Juno News - Public library bans ＂free speech＂ event

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

00:00:05.240 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:16.120 Hello everyone and welcome to you all.

00:00:19.100 Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:22.140 It is Tuesday, May 16th, just after 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

00:00:27.480 And for those of you like me who relish knowing what it is in individual time zones,

00:00:32.420 that makes it 9.02 in British summertime.

00:00:35.340 Again, if you are like me and have no life,

00:00:37.560 and time zones are the bit of trivia you cling to.

00:00:40.680 Nevertheless, we've got a busy, busy show today.

00:00:44.620 Sean is telling me I have to do Saskatchewan,

00:00:47.260 but the problem is I actually never know what time it is in Saskatchewan

00:00:50.880 because like half the year it's on central time

00:00:53.660 and the other half is on mountain time and I forget which is which.

00:00:56.080 So I think it's on Central Time right now.

00:00:58.540 I think Saskatchewan is one hour behind.

00:01:00.840 We have a guest from Saskatchewan today.

00:01:03.080 So my hope is that we got the time zone right.

00:01:07.420 But we are going to be talking about lots of good stuff in the show.

00:01:11.200 We don't have a Saskatchewan guest today, do we?

00:01:13.900 No, that's tomorrow, isn't it?

00:01:15.680 Yeah, we have a guest from Nova Scotia today.

00:01:18.360 We have a guest who is from Ontario, but is in England today.

00:01:22.240 And this is like five minutes of the show.

00:01:23.680 You'll never get back.

00:01:24.400 And Sean, you're fired.

00:01:25.860 I mean, after the end of the show, though, we got to get through to the end before you pack up your virtual bag.

00:01:30.600 Today, we are going to talk about this case that I've been following, which is a local case for me in London, Ontario, but has much broader implications.

00:01:40.460 And that is the decision to ban a speech being put together by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship made by the local library.

00:01:49.480 The London Public Library, committed to intellectual freedom, says free speech is a cornerstone and libraries should be upholding it.

00:01:56.900 But when a lecturer from overseas wants to come and talk about free speech, that's just a little too controversial to allow on library property.

00:02:06.020 So we'll talk about that with the president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, Mark Mercer, in just a couple of moments.

00:02:13.340 Also going to delve into the wonderful world of corporate welfare.

00:02:17.280 You may remember that case we discussed a couple of weeks ago with Volkswagen getting bajillion dollars from the government.

00:02:24.200 And now all of a sudden another automotive manufacturer is saying they want more money too.

00:02:28.760 So they've halted construction on a plant until they get more money from the government.

00:02:33.700 So it's almost as though we saw this one coming.

00:02:37.200 But first off, I want to just talk about this clip that's making its way around the internet right now, which is just a delightful, delightful clip.

00:02:45.020 So Justin Trudeau today came out and his government promised some new bail reform, which is supposedly going to make it a little bit more difficult for violent offenders to get bail.

00:02:54.500 But a lot of people think this is kind of window dressing, that this problem has been going on for quite some time.

00:02:59.800 Police have been warning about it. People in the community safety sector have been warning about it.

00:03:04.500 And there has not been a solution from the government.

00:03:07.320 And the conservatives have been talking about this. They don't like the revolving door of the justice system.

00:03:12.340 And Pierre Polyev, in particular, came out against this.

00:03:15.400 And there was one particular reporter that just didn't get quite grasp the issue.

00:03:21.480 Take a look.

00:03:22.960 When you talk about bail, the crime has already happened, or the alleged crime has already happened.

00:03:28.860 So how can you attribute bail to this increase in crime?

00:03:34.260 And should there not be more supportive measures to prevent the crime in the first place?

00:03:38.920 If you're talking about someone being on bail, they've already allegedly committed

00:03:46.160 the crime.

00:03:47.160 They're committing crimes on bail.

00:03:52.360 That's the problem.

00:03:53.520 The problem is, I'll give you an example.

00:03:55.440 In Vancouver, the same 40 offenders were arrested 6,000 times in a year.

00:04:05.260 That's 150 arrests per offender per year.

00:04:09.040 Why?

