Juno News - Some MPs are acting for foreign powers. Why aren't they being named？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.620 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here on this tuesday

00:01:28.820 june 4th 2024 great to have you aboard the program for another day of what i hope lives

00:01:35.720 up to the irreverence you've all come to know and love not irrelevance you got to be careful

00:01:39.640 on the autocorrect there we are going to be speaking a little bit later on in the show with

00:01:44.220 Heidi McKillop who is a filmmaker I believe from Alberta but she's got a new documentary coming out

00:01:50.000 today. We are going for the breaking news here and that documentary looks very critically at

00:01:56.100 why so many of these green energy initiatives are not actually green or all that efficient on the

00:02:03.060 energy question. So we'll talk to Heidi very shortly. Also coming up later on our good friend

00:02:07.620 Adam Zeevo about the length to which the harm reduction activists will go, harm reduction

00:02:13.980 activists will go to disrupt their critics and to intimidate their critics, of which Adam Zeevo

00:02:20.220 has very much cemented himself as one. That's coming up. He'll be on in, I think, 15 minutes

00:02:25.060 or so. But I want to begin talking about this rather bombshell story that came yesterday through

00:02:30.740 a group called ENCICOP. Now, ENCICOP is an acronym and what is it? N-C-I-C-O-P or whatever. But

00:02:37.800 anyway, they call it ENCICOP. It's the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians. And what

00:02:43.100 this committee had done starting, I think, last year was look into foreign interference in Canadian

00:02:48.680 elections. Remember that? It was all the rage for about five minutes or so. Justin Trudeau

00:02:52.520 appointed his old skiing buddy, David Johnston, to lead what was at first a probe. And then the

00:02:58.280 commissioner eventually said, okay, let's just have an inquiry instead to get himself out of

00:03:03.220 dodge there. Well, the Parliamentary National Security Committee, which is, again, a committee

00:03:07.860 dominated by liberal parliamentarians, looked into this. So they found a few little bombshells

00:03:15.200 here that are now in the ENSA COP report. Now, one of the big ones that came out, and I think

00:03:21.040 this is shocking for a number of reasons, more what is not in the report rather than what is in

00:03:26.280 report is that some canadian politicians are to use the word of the report wittingly which means

00:03:33.960 knowingly participating in foreign interference now the revelation here is that yes china

00:03:41.000 successfully interfered in canadian politics big surprise right china wanted handong to win

00:03:47.640 the liberal nomination in dawn valley north china very much interfered in that had a quote

00:03:53.160 significant impact, unquote, in Handong becoming the candidate. Handong is now an independent

00:03:59.300 member of parliament. The Liberals have kicked him out of the caucus. Handong was also doing an

00:04:04.580 run around Canadian diplomatic channels to talk to the Chinese, I can't remember if it was the

00:04:09.300 embassy or the consulate, but to talk to Chinese agents in Canada about the two Michaels, which

00:04:14.700 as a backbench member of parliament was not his job. But we go into the details here and wonder,

00:04:21.960 okay, who is it in Canadian politics that is working for foreign governments? And well,

00:04:28.880 you look through the report and it doesn't tell you. It says, so yes, some parliamentarians,

00:04:33.960 that would include MPs and senators. And you better believe I know one senator whose name for

00:04:38.040 sure is going to be on that list. But all of these members of parliament are now supposedly

00:04:45.140 working for foreign governments. China is named in the report extensively. India is. There's one

00:04:51.000 country that is redacted. I have a couple of suspicions. I'm not entirely sure. I know Iran 1.00

00:04:56.960 has certainly tried to have influence in the diaspora around the world. There are perhaps

00:05:01.720 Turkey is one that as well, some people have suspected, but I don't know what's under the

00:05:05.860 redaction there or the old black highlighter to use the onion joke about the CIA. But what I do

00:05:12.360 know is that the report is telling us that we have definitely people in Canadian government

00:05:17.560 that have been co-opted and we as Canadians don't get to learn who those people are. If I were an

00:05:24.520 opposition member of parliament and again I haven't seen question period today I would love to be

00:05:28.500 hammering the government on that release the names what is it you're trying to hide release the names

00:05:32.760 of who it is in parliament regardless of party that is apparently working for a foreign government 1.00

00:05:38.920 wittingly or semi-wittingly to use the options provided but not these are not useful idiots these 1.00

00:05:44.260 are not people that are being co-opted because they're dumb. These are people that fully knew 1.00

