Juno News - So much for ＂modest, short-term deficits＂

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:01:30.000 Hello everyone and welcome to you all Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North it

00:01:42.580 is Wednesday March 29th 2023 hope you are all having a wonderful day it is hump day if you are

00:01:50.580 a Monday to Friday worker you are past the midway point of your week if you are like anyone else

00:01:56.560 that is having to embrace the gig economy because it's the only way to keep up,

00:02:00.660 then it's not hump day for you, but I hope we can give you a little bit of insight

00:02:05.320 and perhaps even entertainment on this program today.

00:02:09.880 I attempted, I will say, I don't get out of the house much,

00:02:13.040 so I sometimes forget what life is like outside the house,

00:02:16.760 but I was attempting to be entertained yesterday.

00:02:19.740 I went to a concert with my lovely wife.

00:02:22.740 There was a singer, well, is a singer, who's a friend of ours.

00:02:26.560 and he was performing and sent us an invite and said,

00:02:30.480 yeah, I'll give you guys some tickets, give you some backstage passes.

00:02:32.960 You can come by after the show. It'll be great.

00:02:34.720 So we went there, and it was out of town, so a little bit of a road trip,

00:02:39.200 and I'm getting ready to sit down at a rock concert.

00:02:43.280 Now, I am ready to rock out.

00:02:45.600 This is as rocky as I get.

00:02:47.520 I was wearing a collared dress shirt,

00:02:49.220 so don't think I was wearing my Guns N' Roses cut-off tee and had the hair long.

00:02:53.940 No, no, no. This is as rocky as I get.

00:02:56.080 But I was ready to rock out. I was at a rock concert, and I'm sitting down. I'm in the venue. The lights go off. We're about to get started, and on comes the guy who works for the venue to do the land acknowledgement, which, again, I don't get out much, so I don't know if this is a thing at, like, every live event you go to now.

00:03:15.360 There was a little poster in the hallway that I thought sufficed for the land acknowledgement by saying we were in Oakville.

00:03:21.900 So it's like we were on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and all that.

00:03:26.880 And again, but it's not, here's the thing that got me is that I'm used to the regular land acknowledgement.

00:03:31.540 I'm used to the, we are on the traditional territory.

00:03:34.160 And then, you know, ladies and gentlemen, the concession stand is open outside.

00:03:38.460 Enjoy the show.

00:03:39.280 this was a weird one because the guy said where we were and then he started talking about truth

00:03:46.680 and reconciliation and then he said we were all lied to if we grew up in the 1960s and 70s and

00:03:53.440 our government tried to destroy their culture and we need to tell our elected officials to stop

00:03:58.440 breaking treaties and then he started talking about drinking what he started talking about

00:04:02.000 boil water advisories and again you look there's a time and a place for political stuff this was

00:04:07.600 neither of those things, I would say. And then, you know, he's just depressed everyone, or in some

00:04:13.680 cases, fired them up to, you know, give truth to power about Indigenous politics. And then at the

00:04:18.560 end of it, and ladies and gentlemen, here is the, I don't know, I'm not going to name the performer

00:04:23.120 because they had nothing to do with it. And I actually asked one of the singer, one of the

00:04:27.780 guys backstage after this, singer that I know, I said, I said, what did you think of the land

00:04:32.160 of Knoll? And he's like, the what? I was like, didn't you hear? He's like, oh no, I was, I was

00:04:36.120 downstairs getting ready for the show. So if this is a thing at all concerts, please let me know

00:04:42.100 because it got to it. The sense that I got was that the venue guy like actually wanted the

00:04:48.020 applause himself. Like he just wanted to get the crowd all fired up instead of just doing the

00:04:52.460 obligatory. Like he believed it at least. So maybe it's a step in the right direction. I was at an

00:04:57.380 event once where someone did a land acknowledgement and then someone else did an acknowledgement of

00:05:04.060 their acknowledgement because they wanted to do the land acknowledgement so I'm not entirely sure

00:05:09.160 if we're just letting the politics of this get away but plenty of time to talk about this because

00:05:13.680 apparently they're happening at every event you go to now let's talk about the real story of the

00:05:18.900 week here which is the federal budget and in this particular case the federal government is on track

00:05:25.620 to run up a deficit of $40.1 billion.

00:05:30.140 That is a billion with a B if you were keeping score at home.

00:05:35.080 Now, these numbers at a certain point are abstract and meaningless to people

00:05:39.200 because if you are $200 away, as many families are in this country,

00:05:43.300 from having to put everyday expenses on your credit card,

00:05:46.920 $40 billion is a number that is such an abstraction,

00:05:49.940 it is meaningless in your life.

00:05:52.080 And again, I can tell you that when government is spending outside its means, it does negatively affect every other Canadian.

