Juno News - The government’s own polling says Canadians think Trudeau is failing

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:16.980 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:25.100 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:27.560 this is canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north the andrew lawton show i had a

00:01:33.600 gentleman come up to me we had our big event in calgary on saturday and he said i have some issues

00:01:39.240 with that name that you give your show and i said the andrew lawton show he said no no no not that

00:01:45.080 one the other one and i said oh canada's most irreverent talk show he said well you're not

00:01:48.920 always as irreverent as that name suggests and i was like cracking some jokes at true north nation

00:01:56.060 And he said those were sufficiently irreverent.

00:01:58.060 So I'll make a point of bringing some more of those jokes in,

00:02:01.740 much to the presumable lamentation of our overseers here at True North.

00:02:06.980 But now I know I'm not talking about the Trudeau government.

00:02:08.780 I'm talking about our COO, who at times confesses to being a bit of a killjoy.

00:02:13.240 But he is not, in fact.

00:02:15.000 He just wants us to all succeed and not have to deal with any of these landmines.

00:02:19.080 But I'll try to be sufficiently irreverent moving forward.

00:02:22.820 It is good to talk to you all.

00:02:24.540 We're going to have a rather busy show today.

00:02:26.780 I want to chat later on with Tom Marazzo about the Canadian Armed Forces' new diktat for chaplains who, despite being responsible for the spiritual welfare of soldiers, are no longer allowed to pray in public, including on Remembrance Day.

00:02:45.320 We are also going to speak later on about this ceasefire call that we hear from people on the left now.

00:02:52.060 And it sounds all nice on the surface.

00:02:53.340 Oh, I want there to be a ceasefire in the Middle East. I want world peace. 0.96

00:02:57.080 Well, when they call for a ceasefire, what they're calling for is the annihilation of Israel,

00:03:03.800 whether they choose to accept this or not.

00:03:05.980 So why are so many on the left playing into that narrative?

00:03:10.080 We'll talk about that with Joe Roberts, with whom I disagree on a great many things.

00:03:13.500 He is from the left, but he is an unabashed supporter of Israel and the Jewish people

00:03:18.300 and has a lot to say about his colleagues on the left in these ceasefire calls.

00:03:22.440 So Joe will be joining us very shortly on the program, but I want to begin with the bigger picture here, at least in Canadian politics, because we've talked in the last few weeks about the Liberal government having just a tremendously bad time holding on to any sense of power and popularity in polling.

00:03:42.660 Polls have been rather consistent that if the election were held today, yesterday, tomorrow, a week ago, two weeks from now, people would, generally speaking, vote for the Conservatives.

00:03:52.420 There was one poll that came out just the other day, which if you extrapolated onto the seat map, showed that the Conservatives would have about 200, it was like 205 or 208 seats, which is a rather massive majority, especially given where the Conservatives are now.

00:04:10.300 So this is, I think, an interesting thing.

00:04:12.080 And I made the point, and I'll give the caveat now,

00:04:14.480 I don't cover the day-to-day grind of polls.

00:04:17.300 I'm not interested in, ooh, you know,

00:04:19.400 we're up two points here and down two points there.

00:04:21.800 But I do like to cover trends,

00:04:23.640 and I do like to cover the bigger picture.

00:04:25.760 And I do like to cover when the government's own polling

00:04:29.020 shows that people do not want Justin Trudeau around.

00:04:32.920 This is a fascinating, fascinating story.

00:04:35.640 So the government will actually conduct polls,

00:04:37.760 not that are partisan in nature, but are about basically whether the government is on the right

00:04:42.820 or wrong track. These polls, because they're being paid for by taxpayer money, are tremendously

00:04:48.880 expensive because they're so large. The Privy Council office, which is basically like the

00:04:54.620 bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister's office, is responsible for this. And they were doing

00:04:59.960 polling every single week. They would include about 24,000 people in these polls. They polled

00:05:06.560 them from January to June of this year, so a six-month span. And in this span, we see that

00:05:14.080 Canadians, the majority of them, do not believe the government is on the right track. Now, not

00:05:21.420 only is this the case, but Canadians feel the government is on the wrong track on every

00:05:27.320 individual policy issue, except for one. The only one where Canadians said, yeah, okay, I guess

00:05:33.300 they're doing okay, is on Canada-US relations. And even then, the majority was 51%. So only like it

00:05:40.940 was just a majority, just a majority, 51%. And let's put up the regional breakdown here, because

00:05:48.320 I think this is always interesting. The red line is, of course, in the wrong, unsurprising. In the

00:05:54.140 case of Alberta, they don't like it, and Saskatchewan as well. But even in Ontario and Atlantic Canada

00:06:00.020 and B.C., you see the very same thing, that everyone thinks they're wrong. The only region

00:06:05.240 in Canada where they think the government is on the right track is Quebec, which I believe is

00:06:10.540 actually the most compelling evidence for why Trudeau should go. If Quebec thinks you're doing

00:06:15.260 something right, you're probably doing something wrong. So I actually think it's a nice little

00:06:19.900 balance to have Quebec vote that way or Quebecers vote that way for Justin Trudeau. So I think

00:06:25.380 that's where we need to look at the bigger picture here. Six months, tens of thousands of people,

00:06:30.340 the government's own data show that Canadians believe the federal government is failing.

00:06:38.180 Now, government is liberals. That's the goal here. Government is liberals. Liberals are government.

00:06:43.800 But Justin Trudeau has personally taken over this institution, and there's this cult of personality

00:06:50.460 around him, which is very interesting to see. And I was talking about this a little bit last week

00:06:55.140 on the show where Trudeau has basically made himself and the liberal brand synonymous, in

00:07:01.220 which he is not interested in whether the party or the government of the liberals can survive him.

