Juno News - Should overturning Roe v Wade matter to Canadians？

00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:56.480 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:03.960 Hello and welcome to you all. It is Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022.

00:01:08.900 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show, The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:01:14.220 To those of you who I did see in Calgary over the weekend in Civitas, it was lovely meeting you.

00:01:18.940 Thank you so much for coming out. We had a great time, talked about all sorts of things.

00:01:22.720 And as I think I mentioned at the tail end of last week, this is now the period in which everything that's been cancelled over the last two years because of COVID is just being rescheduled.

00:01:32.860 So my schedule for the next three weeks is just like a conference every weekend.

00:01:37.420 I'm going to be leaving actually tomorrow for Ottawa for the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference.

00:01:41.860 So the offer still stands.

00:01:43.260 If you see me, come out and say hello and we'll actually be doing some interviews and shows live on the ground.

00:01:48.280 So I'm looking forward to that.

00:01:49.340 I was going to be talking today about what happened in Ottawa over the weekend, the Rolling Thunder convoy arriving, and we are going to get to that, but instead I'm going to start with a bit of American news, which came last night via Politico, a leaked draft majority decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which would overturn Roe v. Wade and also Casey, but Roe v. Wade notably, which is the seminal legislation that tends to be held up as enshrining a constitutional right in the United States to abortion.

00:02:18.620 Now, we don't take our marching orders from the U.S. Constitution in Canada.

00:02:22.400 This will have no bearing whatsoever directly on the legality or illegality of abortion in Canada.

00:02:28.580 But still, the treatment of this by the Canadian left is as though abortion rights in Canada have been fundamentally attacked as well.

00:02:36.980 I want to play this clip from Indigenous Services Minister Patti Hajdu this morning responding to the news.

00:02:42.440 as a former health minister are you concerned or what are your thoughts on what could be

00:02:49.160 the reopening of a debate on Roe versus Wade oh yeah listen as a woman let's start there

00:02:57.340 as a woman yesterday's news out of the United States was devastating frightening concerning

00:03:04.660 heartbreaking. And so I can tell you that I woke up this morning deeply concerned and deeply

00:03:12.560 committed to continuing the defense of women's rights to choose here in this country. You know

00:03:17.680 that this has been something that the Prime Minister has been committed to since the beginning

00:03:21.320 of his leadership of the Liberal Party. As the former Health Minister, I can tell you that I

00:03:28.420 personally took direct action towards a province that was making it difficult for women to access

00:03:34.440 women's reproductive rights including abortion. This is a right that women depend on for autonomy

00:03:41.640 in so many ways and so I'm proud to be part of a government that understands that and will

00:03:46.540 continue to work to strengthen women's rights in this country. And of course it went on from there

00:03:52.200 a Bloc Québécois member of parliament in question period just about an hour and a bit ago asked

00:03:58.260 Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland how the Canadian government was going to respond and if

00:04:02.140 Canada was going to double down on its efforts to protect abortion.

00:04:05.660 Christopher Freeland said yes and got a standing ovation in the House of Commons.

00:04:10.540 Jonathan Van Maron joins me.

00:04:11.920 He is the author of a great many books, all of them fantastic,

00:04:14.660 and also writes over at The Bridgehead and does tremendous pro-life advocacy work

00:04:18.980 at the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.

00:04:21.560 Jonathan, good to talk to you as always here.

00:04:23.820 Let's just start.

00:04:24.700 What's your reaction to this likely decision from the Supreme Court in the U.S.?

00:04:30.320 So anybody who was watching this carefully, especially those who listened to the oral arguments last fall, isn't surprised by either the one who authored the decision, Justice Samuel Alito, or by what he said.

00:04:43.100 This has been his known position for a long time. Most of the math people did on the various justices indicated that the overturn of Roe v. Wade, if not a sure thing, was at least a likelihood.

00:04:55.460 And over the last couple of weeks, especially, people were getting bullish that an overturn of Roe v. Wade was likely.

00:05:03.240 The crazy story here is not actually that a court largely appointed by pro-life Republican presidents was making a move to overturn Roe v. Wade,

00:05:12.140 but that for the first time in the history of the court, an entire decision, over 90 pages of it, was leaked to the press and made public prior to that decision being publicized by the court.

00:05:23.040 So that was truly insane.

00:05:26.280 Yeah. And I mean, you had, of course, a range of people there that originally were speculating this was some conspiratorial effort to work against the decision. And then you had other people that were saying maybe it was just some conservative clerk that was really proud of it. But either way, it's happened before, but a very, very rare thing and for good reason.

