00:24:29.340and Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton, the three-way handshake photo where they were trying to basically
00:24:35.200gin up support for a coalition government. So Mark Miller is sitting around this little living room
00:24:41.460and he's saying, oh, we've got the support of progressive leadership. So that's basically saying,
00:24:46.220yeah, you know what? We're prepared to be in a coalition, either officially or unofficially.
00:24:50.880And I would say further to that point, it shows that they only want the progressives at the table.
00:24:58.400They don't want there to be anyone who disagrees with their handling of it there,
00:25:03.320which means, again, like I said, they only want sycophants. They only want sycophants around the
00:25:09.540table, which is absolutely the wrong way of doing anything like this. And speaking of sycophants,
00:25:15.900let's talk about the mainstream media for a moment here. CBC is part of a panel of mainstream media
00:25:21.960outlets calling on the government to support, quote, trusted news sites, unquote. The letter that was
00:25:29.600put forward by the News Media Council, News Media Canada, and signed by a number of independent and
00:25:36.680corporate mainstream media outlets from CBC to the Toronto Star to Post Media, La Press, etc.
00:25:43.060CBC is the important one here. A letter to parliament saying that the government needs to
00:25:49.360do more to save media. Now, these are outlets that are already getting $595 million from the federal
00:25:56.580government. But now they're saying that the news industry in Canada is in trouble. They think there's
00:26:02.320a fake news problem. Facebook and Google are getting too much of the digital ad revenue in Canada,
00:26:07.560Canada. And they need to apparently get the government's help to survive on this. They say
00:26:12.820that Canadian laws have been slower to respond to the evolution and adaptation to the digital world
00:26:19.140that the mainstream media has had to embrace. And a couple of things that stand out in this letter
00:26:25.640here. I mean, fair competition is one section where they say healthy competition is good,
00:26:31.220but. And it's always good when someone says, but you can ignore whatever they said before the but.
00:26:37.340They say, but outdated rules have permitted an unfair environment which favors foreign digital
00:26:42.720companies. So they argue that foreign players are able to have an advantage because they don't need
00:26:48.420to pay sale. They don't need to charge sales tax. They don't need to do other things. But what they
00:26:53.340forget is how restricted telecom in Canada is right now. So there's no competition, which means that if a
00:27:00.820foreign player were to come in and say, you know what, we're going to put money into a Canadian news
00:27:05.780division, I would say, let them have it. But they couldn't under the current rules. So the rules are
00:27:10.820actually very protectionist in nature. And this is when they're talking about fair taxation as well,
00:27:16.520a big problem. But they say that the government needs more. We media organizations, the letter says,
00:27:24.300will continue to work together to do what we can to support a healthy news ecosystem, yada, yada,
00:27:29.540yada. We encourage you to support Canadian media in your community. A strong democracy depends on
00:27:35.940diverse sources of trusted news. We all have a role to play. And the reason I share that is because
00:27:42.980the trusted word is always the one that you have to latch on to as being the source of problems,
00:27:48.940because the mainstream media doesn't actually want diversity of voices in this space. They don't want
00:27:55.040a robust ecosystem that has new media organizations popping up every day. They want a system that
00:28:01.840basically prevents them from hemorrhaging money. They want a system that's going to give them more
00:28:07.400longevity that their business models in 2020 aren't giving them. And when they say trusted,
00:28:13.840what they're basically saying is everyone but us should go away. You should protect us because we're the
00:28:21.340last bastion of support in that free fake news fight. We're the ones that are going to be there
00:28:27.700to stand up for truth and those other people won't. And Michael Geist, who's actually a great voice on
00:28:33.640this issue, he's a telecom expert, an intellectual property lawyer, I believe. He's aimed here at the
00:28:39.680problem of CBC saying that its support for new government regulations, which is basically what's
00:28:45.720happening here, is a bit of a problem. He says they warn ominously about the impact of internet
00:28:52.680platforms and the involvement of the CBC continues to demonstrate that the public broadcaster has,
00:28:59.180in his words, lost its way on public policy and the public interest. No one can argue the CBC,
00:29:06.160which receives, again, upwards of $1.3 billion a year from the government,
00:29:10.600is a voice that needs to be supported more than it already is. You know, I was actually at an event
00:29:17.740in, not an event, it was a crime scene. When you're in journalism, that's what an event is,
00:29:22.960basically. And it was in 2017. And I was just talking about this with a friend earlier today,
00:29:28.940CBC sent six separate crews to cover this one event, six separate crews. It was in Strathroy,
00:29:35.640Ontario, which is about 35-40 minutes west of London, Ontario. And they sent a crew from Toronto
00:29:42.400that was the CBC Toronto crew. They sent a show, a crew from CBC National, which is based in Toronto.
