Juno News - The Liberals have bungled Canadian immigration

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

00:01:19.180 by true north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the

00:01:28.940 Andrew Lawton show on True North on this Tuesday, July 30th. I was going to say a nice summer day,

00:01:34.080 and then I realized that the rain has just been like pouring down here in southwestern Ontario

00:01:38.620 for much of the morning. I heard some thunder about like two and a half, three hours ago.

00:01:45.840 So I always have a panic because I'm trying to remember if the show, Sean, you would know,

00:01:50.120 have we ever lost power during the show? I know we've lost power during interviews that we've

00:01:54.960 been pre-recording for the show which is annoying but at least we're not live i don't think knock

00:01:59.660 on wood we've ever lost power during sean yeah sean's lost power uh so we had it where like

00:02:04.320 because he's the guy that does all the things in the background i don't know if he does it like

00:02:07.260 this i that's just how i was emulating sean um so he was but if like a graphic goes up on the

00:02:13.220 screen that's sean doing it so when sean loses power uh basically it means that whatever is on

00:02:18.380 the frame right now is what's on the frame so it was during adam's evo and i think it was like we

00:02:23.880 either couldn't put Adam's Evo on the screen or couldn't take him off the screen. It was something

00:02:27.220 like that. Anyway, so today, the moral of the story is right now, I think we're good, although

00:02:31.960 I may have jinxed it by doing a two-minute opening monologue on losing power and its effect on the

00:02:36.480 Andrew Lawton show. But nevertheless, we will compensate for power and strength in our commentary

00:02:41.880 on the show. How'd you like that, folks? So we are going to be talking a little bit later on

00:02:46.780 in the program about the Venezuela election. I think election might need to be in air quotes

00:02:52.920 there. We'll speak to Anna Rizzo who is the president of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance and

00:02:58.040 she lives in Canada. She's a great advocate for freedom but she is from Venezuela and has seen

00:03:03.940 exactly what socialism has done to that country and why this election had it been a real one would

00:03:11.000 have been so tremendously important. We'll talk about that also later on about the consolidation

00:03:15.200 of power by the health minister and why Mark Holland is the guy that thinks he should decide

00:03:20.400 what you are able to buy, even when the quote-unquote health experts over at Health Canada

00:03:25.400 have made their decision. But I want to start off talking about immigration. Now, this is an issue

00:03:30.100 that has never really been, I would say for most Canadians, the number one issue at the polls. But

00:03:35.220 behind the carbon tax and cost of living, I think immigration, which is tied into cost of living

00:03:40.360 right now, is going to be one of the most galvanizing issues when Canadians go to the polls,

00:03:46.300 probably next year. And the reason I say that is because we are finally now seeing a shift in the

00:03:52.680 consensus around immigration. It used to be most Canadians were generally speaking very pro-immigration,

00:03:57.840 happy with immigrants, whether you were a Canadian that was born here and lived here your whole life

00:04:01.760 or someone who just became a citizen a few days ago. You could accept that everyone was

00:04:06.860 rowing in the same direction when it came to supporting Canadian values, community, cohesion,

00:04:11.620 all of these things. What we've seen in the last decade has been a monumental shift about

00:04:17.800 immigration discourse. And obviously there have been people on the fringes that are, you know,

00:04:22.720 let's open the borders, doesn't matter. And then on the other side, people that just are resistant

00:04:26.280 to any and all immigration. But in mainstream politics, there has been for much of Canada's

00:04:31.060 history, a consensus. And that consensus has been that we want the best and brightest of the world

00:04:36.440 to make a home in Canada.

00:04:37.720 We want to be a place that can offer the greatness of Canada

00:04:41.140 to people that would otherwise not have that

00:04:43.220 in their own country.

00:04:44.280 But we have a few expectations that come along with that.

00:04:47.420 Number one, that you're going to contribute to this country.

00:04:50.360 Number two, that you're going to learn one of the languages

00:04:52.800 and integrate with this country.

00:04:54.480 Number three, that you love this country,

00:04:56.800 that you actually want to be here

00:04:58.380 because there is something about this country

00:05:00.360 that you think is great

00:05:01.380 and that you do not want to bring the worst

00:05:04.220 of other parts of the world to this country.

00:05:06.980 And that's, I think, the one thing that conservatives, liberals,

00:05:09.560 for the most part, all agreed with it.

00:05:10.900 And it's why Stephen Harper's government did so well with immigration.

00:05:14.380 Jason Kenney was responsible for a lot of this as immigration minister.

00:05:18.340 You had people that believed in Canada that were very pro-immigration.

00:05:22.880 The numbers of immigrants that came into the country under Harper

00:05:25.400 kept rising and rising and rising.