00:05:45.900 yeah well and the thing is that we have to just wait to find out what the investigation says

00:05:51.340 because as you point out there's people who say well maybe roberts wanted it leaked so that he

00:05:56.480 could show people how much of a backlash there would be if they did overturn roe then there's

00:06:01.140 people who think well it must have been some left-wing clerk from one of the liberal justices

00:06:05.260 who wanted to give the democrats a chance to politically capitalize on this we just don't

00:06:10.500 know. We know now, as of today, that Chief Justice Roberts has confirmed this was a draft decision.

00:06:17.960 However, he has also stated that this isn't the final draft of the decision. So we now know that

00:06:23.340 it is more likely than it was before that Roe will be overturned and who will vote for it. We do not

00:06:28.520 yet know if the decision that we're looking at as released by Politico is going to be the court's

00:06:32.860 final decision. Well, I mean, that is something that's very dangerous, though, because now you're

00:06:37.560 taking what's supposed to be an internal deliberative process and turning it into something

00:06:42.940 that's going to be just come a clown circus a clown show here because now people are going to

00:06:47.380 be lobbying the court and it's going to become pushed into the public realm even more than it

00:06:51.560 was already well it is it's extremely toxic because of course if a justice was to make a

00:06:57.880 decision to switch his or her vote based on this being leaked then what you've done is fundamentally

00:07:03.160 undermine the deliberative process of the Supreme Court and virtually guarantee that this will happen

00:07:08.520 again. So let's talk about the Canadian context here, which I was shocked to learn that the

00:07:14.340 Supreme Court of the United States had jurisdiction over Canada. But if you talk to apparently liberal

00:07:19.580 cabinet members, it does. You had Patty Hajdu going off about how this is chilling to her as

00:07:24.920 a woman. Chrystia Freeland getting a question in question period, getting a standing ovation for

00:07:29.720 for saying that Canada's policy will remain unchanged after this.

00:07:33.560 You can't be surprised by it, but what do you make of this?

00:07:36.840 This idea that we need to import this political fight in the U.S.

00:07:41.420 when it doesn't really apply in Canada in the same way?

00:07:45.140 Well, there's a couple of different ways to look at it, right?

00:07:47.900 And the first and foremost is that we know that nobody likes to talk about abortion

00:07:51.620 more than Justin Trudeau.

00:07:53.560 And he doesn't do this to gin up his own support, as is often speculated.

00:07:57.420 I've long thought that the reason he does this, especially now in the middle of a conservative leadership race, is that a healthy minority of the conservative party base is pro-life.

00:08:08.020 And so the more he can push the conservative party leadership candidates or the MPs to repudiate a segment of their base, the more he drives disaffected voters from the CPC, perhaps to the PPC or some other party.

00:08:21.560 And so it's just a phenomenal way for the Liberals to drive a wedge between the social conservative minority of the party and the broader base of the conservative party.

00:08:30.220 And so Trudeau loves to talk about abortion.

00:08:32.940 The other side of this, of course, is that living next to the states is, as the first Trudeau once said, sleeping, it's like sleeping with the elephant.

00:08:40.080 There's no way any of them can do anything, especially not something this big without triggering a massive discussion.

00:08:45.580 But the timing of this, landing right in the middle of a conservative leadership race, means that I'm sure every leadership candidate is going to get pressed on the abortion subject nonstop, which is going to make candidates with clearly delineated policies like Lesley Lewis, it'll give her an opportunity to discuss those policies further.

00:09:03.220 but the candidates like uh Pierre Polver uh who is not pro-life but is hoping to get a lot of

00:09:09.040 so-con votes based on his freedom platform of course this is going to make him profoundly

00:09:13.300 uncomfortable because he just doesn't want to talk about the issue at all because it's a lose-lose

00:09:17.620 situation for him if he does yeah I'm glad you brought that up because it used to be that there

00:09:23.020 was like in Canada itself diversity in politics about this you had very devout Catholic liberals

00:09:29.380 that were liberal on anything under the sun,

00:09:31.880 but they had deeply held religious values

00:09:34.000 and were not just pro-life,

00:09:36.160 but also against gay marriage and so on.

00:09:38.620 Justin Trudeau purged his caucus

00:09:41.060 of the last few pro-lifers.

00:09:43.720 There are a couple of closet pro-lifers still around,

00:09:45.920 but he wanted none of it. 0.89

00:09:47.320 So what that's done is made it so that abortion

00:09:49.720 is not a wedge for the liberals and the NDP and the bloc.

00:09:53.220 Abortion is a wedge for the conservatives only.

