In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show: Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, we cover a variety of topics, including: - Why do so many on the left want to see Israel and the Palestinians wiped off the face of the earth? - The Canadian Armed Forces' new ban on Christian chaplains in public - Who's to blame for the Israeli ceasefire call? And, of course, there's still time to catch up on Canada's most irreverent talk show.
00:02:24.540We're going to have a rather busy show today.
00:02:26.780I 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.
00:02:45.320We are also going to speak later on about this ceasefire call that we hear from people on the left now.
00:02:52.060And it sounds all nice on the surface.
00:02:53.340Oh, I want there to be a ceasefire in the Middle East. I want world peace.
00:02:57.080Well, when they call for a ceasefire, what they're calling for is the annihilation of Israel,
00:03:03.800whether they choose to accept this or not.
00:03:05.980So why are so many on the left playing into that narrative?
00:03:10.080We'll talk about that with Joe Roberts, with whom I disagree on a great many things.
00:03:13.500He is from the left, but he is an unabashed supporter of Israel and the Jewish people
00:03:18.300and has a lot to say about his colleagues on the left in these ceasefire calls.
00:03:22.440So 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.
00:03:42.660Polls 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.
00:03:52.420There 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.
00:04:10.300So this is, I think, an interesting thing.
00:04:12.080And I made the point, and I'll give the caveat now,
00:04:14.480I don't cover the day-to-day grind of polls.
00:04:23.640and I do like to cover the bigger picture.
00:04:25.760And I do like to cover when the government's own polling
00:04:29.020shows that people do not want Justin Trudeau around.
00:04:32.920This is a fascinating, fascinating story.
00:04:35.640So the government will actually conduct polls,
00:04:37.760not that are partisan in nature, but are about basically whether the government is on the right
00:04:42.820or wrong track. These polls, because they're being paid for by taxpayer money, are tremendously
00:04:48.880expensive because they're so large. The Privy Council office, which is basically like the
00:04:54.620bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister's office, is responsible for this. And they were doing
00:04:59.960polling every single week. They would include about 24,000 people in these polls. They polled
00:05:06.560them from January to June of this year, so a six-month span. And in this span, we see that
00:05:14.080Canadians, the majority of them, do not believe the government is on the right track. Now, not
00:05:21.420only is this the case, but Canadians feel the government is on the wrong track on every
00:05:27.320individual policy issue, except for one. The only one where Canadians said, yeah, okay, I guess
00:05:33.300they're doing okay, is on Canada-US relations. And even then, the majority was 51%. So only like it
00:05:40.940was just a majority, just a majority, 51%. And let's put up the regional breakdown here, because
00:05:48.320I think this is always interesting. The red line is, of course, in the wrong, unsurprising. In the
00:05:54.140case of Alberta, they don't like it, and Saskatchewan as well. But even in Ontario and Atlantic Canada
00:06:00.020and B.C., you see the very same thing, that everyone thinks they're wrong. The only region
00:06:05.240in Canada where they think the government is on the right track is Quebec, which I believe is
00:06:10.540actually the most compelling evidence for why Trudeau should go. If Quebec thinks you're doing
00:06:15.260something right, you're probably doing something wrong. So I actually think it's a nice little
00:06:19.900balance to have Quebec vote that way or Quebecers vote that way for Justin Trudeau. So I think
00:06:25.380that's where we need to look at the bigger picture here. Six months, tens of thousands of people,
00:06:30.340the government's own data show that Canadians believe the federal government is failing.
00:06:38.180Now, government is liberals. That's the goal here. Government is liberals. Liberals are government.
00:06:43.800But Justin Trudeau has personally taken over this institution, and there's this cult of personality
00:06:50.460around him, which is very interesting to see. And I was talking about this a little bit last week
00:06:55.140on the show where Trudeau has basically made himself and the liberal brand synonymous, in
00:07:01.220which he is not interested in whether the party or the government of the liberals can survive him.
00:07:06.680He wants to go down with the ship. And I think it's liberals that would probably be
00:07:10.600very well suited to take a look around and say, I don't think this guy
00:07:15.300is interested in the long-term survival of our party. You know, there are a number of examples,
00:07:22.700And 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.
00:07:29.560But 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%.
00:07:38.320He did not say, well, you know what, it's my party and, you know, come hell or high water, I'm staying.
00:08:27.600It's worse than when the bus crashed into the plane in that one election,
00:08:31.840because the Liberal government, the Liberal Party right now are going nowhere.