00:05:27.040 But you did not see any of the problems we're seeing now

00:05:30.020 with housing with ethnic tensions and conflicts that are being brought into canada and that i

00:05:35.800 think is where we need to talk about how trudeau has absolutely bungled immigration trudeau and

00:05:40.440 the liberals have part of it is about canadian values yes but a lot of it is about the numbers

00:05:44.900 it's about the economics of this and trudeau's government trudeau's immigration ministers now

00:05:50.040 it's mark miller have done something which is focused on these arbitrary numbers it's like

00:05:55.600 their emissions reduction targets. They just say a number and it sounds good and they keep

00:06:00.420 increasing the number and they don't really think about the implications of it. And they keep doing

00:06:04.980 this and it is not something they are doing well at all, paying attention to the reality on the

00:06:09.960 ground. They're not paying attention to what that number will mean. So when they say, great, 500,000

00:06:15.020 new permanent residents a year, well, they're also increasing the number of people coming in through

00:06:19.160 other streams as temporary foreign workers, as international students. They are devaluing what

00:06:25.320 an international student is. Now it's not just about someone who's coming from some country

00:06:30.760 around the world to study at the University of Toronto or Fanshawe College or something like

00:06:35.840 that. They're people that are joining these what are really fraudulent strip mall quote-unquote

00:06:40.860 colleges that are not providing an education but are providing an end run around employment-based

00:06:46.260 immigration streams. This never used to happen in the numbers that is happening now when the 0.99

00:06:51.540 Conservatives were in power. And it's turning Canadians against immigration. And this is why

00:06:58.820 I think it's an issue that we need to discuss, because I'm very pro-immigration, but I'm pro-smart

00:07:03.260 and responsible and sensible immigration. I take the very Jason Kenney-esque view of immigration

00:07:09.720 that worked for this country for so well under the previous Conservative government. The Bank

00:07:13.820 of Canada, interestingly enough, has said it doesn't even believe the government is going to

00:07:17.840 reduce immigration because Mark Miller and Trudeau have said, OK, yeah, maybe we did a little bit too

00:07:22.140 much. But Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem says, well, I don't really think they're going

00:07:27.640 to do that. He has expressed doubts, as the Financial Post reported, about that pledge to

00:07:32.680 slow immigration. And you also have the government's own data here. The government's data

00:07:38.100 are saying that Canadians are divided. 51% believe immigrants need to integrate more.

00:07:43.480 46% nearly half of the country's residents say Canada should prioritize unemployed citizens

00:07:49.720 over skilled immigrants. 27% more than one in four say immigration is negatively changing the

00:07:57.280 country citing housing shortages and social changes. Now the issue here is not whether you

00:08:02.720 agree or disagree with these people. The issue is that these people are in the country now shaping

00:08:07.900 immigration discourse. So when you have one quarter of the country that says immigration is changing

00:08:12.920 the country for the worse that's going to cause a lot of issues and it's going to put immigrants 1.00

00:08:17.240 who have done everything right in the crosshairs of those in canada that have seen the deterioration

00:08:24.760 of the housing market that have seen the deterioration of canadian cities and they will

00:08:29.080 start blaming immigrants and immigration when these people have just done what justin trudeau

00:08:34.600 asked of them and i wanted to share this clip because i thought pierre polyev in an interview

00:08:38.840 he did on tln which is a latino outlet put this very succinctly and very simply take a look

00:08:46.600 do you think there is an immigration problem in canada and what is the solution yes the that 1.00

00:08:52.200 problem has a name justin trudeau he caused the problem the immigrant people did not cause the 0.99

00:08:57.880 problem they did what they were told the rules were unlined they followed the rules and they

00:09:03.880 came here in most cases they followed the rules they did what he said they

00:09:08.000 should do the problem is that he destroyed the common-sense approach that

00:09:15.120 worked for 150 years where we brought in people in numbers that we could absorb

00:09:20.080 into housing health care and the job market where people came in lawfully

00:09:26.820 where the international students actually studied and the truck temporary foreign

00:09:31.840 workers actually filled jobs that canadians couldn't fill that was the system we had before

00:09:36.020 and that worked if we get back to that then we can bring we can bring back the best system in

00:09:42.600 the world that gives high achievers and hard workers a chance to free to flee a bad situation

00:09:49.100 and come to the best country in the world and achieve their dreams so again what he's saying

00:09:55.440 there isn't even all that controversial he's making a point it's one that i've made on the

00:10:00.080 show in the past that when you have an immigration system that is in such disrepair it turns

00:10:06.500 Canadians against immigrants who have done nothing wrong who have come to the country because the

00:10:10.240 government rolled out a red carpet for them and said come on here and we have reported at true

00:10:14.640 north on this trend and I'll be honest I hadn't even heard of this word until or this term until

00:10:19.580 not that long ago really called onward migration and the reason I hadn't heard of it is because it

00:10:25.560 wasn't really happening in such large numbers. This is where people immigrate to Canada. They

00:10:30.660 come here, they say, oh, wow, this is great. They look around and say, oh, maybe it's not.

00:10:33.760 And then they migrate somewhere else. And they realize, okay, maybe I don't want this to be my

00:10:38.960 final destination. I want this to be a waypoint to somewhere better. And again, I'm convinced that

00:10:45.000 it's not, I don't think I'm the problem that I haven't seen that term. I think it's because

00:10:48.880 it hasn't been happening in large enough numbers that it's worth people knowing that term.

00:10:53.320 There's also been an issue with immigrants returning to their home countries.