00:09:55.760 So yeah, the more they can talk about it,

00:09:57.560 you're right, there's no losing on that.

00:09:59.380 I think we have, and can put it up on the screen here, a tweet from Justin Trudeau today.

00:10:03.620 Again, the prime minister wading into a foreign country's Supreme Court decisions.

00:10:07.720 He says, the right to choose is a woman's right and a woman's right alone.

00:10:11.080 Every woman in Canada has a right to safe and legal abortion.

00:10:14.220 We'll never back down from protecting and promoting women's rights in Canada and around the world.

00:10:19.220 For starters, he needs a thesaurus because he's used in one tweet the word right four times.

00:10:23.840 But second to that, it is a misrepresentation of the situation in Canada.

00:10:28.780 And I find this is quite common among a lot of pro-choice advocates.

00:10:32.800 I mean, everyone looks at Morgenthaler, which is not Canada's analog to Roe v. Wade, as

00:10:38.380 much as people like to think it is.

00:10:40.560 No, I would also like to point out that the Prime Minister's transphobia is showing there

00:10:45.260 because we went in about 48 hours from having to insist on abortion, not just being for

00:10:51.580 women, but for non-binary people and trans people.

00:10:53.920 and overnight we suddenly snapped back into the binary and have realized in fact uh that it is

00:11:00.260 women who can get pregnant so yeah well i just on that john one of his own ministers last week i

00:11:05.080 can't remember who it was was in question period doing like the most insane gymnastics i've ever

00:11:11.840 seen to avoid saying women by talking about people who menstruate and now it's all about women's

00:11:16.880 rights yep yep no it turns out that in a moment of crisis our luxury views vanished just immediately

00:11:23.440 which I find to be extremely interesting. On your point about Morgenthaler, this is one of the

00:11:29.280 things the Liberals have tried to avoid discussing for a long time, which is that in Canada we have

00:11:34.160 an open fluid situation. The federal government has a mandate to legislate on abortion given to

00:11:39.200 them by the Canadian Supreme Court who called upon Parliament to put together new laws. The key

00:11:44.800 female justice on the court at that time, Justice Bertha Wilson, said she thought the state had an 0.97

00:11:50.720 actual duty to protect fetal life at some point she thought it would be sometime in the second

00:11:56.400 trimester and the reality is that 80 of canadians have no idea what our status quo actually is

00:12:02.080 most of them are horrified when they find out uh which is why groups like the abortion rights

00:12:06.080 coalition of canada work so hard to ensure that nobody does find out you'll remember when uh

00:12:10.960 when my friends that we need a law put up billboards across the country that just said

00:12:15.040 canada has no abortion laws abortion groups called for those billboards to be removed

00:12:20.480 because it was misleading um in other words people were going to see that fact and they

00:12:25.280 were going to be troubled by it and the crtc actually said although it's technically correct

00:12:30.080 it could lead people to the wrong conclusion presumably that if we're permitting abortion

00:12:34.320 up till birth a sane humane person would conclude that it should be restricted substantially before

00:12:39.680 that let's talk about the conservative leadership race here for a moment which you alluded to

00:12:45.840 earlier. The Conservatives have apparently, according to the Globe and Mail, put out a memo

00:12:50.580 to Conservative MPs saying, don't talk about it. So they're basically avoiding, trying to avoid the

00:12:55.940 issue, which is what they always do. Now, is this because they're trying to clamp down on free

00:13:00.540 expression? Or is this because what they're doing is just trying to not hijack the Conservative

00:13:05.960 leadership race? I don't know. That would be the generous interpretation. Let the leadership

00:13:10.060 candidates talk about this. But let's not make it about the party that right now is in a state of

00:13:15.020 limbo. But your point about Leslie Lewis is a valid one. The first statement I saw on this came

00:13:19.260 from Patrick Brown, who has decided to cement his opposition to social conservatives. And he put out

00:13:24.660 a statement saying, you know, we can't allow any backsliding on this. Women's reproductive rights

00:13:29.440 are important and yada yada. But this is going to force leadership candidates like Pierre Paliyev

00:13:34.220 and to some extent Jean Charest, who didn't want this issue at all, to engage it.

00:13:38.980 Oh yeah, Patrick Brown has been a longtime friend of women. We're all very well aware of that.

00:13:42.600 I think when you're looking at what the conservative's policy is, I don't really blame them, politically speaking, for saying this.

00:13:48.900 Because, again, this is a leaked draft.

00:13:51.440 So they wouldn't even be commenting on an actual Supreme Court decision in the nation next door.

