Juno News - The Liberal-NDP coalition wasn't a conspiracy theory

00:00:00.000 Music

00:00:29.160 We'll be right back.

00:00:59.160 Hello and welcome to another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,

00:01:08.220 The Andrew Lawton Show, here on True North.

00:01:10.480 We are live just coming up on 5.05 p.m. Eastern Time on March 22nd, Tuesday, March 22nd.

00:01:18.480 It is just basically a few hours after Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh,

00:01:24.840 the Liberal and NDP leaders respectively, announced they are entering into, we're not

00:01:30.520 supposed to call it a coalition. It's just an agreement, just a confidence and supply agreement

00:01:35.320 in which the NDP will prop up the Liberals for the next three years until 2025 in exchange for

00:01:42.720 some very big ticket items. Now, I want to talk about what this is. And for that, let's first

00:01:49.100 bring in John Broussard, who's a Conservative member of Parliament and the Conservative House

00:01:53.840 leader who joins us live. John, it's good to talk to you. First off, when Conservatives were warning

00:01:59.760 that this was a possibility, going back several months to the previous leader, Aaron O'Toole,

00:02:05.260 the media, the Liberals, the NDP, they all treated it as though it was a joke, a conspiracy theory,

00:02:10.200 yet here we are. Yeah, here we are. Effectively, coming out of the September election, Andrew,

00:02:17.460 the NDP had been supporting the Liberals on almost every piece of legislation that was coming

00:02:21.240 forward, including some of the stuff that was happening at committee. So we knew that

00:02:29.440 the NDP was supporting. And look, let's be frank. I mean, the NDP coming out of that election has

00:02:34.620 no money. They don't want another election. And I guess this was the path to least resistance for

00:02:40.340 them to A, avoid election and B, to get some very costly programs implemented. Whether they're

00:02:48.120 going to get implemented or not remains to be seen. But these are costly, costly programs. And

00:02:53.520 this is a costly alliance, or I would prefer to call it a coalition of the NDP liberal parties.

00:03:02.580 Yeah, I want to put up a tweet that I saw from you last night when news of this broke.

00:03:07.400 It's basically just, I think the reality for Canadians here, dollar signs repeated over and

00:03:13.900 over and over and over again but but actually quantify this because it's easy to say oh yeah

00:03:18.380 the liberals the ndp they want to spend big how much is this going to cost taxpayers in your view

00:03:23.020 so we know uh andrew that the two programs alone um the dental care program and the pharma care

00:03:29.820 program will cost roughly about a hundred billion dollars a hundred billion dollars

00:03:35.580 we also know that the ndp platform costed out by the parliamentary budget officer was

00:03:40.380 in excess of 200 billion dollars so those are two programs 100 billion dollars ndp platform 200

00:03:46.940 billion dollars that's not counting any of the wish list that the liberals and finance minister

00:03:53.820 christopher freeland are going to be proposing in any upcoming budgets including defense budgets

00:03:59.340 so look i i have four children and you know politics aside andrew right now we're 400 billion

00:04:05.980 dollars in deficits or 1.3 trillion dollars in debt who the hell do you think is going to pay for

00:04:14.700 that right now i'm worried about my kids and i'm worried about every other kid every other

00:04:19.580 family in this country because you know as well as i do that two things happen in these types of

00:04:25.420 situations when you don't balance the books taxes go up services get cut and i'm worried i'm also

00:04:33.100 worried too about some of the language that's in there and you can tell that they've been working

00:04:36.620 on this for a while because there's not even any mention of energy security in this uh in you know

00:04:42.380 creating an energy security in the country uh given the circumstances that are going on with

00:04:47.260 russia and ukraine and the need for natural gas in europe so they've been working on this for a while

00:04:54.220 uh but the other thing and this is where i move back to a coalition uh there are meetings that

00:04:59.500 are going to happen between the NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Prime Minister Trudeau that's going to

00:05:05.420 happen on a quarterly basis the house leaders are going to regularly meet between the two parties

00:05:10.860 the whips are going to meet regularly and they're creating this ad hoc committee of staff and MPs

00:05:17.980 to meet regularly as well so there's no mention about the opposition party the official opposition

00:05:23.980 whether it's the conservatives or the bloc as the third party of being part of any of these meetings

00:05:29.420 The other thing that the document references to is committees and that they have the NDP agreement to basically go along with everything they want that's not controversial in committee.