00:08:37.760Now, I think that when we take the perspective on this,
00:08:41.780that we've been taking when we view the poll numbers and all of that in the past on the show
00:08:46.280and continue to do, is that the Liberal government right now is entirely loyal to Trudeau. The Liberal
00:08:54.300caucus is, at least in its messaging, in its narrative, entirely loyal to Justin Trudeau.
00:09:01.620And you have to wonder what he has on them. There's a whip in the Liberal party, just as
00:09:08.780there's a whip in every other party, and the whip's job is to basically whip the caucus. That's the
00:09:13.040goal of the job. That's the point of it. And you got to assume that someone in the whip's office
00:09:17.740just has like house of cards style, this manila envelope filled with dirt on every single liberal
00:09:22.800member of parliament, which is why none of them have dared speak up about this government. And I
00:09:27.900think, I mean, I'm joking, but not really. I mean, maybe there are people that are just genuinely
00:09:32.900true believers in this. They're buying into Trudeau in the same way that CBC journalists did
00:09:37.600in 2015. They look at him as this big old dreamboat and they fail to see the flaws in his
00:09:44.000government. Maybe, just maybe you have people that do not believe they have a political career
00:09:48.500outside of anything that will happen with him. Because this is the fascinating part here.
00:09:54.940No liberal cabinet minister, certainly, who has hitched themselves to the Trudeau wagon
00:09:59.480will really be able to separate themselves from that. So if Trudeau does go down with the ship
00:10:07.040as it's looking like he will, if poll numbers persist, then anyone who was at his side for
00:10:13.540that journey, his co-captain, his bosun, whoever was swabbing the deck on the ship to torture this
00:10:18.820metaphor even further, isn't going to be able to say, well, what I would have done differently
00:10:23.040because you were him. You were that. I mean, Chrystia Freeland, people talk about her
00:10:28.180as being some contender for the premiership of Canada, for the leadership of the Liberal Party.
00:10:34.080If Justin Trudeau's name is as mud as the polls suggest, how on earth would Christopher
00:10:39.580Freeland ever have a chance at salvaging this?
00:10:43.560So it's why I'm not terribly scared to follow up on our chat on Thursday with the idea that
00:10:50.040Justin Trudeau does step down, which I don't think he will, and let someone else take the
00:10:54.260helm because there is no one else that would rise up in that, that would fill the vacuum,
00:10:59.560that would fill the void, who isn't just an extension of Justin Trudeau.
00:11:04.080And 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.
00:11:17.940They saw it as a party and a government that has run its course.
00:11:20.740The Harper government was very popular among conservatives and cabinet ministers all had a chance to speak up.
00:11:26.780and that was why you had like that clown car of a leadership race where just like you know 97 people
00:11:31.680get out of the Prius and all say I want to be the leader of the conservatives and uh you had some
00:11:36.080who were you know doing very well and were very popular like uh Andrew Scheer and uh Maxime
00:11:41.540Bernier and a couple of the social conservatives did very well and then you had other people like
00:11:46.100uh Rick Patterson, Pooterson, Porterson, Rick Porter, Rick oh Rick Peterson that's it sorry
00:11:51.780uh he's so irrelevant I couldn't remember the name uh who's now just uh founded some other
00:11:56.040party whose name I can't remember called the, I think it's the Canadian Future. Yes, I had the
00:12:02.620interim leader on there. But nevertheless, we had a really, really, really busy leadership race
00:12:10.240because the party was not as toxic as a brand. And that's not to say it didn't have to rebuild
00:12:16.700and hasn't gone through a lot in the subsequent years. But that's not where the liberals are
00:12:23.340right now. So I don't see any compelling person in that party that could stand up and say,
00:12:30.900I am going to right this ship. Melanie Jolie, who like was basically blaming Israel for bombing a
00:12:39.400Palestinian hospital without evidence. Is she the one? I mean, yes, if we need convening done,
00:12:43.920she's the woman for the job. Francois-Philippe Champagne, who also did the very same thing.
00:12:50.220Some people are saying Anita Anand, she maybe is a bit of an independent voice, but all of these
00:12:55.420people are people who have lived and died with the Trudeau brand. And I will say here that the
00:13:01.920liberal fascination with going negative continues. There was this really hilarious tweet from the
00:13:08.280Liberal Party about Pierre Paglias, because when liberals are plummeting in polls, they have to whip
00:13:12.720out, like there are three things they go with. They go far-right American politics, they go
00:13:17.700abortion or they go assault rifles. Those are the three. Which one is it? Survey says,
00:13:25.440ah, far-right American politics. If you had your money on far-right American politics,
00:13:30.540you win the grand prize. This is the document here. Pierre Wright's love of far-right U.S.