00:10:57.740 They come here, they think, wow, Canada, the best and brightest of the world, come here.

00:11:01.480 It's going to be a place where I can live free, build a business, have a family.

00:11:04.980 They look around and say, maybe things weren't so bad back in Nigeria. 1.00

00:11:09.880 Maybe things weren't so bad back in Saudi Arabia or whatever in India.

00:11:13.880 And again, this is happening in not a lot of cases relative to the number of people that come here and want to stay here.

00:11:19.940 but we are still talking about a system in which Canada has failed to hold up its end of the

00:11:24.980 bargain because when you offer someone an opportunity to immigrate to Canada you're

00:11:29.020 offering them a tremendous privilege there is no right to go to another country and you know some

00:11:33.440 countries in the world such as Japan are dying because of that they are dying because they have 0.99

00:11:38.380 a low birth rate they have no mechanism to increase their population and they utterly resist the idea

00:11:43.420 of anyone becoming Japanese who wasn't born there that is the perils of an ethno state in full on 1.00

00:11:49.740 full display there. But that doesn't mean that the flip side, which is this, you know, left-wing

00:11:54.980 fever dream utopia, is the answer, which is to have no protection of your borders and really

00:12:00.500 treat your country like a mall concourse in that, you know, anyone who's walking through it at a

00:12:06.520 particular point has a right to be there and that's that. No, countries have a right to protect their

00:12:11.200 borders, both for security reasons and also for economic reasons. But in doing so, when you are

00:12:17.780 going to open them up and welcome people in i think you owe them something too and you owe them

00:12:22.740 the country that they are coming there for and they owe you that they're not going to try to

00:12:28.020 shape that country in very negative ways and this is where i think immigrants have been screwed over

00:12:33.780 as much as canadians have been screwed over by the liberals approach to immigration and pierre

00:12:38.660 polyev has talked about this i will say though listen to immigrants themselves as they talk about

00:12:43.460 this the number of people i've spoken to who have come to this country and they've said

00:12:47.380 this is looking like what i left and this is people that have come from socialist countries

00:12:52.500 that have said this people that have come from former bloc countries people that have come from

00:12:56.500 india and china and they think they're coming here for something else and they find that

00:13:00.180 it's not actually what they wanted this is a tremendous problem and the result of it

00:13:05.380 i go back to the government's own polling there is that canadians have now turned on immigration

00:13:10.420 and that means canadians are turning on immigrants and that is not a dynamic we want to see in this

00:13:15.780 country. We'll talk about this in further detail I suspect in the future because this is going to

00:13:20.740 be governing Canadian politics and I think this is going to make immigration an election issue

00:13:25.860 in a way that it has not been recently but we'll bring things back to the domestic and when you

00:13:30.820 talk about freedom that also means freedom from government intrusion on your decisions. Now not

00:13:36.020 that long ago our friends at the consumer choice center were taking aim at the federal government

00:13:41.460 really sneaking in through the budget the ability for the health minister to unilaterally override

00:13:47.140 health canada and make decisions based on what the health minister as an individual thinks

00:13:52.420 is a harmful product well we've now seen what's happening on this front david clement is the north

00:13:57.700 american affairs manager for the consumer choice center and joins us now i so explain what the

00:14:02.740 liberals did in the budget first and foremost before we get to how this is manifesting now

00:14:06.660 Yeah. So essentially what they did, they call it precision regulating, which is, I think, a rather nefarious way to describe it.

00:14:17.020 But basically, they've said that if the health minister views something as being used negatively or harmfully, the health minister now has the power to override Health Canada on approvals for everything from natural health products to technically contraception in many instances.

00:14:39.900 and it's really in this instance all to go after harm reduction products. In this case with Minister

00:14:48.900 Holland, he wasn't able to override Health Canada's approval of nicotine pouches, which are something

00:14:55.860 that a lot of smokers use to quit. Significantly less risky. He didn't particularly like that he

00:15:03.780 didn't have the power to go after those products. And so he's given himself now the power to go

00:15:10.140 after anything. And I mean, the real thing that I think is alarming here is that the liberals seem

00:15:17.480 to forget, despite the polls, that they're not going to be in government forever. And these are

00:15:23.840 the powers that a former or that a future health minister under any party, let's say the conservatives

00:15:28.660 will have. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, do we want the health minister to have

00:15:35.900 the ability to just, at a whim, override an approval process for a drug or a natural health

00:15:45.220 product because he thinks that it's bad? I don't think so. And a lot of other people,

00:15:52.020 when we started raising awareness about this, expressed their concerns, everything from

00:15:57.160 the natural health product industry to people who care about female access to contraception.

00:16:04.040 It's technically all covered by what the health minister can now potentially do.

00:16:10.820 There's a, I mean, politically, I'm always leery of anyone who supports a policy that they wouldn't

00:16:16.720 want used by another party. And that I think is key here for the reasons you've just mentioned.

