00:01:00.000Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:01:18.220This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:01:30.000Hello and welcome to you all. Sorry there was like a dramatic pause there for some reason before the program began and I'm not precisely sure why, but I guess just to heighten suspense for the show here.
00:01:44.880This is The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North. It is Tuesday, August 22nd, 2023, just after 4 p.m. here in the dirty, leeching east of Canada.
00:01:59.600which is funny. I mean, I spend a lot of time in Alberta and I used to work in Alberta guest
00:02:04.180hosting on actually guest hosting for the woman who's now the premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith
00:02:08.740on 770 CHQR. And the one thing that I always found so jarring whenever I was in the West is
00:02:14.320how they view Ontario as being the East, whereas Ontario views itself as being the center of the
00:02:20.380world. It's like, oh no, no, no. East is like Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. But wherever you
00:02:25.020are in this lovely nation that we call the Dominion of Canada, at least that I call the
00:02:30.020Dominion of Canada. We welcome you very much. And I'm so glad to have you here. I was going to do a
00:02:35.040little bit of prop comedy on the show today. And I was going to like bring a lighter of some kind
00:02:39.640and maybe set something aflame. But then I realized you don't actually need a lighter to
00:02:44.880set anything aflame in this day and age. You can do it with your words alone. So do I have a piece
00:02:50.520of paper. I've got a piece of paper. I hope this isn't anything important. It's a, oh no, this is
00:02:55.560the phone number of a woman who banged my car in a parking lot, but it's already been sorted out. So
00:03:01.480I can burn this. This is okay. I oppose carbon taxes. Carbon taxes are bad.
00:03:13.800oh that's unfortunate it was supposed to light a flame when you say that such is the
00:03:20.860point put forward by Catherine McKenna the former environment minister of Canada you'd think she'd
00:03:25.960know these things she says on Twitter here conservative politicians want to fight about
00:03:31.240a price on carbon pollution with the indignation of a question mark you want to make it free to
00:03:36.940pollute while Canadians pay with their lives threatened homes destroyed and their communities
00:03:41.820obliterated. So what are you going to do? You are the arsonist. So Catherine McKenna there with your
00:03:49.040words, thoughts, and feelings alone, establishing that if you oppose carbon tax, if you do not
00:03:54.440support a price on so-called carbon pollution, you are an arsonist. Now she says this as the
00:04:00.420wildfires wage on and wage on, and wage on actually, in the West and the North and the
00:04:06.280Northwest Territories and in Northern British Columbia. It's tragic. It is horrendous when
00:04:11.260you see people that have been displaced from their homes. We've seen in Maui that lives have
00:04:15.580been lost because of fires. This is very serious stuff. And it is happening in a context that is
00:04:21.700not about politics and shouldn't be about politics. But Catherine McKenna says, if you are a
00:04:26.180conservative who opposes a carbon tax, you are an arsonist. Let me just try one more time.
00:04:32.540I'm going to think really, really, really hard about why I don't want to pay more at the gas
00:04:37.540pumps. No, nothing. Well, I got to say, I cannot believe that Catherine McKenna ever led us astray.
00:04:46.020That I did not have foreseen. I could not have foreseen at all. It is quite fascinating to me,
00:04:51.860if you think about it here, that we are seeing more and more of this nasty rhetoric, this
00:04:57.680catastrophism that we were speaking about a couple of weeks ago with Joe Oliver on this show,
00:05:02.640from people that are proclaiming to be guided by science and governed by science,
00:05:08.340but are actually anything of the sort.
00:05:10.840They are putting political talking points and masking it with science-y sounding language
00:05:16.340and speaking about climate and the weather and the environment in these catastrophic doom and gloom terms
00:05:51.900Catherine McKenna, the former Liberal Minister, accused Conservatives of being arsonists over the opposition to the carbon tax.
00:05:58.720So what's your response to her comment, and what do you say to climate alarmists or maybe people that say that not having a carbon tax will lead to a climate catastrophe?
