Juno News - Pride and Palestine protesters clash

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.660 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most reverent talk show this is the andrew lotton show

00:01:30.160 on i was about to okay i was about to get the name of the station wrong uh it's on true north i was

00:01:37.320 i did a podcast interview this morning with my old uh talk radio colleague craig needles and uh

00:01:43.640 sitting back behind the microphone it was uh very i brought back all sorts of nostalgia so i was

00:01:49.220 about to throw the name of the place that I haven't worked in six years. The place that fired

00:01:53.240 me, by the way. But True North has my back. True North has your back. It is great to have you aboard

00:01:58.900 the show. Thank you, by the way, to all of you who could launch for me. My new book, Pierre

00:02:07.440 Polyev, A Political Life, launched last week. We had events in Calgary and Toronto. I've got an

00:02:12.780 event this week in Ottawa. And I just found out in a couple of weeks' time, I have an event in

00:02:17.180 Winnipeg on June 20th. Now, this is a little bit bittersweet for me because I have never been to

00:02:24.740 Manitoba. I have been to every province in Confederation. I've even been to the Yukon

00:02:29.320 Territory, but I've never been to Manitoba. Again, I got PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,

00:02:34.280 Newfoundland, and Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia. I think

00:02:39.400 I got them all. So I've done all of those, have never done Manitoba. And one of my friends said,

00:02:45.380 you know what, you've gone this far in your life without going to Manitoba. On principle,

00:02:51.480 you should see how long you can go without going to Manitoba. Now, one of my colleagues has always

00:02:57.160 been demanding I go to Manitoba, which has made me want to entrench myself even more on the No

00:03:01.440 Manitoba. But I had a good offer. So I'm going to go and hopefully we'll have details about that

00:03:05.940 in the next little while as they are available. I just got the email that that's confirmed a minute

00:03:11.660 it before I went on air. So I don't actually know all the details yet. But regardless, it is great

00:03:15.960 to have you on the show. Another Monday, June 3rd. It is, if you care, speaking of Pierre Polyev,

00:03:21.420 A Political Life, available on Amazon and Indigo, it is Pierre Polyev's birthday. So if you care

00:03:26.620 about political birthdays, his is June 3rd and Justin Trudeau's is December 25th. So that might

00:03:32.540 be where he gets that Christ-like complex from having been born on Christmas Day. But we are

00:03:39.020 going to talk about all sorts of things on the program ahead i do want to begin by discussing

00:03:45.100 this rather bizarre devolving into chaos of pride events in winnipeg and philadelphia

00:03:54.060 on the weekend now i don't think speaking of winnipeg there we go winnipeg content it was

00:03:57.740 meant to be so winnipeg pride month or a pride season as they now call it has kicked off uh this

00:04:03.500 This is where we celebrate advances in gay rights.

00:04:06.420 We talk about all of these issues in a number of cases,

00:04:09.980 and companies will pretend to be all woke when General Dynamics, for example, 0.58

00:04:14.900 puts up the transgender flag while making tanks for Saudi Arabia. 0.97

00:04:18.820 So there's a little bit of what they call pinkwashing.

00:04:21.460 And this was the source of some of the issues raised against Winnipeg Pride

00:04:26.000 by activists in the Palestinian protest movement,

00:04:30.320 specifically self-identified queer Palestinian activists. Now, I don't know if they're queer

00:04:37.540 Palestinians or if they're queers who support Palestinian causes, but the reality is these

00:04:44.200 people believe that Pride Winnipeg doesn't go far enough. It's not doing enough to advance the woke

00:04:51.100 social justice cause. So what happened is this Pride event, which was by all accounts a unifying

00:04:57.480 event, it had police, it had locals, it had gays, it had allies, it had everyone, was blockaded by

00:05:03.620 people that had a number of demands. The demands were that they do things like divesting from any

00:05:09.240 company that supports the climate crisis, or I don't know what that has to do with Pride or

00:05:13.540 Palestine. They were calling on them to ban police, to boycott, basically to boycott any

00:05:20.100 so-called Zionists. So they don't want any Jews marching in Pride. That was basically what 0.96

00:05:25.600 happened there. Now, a very similar, although a bit more feisty development happened in Philadelphia

00:05:32.760 over the weekend as well, where you had in Philly pro-Palestine protesters clashing very violently

00:05:39.940 with some members of the pride community. Now, I don't know who's on whose side here. We have

00:05:46.280 two clips for you. This is how it ended. This is just like the Bear Street brawl that took place

00:05:52.160 in Philadelphia.

00:06:22.160 Now you see there, police are a little bit outmatched.

00:06:27.760 I don't know who's on whose side. 1.00

00:06:29.320 I don't know which of those are the queers for Palestine

00:06:32.080 and which of those are the gay pride protesters.

00:06:34.640 You get a little bit more clear delineation in this clip from Philadelphia.

