Juno News - Serious countries want nothing to do with Canada

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

00:00:05.280 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.720 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:16.320 This is another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,

00:00:20.020 the Andrew Lawton Show, here on True North on this Tuesday, March 14th, 2023,

00:00:25.340 just after 4 o'clock Eastern, what is it?

00:00:28.640 No, Eastern Daylight Time now.

00:00:30.300 It's no longer Eastern Standard Time.

00:00:32.840 So for, I believe, everywhere but Saskatchewan,

00:00:35.920 the clocks have changed in this great dominion of Canada.

00:00:39.560 If you read the line, which is the online publication

00:00:43.400 started via Substack by Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney,

00:00:46.620 they had like dueling columns this week about daylight savings,

00:00:50.360 which I feel are a bit of a perennial thing that,

00:00:52.780 well, actually more than perennial,

00:00:54.600 because they come twice a year.

00:00:55.800 Wait, no, that's annual.

00:00:56.900 You can tell I'm not a gardener.

00:00:58.220 I don't know.

00:00:58.780 Even now, I have no idea the difference

00:01:00.300 between perennial and annual.

00:01:01.680 I believe perennials come back automatically

00:01:04.980 and annuals you have to plant every year,

00:01:08.300 which always struck me as a bit odd

00:01:10.460 because you'd think annual would mean

00:01:11.760 it comes back every year.

00:01:12.860 But if you tune in for the gardening advice,

00:01:15.040 I assure you, you are horrendously disappointed

00:01:17.180 most days and especially now.

00:01:18.620 So we'll move on to the stuff

00:01:19.660 we have a bit of a better grasp on, sports.

00:01:23.180 No, wait, not really much of a grasp of that either.

00:01:25.340 Politics, I can give you, though.

00:01:26.920 I'm going to be speaking very shortly with Christine Van Gein

00:01:30.100 from the Canadian Constitution Foundation

00:01:32.600 about this absurd and incredibly, incredibly, I would say, illegal bylaw

00:01:38.760 that's being proposed in Calgary to make it illegal by, again, by bylaw,

00:01:44.320 by municipal fiat to protest if city councillors don't like you.

00:01:49.020 So it's undoubtedly unconstitutional,

00:01:51.320 but that doesn't mean they're not going to try it.

00:01:53.320 So that's going to be something we'll talk about very shortly.

00:01:56.380 But I want to start with a bigger picture look at a question

00:01:59.440 that I think should be top of mind for Canadians,

00:02:02.420 but I'd say isn't always, which is Canada's place in the world.

00:02:07.380 Now, let me preface this by saying that the world is not this idealist place.

00:02:12.320 The world has challenges, the world has threats, the world has risks.

00:02:16.900 And the world has all of these things to such an extent

00:02:19.760 that countries need to find a way to combat them.

00:02:22.620 And I've been guilty of this in the past myself.

00:02:24.940 If you try to view things too simplistically

00:02:27.180 or too black and white and you miss the nuance of it,

00:02:29.860 you are not going to get a whole picture.

00:02:31.780 That being said,

00:02:34.240 I don't believe anyone in the world of serious countries

00:02:39.300 right now believes that Canada is a serious country.

00:02:43.160 And the title of this episode on social media

00:02:45.700 is that serious countries want nothing to do with Canada.

00:02:48.420 And I think there's a voluminous amount of evidence supporting this, but it keeps growing.

00:02:54.300 The most recent example this week is the Australia-United Kingdom-United States Security Pact called AUKUS.

00:03:03.000 Now, despite how silly the name is, AUKUS is a security and intelligence partnership between three nations.

00:03:10.460 Now, let me just look up the population of Australia.

00:03:14.180 Now, Australia, 25 million people, so not insignificantly smaller than Canada, but still has a seat at this table.

00:03:22.860 Now, I realize that geopolitically, Australia is more front and center on the Indo-Pacific.

00:03:27.560 Canada is a Pacific country that kind of forgets it's a Pacific country.

