Juno News - The Never-Ending Lockdown

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.140 Coming up, are we headed towards a permanent lockdown? Is pancake syrup racist? And what to look for in the conservative leadership debates?

00:00:23.000 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:26.560 Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:00:36.860 And no, just in case your autocorrect is acting up, it's not irrelevant, it is irreverent, a totally different quality, I assure you.

00:00:44.040 Although one that lends itself well to people wanting to accuse me of being the latter.

00:00:48.340 So we'll try to be pretty relevant talking about the things everyone cares about in Canada, such as Justin Trudeau's haircut.

00:00:53.540 But I know it has been like the number one topic, top of mind for all people for exactly zero seconds.

00:01:00.880 Well, unless you are talking about CBC.

00:01:03.380 CBC cares about it. A lot of the mainstream media may care about it.

00:01:07.300 Real Canadians, I don't think, care about it. 1.00

00:01:10.360 I've got to play this clip for you right out of the gate.

00:01:12.840 Rosie Barton on CBC after Justin Trudeau gave one of his press conferences.

00:01:17.480 I think it was on Monday, it might have been on Sunday.

00:01:20.300 And this is the stellar commentary from the anchor chair at CBC.

00:01:26.120 Okay, that is the Prime Minister of Canada on this Tuesday morning.

00:01:29.580 And I'll just say what everyone is thinking before we get into the meat of what he said.

00:01:33.300 Yes, he did get a haircut.

00:01:35.040 Yeah, pointing out what most people I don't think cared about.

00:01:37.780 Oh, well, let me back up.

00:01:39.080 I thought most people didn't care about it.

00:01:40.980 I might have been wrong.

00:01:42.480 Fresh Daily had a story out.

00:01:44.300 Justin Trudeau just surprised Canada with his new haircut.

00:01:48.500 And if you look in the story, it really doesn't say anything about people being surprised.

00:01:53.100 Just a couple of people on Twitter that seem to care about it.

00:01:57.760 But I don't even think really that was all that relevant.

00:02:00.220 I got one as well.

00:02:01.340 So I'm not judging him for getting a haircut.

00:02:03.940 I actually got one on Friday, which was the very first day that it was permissible in my part of Canada.

00:02:10.420 London, Ontario, to get a haircut.

00:02:12.920 And it was great because all of my friends in Toronto couldn't because they were kept back in a separate category.

00:02:18.940 But southwestern Ontario, most of Ontario, was opened up as far as hair salons and stuff were concerned on Friday.

00:02:26.160 And I normally am not one of the people that has to get everything on the first day.

00:02:30.560 Like, I've never waited in line for the new iPhone.

00:02:32.660 I've never seen the movie on opening day, whatever movie it is.

00:02:35.860 The haircut, I figured I could because the place that I go, you can check in online.

00:02:41.100 And I thought, okay, if I can check in online, then I'm not going to deal with this, like, mad mayhem situation there.

00:02:46.420 I can just show up at my anointed time, sit down and get the haircut, and then that's that.

00:02:52.520 It was not that way, as a matter of fact, because the check-in online gave a time of, like, four hours in the future.

00:03:00.460 So I did my thing.

00:03:01.540 I waited and did some other stuff, puttered around town, went when I was supposed to go.

00:03:06.400 And it was, like, this chaotic situation.

00:03:08.960 I wish I took a picture of it.

00:03:10.260 Where they had decided to turn the parking lot into a waiting area.

00:03:14.820 And they had, like, chairs set up six feet away from each other in the parking lot.

00:03:19.140 And they had this whiteboard, and they were trying to tell people the order.

00:03:22.920 But they were doing this weird thing where instead of just going with the check-in order,

00:03:26.860 they were trying to mesh when you checked in versus when you showed up.

00:03:32.360 And I was, like, number two for three people because they just kept adding in, like, number ones ahead of me,

00:03:37.800 which may have been personal.

00:03:39.360 Maybe they were listeners to the show.

00:03:40.560 Who knows?

00:03:41.280 And then eventually they just gave up on that and just went with the online check-in.

00:03:45.580 And I got in, got the haircut, and had to wear a mask.

00:03:48.060 It was actually my first time through the entire pandemic wearing a mask.

