderness, away from people, socially distanced.

00:07:34.380 Unless the bears are giving you COVID, you're probably fine.

00:07:37.240 But if the bear is close enough to give you COVID, you're probably...

00:07:40.060 The bear speaking moistly is not your biggest problem.

00:07:42.800 And no longer is camping allowed unless you're doing it, you know, in your backyard, basically.

00:07:46.840 So hotels, campsites, they all have to refund anyone if they're not from that particular health authority.

00:07:56.160 And also BC ferries will not allow bookings from campers and trailers.

00:08:01.020 So they're trying to keep people indoors in their own homes.

00:08:04.080 They're also restricting travel within the province.

00:08:06.880 There are going to be roadside checkpoints.

00:08:08.860 Now, Premier Horgan tried to make it out as though this is no big deal.

00:08:14.060 That these roadside checkpoints challenging people as to why they're out of their homes.

00:08:17.960 Ah, they're just like, you know, the ride programs for impaired driving at Christmas.

00:08:21.660 This is what he said.

00:08:22.800 There will be a fine if you're traveling outside of your area without a legitimate reason.

00:08:28.000 So now driving around within your own province, in your own car, is something that will get you fined.

00:08:35.400 But he said, oh, that's just what we do.

00:08:37.460 It's just like, you know, these just like these impaired driving stops we do around the holidays.

00:08:42.720 So the presumption is of guilt.

00:08:46.020 And now there are going to be border signs up along the BC Alberta border telling you that

00:08:52.020 you're only allowed to go in if you have an essential reason.

00:08:54.620 If you want to book a hotel in BC and you are from outside of British Columbia, good luck.

00:08:59.680 You better find some PO box that you can use as your address.

00:09:03.260 And this is what's happening in a country whose constitution, by the way, guarantees mobility

00:09:08.220 rights.

00:09:09.720 So I hope that British Columbia will find a similar pseudo mutiny on its hands from police agencies

00:09:16.040 saying that they have no interest in becoming police state enforcers.

00:09:20.240 But in Ontario, there was no admission, even with this reversal of any sort of wrongdoing.

00:09:26.680 Paul Calandra, who's the Ontario government's house leader, came out on Monday and said, no,

00:09:30.980 no, no, this was just a communications problem.

00:09:33.700 Yeah, you know, we made a mistake in the sense that we didn't communicate what we were doing

00:09:37.720 well.

00:09:38.240 I read the order.

00:09:39.300 I heard Sylvia Jones.

00:09:40.500 She communicated herself abundantly clearly.

00:09:43.480 She wanted police to be able to stop and harass people for no reason apart from them being

00:09:49.920 outside of their houses.

00:09:53.360 And anyone who thinks that this was just a mistake of comms need only listen to the snitch

00:10:00.040 culture that the Ontario government is similarly unleashing in this province.

00:10:05.720 From the same press conference on Friday, here is Solicitor General Sylvia Jones responding

00:10:11.140 to a reporter's question about whether people should snitch on their neighbours.

00:10:17.020 In terms of people calling to snitch, to inform, look, we all have a personal responsibility.

00:10:26.940 And I would hope that the vast majority of us would take that personal responsibility seriously.

00:10:32.480 When we see the ICU numbers rise, I would hope that people would take a second thought and

00:10:39.980 consider their neighbours, consider those health care workers who have been working

00:10:44.060 incredibly hard over the past 12 years.

00:10:47.180 I'm never going to encourage people to inundate the by-law enforcement or police departments

00:10:54.980 with calls.

00:10:56.100 But if it means saving lives, then I think we have to think about what your social

00:11:02.480 responsibilities are as an individual to make sure that you don't empower other people

00:11:08.920 and invite a whole bunch of individuals to your home.

00:11:12.240 Her only concern is that it might overburden government phone lines. 0.83

00:11:17.000 That's the only concern.

00:11:18.440 You know, if it can save a life, go wild, snitch on your mom, your dad, your sister, your

00:11:22.280 kids, your dog, do whatever you want.

00:11:24.340 But space your calls out throughout the day.