00:05:43.020 So to put this in context, the committees, as you know, have the ability to create orders to produce documents to the House.

00:05:52.600 The Winnipeg Lab situation was a perfect example of that, where every member of the opposition voted to produce these documents.

00:06:02.420 Well, the NDP now has basically said, we're going to protect the Liberals from any of that work that gets done at the committees, because the committees do have significant powers and can produce documents.

00:06:14.700 So transparency and accountability are gone at this point in this country.

00:06:18.720 Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, John, because one thing that I think is quite striking about this is how broad one could interpret what confidence is.

00:06:28.520 I mean, if it's just a matter of voting with the Liberal budget and having free reign to do whatever you want and other things, okay.

00:06:34.340 But when you talk about committees, that's a very important point, because we've seen, despite ideological disagreements that the Conservatives and the NDP and the Bloc may have,

00:06:42.420 the three parties have worked together in the interest of accountability on a couple of occasions,

00:06:47.100 whether it was the SNC-Lavalin investigation, whether it was the WE scandal. And again,

00:06:52.300 you can talk about how Justin Trudeau manages to avoid responsibility for a lot of these things.

00:06:57.040 But the point is that you can work together in these contexts, whereas if now the NDP has

00:07:02.740 basically agreed, not in the formal text that we've gotten, but if they've agreed to essentially

00:07:08.340 not oppose the Liberals, all of a sudden, Justin Trudeau has a de facto majority government.

00:07:14.060 Well, that's exactly right. And I think that's one of the reasons why he did this was to

00:07:18.020 have his majority government. Look, you know, he got his hand slapped in the 2021 election. Canadians

00:07:24.800 sent him to Ottawa with a minority government. 82% of Canadians didn't vote for the NDP. And yet,

00:07:31.800 they're effectively part of the government at this point. So on the committee side, it becomes

00:07:37.220 extremely important because in a minority situation uh the opposition party for the

00:07:43.380 most part has the majority on committee and now with the ndp swinging over to the liberals that

00:07:49.460 gives the liberals a majority on the committee and so you spoke about some specific examples

00:07:54.580 whether it's the we charity situation the sn snc lavalin scandal um you know we there were some

00:08:01.620 other things but look you know we have had one meeting of the emergency act committee at this

00:08:08.340 point right and we were hopeful notwithstanding the absurd structure of the committee that was

00:08:14.900 proposed by the government and agreed to by the ndp uh opposed by the bloc and ourselves

00:08:20.580 they've got a chair on that committee uh matthew green uh who you know frankly i was quite confident

00:08:26.740 in, his ability to hold the government to account, to get to the bottom of why the Emergency Act was

00:08:33.180 invoked, this changes everything, in my opinion, because now Mr. Green might be getting his

00:08:38.840 orders from the leader himself, right? Don't obstruct. Let's just, you know, let's just go

00:08:44.860 with the flow here. And this is an important committee to get to the bottom of why the

00:08:49.400 invocation of the Emergency Act and whether it was justified and whether it met that threshold

00:08:52.840 or not so it calls into question that committee as well andrew yeah and on the note of the

00:08:57.080 emergencies act that was only authorized by the house of commons because the the liberals had

00:09:02.200 ndp support do we know if these talks were underway at the time that the ndp made that

00:09:08.760 decision to support the liberals well when i look at the document that was provided by the prime

00:09:14.200 minister's office today the only indication that i get that this was being worked on for a while

00:09:19.160 is the fact that there is nothing in it that mentions about defense that talks about energy

00:09:26.460 security so that tells me that they didn't have an opportunity perhaps they should have yeah if

00:09:31.480 were started in the last four weeks those would be top of mind for any legislation i would assume

00:09:37.060 that they would be part of this this agreement because you know minister and anna signaled that

00:09:41.720 the government is intending on spending a significant amount of money on defense

00:09:45.880 that should form part of this agreement. And it's not in there. So, you know, I look,

00:09:52.800 there's no secrets around this place. We'll find out when these conversations started between

