Juno News - The Art of Mask-Shaming

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.000 Coming up, putting an end to mask shaming, the importance of letting kids be kids, and Ezra Levant on his new book, China Virus.

00:00:23.080 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:26.000 Well, my friends, I'm ashamed to say that the unthinkable has happened.

00:00:33.540 Andrew Scheer has committed an act of such evil and horror that I don't even want to do an introduction to the show.

00:00:40.480 I have to get right to it.

00:00:42.500 He sat in an airport lounge without wearing a mask.

00:00:46.820 I know. I know. It's just so terrible.

00:00:50.540 How can anyone do such a thing?

00:00:52.060 Oh, give me a break. From the federal government that for weeks wouldn't even shut down the border, said masks were not something that anyone should wear.

00:01:01.340 To now have the mainstream media shaming Andrew Scheer and a bunch of people that Andrew Scheer was waiting at an airport with for not wearing masks is something that I cannot muster an ounce of concern about.

00:01:13.180 This is the story. CBC ran wild with it.

00:01:16.360 They had these little sneaky cell phone shots from multiple angles.

00:01:20.460 So we can do like a full Zapruder analysis here of this.

00:01:24.240 Multiple angles showing that Andrew Scheer was at one point sitting in the lounge at the gate at Pearson Airport in Toronto.

00:01:31.480 And he had his mask pulled down around his neck, as did Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, as did three other people with whom they were sitting in a socially distanced fashion waiting for a flight to probably Ottawa.

00:01:46.640 Because I know Andrew Scheer had a press conference there today.

00:01:49.140 So let's get the obvious right out of the gate.

00:01:52.100 Yes, it is a rule that at the airport in the post security area and the pre security area, you have to wear a mask and you're allowed to take it off to eat or drink.

00:02:02.000 But taking it off to have a conversation is not one of the rules permitted under the Pearson Airport guidelines for this.

00:02:10.760 So I'm not saying that what he was doing was in the right.

00:02:15.200 I'm saying that the mainstream media's obsession about this and liberal Twitter's obsession about this is highly disproportionate in a country where mask usage has only been advised for really a couple of weeks.

00:02:30.280 Remember, for the most part, it was the opposite that we were being told to do.

00:02:33.960 So the idea that we would not only encourage mask usage, but publicly shame people who don't wear them now after all of the mixed messaging on this is just absurd.

00:02:45.320 And yes, there's a political bias as well.

00:02:47.680 Stephen Taylor, who's a conservative tweeter, had pointed this out that I think it was Rosie Barton had tweeted twice about Andrew Scheer's mask in the span of time that she didn't mention Justin Trudeau's we scandal even once.

00:03:01.200 And we'll talk about we very shortly.

00:03:03.400 But, you know, for Andrew Scheer, who's an outgoing conservative leader, who's not been one of the ones beating the drums, telling people, oh, you've got to wear a mask for him to now be the story because of this, I find to be absolutely pathetic.

00:03:17.260 And it's not about the right or the wrong.

00:03:19.780 It's about the level of attention that something so insignificant has gotten.

00:03:25.080 And that now we're at the point, as I mentioned, I think it was two shows ago, when we're publicly shaming or in some jurisdictions like Toronto now prosecuting people for not wearing a mask, we're losing sight of the entire dialogue here.

00:03:39.620 And listen, the whole point about masks, which I think are demonstrably positive things in terms of what they did in South Korea, what they did in Taiwan, what they did in Japan.

00:03:51.360 I think that masks themselves, especially if deployed early, have a significant role.

00:03:57.300 But the whole point about it, even now, is that the government, which has been encouraging people to go to protests and stuff like that, says wear a mask when you cannot exercise proper social distancing.

00:04:08.380 And that's an important distinction. Wear a mask when you can't exercise proper social distancing.

00:04:14.060 You look at those chairs at the airport, they have every other chair barricaded off, basically, or with a sign that says don't sit on it.

00:04:22.400 So they're socially distanced. If you're walking around a store and you're going to keep your six feet between you and everyone else, I don't see why you need a mask.

00:04:31.340 And that's why, for the most part, I haven't worn one except where I've been required to, which has only been a couple of occasions.

00:04:38.340 And I know I'm going to have to when I'm traveling next week. And look, I'll wear it. I'll do my part because some things aren't worth a fight.

00:04:46.380 But I am going to pick a fight with the people that are picking a fight with others when they are not impacted or affected in the least by what's happening.

00:04:55.300 And this is the big problem now. So we know CBC is biased. It's fairly transparent. And I don't mean that in a positive way.

00:05:03.920 But the level of attention here, and again, if you even contrast and compare how much Justin Trudeau has been asked about we with you know how much Andrew Scheer is going to be asked about the mask.

00:05:15.520 And, you know, listen, it was like right out of the gate. This is what Andrew Scheer had to answer about when he was speaking about the economic and public health effects of coronavirus and all the things that are happening in Canada.

00:05:28.920 You want to bet that that was what the media wanted to talk about? No, they wanted to talk about masks. Let's roll this clip.

00:05:35.140 Hi, it's Annie Bergeron-Oliver with CTV National News.

00:05:38.800 Masks became mandatory yesterday in many cities across Canada. Yet yesterday you were photographed at the airport not wearing a mask.

00:05:45.880 Elizabeth May earlier today said she does not believe that you take this pandemic seriously.

00:05:50.640 So one, I'm wondering why you didn't wear a mask. And two, what do you say to people like Elizabeth May who say you're not taking the pandemic seriously?

00:05:58.440 So I don't have anything to add based on the story yesterday.

00:06:02.500 Nothing?

00:06:04.020 I think it was pretty self-explanatory yesterday.

00:06:06.460 I know that in part of the statement you said you took off the mask to make a call.

00:06:10.840 Pallister has since come out saying he apologized that, yes, he took it off for a call, but he wanted to chat with some of his colleagues.

00:06:18.620 Should you not be setting an example for Canadians?

00:06:21.120 There are many people who do not believe that masks should be mandatory.

00:06:24.640 Should you not be setting an example for Canadians and nothing else to add?

00:06:28.240 As I said yesterday, I was wearing a mask while I was traveling, so I don't have anything else to add to that story.

00:06:34.500 It's hard to believe that this is actually your question and your follow-up.

00:06:37.760 When we're dealing with a prime minister that is under an investigation for ethics violation for the third time,

00:06:42.700 we're dealing with $300 billion worth of deficit with no recovery plan, with no budget this year.

00:06:48.760 And you want to know how long I had my mask off yesterday after making a phone call?

00:06:52.920 Come on, that's ridiculous.

00:06:58.340 I think the picture is pretty self-explanatory.

00:07:02.020 I think my answer yesterday was pretty self-explanatory as well.

00:07:05.600 And if you want to go, like, analyze social media pictures, if you're looking for some kind of Zapruder film to break down frame by frame,

00:07:15.040 I think that's pretty ridiculous and kind of a wasted opportunity today when we're talking about an economic snapshot today

00:07:20.660 that's going to tell Canadians how the next few months and years are going to roll out

00:07:25.860 when we have the highest unemployment rate in the G7.

00:07:28.840 We're the only G7 country to have experienced a credit downgrade.