00:11:26.700 Don't do it all at once.

00:11:27.800 That might just overburden the government's phone lines. 0.98

00:11:30.920 Apart from that, have at it.

00:11:32.960 If it can save a life.

00:11:34.400 This is the COVID zero idea we'll talk about very shortly with Anthony Fury.

00:11:39.160 This idea that we need to do anything and everything we can, irrespective of the consequences

00:11:43.880 on the economy, on civil liberties, on personal well-being, on police powers, on division of

00:11:49.780 power.

00:11:50.400 Do anything and everything if it can just help one person.

00:11:53.680 But this is not helping anyone.

00:11:55.880 I can assure you the restrictions that Ontario put in beyond the police powers involve shutting

00:12:02.080 down playgrounds, shutting down outdoor recreation, which we know to be safe, ordering people in

00:12:07.960 regions that are not causing any problems to stay at home and not have even a couple of

00:12:15.100 friends over to their backyard, and shutting down Ontario's provincial border.

00:12:21.120 Again, I mentioned mobility rights, a longstanding constitutional reality.

00:12:25.160 And more importantly, a longstanding tradition in Canada of free movement within provinces.

00:12:30.020 But now, border checkpoints up at the Ontario-Manitoba border, at the Ontario-Quebec border.

00:12:35.780 The day this went into effect on Monday, we had backups, I read in one report, of 10 kilometers.

00:12:43.680 10 kilometers long.

00:12:45.660 Ottawa and Gatineau, which are essentially part of the same city in terms of people going back and

00:12:50.920 forth living on both sides, office buildings on both sides, all of a sudden have police

00:12:55.340 checkpoints on the bridge for people who are going to work to have to prove that they're

00:12:59.820 going for an essential reason.

00:13:01.940 And let me tell you, there's no reason to go into Gatineau at all, unless it's an essential

00:13:06.360 reason.

00:13:06.840 Ottawa is a little bit better.

00:13:07.980 People might want to flee Gatineau.

00:13:09.240 But the reality is, this did not save anyone.

00:13:14.200 I read one story that said at one of these checkpoints over the course of several hours,

00:13:17.900 police had turned away four cars.

00:13:19.560 That was it.

00:13:20.220 Four cars.

00:13:21.460 So everyone's needlessly inconvenienced, delayed for kilometers and kilometers, backups.

00:13:26.280 Think of the impact on climate, by the way.

00:13:28.460 Maybe this is the appeal I should be doing.

00:13:30.260 I should be calling up the environment minister and saying, hey, you know what?

00:13:33.200 All these people idling while they go through police checkpoints.

00:13:35.480 That's got to be bad for climate change.

00:13:37.500 Maybe that'll be the way.

00:13:38.720 Use the left's language against what are big government status policies here.

00:13:43.900 And this is coming from Doug Ford's conservative government.

00:13:46.980 The BC shutdown is coming from BC's NDP government.

00:13:50.760 No longer is the shutdown mindset a left-right issue, if ever it was one.

00:13:57.080 This is beyond that.

00:13:58.740 This is beyond politics and ideology and political identity.

00:14:01.820 The fault lines here are basically about big government versus freedom for citizens.

00:14:09.120 And that latter group is becoming more and more elusive in pretty much all areas of the

00:14:15.640 government and public health apparatchiks response to this, which is why it's so important

00:14:20.140 to expose this for what it is.

00:14:22.300 I want to talk about this a bit more with my colleague, True North contributor and Toronto

00:14:27.180 Sun columnist and op-ed editor, Anthony Fury.

00:14:30.360 Anthony, good to talk to you.

00:14:31.320 Thanks for coming on today.

00:14:32.880 Great to be here, Andrew.

00:14:33.860 Now, you made an observation that I thought was a very unique one.

00:14:37.720 We're not hearing it from a lot of people in the media, which was that Ontarians didn't

00:14:41.920 just rebuke this expanded law enforcement power, but more broadly, they pushed back against

00:14:47.940 this COVID zero narrative.

00:14:49.660 Explain what you mean by that.

