Rules For Thee, Not For Me
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Summary
Coming up, the nanny state says you're no longer allowed to talk to your neighbours, Justin Trudeau exposes his hypocrisy, and business owners are left in the lurch. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now, and it's going viral for all the wrong reasons.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, the nanny state says you're no longer allowed to talk to your neighbours,
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Justin Trudeau exposes his hypocrisy, and business owners are left in the lurch.
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I know the last couple of weeks I've been talking about this growing divide
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between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law,
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and now the law enforcement community has caught up with us.
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They're going after, according to Ottawa, loopholes.
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They don't want people to exploit the physical distancing loopholes
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that are pretty much what most people would call sensible behaviour.
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This is a story in the Ottawa Citizen that's going viral for all the wrong reasons.
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An Ottawa health official, the Associate Medical Officer of Health,
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If you have been enjoying a beer on your driveway with a friend
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or exchanging pleasantries with a neighbour over the garden fence, stop it.
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Now, this is the Ottawa Citizen's paraphrase of a message from Dr. Brent Maloney.
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You know, I was having a conversation with my wife on the couch the other day.
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We were sitting a couple of metres apart, and before you knew it,
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All because we started off just the two of us talking.
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You know, that is actually a gateway drug to the bigger things,
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like giant block parties, like giant beachside orgies, whatever you want.
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A conversation over the fence with your neighbour.
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I don't know if Wilson was the guy on the other side of the fence.
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and I think that people are justifiably mocking it here.
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Police and law enforcement need to go after those who are breaking the law
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in a way that is causing there to be a risk to someone else.
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If people are having a mass congregation event, great, go after it.
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But if you've got a couple of people that are talking over the fence, who cares?
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If a bylaw officer goes in there, he has got a joylessness problem,
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that is worse than I think anything coronavirus is going to do in that situation.
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You know, I feel like every episode of the show now
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is just going to be talking about something that we've learned is now illegal.
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It was playing in a park with your four-year-old son a week before that or a day before that.
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And now it is talking over the fence in Ottawa.
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Now, Ottawa has been, it sounds like, the epicenter, not of the virus,
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that is the government overreaction to the virus at the expense of civil liberties.
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For whatever reason, Ottawa has just taken this with gusto.
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And now they're actually going after people who decide they want to sit on their driveway
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and yell at their neighbor who's also sitting on their driveway
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because, oh, that's a loophole and you can't do that.
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So on the weekend, my wife and I had driven somewhere for essential business.
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We went somewhere for essential reasons, I promise.
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And on the way back, we wanted to pick up a jigsaw puzzle from my parents.
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Now, I know this sounds like a horrendously ridiculous existence that we have.
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And the reason is because you can't get an Amazon puzzle anymore.
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You cannot get a jigsaw puzzle from any online retailer.
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Now, my parents, over the years, I have gifted them a number of jigsaw puzzles.
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We were going to be passing by their house anyway.
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I said, okay, can we do like a dead drop on their driveway for the jigsaw puzzle?
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And, you know, they basically put it there and we can go up and sanitize it and spray it away
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and, you know, look around and then it'll be under the park bench or something.
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And as it so happened, they brought the puzzle out and, you know, we did the whole thing.
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And the thing that I found fascinating is that I ended up having a conversation with
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a couple of people that I haven't seen in quite a while from opposite ends of the driveway.
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No Lawtons were killed in the making of this conversation.
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So the fact that this would be a target for the Ottawa Bylaw Office or the Ottawa Public
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Health Office or any municipality's police department is actually quite an offensive concept.
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Because when you start policing ordinary everyday activities that people are doing with the
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accommodations for coronavirus and COVID-19, you're going far beyond the point at which
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people should be or can be comfortable with this.
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So in the Ottawa case, the advice itself is the same.
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Stay home, only make essential trips, associate only with people in your household.
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Well, associating with is a tricky term because, yeah, if you are talking to someone over the
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backyard fence, you're talking to someone in the next driveway over, I don't think if you
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are being cautious and careful, anyone, certainly not a government bureaucrat, has a right to tell
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you no, and this is not on my part about minimizing COVID-19, not at all.
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I've been doing my due diligence as a citizen, as a law-abiding citizen, and as someone who
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But you can't surrender civil liberties for public health when it's not even like the act
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that the government is trying to crack down on will have an impact at all on public health.