00:07:31.760 And that was at a press conference Wednesday morning, just one day after Maskgate,

00:07:38.580 which, of course, Toronto Pearson Airport decided to add some fuel to the fire.

00:07:42.420 They tweeted a link to the CBC story and said,

00:07:45.840 everyone has a role to play in maintaining our healthy airport.

00:07:49.000 We understand there may be a need to briefly eat or drink,

00:07:52.400 but we expect all passengers and workers to follow the rules.

00:07:55.820 Now, when you are the size of a blimp as I am,

00:07:58.220 it's actually very good because they give you the caveat there.

00:08:01.760 If you're eating or drinking, you can take off your mask.

00:08:04.840 So basically, what you do is you get like one of those American Starbucks,

00:08:09.140 I think they're called Trenta size, 30 ounces of something,

00:08:13.060 and you just walk around and you have like a giant hoagie in the other hand.

00:08:17.000 And no matter what, you always just have one of them at your mouth and you're completely fine.

00:08:22.460 That's the loophole, everyone.

00:08:23.620 If you're eating or drinking, you can take your mask off,

00:08:25.820 which kind of reinforces the absurdity of it all.

00:08:30.540 Because look, people are going to be eating and drinking.

00:08:33.220 They're going to be pulling them on and off.

00:08:34.780 And that was one of the things that public health officials said early on,

00:08:38.480 which is that, oh, well, as long as you're not touching the mask,

00:08:41.040 maybe it would be helpful.

00:08:42.740 Well, if you're taking it off to eat and drink, what are you doing?

00:08:45.200 You're pulling it down, eating, putting it up, and so on.

00:08:48.400 So the question that I would raise here to anyone who's involved in mask shaming

00:08:55.180 is do you really want to go down this road of furthering a snitch culture,

00:09:00.240 which is what we started to see happen earlier on in the pandemic

00:09:03.800 when all these bylaw officers were encouraging everyone to snitch out their neighbors

00:09:08.680 for having a backyard barbecue, for not socially distancing on the sidewalk,

00:09:14.060 for going to a park, for doing all of these other things.

00:09:16.480 And that was a really, I don't want to say scary,

00:09:19.980 but it was a really concerning few weeks in Canada when that was the norm.

00:09:24.700 Busy bodies with nothing better to do,

00:09:26.980 turning and rolling over on their neighbors who aren't even really hurting anyone.

00:09:31.780 That's the problem here.

00:09:33.000 People that aren't even really hurting anyone.

00:09:35.220 And if you are maintaining your distance, if you're keeping apart from everyone,

00:09:38.840 if you're doing everything right,

00:09:41.480 at this stage in the game, if you don't wear a mask, that's on you.

00:09:44.980 And if we start to go down this road where we're mandating it,

00:09:48.880 we're not going to like what happens because it's going to become a more and more permanent

00:09:54.120 fixture of society, not just throughout this pandemic, but in flu seasons and beyond.

00:09:59.540 And I saw someone that I know, and I don't remember where I saw it.

00:10:03.700 I saw it on my Facebook or Twitter and I couldn't find it again.

00:10:06.740 But someone who had said that they see a lot of crossover among anti-vax people and anti-mask

00:10:13.040 people, and they say it has nothing to do with science or facts or health, but it has

00:10:16.920 everything to do with people not being told what to do and not liking being told what to do.

00:10:22.740 And they were saying this as a negative.

00:10:24.880 They were saying this to criticize, to which I say, you know, I don't think not being,

00:10:29.240 not enjoying being told what to do by government is a vice.

00:10:34.540 I think that's a virtue in a free society.

00:10:37.280 People that are, whose first instinct is to question authority when authority starts hammering

00:10:42.040 down and sending down orders.

00:10:44.000 So I don't see that as a negative.

00:10:45.880 I see that as a positive.

00:10:47.220 And in many respects, I see that as a moral imperative in a free society,

00:10:51.980 although one that's harder and harder to come up with.

00:10:55.200 Look, we saw this week, Doug Ford is going to extend emergency COVID-19 powers into next year.

00:11:02.620 And this is something that Doug Ford said on Tuesday.

00:11:06.340 He says, it's not a power grab.

00:11:08.140 He's not into big government.

00:11:09.440 It's there to help people.

00:11:11.520 And that may be fine.

00:11:12.780 But for the most part, this have been, this has been extending a little bit at a time,

00:11:17.100 you know, a couple of weeks here, a month there.

00:11:19.300 And now he's looking to extend into next year.

00:11:24.320 And for something that would have gone on now, a full year, a full year, it would have been

00:11:30.900 because this all started in January, February, and really ramped up in March.

00:11:36.080 And anytime politicians have emergency powers in place, the checks and balances required on those

00:11:43.600 are monumental, but they are also harder and harder to enforce.

00:11:47.900 And look, I like Doug Ford.

00:11:49.720 I get along with him.

00:11:50.800 This is not an anti-Ford or Ford derangement syndrome criticism here.

00:11:56.480 Rather, it's a recognition that it's easy for politicians to get addicted to the power.

00:12:02.460 And it's easy for politicians to, in the name of expediency, bypass democracy.

00:12:07.620 And this is what was happening with Justin Trudeau wanting to suspend parliament.

00:12:11.160 Even if it comes with good intentions, we know that proverbially, those are the things that pave the road to hell.

00:12:19.920 So for politicians of any party, of any level of government to say,

00:12:23.660 well, you know, we're just going to extend our emergency powers and it lets us keep getting things done

00:12:27.840 and it's helping people and saving people and all of that.

00:12:30.600 I'm looking as the libertarian and saying, all right, well, what are you going to do to check that power?

00:12:34.960 And, you know, if anything, the more we go on and get back to normal, even in a minor or muted way,

00:12:42.060 the less justifiable it is to have any emergency powers because you have functional legislatures and parliaments.

00:12:48.780 I mean, as much as any parliament or legislature can be functional,

00:12:51.760 but you have a democratic body that is able to be at the table and able to be managing and executing these things.

00:12:59.500 So the idea that governments would be relying on emergency orders when the emergency part of the pandemic is no longer.

00:13:08.640 I would not say that in Canada, we are in an emergency situation right now.

00:13:13.180 Canadians can travel abroad.

00:13:15.220 Canadians have mobility for the most part between provinces.

00:13:18.680 Canadians are getting back to work.

00:13:20.540 Despite the fact that there are still cases, we've had a number of zero case days in a number of jurisdictions.

00:13:25.500 So this is not an emergency anymore, even if it is a situation we take seriously.

00:13:31.260 So why are lawmakers still able to invoke emergency powers, which by their definition are meant to be temporary,

00:13:38.520 they're meant to be for exceptional circumstances, and they are meant to be only in situations where the slow speed of democracy

00:13:47.200 would cause there to be jeopardy for other people.

00:13:51.060 That is no longer the case.

00:13:52.960 So Abby Deschman, who's a lawyer with the Civil Liberties Association, said it's deeply concerning.

00:13:59.100 She said, you know, they're leaving the label of an emergency behind while keeping the emergency powers.

00:14:05.080 And that's a great way of looking at it.

00:14:06.860 So we have the powers without the emergency, and that's not a recipe for democracy.