00:05:49.100 what they were doing when they were engaging with foreign governments. But let's take a look at

00:05:53.380 Chrystia Freeland's feigned outrage on this at a press conference this morning. We have potentially

00:05:59.880 MPs still sitting in Parliament who this committee says wittingly participated with foreign governments

00:06:05.760 to undermine our elections. Does that not undermine Canadian confidence in our Parliament and in our

00:06:12.460 elections? I think Canadians recognize how lucky we are to be Canadian and how strong our democracy

00:06:24.680 is. I think Canadians are smart and they recognize there is a very real threat. I think in the work

00:06:33.820 of this committee, in the measures, the new and enhanced authorities our government has put in

00:06:40.220 place. I think Canadians see that our government takes this threat seriously and is going to

00:06:47.020 continue to act. And I do want to emphasize, I see this as not a partisan issue at all.

00:06:57.520 I see this as an issue of the core national interest and the core strength of Canada's

00:07:05.360 democracy. That is how our government is going to act.

00:07:10.220 Sorry, I was trying to get a sense of whether there was something resembling at all an answer

00:07:16.040 there and I wasn't getting it. So the question, hey, we have MPs who are wittingly collaborating

00:07:22.780 with foreign governments who might be working against Canada. Well, I think that Canadians

00:07:28.080 are proud of our democracy. Really? That's your takeaway from that? That Canadians are just proud

00:07:35.780 and everything's working and the government's going to continue to act? Continue doing what?

00:07:39.240 you haven't done anything up to this point. What are you going to continue doing? If you're

00:07:43.380 continuing to do what you were doing before deputy prime minister, then we're going to have more of

00:07:48.140 the problems that are already underway right now. Governments have, look, I'm a libertarian. I have

00:07:53.860 a very narrow view of what governments should do. Governments at its core, at their core, need to

00:07:58.680 protect their citizens from foreign threats, which means at a bare minimum, it's not raising the

00:08:05.240 asexual pride flag it's not ensuring gender balance in the budget it's not doing any of that

00:08:10.980 at a core the government should be protecting Canada from threats that is supposed to be its

00:08:16.120 full and primary priority so when you have other governments that are wanting to infiltrate Canada

00:08:22.680 in whatever way they are trying to interfere in our elections I saw someone point out on Twitter

00:08:27.580 yesterday or x as it's called it's a fair point can you even call it foreign interference when

00:08:33.540 you have members of the Canadian government that are saying, no, no, come on in. Yeah, Xi Jinping,

00:08:37.660 you want to rig a nomination? You want to help? You want to get a preferred liberal candidate in?

00:08:41.760 Yeah, come on. I mean, they're not even interfering at that point. You can't open the door and invite

00:08:46.920 the guy with the balaclava over his head on the sidewalk into your house and then claim later

00:08:52.320 that he broke and entered. It doesn't work that way. When you're inviting him in, you are the

00:08:56.880 problem. You are the foreign interferer. You are the one that is crippling Canadian democracy. 1.00

00:09:03.240 So this idea that Chrystia Freeland gets up there and every Canadian just feels, oh, well, we actually have trust in the democratic process and we have trust in the government.

00:09:11.160 No, the government is the problem.

00:09:13.660 The government is the one that let it get this way.

00:09:16.700 And any time we've gotten information about this through the commissioner's report, through David Johnston's report, we've learned that CSIS raised concerns with the government.

00:09:26.040 The concerns went to the high ranks of the liberal government, including to the prime minister's office.

00:09:30.400 and at every stage we're disregarded we're told oh yeah maybe we'll set up a briefing and

00:09:35.100 why don't you just send a memo and put it in that paper shredder over there it's actually our inbox

00:09:40.040 we'll get to it in the future oh what do you know we missed the memo we don't know what you want of

00:09:44.080 us here so this is to me a baffling baffling conundrum in the sense that the government is

00:09:50.160 trying to convince us that it has the solution when China has seen Canada as having rolled out

00:09:55.900 the red carpet for their operatives to influence our elections, China being the biggest culprit 1.00

00:10:01.580 of this. And we're supposed to believe that the liberal government, that the Chinese government,

00:10:05.960 that the Chinese regime has wanted to invest in, is going to be their way out of this. They're

00:10:12.320 going to be the ones that save Canadian democracy. Do you feel all that confident about it?

