Juno News - The left doesn't care about its 'hate speech' double standard

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 this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.400 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here at the andrew

00:01:30.260 lawton show i like moved my mic really aggressively before the show and i was hoping it would stop

00:01:35.660 bouncing by the time the camera went on me and it didn't so if you were watching the camera

00:01:40.120 wondering like why is that mic just like moving around independently of the guy talking into it

00:01:44.380 That's why it's not that I'm blowing so much hot air.

00:01:47.020 It is ambulatory all by itself.

00:01:49.860 It is, in fact, the case of me just being, like, very haphazard with my hands in the exciting, riveting pre-show moments,

00:01:57.880 which maybe we'll have to, like, package up as an after-hour special at some point to True North Insiders,

00:02:02.720 which you could be if you head on over to donate.tnc.news.

00:02:07.080 uh later on in the show i have a bit of an exciting announcement about something that is going on

00:02:11.880 for me and for this program next week also going to be chatting a little bit later on in the show

00:02:18.080 about this conference coming up this weekend that sadly i could not make it to dedicated to free

00:02:23.480 speech in medicine which i think before a few years ago you might not have thought necessary

00:02:28.620 but certainly is and this is i believe the second time these groups medical professionals doctors

00:02:34.460 Students will be descending on an idyllic Nova Scotia town and discussing solving the

00:02:40.400 worlds of the problem.

00:02:41.980 No, the problems of the world.

00:02:43.640 Solving the worlds of the problem will be at their next conference.

00:02:46.720 But one thing I wanted to get to today as we wind down another week is the big picture

00:02:52.800 of a lot of the discussions we've been having on this show about anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism,

00:02:58.620 the attacks on Israel, and the rhetorical battles being waged in North America as a result.

00:03:06.480 And I won't play the clip for you, but there was a chilling video you may have seen circulating

00:03:10.620 yesterday of students at a university in the United States that were basically locking themselves

00:03:16.520 in a library as protesters pounded on the doors wanting to get in. Now, when I say students,

00:03:23.880 I should point out I'm referring to Jewish students who were literally being hidden, hidden in the library because there were rabid anti-Jewish students that were attacking and assaulting what most people would argue is the bounds of civility.

00:03:42.280 Now, what they would have done if they had got in and were face-to-face with these Jewish students, I have no idea. 0.99

00:03:46.660 One of the students said in an interview, it felt a lot like being told to go hide in the attic, a la Anne Frank and the Holocaust.

00:03:54.120 We've had people that have looked at what happened at that Toronto restaurant, Cafe Landwehr, and said it seems a lot like Kristallnacht.

00:04:02.040 It seems a lot like the shades of European anti-Semitism in the 1930s.

00:04:07.420 And a lot of the people that we talk to on this show when it comes to free speech will take the view that I do, which is that heinous views, heinous forms of expression still deserve to be protected.

00:04:18.700 But I would say that a lot of the rhetoric we're seeing pushes to the very limit of that, if not goes over it.

00:04:25.940 Now, as you know, I am a free speech absolutist.

00:04:28.560 I believe in about as high a bar as you can have in a free society for freedom of speech.

00:04:34.220 and I believe that the criminal code approach that we have in Canada is probably the best way

00:04:39.900 of doing this. So no, I'm not being hypocritical when I turn around and say, well, that might not

00:04:44.640 actually fit within normal free speech. It's because the speech itself is so extreme, it goes

00:04:49.900 into territory where it is threatening in nature, which is to say the free speech is compromising

00:04:55.800 the freedoms and rights of others, which is about the only time that I believe one's own rights

00:05:01.120 should be curtailed. Now, all of this is to say right now we're seeing people twist themselves

00:05:06.900 into knots. Now, there are some people on the right that are normally defenders of free speech

00:05:12.800 that I think are being very inconsistent on this. And I've criticized several Jewish groups in 0.92

00:05:18.300 Canada for, I don't feel, being sufficiently desiring to protect free speech. But I would

00:05:25.080 say there's far more hypocrisy on the left. People who do not particularly care about civil liberties

00:05:31.040 and fundamental freedoms normally,

00:05:33.280 but when it comes to them facing consequences 0.95

00:05:36.200 for calling for death to the Jews

00:05:38.620 are all about wrapping themselves in the charter

00:05:41.040 and saying, oh, but free speech, freedom of expression,

00:05:43.380 my rights in ways that they don't elsewhere.

00:05:46.980 Now, one notable example of this

00:05:49.140 is the BC Civil Liberties Association.

00:05:51.960 Now, it has civil liberties in the name,

00:05:55.240 but when the BCCLA,

00:05:57.060 the BC Civil Liberties Association calls itself

00:05:59.680 the BC Civil Liberties Association, it's not actually because there is a commitment to

00:06:05.440 civil liberties. It's just branding. I mean, it would be like if I were to call myself the

00:06:09.900 skinny guy show. I can say that, but that's really not believable. And anyone that were

00:06:14.620 to look at the show would say that doesn't actually fit with what you're offering to people.

00:06:18.920 In the same way, the BCCLA is not offering anything civil or anything focused on liberty.

00:06:25.060 You may recall its former executive director a couple of years ago was the one who was

00:06:29.660 cheering the torching of churches across the country. Burn it all down was what its executive

00:06:36.160 director at the time, Harsha Walia, said. Now, Harsha Walia is no longer with the organization,

00:06:41.440 so she is unshackled from the expectations of her board. And it means she can make comments like 0.85

00:06:47.880 this. How intense is the spirit to get free? How deep is the spirit to get free? How beautiful

00:06:57.740 is the spirit to get free that palestinians literally learned how to fly on hand gliders 0.94

00:07:04.160 how embarrassing idea how intense is the spirit to get free how deep is the spirit to get free

00:07:13.860 how beautiful is the spirit to get free that palestinians bulldoze down the apartheid 1.00

00:07:21.040 Sean was just like commenting on how obnoxious the video guy is. Sean's a videographer. So he

00:07:49.200 has no tolerance for a videographer that injects their own commentary into the thing they're

00:07:53.420 filming. Yeah, he was obnoxious, but no, no, no, no one was as obnoxious there as Harsha Waliyah.