00:14:11.460 That's not a recipe for transparency.

00:14:13.180 So even though Doug Ford has said he doesn't think they'll be in place by the 2022 election,

00:14:19.780 the fact that that is right now on the table, that an election in two years,

00:14:25.100 well, you know, maybe we'll have emergency powers in place by then,

00:14:28.820 we need to start pushing back if it looks like we're headed towards what I've called the permanent emergency,

00:14:34.540 the permanent lockdown, because that is not going to be good for anyone.

00:14:39.900 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:14:44.680 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:47.380 Hey, all you cool cats and kittens who have been listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

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00:15:33.800 Stay cool, kittens.

00:15:35.960 Did you like that promo?

00:15:37.420 I meant to play it on Monday's show and forgot to.

00:15:39.900 That is Carol Baskin telling you all what I've been telling you,

00:15:42.900 to listen to The Andrew Lawton Show and to subscribe to the podcast.

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00:16:00.380 I posted that on Twitter on the weekend, and I got a lot of mixed reaction.

00:16:05.640 A lot of people got the joke.

00:16:07.560 A few people said, who the heck is Carol Baskin?

00:16:09.760 And if you don't know, you're missing out on one of the greatest exercises

00:16:13.140 in cinematic brilliance since Schindler's List.

00:16:16.540 And other people were like, how dare you?

00:16:18.560 I'm going to tune out if you're getting an endorsement from a murderer.

00:16:21.480 Because, you know, she may or may not have killed her husband.

00:16:25.940 You know.

00:16:27.040 In any case, so that's funny.

00:16:28.900 It's from a website called Cameo, and I've used Cameo a couple of times.

00:16:32.480 They have a bunch of people there.

00:16:33.900 And I don't actually know Carol Baskin.

00:16:35.600 And I've never met her.

00:16:36.340 That's for the entirety of my interaction with her.

00:16:38.620 And you can get them to, like, do birthday shoutouts or present gifts or whatever for people.

00:16:43.720 And I'm like, oh, you know, I wonder if I just, you know,

00:16:45.420 plug in some information about the Andrew Lawton show if I can get a plug.

00:16:48.160 And she did.

00:16:48.780 I'm glad she got my URL right because she got her own URL wrong. 0.94

00:16:52.520 But that is, you know, a PSA from your friendly neighborhood tiger tamer, Carol Baskin.

00:16:57.700 Thanks to all of you who got the joke on that and enjoyed that.

00:17:01.920 We were talking about masks earlier.

00:17:03.320 One scientist says people who refuse to wear masks should be stigmatized the same way as

00:17:09.640 drunk drivers.

00:17:11.680 This is from Venki Ramakrishnan in the Royal Society Science Journal, who says that drinking

00:17:20.080 and driving, the great taboo, something that would earn you a great scorn and shame, that

00:17:25.200 should be the reaction to people who don't wear a mask.

00:17:27.860 And this is what I mean about the level of shaming ratcheting up here to a degree that

00:17:33.440 we just haven't yet seen.

00:17:34.720 And, you know, the way things are going, I'd say it's probably going to be worse than drinking

00:17:37.840 and driving on its current trajectory.

00:17:40.300 But I hope I'm wrong about that.

00:17:42.400 And I hope it's fleeting.

00:17:43.560 But to go back to what I was saying about politicians, the longer politicians are prolonging the

00:17:50.100 emergency aspect or the emergency aspect, the more it's going to justify this sort of behavior

00:17:56.800 from people.

00:17:57.620 So that is where we're headed here, most certainly.

00:18:01.620 This is a story that I find interesting.

00:18:04.320 And I want to talk about it for a couple of moments here.

00:18:07.620 Never trust government ever.

00:18:10.180 Like government will overcomplicate absolutely everything.

00:18:13.000 In Gatineau, for example, youngsters in Gatineau, I'm reading directly from the Ottawa citizen

00:18:18.380 here.

00:18:19.140 Gatineau is, of course, in the national capital region, just across the Ottawa River.

00:18:23.940 Youngsters in Gatineau will be able to play more safely on their streets after city council

00:18:28.340 passed a motion to begin a year-long pilot project encouraging free play on 50 residential

00:18:35.120 streets and four blocks throughout Gatineau.

00:18:38.120 Signs will soon be posted on affected streets to alert motorists of the project, which aims

00:18:42.980 to promote an active lifestyle in a safe, accessible environment.

00:18:47.120 Gatineau is the largest city in Quebec to adopt the plan, but hardly the only one.

00:18:52.500 Okay, I want to just read this again very slowly.

00:18:57.920 A pilot project encouraging free play on 50 residential streets.

00:19:04.940 Did you know that your children needed the endorsement of government in an experimental

00:19:10.700 pilot project to play road hockey, to play out in the streets, to be children?

00:19:16.400 I didn't know this.

00:19:17.440 I thought this was kind of one of these God-given rites that you just had, this rite of passage

00:19:21.860 as a kid where you play road hockey, you yell out car, you move the net, everyone plays

00:19:27.400 by the same rules.

00:19:28.340 It's lots of fun.

00:19:29.480 I didn't realize that government needed to, in 2020, after roads have been around since

00:19:34.400 basically the beginning of time, to come up with a pilot project to allow kids to play

00:19:38.880 on roads, as though this is like a novel, progressive, and revolutionary concept.

00:19:45.480 Like, this is insane.

00:19:47.080 And you wonder why childhood obesity is so bad.

00:19:50.020 Yes, there's a cultural factor at play with, you know, parents that aren't getting their

00:19:54.020 kids outside.

00:19:54.760 But if we have bureaucracies and bureaucrats and by law enforcement officers that are actively

00:20:00.540 dismantling the mechanisms by which kids could play outside, so much so that it needs an

00:20:06.980 experimental project with signs and costs and reports and consultants to get them to

00:20:11.760 play outside, we are doing something sorely wrong as a society.

00:20:17.120 And you look at this case in British Columbia.

00:20:19.500 Now, I actually interviewed this father years ago, Adrian Crook is his name, a Vancouver dad

00:20:26.580 who took the government to court over whether his kids could legally take the bus on their

00:20:32.660 own, the city bus.

00:20:34.360 Bylaw went after him.

00:20:35.860 His kids are now 11, 8, 11, 10, and 8, and they needed to take a city bus, take public transit

00:20:42.780 to get to school.

00:20:43.580 And it was in 2017 when they were 10, 9, 8, 7, and 5.

00:20:49.780 So it had five children and they needed to take the kids.

00:20:53.820 And he was writing on his blog about having taught the kids to take the city bus.

00:20:58.240 And there were safety in numbers because there were five of them.

00:21:00.760 And then they had child protection get involved because they were riding the bus without supervision.

00:21:06.840 And the dad fought and then I interviewed him and I should find that old interview because

00:21:10.060 he was a fantastic advocate and he wasn't like an activist.

00:21:13.360 He was just a dad that knew his kids, that knew the community, that trusted the kids, and

00:21:18.100 also a dad that knew what a lot of parents today don't necessarily know, which is that

00:21:22.980 it's safer to be a child now on the streets going about doing your own thing than it was

00:21:28.900 30, 40, 50 years ago.

00:21:30.860 So this idea of stranger danger is a grossly overstated risk right now than historically.