00:10:18.800 Now, Chrystia Freeland, I mean, we had a silly story at True North this week about how she was 0.99

00:10:22.880 going door knocking uh well talking about affordability wearing designer sneakers that

00:10:27.960 were 740 dollars now i mean i used to get uh you know my shoes from you know the discount rack at

00:10:33.060 winners or whatever because uh you know basically it doesn't even matter what size it is just if

00:10:37.340 the price is right just squeeze into the size 7 or deal with the floppy size 15 clown shoes but

00:10:42.740 christia freeland uh she's all sorted out she understands what canadians are thinking because

00:10:46.940 she's wearing the big designer sneakers when she's going knocking on doors is it a cheap shot maybe 1.00

00:10:51.380 But perhaps she should spend less time shopping for designer shoes and more time reading the report, reading the dire lengths that the dire straits, basically, of the Canadian ability to protect against foreign interference that her government, that her government has allowed to happen.

00:11:10.440 There's the old line that's been said time and time again, government is not the solution, government is the problem.

00:11:14.940 On foreign interference, it's not even the Chinese government that is the problem.

00:11:19.560 It's not even the Chinese government that we are looking at to blame.

00:11:22.420 We need to start with the first and primary agents and instigators here,

00:11:27.420 which are Canadian parliamentarians that are apparently all too willing

00:11:30.940 to cede Canadian sovereignty to foreign powers.

00:11:35.060 Foreign powers which are evidently quite hostile, quite hostile to Canada's interests.

00:11:42.580 So let's just break this down in a little bit more detail here, because when you read

00:11:48.100 some of what's come out in the report, I actually believe this is a more conservative report. I

00:11:53.800 believe this is a more conservative report because this is, again, it's been approved and signed off

00:11:59.080 on by parliamentarians that overwhelmingly are themselves liberals. So let's just deal with the

00:12:06.720 fact that what's not being said is probably far worse than what is being said. There's probably

00:12:13.460 a lot more to this, a lot more to this that we are likely to see come out in the future. But

00:12:21.520 the government right now has had no curiosity, no desire to really get to the bottom of this.

00:12:26.080 Remember, they didn't even want to have a full independent inquiry into this. They wanted to

00:12:31.120 have Justin Trudeau's preferred guy David Johnston do this and what is quite frankly shocking about

00:12:38.040 this shocking about this is how little Canadians seem to care and I'm not admonishing people I 1.00

00:12:44.160 realize people have big problems in their lives when you can't afford a house you can't afford

00:12:48.700 groceries you can't afford gas I get all of that but ultimately democracy well it feels and seems

00:12:54.440 to many people like an abstract concept is actually anything but abstract because if the

00:12:59.040 democratic process is not intact. Nothing that happens in government is going to solve your

00:13:04.020 problems. Nothing that happens in government is going to work for you when other governments

00:13:08.440 have their fingers in the pot of the democratic process, when they're choosing nomination

00:13:13.080 candidates and they're doing all of this other stuff. So we'll talk about that in a bit more

00:13:18.860 detail in the future. I wanted to just briefly mention this bizarre announcement from the

00:13:25.300 immigration minister mark miller so it was really weird a few weeks ago it looked like the liberals

00:13:30.100 were starting to realize the problems of the immigration system in canada that as justin

00:13:35.780 trudeau said we took in more than we could absorb in a short period of time that we had too many

00:13:40.580 temporary residents more than canadian housing could accommodate canadian job markets could

00:13:45.700 accommodate and everything that the government has done since then has completely completely

00:13:52.340 shown they actually were not having a moment of lucidity at all because at one point we heard

00:13:57.300 that the government is entertaining turning uh illegal immigrants into permanent residents

00:14:02.260 giving them a path to citizenship and now we have a new announcement from the minister this morning

00:14:08.900 uh which is quite surprising here that if you are brought into canada as a caregiver you're

00:14:16.260 basically going to have permanent residency upon arrival and the language requirements language

00:14:20.820 being you know quite important to function in a country are going to be softened as well take a

00:14:25.460 look i'm very pleased to announce that we are launching new pilots that will provide permanent

00:14:32.100 residency status for caregivers as soon as they arrive in canada the biggest change coming in

00:14:41.700 these new pilots will be providing a one-step immigration process before caregivers first

00:14:47.460 needed to get work permits and then obtain work experience before applying

00:14:52.320 for permanent residency under the new rules we're simplifying the process and

00:14:56.580 providing them with a clear straightforward pathway to stay and care

00:15:00.060 for our loved ones the change will notably provide more autonomy for

