Juno News - The Liberals are obsessed with abortion

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:00:05.180 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.

00:00:15.340 Hello everyone and welcome to you all, TGIF.

00:00:19.520 It is Friday, May 12, 2023.

00:00:22.020 You are listening to the Andrew Lawton Show or you're watching the Andrew Lawton Show

00:00:26.520 or you are just ingesting the osmosis.

00:00:30.000 Andrew Lawton Show. I don't recommend it, but we are an equal opportunity broadcast platform. You

00:00:35.660 have to get all the angles covered with C11. This is going to be a lead into the weekend,

00:00:41.600 so we will try not to depress you too, too much. But sometimes talking about Canadian politics can

00:00:47.860 have that effect. I don't proclaim to be right on everything. I proclaim to be right on most things.

00:00:55.440 If I didn't believe it or at least think I was right, I wouldn't say it. But I have to do a bit

00:00:59.760 of a mea culpa on a discussion I had on Wednesday's show about the passport page designs that were

00:01:07.220 unveiled, I think, on Wednesday by the Canadian government. Now, I should say, first off,

00:01:13.520 the fact that the images are crap, I don't apologize for. That I stand by. But as I was 0.96

00:01:19.680 flipping through them on air and watching, I can't actually show you. I was telling you all

00:01:25.660 on Wednesday that I got a new little monitor. So in front of me, I can see things that's happening.

00:01:31.080 The monitor is like this big. So, and it's, you know, about two and a half feet away. So

00:01:35.740 the reason I share that with you is that I was trying to just riff on what was in these images

00:01:40.920 with not a very significant view of what was actually on them. So I had one person,

00:01:48.800 uh susan hamilton 1822 on twitter tell me i may need glasses uh see i can't even read what susan

00:01:56.720 hamilton's writing there she says it's a polar bear and an inuit fishing through the ice andrew

00:02:01.360 you may need glasses so uh the context of this is that i was trying to discern what the images were

00:02:07.240 on the passport and we were on specifically page 36 and page 37 which if we can pull that up is on

00:02:15.540 the right side pretty self-explanatory it's the polar bear in the arctic and on the left side

00:02:21.040 i don't know why but i saw a penguin and i realized that penguins don't live in the arctic

00:02:26.140 they live in antarctica which is as the name suggests the opposite of the arctic uh and i

00:02:31.400 sort of just saw like the top of the head was a little pointy kind of like a beak and then the

00:02:36.660 the thing that sort of looked like a ladybug shell coming out the back i thought was

00:02:40.760 maybe just the the feathers the rear feathers um and then the boots i don't have an answer for uh

00:02:47.060 except to say that maybe penguins feet get cold as well um and the fish you know underneath it so

00:02:52.120 anyway uh so it seems abundantly obvious after the fact that that was an inuit person ice fishing

00:02:58.180 but at the time when i was just sort of like making it up as i went it was a uh a penguin

00:03:03.900 in a very anachronistic setting that uh was for some reason not being consumed by the polar bear

00:03:09.640 Now, even so, I still, put that back up there, Sean, I'm still kind of skeptical about why the Inuit person is ignoring the polar bear behind them. 0.88

00:03:19.740 Like, that strikes me as a tactical error if you are going to be in the Arctic looking for food, to be like, oh, let's just find this little salmon here.

00:03:27.760 I'm going after the Arctic char while the giant polar bear is behind me.

00:03:31.220 But, you know, maybe they're one with nature and I'm not.

00:03:33.420 I mean, what do I know?

00:03:34.460 I thought that was a penguin and not a kind Inuit person. 0.99

00:03:38.420 In any case, I want to talk a little bit here about some far more substantive matters.

00:03:44.100 Yesterday in Ottawa was the March for Life.

00:03:46.860 By all accounts, about 6,000, 7,000 people from across the country, pro-life advocates,

00:03:51.800 descending on Parliament Hill to say that we stand for life.

00:03:55.840 Now, historically, the March for Life has been about supporting life in the wake of abortion policies in Canada.

00:04:04.160 But it's also about euthanasia and assisted suicide, which, as we've seen in the last couple of years in particular, are areas where the government has promoted and promulgated a culture of death.

00:04:16.080 And I think in this way, the pro-life movement has a lot more momentum now than it has in some of these other iterations of it.

00:04:23.500 But the liberals get very antsy whenever anyone's discussing abortion, when anyone's discussing life issues.

00:04:29.520 You know, there was no real political context for the Liberals to be talking about abortion this week.

00:04:36.860 The March for Life was out there as it always has been.

00:04:39.500 But instead, the Liberals were firing on all cylinders, tweeting, putting out statements, commenting on things, and then releasing this little video.

00:04:48.920 I'm pro-choice because it saves lives.

00:04:51.240 I'm pro-choice because I don't believe a man or anyone has the right to tell a woman what she should do with her body.

00:05:00.240 I'm pro-choice because abortion bans endangers women's lives.

00:05:06.000 I'm pro-choice because reproductive health is health.

00:05:09.280 Because our daughters deserve choices. 1.00

00:05:11.940 Because reproductive rights are human rights. 0.99

00:05:14.440 And a woman has the right to determine what she does with her own body, 1.00

00:05:18.000 including her sexual and reproductive health.