00:06:52.160 forever

00:07:11.520 that was the before the second one we played was the after but no pride in genocide that's the

00:07:18.240 the slogan. So it's not enough just to celebrate gay rights. It's not enough to celebrate that you

00:07:22.480 have equal marriage. It's not enough to celebrate all of these different achievements in a liberty,

00:07:28.700 a liberal society. Instead, we have to go after, oh, well, I don't know, maybe the gays are fine, 1.00

00:07:36.900 but they aren't, not if they have Jews there. That's basically what these people are saying. 0.61

00:07:41.880 And by the way, I don't have to point out the obvious, but I will, that queers for Palestine, 0.97

00:07:46.720 Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is one of the most geopolitically devoid knowledge of geopolitics, 0.99

00:07:55.520 completely void of, there we go, I was bouncing around to it a few different words there, but

00:07:59.820 it is just so devoid of any knowledge of the geopolitics of the region and so devoid of any

00:08:05.260 knowledge of what life is like in Gaza. Now, I don't imagine that there is a pride parade in

00:08:12.740 Gaza. There certainly isn't in the West Bank. I know a couple of IDF soldiers did actually hoist

00:08:17.720 a rainbow flag when they invaded Gaza a couple of weeks back. The first time, I believe, that a pride

00:08:23.620 flag has been raised in Gaza. The reason I bring this up is because we have in this country a

00:08:30.200 tremendous problem when you have groups that are rowing in different directions. Now, it may be

00:08:35.400 easy to sit back and look at these people and say, oh, well, yeah, it's one left-wing group against

00:08:38.880 another left-wing group and just enjoy the fight but there's something more concerning happening

00:08:43.200 beneath the surface here now we can take a look at polling that just came out as well coincidentally

00:08:48.000 around the same time showing that there is declining support in canada for lgbtq2 rights

00:08:55.040 and visibility now i'm using that term deliberately because that's the one used in the news coverage

00:09:00.000 that's the one used in the poll here that was done by ipsos but overwhelmingly canadians all

00:09:06.480 are tolerant people canadians are tolerant of all different sorts but there is declining support now

00:09:12.000 there are two explanations for this that i have come up with one is the elephant in the room that

00:09:17.600 nobody will want to talk about which is immigration when you open your doors as a country to people

00:09:22.560 from parts of the world that do not have the tolerant pluralistic views of different sexual

00:09:27.840 identities and orientations that we have in the west you're going to evidently lower the percentage

00:09:34.640 of people in the country that support these things the other aspect of this and this one is is a

00:09:40.160 little bit more difficult to prove but i suspect there is an over correction taking place canadians

00:09:45.440 have overwhelmingly taken a supportive position on gay marriage even if people are personally

00:09:51.600 uncomfortable with the idea there is no movement in canada that supports doing anything to restrict

00:09:56.880 that legal right as is correct the marriage is something that should be decided by religious

00:10:02.640 institutions governments should not be the ones that decide who can get married and who can't i

00:10:07.600 take a very libertarian position on this but what ultimately is the case here is that canadians are

00:10:13.920 saying yeah i'm fine with that i'm not fine with my child being transitioned at school and not

00:10:21.600 learning about it as a parent and these are things that all fall under that broad banner of lgbtq2

00:10:29.520 rights but are a lot more complicated when you delve into the nitty-gritty of it in fact i've

00:10:34.800 talked to many lesbian and gay people that have said i don't like the idea of the tea being

00:10:41.360 included with the lg because the debates the discussions the issues are fundamentally different

00:10:46.800 i've talked to transgender activists transgender people that have tremendous discomfort with how

00:10:53.360 things are being pushed on kids from a young age instead of giving them the support to navigate

00:10:58.720 confusing identities people that are pushing this idea that kids just need to be transitioned put on

00:11:03.680 hormone blockers and put down this irreversible path the reason i bring that up is because we

00:11:09.520 are all muddling these things together and if someone says they have an issue with something

00:11:13.120 in that latter category which by the way includes people who are gay who are trans themselves that

00:11:18.800 don't like how far the activists are pushing it they're then cast as being overall intolerant

00:11:25.320 And this is why the pride discussion is so fascinating

00:11:28.160 because you go back to what's happening in Winnipeg,

00:11:30.340 what happened in Philadelphia,

00:11:31.780 what I suspect we'll see at pride events

00:11:33.320 across the country and across North America

00:11:35.300 in the coming weeks.

00:11:37.420 People who are overwhelmingly on the same side,

00:11:41.460 people who say they want gay rights,

00:11:43.880 people who say they want rights for sexual minorities

00:11:46.360 that are all of a sudden telling each other,

00:11:48.660 no, you don't go far enough.

00:11:50.200 You're not being intersectional enough.

00:11:52.200 And others that are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on here.

00:11:54.640 I mean, again, Pride events used to be about building bridges.

00:11:58.360 They used to be about sharing with the community the positive achievements and advancements

00:12:03.360 and saying, and maybe we could do a little bit more here.

00:12:06.120 When you want to build bridges, you should be welcoming in police.

00:12:09.620 You should be welcoming in people that might have been politically against you in the past.

00:12:14.080 Instead of Pride events, we see people banning conservatives.

00:12:16.980 We see people banning police.

00:12:19.780 How are you building bridges if you're starting to make all of these lines about who does

00:12:23.900 and doesn't belong in something that is supposed to be the paragon of inclusivity and tolerance.

00:12:30.000 Now, this is me not, I'm not lecturing to anyone. I'm not a member of this community. I'm not

00:12:35.420 lecturing to anyone about how you should or should not celebrate this season. I think, you know what,

00:12:40.400 it is absolutely up to anyone to do that how they want to within the boundaries of the law. Again,

00:12:46.320 I can use my libertarianism to my advantage here. I support free speech. If you want to have a pride

00:12:51.120 parade, have a pride parade. Absolutely. But I can point out about the societal aspect of this

00:12:56.800 that right now is clearly not working. And much like immigration, when people see something being

00:13:02.460 pushed too far or too quickly, they retreat. And we see the consensus on immigration shifting,

00:13:09.240 even though Canada has always been an overwhelmingly pro-immigration country.