00:16:22.040 And also, by the way, it rejects what the liberals have said on other issues, because

00:16:25.420 when the Conservatives under the previous Harper government were using ministerial authority to

00:16:31.780 regulate, prohibit certain firearms, the Liberals said, no, no, no, this needs to be in the hand of

00:16:35.920 experts. We can't let just some government politician decide this. And now on health

00:16:40.480 products, that's exactly what they want. They want the health minister to be able to override

00:16:44.300 the bureaucrats. And again, whatever issues you may have with Health Canada,

00:16:47.980 I wouldn't want a politician like this weaponizing any policy.

00:16:53.220 Of course. And regardless of your opinion of Health Canada, they're at least the people who are trusted and have the level of expertise to have these products go through a long approval process of proving efficacy, demonstrating risks, et cetera.

00:17:11.840 That's a lot better than a single person having the power to wield that over an entire product class.

00:17:20.000 And then, I mean, just think about the hypocrisy here in terms of for the better part of six months, the liberals spent a lot of time talking about how scary and socially conservative the conservatives are.

00:17:34.480 I'm talking about contraception.

00:17:36.320 Well, in theory, this tool now under the power of the Minister of Health could be used to do all sorts of things that the liberals wouldn't want social conservatives to do in terms of contraception or hormone therapy or you name it.

00:17:54.220 um there's a long list of other potentially um major items if you're a liberal uh that you

00:18:01.900 wouldn't want Pierre Polyev's health minister to have carte blanche over so explain this in the

00:18:09.400 context of how it's unfolding on tobacco products which is one of the bigger I think more pressing

00:18:15.100 uh dimensions of this yeah it's really the starting point so basically he doesn't like

00:18:20.380 nicotine pouches. And he's had several rather borderline on hyperventilating rants about how

00:18:28.700 they're getting into the hands of kids and they're dangerous and all of this stuff. And so

00:18:32.880 he wants to significantly limit access to them in ways that make it harder for smokers to quit.

00:18:40.960 And when we got word of this, I mean, we started to reach out to people who were trying to quit.

00:18:46.040 And we have almost 1,300 smokers now, or ex-smokers in many instances, who are now urging the health minister, don't eliminate flavors, don't limit where these can be sold. It's totally fine. They should be age-gated to the age of majority or age of what's required to buy cigarettes. That's totally fine. And nobody would argue against that.

00:19:12.840 But we have about 1,300 Canadians who use nicotine pouches as a means to stop smoking and in many instances stop smoking for good. Now, given Holland's background, he should be all over this. This is a win.

00:19:30.920 This is a great shift in the direction of public health, and yet he seems to have his sights set on nicotine pouches today and creating this really uncomfortable power for a future health minister tomorrow.

00:19:47.780 So where do you think this is going to go?

00:19:50.560 And I mean, for starters, what we're talking about here are oftentimes dueling experts.

00:19:55.900 You have studies that support a lot of these alternatives as a harm reduction mechanism.

00:20:01.020 You see on the other side people that say, oh, no, it's all just, you know, big tobacco and you can't trust any of it.

00:20:06.720 How do you navigate this?

00:20:08.740 I mean, I don't think that the risk assessment regulatory body of Germany is beholden to big tobacco.

00:20:17.100 Those who suggest otherwise are just wrong.

00:20:20.480 But the proof is in the pudding.

00:20:22.800 What is the only country in Europe right now that is on the verge of being declared smoke-free?

00:20:28.800 It's Sweden.

00:20:29.740 And why?

00:20:30.640 Because these products come from Sweden and they're regularly available and smoking is virtually non-existent.

00:20:37.580 I'm bordering on 5%, which is, I think, what the WHO declares as smoke-free.

00:20:43.260 So we have a model in a country that's done it, right?

00:20:46.260 They've done the thing that Canadians, Canada, the United States, other countries just haven't

00:20:51.600 been able to do for decades and really eliminate smoking to a rate where it's negligible.

00:20:59.680 And so the proof's in the pudding.

00:21:00.800 Anybody who argues that these products don't work just isn't looking at where we are seeing

00:21:06.920 results.

00:21:08.300 And the science and the research backs that.

00:21:10.300 I mean, the German risk assessors who evaluated this, if you give smoking a score of 99 in terms

00:21:16.960 of harm, vaping is about a five. Nicotine pouches are a one. And that's the same risk as Nicorette

00:21:24.400 gums, Nicorette patches, the sprays, all of the stuff that we see advertised on TV and whatnot

00:21:31.820 for smokers to quit. And so these are exponentially lower risk. And if they're getting

00:21:37.340 people away from cigarettes, which they are, I can't fathom why a federal minister of health

00:21:43.680 would view that as a bad outcome. Yeah. And it's a really interesting contrast when you hear how

00:21:51.520 the government talks about quote unquote, harm reduction in other contexts. You know, we have

00:21:56.680 a government that says, no, no, no, we need to give people access to so-called safe supply 0.73

00:22:00.420 because it's better than street fentanyl. And then someone says, okay, wow. So what about this

00:22:04.360 nicotine pouch instead of smoking combustible tobacco products. And they, oh, no, no, no,

00:22:09.600 you can't do that. Well, I mean, it's, it's, you look at BC, for example, right? They acted first