00:29:49.220They sent a crew from CBC's The National, which is a show produced in Toronto. And then they sent a
00:29:55.300CBC radio person, a French CBC radio person, and a CBC Windsor crew for the Windsor newscast. So six
00:30:02.580different crews from CBC alone sent to the same crime scene. No one can say that CBC is in desperate
00:30:09.480need of support here, except for CBC, which thinks it's not enough, which thinks it's the one that
00:30:15.380needs to be supported and handheld by the government to the tune of infinitely more than it's getting now.
00:30:23.060And it's not just about the money. It's about the regulation and restriction of the market
00:30:27.760to prevent other voices and other companies from entering the market. So they don't just want a
00:30:33.700bailout, but they want to avoid competition. When they talk about fair competition, it's actually
00:30:38.960a colossal sham. So I'm glad that they're being so open about what it is that they want here,
00:30:46.360calling on the government to support trusted sources of news for Canadians. But they're taking aim
00:30:53.980at people that are part of that digital marketplace of ideas, which includes aggregators, which includes
00:30:59.600other media content generators. And what's really, I think, relevant here is the same dichotomy that we
00:31:07.780saw when Stephen Gilbeau was forced to walk back his commenting about licensing news, because he said,
00:31:13.580oh, no, no, no, no, we're not going to license news organizations. But absent was a clarification on
00:31:19.440whether he would license media organizations. And that line of news versus media is what CBC and its
00:31:27.040colleagues are trying to get out in this letter, because they're talking about aggregators and people
00:31:31.880that are digital players who monetize news content and aggregate it across their platforms.
00:31:39.240So they say that this undermines the ability of Canadian media to pay for the journalism they have
00:31:44.240created. Well, that is not going to be solved by stopping other voices from doing it. And what
00:31:52.180they're talking about with aggregators are people like, let's say, the Drudge Report, which has a
00:31:57.640website, and it has advertising on the website, and you can click to links of stories that are being
00:32:02.500done on other platforms. Well, if you go to those platforms, you're seeing their ads. You're seeing
00:32:09.100their ads. So the problem is that they haven't figured out how to monetize in a digital world.
00:32:14.820And that is not the government's problem, any more than it's the government's problem to step in and
00:32:20.160save any other antiquated industry. And that doesn't mean there isn't a place for news and journalism and
00:32:26.200all of these things in 2020. That's what True North is doing. It's that you can't cling to the old way of
00:32:32.860doing it, which no longer works in a digital marketplace. We'll be back in a moment when we
00:32:38.660return. Patrick Moore, former head of Greenpeace, on being cancelled and then re-platformed for an
00:32:44.400upcoming talk in Regina, Saskatchewan. Stay with me. You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:32:51.260The cancel wars continue. Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show. Pleased to welcome to the
00:33:02.900program in just a moment, Dr. Patrick Moore, who is a former president of Greenpeace Canada,
00:33:08.360very prolific writer, and I'll also say tweeter on matters of climate and the environment,
00:33:13.520but apparently too controversial for the city of Regina. Regina had invited Patrick Moore to
00:33:21.240kick off its conference on sustainability in just a couple of months' time, the Reimagine
00:33:27.200Regina conference in May. But of course, nothing good can happen without the activist mob getting
00:33:33.860thrown into full gear. The activists started petitioning the city to try to get Patrick Moore
00:33:38.920cancelled, and they succeeded. Now, it's not entirely a bad news story because Patrick has been
00:33:45.360re-platformed after his de-platforming. Ezra Levant of The Rebel, Ezra being a very good friend of
00:33:51.120this show, and of True North, decided he would take things into his own hands, and he's hosting
00:33:55.680the same night, Patrick Moore, as Patrick was supposed to be speaking in Regina, so there will