00:13:38.020Tea Party politics, just as Trump used, it's in bold so as to scare you even more,
00:13:43.580Just 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,
00:13:51.820Polyev is using the Tea Party's tactics and politics of rage as the basis for his own political assent.
00:14:00.200So there we go. Far-right American politics.
00:14:03.460So, yeah, my one colleague is saying the Tea Party, he forgot about them.
00:14:07.460Yeah, 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.
00:14:15.360So nevertheless, I want to pivot here ever so slightly to our discussion we had yesterday on Israel.
00:14:22.380And I will say time and time again, I am a supporter of Israel and of the Jewish people.
00:14:27.560And I have been heartbroken to see all of the displays that have masqueraded as normal political protests.
00:14:35.260people storming into a Jewish-owned restaurant in Toronto, people who are protesting outside
00:14:41.460literally a Jewish daycare in Toronto, not to mention the vile and very often anti-Semitic
00:14:48.340rhetoric we hear from these people. But oftentimes, things are not explicitly anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.
00:14:55.000They are cloaked in language that may sound entirely normal. One of these is a word that
00:14:59.980sounds on the surface to be wonderful, which is a ceasefire. People, I think, understandably
00:15:05.160associate a ceasefire with peace, two belligerents in a war that agree for a time or perhaps
00:15:10.940permanently to lay down arms and perhaps work out some agreement in the meantime to end
00:15:16.800conflict. This is something that, again, on the surface sounds lovely, but in the context here
00:15:22.020is completely devoid of sense and understanding of history, and I would say is devoid of justice.
00:15:28.540Hamas struck a terrible blow against Israel more than two weeks ago.
00:15:32.900There are still more than 200 hostages who are being held captive by Hamas.
00:15:37.820You've had 1,500 innocent lives lost to this conflict.
00:15:45.880And Israel, which has been living under the perpetual threat by Hamas for years,
00:15:50.620has understandably the desire to obliterate Hamas,
00:15:54.600which is under any interpretation of international law its right.
00:15:58.540Why then do we see so many people, including liberal members of parliament, new democratic
00:16:03.240members of parliament, many people from the left calling for a quote unquote ceasefire? I want to
00:16:10.540welcome to the show Joe Roberts, who is a progressive voice, a fantastic writer and
00:16:15.780podcaster. He is the chair of J Space Canada and joins me now. Joe, it's good to talk to you again.
00:16:21.760Thanks for coming on today. Hey, thanks for having me, Andrew.
00:16:25.620Now, 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.
00:16:33.260But I know it's been a very challenging time in the last couple of weeks.
00:16:37.980And 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.
00:31:17.780But I don't believe if a Girl Guide group wanted to,
00:31:21.380I don't know, not that they have Ramadan parades, but I don't think if a girl guide group wanted to
00:31:25.260march in a Ramadan parade as a show of solidarity, that they would be told they are not allowed to
00:31:32.600do so. But this is what happened here. And then you juxtapose that with this story that was broken
00:31:38.460last week by the Epoch Times, which was a fascinating and very upsetting story that
00:31:45.460military chaplains who are there for the spiritual health and well-being of members of the Canadian
00:31:50.420Armed Forces are now prohibited from doing public prayers, including at Remembrance Day
00:31:56.660ceremonies. They have to be as nondescript and non-religious as they can. Tom Marazzo is with
00:32:03.980me. He is a, well, you know him as a key volunteer and player with the Freedom Convoy and also author
00:32:10.060of the book, The People's Emergency Act. But he is also a retired captain in the Canadian Armed
00:32:16.200forces and joins me now tom uh good to talk to you with a bit of a different hat on today
00:32:21.400yeah thank you this is unusual that i get to talk about something different than the convoy
00:32:26.440so thank you it's uh look and i mean thank you for your service as as i say to any veteran that
00:32:31.960i speak to but this is a really really disgusting turn of events i mean the reason military chaplains
00:32:38.600exist is because faith is so tremendously important to people uh we have incorporated in our religious
00:32:44.600observations uh you know in church my church and every church i've ever been to uh honoring
00:32:49.640veterans on remembrance day and at remembrance day ceremonies prayer has always been a very
00:32:54.520uh prominent thing and why on earth is now the time to say this is no longer permitted these
00:33:01.960people that are still part of the canadian armed forces that have a role are no longer able to
00:33:06.200actually be spiritual leaders you know it's such a bizarre story excuse me i i don't know what the
00:33:16.600the timing of it other than to say that it does seem like it's something orchestrated um but i
00:33:21.560don't want to i don't mean to suggest some sort of con you know conspiracy theory or anything but
00:33:26.840i just find it interesting and when i saw the story broke the first thing i thought was you
00:33:31.320better change the first line of the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms, which is,
00:33:36.120you know, whereas Canada is founded upon the principles that recognize the supremacy of God
00:33:42.280in the rule of law. Um, so it begs the question, what is it that veterans are fighting for?