00:14:51.560 Yeah, I don't think they actively did that.

00:14:53.500 They didn't know they were doing that, but kind of implicitly through them rejecting all

00:14:58.760 of these outdoor restrictions, playground closures, and this basic idea that you have

00:15:04.040 to stay at home regardless of the activity you're doing, regardless of what you're getting

00:15:09.180 up to.

00:15:09.440 They said, no, we don't care for that.

00:15:11.320 We're reasonable people.

00:15:12.500 We want to flatten the curve or, you know, all those buzzwords we've been hearing.

00:15:16.400 Okay, we're up for that.

00:15:17.880 But hold on a second.

00:15:18.780 These activities that we know have nothing to do with spread.

00:15:22.060 Why exactly are you forcing that upon us? 0.93

00:15:25.000 This is ridiculous.

00:15:26.080 And there's an important distinction, clarification to be made here, Andrew, in that a lot of 0.70

00:15:29.840 people think that what the Ford government is trying to do now is combat locations and

00:15:34.180 activities that cause spread.

00:15:35.420 That is not what they are doing.

00:15:37.320 If you look at the latest Ontario Science Table PDF that was at the last presentation,

00:15:41.600 there are multiple pages on that slide deck that talk about bringing down mobility data.

00:15:46.180 So they are just obsessed with the idea, Andrew, that how we deal with coronavirus isn't micro-targeting

00:15:52.700 the locations causing spread, but just to force everyone to stay at home, to give fewer

00:15:57.640 reasons for the Google Analytics chart, which tells you how much people are driving around

00:16:03.380 because they have anonymized cell phone data, and bringing that down.

00:16:07.260 And there's even a table for recreation, meaning how much people are sort of going out and about

00:16:12.200 in the parks and hanging out there, and they want to bring it all down.

00:16:14.720 And that is consistent with this COVID zero ideology.

00:16:18.300 We got to get to zero cases by any means possible.

00:16:21.520 Places like New Zealand, Andrew, which have actually closed the parks multiple times as

00:16:26.100 recently as just last month.

00:16:27.640 They thought coronavirus was gone in New Zealand.

00:16:30.180 No, they still closed the parks, the playgrounds, last month.

00:16:33.280 That's an important point because I've had even from people that I would say are ostensibly

00:16:37.400 on the right pushback when I criticize lockdowns because they say, you know, if we just did

00:16:42.000 an Australia or New Zealand style lockdown, a short but harsh one, we would beat it.

00:16:48.340 But you're right to point out that those jurisdictions haven't beaten it.

00:16:53.060 Yeah.

00:16:53.500 I mean, one of the things that I always say is I find it really, really bizarre.

00:16:58.260 I mean, it flabbergasts me that we're in the 21st century.

00:17:00.520 There's so many really credentialed, bright minds in Ontario that we're privileged to have here.

00:17:04.840 We're told we live in the age of analytics, of big data.

00:17:07.700 It's a multi-billion dollar industry.

00:17:09.840 And you're telling me big data can't be used to actually deal with these problems here.

00:17:14.420 We can micro-target, you know, ad buys for particular products, but we can't micro-target

00:17:19.280 the data coming out of public health.

00:17:21.900 Instead, we have this, quite frankly, really, really, the basic approach to coronavirus right

00:17:27.300 now from COVID zero is, well, this virus spreads from person to person.

00:17:31.060 So let's make it illegal for people to be near people.

00:17:34.640 Look, if someone had put that on their public health final exam, the very people, the professors

00:17:40.180 advocating for this right now, they would have failed those students two years ago.

00:17:45.000 But it's no joke.

00:17:46.040 This has never been a part of public health literature.

00:17:48.560 Infectious diseases physicians who don't support lockdowns have made this very clear to me.

00:17:52.700 It's not in any of the plans that Dr. Teresa Tam signed off on as late as 2018 about how

00:17:57.940 to deal with this.

00:17:58.540 I mean, lockdowns are actually not a traditional public health protocol.

00:18:03.300 Yeah, you're right about that.