00:05:59.220 And I think governments around the world have had a bit of cover because COVID required spending.

00:06:06.000 But they've used that to justify spending far beyond what COVID necessitated and also as a bit of a shield for the fact that in this particular case,

00:06:14.320 we had a government that was running up billions in deficits even before the pandemic came along when the economy was doing quite well.

00:06:20.600 and their rationale was well we're doing okay as a country so we can afford it and then the

00:06:25.740 rationale became well things are terrible so we need to do it and as i've often remarked you kind

00:06:30.800 of look and say well hang on if good times and bad times warrant deficit spending when is the time

00:06:36.000 that we don't run deficits and there doesn't appear to be to this government one of those

00:06:40.180 things so let's talk about one specific aspect of this the federal government promised there would

00:06:45.360 be some relief for families if you have been to a grocery store in the last year you know full well

00:06:50.960 what the problem is you don't need politicians to tell you their solution for this is to give

00:06:57.220 every family in canada a one-time grocery rebate oh wait it's actually not every family in canada

00:07:04.260 they're going to give some families in canada a grocery rebate of sorts and they're going to run

00:07:09.340 this through the existing GST rebate program. The average family could make about $467. I shouldn't

00:07:16.740 say make, could receive $467 from this, but many people will get less than that. And if you are

00:07:25.300 buying groceries, you'll know that for a family, $467 might well be one, or maybe if you're really

00:07:32.040 lucky, two grocery bills, and then you're back to groceries that you cannot afford. So is there a

00:07:38.480 solution the government could have put forward here and is this something that is at all even

00:07:43.820 resembling a solution i want to talk about just this aspect of the budget alone for a little while

00:07:48.760 with professor sylvain charlebois one of the brightest minds in food policy in this country

00:07:53.540 from dalhousie university professor good to talk to you again thanks for coming on today

00:07:58.260 nice talking to you as well andrew so let's start start off with talking about this rebate here i

00:08:04.080 mean obviously it is a band-aid and i don't think it's pretending to be anything more than a band

00:08:08.340 But if you look at grocery bills, it's almost laughable to think of just how little that $200 or $300 a family might get will go on this issue.

00:08:19.480 Pretty much.

00:08:20.960 I mean, when you look at what's going on with food inflation, the average family of four will likely pay about $1,100 more for their food this year.

00:08:30.620 So that family would probably receive an extra $467 if they qualify.

00:08:36.780 if they qualify and that's a one-time payment and so just to contextualize that professor that's

00:08:43.320 half of the increase so so they're still out five hundred dollars a year more yeah it's actually

00:08:49.040 less than half of the increase over one year but Andrew I mean food inflation is a lingering

00:08:54.940 challenge for everyone it's not just over the next six months we are we are looking at some

00:09:01.600 nasty numbers for 2023 2024 as well so there's no long-term plan here this is really about

00:09:10.460 politicizing food inflation really i mean we've seen it in many provinces and ottawa basically

00:09:17.440 decide to do the same by setting out checks it's the easiest thing to do by just changing the name

00:09:23.340 of a program gst rebate and and make it a little bit more sexy if you will and i call it a grocery

00:09:31.080 rebate but it doesn't mean that people will actually use that money to spend on groceries

00:09:36.160 unfortunately. Yeah and of course the blatantly obvious issue with this is that it's not dealing

00:09:41.520 with the underlying causes so it's not a sustain I mean if you can even call it a solution it's

00:09:46.180 certainly not a sustainable solution so let's talk about what some of those could be because I don't

00:09:52.460 like oversimplifying issues here if we're looking at the the food costs and the increase that you

00:09:57.380 just mentioned can we trace this back to one or two concepts or are we talking about many many

00:10:04.020 inputs that are contributing this to this oh that's a tough one because you have you know 18 to 20

00:10:11.700 000 skews in a grocery store and they all have a story uh of course uh or there are we we can

00:10:19.540 actually identify overarching factors like supply chain weaknesses due to covid and the aftermath

00:10:29.380 there's ukraine of course ukraine made everything more expensive almost overnight and and there's

00:10:35.460 and there's climate change i mean right now i can tell you in six months from now beef will be more

00:10:40.740 expensive because there are many parts of the u.s where there are droughts and cattle ranchers are

00:10:46.100 just getting rid of their inventory so my guess in six months from now your beef at the grocery

00:10:51.140 store will be more expensive and that's due to a drought california is north america's garden

00:10:58.100 it ran out of water for a while now it has too much water and so they don't know exactly what's

00:11:03.460 going to happen there there's been some crops ruined over 300 million dollars worth of crops

00:11:08.260 a lot of that product was supposed to go to canada it won't so chances are vegetables will be more

00:11:14.180 expensive in a few weeks from now so there's there's lots going on at once but i would say

