Juno News - February 11, 2020Standing Ovation for a Terrorist (feat. Ezra Levant)
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Summary
In this episode, Andrew Lawton reflects on Omar Khadr's keynote address at the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative event at Dalhousie University, where he was asked to address the audience about his time as a child soldier.
Transcript
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Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, a recap and reflection on Omar Khadr's keynote address at Dalhousie University.
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Hey, welcome to a on-location edition of The Andrew Lawton Show, the first of its kind, although hopefully we'll have more to come.
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I'm coming to you from Halifax, Nova Scotia, just after Omar Khadr took the stage as the keynote speaker at a Dalhousie University event put together by Dalhousie and the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative.
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Now, this event was in many respects one of the first times that Omar Khadr has ever faced the audience in a way at a ticketed event like this in an open forum.
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It was supposed to be a venue for tough questions and it ended up being the event about nothing.
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Here's a guy, a convicted murderer, a convicted terrorist on stage and they don't address anything of substance.
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I'm going to talk about the event and I'm also going to share clips from some of my interviews with people that were going into the event.
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People that were in some cases supportive of Omar Khadr, in some cases people that had an open mind and in other cases people that were thinking this was a profound mark of shame for Canada that this event was taking place.
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But I want to set the stage for it before I get too far into the weeds on it because this event was presented as being about child soldiers.
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It was presented as being about holding Omar Khadr up as an example as a child soldier.
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And the reason for that is that if you accept someone as a child soldier, you also have to accept that they are a victim and they are a passenger and not that they are a perpetrator or that they are a killer.
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And the reason that this was a relevant distinction is because it comes down to whether you are allowed to hold Omar Khadr responsible and hold him to account for what he's done by his own confession.
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And I'm never going to stop telling people and reminding people that he confessed to throwing the grenade that killed Sergeant Christopher Spear and injured Lane Morris,
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that left Tabitha Spear a widow, that left Taron and Tanner Spear fatherless.
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And this is profoundly important because you talk about a Canadian ally, the United States having a soldier killed and the Canadian government exalting and lionizing by giving that $10.5 million check that we all know about now.
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But again, I'll never stop reminding people of the gross disparity between the way that he should be treated by the government and the way he is treated by the government.
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And he was on stage at this event in Dalhousie with Ishmael Beah, who's a former child soldier himself from Sierra Leone.
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But the two are held up as being equivalent, which again pushes that narrative that Omar Khadr can't be criticized because he was just a child soldier.
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And even that term child, by the way, has implications.
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And I'd say it has a lot of assumptions that people make when they hear child.
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And we heard it probably seven or eight times in the first 20 minutes of the event from the MC, from Romeo Dallaire, who spoke before things started,
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and also from the moderator, who was the executive director of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative.
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The CBC moderator who was originally scheduled, Nala Ayed, bowed out.
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And I emailed her and said, hey, you know, just curious about why you stepped down from this.
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CBC did send out a statement that we received from a couple of places saying that they've decided to explore the topic in a different avenue down the road.
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And they may cover the event, but they're not going to be a part of it.
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And this, in and of itself, I find interesting because it also means that even CBC, and yes, I mean that, even CBC decided that,
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OK, maybe we don't want to be the cheerleaders of Omar Khadr at this event, which, had they been on stage moderating, as was initially planned, would have been the outcome.
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And that, I guess, is the big sticking point here.
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This was not an opportunity to hold Khadr to account.
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This was not an opportunity to address any of the inconsistencies.
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This was an opportunity or could have been an opportunity to do these things, but it ended up being just a bunch of pablum.
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The first question started out as being, how do you manage the cold of Halifax?
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Because, admittedly, it was a pretty terrible weather day with freezing rain and all of that.
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And then the moderator realized halfway through the question that Omar Khadr lives in Edmonton, so he's managed the cold.
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So then the question just morphs into, how do you like life in Edmonton, which is a real hard-hitting question.