00:04:10.180 Because they're arrested in the morning, then they're released on bail by noon, they re-offend,

00:04:15.280 they're back in jail by 2 in the afternoon, and then they're released by the evening

00:04:19.380 so that they can commit their final crime before they go to bed.

00:04:21.940 The failure of the system to not support people who have committed crimes, gone to jail, served

00:04:28.580 their sentence, you know, and then they're committing another crime.

00:04:33.120 So is this not a failure of things like social services and support for people who have committed crimes?

00:04:38.120 Are you serious?

00:04:39.940 I'm asking a question.

00:04:40.780 Are you serious?

00:04:42.600 Come on.

00:04:43.220 You're telling me.

00:04:44.020 No, excuse me.

00:04:44.740 Let me answer your question.

00:04:45.640 Are you honestly saying that it's society's fault if a repeat violent offender commits 60 or 70 offenses?

00:04:56.340 I think that criminal is to blame for his own actions.

00:05:00.160 He is personally responsible.

00:05:02.460 We're not talking about some kid who made one mistake when he was 19.

00:05:05.380 We're talking about people who do 60, 70 violent offenses.

00:05:10.720 And then they're because they're criminals.

00:05:13.640 But why are they criminals?

00:05:15.120 Because they do crime.

00:05:16.540 Why do they do crime?

00:05:17.420 Because we let them out early on bail.

00:05:24.320 I've seen that like four or five times.

00:05:26.920 If you're wondering why I was like delayed on the show today,

00:05:30.420 Well, maybe you didn't know that I was, but I was slightly because I just like had watched that for like 12 minutes.

00:05:35.500 And my goodness, like it just at a certain point, I like Pierre Polyev just breaking the idea of, you know, being polite and civil and courteous.

00:05:42.460 And it's just like, are you serious? Like that face has got to be a meme until the end of time.

00:05:46.760 So we'll talk about this a little bit more tomorrow.

00:05:48.280 But I wanted you to see the clip and be able to enjoy it and bask in it as I could.

00:05:52.360 Going back to the story of the London Public Library, which is London, Ontario, not London, England,

00:05:58.680 which has been especially confusing because the speaker at the center of this is a speaker from

00:06:04.040 england so i was like getting retweeted by all these brits that were like taking out their anger

00:06:08.880 at the library in london england uh which admittedly would probably do something like

00:06:13.240 this too but in this particular context it is the public library down in my neck of the woods

00:06:18.560 in southwestern ontario which has barred an academic freedom group of which i happen to be

00:06:24.480 member the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship from booking out its theater from

00:06:29.700 paying to rent its theater to host a talk by British author Joanna Williams the talk unironically

00:06:36.080 was to be titled sex gender and the limits of free speech and this was evidently too controversial to

00:06:41.660 hold at the London Public Library despite its stated policy its official policy committed to

00:06:49.420 intellectual freedom. And I just want to put up on the screen here for a moment the Statement

00:06:55.180 on Intellectual Freedom in Libraries, which is from the CFLA, the Canadian Federation of Library

00:07:01.020 Associations. And this statement has actually been adopted by the London Public Library as policy.

00:07:07.500 And there's a line in here that you should read, a couple of lines, that all individuals have the

00:07:13.520 right to access the full range of knowledge, imagination, ideas, and opinions, and to express

00:07:19.600 their thoughts publicly, only the courts may abridge free expression rights in Canada. The

00:07:25.780 policy also says that the right to intellectual freedom includes the right to seek, receive, and

00:07:31.200 impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers, and it also affirms

00:07:36.940 that libraries have a, quote, core responsibility, unquote, to support, defend, and promote the

00:07:44.640 universal principles of intellectual freedom and privacy. So we have this policy committing the

00:07:50.940 London Public Library to intellectual freedom, but when the rubber hits the road, they say that

00:07:55.560 a talk on free speech is evidently worthy of being deplatformed. The president of the Society for

00:08:02.620 Academic Freedom and Scholarships. SAFS is a professor from St. Mary's University by the name

00:08:07.560 of Mark Mercer, and he joins me now. Mark, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on

00:08:13.120 today. Now, I mean, the one gross sort of or perverse irony here is that your organization

00:08:21.740 exists to combat this, and you're getting proof of the very point that Joanna Williams was going

00:08:28.300 to be speaking about, which is that there are these limits on free speech that exist.

