Juno News - The Liberals think carbon taxes fight forest fires

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:18.220 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:30.000 Hello 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.

00:01:44.880 This 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.

00:01:59.600 which is funny. I mean, I spend a lot of time in Alberta and I used to work in Alberta guest

00:02:04.180 hosting on actually guest hosting for the woman who's now the premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith

00:02:08.740 on 770 CHQR. And the one thing that I always found so jarring whenever I was in the West is

00:02:14.320 how they view Ontario as being the East, whereas Ontario views itself as being the center of the

00:02:20.380 world. It's like, oh no, no, no. East is like Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. But wherever you

00:02:25.020 are in this lovely nation that we call the Dominion of Canada, at least that I call the

00:02:30.020 Dominion of Canada. We welcome you very much. And I'm so glad to have you here. I was going to do a

00:02:35.040 little bit of prop comedy on the show today. And I was going to like bring a lighter of some kind

00:02:39.640 and maybe set something aflame. But then I realized you don't actually need a lighter to

00:02:44.880 set anything aflame in this day and age. You can do it with your words alone. So do I have a piece

00:02:50.520 of paper. I've got a piece of paper. I hope this isn't anything important. It's a, oh no, this is

00:02:55.560 the phone number of a woman who banged my car in a parking lot, but it's already been sorted out. So

00:03:01.480 I can burn this. This is okay. I oppose carbon taxes. Carbon taxes are bad.

00:03:13.800 oh that's unfortunate it was supposed to light a flame when you say that such is the

00:03:20.860 point put forward by Catherine McKenna the former environment minister of Canada you'd think she'd

00:03:25.960 know these things she says on Twitter here conservative politicians want to fight about

00:03:31.240 a price on carbon pollution with the indignation of a question mark you want to make it free to

00:03:36.940 pollute while Canadians pay with their lives threatened homes destroyed and their communities 0.99

00:03:41.820 obliterated. So what are you going to do? You are the arsonist. So Catherine McKenna there with your

00:03:49.040 words, thoughts, and feelings alone, establishing that if you oppose carbon tax, if you do not

00:03:54.440 support a price on so-called carbon pollution, you are an arsonist. Now she says this as the

00:04:00.420 wildfires wage on and wage on, and wage on actually, in the West and the North and the

00:04:06.280 Northwest Territories and in Northern British Columbia. It's tragic. It is horrendous when

00:04:11.260 you see people that have been displaced from their homes. We've seen in Maui that lives have

00:04:15.580 been lost because of fires. This is very serious stuff. And it is happening in a context that is

00:04:21.700 not about politics and shouldn't be about politics. But Catherine McKenna says, if you are a

00:04:26.180 conservative who opposes a carbon tax, you are an arsonist. Let me just try one more time.

00:04:32.540 I'm going to think really, really, really hard about why I don't want to pay more at the gas

00:04:37.540 pumps. No, nothing. Well, I got to say, I cannot believe that Catherine McKenna ever led us astray.

00:04:46.020 That I did not have foreseen. I could not have foreseen at all. It is quite fascinating to me,

00:04:51.860 if you think about it here, that we are seeing more and more of this nasty rhetoric, this

00:04:57.680 catastrophism that we were speaking about a couple of weeks ago with Joe Oliver on this show,

00:05:02.640 from people that are proclaiming to be guided by science and governed by science,

00:05:08.340 but are actually anything of the sort.

00:05:10.840 They are putting political talking points and masking it with science-y sounding language

00:05:16.340 and speaking about climate and the weather and the environment in these catastrophic doom and gloom terms

00:05:22.680 with an ask that is attached to it.

00:05:25.160 And that ask is always about political control.

00:05:28.220 That ask is always about them wanting us to have to pay more, do less, use less, eat less, travel less, and oh yeah, by the way, pay more.

00:05:38.180 And if you don't want to pay more, according to Catherine McKenna, you are just an arsonist.

00:05:42.580 Now, my colleague Elie Kenson-Nantel asked Pierre Paulyev about this in Ottawa just a couple of hours after Catherine McKenna's tweet.

00:05:50.800 Take a look.

00:05:51.900 Catherine McKenna, the former Liberal Minister, accused Conservatives of being arsonists over the opposition to the carbon tax.

00:05:58.720 So 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?