00:03:31.980 Pacific strategy is pretty much an afterthought for Canada, and we've just unveiled a few months ago our grand Indo-Pacific strategy,

00:03:39.860 and everyone's forgotten about it because we really don't have an Indo-Pacific strategy in

00:03:44.300 Canada. But Australia is not more suited to be a part of any alliance of this nature than Canada.

00:03:52.600 Yet the difference between Australia and Canada is that Australia has a seat at the table and

00:03:56.800 Canada does not. I touched on this a little bit last week that the AUKUS partnership needs to be

00:04:04.020 viewed in context. It's a subset of the five I's. The five I's countries, which are the United

00:04:10.100 States, the United Kingdom, Australia, plus Canada and New Zealand, has existed for many years so

00:04:16.940 that these five countries that have shared interests, shared language, shared culture,

00:04:21.240 that are all military partners, that are allies in trade and economics and military, that all of

00:04:26.640 them could come together, share intelligence, and tackle together the big threats facing the world. 0.62

00:04:33.060 Increasingly, that is China. There is no doubt about that. 0.96

00:04:36.120 Even the Liberal Member of Parliament, John McKay, said that China poses an existential threat to Canada

00:04:42.320 and to Canadian democracy and institutions and values, if you extend the point he's making to its logical ends.

00:04:49.600 So when Canada is on the sidelines, as three countries that share goals on that get together,

00:04:57.300 this is something that should bother Canadians. This is something that should bother the Canadian government.

00:05:03.060 so what's happened here is this partnership which has been talked about for quite a while

00:05:07.860 is moving to the next stage you had a meeting and i believe it was uh point loma the point loma

00:05:13.860 naval base in san diego between uh anthony albanese in australia joe biden in the united states

00:05:20.340 rishi sunak in the united kingdom they're all sitting down at the table there and they are

00:05:24.660 talking about the importance of getting together they're talking about helping australia develop

00:05:29.720 a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

00:05:32.080 They're talking about all of the threats 0.96

00:05:33.660 that China's Navy is posing to Western interests, 0.67

00:05:36.440 to Australian interests.

00:05:38.320 They are talking about all of this stuff.

00:05:40.400 And then Canada is sitting on the sidelines.

00:05:43.300 This is the tweet from Foreign Policy Canada on Twitter.

00:05:46.800 Canada welcomes the AUKUS announcement

00:05:48.860 supporting rules-based international order

00:05:51.340 in the Indo-Pacific.

00:05:52.720 As part of our Indo-Pacific strategy,

00:05:54.620 we're committed to working with partners

00:05:56.480 to promote peace, resilience, and security in the region.

00:05:59.720 including through an enhanced naval presence.

00:06:02.960 Naval gazing is more like it.

00:06:04.580 But Canada, I think, just basically shoved a few inputs

00:06:08.200 into one of those artificial intelligence chatbots

00:06:11.500 to generate that tweet,

00:06:12.840 because they have all of the keywords and the buzzwords

00:06:14.800 without saying anything.

00:06:16.380 So because Canada has been excluded from this,

00:06:19.320 Canada's only role, really, is to downplay it and say,

00:06:22.980 oh, yeah, AUKUS is fine. 0.65

00:06:24.340 That's that little, you know, that little side hustle going on.

00:06:27.460 I mean, it's got Joe Biden on it.

00:06:29.000 So in fairness, you shouldn't take it too seriously.

00:06:31.120 This is a guy that couldn't tell the difference between a submarine and an elephant most days.

00:06:35.520 So again, the fact that he is one of three partners here should probably concern us for different reasons.

00:06:41.260 But if I take this in a Canadian foreign policy context, the big question, where is Canada?

00:06:47.520 And I don't think Canada's exclusion is because Canada decided it didn't want to be a part of this.

00:06:52.600 I think other countries look at Canada and say, I don't see a real nation there.

00:06:57.260 I don't see a serious nation.