00:07:06.680 He wants to go down with the ship. And I think it's liberals that would probably be

00:07:10.600 very well suited to take a look around and say, I don't think this guy

00:07:15.300 is interested in the long-term survival of our party. You know, there are a number of examples,

00:07:22.700 And we can look in Alberta with Jason Kenney, who I think in a lot of ways didn't see the writing on the wall that he was on his way out.

00:07:29.560 But when he had that leadership review, which he very narrowly won, and I would say that a narrow victory is not a victory in a leadership review, but he got over 50%.

00:07:38.320 He did not say, well, you know what, it's my party and, you know, come hell or high water, I'm staying.

00:07:43.680 He said, all right, I'm gone.

00:07:46.220 Because Jason Kenney realized that the party, the government, is bigger than him.

00:07:52.300 Justin Trudeau, I don't believe, knows that.

00:07:54.940 Justin Trudeau, I believe, does not care about what happens in Canadian politics after he

00:08:00.560 is out of the picture, which is why he's going to hold on for as long as he can.

00:08:05.180 I mean, like the Trudeau campaign anthem for the 2025 election should basically be that

00:08:10.700 Dido song, White Flag, with the line, I will go down with this ship.

00:08:15.340 Like, that's basically the Trudeau campaign song.

00:08:17.740 So when he's coming in there to do the big speech, that Dido's white flag should be playing.

00:08:22.400 It's not Canadian content, so maybe they can't get away with it, but it is a sinking ship. 0.68

00:08:26.620 That is the metaphor.

00:08:27.600 It's worse than when the bus crashed into the plane in that one election,

00:08:31.840 because the Liberal government, the Liberal Party right now are going nowhere.

00:08:37.760 Now, I think that when we take the perspective on this,

00:08:41.780 that we've been taking when we view the poll numbers and all of that in the past on the show

00:08:46.280 and continue to do, is that the Liberal government right now is entirely loyal to Trudeau. The Liberal

00:08:54.300 caucus is, at least in its messaging, in its narrative, entirely loyal to Justin Trudeau.

00:09:01.620 And you have to wonder what he has on them. There's a whip in the Liberal party, just as

00:09:08.780 there's a whip in every other party, and the whip's job is to basically whip the caucus. That's the

00:09:13.040 goal of the job. That's the point of it. And you got to assume that someone in the whip's office

00:09:17.740 just has like house of cards style, this manila envelope filled with dirt on every single liberal

00:09:22.800 member of parliament, which is why none of them have dared speak up about this government. And I

00:09:27.900 think, I mean, I'm joking, but not really. I mean, maybe there are people that are just genuinely

00:09:32.900 true believers in this. They're buying into Trudeau in the same way that CBC journalists did

00:09:37.600 in 2015. They look at him as this big old dreamboat and they fail to see the flaws in his

00:09:44.000 government. Maybe, just maybe you have people that do not believe they have a political career

00:09:48.500 outside of anything that will happen with him. Because this is the fascinating part here.

00:09:54.940 No liberal cabinet minister, certainly, who has hitched themselves to the Trudeau wagon

00:09:59.480 will really be able to separate themselves from that. So if Trudeau does go down with the ship

00:10:07.040 as it's looking like he will, if poll numbers persist, then anyone who was at his side for

00:10:13.540 that journey, his co-captain, his bosun, whoever was swabbing the deck on the ship to torture this

00:10:18.820 metaphor even further, isn't going to be able to say, well, what I would have done differently

00:10:23.040 because you were him. You were that. I mean, Chrystia Freeland, people talk about her

00:10:28.180 as being some contender for the premiership of Canada, for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

00:10:34.080 If Justin Trudeau's name is as mud as the polls suggest, how on earth would Christopher

00:10:39.580 Freeland ever have a chance at salvaging this?

00:10:43.560 So it's why I'm not terribly scared to follow up on our chat on Thursday with the idea that

00:10:50.040 Justin Trudeau does step down, which I don't think he will, and let someone else take the

00:10:54.260 helm because there is no one else that would rise up in that, that would fill the vacuum,

00:10:59.560 that would fill the void, who isn't just an extension of Justin Trudeau.

00:11:04.080 And I think that right now there's a big difference because after 2015, after 2015, when Stephen Harper left, a lot of people didn't really see it as a catastrophic collapse of the party.

00:11:17.940 They saw it as a party and a government that has run its course.

00:11:20.740 The Harper government was very popular among conservatives and cabinet ministers all had a chance to speak up.

00:11:26.780 and that was why you had like that clown car of a leadership race where just like you know 97 people

00:11:31.680 get out of the Prius and all say I want to be the leader of the conservatives and uh you had some

00:11:36.080 who were you know doing very well and were very popular like uh Andrew Scheer and uh Maxime

00:11:41.540 Bernier and a couple of the social conservatives did very well and then you had other people like

00:11:46.100 uh Rick Patterson, Pooterson, Porterson, Rick Porter, Rick oh Rick Peterson that's it sorry

00:11:51.780 uh he's so irrelevant I couldn't remember the name uh who's now just uh founded some other

00:11:56.040 party whose name I can't remember called the, I think it's the Canadian Future. Yes, I had the

00:12:02.620 interim leader on there. But nevertheless, we had a really, really, really busy leadership race

00:12:10.240 because the party was not as toxic as a brand. And that's not to say it didn't have to rebuild

00:12:16.700 and hasn't gone through a lot in the subsequent years. But that's not where the liberals are

00:12:23.340 right now. So I don't see any compelling person in that party that could stand up and say,

00:12:30.900 I am going to right this ship. Melanie Jolie, who like was basically blaming Israel for bombing a

00:12:39.400 Palestinian hospital without evidence. Is she the one? I mean, yes, if we need convening done,

00:12:43.920 she's the woman for the job. Francois-Philippe Champagne, who also did the very same thing.