00:09:57.720 the Liberals and the NDP. And I suspect they probably started shortly after the 2021 election

00:10:03.820 when Justin Trudeau didn't get the majority that he wanted. One thing I and I'm not trying to

00:10:10.200 undercut that these are big ticket items but one thing that i find is uh very important to note

00:10:16.200 here is that these are things that the liberals had already promised previously and and they're

00:10:21.240 not broken promises that i'd be jumping up and down about because i don't love the policy so i'm

00:10:25.320 okay that the promises were broken but it doesn't seem like the ndp got all that much that wasn't

00:10:30.360 already on the table here especially if you contrast it with the attempt at a coalition

00:10:35.000 back in 2008 when Jack Layton would have had seats in the cabinet for the NDP.

00:10:39.660 Well, you bring up a good point because I think what Mr. Singh has done is, you know,

00:10:44.280 if you sort of equate it to a game of poker, he's pushed his chips all in at this point,

00:10:49.220 right?

00:10:49.460 Instead of dealing with, you know, situations, legislative proposals on a case-by-case basis,

00:10:57.540 he's now effectively given the Trudeau Liberals, you know, free reign to do whatever they want to

00:11:05.220 do, not just in the context of what the agreement was, but he's made an arrangement with them that

00:11:10.780 he will support them until 2025. So, you know, I saw today in the House, I thought was what was

00:11:17.980 a more emboldened Prime Minister, just in his language and his rhetoric. He's now got the NDP

00:11:23.900 effectively in his hip pocket till 2025. And I think you're going to see Justin Trudeau,

00:11:28.940 you're probably going to see not the sunny ways Justin Trudeau, but the true colors of

00:11:32.800 Justin Trudeau come out as a result of this agreement. I mean, he's always been reliant on

00:11:38.140 having to go to the polls and get support from Canadians, but you're going to see a more emboldened,

00:11:44.880 more ideologically activated sort of agenda that's going to come forward. And it's going to

00:11:52.480 not just cost us as Canadians, but, you know, he's going to get what he wants, basically.

00:12:00.420 And I share your view in the sense that, you know, they promised a whole bunch, but they

00:12:05.680 actually haven't delivered.

00:12:07.220 This may be a situation where, you know, Trudeau may not run in four years or maybe leaves

00:12:12.300 earlier, but he's going to leave his mark on this country.

00:12:15.460 And God help us all.

00:12:18.520 John Broussard, Conservative House Leader.

00:12:20.640 Thank you very much, sir.

00:12:21.800 My pleasure.

00:12:22.340 Andrew, anytime. All right. I mean, I'm looking at this right now and I want to read a few of

00:12:28.140 the things because there are going to be, as John mentioned, meetings, leaders meetings at

00:12:33.000 least once per quarter, regular house leader meetings, regular WIP meetings, monthly stock

00:12:37.920 take meetings by an oversight group. So it isn't a coalition per se, but let's be real here. These

00:12:44.600 are semantics that are relatively insignificant. A coalition government to the vast majority of

00:12:49.140 people is a minority government taking the support from another party to govern as if it had a

00:12:55.820 majority. That's what's happening here. For the NDP, I mean, they could have easily insisted on

00:13:02.140 a formal coalition. Jagmeet Singh could have had a seating cabinet if they wanted. Instead,

00:13:07.280 they just were not confident they had a bargaining position at all. So they've given away a fair bit

00:13:13.400 for nothing. But the NDP is also not a serious party in Canada. It's certainly not. The fact

00:13:20.000 that the NDP comes in behind, which again, has formed provincial government in BC. Ontario has

00:13:25.660 had an NDP government, admittedly not recently. Alberta had one up until a couple of years ago.

00:13:30.460 The NDP should be a formidable force in Canada, but isn't. And now they are the third party behind

00:13:36.640 the country, behind the party who wants to tear the country apart, the Bloc Québécois, behind

00:13:41.580 the Conservatives, behind the Liberals. And they've given away. They've given away quite a

00:13:47.600 bit. They've given Justin Trudeau carte blanche in exchange for a couple of things that were

00:13:51.640 already promised. And I mean, Jack Layton would be rolling in his grave right now. He probably is

00:13:56.020 because he was at least prepared to get, I think it's seven cabinet seats. It was six or seven

00:13:59.780 cabinet seats he would have got out. But I go back to the point I mentioned at the very beginning of

00:14:04.240 my conversation with John Broussard, when the Conservatives said, we are looking at the

00:14:09.020 possibility of a liberal NDP coalition. Everyone laughed. Everyone laughed. Take a look at this

00:14:13.820 clip from Aaron O'Toole predicting this precise scenario months ago.