00:07:00.000 I mean, you look back at when Stephen Harper wanted to, I'd say, and this was probably

00:07:04.060 a miscalculation, get a Security Council seat at the UN for Canada.

00:07:08.220 And he failed.

00:07:09.100 He failed.

00:07:09.700 Other countries around the world did not want to vote for Canada.

00:07:13.780 Justin Trudeau tried even harder.

00:07:16.500 Was it two years ago?

00:07:17.840 He really aggressively pushed.

00:07:20.140 He campaigned. 0.99

00:07:21.140 He was like hanging out with African autocrats trying to get their votes at the United Nations 0.99

00:07:26.940 to put Canada on the Security Council 0.98

00:07:28.900 and still lost, still lost.

00:07:31.620 I think we lost, was it Ireland or Norway?

00:07:34.000 But they were the ones voted in

00:07:35.760 and I forget which one was the one

00:07:37.300 that we thought we were going to get

00:07:38.460 and Ireland and Norway were ultimately the victors.

00:07:41.840 So Canada has been rebuked as a serious player

00:07:44.860 that's deserving of a seat on the Security Council.

00:07:47.240 Canada has been excluded from this intelligence partnership

00:07:50.740 and all of this is that Canada is not a player

00:07:56.680 on the world stage in a meaningful way.

00:07:59.380 Now, one of my colleagues, Phil,

00:08:01.580 who is apparently listening to the show,

00:08:03.080 has decided to actually plug this in to ChatGPT,

00:08:07.180 which is the service that lets you spit out AI.

00:08:10.020 I don't know what he put in,

00:08:11.460 but this is what he got out of it.

00:08:13.340 The government of Canada is committed to ensuring

00:08:16.420 the security and prosperity of our country and our allies.

00:08:19.020 We closely monitor developments in global security

00:08:22.020 and defense cooperation.

00:08:23.760 The AUKUS Security Alliance between us.

00:08:25.680 This is basically what the AI has given him is exactly what Foreign Policy Canada tweeted

00:08:32.300 or almost exactly what Foreign Policy Canada tweeted.

00:08:35.800 And then, of course, it ends with the kicker.

00:08:38.080 Canada values its longstanding relationships with all three nations

00:08:41.420 and looks forward to continuing to work with them on shared security priorities.

00:08:46.360 So Canadian foreign policy is a bit of a point of interest for me.

00:08:50.040 Now, as far as topics of scholarship go, it's a pretty easy one

00:08:53.280 because we don't have, I'd say, a foreign policy to speak of.

00:08:56.540 So there's not much to know about it.

00:08:58.780 I think Canada did a very good job under Stephen Harper

00:09:01.740 when it came to foreign policy, largely.

00:09:03.800 There were some issues.

00:09:04.980 But the reason is because they understood the limitations.

00:09:08.520 They didn't try to be something greater than what Canada was.

00:09:12.000 They hitched themselves to largely the United States

00:09:15.540 and found areas where Canada could fill the gaps.

00:09:18.020 We did a lot of very good work in Afghanistan, for example,

00:09:21.100 and that was liberal and conservative governments combined. 0.94

00:09:24.500 I'd say that, I mean, the Afghanistan legacy is a failure across the board,

00:09:28.680 but at the time, Canada saw a gap, saw a role, and tried to fill it.

00:09:33.640 The term you hear from people like Justin Trudeau and his colleagues there is middle power.

00:09:41.180 This idea that Canada's not a great power, we're not a United Kingdom,

00:09:45.180 we're not a United States, we're not a China, but we're a middle power.

00:09:48.420 We have a role and we get to play it. 0.55

00:09:50.660 And Melanie Jolie gave that just asinine comment a few months ago

00:09:54.440 about how Canada's role is to be a convener.

00:09:56.440 That's our great contribution.

00:09:57.920 We can convene.

00:09:58.800 So we can set out our table and all of the great powers will sit at that table.

00:10:03.000 Except no one wants to sit at Canada's table.

00:10:06.220 No one wants to sit.

