Juno News - The Mean Girls Prime Minister (feat. Patrick Moore)

00:00:00.000 Coming up, Justin Trudeau puts partisanship above leadership in the midst of a national

00:00:17.440 crisis, CBC doesn't want anyone competing with it, and Patrick Moore joins me to talk

00:00:22.600 about getting banned from speaking about climate change at an upcoming Regina conference.

00:00:27.000 There is a crisis sweeping Canada, and Justin Trudeau doesn't seem to care.

00:00:42.200 Welcome to the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. This is an absolutely dismal display that

00:00:49.200 we see from the government right now. One that actually, as a Canadian, infuriates me a great

00:00:55.400 deal. I'm actually a reasonably happy-go-lucky guy. I don't like the idea that the country is in

00:01:01.380 disarray, that protesters have proven you can basically blockade and hijack your way into

00:01:07.280 getting the government's attention without being stopped. So I take no joy in pointing out this

00:01:12.800 particular failing of Justin Trudeau's government. But here we are. Here we are. The liberals have

00:01:18.200 decided and continued to embrace the position that there is apparently no need to enforce the law.

00:01:24.120 The Justin Trudeau line that we've heard is, oh, we're working to de-escalate, and we're trying to

00:01:29.440 bring all parties to the table, and we're trying to talk our way through. I'm sorry, since when do you

00:01:34.620 talk your way through a group of people that are brazenly flouting the law? Not even, I don't even

00:01:41.280 want to say flouting the law, because flouting makes it sound all flowery and romantic. They're breaking

00:01:46.200 the law. They are showing disdain for the law, showing disdain for the rule of law, and showing

00:01:51.160 disdain for the Canadians who every day themselves are trying to follow the law. That's what these 0.99

00:01:56.420 protesters are doing. And I don't want to rehash a lot of the things that I spoke about on the

00:02:02.040 previous episode of the show, which if you missed, you should go and listen to it, because I did talk

00:02:06.580 about a lot of the things that were going on then that are still happening right now, so it's still

00:02:11.840 very much timely. But the thing I want to focus on right now is that Justin Trudeau has actually

00:02:18.240 managed to politicize what could have been and should have been a fairly unifying episode in

00:02:25.800 Canada's history. And the reason I say unifying is because one of the things that I hold to very

00:02:32.280 firmly is that national crises are about more than politics. When there's an act of terror in Canada,

00:02:40.020 if there's an act of war, when there is a mass weather event or something that's causing people

00:02:46.980 a great deal of harm, something that's taking lives, these are things that are supposed to be above and

00:02:52.000 beyond partisanship. So it's not supposed to be about liberal versus conservative. It's not supposed

00:02:57.340 to be about left versus right, liberal party versus conservative party versus new democrat versus

00:03:03.240 bloc quebecois versus the kooky greens. It's not meant to be about that when we should all be coming

00:03:09.220 together for the good of the country. But that idea, Justin Trudeau has completely thrown out right

00:03:15.420 now. And the reason I say that is because Justin Trudeau decided to convene this week all of the

00:03:21.420 party leaders to sit down in a nationally unifying way and talk about all the things that we're going

00:03:26.880 to do as a country to move forward, to get past the blockades, to find a resolution. And what does he do?

00:03:32.960 He decides to exclude the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition, Andrew Scheer, the conservative

00:03:40.920 party of Canada's leader. I know he's stepping down, but as it stands right now and insofar as

00:03:46.460 parliament is concerned, Andrew Scheer is the conservative leader. Everyone but Andrew Scheer

00:03:51.480 gets invited. The Green Party leader who, again, Elizabeth May has a heart for public service,

00:03:58.100 but they're a non-player on the scene nationally. You've got the Bloc Québécois who wants to dismantle

00:04:03.740 Canada itself. That's always been the MO of the Bloc Québécois. The NDP, which is the third most

00:04:10.260 populated party in the House of Commons. So you've got this ragtag group of left-wing politicians that

00:04:17.720 are invited. But the lone conservative leader who happens to represent more members of parliament than

00:04:23.900 all of those other liberal parties, he gets excluded from this. So Justin Trudeau actually doesn't want

00:04:30.260 to be the prime minister of Canada. He wants to be the head of the Mean Girls pyramid where he's the 0.97

00:04:36.080 one at the top. He's the chief mean girl. I don't know who that character was. I think it was Rachel

00:04:40.340 McAdams. He wants to be the Rachel McAdams character of Canadian government right now. And instead

00:04:46.280 of governing, he's focused on, oh, well, Andrew Scheer, he doesn't get to sit with us. So Andrew Scheer is

00:04:52.180 over at the table in the corner of the lunchroom. Will all the Mean Girls talk to each other? 1.00

00:04:56.620 And you know what? I don't normally care about political bickering, except we are talking about

00:05:02.420 a national crisis. We are talking about a national issue right now that is disrupting the Canadian

00:05:08.860 economy that is potentially harming Canadian lives. We've talked about some of these groups that have

00:05:14.500 had websites that are urging people to actually use explosives and Molotov cocktails and stuff like

00:05:21.160 that. And I'm not saying that most of the protesters are violent, but there are certainly

00:05:26.140 violent influences amongst them. You've got protesters that are being paid so that these

00:05:31.420 groups will continue to amass in numbers. And all of a sudden, you've got a prime minister that is

00:05:36.420 more focused on protecting and preserving his delicate little ego than dare to have a conservative

00:05:44.100 have a seat at the table as they discuss the way forward. So again, so Justin Trudeau, who says that

00:05:50.760 he's all about listening to the protesters, trying to find a resolution, he actually doesn't want to

00:05:55.640 listen to anyone that is going to offer a different perspective on this situation than the people

00:06:02.220 around him that are just going to be sycophants, that are going to fawn all over whatever he says.