00:07:58.940 How beautiful is the spirit to get free that they paraglided into Israel, that they learned to hang 0.99

00:08:06.880 glide. How beautiful is the spirit to get free that they bulldozed the apartheid wall. I would

00:08:13.460 have actually loved to have heard the uncut speech. I can just imagine Ms. Waliyah sitting around

00:08:18.360 working through all the drafts i don't have any like prop paper that i can use saying uh how

00:08:22.920 beautiful is the spirit to get free that they beheaded those babies no no that line's not 0.93

00:08:28.440 going to work uh how beautiful is the spirit to get free that they kidnapped and raped those 0.97

00:08:34.360 teenagers oh you know man that might not go over very well uh how beautiful is the spirit to get

00:08:40.840 free, that they held those elderly people hostage and murdered them in cold blood.

00:08:48.420 It's a little on the nose, don't you think?

00:08:50.540 Okay, all right.

00:08:51.200 We'll go with hang gliding and bulldozing.

00:08:53.280 That's uncontroversial, right? 1.00

00:08:55.320 Like, what a disgusting, despicable human being. 1.00

00:08:58.600 And not just her. 1.00

00:08:59.660 She's the one that said the words.

00:09:01.140 She was getting cheered, though.

00:09:02.680 Did you hear the outcry of support for her when she talks about the beauty of this?

00:09:08.760 Now, she is a particularly radical person,

00:09:10.960 and I would actually have very little doubt

00:09:13.560 that she holds the Jewish people,

00:09:15.360 at least those living in Israel,

00:09:17.000 in a great deal of contempt.

00:09:18.880 And she is very much celebrating the acts that Hamas took, 0.97

00:09:23.840 which were part of an orchestrated attack

00:09:25.520 that killed 1,500 Jews in Israel,

00:09:28.700 the vast majority of whom were civilians.

00:09:31.460 This is not just a, well, you know,

00:09:33.060 we need to look at both sides,

00:09:34.380 and it's a complicated struggle.

00:09:35.640 This is outright celebration.

00:09:37.720 It's beautiful in her eyes.

00:09:39.720 Like when I, you know, I'm not going to call myself the most romantic person.

00:09:44.920 And my wife and I celebrated our anniversary recently.

00:09:47.520 And I don't, again, would not say that I'm like the best husband or the most romantic

00:09:51.620 person.

00:09:52.060 But I don't recall like with the vows being like, you're so beautiful, you remind me of 0.53

00:09:56.400 Palestinian terrorism.

00:09:57.780 Like that's not actually a line in the hallmark section of your drugstore when you're getting

00:10:03.680 cards that you see often.

00:10:05.080 Like you don't actually, like men, normally I'm not going to give you marriage and dating advice, but you're as beautiful as Palestinian terrorism is not the line that you want to give to your beloved. 0.52

00:10:15.260 Unless, of course, you're going out with Harsha Walia, in which case that's probably the greatest compliment you could bestow upon a woman. 1.00

00:10:21.840 But here is the problem that we have with this, is that here's a woman representing an organization formerly that stood up supposedly for civil liberties, but was uninterested in civil liberties.

00:10:33.180 Now, I don't believe that she should be censored.

00:10:35.700 I do not believe that she should be facing any criminal or civil sanction for what she

00:10:40.640 said.

00:10:40.980 I think she said it.

00:10:41.720 She has a right to, and I have the right to condemn it.

00:10:44.800 But it's interesting that when people like her are attacked, and we've seen this from

00:10:48.480 a number of them in recent weeks, they like to shroud themselves in a right to free speech

00:10:53.540 and freedom of expression that they are not prepared to extend to others.

00:10:57.940 Let's just look at the BC Civil Liberties Association, for example, which has been a

00:11:02.760 big champion of including gender in the BC Human Rights Code. Now, these provisions are ones that

00:11:10.960 let the BC Human Rights Tribunal go after you if you use the wrong pronoun for someone, if you

00:11:17.040 provide a name that is in identification with their biological sex rather than their chosen

00:11:22.840 or preferred gender. So these people will police your pronouns, but so you can't, you know, if you

00:11:28.980 don't want to call your colleague Zimzer Ziz, you are a big hater and off with your head. But if

00:11:35.240 you want to chant death to the Jews, oh, well, freedom of speech, you know, that's just your 0.98

00:11:39.120 right there to say and do what you want. And to look at the BC Civil Liberties Association in a 0.81

00:11:45.100 bit more detail, this is a so-called civil liberties group that, believe it or not, defended

00:11:50.620 vaccine passports. Now, this was a section from a policy document they put out. I'll share two with

00:11:57.120 but the first one uh sean is the one that starts with broadly speaking this is them explaining

00:12:02.960 broadly speaking speaking given the widespread and devastating impact of covet 19 the effectiveness

00:12:08.880 and safety of covet 19 vaccines and the absence of an equally effective and less intrusive alternative

00:12:15.600 programs requiring proof of vaccination can be consistent with civil liberties and human rights

00:12:22.560 principles okay so are there any circumstances i wonder under which the bccla would have opposed

00:12:30.400 vaccine passports well let's go to guideline number nine proof of vaccination programs must

00:12:37.280 avoid requiring two-spirit trans and non-binary individuals having to use government id and legal

00:12:43.840 documents that contain their dead names or inaccurate gender markers so to the bccla a

00:12:49.840 A vaccine passport is fine as long as it doesn't use your biological name.