00:14:19.400 It's been almost two months since the election. Justin Trudeau called the election because of the

00:14:25.860 urgency of the times, he said. He said it was a pivotal moment in Canada's history. So pivotal

00:14:32.700 that he hasn't even met with his own MPs who were elected for almost two months, and he's delaying

00:14:37.340 a return of the house of commons his first order of business is to let his new liberal members of

00:14:43.680 parliament know that they will have to accept a radical liberal ndp coalition agreement this

00:14:50.780 coalition will mean billions of dollars of new spending to buy just jagmeet singh's silence

00:14:56.940 he's bang on billions of dollars hundreds of billions of dollars in fact and what it does

00:15:05.840 is it buys the NDP support.

00:15:08.060 I go back to the Emergencies Act,

00:15:09.860 which was passed with NDP support.

00:15:11.640 And a lot of NDP members of parliament

00:15:13.180 seem to be very uncomfortable

00:15:14.520 with the idea of the federal government

00:15:16.740 using the Emergencies Act to quell protesters,

00:15:19.580 to quell dissent.

00:15:20.820 And when I was watching them,

00:15:22.320 people like Jagmeet Singh

00:15:23.420 and other members of his caucus,

00:15:24.720 I was saying, you can't believe this.

00:15:26.920 You're the party of labor.

00:15:28.540 You're the party of civil action.

00:15:30.080 You're the party of social activism.

00:15:32.200 You're the party of protest.

00:15:33.240 you can't seriously believe this is okay and when they try to twist the twitch uh twist themselves

00:15:39.280 into these rhetorical pretzels i'm like they must not believe it but this is why this is why because

00:15:45.260 i i have no doubt in my mind that there were talks underway or at the very least the goal the hope

00:15:50.200 of this liberal ndp pseudo coalition which prevents the ndp from having to go into another

00:15:55.740 election it cannot afford and gives the liberals a blank check quite literally to do whatever they

00:16:01.060 want for the next few years. And now when the liberals do big spending programs, they can

00:16:05.180 actually blame the NDP. They can say, well, you know, they made us do it while also then reaping

00:16:09.600 the political credit for it. They'll go to people and say, oh, Gladys, that free dental care you got

00:16:14.100 thanks to us. And Jagmeet Singh had a comment at a press conference today about that where he's

00:16:19.040 like, well, you know, as long as the right thing gets done, I'm not worried about getting the

00:16:22.760 credit. So the NDP has thrown in the towel. They are completely okay just being a vassal party

00:16:28.720 for the Liberals and the rest of us have to go along with it. And we know what's been promised.

00:16:34.720 I'm looking at the list here, a better healthcare system. So the Liberals are going to launch a low

00:16:39.180 income dental care program, starting with people under 12, then to anyone under 18,

00:16:45.240 then to seniors. And then it sounds like to a third of the country by the time they get to 2025

00:16:51.480 five with anyone who makes less than $90,000. Continuing progress towards a universal national

00:16:59.700 pharma care program. So they don't even need to do the program. They just need to tell the NDP

00:17:04.740 they are progressing towards the program. Don't get me wrong. Take as long as you need. I'm in

00:17:09.580 no hurry. But all they need to do is tell the NDP, no, no, we're moving. We were over there and now

00:17:15.400 we're there. That's progress. You can't complain. You've got to support us. And a rapid housing

00:17:19.880 initiative, some home buying stuff, top up to the Canada housing benefit. So there's some stuff

00:17:25.100 there that is pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. And tackling the climate crisis,

00:17:31.320 they are committing to the just transition, which is the transition away from oil and gas sector

00:17:37.700 jobs. So Justin Trudeau, to buy the NDP support, has signed the death warrant for a lot of oil and

00:17:44.300 gas sector jobs. We've talked about the just transition on this show. We're going to have to