00:06:08.680What I really worry about is the increased radicalization of rhetoric by Liberals, particularly Justin Trudeau,
00:06:16.160but the nastiness and meanness that they're directing at people who disagree with their
00:06:21.840policies whether it's Trudeau's nasty comments directed at Muslim parents or whether it is him
00:06:29.480jabbing his finger in people's faces and now a former liberal minister saying that anybody who
00:06:35.000doesn't want to pay higher taxes is an arsonist. Really? Really? As if if we paid higher taxes we'd
00:06:42.380have less forest fires? Come on let's get back to some common sense in this country and let's start
00:06:48.800to bring our people together instead of tearing the country apart. It seems like a fairly common
00:06:56.400sense position that Catherine McKenna the environment minister once in Canada saying
00:07:02.300that arsonism is or arson comes from opposing carbon taxes will be a little bit absurd but
00:07:07.100this is what passes for the liberals now and you may wonder if okay maybe I'm punching down by
00:07:12.360talking about some former environment minister.
00:07:16.100But even though she doesn't have a position in government,
00:07:18.360she still is very much a leading voice, not just in Canada,
00:07:21.600but around the world on purveying that climate catastrophism
00:07:25.300I was talking about earlier on in the show and in previous episodes.
00:07:30.080And I would also say she's still very much looked at in some ways
00:07:32.960as this sort of spiritual leader on the green file for the Liberals.
00:07:37.720It's now Jonathan Wilkinson that has her role.
00:07:40.580Stephen Gilbeau, who's I mean, they talk about climate criminals in terms of like the big oil and gas companies.
00:07:47.020They all call them climate criminals. Stephen Gilbeau is literally a climate criminal because he was charged with a criminal offense while he was engaging in climate protests.
00:07:56.320So Stephen Gilbeau is a literal climate criminal who has bungled a number of files and is now on the transport file.
00:08:02.800But Stephen Gilbeau had tweeted, and you can see it on the screen there, that this is about Tracy Gray, the conservative MP for the Kelowna area, that she wants to fan the flames by making pollution free again.
00:08:16.060So, you know, make America great again.
00:08:17.840The conservatives want to make pollution free again.
00:08:20.240Rob, he is taking aim at the fact that Tracy Gray is pointing out that Canadians cannot afford Trudeau's carbon tax and that we should axe the tax and bring home lower prices.
00:08:30.780Now, the Liberals claim to be all on board with fighting inflation.
00:08:35.260The Liberals claim that they're aware of the inflation crisis.
00:09:21.720So absolutely, when the Conservatives are saying, well, perhaps this arbitrary carbon
00:09:25.960tax that does nothing to help Canadians but does in fact punish them is something we could cut. So
00:09:33.000the Liberals are trying to vilify the Conservatives for opposing a carbon tax that even the most
00:09:40.320do-goody Canadians cannot afford right now. And the number of hurdles and barriers and
00:09:46.860restrictions they're putting in place in the name of environmentalism is asinine. One that we talked
00:09:52.360about a couple of weeks ago is these electricity regulations that are coming about a federal
00:09:57.320government forcing provinces to be net zero by an arbitrary date in ways that will only result
00:10:04.700in increased costs to consumers. Now, I've been very heartened to see the Alberta government push
00:10:09.540back against this. Premier Danielle Smith has said this is unrealistic, as has her environment
00:10:14.640minister, Rebecca Schultz. And Minister Schultz joins me now. It's always good to have her on the
00:10:20.180show. Minister, I know you're very kind. You've got to get to a flight soon, but I'm glad you're
00:10:25.120here, and thank you for doing this. Now, just to confirm here, you do not believe that opposing
00:10:30.100carbon taxes is arson, right? You know what? We're very opposed to the carbon tax here in Alberta,
00:10:38.400and we hear it every day. I mean, it was just yesterday, actually. I was speaking to a
00:10:42.440constituent about their power bills, and he said, you know, Rebecca, look, as my MLA, when I break
00:10:48.340down my bill the carbon tax and inflation you know like this is hurting everyday Canadians so
00:10:54.780uh no the carbon the carbon tax especially the consumer carbon tax is not actually having an
00:11:00.640impact on emissions or our environment. Talk to me about these clean energy uh these are so-called
00:11:07.380clean energy regulations these electricity regulations and why Alberta is standing so
00:11:13.100firm on this in a way that right now we haven't really seen many other provinces do what's the
00:11:17.560problem in your view? You know, there's a there's a few. First of all, it's affordability and
00:11:22.780reliability of power for everyday Albertans and Canadians. You know, I would I would suggest that
00:11:28.220the Albertans that I represent and Canadians right across our country, they sure do expect that when
00:11:33.680they turn on their light switch that, you know, they actually have access to power. And that's
00:11:39.420what's at risk here. The other thing is that these aren't Alberta's numbers. These are independent
00:11:44.300numbers, numbers from groups like the Public Policy Forum that have said, look, this is going
00:11:48.460to cost $1.7 trillion. At some point, somebody has to pay for that. And that ultimately will
00:11:55.080be Albertans and Canadians, whether it's on their bills or through their taxes. So, you know, those
00:12:00.420are our two main concerns. But also, in some cases, they are relying on technology that does
00:12:06.280not exist, has not yet been tested anywhere in the world. And they also haven't made the
00:12:11.100infrastructure investments to get us anywhere near this by 2035. There are a couple of different
00:12:17.200dimensions to this. On one hand, there's the, like, does it actually make sense? And is this rooted
00:12:22.180in science? And is this rooted in even what the federal government says are its key objectives?