00:03:51.620 And I had to wear a mask while getting my hair cut.

00:03:53.640 But the hairdresser, barber, whatever you want to call them, she was wearing a mask as well. 1.00

00:03:58.980 And it was weird because, like, I think my sideburns have, like, I'm not going to do a close-up,

00:04:03.560 but I think they have, like, a mask band line on them because she didn't even, like, take off the mask.

00:04:09.200 And, you know, I couldn't really complain because, you know, nothing works in the last three months.

00:04:13.500 So you have to just be grateful you're getting the haircut.

00:04:17.120 And it's funny because I, generally speaking, view life through the lens that there are good experiences and there is material.

00:04:23.060 There's no bad experiences.

00:04:24.440 So even something chaotic, I can usually get a good story out of.

00:04:29.000 But I do find it funny because while I am joking about it and poking fun at it,

00:04:33.840 what's happened in the last three months has made us so eternally grateful to be able to have a haircut,

00:04:41.380 grateful to be able to go to a store, grateful to be able to do this.

00:04:44.580 And it's weird because that gratitude tends to be unhealthy, I think, in the long term

00:04:50.080 when we have to be grateful that the government has bestowed upon us this great gift of going to buy bread from a store,

00:04:58.340 of going to get your hair cut, of going to get your nails done, or whatever the case may be.

00:05:03.140 And that's very dangerous because now we see reports out of China that this so-called second wave is coming back.

00:05:10.880 And if you look at some of the things that are being discussed there, Beijing has cut all flights.

00:05:16.980 They have done a lot to put lockdowns in place.

00:05:20.300 They've extended residential lockdowns.

00:05:22.600 They've tightened even domestic travel.

00:05:25.440 And more than 100 people are now infected in an outbreak that's just been over a couple of days.

00:05:31.520 And the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, I'm looking here, had reported 27 fresh cases on Tuesday,

00:05:38.980 bringing the five-day total up to 106.

00:05:41.460 And this follows a flare-up at the market.

00:05:44.320 Now, I think there are a couple of things to take away from this.

00:05:46.900 Number one, yes, we know that COVID-19 is very infectious.

00:05:50.760 We know that.

00:05:51.420 We know it's not as deadly as we feared early on, but it is still infectious.

00:05:55.700 But more importantly, we also know that the rest of the world tended to be in the first round of this downstream of China.

00:06:03.280 So something that happens in China very much moves everyone else into this fear of,

00:06:11.080 OK, what do we do?

00:06:11.960 What do we lock down?

00:06:12.880 Where do we go from here?

00:06:14.540 And the danger of this is that it completely forces us into the same situation we've been in for the last three months.

00:06:23.040 So part of the reason, to be honest, I got the haircut on Friday is because I'm like,

00:06:27.040 I just am pessimistic enough that I don't think everything is going to be open and stay open

00:06:32.900 if there's a whiff of this second wave.

00:06:35.460 And now there is this whiff, so everything's locked down again.

00:06:38.120 And this is very dangerous because it gives government license to say,

00:06:42.100 oh, see, this is why we have to continue indefinitely.

00:06:45.480 This is why we have to just keep going on with this.

00:06:47.940 This is why we can't just reopen and say, all right, you know, it's a party.

00:06:51.760 Everyone have fun, go to the restaurants, go to the patios and all of that.

00:06:55.520 So this is the danger we have here.

00:06:58.360 I saw a tweet going around that I want to share with you that I think encapsulates

00:07:03.140 why we should be a little bit nervous of how governments will respond to this.

00:07:09.020 It's a tweet that went viral.

00:07:10.480 Here's a call to action for would-be allies.

00:07:13.400 Keep wearing that face mask every moment you're in public and without complaint until a vaccine is found.

00:07:18.840 Doing so protects essential workers, often people of color,

00:07:22.400 and limits our exposure to a medical system rife with bias that can be deadly for us.

00:07:27.180 And this is basically saying that if you don't wear a mask, you're not only killing grandma, 0.99

00:07:31.280 but you're also a horrible racist. 0.98

00:07:33.180 But this has nearly 4,000 retweets. 0.99

00:07:35.980 And this whole tweet is based on an idea that I've seen a lot of,

00:07:40.160 which is that all of the lockdowns we do,

00:07:42.660 all of the things we do to so-called social distance,

00:07:45.720 flatten the curve, end the curve, whatever, are not just until the curve is flattened.