00:33:49.240If not for, you know, the very way of life that we have in Canada, why did our veterans,
00:33:55.800why did our combat veterans go to world war one and two and Afghanistan and Korea
00:34:00.520and all these these missions overseas if not to preserve the way of life that we have
00:34:07.400here in canada and for many that includes god and it doesn't have to be the christian god
00:34:15.240it could be the god of whatever religion that you prescribe to but you know the timing of this i
00:34:21.240find extremely bizarre especially coming right up um you know close to remembrance day and
00:34:28.040And 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.
00:34:42.980And 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.
00:34:53.120I 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.
00:35:10.720And to me personally, I find it really offensive.
00:35:13.720You know, I spent a lot of my life questioning my religious beliefs.
00:35:20.720And 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.
00:35:29.720And, you know, the morality of what I'm doing or what I did for 25 years of my life.
00:35:37.720my life and to see that that somehow becoming sort of taboo, um, amongst the, those celebrations
00:35:49.480that are so important to us to honor the sacrifices of, of past men and women who've given up their
00:35:55.960lives and not just the ones who've given up their lives, but who have been wounded, who have
00:36:00.760psychologically suffered as, you know, as a result of answering the call of Canada to go off to
00:36:09.080foreign lands and do things. And doing that, knowing they were one, protecting the way of
00:36:15.800life in Canada in the traditions that we have. But, you know, there is a saying that something
00:36:20.920to the effect that, you know, in war, everybody in a foxhole believes in God.
00:36:28.360You know, and I certainly think that it is an affront to the Canadian public to put limitations
00:36:39.060or even curtail or, or reframe these, these things around Remembrance Day ceremonies.
00:36:45.680I just think it's wrong and I'm not saying I'm not just go ahead, go ahead.
00:36:50.980No, I just wanted to jump in just to give people the full context of what has been changed here.
00:36:55.460So 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.
00:37:17.160It 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.
00:37:28.560Because of the gender-based analysis, you cannot actually refer to God as male.
00:37:34.420If you are going to reference God, you can't say Heavenly Father because that's gendered.
00:37:39.960And then they've also taken away, and this is, I think, really crazy.
00:37:43.160crazy. There are scarves that chaplains wear. And I didn't know this necessarily, but each scarf
00:37:49.420has an emblem on it, depending on the religion of that chaplain, because they aren't all just
00:37:54.380Christians. And those emblems have to go. So now like a Christian minister or a Catholic priest
00:37:59.540that's a chaplain has to pretend that, you know, they are just this nondescript, you know, force
00:38:05.260here. So they're trying to just like, it's weird that they're trying to do the best of both worlds,
00:38:09.960because they're trying to claim that we still have this spiritual role, but we have to strip
00:38:14.800away the thing that makes that role relevant to people. And by the way, it's Muslims and Jews
00:38:19.700that also suffer from this because they're not allowed to have any recognition of their faith,
00:38:24.780of a chaplain of their denomination. Yeah, I read all that as well. And I found it
00:38:30.980interesting that this report or this policy came as a report based on a 2022 committee studying
00:38:38.260diversity and inclusion within the Canadian Armed Forces.
00:38:56.860And, you know, to me, it's irrelevant what religious faith you come from.
00:39:02.820What 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.
00:39:19.280Okay. And so when you look at this woke ideology, which I would say is directly attributed to
00:39:26.160Marxism, Marxism isn't very friendly to religion of any kind. This is just one more example of a
00:39:33.440Marxist takeover of another institution. It's another nail in the coffin of the Canadian
00:39:39.280military. Why would anybody want to join the Canadian military given everything that has been
00:39:44.960and socially experimented on within the CAF.