00:18:04.440 And it's interesting how of the many shifts, even this is one that we've seen from the World

00:18:09.440 Health Organization, which has said, no, no, no, lockdowns are not something that we like.

00:18:13.760 And that's the one area where the governments have decided they're not going to defer to this.

00:18:18.020 But this COVID zero idea is also a complete inversion of that stated goal of just make

00:18:25.540 it so that we if we do have harsh cases, we have hospital capacity, we can get our ducks

00:18:30.540 in a row, the the flatten the curve line from what, 13 months ago.

00:18:34.160 And now it's you're right, moving more and more towards this idea that we need to do everything

00:18:39.020 and anything we can until there are zero cases.

00:18:41.920 And what is so bizarre is at the same time, if you ask those very COVID zero advocates,

00:18:47.200 hey, is coronavirus becoming an endemic illness, meaning it's just kind of here to stay for

00:18:52.400 the rest of our natural lives, hopefully at a much sort of lower level and hopefully much

00:18:56.640 fewer deaths every year, they will all agree.

00:18:58.860 Yes, except one of the latest COVID zero documents that a lot of these people were co-signatories

00:19:03.780 on the very doctors who are on television saying shut her down.

00:19:06.860 But oh, no, we didn't mean the playgrounds.

00:19:08.500 We didn't mean the outdoor sports, those very documents, not only do they call for the New

00:19:12.240 Zealand model, which does involve playground shutdowns, they also call for continual suppression 0.82

00:19:17.400 of the virus, meaning various restrictions and lockdown measures until Canada gets to

00:19:21.940 40 cases per day.

00:19:24.460 That's actually in this Canadian shield document that COVID zero advocates they liked and they

00:19:29.360 co-signed it 40 cases per day.

00:19:31.300 They came up with that because it's one case per million, 40 cases per day with a country

00:19:36.940 with a border as long as ours, not an island nation like Taiwan and New Zealand, when it's

00:19:42.160 an endemic illness that we're also admitting we will never get rid of in our natural lives.

00:19:46.740 I mean, it's crazy talk is really what we can call COVID zero. 0.94

00:19:50.840 It is total junk science.

00:19:53.540 Explain to me what's happening with Doug Ford's legitimacy as a leader right now, because one 0.96

00:19:59.160 thing I saw on Friday was that a lot of the criticism that he was getting was from the

00:20:05.720 right and the left.

00:20:06.860 I was not seeing any real defense of the Ontario police measures.

00:20:11.180 Now, the province has since backtracked a little bit on that.

00:20:14.180 But as you know, they've not admitted wrongdoing.

00:20:16.760 And even the language they used was not, you know, we got it wrong.

00:20:20.120 They said, no, no, no.

00:20:20.920 They were going to, quote, refocus, unquote, the powers.

00:20:24.820 Paul Calandri yesterday gave a little bit more.

00:20:27.340 But even then, he said, no, no, no.

00:20:28.420 It was just a communications problem.

00:20:30.420 What's happening here?

00:20:32.240 Well, when you ask what's going on with Doug Ford's legitimacy, I mean, nothing's going

00:20:35.720 on with it.

00:20:36.140 There is no legitimacy right now.

00:20:37.700 They announced these measures on Friday.

00:20:39.820 A lot of people were immediately outraged, closed down the playgrounds, randomly stopped

00:20:43.660 me.

00:20:43.820 And then by the weekend, you had most police forces in Ontario saying, we ain't doing those

00:20:49.320 random stops.

00:20:49.980 I was bicycling around downtown and I saw all the new rules that are enacted.

00:20:53.940 And there's a lot.

00:20:55.140 Yes, the playgrounds were shut down, but picnic tables are still banned.

00:20:58.620 You can't sit on those.

00:20:59.700 You can't play catch with a friend in a park.

00:21:02.200 That is illegal.

00:21:02.780 All you can do is walk through parks and so forth.

00:21:04.780 I can tell you, traveling through the streets of Toronto, nobody was following those rules.

00:21:09.680 Some of them because they probably said, I'm going to do civil disobedience.