00:06:06.560 He doesn't want anyone that has a position he finds disagreeable to even be in the room. That's

00:06:13.680 what's happening here. And it's astonishing how brazen he has done this, how brazenly rather he

00:06:18.960 has done this. Now, you may not like Andrew Scheer, you may not like the conservatives, but surely the

00:06:25.080 idea of a national crisis being something that Canada is facing should trump politics and should

00:06:32.540 trump partisanship. But for Justin Trudeau, it's oh, no, I don't want to hear that. Trudeau says

00:06:37.980 that Andrew Scheer's criticism of Justin Trudeau disqualified Andrew Scheer from being a part of the

00:06:44.780 solution. About an hour ago, I had a meeting with Mr. Singh, Mr. Blanchet and Ms. May to discuss how

00:06:52.360 this government is working to engage in peaceful resolution of the situation.

00:07:01.800 Mr. Scheer disqualified himself from constructive discussions with his unacceptable speech earlier today.

00:07:09.960 Well, that criticism was about Justin Trudeau not being interested in finding a solution. So you don't

00:07:16.320 need to do what the guy is telling you to do, but surely you can listen if you're trying to get

00:07:21.120 Canadians to take seriously the fact that you're on to this, which I don't think you are. And what

00:07:26.680 was it Andrew Scheer said that was all that troubling? Well, take a listen. Take a listen to

00:07:31.940 this clip.

00:07:32.560 That was the weakest response to a national crisis in Canadian.

00:07:41.920 Now, I listened to the Prime Minister's word salad just now, Mr. Speaker, and at least two key

00:07:47.820 things were missing. A clear denunciation that the actions of these radical activists are illegal,

00:07:55.100 and some kind of an action plan that would put an end to the illegal blockades and get our economy

00:08:02.320 back on track.

00:08:07.380 Yeah, so Andrew Scheer says it's the weakest response to a national crisis in Canadian history,

00:08:13.900 and pointed out that there has been no clear denunciation of radical activists' illegal actions.

00:08:20.860 There's nothing untrue about that. And in fact, I would say, where has this Andrew Scheer been for

00:08:26.060 the last three years? This is an Andrew Scheer that I think many Canadians could get behind.

00:08:30.980 Look, there was a poll that came out from Ipsos this week that shows the majority of Canadians,

00:08:36.180 a clear majority of Canadians, do not think these blockades are justified.

00:08:40.100 Beyond that, a majority of Canadians who think that police should be called in to deal with this,

00:08:46.300 that there needs to be a law enforcement response.

00:08:49.940 So Canadians, by the way, and that includes a lot of Indigenous Canadians, especially those who

00:08:55.240 support the Coastal Gas Link Pipeline project, are saying, yeah, we expect the government to deal

00:09:00.460 with this. We expect leadership. You can't just sit down and listen to someone who is holding you

00:09:06.700 hostage, which is exactly what's happening on these blockades. And by the way, I do not blame law

00:09:13.180 enforcement for this. I do not blame individual members of law enforcement groups, because they

00:09:18.420 are taking their marching orders from above. There might be some criticism to direct towards the chiefs

00:09:23.620 of the police departments. But I think more importantly, it's the politicians to whom these

00:09:27.900 law enforcement agencies report that have a great deal of questions to which they must provide answers.

00:09:35.000 And again, this story that came out of Manitoba was astonishing. There's a blockade there on

00:09:42.160 Manitoba's, I think it's Highway 75 near Morris, Manitoba, a group of demonstrators blocking the

00:09:48.780 highway. They are performing roadside detentions. These people, these rogue protesters, are doing

00:09:55.020 roadside detentions of drivers that are just trying to go about their business down this highway.

00:09:59.900 They've blocked traffic. They've narrowed it down. They've decided they're going to start

00:10:04.080 talking to drivers, roll down their windows, and do things that, by the way, it would be illegal

00:10:08.780 for law enforcement to do. Illegal roadside detentions. And this one truck driver sees this

00:10:14.980 line, says, screw this. He decides to drive. I think it was on the shoulder. He drove around the

00:10:20.100 blockade in some way. And two of the protesters tried to jump in front of him, try to like put their

00:10:26.560 arms out in front of the truck to stop him. One of these protesters now says that he was hit by a

00:10:32.040 truck. You can't be hit by something that you got in front of. That means you hit the truck.

00:10:37.980 You hit the truck. The truck didn't hit you. You hit the truck. So this guy says that now this trucker

00:10:44.300 has hit him. He wants police to investigate. Police are investigating. Police aren't investigating

00:10:50.380 the protesters that caused this illegal blockade. Police are investigating the guy that tried to

00:10:57.480 just go about his life the way he always has and the way he always should be, driving his truck from

00:11:03.280 point A to point B. They're investigating him. Can you imagine what had to have happened in someone's

00:11:12.940 head in Ottawa to think that this is the way things are supposed to be in a free country?

00:11:17.900 That we now investigate the people who find ways to get around the illegal blockades

00:11:23.000 while leaving those responsible for the illegal blockades alone. Oh no, we just let them do their

00:11:29.700 thing. That's okay. And for Andrew Scheer to get up and say, yeah, this has been a pretty weak response

00:11:35.720 to a national crisis. And that's deemed too controversial for him to be allowed to have a

00:11:41.700 seat in the table when what's supposed to be the cross-partisan meeting of party leaders takes place.

00:11:47.900 Now look, I actually, despite being a critic of Justin Trudeau, would love nothing more than to

00:11:54.000 stand behind my country's prime minister as he makes the tough but important call to deal with this.

00:12:00.220 I would love to put partisanship aside. I would love to put my ideological disagreements with the

00:12:05.440 Liberals aside and have a Canadian response that looks out for Canadian people, for Canadian principles,

00:12:12.200 for Canadian values, for the Canadian economy, and for the rule of law in Canada. I would love that.

00:12:19.720 But I don't have the opportunity to do that right now. I don't have the opportunity to do that because

00:12:25.700 Justin Trudeau has decided that he doesn't care about these things.