00:06:08.680 What I really worry about is the increased radicalization of rhetoric by Liberals, particularly Justin Trudeau,

00:06:16.160 but the nastiness and meanness that they're directing at people who disagree with their

00:06:21.840 policies whether it's Trudeau's nasty comments directed at Muslim parents or whether it is him

00:06:29.480 jabbing his finger in people's faces and now a former liberal minister saying that anybody who

00:06:35.000 doesn't want to pay higher taxes is an arsonist. Really? Really? As if if we paid higher taxes we'd

00:06:42.380 have less forest fires? Come on let's get back to some common sense in this country and let's start

00:06:48.800 to bring our people together instead of tearing the country apart. It seems like a fairly common

00:06:56.400 sense position that Catherine McKenna the environment minister once in Canada saying

00:07:02.300 that arsonism is or arson comes from opposing carbon taxes will be a little bit absurd but

00:07:07.100 this is what passes for the liberals now and you may wonder if okay maybe I'm punching down by

00:07:12.360 talking about some former environment minister.

00:07:16.100 But even though she doesn't have a position in government,

00:07:18.360 she still is very much a leading voice, not just in Canada,

00:07:21.600 but around the world on purveying that climate catastrophism

00:07:25.300 I was talking about earlier on in the show and in previous episodes.

00:07:30.080 And I would also say she's still very much looked at in some ways

00:07:32.960 as this sort of spiritual leader on the green file for the Liberals.

00:07:37.720 It's now Jonathan Wilkinson that has her role.

00:07:40.580 Stephen Gilbeau, who's I mean, they talk about climate criminals in terms of like the big oil and gas companies.

00:07:47.020 They 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.

00:07:56.320 So Stephen Gilbeau is a literal climate criminal who has bungled a number of files and is now on the transport file.

00:08:02.800 But 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.

00:08:16.060 So, you know, make America great again.

00:08:17.840 The conservatives want to make pollution free again.

00:08:20.240 Rob, 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.

00:08:30.780 Now, the Liberals claim to be all on board with fighting inflation.

00:08:35.260 The Liberals claim that they're aware of the inflation crisis.

00:08:38.380 They know about it.

00:08:39.180 They're on it.

00:08:39.720 They're on top of it.

00:08:40.680 Just who you want running the problems here.

00:08:42.520 But the reality is that Canadians cannot afford to fill up their gas tanks.

00:08:47.560 There was a tweet from the Ottawa Food Bank, I believe it was, earlier today that I saw

00:08:52.200 just moments before I went on air, saying that they are unable to find enough food to

00:08:58.780 distribute.

00:08:59.280 So they've had to cancel volunteer shifts.

00:09:01.720 People that said, you know what, I'll roll up my sleeves and help the food bank.

00:09:05.100 I'll help you sort food and distribute it.

00:09:06.700 They said, well, we don't actually have any food to distribute because our donor base

00:09:11.260 are struggling with increased cost of things.

00:09:13.800 So people cannot afford to buy groceries for themselves, let alone afford a surplus to

00:09:19.600 donate food to a food bank.

00:09:21.720 So absolutely, when the Conservatives are saying, well, perhaps this arbitrary carbon

00:09:25.960 tax that does nothing to help Canadians but does in fact punish them is something we could cut. So

00:09:33.000 the Liberals are trying to vilify the Conservatives for opposing a carbon tax that even the most

00:09:40.320 do-goody Canadians cannot afford right now. And the number of hurdles and barriers and

00:09:46.860 restrictions they're putting in place in the name of environmentalism is asinine. One that we talked 0.92

00:09:52.360 about a couple of weeks ago is these electricity regulations that are coming about a federal

00:09:57.320 government forcing provinces to be net zero by an arbitrary date in ways that will only result

00:10:04.700 in increased costs to consumers. Now, I've been very heartened to see the Alberta government push

00:10:09.540 back against this. Premier Danielle Smith has said this is unrealistic, as has her environment

00:10:14.640 minister, Rebecca Schultz. And Minister Schultz joins me now. It's always good to have her on the

00:10:20.180 show. Minister, I know you're very kind. You've got to get to a flight soon, but I'm glad you're

00:10:25.120 here, and thank you for doing this. Now, just to confirm here, you do not believe that opposing

00:10:30.100 carbon taxes is arson, right? You know what? We're very opposed to the carbon tax here in Alberta,