00:13:57.020 Their MPs and their senators would be speculating on a leaked draft that has attracted the ire of the chief justice.

00:14:05.880 So I don't really see what they have to gain.

00:14:07.780 obviously when we find out what the actual decision is telling them not to speak on something of that

00:14:12.100 magnitude would be a lot less less teenable what i think is really interesting about the leadership

00:14:16.900 race is that the only way conservatives are ever going to be able to go on the offensive on the

00:14:21.940 abortion issue is to state their position clearly without hedging so shere and brown have both done

00:14:28.340 that what i like about what leslie lewis is doing and she's occupying the ground i've been saying

00:14:32.580 pro-lifers should occupy for a long time politically and i was interested i went to one

00:14:37.060 of her rallies in in the greater toronto area a couple weeks back and she was asked by somebody

00:14:42.100 who clearly wasn't a pro-life person you know so what is your response going to be on the abortion

00:14:47.060 issue and she she delineated uh her her no hidden agenda platform but the way she started her

00:14:52.580 response was most interesting she said the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to reach the

00:14:56.100 pro-choice canadians and i'm going to find out where the common ground exists and then we're

00:15:00.500 going to start doing things together on that common ground that's brilliant because all of

00:15:05.060 the polling data indicates to us that there is an enormous amount of common ground between people

00:15:09.700 like myself and people on the other side of the aisle on this issue and all of her policies are 0.96

00:15:15.220 firmly planted in that area so right now it politically benefits the liberals to use abortion

00:15:21.540 as an issue to divide the conservative base and to split them and continue to winning to win

00:15:25.780 elections and to misrepresent both the status quo and the uniformity of canadians on this issue and

00:15:31.460 conservatives have bought into that ever since Stephen Harper finally won his majority by more

00:15:36.580 or less silencing social conservatives. And so they've stuck to what I call the Harper Doctrine,

00:15:40.420 which is we only win when socons are in the tent but off the platform. What we need is a third way. 0.99

00:15:45.700 We need somebody who's willing to come forward and admit where Canada is at, right? We're not

00:15:50.580 going to get a law banning abortion. We're not going to get even close. That does not mean there

00:15:54.900 are not many policies that we can pursue that will be enormously welcome to social conservatives who

00:16:00.100 care about pre-born children in the womb and very welcome to buy pro-choice people who share similar

00:16:05.460 views with us at certain points of gestation when we're talking about gender selection when we're

00:16:10.260 talking about you know um giving giving money and supports to those in crisis pregnancies and so

00:16:15.860 i think that leslie lewis is in the best shape because if they ask her well what do you think

00:16:19.460 of roe she can say well i am pro-life as i have said and again here is where i think in canada

00:16:25.060 we need a tailor-made canadian solution to the abortion debate and i've been open with what i'm

00:16:29.620 I'm going to do. That's a great point. And it reminds me of this, this trend that we see a lot

00:16:35.240 of anytime someone has brought up a pro-family policy that in some cases doesn't even touch on

00:16:40.900 abortion. And you see how the left gets very nervous about it because for example, when Kathy

00:16:46.280 Wagenthal put forward her private member's bill on sex elective abortion, which was an abortion bill,

00:16:51.260 you had people have to defend something that is indefensible just because they have to protect

00:16:57.120 their own uh policy which is basically don't allow anything don't allow any restrictions don't allow

00:17:03.760 any debates but even other things like when the conservatives were putting forward the unborn

00:17:07.340 victims of crime act and even when they tried to neuter some of the components of it to make it

00:17:11.820 less controversial to pro-choice people there was still significant opposition and you see a lot of

00:17:16.640 this and i'm almost more of a fan of this because it forces the abortion rights coalition crowd the

00:17:23.200 liberals to be very transparent about what they believe. And they're actually opposed just to

00:17:28.180 spite pro-lifers to a lot of pro-family policies that should be universal and I think would be

00:17:33.500 among Canadians. And I think crisis pregnancy centers are a great example of that. Why is

00:17:37.680 there not more support from them? Well, I'll tell you where I think the conservative party is

00:17:42.200 missing its greatest opportunity. And that's to discuss abortion in a context that I think all

00:17:47.160 Canadians, almost all Canadians beside a handful of extremists can agree, which is according to

00:17:51.840 abortion rights coalition of canada somewhere south of 60 percent of canadians um have had

00:17:58.080 abortions because they quote according to this 2018 report feel like they have no other choice

00:18:02.640 so i think that conservative leadership candidates and conservative members of parliament should