00:07:50.260 They're not just about ensuring we have hospital capacity,

00:07:53.180 which, by the way, is what flattening the curve was about.

00:07:57.020 Flattening the curve wasn't about making sure no one got infected.

00:08:00.700 Flattening the curve was about making sure we didn't have an exponential spike

00:08:04.180 that would overwhelm the healthcare system. 0.94

00:08:06.900 And if you talk to healthcare practitioners, nurses, doctors, and you look at the numbers,

00:08:10.720 by and large, in Canada, hospital emergency rooms and ICUs were pretty much empty throughout the pandemic.

00:08:17.440 And I'd say actually less full than usual even,

00:08:21.020 because people with other issues weren't going to hospitals because they were scared of the coronavirus.

00:08:26.340 So we didn't have a curve that was anything other than flat.

00:08:31.580 The whole point was never to protect every single person in the country from getting it.

00:08:36.680 It was to make sure that it was managed and measured, which happened.

00:08:40.860 So when the talk now goes to keep wearing the mask until there's a vaccine,

00:08:45.980 keep distanced until there's a vaccine, that was not what we signed up for.

00:08:50.380 It's not sustainable and it's not reasonable.

00:08:53.080 And there's a reason that patios are being flooded right now in places where they're allowed,

00:08:57.540 like my little part of Canada.

00:08:59.460 And that's because people were, for three months, told you've got to stay home to save lives.

00:09:03.680 They did that. Lives were saved.

00:09:06.860 And it's going to be a very tough sell to tell these people,

00:09:09.000 oh, no, no, no, there's no vaccine yet.

00:09:10.980 We've got to keep doing this and we can never get back to normal.

00:09:13.840 I went to on Sunday or Monday, whatever day it was,

00:09:17.100 a little bakery that is near my house that I love.

00:09:21.120 And they have great bread.

00:09:22.340 And I was waiting in the socially distanced line well into the parking lot to get in.

00:09:29.380 And it was a literal bread line.

00:09:31.440 You know, I've joked with my wife all the time. 0.97

00:09:33.940 The growth, everything is a bread line.

00:09:35.360 And then I realized I was in a literal bread line.

00:09:38.780 And there's a thing about communism is that it kind of sneaks up on you one way or another.

00:09:43.100 Like we're not staying in the bread line the same way that,

00:09:45.600 you know, Bernie Sanders wants everyone in the bread line.

00:09:47.660 But I was literally in line for bread.

00:09:50.180 And it was just that the metaphor was not lost on me.

00:09:53.080 And I don't think is lost on many other people.

00:09:55.340 So right now, when we have this whole thing happening in Beijing,

00:09:59.720 it's giving license to extend lockdowns anywhere and everywhere.

00:10:04.060 We saw in Canada, the border closure with the United States was extended until July 21st.

00:10:10.120 Just this morning, as a matter of fact,

00:10:11.920 Ontario extended its emergency order until the end of the month.

00:10:15.300 We've got some provinces like Alberta and BC that are moving in the right direction.

00:10:19.520 Ontario is slowly but surely moving in what I'd say the right direction.

00:10:24.480 But all of that's going to be reversed if we start seeing these flare-ups,

00:10:28.980 as they're being called, like what happened in Beijing.

00:10:32.540 So I'm going to put a little pin in this right here and say that we need to be a lot more

00:10:40.320 insistent about civil liberties being protected,

00:10:45.420 a lot more insistent about the science being followed,

00:10:47.980 and not just do what we did at the very beginning of this, myself included,

00:10:52.140 which is to say, listen, we don't know.

00:10:54.220 We have to be cautious.

00:10:55.620 Let's just assume the worst and prepare for the worst.

00:10:58.800 Now that we know more about this,

00:11:01.320 there is no excuse for following along with the worst case scenario predictions and projections

00:11:07.660 when we know those don't align with what we're actually dealing with.

00:11:11.620 We've got to take a break.

00:11:12.720 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:11:14.780 Stay tuned.