00:10:07.180 No one cares about a table that Melanie Jolie is at the head of.

00:10:11.440 And that's why Michael Cooper, the Conservative MP,

00:10:14.080 got absolutely railroaded last week when he made that comment

00:10:16.940 about how Melanie Jolie looking into the eyes of the Russian foreign minister,

00:10:22.060 which was her comment, was, you know,

00:10:24.680 apparently not going to have him trembling in his boots.

00:10:26.900 And then, of course, all of the liberals were like,

00:10:28.820 oh, that's sexist, that's offensive.

00:10:30.360 It's like, okay, well, did it work?

00:10:32.820 Did Melanie Jolie staring into the eyes of the Russian foreign minister do anything?

00:10:36.880 No.

00:10:37.520 Or the Chinese foreign minister, rather.

00:10:38.800 I'm conflating conflicts here.

00:10:40.340 I'm conflating great powers.

00:10:41.960 But no, it didn't do anything.

00:10:44.120 Melanie Jolie staring into the eyes of China's foreign minister

00:10:46.760 did not actually cause China to back down.

00:10:48.700 It didn't cause China to get out of Canadian elections.

00:10:51.660 It did absolutely nothing.

00:10:53.140 So it was not an unfair comment,

00:10:56.420 not an unfair comment.

00:10:57.700 And then he gets pilloried as, you know,

00:11:00.100 misogynistic and sexist and all of that.

00:11:02.340 But you hear this from liberals all the time

00:11:05.380 that Canada is this great power in waiting.

00:11:08.280 One of my favorite articles about Justin Trudeau of all time

00:11:13.180 was one by Kate Bolingaro of Bloomberg.

00:11:16.100 now she's no longer at Bloomberg, writing about the NATO, it was a NATO EU summit or NATO G20

00:11:23.600 summit. They were back to back and they were in Brussels. And Justin Trudeau's people were going

00:11:29.200 around trying to position Justin Trudeau as what he called the dean of the G7. It was G7, not G20,

00:11:36.340 the dean of the G7, because they determined that with Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of

00:11:40.540 Germany stepping down. Justin Trudeau was the longest serving head of government of the G7

00:11:46.840 leaders. Ergo, he should be the de facto chair of the G7, as though it's a seniority game and not a

00:11:53.060 question of relevance from different countries and influence of countries. And he had decided

00:11:59.680 that he could get involved and help solve the EU-UK dispute over Northern Ireland. So he was

00:12:07.420 saying that yes we can get the european union and the united kingdom together and no one cared like

00:12:12.300 none of them wanted to sit at the table that justin trudeau was at the head of because canada

00:12:18.020 is not a serious country canada is not a serious player and there are i think two fundamental

00:12:24.580 reasons for this one of them is that canada has never been and will never be a great power we

00:12:30.040 don't have the size we don't have the economic might we don't have the legitimacy on the global

00:12:35.700 state. And the second part, and I think this is the more critical part, is that Canadian governments

00:12:41.800 often misrepresent Canada's role. If we knew what we were, we knew our size, we understood our

00:12:48.680 limitations and worked within that, we would be taken a lot more seriously than we are. But instead

00:12:54.360 you have Justin Trudeau that thinks he can go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump and take him down.

00:12:59.080 You've got Chrystia Freeland that thinks she can go toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin and take him

00:13:03.120 down. You've got Melanie Jolie that thinks she can go toe-to-toe with China and take China down.

00:13:08.000 And then you have all of these grandiose claims by these leaders that, whoa, we're a nation of

00:13:12.520 peacekeepers. Canada has, I think, like 23 peacekeepers deployed right now. It's in and around

00:13:18.540 there anyway. So we are not, and never have been, with the exception of a bit of a flurry of

00:13:24.420 peacekeeping missions in the 1990s. We've never been a nation of peacekeepers. But we have this

00:13:29.140 mythology about Canadian foreign policy that is such a mismatch from the reality of the situation.