00:17:48.180 have another panel and talk about it further because it's now moving ahead. And there's a

00:17:54.680 question of what happens beyond this. What other things will the NDP back? Does this become a

00:18:00.460 rubber stamp on anything the Liberal government does? Take a look at this question that a reporter

00:18:05.300 asked about what constitutes confidence. What is it that we're really talking about? Because this

00:18:10.240 is a supply and confidence bill, which means any bill that is a confidence bill, the NDP is agreeing

00:18:15.080 to support but as we saw with the emergencies act trudeau can very conveniently call anything he

00:18:20.440 wants to get past a confidence bill so that everyone's too afraid to vote against it and

00:18:25.400 i can't i must say i'm not convinced i even know the answer after this

00:18:31.800 a lot of your comments seem to be addressing concerns in your own party and perhaps in your

00:18:35.800 new dance partners party that everyone can still do their job and do what they came to do here but

00:18:41.880 I'm confused as to what limits this agreement and the support like what defines confidence do you do you have a definition of that is it only money bills when it comes to defense spending for example will the NDP's view of that veto what you want to do in Ukraine I think it's important to say that it's not just about reassuring people that the formulas of parliament will be respected

00:19:11.880 Both of our parties understand deeply how important it is for people to have confidence,

00:19:18.100 not just in government, but in our democratic systems.

00:19:22.360 That we're in a time where we are seeing around the world challenges to democracies, erosion of democracies.

00:19:29.340 And that's where the role of parliamentarians to hold governments to account,

00:19:35.760 to ask tough questions, to demand transparency and openness,

00:19:40.840 continues to be at the centre of our working relationship with the NDP and with all other parties.

00:19:48.740 We know that delivering for Canadians needs to, at the same time,

00:19:54.660 reassure them that democracy is strong and that government is being held to account.

00:20:00.200 And that's exactly what this agreement is focused on,

00:20:03.320 saying there are broad areas in which we agree we should be able to work constructively together

00:20:09.160 and not have parliament be obstructive so we can deliver for Canadians, but at the same time

00:20:16.920 point out that democracies can be strong not only when they're toxic or hyper-partisan,

00:20:26.840 but when they're also collaborative and focused on delivering concretely for Canadians.

00:20:32.440 That's what this is about.

00:20:37.860 Oh, my goodness.

00:20:39.420 Sorry, I dozed off there.

00:20:41.680 What was he saying?

00:20:43.780 No, nothing.

00:20:44.500 He was saying nothing.

00:20:45.360 That was like the world's longest lullaby.

00:20:48.040 And it didn't even have the redemptive quality of being soothing.

00:20:51.500 At the end of it, I still don't know what his answer to the question was.

00:20:55.140 It was what constitutes supply.

00:20:56.740 And he talks about, oh, democracy and working together.

00:20:59.920 and we're going to do all this stuff and faith in the institutions. And the question was,

00:21:04.860 how much are you going to crack the whip and say the NDP has to support you? And the answer,

00:21:10.380 if you read between the lines there, is whenever I damn well want to. And the Emergencies Act was

00:21:16.600 not a confidence motion, but Justin Trudeau said it was so that everyone who didn't want an election

00:21:21.480 had to vote for it.

00:21:24.220 And that is a very, very important dimension of this.

00:21:28.800 This is a guy who's positioning himself,

00:21:31.000 I must say he gets lots of credit,

00:21:32.780 he's positioning himself to stay in power forever

00:21:36.060 and he knows it, he knows it.

00:21:38.400 Justin Trudeau was asked how long he plans to stick around

00:21:41.440 because the thinking was,

00:21:42.780 okay, if he's got the runway until 2025,

00:21:45.040 that gives him enough time to choose a successor.

00:21:48.820 Well, take a look.

00:21:52.100 Prime Minister, by the time this deal expires in 2025, you will have been in office for almost 10 years.

00:21:58.760 Are you committed to staying on and running another election campaign in that year?

00:22:02.400 Or do you imagine a leadership race within your party?

00:22:05.100 As I've said a number of times, I'm planning on continuing to serve Canadians through and beyond the next election.

00:22:12.920 So he's still anticipating going completely guns blazing into the next election.