00:05:20.720 I'm pro-choice because women should have the right to choose a safe and legal abortion with privacy and dignity.

00:05:26.720 Because a woman's right to choose what she does with her body is her choice and her choice alone. 1.00

00:05:31.960 Because a woman's autonomy over her own body is not only a human right, it's her rights. 1.00

00:05:37.840 I'm pro-choice because a woman's right to choose is her choice and her choice alone. 1.00

00:05:42.640 I'm pro-choice because it's a human right.

00:05:44.780 I'm pro-choice because I believe that women's rights are human rights.

00:05:48.200 Because women should have the right to choose what happens to their own play-productive health. 1.00

00:05:53.040 I'm pro-choice because I believe everyone has a right to safe and affordable health care.

00:05:58.180 Because what happens to a woman's body should be her choice and her choice alone. 1.00

00:06:01.880 Because choice is choice.

00:06:04.860 It's about respect.

00:06:06.000 Because women should make their own health care decisions and have control over their bodies. 1.00

00:06:10.380 It's 2023.

00:06:11.620 Je suis pro-choix parce que les décisions des femmes appartiennent aux femmes.

00:06:15.680 Because access to safe and legal abortion is a fundamental right.

00:06:19.320 I'm pro-choice because I believe that this issue should not be in the political arena.

00:06:24.020 I'm pro-choice because we won't go back.

00:06:26.320 We will not go back.

00:06:28.340 So, I mean, look, most of it is just repetitive.

00:06:31.340 I like the I'm pro-choice because choice is choice, choice, choicey, choicey, choice face.

00:06:36.720 And then you've got other people on there that are saying various iterations of the same thing,

00:06:41.000 women's health and human rights. 0.75

00:06:42.440 And I like the MP standing in Parliament Hill saying this shouldn't be a political issue. 0.97

00:06:47.420 It's like, OK, great, then shut up.

00:06:49.320 But here's the fascinating thing about this.

00:06:52.200 All of the people talking about the rights for those of us who get pregnant.

00:06:57.940 I mean, the fact that they were even saying she and her, I think, is a bit transphobic, don't you think?

00:07:02.700 But let's just set that aside for a moment.

00:07:05.520 They're all talking about the right to do what one wants with one's own body.

00:07:11.200 These were the same people that imposed one of the most draconian vaccine mandates on Canadian individuals.

00:07:19.620 The vaccine mandate to keep your job in the public service, the vaccine mandate to get on an airplane, to get on a train, to get out of a two-week quarantine, to get out of a quarantine hotel.

00:07:32.740 So all of these people saying, I will never, ever fold when it comes to people having the right to make their own choices about their own bodies. 0.98

00:07:41.220 I'm like, have you forgotten like the last two years, you pathetic hypocrites? 0.99

00:07:45.400 Apparently they have, or they just don't care. 0.98

00:07:48.040 But let's talk about the existence of the video itself.

00:07:51.300 Now, I'm pro-life, I make no bones about it, but let's be honest here.

00:07:55.680 In Canada, the pro-choice movement has won.

00:07:58.640 We have the most liberal abortion laws in the world, in that abortion is legal right up until one second before a child is born.

00:08:08.140 You cannot get more pro-abortion than Canada's abortion laws.

00:08:13.000 That is a complete fact.

00:08:14.920 And the fact that even conservative leaders who are pro-life and have been for their entire lives pro-life are unable to say,

00:08:21.920 hey, I'm pro-life, without being pilloried by the media, suggests that we have in the cultural realm

00:08:29.700 also done a tremendous disservice. And the pro-choice movement has won there largely.

00:08:35.480 It's a little bit trickier, as I'll talk about in a moment. But Canada is as pro-abortion a country 1.00

00:08:40.380 as it gets right now, politically and to some extent culturally. And that is important because

00:08:46.920 why do you need to talk about an issue that you've already won why did the i mean i mean imagine if

00:08:54.000 uh right now the brits and canadians and americans were talking about the importance of vanquishing

00:08:59.940 nazi germany it's like you you won that battle why are you still fighting it the reason they're

00:09:05.520 fighting it is because they know that it is a wedge for conservatives they know that conservatives

00:09:10.800 even those who are pro-life kind of fail and flail and flounder when they're forced to talk

00:09:16.440 about this. And people like Andrew Scheer, who for years of his life could always communicate

00:09:20.060 coherently his position on abortion as a pro-life man, when he's the leader of the conservatives,

00:09:24.860 he's like, well, I, you know, the pro, you know, women, you know, I, and he starts to sound like

00:09:31.220 Justin Trudeau describing a bottle of water. And I think that the interesting thing about all of

00:09:37.040 this is that the liberals will not shut up about abortion, but then they turn it around and say,

00:09:43.720 the Conservatives are obsessed with abortion. I'm like, really? The Conservatives are too

00:09:47.600 terrified to bring it up. The Liberals are the ones who bring up abortion all the time. 0.96

00:09:52.060 And you look into this week, and the Liberals are doing something that I hope they get called

00:09:57.160 on by the media, and to some extent they are. One of the dimensions of this is that Kathy

00:10:02.560 Wagenthal, who is from Saskatchewan and is a proudly pro-life Conservative MP, has introduced

00:10:09.100 a private member's bill that no sensible person should have issues with.