00:12:55.880 That would be a road too far.

00:12:58.280 Yeah, well, you know, having to have a vaccine passport to go to a restaurant, that's fine. 0.96

00:13:02.060 Calling yourself Timmy when you go by Tammy now?

00:13:05.000 Oh, how dare you?

00:13:07.360 Now, this is, I think, a very interesting dilemma.

00:13:10.040 Now, let's talk about how the BCCLA has responded to the wave of protests

00:13:15.040 and pushback against them in the last couple of days.

00:13:18.040 This ostensible and self-proclaimed civil liberties organization put out a statement,

00:13:23.600 which I'm not going to read in full, but you can see there that they are in fact disquieted

00:13:29.220 by the growing chorus of statements from federal, provincial, and municipal government officials

00:13:34.220 and politicians that risk conflating pro-Palestinian sentiments, criticism of the state of Israel,

00:13:40.720 or calls for a ceasefire with expressions of hate and anti-Semitism.

00:13:45.980 They're disturbed by the recent decision to silence Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament Sarah Jama

00:13:51.800 over comments she made in support of a ceasefire.

00:13:55.020 Not exactly, by the way, an accurate distillation of what she said.

00:13:59.620 More importantly, they are deeply concerned by the chilling effect

00:14:03.540 that irresponsible statements and actions from government officials will have

00:14:06.860 on the free exercise of charter protected rights in Canada.

00:14:11.960 So they talk about this in lengthy terms.

00:14:14.840 and by the way, as I say, I support free speech. I support free speech for those who support Israel

00:14:19.280 and for those who support Gaza. I support free speech for people who want to say very offensive 0.66

00:14:25.620 or what I would view as intolerable things. But it is interesting that these activists only want

00:14:32.080 to extend that freedom in one direction and are uninterested in defending freedom of speech at

00:14:37.600 any other points in their existence. What does this all mean? There is a double standard afoot.

00:14:43.400 Now, many of you may say, oh, my goodness, you've got them dead to rights.

00:14:47.040 Well done, Andrew.

00:14:47.800 You've called out the double standard.

00:14:49.360 You've called out the hypocrisy.

00:14:51.160 Yeah, I wouldn't get too excited about that because, you see, the left does not care.

00:14:56.860 My dear late friend Kathy Shadle once had to write me on this, not like, you know,

00:15:03.140 W-R-I-D-E, but R-I-G-H-T, because I was so keen and so enthusiastic about pointing out,

00:15:09.440 I've got them. I've exposed these hypocrites. And she said, they don't care. And she summed it up 0.98

00:15:14.840 in a very snappy slogan as Kathy Shadle only could, which is, you know, liberals, it's different

00:15:19.740 when we do it. And that is a bit of a nihilistic view of things, but it is an incredibly useful

00:15:25.720 one because the left simply plays by different rules. If you expect them to defend and protect

00:15:31.940 their own free speech rights just as much as yours, you are in for a rude awakening. If you

00:15:36.920 expect them to take the same level of condemnation to anti-Semitism as they do to Islamophobia,

00:15:43.100 you are going to be in for a rude awakening. If you expect them to defend civil liberties equally

00:15:50.320 and evenly without picking up and defining freedom based on their own preferred pet groups

00:15:55.940 and causes, you are, say it with me, in for a rude awakening. They are, I mean, they're rude,

00:16:02.680 they're not particularly awake, but you and I will have to be both. And this is the fundamental

00:16:08.120 problem. And I'd say it's the fundamental difference between the pro-free speech set

00:16:12.820 and the anti-free speech set. And I should clarify, this is not just a left versus right issue. I think

00:16:18.320 generally speaking, the right is better on free speech, but not exclusively good. It was

00:16:22.620 conservatives that first wanted to ban Holocaust denial in Canada, which I thought

00:16:26.860 may be rooted in a noble place, but is fundamentally wrong. And it is many people

00:16:31.600 on the left who are dwindling in number but still exist that have this principled defense of free

00:16:37.180 speech that goes back to basically that Berkeley era of what the left used to be. So when I say

00:16:42.980 the left and the right in this case, I realize it is a crude distillation of groups that are not

00:16:49.560 monolithic. But as we were talking about yesterday on the show with Joe Roberts, it's the left here

00:16:55.020 that wants to be convenient champions of free speech only when they want the freedom to shout

00:16:59.660 out death to the Jews, but we'll go back to censoring anyone that, you know, misgenders Timmy 0.99

00:17:04.160 or Tammy once tomorrow comes along. And again, you know, if we were to see a bunch of students 0.98

00:17:10.460 get out of school because they wanted to protest, let's say, gender ideology in schools, we would 0.98

00:17:15.980 hear denunciation from the teachers union that this was hate, kids need to get in class, they

00:17:20.200 shouldn't be protesting. But when you have a display like what's taking place in Toronto today

00:17:25.180 where students are sitting out class because they want to protest against Israel,

00:17:29.460 this has been met with very little condemnation from the TDSB.

00:17:33.520 In fact, some people would say the Toronto District School Board is in fact sanctioning this.

00:17:39.680 Sue Ann Levy, my colleague from True North,

00:17:42.040 who's been on the cutting edge of this story for years before anyone else was paying attention,

00:17:47.500 joins me now and she has a great piece up at True North yesterday looking at this student walkout here.

00:17:53.780 Let's just start there, Sue Ann.

00:17:55.240 I mean, when students and their parents were protesting a couple of weeks back, they were

00:17:59.640 accused of being brainwashed.

00:18:01.140 They were told to stay in school.