00:10:38.400 and we hear it every day. I mean, it was just yesterday, actually. I was speaking to a

00:10:42.440 constituent about their power bills, and he said, you know, Rebecca, look, as my MLA, when I break

00:10:48.340 down my bill the carbon tax and inflation you know like this is hurting everyday Canadians so

00:10:54.780 uh no the carbon the carbon tax especially the consumer carbon tax is not actually having an

00:11:00.640 impact on emissions or our environment. Talk to me about these clean energy uh these are so-called

00:11:07.380 clean energy regulations these electricity regulations and why Alberta is standing so

00:11:13.100 firm on this in a way that right now we haven't really seen many other provinces do what's the

00:11:17.560 problem in your view? You know, there's a there's a few. First of all, it's affordability and

00:11:22.780 reliability of power for everyday Albertans and Canadians. You know, I would I would suggest that

00:11:28.220 the Albertans that I represent and Canadians right across our country, they sure do expect that when

00:11:33.680 they turn on their light switch that, you know, they actually have access to power. And that's

00:11:39.420 what's at risk here. The other thing is that these aren't Alberta's numbers. These are independent

00:11:44.300 numbers, numbers from groups like the Public Policy Forum that have said, look, this is going

00:11:48.460 to cost $1.7 trillion. At some point, somebody has to pay for that. And that ultimately will

00:11:55.080 be Albertans and Canadians, whether it's on their bills or through their taxes. So, you know, those

00:12:00.420 are our two main concerns. But also, in some cases, they are relying on technology that does

00:12:06.280 not exist, has not yet been tested anywhere in the world. And they also haven't made the

00:12:11.100 infrastructure investments to get us anywhere near this by 2035. There are a couple of different

00:12:17.200 dimensions to this. On one hand, there's the, like, does it actually make sense? And is this rooted

00:12:22.180 in science? And is this rooted in even what the federal government says are its key objectives?

00:12:26.760 And then there's also the federalism aspect of this, which is that, is it the federal government's

00:12:30.940 responsibility to come and manipulate effectively how provinces manage their electricity systems?

00:12:36.180 And 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.

00:12:45.500 Is this a similar dynamic here?

00:12:47.600 Do you think there's even more of a case that, no, no, no, this is provincial domain and Ottawa should butt out?

00:12:52.900 You know, this is absolutely an area of provincial jurisdiction.

00:12:56.240 And, you know, when it comes to power generation, that's one thing.

00:12:59.460 The 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.

00:13:10.380 In 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.

00:13:19.540 And so that also impacts our energy development, which, again, is an area of provincial jurisdiction.

00:13:25.420 So you're right. It's not only unrealistic, unachievable, it's also completely unconstitutional and, of course, unaffordable for everyday Albertans and Canadians.

00:13:34.760 So those are some of our concerns.

00:13:36.680 I 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.

00:13:56.020 When 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.

00:14:03.140 And after that, it's not going to be legal to provide power to the grid using natural gases generation.

00:14:09.980 That absolutely doesn't make sense.

00:14:12.340 And so you're exactly right.

00:14:13.560 Myself, our premier, we have said absolutely under no circumstances are we accepting these clean electricity regulations here in Alberta.

00:14:20.100 And 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.

00:14:31.840 I mean, whether it's John Kerry, who talks about the need to reduce your emissions, but not so much in China.

00:14:37.960 I 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.

00:14:45.700 And I know you've pointed this out to him. Have you gotten a response yet with your concerns?

00:14:51.620 You know what? Not not on this front. And we will be continuing our discussions with the federal government.

00:14:57.400 Premier Smith has set up some bilateral tables.

00:15:00.540 So we are going to have discussions about both the electricity regulations and impending oil and gas emissions cap.

00:15:07.000 And so these will be part of those discussions going forward. But you're exactly right.

00:15:11.420 I 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.

00:15:26.680 But for China, it's OK to work on 2060. 0.81

00:15:29.960 And so, you know, when we look at here in Alberta, our plans are around carbon neutrality.

00:15:34.220 We have an aspiration to be carbon neutral by 2050.

00:15:37.500 What 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.

00:15:48.200 You 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.

00:15:54.780 You know, you flip on the switch, you expect there to be power.

00:15:58.080 I mean, this is just, you know, I just can't see how this is something that Albertans or Canadians can accept.

