00:01:00.000welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:20.460north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show the andrew
00:01:31.000lawton show on true north on this tuesday december 19th 2023 just a few days until christmas uh just
00:01:39.580a few days plus one i guess until boxing day then the new year is going to be upon us you're going
00:01:45.140to blink and it'll be easter and then it'll be christmas 2024 what is time but an illusion right
00:01:50.160Well, it is my absolute pleasure to be with you today.
00:01:53.180I mentioned last week that I was going to do this, and I was worried that no one would
00:01:58.420respond or all of the responses would be unfavorable.
00:02:01.760But to my credit and to my great delight, people did seem to like this random idea I
00:02:07.700came up with, which was to do a show that was dedicated to answering your questions.
00:02:12.840Now, part of this, I will admit, is a bit selfish on my part because I get besieged
00:02:17.080by emails at times. And there are just not enough hours in the day to go through and write everyone
00:02:22.140an emailed reply. I would love to. I do try. I used to be a lot better at it. But now that I'm
00:02:26.980working on a book and doing the show and all of that, I can't respond to every email. But I can
00:02:31.760respond to them on air, especially when you can kind of lump ones together that are a bit similar.
00:02:37.160So I figured today we do something fun. It's the holiday season. Why not break with the usual
00:02:41.220format and devote a show to answering your questions we will deal with the specific
00:02:47.380the mundane the general the big picture the personal the political if you ask me about sports
00:02:52.900i will give you an answer but i assure you it will bother you tremendously whatever answer
00:02:58.500i come up with actually i did get a sports question i didn't send it to sean so i don't
00:03:02.900think we have like a nifty graphic for it but i'll try to answer it nonetheless i think someone was
00:03:07.220was trying to quiz me rather than genuinely seeking to get my input on whatever sporting
00:03:13.000event it was. Something about, I don't know, crack it or something. But in any case, we are
00:03:17.280going to have some fun today. But I first, before we get into your questions, and by the way, if
00:03:20.920you're watching on YouTube, you can ask a question live by using the super chat feature. You can ask
00:03:26.440it in the general comments thing, but we'll definitely see it if you give us a super chat
00:03:30.940and it goes towards supporting the work that True North does. But I wanted to speak very briefly
00:03:35.820about my interview which came out yesterday with conservative leader Pierre Polyev. A lot of
00:03:40.200really great feedback on that. I've been trying to read some of the comments on that interview
00:03:45.080and people that were very delighted we spoke about immigration and I pushed him to, I even gave him
00:03:50.140just the number on immigration, although he still rejected the opportunity to provide a number. His
00:03:55.520answer was that it's really not possible to come up with one that in 2025 he would put in place
00:04:00.820were he elected prime minister but just on a completely random note that interview we recorded
00:04:07.940on Friday of last week and we were in Mississauga Ontario and for what I live a couple of hours from
00:04:14.100there so it's not too difficult for me to get up in the morning and drive to Mississauga and all
00:04:18.300of that but the thing that I find interesting here is that there is a I had a weird bad feeling
00:04:27.500about the interview and I didn't want to not not that the interview itself but I felt like
00:04:31.160something was going to go wrong and I was prepared to blame Sean I was like going to say
00:04:35.020so I was imagining something Sean was going to do something he was going to be late or he was going
00:04:40.340to be in a car accident or his camera was going to break I just I had this weird ominous feeling
00:04:45.380about the interview so I then decided I'm going to go up the night before let me just go up the
00:04:49.400night before everything make sure I'm there and all is good there we do the interview goes off
00:04:54.300without a hitch. Everything's fine. I'm like, great. My ominous feeling about this little foray
00:04:59.260into interviewing Pierre Polyev in Mississauga completely averted. So I get in my car and I start
00:05:04.240driving home. If you are from Ontario, you are familiar with this entity known as the 401. It is
00:05:10.440the big highway that stretches from Windsor, Ontario, right up to, well, basically to Montreal,
00:05:15.640but right up to the Ontario-Quebec border. I was on the 401. I was driving home. I'd been driving
00:05:21.580for about 30 minutes and traffic which is just like a perennial condition there is pretty bad
00:05:27.140there's construction congestion car in front of me slams on the brakes I slam on the brakes I stop
00:05:33.180I do my part I do my part as a citizen as a driver I stop I don't hit the nice Cadillac in front of
00:05:38.880me and then a GMC pickup truck just I see it in the rear view mirror I see it approaching and just
00:05:46.300in slow motion, this car, this truck, this behemoth of a truck is just barreling towards me.