00:11:18.580 that those are the top three factors impacting most of the grocery store yeah and then you can

00:11:24.820 look beyond that and if we are sort of analyzing this through the perspective of multiple inputs

00:11:30.020 you know five percent from one thing two percent from another thing it all does add up i mean you

00:11:35.700 i know i've spoken elsewhere it's the the sacred cow pardon the pun in canada but supply management

00:11:40.580 is driving up dairy costs and poultry you have carbon taxes which i think are also contributing

00:11:46.580 because it adds to shipping so it becomes very difficult when you start layering all of these

00:11:51.940 things to find one ready-made solution does it not no absolutely so it's it's hard to uh to look

00:11:58.820 at uh all of the factors and as as a government how do you tackle all these factors so i i've

00:12:05.540 always advocated for measures that would be meaningful and that would change the cost

00:12:11.460 structure of the entire industry right now what you're looking at Andrew uh is is a new baseline

00:12:17.860 2022 was an historical year when it comes to uh management in the food sector uh there is a new

00:12:24.980 baseline wages are way up packaging costs everything is costing more so when people are

00:12:30.900 asking me if food prices are going to drop anytime soon i i kind of laugh because i i don't we don't

00:12:37.380 see it we don't see how food prices will drop so we are hoping for a lower food inflation rate and

00:12:43.620 that's probably going to happen during the second half of 2023 you know i i imagine just from what

00:12:50.020 you're describing about ukraine and weather conditions and all of that that food prices

00:12:54.500 can be a bit of a lagging indicator so even if some changes were put into effect now how long

00:12:59.540 does it actually take to start seeing the effects of these things or does it to go back to your

00:13:04.020 comment about the number of shoes depend on the product yeah it absolutely depends now when you

00:13:09.540 look at uh central banks and and they're all trying to actually bring down uh the inflation

00:13:14.580 rate even though canada actually has one of the lowest inflation rates in the world by the way

00:13:18.500 andrew i don't know if you knew this but if you look at the g7 uh canada is number three after

00:13:23.860 the u.s and japan japan is at 7.5 the u.s is at 9.4 we're at 9.7 but people in canada won't care

00:13:33.460 they won't care what's going on in germany or france or the uk they care about what's going on

00:13:38.980 in their own grocery stores and so you have to kind of wonder why are prices still too high

00:13:46.820 given the fact that we do grow a lot of food here in canada and that's really the one thing that's

00:13:51.380 bothering a lot of people and the answer to that question is pretty simple i don't think there's

00:13:56.500 been any greedflation going on we actually did look at financial statements of grocers there's

00:14:02.500 no evidence margins have been pretty stable however margins are double of what they are in

00:14:07.780 the u.s if you look at operational margins if you look at metro loblaws and sobeys for example empire

00:14:14.580 and you look at uh say kroger's and albertson they're they're double so it's been cozy for them

00:14:19.780 in Canada really we need more competition but here's the thing Andrew and this is what I was

00:14:25.420 expecting in the budget yesterday Canada's not all that interesting to invest in Canada doesn't

00:14:32.400 attract investors Aldi and Little for 20 years they've been in the U.S. well Aldi actually

00:14:39.080 entered in 2017 but Aldi has been around for a long time they've looked at Canada they've never

00:14:46.180 invested because they saw companies like Target leave in a nanosecond. They saw Sears leave,

00:14:52.880 Lowe's leave, Nordstrom is leaving in a couple of months. It's a hard market to service because of

00:14:59.680 inter-provincial barriers. Our fiscal regime is incredibly cumbersome. And I was expecting

00:15:07.360 yesterday in the budget to see some really meaningful measures to make our market more

00:15:13.040 competitive but I didn't see anything unfortunately. Yeah and I mean one example that I recall coming

00:15:18.980 up and I don't know if it was overstated as to how influential it was but when Target came to

00:15:24.120 Canada however many years ago bilingualism on packaging so it's they had to in many ways

00:15:30.660 recreate their supply chain they couldn't just take the products that were on the shelf

00:15:34.120 in the United States and plop them on the shelf in Canada so it it does I think for a lot of

00:15:39.420 companies bring up this question of is it worth the hassle to do all this extra work for a country

00:15:43.340 a tenth the size. And a lot of people a lot of companies I do look at the the supply chain

00:15:49.880 economics of Canada and it's it's hard it's really really hard in the U.S. de facto the number one

00:15:58.280 grocer is Walmart okay Walmart's market share in the U.S. is about 20 percent which is not a whole

00:16:06.400 lot but it's 20 in canada the number one grocer is lobla they own 32 of the market so that's

00:16:14.080 market dominance along with uh sobe's and metro so there there is there is some coziness that needs

00:16:21.360 to be broken up and so that's why i've been advocating for a code of conduct for example

00:16:26.400 to protect independent grocers because independent grocers are disappearing i mean they're just

00:16:31.840 gone they're disappearing everywhere in the country and we need to protect them a little

00:16:35.200 but they have no chance against Walmart and Loblaw negotiating with processors,

00:16:40.480 and they are fewer than in the United States, so it's hard to get a good price.

