Juno News - The convoy is making a difference, even if politicians don't want to admit it

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:04.480 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.200 And welcome to a momentous occasion.

00:00:15.480 This is a first, the very first live edition of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:21.660 It is good to have you here.

00:00:23.120 I started the show right away because I got tired of the same, like, two seconds of that show music

00:00:29.500 just looping over and over again. And I figure if I am the guy that chose the song and I can't

00:00:34.300 withstand it for more than 30 seconds, surely you all can't do it either. So great to have you

00:00:39.740 tuned in to the program here. We're doing things a little bit differently. There are two reasons

00:00:44.260 for this. Number one, my background is in talk radio. So I love the idea of live. I love the

00:00:49.600 idea of live content, of engaging with the audience. And I've kind of missed it doing

00:00:53.960 the podcast form of the show on True North. The other reason I'm doing it live is that the last

00:01:00.160 two shows have just been so painfully annoying. I will record, I'll prep, I'll pour my heart and

00:01:05.560 soul into the show. We've got a great team that edits it. You can see the way I look live. I need

00:01:10.640 a lot of editing and airbrushing to get to the point where I look like someone people want to

00:01:14.360 watch for an hour. And then we're just getting ready to hit publish. We're just getting ready

00:01:18.940 to go. And some breaking news story will come that completely changes everything I was talking

00:01:25.240 about. This happened a couple of times in a row. And finally, I said, you know what, I'm going to

00:01:29.320 do the old Bill O'Reilly thing. If you ever saw that great moment, the candid moment on Inside

00:01:34.820 Edition back in the day when Bill O'Reilly just, you know, screams and drops an F-bomb and says,

00:01:39.500 we'll do it live. So that was me with our production team here at True North. I said,

00:01:43.340 F this. We're doing it live. And here we are on, what day is it? Wednesday, February 9th, 2022.

00:01:50.920 Thank you to all of you who are tuning in on Facebook, on YouTube. We had Candace working

00:01:56.680 up a fire to do a smoke signal edition. I don't know. If you look over the Ottawa skyline, you

00:02:01.800 just might see it there. That'll be a great one here. But ultimately, we're going to be doing a

00:02:06.360 lot of things differently here. I'm going to be talking about the convoy. I'm going to be talking

00:02:10.120 a little bit about the conservative leadership race.

00:02:12.780 And because it's live, I want to take your questions.

00:02:15.780 If you see my eyes darting around here,

00:02:18.080 it's because I want to see the questions

00:02:19.380 that you are sharing with me in the Facebook comments

00:02:23.040 and the YouTube comments.

00:02:25.260 And Carrier Pigeon, I don't know if we're set up for that.

00:02:28.440 I think that's in next week's show.

00:02:30.520 But let me know because I want to hear from you

00:02:32.580 and we'll try to address some of these things.

00:02:34.200 I did last night, I think it was, a great chat with Aaron Gunn.

00:02:38.300 And he is the former B.C. Liberal leadership candidate who is summarily defenestrated by the B.C. Liberals because he said that Canada wasn't a racist country.

00:02:48.420 So apparently he was a racist or something like that. I don't make the rules.

00:02:52.060 And he had invited me to come in and chat with some of his supporters.

00:02:55.820 And we had a great time. A lot of people there were asking about the convoy.

00:03:00.080 So that's exactly what I think we're going to keep talking about here.

00:03:02.980 But I want to talk about some of the greatest hits, because I mentioned on the show last week and two weeks ago that the convoy, when it was en route to Ottawa, made me feel more encouraged and more optimistic than I had felt in quite some time, and still than I felt in nearly two years in Canada, as I've been talking about all of the dwindling freedoms, the government's encroachment on civil liberties, and an increasing reluctance among Canadians to do anything about it.

00:03:31.740 Canadians were in a lot of cases just going along with it. So I was getting very annoyed by this and

00:03:38.880 feeling very pessimistic, feeling very cynical. It was certainly seeping into my show. And then

00:03:43.520 the convoy came, then the truckers came, and then hundreds of them hit the road, thousands of them.

00:03:48.980 Now we have hundreds of thousands, millions of people around the world that have been talking

00:03:53.820 about freedom just because of the convoy. And if you look at some of the footage, it's tremendous.

00:03:59.220 Convoys in places like Canberra, Australia, in Wellington, New Zealand, in London, England,

00:04:05.560 places that have been hit by the lockdown police in many ways worse than in Canada.

00:04:12.820 Worse than in Canada.

00:04:14.240 And these people are finally saying they've had enough.

00:04:17.280 And who is it that they can thank but Canadian truckers who got together,

00:04:21.040 they got in their cabs, they hit the road to Ottawa, and they never looked back.

00:04:24.920 For a lot of them still have not looked back.

00:04:28.560 So we're going to talk about a lot of this.

00:04:30.820 And specifically, though, the convoy effect, because in the time that the convoy has been

00:04:34.540 to Ottawa, the Conservatives have gotten rid of their leader.

00:04:39.360 Quebec has abandoned its tax on the unvaccinated and has said that it's going to be rolling

00:04:43.720 back its restrictions.

00:04:45.420 Saskatchewan has said it's going to be rolling back all of its restrictions.

00:04:49.200 Alberta, just last night, got rid of the vaccine passport.

00:04:53.820 And this is all, well, you can hear the faint honks of liberty, depending on where you 0.59

00:04:58.080 are in the country. You listen really closely. You can hear the honk honk in the background.