00:12:50.220 Some people are saying Anita Anand, she maybe is a bit of an independent voice, but all of these

00:12:55.420 people are people who have lived and died with the Trudeau brand. And I will say here that the

00:13:01.920 liberal fascination with going negative continues. There was this really hilarious tweet from the

00:13:08.280 Liberal Party about Pierre Paglias, because when liberals are plummeting in polls, they have to whip

00:13:12.720 out, like there are three things they go with. They go far-right American politics, they go

00:13:17.700 abortion or they go assault rifles. Those are the three. Which one is it? Survey says,

00:13:25.440 ah, far-right American politics. If you had your money on far-right American politics,

00:13:30.540 you win the grand prize. This is the document here. Pierre Wright's love of far-right U.S.

00:13:38.020 Tea Party politics, just as Trump used, it's in bold so as to scare you even more,

00:13:43.580 Just as Trump used the Tea Party as the base from which to launch his presidential career and remake the Republican Party in his own image,

00:13:51.820 Polyev is using the Tea Party's tactics and politics of rage as the basis for his own political assent.

00:14:00.200 So there we go. Far-right American politics.

00:14:03.460 So, yeah, my one colleague is saying the Tea Party, he forgot about them.

00:14:07.460 Yeah, the Tea Party was all the rage back in 2012, which is the last time the Liberal Party of Canada had an original thought, as it turns out.

00:14:15.360 So nevertheless, I want to pivot here ever so slightly to our discussion we had yesterday on Israel.

00:14:22.380 And I will say time and time again, I am a supporter of Israel and of the Jewish people.

00:14:27.560 And I have been heartbroken to see all of the displays that have masqueraded as normal political protests.

00:14:35.260 people storming into a Jewish-owned restaurant in Toronto, people who are protesting outside

00:14:41.460 literally a Jewish daycare in Toronto, not to mention the vile and very often anti-Semitic

00:14:48.340 rhetoric we hear from these people. But oftentimes, things are not explicitly anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.

00:14:55.000 They are cloaked in language that may sound entirely normal. One of these is a word that

00:14:59.980 sounds on the surface to be wonderful, which is a ceasefire. People, I think, understandably

00:15:05.160 associate a ceasefire with peace, two belligerents in a war that agree for a time or perhaps

00:15:10.940 permanently to lay down arms and perhaps work out some agreement in the meantime to end

00:15:16.800 conflict. This is something that, again, on the surface sounds lovely, but in the context here

00:15:22.020 is completely devoid of sense and understanding of history, and I would say is devoid of justice.

00:15:28.540 Hamas struck a terrible blow against Israel more than two weeks ago.

00:15:32.900 There are still more than 200 hostages who are being held captive by Hamas.

00:15:37.820 You've had 1,500 innocent lives lost to this conflict.

00:15:43.260 Israel has a right to defend itself.

00:15:45.880 And Israel, which has been living under the perpetual threat by Hamas for years,

00:15:50.620 has understandably the desire to obliterate Hamas, 0.94

00:15:54.600 which is under any interpretation of international law its right.

00:15:58.540 Why then do we see so many people, including liberal members of parliament, new democratic

00:16:03.240 members of parliament, many people from the left calling for a quote unquote ceasefire? I want to

00:16:10.540 welcome to the show Joe Roberts, who is a progressive voice, a fantastic writer and

00:16:15.780 podcaster. He is the chair of J Space Canada and joins me now. Joe, it's good to talk to you again.

00:16:21.760 Thanks for coming on today. Hey, thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:16:25.620 Now, I'm not trying to wedge you on your colleagues on the left with whom you get along on, you know, probably 90, 95 percent of issues.

00:16:33.260 But I know it's been a very challenging time in the last couple of weeks.

00:16:37.980 And I was just wondering, first off, if you could just explain how that's been, because I know that other people I've spoken to of your political persuasion have said they've learned that some of their friends were not actually their friends.

00:16:49.720 It's been sobering.

00:16:50.620 i mean i think look we saw violence and brutality on october 7th that's incomprehensible you can't

00:16:56.620 even put words around it to make it make any sense and the response from some of our allies

00:17:02.380 on the left has been shameful i think is the best word for it i mean really truly hurtful people

00:17:09.100 that we've made uh allyship with on on racial justice on social justice on economic justice

00:17:15.820 We stood by. We've been supportive of their efforts. When they were threatened, we just

00:17:22.020 didn't see the same. Now, I want to be really clear. It's not everybody. It's a fragment of

00:17:26.160 the left, but it has been a really problematic thing. I mean, and the vitriol, the anger,

00:17:34.980 the interlacing of anti-Semitism is problematic. All around, it's been a real challenge.

00:17:39.800 when we look at that word ceasefire it's to me a bit of i mean we hear oftentimes from people

00:17:47.000 dog whistle is as the term that something can be uh you know offensive without intending to be and

00:17:52.560 i i fear that ceasefire calls are like that because when someone says we need a ceasefire

00:17:57.000 what they're in fact saying is that israel has no right to defend itself and no justification to

00:18:03.340 defend itself and you had a great piece in the national post about this i was wondering if you

00:18:07.560 you to explain how you've approached this and these calls for a ceasefire. Apparently he was

00:18:14.900 not just staring intently. His camera has frozen. We'll get Joe Roberts back on the program in a

00:18:20.860 moment. Let me, while we're doing that, play this clip. This was a call to Pierre Polyev that was

00:18:26.240 put to him by a CP24 reporter on Saturday about this. Did you tell your MPs not to sign this or

00:18:33.780 symbolically do you think it would have obviously you can't force a terrorist organization an

00:18:37.920 organization that's been declared a terrorist organization for decades now in this country

00:18:41.380 to abide by it but symbolically do you think it would have made a difference

00:18:44.820 what to sign this letter at least to say the americans have encouraged and they've had

00:18:51.600 discussions with netanyahu to you know undertake the most peaceful approach possible in this

00:18:57.520 situation while also saying israel has the right to defend itself which the prime minister here has

00:19:01.480 said on several occasions since this all unfolded, this horrific event two weeks ago.