00:12:28.840 And the prediction that I made on Tuesday's show, which is not a radical prediction, by the way,

00:12:35.900 it doesn't, doesn't, I'm not a genius, it does not take a genius to reach this conclusion,

00:12:39.940 is that there is no way out of this that doesn't involve police eventually having to come in and make

00:12:46.840 arrests. The protesters are not going to back down because what they want is not possible unless

00:12:53.160 we're talking about completely ceding a veto of Canadian industry and energy to these activists,

00:12:59.680 to these radicals. And the only way apart from them just changing their minds is for police to

00:13:05.860 start getting in. So if that is the inevitability, I don't know if Justin Trudeau is waiting for

00:13:11.300 someone else to come in and fix this, waiting for someone else to come in and say, okay, well,

00:13:18.260 you know what, here's the magic wand, you know, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, the problem solved.

00:13:23.160 I'm sorry, there's no fairy godmother that's going to swoop in here and fix this. You're the

00:13:27.060 prime minister, you're the government, you have the resources of the federal government behind you,

00:13:31.660 you can show a sign that you are going to look after this. And instead, he's just sitting,

00:13:37.320 oh, well, oh, Andrew Scheer was mean to me. Boo hoo. You're concerned that Andrew Scheer was mean

00:13:43.960 to you by criticizing your mishandling of this more than you're concerned by all of the Canadians who are

00:13:50.240 being disrupted and all of the Canadians who are being threatened, all of the Canadians whose 0.81

00:13:54.980 livelihoods are being threatened by this. You care more about Andrew Scheer being mean to you.

00:14:02.900 That's what Justin Trudeau has turned this into. That's what he has turned this into. So he called

00:14:08.420 short. He was supposed to go to Barbados, I think at the beginning of the week or on the weekend for

00:14:12.740 this meeting. And he said, oh no, I'm going to, I'm going to cancel my trip to Barbados. I'm going,

00:14:17.080 which by the way, that's actually a very positive gesture for Trudeau to turn down a trip to the

00:14:22.100 Caribbean is actually a big deal more than I think we can realize. So he says, I'm going to go back to

00:14:27.420 Ottawa to deal with it. So I expected from that, that he was actually going to deal with it. I

00:14:33.740 expected that when he says, all right, well, I have to be in Ottawa to manage this crisis that he's going

00:14:38.340 to manage the crisis. I don't know what he's done that he couldn't have done in Barbados, which is to

00:14:43.440 say nothing. I think the response actually might've been a bit better if he had just stuck around on a

00:14:48.800 beach in Barbados, because without Justin Trudeau here, maybe someone would have actually done

00:14:54.000 something if he were absent, if he were just going to continue to phone it in as he's been doing since

00:14:59.160 he got reelected. But you've got 61% of Canadians who oppose the blockades. You've got 75% who have

00:15:07.880 believe that we need to help indigenous peoples. So Canadians are actually severing these. Canadians 0.97

00:15:14.380 don't think that the blockades are actually about indigenous rights. Canadians realize that, yeah, 0.97

00:15:19.680 we should do all of these things for indigenous peoples, but these blockades are not about that.

00:15:24.220 And these blockades are not justified. And I was actually a little bit optimistic this week when

00:15:31.320 Andrew Scheer put a number of motions forward on the notice paper of the House of Commons,

00:15:37.320 which is nerd speak for he put a bunch of motions forward that might be introduced. It's not

00:15:42.020 introducing them. It's saying, we're just giving you a heads up. We might introduce these. And one

00:15:47.160 of these was very clear. It was put on the notice paper February 18th from Andrew Scheer that the

00:15:54.420 House has lost confidence in the government. That is in clear and unequivocal terms, a motion of

00:16:01.800 non-confidence in the government of Canada. He also put another one forward that the House

00:16:06.700 condemned the government's inaction in response to the illegal blockades of railways, highways,

00:16:11.900 and bridges by activists not impacted by the Coastal Gas Link project and call on the government

00:16:17.700 to take action immediately to restore access to important economic infrastructure. Another one

00:16:23.840 that the House stand in solidarity with every elected band council on the Coastal Gas Link route.

00:16:29.200 Another one that there is a report on the quantifying of the financial impact of the rail

00:16:34.120 disruption on individuals and companies. And also that the Foreign Affairs Committee conduct a study

00:16:40.600 of foreign funding by groups of protesters or of groups of protesters. So some great motions on there,

00:16:47.240 though the conservatives a day later backed off of the non-confidence motion. They said,

00:16:53.360 you know what, maybe now is not the right time. They're not actually going to pursue

00:16:57.900 that particular motion. And I was actually kind of mixed on it, to be perfectly candid, because I

00:17:05.920 think that there is a valid reason to put it forward, even if you know it's not going to be

00:17:13.020 successful. I mean, as we saw from the Mean Girls routine, Justin Trudeau has the backing of all the

00:17:19.160 left-wing parties. He has the backing and support of these different groups. And I think that it's safe

00:17:25.900 to say they would probably back him in the event of a non-confidence motion, the reason being that

00:17:32.300 they like him more than they like Andrew Scheer. And they don't like a scenario in which Andrew Scheer

00:17:39.520 gets any moral authority, or in which Andrew Scheer actually gets to potentially govern, which could

00:17:45.640 happen. But certainly they are going to coalesce behind him, so we'd be back to the polls. It just

00:17:50.520 wouldn't go the direction that it needed to. But it would force these parties to put on record

00:17:57.000 whether they stand behind Trudeau's handling of this crisis or not. That's what I liked, is that

00:18:02.200 even if it was going to fail, it would have forced the NDP to say, yes, I have confidence in Justin

00:18:09.140 Trudeau or no, I don't. It would have forced the Bloc Québécois and even the Greens to say, yes,

00:18:13.520 I do or no, I don't. And I know that Andrew Scheer is only the interim leader right now. He's not the

00:18:19.820 guy that was supposed to be carrying the Conservatives into the next election. But at the same time,

00:18:25.620 like I said earlier about rising above partisanship, you can't say that this is not a moment that any

00:18:32.160 opposition leader should be seizing because Trudeau is showing his failures to be about far more than

00:18:39.280 just, oh, he's a liberal and we don't like him because he's a liberal and we're conservatives.