00:16:45.440 The stop sell last year, I don't know if you remember with Frito-Lay and Loblaw,

00:16:50.160 do you remember when Frito-Lay, Pepsi actually just left the table and decided not to sell to

00:16:55.920 Loblaw? That's what I'm talking about, the code of conduct. Pepsi was big enough to basically just

00:17:01.840 walk away for a month many sme companies like many small companies family-sized companies out there

00:17:08.800 can't afford to do that and that's due to the fact that lobla and walmart have too much power

00:17:15.520 so we're agreed professor that the one-time grocery rebate is essentially meaningless for

00:17:21.440 for a lot of people at least in the long term past the the first couple of months of receiving

00:17:26.160 the check if there were one actually i would say one thing i think it's actually can be a problem

00:17:33.200 when you see when you see a government invest in the economy it's only 2.5 billion but still

00:17:39.760 you do not want to see a state a government uh pour more money uh more fuel onto the inflation

00:17:48.400 fire because you may end up raising prices for everyone so they're trying to help 11 million

00:17:56.000 people but at this time they could actually hurt potentially well 39 million people no that that's

00:18:03.940 a very very fair point i'm glad you raised that i guess just in closing i'd say you know if there

00:18:08.860 were one singular policy that would make in your view a difference if such a thing exists in the

00:18:14.780 budget what would that be right right away yeah if you were if you had the misfortune of being

00:18:21.360 canada's finance minister and you had you had one policy you could put forward that would make a

00:18:26.500 tangible difference what would it be i would eliminate all sales stacks on food immediately

00:18:31.900 retail right now because of shrinkflation a lot of packages were groceries are now snacks and if

00:18:39.000 you're a snack, like for example, granola bars, if you bought a box of five bars of granola bars

00:18:45.160 instead of six, that's a snack. You pay tax on that. Okay. If you're buying a container of ice

00:18:50.380 cream like Ben and Jerry's and Agandaz, if it's below 500 mil, you're paying tax on that. It's

00:18:56.400 five to 15% depending on where you live in this country. That's more money. That's a lot of money

00:19:02.120 and families would appreciate a discount there. The same products in different sizes. I got to

00:19:07.640 of science and evidence in policy making.

00:19:10.440 Professor Sylvain Charlebois,

00:19:11.780 your insights is always appreciated.

00:19:13.380 Thank you very much, sir.

00:19:14.560 Take care.

00:19:15.420 Thank you.

00:19:16.260 Yeah, it's so absurd.

00:19:17.780 And I had actually forgotten about the snack meal divide

00:19:22.000 or the snack food divide.

00:19:23.260 So when you're going, it's like trying to understand,

00:19:25.580 well, why is this thing taxed?

00:19:26.960 And why is that not thing taxed?

00:19:28.340 And I mean, for a guy who looks like me,

00:19:29.980 it's dangerous because it means it's actually fiscally sound

00:19:32.800 to buy more ice cream than to buy less ice cream,

00:19:35.640 which is like hardly the message that the government should be sending with its Canada food guidance.

00:19:41.760 No, no, no, Andrew, if you buy one ice cream, that's just a snack.

00:19:44.180 You need to buy like the whole Costco-sized crate of ice cream.

00:19:47.520 In fact, I only look like this because of Justin Trudeau.

00:19:50.160 Okay, may or may not be true.

00:19:51.940 In any case, one thing I will say before we get on to the climate war waged against, I'd say,

00:19:58.900 well, pretty much everyone in this world by governments and the global elites.

00:20:02.900 I just want to talk about the NDP here.

00:20:05.080 And I said last week when we were doing the show live from the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference that you should never make the mistake of ascribing relevance to Jagmeet Singh.

00:20:15.420 It's just a rookie error in politics.

00:20:17.540 I mean, even when I was covering the election debates in 2021 and I had a question that I was able to ask to Jagmeet Singh, I'm like, why do I care?

00:20:25.620 Why am I even going along with this?

00:20:27.440 He's like just Elizabeth May with, you know, two or three more members of Parliament in his caucus.

00:20:32.180 But nevertheless, Jagmeet Singh is the guy who is single-handedly propping up Justin Trudeau's government right now,

00:20:40.140 going along with things that even the Bloc Québécois will not go along with.

00:20:45.620 And Jagmeet Singh, of course, has said that he is totally backing the budget.

00:20:49.620 Now, here's a little clip to explain how he rationalizes supporting the Liberal budget.

00:20:56.780 This is the clip where he talks about how the NDP really forced some concessions out of the Liberals.