00:22:16.180 and they said, okay, no, we don't want these sold in convenience stores. We want them only

00:22:22.760 sold in pharmacies, which is pretty crazy because anybody who knows this, we all know someone who

00:22:29.280 smoked and paid the price or quit and quit too late and paid the price. You want these products

00:22:35.300 sold alongside cigarettes so that smokers can be prompted when they go, oh, okay, maybe I'll try

00:22:40.620 something that's way less dangerous and maybe that's my key to getting off. So BC pulled them

00:22:47.480 out of convenience stores and put them only in pharmacies, which obviously makes them less

00:22:52.460 accessible. And while at the same time in BC, you have safe supply for all sorts of drugs that are

00:23:03.100 wildly different in terms of risk. And I can't understand the cognitive dissonance there where

00:23:11.100 it's like, no, we're going to supply addicts with safer alternatives to hard drugs,

00:23:18.860 drugs, while at the same time making it harder for smokers to quit. And we don't yet know

00:23:25.860 what Mark Holland is going to do, but I think at the very least, he's probably going to

00:23:30.100 do what BC did. And so you have a government basically saying, yes, we will supply, in

00:23:38.240 many instances, free hard drugs for those who are addicted to those substances, while

00:23:45.420 at the same time, we're going to heavily restrict access to something that might get people off

00:23:52.220 of cigarettes entirely and no longer smoke at all. And so, yeah, I can't make sense of

00:24:00.840 the cognitive dissonance there. It just is baffling to me.

00:24:05.040 So one of the things that I'll say here is that a lot of people will, because they just don't

00:24:10.940 like tobacco products, they don't like tobacco companies, they'll say, I support this power

00:24:14.700 because I like how it's being used.

00:24:16.540 And I know we started off talking

00:24:17.880 about some of the different applications for this,

00:24:19.720 but what's the message you give to those people

00:24:21.360 that may like this application

00:24:22.540 but might not like the next application of it?

00:24:25.220 Careful what you wish for.

00:24:26.840 Careful what you wish for

00:24:28.080 because the power you give the government today

00:24:30.260 is the power you give the government tomorrow.

00:24:34.220 And like you alluded to,

00:24:36.140 any power that you give the federal government today,

00:24:38.600 let's say you really don't like the conservatives,

00:24:42.380 you have to ask yourself,

00:24:43.600 do I want Pierre Poliev to have that power? Let's say you really don't like Jagmeet Singh

00:24:48.800 and the NDP. Would you want an NDP government to have that power? And most people, when they hear

00:24:55.760 it framed that way, get a little more cautious, but they have to take the horse blinders off

00:25:00.980 and take a deep breath and realize that what is being used today can and will be used for other

00:25:07.940 things uh tomorrow and it certainly will i mean we see this the erosion into provincial jurisdiction

00:25:16.820 which was once rare is now something that is commonplace across every across federal

00:25:24.340 governments of of every party um you start to see the erosion of those norms when when when they

00:25:31.140 change and then they become common practice and that's a huge problem and i just only see it

00:25:36.420 getting worse and further politicized, right? Because all of a sudden there's a negative

00:25:41.020 headline about a particular natural health product or contraceptive. And then the health

00:25:46.580 minister says, well, I got to do something about it. And now I have the power to do something about

00:25:51.700 it, whether it's merit-based or fact-based or not, doesn't matter. And then they do. And all of a

00:25:57.400 sudden, medicine or drugs or natural health products, or in this case, nicotine pouches

00:26:03.180 are taken off the shelves despite the fact that they've already proven themselves

00:26:07.200 to Health Canada as an effective tool. Yeah and Mark Holland let me see if I can find the quote

00:26:13.960 here he made a comment about how we need to oh yeah we can play whack-a-mole with them he's

00:26:19.860 referring to tobacco companies as fast as their lawyers create new loopholes so he's saying he

00:26:24.320 needs to actually be faster than the process and I think that in and of itself I mean he views it

00:26:30.140 as a feature. But I view it as exactly why it's so problematic, because he believes that just he

00:26:34.760 should wield that power faster than the process that's literally put in place to deal with this

00:26:39.140 stuff. Yeah. And it suggests that it feels more like a vendetta. He just doesn't like that a

00:26:47.320 tobacco company has made an alternative to smoking. And you can think that tobacco companies are evil.

00:26:54.460 I mean, they make a product that kills people, but is it a good thing that they're making a product that doesn't kill people and gets people away from the product that kills people?

00:27:05.760 Yeah, that's a positive development.

00:27:08.280 That's not something that we need to clamp down on just because the health minister in this instance doesn't particularly like the one company involved in the product that was created.

00:27:18.880 And so it just seems like very cheap politics to me that run counter to the rest of Health Canada's mission, the rest of the health ministry's mission in terms of trying to reduce smoking rates.

00:27:34.140 David Clement, North American Affairs Manager for the Consumer Choice Center.

00:27:38.080 Always good to talk to you, David.

00:27:39.400 Thanks for coming on.

00:27:40.620 Appreciate it.

00:27:41.120 Thank you, Andrew.

00:27:41.820 All right.