00:22:19.060 he's clearly anticipating this because he's confident enough that he can win and why wouldn't

00:22:24.900 he be he's won three elections in a row he won a majority of course went down to a minority but

00:22:30.720 still he has weathered scandal and he's been around and if he goes until 2025 that means he'll

00:22:37.820 have had a decade in power he will have surpassed what Stephen Harper achieved and if he wins an

00:22:42.820 election on top of that then he gets 14 I mean he's going for the William Lyon Mackenzie King

00:22:46.740 record. That's what Justin Trudeau is going for. And he doesn't even want to do the Mackenzie King

00:22:50.580 thing and lose for a term and then come back. He thinks that he will have this dynastic place in

00:22:56.680 Canadian politics because by and large, he's surrounded by people that are telling him that

00:23:01.060 is a good idea. And it's odd because normally when you look at the sort of spending promises

00:23:06.880 that we're seeing from the liberals, you wonder, okay, you're clearly racking up enough of a bill

00:23:11.340 here that it is going to be the next person's problem, that it's going to be the next person's

00:23:17.280 problem. At this point, he is the next person. He's going to be there. He's there until he is

00:23:22.280 the next person because the NDP do not have a way to find a backbone for themselves. And Canadian

00:23:28.240 voters, Canadian taxpayers are the ones stuck with the bill. Now, let me be clear. This is not

00:23:32.880 undemocratic. This is not unconstitutional. This is how the system works. If you look at European

00:23:39.600 parties for example european parliaments it is not uncommon for every government to be a coalition

00:23:44.840 in some case a coalition of four five six seven smaller different parties that all have to work

00:23:49.760 together when you have i mean in the uk for example they don't have minority parliaments

00:23:55.360 as part of their convention they they exist just as a as a factual reality but they almost entirely

00:24:02.360 find coalition governments to avoid what they call a hung parliament it is generally the convention

00:24:08.680 in Britain that you govern with the support of the majority. You don't just limp by on a vote-by-vote

00:24:13.660 basis. So the issue here is not that democracy has been subverted because this number of liberal

00:24:20.900 MPs were elected, this number of NDP MPs were elected, and combined they have a majority in

00:24:25.480 the House. That is democracy. The issue is what it means for voters. The issue is what it means

00:24:33.640 for taxpayers. The issue is what it means for Justin Trudeau. And why the NDP? Just because

00:24:39.720 they were so desperate to hang around and have just some semblance of power that they abandoned

00:24:45.880 the pretense of what it is they are supposed to stand up for as a party. It's no longer the party

00:24:50.980 of Jack Layton. It's no longer the party of Tommy Douglas. It's the party of the woke left, but not

00:24:55.480 even a party that felt it had enough political capital to exact something more than just a

00:25:01.220 a reassertion of promises that the Liberals had already made. Absolutely crazy. I want to pivot,

00:25:07.560 we'll talk about this more on the next show this week, I assure you, but I want to pivot to

00:25:11.460 a story that emerged in the last day or so from Ottawa police regarding the convoy.

00:25:17.160 I know the convoy is technically over, but I still think there are some subplots that are

00:25:23.260 emerging from this. And one of them, to go back to the very first weekend, involves all of the

00:25:27.920 stories that tended to pop up that were supposedly representative of the whole, but really weren't.

00:25:33.460 And one of them was this idea that there had been a member of a convoy who had tried to commit a

00:25:38.900 horrible arson in an apartment building on, I think it's called Lisger Street, and they set a fire.

00:25:44.180 They tried to lock the doors to barricade residents in, and people were saying, oh, this was happening

00:25:48.720 near the convoy site. It must have been convoy related. And when you looked at the video footage,

00:25:53.120 the CCTV footage you looked, you're like, these do not look like convoy people. And when I saw

00:26:00.020 that, I'm not going to say it couldn't be because anything's possible. I don't want to rule anything

00:26:03.820 out, but it's also not incumbent on me or anyone else to prove a negative. The people that were

00:26:07.380 saying this was connected to the convoy had to provide evidence and they didn't, except for

00:26:12.500 this took place in downtown Ottawa and the convoys in downtown Ottawa, ergo, they must be connected.

00:26:18.820 and it took a couple of months

00:26:20.700 because this was near the end of January.