00:13:37.000 And we'll certainly revisit this soon enough, but the big challenge here for a lot of people

00:13:43.100 is that we have to check our expectations. Check our expectations. And to go back to this

00:13:49.880 AUKUS thing for a moment, you know, look, if the US, the UK, and Australia think that the three of

00:13:54.780 them have shared interests that are distinct enough from what the Five Eyes Partnership does

00:14:00.180 that they need this alliance, then power to them. But if you understand the dynamics of this region,

00:14:06.640 the dynamics of Indo-Pacific policy, you'll understand it's not that simple. New Zealand

00:14:11.320 has completely capitulated to China. New Zealand has completely sold out to China. They have

00:14:17.640 exported so much of their trade, and I would say by extension of their sovereignty to China, 0.99

00:14:23.020 and they refuse to push back against China

00:14:25.280 because China has become such a dominant player

00:14:27.780 in the New Zealand economy.

00:14:29.000 So I understand why New Zealand gets carved out of this.

00:14:32.000 Canada gets carved out because we have a leader

00:14:34.820 that has decided to capitulate to China at every turn,

00:14:38.400 a leader that doesn't want to take Chinese interference

00:14:40.680 in our election seriously,

00:14:42.580 a leader that doesn't want to take China's fundamental violations

00:14:46.720 of human rights seriously,

00:14:48.460 a government that has been co-opted, it seems like,

00:14:51.960 by people who are beholden to the Chinese regime

00:14:55.240 or at the very least start singing

00:14:57.620 from the same songbook as the Chinese regime.

00:15:01.160 And that's why this is such an important issue

00:15:02.920 to continue to talk about.

00:15:04.800 And it's not about being a global police officer.

00:15:07.520 It's about understanding

00:15:08.660 what you are capable of doing as a country,

00:15:12.380 doing it, doing it well.

00:15:14.640 I mean, I used to like that political show

00:15:16.780 that was on Netflix.

00:15:18.320 Well, it was on Danish television

00:15:19.720 And then Netflix picked it up called Borgen, which was basically Danish West Wing.

00:15:24.580 And it was interesting, though, seeing a political show about a country like Denmark, which is, I'd say, I mean, it's smaller than Canada.

00:15:31.220 But it's a country that is not particularly relevant in the global picture.

00:15:36.380 But there was an interesting little arc about this where the leader that they had put in, who was meant to be the bad guy because he was the conservative.

00:15:45.380 So he was like the leader of the conservative party, was in this debate.

00:15:48.540 And he said, we're Danes.

00:15:49.720 We don't need to be Americans.

00:15:51.760 We don't need to be Brits.

00:15:52.640 We don't need to be Australians.

00:15:53.820 We're Danes.

00:15:54.500 We do what we can, and that's that.

00:15:56.220 I think that understanding our limitations, which is the term I keep going back to, needs to be front and center for Canadian governments.

00:16:04.900 And it doesn't mean accepting ourselves as being a failed state.

00:16:07.820 It doesn't mean saying that we're nobodies. 0.75

00:16:09.180 It means just that we have to accept and understand that we are never going to be one of those P5 nations, one of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council. 0.95

00:16:20.760 And we, I mean, we had an option. 0.95

00:16:22.180 If you look back through Canadian history, I mean, we could have been a nuclear power.

00:16:25.460 But Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, decided to turn his back on that.

00:16:30.540 And here we are today.

00:16:31.640 So moving from the global to the local, I want to turn to a debate that's ongoing in Calgary right now.

00:16:38.040 At least I think it's ongoing.

00:16:38.960 Someone tell me if they've voted on this, but Calgary is debating a bylaw, Calgary city councillors, that has been derided online by civil liberties advocates.

00:16:49.400 And if you look at the fine print of it, it's not all that surprising why.

00:16:52.420 This is basically a municipal ban on protesting if city council doesn't seem to like who you are and what your protest is.

00:17:00.620 And I am putting it in an uncharitable light, but we'll get to the details of it here with Christine Van Gein, who is the litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

00:17:10.920 Christine, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:17:13.560 It's always great to talk to you, Andrew.