00:11:15.220 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:11:21.760 Welcome back.

00:11:22.780 The fight against racism continues.

00:11:25.600 More statues torn down.

00:11:27.880 And a little bit closer to home,

00:11:29.380 the city of Kitchener, Ontario, we're told,

00:11:32.460 is thinking of changing the name because of its sordid and racist past.

00:11:37.600 And I find this story a bit interesting for the main reason that if you read the actual CTV story

00:11:44.320 about Kitchener renewing a debate about the name change,

00:11:48.040 you'd know that they aren't actually doing anything of the sort.

00:11:53.080 So the headline of the story,

00:11:54.620 Kitchener name change debate being revisited,

00:11:57.340 starts with a Facebook post apparently from a woman of Kitchener, Jenna Thomas,

00:12:01.900 who says a lot of people aren't aware that Horatio Herbert Kitchener,

00:12:05.980 the namesake of the city of Kitchener,

00:12:08.540 was a successful British general against the indigenous forces of Africa, India,

00:12:13.720 and places like that at the time of the British Empire.

00:12:16.820 Okay, he was a military hero.

00:12:19.660 However, he was also a symbol of hate, they say.

00:12:23.940 Someone from whom everyone needs to detach because of the atrocities and yada, yada, yada.

00:12:29.220 But then you scroll down further in the story,

00:12:31.100 and a representative of the city of Kitchener says that they are not at all changing.

00:12:36.820 They have no plans to revisit their name.

00:12:40.120 They say, well, we in no way condone, diminish, or forget his actions.

00:12:43.320 Kitchener has become so much more than its historic connection to a British field marshal.

00:12:48.880 Our name is not a celebration of an individual leader's hurtful legacy.

00:12:53.480 Now, the city of Kitchener still goes down the road of talking about how he was a bad guy,

00:12:58.320 but says they're not changing it.

00:12:59.680 So the Kitchener name change debate being revisited is actually angry woman on Facebook

00:13:05.400 doesn't like Kitchener, which is not news now,

00:13:08.580 because everyone's unpleasantly against all names of everything.

00:13:12.420 Like, you cannot like something now.

00:13:14.900 I mean, does Kitchener want to go back to Berlin?

00:13:16.740 Because surely we could say Berlin may have been connected with some atrocities in the past as well.

00:13:21.600 It reminds me of that Norm Macdonald bit about Germany.

00:13:25.420 There is one country that worries me, though.

00:13:27.440 Not Iraq, not Iran, not North Korea.

00:13:30.120 The only country that really worries me is the country of Germany.

00:13:35.280 I don't know if you guys are history buffs or not, but...

00:13:38.260 And it's actually bad.

00:13:45.540 There's a Wikipedia page I came across.

00:13:47.580 List of monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests.

00:13:53.040 Now, this is something that is getting longer and longer, and it's changing by the day.

00:13:57.920 And even from when I first looked at it yesterday, it's gotten a fair bit longer.

00:14:01.400 Going around the world, United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, New Zealand, even within

00:14:06.700 the UK specifically, there's a separate page, actions against memorials in the United Kingdom

00:14:12.540 during the George Floyd protests.

00:14:14.620 So things that have been vandalized, knocked down, toppled.

00:14:18.220 But the list of monuments and memorials removed is massive.

00:14:23.100 And these are, in many cases, being moved by lawmakers or by the people that own them.

00:14:29.460 In other cases, they're just toppled.

00:14:31.580 People are pushing them down.

00:14:34.400 You know, you look at the very top of the list here.

00:14:36.380 Statue of Edward W. Carmack, toppled by protesters.

00:14:39.980 You have statue of Charles Lynn, toppled by protesters.

00:14:43.280 You have statue of Robert E. Lee at Robert E. Lee High School, toppled by protesters.

00:14:48.160 And it keeps going on.

00:14:49.160 So even things that, I mean, but you don't need to topple them as protesters because governments

00:14:53.880 are, by and large, in rapid, rapid form, taking these down themselves.

00:14:59.560 You have a whole bunch of them here that are listed.

00:15:02.860 Plans for removal by city, plans for removal by state, removal by city, and so on and so

00:15:08.240 forth.