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Now, there have been a couple of examples of this that, like I said, I'll probably mention
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each episode because I want to remind people how close we are to losing a lot of these things
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There was a tweet from Raleigh police in North Carolina that, again, I don't even think the
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police were in the wrong, but it does come across as just having that eeriness and ickiness
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because in Raleigh, North Carolina, there were a bunch of people protesting the government's
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And of course, because they're protesting the lockdown order, they are not themselves locked
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They said the protesters are in violation of the governor's executive order.
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Someone asks what part of the governor's order was violated here.
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And a little bit cheekily, Raleigh police says protesting is a non-essential activity.
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If you protest the fact that you're not allowed to do non-essential things, that protest gets
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I mean, why doesn't government do this more often?
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Anytime you do something that says the government is wrong, you're deemed a non-essential
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And of course, as I mentioned before, Americans are a lot more prone to standing up against
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Because Americans would hear this and say, ah, but the First Amendment, and they'd probably
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I have a friend of mine who's a blogger, Kathy Shadle.
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And she had said anyone who thinks that people won't go along with this long term has never
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Because my thesis was that people won't really buy into all of this.
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And her thing is that everyone just goes along with it like they have with all of the ridiculous
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airport security, quote unquote, enhancements post 9-11.
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I hope that we don't have to do this long enough that any one of us has to be right or
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And the most chilling police tweet of the week is not the Raleigh, North Carolina police,
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but the central community team from Central Bedfordshire in England.
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Now, the central Bedfordshire people have said, if you think that by going for a picnic in
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a rural location, no one will find you, don't be surprised if an officer appears from the
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Now, the picture accompanying that tweet, two officers in shadow telling people just because
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you go for a picnic in a rural location doesn't mean we won't find you.
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And we're going to sneak up on you from the bushes and tell you, ha, you're busted now.
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The person minding their own business, having a picnic out in the middle of nowhere, or the
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person who is approached in the middle of nowhere by two police, all of a sudden doubling
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the number of people that are in this confined space, all in the name of enforcing physical
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And to enforce physical distance, we're going to have law enforcement close in on you because
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this is exactly where we are in society right now.
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And I said last week that there were really huge imbalances in the way the UK police, which
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have turned a blind eye in the past to just absolutely heinous crimes, decide they're going
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There are a lot of people that it seems like absolutely love the world we're in now.
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The people that absolutely seem to love this idea that they have purpose in their lives
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because they can now go and tell people, oh, you can't have a picnic.
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And there are entire industries, entire industries that I think are basing themselves off of this
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The bylaw enforcement industry, for example, which is, I think, probably one of the only
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industries that's doing better off in the midst of the economic turndown right now than
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anything else is the bylaw enforcement, law enforcement.
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I mean, you get a lot of these bylaw enforcement officers that I'm pretty sure think they're like
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I mean, it's not even like I'm going to give them credit for being on the front lines like
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I will police or paramedics or hospital workers.
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It's like bylaw enforcement officers, I feel like we could have so far from the front lines
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there in Switzerland during this battle, and the country would be better off, not worse
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But I also kind of think that year round about bylaw enforcement, so I'm a bad person to
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However, we have this story in Blacklock's reporter that is talking about the fact that
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under the new legislation passed by the federal government, anyone who crosses the border illegally
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or unlawfully for non-essential cross-border travel.
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So it doesn't mean you've crossed illegally because you're an illegal immigrant.
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It means if you cross because you want to visit grandma rather than delivering a load
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of papayas or something to the local grocery store, they're going to ticket children $100.
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So the new regulations passed by cabinet are that non-essential border travelers who are
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apparently able to cross the border will be fined $1,000 for illegal entry into Canada,
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$750 for failure to comply with an order, $275 for providing a false or misleading statement,
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Now, I'm assuming they give that bill to the parents.
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Dr. Howard New, who is the deputy chief public health officer, says that those who arrive
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And these rules, by the way, are also impacting those who break the Quarantine Act when they
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come in, although that actually could have a much steeper fine.
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If you come in and you break the quarantine orders, you could be fined.
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I think it was up to a million dollars in some terms, although it doesn't look like they've
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But they have changed and amended the Quarantine Act.
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And again, it still is very lacking in enforcement.
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You get people that come into the country, and yes, the government says you must quarantine
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yourself for 14 days, but they have no follow-up mechanism.
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You know, and the fact that there are people that are talking about these sorts of snitch
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But I also think that if you're going to have a rule, you have to enforce it when there is
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And that's the line here, because on some areas, I'm like, yeah, enforce the law.
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Then there are other laws that I'm like, why on earth are we enforcing these ones and
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You know, you look at before the government decided it was going to turn away illegal border
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My thought would be, why are we enforcing all of these ridiculous ordinances like skateboarding
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parks that are closed that someone skateboards on?