00:05:01.680 If you spend too much time in Ottawa, you might not be able to hear anything at all.

00:05:06.100 But that's all part of the fun of this protest movement. But the reason I bring all of this up

00:05:11.520 is to say that all of these politicians that are rolling back these measures,

00:05:15.580 they're saying the convoy had nothing to do with it. That's their position, that the convoy had

00:05:21.880 nothing to do with it. The convoy, what convoy? Alberta Premier Jason Kenney last night was asked

00:05:28.060 this question and he said something about, oh, you know, just a few trucks at the Coutts border

00:05:32.040 crossing. Well, it's not a few trucks and it's not just the Coutts border crossing. It is quite

00:05:38.400 significant and it is very much there that the public appetite for lockdown, which was pretty

00:05:45.340 strong admittedly for quite a while, has now eroded. And the public has had enough. And one

00:05:52.140 of the reasons the public has had enough is because the trucker convoy mainstreamed opposition to

00:05:57.460 lockdowns. So when Trudeau got up there a couple of weeks ago and said, this is the fringe minority

00:06:02.920 with unacceptable values or unacceptable views, what he was doing is wedging himself in a way.

00:06:09.780 Because up until that point, he was kind of in the majority there. A lot of Canadians believed that.

00:06:16.120 Remember, it was Doug Ford back earlier on in the pandemic who said anyone criticizing

00:06:20.180 lockdowns fits into this category of being just a bunch of yahoos.

00:06:24.920 so that was i think the prevailing sentiment certainly if you read the mainstream media

00:06:30.360 discourse the mainstream political discourse so that's an important point here but what the

00:06:34.980 truckers did is they mainstreamed it as i talked about when i was in ottawa you had just profoundly

00:06:40.300 normal people profoundly normal people that were going to support the truckers that were standing

00:06:47.820 on the overpasses that were doing a lot of very significant things a lot of very significant

00:06:54.160 things. And in doing so, proving that they were prepared to take a stand when they hadn't ever

00:07:00.780 previously. So that's something that I think we need to very much keep an eye out for, how the

00:07:06.280 truckers have mainstreamed a position that was previously held up as fringe and that Justin

00:07:11.560 Trudeau certainly still thinks is fringe. And in doing so, prove that he just is not on side with

00:07:18.440 Canadians, lest anyone had needed proof of that. Now, I'm getting a lot of comments here from

00:07:22.920 people saying, well, my vaccine passports aren't being lifted. This mandate's not being lifted.

00:07:26.980 I'm not saying it's all gone. I'm not saying the fight is over. I'm just talking about the

00:07:30.840 significant changes we have seen, the significant changes we have seen in the last little while.

00:07:37.900 And I want to read a couple of your comments and I will get to them, I promise. But I want to play

00:07:42.160 some clips here first, because when we talk about some of the changes, I want you to understand

00:07:48.980 exactly what I'm talking about here.

00:07:50.900 This is a clip from Joël Lightbound,

00:07:53.320 who's a Liberal member of Parliament,

00:07:54.960 not a Cabinet Minister by any stretch,

00:07:56.820 but he's a Liberal MP that has a fair bit of clout

00:07:59.580 and I think was up until yesterday

00:08:01.400 the chair of the Quebec Liberal Caucus.

00:08:04.720 Now, of course, he stepped down from that.

00:08:06.980 But as you may have seen by now,

00:08:08.380 Monsieur Lightbound took a stand

00:08:10.020 and not only said that vaccine mandates

00:08:12.380 and coercive measures that are being put forward

00:08:15.140 under the guise of public health are wrong,

00:08:16.920 but he specifically took aim at Trudeau's vilification of the unvaccinated and his

00:08:23.140 vilification of people protesting vaccine mandates. Take a look at this clip.

00:08:30.660 At last, I think it's time to stop dividing Canadians, to stop pitting one part of the

00:08:36.860 population against another. I can't help but notice with regret that both the tone and the

00:08:42.980 policies of my government changed drastically on the eve and during the last election campaign

00:08:49.140 from a positive and unifying approach a decision was made to wedge to divide and to stigmatize

00:08:57.080 i fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public's trust in our public

00:09:05.060 health institutions this is not a risk we ought to be taking lightly and this last year canada

00:09:12.300 has reached one of the highest levels of vaccination in the world it is something we

00:09:17.020 should be proud of it is something we should be celebrating yet here we are more divided than ever

00:09:24.140 it's time to stop with the division and the distractions it's time to choose positive

00:09:29.580 not coercive methods it's time to unite and finally though i am alone voicing these concerns

00:09:37.820 publicly today, I can tell you that I'm not the only one who feels to varying degrees as I do

00:09:44.720 within our ranks. I remain hopeful that this call for more humanism, for more reason,

00:09:51.720 and for more hope will be heard. I want to thank you all for your attention.

00:09:59.560 That was Joël Lightbound, Liberal MP from Quebec. And I want to mention something here about

00:10:06.260 members of parliament, because a lot of people I don't think have realized this or think about it

00:10:10.840 consciously. They have three constituencies. They have three constituencies, three things,

00:10:17.340 three entities they must make happy. One is their party and leader. One is their personal moral

00:10:23.320 compass and their personal principles. The other is the people that voted them in, their actual

00:10:28.100 constituents. And you can't be a servant to two masters. You certainly can't be a servant to

00:10:33.860 three masters. Every now and then you have to hope that all three are in alignment, that you believe

00:10:37.900 in what your party's doing, that your constituents believe in that. But when one of those three

00:10:42.180 starts to deviate, and Mr. Lightbound is a great example of this, when his personal moral compass

00:10:48.100 and presumably what he's hearing from his constituents is so vastly different from

00:10:53.260 what the liberals are trying to peddle, you get two choices. Do you save your political career

00:10:58.880 or do you stand up for your constituents?