00:05:52.480All I can do is pray and grab onto the wheel and hold on for dear life because that truck just
00:05:58.520barreled right into me, pushed me into the Cadillac in front of me, created what I believe
00:06:04.020they call an Andrew sandwich, which is like the least ordered item on any deli menu. And then a
00:06:09.400fourth car comes behind the pickup truck. So we had a nice little four car collision on the 401,
00:06:15.040one, which I endured just to bring you that interview with Pierre Polyev. And by the way,
00:06:19.940that interview cost me my car. The tow truck driver, I was able to drive it home, but the
00:06:26.600tow truck driver just picked it up and took it away this morning. So I now have no car,
00:06:31.600which means my carbon footprint has gone down to a Justin Trudeau approved level. Maybe I need to
00:06:36.420buy one of these new fancy electric vehicles the government is subsidizing. I'll donate now so I
00:06:42.480can get a Tesla to replace my crappy little sedan that got totaled on the way back from Toronto. So
00:06:48.040that I just had to share that with you. These are the behind the scenes things you don't actually
00:06:51.980see. And it's why you should generally listen to your instincts. I knew something was going to
00:06:55.620happen. I didn't know what I didn't know when, but I was right that something was going to happen.
00:07:00.120So I said this show, I was going to devote it to your questions. I gave the email address over a
00:07:05.460few shows last week and I got, I won't even get a chance to answer all the questions. So I assure
00:07:10.880you, I was kind of prioritizing on length. The ones that were 500 words, I'm like, I'm not reading
00:07:15.420that question. But I tried to kind of pluck out the relevant bits. And there are some that I may
00:07:20.020not be answering by name, but it's because I'm answering a similar question that I happen to
00:07:25.120see first and they're on related topics. So we've tried to triage this and make it somewhat fair,
00:07:30.860at least as fair as we're able to. But if you want to get a new question in, you can do so on
00:07:35.420YouTube if you're watching live using the super chat feature. But we'll start with this question
00:07:40.940from Dustin. This is a very specific one, but it's good. It puts me on my toes. Dustin writes,
00:07:46.840do you like or dislike Canada Post as a crown corporation? Do you still think, or do you think
00:07:56.940it still serves a purpose? I feel like Dustin may be a postal worker and I'm being trapped here.
00:08:01.220So I have no opinion on Canada Post specifically. I've sent mail and I've received mail, which is like the end of my transactional involvement with Canada Post in principle. In principle, I think it's kind of past its prime. Now, Milton Friedman, I believe it was, I can't remember which of his books, kind of said that the Postal Service was one of those things where, yeah, maybe in principle as a libertarian, he wasn't a fan of it being a monopoly, but in practice, it just made sense.
00:08:27.860But practically speaking, that's no longer the case. You have people that are sending packages all the day long through DHL and Purilator. Is Purilator still owned partially by Canada Post? It used to be in part. But you had, of course, the idea here that all of these different courier services, FedEx, UPS, are doing this. What are they doing? They're doing mail.
00:08:51.260I mean, what is Amazon doing? Amazon has effectively recreated postal delivery as a private for-profit corporation. So do I care about it? No. Do I have an issue with it in general terms as far as the day-to-day implications of it? No. But is it still relevant? I also would say the answer to that is no.