00:15:05.220 caregivers to leave workplaces with abusive situations and seek

00:15:09.300 opportunities to advance in the care sector and Lord knows I've heard a lot

00:15:13.740 those stories not only today but in the past as we've been listening and reaching out to people

00:15:19.660 that have been providing that support and have been in abusive situations i'm also pleased to

00:15:24.460 share that we are lowering out of fairness the language requirements to canada language benchmark

00:15:29.580 four benchmark four under these new pr on arrival pilots our aim is to strike a balance between

00:15:35.900 breaking down the barriers caregivers face to get pr and selecting newcomers who will be resilient

00:15:41.260 to changes in the labor market lowering the language requirements is a must needed change

00:15:47.580 that we've heard directly from the community on and will align with other programs in my department

00:15:52.940 as well as provincial programs creating better consistency and fairness for all applicants

00:15:58.540 caregivers will still have the needed language skills to work

00:16:02.860 in the caregiving field let me be clear about that and finally as we look to address the

00:16:08.540 the desperate need for caregivers who are also expanding the pilot programs from private household

00:16:13.180 employers now to also include organizations who will directly employ home care workers. This will

00:16:19.280 allow for and not-for-profit organizations to provide jobs, job offers, and help address home

00:16:26.920 care needs where labor shortages exist. I like the one person that clapped at the beginning when he

00:16:33.560 made the announcement. So I was like, yeah, yeah, you go, Mark. That was like his press secretary,

00:16:37.380 presumably on the side it was a major jeb bush please clap vibes if you remember that from i

00:16:42.420 think the the 2016 republican primary but again he's saying all right on one hand uh yeah the

00:16:48.420 language requirements they they have to have the language they need to be caregivers but no more

00:16:52.500 than that and we're going to give them permanent residency immediately now the government is is

00:16:57.540 again for a government that claims it understands the immigration crunch not making any decisions

00:17:03.860 or taking any courses of action that suggest they genuinely understand that problem.

00:17:09.860 So now someone comes in as a caregiver, they're a permanent resident immediately.

00:17:14.020 I haven't looked at the nitty gritty yet, but it strikes me that if they decide they

00:17:17.380 no longer want to be a caregiver after a short period of time, ta-da, they're already in

00:17:21.020 the country anyway.

00:17:22.180 So we've now found a way to fast track entry into Canada for people that don't necessarily

00:17:27.680 have a solid grasp of the English language and people that up until a minute ago wouldn't

00:17:31.900 have been eligible for permanent residency as quickly so this is not a government that is

00:17:38.300 definitely showing itself to be at all a credible voice on these issues and I think it's an opening

00:17:43.620 to have a sensible grown-up discussion about immigration in Canada as I talked about with

00:17:48.920 Aaron Woodrick who was on the show yesterday but we had this conversation a few months back or so

00:17:54.460 but let's turn our attention to the wonderful world of harm reduction now this has been a space where

00:18:00.840 a lot like COVID. On one hand, you get people that say, trust the science, trust the science.

00:18:06.660 And then you look into what the so-called science is. And the science doesn't actually support what

00:18:12.640 a lot of the activists say it does. I mean, funny timing on this. Anthony Fauci this week admitted

00:18:17.580 under oath that he just kind of made up the social distancing stuff and he made up the masking stuff

00:18:23.180 and didn't really have any science behind it. But in the harm reduction phase as well, you have all

00:18:27.800 of these activists, very, very heated, passionate activists that talk about what they're doing as

00:18:32.640 though it is science, but they have, in fact, a religious fervor about it. Now, we've talked about

00:18:37.220 this with Adam Zivo from the National Post, who has delved into this issue more than any other

00:18:42.260 journalist in Canada has. And what I found quite surprising, and he was reporting on this last week,

00:18:48.280 was the extent to which some of these activists that he's covered were trying to disrupt a

00:18:53.820 conference of their critics. Now, ideally, in a sensible, grown-up world, you engage with your

00:18:59.820 critics. You debate them. You say, well, actually, I think you're wrong, and here's why. And that's

00:19:03.880 what people like Adam Zeebo have tried to do, and people like Sharon Koivu and Julian Summers,

00:19:09.100 both of whom we've had on the show. But these activists had a little secret meeting that Adam

00:19:13.960 got his hands on, where they talked about dyeing a hotel conference fountain red. They talked about

00:19:19.800 spraying people with a fire extinguisher filled with paint might have been a bit of a joke but

00:19:24.820 i'm not sure it's exactly haha funny they talked about intimidating tracking and monitoring all of