00:13:12.860 We look at this polling on LGBTQ2 rights, and a lot of people I suspect are frustrated if only

00:13:18.640 because they don't understand what the q and the two and the t have to do with the l the g and the

00:13:24.000 b that wasn't meant to rhyme that was just how it worked out so again we don't know what's going to

00:13:29.040 happen in the future we do know that it wasn't that long ago that you saw the million man march

00:13:33.280 uh pitting very different cultural groups against each other you had in many cases right-wing

00:13:38.400 christians and fundamentalist muslims that were all finding support alongside parents that were

00:13:43.440 not religious or not political at all but then all of a sudden you had the left start to see

00:13:50.320 a fracture in its coalition the left that says well hang on we've always been pro-muslim we've

00:13:54.800 always been pro-gay what do we do when these two groups are butting up against each other and i

00:13:59.440 think that's also influencing in some way what's happening in this pride issue i've seen reports

00:14:05.040 that attendance in schools is once again going to be challenged this year parents are going to have

00:14:10.160 their kids walk out because they don't like what's being taught you can say they're right you can say

00:14:15.200 they're wrong it doesn't matter these are decisions that parents should make and more importantly the

00:14:20.000 coalition that we have that makes this a tolerant country is one that requires people realizing that

00:14:26.800 not everyone is going to get along not everyone's going to like each other the goal should not be

00:14:31.440 forcing everyone to link arms and sing kumbaya the goal should be forcing people to accept that

00:14:36.240 we live in a pluralistic country they're going to be people whose religions you don't like

00:14:40.320 they're going to be people whose political views you don't like and that is something that we have

00:14:44.240 to accept but when you try to make tolerance a one-way street when you try to make tolerance

00:14:49.360 and imposition it's not whether it's right or wrong it just doesn't work that thank you for

00:14:54.960 coming to my ted talk on this i i saw the clips in philadelphia i'm like my goodness the whole

00:14:59.360 thing is about tolerance and love and joy and happiness then you have people ending up in a

00:15:03.920 brawl in the streets. Hardly the intended message. Thankfully, the Winnipeg one didn't come to that.

00:15:08.880 It just ended up as a blockade for a time. But they managed to break up the blockade without

00:15:13.800 the emergencies act coming in. So maybe we are getting baby steps towards the right direction

00:15:19.040 on the civil liberties front. I am not a sports fan, but I can share in the joy that sports fans

00:15:24.960 in the audience have that the Edmonton Oilers have made the Stanley Cup final. And what was

00:15:30.660 interesting is that cbc decided it was going to sit this one out in a way uh chris sims is our

00:15:36.820 regular monday correspondent she is the alberta director with the canadian taxpayers federation

00:15:41.020 uh chris always good to talk to you thanks for coming on today well thanks for having us on

00:15:45.200 this is fun so okay so what what the heck did cbc do here okay so off the top i'm not quite sure

00:15:51.440 what happened here so i am going to be asking some questions of our state broadcaster maybe there is a

00:15:56.440 jurisdictional or fee for carriage explanation here. All that being said, I wasn't alone in my

00:16:02.820 frustration of not being able to watch the Oilers versus the Dallas Stars game. So Andrew, the

00:16:08.840 Edmonton Oilers were in the Western Conference finals against the Dallas Stars. If they won

00:16:13.880 this series, they would then go on to the Stanley Cup finals. So just as a bit of an explainer for

00:16:18.420 background. And they did. They won last night. But on the for game, I think it was game four

00:16:24.240 or game five, I think it was game five, two games ago, we go to watch the game and it's not on CBC.

00:16:31.560 Now, to be clear, it's Sportsnet that is producing and filming and streaming the actual game. The CBC

00:16:38.900 has rights to carry it. And as far as we know, they had the option, we think, of choosing to

00:16:46.420 simulcast it, choosing to bring it over onto their main net station. But it was nowhere to be found.

00:16:51.940 They were playing some old just for laughs show or something like that, something that was not NHL hockey, to be clear.

00:16:59.540 And so you had to rush around and scramble.

00:17:01.780 And even then you had to upgrade to this like super duper level Sportsnet package in order to be able to watch it.

00:17:07.580 The reason why I raise this is because Hockey Night in Canada would be far and away the top rated show that Canadians would want to watch at that moment,

00:17:17.940 especially on our state broadcaster which by the way we pay 1.4 billion dollars for every single

00:17:24.960 year so the question then is what were the folks who are on super fixed income who couldn't afford

00:17:31.200 the extra few dollars it was to upgrade their sports net package what about the folks who are

00:17:36.360 in remote areas that weren't able to watch it why couldn't they watch the game again taxpayers are

00:17:42.700 paying for the cbc they're the ones that try to use hockey night in canada to promote themselves

00:17:47.540 all the time. It's the show that everybody would want to watch that evening. So why did they do

00:17:52.760 this? And they did it again, as far as I can tell, last night. So last night was a big win.