00:08:32.620 Well, yes, but do you think that irony is appreciated by the people who denied us our space?

00:08:42.080 Well, no, and I guess that's where I want to just talk a little bit about SAFs for a moment, because this is not, and again, I mean no offense to you and to others, because I'm a member as well, but this is not a fire-breathing organization, I'd say.

00:08:54.840 Any meetings I've ever been to have been very respectful.

00:08:58.260 You and I were corresponding this week.

00:09:00.120 There's never been any disruptive protest added.

00:09:03.160 And, you know, one member of SAF said, you know, it's a bunch of stuffy academics sitting around.

00:09:08.100 It's not, you know, this controversial lightning rod.

00:09:11.440 So why do you think that this ban has been issued by the library?

00:09:16.260 Well, I'm not sure, but I want to take issue with some of the things you said.

00:09:19.800 I was just quoting one of your speakers from this year as far as stuffy academics go.

00:09:24.500 but carry on well we there's lots of controversy but uh yes we we discuss um things civilly and uh

00:09:33.620 uh because we we want to uh to understand how things are we want to talk with each other

00:09:39.380 uh so uh very many controversial uh things have been said at staffs meetings but but it's always

00:09:45.700 done in a respectful way not to right i guess that's more where i was getting at there that's

00:09:50.340 right no no fisticuffs no pushing people into the hallways or anything like that yes so it is

00:09:59.940 strange to me that a group whose record has been one of civil discourse is now

00:10:08.180 denied space in the library and some of the reasons I don't think I understand them but

00:10:13.460 that we would deny um the library patrons um uh use of the facilities or something like that

00:10:21.460 what what are we going to do uh take um uh pea shooters and and shoot at library page patrons 0.72

00:10:29.140 so i really don't understand where where they're coming from yeah we're not blocking entrances

00:10:36.980 no and if anyone's familiar with the layout of the library which most people listening wouldn't be

00:10:42.580 It's not even in the library itself.

00:10:44.920 It's in a dedicated area across the hall.

00:10:47.860 So it's like, you know, someone going to check out Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever

00:10:51.420 wouldn't even have to, you know, be in earshot of your event.

00:10:54.800 So this idea that it would be disruptive to other library patrons.

00:10:59.040 One of the other policies they quoted was risk or likelihood of physical danger to participants.

00:11:05.400 And also workplace harassment and sexual harassment prevention policies were, quote unquote, engaged.

00:11:12.580 Yeah, well, maybe there's a rock band called SAFs and they have,

00:11:16.600 but they got us confused with some bands been trashing hotel rooms for the last decade.

00:11:22.880 Yeah, it's absurd.

00:11:24.680 I had no idea how one could think that a group of stuffy old academics, 1.00

00:11:29.060 who do talk about controversial things, but stuffy nonetheless,

00:11:32.060 would be a threat to a property or person.

00:11:37.980 One of the challenges with the no platforming approach,

00:11:41.880 which we've seen and you know full well on university campuses is that oftentimes people

00:11:47.320 will use the language to say that they're supporters of free speech, but they want to

00:11:52.760 make it very difficult for some people to speak. They'll say, well, just because you have the right

00:11:56.000 to speak doesn't mean you have the right to a platform. And the problem with this is that the

00:12:00.300 very places that should be platforms for controversial speech, evocative speech are

00:12:05.720 places like libraries and universities. Yet they're the ones that seem to be the most susceptible

00:12:10.660 to this idea of saying that this speech

00:12:13.420 is going to go against unspecified policies?

00:12:16.280 Well, we do have a right to a platform

00:12:19.940 in the sense that we have a right to line up

00:12:22.240 and pay our money at venues

00:12:24.880 that are responsible for allowing people

00:12:29.660 in the community to come together and talk about things.

00:12:33.180 So, you know, we do have a right to a platform,

00:12:36.480 just in that we have a right to pay for this space at fair rates.