00:19:30.140 these people sounds a little bit mccarthy-esque so why are they not just engaging in the debate

00:19:35.660 if they're confident the facts are on their side adam zivo returns to the show it's always good to

00:19:40.100 talk to him adam thanks for coming on oh thanks for having me back on the show uh this we we have

00:19:45.660 like a yin yang effect going on right now you're in the darkness and i'm in the light so hopefully

00:19:49.840 you'll be uh your words themselves will be will be illuminating here but let me start on that

00:19:54.760 point because these people do claim that the science is on their side but they don't want

00:19:59.300 to debate the facts it seems uh just a quick note i am in ukraine and there is a blackout right now

00:20:04.760 so i do apologize in advance if i cut out i'm actually tethering to my phone data uh it's

00:20:10.280 remarkably good connection for a war zone so i'm glad you're making the time so late in the night

00:20:14.020 Sorry. And the last question, I just, was it about the science on the side of this?

00:20:18.440 The activists think that the science is on their side, but don't seem to want to debate the science.

00:20:23.000 They don't want to engage in it. They'd rather, as you learned, dye a fountain red to make their point.

00:20:28.440 Yeah. I mean, here's the thing is that there are all sorts of important policy debates we had about addiction policy and harm reduction is not inherently a bad thing.

00:20:37.480 it's considered one of the four main pillars of an effective addiction strategy with the other

00:20:42.520 pillars being treatments enforce enforcement and prevention so many people who criticize

00:20:48.600 harm reduction are not against all forms of harm reduction they just want a more thoughtful approach

00:20:53.240 to it but for many radical harm reduction activists that's unacceptable uh they treat

00:20:58.360 the most radical forms of harm reduction as sacrosanct truths that cannot be questioned

00:21:03.880 or discussed even though many of these interventions have only come about within the last 10 years and

00:21:09.400 have very flimsy evidence bases and so i think it's a sign of there's that uh there's that uh

00:21:19.160 cut out that uh he warned us about a few moments ago we'll try to get adam zeebo back on the show

00:21:25.080 here but i i think the point is an incredibly valid one and if you look at the the context

00:21:29.800 behind this. I mean, I have had a number of times where I have reached out to people on a particular

00:21:35.300 side of an issue, not just this issue, but other ones as well. And they don't respond. They say

00:21:39.940 they don't want to talk to you. They come up with all these sorts of excuses of, oh, well,

00:21:43.460 I don't think it's going to be a good faith interview, a good faith this or that. And I've

00:21:47.940 never had anyone, by the way, ever accuse me of doing anything that was unfair as far as

00:21:53.240 interviewing is concerned. So I go back to the details here. And if you read Adam's piece in

00:21:58.820 the national post about this and you follow him on social media he's he shared the audio recordings

00:22:03.460 of this zoom meeting they had this this zoom meeting where all of these people planned

00:22:07.740 on how they would disrupt this conference which was called the the prosper symposium it was hosted

00:22:13.820 by the foundation for drug policy solutions and again the people in this are scientists the people

00:22:20.560 in this are dr keith humphries uh dr um uh dr julian summers again we've had on the show

00:22:27.380 psychologists. So these people are coming up with science-based solutions to these problems.

00:22:35.320 And I don't know, I wasn't an organizer of this conference, but I suspect they would have welcomed

00:22:39.620 the opportunity to have one of these harm reduction activists on the stage and say,

00:22:43.380 let's actually talk about our different approaches here. We have Adam Zivo back,

00:22:47.500 so feel free to pick up where you left off there, Adam.

00:22:49.660 i think we have him back can you hear me yeah um perfect yeah just carry on where you left off

00:22:58.180 there right yeah so so you had mentioned earlier so there was this prosper conference and this

00:23:03.520 conference was put together by a number of very distinguished experts in the addiction medicine

00:23:07.560 world you had a number of well-respected doctors who are addiction medicine practitioners who have

00:23:13.200 been critical of radical harm reduction and have argued for a more balanced approach you had as

00:23:18.500 mentioned before, Keith Humphreys, who is a Stanford professor who has been a leading figure

00:23:23.240 in the development of American and British drug policy. You have Kevin Sabet, who was a former

00:23:28.340 White House policy advisor for both the Bush administration and the Obama administration,

00:23:33.680 making him one of the rare examples of a bipartisan policy expert in this space.

