00:00:00.000Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:00:05.240This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.
00:00:12.200Hello everyone and welcome to you all.
00:00:15.120This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:00:17.760You're listening to or watching or sensing, I guess.
00:00:21.420You might be able to just feel in the ether that the presence of the Andrew Lawton Show is upon us.
00:00:26.420But whatever it is that is your preferred delivery vehicle, we welcome you to Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.
00:00:34.520We are going to cover a couple of the big issues of the day here.
00:00:38.200One is particularly time sensitive with 150,000 federal public servants on strike.
00:00:44.800And if you haven't noticed a decline in what the federal government is doing, it probably tells you that these people aren't doing all that much in general.
00:00:53.580But we'll talk about that in a few moments time.
00:00:56.420And later on, I also want to get to this fantastic new docu-series produced in part by a friend of mine,
00:01:03.160but that's not why I'm covering it.
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00:01:04.480I'm covering it because it is a great product in and of itself, exposing Canada's made regime.
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00:01:09.920So we're going to talk about their series, Made in Canada, produced by the Koeman Brothers.
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00:01:16.860But let me first just bring up here the ongoing federal public servant strike.
00:01:21.760The big presence here that a lot of us are probably sensing is the Canada Revenue Agency workers,
00:01:27.360which means if you haven't done your taxes yet, you still don't get an extension,
00:01:31.080even though the people that are supposed to be processing your tax return on the CRA side are on strike.
00:01:37.340But I also want to talk a little bit about the tactics here,
00:01:40.240because they've been very much focused on this idea of inflicting maximum damage.
00:01:46.120And I want to bring up here one example. Chris Aylward, who is the president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, he has talked about how they want to start targeting the strike at strategic locations, and included in that category are ports of entry.
00:02:07.180and he specifically said to maximize the economic impact of the strike and if you look right now
00:02:14.360you'll see that the striking federal workers are currently blocking access to various federal
00:02:20.160buildings they're blocking access to key infrastructure including in the city of
00:02:25.880ottawa now you may be wondering what does justin trudeau have to say about this well here is justin
00:02:31.760Trudeau in the House of Commons talking about exactly this. Individuals are trying to blockade
00:02:40.000our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens' daily lives. It has to stop.
00:02:51.660i'm sorry i'm told that's not actually justin trudeau talking about the striking public service
00:03:03.600alliance of canada workers he's actually talking about a group of truckers that were blocking
00:03:09.860infrastructure he claims and restricting access to downtown ottawa and making ottawa residents
00:03:16.140lives miserable. What does Justin Trudeau have to say about the striking federal public servants
00:03:22.440blocking critical infrastructure? Roll that clip.
00:03:28.420What's that? Oh, I'm told there isn't a clip. I'm told he actually hasn't said anything about
00:03:34.980the blockades of infrastructure taking place by federal public servants. My goodness,
00:03:39.780I'm just so disorganized here. I just could have assumed he must have said something about it.
00:03:44.720By the way, I didn't tell Sean, my producer, that I was doing that bit.
00:03:50.880So Sean in the group chat right now was like terrified that he missed a clip that I was calling for.
00:03:55.680No, that was just me trying to do some physical comedy there, Sean.
00:04:00.580Even the first clip, he wasn't sure if it was the right one.
00:04:02.880But that is Justin Trudeau saying something about the truckers a little over a year ago in Ottawa
00:04:08.760and nothing about striking federal public servants.
00:04:12.180We know when this stuff comes up, it's all about, oh, the right to collective bargaining and the right to be heard.
00:04:18.040Even Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, when he was trying to find a way to weasel into supporting the Emergencies Act,
00:04:25.720he was saying, no, no, no, I support the right to protest for climate justice.
00:04:29.960I support workers' rights, just not this type of protest.
00:04:33.480So obviously there is a double standard here.
00:04:36.300We shouldn't be all that surprised about it, but it is interesting how brazen it is.
00:04:41.320Now, let's talk about what is actually at stake here.
00:04:44.500What are these federal public servants actually pushing for here?
00:04:48.440Franco Terrizano is the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins me now.
00:04:54.580Franco, they always say it's not about the money, but in this case, it really is about the money.