00:12:26.760And then there's also the federalism aspect of this, which is that, is it the federal government's
00:12:30.940responsibility to come and manipulate effectively how provinces manage their electricity systems?
00:12:36.180And I know the carbon tax case when that first went towards the courts was favorable in Alberta, but at the Supreme Court of Canada, not as much.
00:12:47.600Do you think there's even more of a case that, no, no, no, this is provincial domain and Ottawa should butt out?
00:12:52.900You know, this is absolutely an area of provincial jurisdiction.
00:12:56.240And, you know, when it comes to power generation, that's one thing.
00:12:59.460The other thing that this clean electricity regulation does is it really limits the natural gas baseload that we rely on, especially, I mean, in Alberta, but other places across Canada.
00:13:10.380In the middle of winter when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing and we need natural gas baseload, we don't have access to hydro like some other provinces do.
00:13:19.540And so that also impacts our energy development, which, again, is an area of provincial jurisdiction.
00:13:25.420So you're right. It's not only unrealistic, unachievable, it's also completely unconstitutional and, of course, unaffordable for everyday Albertans and Canadians.
00:13:36.680I mean, you know, when we look at some of the actual aspects of this bill and or sorry, of these regulations, the biggest concern, you know, maybe to some would be this 18 day limit, 450 hours in terms of how we can use our natural gas to support reliability within the system.
00:13:56.020When I think about the month of January here in Alberta, I mean, 18 days, that doesn't even get us through the coldest month of the year.
00:14:03.140And after that, it's not going to be legal to provide power to the grid using natural gases generation.
00:14:13.560Myself, our premier, we have said absolutely under no circumstances are we accepting these clean electricity regulations here in Alberta.
00:14:20.100And then we, of course, have Stephen Gilbeau going over to China, basically, which is always the blind spot in a lot of the climate alarmist discussions on this.
00:14:31.840I mean, whether it's John Kerry, who talks about the need to reduce your emissions, but not so much in China.
00:14:37.960I mean, here we have China, which is one of the most coal dependent nations in the world, whose emissions dwarf anywhere else in the world, including Canada.
00:14:45.700And I know you've pointed this out to him. Have you gotten a response yet with your concerns?
00:14:51.620You know what? Not not on this front. And we will be continuing our discussions with the federal government.
00:14:57.400Premier Smith has set up some bilateral tables.
00:15:00.540So we are going to have discussions about both the electricity regulations and impending oil and gas emissions cap.
00:15:07.000And so these will be part of those discussions going forward. But you're exactly right.
00:15:11.420I mean, you know, I don't think it's acceptable to pick fights with provinces and, you know, essentially increase the cost of living and risk the reliability of our grids here in Canada while saying, you know, here we need an arbitrary date of 2035.
00:15:26.680But for China, it's OK to work on 2060.
00:15:29.960And so, you know, when we look at here in Alberta, our plans are around carbon neutrality.
00:15:34.220We have an aspiration to be carbon neutral by 2050.
00:15:37.500What we're saying is let us do this in our own way, in a way that doesn't put at risk the affordability or the reliability of our power grid for everyday Albertans that rely on that.