00:15:09.340 And the point that I raised on Monday, I think bears repeating here.

00:15:12.820 Does any of this save people?

00:15:15.360 Does any of this contribute to an actual resolution that pushes racism further and further to the

00:15:22.220 past where it belongs?

00:15:23.760 And this could be applied to Quaker as well, which I don't know if you saw the news has

00:15:28.240 decided it's killing off Aunt Jemima.

00:15:30.580 So Aunt Jemima is going to be no more.

00:15:33.840 Quaker is going to change the name of this iconic pancake syrup and recognizes that it was

00:15:40.420 based on a racial stereotype.

00:15:42.340 Now, the brand has been around since the 1800s, and it's undeniably a racial stereotype, which

00:15:49.600 is why the company has, over the years, tried to amend and has amended the mascot and the

00:15:55.080 logo and the imagery to get from that, you know, minstrel character that it once was, the

00:16:00.660 mammy character, basically, to something that is just a smiling black woman. 1.00

00:16:07.640 That's the logo now.

00:16:08.800 And it was actually a black friend of mine, Stacey Washington, who kind of just said, you

00:16:12.720 know, liberals are ruining everything. 1.00

00:16:14.080 Here was a strong black woman mascot or logo, and now she is no longer. 0.83

00:16:19.900 And what Quaker has said here is that we recognize Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial

00:16:24.660 stereotype.

00:16:25.560 As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take

00:16:31.040 a look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers'

00:16:36.400 expectations.

00:16:36.980 So, I would say that, you know, from a branding perspective, yes, this probably should have

00:16:43.680 changed a while ago.

00:16:45.080 At the same time, Aunt Jemima is an iconic name.

00:16:47.460 I don't know how you replace it with something that people embrace with the same gusto they

00:16:51.440 embraced Aunt Jemima.

00:16:52.780 But at the same time, you also have to ask, why now?

00:16:56.520 Because companies like Quaker have resisted for years and years and years these same pushes,

00:17:01.720 the same arguments, the same circumstances.

00:17:03.840 This time, it's at this point where the domino effect means that no one wants to be the one

00:17:09.460 to stop it.

00:17:10.180 No one wants to be the one to say, we're not going to go along with this and go down this

00:17:14.400 road.

00:17:14.800 So, what happens?

00:17:15.760 Everyone just gives in.

00:17:16.700 And they say, you know what?

00:17:17.460 We don't want to risk the scorn of being called racist, so we'll just give in.

00:17:21.080 We'll destroy everything and move on.

00:17:23.620 Now, I wonder, why couldn't Aunt Jemima be embraced kind of like a Rosie the Riveter

00:17:28.080 type character of have a strength that comes in spite of the history rather than having

00:17:35.160 to get rid of that history?

00:17:36.800 And that's just one idea.

00:17:39.020 The point is, is that millions and millions of dollars have been made off of this brand.

00:17:43.740 And to say now, okay, we're just going to change it and move on and we recognize it's

00:17:47.340 hurtful, I think is exactly the point here.

00:17:49.760 If companies are doing the bare minimum because it gives the illusion of countering racism

00:17:56.080 when none of these things actually are creating anything positive.

00:18:00.900 And this is the point with taking down statues that we talked about on the show on Monday.

00:18:04.920 That if you destroy things and aren't interested in rebuilding something, all you're left with

00:18:09.540 as a whole, you're not left with anything constructive.

00:18:12.380 And I've got to point out one of the most inspirational stories that I've seen in the midst of all of this.

00:18:18.080 And that's Hal Johnson from Body Break, which every Canadian knows Body Break.

00:18:23.480 You were raised with it, even ones that look like me. 0.91

00:18:25.660 I may not have followed the commercials, but I saw the commercials of Hal Johnson and Joanne

00:18:30.760 McLeod.

00:18:32.000 Two people that from a young age I saw on TV.

00:18:35.060 And you know what?

00:18:35.940 The one thing that was so fascinating about it is that they never truly opened up about

00:18:40.780 their relationship.

00:18:42.500 Like they weren't open about the fact that they were married.

00:18:44.840 But I think I just, as a kid, always assumed they were a couple because they were together.