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Other questions were, you know, how do you feel hearing about this story?
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And I was waiting, OK, maybe they're just easing into it.
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Maybe they're just going to get there, and their hard-hitting questions are just around the corner.
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And even when they started taking questions from the audience that were submitted via this app called Slido, which I downloaded,
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I got the app, and I even put my questions in, and none of the questions, you could see what people were asking,
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none of the questions that really dealt with the substantive portions of Omar Khadr's life were asked.
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And I'm going to talk a little bit later on in this show about what those answers would be and what those questions should have been.
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And the reason for that is because we are looking at a guy who has had a red-carpet treatment ever since he came back to Canada.
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And a guy who has never had to answer the tough questions, and I mentioned on a previous show that first press conference he had
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in the driveway of his lawyer, Dennis Edney's house, where Dennis Edney said,
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if anyone asks a question I don't like, we're taking him inside, and the media complied.
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And Omar Khadr, who sat down with the Toronto Star's Michelle Shepard, and again, no critical questions.
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Her main approach to it was that she had literally written a book calling him Guantanamo's child,
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And time and time again, no difficult questions.
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It's about saying, listen, you say this, what about this?
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And that's especially germane now that he's decided to become a public speaker.
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He isn't just retreating into the wilderness and living his life and saying, you know,
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everyone leave me alone, I want a normal life, which is what he's previously said.
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So if you're going to answer questions, I think you have to answer genuine questions.
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And I will say that the moderator of the event said at the outset,
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the incident that happened in Afghanistan is off limits as far as questions are concerned,
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as well as any questions about his settlement with the government.
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quote, we want you to ask hard questions, unquote.
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She said, you can ask about the difference between victims and perpetrators.
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You can ask about child soldier versus terrorists, all of these things.
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But you can't ask about the incident that happened in Afghanistan.
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Now the incident in question is, of course, the firefight that killed Sergeant Christopher Spear
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That incident has had pretty long-term implications for a number of people in the United States
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And the incident that happened, you can't ask about.
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Okay, well, if you can't ask the guy that you're holding up as a child soldier
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about his most well-known battle, to use that narrative,
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why on earth are you saying that he's answering questions?
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And she did address Christopher Spear, by the way.
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He was mentioned by name earlier on in her remarks.
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And she said that he was killed by a grenade allegedly thrown by Omar Khadr.
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And there was no live stream of this that the veterans outside could have seen.
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And I want to play one of the clips from one of the veterans that I spoke with in particular.
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This is a gentleman by the name of Frank McLeod.
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And I'll let you hear for yourself what he thought about this.
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And I'm just here to show my disappointment with the Canadian people.
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How they, how Canada's react to basically, what do you want to call them, terrorists.
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What do we got, 60 ISIS fighters now in Canada?
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But yet our government doesn't look after our veterans?
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If all of the things that you want as a veteran were looked after, would it bother you, those
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Or is it, is it the either or that you're finding troubling?
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It's just, it's a lack of respect for our service members that have gone over.
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You know, men and women that are, put the uniform on and go.
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And then when they come home, they get looked down upon.
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You know, it's just, it's not the fact that it's one or the other.
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It's just the fact that he has, our government has multi-millions of dollars for terrorists
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Well, when you embrace that issue, I have to ask, is the Omar Khadr frustration specific
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Or is it really symbolic of these other grievances that you're citing?
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No, it's about, it's about what he did and how he did it.
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You don't stand there with a hand to pull a string and with hands on it that you cut
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You know, it's just not, that's not the way it's supposed to be.
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And I think of all the people that served in the United States and imagine if the roles
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were reversed here and the U.S. were honoring someone who killed a Canadian soldier, the
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And, you know, there has been some outcry from Americans over this, but even that has not
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really dampened any of the Canadian response to Omar Khadr from the media, from the government,
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I find now that they treat them as a rock star.