00:10:14.860 Now, I realize we're not talking about sensible people.

00:10:17.000 We're talking about members of parliament, but no sensible person should be against what

00:10:22.420 she wants to do here.

00:10:23.600 Her bill, C311, and we should get Kathy on the show to talk about this, would encourage

00:10:29.000 judges to consider physical or emotional harm to a pregnant woman who's a victim of a crime

00:10:35.840 as an aggravating factor during sentencing.

00:10:39.100 It has nothing to do even with recognizing the human rights of an unborn child.

00:10:45.060 It says that if a woman is pregnant and someone intentionally inflicts emotional or physical

00:10:50.200 harm, that should be considered during sentencing.

00:10:53.540 Someone who's abusing a pregnant woman should be perhaps treated more harshly by the justice

00:11:01.080 system.

00:11:01.560 This is not at all controversial.

00:11:03.440 Cool. Pierre Paulyev, I asked him on Wednesday what he was going to do about this. I asked his

00:11:09.880 office. I didn't just text up Pierre and say, yo, Pierre, what do you think of C311? I went through

00:11:14.480 the proper channels and no one responded. His office did not respond. I followed up about an

00:11:18.940 hour before I went on air and no one responded. Now, apparently he's told the Canadian press

00:11:23.200 that he is going to vote in favor of this bill. So Pierre Paulyev supports that. And now the

00:11:29.060 pro-choice liberal MPs, which is basically all of them because the couple of lingering pro-life

00:11:34.380 MPs have just learned to shut their mouths about it in the liberal caucus. But Pierre Polyev

00:11:39.800 is now being criticized for supporting this bill because the liberals and Karina Gould are saying

00:11:45.220 this is just like a backdoor way into legislating abortion. So even when a pro-life person comes out

00:11:50.620 and offers the most benign, neutral, safe bill

00:11:55.860 that protects mothers. 1.00

00:11:58.340 That's what this bill is.

00:11:59.460 It's about protecting mothers, basically.

00:12:01.720 The liberals are so convinced

00:12:04.300 that they have a cultural and political monopoly

00:12:07.040 on the abortion issue that they can say,

00:12:09.180 nope, we want nothing to do with it.

00:12:11.680 And this really reinforces my longstanding position on this,

00:12:16.340 that the issue is not that the liberals

00:12:18.060 dislike the pro-life position.

00:12:20.620 liberals dislike pro-life people. They dislike the people who are pro-life, the people who dare.

00:12:27.020 So Kathy Wagenthal, they've already cited she is a bad person because she believes that the lives

00:12:33.820 of unborn children are worth protecting. So even if she's proposing a bill that has nothing to do

00:12:38.840 with that, they're going to be against it. And the media generally is giving them a pass on this.

00:12:45.260 The liberals are not accused of partaking in wedge politics on the abortion issue. Chris Selle,

00:12:50.380 I don't know what his position on abortion is, but he in the National Post had put a column forward basically calling out this BS, which is, pardon my, like I said, I don't really need to apologize for not using the bad words, but he basically called this out for what it is.

00:13:05.860 But I'm not seeing all of the liberal commentariat, the people in the Toronto Star on the CBC Power and Politics panel coming out and doing the same.

00:13:15.620 So just remember, whenever the liberals say, oh my goodness, these pro-life conservatives,

00:13:20.520 they never shut up, they are the ones who are never shutting up about abortion.

00:13:24.600 Now, the caveat here when you talk about the culture is that I think, generally speaking,

00:13:29.760 the Canadian culture is not as pro-choice as you're led to believe.

00:13:34.400 There are a lot of people of faith in this country, be they Christians, Jews, Muslims,

00:13:39.120 Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, pretty much every mainstream and even most alternative religions

00:13:44.560 in this country and in the world support the pro-life position, at least to some extent.

00:13:51.320 I mean, maybe they wouldn't go so far as to say abortion should always be banned, but you'd find

00:13:55.500 if you polled the entirety of the country, as has been done many times, that when people know

00:14:01.380 what the current laws are in Canada, that abortion is legal right up until the second a child is

00:14:07.340 delivered, they do not support that. So even people who would consider themselves pro-choice

00:14:12.780 support what are called gestational restrictions, these gradations in policy. But you can't have a

00:14:19.400 nuanced discussion when the Liberals control discourse in the way that they do. And the

00:14:25.420 Liberals just have this absolute stranglehold on debate and discussion. And just because it's

00:14:31.060 related to this topic, we're going to change the schedule a little bit and do our Fake News

00:14:35.420 Friday a little earlier. Roll that clip.

00:14:42.780 Yeah, this is, it's not news per se, but a Liberal MP, Adam Van, he's, I forget, I don't even know how to pronounce his last name.

00:14:54.240 All the Dutch people are going to be mad if I butcher it. 1.00

00:14:56.640 It's like Adam Van Kober for Ververden or something.