00:17:58.180 The Edmonton Oilers won, they beat the Dallas Stars, and now they're going to the Stanley Cup

00:18:02.500 final against the Florida Panthers. But what's weird here, Andrew, is that they were still

00:18:08.320 carrying the New York Rangers versus Florida Panthers game on the CBC main net channel just

00:18:14.720 the other day. So it's a real head scratcher why they chose, we think, to not air the two Edmonton

00:18:21.260 games. Now, again, I want to be clear, there might be some weird fee or broadcast carriage

00:18:26.500 agreement or something where they weren't allowed to, but we don't have answers on that yet. As a

00:18:31.140 taxpayer and a hockey fan, I wanted to flag that for people because I wasn't alone. I was seeing

00:18:36.200 it all over Twitter. So I do have the statement from CBC on this. It sounds like they could have

00:18:42.400 played it if they wanted. So the statement which I got from Lindsay Finneran-Gingris, who is a,

00:18:49.280 I believe, a journalist on Twitter, we set our schedule long before the playoffs are determined,

00:18:55.000 and that schedule includes Canada's ultimate challenge on Sunday nights, as well as the

00:18:59.780 Canadian Screen Awards Gala. With that context, we knew there would be occasions during the playoffs

00:19:05.320 when CBC would not be carrying certain games. So their answer is that, well, they didn't know

00:19:09.820 Edmonton was going to be in the playoffs. So they decided they were going to put the Canadian screen

00:19:14.360 or the old Canada's ultimate challenge on. And no one thought, oh, wait, me, a Canadian team is in

00:19:19.340 there. Maybe we should just preempt that a little bit. You are smashing my rose colored glasses,

00:19:24.660 Andrew, because I don't give them the benefit of the doubt. They don't deserve it. I was honestly

00:19:29.920 this last little shred of hope inside me was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.

00:19:34.640 But you know what makes this even worse, Chris? They paid for the rights and aren't even using

00:19:39.460 them those rights are not cheap these things cost i would presume in the millions and millions of

00:19:44.660 dollars and they're not even playing all the games oh yeah we're gonna find out brother i'm putting

00:19:50.360 in freedom information requests to find out how much we paid for those rights and for them to

00:19:54.920 choose to not air the edmonton oilers playoff game again something that the vast majority like every

00:20:02.820 hockey fan in canada would want to watch that even if you're not a huge oilers fan a lot of people

00:20:08.140 if their team doesn't make it they go for the last canadian team that's still in the playoffs

00:20:13.180 so they would have had tons of eyeballs on their screen but instead they decide to play some awards

00:20:18.620 show that i would argue few people outside of the arts community want to watch and some other old

00:20:23.820 show like that's bizarre so yeah that's that's terrible i was giving them the benefit of the

00:20:27.900 doubt and that's even worse so yeah we should find out exactly how much we paid for the game they

00:20:32.380 didn't air now i one thing that's kind of interesting here is i mentioned this i believe

00:20:37.820 earlier on so we have at true north a pool uh for the the playoffs um where you decide you know which

00:20:44.220 hockey player is going to get the most touchdowns or something i don't know um but i i don't like

00:20:48.540 feeling left out so i did i i made what's called a parenth sorry not a parenthesis a bracket right

00:20:54.300 and uh i you did the bra and you have to like pick who's gonna win and in how many games they're

00:20:58.540 going to win and by the way so after round one guess who was winning the true north nhl playoff

00:21:04.140 pool it was yours truly all of these hockey fans were were put to shame because they had no idea

00:21:10.540 what they were doing and i had no idea what i was doing but they thought they knew what they were

00:21:13.660 doing so i i came up with like a very weirdly mathematical way i nailed the eastern conference

00:21:19.340 and i got like all the games right uh you know i you know i i had you know florida and five and

00:21:23.900 and Boston in seven and Rangers in four and Carolina in five.

00:21:27.240 I got all the winners right in the Western Conference,

00:21:29.880 but I didn't get the number of games right on Dallas and Colorado.

00:21:33.980 So I completely screwed up the second.

00:21:36.660 So I had the Canucks beating the Oilers.

00:21:38.840 So that's on me.

00:21:40.080 Okay, well, you know, I was a little torn because I'm from BC,

00:21:43.680 but Alberta has embraced me.

00:21:45.400 So I was definitely cheering for the Oilers against the Canucks.

00:21:48.260 And I still haven't gotten over my 1994 playoff hopes being dashed by the Rangers.

00:21:52.560 So I still have the final.

00:21:54.240 Fair enough.

00:21:55.020 Yeah, I had the final being Colorado versus Carolina, which is not happening.

00:22:00.380 So, but again, I knew nothing and I'm still in second place overall.

00:22:03.840 That's how much they all crapped in.

00:22:04.400 This is what I mean.

00:22:05.120 Like, that's not far off.

00:22:07.080 Like, that's pretty impressive for not knowing what you, did you just like cover your eyes

00:22:11.140 and pick or what did you do?

00:22:12.540 No, no.

00:22:13.180 I looked, so there, there, I, it was, I came up with like my own little system where I

00:22:18.120 looked at uh the win win loss uh record from this general season and i just picked whichever one had

00:22:23.880 the highest in the regular season of the two okay that's good so i again i i separated emotion from

00:22:31.640 it because i don't have a team i actually didn't care i think i think the emotional attachment to

00:22:35.320 teams is what gets people making bad decisions on these picks but anyway uh speaking of bad decisions

00:22:41.400 let's talk about government bonuses what happened so very quickly andrew um they do have entire

00:22:46.120 lottery systems based on sports ball games and even if you don't like sports ball games you

00:22:51.320 should probably try this because it's i'd rather i'd rather bet on like political outcomes this is

00:22:56.360 it gets you money though man okay um speaking of money uh remember the bank of canada yeah them so

00:23:02.600 one of their main jobs is to keep interest rates low so they really failed on that so usually when

00:23:11.240 somebody really really you know screws up their job and they fail they don't get a bonus not so

00:23:16.840 fast for government employees uh access to information requests uh by our team there in

00:23:21.960 ottawa franco terrazzano and ryan thorpe they dug this up apparently the bank of canada handed out

00:23:27.640 around 23 million dollars in bonuses last year in 2023 so that whole time that people were you know

00:23:35.480 sweating and having their interest rates going up and all this stuff happening end of the year