00:39:48.860I mean, our priority needs to be about training for the defense of this country,
00:39:54.860not spending copious amounts of hours being trained in diversity, uh, in denied,
00:40:02.000you know, your section two, you know, religion, uh, freedom of your conscience.
00:40:07.760So I, I find the whole thing absolutely absurd.
00:40:11.160And the reason I say, why would you want to serve is because what the
00:40:14.300hell are you fighting for? What is it that you want to sacrifice your life to defend in this
00:40:19.700country? I don't even recognize this country anymore. There have been, like I know it's
00:40:25.920separate from the chaplain discussion, but there has been this tremendous relaxing of standards
00:40:30.320in the last few years for members of the Canadian Armed Forces. And just to give one example, I was
00:40:35.580at the airport the other day and I was walking through and there were four young men in uniform
00:40:40.500that were just eating at the restaurant and presumably going somewhere or coming back from
00:40:44.960somewhere. And one of them had this neck tattoo, which, look, I don't love tattoos. Do what you
00:40:51.480want. And he's still serving his country and I have no ill will towards him. But there are certain
00:40:56.580standards that existed even a couple of years ago that don't now. And the reason they've had to do
00:41:01.560that, and I know the policy on tattoos is one of them, is because no one wants to join. There is
00:41:07.420an enrollment or there is an enlistment issue. There is a morale issue of people that are in
00:41:12.640there. And there is a treatment issue of people that were in there. I remember a story a couple
00:41:16.900of weeks ago of like soldiers, I think it was in Latvia that had to buy their own helmets or
00:41:21.060bulletproof vests or whatever it was because the military wasn't holding up its end of the bargain.
00:41:25.580And, you know, it's easy to look and say that, you know, this is all just bureaucracy and
00:41:30.300mismanagement, but it's that government is also, I fear, and this is not to sound conspiratorial,
00:41:35.940but directly or indirectly killing off the military yeah i mean you know joining the military
00:41:43.140for many people and it certainly was for me uh there's this this sort of inner fire that you have
00:41:49.060that you want to to join and you want to be part of something that important within your country
00:41:55.460you want to contribute you you want to do something positive and good and serve your country and you
00:42:03.460want to do it at a very, very high level too. That's something that we don't often talk about.
00:42:08.340You don't want to go in there and be mediocre. You want to go in there and be exceptional.
00:42:12.580And when you look at this, and this is something many of the veterans I know right now, I find,
00:42:18.340find very offensive, this relaxing in the standards of dress and deportment,
00:42:23.700because we believe it also contributes to a lack of personal discipline, a lack of
00:42:30.260respect for authority. In wartime, I'm sorry, but it's a military. It's not necessarily a
00:42:35.860democracy. It certainly isn't on the battlefield. When you're told to jump, you jump. That comes
00:42:42.500from discipline, good order and discipline. In terms of how you look and feel, I want to feel
00:42:49.380in my uniform like I am the biggest, baddest force to be reckoned with on the battlefield.
00:42:57.380I don't want to be, you know, me and having my own personal ethics, but flanked by either side
00:43:03.220with guys on the battlefield with their nails polished and earrings and long hair. I want to
00:43:09.160know that I'm there doing the work of the military to the best of my ability and with other people
00:43:17.140that feel the same. And so when I look at this drop in standard, I would say that it is directly
00:43:22.420attributable to this wokeism ideology that is completely engulfed the senior leadership
00:43:29.460of the Canadian military. And that's, you know, Army, Navy, Air. And you're right,
00:43:33.940there's not that many people in uniform right now. We're somewhere shy of, or short of about 12,000
00:43:42.980to 16,000 positions are vacant in the Canadian for right now. And I don't see that improving
00:43:51.860Because I don't view the Canadian military as a winning team.
00:43:58.340You know, it's just not what it used to be.
00:44:00.400It's not the military that we had in Afghanistan that were highly sought after in terms of NATO cooperation, NATO operations.
00:44:10.020You know, JTF-2 was often selected by the Americans because they were so good.
00:44:14.480And I can't, you know, answer for the state of them now.
00:44:17.740but that's an example, is that Canadian special operations teams were highly sought after to go
00:44:22.700on missions. I know Canadian soldiers were highly sought after. And I'll tell you, there's a saying
00:44:28.000from World War II, and it was from, I believe it was from Rommel. He said that the unstoppable army,
00:44:35.520the unstoppable army in the world, German officers, American equipment, and Canadian soldiers.