00:14:59.460 But he tweets out, like all the Liberals are, Canada needs to do more to protect reproductive rights,

00:15:05.020 not less conservative MPs regularly introduce legislation that would limit access to abortion,

00:15:11.140 and undermining women's right to choose. 1.00

00:15:13.580 Spoiler alert, Pierre Polyev says he supports this bill.

00:15:16.880 Well, this is a rare example of the fact checkers getting it right.

00:15:20.500 And Twitter has gotten a little better on this.

00:15:22.800 The reader added context below Adam's tweet says,

00:15:26.300 This bill was about amending the criminal code to protect pregnant women from violence

00:15:30.720 and ensure that pregnancy is a mitigating factor considered at sentencing.

00:15:34.620 It has nothing to do with abortion.

00:15:37.360 So congratulations, MP Adam.

00:15:39.140 You win the Fake News Friday Award.

00:15:41.140 for may 12th 2023 uh so the problem when you start off with like the big controversial issue

00:15:47.220 is that it's very weird to like segue into a wonkier subject so uh usually in broadcasting

00:15:52.740 you try to like find a creative way to be like speaking of x and then you get to z and hope that

00:15:58.080 y is kind of a little bit easier to sell i haven't figured out a way to connect abortion to hydro

00:16:04.540 rates yet i was kind of working on it but i might need to do the hard segue and just go right to

00:16:09.880 our next topic here because just as the liberals don't want you to have a right to make your own

00:16:15.280 decisions about your body in some context they also don't want oh here we go I've got the segue

00:16:19.920 they don't want you to be able to decide how you navigate climate and environmental policy they

00:16:25.560 have a one-size-fits-all solution and this is driving up the cost of pretty well everything

00:16:32.300 the coalition of concerned manufacturers and businesses of Canada is warning that we could

00:16:38.960 be looking at a 30 to 50% increase in hydro bills, all because of the government's goal

00:16:45.640 and the Canada Electricity Advisory Council's goal of getting to so-called net zero by 2035.

00:16:52.500 Catherine Swift from the CCMBC joins me now. Catherine, always good to talk to you. Thanks

00:16:58.440 for coming on today. My pleasure, Andrew. Nice to see you. Virtually, of course.

00:17:03.980 so let's start first off by talking about exactly what it is that we're looking at here because we

00:17:12.340 we know that whenever we hear net zero uh from the government it sounds lofty and ambitious but

00:17:17.060 it always comes with a price tag here so where are you seeing as being the bigger driver in

00:17:21.580 electricity prices going up well there's a few drivers and they're all significant um obviously

00:17:28.940 things like the carbon tax are going to increase uh triple roughly you know triple from what they

00:17:34.600 originally said they were going to be and they said they'd never go higher than 50 a ton they're

00:17:38.220 going to go to 170 um we're going to see another tax this year uh we haven't seen the nuts and

00:17:43.460 bolts of it yet but it's supposedly called the the clean energy standard we'll see what that looks

00:17:49.160 like whenever it hits uh but this this net zero um a lot of the uh a lot of the uh cost to so-called

00:17:57.800 achieve it, it will not be achieved. I will put money on the table right now that we will never

00:18:02.140 see net zero in our electricity system by 2035. By the way, we're already 83% there. We got a clean

00:18:09.740 electricity system relative to the rest of the world. We should be looking at other issues,

00:18:13.700 not this. But this is going to be hugely expensive. It's going to translate into much

00:18:16.880 higher electricity bills, which, of course, everybody uses. You know, you can't avoid

00:18:20.500 using electricity. And it's also going to hit the taxpayer because billions and billions of dollars,

00:18:26.860 tens of billions will be spent to subsidize uh hydro utilities a lot of these consultants that

00:18:34.460 that live off the public dime because they're advising government and some of them are on this

00:18:39.420 new council that just got it announced last week by the way um and there's there's just all manner

00:18:45.180 in which canadians will pay big let's not forget remember the um uh green energy plan in ontario

00:18:51.580 back in 2009 it was introduced it was supposed to according to the liberal government of the day

00:18:56.780 amount to about the price of a cup of coffee a day yeah it doubled hydro rates in Ontario to the

00:19:03.880 point that it has made so much business uncompetitive a lot of them just left the province

00:19:08.780 certainly the manufacturing sector is a notable example and of course created the whole concept

00:19:13.740 of energy poverty which is basically when you're paying more than a certain amount of your household

00:19:17.800 income just for energy just keep the lights on keep the place warm whatever then that is defined

00:19:23.080 as energy poverty so i when i say 30 to 50 that's a guesstimate i suspect it'll be higher but but

00:19:30.760 we want to be reasonable here and say 30 to 50 is a potential increase yeah well i mean when you

00:19:37.080 talk about the existing cleanness for lack of better term of the energy the electricity system

00:19:41.800 i actually think this is an important point because a lot of the pretty radical policies

00:19:46.360 we've withstood to date we were told would be the solutions to the problem not just a stepping stone

00:19:52.360 to bigger so-called solutions.

00:19:54.020 Like you look at the phase out of coal,

00:19:56.280 the investment in windmills.