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But for a time, anyone could just waltz into Canada via Roxton Road and the government would
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This is your new home now for the next couple of years before we forget that we were supposed
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It's that the laws that are being enforced, the things that the government is caring about,
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it seems like are a lot less significant than the things they aren't caring about.
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And this misguided priority set is permeating through every single level, I think, of this
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And I have to talk about Easter weekend here because this is something everyone's been asking
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And I didn't talk about it on my show on Monday because I hadn't yet heard Justin Trudeau's
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And I wanted to wait a couple of days to hear what he was going to say and then delve into
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And it's that Justin Trudeau decided he would break what he had been telling all Canadians
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to do for weeks by having Easter with his family in Harrington Lake.
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Now, you all saw that Instagram post from Sophie Gregoire Trudeau.
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Sophie, Justin, the three kids all hamming it up and having a little outdoor Easter celebration
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at Harrington Lake, which is the Prime Minister's country residence, which is 30 minutes from
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actually, I don't even think it's 30 minutes, it's 30 kilometers from where the Prime Minister
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And I think we need to have a longer term discussion after this about official residences.
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And perhaps if the Prime Minister needs two residences, they don't need to be so close
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But again, longstanding grief, nothing to do with coronavirus.
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So for whatever reason, three weeks ago, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, after getting cleared of
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coronavirus, had moved with the Trudeau children to Harrington Lake.
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But the arrangement, as we understand it, for the last few weeks was that Trudeau is
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at Rideau Cottage and Harrington Lake is occupied by the rest of the family.
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And there was that weird sort of, you know, Justin Trudeau was in quarantine, but he was
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still, after the 14 days was up, decided he would stay for 40 days and 40 nights or something,
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And then on Friday, I think it was, he was asked, oh, what are you going to do for Easter?
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Which was, you know, a really hard hitting question from the mainstream media, as always.
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Now, this was just one hour, I think, before Howard New had said, who's the deputy public
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health advisor to Canada, had said, you know what, you're going to have to have that big
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family dinner on Skype and you're going to have to have virtual Easter dinners and all
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And Trudeau just said, I'm going to see my family.
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Now, there were a lot of people that kind of defended him, that were really parsing that
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and saying, oh, he means FaceTiming them or something like that.
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And I didn't really think anything of it because I don't really care what most people do on Easter
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And then the picture comes and it's like, well, hang on.
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So right now, non-essential travel is banned in general.
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Quebec has secured its border so that you can't actually do non-essential travel from Ontario
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You have to get stopped and questioned and you have to answer what it is that you're planning
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And then you have the fact that Trudeau and his family, by their own admission, are living
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And again, why they made that decision, I don't know or care about.
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But they decided and they were going to live at the two separate addresses.
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So then Trudeau decides he's going to go to Harrington Lake, cross a provincial boundary.
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My colleague Candace Malcolm did a video talking about all of the specific rules that Trudeau
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And I want to make it very clear here that I don't care were it not for how clear he was
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And it was interesting how much pushback there was when people on Twitter were raising these
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And then the mainstream media started to ask it.
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And now it's commendable to ask these questions.
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But you had stories in Global, the National Post, etc.
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And I want to read the one from Global here, which I think is interesting.
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Trudeau under fire for Easter trip, despite urging Canadians to, quote, sacrifice plans.
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And they mention, I think, this very important line that Trudeau gave on the weekend before
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And the Easter egg hunt, well, it'll have to happen around the house instead of around
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So he says, stay home and Skype the family dinner.
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And then he decides to just get in the car and head on across the Ottawa River not long
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But where I find it interesting is that when asked about it, he just said, we continue to
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follow all the instructions from public health authorities.
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The follow-up question was asked by the journalist in French.
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And he says, yep, you know, my family's been living there for three weeks and this is where
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So he doesn't actually say how what he did squares with the public advice, the public health
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advice that he's been parroting and that his public health team has been parroting.
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And this is why I wanted to cite that global story at the bottom of it.
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Speaking on background, a government official said the prime minister should be considered
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an essential worker and therefore allowed to cross the border into Quebec.
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Now, I will not comment on whether Justin Trudeau is deemed an essential worker.
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I think most of the time it might be a very difficult sell to make that case.
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Well, anyway, but even if he is an essential worker, which if you can say that with a straight
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He should be allowed to cross the border into Quebec.
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And the other line, the official also suggested the travel should be viewed as the prime minister
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traveling between his work location and a new primary residence for his family.