00:19:06.660 So what is your question?

00:19:08.500 Symbolically, would it have maybe been a gesture to have Conservative MPs join Liberals and

00:19:15.160 New Democrats and Greens and saying, let's call for a ceasefire?

00:19:19.500 It would have been a gesture to Hamas. It would encourage Hamas to become even more violent 0.80

00:19:25.860 and vicious. Obviously, our heart breaks for every lost Israeli and Palestinian innocent

00:19:34.260 life. The blame rests entirely with Hamas and their state sponsors in Tehran, the Iranian 0.94

00:19:40.740 government, which help orchestrate this attack. We have to defeat the terrorism in order to

00:19:46.660 get to a peaceful two-state solution that will allow Israelis to continue to have a 0.77

00:19:53.800 Jewish state and Palestinians to have an independent state of their own. I shared that

00:19:59.800 clip with you to set up some of the reaction to it. Now, admittedly, a lot of this may be colored

00:20:04.880 more by people that dislike Pierre Polyev than people who dislike Israel. But there was this

00:20:09.560 one tweet from a critic of Polyev's who says that when you reject this ceasefire premise,

00:20:17.020 it's because you're not understanding world peace. So this idea that a ceasefire and peace

00:20:22.360 are equivalent. And we have Joe Roberts back from JSpace Canada. Joe, I don't know how much of my

00:20:29.760 previous question to you you heard, but basically, is a call for a ceasefire a dog whistle, to use

00:20:35.440 that term, from people that are basically saying Israel does not have the right to fight back when

00:20:39.660 it's attacked? Look, I think there's a misconception about what a ceasefire is in this case, right? And

00:20:45.340 what is the long-term goal? We've been in this situation in Gaza five times, six times, since

00:20:51.360 the disengagement from Gaza back in 2005. What does that mean? That means we've had these conflicts

00:20:57.440 every year, every other year. There's been this phrase used, mowing the lawn. It costs

00:21:03.260 civilian lives. It costs Israeli lives. It costs lots of money and security. It's not a good 0.99

00:21:09.240 situation. It's not sustainable. The status quo is not working. And so I think there's a realization

00:21:13.520 across the board, both in Israel, the reality, they recognize that the citizenry demands a response,

00:21:20.160 that this doesn't work, that this 1,400 deaths and this brutality is not acceptable,

00:21:25.100 and they must act. And there's a realization that there is no path to peace without a fundamental

00:21:32.320 change to the status quo, right? And so that means Hamas must be removed. It can no longer

00:21:37.860 govern Gaza so that it can rebuild and do this again in a couple of years. So we'll be right 1.00

00:21:42.920 back in the same place that we are today. And in the long run, we're going to have more death and

00:21:47.540 more violence. So the goal here is a ceasefire is a pause. It's saying we're going to push a pause

00:21:52.260 right now and come back to this violence over and over again, never break the cycle. And when I

00:21:57.560 think what we're advocating for is to say, actually, you know, this needs to be seen through.

00:22:01.540 Hamas must be removed. The Palestinian people are not the enemy here. Hamas is the enemy.

00:22:05.980 Remove Hamas. And then we can actually start a political solution to this conflict through a 0.99

00:22:10.820 two-state solution, which is the only real way we'll ever end this cycle of violence.

00:22:15.060 Yeah, I think that's an important point. And I often believe that, well, not often, I think it's

00:22:19.880 a pretty clear cut fact at this point that people who are very critical of Israel view Israel as

00:22:25.180 being the impediment to a two-state solution when, in fact, oftentimes it's the Palestinian 0.85

00:22:30.080 activists who want a one-state solution, which is an entire Palestinian state.

00:22:35.880 Well, I mean, look, let's be clear about what a one-state solution means. It means the erasure

00:22:39.980 of a Jewish state. It means the erasure of the Palestinian national aspiration, which they've 0.59

00:22:46.160 worked very hard to legitimize over the last 75 years. They don't want it, frankly. No one that

00:22:51.840 would live under a one-state solution would want that, right? 71% of Palestinians reject one-state

00:22:57.700 solution. 81% of Israelis reject a one-state solution. There's no path forward here without 0.83

00:23:03.040 two states. You know, there was a call yesterday between the Palestinian Authority ambassador to

00:23:07.720 the European Union and some members of the EU, and someone said, well, what about confederation,

00:23:13.320 which is another word for a one-state reality? And he said, look, we reject this. I've never

00:23:18.400 seen someone so angry. He said, we reject this. Why would you tell us that we don't deserve our

00:23:23.620 own state? So the reality is it has to be a solution. Hamas is the impediment to that two 0.96

00:23:28.240 states. You cannot deal with a terrorist organization. Everyone knows this. You have

00:23:33.500 to get rid of Hamas, and we'll move towards two states. It's the only long-term solution here. 0.99

00:23:38.460 The one thing I also find jarring about a lot of these calls for ceasefire is that they're not

00:23:43.540 accompanied by a call to release hostages. Sometimes they are, but oftentimes they're

00:23:47.900 not. They're just unqualified. Israel must stop its attack. Israel must stop its counter-offensive.