00:19:58.320 I mean, in Ontario,

00:19:59.160 you drive through southwestern Ontario

00:20:00.680 and there are windmills as far as the eye can see

00:20:03.040 and they don't appear to have done anything

00:20:04.840 to reduce the overall reliance

00:20:07.240 on some of these things that we're now told are terrible.

00:20:10.260 Hydroelectric, it's hard to get cleaner than that.

00:20:12.040 Nuclear is one that does actually fit

00:20:14.680 what the environmentalists want,

00:20:15.900 but they don't nearly seem as interested in nuclear

00:20:18.040 as they should be.

00:20:19.420 But all of this stuff has basically gotten us

00:20:21.940 uh in in the words that they're using now kind of nowhere and and they're saying oh yeah we still

00:20:26.880 have so far to go well i think the environmental community doesn't like um nukes because they can't

00:20:34.960 make money off them like they can look at how i'm not i'm not kidding i know no i i don't you aren't

00:20:40.460 but i'm serious look at how many windmill farms and uh you know uh solar uh solar panel and mind

00:20:48.940 you a lot of them have gotten bankrupt because of course it's a failure of a solution but look at

00:20:53.340 how many of those are owned by uh you know environmental zealots uh they they love to

00:21:00.100 advise there's so many consultants this is something a lot of Canadians don't know about

00:21:04.360 I I see new green organizations popping up every day we the taxpayer are paying for all these guys

00:21:12.080 and girls uh to have a nice fat salary running these environmental this and environmental that 1.00

00:21:18.440 group. And they're all taxpayer funded. And I would love to see some kind of cost benefit analysis

00:21:24.840 because I don't think they're doing a darn thing. And once again, this new council has several of

00:21:29.080 those types on their advisory body, sucking up more taxpayer dollars, you can bet they're all

00:21:33.980 being paid for their time, etc. So, you know, this is hitting the average Canadian every which way,

00:21:41.260 we all want to do the right thing for the climate. But what really makes me crazy is it never gets

00:21:46.080 measured and have we met a goal yet when we look at the emissions targets the Trudeau liberals have

00:21:51.200 set out we have not met one yet not one uh and there has been the best we could do was during

00:21:58.580 the pandemic when the economy was virtually completely shut down is that what we'd like to

00:22:02.640 do is that might accomplish the goal mind you we'll all be you know we'll all be scrounging for

00:22:07.460 scraps in the in the garbage cans or whatever but uh but that's the kind of thing uh that that

00:22:12.800 really you know will only reduce our emissions better to have sensible measurable policies see

00:22:19.080 what actually works and a lot of countries are doing this kind of thing uh rather than these

00:22:23.380 virtue signaling type of policies that don't accomplish much but they beggar the average

00:22:28.280 person in the process well you know your group represents manufacturers and a manufacturer

00:22:34.680 manufactures something that shouldn't be a radical concept you know they they build something they

00:22:39.300 put in the raw materials. They take out this other piece. Sometimes that piece is sold. Other times

00:22:43.780 it becomes a part of something larger. The thing with a lot of these green energy companies is

00:22:48.340 they're producing absolutely nothing. They're producing ideas, getting billions of dollars

00:22:53.120 in subsidies. And at the end of the process, as you've indicated, Catherine, the only people who

00:22:57.360 have benefited from it are the people who run the company. It hasn't actually made electricity

00:23:03.220 cheaper or more available. It hasn't actually reduced the overall share of whatever the problem

00:23:08.400 is and and that's the thing i mean if we're going to be subsidizing anything which i don't think we

00:23:12.000 should let's subsidize companies that are actually producing things apart from uh just virtue

00:23:17.080 signaling promises yeah what they're really doing is actually acting as proxies for the government

00:23:23.180 the guy it permits the government to sort of have this network of voices out there supporting the

00:23:28.500 kind of policies they do so people you know your average person who doesn't follow this like geeks 1.00

00:23:33.340 like us do uh can can uh say oh there's a there's a real you know there's a real lot of support for

00:23:39.280 these kind of policies here so i guess they're a good idea so let's talk a little bit about the

00:23:46.240 kind of the the council itself because this is a body that i don't think most people have heard of

00:23:51.280 here and i've already forgotten the name of it but you know the canadian electricity council you

00:23:54.860 you've raised some concerns about who's on it yeah well everybody that's on it is either a utility

00:24:01.440 I mean, that makes sense, though.

00:24:02.700 You do want the people that are producing the power, you know, to have some input into the process.

00:24:07.480 A lot of the regulators, because, of course, there's big regulation in this industry.

00:24:12.520 But then we see a number of Indigenous, which, of course, is a political.

00:24:16.300 You'd have to do that with any political body these days.

00:24:19.040 Well, just to interject on that, Catherine, the problem is that when the government brings Indigenous voices into these projects, which I think it absolutely should,

00:24:26.800 it never picks the ones that are leading the charge for resource development and the Indigenous

00:24:32.520 people that are saying, absolutely, we need more of this. They're always the naysayers, I find.