00:17:15.560 So, OK, so let's be a little bit more perhaps objective than I was.

00:17:19.380 What is City Council trying to do here?

00:17:21.920 I actually don't disagree with your characterization.

00:17:24.260 what city council is trying to do is restrict protests around city libraries and recreational

00:17:34.660 buildings so like community centers for protests but it's they actually are only for specific types

00:17:43.160 of protests and they define which protests cannot be around these buildings by i think it's a hundred

00:17:49.620 meters. You can still protest, you just have to go 100 meters away. So the protests that they

00:17:54.920 want to ban are protests that are aimed towards objection or disapproval towards an idea or

00:18:04.140 action related to race, religious belief, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression,

00:18:10.200 physical disability, mental disability, age, and trustee, place of origin, marital status,

00:18:14.840 source of income family status or sexual orientation so um those are this the uh terms

00:18:21.800 from human rights legislation but basically what it means is if you want to have an environmental

00:18:27.400 protest uh you know a climate extinction march thing in front of a library that's totally fine

00:18:36.760 but let's be clear what they're trying to ban here this is very clearly about the protests

00:18:44.040 at libraries around drag queen story hour and you know people can have whatever their views on that

00:18:51.400 are you may think that they're totally benign and family friendly or you may think that it's

00:18:56.680 objectionable to have um that type of performance art for children so whatever your perspective

00:19:04.440 you are no longer going to be allowed to protest this this would be uh prohibited under this bylaw

00:19:10.200 to have a protest like that um in front of a library where it's taking place and look i'm not

00:19:16.040 i'm not exaggerating the the topic of it is about the drag queen issue because there have been a

00:19:21.880 number of these protests in calgary recently and i've been watching the debate it is not over

00:19:27.640 they're currently in a closed session but it is about that it is just about that issue yeah you're

00:19:34.440 right they have to add all of these other categories just so it doesn't look like it's

00:19:37.560 about that one issue. I think they would make it just about Drag Queen Story Hour if they could.

00:19:42.800 Yeah. Now, you've looked at this, and I know you've been commenting quite intelligently,

00:19:47.000 as always, on Twitter about this. Your view is that it's completely and utterly unconstitutional,

00:19:51.120 correct? Of course. The courts have long applied the principle of content neutrality

00:19:59.220 in defining the scope of our protections for freedom of expression. The content of the

00:20:06.220 expression, no matter how offensive, no matter how unpopular, no matter how much it might disturb

00:20:13.460 you, that content does not deprive you of your right to expression. So the specific targeting

00:20:21.740 of a very clear type of speech is a big problem here. How would you reconcile what you've just

00:20:31.200 said with the Ontario bubble zone law about restricting protests around abortion clinics,

00:20:37.060 which is very targeted to a particular type of protest. Yeah. So, I mean, I take issue with that

00:20:43.620 parallel vision as well. I'm pretty clearly in the camp of freedom of expression, but even

00:20:50.020 this is much further. This is just much, much, much further than abortion clinics or hospitals.

00:20:57.380 there's a bubble zone around around hospitals as well and you could make an argument on the

00:21:03.000 balancing you could make some argument that a health care facility should be treated differently

00:21:08.020 than a community center where political debates are literally hosted between candidates so you

00:21:15.380 know if you if you disagree or disapprove of a candidate a political candidate and a debate is

00:21:21.120 taking place in that community center and the grounds of your objection or even disapproval

00:21:27.480 um is is one of those categories you would not be able to protest and i'll give you an example

00:21:33.580 and i'll give you an example of how there could be unintended consequences and i'm not giving

00:21:39.540 i'll just give you an example so jk rowling is a very famous author and she uh would i'm sure many

00:21:48.360 libraries would love to have her come and speak but she has also been very critical of radical

00:21:53.180 gender ideology and her criticism comes from a place of feminism and sex-based rights and her