00:12:43.320 And so that's being denied us.

00:12:45.780 And this is why I think the thing is deeply disturbing.

00:12:48.560 I think the only grounds that seem to make any sense for denying us the space

00:12:55.000 is that they don't like what they believe Joanna will say.

00:12:58.980 It can't be that we are a threat to property or persons.

00:13:05.680 so that must be it but they do have an obligation as you noted by reading the intellectual freedom

00:13:12.800 statement to to grant us that space one of the things that that strikes me about that statement

00:13:20.640 is that there was a big push a few years ago in ontario for example to have universities put these

00:13:26.480 commitments to academic freedom and and freedom of speech these policies in place and i was a

00:13:31.680 a supporter of that because I think it's better to have than not but I think that what this episode

00:13:35.720 is illuminating and some of the other issues from the academy in the last few years is that you can

00:13:40.260 have the words on the paper all you want but if the people in these institutions are not committed

00:13:45.880 to free speech or maybe they are nominally but are too scared to follow through with it it actually

00:13:52.060 doesn't really mean all that much that's been one of my central themes for 15 years or so in my

00:13:59.060 writing that it's it's the culture that matters and if we have a culture of intellectual endeavor

00:14:05.380 a culture of uh uh free uh freedom of expression freedom of inquiry uh then you know we don't have

00:14:11.780 to worry too much about uh what the uh what the words on the paper are uh words on the on paper

00:14:16.820 are good when things um become difficult but unless there is that commitment no they don't

00:14:24.980 mean much at all. Universities can get around government-imposed policies. Another problem

00:14:31.940 with the government-imposed policies is that there's no better way of galvanizing the anti-free

00:14:37.140 speech people than to threaten government action against the university. I'm still on the fence. I

00:14:45.220 think there are good arguments for governments taking a more active role than they are,

00:14:52.660 but really it does come down to the professors and the students the professors and the students have

00:14:57.140 to be in favor of freedom of expression in order for the university campus to be a place of freedom

00:15:02.420 of expression um you probably haven't seen this yet but i'm gonna have a story about it at five

00:15:08.340 o'clock today this just came about this afternoon and i i'm still giving the library the opportunity

00:15:13.700 to respond to it a memo that was sent out uh internally by the ceo of the library about this

00:15:19.300 incident but but one part that i i can raise with you is that the ceo says that the library policies

00:15:27.380 have to be uh filtered through the lens of i'm going to pull up the exact wording here

00:15:32.580 exceptional customer service and a commitment to anti-racism and anti-oppression and and those

00:15:38.340 words in an academic setting i i think are they're loaded terms and they may be on the surface sound

00:15:43.780 great yes anti-racism is good anti-oppression is good but what strikes me in the library case

00:15:50.080 clearly and in universities is that the idea of academic freedom seems to be secondary to these

00:15:55.180 things it's yes academic freedom but we have to balance this against our commitment to diversity

00:16:00.120 or we have to balance this against our our commitment to anti-racism and these things

00:16:04.920 don't really balance so much as be subject to a veto it seems well and that's right and really

00:16:11.600 a lot depends on what one wants from a democratic, multicultural society, individualistic society.

00:16:19.440 And I think the equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives and ideas have a basis in a sort

00:16:29.040 of collectivity or collectivism where the group is somehow supreme. And if you are concerned

00:16:38.620 about the individual, you think the individual inquire, the individual discussant is what's

00:16:45.900 most important, then you won't see a conflict between academic freedom and anti-racism.

00:16:53.440 But it's only if somehow the group, however it's defined, is the arbiter of what is oppressive

00:17:06.340 and what isn't oppressive, that we find conflicts between freedom of expression or academic freedom

00:17:11.300 and anti-racism. Now, as I indicated in my reporting, and as you've said elsewhere,

00:17:18.600 the event is going on. You've had to find another venue, and the talk by Joanna Williams, which I'll

00:17:24.020 be at, and I would encourage anyone else in the area to be at, is preceding Friday at the Delta

00:17:28.920 Hotel. But in general, where do you go from here? I know you indicated when we spoke earlier this

00:17:34.380 week that you're trying to get a sense of internal processes and deliberations here.