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I know many men who are brave and women that are served and they come home and they look
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Like, why is a known terrorist looked upon as a rock star and a guy that serves or a
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You know, even our government does it to us all the time.
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Every time you ask, you know, try to get something, DVA.
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When you look at Canadians that, like yourself, Canadians in uniform that have fought for freedom,
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do you think that includes the right for Omar Khadr to speak here?
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It's not about us telling, we do not feel that he has to be brought up as a rock star
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sort of thing or out here to talk about child soldiers and all that.
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You can talk, go ahead, but we don't agree with what you're saying because we're from
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We're the guys that they were trying to kill with IEDs and stuff, you know?
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So it's just, we just don't think it's correct.
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Now, like I said, I genuinely wanted to hear what people thought.
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Those who were supporting Khadr, those who were against Khadr, those who genuinely didn't
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What I found most baffling is how few people wanted to talk about what they were doing there.
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It was a crappy day outside, but no one wanted to answer any questions.
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And by the way, I'm, contrary to popular belief, I'm not a terrifying person.
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I'm actually very easygoing and convivial with these sorts of things because I genuinely
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And I'd say to people, hey, you know, do you want to talk about what you're doing here?
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Hey, do you have any thoughts about why you're at this event?
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And I don't know if it's because they don't know why they're there, because they're embarrassed
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that they're there, because they just don't want to end up being a punchline if they say
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But people would not talk about what they were doing there, which was very disappointing
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because these are the people that were cheering him and ultimately giving Omar Khadr a standing
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Now, video recording was not allowed, and I obliged until the very end because the event
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When they closed things up, Omar Khadr got a standing ovation.
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This is not his first standing ovation, by the way.
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He also got one on To Le Monde en Parle, that Radio Canada show on which he appeared.
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But this is a guy who, I don't think I've ever had a standing ovation before, and he
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Now, talk about the real injustice in this all, in jest, of course.
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But here's one of the people that I did speak with that was able to say what they thought
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This guy seemed like an academic, the way he talked about imperialism and the empire and
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I'm just really glad to see that Omar Khadr is kind of having a platform to talk a little
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bit about his experience as a child soldier and, yeah, kind of hear what he's got to say.
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Well, I mean, the people who say that he's a terrorist are just wrong.
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But he was in Al-Qaeda on the battlefield, killed an American soldier.
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Well, it's not terrorism because he was in Afghanistan and America was an invading army
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at the time against a country that hadn't declared war against America.
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So America is an invading army in that context.
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Now, there are a number of veterans out here that say Omar Khadr having a platform dishonours
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I think that there's a structure at play here that's bigger than what an individual did.
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And to think that a child, a 15-year-old, could somehow come to signify the entirety of
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the history of imperialism that soldiers themselves have been sort of treated as pawns in, I think
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it makes light of the entirety of the situation.
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So do you see them as equivalent then, the Canadian and American soldiers and Omar Khadr in that case?
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One of the biggest differences is that a soldier is a grown adult who makes a conscious, informed
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decision to do what he or she is choosing to do.
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A child soldier, by definition, does not decide to go to war.
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Do you think that it is that black and white, though?
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Or do you think there is a middle ground between terrorist and victim?
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It's precisely that it isn't black and white is the point that I'm trying to make.
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That you can't just look at a child and define that child as a terrorist or not a terrorist.
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They're a human being that is a product of generations of empire.
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So even for people that are going there to support Omar Khadr, I don't think they got
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anything of substance out of this except for being able to say, I saw Omar Khadr on stage.
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And that's my big frustration with this event is that there was nothing.
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I mean, even for me going in as somewhat of a sceptic, there's very little to take away
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And I don't even put the blame squarely on Omar Khadr for that, by the way.
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He was not put in a situation where he had to answer any questions.
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You know, I want to read some of the questions that were put to Omar Khadr in the app that
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And there were some questions that were very reasonable questions in here that I would have
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As a fellow Canadian citizen, I want to apologize for how the Canadian government treated you
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So some people are just there to get their fan mail in.