00:11:02.620 And just take a look in Ontario

00:11:03.920 at how many members of provincial parliament

00:11:05.840 have thrown away their political careers

00:11:08.280 because of what they want to stand up for.

00:11:11.600 Belinda Karahalios, again, 1.00

00:11:13.320 could have continued to be reelected as a PCMPP. 1.00

00:11:16.220 She's gonna have a much harder time now 1.00

00:11:18.060 with the upstart new blue party,

00:11:19.840 but she had to take a stand.

00:11:21.260 It got her kicked out of caucus.

00:11:22.820 Roman Babber, same thing, kicked out of caucus.

00:11:25.640 Randy Hillier was kicked out a while ago,

00:11:27.700 but even so did it because he stood up on principle. Rick Nichols wouldn't take the

00:11:32.100 vaccine, kicked out of the PC caucus. Christina Midas, now this is Ontario where the PC party has

00:11:37.860 had a, basically a loyalty pledge it needs from its MPPs in order for them to stay as conservatives.

00:11:45.720 But the reality is all of these people look to their principles and said, I'm not prepared to

00:11:50.360 compromise those for the good of my party. And that's, I think what Mr. Lightbound did as well.

00:11:56.300 I imagine it was tremendously courageous.

00:11:58.360 I don't know if he'll be able to stand

00:11:59.920 as the liberal candidate in the next election.

00:12:03.080 I certainly hope he does

00:12:04.260 because I think that all political parties

00:12:06.400 need people who are prepared to stand up for liberty,

00:12:09.460 prepared to stand up for what they believe

00:12:11.580 and for what their constituents believe.

00:12:14.580 And remember that Quebecers have been absolutely

00:12:16.660 pushed to the brink by all of this.

00:12:18.880 But then Trudeau responds

00:12:20.940 in the most condescending, patronizing way possible.

00:12:24.200 This is how Justin Trudeau responded to Joelle Lightbound's statement yesterday on COVID restrictions.

00:12:33.560 One of the things we all understand is just how frustrated everyone is.

00:12:38.980 We're all frustrated. We're all sick and tired of restrictions, of mandates, of having to make sacrifices, of not being able to do the things we love.

00:12:48.800 It's been two years and it's really, really tiring for all of us.

00:12:54.960 This government has been focused every step of the way on following the best science,

00:13:00.480 following the best public health advice to keep as many people safe as possible.

00:13:04.720 And quite frankly, it's worked.

00:13:06.480 We've seen the curves lower in Canada than elsewhere.

00:13:10.300 We've seen lower death rates.

00:13:11.300 We've seen quicker economic recovery because Canadians stepped up, because Canadians got

00:13:17.280 vaccinated.

00:13:18.560 And I can understand frustrations with mandates, but mandates are the way to avoid further restrictions

00:13:25.440 or having to be restricted.

00:13:26.780 As people get vaccinated, as Canadians have gotten vaccinated, we've been able to get

00:13:30.940 through things.

00:13:31.940 And this team is going to stay focused on doing exactly that.

00:13:48.560 Sorry about that. We went for a very dramatic pause at the end of that video for reasons that

00:14:02.700 I'm still not clear of. But in any case, the point of this is that what we are seeing here

00:14:08.580 is that Trudeau is doing the whole fringe minority shtick with the liberal MP. He's doing the fringe

00:14:17.040 minority shtick with his own thing, which is, oh yeah, well, I can understand him being frustrated

00:14:21.360 and yeah, that's just people just lashing out. That's what he does. Refuses to take accountability

00:14:26.300 for his policies and his government's policies. And in doing so, he sets the tone for the entire

00:14:32.480 country. And this is something that is so dangerous in the Canadian political climate.

00:14:39.240 And this is why for all the people that were looking at the convoy and saying, well, why are

00:14:42.800 you protesting federally? All of these restrictions are provincial. The problem with this, of the many

00:14:49.400 problems, but one of the big problems here is that what's happening is laughable. It's absolutely

00:14:57.900 laughable because the federal government is the one that sets the benchmark. And just look, for

00:15:03.420 example, Jason Kenney. Let me talk about Premier Kenney here because Alberta announced yesterday

00:15:08.260 something that should be tremendously gratifying to people, that Alberta, as of last night at

00:15:12.840 midnight Mountain Standard Time, was getting rid of its vaccine passport. So today, you no longer

00:15:17.820 have to go to a restaurant with your vaccine paperwork in hand in Alberta. That was the

00:15:23.280 first part of Alberta's multi-stage reopening. And in doing so, what Alberta did was great.

00:15:32.400 It's exactly what we've been wanting. It's exactly what we've been seeking.