00:21:37.800 So the people, I mean, a lot of boomers especially, of their generation, yeah, the problem existed, 1.00

00:21:42.980 but it doesn't as much now.

00:21:44.740 So this idea that, you know, it would be horrific to allow your kids on the city bus is just not

00:21:49.760 consistent with crime rates or anything else.

00:21:53.400 So Adrian Crook went public.

00:21:55.460 He was blogging about the issue, went to court, covered costs, and now he has won.

00:22:00.500 So this was at the BC Court of Appeal.

00:22:02.660 They found that the province overstepped its authority when they ordered him to supervise

00:22:07.340 his children.

00:22:08.340 Now, whether this is going to go up to the Supreme Court of Canada, I don't know.

00:22:13.380 It was the lower court that actually upheld the provinces.

00:22:17.100 So this comes after last year he lost at the lower court level in the Supreme Court of BC.

00:22:23.920 But I'm a big proponent of free-range kids.

00:22:26.720 Lenore Skenazy has done a lot of work on this.

00:22:28.840 It's basically letting kids be kids, letting kids be independent, and ultimately not coddling

00:22:34.300 them to the point that they aren't able to have any independence, which is why I say this

00:22:38.660 man doesn't deserve to be prosecuted.

00:22:40.980 He deserves a medal for doing something that a lot of parents are afraid of or don't know

00:22:45.980 they have a right to do.

00:22:47.860 And when you, you know, contrast this with the story out of Gatineau, where kids are not

00:22:52.060 even able to play in the street without the permission of government, apparently, I think

00:22:56.260 this is something that desperately needs to be moved in a different direction.

00:22:59.820 And it's all over the map.

00:23:01.400 It's not just about public transit here or road hockey here, but about what sort of play

00:23:06.700 is allowed at school, about, you know, roughhousing and the approach that a lot of people are

00:23:11.600 taking now, which seems to be coming back in the right direction.

00:23:15.640 Many people have read that New Zealand school who decided they were going to suspend all rules

00:23:21.960 at recess, basically.

00:23:23.560 And if you want a roughhouse, you can.

00:23:24.900 If you want to play, play fight, you can.

00:23:27.340 If you want to run around, get dirty, you can.

00:23:29.520 And they basically just said, hands up, we're going to just not get involved in a lot of

00:23:34.080 these things unless we have to.

00:23:35.980 And then there was that playground.

00:23:37.800 I think it was in Calgary.

00:23:39.040 It might have been Edmonton.

00:23:40.340 I'm going to, you're going to see it up on your screen and it's going to be correct 0.76

00:23:42.920 because the little secret of the show is that we do that afterwards.

00:23:45.720 I think it was Calgary though, where they did, it was like a junk playground, basically.

00:23:49.600 They took just random things, metal, tires, wood, things that, you know, aren't necessarily

00:23:55.240 kid-proof and they turned that into a playground, which admittedly looked like a trailer trash 1.00

00:24:01.460 front yard.

00:24:02.700 But at the same time, it also was just teaching kids to navigate risk themselves, to navigate

00:24:08.280 the risk in the world.

00:24:09.620 And on one hand, you know, it's funny that a lot of the people that are trying to say

00:24:14.780 that kids can handle complex things like gender identity and, you know, really advanced sexual

00:24:21.220 education from a young age are the same people that are saying a kid can't ride a city bus

00:24:26.060 or a kid can't, you know, play tag with a bit of force in the push without being protected

00:24:31.640 by adults.

00:24:32.240 And it's amazing how the two work against each other.

00:24:35.700 Either the kids are able to handle complex things and able to navigate the world themselves

00:24:40.500 or they can't.

00:24:41.460 And I think they definitely can.

00:24:43.140 And more importantly, I think we need to be encouraging that very actively.

00:24:47.560 We have to take a break.

00:24:48.800 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:24:53.720 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:24:59.160 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:01.540 You know, a lot of the time throughout the coronavirus pandemic, we've been so responsive to

00:25:06.260 the breaking news that we haven't really had a chance to take a step back and look at the

00:25:10.920 big picture and some of the major narratives that we've seen here.

00:25:14.760 Well, a new book does exactly that, looking at some of the domestic and global political

00:25:20.240 narratives that have emerged here and really painting a picture that I think is a very important

00:25:25.280 one.

00:25:25.940 The book must be on to something because there are certain people, including Amazon, that

00:25:29.660 initially didn't want you to be able to buy it.

00:25:31.660 That is China Virus, How Justin Trudeau's Pro-Communist Ideology is Putting Canadians

00:25:37.080 in Danger, written by our friend, Rebel Commander Ezra Levant, who joins us on the line now.

00:25:42.980 Ezra, thanks for coming on and congrats on the new book.

00:25:46.420 My pleasure.

00:25:47.460 You know, I was really scared for a bit there because we have published seven books with

00:25:54.360 Amazon before, both as e-books and print books, so 14 titles.

00:25:58.720 And we do really well with them and we do well for them.

00:26:01.280 And we went to upload this book in late April, like two months ago, and they said they rejected

00:26:07.400 it right away.

00:26:08.360 And we said, oh, maybe we entered some, because you do it electronically, maybe we made an error.

00:26:12.360 So we tried again.

00:26:13.400 They rejected it again.

00:26:14.740 We appealed.

00:26:15.680 They rejected it.

00:26:16.440 We had lawyers.

00:26:18.100 They rejected it.

00:26:19.000 And they said, they actually gave us, they finally gave us a reason.

00:26:21.860 They said because they only propagate, quote, official, unquote, information about the pandemic.

00:26:30.900 And they thought our book would contradict the United Nations.

00:26:34.840 And we said, look, we're not giving medical advice or anything.

00:26:37.160 We're not giving home remedies.

00:26:38.880 But they held the line.

00:26:41.340 And for two months, Amazon refused to upload the book.

00:26:45.440 They finally relented about a week ago.

00:26:47.840 And the book immediately shot up the bestsellers list.

00:26:50.560 It hit number one on Kindle.

00:26:52.720 It hit number two in the whole country for paperbacks.

00:26:56.500 So obviously people want the other side of the story.

00:26:58.440 I just find it terrifying that Amazon, which has so many books and we rely on for so many things, was literally running interference for the United Nations.

00:27:09.720 Not only, it wasn't even applying Canadian law.

00:27:12.760 Like if they were to say, Ezra, your book is defamatory or hate speech or whatever, okay, that's the real thing maybe. 0.55

00:27:19.020 But they were running errands for the UN.

00:27:21.360 And I think that's part of the problem here.

00:27:23.120 We criticize the UN and the World Health Organization.

00:27:26.080 And as you mentioned, my subtitle is Justin Trudeau's support for pro-communist ideas.

00:27:32.640 I mean, I'm not saying that Trudeau himself is a communist, but he sure seems to love them, whether it's Cuba or China.

00:27:40.260 And I think we're at real risk from China. 0.62

00:27:42.880 We don't have a lot of ties with Cuba.

00:27:44.420 People go there for a vacation.

00:27:46.240 But with China, we have tremendous political and economic and diplomatic ties.

00:27:50.980 I think that's the real China virus. 0.97

00:27:53.160 Thank God the pandemic is almost over.