00:04:59.220Oh, it sure is, Andrew. It definitely is about the money.
00:05:01.680I mean, look, when you talk about government bureaucrats and union negotiators,
00:05:05.660you have to look at the full ask, pay and benefits.
00:05:09.960And when you do that, these government union negotiators in Ottawa were pushing up to 47% compensation increase when you look at wages and benefits over three years.
00:05:20.380So up to a 47% compensation increase, and that would cost taxpayers $9.3 billion, Andrew.
00:05:28.520just to put this into context here by the way we've talked you and i in the last few years about
00:05:35.300some of the economic hardships that have fallen on the private sector specifically small business
00:05:40.620owners there was a story yesterday from the canadian press small business owners working
00:05:45.120eight day week equivalent not because they love the beetles and the idea of doing eight days a
00:05:50.360week but because they cannot actually afford to or find the staff to cover off their shifts that
00:05:55.640us from a CFIB report. So you have federal public servants that are demanding a collective
00:06:00.920multi-billion dollar raise while the private sector is still suffering. Yeah you know I think
00:06:06.600it's fair to say that we've all struggled over the last couple years right we've all struggled
00:06:10.580right now with the high price of living but the struggles facing government bureaucrats who got
00:06:17.080to keep their job who got to work from home who didn't miss a pay raise that stress is not the
00:06:23.680same as the struggles facing the small business owner, the gym, the restaurant down the street
00:06:28.260who had to take out a line of credit just to keep the lights on. Let me paint a picture for your
00:06:34.660viewers and your listeners of what the federal government just went through. Okay. Over the last
00:06:40.280couple of years, during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, 312,000 federal bureaucrats took
00:06:47.140at least one pay raise. Okay. When you look at all the different pay raises that the government gave
00:06:52.920out since 2020, they gave out more than 800,000 pay raises over the past three years. Then let's
00:07:00.120look at the bonuses. The Fed's handed out $559 million in bonuses since 2020, and the Fed's just
00:07:07.300hired more than 30,000 new employees. So you have these privileged federal bureaucrats who didn't
00:07:14.340miss a pay raise and who never had to worry about losing their job, now demanding billions more from
00:07:20.260taxpayers who did lose their job, who did take pay cuts, and who may even have lost their small
00:07:25.120business. I don't know if you saw this. It was like an hour ago in the Globe and Mail. Striking
00:07:31.240public servants could continue getting regular salaries while on the picket line, the union says.
00:07:37.560So these are people who literally are by design, by the definition of what a strike is, not going
00:07:43.760to work and are just by default, in many cases, going to continue getting full pay from the
00:07:48.480government. Yeah. I haven't had too much time to dive into that. I did read the article.
00:07:53.100Now my understanding, well, first of all, hold on a sec before we even get into the weeds.
00:07:57.180Let's just say the obvious, you don't go to work. Taxpayers shouldn't pay you right? Like that. Let's
00:08:02.580just say the obvious right there. Now my understanding is obvious. So it does need to
00:08:07.120be restated. Yeah. For, for everyone who's listening in Ottawa, right? Let's restate the
00:08:12.100obvious, but so it's my understanding now that they may get some of that money clay, uh, clawed
00:08:18.000back after the strike is over. But it doesn't look definitive, at least from reading the article.