00:18:48.900 And Hal Johnson said that Body Break actually came about because of a desire to combat racism.

00:18:55.340 And he put a very evocative YouTube video out.

00:18:58.100 Let's roll that clip. 0.89

00:18:59.680 Hi, I'm Hal Johnson from Body Break.

00:19:01.220 And you normally see me giving fitness and health tips and being very positive.

00:19:04.940 And I'm going to be positive now.

00:19:06.120 But you think that Body Break was started because of fitness.

00:19:09.380 Well, it wasn't.

00:19:09.920 It was started to combat racism.

00:19:12.880 That was the number one reason that we started Body Break, Joanne and I.

00:19:16.620 It happened back in, you know, April of 1988.

00:19:20.440 And I was wanting to be a sports reporter.

00:19:22.460 And I went to TSN.

00:19:23.880 And they were very open to see me.

00:19:26.320 I went in and submitted my tape.

00:19:28.040 They loved it.

00:19:29.240 And I got hired by Jack Hutchison at 11 o'clock in the morning.

00:19:32.900 And he was very enthusiastic about me joining TSN.

00:19:36.340 At 2 o'clock that afternoon, I got a phone call.

00:19:39.300 And he said, sorry, but the higher-up said, because I'm black and they already had Mark Jones,

00:19:47.600 who's now with ESPN, has been there for many years.

00:19:50.640 Because they already have a black reporter, they don't want to have two black reporters. 0.92

00:19:55.720 Jack was almost in tears.

00:19:56.840 And he was very, very apologetic.

00:19:58.920 And I was obviously very disappointed.

00:20:01.240 The next month, I then subsequently met Joanne, which was my good fortune and my good luck.

00:20:08.080 And we started talking about doing something in television together, something fitness or

00:20:12.960 something, you know, along those lines, because Joanne's background.

00:20:17.240 But then on June 8th of 1988, I was doing a commercial.

00:20:21.820 And that commercial was at Woodbine Racetrack.

00:20:25.100 And there was three of us.

00:20:26.120 There was myself, a white young lady, and a white guy.

00:20:29.420 And we were rehearsing, cheering.

00:20:31.660 And then after about a half hour of that, just ready before we were going to shoot,

00:20:35.380 the assistant director goes to the director and says something.

00:20:38.760 And then the director tells the white guy and white girl to switch positions.

00:20:41.820 So it's myself, the white guy, and the white girl's on the end. 0.74

00:20:45.380 So at lunch, I then talked to the assistant director as we're in the buffet line.

00:20:49.620 And I just, you know, tapped him on the shoulder and asked him,

00:20:52.020 why did you switch the two of us?

00:20:53.880 And he said, well, he laughed.

00:20:55.860 He said, well, the client really didn't want you next to the white girl because,

00:21:01.000 you know, and, you know, God forbid, somebody might think you're with the white girl.

00:21:05.500 And then he chuckled and laughed and then turned.

00:21:08.020 And I didn't get mad.

00:21:10.240 I just thought about it.

00:21:11.520 My dad had always told me, never get mad at something.

00:21:14.760 Because when you get mad, you can't find a solution to it.

00:21:17.920 So that afternoon, after lunch, I took a piece of paper and I just wrote out kind of a storyboard.

00:21:23.420 And I thought, how can I change things?

00:21:26.140 How can I make that we can all live, work, and play together?

00:21:29.080 And there won't be this attitude that white and black and Asian and persons with disabilities

00:21:35.740 and male, female, we all can't be together.

00:21:38.580 So I came up with this idea, and the idea is Body Break.

00:21:42.560 And that was really the formulation of the idea.

00:21:44.820 I then took it around after Joanne and I had produced this, which we had no production background at all.

00:21:51.540 But we took this around to 42 different companies and were turned down by every one.

00:21:56.200 But then I went to TSN again, and I saw the program director this time, a different gentleman,

00:22:02.060 and he loved the show.

00:22:03.500 And I was excited.

00:22:04.400 And he said, yes, we'll take it. 0.86

00:22:07.440 However, the problem is you're black and the young lady, I remember him saying, the young lady is white.

00:22:15.040 And so we don't think the Canadian public is ready for a black and white couple together. 0.58

00:22:20.260 And so I thought about that.