00:18:02.740 They were told that the schools had no tolerance for absence.

00:18:06.340 When students want to sit home and call Israel an apartheid state, the TDSB is just clamming

00:18:11.780 up.

00:18:13.080 Are they ever, Andrew?

00:18:14.740 In fact, what they said in the note that came from Colleen Russell-Rollins, the education

00:18:21.700 director yesterday is that they don't approve of the walkouts and the walkouts are happening in

00:18:29.660 several high schools, mostly this afternoon. They don't approve of the walkouts, but they're free

00:18:37.100 to walk out. And I'm thinking, okay, who is running the asylum these days? Because what I have said

00:18:46.380 on, you know, social media is that if the Toronto School Board had a firm expulsion and suspension

00:18:53.300 policy, which they don't, they don't give out hardly any anymore, they could threaten the kids

00:19:00.640 with this. Say, you know, you walk out, you're going to be expelled or you're going to be suspended.

00:19:05.680 So there are ways of dealing with them, but there are absolutely no consequences.

00:19:10.880 and it leads me to believe that the senior executives at the toronto school board and the

00:19:16.960 trustees sanction this they they you know they they have no way of stopping them come on who's

00:19:25.020 running the show well and there was one school you mentioned this in your column yesterday i

00:19:30.580 believe it was the rh king academy where the principal has agreed to move assignments or move

00:19:36.260 quizzes to another day. So, I mean, what is that, if not a tacit, or I would even argue explicit

00:19:41.280 endorsement of absenteeism on this day? Yeah, I mean, they basically are holding these kids'

00:19:49.520 hands and saying, okay, you can walk out the door because we're going to make it super easy for you.

00:19:54.620 And I would lay you a bet that absenteeism will be very high today in those schools,

00:20:00.400 not even because they're planning to protest, but because they've gotten a free ride.

00:20:04.620 I mean, this, you know, aside from the fact that this really disturbs me that these kids are protesting, being a very ardent Zionist and a member of the Jewish community in Toronto, and, you know, the hate fest that have been going on are just appalling.

00:20:22.600 um the it speaks to all the things that are wrong with the school system you know academics take a

00:20:29.920 back seat to protest 101 and you know they i i can't believe that they're allowing these kids

00:20:39.860 just to walk out the door and do what they're doing i mean the only good thing is that it's

00:20:43.360 raining today in toronto so yeah and i mean look i take a view i mean i was never so fortunate as

00:20:50.180 to have the parents that would pull me out of school for, well, really for anything. I mean,

00:20:55.060 I would have to be on my deathbed, I think. Whereas, you know, like my brother, for example,

00:20:58.820 has like taken their kids out, you know, to go on a vacation for a few days. I'm like, oh, wow,

00:21:02.580 I never got that growing up. And my brother said, I know. But, you know, so parents, I think who want

00:21:07.700 to, for whatever reason, make a decision for their kids obviously have that right. I mean,

00:21:11.240 the schools are not able to go and round up the kids and, you know, drag them into school.

00:21:14.900 But it's about the messages they're sending out. And you mentioned that the TDSB education director,

00:21:20.180 This is herself an activist. Now, I don't know if she's commented on the Israel-Palestine issue in the past, but she's very much tried to inject a level of activism into the school board here. So you can make an argument that the schools are taking their cue from the director.

00:21:37.340 Well, certainly are. They certainly are in the senior executive team because I've written several stories about the fact that even elementary schools or in particular elementary schools spend, and not all, but many of them, spend at least an hour a day doing something related to social justice or social emotional learning.

00:21:58.660 a buzzword for basically, you know, touchy feely stuff like steel drumming and Hindu dancing. And 1.00

00:22:06.440 I mean, nothing to do with academics. And the kids are getting further and further behind.

00:22:11.800 But I mean, the director is an activist. And the thing that's scary is that she's a proponent of

00:22:16.920 critical race theory. Critical race theory, by its very ideology, is anti-Semitic. So you draw

00:22:23.540 your own conclusions, Andrew. Let me ask you, I mean, one theory that I have on this, and I could

00:22:29.220 be overcomplicating this, is that the school is basically dealing with a bit of guilt over how it

00:22:34.540 dealt with a lot of Muslim students and families during the parental rights approaches. I mean, 0.64

00:22:39.140 everyone's heard that clip from that teacher in Edmonton berating the Muslim student Mansour,

00:22:44.120 because, you know, Mansour was, you know, giggling at the pride stuff. And the teacher was very brazen

00:22:49.120 about how transactional she thought diversity should be.

00:22:52.380 It's like, you know, everyone else dealt with your Ramadan stuff,

00:22:55.060 so now you need to deal with the trans pride stuff.

00:22:57.340 And I wonder if what we're seeing now is a bit of an overcorrection,

00:23:00.480 whereas the school is seeing what's predominantly Muslim students

00:23:03.740 and families that are voicing all of their issues with Israel

00:23:07.620 and Zionism right now, and they're like not wanting to offend

00:23:12.220 this particular group.