00:08:24.900So a couple of things that I need to point out here. The government must stop paying these
00:08:29.660government employees ASAP. Maybe there's some payroll concerns. I don't know. But as soon as
00:08:36.120possible, taxpayers should not be paying for people who are not showing up to work. Now,
00:08:41.700in the future, the government must make sure that it gets every single penny back that it paid out
00:08:47.560to these striking employees. I think that's only fair. When we're talking about the bigger picture
00:08:53.300here, you know, one of the issues that really I find interesting, and you see this in the U.S.,
00:08:58.300where they have, if they don't pass a budget in time, they have a government shutdown, where the
00:09:03.000government literally shuts down non-essential services. And I've talked to people in the U.S.,
00:09:07.040and they say one of the things that's the most astonishing is how normal their lives are when
00:09:11.400the federal government shuts down in large areas. And I feel in Canada, we're probably going to see
00:09:16.640something very similar where a lot of these people are not actually providing critical functions. And
00:09:21.120I think there's a bigger picture question here about whether we need the 100 and all of the
00:09:25.340150,000 people that are able to go on strike in these circumstances. Well, what do you call
00:09:31.420it taking forever to get your passport? Last September, right? We've been getting subpar
00:09:38.000services from the federal government to put it mildly for a very long time here. So the issue
00:09:43.360isn't the the service i mean a part of the issue of course is always you know what kind of value
00:09:48.080are we getting for our tax dollars but we we haven't been getting good value from the federal
00:09:52.140government for quite some time now the big issue there's two i'll say is this number one
00:09:56.840is the tax burden right they were pushing for up to 47 compensation increase over three years
00:10:02.800costing taxpayers 9.3 billion dollars so they want that money to come from people who have been
00:10:07.320struggling right the people who are worried about their mortgage payments right now the people who
00:10:11.240are worried whether or not they can afford that package of ground beef at the grocery store okay
00:10:15.660so the number one is the big tax bill if the government gives into these demands number two
00:10:19.520the implied threat from the union negotiators of the tax bureaucrats has always been this
00:10:25.260if you don't pony up money taxpayer that you can't afford and you don't have you may not get your own
00:10:31.400money back at tax refund time i think that is extremely cruel i think it's extremely out of
00:10:36.800touch andrew is the reason i really don't think that there's canadians out there outside of ottawa
00:10:41.540that will have sympathy for any of these privileged bureaucrats who just took pay raises and now are
00:10:47.280making these types of implied threats to their to their neighbors no and i mentioned it briefly
00:10:52.540when i started talking about this the tax deadline is i think a very revealing uh symptom here and
00:10:58.440in that canadians still have to live by the same rules that they always have and file their taxes
00:11:03.560on time well those on the other end of it can just decide you know what we're not going to work this
00:11:08.380week so there is this double standard between the real world and the public sector well there's a
00:11:14.380huge difference between the real world and the government right i mean look what just happened
00:11:19.500over the last two three years everyone as a taxpayer in the private sector was worried about
00:11:24.500losing their job or taking a cut or maybe even losing their business they weren't even worried
00:11:28.940about missing a pay raise in government. I mean, the executives weren't even worried about missing
00:11:34.420a bonus in government, right? And now here's how a serious government would handle this.
00:11:40.420A serious government would actually take a page from former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and put
00:11:46.480the onus back on the union negotiators, right? Because there's a couple ways to solve the issue
00:11:51.060of the ballooning bureaucracy, which increased by 31% over the last two years. What you would do
00:11:56.740is you would say, OK, we're going to find savings through attrition, reducing the number of
00:12:01.840bureaucrats, pay cuts or benefit cuts, or maybe all of the above. Union negotiators,
00:12:07.220you have to figure it out. Either you take pay cuts or you hand out pink slips.
00:12:13.580Yeah. So I guess the question is, where do you think it's going to go from here? I know that
00:12:18.560Mona Fortier, the Treasury Board president, has said that she wants an open dialogue and all of
00:12:23.960this stuff and and you know she says the union has given 500 and some odd uh demands and of those
00:12:29.160you know a few are those core sort of critical ones do you think the government folds here
00:12:32.500well i'm not at the negotiating table and i don't have a crystal ball but let me just point out the
00:12:38.180obvious the only way that these union negotiators can even go to the table with these types of
00:12:43.120outrageous demands is because you have a government that doesn't care about reining and spending that
00:12:49.460has been so frivolous for so long and has no plan to actually exercise restraint, right? Because
00:12:55.400most of us, if we went to the table and asked our bosses for some of these demands, we'd get
00:13:00.180laughed out of the office. Andrew, let me read you some of the non-wage benefits that these union
00:13:05.520negotiators are pushing for. Are you ready? They want to get paid more to work past 4 p.m.
00:13:11.560You know what most people call working past 4 p.m.? A normal day on the job, a normal work day,
00:13:16.860Right. They want this might be the most outrageous. They want taxpayer funded contributions into a union controlled social justice fund to advocate for progressive public policy.