00:15:48.200You know, and being a parent of young kids, I do think of what it's like to be up in the middle of the night with a young child.
00:15:54.780You know, you flip on the switch, you expect there to be power.
00:15:58.080I mean, this is just, you know, I just can't see how this is something that Albertans or Canadians can accept.
00:16:06.460And so we're going to continue to defend Albertans and everyday people right across our country from from these types of legislation.
00:16:15.080But it's not just that. I mean, the plastics ban is another example that we pointed out to the federal government where, you know, their legislation is having the exact opposite impact.
00:16:24.460We have Calgary Co-op here in Calgary paired up with an entrepreneur here who developed a fully compostable bag.
00:16:31.060It is not plastic. And yet it is banned by ECCC.
00:16:34.700And so, you know, I pointed out to the minister, this doesn't make any sense. You're having the exact opposite impact. Same thing with the oil and gas cap. If you limit the amount of natural gas or LNG coming out of Alberta, coming out of Canada, displacing coal fire generation in other parts of the world, we're having the opposite impact on emissions worldwide.
00:16:54.800We have an opportunity right now in Alberta, in Canada, to lead with sustainable energy development, emissions reduction, address energy security and affordability and reliability.
00:17:07.020But unfortunately, the federal government seems to be choosing ideology over common sense every single time.
00:17:13.460All right. Well, I appreciate you squeezing us in.
00:17:15.320I know you've got a plane to catch there, Minister Rebecca Schultz, the Environment Minister in Alberta.
00:17:19.800Always a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on.
00:17:23.100All right. And I should just say, I mean, this whole thing from Catherine McKenna is absurd,
00:17:28.760but it really is reflective, I believe, of the government's absurdity on this. And a lot of
00:17:34.700these targets that they put out are incredibly arbitrary. I mean, Rebecca Schultz was just
00:17:39.900saying there, you've got China that gets until 2060 to go carbon neutral, but these people have
00:17:44.880to do it by 2035. And then, oh, maybe just 2030 and maybe 2050. And these are all lofty aspirational
00:17:50.800goals. The one that you hear at all the big UN climate summits is about the need to reduce global
00:17:57.560warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. And no one could really agree on 1.5
00:18:03.760at the Paris climate agreements because it was all going to require just a complete
00:18:08.640de-industrialization, essentially just shut down electricity altogether. And you don't even get
00:18:14.100to light candles because they might be a little bit too carbon inhospitable. So they agreed on
00:18:18.520two degrees and then work really hard to get to 1.5. And then Glasgow comes along and then the
00:18:25.620Charmel shakedown, which was just last year. And all of a sudden it's 1.5. They're all talking
00:18:29.780about 1.5 again, 1.5. And if you're a Canadian, whether you're one of Rebecca Schultz's constituents
00:18:36.200in Alberta, or you live in Northern Ontario or Eastern Canada, or even in Quebec, which pretends
00:18:41.640it's above oil and gas, but is disconnected from the realities of the world outside of the hydro
00:18:48.280electric grid, apparently. And all of these people that are saying, listen, I actually don't care
00:18:53.500about any of this stuff if my own household isn't looked after. And this is the big flaw in what the
00:19:00.940government is doing right now, is that they are imposing something on provinces, on communities,
00:19:06.060and by extension on families, without caring at all about the consequences, without caring about
00:19:11.980the consequences of the family that can't afford to pay the carbon tax, without caring about the
00:19:16.080consequences of the family who can't afford to pay its electricity bill or its home heating,
00:19:22.120the family who can't afford the increase in grocery prices that carbon taxes and other
00:19:27.680related things are doing, exacerbating existing inflation. And all of this just continues to go on
00:19:34.100in a government that just does not care, a government that believes genuinely that it
00:19:40.260should be above all of these rules that are for the little people. Now, you know, we talked a few
00:19:45.640weeks ago about Christia Freeland, who's getting up there. You know, Christia Freeland, who says
00:19:48.940cutting your Disney Plus subscription is the way you fight inflation. Christia Freeland, who says,
00:19:53.660you know, we all need to do a little bit less. And then you look and realize that she commutes
00:19:57.520effectively daily, like three or four times a week from Toronto to Ottawa, taking a plane. I've seen
00:20:04.740her on planes in business class before. So this is a woman who knows how to travel and enjoys travel.