00:27:55.680 If you look at the number of people dying, it hasn't been this low since March.

00:28:00.720 I really think the health threat has receded.

00:28:04.160 But it has exposed the political and economic and diplomatic and military and cybersecurity threats of China.

00:28:12.120 That's the China virus.

00:28:13.380 I wanted to ask you about the timing of this, because if this was something that you had initially submitted two months ago, do you think it was premature?

00:28:22.220 Do you think that we were able to see all of the political narratives unfold then that haven't really changed now?

00:28:28.500 Well, I mean, during those two months, I updated it.

00:28:32.480 And when they finally approved it, I mean, you can see there's things in the book that are as late as June.

00:28:39.020 And I went back and I updated some numbers and some things.

00:28:42.060 And there were there.

00:28:43.060 I mean, I wasn't just sitting around in those two months.

00:28:45.240 But listen, it was a little unclear for everyone in those first weeks how bad is the problem, how does the virus spread, are we all at risk?

00:28:57.300 We just simply didn't know a lot of things.

00:29:00.740 And it was risky to trust China, China, which, like the Soviet Union and Chernobyl, was more interested in covering up than exposing and asking for help. 0.96

00:29:12.980 Also, how China dealt with it, China's a brutal authoritarian regime.

00:29:17.360 The idea that they would simply, actually, in some cases, weld the doors shut to people in quarantine, like turn apartments into prisons.

00:29:26.180 That's how China rolls. 0.50

00:29:28.120 So we didn't really know a lot.

00:29:29.700 And here we are on the other end now.

00:29:31.520 And we know, for example, in all of Canada, there has only been a single person under the age of 20 who has died from this disease.

00:29:40.200 And that person had preexisting conditions, had terminal diseases anyway.

00:29:44.100 So this is not a disease that affects children.

00:29:47.680 The annual death toll from the flu and pneumonia is every year between 7,000 and 9,000 people in Canada.

00:29:54.880 That's what this virus death toll is.

00:29:57.760 We've learned a lot about it.

00:30:00.360 And so now some of the government overreactions seem even more absurd, like closing schools, when kids don't get sick from it.

00:30:07.040 Or if they get sick, it's very mild.

00:30:08.380 Thank God they all recover.

00:30:09.700 So we've learned a lot about closing borders.

00:30:14.340 The places in Canada that had the least virus outbreaks were the ones that were the least connected to global travel.

00:30:23.300 And one of the things we document in the book is how Trudeau actually never stopped flights from China.

00:30:29.220 They came every day during the peak of the crisis.

00:30:32.100 Over a million Chinese citizens have visas to come to Canada.

00:30:35.960 They were issuing new ones all the time.

00:30:37.840 And there were special exemptions for anyone who claimed to be a refugee, even if at Roxham Road, even if they said, even if they had a cough and a fever, they were specifically, by executive order of Trudeau, allowed to come in.

00:30:54.260 So there's a lot of strange things in there.

00:30:56.080 I'm sorry, I'm getting a little bit off target, but yes, we did learn things over the course of the last four months.

00:31:02.860 It's been, I think, 113 days today since Ontario went into a two-week emergency mode.

00:31:09.340 Remember that?

00:31:10.400 Two weeks to flatten the curve.

00:31:11.780 Well, we're on day 113 of that.

00:31:13.780 Well, it's funny you mention that because I remember when 9-11 happened and, you know, a lot of the left response to it afterwards.

00:31:23.140 There was that famous footage, I think Michael Moore had popularized it, of, you know, George Bush just sitting in the classroom doing nothing as the time passed from when he was notified.

00:31:34.060 And, you know, it's funny that, you know, Justin Trudeau sat on vacation for days and days and days and did nothing.

00:31:41.360 And there was very little criticism from the mainstream media in that.

00:31:45.460 And you actually had laid this out very early in the book, you know, even when Ontario public health officials had sort of alerted themselves and leapt into gear federally, there was no response whatsoever.

00:31:56.620 And what I find so interesting is that we've seen almost an inverse reaction from the federal government, where earlier on when a swift response was needed because we didn't know what we were dealing with, there was none.

00:32:09.620 And now that things have leveled out, now that things have become a bit more measured and we have more information, we have more data, the federal government is continuing to ramp up its response domestically.

00:32:20.580 Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, right now in the city of Toronto, for example, masks are mandatory in public places.

00:32:30.040 All right, well, where was that? Where was that in March and April?

00:32:33.240 You're correct to point out that when I remember that first case in Ontario, because it's not often that you have sort of a panicky press conference on a weekend by government officials.

00:32:47.120 They normally don't do that. So they were taking it seriously. The virus had arrived in Toronto.

00:32:53.160 A guy flew in from China, was sick on the plane. There was a manhunt for the other 30 people near him on the plane. It was really panicky.

00:33:00.020 The next day, all the newspapers were panicky. Trudeau was taking a personal day.

00:33:06.520 I went back and I added up how many days Trudeau was away from Canada since he became PM.

00:33:13.260 He loves to travel. He loves to take personal days. He takes long, long vacations.

00:33:18.340 He had a 17-day vacation in Costa Rica. What was the last time you had a 17-day vacation?

00:33:25.040 Then he got back to Canada. The virus broke. And a week and a half later, he left on another junket to Africa,

00:33:32.560 where he was going to hand out foreign aid to try and get a UN vote.

00:33:36.380 So in the period of time when the virus was arriving in Canada and starting to spread,

00:33:42.020 when the airport—and Trump, by the way, six days later, Trump restricted flights from China.

00:33:47.120 Trudeau waited six more weeks because he was busy flying around.

00:33:50.960 He didn't want to make any tough decisions. He wasn't engaged in the news.

00:33:55.660 Trudeau took more days off, more foreign trips, more vacations in the period of the virus arriving in Canada

00:34:03.480 than at any other time in his five and a half years as prime minister.

00:34:07.320 Yeah, he was still campaigning for that UN Security Council seat.

00:34:11.520 Yeah, and by the way, it was on that trip where he announced, on that campaign trip,

00:34:18.340 where he announced he was giving our personal protective equipment stockpile to China.

00:34:24.920 So he was thinking about the virus, but how can I give money to foreign countries?

00:34:30.940 How can I give Chinese-made protective gear back to China? 0.99

00:34:35.720 He wasn't thinking about Canada. And it's so, so strange.

00:34:39.300 And you know, there's one more thing. There's a lot of things I cover in the book,

00:34:41.920 and I hope we can talk about his ties to the Chinese Communist Party,

00:34:45.360 because that's actually what I mean by China virus.

00:34:47.680 But it's so odd how lackadaisical he is. He's been self-hiding, I call it, in Rideau Cottage.

00:34:56.580 He just, the other day, announced he's not going to meet Trump and the Mexican president.

00:35:00.700 They're having a face-to-face. Trudeau won't go. He just won't.

00:35:04.260 He's become a hermit, you know, a recluse.

00:35:07.480 Really, the only time he left is to do the Black Lives Matter take-a-knee on Parliament Hill.

00:35:12.200 He's the only world leader who's in hiding.

00:35:14.440 I mean, he has no medical risk. He hasn't been diagnosed with anything.