00:27:42.180 Glad Mark Holland didn't get that audio problem sabotaged for the whole show.

00:27:47.320 I wanted to turn to something happening in the world here because it certainly has a Canadian 0.67

00:27:52.280 tie-in. If you look at how Canada's politicians are right now rather united, which is quite rare,

00:27:59.860 in resisting the sham election result in Venezuela. You had Maduro running for,

00:28:06.320 I want to say, I mean, re-election, but it's only by name only. And Canada has come out with a level

00:28:12.600 of skepticism towards this this is a clip from deputy prime minister christia freeland on the

00:28:19.520 venezuela so-called election results canada accept the results of the election in venezuela

00:28:24.780 and if not what is canada going to do about it uh thank you for the question uh canada

00:28:34.580 Venezuela, like many of our other allies, like many of the world's democracies, has

00:28:44.260 serious concerns about the election in Venezuela, and we're working closely with our partners.

00:28:55.700 I do want to take a moment to really voice my support for the brave people of Venezuela,

00:29:06.820 the brave democracy leaders of Venezuela.

00:29:15.080 It takes real courage to stand up for democracy in the face of an authoritarian regime.

00:29:24.320 Millions of people in Venezuela have been doing that.

00:29:28.540 And I want them to know that Canada recognizes their courage and determination.

00:29:35.280 And Canada has been supporting the democratic opposition and condemning an increasingly

00:29:42.960 severe authoritarian regime in Venezuela for many years now.

00:29:48.440 I want the people of Venezuela, the Democrats of Venezuela, to know that Canada stands with them

00:29:58.320 and recognizes that they are fighting hard for democracy and freedom, and they deserve it, just as all of us do.

00:30:11.520 That was Chris Jafreeland, slightly more measured than you'd like to see.

00:30:16.420 Pierre Poliev, the conservative leader, came out a bit more out of the gate here.

00:30:20.340 He writes in a statement,

00:30:21.540 Yesterday, Venezuelans voted to end socialist oppression,

00:30:25.460 but dictator Nicolas Maduro rigged the results to stay in power.

00:30:30.340 Trudeau should immediately refuse to recognize this sham election

00:30:33.880 and support the Venezuelan people's struggle for freedom and democracy.

00:30:39.680 Now, someone pointed this out on social media.

00:30:42.360 Maduro used to have the gray checkmark beside his name, which is what you have when you're an

00:30:48.160 official government or political account. But Elon Musk had removed that. So Elon Musk, for

00:30:54.400 whatever his recognition matters, has basically said that Maduro is not, in fact, the president

00:30:59.860 of Venezuela. And here's the thing that's interesting. This isn't just a conservative

00:31:05.220 leader mouthing off about a socialist dictator, which I think he has a right to do. This is a

00:31:11.720 man who's married to a Venezuelan, well, not a technical refugee, but someone who, with her

00:31:17.280 family, sought political asylum and was granted it in Canada. Anna Polieb, who's been just an

00:31:23.260 absolute force on the campaign trail, she literally had to flee the very sense of what Maduro is doing

00:31:32.200 to that country. Now, Maduro was not the guy in power when she and her family came. I think she

00:31:36.200 was eight years old, if I recall, seven or eight, when she landed in Montreal. No knowledge of

00:31:40.460 English and look at her now. And that was why I think this was such an important dynamic. So

00:31:45.000 Poliev knows quite well what exactly is at stake here. And there was another point that we don't

00:31:52.920 have the tweet to display, but I'll pull it up and I'll just read it. Because even before the

00:31:56.400 election, Poliev had actually posted, I don't have it handy, but oh, here we go. He had posted a

00:32:02.380 graphic of the woman, Karina Machado, who is running against Maduro. And he says, Iron Lady

00:32:07.320 Maria Carina Machado, is fighting to free her people from socialist tyranny, let the people 1.00

00:32:12.520 vote, and democracy prevail in Venezuela. The Iron Lady of Venezuela threatens to unseat its

00:32:18.320 autocrat. That was the headline in the New York Times. Now, interestingly enough, the New York

00:32:24.640 Times ran a story in which they wrote that capitalism was the real problem. Capitalism was

00:32:31.200 what destroyed Venezuela, not socialism. So take from that what you will. But the reason I want to

00:32:36.840 talk about this is because freedom around the world is important and worth defending and worth

00:32:41.600 protecting. And you may say, well, it's not necessarily in Canada's interest, but I think

00:32:45.460 it matters as people who love freedom to talk about what freedom is, why it matters, and what

00:32:50.380 people are doing to push back against it. It's my pleasure to welcome to this program someone who

00:32:54.580 has been doing that in more than one country. Anna Rizzo is president of the Ladies of Liberty

00:33:00.100 Alliance. She calls Canada her home now, but knows this part of the world very well. Anna,

00:33:04.640 good to have you on thanks for coming on today thank you so much for inviting me andrew it's

00:33:09.280 a pleasure to be in this program so let's just start off with a bit of the context here leading

00:33:14.320 up to this so-called election did you genuinely have a belief that this was going to be a real

00:33:19.760 election because i saw a tremendous amount of support for the process but afterwards no one's