00:23:14.120 I wish I could say that, but in 2021,

00:23:16.960 when I was still with Post Media, there was another insurrection in Israel, and it wasn't as

00:23:26.640 blatant as it is this time, but the anti-Semitism coming from the Toronto District School Board

00:23:31.620 and from, in particular, some really radical teachers and the teachers' unions was just as

00:23:41.180 Pauling. And the director, I don't believe she had come to the school board yet, but

00:23:50.620 she was about to start. This wasn't stopped back in 2021. And I don't know if you recall

00:23:57.660 that I did several stories on Javier Davila, a pro-Palestinian activist in the board,

00:24:04.060 an equity worker who put out manuals that were grossly antisemitic. And they launched a petition

00:24:10.620 against me for doing that uh the teachers and the teachers unions and the muslim association so this

00:24:16.860 has been going on for a while and it hasn't been um it's been sanctioned it you know there it's been

00:24:22.940 enabled and uh it's just on a larger scale now and you see very much a pipeline of this uh you know

00:24:29.980 the ideology takes hold in you know in some cases as young as early elementary school into high

00:24:34.860 school and it's not all that surprising when you see what we've seen on university campuses including

00:24:39.820 my own alma mater of Western, I think McMaster in Hamilton, or it might have been McGill,

00:24:44.460 that was the other one, where students who looked Arab were walking around ripping down posters that

00:24:50.700 were acknowledging hostages, of which there are still about 200 in Israel. So, you know, that

00:24:57.020 dispenses with any pretense that this is about peace for all sides, when these innocent hostages,

00:25:03.420 who are innocent by any, any interpretation of the word, but are being acknowledged on posters

00:25:09.860 are then getting ripped down by a number of students? Well, you know, again, that is happening

00:25:17.760 mostly on university campuses or by university students. I haven't seen instances of that

00:25:23.760 actually happening in the board, but I mean, they're all part of the same group and there

00:25:29.180 no repercussions it's a very interesting um twitter handle called stop anti-semitism

00:25:35.420 and person has been really dogged about pointing out and naming and shaming some of these people

00:25:41.180 and some have lost their jobs some have lost their um well many have lost their jobs mostly

00:25:47.260 in the states but it's starting to happen here as well um and i think that's what has to happen

00:25:52.940 these people have to be exposed because if we wait for our political leaders if we wait for

00:25:58.140 the police even I mean the police really have their hands full now I mean I walked by Bielek

00:26:03.260 which is a Jewish day school yesterday and there's a command center there 24 7. I mean the resources

00:26:09.420 that must be used being used right now in Toronto I can only imagine the bill that taxpayers are

00:26:17.340 going to have to foot but you know it's it's our weak political leaders that you know Andrew I

00:26:26.060 I don't know if you've heard that there is going to be a bikers rally for Hamas on the weekend.

00:26:31.320 They're going to go from Pickering to Yorkdale and go through the Jewish community, which in its Sabbath. 1.00

00:26:36.900 I mean, like who dreams up this stuff?

00:26:39.780 Are there that many Jew haters and Hamas lovers in this?

00:26:45.000 Yeah. And that was the interesting thing is that it didn't take long for the masks to come down.

00:26:50.620 like in the first couple of days of this the most rabid anti-semites had the wherewithal to keep

00:26:56.780 their mouths shut and i mean even the ndp is i think a great example the ontario ndp knew

00:27:01.580 you know we have to start like you know saying the right thing so they begrudgingly issue the

00:27:05.580 statements of support for israel and then uh the longer it goes on the more people start to show

00:27:10.140 their true colors i mean just today you have two ontario ndp riding associations one in hamilton

00:27:15.900 one in Kitchener, calling on Merritt Stiles, the leader of the Ontario NDP, to resign because they

00:27:20.980 think she's been, you know, too supportive of Israel by condemning Sarah Jamma, that, you know,

00:27:26.300 MPP that was essentially trying to erase the Jewish people from the Middle East in her statement. 0.99

00:27:32.180 So people are no longer hiding and no longer feel the need to hide these very vile tendencies.

00:27:39.900 Well, you know, I'm in touch with a lot of people in the Jewish community, a lot of different groups,

00:27:45.140 And the one good thing about it is at least it's coming out of the woodwork now.

00:27:48.580 At least they're exposing themselves.

00:27:50.440 And as I think I told you the last time we spoke, I've been following anti-Semitism since 2009.

00:27:57.320 And you couldn't even say equate anti-Zionist to anti-Semitic.

00:28:02.280 And now it's, you know, it's right out there.

00:28:07.340 And people are not hiding their Jew hatred. 1.00

00:28:10.940 and uh there's a wonderful woman who's based in well she's living in israel but she was in new

00:28:16.640 york and she was her name is brooke goldstein and she's with the lawfare project and i've never heard

00:28:22.280 her so um despairing as she was she spoke at a conference i was at a couple weeks ago but i never

00:28:31.560 heard her the level of despair in her voice as i did yesterday on the news talking about all the

00:28:38.440 anti-Semitic acts and the ripping of posters as you say, the parades, the

00:28:45.900 professors speaking out and we can only hope that these people suffer some

00:28:50.780 consequences for what they're doing and maybe that'll stop them. And and the

00:28:54.680 donors not giving to universities, I wish more would do that here in Canada, here

00:28:59.740 in Toronto, Jewish donors pulling their check books and closing

00:29:06.160 their checkbooks because that's what speaks unfortunately not uh like you were saying in

00:29:11.800 the last segment they don't care there's just no conscience whatsoever unfortunately sue ann levy

00:29:18.240 thank you so much keep up the great work thank you all right we have been talking a lot about

00:29:23.540 free speech now we've been focusing on uh one more specific context here but as you know this has

00:29:28.880 been for me for many years the fight that i choose to take up as the most important it is i've often

00:29:34.320 said, my hill to die on. And it was easy to look more broadly as we did yesterday talking about

00:29:40.500 the last few years of the COVID era at assaults on civil liberties in Canada from freedom of

00:29:45.800 assembly to freedom of religion. But at its core, freedom of speech was one of the first casualties

00:29:52.480 of the COVID era because you lost the ability to even really protest against what was happening.