00:23:39.080 before that, they gave them out bonuses. So it doesn't look like they've missed one year of

00:23:43.940 bonuses, Andrews, at the Bank of Canada. So you can continue to fail upwards as long as you have

00:23:50.060 a government job, apparently. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing this across departments. I mean,

00:23:55.420 CBC, I know, has been notoriously evasive on this and actually was a little bit snarky about the

00:24:01.020 Canadian Taxpayers Federation last week. I don't know if you saw that. They were upset about

00:24:04.460 basically misinformation circulating about their refusal to hand over data but this is a problem

00:24:11.120 in other government agencies the departments as well there's just this general chasm between the

00:24:15.660 way ordinary people in the private sector are and the way people who work for government in some

00:24:20.180 capacity are yeah exactly and what's weird is that the government will often show us like their

00:24:26.300 performance like metrics and even what's strange is that they'll show us this stuff they'll show us

00:24:33.140 these numbers and like where they're trying to hit their target and the targets will be something

00:24:37.320 really middle of the road, super vanilla, really easy to do. And most of the time, these employees

00:24:43.340 still aren't meeting their targets and they're still getting bonuses. Like, for example, even at

00:24:49.240 the top of the CBC, and I didn't see that misinformation thing, I'll have to dig that up

00:24:52.720 because that's actually a pretty loaded word right now in federal politics. With the CEO of the CBC,

00:24:57.960 Catherine Tate their viewership is just tanking like by most normal people's metrics she is not

00:25:05.740 succeeding at her job so their viewership their ratings are tanking they're taking a nosedive

00:25:11.220 they're taking more and more taxpayers money they're choosing to not air hockey night in

00:25:15.900 Canada when there's a single Canadian team left in the playoffs like bonehead moves like that

00:25:20.420 but they still hand out bonuses so regardless of how they're actually performing and how what kind

00:25:25.540 job they're doing they're still handing out bonuses again if this were a private company

00:25:29.940 a few would care who cares but this is taxpayers money because these are crown corporations

00:25:36.900 well and the thing too is that the government i mean the bank of canada has there's an argument

00:25:41.540 to be made that they shoulder a lot of the blame for the inflation crisis that they are responsible

00:25:46.980 at least in a way for what canadians are dealing with as far as this cost of living and inflation

00:25:52.500 issue is concerned so when they're cashing out tens of millions of dollars in in bonuses it's

00:25:57.420 a particular sting even more than if you know i don't know department of fisheries bureaucrats

00:26:02.400 were getting big bonuses yeah great point it's not just interest rates it's the fact that they

00:26:06.880 printed hundreds of billions of dollars during the lockdowns and all of that and that was used

00:26:12.320 largely to buy up government debt government debt of course if people don't know has now doubled

00:26:18.440 since 2015. We're now at about $1.2 trillion. And during the lockdowns, especially, they just

00:26:25.120 fired up the printing press and they used that newly printed money to buy up government debt.

00:26:30.900 Franco explains this very well because he does have an economics degree or two. And so it again,

00:26:36.320 it has caused a lot of these critical problems. And again, leading people to think that interest

00:26:41.640 rates will be low for long. No worries. Don't worry about it. And then all of a sudden they

00:26:45.700 erupted. And this is particularly interesting. And I did earnestly want to warn people,

00:26:51.120 they're going to have their rate announcement this Wednesday. So I know that causes a lot of

00:26:55.620 stress for a lot of people for various reasons with lines of credit and variable mortgages and

00:27:01.600 all that stuff. It's super important. They are going to be making a rate announcement on Wednesday,

00:27:05.920 no prediction which way that's going to go. But it does add sting to it when we see them still

00:27:10.260 taking in these massive bonuses, when by most normal people's metrics, they're not doing a very

00:27:15.060 good job so is there a policy solution to this could the government and is this something that

00:27:21.420 the taxpayers federation is advocating for just say hey bureaucracies don't get bonuses yeah

00:27:26.240 yeah for sure uh if they super wanted to argue that they deserve it then maybe we could start

00:27:32.280 from there but yeah this should start back at zero for sure and then if we want to argue years later

00:27:37.620 that hey we are doing an awesome job look at all these metrics look at all these performances that

00:27:41.740 we've been hitting maybe we can have a discussion after that but as a baseline yeah we shouldn't be

00:27:46.660 handing out bonuses to bureaucrats and to crown corporations well we're going to be talking with

00:27:51.320 with aaron woodrick in a few moments about the work from home edict which has become this like

00:27:56.500 incredible source of offense for much of the public sector but one of the things that aaron's

00:28:01.760 raised and i think would apply here as well is have pretty clear clearly delineated performance

00:28:07.480 metrics not things that are done because you know you can clear the bar but things that actually

00:28:12.760 involve it i mean i'd be fine with bonuses based on how much money you're saving like if hey for

00:28:17.240 every 10 of taxpayer money you save you get a dollar okay fine we save a dollar less for every

00:28:22.520 10 but we're still saving the nine buck like like i'm not proposing that as a policy but something

00:28:27.080 like that because there's right now no incentive to actually pay pay for things to use taxpayers

00:28:32.840 money responsibly anywhere in government. That's a great point. Reagan had something very similar

00:28:38.500 to that in the 1980s when he was trying to tackle their deficits. So he brought in people, if I

00:28:43.500 recall correctly, who were specialists from their field, begged them to come in and take a government

00:28:47.920 job for a year and find savings. And I think bonuses were given based on the dramatic amount

00:28:53.940 of savings that were found in different departments. In a reverse way, that's often what balanced

00:28:58.700 budget legislation does. So for a long time, the province of British Columbia, for an example,

00:29:03.780 had balanced budget legislation where the minister's department came in with a deficit,

00:29:10.120 meaning they're spending too much money. That minister took a 10% pay cut. Yeah. So if they're

00:29:16.720 not doing their job, they get money clawed back. So it's kind of, you know, a different direction

00:29:21.340 from what you're talking about, but the same sort of incentive structure. So that sounds really

00:29:25.280 smart. If that's something that MLI is looking into, that'd be great. It's interesting. You're

00:29:29.560 speaking with Aaron Woodrick, who of course was with the Taxpayers Federation for many years.