00:23:55.100 Again, I understand the impetus, right? I mentioned this in the piece.

00:23:58.400 they're suffering. Human lives are being lost. There's no question about that. It's a horrible

00:24:03.900 tragedy, no matter who they are. On either side, Israeli, Palestinian, it doesn't matter. 1.00

00:24:08.560 And we have an obligation to make sure that this war is waged in a humane way. That means

00:24:12.660 humanitarian aid continuously going into Gaza. That means we would advocate for the restoring

00:24:18.860 of electricity and water to Gaza. We would advocate for fuel to be brought in for the

00:24:25.060 hospitals, recognizing there are challenges with humanitarian aid, but still, I think it is a moral

00:24:30.240 and humane thing to do, right? I think what the challenge here is when people don't see the

00:24:35.980 humanity of both sides of this conflict, which it is easy to do when you are stuck in an echo chamber

00:24:43.120 in the West where you have no stakes in this, the people that are real lives on the ground don't

00:24:48.840 matter to you. It's easy to say, I'm picking a team. This isn't a team sport. These are human

00:24:54.480 beings. And the reality of this place is there are 7 million Israelis, there are 5 million

00:24:59.220 Palestinians, nobody's going anywhere. We have to share this place, we have to share this land,

00:25:04.120 and we have to learn how to do that together. Let me just ask you then, Joe, about a little

00:25:10.560 bit of the way forward here. And so far as you and I are able to, you know, put our heads together

00:25:14.500 and solve this conflict in the next couple of minutes. But where is the way forward? Because

00:25:20.600 right now the Palestinian Authority is certainly a much better force than Hamas, but there is a

00:25:27.960 legitimacy problem there that's often raised. And oftentimes I think it's raised by people who are

00:25:33.380 more sympathetic to Hamas. But again, you know, Abbas has stayed there for far longer than he

00:25:38.600 was elected. But the counterpoint to that is that if elections were held, it's very possible that

00:25:43.580 Hamas would end up becoming more powerful. So how do you go forward when even the Palestinian cause 0.98

00:25:49.760 such as it is, isn't unified under one main voice and one main advocate.

00:25:55.640 Yeah, I mean, look, this is a problem. And let's be clear, you know, there has been

00:25:59.260 no movement on peace building for the last 15 years. We've had, frankly, we've had extremists

00:26:04.900 on both sides, extremist leadership in Israel, we've had extremist leadership in the West Bank,

00:26:10.720 the Palestinian Authority, who said, status quo is good for me. If it works for me, it works for 0.87

00:26:15.640 everybody. Well, we've seen that that doesn't work. It actually breaks down and causes horrible

00:26:18.840 violence. So, you know, there's a lot of consternation about the Palestinian Authority,

00:26:23.460 and I agree. They have a legitimacy problem among their own people. Abbas is 88 years old. He's a

00:26:28.560 chain smoker. You know, he's not doing great. I don't think he's going to be the leader to move

00:26:33.360 housing people forward. And whenever reunification of Gaza comes, which it has to come, you can't 0.91

00:26:38.580 have a two-state solution with a separate government in the West Bank from Gaza. It will

00:26:44.520 have to be under a Palestinian Authority. Now, what does that mean? I mean, the Palestinian

00:26:47.240 Authority has been undermined, defunded, challenged, I think limited in its abilities somewhat by the

00:26:55.400 Israelis to make sure that they wouldn't become a threat. But I think we also look at the good

00:26:59.800 things that the Palestinian Authority does. The Palestinian Authority has been committed to the

00:27:02.600 two-state solution along 1967 borders since 1987 when it was founded. The Palestinian Authority

00:27:09.320 has rejected violence, right? You don't see violence being done in the name of the Palestinian

00:27:14.440 authority. You don't see a third intifada that's called by Abbas. They recognize a path forward

00:27:20.640 as two states. They also recognize Hamas is a dangerous and violent extremist group that cannot

00:27:25.560 be allowed to take root in the West Bank like they did in Gaza. And when they, just remember, 0.94

00:27:29.500 when Hamas took power in Gaza, they threw people off roofs. They executed 700 Palestinians to take

00:27:35.420 power. All of them were affiliated with the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, the faction

00:27:40.180 that controls the Palestinian Authority that Abbas is a part of. So I think there's a lot of

00:27:44.100 alignment here. What we're going to have to do, and it's going to take U.S. leadership, Canadian

00:27:49.800 partnership, and our allies are going to have to come together and have a plan. How do we actually

00:27:54.640 strengthen the Palestinian Authority? How do we train them? How do we arm them so that they can 1.00

00:27:59.400 defend themselves and also govern Gaza? It's not going to happen today. Even when Israel leaves,

00:28:06.040 there's going to have to be some kind of transitional authority. But I think that the

00:28:09.500 long-term solution without the passing authority being in Gaza and a reunification, there's just

00:28:13.960 no pathway to peace. Just to go back to where we started on progressives and their approach to this

00:28:19.960 issue, there are some people that are just anti-Semitic or are very dyed in the wool,

00:28:25.320 committed to an anti-Zionist position that it goes very close to anti-Semitism. But I have to assume 0.95

00:28:30.420 that on both sides, there are people that are maybe misinformed, maybe ill-informed, or maybe

00:28:36.620 they're letting their idealism get away get in the way of the reality what what are the people

00:28:41.220 in that camp let's talk about those ones which may actually be within reach of persuading here

00:28:46.080 what are they missing what would you like them to know oh we've lost we've lost joe again i was

00:28:54.480 actually looking forward to his answer to that question so hopefully we can get him back in