00:15:35.500 but here's the thing alberta will still as a government produce the qr code vaccine passports

00:15:42.240 they're still giving people the qr codes and the reason why is because the federal government still

00:15:47.640 has a vaccine mandate in place to get on an airplane so an albertan who wants to board a

00:15:53.220 west jet or air canada or swoop or flare flight from calgary or edmonton airport is still going

00:15:58.120 to need their vaccine paperwork also other provinces if you're an albertan that decides

00:16:03.360 for reasons that I do not understand at all to go on a vacation to Ontario, you are going to have

00:16:09.960 to show your vaccine paperwork if you want to go eat at a restaurant in Ontario. So all of these

00:16:16.680 things are interconnected. You can't just look at one province lifting its restrictions and say,

00:16:20.540 okay, that's a victory because it's all integrated, the federal, the provincial, and of course,

00:16:26.020 the international as well. So I understand the idea of taking this position as the convoy

00:16:33.360 protesters are, that we want all mandates gone, federal, provincial, and the way we do that is

00:16:39.360 by going right to the head of it, which is Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Because again, in some

00:16:45.080 provinces, there is no end in sight, specifically Ontario. And I'm going to play a clip in just a

00:16:50.860 moment of Christine Elliott, who's the health minister and deputy premier in Ontario. But

00:16:55.980 I want to set the stage here because Ontario a few weeks back unveiled its however many part

00:17:01.200 reopening, which went until I think March 31st, the end of March. And I was so excited. I got

00:17:06.200 opened up the PDF for the slideshow and I was flipping through the pages and I got to the end

00:17:10.700 and by the end of it, vaccine passports weren't gone and masks weren't gone. And I'm like, well,

00:17:17.240 what sort of reopening is it that at the end of it or the purported end of it, there isn't an end

00:17:22.140 to the two most intrusive public health restrictions we have on the books in Ontario.

00:17:27.520 And even as we go through this great reopening, which is what I prefer much to the Great Reset,

00:17:33.700 Ontario, the largest province and confederation, has no interest in getting rid of these two intrusions.

00:17:39.200 Here's Christine Elliott this morning.

00:17:43.000 Well, we've already set out our opening timelines.

00:17:45.860 we started on January 31st the next phase is as of February 21st and then

00:17:52.280 March 14th we have no plans currently to drop the passport vaccination situation

00:18:01.100 or masking we believe that masking is going to be important for some time to

00:18:05.420 come and of course we take our advice from dr. Moore the chief medical officer

00:18:11.120 of health and the people at the science advisory table and other medical

00:18:15.380 experts and so we always said that we were going to take a very cautious phased prudent approach

00:18:21.300 to opening up and that's the path that we're going to follow

00:18:26.740 for some time to come that that's how long you're stuck with the masks in ontario for some time to

00:18:32.900 come now that is what they give you when they have no date and they have no interest in providing a

00:18:38.100 date now one of my more popular observations from the freedom convoy in ottawa when i was there last

00:18:44.340 weekend was the observation that the mask mandate basically died and right now i think it's still

00:18:52.020 the same the mask mandate in downtown ottawa is pretty much dead if you wear a mask in a hotel

00:18:56.660 a restaurant a store you're going to be an outlier and that's fine make your own choices

00:19:01.540 but they're not enforcing it because of the volume of people in downtown ottawa that are saying

00:19:06.340 i refuse to comply and whatever you think of that whatever you think of that approach

00:19:12.820 there's something to that that i think is worth noting which is that a lot of these

00:19:16.420 public health measures are nothing if people don't comply with them because they're not

00:19:21.060 following the science you know you could say that people are following the science

00:19:26.740 but the science doesn't follow the people and it's politicians right now that are people

00:19:32.580 masquerading a science and that's something that is going to continue to happen unless people start

00:19:39.300 saying, you do not have legitimacy over me. And that's what they've done in Ottawa. They've said,

00:19:43.640 we're not wearing masks. And the government has basically just had to choose its battles. And

00:19:47.640 police have spent their time going after jerry cans. So, you know, police are running after

00:19:52.440 everyone who's walking around Wellington Street with a jerry can of diesel. And in doing so,

00:19:57.160 all the people that are walking around maskless are getting a pass. When at a different point in

00:20:01.840 the pandemic, they would be slapped with, you know, thousands of dollars, tens of thousands

00:20:06.200 of dollars of fines. So there is a cautionary tale there. But at the same time, you can't

00:20:12.800 necessarily say that the COVID mentality, the COVID mindset, the institutional Stockholm

00:20:19.040 syndrome, as I've called it, is going to go away immediately. And I want to return on this note

00:20:23.800 back to Alberta for a moment, because in Alberta, the infrastructure for the vaccine passport is

00:20:29.800 still there. The infrastructure still exists. So like I mentioned, you can still get your QR code.

00:20:35.960 So the question that I asked Jason Kenney yesterday, and I'm going to play a clip of it here, is whether businesses that are more comfortable keeping up with the vaccine passport charade will still have the ability to do it. Here's our exchange on that.

00:20:48.820 good evening premier for people that own businesses that are comfortable with requiring

00:20:59.020 proof of vaccination will they still have the right in your view under alberta law to

00:21:04.580 impose a vaccine requirement for customers moving forward

00:21:08.080 yes they'll have that right under law and i guess i would just say that's a matter of

00:21:14.840 of the free market, Andrew. If a business chooses to have a policy of that nature,

00:21:23.880 then that may appeal to a certain kind of customer and it may turn away other kinds

00:21:30.020 of customers. That's a commercial decision. At the end of the day, I would love if we could

00:21:37.460 move away from all of this and no longer have to produce the QR codes, that could get us past

00:21:46.500 the problem you've raised. But the paradox or the problem is that we have a lot of Albertans

00:21:53.960 who, especially during the cold winter here, love traveling and at the end of the summertime too.

00:22:01.920 And as long as there is a federal requirement for provincially issued proof of vaccination,

00:22:07.460 We have to offer that as a service.