00:29:33.280 They just put out, I'm sure you saw it because I think you signed it, the Ottawa Declaration on

00:29:37.960 not giving government money to media organizations, which is an excellent thing to see. If people kind

00:29:43.540 of team up on this stuff and really take a stand, we might actually get some work done here.

00:29:48.320 Well, that's certainly the hope. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Always a

00:29:52.560 pleasure chris we will talk to you next monday you bet take care all right thanks very much chris

00:29:57.220 sims the alberta director and star of that uh ai generated song of what was it the voice of alberta

00:30:02.900 i think that was the name of it uh for crew we won't play it but uh i rachel emmanuel my colleague

00:30:07.840 at true north she is because i may again i went on like a tear with the ai generated songs admittedly

00:30:13.400 i i did a little bit more than i probably should have with it because everyone around me was like

00:30:17.460 just stop with the damn song so rachel i made one for her show and i just did it for her and then 1.00

00:30:21.980 she put it in the show. And I think it's very polarizing. Some people don't love the AI 0.99

00:30:26.040 generated theme music. So we haven't embraced an AI generated theme song just yet. That voice you

00:30:31.260 hear is a real man, a real voiceover guy. The music was made by, I mean, it was probably made

00:30:35.620 on a computer, but it wasn't made by a computer. I did see something quite interesting the other

00:30:41.460 day circulating of someone saying, you know, don't let me use AI to make my art so that I have more

00:30:47.020 time to do laundry. Like let AI do my laundry so I have more time to make art, which was a nice

00:30:51.560 little philosophical spin on the way AI is going because we're now seeing like AI generated statues

00:30:57.360 and AI generated this and AI generated music and AI is not doing my dishes on its own I still have

00:31:03.640 to go and load them in manually and take them out when it's done so all of that notwithstanding a

00:31:08.920 little bit of a busy day I just want to mention this briefly and I'll do a little bit more on

00:31:12.300 this as the week progresses in British Columbia politics now I confess fully British Columbia

00:31:17.700 politics has been an underexplored area on the show because historically there weren't really

00:31:22.540 great options. You had the BC Liberals, which kind of had like a semblance of some conservative

00:31:28.200 thought every now and then. And then Christy Clark just took the only bit of conservatism

00:31:32.760 there out to the woodshed and shot it when she wanted to cling to power. And then you had the 1.00

00:31:37.020 BC NDP. And it's only been relatively recently that there's been this conservative resurgence,

00:31:41.860 or maybe insurgency is a better way of putting it, in BC. So we're actually working out,

00:31:46.860 we're going to have John Rustad, who's the leader of the BC Conservatives, on the show

00:31:50.560 in the next couple of weeks. And I'm looking forward to that. But another floor crossing

00:31:54.800 today of a BC United, formerly BC Liberal MLA, joining the Conservatives. There was one last

00:32:00.460 week as well. There are rumblings that there are going to be perhaps a couple of more. So this is

00:32:05.000 shaping up to be just the complete decimation of what was once the BC Liberal Party. But

00:32:10.900 let's get back to the public sector here. Aaron Woodrick is the director of the Domestic Policy

00:32:16.380 program for the mcdonald laurier institute and joins us now uh aaron it's always good to talk

00:32:21.420 to you so this story i find just fascinating the federal government says civil servants have to go

00:32:26.940 back into the office three days a week it's not even like they're being forced in five days a

00:32:31.580 week like they were up until march of 2020 three days a week and it's as though you've committed

00:32:37.340 this just grave injustice against public sector unionized workers in ottawa what the heck is going

00:32:43.900 on here? Yeah, it does speak to an entitlement issue, right? I mean, you got to have perspective.

00:32:49.300 And I think if there's any allegation, and people will know this from my days advocating with the

00:32:52.740 Taxpayers Federation, I've been tough on the public sector at times, right? And that's largely because

00:32:57.700 I don't think sometimes folks in the public sector appreciate how good they have it. I mean,

00:33:02.160 even when you think about things like defined benefit pensions, which are basically extinct

00:33:06.260 in the private sector, the level of job security. I mean, these are pretty important things that a

00:33:12.340 lot of people would give the right arm for. And so I think at times when the public sector

00:33:17.040 complains about things not being as, you know, optimal for them, they need to recognize that

00:33:24.160 there's an audience out there of Canadians that don't have anywhere near those things. And so

00:33:28.200 they, you know, it comes across sometimes a little bit toned out. Yeah. And I mean, look,

00:33:33.040 I think there are arguments to be made about whether, with work in general, of whether work

00:33:38.540 can be rethought, whether traditional offices, nine to five jobs can be rethought. But the idea

00:33:43.280 that government gets something that basically the private sector never will, or government workers

00:33:48.700 get something that most private sector employees never will, is always the part that rubs me the

00:33:53.200 wrong way about this. I mean, we talked about this in the context of executive bonuses with Chris

00:33:56.860 Sims a few moments ago, but it's especially true on an arrangement like this. Like any private