00:21:06.720 Will you trigger an election if the Liberals don't meet the Pharmacare plan by the end of the year?

00:21:11.020 That's not a decision we're making today, but we want to make it very clear

00:21:14.120 that there are certain things that the government has to deliver by the end of this year.

00:21:18.160 And the Pharmacare is one of those.

00:21:19.560 We want to make sure that's absolutely delivered by the end of this year.

00:21:22.040 In this budget, we have forced the government to deliver meaningful things

00:21:25.440 that are going to make people's lives better,

00:21:27.140 save people money and help them with their health care needs,

00:21:30.120 like their dental care needs.

00:21:31.440 That's something that we're proud of

00:21:32.700 and we force the government to do that.

00:21:34.420 There's more things that we're going to continue

00:21:35.620 to force this government to do by the end of this year.

00:21:40.900 It's kind of funny how the concessions

00:21:44.220 he says he got out of Justin Trudeau

00:21:46.300 were all things that were like literally

00:21:48.520 in the liberal platform, irrespective of the NDP,

00:21:51.960 that had nothing to do with the NDP.

00:21:54.540 And I think I go back to Stephen Harper's line when he was on stage with Preston Manning on, I guess it was a week ago today, yeah, in Ottawa.

00:22:02.160 And he was saying, you know, only Jagmeet Singh could walk into a negotiating room with Justin Trudeau and come out with absolutely nothing.

00:22:08.940 Like that takes a particular level of incompetence.

00:22:12.200 But you look at, again, Jagmeet Singh on Twitter throughout the year and he's saying, oh, the Liberals have failed Canadians.

00:22:17.160 Grocery store CEOs are getting rich and it's all happened on Justin Trudeau's watch.

00:22:21.580 And then budget time comes along and he's like, I vote yay, I vote yay, I don't want to have an election, I'm going to lose everything else and then I'm going to be ousted as leader.

00:22:32.220 So here we have it continuing along and indefinitely, of course, the Conservatives voting against it and the Bloc Québécois, the Green Party, again, no one really cares.

00:22:42.220 But the one thing I will say, that's not true.

00:22:45.940 We have like 40 minutes of show left.

00:22:47.300 So one of the many things I will say this show,

00:22:49.940 but specifically about Jagmeet Singh and his support for the Liberals,

00:22:54.420 is that do not believe that anything has anything to do with principles.

00:22:59.560 It's absolutely not.

00:23:00.980 It is purely a political calculation.

00:23:03.440 It's purely brinksmanship when it suits him, saber-rattling when it suits him,

00:23:07.240 and blind support like a little lost puppy following around someone

00:23:11.200 that looks like they might have jerky in their pocket or something.

00:23:14.300 That is all that they are doing because they are trying to avoid the polls.

00:23:18.340 And when they have enough in their war chest that they believe they could justify going to an election

00:23:23.080 or when, you know, really, really they get pushed into a corner,

00:23:26.380 then maybe they'll pull support, but it's never going to happen.

00:23:28.520 Not over China, not over ethics scandals, not over inflation,

00:23:31.780 not even over this little paltry pittance to Canadians on a so-called grocery rebate.

00:23:38.320 One thing that I will now turn to, which we have not covered a lot,

00:23:42.800 and I should say Canadian media has not really covered this a lot,

00:23:46.440 but it's incredibly important because these sorts of reports

00:23:48.960 that come from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

00:23:52.940 which is the consortium of official alarmists around the world

00:23:56.940 propped up by the United Nations,

00:23:59.520 their reports tend to be very influential when it comes to the COP treaties,

00:24:04.060 when it comes to, or the COP agreements rather,

00:24:06.740 when it comes to climate policy in countries like Canada,

00:24:10.180 which has been very deferential to the United Nations.

00:24:13.840 And if you ever saw that just like weirdly preachy

00:24:17.440 and terrible movie with Jonah Hill and Meryl Streep

00:24:21.240 called Don't Look Up,

00:24:22.500 the whole premise was that an asteroid

00:24:24.680 is hurtling towards Earth.

00:24:26.360 And there are a couple of scientists

00:24:27.960 that are warning people to look and see it.

00:24:31.640 And, you know, the elites, the media, the politicians, they're not paying attention.

00:24:35.360 It was like, it was the blunt force approach.

00:24:38.120 No subtlety, no nuance, no symbolism.

00:24:40.140 It was the hit you over the head with it approach.

00:24:42.560 But it's amazing how the official science-based reports from the IPCC are just as blunt and

00:24:49.820 ham-fisted and I would say fear-mongering.