00:22:10.820 And I got to tell you, even then, even if we weren't issuing QR codes, I suppose a vendor could, going back to the pre-COVID days, you know, just like when you're visiting certain countries, they want to see if you've been vaccinated against the yellow fever and you have to produce these slips that prove vaccination.

00:22:34.520 So governments will always be issuing some kind of proof of vaccination.

00:22:38.320 That's just part of our responsibility in the health care system and how people use that as their choice.

00:22:45.400 So what he's saying there is that it's the free market.

00:22:48.680 Businesses can do what they want.

00:22:49.940 Now, incidentally, I know this is against what a lot of you think.

00:22:54.060 I've borne, I've borne, I've bared, whatever.

00:22:57.440 I've dealt with the brunt of it.

00:22:59.040 This is what happens when you go live.

00:23:00.660 You can't edit things out to make yourself look smarter.

00:23:03.100 But what happened is I got into some spats on Twitter about this yesterday because I

00:23:08.140 take the libertarian view on this, that if a business wants to require proof of vaccination,

00:23:12.920 they should absolutely have the right to do that.

00:23:15.140 Just as if a business says only those wearing pink polka dot socks like Justin Trudeau can

00:23:20.340 come in, that is completely within their purview as well.

00:23:24.160 Just as it's my right as a customer to say I have no interest in going to a restaurant

00:23:28.640 or store that is voluntarily imposing vaccine segregation. My issue with this was never an

00:23:35.580 issue with vaccination. It was always an issue with government coercion of business and by

00:23:40.780 extension of citizens. So if an individual business wants to set up this policy, I think

00:23:45.780 it's their right, just as it's my right. And those of anyone else who wants to live a free

00:23:50.240 independent life to say, go pound salt, I'm going to go to these businesses that don't care,

00:23:54.960 that aren't interested in that.

00:23:57.260 And this is true in my view, 1.00

00:23:58.700 whether you're talking about a Christian baker 0.96

00:24:00.980 not wanting to bake a gay wedding cake 0.98

00:24:03.040 or a gay baker not wanting to bake 0.98

00:24:05.100 a Christian wedding cake for whatever reason. 1.00

00:24:07.540 I don't care.

00:24:08.380 The whole point is we should be as individuals

00:24:10.520 able to say this decision is wrong,

00:24:13.160 but they have the legal right to make it,

00:24:16.080 which is what I think we need to say

00:24:17.700 about business decisions

00:24:18.780 and also of individual decisions.

00:24:21.340 And here's the thing.

00:24:22.500 When the vaccine mandates are gone,

00:24:24.500 If every vaccine mandate in Canada were at the snap of my fingers to be gone,

00:24:29.900 nothing would stop anyone from wearing a mask.

00:24:33.140 Nothing would stop anyone from getting triple dose, quadruple dose.

00:24:36.460 Nothing would stop anyone from staying home, from socially distancing.

00:24:40.360 The question is whether the government is the one to make everyone do it,

00:24:45.000 even those who don't value that.

00:24:47.540 And the people that are in this delusional state of Stockholm syndrome,

00:24:51.880 COVID Stockholm syndrome.

00:24:53.360 These people don't want the restrictions to end.

00:24:57.060 They just don't.

00:24:58.220 They're scared of going back to normal.

00:24:59.880 They want to claim the new normal is normal

00:25:02.580 when it actually is not normal in any sense whatsoever.

00:25:06.560 And I would tell anyone in that boat

00:25:09.340 that you can live your life however you want.

00:25:12.520 If we flip the switch, go back to restriction zero,

00:25:16.000 you can still live your life like it's March of 2020.

00:25:18.700 I'm not going to, but if you want to, have at it.

00:25:21.880 I'll keep six feet away from you.

00:25:23.260 I'll keep a lot more than six feet away from you.

00:25:25.540 I won't go to your birthday party 1.00

00:25:26.840 if you want a vaccine passport. 1.00

00:25:28.400 I won't allow people in my life to segregate society. 0.58

00:25:34.780 And I should say that differently.

00:25:36.360 I won't engage with that form of segregation.

00:25:40.860 Even though I'm fully vaccinated,

00:25:42.660 I just won't engage in that level of discourse with people.

00:25:47.260 If that's what you wanna do though, have at it.

00:25:49.540 Live your life.

00:25:50.660 Just let me live mine.

00:25:53.080 This shouldn't be a radical concept.

00:25:55.380 And it goes back to a woman who is very memorable,

00:25:57.640 a woman I met at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.

00:26:00.240 And what drew me to her was her sign.

00:26:02.840 So I want you to, when you see this clip,

00:26:04.740 take a look at her sign specifically.

00:26:06.680 And you'll see why I wanted to talk to her. 0.84

00:26:08.580 Tremendously well-spoken, 0.99

00:26:09.840 but she embodies that very idea of individuality

00:26:12.800 that I think most people should.

00:26:15.100 And most people, I hope, do.

00:26:20.880 What's your name and where are you from?

00:26:22.880 My name's Lila, I'm from near Smith Falls.

00:26:25.680 Now, the sign here, fully vaxxed, BIPOC, pro-choice, anti-mandate.

00:26:30.380 So, what do you make of the characterization of this movement as being about anti-vaxxers?

00:26:35.820 I feel like the mainstream media has really tried to characterize the movement as being extremist, right-wing, racist,

00:26:42.140 and it's a much more diverse movement than that, and the goal is really about the mandates and the government policy

00:26:48.220 and that it's trying to dismiss the movement by trying to show it as a fringe element.