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They are made up for the purposes of justifying what Trudeau has done.
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Traveling between his work location and a new primary residence for his family.
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Well, his new family primary residence is different than his primary residence, which is different
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than where he works because he works at the one primary residence.
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So the government has been specifically telling people not to go to their cottage.
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Harrington Lake is best described as the Justin Trudeau cottage, as the prime minister of Canada's
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And now the big line is, I don't know, he's just traveling from one residence to the other.
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So again, the rules for me are different than the rules for thee.
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And I can't stress enough that I wouldn't care if we were not having Canadians being told,
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don't talk to your neighbor who's in the driveway over, don't rollerblade at the empty park,
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If we were being told, if we were not being told all of these things, I wouldn't care.
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And Justin Trudeau has made a priority about being the model of good behavior.
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And that was why he stayed in his 14-day quarantine for the better part of, I think, 27 years or
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The reason he did that was because he was saying, listen, I'm following all the rules.
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And then the second it's no longer convenient to do so, he's zoomed across a provincial border.
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And then he's back in time for the next press conference from Rideau Cottage.
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And by the way, I don't think it is all that similar to what happened with Andrew Scheer,
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And I realized that I think the two were different cases because Andrew Scheer, who has had to
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conduct matters of being the official opposition leader, so much so that the government arranged
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for a government jet to bring Andrew Scheer to Ottawa for the first parliamentary session,
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and then I think for the second as well, Andrew Scheer has done this thing that he's had to
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do because it's important to have opposition leaders as part of the process.
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You can't get from Regina to Ottawa by car without just a miserable, miserable drive that
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So the Trudeau government, the prime minister's office, offers a government jet.
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Andrew Scheer decides, OK, we're going to move the family to Ottawa and stay there so I
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They use all the things they're supposed to do.
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And then Elizabeth May just decides she's going to just go.
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And if I can use the term, just start bitching to CBC about, oh, my goodness, Andrew Scheer.
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I mean, for crying out loud, if you had a problem with it, you were literally asked, you could have said no.
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She made this big show about, oh, the generosity.
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She said she was overcome by generosity at the time.
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And so much so that it had an expiration date on it.
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She couldn't maintain that level of generosity a second longer than the flight, apparently.
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And then the CBC story runs this thing about Andrew Scheer and the Challenger Jet.
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He's fielding eight questions from reporters at his press conference on Tuesday morning, whereas Trudeau's little Easter getaway on Tuesday gets him one question and one follow-up from just one reporter.
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Now, if I had my druthers, I'd say we talk about neither.
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I'd say we talk about neither because you have people that are business owners that are suffering.
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You have people that are in families that can't afford to pay their bills.
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You have people that have no idea whether they will have a job or what their life will look like in two weeks, let alone in two months, let alone in a year.
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So I don't actually care that much about where the Prime Minister spends his Easter or about whether Andrew Scheer decides to live in Regina or in Ottawa for the duration of this crisis.
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But if you are going to go down that road of caring about these things, you're going to choose to make these the hills to die on, my goodness, media, can you be a bit more bloody consistent?
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You disgusting hacks who just will take two situations that have that common thread and completely turn a blind eye to what Justin Trudeau does.
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But, oh, when Andrew Scheer does it, he's a conservative.
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So we're going to be rate and badger and go and keep hammering and keep hammering and keep hammering to such a point that you don't even know what you're even talking about anymore.
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But, oh, he's the bad guy and Justin Trudeau is the good guy.
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You know, I talk a lot about media bias because it's there for a reason.
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But for the most part, I actually have a lot of respect for the people that I've encountered in my career working in media.
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There are a few people that really stand out as being exceptionally bad.
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And there are a few people that I have no opinion on.
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But it was just such an embarrassing display when I saw.
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And by the way, I was at that or by electronic means.
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I was on the phone for that press conference and I was hearing this and I didn't see it in real time.
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And I didn't see that Andrew Scheer had actually shaken his head at one point because the question was just so ridiculous.
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And she asked, listen, why are the rules there for other people and not for you?
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Even the one question that Trudeau did field, I think it was from Le Devoir, was a question that was a lot more online with, you know, just tell us about why you did it.
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Whereas with Scheer, it was why did you do this?
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Who like and look, politicians need to be held to account at all parties.
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And if you think this is a partisan thing, just look at stuff I've said about Andrew Scheer in the past.
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I have not held back when the Conservatives and when Andrew Scheer have warranted criticism.