00:24:52.640 So the latest report, this is a sixth assessment or the final part of the sixth assessment

00:24:58.560 report which came out less than a couple of weeks ago and it has been now issued as a final warning

00:25:05.660 it's now or never we either deal with what they want us to deal with now or it'll be too late and

00:25:11.760 the world will go to hell in a handbasket we have to keep warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial

00:25:17.220 levels this has been this thing that countries have just not really been willing to go along

00:25:22.200 with, even going back to Paris. And since then, Donna Laframboise is a tremendous journalist

00:25:28.780 and researcher in Canada who has, I believe, done more to debunk the IPCC than the entire

00:25:36.800 mainstream media in this country ever have and ever will. She joins me now. Donna, great to talk

00:25:42.360 to you and have you on the show finally. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks so much for the invite.

00:25:46.560 So, I mean, what is the thesis of this latest report here from the IPCC?

00:25:53.680 I mean, basically, it's we're all going to die unless you do what we want.

00:25:57.600 Yes, and that is not, as you mentioned, that is not a new message.

00:26:01.200 In fact, that has been the message of environmental activists since Earth Day, which is like 52 years ago.

00:26:08.340 So every year or every few years, we are told this is the last call, the last chance.

00:26:15.300 This is the last generation that has any hope of saving the planet.

00:26:19.420 And it's gotten a bit repetitive.

00:26:22.780 The IPCC is a UN body.

00:26:26.980 It is part of the UN.

00:26:29.840 It is run by UN bureaucrats.

00:26:32.000 And, you know, I have, thank you for those kind words about the work I've done on the IPCC.

00:26:40.540 I've spent more than 10 years now studying this organization that I'd never even heard about before.

00:26:46.600 And I didn't start this way.

00:26:49.280 I thought it was important to be open-minded and to be fair and to look very carefully at what they were doing.

00:26:56.660 But I have come to the conclusion that it's the UN.

00:27:00.580 And because it's the UN, we need to just close the door and say, thank you very much. You're not legitimate. We don't recognize your authority. Because the problem with the UN is that it is not accountable to anyone. And it is not democratic.

00:27:16.460 If we have a concern about how a UN body is behaving, we have no ability whatsoever as members of the public to vote those people out, to get rid of them, to tell them to change course or pull up their socks.

00:27:29.500 So this is a UN body.

00:27:31.580 It is, you know, it's, and so, yeah, thank you very much, but we're not going to pay attention to you.

00:27:39.140 That is my conclusion.

00:27:40.400 That's the best way to respond to these people.

00:27:42.420 I want to just don't give away where I'm going with this because I think you're shrewd enough

00:27:46.940 to detect where I'm going with this but I want to read a bit from an Associated Press report about

00:27:51.020 the United Nations a senior UN environmental official says entire nations could be wiped

00:27:56.340 off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed

00:28:01.420 in the next 10 years governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse

00:28:07.260 effect before it goes beyond human control that was in 1989 so you are you are very correct that

00:28:16.180 the the overarching goal has not changed the rhetoric has not changed but we give them well

00:28:22.280 we not you and I but I think society the media governments give them a pass when none of these

00:28:27.100 doomsday predictions actually materialize we do we do and we have a very short memory so we forget

00:28:34.180 that just last year they told us it was the last call and and five years ago they told us it was

00:28:39.140 our last chance we forget and the uh the media uh turns out you know the mainstream media turns out

00:28:45.300 to be very good recyclers they're just repeating the same things over and over again so um you know

00:28:50.660 and once you once you clue in and you notice that um you know i think that can be very liberating

00:28:55.940 um but but you know perhaps it's it's useful for me to say just a few words about how the ipcc

00:29:01.380 operates. People call it a scientific body. This is the science. The science has spoken.

00:29:07.480 In fact, it's not. What the IPCC does is write reports. They are literature reviews. So they

00:29:15.260 recruit a bunch of scientists and ask them to survey the published scientific literature and

00:29:21.500 write a report about what that literature says about, you know, sea level rise or about soil

00:29:27.500 degradation and then they put it all together and they say the science has spoken but it's not

00:29:31.980 science it's it's it's it's kind of journalism in fact it's you know what what is it yeah so

00:29:37.740 just as shoddy as a as a lot of journalism carry on so so that's what's happening so when people

00:29:44.140 say oh this the ipcc is scientific it's not it's not and in fact some amount of trouble has been

00:29:51.020 taken to to mislead us to tell us that well the scientists are writing it but the scientists are

00:29:57.100 not in charge. The scientists are told you're going to work on chapter five and you have 300

00:30:03.080 words to talk about this topic and you have 500 words to talk about that topic and the one over

00:30:08.660 there the governments really are keen on that so even if there isn't any research you kind of just

00:30:13.640 have to wing it and tell us something because governments want to know about that in the report

00:30:17.920 and in fact scientists have so little control that in one report they said we'd like to change the

00:30:25.700 title of our chapter because the feedback we received says that it's got it talks about