00:34:01.440 sector office worker that I've spoken to, with few exceptions, so I shouldn't say any, most of them

00:34:06.640 are looking at this and are like, give me a break. I had to go back to the office a year and a half

00:34:10.620 ago. Yeah, absolutely. And in a lot of cases, the response I always used to get from, you know,

00:34:16.340 people in the public sector or the union leaders in the public sector as well, the government is

00:34:21.460 being the leader in this, right? When I'd say, well, we can't afford to find benefit pensions,

00:34:24.760 they say, well, it's the private sector should have them too. Well, and the obvious reason,

00:34:28.380 Andrew, that they don't have them is they can't afford them, is that unlike the government,

00:34:31.560 businesses don't have unlimited funds, right? They have to stay afloat. And so I think sometimes

00:34:36.620 Again, in the public sector, they need to recognize that they're not facing the same kind of constraints that those in the private sector have. And that while I never begrudge any group sort of banding together to try and get the best deal they can have, they often have power and negotiating power that people in the private sector just don't have.

00:34:54.420 And they don't have a lot of sympathy for people that are crying about things and saying, oh, you know, boo-hoo, you have to go in three days a week instead of two.

00:35:02.420 I've been going back five days a week for years.

00:35:05.180 It just strikes the ear wrong, I think.

00:35:07.720 So you offer in the hub what I think is an olive branch, and I suspect the Public Service Alliance of Canada might not see it that way.

00:35:15.400 But you say federal public servants can get their remote work, but in return, they should expect more rigorous performance reviews.

00:35:22.560 What do you mean?

00:35:24.060 Yeah, this is a bit of a contrarian take, and some people were surprised to see me say this.

00:35:29.560 But I think part of the issue we have right now is this, is that the people in public service, they really like the remote work, just like a lot of people who enjoy the remote work.

00:35:39.420 Now, does that mean they should always get it?

00:35:40.860 Not necessarily, but I do think we should acknowledge the type of white-collar work, the type of work at a computer.

00:35:46.160 That is the ideal type of work for remote work, if you're going to have it at all.

00:35:49.800 And most of the public sector is that kind of work.

00:35:52.180 most of the government jobs in Ottawa involve the type of work where you log onto a computer

00:35:56.320 and type at a keyboard. I think we should be open to remote work in those cases. The other thing I

00:36:02.320 think is a lot of the thing that is motivating both the government and the public to want to get

00:36:07.340 public servants back to work has nothing to do with whether or not they need to be there.

00:36:13.000 It's more a sense of, I think you're lazy and I'd rather have you at a desk. And my response to that

00:36:18.560 is, first of all, I will defend civil servants on that. Are there bad ones? I'm certain there

00:36:22.620 are who don't work. But otherwise, I think many of them are happy to do their work. And I think

00:36:28.640 if your real concern is that civil servants are lazy, well, I can tell you, they'll probably be

00:36:33.000 lazy sitting at their desk downtown at the office just as much as they will at home. So that doesn't

00:36:36.860 solve anything. Even worse, because now you've got the social aspect, the coffee station, the

00:36:41.140 Well, this is it. And Andrew, I almost think like, look, let's be honest, for some people,

00:36:45.660 It's just about sticking it to them.

00:36:47.120 It's about saying, you know what?

00:36:48.260 I don't like you.

00:36:48.980 So I'm going to make you trudge downtown to the office.

00:36:51.140 I think that's a poor reason to do it.

00:36:53.260 The same as way, you know, Doug Ford says they need to get back down there.

00:36:56.000 So the restaurants, that is not a reason to send people into the office just because it supports the, you know, the restaurants at lunch.

00:37:02.320 And that's a terrible reason.

00:37:03.620 But what I am saying is they want this so bad.

00:37:05.780 Let's make a deal.

00:37:06.800 Let's make a deal that gives both sides what they want.

00:37:08.860 You can get your remote work, but you have, we have to talk about your pensions.

00:37:12.140 We have to talk about productivity and performance measurement.

00:37:15.160 we want Canadians to get good value for their money. So if you're willing to accept some kind

00:37:20.320 of oversight, some kind of measurement, something that gives people confidence you're doing work and

00:37:24.640 you're doing it well, and Canadians are getting value for the tax dollars, then we can talk about

00:37:28.520 remote work. I think that's a good trade, both for Canadians and for civil servants, and they

00:37:33.420 should seriously think about that. Yeah, and I think it brings it back to the broader idea of

00:37:37.380 this that doesn't have anything to do with government or private sector. It's just generally

00:37:41.780 about remote work and look i i worked remotely before it was cool too i i worked from home before

00:37:46.740 covet came along and i like it i think there are some deficiencies in it but we have a team at true

00:37:51.540 north that's scattered around the country so it's just not practical to work anything but remotely

00:37:56.420 but it comes down to a performance question of you know if if you can perform at the same level

00:38:02.020 regardless of where you are i don't think it should matter if there is a deficit in some way

00:38:07.060 of what you're able to do at home that needs to be accounted for in some way whether it's you know

00:38:12.020 people work a bit longer whether you change i mean you you have to have some way of of addressing

00:38:16.820 that i understand the convenience i mean you save money on parking you save money on gas you save

00:38:21.620 just frustration of travel time all of that but but we need to have the discussion of productivity

00:38:26.980 and there has to be a way to measure that productivity i think exactly and the measurement

00:38:31.620 historically for the civil service has been did you show up at your desk downtown were you there

00:38:35.700 at the hour and did you leave? And I'm saying that was always a bad measurement. And we should

00:38:39.140 take this opportunity now to say, you know what? I'm okay with an arrangement, whether it's public

00:38:44.240 or private, saying, here are your tasks. You need to perform these tasks well on time by this time.