00:28:57.620 just a second here because i i do believe there are some people that are just against uh this

00:29:03.020 country against its people. And I think those are the ones that are storming Cafe Land. We're in 0.54

00:29:08.460 Toronto. Those are the ones that are protesting Jewish daycares. Those are the ones that are 0.99

00:29:12.240 chanting from the river to the sea. Those are the ones like that former head of the BC Civil

00:29:17.060 Liberties Association, Harsha Walia, who said it was beautiful, beautiful to see Hamas parade glide

00:29:24.660 into Israel. She said it was beautiful. She like, imagine if someone in 1944, 1945 had just said,

00:29:31.520 Oh, how beautiful is that German ingenuity that they learned to run gas into chambers 0.83

00:29:37.160 because they were so devoted to their cause of ridding Europe of Jewish people. 1.00

00:29:42.480 That is the level of insane evil depravity that has been mainstreamed and normalized in society.

00:29:52.040 So all of that is to say I'm very grateful to have had Joe Roberts on the show.

00:29:57.160 We'll have to check into the connection issue there and have him back on another time.

00:30:01.200 But thanks to Joe Roberts, the chair of J Space Canada.

00:30:04.880 I wanted to move on to this story, which came up out of Ottawa.

00:30:08.680 I have never shockingly been a Girl Guide.

00:30:11.540 I know you were, well, it's 2023, I could have been.

00:30:14.580 But Girl Guides of Canada, which has been around for, as my late British grandmother would have said,

00:30:20.360 donkey's years, which just means a long time, but it's far more amusing to say it with a British accent.

00:30:25.880 Girl Guides of Canada has told its chapters they are not to participate in Santa Claus parades.

00:30:34.300 Yeah, Santa Claus parades.

00:30:36.240 Now, you may wonder why. 0.98

00:30:37.520 It's not because Santa Claus is an evil, you know, white male patriarch, 0.85

00:30:41.440 but it's because Santa Claus is associated with Christmas, which is a religious holiday,

00:30:46.680 and Girl Guides of Canada believes it needs to embrace its policy of secularism

00:30:51.960 in the name of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance.

00:30:55.180 So as such, a Girl Guide chapter,

00:30:57.020 which wants to jump in and join the Santa Claus Parade

00:31:01.080 as the chapter in Canada near Ottawa

00:31:04.000 or in Ottawa wanted to do, is unable to.

00:31:06.560 So this is rather absurd.

00:31:08.460 And every year there are these stories

00:31:10.060 where people will coin the phrase

00:31:12.020 or use the phrase, a war on Christmas.

00:31:13.860 And I find often the so-called war on Christmas

00:31:16.140 gets a bit overblown.

00:31:17.780 But I don't believe if a Girl Guide group wanted to,

00:31:21.380 I don't know, not that they have Ramadan parades, but I don't think if a girl guide group wanted to 1.00

00:31:25.260 march in a Ramadan parade as a show of solidarity, that they would be told they are not allowed to

00:31:32.600 do so. But this is what happened here. And then you juxtapose that with this story that was broken

00:31:38.460 last week by the Epoch Times, which was a fascinating and very upsetting story that

00:31:45.460 military chaplains who are there for the spiritual health and well-being of members of the Canadian

00:31:50.420 Armed Forces are now prohibited from doing public prayers, including at Remembrance Day

00:31:56.660 ceremonies. They have to be as nondescript and non-religious as they can. Tom Marazzo is with 0.99

00:32:03.980 me. He is a, well, you know him as a key volunteer and player with the Freedom Convoy and also author

00:32:10.060 of the book, The People's Emergency Act. But he is also a retired captain in the Canadian Armed

00:32:16.200 forces and joins me now tom uh good to talk to you with a bit of a different hat on today

00:32:21.400 yeah thank you this is unusual that i get to talk about something different than the convoy

00:32:26.440 so thank you it's uh look and i mean thank you for your service as as i say to any veteran that

00:32:31.960 i speak to but this is a really really disgusting turn of events i mean the reason military chaplains

00:32:38.600 exist is because faith is so tremendously important to people uh we have incorporated in our religious

00:32:44.600 observations uh you know in church my church and every church i've ever been to uh honoring

00:32:49.640 veterans on remembrance day and at remembrance day ceremonies prayer has always been a very

00:32:54.520 uh prominent thing and why on earth is now the time to say this is no longer permitted these

00:33:01.960 people that are still part of the canadian armed forces that have a role are no longer able to

00:33:06.200 actually be spiritual leaders you know it's such a bizarre story excuse me i i don't know what the

00:33:16.600 the timing of it other than to say that it does seem like it's something orchestrated um but i

00:33:21.560 don't want to i don't mean to suggest some sort of con you know conspiracy theory or anything but

00:33:26.840 i just find it interesting and when i saw the story broke the first thing i thought was you

00:33:31.320 better change the first line of the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms, which is,

00:33:36.120 you know, whereas Canada is founded upon the principles that recognize the supremacy of God

00:33:42.280 in the rule of law. Um, so it begs the question, what is it that veterans are fighting for?

00:33:49.240 If not for, you know, the very way of life that we have in Canada, why did our veterans,

00:33:55.800 why did our combat veterans go to world war one and two and Afghanistan and Korea

00:34:00.520 and all these these missions overseas if not to preserve the way of life that we have

00:34:07.400 here in canada and for many that includes god and it doesn't have to be the christian god

00:34:15.240 it could be the god of whatever religion that you prescribe to but you know the timing of this i

00:34:21.240 find extremely bizarre especially coming right up um you know close to remembrance day and

00:34:28.040 And it makes no sense to me other than I would say it is just one more further erosion on, you know, the foundations of this country that we built.