00:18:06.480 campaign against unwanted abortions if a hundred thousand abortions are happening every year and

00:18:12.160 over half of those are are being had by women who wish they had some alternative we should be saying 0.99

00:18:17.600 well what are we going to do about this how disgusting and how tragic is it that women in

00:18:21.280 in this country are having abortions because they feel trapped into them not because they're

00:18:25.480 exercising you know autonomy not because they're you know using their reproductive freedoms because

00:18:30.080 they don't feel like they have any other choice you know canada countries brags about its social

00:18:34.080 safety net brags about helping those uh who are most in need of our help they're they're literally

00:18:38.920 not having children that they want to have because they feel pushed into it by a system created

00:18:43.920 largely uh by those who are also giving them the right to abortion but only giving them that right

00:18:49.700 So I think the best way forward is to talk about abortion, but let's start with unwanted abortions.

00:18:54.820 If we can cut the abortion rate in half by addressing unwanted abortions, we also force

00:18:59.620 the people you just referred to who are so uncomfortable with allowing anybody to discuss

00:19:04.540 abortion except as an unalloyed positive, we'll force them either to defend that or admit that

00:19:11.200 there are many abortions in this country that are not people enjoying a right, that are an

00:19:15.760 unmitigated tragedy that the government has a responsibility to mitigate.

00:19:18.760 yeah the line even from some of the most pro-choice democrats in the in the i mean in

00:19:24.460 canada as well but in the u.s specifically was safe legal and rare and i don't even think there's

00:19:29.040 a pretense anymore no one cares about rare no no and it's interesting it's really interesting

00:19:36.080 because like it's the left suddenly is okay with massive corporations making an enormous amount of

00:19:41.300 money when those corporations are in bed with them right like planned parenthood they trust

00:19:45.300 Planned Parenthood to do sex education, provide birth control, and provide abortions. If they

00:19:50.820 were consistent on their suspicion of large corporations, you know, you wouldn't allow the

00:19:55.420 fox to guard the hen house. You wouldn't assume that the person who most financially benefits

00:20:00.020 from people behaving sexually irresponsibly are also enormously enthused about teaching people

00:20:06.500 to behave responsibly. The abortion industry makes an enormous amount of money, and we used to be

00:20:11.820 justifiably suspicious of that when it came to allowing corporations to also work on that sort

00:20:18.760 of thing. So I think that there's a very, very good pro-life argument to be made to left-leaning

00:20:24.120 people, to even people who lean as far left as socialists. And I think that where the binary

00:20:31.360 really is in this country is trapped between how the media portrays the whole pro-life movement,

00:20:35.900 which is the gang of people who will take nothing but a total ban, and the liberals who say the

00:20:40.980 same thing. And the reality is there's an enormous amount of common ground in the middle that would

00:20:45.940 allow us to have a very productive discussion where a majority of Canadians could agree.

00:20:50.760 And if Pierre Polliver was smart, if Jean Charest was smart, if these other candidates were smart,

00:20:55.580 they would be doing what Leslie Lewis is doing and putting forward policies that camp out in

00:21:00.340 that common ground rather than falling directly into the Trudeau trap and saying what they're

00:21:04.420 saying now, which is, I believe that abortion is a total right and it's offensive to suggest

00:21:08.780 otherwise and i'll let all of my backbench appease put forward bills restricting abortion 0.97

00:21:13.660 because you know what we have to love the neanderthals in our party somehow and so and that

00:21:18.320 is that is a pretty untenable position and as such they're going to get hammered over it over the 0.55

00:21:22.580 next couple of weeks i suspect and and i know that some of the campaigns are are sweating about this

00:21:27.160 because the last thing pierre poliver for example wants to do is talk about abortion because he's

00:21:31.500 not going to make anybody happy when he opens his mouth yeah very well said jonathan van maeren you

00:21:37.120 can read him at thebridgehead.ca. I'd also recommend picking up his book The Culture War

00:21:40.940 and he had another book as well about the abortion fight in Ireland which is a very good read.