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And my goodness, if we are going to choose to fight to the death on these things,
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we're going to see a lot more cases like the Ottawa health officials saying,
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We'll become the Stepford country, before you know it, where everyone just has this robotic, automatronic means of going through life.
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And I don't even think the public health crisis will be cleared because no one will be on that track.
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We'll just be thinking of enforcement and enforcement only.
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And you look at, in Scotland, by the way, the chief medical officer resigned after what was heralded as being conflicting in messages.
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And then she ended up resigning because she had been traveling to her second home on weekends.
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And this was something that, again, I want to stress, I'm not choosing to make the Trudeau thing the big fight.
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But Corey Morgan had said on Twitter, this person lost her job for doing exactly what Justin Trudeau did last weekend.
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He says, I guess Scotland has a lower tolerance of gross hypocrisy than Canada does.
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So she apologizes profusely because she's been telling everyone to stay put.
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And then on weekends saying, oh, I'm going to go to my cottage.
00:27:48.520
But at the same time, do we really want to adopt a snitch culture and make that the cornerstone of this country?
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00:27:59.500
Back in a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:28:08.140
Speaking of the things that matter, National Post, is it okay to get hairy in COVID-19 lockdown?
00:28:18.920
This is a letter from, well, not from someone who's mentioning their name.
00:28:26.780
The question is, I noticed that guys everywhere are letting their facial hair grow.
00:28:30.580
Why would you take the time to shave every day when you aren't going anywhere?
00:28:34.900
As a woman, I have to admit, I have also let things slide in the personal upkeep area.
00:28:40.020
Let's just say that the lady down at the waxing place, you know, the one with the window sign that says,
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stop shaving your beaver, is going to have her work cut out for her when all of this COVID-19 stuff settles.
1.00
00:28:50.760
The advice is that time spent at home during self-isolation is no exception to the rule that we sometimes feel bored and uninspired.
00:29:02.200
you seem like you are pretty laid back about the whole thing.
00:29:06.920
But at the same time, if you get in shape and then quit, over time, your muscles will get weaker, as will your body.
00:29:12.700
So you apparently are supposed to keep up your personal hygiene.
00:29:16.620
So the National Post says it is not okay to get Harry in lockdown or something like that.
00:29:21.700
I lost track when the story just kept going on.
00:29:24.360
And it actually went on longer than Justin Trudeau's lockdown did.
00:29:27.700
The, this is apparently what people are caring about now.
00:29:32.180
So it's funny because on one hand, I was saying we need to care about more important things.
00:29:35.600
And then the next tab that I open on my computer is about personal grooming.
00:29:40.120
I'm actually in a very beneficial position right now because I have to wear a nice shirt when I go on camera.
00:29:48.720
And like I said last week, I mean, you never know if I'm wearing like track pants or pajama pants underneath.
00:29:52.840
But from like the, from like the, the stomach up, I look very presentable.
00:29:57.120
So that forces me to not go around as completely slovenly as some other people might be.
00:30:02.860
It's not because I'm naturally a put together person, I assure you.
00:30:05.960
It's just because if I just sit down here with some like hooded sweatshirt having not shaved in a week,
00:30:10.780
you'll think, wow, why is that homeless guy doing a show and why should we listen to him?
00:30:14.720
So in any case, let's talk a little bit about the global aspect of COVID-19.
00:30:21.840
Because even still, China is not trustworthy.
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00:30:26.900
If you remember nothing else from the show, remember those four words.
00:30:30.540
And there is a letter from parliamentarians from all over the world, from the UK, from Australia, from Estonia,
00:30:42.580
And this is something that in the letter they call China's Chernobyl moment.
00:30:47.300
A hundred politicians and policy experts have signed, including former Canadian Attorney General Erwin Kotler,
00:30:55.500
I disagree with him on a lot, but I agree with him on a great deal as well.
00:30:59.600
He's from a vintage of liberal that just doesn't exist anymore.
00:31:04.320
But the problem is not a single current Canadian legislator has signed this letter.
00:31:12.440
China's Chernobyl moment is a self-inflicted wound.
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00:31:15.600
The Chinese Communist Party silenced Chinese doctors who wanted to warn other health professionals
00:31:20.740
during the early stage of the outbreak, it says.
00:31:25.840
It criticizes the capitulation of Chinese pressure to downplay.
00:31:36.080
Not a single Canadian MP would put their name to this.
00:31:39.280
Now, there are a number that I know probably would endorse the spirit of it.
00:31:43.480
But the fact that no one from the liberal government, no one from the Trudeau government is prepared
00:31:52.180
I mean, we talked for a couple of shows about Patti Hajdu, Politburo Patti's capitulation of
00:31:57.600
the Chinese by saying there's no indication the numbers can't be trusted.