00:16:06.460 And so we're going to continue to defend Albertans and everyday people right across our country from from these types of legislation.

00:16:15.080 But 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.

00:16:24.460 We have Calgary Co-op here in Calgary paired up with an entrepreneur here who developed a fully compostable bag.

00:16:31.060 It is not plastic. And yet it is banned by ECCC.

00:16:34.700 And 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.

00:16:54.800 We have an opportunity right now in Alberta, in Canada, to lead with sustainable energy development, emissions reduction, address energy security and affordability and reliability.

00:17:07.020 But unfortunately, the federal government seems to be choosing ideology over common sense every single time.

00:17:13.460 All right. Well, I appreciate you squeezing us in.

00:17:15.320 I know you've got a plane to catch there, Minister Rebecca Schultz, the Environment Minister in Alberta.

00:17:19.800 Always a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on.

00:17:22.420 Thanks so much, Andrew.

00:17:23.100 All right. And I should just say, I mean, this whole thing from Catherine McKenna is absurd,

00:17:28.760 but it really is reflective, I believe, of the government's absurdity on this. And a lot of

00:17:34.700 these targets that they put out are incredibly arbitrary. I mean, Rebecca Schultz was just

00:17:39.900 saying there, you've got China that gets until 2060 to go carbon neutral, but these people have 0.95

00:17:44.880 to do it by 2035. And then, oh, maybe just 2030 and maybe 2050. And these are all lofty aspirational

00:17:50.800 goals. The one that you hear at all the big UN climate summits is about the need to reduce global

00:17:57.560 warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. And no one could really agree on 1.5

00:18:03.760 at the Paris climate agreements because it was all going to require just a complete

00:18:08.640 de-industrialization, essentially just shut down electricity altogether. And you don't even get

00:18:14.100 to light candles because they might be a little bit too carbon inhospitable. So they agreed on

00:18:18.520 two degrees and then work really hard to get to 1.5. And then Glasgow comes along and then the

00:18:25.620 Charmel shakedown, which was just last year. And all of a sudden it's 1.5. They're all talking

00:18:29.780 about 1.5 again, 1.5. And if you're a Canadian, whether you're one of Rebecca Schultz's constituents

00:18:36.200 in Alberta, or you live in Northern Ontario or Eastern Canada, or even in Quebec, which pretends

00:18:41.640 it's above oil and gas, but is disconnected from the realities of the world outside of the hydro

00:18:48.280 electric grid, apparently. And all of these people that are saying, listen, I actually don't care

00:18:53.500 about any of this stuff if my own household isn't looked after. And this is the big flaw in what the

00:19:00.940 government is doing right now, is that they are imposing something on provinces, on communities,

00:19:06.060 and by extension on families, without caring at all about the consequences, without caring about

00:19:11.980 the consequences of the family that can't afford to pay the carbon tax, without caring about the

00:19:16.080 consequences of the family who can't afford to pay its electricity bill or its home heating,

00:19:22.120 the family who can't afford the increase in grocery prices that carbon taxes and other

00:19:27.680 related things are doing, exacerbating existing inflation. And all of this just continues to go on

00:19:34.100 in a government that just does not care, a government that believes genuinely that it

00:19:40.260 should be above all of these rules that are for the little people. Now, you know, we talked a few 0.84

00:19:45.640 weeks ago about Christia Freeland, who's getting up there. You know, Christia Freeland, who says

00:19:48.940 cutting your Disney Plus subscription is the way you fight inflation. Christia Freeland, who says,

00:19:53.660 you know, we all need to do a little bit less. And then you look and realize that she commutes 0.99

00:19:57.520 effectively daily, like three or four times a week from Toronto to Ottawa, taking a plane. I've seen

00:20:04.740 her on planes in business class before. So this is a woman who knows how to travel and enjoys travel. 0.95

00:20:09.920 And I like travel, so I don't judge her for that. I judge her for doing it while telling us that we

00:20:14.240 are all the problem and telling us that we're the ones who need to do less. And, you know,

00:20:18.120 Catherine McKenna believes that with your thoughts and words, you can cause ours. And when I pointed

00:20:22.860 this out on Twitter, everyone's like, oh, you don't understand metaphor. Yeah, I understand

00:20:27.340 metaphors. And I also understand, you know, lunacy masquerading as cogent policy. One thing I want

00:20:34.240 to talk about here, just shifting gears entirely, is the idea of academic freedom. And the really,

00:20:40.740 the whole point of this discussion whenever we've brought up free speech and academic freedom

00:20:45.260 is that there is a value that comes in people being able to disagree in a free society and

00:20:51.880 to weave this into the climate narrative one of the big problems we've had in discussions of

00:20:57.880 climate science is that there's often been this very phony and artificial consensus the so-called

00:21:03.200 consensus I don't know why my air quotes are like sagging one way or another there we go

00:21:07.460 But 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.