00:30:32.100 systems in the title and that's confusing for people we'd like to change it to ecosystems they

00:30:37.780 wanted to add three letters to the title and they were basically told oh you don't have the power

00:30:43.460 to do that we would have to go through a whole series of meetings through the ipcc bureaucracy

00:30:50.740 to get that change approved so it's not a scientific document scientists are not in charge

00:30:58.740 and it's really the un bureaucracy using scientists to as kind of a shield or kind of

00:31:07.060 you know put on the white lab coat and dress up our agenda and we'll say it's scientific

00:31:12.900 there are i mean despite the vaunted uh and so-called consensus of scientists there are some

00:31:18.580 dissidents, you know, people like Willie Soon and Ian Plymer and many others around the world,

00:31:24.560 especially in Australia, that do push back against this either in full or in part. People like them,

00:31:31.260 what happens to them in the IPCC process? Are they just excluded altogether? They're not let

00:31:36.180 in the door? Are they allowed to contribute and perhaps their stuff is just like shoved down to,

00:31:41.860 you know, footnote 3072 on page 5072? Like what happens to the people that do exist in

00:31:48.180 the academic community that are skeptics as they say? Well in some cases they're frozen out from

00:31:54.220 the beginning. Their views are well known and so the IPCC doesn't even recruit them. In other cases

00:32:01.520 they participate in the IPCC, they raise their concerns about the IPCC process and that's when

00:32:08.380 they're frozen out. You know technically anyone can or anyone you know with some credentials

00:32:15.900 can comment on drafts of the IPCC reports as they're developed, but there is no, there's no

00:32:23.720 obligation for the authors to pay attention to those comments. So, you know, some of those

00:32:28.960 dissident scientists have taken a great deal of time to write out their concerns, to document

00:32:34.800 their concerns, to point to published literature, and it basically disappears, you know, down a

00:32:40.800 black hole and it has no effect whatsoever. So yes, there are a great number of scientists with

00:32:46.900 very impressive credentials who beg to differ, who have a different analysis, but the IPCC is

00:32:53.400 not a welcoming place for them. A mutual friend of ours, a retired professor from University of

00:32:59.300 Western Ontario, Christopher Essex, I invited him years ago on a debate. And I thought I would do

00:33:05.620 a really good journalistic job and have him and someone else on. And he had said, you know,

00:33:09.900 there's no point because he said, you can't actually debate science in these forums. You

00:33:13.800 end up debating politics and debating these things. And, and it was a fair point. I mean,

00:33:17.740 I'm a journalist. I'm not a scientist by any stretch. So if someone actually starts speaking

00:33:22.080 in scientific language, I don't really have the ability to push back as much as that I may on,

00:33:27.260 on some other things. And, and that's the one thing that I find very striking is that a lot

00:33:31.600 of the times the proclamations you get are not actually scientific language. The ones you get

00:33:36.340 from the IPCC, from the United Nations.

00:33:39.320 And you are right.

00:33:40.080 It's sort of shielded as this being part

00:33:42.320 of the scientific process.

00:33:43.420 And then somehow it translates to things

00:33:45.960 like final warning and, you know, irreparable harm.

00:33:49.400 Real scientists, if you speak to them,

00:33:51.100 don't actually use absolutes like that.

00:33:54.500 Absolutely.

00:33:56.020 See, you and I can use absolutely.

00:33:57.820 But yeah, real scientists,

00:33:59.000 when they're talking about research,

00:34:00.460 in fact, like I've interviewed researchers

00:34:02.380 about so many things and they're always so cautious

00:34:04.920 when you say something with a level of certainty

00:34:07.960 because that's not what science is.

00:34:09.880 Exactly, exactly.

00:34:11.340 So, you know, that's another alarm bell.

00:34:13.960 That's another red flag for us as members of the public to notice

00:34:17.000 that scientists are usually very cautious

00:34:19.960 and they're very careful and they qualify what they say

00:34:23.400 and that's not what the scientists who are talking about global warming

00:34:27.260 in the mainstream media do.

00:34:29.140 They behave very differently.

00:34:30.600 They behave much closer to political activists

00:34:33.400 because in fact that's what they are. So explain to me the danger of this because you know there

00:34:40.060 are lots of agencies and organizations that publish reports and they get you know acknowledged they

00:34:45.560 get received into a library they plopped on a shelf and they're never seen before but

00:34:49.140 the IPCC's reports are not that. No in fact the whole purpose of the IPCC reports is to facilitate

00:34:57.620 the UN treaty on climate change. So without that treaty, the IPCC wouldn't exist. And it makes a

00:35:07.140 certain amount of sense that if you're trying to get 185 countries who belong to the UN to be all

00:35:14.020 on the same page and to start some negotiations, it's good to have a base document, sort of an

00:35:20.120 agreed statement of facts is what the lawyers would say. This is what we think is the state

00:35:25.580 of of climate so um so that's the that's the purpose of those reports they're not scientific

00:35:32.940 they are they're they're a document intended to facilitate un negotiations you know we're talking

00:35:41.180 high test international politics here that that's the whole purpose of the sign of the ipcc report

00:35:48.380 So the process is such that the governments of the world participate in helping the reports to be written, and then they're sort of held to them.