00:33:24.320 all that surprised with with what seems to have unfolded yes absolutely like in venezuela we are

00:33:30.880 well aware that this is a dictatorship but still we had to go and vote in order to express or

00:33:38.640 discomfort with the government now are we really surprised that they reached the election of course

00:33:44.960 not because that's what they have been doing in the last years as well and for any venezuela like

00:33:51.760 every venezuela knows that the committee electoral commission is under maduro's power like there's no

00:33:58.400 separation of power in venezuela or in any dictatorship so what happened there is that

00:34:05.120 what we did with the the electoral process is to pretty much gather truth against the regime and

00:34:12.720 that's what the opposition has been doing this time they have documented in every voting centers

00:34:19.280 the results of this election and that's what they are using right now against the government

00:34:25.600 Like Maduro has two options right now, and he either acknowledged that he lost, which

00:34:32.220 he's not doing right now, but he will be certainly confirmed a dictator in front of the world

00:34:37.380 because now there's plenty of evidence against him.

00:34:39.860 And now more than ever, every country is condemning Venezuela.

00:34:44.660 Even Japan recently stated that they don't acknowledge the results of the last elections.

00:34:51.360 And in the Americas, it's the same.

00:34:53.040 what is the flow of information like in venezuela right now are people in the country able to get

00:35:01.440 accurate truthful information and share it freely right now well we have many journalists that are

00:35:08.640 living in the exile and they have actually programs like this one that you have for example

00:35:14.480 and many of them have to gather information from journalists that are working independently in the

00:35:20.460 country because unfortunately in venezuela most of our media or at least the official media was

00:35:26.620 taken by the government and let's say we have a version of the cbc and the cbc in venezuela

00:35:33.900 that was a radio caracas television one of the biggest channel was removed from the the country

00:35:41.260 long time ago and all our national tv channels they face the same luck they they're taken by

00:35:47.900 the government so there's no really like official uh independent journalism like you only have

00:35:55.180 the independent journalists that are working in the street and who are risking their lives

00:36:00.320 right now i've seen some footage of people that really seem to be motivated to go into the streets

00:36:06.740 themselves to protest this and do you think this is really something that could put the country on

00:36:12.440 the verge of a revolution oh absolutely like right now especially the last few days like the last two

00:36:19.140 days in venezuela people have been taking the streets non-stop even right now as we are talking

00:36:25.600 maria corina machado and el mundo gonzalez are in the street with the venezuelans like they are 0.65

00:36:32.620 gathering and many of them have been protesting and some of these protests have endowed in violence

00:36:39.800 like just last night a teenager 14 years old he was shot by the maduro stocks the gang members

00:36:47.660 who are still obedient to the regime there are a lot of people i mean things you know that this

00:36:53.660 is someone who lives in canada things here are very difficult people are having trouble affording

00:36:57.720 groceries housing is an issue it's very difficult sometimes to get canadians to care about what's

00:37:02.940 happening around the world and obviously you yourself have have lineage in this part of the

00:37:08.060 world so i get why you care why should canadians care about this why does this story matter

00:37:11.540 to people outside of venezuela i think that it matters because once venezuela is a lesson

00:37:17.380 venezuela is a lesson that once you vote into socialism there's no way of getting out the easy

00:37:23.020 way so it's a lesson that this is not a path that we shall follow like there's no such a thing as

00:37:29.600 free you know handouts no someone else is paying for it and you might pay the final cost for it

00:37:36.780 that cause might be your own freedom and secondly i believe that canada being a country that is part

00:37:44.220 of the organization of american states we champion democracy as well the fact that the prime minister

00:37:51.100 justin trudeau hasn't said anything about the issue in venezuela is concerning because even

00:37:57.100 chile which is a country right now with a left center government stated that they are not going

00:38:02.860 going to recognize the results in Venezuela.

00:38:06.340 So the fact that the prime minister in Canada

00:38:08.980 hasn't said anything is like, why is that?

00:38:12.900 So I think that that's a very delicate subject

00:38:16.480 for Canadian diplomacy right now.

00:38:19.100 Well, and one of the things too,

00:38:20.100 and I don't consider myself an expert

00:38:22.080 in the history of South America by any stretch,

00:38:24.400 but I have read into Venezuela.

00:38:26.820 And one of the things that people would be shocked by

00:38:28.700 is that it wasn't always like this.

00:38:30.120 This was a country that was incredibly wealthy.

00:38:32.240 It's an oil rich country.

00:38:33.580 It has all of the ingredients needed

00:38:35.320 to be an economic powerhouse.

00:38:37.120 And it was ruined by this ideology.

00:38:41.120 Yes, as a matter of fact, it wasn't only oil.

00:38:44.240 Of course, oil has been a very important part

00:38:47.020 of Venezuelan prosperity,

00:38:48.960 but also Venezuela was a country

00:38:51.000 that was very open to business.

00:38:53.260 Venezuela was a country

00:38:54.700 that embraced entrepreneurship in the past.

00:38:59.340 So many companies that were foreign, 0.72

00:39:03.680 like from the US, from Europe,

00:39:05.740 they could operate in Venezuela without any problem.