00:29:58.780 You couldn't get together and have a protest. If you worked in certain fields like law or medicine

00:30:04.120 were unable to speak up about your own opinion, even if it was rooted in your professional

00:30:10.380 background. So it was very enthusiastic. I don't want to say I was excited to see it, but I was

00:30:17.240 pleased given the circumstances to see so many doctors put out so many statements, even knowing

00:30:24.420 what was likely going to await them in terms of the regulators cracking down. And I think it's

00:30:30.120 created a bit of a movement of these dissident free speech loving doctors who have started to

00:30:35.060 come together. And one of the fora in which they've done this is a conference in this idyllic part of

00:30:41.280 Nova Scotia that is called, just to hit you on the head with the name, the Free Speech in Medicine

00:30:47.000 Conference. And it's actually coming up this weekend. So I wanted to chat about it with

00:30:50.840 the co-creator and organizer, Dr. Chris Milburn. Dr. Milburn, good to talk to you. Thanks for

00:30:56.240 coming on today hey thanks thanks for having me so just explain the genesis of this first off

00:31:02.960 um yeah so free speech was a problem in medicine

00:31:10.640 oh it's been a problem in medicine over several decades um i think many people didn't recognize

00:31:18.160 that that was happening but then suddenly colvin hit and it's like oh wow doctors are really not

00:31:23.760 allowed to say what they think. It was very obvious during COVID. In fact, our medical

00:31:31.040 regulators in most provinces put out statements to the effect that all doctors are expected to be

00:31:36.080 on board with all public health measures and are expected. We were told in Nova Scotia not to be,

00:31:42.480 and they use the terminology, not to be anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers, i.e. don't criticize

00:31:46.960 vaccines and don't criticize masks. We were explicitly told that in an email missive from

00:31:51.840 our college so it it became very overt the the restrictions around free speech but truthfully

00:31:58.160 the walls were closing in on free speech for several decades with things like um you couldn't

00:32:04.960 talk about your what's your opinion as a physician what do you think about the trans

00:32:10.480 moment that we're in in society what do you think about harm reduction drug policy all of these

00:32:15.680 things had a right answer and a wrong answer and you had to be very careful not say the wrong thing

00:32:22.640 publicly because there were there starting to be consequences um like myself people can look at

00:32:29.040 jccf.ca and you know if they google the justice center for constitutional freedoms in milburn

00:32:35.680 they'll hear about my case which happened prior to covid um i just wrote an op-ed and i used the word

00:32:41.920 criminals in the op-ed and apparently that's a very offensive word so a left-wing mob came after 0.56

00:32:47.680 me and they complained about me to the college and i got dragged through the mud for your behind

00:32:51.600 the scenes just for writing an op-ed which was broadly popular a lot of people agreed with it

00:32:56.800 some people disagreed um and then like i say covet hit and myself and many other people ended up

00:33:03.920 suffering consequences and losing opinions for daring to question the orthodoxy so we just felt

00:33:08.800 that it was time that we needed a venue to discuss all of those third rail nuclear waste topics that

00:33:16.080 nobody wants to go anywhere near so that's what free speech medicine is about it's a bug light

00:33:20.640 for people who think that we need to hear both sides of issues to go to the i guess the status

00:33:29.200 quo here i think anyone that's followed along with what happens what's happening to jordan peterson

00:33:33.280 knows that regulators are very powerful and the government has kind of done something quite

00:33:40.080 insidious here and i think maybe it started off with noble reasons but they say you know we're

00:33:44.400 going to just outsource the regulation of these fields to the fields themselves so it's you know

00:33:48.880 the lawyers that come together and deal with the law and make the law society it's doctors that

00:33:53.040 come together and make the medical colleges and then the government kind of just takes its hands

00:33:56.480 off them but the problem is that these regulatory bodies are incredibly powerful they're incredibly

00:34:02.000 well staffed and and they obviously have this culture that is not prone to respecting free

00:34:06.960 speech but let me ask you if the culture that you see in the colleges is reflective of the culture

00:34:13.760 you see broadly in your field or if everyone else is looking around at each other thinking like you

00:34:20.560 but the college has just become this mammoth that is more powerful than its members

00:34:25.040 Yeah, that's a great question. And actually, one of the topics of discussion

00:34:32.000 at the conference this weekend, we have a panel of lawyers who will be discussing the question,

00:34:35.600 is it nature or nurture? Is regulation creating the political climate or is the political climate

00:34:44.080 creating the legislation? And I'd say to some degree, it's just a vicious circle. They feed

00:34:49.200 on each other. So a bit of both. Certainly, the colleges have become very draconian. And as with

00:34:57.200 many institutions, they've been kind of captured by the left wing fringe. And there's a saying that

00:35:02.300 if you're not explicitly conservative, then you will become very, very progressive. And that's

00:35:07.420 John O'Sullivan's first law. Yeah. Yeah, that's what's happened with the colleges, certainly. So

00:35:12.900 what we've seen inside the colleges is this, what I would say, a movement to have more and more and

00:35:19.040 more wokeness embedded in the college like they put out missives about black lives matter and all

00:35:23.560 that and you know kind of the standard uh boilerplate stuff that we see from all organizations

00:35:29.180 now but and what they what's happened is they use um this term professionalism and i call it i call

00:35:36.660 it professionalism creep it's my own term for it professionalism used to be you know don't get

00:35:42.460 drunk and scream at your patients that's unprofessional and if you did that you would

00:35:47.020 understandably be hauled onto the mat, but then professionalism became a little bit more and a

00:35:51.960 little bit more and a little bit more. And now professionalism is, hey, you forgot to use the

00:35:57.160 correct pronoun for somebody when referring to them in one of your reports, or you called somebody

00:36:03.120 obese in your report. They're 320 pounds and five foot two, and you refer to them as obese.