00:34:42.980 And I don't mean my generation, but I mean the Judeo-Christians that settled from Europe and came and built Canada into such a great country or what it used to be. 0.89

00:34:53.120 I would argue that it's not so great anymore under the current political landscape, but it's interesting to me that, you know, the very things that made us Canadians seem to be the very things that are being taken away from us slowly, incrementally.

00:35:10.720 And to me personally, I find it really offensive.

00:35:13.720 You know, I spent a lot of my life questioning my religious beliefs.

00:35:20.720 And I have had many occasions to sit down with military Padres and talk about the existence of God and where I fit into the universe.

00:35:29.720 And, you know, the morality of what I'm doing or what I did for 25 years of my life.

00:35:37.720 my life and to see that that somehow becoming sort of taboo, um, amongst the, those celebrations

00:35:49.480 that are so important to us to honor the sacrifices of, of past men and women who've given up their

00:35:55.960 lives and not just the ones who've given up their lives, but who have been wounded, who have

00:36:00.760 psychologically suffered as, you know, as a result of answering the call of Canada to go off to

00:36:09.080 foreign lands and do things. And doing that, knowing they were one, protecting the way of

00:36:15.800 life in Canada in the traditions that we have. But, you know, there is a saying that something

00:36:20.920 to the effect that, you know, in war, everybody in a foxhole believes in God.

00:36:28.360 You know, and I certainly think that it is an affront to the Canadian public to put limitations

00:36:39.060 or even curtail or, or reframe these, these things around Remembrance Day ceremonies.

00:36:45.680 I just think it's wrong and I'm not saying I'm not just go ahead, go ahead.

00:36:50.980 No, I just wanted to jump in just to give people the full context of what has been changed here.

00:36:55.460 So the directive, and I'm reading this from the Epoch Times here, well, the dimension of prayer may occupy a significant place for some of our members. We do not all pray in the same way. For some, prayer does not play a role in their lives. Therefore, it is essential for chaplains to adopt a sensitive and inclusive approach when publicly addressing military members.

00:37:17.160 It goes on to say that any spiritual reflection, not a prayer, needs to be inclusive in nature and respectful of the religious and spiritual diversity of Canada.

00:37:28.560 Because of the gender-based analysis, you cannot actually refer to God as male.

00:37:34.420 If you are going to reference God, you can't say Heavenly Father because that's gendered. 1.00

00:37:39.960 And then they've also taken away, and this is, I think, really crazy.

00:37:43.160 crazy. There are scarves that chaplains wear. And I didn't know this necessarily, but each scarf

00:37:49.420 has an emblem on it, depending on the religion of that chaplain, because they aren't all just

00:37:54.380 Christians. And those emblems have to go. So now like a Christian minister or a Catholic priest 0.99

00:37:59.540 that's a chaplain has to pretend that, you know, they are just this nondescript, you know, force

00:38:05.260 here. So they're trying to just like, it's weird that they're trying to do the best of both worlds,

00:38:09.960 because they're trying to claim that we still have this spiritual role, but we have to strip

00:38:14.800 away the thing that makes that role relevant to people. And by the way, it's Muslims and Jews

00:38:19.700 that also suffer from this because they're not allowed to have any recognition of their faith,

00:38:24.780 of a chaplain of their denomination. Yeah, I read all that as well. And I found it

00:38:30.980 interesting that this report or this policy came as a report based on a 2022 committee studying

00:38:38.260 diversity and inclusion within the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:38:41.860 This is more wokeism.

00:38:43.580 This is what it is.

00:38:44.500 Again, this is about, you know, the true nature of, of supporting military

00:38:51.220 members on the battlefield or military members at a Remembrance Day ceremony.

00:38:54.860 This is about wokeism.

00:38:56.860 And, you know, to me, it's irrelevant what religious faith you come from.

00:39:02.820 What is relevant to me is, you know, section two to A of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is, you know, you have a fundamental freedom regarding freedom of conscience and religion.

00:39:19.280 Okay. And so when you look at this woke ideology, which I would say is directly attributed to

00:39:26.160 Marxism, Marxism isn't very friendly to religion of any kind. This is just one more example of a

00:39:33.440 Marxist takeover of another institution. It's another nail in the coffin of the Canadian 0.96

00:39:39.280 military. Why would anybody want to join the Canadian military given everything that has been

00:39:44.960 and socially experimented on within the CAF.

00:39:48.860 I mean, our priority needs to be about training for the defense of this country,

00:39:54.860 not spending copious amounts of hours being trained in diversity, uh, in denied,

00:40:02.000 you know, your section two, you know, religion, uh, freedom of your conscience.

00:40:07.760 So I, I find the whole thing absolutely absurd.

00:40:11.160 And the reason I say, why would you want to serve is because what the

00:40:14.300 hell are you fighting for? What is it that you want to sacrifice your life to defend in this

00:40:19.700 country? I don't even recognize this country anymore. There have been, like I know it's

00:40:25.920 separate from the chaplain discussion, but there has been this tremendous relaxing of standards

00:40:30.320 in the last few years for members of the Canadian Armed Forces. And just to give one example, I was

00:40:35.580 at the airport the other day and I was walking through and there were four young men in uniform

00:40:40.500 that were just eating at the restaurant and presumably going somewhere or coming back from

00:40:44.960 somewhere. And one of them had this neck tattoo, which, look, I don't love tattoos. Do what you

00:40:51.480 want. And he's still serving his country and I have no ill will towards him. But there are certain

00:40:56.580 standards that existed even a couple of years ago that don't now. And the reason they've had to do

00:41:01.560 that, and I know the policy on tattoos is one of them, is because no one wants to join. There is

00:41:07.420 an enrollment or there is an enlistment issue. There is a morale issue of people that are in

00:41:12.640 there. And there is a treatment issue of people that were in there. I remember a story a couple

00:41:16.900 of weeks ago of like soldiers, I think it was in Latvia that had to buy their own helmets or

00:41:21.060 bulletproof vests or whatever it was because the military wasn't holding up its end of the bargain.