00:26:22.340 It took a couple of months,

00:26:23.420 but we're finally where we are now,

00:26:24.860 at which point the Ottawa police have said

00:26:27.300 they do not have any evidence

00:26:29.740 that this was connected to the convoy.

00:26:31.720 They've charged someone,

00:26:32.920 nothing to do with the convoy,

00:26:34.400 nothing to do with truckers.

00:26:35.420 He wasn't protesting vaccine mandates.

00:26:37.700 What his motivation was, I don't know.

00:26:40.120 But I do know that all of the people

00:26:41.660 that tried to pin this on the truckers lied.

00:26:43.840 And you know what?

00:26:44.360 When I look around,

00:26:45.320 I have not seen a lot of apologies.

00:26:47.520 Speaking of Jagmeet Singh, let's take a look at the montage of all those who decided that they would put their own hatred of the truckers above facts.

00:26:59.920 Violence is commonplace.

00:27:03.060 We saw an example of this violence, an attempted arson downtown of an apartment building where people started a fire.

00:27:12.800 When they exited, they taped the door.

00:27:16.060 and an attempted arson all of which madam speaker was caught on video it has been an illegal

00:27:22.520 occupation that has been harassing people in residential areas of ottawa people don't feel

00:27:27.980 safe in their own homes there have been reports of attempted arson canadians are also concerned

00:27:33.760 hearing reports of an attempted arson in the lobby of a residential apartment building because we see

00:27:40.160 hate speech. We see illegal acts such as arson. The incessant honking, the arson attempts.

00:27:48.900 The incessant honking, the arson attempts. An attempted arson of a residential building

00:27:54.740 in the occupation area. We've seen the active sabotage of 911 emergency call lines and even

00:28:00.840 an attempted arson. Other alleged crimes have even been more egregious. Ottawa police are

00:28:06.740 investigating the attempted arson of a downtown apartment building the situation persists fueled

00:28:11.200 in part by foreign funding we saw reports of attempted arson in some of the building and it

00:28:16.080 certainly does not include arson or pushing into a residential apartment building and barricading

00:28:21.540 the exits with handcuffs the arrests for conspiracy to murder attempted arson of a residential building

00:28:27.440 over the past three weeks we have watched assaults attempted arson they have been living in fear

00:28:33.220 Fear that their apartment buildings may be torched by arson.

00:28:37.080 Seen assaults, attempted arson, widespread harassment.

00:28:40.280 There's been attempted arson with the attempt of handcuffing doors shut so that if a fire started, people would be burned alive.

00:28:48.940 Death threats, an attempted arson.

00:28:52.360 A building had an attempted arson where the doors were taped shut.

00:28:57.140 Another building had occupiers attempting to handcuff the doors.

00:29:00.680 There are reports of attempted arson, bomb threats, hate crimes, misogyny, arson.

00:29:07.000 Horns honked all night long.

00:29:09.880 We saw thefts and attempted arson.

00:29:14.420 So the last one's great.

00:29:16.980 So if you take out the part that's been debunked, which is theft, and the other part which has

00:29:22.520 been debunked, which is arson, you're left with honking.

00:29:26.620 Yeah, that's basically what it is.

00:29:30.020 The narrative is crumbling.

00:29:32.060 Now, there were a lot of people in there.

00:29:33.300 Now, in fairness, Laurel Collins, bless her heart,

00:29:35.880 she was in there like seven or eight times.

00:29:37.360 That was not just the same clip over and over.

00:29:39.360 She kept going back to this.

00:29:40.920 That reel was put together by Cosman Giorgia,

00:29:43.540 my colleague at True North, who deserves a,

00:29:46.960 I don't know what medal.

00:29:47.980 I don't know if it's a Pulitzer.

00:29:49.080 I don't know if it's a Nobel Prize,

00:29:50.580 but for sifting through all of that,

00:29:52.780 he deserves an award of some kind

00:29:55.100 because you know that whenever you are trying

00:29:57.280 to go through to make a montage,

00:29:58.280 You have to look at all of those people talking about other things as well.

00:30:02.060 So he has seen hours of those people talking, making things up about the convoy, all to

00:30:07.820 give us a two-minute sizzle reel.