00:24:37.400 That's correct. And of course, we know of many, many, many, many Indigenous leaders. In fact,

00:24:43.600 the vast majority are in favor of these projects because they see economic value for their

00:24:49.660 communities. And if you want to do something like fix water problems on a reserve, for example,

00:24:54.560 best thing to do is give these people good jobs give these communities resources from our very

00:25:00.460 many rich resource industries and and the majority want to be you're right the the the ones that fight

00:25:05.480 it usually being funded by american uh environmental groups by the way um are the ones that they put

00:25:11.940 on these particular councils but anyway the other representation is a number of the enviro

00:25:16.460 envirozealots you know the people that are out there making their living and making a very good

00:25:20.360 living by the way on our tax dollars subsidizing them to be voices out there pushing these extreme

00:25:25.860 radical solutions what kills me because one of the big impacts here should it come to pass which

00:25:32.160 again there's a lot of you know if we get a change of government a lot of this is thankfully going to

00:25:36.300 be reformed quite substantially I would hope I hope some sanity will prevail but we don't have

00:25:42.500 any consumers on there the people that are going to be paying for this are consumers taxpayers and

00:25:46.640 businesses, naturally, businesses as taxpayers, and also having to hobble their businesses,

00:25:52.540 because we've seen some of these emissions caps that are being discussed, such as the agricultural

00:25:58.060 industry is a great example. Are we really going to cut our food production? Is this the same thing

00:26:02.600 to do? No, it's not. So anyway, we don't have any of these groups represented, absolutely none.

00:26:08.340 So that to me is a glaring omission that should be corrected, but it won't be because again,

00:26:13.260 the government doesn't want to hear from these people that would present some facts that make

00:26:18.500 this look as outrageous as it actually is. Catherine Swift from the Coalition of Concerned

00:26:24.540 Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada. Always a pleasure, Catherine. Thanks for coming on today.

00:26:28.640 Thank you, Andrew. Well, just to build off of one of the things Catherine mentioned at the end

00:26:32.780 there, one of the challenges that always comes up with this is that the consumer can do pretty much

00:26:38.060 nothing about it. And, you know, I look at energy prices in Ontario, for example, which were for

00:26:43.360 the, for a time, one of the largest, one of the most expensive jurisdictions in the world for

00:26:48.240 energy, certainly the domestic or the developed world. And the thing about it was that you could,

00:26:53.240 as an Ontario resident, be like, okay, I'm going to turn, I mean, I've got like five studio lights

00:26:57.280 around me. So I'm like, my carbon footprint is, you know, that of a small African village. But

00:27:01.640 the thing about the carbon footprint is that you could say, okay, I'm going to turn off the lights.

00:27:06.920 I'm going to do my laundry and off peak hours on weekends.

00:27:10.120 I'm going to wash my dishes by hand and not like you could do all of this and you'd save

00:27:14.440 like $3 on your hydro bill.

00:27:16.940 Because when you look at it, you'd be like, okay, you know, usage, you know, whatever

00:27:20.740 kilowatts per hour delivery charge, a hundred dollars.

00:27:23.600 They're like, well, what did they deliver?

00:27:24.560 I didn't use anything, but it was these fixed costs or the carbon tax, these fixed costs

00:27:29.880 that were on it, that meant it was pretty much inescapable for the average consumer.

00:27:33.980 And I think that's true of a lot of these increases we're seeing now.

00:27:36.920 It's not going to come down.

00:27:37.940 You can't do anything to get away from them or to avoid it. 0.98

00:27:41.340 You're just kind of screwed. 0.95

00:27:43.700 I want to shift gears here yet again. 0.97

00:27:45.580 The problem with Friday is that like all the stuff we don't get to earlier in the week,

00:27:48.540 we all have to like put into one seamless narrative.

00:27:50.940 So we're abandoning the narrative and abandoning the seamlessness.

00:27:54.020 And hopefully it's just interesting enough to keep your attention.

00:27:58.380 But last but certainly not least, Colin Craig is with secondstreet.org,

00:28:02.340 which has commissioned a rather interesting study, a poll through Leger, that looks at,

00:28:09.720 I think, something that if we go back to the earlier discussion we had about abortion in

00:28:15.100 Canada, there's a gap between what ordinary people think and what the media would tell them to think,

00:28:22.220 what the media would sort of claim is the consensus on a particular issue. And one in

00:28:29.280 particular jumps out. And that is about if schools should inform parents when a child shows up and

00:28:35.640 says, you know, I'm actually a woman or I'm non-binary or I'm pan-gender or the one that I

00:28:41.280 learned many years ago, masculine of center, gender, queer. So a student goes to a teacher 0.96

00:28:45.500 and says, I'm this and this, and these are my pronouns. Should parents be notified? 57% in this

00:28:51.020 poll said yes, but that would be a position that, you know, when it's been mentioned by politicians

00:28:55.960 jurisdictions uh in other jurisdictions is like this hateful bigoted transphobic position where

00:29:00.560 it's no i think parents in general should know what's happening between their child and their

00:29:05.300 child's educators uh colin craig is with me now after that lengthy wind up there colin good to

00:29:10.620 talk to you thanks for coming on today having me andrew so so let's start with the why you've done

00:29:16.520 this question i mean second street i know we've had you on has done a lot on energy policy on

00:29:20.680 health care. This was when I saw this, I'm like, oh, really? They went there. Yeah, well, we put