00:32:02.980
I mean, the World Health Organization is right now merely an extension of China.
00:32:08.620
The WHO has completely adopted the Chinese talking points and itself was early on saying,
00:32:15.780
ah, there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
00:32:21.180
So at a time when the WHO could have and should have been looking to other countries and saying,
00:32:26.620
hey, just so you know, guys, gird your loins because this thing's coming out of China and
00:32:32.800
Instead, the WHO was doing what China was trying to do, which is telling people, ah,
00:32:43.000
It's just a little contained sort of thing there.
00:32:53.900
And I know that everyone in the U.S. right now is losing their mind, everyone on the
00:32:57.900
left actually around the world, that Donald Trump is pulling funding from the WHO, halting
00:33:04.440
Let's talk about this because I think Canada would be completely justified in following
00:33:09.360
I think that people have a very distorted view of what the World Health Organization does.
00:33:14.880
It is not a public health agency in the sense that it's not actually doing anything
00:33:23.900
The World Health Organization is an aggregator of data at best, but it's not even particularly
00:33:31.480
I mean, it seems like its greatest contribution to the COVID-19 effort is a spreadsheet that
00:33:36.760
they just populate with numbers that other countries send in.
00:33:39.560
So when, you know, Xi Jinping says, oh, you know, China has, you know, 200 deaths and that's
00:33:48.900
And then when Iran says, oh, yeah, you know, we've just got, you know, a couple here and
0.70
00:33:55.900
So when you have a case like Ebola, when you have viruses or infections or bacterial issues
00:34:03.420
that are in parts of the world that don't have the response in a box like Western governments
00:34:16.080
But when you have countries like the US, UK, Australia, Canada, the European Union is not
00:34:25.480
When they're impacted by this, they have public health apparatus that do as much as the World
00:34:35.480
And they're able to manage these things because right now the World Health Organization is not
00:34:40.720
I mean, they're sitting on the sidelines and just telling people what China tells them
00:34:46.060
And this is like, I mean, there's no credibility whatsoever.
00:34:49.760
And this is one of the reasons that I think Dr. Teresa Tam warrants some skepticism from
00:34:54.960
Canadians, because more than other public health officials, she is herself linked to the WHO.
00:35:04.160
She's worked on a number of WHO products and projects, rather.
00:35:07.760
And I think that her link to the WHO is something that itself might color the stuff she said that
00:35:16.240
just ended up being wrong going back to January, using WHO, and by extension, using Chinese talking
00:35:24.160
And it was actually good to see Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, criticize her for this
00:35:30.660
when answering a question from Vashie Capellos on CBC about why Alberta wants to circumvent
00:35:40.500
I mean, Health Canada has been behind the curve for the entirety of this crisis.
00:35:45.760
You've got vaccines, tests, and drugs that other countries have tested and allowed and
00:35:53.300
Because Canada's like, oh, we've got a rigorous process and all of this stuff.
00:35:56.240
And Jason Kenney said, listen, if a country that we trust or a jurisdiction we trust, like
00:36:01.480
the FDA, the Australian Health Agency, the European Union Health Agency, if they've gone
00:36:06.380
through the due diligence here and approved these things, why should we not?
00:36:10.220
So what he says is Alberta is going to completely allow these things from what he calls peer countries.
00:36:17.660
But I'm glad that he took aim at PHAC, at the Public Health Agency of Canada, when pushed
00:36:26.560
And you tweeted yesterday that you're directing health officials to use or to consider using
00:36:33.320
testing methods that are approved by regulators in other countries, not specifically by Health
00:36:40.020
Does that mean that you don't trust Health Canada?
00:36:42.980
No, of course, I trust them as their credibility as a agency in terms of their approvals.
00:36:53.300
But we're not going to wait for Health Canada to play catch up with, for example, the European
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00:36:59.100
Union's drug regulator or the Food and Drug Administration in the United States.
00:37:04.660
The direction I've given our officials is that if we see a highly credible regulator of medications
00:37:13.240
in a peer jurisdiction like the European Union, Australia or the United States, that has approved
00:37:19.980
a test or a vaccine or medication, we should pursue that.
00:37:26.620
We should not wait for Health Canada to catch up.
00:37:29.380
So we're not going to allow, you know, I think one of the critical learnings about response
00:37:36.020
to pandemic is you do not allow bureaucracy to get in the way of speed of response.