00:36:09.320 That's unprofessional. So professionalism has crept and crept and crept to it now means if you

00:36:15.140 offend anyone with anything you say that's unprofessional and since you're a doctor we

00:36:20.980 can regulate you so it goes beyond like when i wrote my op-ed that had nothing to do with my

00:36:27.300 my day-to-day practice of medicine the complaints weren't from people who i had ever seen as

00:36:32.740 patients it was just people who didn't like what i said but they used the medical regulatory

00:36:37.620 college as a bludgeon to hammer my political opinion back with and colleges seem only too

00:36:45.060 happy to oblige you'll i've never heard of anybody with an opinion that was too far left-wing for the

00:36:50.820 colleges who they pursued but there's all kinds of people with um with either centrist or opinions

00:36:57.300 that could be considered conservative who they've gone after um is that reflective of what's happening

00:37:02.100 inside medicine to some degree yes medicine has become very uh feminized and not i don't mean just

00:37:08.020 more females but i mean feminized uh so medicine used to be a bit of a cowboy free for all you go 1.00

00:37:14.500 out there you work hard you look after your patients best you can a bit of a you know an

00:37:20.260 individualistic rugged kind of profession and now it's guideline driven and it's there's so much

00:37:27.540 about uh physician wellness that we hear every day and physician we're all physician burnout

00:37:33.620 we're all burnt out we all need to pay more attention to wellness the volume of people we

00:37:38.340 see is being cut down to take care of us better as a profession so the profession has become

00:37:44.180 real issues though because i i've heard from male doctors as well that have talked about just

00:37:48.260 increasing workload over the years i i've just i've never viewed those as being particularly

00:37:52.980 gendered issues uh yeah true enough uh true enough but certainly anybody but either by statistics or

00:38:01.620 or by softer measures we are a more feminized profession for better and for worse there's some

00:38:07.060 good things that have happened with that but you know ask ask a teacher if their job is easier now

00:38:12.180 ask a lawyer ask a police officer ask anyone in a position of authority in canada if they feel their

00:38:20.660 job is easier or more stressful in 2023 than it was say in 1990 and and every everything's become

00:38:27.540 more stressful but uh doctors we like to feel i would say we like to feel particularly hard done

00:38:32.580 by fair enough let me then ask you about the kind of the road forward here because i know that in

00:38:40.340 ontario lawyers a few years back and i know you have lisa bildi who's speaking at your conference

00:38:45.220 this year who was instrumental in this kind of did a hostile takeover of their law society and

00:38:49.860 they had some success. They organized around one specific issue. They had a little bit less success

00:38:54.900 in their most recent election. But is something like that possible within medicine? Could you

00:38:59.540 mount a hostile takeover of the colleges? Or is it really not structured in a way where you could

00:39:04.480 replicate what they try to do in the law society? It is not structured in that way. In theory,

00:39:11.220 we have some say in who regulates us. In reality, we have no say. It's still unclear to me exactly

00:39:19.440 how, for instance, the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Nova Scotia has a very bad

00:39:25.220 reputation. If you talk to 20 doctors, you get 20 negative opinions. But how anybody would change

00:39:32.640 that is beyond me. I don't think there's any way to do that. And unfortunately, because

00:39:38.860 medicine in Canada, we are the, you know, I'm not saying it's communist, but it's communist.

00:39:45.240 that it's completely government run completely government regulated there's no doctors are not

00:39:51.000 independent practitioners who do their own thing set their own fees set up the way they want to

00:39:56.120 practice it's all very much regulated on the canada health care act so out of any profession like

00:40:03.080 law law is the wild west compared to medicine um i i think we're you know this is this is a

00:40:09.400 difficult issue you know the in the woke infiltration of the law society is an issue

00:40:13.640 it's way worse and way harder to solve in medicine than it is in law you've got a fantastic lineup of

00:40:20.440 speakers i'm actually sorry i i can't make it this year to uh to report on it you've got kenneth

00:40:24.680 zucker and amy ham who've been very front and center on the the trans issue you've got lee

00:40:29.320 stability you've got my colleague rupa subramania you've got gad sad i mean i i'm just going through

00:40:34.920 the list you've got great names there and i i fear that all the issues that you and i have been

00:40:39.880 talking about are keeping a lot of good people out of medicine and i'm wondering if that's true

00:40:45.240 uh that you've heard even anecdotally if people that have been looking at going to med school

00:40:49.640 are kind of looking around saying i i don't want to be a part of this absolutely it's a problem

00:40:55.240 right so you as well just a little example to get into medical school at dell now during

00:41:05.400 covid they went to an online interview process because you know you don't want to make anybody

00:41:09.800 catch covet so they there was an online interview and you could you could record a video of your

00:41:15.960 answer to the question and you could record it and edit it and then finally send it when you're

00:41:19.400 happy and one of the questions was how are you going to promote diversity equity and inclusion

00:41:24.040 as a physician. Obviously, when you're trying to get into med school, you can go into med school

00:41:30.280 and make lots of money, or you can go and do something else that would be much less well paid.

00:41:36.680 People want to get in, and they know the right answer to that. The right answer is not,

00:41:41.000 I don't think diversity and equity inclusion is a priority for me. I think excellence is

00:41:46.040 a priority, and I just want to give excellent care, and I want to be colorblind. That is the

00:41:51.640 wrong answer and you will not get in so i've talked to numerous young people students who

00:41:58.760 are considering medical school and have heard and know this because it gets around pretty quick and

00:42:03.400 they realize i can either act woke which robs robs me of my soul or i have to actually be woke

00:42:13.560 and those are the two choices so it is going to drive good people out of medicine and and

00:42:18.360 basically, we're going to have more and more and more of an ideological bent on the people who

00:42:23.260 enter the field. And that's happening already. I definitely see that already.