00:18:43.200 It's actually about failing to uphold a fundamental tenet of Canadianism, which is or is supposed to be

00:18:50.960 support of the rule of law. It's that simple. And Andrew Scheer asked, will our country be one of the

00:18:59.040 rule of law or will our country be one of the rule of the mob? And Justin Trudeau is not shying away

00:19:06.580 from the fact that he's standing by the mob. Justin Trudeau is actually quite fond of standing

00:19:13.480 behind the mob. And the left-wing rhetoric on this is absolutely insane. The Green Party of Canada

00:19:18.740 responded with a tweet saying, a message for you, Andrew Scheer, civil disobedience is not radical.

00:19:25.400 Civil disobedience is legitimate. Civil disobedience is lawful. Civil disobedience is just and civil 0.70

00:19:31.720 disobedience works. Now, whether it's radical is subjective, whether it's legitimate is subjective,

00:19:37.940 whether it works, I think is subjective, although I'd say it's probably not working right now.

00:19:42.200 But what's happening now is not lawful. Yes, civil disobedience, protest is lawful. Protest that does not

00:19:49.500 interfere with others' rights is not lawful. Canadian law does not prescribe or allow what's happening

00:19:58.680 now. It just doesn't. It is forbidden to block rail. It is forbidden to block roads. It is forbidden to

00:20:06.680 do all of these things. So you can't say just because you disagree with an energy pipeline. I mean,

00:20:11.000 what happens if I start protesting? Oh, I don't know. The carbon tax. I don't like Justin Trudeau's

00:20:16.860 carbon tax. So I'm going to set up a camp on the 401. No, I don't like the carbon tax. I'm going to set

00:20:22.280 up a blockade. Oh, I don't like the carbon tax. I'm going to, you know, stand outside of Pearson

00:20:27.160 Airport and deny people from getting in. Oh, I don't like, you know, I don't like Justin Trudeau's

00:20:33.360 middle-class ministry. So I'm going to do, I mean, look, when do we say that your political

00:20:40.120 disagreements do not trump the rights of others? And it's not about individualism versus collectivism.

00:20:46.960 It's about the individual rights of the people who are being disrupted. And yeah, by extension,

00:20:53.160 the disruption of the Canadian economy and all of these other factors that are at play.

00:20:58.720 But I've never, I've never been able to tolerate those who aim to disrupt others,

00:21:06.460 those who use their rights to free speech to block others, which means that you're,

00:21:12.740 it's not actually about free speech. You know, I was at, when was it? I think 2015 in the election

00:21:17.400 campaign, I was covering an event of Stephen Harper's and there were union protesters that were

00:21:22.680 blocking people from getting into the parking lot of the event venue. So you had, again, you know,

00:21:27.740 1500 people that were going to be in a ballroom to hear Stephen Harper speak. And you had seven or

00:21:32.260 eight people that were stopping them from entering and they'd keep you there. They'd move every, you

00:21:38.460 know, let a car go through every two minutes or so. I ended up just parking elsewhere and police just

00:21:43.500 stood by and watched it. Police just stood by and watched it. So we've now accepted that blocking

00:21:49.680 others from moving, denying others, the right to free movement across the country, which by the way,

00:21:56.260 is a constitutional right is allowed that this is allowed, but the green party says, Oh no, no,

00:22:01.740 no, this is a, this is very lawful. And Justin Trudeau says, Oh, if you, if you say that you don't like

00:22:06.840 this, you don't get to be a part of stopping it. Well, Justin Trudeau doesn't like this.

00:22:12.000 Like no one in Canadian politics likes what's happening right now. It's just whether they

00:22:18.200 dislike it because of the disruption or they dislike it because of the pipeline,

00:22:22.100 but no one is happy right now, except for the protesters because they have nothing better to

00:22:26.700 do. The protesters have absolutely nothing else going for them except this veiled sense

00:22:31.160 of superiority because, Oh, they're the ones that are standing out in the cold and blocking people

00:22:37.420 from shipping, whatever it is they're shipping or from taking the train to go see grandma or doing

00:22:42.080 whatever. Oh yeah. You should be really proud of yourself, really proud of yourself. What have you

00:22:47.180 done with your life? And I have no tolerance for this, but I have, but I expect it from them. See,

00:22:52.960 I expect this sort of nonsense from the protesters. I don't, well, I shouldn't say I don't expect, 0.57

00:22:58.500 but I would like to see the government rise above this. I mean, the protesters are always going to do

00:23:03.960 this. You need the grownups in the room or first off, you need there to be grownups in the room,

00:23:08.600 but you need the grownups in the room to stand up and say, okay, well, you can do this. You can have

00:23:14.300 your hissy fit in the corner, but me being the adult is going to pick you up, give you a spanking 1.00

00:23:18.700 and make you go to bed because they're behaving like spoiled children. So when Andrew Scheer said they 0.65

00:23:26.000 have to check their privilege, I don't know why that was seen as a radical concept because most people

00:23:31.380 don't have the privilege to just camp out all day and not have to focus on, oh, I don't know,

00:23:35.340 going to work, producing something, creating something, being a part of the solution, 0.91

00:23:41.160 petty, petulant children. Back in a moment with more of the Andrew Lawton show here on True North.

00:23:48.800 You're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton show.

00:23:52.460 You know, I meant to mention in the previous segment and it slipped my mind because I got a bit ranty.

00:23:57.260 I apologize. Actually, I don't apologize, but yeah, well, whatever. Mark Miller, who's the

00:24:03.580 Indigenous Services Minister and the one who's basically running point on this, had posted a

00:24:08.480 photo of that party leader meeting from which Andrew Scheer was excluded. And he says,

00:24:13.780 during this difficult time, it's good to know that we have the support of the progressive leadership

00:24:18.920 in Parliament. And then he did it in French, of course. And this is actually, I think, a very

00:24:23.460 telling picture because for starters, it's reminding me of that old photo of Stéphane Dion

00:24:29.340 and Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton, the three-way handshake photo where they were trying to basically

00:24:35.200 gin up support for a coalition government. So Mark Miller is sitting around this little living room

00:24:41.460 and he's saying, oh, we've got the support of progressive leadership. So that's basically saying,

00:24:46.220 yeah, you know what? We're prepared to be in a coalition, either officially or unofficially.