00:29:26.120 our fingers in all the pies. You know, we spend, you're right, we spend a lot of time on health

00:29:30.540 care and natural resource issues. But we do some work on education, taxation, lots of different

00:29:38.540 other policies. And we actually did a poll about two and a half years ago. And one of the questions

00:29:45.220 we asked was, do Canadians think that the public school system has gone in the right direction or

00:29:51.620 wrong direction over the last 20 years? And at the time, about 32% said wrong direction. And we

00:29:58.880 thought, well, that's actually pretty high. That's a pretty significant number of Canadians who don't

00:30:02.480 think the system's going in the right direction. But this time it was 51%. So it's a very, very big

00:30:08.080 jump. And the reason what got us going with this poll is we thought, well, let's ask that question

00:30:13.460 again. And then we sort of were looking at some of the other issues in education. And this was

00:30:18.240 one where, you know, like yourself, and I'm sure lots of your viewers, I had seen these different

00:30:24.520 stories coming up about parents being kept in the dark about, you know, what their children are

00:30:29.040 talking with their teachers about when it comes to pronouns and transitioning, having very serious

00:30:34.020 discussions. And I thought, you know, I wonder if there's any public opinion research on this for

00:30:38.120 Canada. And I hadn't seen any, there were some numbers from the States, we thought, well, let's

00:30:41.080 ask the question and see what Canadians think. Well, and the other one that was interesting,

00:30:46.860 not as decisive as reporting back on, you know, gender identification, is this one,

00:30:52.400 47% of parents agree or of respondents agree that schools should have to make materials for topics

00:30:58.860 on gender and race related topics ahead, available ahead of time for parents to view. Now, that one

00:31:04.760 I find interesting, because I think largely a lot of curricular materials are available ahead of

00:31:10.120 time, but I don't think most parents have the initiative to, to go in and seek those out. Some

00:31:14.960 do, but I was curious kind of what your insights were on that. I mean, is there this realm of

00:31:19.760 materials that parents cannot access and do not know are being taught unless their child tells

00:31:25.300 them? Uh, short answers. I'm not sure exactly. I know in the U S there've been some challenges

00:31:30.620 where, uh, parents have tried to get access to materials that are being taught in schools and

00:31:35.000 they've had trouble. I'm not sure exactly where that's at with where that's at in Canada, but

00:31:39.940 I think it's an easy solution that can sometimes help in cases where parents are concerned about

00:31:45.280 what's being taught. For very sensitive topics, we have technologies makes all this stuff so easy now

00:31:52.360 that schools could put this information out ahead of time. So a parent could go in and say, okay,

00:31:56.980 what's my child going to learn about, say, gender related issues or race related topics? And just

00:32:03.000 kind of understand, well, do I want my child learning that? Yes or no. And if they have a

00:32:07.240 deep concern they could say well you know I'd like my child to sit in the library during that

00:32:10.840 lesson or whatever the other option of course and this was uh you know someone else raised this with

00:32:15.480 me and I think it's a good idea it also allows parents to know okay my child's going to learn

00:32:19.000 this in school today I want to present a different perspective to them when they get home so that

00:32:23.940 they can learn a little bit more and you know see different viewpoints have maybe a bit more of a

00:32:28.200 balanced uh learning exercise when it comes to this topic so we thought you know this would be

00:32:33.280 interesting just to see what Canadians think. And like you say, certainly more Canadians think

00:32:38.040 that's a good idea than people that say not to. I want to drill down to that one question I led

00:32:43.160 in with about the 57% say yes, the public, the teacher should have to tell or the school should

00:32:48.600 have to tell parents if a child wants to change their gender, use different pronouns. The regional

00:32:53.560 breakdown I found quite surprising here, because I think if you were to say this, everyone would

00:32:58.260 be like, oh yeah, if I were to ask which province said this yes the most, people would say like,

00:33:02.360 oh yeah, clearly Alberta. And Alberta was actually below the mean there. BC, unsurprisingly,

00:33:11.580 was the lowest, even then at 49%. Alberta, 54% said yes. The real outliers here on the high end

00:33:18.480 were Atlantic Canada and Quebec. Now, Atlantic Canada is a smaller sample, 100 people. So there

00:33:24.640 could be in that a bit of a um you know perhaps a a sampling issue but but quebec 61 so regionally

00:33:32.480 i found that just quite interesting yeah those numbers certainly are interesting that uh you

00:33:38.560 know it is higher in those provinces like you say that samples are smaller so it could be just

00:33:43.120 you know partially due to having a smaller sample size but it's not just the more conservative the

00:33:47.760 province the larger the number ontario was higher than saskatchewan and alberta yeah and you know

00:33:53.280 we're not we're not an advocacy organization we're not taking position in terms of what governments

00:33:57.120 should and shouldn't do on this i mean my own personal opinion is that uh yeah i think parents

00:34:01.440 should have the right to know i mean this is a pretty serious thing for a child to be assuming

00:34:07.120 basically a different identity at school if they're changing their pronouns but also uh even

00:34:12.240 chatting with the school system about you know how do i go about changing my my gender and trying

00:34:17.280 to have surgery and all this stuff you know my colleague makes a good point he says schools can't