00:39:09.080 And these created many opportunities for Venezuela.

00:39:12.020 So Venezuela was a very prosperous country,

00:39:14.460 one of the most prosperous country in Latin America,

00:39:17.020 as a matter of fact.

00:39:18.200 And well, now we have been under this ideology

00:39:22.000 for 25 years, which is insane and is unacceptable.

00:39:26.340 And that's why Venezuelans are so... 1.00

00:39:28.540 Many of them are not even scared anymore

00:39:30.780 of going in the streets.

00:39:32.700 I know that the protests have, as you've noted,

00:39:35.020 been quite violent, even I have a little tracker up,

00:39:37.520 even as we've been talking,

00:39:38.720 there are more reports coming out

00:39:40.040 of people killed in protest.

00:39:42.380 How much of a grip does Maduro have

00:39:45.640 on police and law enforcement?

00:39:47.460 Is there a possibility that some members of that regime

00:39:51.220 may flip and actually help the protestors?

00:39:54.960 Yes, Andrew, it's a good thing that you question that

00:39:57.820 Because that's the difference between what is going on in Venezuela right now to what was going on in the past.

00:40:05.200 Like right now, even in the military, a lot of people are struggling financially.

00:40:10.400 Sure, you have the ones on the big chain that are like, you know, with all this money that they gain corruption on the top of the food chain.

00:40:18.620 But the reality is that the ones below are not doing that great.

00:40:23.920 And the overwhelming difference is that most of the population is against Maduro right now.

00:40:30.460 So he doesn't have the support that he used to have in the past.

00:40:35.060 And this probably will impact the support that he has in law enforcement as well.

00:40:42.680 So where do you think this is going to go?

00:40:45.420 I mean, I know that you're an advocate for liberty and you obviously want this to be as bloodless as possible.

00:40:51.040 But right now the people are rising up.

00:40:53.120 if you understanding what has happened before and i'll just offer a bit of context to that i mean

00:40:57.900 we've seen in iran for example which is a very different country that it seems every couple of

00:41:03.180 years like they're on the verge of a revolution and then it nothing it doesn't go anywhere what

00:41:07.500 do you think makes venezuela different and where do you think this is going um that's a very good

00:41:13.400 question that i honestly i'm trying to be optimistic i think that a scenario this time is

00:41:18.500 different as i mentioned in the past the chavismo used to have a lot of diplomatic support from the

00:41:25.620 region of the americas right now that support is basically non-existent like very few countries

00:41:32.260 are really supporting them and these are countries with terrible records of human rights like russia 0.71

00:41:37.540 iran china and not even in the region they have the strengths that they used to have in the past

00:41:44.660 And another thing is what I mentioned about the law enforcement, like a lot of people in the

00:41:49.540 military, a lot of people in the police, they don't like what is happening and they certainly

00:41:54.900 are not getting a lot of benefits from the government anymore. And Venezuela is going to

00:41:59.380 be extremely isolated if Maduro doesn't leave because no one in the region would like to do

00:42:05.620 business with a dictatorship, with a consolidated dictatorship. That is where they're leading.

00:42:11.380 So I think that right now, the pressure that they're going to have is going to be very strong.

00:42:17.220 The Chavismo is not as strong.

00:42:19.560 There are chances of them actually being pressured to the point that they will have to leave,

00:42:24.480 which is not the first time that this has happened in Venezuela.

00:42:27.780 It happened in the past in Nordic tenorship in 1988.

00:42:33.400 Where is the best place, in your view, for people to get information about this?

00:42:38.200 because as we know some media outlets i mentioned earlier i don't know if you saw the new york times

00:42:42.600 had a story about how capitalism is the reason that venezuela failed so not everyone is uh relaying

00:42:48.120 the most accurate information here where have you found the most trustworthy sources to to get

00:42:52.440 an accurate sense of what's happening anna well unfortunately you just need to rely on social

00:42:57.960 media in certain journalists that are posting the information there is a channel is i think

00:43:04.840 things called EVTV on YouTube, where former journalists who were persecuted in Venezuela,

00:43:11.460 they are informing about what is happening from a studio in Miami. And then there are other

00:43:18.140 independent journalists. But honestly, there's no way to get official, reliable news because,

00:43:27.100 again, it's a dictatorship. We don't have such thing as a free media anymore.

00:43:30.820 we'll have to partner up with someone there and start true south in venezuela

00:43:34.760 exactly there you go if you i know not that it would be safe for you to go back but if you ever

00:43:38.960 do there's a there's your there's your opportunity there uh oh my god yeah anorizo president of the

00:43:45.240 ladies of liberty alliance thank you so much and best of luck thank you so much andrew have a

00:43:50.780 wonderful day yes you too this is the end of our time together we'll be back in 23 hours and 15

00:43:57.020 minutes here on Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North. Thank you. God bless. Good

00:44:01.840 day and stay free. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by

00:44:07.400 donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:44:27.020 We'll be right back.

00:44:57.020 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 30, 2024

The Liberals have bungled Canadian immigration

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