00:22:22.240 And he said, if you change the person, your part, to be a white gentleman, we'll take it on the air. 0.55

00:22:30.760 Well, I went home that afternoon, and I looked at the phone and thought, who can I call, what can I do?

00:22:35.580 Who can I call, what can I do?

00:22:37.100 And after a half an hour of chanting that and looking at the phone, I yelled over to Joanne,

00:22:41.440 who does the fitness and multiculturalism for Canada?

00:22:44.860 And she said, participation.

00:22:46.980 So I then picked up the phone, called participation, had a meeting in two days,

00:22:52.000 and within a very, very short period of time, we had a contract for six episodes,

00:22:57.860 and then we subsequently did 65 for participation.

00:23:01.340 So it was without that, without that TSN spawning me to think, to go that route,

00:23:10.160 without the racism that they displayed, without the racism of June 8th of 1988

00:23:15.960 by that client at Woodbine Racetrack.

00:23:18.620 All those little things created body break, and we're happy to have hopefully given health and fitness tips

00:23:26.460 to Canadians for 32 years, but also enlightened you that we all can live, work, and play together,

00:23:33.300 regardless of our ability, disability, or skin color.

00:23:36.200 What he says there is that it wasn't about fitness, it was about combating racism.

00:23:42.180 He was turned down from a job at TSN because they already had apparently reached their black reporter quota

00:23:47.580 and they didn't need another one.

00:23:48.960 When they first pitched body break, they were told that they needed to swap him out for a white guy

00:23:53.900 because, oh, you can't have an interracial relationship on television.

00:23:57.700 And what they did, Hal and Joanne, is fought racism the best way they could

00:24:03.600 by modeling an interracial couple on TV.

00:24:08.060 By showing, hey, this is something we're going to normalize,

00:24:10.540 this is something we're going to make so it's not controversial,

00:24:14.260 and this is something that we're going to put on TV so that people see it

00:24:17.640 and so that no one is ever going to say, oh, no, we can't do that.

00:24:21.040 And TSN has apologized.

00:24:22.640 They put out a statement saying they're sorry for this, you know,

00:24:26.500 really horrific chapter of their history.

00:24:28.720 The irony is that TSN actually played body break spots,

00:24:32.280 even in spite of what it had done and said to Hal Johnson

00:24:36.020 when the idea first went to them.

00:24:38.280 But Hal said he doesn't hold any grudges.

00:24:41.320 His point was that he wanted to fix something,

00:24:43.620 and he said a lot of companies would be very risk-averse

00:24:46.340 because they know their audiences are mostly white,

00:24:48.420 so they have to just, you know, stick to what they know.

00:24:50.500 And it was moving because, first off, I mean,

00:24:53.980 it's not something I'd ever considered.

00:24:55.440 The past he had, the history he had,

00:24:57.140 I just thought they were two people that loved fitness.

00:24:59.640 And when I saw them on Amazing Race Canada,

00:25:01.640 they were exactly the couple that, you know,

00:25:03.680 I always thought they were as long as I knew they were a couple,

00:25:06.660 which is just a, you know, a fun, really good team.

00:25:09.480 And the thing about it, though, is to learn about what went behind,

00:25:12.760 what went on behind the scenes here.

00:25:14.860 They said we're going to fight it just by being us

00:25:17.780 and by creating something, creating something positive,

00:25:22.320 creating something constructive.

00:25:24.260 And it's not as flashy as a statue toppling,

00:25:28.820 but it's also a heck of a lot more long-lasting.

00:25:31.520 They're more interested in building statues to good things

00:25:34.180 than taking down statues of bad things.

00:25:37.600 And to see that clip go viral, I think,

00:25:40.340 is a great example of how successful they were.

00:25:44.520 And it's not to say that they solved all the problems of the world.

00:25:47.140 It's not to say that they solved racism in television or racism in Canada,

00:25:50.920 but they did their part and they started to be part of the solution,

00:25:54.600 which is something that everyone needs to do.

00:25:56.980 It's not enough just to identify problems and complain about this,

00:26:00.800 complain about that. 0.89

00:26:01.680 What are you doing to solve them in a long-lasting way?