00:21:14.500 I need an air quote augmentation to balance them out and perk them up a bit.

00:21:18.360 But in any case, the whole point of the... I totally lost my train of thought there. Don't mind me.

00:21:23.860 The point that I was getting at there is that on the climate debate and on the climate science debate,

00:21:28.520 We'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.

00:21:42.320 And we've had a silencing of debate.

00:21:45.300 We've had a chilling of debate.

00:21:47.020 And it's very similar to what we saw on, certainly in Supercharge, in the COVID era, where it

00:21:53.120 was very clear early on that there was an official narrative.

00:21:55.660 And anyone, no matter how many letters you had after your name, how many years of schooling,

00:22:00.120 anyone who diverged from the capital O, capital N official narrative would be silenced.

00:22:06.540 And it wasn't just that they would be subjected to cancel culture.

00:22:09.900 In some cases, you had people's regulatory licenses, their ability to practice medicine

00:22:14.840 be jeopardized, and people were suspended, people were removed from colleges, and certainly

00:22:20.400 people lost jobs.

00:22:22.080 They're alleged crimes to be dissidents in an area in which I'd say we needed more debate

00:22:27.500 and more skepticism and far less deference.

00:22:29.980 Now, one of the people who stands out as, and I don't use the word lightly, a hero of

00:22:35.820 the last several years is Dr. Matt Strauss.

00:22:39.100 Now, 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.

00:23:03.880 And 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.

00:23:13.020 And 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.

00:23:23.740 He has now filed a lawsuit against Queen's.

00:23:27.840 And while we can't talk about this matter because it is before the legal system,

00:23:31.640 I did think it was a good opportunity to talk in general about the retrospective on this

00:23:36.720 last few years and where it all went so wrong from an academic freedom, a medical freedom

00:23:42.240 and a free speech perspective.

00:23:43.760 So Dr. Matt Strauss joins me now.

00:23:46.540 It's good to talk to you again, Dr. Strauss.

00:23:48.020 Thanks for coming back on the show.

00:23:49.680 It's always nice to talk to you, Andrew.

00:23:50.980 That introduction was too kind.

00:23:53.580 Well, it was very much deserved.

00:23:55.740 And I say that just to not to toot your horn even more, or maybe I am trying to do that,

00:24:00.800 But I say that because a lot of people didn't realize how much doctors were putting on the

00:24:05.760 line if they did speak out.

00:24:07.760 And I would say there were probably some cases where people didn't realize their own power

00:24:12.160 and they didn't realize that they did have a voice.

00:24:14.180 But there were a lot of times where people said, look, if I speak up, I lose the ability

00:24:19.140 to practice medicine, or they feared that was going to happen.

00:24:22.300 And I was wondering where you sort of land on this now, having seen some of your colleagues

00:24:26.520 and you've seen people go through this process.

00:24:28.820 do you think that the negative consequences for those who spoke out are over oh no certainly the

00:24:37.060 negative consequences aren't over i i and i and that's not just for physicians um you know since

00:24:42.100 i started speaking out about some of my concerns about pandemic management but especially since

00:24:47.920 uh unfortunately this news of my uh lawsuit was made public um i've heard from so many canadians

00:24:54.140 i a real estate agent texted me today to say that she had had a hard time uh being able to speak out

00:24:58.800 a child psychologist reached out to me, a construction company executive, I've heard

00:25:05.860 from school board trustees. Like it seems to me that throughout Canada, exacerbated during the

00:25:11.120 pandemic, but in all areas of public life, people feel that they can't speak their mind. And my

00:25:18.060 fundamental concern is we're not going to have good public policy if we don't have good public

00:25:22.640 debates about things um so i i i see in every area that the people are still suffering from