00:41:25.580 And, you know, it's easy to look and say that, you know, this is all just bureaucracy and

00:41:30.300 mismanagement, but it's that government is also, I fear, and this is not to sound conspiratorial,

00:41:35.940 but directly or indirectly killing off the military yeah i mean you know joining the military

00:41:43.140 for many people and it certainly was for me uh there's this this sort of inner fire that you have

00:41:49.060 that you want to to join and you want to be part of something that important within your country

00:41:55.460 you want to contribute you you want to do something positive and good and serve your country and you

00:42:03.460 want to do it at a very, very high level too. That's something that we don't often talk about.

00:42:08.340 You don't want to go in there and be mediocre. You want to go in there and be exceptional.

00:42:12.580 And when you look at this, and this is something many of the veterans I know right now, I find,

00:42:18.340 find very offensive, this relaxing in the standards of dress and deportment,

00:42:23.700 because we believe it also contributes to a lack of personal discipline, a lack of

00:42:30.260 respect for authority. In wartime, I'm sorry, but it's a military. It's not necessarily a

00:42:35.860 democracy. It certainly isn't on the battlefield. When you're told to jump, you jump. That comes

00:42:42.500 from discipline, good order and discipline. In terms of how you look and feel, I want to feel

00:42:49.380 in my uniform like I am the biggest, baddest force to be reckoned with on the battlefield.

00:42:57.380 I don't want to be, you know, me and having my own personal ethics, but flanked by either side

00:43:03.220 with guys on the battlefield with their nails polished and earrings and long hair. I want to

00:43:09.160 know that I'm there doing the work of the military to the best of my ability and with other people

00:43:17.140 that feel the same. And so when I look at this drop in standard, I would say that it is directly

00:43:22.420 attributable to this wokeism ideology that is completely engulfed the senior leadership

00:43:29.460 of the Canadian military. And that's, you know, Army, Navy, Air. And you're right,

00:43:33.940 there's not that many people in uniform right now. We're somewhere shy of, or short of about 12,000

00:43:42.980 to 16,000 positions are vacant in the Canadian for right now. And I don't see that improving

00:43:51.860 Because I don't view the Canadian military as a winning team.

00:43:58.340 You know, it's just not what it used to be.

00:44:00.400 It's not the military that we had in Afghanistan that were highly sought after in terms of NATO cooperation, NATO operations.

00:44:10.020 You know, JTF-2 was often selected by the Americans because they were so good.

00:44:14.480 And I can't, you know, answer for the state of them now.

00:44:17.740 but that's an example, is that Canadian special operations teams were highly sought after to go

00:44:22.700 on missions. I know Canadian soldiers were highly sought after. And I'll tell you, there's a saying

00:44:28.000 from World War II, and it was from, I believe it was from Rommel. He said that the unstoppable army,

00:44:35.520 the unstoppable army in the world, German officers, American equipment, and Canadian soldiers.

00:44:42.940 You can't say that today.

00:44:44.680 You cannot say that today.

00:44:46.260 I'm sorry.

00:44:47.100 And I'm not trying to criticize the people that are currently serving, but look at the state of the Canadian military right now.

00:44:54.280 We have less people in the regular force right now, or roughly around the same size as the New York City Police Department.

00:45:03.260 That's the state of the Canadian military.

00:45:05.060 And it's only going to get worse when they start taking religion or religious freedom away from soldiers expressing that.

00:45:13.320 Because what's next?

00:45:14.640 A padre can't express himself, his, you know, so show symbols. 0.95

00:45:19.900 But what does that say for the soldier now?

00:45:21.940 You're not going to be allowed to wear a cross. 0.99

00:45:23.460 You're not going to be able to pray at the, in the mess.

00:45:26.220 You know, where does it end?

00:45:27.840 This is just one step in a long line of questionable conduct by the senior leadership.

00:45:32.780 And the chaplain general should know better.

00:45:35.060 yeah and to weave the two issues we were talking about together you can have a face tattoo and

00:45:39.160 express yourself that way but heaven forbid there's a cross if you've got a cross on your

00:45:42.320 cheek you can't have a face tattoo or something that's where things are going uh tom marazo

00:45:46.580 author of the fantastic book the people's emergency act which you can see just in the

00:45:50.900 the top i think it's left corner on my screen sorry and and i andrew i got i got yours too

00:45:56.560 i got yours too on the okay i've just got the chinese translation of mine uh handy i gave my

00:46:03.680 last english one away so uh take from that what you will but uh it's a great book and you can get

00:46:08.540 that on amazon and you can also look at my interview with tom when that book came out a few

00:46:12.980 weeks back uh which is over at tnc.news well uh tom marazzo thank you again for your service and

00:46:18.400 thanks for coming on today thanks andrew all right tom marazzo that does it for us for today

00:46:24.340 we'll be back tomorrow with more of canada's most irreverent talk show right at 1 p.m eastern uh

00:46:31.520 what is that noon central 11 a.m mountain time and a nice little late morning 10 a.m start in

00:46:38.180 british columbia and we'll do the atlantic canada times next time thank you god bless and good day

00:46:44.060 to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating

00:46:48.900 to true north at www.tnc.news

00:47:01.520 We'll be right back.

00:47:31.520 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 24, 2023

The government’s own polling says Canadians think Trudeau is failing

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