00:35:20.000 A few months ago, his wife had the virus, but that was months ago.

00:35:24.220 He doesn't even live with her anymore.

00:35:25.420 I think he's mentally checked out, and he's childish.

00:35:30.980 In the middle of this whole thing, when we're all in lockdown, he celebrates Earth Hour.

00:35:38.400 And he says, hey, everybody, turn off your lights and your power.

00:35:42.100 Yeah, we've been under house arrest, mate.

00:35:44.760 We've been living the Earth Hour lifestyle, shutting down the economy.

00:35:49.440 Like, he's a child in an age where we need men, and it's not changing. 0.94

00:35:56.420 And the media is so submissive.

00:35:59.200 I've never seen anything like it.

00:36:00.240 Do you think if Donald Trump just went back to Trump Tower in New York City

00:36:04.460 and ordered DoorDash all the time and came out once a day for some blah, blah, blah,

00:36:09.000 do you think the media in America would accept that?

00:36:11.240 If Boris Johnson just went to his country home and just hid out for 113 days,

00:36:19.900 do you think the Fleet Street tabloids would be fine with that?

00:36:23.360 It's insane.

00:36:25.340 And it's a combination of a lazy, disinterested prime minister

00:36:28.560 who has deep ties to China and the Chinese Communist Party,

00:36:34.040 and that's a recipe for disaster, not just a health disaster,

00:36:37.680 but an economic and political and diplomatic and security disaster.

00:36:42.860 Let's turn to that ideological component there,

00:36:45.920 because the government's position on China,

00:36:48.760 which you articulate very well in the book,

00:36:50.660 and I know you've been covering it as we have here at True North

00:36:53.140 along the course of this pandemic,

00:36:55.840 has been very dangerous from Patti Haidu to Francois-Philippe Champagne

00:36:59.840 to Justin Trudeau himself.

00:37:01.640 And when it comes to Canada's relationship with China,

00:37:04.300 which has really been, I think, one of the most revealing

00:37:07.460 and illuminating things throughout this pandemic,

00:37:10.580 I would say, in a lot of cases, I would put it as weakness.

00:37:15.640 Now, you're saying there's an underlying ideological support for China there

00:37:20.160 that's not just a weakness or limp-wristed approach to foreign policy,

00:37:24.940 but a specific China issue.

00:37:27.400 I think so, and I start by talking about Justin Trudeau's dad, Pierre Trudeau.

00:37:32.920 And remember, Pierre Trudeau, there was no tyrant he didn't love.

00:37:37.080 He went to Cuba and canoed with Castro.

00:37:40.300 He visited Castro repeatedly.

00:37:42.380 He went to the Soviet Union and said,

00:37:46.560 Soviet Siberia was the land of the future. 0.91

00:37:49.200 Like, seriously.

00:37:49.800 Pierre Trudeau went to China even before he was prime minister

00:37:55.720 to celebrate Mao's revolution.

00:38:00.640 So Pierre Trudeau was very pro-communist, not just pro-China.

00:38:05.660 Anyone can love China, the people, the culture, the history, the art,

00:38:10.880 the architecture, the food, even the language is fascinating.

00:38:14.680 There's so many wonderful things about China.

00:38:16.680 It's like a world unto itself.

00:38:18.520 I understand how someone could admire China.

00:38:21.340 But remember when he was asked that day at that liberal fundraiser,

00:38:24.440 what country do you admire most?

00:38:26.500 He said China, but he didn't say all the things I just listed

00:38:30.140 that are wonderful about China.

00:38:32.480 He said the most odious thing about it, which is, quote,

00:38:35.640 it's basic dictatorship.

00:38:38.600 And so he's had that in him.

00:38:40.240 And in the book, I quote his brother, Alexandra,

00:38:43.640 otherwise known as Sasha Trudeau.

00:38:46.060 So his brother, Sasha, who was his foreign policy advisor

00:38:50.380 during his leadership campaign, I should remind you.

00:38:53.100 So he's not just a brother, he's a policy advisor,

00:38:56.320 who, by the way, did propaganda films for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

00:39:03.220 So again, his brother, there's no tyrant his brother didn't love.

00:39:06.640 His brother wrote an insane obituary for Fidel Castro and the Toronto Star.

00:39:10.540 It was creepy.

00:39:11.600 Well, then there's Trudeau's own, you know,

00:39:13.640 laudatory statement of Fidel Castro.

00:39:16.060 Oh, yeah.

00:39:16.820 But let me tell you one quick thing about Sasha Trudeau.

00:39:19.700 So he was writing a little preface to a book or something about China.

00:39:28.320 And then he said, and he said this in an interview.

00:39:31.120 He said, well, it just grew into a chapter and then it grew into a book.

00:39:34.520 And he had this book about China called Barbarians or the New Barbarians.

00:39:42.960 He was saying that Westerners are the barbarians.

00:39:47.040 China is the civilized society.

00:39:50.480 And he published this book.

00:39:53.520 Any publisher in the world would publish a book by a Trudeau

00:39:56.340 for vanity reasons, for sales reasons.

00:40:00.000 Any Canadian publisher would publish it in a second.

00:40:03.320 But he deliberately chose to have his book about China

00:40:06.920 published by the Chinese government, the Chinese dictatorship.

00:40:12.100 And it's obvious why.

00:40:15.880 He loves working with dictatorships like he did with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

00:40:20.660 He is a pro-China propagandist.

00:40:23.140 The whole book was an apology for Communist China.

00:40:25.920 And he specifically said he gave this book to his brother Justin

00:40:29.420 right before Justin Trudeau went to China on the first visit.

00:40:34.320 And obviously it's solidifying the Trudeau family view

00:40:38.620 that China and its dictatorship is noble.

00:40:42.400 In fact, in some ways more noble than we are.

00:40:46.460 So it's pervasive in his family and in his senior staff.

00:40:51.760 In my book, I argue that Peter Harder,

00:40:55.400 who was the head of a major China lobby group in Canada,

00:40:59.500 he was put in the Senate by Trudeau.

00:41:01.780 But more important than that,

00:41:03.300 he was in charge of the transition from Stephen Harper

00:41:06.380 to the Trudeau government after Trudeau won in 2015.

00:41:10.540 Harder was in charge of the transition team,

00:41:13.220 which means he was really the boss for hiring

00:41:16.220 hundreds and hundreds of appointees.

00:41:19.680 So you could say it was the most important job

00:41:22.440 because other than choosing the cabinet,

00:41:25.820 you're choosing every single official,

00:41:27.680 every top official.

00:41:30.020 So he put in pro-China activists,

00:41:33.560 salted throughout the entire government.

00:41:36.520 And it's just assumed that if you are a Trudeau liberal,

00:41:42.020 of course you're pro-China.

00:41:43.940 And the Chinese government knows this.

00:41:46.880 Like John McCallum took $73,000 worth of free gifts

00:41:51.400 from the government of China.

00:41:52.980 He disclosed them to the ethics commissioner.

00:41:55.200 I'm not saying they were illegal,

00:41:57.560 but why would China give $73,000 worth of gifts to someone

00:42:01.820 unless they thought that guy's an asset?

00:42:03.880 Well, yeah, and McCallum's downfall

00:42:05.200 was I think being too open about his view of China.