00:20:09.920And I like travel, so I don't judge her for that. I judge her for doing it while telling us that we
00:20:14.240are all the problem and telling us that we're the ones who need to do less. And, you know,
00:20:18.120Catherine McKenna believes that with your thoughts and words, you can cause ours. And when I pointed
00:20:22.860this out on Twitter, everyone's like, oh, you don't understand metaphor. Yeah, I understand
00:20:27.340metaphors. And I also understand, you know, lunacy masquerading as cogent policy. One thing I want
00:20:34.240to talk about here, just shifting gears entirely, is the idea of academic freedom. And the really,
00:20:40.740the whole point of this discussion whenever we've brought up free speech and academic freedom
00:20:45.260is that there is a value that comes in people being able to disagree in a free society and
00:20:51.880to weave this into the climate narrative one of the big problems we've had in discussions of
00:20:57.880climate science is that there's often been this very phony and artificial consensus the so-called
00:21:03.200consensus I don't know why my air quotes are like sagging one way or another there we go
00:21:07.460But because I'm looking at myself back and my camera is tilted, so I didn't quite know where the air quotes were supposed to be.
00:21:14.500I need an air quote augmentation to balance them out and perk them up a bit.
00:21:18.360But in any case, the whole point of the... I totally lost my train of thought there. Don't mind me.
00:21:23.860The point that I was getting at there is that on the climate debate and on the climate science debate,
00:21:28.520We've had more often than not this phony consensus in which doctors of physics, of geology, of all of these other things have been told that their perspectives don't matter if they go against the narrative.
00:22:22.080They're alleged crimes to be dissidents in an area in which I'd say we needed more debate
00:22:27.500and more skepticism and far less deference.
00:22:29.980Now, one of the people who stands out as, and I don't use the word lightly, a hero of
00:22:35.820the last several years is Dr. Matt Strauss.
00:22:39.100Now, Dr. Strauss, you've seen on this program before, he's been a tremendous advocate for not COVID denialism, not anti-vaccine rhetoric of just science and medicine and of taking a very traditional view of medicine, which is that you should try to personalize it to the patient and not paint entire societies and countries with a one size fits all solution when that may not fit their individual needs.
00:23:03.880And he's also spoken at great length about the harms, the adverse effects of some of the purported remedies and treatments, such as lockdowns, for example.
00:23:13.020And it's his COVID skepticism that Dr. Strauss argues jeopardized his role at Queen's University and ultimately led to him being forced out of that role.
00:23:23.740He has now filed a lawsuit against Queen's.
00:23:27.840And while we can't talk about this matter because it is before the legal system,
00:23:31.640I did think it was a good opportunity to talk in general about the retrospective on this
00:23:36.720last few years and where it all went so wrong from an academic freedom, a medical freedom
00:24:07.760And I would say there were probably some cases where people didn't realize their own power
00:24:12.160and they didn't realize that they did have a voice.
00:24:14.180But there were a lot of times where people said, look, if I speak up, I lose the ability
00:24:19.140to practice medicine, or they feared that was going to happen.
00:24:22.300And I was wondering where you sort of land on this now, having seen some of your colleagues
00:24:26.520and you've seen people go through this process.