00:23:39.780 So this was not some gathering of wackos, right? These were people who knew their stuff

00:23:45.780 and want to present an alternative recovery-oriented perspective on the addiction crisis in Canada.

00:23:54.160 Now, when this conference was announced, harm reduction activists across Canada,

00:24:00.220 but predominantly in BC, decided that this was unacceptable.

00:24:05.120 So they came together and they organized and tried to find ways to discredit the attendees of this conference,

00:24:13.020 to disrupt the conference and potentially shut it down.

00:24:16.800 And so on May 21st and May 28th,

00:24:20.060 they had two large Zoom meetings,

00:24:21.920 which included a total of about 20 people

00:24:24.040 and 20 organizations where they plotted

00:24:26.460 how they could do this.

00:24:28.200 And some of the tactics that they described

00:24:30.180 went beyond normal protest

00:24:32.400 and got into the realm of intimidation.

00:24:36.440 So they talked about sending activists

00:24:39.220 into this conference so they could shout down speakers,

00:24:41.820 secretly record attendees they talked about dying of fountain red symbolized blood

00:24:47.840 they debated whether or not that was legal or constituted property damage uh they they explored

00:24:55.760 the possibility of parking a car right beside the building and honking their horn uh which of course

00:25:02.360 the tactic that we saw back in 2020 with the trucker convoy uh and and once again i do really

00:25:07.900 want to stress that people have a right to protest, but this went beyond that. And I managed to get a

00:25:13.460 recording of these two meetings. And once I reviewed it, I realized that we had a problem here

00:25:18.420 and that there wasn't, these activists were not interested in allowing a space for reasonable

00:25:24.460 debate about addiction policy. They were interested in shutting down and silencing their opponents.

00:25:30.640 Yeah. And one thing I found quite interesting, there was actually a lamentation of sorts of,

00:25:36.920 if I can find it here, where they basically said, I don't think we have unfortunately a chance to

00:25:43.420 kind of really shut it down, unquote. So their first instinct was, can we just avoid this from

00:25:48.360 happen, make this not happen altogether? You're either stunned into silence or frozen. I think

00:25:58.680 the connection is not cooperating today. We'll get Adam back on the show in the future, but I do

00:26:03.760 hope he's able to join us when the connection is stabilized. He has done tremendous reporting

00:26:10.800 on Ukraine. And as you've seen there, he gives up the comfort of a reliable internet connection and

00:26:16.040 power to do his journalism. So he's in the midst of a blackout now, but I appreciate very much him

00:26:21.900 coming on there. I wanted to turn to this event that's happening in Calgary today. It's the

00:26:27.380 premiere of a new documentary called Generation Green. Now if you can make it to the documentary

00:26:34.000 it is at the Plaza Theatre in Northwest Calgary tonight at six o'clock mountain time but I think

00:26:39.940 the documentary itself is one that people across the country should be paying attention to as well

00:26:44.960 because we hear all the time from the activists, the government, many people in the media the

00:26:49.400 importance of having green energy initiatives we need to subsidize this, subsidize that and all

00:26:55.500 the like. But the one thing that people often forget to consider is that a lot of this is not

00:27:02.200 at all based on the science, just like with harm reduction, just like with COVID, what people

00:27:07.380 present as scientific solutions oftentimes are anything but. So as we delve into this, I was

00:27:14.240 glad to see this film come to the forefront here. It's called Generation Green. The filmmaker is

00:27:20.920 Heidi McKillop, who joins us on the line now. Heidi, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on

00:27:25.260 today hi thank you for having me now i just saw you a couple of days ago at my book launch in

00:27:30.740 calgary so thanks again very much for uh for coming out to that so so what's the story you're

00:27:35.220 telling here so basically what we wanted to dive into was this question of what are the pros and

00:27:41.680 cons of renewables you know i really uh was personally confused when i started to read

00:27:46.540 articles online and everything was like 100 renewables they're performing at this and i'm

00:27:52.220 like well if they're performing that high then why are we still backing up everything with coal

00:27:56.920 hydro natural gas oil you name it every country is pivoting because the energy demand is so high

00:28:03.740 so obviously there was a discrepancy there that we really wanted to dive into so that was part

00:28:10.060 of our investigation and what did you find not to give away too much but what did you come away with

00:28:15.700 so there's a couple key points that we really wanted to address in the film the first component

00:28:21.400 of the film is really speaking about, you know, solar panels on your roof, you have a direct

00:28:26.420 connection to that energy source. It doesn't have to go into transmission lines that lose energy.