00:24:50.880 And I would say further to that point, it shows that they only want the progressives at the table.

00:24:58.400 They don't want there to be anyone who disagrees with their handling of it there,

00:25:03.320 which means, again, like I said, they only want sycophants. They only want sycophants around the

00:25:09.540 table, which is absolutely the wrong way of doing anything like this. And speaking of sycophants,

00:25:15.900 let's talk about the mainstream media for a moment here. CBC is part of a panel of mainstream media

00:25:21.960 outlets calling on the government to support, quote, trusted news sites, unquote. The letter that was

00:25:29.600 put forward by the News Media Council, News Media Canada, and signed by a number of independent and

00:25:36.680 corporate mainstream media outlets from CBC to the Toronto Star to Post Media, La Press, etc.

00:25:43.060 CBC is the important one here. A letter to parliament saying that the government needs to

00:25:49.360 do more to save media. Now, these are outlets that are already getting $595 million from the federal

00:25:56.580 government. But now they're saying that the news industry in Canada is in trouble. They think there's

00:26:02.320 a fake news problem. Facebook and Google are getting too much of the digital ad revenue in Canada,

00:26:07.560 Canada. And they need to apparently get the government's help to survive on this. They say

00:26:12.820 that Canadian laws have been slower to respond to the evolution and adaptation to the digital world

00:26:19.140 that the mainstream media has had to embrace. And a couple of things that stand out in this letter

00:26:25.640 here. I mean, fair competition is one section where they say healthy competition is good,

00:26:31.220 but. And it's always good when someone says, but you can ignore whatever they said before the but.

00:26:37.340 They say, but outdated rules have permitted an unfair environment which favors foreign digital

00:26:42.720 companies. So they argue that foreign players are able to have an advantage because they don't need

00:26:48.420 to pay sale. They don't need to charge sales tax. They don't need to do other things. But what they

00:26:53.340 forget is how restricted telecom in Canada is right now. So there's no competition, which means that if a

00:27:00.820 foreign player were to come in and say, you know what, we're going to put money into a Canadian news

00:27:05.780 division, I would say, let them have it. But they couldn't under the current rules. So the rules are

00:27:10.820 actually very protectionist in nature. And this is when they're talking about fair taxation as well,

00:27:16.520 a big problem. But they say that the government needs more. We media organizations, the letter says,

00:27:24.300 will continue to work together to do what we can to support a healthy news ecosystem, yada, yada,

00:27:29.540 yada. We encourage you to support Canadian media in your community. A strong democracy depends on

00:27:35.940 diverse sources of trusted news. We all have a role to play. And the reason I share that is because

00:27:42.980 the trusted word is always the one that you have to latch on to as being the source of problems,

00:27:48.940 because the mainstream media doesn't actually want diversity of voices in this space. They don't want

00:27:55.040 a robust ecosystem that has new media organizations popping up every day. They want a system that

00:28:01.840 basically prevents them from hemorrhaging money. They want a system that's going to give them more

00:28:07.400 longevity that their business models in 2020 aren't giving them. And when they say trusted,

00:28:13.840 what they're basically saying is everyone but us should go away. You should protect us because we're the

00:28:21.340 last bastion of support in that free fake news fight. We're the ones that are going to be there

00:28:27.700 to stand up for truth and those other people won't. And Michael Geist, who's actually a great voice on

00:28:33.640 this issue, he's a telecom expert, an intellectual property lawyer, I believe. He's aimed here at the

00:28:39.680 problem of CBC saying that its support for new government regulations, which is basically what's

00:28:45.720 happening here, is a bit of a problem. He says they warn ominously about the impact of internet

00:28:52.680 platforms and the involvement of the CBC continues to demonstrate that the public broadcaster has,

00:28:59.180 in his words, lost its way on public policy and the public interest. No one can argue the CBC,

00:29:06.160 which receives, again, upwards of $1.3 billion a year from the government,

00:29:10.600 is a voice that needs to be supported more than it already is. You know, I was actually at an event

00:29:17.740 in, not an event, it was a crime scene. When you're in journalism, that's what an event is,

00:29:22.960 basically. And it was in 2017. And I was just talking about this with a friend earlier today,

00:29:28.940 CBC sent six separate crews to cover this one event, six separate crews. It was in Strathroy,

00:29:35.640 Ontario, which is about 35-40 minutes west of London, Ontario. And they sent a crew from Toronto

00:29:42.400 that was the CBC Toronto crew. They sent a show, a crew from CBC National, which is based in Toronto.

00:29:49.220 They sent a crew from CBC's The National, which is a show produced in Toronto. And then they sent a

00:29:55.300 CBC radio person, a French CBC radio person, and a CBC Windsor crew for the Windsor newscast. So six

00:30:02.580 different crews from CBC alone sent to the same crime scene. No one can say that CBC is in desperate

00:30:09.480 need of support here, except for CBC, which thinks it's not enough, which thinks it's the one that

00:30:15.380 needs to be supported and handheld by the government to the tune of infinitely more than it's getting now.

00:30:23.060 And it's not just about the money. It's about the regulation and restriction of the market

00:30:27.760 to prevent other voices and other companies from entering the market. So they don't just want a

00:30:33.700 bailout, but they want to avoid competition. When they talk about fair competition, it's actually

00:30:38.960 a colossal sham. So I'm glad that they're being so open about what it is that they want here,

00:30:46.360 calling on the government to support trusted sources of news for Canadians. But they're taking aim

00:30:53.980 at people that are part of that digital marketplace of ideas, which includes aggregators, which includes

00:30:59.600 other media content generators. And what's really, I think, relevant here is the same dichotomy that we

00:31:07.780 saw when Stephen Gilbeau was forced to walk back his commenting about licensing news, because he said,

00:31:13.580 oh, no, no, no, no, we're not going to license news organizations. But absent was a clarification on

00:31:19.440 whether he would license media organizations. And that line of news versus media is what CBC and its

00:31:27.040 colleagues are trying to get out in this letter, because they're talking about aggregators and people

00:31:31.880 that are digital players who monetize news content and aggregate it across their platforms.