00:42:27.600 Do you anticipate this being an annual thing? Or do you hope that you could actually make this

00:42:31.540 conference obsolete in the next couple of years? Oh, God, that's great. It would be lovely if we

00:42:37.680 didn't need this, right? I have lots of other things I'd rather do. I live here in Cape Breton.

00:42:42.180 I love kayaking. I love cutting a little bit of wood and sitting in front of my fire. But instead,

00:42:46.820 we've been slaving away for three months trying to get ready for this conference um i would love

00:42:51.940 to put myself out of business do i see that happening anytime soon no i think the trends

00:42:58.100 for free speech and medicine are still sadly they're heading in the wrong direction and

00:43:03.380 there's a lot more work to do are we going to turn the tide to some degree uh there are

00:43:09.460 a fair amount of doctors behind the scenes they come up to me in the mail room they make sure the

00:43:13.220 door is shut nobody's there and then they'll say chris i really like what you're doing but i i don't

00:43:17.860 think i can really come to the conference because they just don't want to be seen to be associated

00:43:21.540 with this um so hopefully over the next few years as more and more people are like okay this is

00:43:28.580 crazy this is crazy what we're doing we have to do something but hopefully more people will will

00:43:33.780 grow the courage necessary to to speak out and to start to turn the tide not happening yet but

00:43:41.060 i'm hopeful that it will yeah don't doctors get like professional development credits or something

00:43:45.780 for attending conferences do they get those at yours uh yeah not officially we we couldn't get

00:43:51.780 officially recognized as educational that we would have had to jump through all of the woke dei you

00:43:57.540 would have had to like started off with the land acknowledgement to put pronouns on the name tag

00:44:01.540 and like basically undermine it all like you were just saying right we don't we don't meet the cut

00:44:05.700 we don't make the cut for that yeah good well that makes it all the word that's like real

00:44:09.540 professional development right there screw the credits you're going to learn a lot all right

00:44:13.700 let me just ask you because i know a lot of people listening may be interested maybe perhaps not this

00:44:17.780 year but for the future it are is it just for the medical field field or do you have kind of a

00:44:22.820 layer outside of that of people that are just interested in the field no not at all so when

00:44:27.860 people sign up i ask them it's voluntary but i ask you know what's your profession what's your

00:44:31.220 interest in the conference we have everything from we have lots of doctors we have nurses we

00:44:35.780 have a strange number of strangely large number of dentists uh we have psychologists we have

00:44:43.860 teachers we have contractors we have stay-at-home moms we have um you you name the profession we

00:44:50.740 have some of them coming so it's all over the the map in terms of the people's background the one

00:44:57.940 thing that everybody has in common their interest is they're they're afraid that they're not getting

00:45:03.700 the whole balanced story on these difficult subjects transgenderism drug policy uh the

00:45:11.780 general issue of free speech they they don't feel that they're getting that that both sides of the

00:45:17.300 story and they want to hear it so these the people we have are just above average in terms of their

00:45:22.820 interest their their their desire to dig into things and really find out they're not just going

00:45:29.460 going to listen to CBC TV and formulate their opinion there they want it well yeah I mean when

00:45:34.440 doctors rights are suspended in this way patients rights are as well because if your doctor can't

00:45:39.700 speak their own mind you as a patient are now denied the benefit of what would have happened

00:45:44.300 had you heard that doctor's opinion so very very well said Dr. Chris Milburn one of the good ones

00:45:49.760 who's going to be assembling with the other good ones in Nova Scotia this weekend for the free

00:45:54.520 speech in medicine conference hopefully we'll be able to check out a future one there but Chris

00:45:58.820 thanks so much for coming on today.

00:46:00.140 Have a good event.

00:46:01.420 Thank you very much for having me on, Andrew.

00:46:02.980 Hope to see you soon.

00:46:04.040 All right.

00:46:04.460 We'll talk to you soon.

00:46:05.200 That does it for us for this weekend.

00:46:07.880 I mentioned at the beginning

00:46:08.900 that I had a little mini announcement

00:46:11.200 about what's happening next week.

00:46:13.140 You may have heard that there is a new event

00:46:16.140 that is coming to the world.

00:46:18.420 It's global.

00:46:19.180 It's not globalist, though.

00:46:20.460 It is called the ARC Forum.

00:46:22.900 This is the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

00:46:25.920 It's being helmed by Baroness Stroud in the UK, but also involved are people you might have heard of,

00:46:32.120 like Leslyn Lewis, the Conservative MP, and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist extraordinaire that I just mentioned a few moments ago.

00:46:41.040 The ARC Forum, I mean, how it was originally explained to me is it's like the right answer to the World Economic Forum.

00:46:49.180 Now, I think that doesn't really do itself any favors because I don't know if the right needs an answer to the World Economic Forum,

00:46:54.820 but it's meant to be a global assembly of movers and shakers and thinkers that are focused on ideas

00:47:00.600 that really focus on freedom, responsibility, and citizenship.

00:47:05.960 And I was very grateful to have been invited.

00:47:08.120 I know a few other Canadians are going to be there as well.

00:47:11.500 So all next week, I'm going to be doing my show from London, not Ontario, but London in the United Kingdom.

00:47:17.900 We'll be at a different time, just to account for the fact that I'll be holed up in a conference room through the day.

00:47:24.060 So you can catch us at 5 p.m. Eastern or 3 p.m. Mountain all next week.

00:47:28.560 And we'll have reports from the ARC Forum in London.

00:47:31.740 But I'm looking forward to it.

00:47:32.940 And if any of you are going to be there, I will see you there.

00:47:35.460 But in the meantime, thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:47:39.580 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:47:42.100 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:47:54.060 We'll be right back.

00:48:24.060 We'll be right back.

00:48:54.060 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 26, 2023

The left doesn't care about its 'hate speech' double standard

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