00:21:12.900 Others because they don't listen to this stuff anymore.

00:21:15.040 They don't care.

00:21:16.080 They've tuned it out.

00:21:16.760 And then you've had mayors like Patrick Brown and Brampton, the mayor of Aurora and others

00:21:20.020 who have openly said these need to be repealed.

00:21:23.140 So there's a major legitimacy problem.

00:21:25.160 They've got to get these laws off the books because you can't have a society in which these

00:21:29.640 laws are just everybody's kind of mocking them.

00:21:33.520 Nobody's following them.

00:21:34.480 Because if they think they have a problem on their hands now, well, if we're asking what's

00:21:38.820 the point of these laws, why should we follow them?

00:21:41.020 There's going to be a cascading effect.

00:21:42.740 I guarantee you more and more rule breaking is going to happen because of that.

00:21:46.860 And the government's put themselves in a very dangerous situation where their legitimacy

00:21:50.700 is collapsing right now.

00:21:51.860 Yeah, and you're right that that then makes it very difficult for people to go along with

00:21:56.660 advice or guidance that may actually be rooted in science if they're so used to stuff that

00:22:01.360 is not.

00:22:02.140 And the playground ban, I think, is a very real thing.

00:22:05.460 I don't want to make it just about the symbolism.

00:22:07.740 But symbolically, it also, I think, does reveal the government has just completely abandoned

00:22:13.140 that idea of linking science with the guidance.

00:22:16.160 And when you mentioned it at the beginning of our discussion that it's not about targeting

00:22:20.360 where transmission is occurring, parks, I'm not aware of any outbreaks there.

00:22:24.860 And then for Minister Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier Christine Elliott, to say that people

00:22:29.240 not wearing masks at parks is part of the reason for spread.

00:22:33.860 Whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:22:34.700 Like, where's the evidence?

00:22:37.180 Yeah, it's absolutely shocking that they would go out and say numerous factually incorrect things

00:22:41.960 during that press conference, which I think really frustrated people.

00:22:44.880 I mean, are there anomalous examples of outdoor spread in the literature?

00:22:48.500 Sure.

00:22:48.880 One of my favorite lines in one of those studies is that most examples of outdoor spread have

00:22:53.020 an indoor component to them.

00:22:54.600 And you're like, what?

00:22:55.240 What does that mean?

00:22:55.840 So there's an outdoor barbecue.

00:22:57.260 And then, well, people decide to take it indoors to get some beer from the beer fridge,

00:23:00.780 hang in inside in a close space for 20 minutes.

00:23:04.400 Oh, OK.

00:23:04.780 So outdoor spread just wasn't outdoor spread.

00:23:07.060 It was actually indoor spread.

00:23:08.820 It's basically not really a thing that's happening.

00:23:11.940 And yet here we have all these restrictions on outdoor activities.

00:23:15.620 It's if the people of Ontario want to say that's unacceptable, we got to get this rolled

00:23:19.380 back.

00:23:19.820 Well, they're already hearing from other mayors who are saying just that.

00:23:23.400 Anthony Fury is an op-ed editor and columnist at the Toronto Sun and my colleague here at

00:23:27.860 True North.

00:23:28.380 Anthony, always a pleasure.

00:23:29.300 Thanks for coming on.

00:23:31.020 Likewise.

00:23:31.440 Thanks.

00:23:32.240 Unreal.

00:23:32.760 And if you're not following Anthony already, please do.

00:23:35.480 He's doing lots of great work at True North at the Toronto Sun.

00:23:38.000 And he has great observations on Twitter all the time.

00:23:41.100 He mentioned briefly the mobility data that the government uses from Google.

00:23:46.440 And it's not tracking people in the sense of, you know, oh, Andrew went to the convenience

00:23:51.200 store or something like that.

00:23:52.420 It is anonymized.

00:23:53.560 Google does provide it.

00:23:54.940 But here's the thing about the mobility data.

00:23:57.420 It does not distinguish between legitimate essential movement and non-essential movement.

00:24:05.460 And this was something I learned a few months back.