00:21:45.780 Jonathan always a pleasure thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me Andrew. It is fascinating to

00:21:51.120 look at how this issue dominates the conservative campaign no matter what they do and this is I

00:21:56.180 think fascinating because in 2019 when you had Andrew Scheer who was and is pro-life a very

00:22:01.680 about Catholic running as the leader of the conservative party. He could not articulate

00:22:07.080 his position to save his life. He was asked and he just fumbled and stumbled and couldn't really do

00:22:12.220 it. And then you fast forward to 2021 and everyone says that social conservatism cost

00:22:17.080 sheer the 2019 election. So let's put a socially progressive center candidate, Aaron O'Toole

00:22:24.200 forward. And he still couldn't answer questions about abortion in a way that got the critics

00:22:29.880 off his back. He absolutely couldn't. And this was the thing. So he did what a lot of conservatives

00:22:34.820 do that aren't pro-life, where they default to free votes. They default to, I'm not going to

00:22:40.040 touch it, but yeah, I'm going to let backbench members do. And by the way, he couldn't even

00:22:44.140 commit to that. And this is what Jean Charest has done as well. He said in a tweet, I don't know,

00:22:48.740 about 45 minutes or so, well, I'm not pro-life, I'm pro-choice, but I won't stop individual

00:22:56.200 members of my caucus from introducing legislation. And everyone would say, oh yeah, look, that's a

00:23:01.660 socially progressive position. But you know what's going to happen is if he runs and is the leader,

00:23:07.020 if he runs in an election as the leader, he's going to be tarnished as being this evil, scary, 0.79

00:23:11.480 mean, right-wing, nasty pro-lifer, even though he, like Aaron O'Toole, has taken the identical 0.88

00:23:16.280 position of being pro-choice but supporting free votes. So what conservatives have to realize here 0.57

00:23:21.920 it is that the opposition is going to be the same no matter what, unless every single pro-life person

00:23:27.560 is purged from Canadian politics. That's what the critics want. But I can tell you that is not where

00:23:33.660 Canadians are on this. Pro-lifers, I would say, are a minority, yes. But if you start to break down

00:23:40.780 what pro-life means and ask Canadians questions, well, what about late-term abortions? What about

00:23:46.440 sex-selective abortion? You're going to find even among people who are ardently pro-choice, they're

00:23:50.800 saying, well, I'm uncomfortable with that. Oh, wait, I didn't know that third trimester abortions

00:23:55.160 were legal in Canada. I didn't know that Canada was the only democratic country in the world that

00:23:59.700 doesn't have a restriction of some kind. When Canadians learn about these things, they're

00:24:04.620 against it. So can you imagine anything else that we've just decided, not we, but the intelligentsia

00:24:10.260 has just decided should be taken off the table entirely and in perpetuity. That is exactly what's

00:24:16.220 happen with the abortion debate. I want to shift gears and talk about the Freedom Convoy, or I

00:24:21.820 guess the latest iteration of the Freedom Convoy, the Rolling Thunder Biker-Led Convoy, which ended

00:24:27.940 up in Ottawa on the past weekend. And I had all sorts of people messaging me saying, are you there?

00:24:32.660 Are you in Ottawa? And I was committed to speak at this conference in Calgary over the weekend,

00:24:37.300 so I couldn't make it, but I did have my colleague Elie Kenton-Nantel, who was on the ground there

00:24:42.900 and did some tremendous work, and there were certainly situations where it looked a lot more

00:24:47.400 tense than the Freedom Convoy, especially because police early on really threw down the gauntlet and

00:24:53.160 said, we are not going to let you turn this into another January, February 2022 convoy-style

00:24:59.180 protest, and generally speaking, people were there, they made some noise, they did their thing, and then

00:25:04.780 they left. It was still very much a peaceful protest, but the level of fear, the level of fear

00:25:10.880 that people have about the freedom movement i find not surprising but very disconcerting i want to

00:25:18.780 play a clip that my colleague put together of people he interviewed on the ground these radical

00:25:23.720 right-wing evil white supremacist misogynist talking about why they were there in ottawa

00:25:29.720 I came from Brazil and was born in Ukraine when my parents left because of communism. 0.96

00:25:39.940 So I'm fully Canadian.

00:25:40.940 I'm Russian-Ukrainian, so I'm not supporting war.

00:25:44.340 I'm not participating in any activities, but this is for me the way how you can express

00:25:50.200 yourself.

00:25:51.200 I'm grateful for Canada, and if the people demonstrate, there is a reason why.

00:25:59.340 i know what is totalitarian country i don't want to just that in canada would be the same thing

00:26:05.580 and unfortunately i feel that it might be even worse because it's not communism it's something

00:26:11.580 else for me it's just slavery and tyranny real tyranny whatever can happen wait i'm uh told they

00:26:19.580 were not white supremacist racist neo-nazis okay were they they might have been at the wrong pro 0.87

00:26:25.420 No, they were at the right protest. 0.97

00:26:26.760 Weird.

00:26:27.860 Maybe Justin Trudeau was wrong about who it is that cares about freedom.