00:17:39.380 I know I've also filed a Freedom of Information request on my own independently of you, but

00:17:44.220 what do you want to do moving forward with this?

00:17:47.460 Well, I want people to know about this and to approach their libraries and say that this

00:17:54.900 is inconsistent with the library's mission, what the library should be doing.

00:17:59.760 I think if people don't know that we were turned down, then it looks like, you know, everything's fine with the library.

00:18:08.080 So, you know, I want people to know and people to say, well, you know, if they can do it to the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, which is just a talking shop.

00:18:22.360 We like controversy, we like to talk about it, then anyone could be turned down.

00:18:29.760 There just don't seem to be any grounds for denying us space, and then that's an arbitrary decision by the library, and everyone is affected.

00:18:43.960 So that's why we want to know more about it, yes, even though we're having the talk and we'll be doing this for a number of years coming.

00:18:55.480 good well that's I'm looking forward to it and anyone who is interested can learn more

00:19:01.740 at the SAF's website there Mark Mercer Professor Mark Mercer and President of SAF's always good

00:19:07.020 to talk to you Mark thanks and we'll see you on Friday thanks Andrew yes looking forward to it

00:19:11.320 see you there all right thank you very much and yeah Joanna Williams she has never been cancelled

00:19:16.640 she's had a call in the UK at one point to cancel one of her talks but it's never happened

00:19:21.340 The odd thing, I didn't mention this with Mark,

00:19:24.260 SAFs actually had an event at the very same library in 2019,

00:19:29.120 which I was at, and I had introduced the keynote speaker,

00:19:32.560 who is a University of Chicago historian, Rachel Fulton Brown.

00:19:36.000 And again, no protest, no controversy,

00:19:37.900 except for sort of the controversy that rigorous debate and thought can sometimes provoke.

00:19:43.900 But the idea that we have libraries which are fighting tooth and nail

00:19:48.520 against so-called book bans from the, you know, evil, scary conservatives in the U.S. or whatever.

00:19:54.740 They talk about the importance of free exchange of ideas, except if they don't like your idea.

00:20:00.360 And then all of a sudden, it is not all that important.

00:20:03.500 I want to move on to the idea of corporate welfare here.

00:20:06.500 And we talked a few weeks back on this show about the slippery slope,

00:20:10.240 which you didn't even need to look that far down the pipeline to see coming,

00:20:13.580 and the implications of the federal and provincial governments bending over backwards

00:20:18.520 to give billions and billions and billions in subsidies to Volkswagen

00:20:23.460 to build an electric vehicle battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario.

00:20:28.060 Again, I'm sticking with local news today, but there's a bigger picture aspect of it.

00:20:32.380 $13 billion was what we found out Volkswagen was getting.

00:20:35.540 And now you look just a couple hours down the 401 and Stellantis,

00:20:40.260 An auto manufacturer building a plant in Windsor, Ontario, has halted because it wants more money from the federal and provincial governments.

00:20:50.040 And now the great story here, Philippe-Francois Champagne, the federal cabinet minister, says Ontario needs to pay its fair share to the company to end the stalemate.

00:21:02.220 So all of a sudden, it is companies shaking down the government at all levels for money.

00:21:08.140 And this is just the way business is done in Canada.

00:21:11.180 Aaron Woodrick is the Domestic Policy Director for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and joins us now.

00:21:16.760 Aaron, it's always good to talk to you.

00:21:18.500 Could we have seen this coming from a mile away that now every company is just wanting more and more cash

00:21:23.940 now that they've seen how much is coming out of the government taps?