00:26:52.740 And I think what we're seeing today is that it really represents the concerns of a diverse group of Canadians.

00:26:58.080 Are you finding that other people that are similar to you, those things that you put on your sign,

00:27:02.260 are starting to see things the same way, or do you find that you're a bit of an outlier?

00:27:06.520 It's pretty split. This is a weird one. It splits along weird lines.

00:27:10.520 Now, would you identify as being politically on the right at all?

00:27:13.840 No.

00:27:14.820 So you're here as someone on the political left.

00:27:16.800 What do you make of this?

00:27:18.120 Do you find that just the cause of freedom is being this binding force

00:27:21.760 between people that might not agree on other things?

00:27:23.900 Totally. I think a lot of Canadians are worried about what's happening with our country

00:27:26.960 and are worried about the direction that policies are heading.

00:27:29.780 And everyone's coming together to voice their concerns.

00:27:32.840 And we might have slightly different concerns,

00:27:34.600 but if we can all come together around some common goals,

00:27:37.340 I think it will show to the broader Canadian public and the government

00:27:40.800 that it's not just a small fringe movement.

00:27:43.460 It's really a lot of people who have serious concerns that need to be listened to and that need to be voiced more publicly.

00:27:50.180 What do you hope comes at the end of all this?

00:27:52.380 I hope that people realize that people that they know and care about may think differently from them

00:27:59.100 or people that they know and care about may be unvaccinated or people that they know and care about

00:28:02.580 may be suffering in very real ways from the way that the government is handling the pandemic

00:28:08.120 and that we are more open-minded to thinking about different alternatives.

00:28:13.460 so what a concept someone making decisions for themselves wanting other people to make decisions

00:28:21.540 for themselves i got a message in the chat here from sean he says andrew so you are saying

00:28:27.000 it's okay to discriminate over a medical procedure as i recall it's against the law to discriminate

00:28:32.900 race creed and medical status whatever happened to our rights you deliberately did not listen to

00:28:37.960 a thing I said. So let me say it again, abundantly clear. No, it's not okay. But choice is a two-way

00:28:44.480 street. There's a difference between something being legally allowed and morally okay. I think

00:28:50.800 it's reprehensible for a business to say, we're not going to serve people because they're

00:28:54.800 unvaccinated. I don't want these dirty, rotten, unvaccinated people there. I think that's 1.00

00:28:59.620 tremendously wrong. But do I think the answer to things that are morally wrong is the state's

00:29:05.000 intervention. Rarely is that the case. My view is that the state should involve itself when

00:29:11.260 people's individual liberties are being violated. But by that, I mean their right to life, their

00:29:17.200 right to liberty, their right to security. These rights that are negative freedoms, the right to

00:29:22.780 have things not done to you. No one has a right to what are called positive obligations in most

00:29:30.220 cases, this idea that people must serve you, that people must give you this, they must give

00:29:35.280 you that. No. Choice is a two-way street. The choice to be unvaccinated, the choice to be

00:29:40.520 vaccinated, the choice to associate with the unvaccinated, the choice to associate with the

00:29:45.200 vaccinated. If you're going to look at me and expect me to defend these human rights codes in

00:29:51.420 provinces across the country that are interfering in the private sphere, I won't do it because these

00:29:56.120 are the codes that go after people in trying attempts to censor them. These are the codes

00:30:01.320 that went after Mark Stein and Ezra Levant because their writing was supposedly discriminatory to

00:30:07.220 someone. So no, I'm not defending these interferences. I'm simply saying that choice

00:30:12.320 goes both ways. When I went down to Florida a few weeks back and saw people wearing masks,

00:30:18.120 they were doing so voluntarily. I could say, I think it's a bit weird that you're wearing a

00:30:22.160 mask on the beach. But what I actually said was nothing because that's them doesn't affect me.

00:30:27.320 And that idea of individual choice is what we should all be striving towards.

00:30:33.440 So that's what I mean, because I'm defending a legal right to do something does not mean I'm

00:30:38.080 encouraging it at all. I'm just saying that if we want to let people live their own lives and

00:30:44.180 do their own thing and live like it's March, 2020, if that's the price of us living like it's

00:30:49.180 February 2022. I'm completely happy with that. So I went to one question there. I'm going to take

00:30:54.560 a few more of your questions here. We've got some great ones. Neo Armor, who donated on the super

00:31:00.400 chat, thank you for that, says, do you think Trudeau will be able to stay in power before the

00:31:06.120 next election? I think the one thing that afflicts Trudeau more than any political reality is

00:31:13.420 arrogance. I don't think he's a guy that ever imagines that he could lose an election because

00:31:18.660 by and large, he has been Teflon Trudeau. There's, I mean, it's underneath the black, underneath the

00:31:23.460 blackface is a layer of Teflon. That underneath the shoe polish, there's Teflon. That's actually, 1.00

00:31:28.620 it's a marvel that the blackface stuff stays on the face with all the Teflon there. Maybe he put 1.00

00:31:33.220 the Teflon outside of the shoe polish. I don't know. But the whole point is that nothing sticks

00:31:37.760 to Justin Trudeau, which is why he won, he won an election after SNC-Lavalin. He won an election

00:31:43.280 after the We scandal. He won an election during Blackface. He won a Blackface election. He probably 0.96

00:31:49.220 could have won the election in Blackface. So I don't think he thinks that he's going to lose.