00:31:39.240 So they say that this undermines the ability of Canadian media to pay for the journalism they have

00:31:44.240 created. Well, that is not going to be solved by stopping other voices from doing it. And what

00:31:52.180 they're talking about with aggregators are people like, let's say, the Drudge Report, which has a

00:31:57.640 website, and it has advertising on the website, and you can click to links of stories that are being

00:32:02.500 done on other platforms. Well, if you go to those platforms, you're seeing their ads. You're seeing

00:32:09.100 their ads. So the problem is that they haven't figured out how to monetize in a digital world.

00:32:14.820 And that is not the government's problem, any more than it's the government's problem to step in and

00:32:20.160 save any other antiquated industry. And that doesn't mean there isn't a place for news and journalism and

00:32:26.200 all of these things in 2020. That's what True North is doing. It's that you can't cling to the old way of

00:32:32.860 doing it, which no longer works in a digital marketplace. We'll be back in a moment when we

00:32:38.660 return. Patrick Moore, former head of Greenpeace, on being cancelled and then re-platformed for an

00:32:44.400 upcoming talk in Regina, Saskatchewan. Stay with me. You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:51.260 The cancel wars continue. Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show. Pleased to welcome to the

00:33:02.900 program in just a moment, Dr. Patrick Moore, who is a former president of Greenpeace Canada,

00:33:08.360 very prolific writer, and I'll also say tweeter on matters of climate and the environment,

00:33:13.520 but apparently too controversial for the city of Regina. Regina had invited Patrick Moore to

00:33:21.240 kick off its conference on sustainability in just a couple of months' time, the Reimagine

00:33:27.200 Regina conference in May. But of course, nothing good can happen without the activist mob getting

00:33:33.860 thrown into full gear. The activists started petitioning the city to try to get Patrick Moore

00:33:38.920 cancelled, and they succeeded. Now, it's not entirely a bad news story because Patrick has been

00:33:45.360 re-platformed after his de-platforming. Ezra Levant of The Rebel, Ezra being a very good friend of

00:33:51.120 this show, and of True North, decided he would take things into his own hands, and he's hosting

00:33:55.680 the same night, Patrick Moore, as Patrick was supposed to be speaking in Regina, so there will

00:34:01.660 be at least an opportunity to hear what it is that he had to say. But it still speaks volumes about where

00:34:09.080 we are today, that everyone is so terrified of an alternative viewpoint that they have to cancel the

00:34:14.540 person that was going to bring it. What is that alternate viewpoint? Well, in Patrick Moore's words,

00:34:20.160 it is as follows. There's no doubt in my mind that on balance, our CO2 emissions are 100% positive

00:34:28.540 for the continuation of life on Earth. You might disagree with it. You might be able to have a

00:34:35.260 raucous debate about it. Is it controversial? And is it something that should get him cancelled? My

00:34:41.140 goodness, no. Patrick Moore joins me on the line. Patrick, good to talk to you. Thanks very much for

00:34:46.200 coming on the show today. Thanks for having me on. Now, I must admit, I'm rather pessimistic when it

00:34:52.540 comes to a lot of the cultural issues we see surrounding free speech, and especially on the

00:34:58.540 climate issue. So I thought that you would have had a lot more experience with this than you do,

00:35:04.280 but I was reading in your financial post-op, but this is actually the first time you've been

00:35:08.960 deplatformed. Yes, I'm a bit surprised it's the first time, but it is. And I have the Greenpeace

00:35:16.840 background. I was 15 years helping found that organization and spent 15 years in the top

00:35:23.140 committee as a director and then a director of Greenpeace International. So, you know, I know my

00:35:29.060 ropes. I know my stuff. And for a while, they were leafleting my presentations by putting

00:35:35.420 propaganda against me on the chairs in speaking at, but they stopped doing that 10, 15 years

00:35:43.600 ago. And so I'm pretty well left alone. This sparked in Regina some university professors

00:35:53.420 who, I guess, are wanting to protect their climate change grants from the government or whatever,

00:35:58.820 decided to object to the mayor about my coming up appearance. And it's not till May the 20th. So

00:36:07.420 they got the jump on me. And it's kind of behind closed doors what happened here. I don't know how

00:36:15.120 it went, but the mayor publicly asked his counselors and organizers that were organizing this conference

00:36:22.500 on sustainability and renewable energy in Regina to reconsider my invitation. I suppose they did that

00:36:31.640 because then they announced that I was being disinvited and round filed by themselves. So the

00:36:40.180 mayor never made that announcement, even though you'd think seeing as though he was the one that asked

00:36:44.740 them to give him advice on it, that he would be the one to say that I should not be allowed to be

00:36:50.660 there or should be allowed to be there. And then of all the miraculous things, now the mayor is saying

00:36:56.120 they should have kept me on the program. So I don't know what the machinations are, but

00:37:02.360 thankfully my good friend Ezra Levant, who we've known each other for many, many years, and he saw that

00:37:10.800 I'd been deplatformed and it took him about two minutes to get on the phone and propose to me that

00:37:16.180 we get another venue and go ahead with this. And not only that, preempt this conference by doing it

00:37:21.740 the night before. And here we are now. The last I heard was two or three days ago. We've sold over

00:37:27.180 a thousand tickets already. And I would imagine it's considerably more than that today. I haven't

00:37:32.620 heard from Ezra. I think he's covering the blockades out in Ontario. Yeah, I think you've

00:37:37.800 actually outsold the city of Regina conference by this point. I believe so. And this indicates to me,

00:37:47.320 like, a lot of people get cringy about stuff like this, but I've been on the front lines all my life.