00:13:29.200Now, Andrew, I wasn't even aware that there was a social justice fund until the Canadian Taxpayers Federation dug this up.
00:13:35.440They've been using the social justice fund to send members to climate conferences in Madrid and Cancun.
00:13:41.760They've even used the fund to produce a report which advocates for higher business taxes.
00:13:47.800Now, you have a right to advocate for public policy, but you shouldn't be forcing taxpayers to pay for it.
00:13:52.940They want an education fund for up to $17,000 for laid-off employees.
00:14:01.420They want four weeks of vacation, folks, after just working for four years.
00:14:06.240And they want overtime paid at double time.
00:14:08.440just before i let you go i want you to go back to this after four o'clock thing here because it's
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00:14:14.4404 16 now uh so i don't know if i can actually shake down uh candace malcolm for some more money
00:14:19.980here let me know no andrew i think you live in the real world sir you're you're not within the
00:14:25.600golden gates of government so uh it's not as sunny out here for you all right well i will uh just out
00:14:31.040of the goodness of my heart double your appearance fee today because it's after four oh my gosh yeah
00:14:35.400what's double zero you weren't supposed to say that part out loud uh franco terrazano federal
00:14:41.500director for the canadian taxpayers federation and to keep up the great work staying on top of
00:14:46.400this and holding them to account it's very much appreciated thank you andrew all right that is
00:14:51.820franco terrazano always good to talk to him we are going to move into in just a moment here a little
00:14:57.840bit more of a somber topic because it is an issue that i think is one that we need to spend a fair
00:15:03.460bit of time discussing in the sense that I don't believe we should allow it to fall off the radar
00:15:10.420as much as it has. But before we get to that, I just want to give a little bit of an update on
00:15:14.640a story we've covered in the last couple of months. The battle to replace outgoing, well now
00:15:19.920he's gone, gone Conservative MP Dave McKenzie in Oxford, which is a riding in Ontario, not far
00:15:27.060for me uh dave mckenzie is a member of parlor was a member of parliament who had for years been
00:15:34.620trying to like pass off his seat to his daughter he was he decided that uh being a member of
00:15:40.220parliament should be a little bit more dynastic so he has been kind of for years uh deciding oh
00:15:45.240do i resign do i not trying to find an opportunity to get his daughter to replace him so uh he
00:15:50.220resigned midway through the term uh which is something that i don't think was unplanned on
00:15:56.080his part. His daughter tries to seek the conservative nomination. Of all the candidates
00:16:00.560in that race, she was not at all the one that anyone thought was going to be the winner,
00:16:04.700despite the fact that she is a city councillor. She's accomplished. I've never met her, but I
00:16:09.660don't have any reason to dislike her. But anyway, she doesn't win. Arpan Canna wins. I covered on
00:16:16.280this show the disqualification of Garrett Van Dorland, which I thought was a very bad idea on
00:16:21.040the part of the Conservative Party. But the point of the matter is that Dave McKenzie's daughter was
00:16:26.480obviously Dave McKenzie's primary candidate. She did not win. Why is this relevant now? Because
00:16:32.340Dave McKenzie has decided to back the Liberal. So he's just taking his marbles and going home
00:16:37.240and now wants the Liberal to win in the heartland of the Conservative movement, which is rural
00:16:42.680Ontario next to Alberta. I think we can call it the most reliable Conservative seats in the country.
00:16:47.780So he says that this is a reflection of where the Conservative Party has gone now.
00:16:52.220No, I think it is a reflection of where Dave McKenzie is.
00:16:56.080And the kind of person who can just unilaterally and instantly flip from conservative to liberal for political reasons
00:17:03.000is probably not someone who is ever conservative and ever someone that voters should have rallied behind.
00:17:08.660So that little rant out of the way here.
00:17:10.940I want to talk about this series which has been exposing and adding a lot of context and nuance to an issue that is near and dear to my heart for reasons I've discussed on the show and in writing, and that is Canada's assisted dying regime.