00:30:09.680 But I saved the best for last.

00:30:11.440 Jim Watson, the ineffectual mayor of Ottawa, went all in on this.

00:30:16.400 Take a look at this clip.

00:30:19.480 Yesterday, we learned of a horrific story that clearly demonstrates the malicious intent

00:30:24.900 of these protesters occupying our city.

00:30:28.280 At 5 a.m., and this was captured on the building's video, on Sunday morning, two young guys in the lobby of the building on Lisker Street,

00:30:35.800 where they proceeded to light fire starter bricks near the elevators before taping up the door handles so residents would struggle to get out during a fire.

00:30:45.420 Thankfully, no one was hurt, but this story could have ended very, very differently.

00:30:51.140 It's extremely disturbing and points to a desire to harm our residents and obvious criminal intent,

00:30:56.940 which I know the Ottawa Police Arson Unit is now investigating.

00:31:00.900 I cannot stress this enough, and I hope this message gets through to the truckers.

00:31:04.940 The lives of individual innocent people are at stake right now, right here.

00:31:12.500 La vie de nos résidents vulnérables est en jeu, et cette occupation doit s'assé tout de suite.

00:31:18.240 this occupation must cease right now i have looked at some of their twitter accounts notably

00:31:25.600 jim watson's and you know just in case just in case something has changed in the times since

00:31:30.840 i've been on air i'm going to look up in in real time his twitter account and see what we have

00:31:36.900 here nope his last tweet was on i believe well no it was 48 minutes ago that was not an apology

00:31:43.800 he retweeted some stuff five hours ago he retweeted some stuff yesterday no oddly enough

00:31:51.460 unless there's an issue with my twitter or with jim watson's twitter or with twitter itself i don't

00:31:57.500 think jim watson has apologized i don't think jim watson has admitted that he got it wrong and again

00:32:03.200 this is a guy who used his muscle as the mayor of ottawa such as it is to lobby go fund me to present

00:32:09.380 this image of lawlessness to get basically to get the government action that we saw in the

00:32:15.120 Emergencies Act. And this was a piece of the evidence that he was leaning on and that a lot

00:32:20.900 of those federal MPs you just saw in that reel there were leaning on. And what do we have? Ottawa

00:32:26.180 police admittedly two months later say it had nothing to do with the convoy. This is why the

00:32:31.040 convoy was so powerful. This is why the convoy was so influential because it revealed the lengths

00:32:36.100 through which people who view liberty as inherently toxic will go to quell democratic, peaceful

00:32:44.240 protesters, to quell people. It's blatantly wrong. And anyone with half a brain saw that it was wrong.

00:32:51.600 They saw that this was not connected to the convoy. Could it have been possible? Absolutely.

00:32:56.160 But it was always implausible because of what the convoy was about and who was in that and who made

00:33:01.760 up and who may who comprise the the convoys membership and shame on all the media shame

00:33:07.600 on all the politicians that let their contempt for this movement get in the way of any semblance

00:33:12.860 of facts of honesty and of fair dealing we've got to end things here my thanks to all of you

00:33:20.660 for tuning in to the Andrew Lawton show today we'll be back in a couple days time with more

00:33:24.720 of Canada's most irreverent talk show and if you haven't already do check out my interviews with

00:33:29.400 so far four of the conservative leadership candidates. There are nine. So we're going to

00:33:33.440 be extending invitations to the others and try to get as many of them on the show as we can.

00:33:38.340 But the ones we have so far, you can go and check out with Leslie Lewis, Roman Baber,

00:33:42.580 Jean Charest, and who else do we have? We have Pierre Polyev. And I think that's it. We've done

00:33:47.460 the four. We've done the four. So that is coming up. But I do thank you very much. If you want to

00:33:51.800 support the work we're doing here at True North, you can head on over to tnc.news and click the

00:33:56.860 donate button. And we thank you very much for it. We'll talk to you soon, folks. Thank you. God bless

00:34:01.200 and good day. For listening to The Andrew Lawton Show, support the program by donating to True

00:34:07.760 North at www.tnc.news.

00:34:26.860 Let's get started.

Juno News - March 22, 2022

The Liberal-NDP coalition wasn't a conspiracy theory

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