00:09:12.760But I'm not going to be leading the crusade to end Canada Post just because I don't actually spend a lot of my time thinking about Canada Post, to be honest.
00:09:21.780Dustin's question is the first time I've genuinely had to think about Canada Post ever.
00:09:30.280Could you look into how it is that King Charles III can attend these functions like COP28 while being our apolitical head of state?
00:09:38.140This seems to be him going against what the crown is supposed to be.
00:09:43.600So that is, I mean, I don't actually need to look into it, Jonathan.
00:09:46.660The answer is that King Charles fancies himself a political leader, a political figure, and
00:09:53.640not just a nonpartisan, a political head of state.
00:09:57.620Now, this was always going to be the big challenge because when he was the Prince of Wales during
00:10:01.920Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's reign, he loved to be all about the political issues.
00:10:07.040He was the one who would like fly the private jet to the private tarmac, get in the private limo, drive to the palace and then deliver a press conference about how we all need to live within our means and do less.
00:10:18.540And he always was able to do that because as the Prince of Wales, you can be a little bit more issue oriented.
00:34:10.260So if I am to engage in this issue, I believe that I have an authority or I believe I have a responsibility if I'm talking about something to understand it, to know the issue.
00:34:20.860So I've engaged on the issue of vaccines from the perspective that matters to me the most, which is personal choice and civil liberties.
00:44:00.660and not see on shows all get together.
00:44:02.800And it's a fun opportunity for the True North team
00:44:04.540to kick back and also to take some more questions
00:44:07.380similar to this format that we have there.
00:44:11.960And sorry, I got distracted by another comment about Sean.
00:44:14.120Sean's like amassing all of the fans in the audience.
00:44:16.880So this may be like a Dr. Phil scenario where,
00:44:20.080Well, actually, that makes me Oprah in this case.
00:44:22.220So anyway, don't take the metaphor too far.
00:44:25.080We have a message from Elia who writes,
00:44:29.580Perhaps you can address why there is no mention in the media or by the conservatives
00:44:34.000that according to a number of sources that measure or estimate the amounts of greenhouse gas emissions per country,
00:44:40.640China produced a bajillion kilotons of carbon per year.
00:44:45.260The numbers are, you can kind of see them there.
00:44:47.920But basically, the question is that China is contributing more than 20 times what Canada is.
00:44:52.940They're building coal plants, not reducing, yet we're the ones that have to do the so-called fight to stop climate change.
00:45:01.180What Elia writes here, personally, I think we should make efforts to take our natural environment into consideration and endeavor to be more environmentally friendly.
00:45:09.080But it's obvious that the liberals are perpetuating a fraud on Canadians.
00:45:12.740I would say, I mean, I don't know if the conservatives talk about it.
00:45:16.940I think with Mark Marano last week on his time at COP28, we talked about this.
00:45:22.500Why is it that we have to bend over backwards, destroy our economy when China is kind of just going along and paying lip service while investing, industrializing, building, constructing, and doing so with no sense of environmental consideration?
00:45:35.960So we can't stop the world from producing, but we can shift production.
00:45:39.600And do we want to be producers here or do we want China and India to be the beneficiaries?
00:45:43.960And when you put it like that, it's a simple calculation.
00:45:46.560but one that you're right is absent from a lot of the mainstream media discourse this is a question
00:45:52.360from john i have followed you since you were on the radio and agree with 99 of your views that's
00:45:58.440a very good out very good average i see that on the middle east situation you along with the north
00:46:03.200american mainstream and conservative media take a strong pro-israel stance you've even reported
00:46:09.340repeated the beheaded baby story which i've learned after much research was just a rumor made up by a
00:46:15.900reporter. Do you still believe it? Here's a loaded question. So just, yes, I'm pro-Israel. I've been
00:46:24.220to Israel twice. I do not take an uncritical view of Israel. But when it comes to the core question,
00:46:29.600does Israel have a right to exist? My answer is yes. Does Israel have a right to defend itself?