00:34:22.800 give students a Tylenol without checking with parents first we're gonna let them

00:34:27.960 engage in this pretty serious psychological intervention you know I

00:34:33.960 totally understand why parents would want to know and what I think is

00:34:37.800 interesting is the breakdown between parents that say yes and parents that

00:34:40.740 say no or rather Canadians and say yes versus no is 57 to 18 and then there's a

00:34:46.980 large number of Canadians who are undecided I think maybe because they

00:34:50.160 haven't been confronted with this issue maybe want to know a little bit more uh whatever the

00:34:55.180 case is but it's also interesting too that when you shift this discussion from uh Canadians at

00:35:02.460 large to Canadians with kids the number increases goes up to a well over 60 percent I think 60 and

00:35:09.000 not just kids but kids in the household so not just like you know boomers with adult kids but

00:35:13.220 yeah parents with kids at home yeah yeah thanks for clarifying that yeah it's it's uh people with

00:35:19.020 young kids they want to know and like i said i can't blame them uh and i i think uh it makes

00:35:25.380 sense because this would be a very difficult thing for a child to be going through if they're

00:35:29.060 suddenly confused about who they are and and that uh you'd want to as a parent you'd want to be

00:35:34.860 helping them right you'd want to be there to guide them and maybe regardless of what side of the

00:35:39.760 debate you're on with this i think any parent would want to be there to to support their child

00:35:45.180 if they're going through something that's very difficult.

00:35:47.700 Yeah, I mean, look, I'm in my 30s.

00:35:49.740 I'm one of the dirty millennials that I complain so often about.

00:35:53.460 And one of the challenges I find is that I think that I was kind of part of this transitional

00:35:58.160 period where parents were engaged in the education system and, you know, wanted to do the parent

00:36:04.260 teacher checkups and read the report cards and learn.

00:36:06.840 But for the most part, sort of just trusted that the system was working, just sort of

00:36:10.720 dropped you off at school in the morning.

00:36:12.240 And that's that.

00:36:13.340 And I think that parents would be doing a tremendous disservice of themselves and their kids to do that.

00:36:18.960 And all the parents I know, and granted, I mean, there's a bit of a selection bias in terms of who I talk to more often, but they just don't trust it.

00:36:27.100 And the number of people I've heard from that have just self-selected out of the public system who are not the traditional private school or homeschool demographic, but it's largely because of stuff like this.

00:36:37.800 yeah there's it feels like there's been a lot of controversial news stories in the past while

00:36:44.640 involving public schools i mean you're based in ontario the oakville teacher with the

00:36:50.080 extremely large fake prosthetic breasts i'm sure most of your your viewers have seen them if not

00:36:57.300 if you google it you'll see that these these fake breasts were about the size of a gatorade cooler 1.00

00:37:02.020 that you know an nfl team might throw on its coach after winning the super bowl like absurdly large

00:37:07.660 What football games are you watching?

00:37:10.420 Well, you know, right?

00:37:12.980 You know, all the champions, you see these giant coolers being thrown. 0.98

00:37:16.620 That's how large these fake breasts are. 1.00

00:37:18.440 And many people found them demeaning to women. 0.96

00:37:20.560 So you see that kind of thing.

00:37:21.660 And then you see a school system that was just frozen, unable to deal with this.

00:37:25.220 Something that I think many people would consider to be extremely inappropriate.

00:37:29.660 On the other side of Canada, in British Columbia, a small town, Castle Garby Sea,

00:37:34.100 an elementary school teacher had a drag queen read to children in the classroom through zoom

00:37:41.240 and so many parents were outraged about this and so regardless of where you stand on these issues

00:37:47.900 I mean these are pretty controversial things and I think more than anything what we're seeing is

00:37:53.780 a need for more choice and Alberta has a good solution with charter schools here

00:37:58.420 uh for those who aren't familiar they're they're basically uh schools run by non-profits that are

00:38:05.460 funded by the government and they tend to specialize in different things one might

00:38:09.160 specialize in science and math another one might specialize in a particular like cultural study or

00:38:14.700 language whatever parents have more choice that they can choose schools outside of the public

00:38:20.400 school system without facing a huge bill because like i say the government will fund these uh

00:38:26.900 these schools so it does give parents more choice and i think in the rest of the country we would be

00:38:31.780 wise to be looking at that because clearly there's a pretty high uh dissatisfaction rate with the

00:38:37.220 direction public school systems going in yeah very well said people can read the results for

00:38:42.260 themselves over at secondstreet.org and if you are a parent at the very least pay attention

00:38:46.820 to what's happening in your kids school so you don't get blindsided whenever these stories come

00:38:50.980 up or an oakville teacher is waving the stories in your face so to speak uh colin craig always

00:38:55.860 good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thanks a lot andrew all right that does it for

00:39:00.740 us for this weekend we'll be back tuesday with more of canada's most irreverent talk show after

00:39:05.460 leaving you with that wonderful visual uh from the dominion in oakville but thank you very much

00:39:10.740 we will talk to you soon have a good one god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to

00:39:15.620 the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:39:25.860 Thank you.

Juno News - May 12, 2023

The Liberals are obsessed with abortion

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