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Is there a specific age or mentality that makes someone a child soldier?
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Many Canadians feel enormous sympathy for you, but less so for your parents.
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Can you please speak about your own feelings about your parents?
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What's your message to the families of soldiers killed by IEDs in Afghanistan?
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Another question that was put forward in the app that I thought was a very positive one
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Do you have resentment towards the people who put you to war or have you found forgiveness for them?
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Now, I don't know if it's a question of forgiveness, but does he resent his family?
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And this is where you get into what I think is the most critical contradiction in the Omar Khadr
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as a victim narrative, which is his relationship with his family.
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If you accept he's a victim, you have to be a victim of something or a victim of someone.
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It's not just about being a victim of circumstance.
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Omar Khadr, if you view him as a victim, was a victim of his family.
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So, he was a victim of them if he was a victim of anyone.
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Yet, that same family, he fought tooth and nail to have more access to.
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His father is dead, but he wanted unsupervised access to his sister.
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He wanted to have closer connections with his family.
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If your family is the reason that you were put through what you describe as the worst experience
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of your life, why would you actively and fervently fight to be closer to that family?
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And I get that family dynamics are complicated, but you cannot say that you've moved beyond
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radicalism if you are not prepared to answer the questions about your relationship with your
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family, your view of your family, and if you are not prepared to denounce your family's
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His sister has said that Omar Khadr is great because he killed the soldier and most parents
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should be fortunate to have a child that's going to do that.
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So these are the people that were surrounding him when he ended up getting embroiled in
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the world of terror, yet they're also the people that he is still surrounding himself
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And that was not a question worth asking when Omar Khadr took the stage at Dalhousie University.
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And you know, Omar Khadr comes off as a very charming guy.
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In fact, Ezra Levant ended up just by fluke being on the same airplane as Khadr from Toronto
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to Edmonton and didn't notice it until the end.
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And so Ezra went and tried to talk to him at the airport.
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And his first response is, do you want a selfie?
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He just kept smiling, stone-faced, didn't say anything, didn't respond, didn't engage.
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And this is a guy who, again, on stage, comes across as just very mild and unassuming.
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He said something that I really found positive at the end.
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He said, even people that are critical of me, they are doing it from a place of pain.
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Talk to someone that's going to ask difficult questions.
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Because I'm actually a firm believer in second chances.
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I'm a firm believer in people being able to move beyond bad things in their life.
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And I am totally willing on anywhere he wants, anywhere he wants, to sit down and have a conversation
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And ask the questions that I think are essential, like the relationship with the family, like
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his true belief about what happened, like his belief on some of the geopolitical situations
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that emerge, that involve Al-Qaeda, that involve radical Islam, that involve Islamic terror
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And these are the questions that need to be answered if people are going to view him in
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I want to play a clip from my chat with Ezra Levant right after the event.
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Now, Ezra, as I showed a brief little B-roll package of earlier, saw Omar Khadr at the
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airport, tried to get an interview, didn't end up getting any answers out of him.
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But I did speak with Ezra after the speech at Dalhousie to get his thoughts.
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So, Ezra, what was it that really brought you here?
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Because I know you've covered this case for years.
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Well, I wanted to hear what he had to say when he was given direct access to students,
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I wanted to hear if he was going to start recruit or propagandize, because he's never renounced
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And, I mean, they were oohing and cooing over him.
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Of course, no real questions were put to him about his murder.
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The most shocking part of the day for me, of course, was coming here when I actually saw
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I was shocked that he wasn't on the no-fly list.
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The Air Canada pilot and flight attendant I spoke to were shocked, too.
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So, I mean, listen, I think Canadians are hospitable and we're friendly.
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But in this case, we're being taken for suckers.
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This guy has never renounced the family business or his family, for that matter.
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So, what's the question or questions that weren't asked that you thought needed to be
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Well, I had a few technical questions, you know, about why he's hiding the money from
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the widow and the two kids whose father he killed.