00:21:27.780 Boy, if only someone could have predicted this, like you and me and a lot of other people,

00:21:32.220 who said you know I do have to confess though Andrew I didn't see the chickens coming home to

00:21:36.220 roost quite this quickly no I thought maybe like years not weeks yeah I mean it is really something

00:21:41.720 here and look put yourself in Stellantis's shoes right I mean what they're doing is perfectly

00:21:45.720 logical perfectly rational they're saying they're saying hold on a second you just gave VW 13 billion

00:21:50.980 what are we doing here I mean we can clearly get more they're clearly prepared to pay more

00:21:55.280 so now they're they've they've stopped constructing their plant um and you know the thing that really

00:22:00.180 the real kicker here Andrew is I'm absolutely certain that nobody in the Ford government or

00:22:05.300 Trudeau government when they were busy trying to you know get seduce VW with billions of dollars 0.52

00:22:10.080 none of them put any thought into what it would do to Stellantis none of them put any thought

00:22:13.520 into what it would do to other companies watching and learning how to play the game so that's the

00:22:18.980 real uh tragedy here is this is a mess entirely of their own making now you've got Ford telling

00:22:24.460 the feds to do it and you've got the feds telling Ford government to do it and I'm saying guys

00:22:28.600 before you were you were climbing over each other for a chance to offer the subsidy now you're

00:22:33.640 saying oh no no it's not my problem i mean the irony is pretty rich here yeah and that's the

00:22:38.840 problem i mean they were just bragging about the 13 billion dollars when i would have seen that as

00:22:44.060 a confession more than a boast and and now you know they've decided volkswagen is the beneficiary

00:22:49.280 everyone else should just be satisfied with what they got but but again if you're a company like

00:22:54.120 this and i mean basically you're holding jobs over the government's head here i i get it from

00:22:59.700 a business perspective it makes sense because free money is better than no money and they know

00:23:03.540 it's being dished out sure but that's that's exactly why these things are dangerous precedents

00:23:08.960 once you're a government that hangs a sign in your window saying we will we will give free money away

00:23:14.080 what do you think is going to happen to every any company andrew that's thinking of coming to

00:23:18.320 Ontario um is going to stop at Queen's Park first and say and hint and say hey we were thinking of

00:23:24.260 building this plant here we might build it somewhere else what have you got for me I mean

00:23:27.720 this is the situation that they have created for themselves and it's it's just not sustainable

00:23:32.740 we're going to see how tough they are I mean you'll recall on the day of the VW announcement

00:23:37.080 Andrew the Prime Minister uh very explicitly said oh well you know other companies shouldn't expect

00:23:42.480 this this is a one-off well it's only been a few weeks and he's about to be tested if he's going

00:23:47.300 to keep his word on that. Yeah. And I know it's difficult to pull up a metaphorical crystal ball

00:23:53.120 here and see what's going to happen. I mean, if you're Stellantis and you've already invested

00:23:56.820 in starting this plant and you already budgeted for it, it stands to reason that if the government

00:24:02.340 were to call their bluff, I would assume they would proceed rather than cut their losses. But

00:24:08.360 you never know. And I think the government may not want this if the Stellantis folks end up 1.00

00:24:13.300 having better pr than the government does sure and you know you might be right but uh we've seen

00:24:18.700 in the past we've seen automakers that already have plants in ontario that were up and running

00:24:23.320 play this game and imply that you know what if we don't get more subsidies we might have to leave so

00:24:28.520 um it would be nice to see a government try and call their bluff on it for once i mean of course

00:24:33.380 a lot of governments are terrified that their bluff would be called and they'd have to wear it

00:24:36.900 but if you never call their bluff i mean for from a company standpoint what have they got to lose by

00:24:41.300 trying to do this all the time you had a great piece in the hub i think it was i think it came

00:24:46.820 out yesterday i read it this morning and when you talk about there being smarter ways to strengthen

00:24:51.420 canada than with corporate welfare but one of the angles that you discussed here which i think is

00:24:55.580 important is how certain jobs can be sentimentalized and i think you know factory jobs are

00:25:00.880 that because it really is to a lot of people this hallmark of a bygone era where everyone in the town

00:25:05.820 works at the same factory and around that factory there's a sense of community and i i don't think

00:25:11.000 that that sentimentalization for lack of a term is worth the 13 billion dollars no and look there's

00:25:16.620 nothing wrong with as i write in the piece of course you should be focused on working class

00:25:21.280 families and communities that have lost their employers but what my argument is that you know

00:25:25.940 corporate welfare is just creating the illusion of bringing back those old times it's not real

00:25:30.660 i mean these are not companies that have an attachment to the community um they're only