00:34:01.660be at least an opportunity to hear what it is that he had to say. But it still speaks volumes about where
00:34:09.080we are today, that everyone is so terrified of an alternative viewpoint that they have to cancel the
00:34:14.540person that was going to bring it. What is that alternate viewpoint? Well, in Patrick Moore's words,
00:34:20.160it is as follows. There's no doubt in my mind that on balance, our CO2 emissions are 100% positive
00:34:28.540for the continuation of life on Earth. You might disagree with it. You might be able to have a
00:34:35.260raucous debate about it. Is it controversial? And is it something that should get him cancelled? My
00:34:41.140goodness, no. Patrick Moore joins me on the line. Patrick, good to talk to you. Thanks very much for
00:34:46.200coming on the show today. Thanks for having me on. Now, I must admit, I'm rather pessimistic when it
00:34:52.540comes to a lot of the cultural issues we see surrounding free speech, and especially on the
00:34:58.540climate issue. So I thought that you would have had a lot more experience with this than you do,
00:35:04.280but I was reading in your financial post-op, but this is actually the first time you've been
00:35:08.960deplatformed. Yes, I'm a bit surprised it's the first time, but it is. And I have the Greenpeace
00:35:16.840background. I was 15 years helping found that organization and spent 15 years in the top
00:35:23.140committee as a director and then a director of Greenpeace International. So, you know, I know my
00:35:29.060ropes. I know my stuff. And for a while, they were leafleting my presentations by putting
00:35:35.420propaganda against me on the chairs in speaking at, but they stopped doing that 10, 15 years
00:35:43.600ago. And so I'm pretty well left alone. This sparked in Regina some university professors
00:35:53.420who, I guess, are wanting to protect their climate change grants from the government or whatever,
00:35:58.820decided to object to the mayor about my coming up appearance. And it's not till May the 20th. So
00:36:07.420they got the jump on me. And it's kind of behind closed doors what happened here. I don't know how
00:36:15.120it went, but the mayor publicly asked his counselors and organizers that were organizing this conference
00:36:22.500on sustainability and renewable energy in Regina to reconsider my invitation. I suppose they did that
00:36:31.640because then they announced that I was being disinvited and round filed by themselves. So the
00:36:40.180mayor never made that announcement, even though you'd think seeing as though he was the one that asked
00:36:44.740them to give him advice on it, that he would be the one to say that I should not be allowed to be
00:36:50.660there or should be allowed to be there. And then of all the miraculous things, now the mayor is saying
00:36:56.120they should have kept me on the program. So I don't know what the machinations are, but
00:37:02.360thankfully my good friend Ezra Levant, who we've known each other for many, many years, and he saw that
00:37:10.800I'd been deplatformed and it took him about two minutes to get on the phone and propose to me that
00:37:16.180we get another venue and go ahead with this. And not only that, preempt this conference by doing it
00:37:21.740the night before. And here we are now. The last I heard was two or three days ago. We've sold over
00:37:27.180a thousand tickets already. And I would imagine it's considerably more than that today. I haven't
00:37:32.620heard from Ezra. I think he's covering the blockades out in Ontario. Yeah, I think you've
00:37:37.800actually outsold the city of Regina conference by this point. I believe so. And this indicates to me,
00:37:47.320like, a lot of people get cringy about stuff like this, but I've been on the front lines all my life.
00:37:53.200And I don't get intimidated by this sort of thing. And when Ezra came along and said he'd help me put
00:38:00.520something on, I know he's quite capable. And the other good thing about Ezra is he knows about security
00:38:05.940because he's had to deal with some things in his time too. And I think we're going to put on a
00:38:12.300really good show. I hope people come to listen. Even the people that don't agree with what I'm
00:38:18.760saying should come and listen because I have a lot to say. And what I have to say, if there's
00:38:24.960anything I say that people think is phony or incorrect or whatever, I'm always willing to learn.