00:37:43.220
And that's one of the reasons that Alberta is participating, for example, in trials for
00:37:48.940
hydroxychloroquine, which is a potential medical treatment.
00:37:53.300
But with respect, Premier, it's not exactly just about bureaucracy, right?
00:37:57.400
Health Canada performs a function in which they vet these tests.
00:38:02.000
And Dr. Tam today, in response to your tweet, said that they do have significant concerns about
00:38:08.580
So if you instead defer to speed and you end up with tests that aren't accurate, that
00:38:12.800
becomes a health risk in and of itself, does it not?
00:38:17.040
Is Dr. Tam suggesting that the European Union's regulator of medications or the Food and Drug
00:38:24.880
Administration approve things that are dangerous for public use?
00:38:30.500
You know, this is the same Dr. Tam who is telling us that we shouldn't close our borders
00:38:35.220
to countries with high levels of infection and who, in January, was repeating talking
00:38:41.760
points out of the PRC about no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
00:38:48.620
There were Chinese talking points that were being parroted by Canadian officials.
00:38:53.260
Now, it's not to say that they're Chinese operatives, but either way, they were either uncritical
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00:38:59.300
of China, which makes them bad at their jobs, or they just didn't think it was worthwhile
00:39:04.240
to criticize China, in which case they're still not particularly good at their jobs.
00:39:08.580
No matter what the reason was, the result is the same, which is data that can't be trusted
00:39:14.000
coming from the people who are telling us, just trust us, because they know best.
00:39:18.480
And the people that Justin Trudeau has effectively given a blank slate to and a blank check to,
00:39:23.960
to put whatever policy measures they want to in place in Canada.
00:39:27.600
And when what they're saying is indistinguishable from what China's saying, yeah, I think it's
0.63
00:39:35.680
So good on Donald Trump for pulling WHO funding.
00:39:39.280
It'll be interesting to see if a similar push comes from the conservatives or even conservative
00:39:44.200
leadership candidates, who I know are not supposed to be campaigning, but are anyway.
00:39:47.800
Because right now, the US has to pay for every country's share of the UN, of NATO, of WHO,
00:39:59.880
I mean, the US just gets completely crapped on by the UN, but most of its budget is coming
00:40:04.820
from the US and its entire domicile is at the US.
00:40:08.760
And the WHO is headquartered abroad, but it's the same sort of thing.
00:40:12.480
Why should the United States have to bankroll this thing that is not doing anything?
00:40:18.020
And by the way, hasn't really contributed much of a net positive in the coronavirus combat
00:40:24.860
And that, I think, is where we need to have a real discussion about this moving forward.
00:40:29.340
Now, I said last week, maybe it doesn't need to be done right now.
00:40:33.120
Maybe you can just review the WHO relationship after the crisis.
00:40:37.380
But now that we hear, OK, this crisis is going to go on, you know, up to two years, there
00:40:43.820
So if the problem is there now and they need an about face, this may be the thing that triggers
00:40:49.340
Although, of course, all of the so-called experts in the US are now saying, oh, no, no, no,
00:40:54.640
I think that no one can force a country to hand a check over to an international body that
00:41:05.160
When we come back, a final wrap up of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:41:18.760
I'm ending on a bit of a boring subject here, but I do think it's an important one.
00:41:24.240
And that is the lack of coverage of the government's relief measures for people impacted by COVID-19.
00:41:32.340
And I'm speaking specifically of employers and business owners and entrepreneurs here,
00:41:37.400
because right now the government has made $2,000 a month available to people who are out
00:41:43.920
of work or people who have no income because of COVID-19, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.
00:41:53.720
And a few days later, $2,000 appears in your bank account or you get a check, whichever you
00:42:01.740
But when you look through all of the things for employers, it's a lot different and there
00:42:09.680
So the big employer measures are deferral of tax payments and deferral of GST, HST remittance,
00:42:16.480
But as far as the cash payments that deal with loss of revenue, there's the wage subsidy,
00:42:21.720
which will cover up to 75% of employee wages for a term of time.
00:42:27.860
There is the Canada Emergency Business Account, SEBA, which is a government guaranteed loan
00:42:34.000
from your bank of up to $40,000, interest-free and $30,000 is all you have to pay back.
00:42:40.540
And then there are some other measures as well that are available, like loans through BDC
00:42:47.680
But for the most part, these are the primary programs.
00:42:52.000
Now, if you are self-employed and you have some income, you are ineligible.
00:43:01.060
The government has tried to make it now so that if you work less than 10 hours a week,
00:43:05.240
you can still apply for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.