00:22:01.140 if someone came to protest JK Rowling speaking at a library because they disagree with her views on

00:22:08.980 gender her views on gender are actually couched in her gender they're they are form a part of her

00:22:16.780 sexual identity and her sex and her gender. So those protests could actually also be prohibited 0.99

00:22:24.940 under this bylaw. And I guarantee you, the people at City Council would be all in favor. These

00:22:32.360 people who support this bylaw restricting protests around libraries, they'd be all in favor of a

00:22:37.660 protest with J.K. Rowling. But they are opposing the protests by these individuals who oppose

00:22:43.320 drag queen story hour. And I want to be clear that I think that there's been some conduct by

00:22:48.760 some of the protesters opposing drag queen story hour that I don't think is very civilized conduct.

00:22:55.980 But the Supreme Court has affirmed that our right to expression includes the right to offensive

00:23:02.100 expression. Well, and the other thing too, is that protest against an event that you don't like is

00:23:08.540 the very embodiment of free speech so drag queens have a right to go and perform as drag queens 0.88

00:23:14.200 people that don't like drag shows around children can protest those and as long as they're not

00:23:19.440 barricading the doors people can come and go they hear both sides ideally this is free speech in

00:23:24.980 action people can make up their own minds and we see this unfolding all the time so this idea that

00:23:29.920 on something that is a contentious issue has a city council of all bodies trying to shut down

00:23:36.380 one side of it is particularly insane here. And you're right. I mean, they're very deliberate

00:23:42.280 about what they're doing with this. Yeah, look, it's very clearly about this topic that the city

00:23:49.920 councillors who are in favour of it are very short-sighted if they don't see how this could

00:23:54.520 cause an adverse, unforeseen consequence to someone who's engaging in speech that perhaps

00:24:02.240 they support. And, you know, I think it's so important for us to remember that it is just not

00:24:09.160 for government to tell Canadians what we may protest and what we may not protest, that an

00:24:16.260 environmental protest is acceptable, but a protest over what publicly funded arts activities are

00:24:24.160 acceptable for children, you're not allowed to engage in that protest. That is not something

00:24:29.780 for government to decide i don't know if uh ccf has already planned its response to this uh beyond

00:24:36.980 kind of comments that have been made now but but if they do pass this bylaw which i hope they don't

00:24:41.700 but if they do does someone have to be charged under it to challenge or can it be challenged

00:24:46.820 just based on what it is right away it could theoretically be challenged without charges it's

00:24:53.620 always better to actually have charges but we've successfully challenged legislation for example

00:24:59.380 there was federal legislation about what the government calls misinformation and we've

00:25:05.700 successfully challenged that legislation and had it struck down under the elections act it was

00:25:11.060 elections act legislation we had that struck down without anyone ever being charged and in this case

00:25:17.540 the charges are serious right the proposed penalty under this bylaw is ten thousand dollars ten

00:25:22.500 thousand dollars for exercising your constitutionally protected right to protest in public

00:25:29.380 Yeah, and I think with all of these things, it's meant to have a chilling effect. They don't want to, I believe, find people. They just want people to know it's illegal and to just put their tail between their legs and go home, which is, I think, how these things are most damaging. They just try to shrink the bounds of discourse.

00:25:45.740 Well, I think they're also, I mean, I don't, what they're trying to do is move the protests away from the entrances, but that actually moves them onto roads, onto the sidewalk, into residential neighborhoods.

00:26:01.260 But it defeats the purpose of the protest. I mean, like, I don't protest what, you know, the premier of Alberta is doing by going to Saskatchewan because I'm far away from Alberta. I protest it where it's happening if I want to protest.

00:26:13.520 Of course, of course. So it would make the the protest sort of irrelevant. If you're trying to protest them, you're trying to express yourself, and they would not be very effective expression if you were only allowed to have your protest in this designated protest area.

00:26:33.160 But your question about what are we planning?

00:26:36.800 I mean, my hope is that they do not pass this.

00:26:39.220 I always would love to see a good precedent for freedom of expression.