00:38:50.360 If you do that, I don't care where you work. I think that can work both in the public and private

00:38:53.920 sector, but that's not what we have right now. So I think we need to, you know, and it's really a

00:38:58.540 test here, Andrew, to see just how badly folks in the public service want this. They should be

00:39:03.220 willing to accept that. I'm willing to bet a lot of them are. The other thing, too, I would say

00:39:07.240 with remote work, like you, I've long worked remotely. It's certainly been a benefit to me

00:39:12.740 and my family, but the nature of the work I've done has suited itself to that. I think the

00:39:17.340 civil service, we remember the headaches with passports, you know, it was taking Canadians

00:39:21.360 forever to get a passport. That gave people a reason to believe that not being in the office

00:39:26.260 was a problem, right? And so I think the civil service needs to prove that it can deliver

00:39:30.440 remotely. Otherwise, you're going to have people saying, hey, if you're not being productive,

00:39:34.300 I'm waiting forever for stuff because you're working from home. I want to see you back in

00:39:37.420 the office because in your mind, maybe that will fix the problem.

00:39:41.180 Well, and also the other thing we've seen this in the context of in a lot of ways is just

00:39:46.060 the remote work question as a convenience is great, but you can't just make that policy based

00:39:52.560 on the fact that it's more convenient for you as an individual. You have to figure out

00:39:55.640 the value add. I mean, there's always the age old problem if you start heaping productivity on

00:39:59.760 people is that or heaping tasks on people is that we have to rethink the idea of nine to five work

00:40:04.680 in general. I mean, there are people that are very effective that do a lot. And what do they do? They

00:40:08.820 finish their work in six hours. So their employer gives them more work to do. Whereas the people

00:40:13.560 that take the eight hours for the same work end up doing less. So I think in general, we need a

00:40:18.340 bit of a rethink on these things across the board, not just in government. Yeah, I think so. And

00:40:23.300 remember, there are other trade offs involved. If you're say, for example, you're someone and I'm a

00:40:27.880 recovering lawyer, if you're a junior lawyer, it's your first year, you learn a lot of what you do

00:40:33.100 from the more senior lawyers around you, right? From being in the office next to the senior

00:40:36.980 partner and just sort of being called in ad hoc. When you do all remote work, you lose some of

00:40:40.840 that. So as much as I am a supporter of flex work, and in some cases, especially once you're past a

00:40:45.720 certain level of more remote work, it's absolutely true that a lot of professions, the networking,

00:40:51.140 the skill transfer, a lot of that comes from proximity, physical proximity to the people that

00:40:56.000 you work with. So that has to be part of it. Like what does a civil service look like where your

00:41:00.620 more junior people are never around the more seasoned experts? There's something there. So

00:41:05.880 I think that has to be part of the discussion. All I'm saying is that, you know, this looks like

00:41:10.500 another run-of-the-mill labor strife that we're going to have in Ottawa. I think there is unique

00:41:15.220 opportunity here given the context and we shouldn't throw all that stuff out the window

00:41:19.240 because this type of situation may not present itself soon again anytime. Very briefly, I'm

00:41:25.300 pulling you off topic here, but I know True North was a signatory to this declaration, this Ottawa

00:41:31.020 declaration that McDonnell-Laurie Institute was instrumental in, asking for something that a few

00:41:36.060 years ago wouldn't have seemed all that controversial, the government not subsidized

00:41:39.820 the media. But now there's a clear line on this. You have big media companies in Canada, the Toronto

00:41:44.940 Star, Post Media, the Globe and Mail, who are, as they describe it, entirely dependent on government

00:41:50.500 subsidies to survive. And these independent players like not just True North and The Hub,

00:41:55.740 but Paul Wells, who's done a great job on Substack, he signed this as well. Why'd you take this on?

00:42:02.120 Yeah, look, we just think it's an important issue. We care about democracy and we care about a free

00:42:06.300 press. And in our view, institutionally, it's simply incompatible for a media organization to

00:42:11.640 be dependent on government and claim to be independent. It just completely undermines any

00:42:15.640 claim. And I don't want to suggest that every organization or every journalist that's employed

00:42:20.240 by an organization that takes government money is like actively trying to suck up to the government.

00:42:25.700 But what I am saying is it's impossible to get past the impression of a conflict of interest.

00:42:30.760 Like the average person, all it will take, if you're an organization that covers, say,

00:42:35.840 the Trudeau government flatteringly, it's very easy for people to draw the link between saying,

00:42:39.640 well, of course you would say that because you're receiving money from them. So I think if you

00:42:42.820 truly want to be independent, you have to be willing to say, we've got to stand on our own

00:42:46.520 two feet. We're very glad that True North is one of the organizations that has signed that

00:42:50.160 declaration. All right. Well, Aaron Woodrick, always good to talk to you, sir. Thanks so much

00:42:54.180 for coming on. Thanks a lot, Andrew. All right, Aaron Woodrick, we will be back tomorrow with

00:42:59.040 more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. And let me tell you as well, Pierre Polyev,

00:43:03.760 A Political Life, available on Amazon, available at Indigo, available at your local neighborhood

00:43:08.700 bookstore generally speaking and if not ask them they'll be able to get it in and you can support

00:43:13.880 independent booksellers and well by extension authors as well all right well that does it for

00:43:18.600 us we will talk to you all tomorrow thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for

00:43:23.640 listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - June 03, 2024

Pride and Palestine protesters clash

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