00:43:08.920
But for the most part, if you're self-employed and you lose, let's say, 80% of your livelihood,
00:43:14.400
it is more advantageous for you to stop working entirely and claim the $2,000 than it is for
00:43:21.120
you to keep working and thus be ineligible for it.
00:43:24.020
And I thought, because I'm self-employed and I know I do a lot of stuff for True North and
00:43:27.760
this is not really relevant to most of you throughout the year, but I'm telling you just
00:43:32.880
because it's relevant to the story I'm telling right now.
00:43:35.800
On paper, I am self-employed and I am a contractor and that is the way I set it up because I do other
00:43:44.080
But anyway, I'm self-employed and I'm actually okay.
00:43:47.920
So I'm not saying this because I'm trying to say that I'm in a rough spot because I'm not,
00:43:54.500
And I have a lot of friends of mine who are employers that have had to shut down and have
00:44:02.420
And someone I did talk about on a previous episode that I know who owns a restaurant and
00:44:10.080
They aren't paying their employees, so the wage subsidy doesn't really do anything for
00:44:14.000
They can benefit from the loan, but it doesn't really deal with the revenue side of things.
00:44:18.920
If you are a sole proprietor, you're not someone who has a corporation, you're a sole proprietor,
00:44:24.800
you can't benefit from that emergency loan at all.
00:44:29.140
The only thing you could get if you're a sole proprietor is that $2,000 a month.
00:44:34.400
But if you're a sole proprietor who's still doing a bit of work, you are completely excluded
00:44:38.900
from the personal support measures and you are completely excluded from the business support
00:44:47.180
And I found a stat on this that was interesting, which is that the vast majority of independent
00:44:53.340
of small businesses have between one and four employees.
00:44:56.160
So for you to have access to that government backed loan, you have, and I think this is
00:45:03.180
fascinating, you have to have payroll between $50,000 and a million dollars.
00:45:07.640
A lot of small businesses, certainly sole proprietorships, don't have that.
00:45:12.480
And if you're a sole proprietor who pays yourself, but you take it as business revenue rather than
00:45:18.220
payroll, which is how most people do it, you're excluded from this.
00:45:21.580
Now, for a lot of people listening or watching, I know this may sound Greek to you, and I don't
00:45:29.600
I'm just someone who's tried to navigate this system and figure out what's available for
00:45:36.600
But the reason I share this with you is to say that there are huge swaths of the population
00:45:41.360
that are ineligible for the government support or for whom the government support is not
00:45:48.120
And it would be so easy for the government to expand eligibility.
00:45:53.640
And the more that I see this all, the more strengthened I am in my resolve, that it would
00:45:58.020
be better for the government to just say, you know what, everyone who wants it gets the Canada
00:46:04.860
And if your income for 2020 is over a certain amount, and I don't know what you make that
00:46:09.300
amount, we'll take it back from you at tax time.
00:46:12.360
That would solve pretty much all of the problems.
00:46:17.420
It would solve the eligibility problems with the current programs.
00:46:21.240
It wouldn't solve cash flow issues for businesses.
00:46:25.120
But it would at least make it so there aren't people that are completely excluded from all
00:46:34.500
This is something that I would criticize because it's not a liberal or conservative issue.
00:46:38.620
It's something that just if the government is going to commit to this path, do it a lot
00:46:42.700
And this is why I've been really holding up the importance of the official opposition
00:46:47.460
in this, because the official opposition is the only real way to tell the government,
00:46:52.180
hey, we think you should do this and then put it in legislation.
00:46:55.480
Look, I'm not able to ask questions of Justin Trudeau at those press conferences.
00:46:58.860
I'm still banned from covering the Justin Trudeau government.
00:47:02.540
And that's something I have to live with right now.
00:47:04.740
But I would love to see these ideas put forward.
00:47:07.320
So if you have an MP, especially a liberal MP, talk to them about this.
00:47:11.980
Say, listen, there are people I know of who are excluded from all of these programs.
00:47:18.180
Ask them about employers in businesses that don't have any cash flow right now.
00:47:23.880
Ask them about these people, because there needs to be some pressure on the government
00:47:27.820
to expand the criteria so that those who most need the supports that are being offered right
00:47:36.820
So that's my little TED talk that I'll end with today.
00:47:39.100
My thanks to all of you for tuning into the show, writing in.
00:47:41.920
We might do a reader email or listener email episode in the future, because I've gotten
00:47:46.400
some great thoughts and some very heartwarming thoughts from people.
00:47:53.460
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:47:55.560
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.