00:25:34.600 coming because they're getting a big subsidy it's a bit like saying i i've developed this new

00:25:38.640 friendship when really you just paid someone to be your friend i mean that's what's going on here

00:25:43.280 and i think particularly for conservatives they need to be careful that they're not sort of um

00:25:48.880 you know they're not kidding themselves because this is this is not real these are not real jobs

00:25:52.720 i mean if you pay someone um to to to hire you um or is that is that is that a real job i mean that's

00:26:00.560 most people would find that a bit bizarre is that but that's exactly what's happening here and so i

00:26:03.920 I think people need to remember that there's a massive cost involved in something that would

00:26:09.340 otherwise just be celebrated as a pure gain to the community. Yeah, and I think there are

00:26:14.760 examples of that. I mean, Chapman's, the ice cream factory up in Markdale is a really community

00:26:19.320 oriented factory. I think the Savage Arms plant, which I toured a couple of years ago up in

00:26:24.340 Peterborough, an American company, but really ingrained in the community. But a lot of these

00:26:28.240 automotive manufacturers, it's not to say that they don't have roots in the community in some

00:26:32.640 ways. But I don't believe for a second that if BW could do things for more cheaply in Seoul,

00:26:39.320 that they wouldn't in a second just shut down overnight and move everything over there,

00:26:42.960 because we've seen these big international conglomerates do that. So they aren't really

00:26:47.200 invested unless the subsidies keep coming. Sure. And the other thing, when we romanticize

00:26:53.040 the sort of one company town, we have to remember how those stories ended most of the time. They

00:26:57.640 ended very badly, precisely because companies were at the mercy of a single company. I think

00:27:02.260 if you want to build communities that are resilient, that are diversified, you can't have

00:27:06.160 one employer. The goal shouldn't be one big employer. It should be a, you know, a range of

00:27:10.520 employers so that you don't sort of have all your eggs in one basket. And so if anything, I mean,

00:27:14.760 we're trying to recreate a situation that made a lot of these communities vulnerable. And that's

00:27:19.600 not something we should aspire to. We should be aspiring to situations where when one company

00:27:23.340 goes out of business, it's not devastating to the whole community. And you do that by having

00:27:27.540 a lot of smaller employers instead of just one big one i know your focus aaron is on the policy

00:27:33.000 over the politics of this but i but i was wondering if you had any advice on how politicians

00:27:37.860 could actually criticize this when it becomes very difficult when they have to basically say no

00:27:44.120 to an immediate promise of you know 2500 jobs in a particular town i mean in the case of the

00:27:50.260 the saint thomas plant it's in a conservative riding and i know there was a bit of an awkward

00:27:54.020 encounter there with the local conservative mp karen vecchio when she was standing beside trudeau

00:27:59.060 taking pot shots at pierre polly for not supporting corporate welfare sure i mean well there's a few

00:28:04.500 things and you can see that the the federal conservatives have done this by referring it to

00:28:08.100 the parliamentary budget officer i think that's their way of sort of signaling we're concerned

00:28:11.780 but they don't want to sort of give the strongly worded letter approach sure but they don't want

00:28:16.900 to give the liberals the clip of them saying that they are against these jobs or things like that

00:28:21.460 right but you know i think one thing that uh that uh you know people who want to criticize this can

00:28:26.900 just be honest about is saying yeah sure it's going to be good for the people who get those

00:28:30.660 jobs uh but let's be honest about the cost i mean this is not an ideal situation we shouldn't have

00:28:35.780 to to get jobs this way um and and there's a real cost i mean there are a million other priorities

00:28:40.980 there's so many other things canadians expect their tax dollars to go to um and the 13 billion

00:28:45.860 is is is not exactly chunk change so um there's an opportunity cost here and you're right andrew no

00:28:51.380 Nobody wants to sort of be the Debbie Downer and point out the bad stuff, but somebody needs to do it.

00:28:57.180 Thankfully, I'm not an elected official, so I have no hesitation in calling it out.

00:29:01.680 Yeah, and I mean, when you look at the math, we looked at the math last time you and I spoke about this on how much it costs per job.