00:26:31.680 Maybe people that have seen tyranny firsthand understand exactly why it is that they oppose

00:26:36.540 vaccine mandates and vaccine passports and more broadly, government overreach in this

00:26:41.200 country.

00:26:42.000 And that's what the protest is about.

00:26:43.580 That's what the convoy is about.

00:26:45.400 I did a radio interview this morning on a station I appear on every week.

00:26:48.880 And they asked, well, you know, what are people still protesting?

00:26:51.680 And I said what I've been saying on my show for the last several weeks now.

00:26:54.960 this is not over. This is not close to being over. Until the unvaccinated can work in jobs

00:27:01.580 without fearing them being taken away because of their vaccination status, until they can board 1.00

00:27:05.780 planes, until they can leave the country, we are nowhere near over, at least over with these

00:27:13.140 restrictions. We're nowhere near back to normal. And I keep harping on that because it is important.

00:27:18.380 And it's easy for people to be lulled into this sense of feeling like life is back to normal,

00:27:23.720 the sense of feeling like all of these restrictions are gone without acknowledging this subset of the

00:27:29.460 population for which that is not true and for which that may never be true. Remember, Teresa

00:27:33.640 Tam just yesterday said, you know, we're in the midst of a sixth wave. How could we even think

00:27:37.780 about dropping the mask mandate that's on airplanes right now? And again, I mean, every

00:27:42.500 time I've talked about the mask mandate on planes, I get unvaccinated people saying, I mean, that's

00:27:46.480 the least of our worries. At least you can get on the plane. But it's the same sort of thing of

00:27:50.300 government always holding the carrot out and be like, oh, well, no, no, it's different now. I mean,

00:27:54.120 it's the sixth wave. It's the sixth wave. We can't drop the mask mandate. There's always going to be

00:27:59.700 something. Ontario, as of today, is in the midst of an election campaign. I know that that was

00:28:05.040 probably driving the provincial government in Ontario to lift vaccine passports and lift

00:28:09.740 vaccine mandates. And I'm very worried about what's going to happen after the election,

00:28:14.100 especially given Ontario's chief medical officer has already talked about bringing them back in

00:28:18.700 the winter, not just for COVID, but for other seasonal illnesses as well. Flu season, yep,

00:28:23.760 put some masks on, just two weeks to flatten the curve or something like that. Not that anyone

00:28:28.340 would take that seriously or believe it, not that anyone should believe that if that line is ever

00:28:33.320 uttered again. But the reason this is so important for people to talk about is because we always have

00:28:39.680 to understand why Canadians are protesting if they're protesting. It doesn't mean you agree,

00:28:43.820 but we have to understand why and we've already seen the lengths through which this government

00:28:48.700 will go to quell peaceful protests to quell people who are taking a stand for liberty and

00:28:55.540 the government still is not wanting to answer questions about the emergencies act i wanted to

00:29:00.700 play this clip of marco mendicino answering a question from conservative member of parliament

00:29:05.520 dane lloyd i shouldn't even say answer the question being asked a question and uttering

00:29:11.420 words in response in the house of commons take a look the honorable member for surgeon river parkland

00:29:18.800 mr speaker he's avoiding the question again but i'll move on this past weekend ottawa saw the

00:29:23.780 so-called rolling thunder protests come and go without major incident now during the freedom

00:29:28.740 convoy protests the government claimed that they needed the emergencies act because they needed to

00:29:33.540 compel tow truck drivers to remove the protesters now over this last weekend we saw many vehicles

00:29:39.040 towed without needing the emergencies act yet another blow to this government's fabricated

00:29:43.440 claims if the government didn't need extraordinary powers to get the tow trucks what did they need

00:29:48.480 them for mr speaker first and foremost i'd like to begin by expressing my gratitude to all frontline

00:29:58.480 police officers including members of the rcmp who ensured that we were able to maintain public

00:30:06.800 safety over the course of the past weekend of course there are big distinctions between what

00:30:10.860 occurred last weekend and what occurred last winter which was a national emergency Mr. Speaker

00:30:16.420 we invoked the emergencies act after we received advice from law enforcement once it was invoked

00:30:21.580 we were able to restore our public safety and now we'll ensure that there's transparency in the

00:30:25.620 accountability of that decision thank you so what's happening there is he's still not acknowledging

00:30:32.840 the process. He's not acknowledging the access to cabinet documents and whether those will be

00:30:37.520 granted to the inquiry. Because again, the government can't provide evidence that never

00:30:41.480 existed for why it needed to invoke the Emergencies Act. And that's why Mendicino is probably going to