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I mean, if he really is sorry, why is he going to such lengths to hide money from them?
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And is he sorry or is he not sorry and denies he ever did it and is fighting his own confession?
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Second, technical questions about his conduct in Guantanamo Bay.
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For example, he told guards there that killing Christopher Speer was the best day of his life.
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He told a black female guard at Guantanamo Bay that she was a bitch and a slave because
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he hates women, obviously, and he hates blacks, obviously.
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So, these things were not done by a 15-year-old.
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He, in fact, led the prayers in Guantanamo Bay.
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He was so fundamentalist there and he fomented against the guards in Guantanamo Bay.
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He revved up the other prisoners against the order in Guantanamo Bay.
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So, this pretend act of contrition and meekness is just fleecing all these suckers here who love it.
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So, I guess then the big question is, is there anything that he could do to turn the page on this?
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Because he's saying, on that stage, that's all he wants.
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He wants to just not have to feel bad when he's out in the world.
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Well, Dr. Michael Wellner and others who have studied radical Islamic terrorism,
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see there's three indicia for whether or not someone is really reformed or not.
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Are they still really hardcore fundamentalist Muslims?
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And, of course, with Omar Khadr, the answer is yes.
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The second is, is he still associating with the people who he was running with when he committed this terrorism?
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His sister, who says that al-Qaeda is no big deal.
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And the final thing is, has he actually renounced publicly the jihad?
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You know, if I try to drill down into what to take away from what Omar Khadr said, there are a few things.
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He's surrounded by people that genuinely view him as a rock star and as a celebrity.
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But he's surrounded by people that just want to fawn over him and protect him and build this bubble, this envelope around him and not let him answer any tough questions because these people genuinely don't think that he has anything to answer for.
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These people do not believe that he has anything to answer for.
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So, those people around him will always put the questions to him that are like, tell me a nice moment from your childhood.
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And then Omar Khadr talked about how his dad bought him a horse.
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You know, there was at one point, he was talking about why he is viewed differently than Ishmael Baia is, for example.
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And the vision of a child soldier being a small African child with a gun.
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And that was, again, the whole context of the event.
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They're trying to say that Omar Khadr needs to be viewed in the same terms that we would view these people.
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And Omar Khadr actually said something very interesting, and I actually don't disagree with it.
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He said, it's hard to forgive someone when they do something that impacts you.
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And he said, that's the feeling that Canadians have because an American soldier was killed.
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He said, you know, Canada, America, it's all the same.
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And then the moderator interjected to say Canada and the United States are not the same, especially now.
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So, there is a veiled Trump reference, of course.
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And then the audience loves it and hoots and hollers.
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And Omar Khadr, who's just said something I agree with, responds by saying,
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quote, I don't believe in borders and I don't believe in nationalities, unquote.
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So, I'd say that was the only time during the evening that we got something from him
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that tells us a bit about who he is and what he believes and what he feels.
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I don't believe in borders and I don't believe in nationalities.
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There was another point in the evening when someone asked him why he's speaking up now.
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I'm trying to figure out my calling in life and I wanted a safe space to do it.
00:28:07.760
Now, here's a guy who in some situations is saying, listen, I'm still figuring out how
00:28:14.060
to navigate the world, how to interact with people, how to trust.
00:28:17.360
And then on the other hand, he's using Berkeley rhetoric.
00:28:20.560
He's talking about safe spaces, open borders, post-nationalism.
00:28:25.440
And all of these things are like, you know, I get that he likes to read, he says, but this
00:28:32.860
is what happens when you're surrounded by people that are infecting you with an agenda.
00:28:39.320
These are not things that you just come up with.
00:28:43.300
These are things that you're told or things that you come to learn and come to believe
00:28:48.180
And when he's talking about these sorts of things, he is becoming an activist and he's
00:28:55.440
And that's going to be very interesting to see if he does speak out more, how that unfolds.