00:25:29.360 things that happen to them and you know i think you were speaking about wildfires and climate

00:25:34.160 change before i came on um in some ways we're suffering from it now i want to hear from a

00:25:38.960 forestry expert i want to hear from firefighter experts about what could be better about our

00:25:43.280 wildfire response right now so so no i don't i don't think this problem has gone away and i think

00:25:48.320 think we all need to keep pushing against it and just speaking out for a free open liberal democratic

00:25:52.680 society where people can speak their mind you know in some cases there is a reason that we have

00:25:59.760 certain established facts in science and i'd say in medicine there are probably certain things that

00:26:05.240 are fairly universal and you know certain medical treatments of history that have been lost to

00:26:09.900 history and probably for good reason so on one hand we don't want the the doctor that's going

00:26:14.240 to come out and say oh you know what i think bloodletting needs to make a comeback or something

00:26:17.340 like that. But at the same time, we also need to have room to discuss and to debate. And when the

00:26:22.840 science isn't clear to say, well, hang on, I, you know, what I'm seeing in my patients is this,

00:26:26.840 or what I'm seeing in this study is this. And I, I'm curious where that, I mean, how should you

00:26:32.380 let yourself as a physician be guided in that? Because on one hand, you want to do what's in

00:26:36.840 the best interest of your patients. And, but on the other hand, if a problem is presenting itself,

00:26:41.040 you don't always have time to go through that, you know, academic discourse and study when

00:26:45.020 you're figuring it out and I'm talking of course about the pandemic I believe

00:26:47.940 that it provided a sense of urgency for doctors but but what was the proper

00:26:52.500 response to that without you know basically be laboring something where

00:26:56.520 urgency was required so the practice of medicine needs to be sacrosanct it needs

00:27:03.180 to be approached with great humility and a lot of caution and professional

00:27:08.000 bodies do need to govern how medicines practice so if if I were going out

00:27:12.380 saying, Andrew Lawton, I think that you should treat your COVID with acupuncture. That would be

00:27:19.020 wrong because acupuncture doesn't treat COVID and I'm not your physician. I haven't done a history

00:27:23.820 and a physical on you. We're speaking in public. You're not benefiting from physician patient

00:27:29.020 confidentiality right now. So I really take very seriously the sorts of recommendations that

00:27:35.980 physicians give to their patients. But that's different than having a concern about public

00:27:41.260 policy. And again, I don't want to get into the facts surrounding the case, but fundamentally it

00:27:47.180 was made clear to me that the problem I was having with the administration was that I criticized the

00:27:51.980 government. And that's very different from practicing medicine. So physicians need to be

00:27:55.740 able to criticize the government. They need to be able to criticize public policy. But I 100%

00:28:01.980 agree that physicians cannot recommend quackery to their patients and nor should they be making

00:28:06.540 medical recommendations to people who are not their patients in public or otherwise.

00:28:09.820 The 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.

00:28:32.360 And 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.

00:28:42.640 The government says it, ergo, we just accept it.

00:28:45.900 Yeah, I think this is a bit new.

00:28:48.360 I 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.

00:28:59.020 But I know that on both sides of that set of issues, professors ran afoul of their

00:29:04.780 administration over the last 10 years. But 100%, this idea of academic freedom being sacrosanct

00:29:10.940 was a foundational principle to universities for hundreds of years. In one meeting that I went to,

00:29:16.540 I brought up Noong Chomsky, who is, I think it's fair to say, a radical leftist and a very

00:29:22.780 interesting thinker, was arrested by the government at one point for attending the Vietnam War

00:29:28.480 protests. And as far as I'm aware, his institution stuck with him through thick and thin. And thank

00:29:35.340 goodness, because I certainly don't agree with Chomsky and everything, but he's a profoundly

00:29:39.860 interesting thinker, and I have benefited from hearing his thoughts, and I've come to agree

00:29:44.360 with him about many of the things that he has said since the 60s in that arrest.

00:29:48.860 One 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.

00:30:00.340 They don't often admit it.

00:30:01.480 One example that comes to mind is Western University, my alma mater.

00:30:05.800 You went there for med school as well.

00:30:07.580 This is a university that had, I think it was a one of a kind or maybe one of two in

00:30:12.400 the country, which was this academic year, putting in place a booster mandate for students,

00:30:17.120 not just a vaccine mandate, but a booster mandate, which was supposed to go into effect

00:30:21.040 in September of, I guess it would have been 2022.