00:24:08.400 I think it was in January that I was working on this.

00:24:10.620 Actually, no, it was December.

00:24:12.140 Because in December, Doug Ford had made a comment about people that are coming in from

00:24:16.780 the U.S. and not quarantining.

00:24:18.580 And he was calling for harsher restrictions from the federal government.

00:24:21.800 This was around the time that the province was for the first time trying to scapegoat the

00:24:26.020 federal government.

00:24:26.980 And I was desperately trying to get from the premier's office an acknowledgement of what this

00:24:32.160 data were, of what these data were rather.

00:24:35.460 And where they were getting them from and what they were actually saying.

00:24:39.900 And they wouldn't provide anything.

00:24:41.860 And eventually they conceded that they were using anonymized Google mobility data.

00:24:47.020 But the problem is these data do not show people who are exempt from quarantine because

00:24:53.900 they are essential cross-border workers, truck drivers, versus people who have just skipped

00:24:59.480 into the country.

00:25:00.200 And have decided they're going to float their quarantine.

00:25:02.640 So the data are actually useless in that way.

00:25:05.640 Same as right now.

00:25:06.640 If they're looking at mobility data as being the problem, people are moving around.

00:25:11.040 Well, how do you know these people are not essential workers?

00:25:13.560 How do you know these people are not, even in the government's eyes, having a reason for

00:25:18.720 being out in the world that the government approves?

00:25:20.960 Which, in and of itself, is a rather chilling and Orwellian statement.

00:25:24.960 So anytime you hear talk about mobility as being the problem, know that it actually means

00:25:30.240 nothing.

00:25:30.720 It's people going out.

00:25:31.920 It's people going around.

00:25:33.200 But a lot of those people may have, even under the government's restricted approach,

00:25:37.160 a right to be doing it.

00:25:38.640 Although I would say, under the Constitution, everyone does.

00:25:41.700 We've got to take a quick break.

00:25:43.100 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:25:46.280 Stay with me.

00:25:48.660 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:56.860 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:59.040 I want to talk about what Peter McKay called the stinking albatross around Andrew Scheer's

00:26:06.240 neck, which is social conservatives in the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:26:09.820 This rhetoric was echoed by Conrad Yakabuski in a Globe and Mail column in which he says

00:26:15.920 that like clockwork, the Tory stalking species known as the stinking albatross returns to

00:26:22.460 Canada each election season after wintering in warmer climes where the culture wars occur

00:26:28.360 year round.

00:26:29.540 He is taking aim at Kathy Wagenthal, a Conservative MP, who introduced a private member's bill that

00:26:36.380 would ban sex-selective abortion, which is basically abortion that is decided for the

00:26:41.960 sole basis of someone not wanting to deliver a child of a particular gender, almost exclusively

00:26:48.360 because people do not want daughters for various cultural reasons, all of which are rooted in

00:26:54.360 a very misogynistic view that females are less worthy of living than males.

00:26:59.300 And in doing so, she has, and by the way, Kathy Wagenthal has always been a very reliable

00:27:06.020 pro-life member of Parliament.

00:27:08.520 She's never equivocated on this position.

00:27:11.080 She's always been very transparent, and her voters in her riding have rewarded her by re-electing

00:27:15.980 her time and time again.

00:27:17.720 And she's decided that she wants to take aim at this problem, which we know is happening.

00:27:21.800 There's not a lot of research on it, but it does very much occur.

00:27:25.220 And I am, as a pro-life person, slightly concerned with sex-selective abortion restrictions for

00:27:34.520 two reasons.

00:27:35.740 The chief among them is that it tends to mask the problem.

00:27:40.060 If you believe that abortion is wrong because it takes a life, it shouldn't matter what the

00:27:44.820 motivation is for it.

00:27:46.360 The reason I say that is because a bill like this makes it seem as though the intent is the

00:27:51.380 problem more than the actual outcome.

00:27:54.220 The other part of it is that I feel that, and this one is something I'm of two minds on,

00:28:00.260 frankly, it almost is more of a political push towards pro-life policy than anything else.