00:38:31.620And my mother, actually, when I was quite young, told me, because she was a lifelong reader and
00:38:37.840learner, she said, you don't stop learning just because you turn 21. You should be a lifelong
00:38:43.760learner. And I've taken that advice my whole life. And I learn a bunch of stuff every day.
00:38:49.160So people who don't want to learn anything more and become dogmatic in their positions
00:38:54.600are wasting their lives, as far as I'm concerned, because everybody should be learning every day.
00:39:00.540There's so much to learn. It's an infinite, almost infinite amount of information there is out there
00:39:06.960to put two and two together and understand how the world works a little bit better.
00:39:11.640I want to ask you in a moment about the message itself. And I know you elaborated a bit on that
00:39:17.540in your financial post piece. But I do want to get into a bit of the background on this because
00:39:22.440Regina came to you. This wasn't a case of you being the one beating down their door saying,
00:39:27.880let me speak, let me speak. They booked you through your speakers bureau. They had a contract
00:39:32.460with you. In all honesty, and I don't mean to insult you here, but do you think they just didn't know
00:39:38.240who you were? They saw the Greenpeace. They saw the PhD. They assumed you were one of the conventional
00:39:44.060climate experts or so-called experts we're hearing from. Or do you think they originally went into this
00:39:49.980with open eyes and open ears and then got cold feet once the mob descended?
00:39:54.360Well, if they didn't know who I was, they must be living in a closet somewhere.
00:39:59.500Well, I agree. But I mean, I can't understand any other reason why they would be surprised that
00:40:06.400you were going to say the things that you've always been talking about.
00:40:11.440Yeah, I see. That's what I it wasn't a very open process. Obviously, the mayor, the mayor did say
00:40:18.720publicly that they should reconsider me. And then they obviously reconsidered me and decided to ban me.
00:40:23.600So I have no idea who knows who or what the opinion. Maybe some of the organizers are hardcore
00:40:31.580climate extremists. You know, the objective of the stated objective of this conference,
00:40:38.260two days with 45 speakers. Well, maybe there's only 44 now. I don't know if they've replaced me or not.
00:40:43.500But two days of discussing how to make the city of Regina 100% renewable. Right now, does that I don't
00:40:56.580they said all their operations and facilities. So facilities are buildings. Does that mean their
00:41:03.400buildings can't have any steel or concrete in them? Because they're non-renewable. And I think
00:41:08.460they're confusing the word renewable with the word sustainable. And I've always made a point
00:41:13.680because a lot of people I got a little bitty called renewable and clean, sustainable and green.
00:41:21.160Those four words are often thought to mean exactly the same thing, but they're all completely different.
00:41:26.700Renewable is like fish and trees and solar, the sun. Actually, the equipment they use to catch the sun
00:41:34.440isn't renewable, though. It's made out of aluminum and glass and arsenic and a whole bunch of other
00:41:39.540stuff. But renewable is very clear. But renewable doesn't necessarily mean sustainable, because if
00:41:45.380you overfish a fish stock, that's not sustainable, even though the fish is renewable. So there's one
00:41:52.300way of looking at it. Another thing is, is that sustainable can be non-renewable. There's enough iron
00:41:59.380and aluminum and many other things in the Earth's crust, uranium for nuclear energy to last for tens
00:42:06.560of thousands of years, at least maybe millions. So we don't need to worry about using too much iron,
00:42:14.320even though it's non-renewable and concrete. The same cement is made from limestone, which is 8% of
00:42:20.920the whole Earth's crust. It's actually of life origin. It was made by marine calcifying species in the sea.
00:42:26.540I point that out in my article. So I think they could have got some clarification from me about
00:42:33.500what they mean by 100% renewable city. Because are they going to have solar-powered fire trucks?