00:37:53.200 And I don't get intimidated by this sort of thing. And when Ezra came along and said he'd help me put

00:38:00.520 something on, I know he's quite capable. And the other good thing about Ezra is he knows about security

00:38:05.940 because he's had to deal with some things in his time too. And I think we're going to put on a

00:38:12.300 really good show. I hope people come to listen. Even the people that don't agree with what I'm

00:38:18.760 saying should come and listen because I have a lot to say. And what I have to say, if there's

00:38:24.960 anything I say that people think is phony or incorrect or whatever, I'm always willing to learn.

00:38:31.620 And my mother, actually, when I was quite young, told me, because she was a lifelong reader and

00:38:37.840 learner, she said, you don't stop learning just because you turn 21. You should be a lifelong

00:38:43.760 learner. And I've taken that advice my whole life. And I learn a bunch of stuff every day.

00:38:49.160 So people who don't want to learn anything more and become dogmatic in their positions

00:38:54.600 are wasting their lives, as far as I'm concerned, because everybody should be learning every day.

00:39:00.540 There's so much to learn. It's an infinite, almost infinite amount of information there is out there

00:39:06.960 to put two and two together and understand how the world works a little bit better.

00:39:11.640 I want to ask you in a moment about the message itself. And I know you elaborated a bit on that

00:39:17.540 in your financial post piece. But I do want to get into a bit of the background on this because

00:39:22.440 Regina came to you. This wasn't a case of you being the one beating down their door saying,

00:39:27.880 let me speak, let me speak. They booked you through your speakers bureau. They had a contract

00:39:32.460 with you. In all honesty, and I don't mean to insult you here, but do you think they just didn't know

00:39:38.240 who you were? They saw the Greenpeace. They saw the PhD. They assumed you were one of the conventional

00:39:44.060 climate experts or so-called experts we're hearing from. Or do you think they originally went into this

00:39:49.980 with open eyes and open ears and then got cold feet once the mob descended?

00:39:54.360 Well, if they didn't know who I was, they must be living in a closet somewhere.

00:39:59.500 Well, I agree. But I mean, I can't understand any other reason why they would be surprised that

00:40:06.400 you were going to say the things that you've always been talking about.

00:40:11.440 Yeah, I see. That's what I it wasn't a very open process. Obviously, the mayor, the mayor did say

00:40:18.720 publicly that they should reconsider me. And then they obviously reconsidered me and decided to ban me.

00:40:23.600 So I have no idea who knows who or what the opinion. Maybe some of the organizers are hardcore

00:40:31.580 climate extremists. You know, the objective of the stated objective of this conference,

00:40:38.260 two days with 45 speakers. Well, maybe there's only 44 now. I don't know if they've replaced me or not.

00:40:43.500 But two days of discussing how to make the city of Regina 100% renewable. Right now, does that I don't

00:40:56.580 they said all their operations and facilities. So facilities are buildings. Does that mean their

00:41:03.400 buildings can't have any steel or concrete in them? Because they're non-renewable. And I think

00:41:08.460 they're confusing the word renewable with the word sustainable. And I've always made a point

00:41:13.680 because a lot of people I got a little bitty called renewable and clean, sustainable and green.

00:41:21.160 Those four words are often thought to mean exactly the same thing, but they're all completely different.

00:41:26.700 Renewable is like fish and trees and solar, the sun. Actually, the equipment they use to catch the sun

00:41:34.440 isn't renewable, though. It's made out of aluminum and glass and arsenic and a whole bunch of other

00:41:39.540 stuff. But renewable is very clear. But renewable doesn't necessarily mean sustainable, because if

00:41:45.380 you overfish a fish stock, that's not sustainable, even though the fish is renewable. So there's one

00:41:52.300 way of looking at it. Another thing is, is that sustainable can be non-renewable. There's enough iron

00:41:59.380 and aluminum and many other things in the Earth's crust, uranium for nuclear energy to last for tens

00:42:06.560 of thousands of years, at least maybe millions. So we don't need to worry about using too much iron,

00:42:14.320 even though it's non-renewable and concrete. The same cement is made from limestone, which is 8% of

00:42:20.920 the whole Earth's crust. It's actually of life origin. It was made by marine calcifying species in the sea.

00:42:26.540 I point that out in my article. So I think they could have got some clarification from me about

00:42:33.500 what they mean by 100% renewable city. Because are they going to have solar-powered fire trucks?

00:42:39.580 You know, are they going to ban fossil fuels inside the city limits? That's what 100% renewable would

00:42:47.220 mean. One of the things that I find so fascinating about this, and you're Canadian, so you, of course,

00:42:54.640 are aware of the, I think in many cases, exaggerated panic when Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister

00:43:00.240 about the government interfering with scientists and silencing research and all of this stuff that

00:43:06.080 the media was saying. And the political left was very antagonistic towards this. And I find it

00:43:12.400 fascinating that there's no outrage when it's reversed. So you're the scientist, you're the guy

00:43:16.760 with the PhD, you're the guy with the expert, but the mayor and city council can clamp down

00:43:21.900 on a speech that you are going to give without criticism from those people.

00:43:28.280 Well, yeah, I mean, they are a bunch of Trotskyites. And that's in the literal sense,

00:43:34.680 because Trotsky's primary strategy was to blame other people of what he is. And these people who use

00:43:41.220 the word bigot and racist, you know, it's usually them who are bigots and racists, because they're

00:43:46.480 people who will not tolerate any other view, but their own exact view. You can't even vary two words

00:43:53.860 from what their party line is, or they basically want to banish you from the face of the earth.

00:44:00.340 And what kind of way is that to conduct a society or to conduct a conversation?

00:44:05.040 Well, and what sort of way is that to conduct scientific inquiry?

00:44:08.180 Well, they're not interested in scientific inquiry, they just use those words. When they say climate

00:44:15.180 scientist, they mean someone who agrees with them. Because the opposite of a climate scientist is a

00:44:21.480 climate denier. Right? That's how they are using the words. And people don't pick that up because

00:44:27.800 they think, oh, climate scientist, that must be a scientist who studies the climate. No, it's not.