00:30:24.960 And there was a rally held around a year ago at which I spoke, at which you spoke, at which

00:30:30.000 your medical colleague, Dr. Martha Fulford spoke, and a number of student activists.

00:30:34.920 And Western eventually backed off that.

00:30:36.600 Now, they didn't credit it to the backlash.

00:30:38.420 They just kind of just let it die on the order paper.

00:30:41.120 And then a few months later said it's no longer necessary.

00:30:43.440 But there's a case in which Western said one day the science requires a booster for students.

00:30:48.280 And the next day said the science no longer requires a booster for students.

00:30:52.280 So this deference that was expected of you at Queens and of people elsewhere is on its

00:30:58.660 face absurd, because how is that deference supposed to factor into a world in which governments

00:31:03.460 will change what they believe the science leads them to?

00:31:07.480 Yeah, thank you for bringing up that episode with Western. And I'm biased. I love Western.

00:31:12.760 I'll always love Western. I'm glad they did the right thing in the end. And I was so proud and

00:31:19.560 lucky to be part of that student-led movement. But it is true that whoever was doing the university's

00:31:27.080 press releases at that time, who I'm almost sure was not a scientist but a communications

00:31:32.280 professional of some sort or another was was claiming that the science was on their side

00:31:36.200 and science um science doesn't really take sides science is a process of open inquiry and debate

00:31:41.560 and evidence gathering and argument synthesis so it certainly wasn't the case in that instance

00:31:47.880 that the science was on their side um and i'm glad dr fulford and i were able to to draw some

00:31:53.960 attention to that and i guess i i i like to think that we had some effect on that ineffective and

00:32:02.040 harmful mandate being withdrawn. I would have liked to have seen maybe a bit of a mea culpa

00:32:07.400 from the university on that point of view, but I still love them. When you look around at Queens

00:32:13.520 in your situation, and again, I'm very careful. I know you can't talk about too much of the facts

00:32:17.960 of the case. So if I'm asking too much, please let me know and I'll back off. But when you look

00:32:22.340 around and saw the dynamic with your colleagues there, were you just the outspoken one and everyone

00:32:27.900 else was kind of the same as you were on this, but didn't want to put their neck out? Or did

00:32:33.220 you really feel like you were alone in this and that everyone else was really adopting that line

00:32:38.900 that you were expected to adopt genuinely? I certainly am not the only one who felt the way

00:32:44.300 that I did. I was the only outspoken one who, to my knowledge, I was the only outspoken one

00:32:51.080 to maybe have a set of views that I had. There were several, I had several outspoken colleagues

00:32:57.480 who took maybe some views contrary to mine and i would have loved to have had a debate with them

00:33:02.840 either you know either on a podcast or somewhere at the university um it became clear that you were

00:33:11.320 became clear to me at many universities that individuals who were towing the party line were

00:33:15.720 allowed to be outspoken and people who criticized the party line were not allowed to be outspoken

00:33:20.280 but i um throughout all of this uh like i said i've heard from so many canadians of all walks

00:33:24.920 of life but many of them were colleagues of mine at the university and I'm not a political person

00:33:31.880 I'm not a political organizer I never I never thought oh I know what I'll do I'll organize a

00:33:36.600 demonstration or I'll organize a petition or something like that and maybe that was an error

00:33:40.920 of mine but I they you know they had careers they were doing work that was really important

00:33:47.640 they also have mortgages and kids and that sort of thing and I it never occurred to me to ask

00:33:53.400 ask someone to stick their own neck out um and but and i and i i understand that it's

00:34:00.440 it i it's a it's a lot to chew off uh and one does not want to bite off more than one can chew

00:34:08.120 when one of the the challenges i mean you literally had your i i didn't i'd missed this

00:34:12.520 part of your story and i when i read about it in the national post you had had your belongings

00:34:16.040 shoved into a cardboard box i mean one of the most sort of depersoning things that you know

00:34:21.400 an employer can do and and you had that done to you and and at the time if i recall it had kind

00:34:26.680 of blindsided you in a way because you weren't even aware there was an issue like you weren't

00:34:30.240 even aware that you had been doing something even purportedly wrong in the university's eyes