00:24:28.820do you think that the negative consequences for those who spoke out are over oh no certainly the
00:24:37.060negative consequences aren't over i i and i and that's not just for physicians um you know since
00:24:42.100i started speaking out about some of my concerns about pandemic management but especially since
00:24:47.920uh unfortunately this news of my uh lawsuit was made public um i've heard from so many canadians
00:24:54.140i a real estate agent texted me today to say that she had had a hard time uh being able to speak out
00:24:58.800a child psychologist reached out to me, a construction company executive, I've heard
00:25:05.860from school board trustees. Like it seems to me that throughout Canada, exacerbated during the
00:25:11.120pandemic, but in all areas of public life, people feel that they can't speak their mind. And my
00:25:18.060fundamental concern is we're not going to have good public policy if we don't have good public
00:25:22.640debates about things um so i i i see in every area that the people are still suffering from
00:25:29.360things that happen to them and you know i think you were speaking about wildfires and climate
00:25:34.160change before i came on um in some ways we're suffering from it now i want to hear from a
00:25:38.960forestry expert i want to hear from firefighter experts about what could be better about our
00:25:43.280wildfire response right now so so no i don't i don't think this problem has gone away and i think
00:25:48.320think we all need to keep pushing against it and just speaking out for a free open liberal democratic
00:25:52.680society where people can speak their mind you know in some cases there is a reason that we have
00:25:59.760certain established facts in science and i'd say in medicine there are probably certain things that
00:26:05.240are fairly universal and you know certain medical treatments of history that have been lost to
00:26:09.900history and probably for good reason so on one hand we don't want the the doctor that's going
00:26:14.240to come out and say oh you know what i think bloodletting needs to make a comeback or something
00:26:17.340like that. But at the same time, we also need to have room to discuss and to debate. And when the
00:26:22.840science isn't clear to say, well, hang on, I, you know, what I'm seeing in my patients is this,
00:26:26.840or what I'm seeing in this study is this. And I, I'm curious where that, I mean, how should you
00:26:32.380let yourself as a physician be guided in that? Because on one hand, you want to do what's in
00:26:36.840the best interest of your patients. And, but on the other hand, if a problem is presenting itself,
00:26:41.040you don't always have time to go through that, you know, academic discourse and study when
00:26:45.020you're figuring it out and I'm talking of course about the pandemic I believe
00:26:47.940that it provided a sense of urgency for doctors but but what was the proper
00:26:52.500response to that without you know basically be laboring something where
00:26:56.520urgency was required so the practice of medicine needs to be sacrosanct it needs
00:27:03.180to be approached with great humility and a lot of caution and professional
00:27:08.000bodies do need to govern how medicines practice so if if I were going out
00:27:12.380saying, Andrew Lawton, I think that you should treat your COVID with acupuncture. That would be
00:27:19.020wrong because acupuncture doesn't treat COVID and I'm not your physician. I haven't done a history
00:27:23.820and a physical on you. We're speaking in public. You're not benefiting from physician patient
00:27:29.020confidentiality right now. So I really take very seriously the sorts of recommendations that
00:27:35.980physicians give to their patients. But that's different than having a concern about public
00:27:41.260policy. And again, I don't want to get into the facts surrounding the case, but fundamentally it
00:27:47.180was made clear to me that the problem I was having with the administration was that I criticized the
00:27:51.980government. And that's very different from practicing medicine. So physicians need to be
00:27:55.740able to criticize the government. They need to be able to criticize public policy. But I 100%
00:28:01.980agree that physicians cannot recommend quackery to their patients and nor should they be making
00:28:06.540medical recommendations to people who are not their patients in public or otherwise.
00:28:09.820The funny thing, too, about universities, and I don't want to draw a false equivalence between real science and, you know, political science, which I studied, but, you know, universities pride themselves on being anti-authoritarian in so many other disciplines, you know, they would celebrate a professor who came out with some scathing report that condemned the government's approach on, you know, some national security law or something like that.
00:28:32.360And it's weird that that skepticism of academic inquiry and really the purpose of academic inquiry, which in university medicine, I think is incredibly important, is completely gone on this.
00:28:42.640The government says it, ergo, we just accept it.
00:28:48.360I think it was seen prior to COVID around things to do with, I think, obviously, the Israel and Palestine conflict will be with us forever.
00:28:59.020But I know that on both sides of that set of issues, professors ran afoul of their
00:29:04.780administration over the last 10 years. But 100%, this idea of academic freedom being sacrosanct
00:29:10.940was a foundational principle to universities for hundreds of years. In one meeting that I went to,
00:29:16.540I brought up Noong Chomsky, who is, I think it's fair to say, a radical leftist and a very
00:29:22.780interesting thinker, was arrested by the government at one point for attending the Vietnam War
00:29:28.480protests. And as far as I'm aware, his institution stuck with him through thick and thin. And thank
00:29:35.340goodness, because I certainly don't agree with Chomsky and everything, but he's a profoundly
00:29:39.860interesting thinker, and I have benefited from hearing his thoughts, and I've come to agree
00:29:44.360with him about many of the things that he has said since the 60s in that arrest.
00:29:48.860One of the problems with governments, and I'm using that in the broadest possible sense of just institutions in general, is that they are fallible and they know they're fallible in some cases.