00:42:08.680 Yeah, and Huawei,

00:42:10.600 the massive tech company,

00:42:13.220 a rival to Google,

00:42:16.220 a security threat,

00:42:17.200 wants to build 5G networks in Canada.

00:42:20.720 They're not allowed under Canadian law

00:42:22.860 to donate to the Liberal Party,

00:42:24.240 so they just back up the Brinks truck

00:42:26.460 and dump money into Canada 2020,

00:42:29.720 which is Trudeau's sort of in-house think tank

00:42:32.640 affiliated with the Liberal Party

00:42:34.120 run by Trudeau's lifelong friend.

00:42:36.040 So there's so much cash being dumped on Trudeau

00:42:40.160 by the Chinese communists.

00:42:43.360 They're pragmatic people.

00:42:45.300 Why would they do that?

00:42:46.260 They're doing that because they have,

00:42:48.640 to use the phrase,

00:42:49.980 a Manchurian candidate.

00:42:51.120 They have someone who,

00:42:53.100 like even today,

00:42:54.840 front page,

00:42:55.420 big screaming headlines

00:42:57.000 in the Toronto Star,

00:42:58.600 China is threatening retaliation against us,

00:43:01.120 and Trudeau's just fine with it.

00:43:04.960 Yeah, and you know what?

00:43:06.180 For all of the Canadian mainstream media

00:43:08.140 was carrying U.S. congressional hearings live

00:43:11.260 and talking about Trump and Russia,

00:43:13.000 Trump and Russia,

00:43:13.640 Trump and Russia,

00:43:14.260 there's very little coverage

00:43:16.140 of the mainstream Canadian media

00:43:17.920 when it comes to Trudeau and China.

00:43:20.000 So I think it's an important book,

00:43:21.660 China Virus,

00:43:22.380 How Justin Trudeau's Pro-Communist Ideology

00:43:24.640 is Putting Canadians in Danger. 0.85

00:43:26.900 Author Ezra Levant of The Rebel

00:43:28.280 joining us now.

00:43:29.580 Ezra, where can people pick up a copy?

00:43:32.240 Well, thank you for asking.

00:43:33.580 You can get it on Amazon,

00:43:35.080 or we have a little website

00:43:36.260 called ChinaVirusBook.com

00:43:39.520 with the Amazon links there.

00:43:41.400 Pretty easy to find.

00:43:42.280 It's on the bestseller list,

00:43:43.240 I'm pleased to say,

00:43:44.300 which tells me people want to hear

00:43:45.700 the other side of the story.

00:43:46.960 They want to hear these other things,

00:43:48.240 and I'm grateful to you

00:43:49.180 for giving me a bit of a platform

00:43:50.800 that Amazon denied me for two months.

00:43:52.500 And you've got a five-star rating

00:43:53.800 on Amazon already,

00:43:54.820 so let's hope we can keep you

00:43:56.040 on that bestseller list.

00:43:57.320 Ezra, always a pleasure.

00:43:58.260 Thanks for coming on.

00:43:59.640 Thanks, my friend.

00:44:00.260 Bye-bye.

00:44:02.660 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:05.240 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:12.540 That was a great interview.

00:44:13.680 Glad you were able to tune into that.

00:44:15.760 Just before we wrap things up,

00:44:17.140 I have a couple of odds and ends,

00:44:18.480 things that didn't really fit into the show,

00:44:20.260 but things that I had to inject in in some way.

00:44:23.620 So we just kind of just shove them all to the end

00:44:25.560 and do a little bit of a rapid fire here. 0.92

00:44:27.820 So a couple of weeks ago,

00:44:29.280 I spoke about J.K. Rowling

00:44:30.880 and her battle against the trans radical activists,

00:44:34.400 and she has not just not backed down.

00:44:38.260 She has doubled down, tripled down, quadrupled down. 0.96

00:44:41.980 She's heptupled down. 1.00

00:44:43.500 She's done all of these things,

00:44:45.080 and you know what?

00:44:45.680 She continues to go,

00:44:46.900 and J.K. Rowling had a fantastic tweet

00:44:48.840 when someone else was reminding everyone

00:44:53.000 about all of this cancel culture stuff

00:44:55.340 being reminiscent of the McCarthy era.

00:44:57.820 And J.K. Rowling tweeted,

00:44:59.780 Indeed, and to quote the inimitable Lillian Hellman,

00:45:02.980 I cannot and will not cut my conscience

00:45:05.680 to fit this year's fashions.

00:45:08.080 Now, what's interesting here is that J.K. Rowling

00:45:10.420 still continues to be maligned and slandered online.

00:45:14.380 People are calling her every name under the book.

00:45:17.360 And in this case, I think she was, you know,

00:45:20.300 really retweeting someone who is themselves

00:45:23.560 a trans activist that has supported J.K. Rowling.

00:45:28.440 But the one thing that was interesting

00:45:30.300 is that J.K. Rowling has really just resisted it entirely

00:45:35.560 and has come out stronger on the other side.

00:45:38.620 Because despite the fact that everyone

00:45:40.600 in the predictable chorus says she's hateful 0.94

00:45:43.280 and a bigot and all of that stuff,

00:45:44.620 which is just plain wrong,

00:45:45.820 her support has grown the longer she has held to her guns.

00:45:51.280 And I think that is a very important message here

00:45:54.340 in pushing back against the cancel mob.

00:45:57.380 This is a fun one.

00:45:58.720 Sherry DeNovo, who is a former member

00:46:00.980 of provincial parliament in Ontario,

00:46:03.500 has retweeted someone who does not appear

00:46:07.720 to be a fan of that Victims of Communism Monument.

00:46:12.940 And she seemed to be supportive

00:46:14.340 of the monument being defaced,

00:46:16.860 as we talked about on Monday.

00:46:18.060 That is Nora Lurito. 0.65

00:46:19.680 She needs no introduction.

00:46:21.360 Her tweets are quite legendary

00:46:22.740 because she's just an unabashed Marxist, 1.00

00:46:25.180 which is fine.

00:46:25.900 You know, the world needs a couple of those

00:46:27.180 every now and then,

00:46:27.920 just if nothing else to remind us how crazy they are.

00:46:30.880 And Sherry DeNovo has asked,

00:46:33.040 how can there be victims of a system

00:46:34.980 that's never existed?

00:46:36.720 So, as my friend David Clement pointed out,

00:46:39.660 ah, the old, that wasn't real communism trick.

00:46:42.080 That's where we are right now, eh?

00:46:43.940 So, it's good to know that the NDP

00:46:45.480 is quite unabashedly,

00:46:47.540 not that she's a representative now,

00:46:48.940 but was a long-time representative of the NDP,

00:46:52.120 is like, ah, you know,

00:46:53.080 we can't say communism had victims

00:46:54.580 because, you know,

00:46:55.980 real communism has never been tried.

00:46:58.940 And if you want to talk about a real tweet

00:47:02.120 that sums up 2020,

00:47:04.640 this one from The Independent,

00:47:06.060 what the white supremacist roots

00:47:08.840 of biological sex reveal

00:47:10.860 about transphobic feminism.

00:47:13.520 And if you can figure out what that means,

00:47:15.660 well, please do let me know

00:47:17.760 because I sure as heck can't.