00:34:35.400 um i would i would rather not speak with great specificity about what i thought and when and

00:34:45.360 what I've seen and when because I that would be a little bit from the hip and

00:34:50.880 I just want to be really really careful. Let me let me take a different approach

00:34:57.360 then on on this which is to ask you how you feel about what happened moving

00:35:03.000 beyond it I know that's sort of a sappy question that I would you know

00:35:06.060 criticize most hard-hitting journalists for asking but but I'll ask you how you

00:35:09.780 feel looking back at it because I've never seen from you even when this has

00:35:13.080 been going on anything resembling bitterness or antipathy to Queens in

00:35:17.220 fact I've only ever heard you speak highly about your your time at in

00:35:21.060 academia both as a student and as a as on the the admin side I said a few

00:35:26.280 things to say about that one is I I it was a great privilege it was the best

00:35:32.760 job I've ever had getting to teach medical students and you know I still

00:35:37.700 practice medicine it's always a privilege to get to look after folks

00:35:41.160 who are having a hard time we're ill so into my former colleagues even the ones

00:35:48.520 who disagreed with me I honestly have nothing but but love I this lawsuit is a

00:35:55.440 dispute that with something some elements of the administration but

00:35:59.580 frankly I received not just from colleagues texts of support but but also

00:36:07.620 from professors in other departments a professor of law and a professor of bioethics both reached

00:36:12.660 out to me you know way back when when all this was happening so i i have so much warmth for

00:36:19.220 the the queen's community that that is not at all what um what this is about i wouldn't want it to be

00:36:26.660 framed as me having anything other than um warmth for my students and the colleagues and my

00:36:32.420 colleagues um former colleagues i guess and the other thing i will say is everyone had a really

00:36:37.060 bad pandemic i had a bad pandemic in some ways but um i i saw horrible things that happened to my

00:36:46.020 patients both because of covid and all the other ways that um the pandemic and the pandemic

00:36:51.220 restrictions uh affected their lives so i you know i had folks who were between life and death

00:36:57.380 in the icu for three months who weren't allowed to have their family visit and i

00:37:00.580 it was like Russian novel levels of misery and despair so I can't I can't even somewhat feel 0.99

00:37:10.600 bad about what happened to me I guess like in contrast and so I would say that if I'm

00:37:18.580 outspoken about these issues and if I'm maybe pugilistic in terms of defending this principle

00:37:24.980 of academic freedom I hope I'm doing it for these more public concerns and what happened to me because

00:37:30.560 i'm fine i have a roof over my head i have i have three square meals a day and i have a family that

00:37:35.080 loves me um so i i can't complain well that's a wonderful wonderful way to put it and i actually

00:37:41.680 think it's an incredibly thoughtful way of putting it because so much of what we've seen of the edicts

00:37:47.620 have come from people that weren't affected by what they were doing i mean someone who's married

00:37:52.300 and has a family at home telling someone who lives alone that they have to stay at home alone and

00:37:58.480 can't go see their neighbors, someone who doesn't have a family member dying in a care home telling

00:38:03.000 other people that they can't go and visit their loved one, their grandma or father or whatever

00:38:08.460 in a care home. So all of these things, I would agree, were absolutely horrible. And I'm glad

00:38:12.720 you've come through it the way you have. And I wish you well in this lawsuit. Dr. Matt Strauss,

00:38:17.680 always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on, Matt. Nice to see you, Andrew. All right. Thank you.

00:38:21.780 That does it for us for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent 0.84

00:38:26.760 talk show here on True North. This is the Andrew Lawton Show. And I was about to tell you what we

00:38:31.460 have coming up tomorrow. And now I've forgotten what we have coming up tomorrow. But I am going

00:38:35.280 to say on Friday, we have a great show planned looking at the trans issue from all angles, sports,

00:38:40.680 politics, and a little bit on the back to school front as well, because school is heading back

00:38:45.520 in just a couple of weeks, which I am sorry to terrorize the poor parents by realizing that. But

00:38:50.260 hey, at least it's not school on Zoom. We'll talk to you all soon. Thank you. God bless and good day

00:38:55.840 to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to

00:39:00.720 True North at www.tnc.news.

00:39:25.840 We'll be right back.

00:39:55.840 We'll be right back.

Juno News - August 22, 2023

The Liberals think carbon taxes fight forest fires

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