00:31:55.420 I think if anyone gets rid of him, it's got to be the Liberal caucus, because I think some of

00:31:59.560 the Liberals might realize, you know what, we're, especially if Joao Lightbound is speaking for a

00:32:03.860 larger constituency of Liberal MPs that are so far too scared to speak up. There could be other

00:32:09.600 liberals that are saying, you know, we really, really can't get behind Trudeau. But a lot of

00:32:13.800 the convoy protesters that, you know, would love to see Justin Trudeau deposed or resign or whatever,

00:32:19.320 I'd ask what's going to come in his place? Chrystia Freeland. You can get rid of Justin

00:32:24.500 Trudeau, but it doesn't get rid of the liberal party. It doesn't get rid of the liberal plurality

00:32:28.960 in the House of Commons. And I don't think Chrystia Freeland is going to be all that much better. So 0.73

00:32:33.920 be careful what you wish for in a way. I think that's a message that people need to realize here.

00:32:39.600 Uh, let's see. What else do we have here? Uh, Daryl, actually a lot of questions about the

00:32:45.020 fuel. Have the police returned the fuel to truckers? Any information about police returning

00:32:49.820 the fuel they stole? So there's something called the Streisand effect. There's something called

00:32:57.740 the Streisand effect that I think is very interesting here. And, um, the backstory of it,

00:33:04.180 I can't remember what paper it was, but someone took a picture of Barbara Streisand's mansion on

00:33:10.420 the waterfront somewhere, and she didn't want it published. So she took the photographer and the

00:33:14.660 newspapers to court. And in doing so, she got more attention to this photo than would have been there

00:33:20.140 had she just left it alone and let the photo been published. So there's something about that here.

00:33:27.180 When police decided that they were going to make diesel the enemy, not just for carbon tax reasons,

00:33:33.200 But because they didn't like that, it was fueling literally and figuratively the convoy.

00:33:37.500 Police say we're going to make diesel the issue.

00:33:39.080 They go and they load up the wheelbarrows and they take the diesel away.

00:33:41.900 All that does is make it so that people want to bring diesel in.

00:33:45.480 They want to bring gasoline in, diesel in.

00:33:47.800 They want to power the generators, power the trucks.

00:33:50.620 And that's why when you look at all the photos now, pretty much everyone, like,

00:33:54.920 there are a few staples that you never leave home without.

00:33:57.240 There's the cell phone, the wallet, the keys, and now the jerry can.

00:34:01.420 Everyone's leaving house with a jerry can.

00:34:02.940 It's actually the new size they have at Starbucks.

00:34:05.000 You can get a tall, you can get a grande, you can get a venti, or you can get a jerry

00:34:08.640 can if you're in Ottawa, because everyone in Ottawa now, except for the police, are

00:34:12.580 walking around with jerry cans.

00:34:14.740 And at a certain point, they made that the issue.

00:34:17.360 So that's the one that everyone is going to bring in.

00:34:19.580 When they start going after sandwiches, everyone is going to be a walk-in one person subway

00:34:23.780 operation.

00:34:24.600 So I don't know about where the fuel that was seized is, if it's going to come back.

00:34:30.560 I highly doubt it, but there's a lot more where that came from. That's generally the view that I

00:34:35.100 take on this. Someone says, how long do you think until Ontario drops the mandates? Well,

00:34:40.800 I played that clip earlier from Christine Elliott and basically they have no interest in doing it.

00:34:46.260 It doesn't matter that Saskatchewan is, Alberta is, Quebec is, Denmark, Finland, England, Ireland,

00:34:52.180 doesn't matter. Ontario is completely happy catering to the people that want this to be a

00:34:57.080 permanent fixture of our lives. Going to have a look here at one comment from Tan Man. I don't 0.93

00:35:07.020 know, maybe this is Justin Trudeau, actually. He's Tan Man sometimes, especially at parties. 0.99

00:35:11.720 Is Trudeau's caucus starting to turn on his rhetoric? I'm hearing rumbles. There are plenty 0.87

00:35:16.060 of liberal MPs that are aghast at how Trudeau is handling behind the scenes. I try not to put

00:35:21.720 too much stock into rumblings because in Ottawa, rumblings are ubiquitous and oftentimes they

00:35:28.400 don't materialize in anything. I do think, however, that the liberal, I mean, to go back to the point

00:35:34.540 I mentioned a few moments ago, Justin Trudeau, the shine will eventually come off. And I think

00:35:39.800 it already has, but he still has a pretty solid grip on his caucus. But so did Aaron O'Toole.

00:35:45.320 Aaron O'Toole has had an ironclad grip on his caucus up until the point when he didn't.

00:35:49.640 And when you start seeing the punishment of dissenters, that could be a game changer.

00:35:55.640 So if Justin Trudeau decides to punish Joelle Lightbound for speaking out, that could be

00:35:59.900 that first domino that triggers a lot of other things that end up working against Justin

00:36:05.960 Trudeau.

00:36:07.460 What other questions and comments do we have here?

00:36:10.440 Mostly questions.

00:36:11.160 So thanks for asking about this. 0.94

00:36:12.700 Marion asked a phenomenal question.

00:36:14.400 Do you think this convoy took politicians by surprise?