00:29:02.440
And on that note, there was some discussion about whether this was going to be a national
00:29:08.700
And I never, I never saw that, but people were telling me they were seeing it elsewhere.
00:29:13.260
My interest was in whether he was getting paid, whether Omar Khadr was getting a speaking
00:29:19.800
And I had asked the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative and didn't get a response.
00:29:24.740
I asked Dalhousie University, didn't get a response.
00:29:29.040
Eventually, I just ran a story about the fact that they weren't responding.
00:29:33.100
And that story ended up getting shared quite a bit.
00:29:36.980
And they addressed that on stage, believe it or not.
00:29:40.340
They said he's not getting a speaking fee and it's not a publicity stunt and it's not
00:29:47.840
So Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative and Dalhousie are saying this is just a one-off.
00:29:54.940
If he were getting a speaking fee, would it make a difference?
00:29:57.420
I don't think it would necessarily from the context of what he's doing.
00:30:02.060
I think it would matter in the sense of a publicly funded university, Dalhousie, handing over
00:30:12.820
And as you saw from my interview with Frank McLeod, the veteran earlier, the issue is not
00:30:18.620
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve the right to speak.
00:30:23.100
Even the veterans outside, they're the first to line up and say, we defend Canadian rights.
00:30:28.940
The issue is always and has always been about judgment.
00:30:34.760
The judgment in holding this guy up as a victim, holding him up as a hero.
00:30:40.320
You know, he was not just viewed by the audience as being a guy who was in the wrong place at
00:30:46.180
the wrong time, a guy who was a victim of circumstance, a victim of his family.
00:30:51.460
So, Romeo Dallaire, a man who has done more for peace and more for Canada than most people
00:31:01.160
And I have interviewed Lieutenant General Dallaire.
00:31:04.780
Despite my disagreements with him on political issues, the guy certainly has earned the right
00:31:11.440
And I know he's seen horrific, horrific things.
00:31:13.680
Dallaire, at the very beginning of the event, said that Cotter is a magnificent gentleman.
00:31:26.980
And even if you don't necessarily like the idea of calling him a terrorist, is there not
00:31:35.420
a bit of a gap between terrorist and magnificent gentleman that you could probably find something
00:31:50.020
If he is a victim, if he is a passenger, and if he's just some guy, some poor kid that didn't
00:31:55.420
know what was going on, and now he's out on his own free after serving his sentence, what
00:32:04.260
So if he has done nothing, and he's just been along for the ride, why does he get any credit
00:32:19.080
Women in the audience, when he was talking, going, aw.
00:32:22.720
And I was waiting to do the show to share that, by the way, because I didn't know how
00:32:30.760
I didn't know if it was a whinny, so not a whinny, that's horses do whinnies.
00:32:37.340
But he, like, he would say something like, oh, you know, I find it hard to be myself.
00:32:48.220
And this is a guy that has the power to do a lot.
00:32:54.120
If he does a national speaking tour, he'll sell out.
00:33:11.680
Because if he is a victim, if he is a passenger, he's not deserving of love and fandom.
00:33:20.480
And even if you view somewhere in between, there were some people there that I think were
00:33:24.980
genuinely there with open minds about, oh, you know, I want to hear.
00:33:34.740
There was this one woman I spoke with, for example.
00:33:39.440
But she, despite saying she's open, she wants to listen, there's probably a real story there,
00:33:48.780
I'm really interested in hearing what he has to say.
00:33:53.240
And, you know, I was thinking there are four or five stories to everything, right?
00:33:59.960
And somewhere in between, in the middle, is the truth.
00:34:03.640
So you're not here viewing him as a terrorist or viewing him in a supportive way.
00:34:45.040
And I think that was true of a lot of the people.
00:34:47.520
I won't play every single interaction I did because a lot of them were very similar to one another.
00:34:52.360
I've tried to show you a cross-section of the people I spoke with, the veterans,
00:34:56.520
the people with open minds, the supporters, and all of that.