00:26:43.040 And I think that we could get one here if we could successfully have this legislation

00:26:46.840 struck down.

00:26:48.000 But, you know, we are preparing right now, if it is passed, that we would participate

00:26:52.640 in a challenge.

00:26:54.160 And we would work with individuals who might be affected by this bylaw.

00:26:59.760 so city of calgary residents who like to engage in public protests things like that so if you're

00:27:06.720 a person who cares about freedom of expression and you care about this issue and you might want

00:27:11.400 to participate in a challenge if this passes send me an email send me a note on twitter

00:27:16.420 our website's theccf.ca and all of my contact information is there it's always best to challenge

00:27:22.840 with not just as an organization but with a real face to the people who are affected by that and

00:27:27.580 that's the citizens of Calgary. And just lastly, Christine, I know that municipalities are

00:27:32.380 creations of the provinces in which they exist. Is there anything that the province could do on

00:27:37.580 this? Or is this within, I mean, constitutionality aside, is this within the municipal domain solely?

00:27:44.080 That's a good question. So I think that's something that Daniel Smith could certainly

00:27:49.200 look at. As you said, municipalities are creatures of statute. They are created

00:27:55.220 by provincial legislation but I'd like to remind everyone we all you know complain about the big

00:28:02.060 guys in Ottawa but it is often our municipal politicians the petty busy bodies who have the

00:28:10.240 most authoritarian tendencies and often have the most direct impact on our lives so don't stop

00:28:16.940 paying attention to municipal politics because those people once they get a little bit of power

00:28:22.300 They like to exercise their authoritarian instincts in ways that affect us perhaps the most.

00:28:30.220 Yeah, and I mean, just by virtue of, you know, let me just pull it up now.

00:28:34.140 2021 Calgary election had 40% or 46% voter turnout.

00:28:38.200 And I think that was elevated above previous years because Alberta had a referendum at the time.

00:28:42.280 But municipal voter turnout is sometimes a third of the eligible voters.

00:28:46.940 So a lot of these things do, as you mentioned, get they sneak in there.

00:28:50.480 So we'll keep an eye out.

00:28:51.880 hopefully it doesn't pass. But if it does, I'm glad to know there are people that support freedom

00:28:55.300 of expression standing by to take aim at it. Christine Van Gein, litigation director for the

00:29:00.480 CCF. Always a pleasure. Thanks, Andrew. All right. Thank you, Christine. That does it for us for

00:29:06.160 today. I should get Stella Ambler back on the show. She's launched that think tank, Municipal 0.75

00:29:10.680 Watch, which takes aim at municipal governments that are drastically overstepping their bounds

00:29:16.280 as Calgary is doing here.

00:29:18.240 But again, if you were to ask people

00:29:19.940 what is the most conservative province in Canada,

00:29:24.180 they're going to say Alberta.

00:29:25.200 If you were to ask people

00:29:25.840 what's the most conservative city in Canada,

00:29:27.660 I don't mean town or village,

00:29:29.380 but the most conservative city,

00:29:30.660 they're probably going to say,

00:29:31.420 well, I think it's Cal...

00:29:32.680 Maybe they'll say like Red Deer or something,

00:29:34.020 but they'll say Calgary.

00:29:35.360 And Calgarians are like,

00:29:37.000 no, just look around. 0.99

00:29:38.360 But this is the problem

00:29:39.640 is that even in conservative provinces

00:29:41.540 in generally conservative cities,

00:29:43.520 you get these municipal governments that do not care about your freedoms and actually hold them

00:29:48.940 in contempt and hold you in contempt so let that be the cheery note on which we end today

00:29:54.060 that does it for us my thanks to all of you we'll talk to you tomorrow with more of the

00:29:58.080 Andrew Lawton show here on true north thank you god bless and good day to you all

00:30:02.320 thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show

00:30:05.700 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:30:13.520 You

Juno News - March 14, 2023

Serious countries want nothing to do with Canada

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