00:42:39.580You know, are they going to ban fossil fuels inside the city limits? That's what 100% renewable would
00:42:47.220mean. One of the things that I find so fascinating about this, and you're Canadian, so you, of course,
00:42:54.640are aware of the, I think in many cases, exaggerated panic when Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister
00:43:00.240about the government interfering with scientists and silencing research and all of this stuff that
00:43:06.080the media was saying. And the political left was very antagonistic towards this. And I find it
00:43:12.400fascinating that there's no outrage when it's reversed. So you're the scientist, you're the guy
00:43:16.760with the PhD, you're the guy with the expert, but the mayor and city council can clamp down
00:43:21.900on a speech that you are going to give without criticism from those people.
00:43:28.280Well, yeah, I mean, they are a bunch of Trotskyites. And that's in the literal sense,
00:43:34.680because Trotsky's primary strategy was to blame other people of what he is. And these people who use
00:43:41.220the word bigot and racist, you know, it's usually them who are bigots and racists, because they're
00:43:46.480people who will not tolerate any other view, but their own exact view. You can't even vary two words
00:43:53.860from what their party line is, or they basically want to banish you from the face of the earth.
00:44:00.340And what kind of way is that to conduct a society or to conduct a conversation?
00:44:05.040Well, and what sort of way is that to conduct scientific inquiry?
00:44:08.180Well, they're not interested in scientific inquiry, they just use those words. When they say climate
00:44:15.180scientist, they mean someone who agrees with them. Because the opposite of a climate scientist is a
00:44:21.480climate denier. Right? That's how they are using the words. And people don't pick that up because
00:44:27.800they think, oh, climate scientist, that must be a scientist who studies the climate. No, it's not.
00:44:33.120It's a political term. It's not really a scientific term. Because actually, climate scientist is a silly
00:44:39.000phrase. The climate is so complicated and involves so many disciplines, from astrophysics to oceanography
00:44:46.260to atmospheric physics, and the composition of the plants on the earth, and every other imaginable
00:44:53.540thing. It is a very, very complicated subject. And to just bring it down to climate science and climate
00:45:00.540denier is purely political. Because politics is always about slogans and actually always about using language
00:45:08.540in a way that is deceptive or propagandist. Propaganda is about using language to color things evil or good.
00:45:15.540You know, and I understand how to use it, but that's not my shtick.
00:45:23.540Well, and your message is certainly one that I'd say is radical compared to what we typically hear.
00:45:29.540I 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.
00:45:37.540And you come out very simply and say CO2 emissions are 100% positive. So how does something so at odds with the narrative stand up?
00:45:47.540What's the pitch for why that message was one that you thought the people of Regina needed to hear?
00:45:53.540Well, just a little fun thing to start with. You know how people said that if you talk to your plants, they'll grow better?
00:46:00.540And 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.
00:46:10.540That's 100 times higher than it is in the atmosphere, because it's 400 parts per million in the atmosphere.
00:46:18.540So 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.
00:46:25.540And I'm sitting in my garden here in southern Baja surrounded by greenery.
00:46:30.540All of this greenery is sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
00:46:34.540And the amazing thing is, at 400 parts per million, that's only 0.04%, they can actually get enough food out of the air.
00:46:44.540It's phenomenal, because we need at least 15% oxygen in the atmosphere in order to breathe.
00:46:52.540Get us down to 5% oxygen and we start to die.
00:46:55.540Plants can live at 0.04% of their primary food, which is carbon dioxide.
00:47:01.540And 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.
00:47:15.540Carbon dioxide is also dissolved in the oceans.
00:47:18.540And that's what the life in the oceans uses as their primary source of carbon.
00:47:38.540We breathe out CO2, they breathe in CO2.
00:47:41.540They give off oxygen, we breathe in oxygen.
00:47:44.540So just starting right there at that basic.
00:47:48.540And 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.
00:47:58.540To look at, you know, we have really good knowledge of what CO2 and temperature was going back for half a billion years.
00:48:05.540And 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.
00:48:21.540It'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.
00:49:21.540They don't even want to talk about it.
00:49:23.540Well, 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,
00:49:31.540you 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.
00:50:13.540You 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.
00:50:24.540And I do I find that interesting, especially coming from him, who he's like just hanging out on a beach in Baja, Mexico.