00:31:31.520then when you make it a medical procedure
00:31:33.880and you take off the stigma of taking your own life,
00:31:39.240there's something that changes with the procedure itself and i think that you know even the euphemism
00:31:44.760that we use medical assistance in dying is significant and the words matter and that that's
00:31:51.080that's a definite intentional change in the language you know and this is the irony in
00:31:57.040canada it's a sad and tragic irony we have worked for decades to stop suicide at all costs
00:32:02.740and now out of the same mouth the government like which has worked has worked so hard and i would
00:32:08.520And I commend the government of, you know, if the past president for all the work they've done to stop suicide, we have a suicide hotline, there's resources.
00:32:18.300But now that same, that same entity is saying this is this is OK.
00:32:22.980It's a totally confusing and mixed message and one that I think just the the damage done to the stop suicide movement is going to be incalculable.
00:32:32.940Yeah, and that was, I mean, one of the reasons I shared my own story there is that I'm so grateful that I had doctors that said, no, I'm not going to settle for some young man that could have a bright future going down the road of suicide.
00:32:44.480And now you push this into the current context when suicide is seen as a medical treatment and it's seen as an answer to problems rather than the type of thing that is itself a problem.
00:32:56.620I'll give the last word to you on this, Daniel.
00:32:58.740I know your first episode really looks at the kind of the bigger picture of this setting the
00:33:02.320table. The second episode, which we shared the trailer for early talks about Canada's heroes
00:33:07.580and their treatment. Where do you go from here? Yeah, well, we have four more episodes in the
00:33:13.240queue. And it's worth noting, it's a viewer supported series. So anyone that feels passionate
00:33:17.260about this, you can literally help us to tell this story by going to madeincanada.org and
00:33:21.780getting behind us because we really felt like for one, I personally wouldn't pay money as a,
00:33:28.040know pay-per-view to watch a series like this but i would want to watch this and so we want it to be
00:33:34.200available free to all canadians and people in other countries as well but we are calling on
00:33:38.520those that are passionate about the stories and about the issue to join along with us and support
00:33:42.520us through the made in canada site and you can do that as you know a one-time pledge or a subscription
00:33:47.320but the point being um in the four additional episodes we're going to cover quite a broad range
00:33:52.120but specifically we're diving right now into medical ethics so what what are the ethics of
00:33:57.000the medical profession and is this even possible to label as a medical treatment because they
00:34:01.720actually put that word like treatment on stuff and i the a treatment that kills you is not actually
00:34:06.760by definition a treatment um it's kind of a final solution right so i think um it's it's something
00:34:12.520that we're really going to dive into is the ethical questions in the next episode we also have
00:34:17.000one that is about a very perplexing and shocking part of it it's called ode which stands for organ
00:34:22.440donation euthanasia they actually promote in clinics and in hospices in canada that we are
00:34:29.080leading all districts in organ donation euthanasia and that should be something to weep about not to
00:34:34.920celebrate and this is truly i mean a nurse in my own town just messaged me because they know we're
00:34:40.760making this and said guess what they just they just announced that we've surpassed organ donation
00:34:46.440all time organ donation record oh dot dot how do you think that happened so they're giving it as
00:34:52.920an alternative to say you know what maybe maybe you're suffering too much maybe life is hard but
00:34:58.280you can go out in a blaze of glory and help somebody and that is called suicidal ideation
00:35:03.000and that is a very very dangerous in fact illegal thing if you consider so organ donation euthanasia
00:35:08.680is another episode we're working on plus um one that is very intriguing and should get people's
00:35:14.760attention is uh follow the money what does this mean for the cost of which the actual liberal
00:35:20.760government said that our health care system is on the verge of collapse so the people that are
00:35:25.000saying we're going to expand medical assistance and dying also said our health care system
00:35:31.000nationwide is on the verge of collapse so just try to put those two together and see if the
00:35:35.080narrative lines up that i mean i've covered this issue extensively and the organ donation dimension
00:36:10.260It was an act of celebrating the production of storytelling that is very much needed in Canada.
00:36:16.260And I've always been a big believer in independent media.
00:36:19.240And I should just kind of add a bit of a caveat there that independent media isn't just independent journalists.
00:36:25.240It's also independent authors, independent documentarians, people that are telling these stories that are oftentimes undertold or undersold by the mainstream media.
00:36:35.020So I think this was a tremendously important one and we'll follow it as the episodes progress.