00:28:07.840 And the reason for that is because it may well be effective.

00:28:10.280 There are lots of people in Canada who are pro-choice.

00:28:13.600 They would identify as pro-choice, but when it comes down to it, they would oppose sex-selective

00:28:18.320 abortion.

00:28:19.000 So bills like this tend to appeal to those people.

00:28:22.020 But in a lot of ways, I almost feel that they mask.

00:28:24.880 Again, if you feel abortion is wrong, they mask what is wrong for reasons that have nothing 0.83

00:28:30.200 to do with intent.

00:28:31.660 So it ties into the reason I already mentioned.

00:28:34.520 But at the same time, I don't want to question Kathy Wagenthal's motive.

00:28:38.640 She's been a tireless advocate on this file.

00:28:41.280 She believes what she believes.

00:28:42.440 But it's interesting that now, the existence of a pro-life MP in Aaron O'Toole's conservative

00:28:50.420 party is all it takes for the mainstream media to say, oh, well, Aaron O'Toole's got that

00:28:56.500 hidden social conservative agenda.

00:28:58.940 I mean, look at this story.

00:29:00.180 Look at the photo used for the story.

00:29:01.620 It's a photo of Aaron O'Toole.

00:29:03.020 The entire analysis is based on this idea that Kathy Wagenthal's bill is that stinking 1.00

00:29:07.860 albatross around Aaron O'Toole's neck.

00:29:09.680 And a lot of the critics of Andrew Scheer, of Aaron O'Toole, of Stephen Harper, they're

00:29:15.060 not good faith critics of this.

00:29:17.720 They don't actually care about whether the leader is pro-life, whether the party will

00:29:22.800 officially back any policy that's pro-life.

00:29:25.360 They don't want pro-lifers to exist in Canada at all.

00:29:29.180 And they don't, therefore, want any pro-life politicians to exist.

00:29:33.900 And Aaron O'Toole, who literally said in no uncertain terms, I'm pro-choice.

00:29:38.500 I believe in abortion rights.

00:29:39.740 I've always believed in that.

00:29:41.160 Here's when and why I started believing in that.

00:29:43.580 Here's how long I've believed in it.

00:29:45.280 I'm not going to do anything.

00:29:46.520 And he's still getting hit with story. 0.55

00:29:47.960 Oh, well, you know, the stinking albatross is back because an MP from, I think, Saskatchewan

00:29:52.840 introduced a private member's bill, which, by the way, most Canadians, even those ardently

00:29:57.940 pro-choice, would agree with.

00:29:59.780 So this is why conservatives should never play by the left's rules, should never play

00:30:07.180 by the mainstream media's rules, should never play on their terrain.

00:30:11.160 And this is true whether you're talking about a carbon tax, as we were last week.

00:30:14.780 And it's certainly true when you're talking about social policy.

00:30:18.200 This is what he writes.

00:30:18.940 Eventually, a future conservative leader must understand that playing to the SOCONs is a

00:30:24.340 losing strategy, period.

00:30:26.260 It might help you win a leadership race, but it will leave you with a stinking albatross 0.98

00:30:29.760 around your neck of which no amount of flowery perfume can disguise the stench.

00:30:35.940 This is the mainstream media's characterization of people who value life.

00:30:41.160 And one of the things that I found interesting is that pro-life candidates that seek the conservative

00:30:46.880 leadership, whether we're talking about Leslie Lewis or Derek Sloan, they didn't say they

00:30:51.660 expect it to be a socially conservative party.

00:30:54.660 They wanted a party that simply respects that social conservatives are in it.

00:30:59.100 And if the liberals were authentic about representing Canadians, they would recognize that they

00:31:04.320 preside over a country that has social conservatives in it.

00:31:08.460 So whatever the group is, and again, statistics tend to be a little bit tricky on this.

00:31:13.600 My friend Scott Hayward of RightNow has done tremendous work at trying to really look at

00:31:18.960 genuine public opinion on this.

00:31:20.820 And he points out that 82% of Quebecers support restricting sex-selective abortion and 67% of

00:31:28.080 Quebecers support legally restricting late-term abortion.