00:47:18.980 But basically,

00:47:20.180 what I can glean from this,

00:47:21.980 and the column's not much better,

00:47:24.000 is that transphobic feminism, 0.99

00:47:26.560 so TERFs, 0.70

00:47:27.460 trans-exclusionary radical feminists,

00:47:29.720 are heralding something

00:47:31.900 that is white supremacist,

00:47:33.420 because when you talk about biological sex,

00:47:35.560 that actually stems back

00:47:36.960 to Britain's colonial past.

00:47:38.620 So, all roads lead to colonialism,

00:47:40.820 which unfortunately is getting hit

00:47:42.800 by someone from within the family

00:47:45.260 that was behind most of the colonization.

00:47:48.260 Harry, the Duke of Sussex,

00:47:50.220 and his bride, Megan,

00:47:51.980 the Duchess of Sussex,

00:47:53.280 did an interview speaking

00:47:54.440 about the problematic aspects

00:47:56.760 of the Commonwealth's history.

00:47:58.620 Let's take a look at this clip.

00:47:59.940 Certainly, when you look across

00:48:00.860 the Commonwealth,

00:48:01.600 there's no way that we can move forward

00:48:04.180 unless we acknowledge the past.

00:48:06.720 And I think so many people

00:48:08.020 have done such an amazing,

00:48:09.660 incredible job

00:48:10.300 of acknowledging the past

00:48:11.560 and trying to right those wrongs,

00:48:13.600 that I think we all acknowledge on here

00:48:15.100 that there is so much more still to do.

00:48:17.420 It's not going to be easy,

00:48:18.500 and in some cases,

00:48:19.160 it's not going to be comfortable,

00:48:20.400 but it needs to be done

00:48:21.520 because guess what?

00:48:22.720 Everybody benefits.

00:48:24.380 So, I think there's a hell of a lot

00:48:26.180 that we together need to acknowledge,

00:48:29.080 but I only see hope and optimism

00:48:31.940 in the fact that we could only do this together.

00:48:34.900 We have to, in this moment in time,

00:48:36.540 say, we're going to have to be

00:48:37.920 a little uncomfortable right now

00:48:39.280 because it's only in pushing

00:48:40.660 through that discomfort

00:48:41.580 that we get to the other side of this

00:48:43.200 and find the place,

00:48:44.960 as you're pointing out,

00:48:45.800 where a high tide raises all ships.

00:48:49.140 Equality does not put anyone on the back foot.

00:48:51.760 It puts us all on the same footing,

00:48:53.480 which is a fundamental human right,

00:48:55.560 and that's what we're talking about here.

00:48:57.220 Yes, Harry and Meghan

00:48:58.340 in a Commonwealth Trust interview

00:49:01.160 talking about how the Commonwealth

00:49:03.200 has rights,

00:49:04.860 has wrongs that it must right,

00:49:06.960 and I just think what a disgrace

00:49:08.560 that couple has become

00:49:10.000 despite being so full of promise initially

00:49:12.320 to the royal family.

00:49:13.840 They have upended tradition,

00:49:15.300 they've upended stability,

00:49:16.520 and they've upended an institution

00:49:18.200 that has managed to stay above politics

00:49:20.340 for virtually the entirety

00:49:22.340 of its modern existence,

00:49:23.780 and both the two of them

00:49:24.840 are just disgraceful right now.

00:49:27.460 And lastly, this is an interesting one,

00:49:29.860 Scrabble has decided to go woke as well,

00:49:32.280 taking out of tournaments slurs.

00:49:34.520 Now, I didn't realize this.

00:49:35.540 The N word has been a valid Scrabble word 1.00

00:49:38.560 in tournaments,

00:49:39.340 not in the one you get from Hasbro,

00:49:40.900 but in tournament play.

00:49:42.340 So what's had to happen now

00:49:43.760 is people have gone

00:49:46.040 and removed some of these

00:49:47.940 from the players' tournament

00:49:49.560 so that they're not traumatizing

00:49:52.180 and victimizing people

00:49:53.720 by, you know,

00:49:54.420 playing down a word

00:49:55.480 that's actually a racial slur.

00:49:57.620 Evidently, there were 226 offensive terms,

00:50:01.800 including the almighty N word

00:50:03.640 that were on the books here.

00:50:05.740 Now, what I found interesting

00:50:06.820 in this New York Times story

00:50:08.180 was a black Scrabble player

00:50:10.580 who was very resistant of this.

00:50:13.340 And interestingly,

00:50:14.740 Scrabble is the one place

00:50:16.420 where words don't have meaning.

00:50:18.480 We say that words have meaning

00:50:19.700 and Scrabble, a word,

00:50:21.120 is entirely valued

00:50:22.320 based on how many points it gives you.

00:50:24.620 So if you were to play,

00:50:26.100 to be honest,

00:50:27.180 bleep me out here, please,

00:50:29.020 but sh** head is a valuable Scrabble word

00:50:31.280 and is one that I played once

00:50:33.340 just out of a sheer novelty

00:50:34.460 and it gave me,

00:50:35.400 I think it was like over 100 points

00:50:36.700 because I would have gotten

00:50:38.000 the seven point,

00:50:39.000 the seven tile bonus.

00:50:40.720 I would have had double

00:50:41.900 or triple words somewhere there.

00:50:43.980 But there's one player here,

00:50:47.380 Noah Livermore,

00:50:49.220 who's a black player from Florida

00:50:50.800 and he says,

00:50:51.480 if I'm going to lose the game

00:50:52.720 playing a different word,

00:50:53.900 then I'm going to use that word.

00:50:55.540 I need to score points

00:50:56.620 and on that board,

00:50:58.120 they don't have any meaning.

00:50:59.500 So he's saying

00:51:00.380 that it's a numbers game

00:51:01.480 disguised as a words game.

00:51:03.260 He doesn't even flinch

00:51:04.440 when people have used a slur.

00:51:05.780 He says he wants to use

00:51:07.060 an obscenity against a woman.

00:51:08.760 He apologized,

00:51:09.660 but he said he needed the points.

00:51:11.020 That's the attitude here.

00:51:12.140 So now you've done something

00:51:13.260 that is there to probably appease

00:51:15.060 one or two loud people

00:51:16.280 and in the end

00:51:17.500 has absolutely done nothing

00:51:19.060 to combat racism.

00:51:20.820 But again,

00:51:21.600 it's 2020.

00:51:22.520 It's not what you've done,

00:51:23.720 it's how it looks.

00:51:24.800 And if that doesn't sum up the year,

00:51:26.860 I don't know what does.

00:51:28.060 We've got to wrap things up.

00:51:29.200 My thanks to all of you

00:51:30.200 for tuning in to the show.

00:51:31.980 We'll be back next week

00:51:33.160 with more of Canada's

00:51:34.480 Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:51:36.240 Thank you,

00:51:36.860 God bless,

00:51:37.440 and good day to you all.

00:51:38.800 Thanks for listening

00:51:39.520 to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:51:40.940 Support the program

00:51:41.760 by donating to True North

00:51:43.000 at www.tnc.news.

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Juno News - July 08, 2020

The Art of Mask-Shaming

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