00:30:46.640 at some point be left holding the bag. And he'll be made the fall guy for this because Justin

00:30:50.660 Trudeau didn't like truckers honking and telling him that he was not violating, that he was not

00:30:55.840 respecting their rights and freedoms. Which interestingly enough, I'm looking on Twitter,

00:31:00.980 someone sent this to me. Justin Trudeau, it's World Press Freedom Day. So Justin Trudeau has

00:31:06.000 tweeted out the following, to journalists across the country and around the world,

00:31:09.960 thank you for your relentless pursuit of the truth and for your commitment to sharing these

00:31:14.620 truths. Today, we celebrate your work and we pay tribute to your colleagues who have been injured

00:31:19.620 or lost their lives on the job. You know, I'm going to respond to this right now. Let's see,

00:31:26.020 I'm not going to bring up the pepper spraying incident because my face is puffy and bloated

00:31:29.660 And I don't want to share that picture of me being pepper spray. But how would I just say, remember when you banned me from covering your campaign? How about when you authorized police to arrest independent journalists in Ottawa, covering your crackdown on civil liberties?

00:31:51.000 See, you get to see behind the curtain right now in real time as I tweet, which is, I think,

00:31:55.660 like one step above watching paint dry on the level of interest.

00:31:59.200 I'm going to send that now.

00:31:59.960 I couldn't, I just couldn't let it pass by because, again, the government loves to do

00:32:03.860 this.

00:32:04.020 They talk about global press freedom in the context of like Venezuela or something, but

00:32:09.320 they aren't interested in their own track record, their own track record on media freedom

00:32:14.780 right here at home.

00:32:16.000 And if I were Justin Trudeau, I'd be very cautious about talking about the importance

00:32:19.700 of letting journalists do their job unless you're on the liberal government's bailout list. Then

00:32:24.620 you can do your job. Then you'll be empowered, authorized, you'll be credentialed, you'll be

00:32:28.820 given whatever you need. But not if you're not one of the liberal unapproved journalists, then you

00:32:33.080 do not in fact get access to any of those rights. So all of this is to say that right now we are in

00:32:39.980 a wacko world in which one group can say one thing and completely ignore it. I used to be very

00:32:46.340 troubled by this hypocrisy. My late friend, Kathy Shadle explained it well. She said,

00:32:51.360 you know, you're trying to find sense in something that is nonsensical. She said,

00:32:55.360 basically, it's just this. Liberals, it's different when we do it. And there's a simplicity

00:33:00.080 in that. There's a beauty in that as well. Liberals play by different rule books. I mean,

00:33:04.640 to go back to the Roe v. Wade discussion at the beginning here, right now, all the liberals are

00:33:09.180 clutching their pearls and talking about the importance of abortion rights because my body,

00:33:13.460 my choice. The same people that for the last year have been pushing vaccine mandates on anyone and

00:33:19.280 everyone are somehow mortified at the idea that the Supreme Court could allow someone, a state

00:33:25.820 government to restrict abortion rights. The people that would not hesitate to take away your right

00:33:33.000 to choose whether or not you are vaccinated. Those people are now saying, how dare anyone

00:33:40.180 restrict what someone does to their own body. Now, the reality of abortion is it's contentious

00:33:46.460 not because it's restricting a woman's right to do something with her own body. It's because

00:33:50.360 there is debate about whether the unborn child constitutes a body. Pro-lifers say it does.

00:33:55.820 Pro-choicers say it doesn't. It's not about individual autonomy. It's about actually

00:34:00.140 defining and characterizing what an individual is. With vaccination, there's no question that

00:34:05.460 when you mandate vaccination on someone, on a population, you are talking about literally

00:34:09.980 taking away their bodily autonomy. And the only explanation to this, liberals, it's different when

00:34:15.720 we do it. We're going to end things there. I'm going to be at the Manning Conference in Ottawa

00:34:19.640 this weekend, which is no longer called that. The Canada Strong and Free Conference, rather.

00:34:23.340 And I'll be doing live shows. We'll hopefully have some great content for you. And if you are

00:34:27.040 there yourself, do come out and say hello. We'll talk to you soon. This is more of Canada's most

00:34:31.600 irreverent talk show in the days ahead that we're teasing you on but i'm looking forward to it and

00:34:35.460 i hope you are as well if you don't come back well have a great weekend thank you god bless

00:34:39.560 and good day to you all for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating

00:34:46.120 to true north at www.tnc.news

00:35:01.600 We'll be right back.

Juno News - May 03, 2022

Should overturning Roe v Wade matter to Canadians？

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