00:29:07.000 But even if you just look at the tax burden, $13 billion divided by 40 million people, that's $325 a person.

00:29:13.500 I mean, that's not an insignificant amount of money that if you were to ask Mike in Canmore or Joe in wherever,

00:29:20.280 about they'd say yeah my family could use that sure and this is for one plant in one community

00:29:25.640 i mean if this is your if this is your sort of industrial policy generally how many times can

00:29:30.740 you afford to do this and how many communities and how many sectors right is it really going to

00:29:34.520 be the one-off uh you know color me skeptical that this is going to be the last time they do this

00:29:39.100 aaron woodrick domestic policy guru over at the mcdonald lorie institute always good to talk to

00:29:44.300 you aaron thanks for coming on today thanks a lot andrew i imagine we'll probably have aaron back on

00:29:49.180 when the government caves to Stellantis,

00:29:51.700 as I assume slash fear is inevitable in some form.

00:29:55.120 But it is interesting.

00:29:56.660 So yeah, when they're giving out the $13 billion,

00:29:58.580 you've got Trudeau and Ford

00:29:59.720 doing their buddy comedy shtick,

00:30:02.180 which only ever goes one way.

00:30:03.820 Like Ford will literally bend over backwards

00:30:05.760 for Justin Trudeau,

00:30:07.460 who just like, you know,

00:30:08.440 spits all over him at the first opportunity.

00:30:10.900 And here we have another example of that

00:30:12.520 where Francois-Philippe Champagne is saying,

00:30:14.560 yeah, this is the Ontario government's problem.

00:30:16.340 They need, they're the ones that are preventing it.

00:30:18.120 They need to pay up more.

00:30:19.180 where like Ford, who's been doing the, oh yeah, he's my best friend and I'm not going to lift a

00:30:23.160 hand to help the conservatives. And Chrystia Freeland's my best buddy. And yeah, I want

00:30:26.960 Justin Trudeau to be my best man. Like all of that is basically meaningless because the federal

00:30:31.780 liberals actually do not hold Doug Ford in any sort of respect. They look down upon him, yet he

00:30:37.880 still keeps giving them everything they want at the expense of what Doug Ford would normally in

00:30:43.360 his position be doing to help the conservatives federally but all of that is aside from the main

00:30:49.480 point here which is that this was an entirely predictable problem and once uh Stellantis get

00:30:54.460 there's a reason that the u.s policy that's been like parodied in film time and time again

00:30:59.220 is do not negotiate with terrorists because the whole point is if you give five million dollars to

00:31:04.500 a terrorist to free some hostage they're going to say wow this is a really great way to get five

00:31:08.960 million and then they're just going to start taking hostages left right and center in this

00:31:14.060 particular case it is the taxpayers of Canada who are paying the ransom here and it is not going to

00:31:21.400 end when this proves the concept so yeah I hope just for the future aspect of this that the

00:31:27.760 government says to Stellantis no we're not playing this game but I don't think it's going to go that

00:31:32.060 way because the government loves to play this game then they're going to show up with the big giant

00:31:35.860 novelty-sized check on the front lawn.

00:31:38.420 It wasn't Ed McMahon.

00:31:39.560 I forget who it was that showed up with the checks,

00:31:41.420 but everyone says it was Ed McMahon.

00:31:43.480 But does anyone know who Ed McMahon is now?

00:31:45.280 I was going to say I'm dating myself,

00:31:46.860 and then I realized I wasn't even alive

00:31:49.000 when Ed McMahon was doing his thing.

00:31:50.500 But whatever the case is,

00:31:51.820 they're just going to do that

00:31:53.300 and start claiming that this was all part of their big

00:31:56.120 Made in Canada strategy

00:31:57.620 until someone better comes along,

00:32:00.200 and then the companies will pull up stakes and go there.

00:32:03.460 That does it for us for today.

00:32:04.800 We will end things there.

00:32:05.940 My thanks to all of you for tuning in to today's edition of the show.

00:32:09.340 We'll talk to you tomorrow with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:32:12.960 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:32:16.620 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:19.160 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 16, 2023

Public library bans ＂free speech＂ event

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