00:44:33.120 It's a political term. It's not really a scientific term. Because actually, climate scientist is a silly

00:44:39.000 phrase. The climate is so complicated and involves so many disciplines, from astrophysics to oceanography

00:44:46.260 to atmospheric physics, and the composition of the plants on the earth, and every other imaginable

00:44:53.540 thing. It is a very, very complicated subject. And to just bring it down to climate science and climate

00:45:00.540 denier is purely political. Because politics is always about slogans and actually always about using language

00:45:08.540 in a way that is deceptive or propagandist. Propaganda is about using language to color things evil or good.

00:45:15.540 You know, and I understand how to use it, but that's not my shtick.

00:45:23.540 Well, and your message is certainly one that I'd say is radical compared to what we typically hear.

00:45:29.540 I mean, we hear all the time from politicians who say that CO2 is the bad guy, CO2 is the enemy, CO2 needs to be regulated, and all of this stuff.

00:45:37.540 And you come out very simply and say CO2 emissions are 100% positive. So how does something so at odds with the narrative stand up?

00:45:47.540 What's the pitch for why that message was one that you thought the people of Regina needed to hear?

00:45:53.540 Well, just a little fun thing to start with. You know how people said that if you talk to your plants, they'll grow better?

00:46:00.540 And a lot of people would go, oh, that's silly. Actually, it's not silly, because when you breathe out, you're breathing out 40,000 ppm of CO2.

00:46:10.540 That's 100 times higher than it is in the atmosphere, because it's 400 parts per million in the atmosphere.

00:46:18.540 So when you're talking to your plants, you're breathing on them and you're giving them a big shot of their food, which is carbon dioxide.

00:46:25.540 And I'm sitting in my garden here in southern Baja surrounded by greenery.

00:46:30.540 All of this greenery is sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere.

00:46:34.540 And the amazing thing is, at 400 parts per million, that's only 0.04%, they can actually get enough food out of the air.

00:46:44.540 It's phenomenal, because we need at least 15% oxygen in the atmosphere in order to breathe.

00:46:52.540 Get us down to 5% oxygen and we start to die.

00:46:55.540 Plants can live at 0.04% of their primary food, which is carbon dioxide.

00:47:01.540 And that's what people have to get back to understanding is basic biology, that carbon dioxide is the source of carbon for all carbon-based life in the sea and on the land.

00:47:15.540 Carbon dioxide is also dissolved in the oceans.

00:47:18.540 And that's what the life in the oceans uses as their primary source of carbon. 0.76

00:47:23.540 And all life is carbon-based.

00:47:25.540 So CO2 is the food for all life, including us, because we have to eat the plants to survive.

00:47:31.540 We can't just, there wouldn't be any animals if there weren't any plants.

00:47:35.540 And so it's a perfect circle.

00:47:38.540 We breathe out CO2, they breathe in CO2.

00:47:41.540 They give off oxygen, we breathe in oxygen.

00:47:44.540 So just starting right there at that basic.

00:47:48.540 And the other important thing to recognize is, you know, all these climate alarmists, they never want to go back further than about 1850 in the history of the Earth.

00:47:58.540 To look at, you know, we have really good knowledge of what CO2 and temperature was going back for half a billion years.

00:48:05.540 And the truth is, if you were to be exposed to that knowledge of the relationship between CO2 and temperature through the millennia, you would see that there is zero support for the CO2 causes temperature point of view.

00:48:20.540 It is not true.

00:48:21.540 It's only because in the last 150 years or so, since we started increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature is also going up because we're in the modern warm period.

00:48:32.540 So you have a correlation.

00:48:34.540 But if you go back in history, you will see that CO2 and temperature are out of sync more often than they are in sync.

00:48:41.540 And that is not a correlation.

00:48:43.540 So there's no reason to just jump to the conclusion that there's a there's a causal relationship CO2 causes temperature.

00:48:52.540 There's no reason to do that in the scientific literature going back for millions of years.

00:48:58.540 So they only want to talk about the last 50 years.

00:49:02.540 mostly, you know, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and its climate has been changing for a long time.

00:49:10.540 And we have marine sediment samples that we can analyze and see what the chemistry of the Earth was like way in the past.

00:49:19.540 And they just ignore all that.

00:49:21.540 They don't even want to talk about it.

00:49:23.540 Well, and that gets into the great divide here, because unlike the alarmists, unlike your most vocal critics, you actually and you said this earlier in the interview,

00:49:31.540 you welcome the debate, you welcome the scrutiny, whereas their alternative is to say, no, no, no, you can't let this Patrick Moore guy speak.

00:49:39.540 That's exactly right.

00:49:41.540 And I just I feel I feel bad about the way things have gone here politically.

00:49:48.540 This is an extremist cultist kind of poisonous combination of religious cult and political ideology.

00:49:57.540 And it has absolutely nothing to do with science.

00:50:00.540 Well, I'm very glad you've been replatformed.

00:50:03.540 I don't like that it had to get to that point, but certainly I'll make an effort to be there.

00:50:06.540 Patrick Moore, thank you so much for coming on today and best of luck with the talk in May.

00:50:10.540 Thank you very much.

00:50:12.540 Anytime.

00:50:13.540 You know, there was one point Patrick made in that op-ed that I thought was very interesting, which is that it's only people in the coldest countries in the world like Canada that are concerned about global warming.

00:50:24.540 And I do I find that interesting, especially coming from him, who he's like just hanging out on a beach in Baja, Mexico.

00:50:29.540 Maybe he's not on a beach.

00:50:30.540 I don't know.

00:50:31.540 Whereas I'm like, I'm in the cold Canada right now and I'm supposed to be the one that cares about global warming.

00:50:35.540 Bring it on.

00:50:36.540 In any case, my thanks again to Patrick Moore for coming on the show and also to all of you for tuning in.

00:50:42.540 We'll be back next week with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show, The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:50:48.540 Thank you.

00:50:49.540 God bless.

00:50:50.540 And good day, Canada.

00:50:51.540 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:50:53.540 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - February 20, 2020

The Mean Girls Prime Minister (feat. Patrick Moore)

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