00:36:01.120 And so we have governments all over Canada at the municipal level, at the provincial level, at the federal level, who point to the IPCC report and say, well, this is what's happening.

00:36:11.800 This is why we need carbon taxes.

00:36:13.480 This is why we are now having to persecute our farmers and make rules about nitrogen because the IPCC says so.

00:36:24.400 But it's all a house of cards once you start looking at it carefully.

00:36:29.000 So, yes, it's governments point to this and say, you know, this is what we must do because the IPCC says so.

00:36:36.020 But the IPCC is just a political construct.

00:36:39.120 So what's the next step of this?

00:36:41.560 Because obviously this was the final part of the sixth assessment report.

00:36:45.160 Do they just go immediately into the seventh report now?

00:36:47.700 I think they will.

00:36:48.580 That's what they've done always so far.

00:36:50.920 So, you know, there are summaries of the reports written because the reports can be 7,000 pages long.

00:36:58.100 And who's going to read those is certainly not politicians.

00:37:00.560 So they end up doing a summary that's 20 or 30 pages.

00:37:03.760 So what just came out last Monday is a summary of several other previous summaries.

00:37:11.560 so they have to summarize the summaries now it's so dense and long okay um so you know they this

00:37:19.240 is a because because part of the the negotiations for the climate change accord is that there have

00:37:26.600 to have a meeting every year that's the cop meeting right at the end of the year cop 27 or

00:37:31.640 whatever we're on now it's it's part of the the regimen the the doctrine you must have a meeting

00:37:37.880 every year and so then you know it's guaranteed that people are going to fly around the world and

00:37:43.400 there's going to be all this press another climate meeting so it's very much established now

00:37:50.440 you know in our governments and I'm not quite sure how we're going to dislodge it because

00:37:55.480 I'm told that in Germany they still have parts of the government that are working on acid rain

00:38:00.520 which was kind of a scare back in the you know the 1980s and it's it's once once government

00:38:07.400 takes on these agendas it's very difficult to get rid of them again yeah they perpetuate their own

00:38:14.280 existence i mean that's the thing like you know cop the you know cop 15 and cop 20 and all of

00:38:19.320 these things everyone sees and then you look and there's like a parallel track of cops about

00:38:23.240 something else and they're like so there are all these like you know different uh conferences of

00:38:27.240 of the organized parties every year and you're looking around i'm like no one's even paying

00:38:30.760 attention to these ones anymore they just someone just set it in motion 20 years ago and it just

00:38:35.160 you know goes on in in perpetuity so i'm glad you are not letting this fly under the radar donna

00:38:40.760 laframboise you're doing great work where's the the best people for people to get up to speed the

00:38:44.600 best vehicle for people to get up to speed on this issue if they haven't followed your work on it um

00:38:49.720 well i have a book on amazon it's called the delinquent teenager who was mistaken for the

00:38:55.480 the world's top climate scientist. It's a few years old now, but it's still, people tell me

00:39:01.020 who've just read it in the past month, this is really, really eye-opening. I didn't know all

00:39:07.220 of these things. So on Amazon, that's a good place to look. I'm on Twitter. Under my handle

00:39:14.140 there is no consensus, at no consensus. And this was not about Greta Thunberg. This was like long

00:39:21.300 before Greta Thunberg was the delinquent teenager that ran the climate world. That's true. That's

00:39:25.940 indeed true. Yes. All right, Donna, thanks very much. Great chatting with you. Thank you. All

00:39:31.960 right. She has just such an incredible wealth of knowledge on this. And it was actually

00:39:35.780 Christopher Essex, who I mentioned earlier, that had said, you know, Andrew, you should get Donna

00:39:39.760 on your show. And I realized I actually don't think I've ever interviewed her. I followed her

00:39:42.500 and we've corresponded. And she also has a great substack that has followed some of the stories

00:39:48.180 related to the trucker convoy and she wrote some very kind things about my book when that came out

00:39:53.640 and I'm very grateful to her for that as well. So that does it for us for today. We will be back

00:39:59.880 later this week with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. Hope you enjoy the rest

00:40:04.340 of your week. Thank you, God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew

00:40:10.540 Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:40:18.180 We'll be right back.

00:40:48.180 We'll be right back.

00:41:18.180 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 29, 2023

So much for ＂modest, short-term deficits＂

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