00:28:33.520 So essentially, those forms of solar panels are actually not too bad for an average household,

00:28:39.860 you can debate if you want to, you know, put the investment into it or not. But right now,

00:28:44.780 with our current federal government, they're heavily subsidized. So we kind of left that

00:28:48.840 into the pro the con really is though is that the renewable energy movement has basically gone off

00:28:55.800 of numbers of their install capacity instead of their actual output of what they're performing at

00:29:01.000 so we address this and we try to make it as simplistic as we can for audience that doesn't

00:29:06.040 really have an energy background or doesn't have an engineering background another component to

00:29:11.320 this which is extremely important to me as a new mom as you know a woman in the space is really the 0.98

00:29:18.600 exploitation of children in Africa for mining extractions that is used for the renewable

00:29:24.680 energy movement specifically cobalt we were investigating in the Congo and obviously there

00:29:30.840 is a lot of problems that have been affiliated with cobalt extraction primarily because they

00:29:36.520 are completely owned in majority from Chinese owned companies this is a huge conversation that

00:29:42.600 we have to take into the supply chain is that if you are going to demand an energy source and

00:29:47.560 displace those missions globally is that fair is that really the way that we want to conduct

00:29:52.280 ourselves as canadians yeah it's an interesting question i remember when i was covering the the

00:29:57.880 world economic forums meeting in davos i can't remember if it was this year it might have been

00:30:01.640 last year there was this this one mining executive that's getting up there and saying oh yeah we need

00:30:05.880 to do battery everything battery powered everything fossil fuels are uh you know a thing of the past

00:30:10.680 and then you look at his mining operation realize that you know he is his company is doing all the

00:30:14.760 mining that we need if we're converting to battery everything so it's not this altruistic

00:30:19.480 environmental message and and people often forget that there there's a cost to everything and you

00:30:24.680 know it's not uh it's not the case that you know you can get rid of this one energy source and have

00:30:30.040 another one we haven't yet you know harnessed wind in a meaningful way which is you know the only

00:30:35.080 form of you know energy that i guess doesn't really have a consequence apart from you know

00:30:39.240 the construction of the windmills but you're right all of these other ones do and and they're either

00:30:43.160 ineffective or partially effective or incredibly intensive to produce as in the case of mining

00:30:49.800 yes exactly and even with the wind turbines what is really interesting we've gone off um we dove

00:30:55.960 into this very intensively in the documentary as well because we had the opportunity to go down to

00:31:01.400 southern alberta and talk to landowners about the placement of the wind turbines um specifically this

00:31:07.240 one project that recently got cancelled but it was due in part because of the the mobilization

00:31:13.800 of community members in southern Alberta and they were really trying to say like this is a pristine

00:31:19.000 area of Alberta right by the adjacent to the Waterton Park they don't want to see that land

00:31:25.080 industrialized by any kind of energy company and they certainly have a right to start asking these

00:31:31.720 types of conversations um this is a really complex issue we can't just pick and choose

00:31:37.480 which conversation we want to say is the truth or not it really needs to be foundationally built

00:31:43.080 around a larger conversation and i'm not personally against wind or solar i think any kind of

00:31:48.680 technology that we want to diversify in within beans is a great idea but you're going to have

00:31:53.960 to have the same regulations that the oil and gas faces which is proper decommissioning of the wind

00:31:58.120 wind turbines, proper disposal sites for solar panels, which we do not have in place right now.

00:32:03.660 And my understanding is that that really does need to be improved long term.

00:32:08.420 Yeah, and you're right to point out, and I'm glad you shared your own perspective on this,

00:32:12.360 because I think there's a knee-jerk reactionary component that even some supporters of the oil

00:32:17.780 and gas sector have. Whereas if they hear green energy, they assume it's bad because

00:32:21.240 it's coming from people that typically hate oil and gas. And I think there's probably a lot of

00:32:25.080 truth to that. But ideally, we should be approaching any energy discussion with the same

00:32:29.640 conversation, which is, is this efficient? Is this affordable? What does it do for our stated goals,

00:32:34.800 our needs for energy production, our stated environmental goals, all of that. And you should

00:32:39.240 be able to have that discussion in a fairly dispassionate way that is focused on the facts.