00:31:31.740 And that's just one recent example.

00:31:33.860 84% of Canadians support legally restricting sex-selective abortion.

00:31:38.460 And 70% of Canadians support legally restricting late-term abortion.

00:31:43.400 This is very valid, up-to-date polling that suggests the mainstream media position, the liberal

00:31:49.240 government's position, the elite narrative is distinct from what ordinary Canadians think

00:31:55.440 and feel.

00:31:56.860 And you may think, okay, well, the conservatives still have to win over people by getting their

00:32:02.280 message out through the mainstream media.

00:32:04.100 Sure.

00:32:04.300 But I do want to believe, and perhaps this is an overly romantic notion, that voters reward

00:32:09.860 authenticity.

00:32:12.180 And when Andrew Scheer couldn't give a very clear position on abortion, which was, well,

00:32:17.740 I'm, you know, yes, I'm pro-life, but, you know, I know I won't touch it.

00:32:21.160 And I mean, but my member, like, no one knew, even pro-lifers had no idea what he was saying.

00:32:25.920 Whereas Aaron O'Toole has given a tremendously clear position on it.

00:32:28.960 And the mainstream media coverage is identical.

00:32:31.700 He's clearly pro-choice and the media coverage is, oh, well, yeah, those stinking albatross, 0.99

00:32:35.880 stench pro-life people, they're dirty, smelly people, you know, no party wants them. 0.99

00:32:40.480 That's really what Conrad Yakubowski is saying. 0.97

00:32:42.740 By taking Peter McKay's metaphor and just extending it beyond which, beyond the point at which any

00:32:49.520 metaphor should be extended and still keep its original meaning.

00:32:52.700 So what we have happening here is the beginning of the age-old conservative dilemma of feeling

00:33:00.780 like their problem is not being conservative enough.

00:33:04.280 And I'm not trying to preach to anyone right now on social issues, whether you're watching

00:33:08.820 and you're pro-life, pro-choice, doesn't matter to me.

00:33:12.120 But understand that the conservative movement in Canada has people who believe this.

00:33:17.740 And as we see from party conventions and internal races like nominations and leaderships, there

00:33:22.820 may be more social conservatives than non-social conservatives in the conservative party.

00:33:27.360 But at the very least, it's not a fringe group.

00:33:30.600 And if you look at national polling, it's not even a fringe group in Canada itself.

00:33:34.820 It is just painted as fringe by the people that believe they have a monopoly on which ideas

00:33:40.880 are worth discussing and which ones are not.

00:33:43.680 That does it for me for today.

00:33:45.300 Before I wrap things up on this show, I want to tell you about an event I am participating

00:33:50.120 in tomorrow.

00:33:51.220 That is April 21st at 7.30 p.m.

00:33:54.380 Eastern Time.

00:33:55.080 A panel, Lockdown, Censorship, Big Tech, Free Speech, and Radical Gender Ideology.

00:34:00.680 That is a lot to pack into a 90-minute panel.

00:34:03.420 And we've got fantastic panelists, Barbara Kay and Salim Ansour and, well, then just me.

00:34:08.760 But it'll be a lot of fun.

00:34:09.720 And Serena Singh, who's been a tremendous advocate for free speech and open debate, is

00:34:15.540 moderating and hosting this.

00:34:17.440 And I interviewed her a couple of years back, and it was a great chat we had.

00:34:21.040 So this is going to be a great panel tomorrow night.

00:34:23.320 Glad to be a part of it.

00:34:24.260 It's going to be on Zoom.

00:34:25.120 So wherever you are, you can tune in online.

00:34:28.080 But do make sure to register in advance.

00:34:30.180 And the details are on the screen right there in front of you.

00:34:33.440 My thanks to all of you for tuning in.

00:34:35.180 We will talk to you in a couple of days with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:34:39.680 Thank you.

00:34:40.140 God bless.

00:34:40.700 And good day to you all.

00:34:41.940 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:34:43.960 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - April 20, 2021

Policing the Police State

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