00:35:00.280
But that is genuinely what you're dealing with here.
00:35:04.480
And I think if it's important to you that Omar Khadr is speaking,
00:35:09.480
you have to either decide what you think he did or what you think it represents
00:35:16.780
or what you want to hear from him now or what you think he needs to do, all of these things.
00:35:22.140
And I'm not sure that introspection was being done.
00:35:24.860
I think people have just decided they support him and he's on stage.
00:35:29.400
And it's like if Michael Buble comes to town, you may not like his new album,
00:35:33.400
but you like Michael Buble and he can sing whatever he wants and you'll go there.
00:35:38.980
I think Omar Khadr, they don't even know what the latest album is,
00:35:50.140
And I'm glad that the event was not disrupted for whatever grievances I have with Omar Khadr,
00:35:58.100
that the way you settle those is not by taking away someone's right to free speech, in my view.
00:36:02.560
And I also have to say that the Romeo de la R child soldiers initiative does a lot of really important work.
00:36:08.220
So my issue is with viewing Omar Khadr as a child soldier.
00:36:13.540
And the Romeo de la R child soldiers initiative, they were very good with me.
00:36:19.080
When I showed up in the cold, soaking wet, they said, oh, here's your media badge.
00:36:24.760
So they were not at all trying to stop me from doing my job.
00:36:28.600
Now, in true Ezra Levant fashion, they did try to stop Ezra from going in,
00:36:32.120
but eventually he won, which I don't think he was expecting, but he did get in.
00:36:38.380
And I'm glad he was able to chat with us after about that.
00:36:41.520
So I want to share just a few final thoughts on this before I close out today's show,
00:36:46.820
because it would be great if I could show you the video of the event and say,
00:36:51.680
you know, here's when he said this, here's when he said this.
00:36:55.840
The only clip that I got was that little bit about the standing ovation,
00:37:01.440
which I think says more than a lot of the clips of the event itself could, frankly.
00:37:08.320
It's not about hatred of Omar Khadr as a person.
00:37:13.020
If he were just to say, I want to live my life, as he has said, and he were to do that,
00:37:18.680
I don't think it's fair to track him down, bang on his door and say, you need to answer for this.
00:37:28.620
I do think it is incredibly fair when he injects himself into public discourse,
00:37:35.180
when he injects himself into a public discussion to ask questions.
00:37:40.000
And I think it's profoundly dangerous for an organization, for people to say,
00:37:48.540
we're going to ask the hard questions and then not permit any of those questions,
00:37:56.500
You can ask challenging questions in a way that is diplomatic,
00:37:59.640
in a way that is sensitive, in a way that doesn't threaten a safe space.
00:38:04.540
I'd say the hardest question, you know, I don't even know the hardest question, actually.
00:38:09.000
I'd say the hardest questions were the ones that weren't asked, the ones that were never posed.
00:38:16.220
That one question that was up on the, the one that I love, I'd say is the easiest question.
00:38:20.960
Where do you find the patience and generosity to face the hypocrisy of your critics?
00:38:28.260
And that was a question that had more thumbs up in the question app than, than most other questions did.
00:38:42.880
And at the end of it, if you're a Canadian veteran, you are quite literally out in the cold.
00:38:49.800
I want to thank everyone who supported this, who supported this fully crowdfunded effort to send my videographer and I to Halifax.
00:38:57.900
We had a great time talking to people and more importantly, covering a story that the mainstream media really didn't and didn't cover in a way that had any skepticism.
00:39:06.620
So all of you who chipped into that, we really appreciate it.
00:39:09.040
And to the people that agreed to chat with me and the one woman who gave me the finger and the other three that called me racist, thanks to you as well.
00:39:15.500
Because there's nothing better than being in the freezing cold and being called a racist.
00:39:20.760
We'll talk to you later this week with more of The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:39:26.540
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:39:29.060
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.