00:32:44.360 But all of a sudden, you have people that are just against oil and gas, and they don't actually

00:32:48.700 care about hearing things that the oil and gas industry is doing in Canada and the United States

00:32:53.680 to some extent, to deal with the problems that they raise. And this is where we end up where

00:32:58.580 there is a need for this grown-up conversation about it. When we started to put out documentaries

00:33:06.180 like this, I get quite a bit of backlash on my personal life. And people will start saying,

00:33:11.220 you have a sociology background, a social work background, or who are you? You were a receptionist

00:33:16.760 at one point and a waitress. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly it. I'm really proud of the transition

00:33:22.320 of being able to be in multi-different faceted industries.

00:33:26.140 And that collectively, hopefully, will be projected in my films,

00:33:30.560 basically of having a balanced conversation from a human perspective.

00:33:34.120 We really focused a lot on the citizens.

00:33:36.120 We focused on the people in the regions of what their voices and concerns were.

00:33:40.700 And that's what I care about, is that we have to have that open dialogue

00:33:43.600 from the ground up, not from the top down.

00:33:46.260 And I think that's something that I'm really proud about with this film

00:33:49.340 that we accomplished is really getting the citizens to be at the forefront of the discussion.

00:33:55.360 So what's, I mean, you've been in this space for quite a while, and I know you've had an

00:33:59.740 open mind about this. Did anything surprise you? Did you learn much when you were making this?

00:34:04.120 A lot. Yeah, I think there's a couple things that really shocked me was definitely

00:34:08.280 the numbers. I feel very disheartened by the fact that certain groups are putting out random

00:34:16.220 numbers that are so contradictory to what their actual performance is at in terms of industrial

00:34:21.400 wind and solar plants. That really confuses me. And if I'm confused working in this energy space

00:34:27.600 for quite a few years, I can guarantee you my mom, my grandmother, my sister, they're all going to be

00:34:32.220 confused as well. So I think that's really something that I was shocked by and didn't

00:34:38.580 appreciate. Who's your target on this? Because the challenge when you have these sorts of

00:34:44.660 discussions a lot of the time is that the people that are going to come out and see it are the

00:34:48.520 ones that are already on your side are already open to it. There's a tremendous hostility in

00:34:53.660 certain subsets. I mean, even in Alberta, it's probably the most feisty, the opposition in

00:34:57.860 Alberta. But so how do you break through that? How do you get it to the people that genuinely

00:35:01.520 need to see this message? That's a great question, Andrew. And I think with each film that we start

00:35:07.640 to do, it slowly progresses into getting more viewership. And hopefully over time, you know,

00:35:12.920 people will start taking me more seriously as a director and producer of

00:35:16.460 film.

00:35:17.200 And I do get a lot of backlash because I don't have primarily a film

00:35:21.560 background. You know,

00:35:22.640 I fell into it when I was at my waitressing job and just started to hear

00:35:26.420 people talk about their problems and about the narratives around oil and gas.

00:35:31.040 And I thought, gosh, like what a great documentary this would make.

00:35:34.540 And that was my first one, a stranded nation. So since then, you know,

00:35:37.660 over the last five years,

00:35:38.640 it's really progressed and I try to challenge myself and my own beliefs.

00:35:42.220 every time we tackle a subject you know i sit down i i play both pros and cons i weigh them

00:35:47.660 very heavily in my head and i do a ton of research so i hope over time people will start to slowly

00:35:54.860 start getting into the idea that even if you disagree with the topic or even me as a person

00:35:59.420 that you will take the time to actually watch something that maybe will challenge your point

00:36:03.260 of view all right well uh where can people get details about the event tonight i so it's on

00:36:10.060 eventbrite and the film begins around six o'clock and doors open at five it's at the calgary plaza

00:36:17.100 in kensington and we hope to see you folks there and then tomorrow we'll be launching it digitally

00:36:22.060 online on my youtube channel all right the film is called generation green definitely give it a

00:36:28.300 look heidi mckillop good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thank you so much andrew all

00:36:32.940 right that does it for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of canada's most irreverent

00:36:38.460 talk show now i'm actually going to be in ottawa tomorrow hosting a book event uh where uh we will

00:36:43.620 hopefully have well not hope i we're going to have a lot of people out there so thanks to those of

00:36:47.500 you who are coming out uh we have a special edition of the andrew lawton show planned in

00:36:51.860 the interim as i'll be on the road but i do hope you have a great day we will talk to you tomorrow

00:36:56.700 thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:37:01.960 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:37:08.460 We'll be right back.

00:37:38.460 We'll be right back.

00:38:08.460 We'll be right back.

Juno News - June 04, 2024

Some MPs are acting for foreign powers. Why aren't they being named？

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