00:36:19.020 Absolutely. 100% absolutely. And here's why, Marion. Because for the politicians, they oftentimes

00:36:27.240 live and work in downtown Ottawa in this very small area of just a few city blocks. And they

00:36:33.920 watch media that's produced in those few city blocks. And I'm not saying that some of them

00:36:37.880 don't have ties into their community and spend time in their riding and all of that. But I'm

00:36:42.500 saying that there is a bubble. And you hear it called the Ottawa bubble for a reason. And when

00:36:47.620 I lived in Ottawa, I never left that bubble. I worked on Parliament Hill. I lived a few blocks

00:36:52.740 from there. I ate a few blocks from there. I shopped a few blocks from there. I never really

00:36:56.480 saw Ottawa. And it was interesting when I went back years later and I was driving around real

00:37:01.600 Ottawa, I'm like, well, this is not, to me, this wasn't even Ottawa. So the Ottawa bubble is a very

00:37:07.120 insulated place, which is why there's so much moral panic right now at the blaring horns and

00:37:13.080 people standing up for freedom and Canadian flags and patriotism, because this is just not something

00:37:18.200 that permeates through the Ottawa bubble. So if you get your news from CBC and CTV, and you agree

00:37:24.380 with the Trudopian position that all of these protesters are just a fringe minority with

00:37:29.720 unacceptable views, you were baffled when you saw thousands of normal people, like that woman whose

00:37:36.000 clip I just played a few minutes ago, normal people showing up saying, no, I'm fully vaccinated,

00:37:41.060 I'm just against mandates or I'm not vaccinated, but here's why. And it's a good reason. I'm not

00:37:45.920 anti-science. I just made a choice for myself. People with families. If you on one hand see on

00:37:52.300 TV, the characterization of this as being a white nationalist rally, and then you meet a Sikh family,

00:37:57.360 you're like, well, hang on. Like, or you think these are all white supremacists. And then you

00:38:01.380 meet the indigenous people that are there giving blessings and saying, we stand with you for

00:38:06.440 freedom. So anyone who's on the ground was seeing a picture that simply was not the picture shared

00:38:13.500 in the mainstream media coverage. And I think absolutely to get back to the question,

00:38:17.860 there's no doubt in my mind that the politicians had probably deceived themselves into thinking

00:38:22.220 that this segment of the population didn't exist or that it was a lot smaller than it actually was.

00:38:28.300 I think we're going to do another live edition of this show in the near future. I had a lot of fun

00:38:33.400 doing it. I enjoyed your questions. I'd love to take more of them. Before we end things, I want

00:38:38.320 to play one clip which stuck with me. Right now, actually, some of the Convoy organizers are

00:38:43.440 holding a press conference, and I've been keeping one eye on it with just seeing if there's anything

00:38:49.020 out of there, and I don't actually know if there's too much to report just yet. It sounds like they're

00:38:55.480 really prepared to start debunking a lot of the negative media and false media attacks against

00:39:01.320 them. And interestingly enough, one of the things that the lawyer said, and I'm reading a quote here

00:39:07.600 sent by one of our producers, at no time, this is one of the lawyers for the convoy, at no time has

00:39:13.020 anyone involved in the core group of the Freedom Convoy asked for anything other than to have their

00:39:17.780 charter rights restored, the rule of law in Canada to be respected. It's not about sedition. It's not

00:39:23.600 about a military junta. It's about freedom. That's what they want. It is about freedom.

00:39:28.840 and asked last week I think this was on Sunday they had a press conference so this is not the

00:39:35.320 one today and one of the questions that my colleague Elie Quentin Nantel had asked which

00:39:40.980 I thought was a very important question was are you prepared to go to jail for this police at the

00:39:45.400 time had been ramping up their efforts they were talking about arrest and he asked the organizers

00:39:50.080 that very simple question and I want you to as we close things out here hear their answer

00:39:54.440 We've seen pastors in Alberta be locked up for not complying with COVID rules.

00:40:03.600 Do you think that there is a way that these organizers could be locked up for their protests?

00:40:10.200 And maybe to you guys, are you guys willing to go to jail, even if it's arbitrarily, to fight for your cause, to restore the freedoms for Canadians?

00:40:20.000 Yes, yes, for me, absolutely.

00:40:22.380 This is my help. 0.61

00:40:24.440 Justin Trudeau jailing a Métis woman and someone who used to protect him.

00:40:32.820 We're in the same cell.

00:40:38.560 They didn't even need to think about it.

00:40:41.500 It was a no-brainer.

00:40:42.480 All of them were like, yeah, would you go to jail?

00:40:44.620 Yeah. 1.00

00:40:45.560 And then Tamara Lee, she's the creator of that initial GoFundMe,

00:40:49.080 which raised, you know, a bajillion dollars before GoFundMe decided to spike it,

00:40:52.460 uh said very candidly there uh yeah this is my hill this is my hill and for a lot of people on

00:40:59.180 the political right they have just been kind of trying to talk about the little issues and not

00:41:04.020 pay attention to the big issues not pay attention to the big picture but for the organizers they're

00:41:08.820 saying yeah this is our hill we're taking a stand and it's starting to work the alberta case

00:41:13.680 saskatchewan quebec it's starting to work they're having an effect even if the politicians don't

00:41:18.260 want to realize it. So thanks very much for tuning in. My thanks to Jacob and Phil for their efforts

00:41:23.520 behind the scenes. We'll have another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show that I think we'll do live

00:41:27.420 because it's a lot of fun in a couple of days time. So do stay tuned for that. We'll talk to

00:41:31.500 you. And also follow me on Twitter at Andrew Lawton, because I'm going to be having lots

00:41:34.780 more Convoy coverage in the days ahead. Have a good one. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all.

00:41:42.360 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North

00:41:46.680 at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - February 09, 2022

The convoy is making a difference, even if politicians don't want to admit it

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