00:46:34.080My answer is yes. Now, the Gaza situation has been a heinous, heinous example of why Israel's
00:46:43.540right to exist and defend itself is under threat because you have this terrorist group called Hamas
00:46:48.740and other groups as well that want the annihilation and obliteration of Israel. Now war is nasty,
00:46:55.060terror is nasty. The question is about this one specific allegation that has become a very
00:47:03.140important one in terms of how people view this conflict and also the pace at which media reports.
00:47:09.380So how it started was there was an Israeli reporter
00:47:13.540with I-24 in Israel, I believe it was, who reported that she had heard from an IDF official
00:47:19.700or multiple IDF officials that there were evidence of babies having been beheaded. I think it was at
00:47:24.700the kibbutz whose name escapes me right now. And this was reported extensively. It was reported
00:47:30.880everywhere. But if you looked at all of the reporting, it all linked back to this one woman
00:47:37.200and this one report. And that was so very key. And this was just a few days after the initial
00:47:42.960attacks. So I reported it originally, and then I pulled back a little bit. And then I saw there
00:47:50.160be more and more support for it. And then multiple IDF officials at different levels came out and
00:47:57.320said, yes, there is evidence. And yes, there are photographs. Now they have not shared these
00:48:02.020photographs, even when they have brought reporters in and showed off the record footage of what has
00:48:08.740happened and footage of victims, they have not shared videos of beheaded babies. And it's terrible
00:48:14.260for me that this has become, brutal as this is, such an important discussion in this. But I have
00:48:22.060not seen pictures. I have not seen these images. I do not claim to have seen them. Do I believe them?
00:48:30.300Yes. I believe them because it has come from enough different places, enough different
00:48:36.100authorities that do not have a reason to lie about this and by that i mean that there is enough that
00:48:43.940has been proven such as the sexual assaults the hostages all of that there's enough that has been
00:48:51.700proven that you don't need to make something like this we know that babies were killed we know that
00:48:57.380bodies were burned is it all that unbelievable that babies were so yes i believe it i i dispute
00:49:05.220the premise that it all goes back to that one reporter's work that one reporter certainly
00:49:10.740started that initial volley but it has since been reaffirmed by multiple people in the idf now look
00:49:16.100if you're if you take the view that israelis are just propagandists and they're lying and it's all
00:49:20.740just wartime propaganda yeah you won't believe that unless you have evidence but i'll say does
00:49:24.980it really matter and and i don't mean that truth doesn't matter truth does matter but if if your
00:49:30.900view of what Hamas did is that everything else is fine, except for the possibility of beheading
00:49:38.400babies, you have already decided that you are fine with horror and you are fine with terror.
00:49:47.140So the people that got all pearl clutchy about this particular issue are people that are generally
00:49:52.940fine with Hamas violence in general. I can't end on that note. That would be like a brutal one to
00:49:57.720end on. But do we have any lighter ones here that we can go to? Well, here's a fun one. Robert says
00:50:04.680he finds it infuriating when we see a politician asked a question in the House of Commons launch
00:50:09.520into a talking point filled speech that in no way relates to the question. We see politicians
00:50:13.980refuse to answer no matter how many times they're asked. I believe Justin Trudeau was asked 17 times
00:50:19.060in a row. How many times have you met with the ethics commissioner? Would it be possible to get
00:50:25.200a few influential people together to discuss the merits in bringing in some form of regulation
00:50:30.260regarding the Q&A period that requires truth and relevance, something similar to those in place
00:50:35.340in a court of law. So I don't know if it's possible. I think what we need to see is political
00:50:40.200pressure. We need to make it where the dodging the question is not something you can just get
00:50:45.120away with. I jokingly wrote, it was actually like one of my most popular tweets about a year ago,
00:50:50.860something where I said, you know, I'm going to start talking to my wife like a politician. If
00:50:53.860She says, did you unload the dishwasher?