00:26:05.920 And a huge, huge, huge gratitude for Hal and Joanne for doing that,

00:26:10.140 not just on fitness and obesity and health and well-being,

00:26:13.400 but on racism, which I don't think anyone knew necessarily was part of their mission,

00:26:19.180 and we know was.

00:26:20.620 Well, we've got to take a break.

00:26:21.520 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:26:23.580 Stay tuned.

00:26:25.360 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:26:27.980 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show as we close things out for this edition of the program here.

00:26:35.140 We've all been here, by the way.

00:26:36.920 We can all relate to this.

00:26:37.960 A man with horse and buggy furious after being refused service at the KFC drive-thru.

00:26:43.120 He did what we've all done at some point in the day,

00:26:45.580 this man from Carlisle, Cumbria.

00:26:48.120 And he took his horse-drawn buggy through the drive-thru at Kentucky Fried Chicken,

00:26:52.880 and they wouldn't even let him into the drive-thru.

00:26:55.700 They said, you know, we can't serve you here, automobiles only.

00:26:59.180 Ian Bell said he felt absolutely humiliated by it,

00:27:03.160 so he went to get a Big Mac instead.

00:27:05.560 And evidently, McDonald's does not care about whether you take a horse through the drive-thru.

00:27:10.300 They'll serve anyone.

00:27:11.340 So, you know, it's not the horse-drawn buggy that I find hilarious.

00:27:15.700 It's like the feigned outrage of, you know, just being so humiliated by it.

00:27:19.120 I've seen people walk through drive-thrus because they don't have a car,

00:27:22.060 and I'm just waiting for, like, a discrimination case to be filed against,

00:27:25.620 you know, discriminating against those without driver's licenses once one of them is turned down,

00:27:31.240 especially now that we're living in an era where all of the dining rooms of these places are closed down.

00:27:36.220 So the drive-thrus, for some cases, have been the only way to get there,

00:27:41.080 the only way to pick up something.

00:27:42.300 So if you're craving a Big Mac or a bucket of KFC and all you got is a horse,

00:27:47.440 I don't know how they can tell you otherwise.

00:27:49.820 Let's spend a couple of moments here, if we can, on the developments in the conservative leadership race.

00:27:55.180 So today, we have the first of the debates of the leadership candidates,

00:28:00.300 the four verified candidates, Leslyn Lewis, Derek Sloan, Peter McKay, and Aaron O'Toole.

00:28:06.400 In French, tomorrow, they're debating in English.

00:28:09.120 And after that, that's pretty much it.

00:28:11.400 It's not like the last leadership race where you had a bunch of debates across the country.

00:28:15.660 In this case, because of the pandemic, all of their campaigns have been done remotely.

00:28:22.020 But this is going to be, I think, a very underwhelming event.

00:28:27.240 And I'm going to be watching it.

00:28:28.240 I'm going to be live tweeting it.

00:28:29.400 Don't worry.

00:28:29.920 I'll do the dirty work so you don't have to, which is, you know, watching politicians talk to each other.

00:28:34.800 I've interviewed three of the four candidates.

00:28:37.880 And I would encourage you to go back and take a look at these interviews,

00:28:41.460 Leslyn Lewis, Aaron O'Toole, and Derek Sloan.

00:28:44.400 We also interviewed a couple of the others who didn't make the final ballot.

00:28:48.460 The one who we didn't interview is not for lack of trying, and that's Peter McKay,

00:28:52.400 whose campaign ignored every single one of our interview requests.

00:28:56.860 Not even so much as, sorry, we can't do this.

00:28:59.500 They ignored every single one.

00:29:01.740 I've had people saying, oh, you know, why are you shilling for so-and-so by not interviewing McKay?

00:29:05.980 And I say, well, the question is, why is McKay not interested in talking to independent media?

00:29:11.000 That's the question that I've put to them and still didn't get an answer.

00:29:14.600 So I would only base what I think of the candidates on the conversations that I've had.

00:29:20.100 If you're not interested in sitting down and talking to your base, then, you know, quite frankly,

00:29:24.580 I don't really care what you have to say.

00:29:26.060 But the whole narrative that we've seen form is that Peter McKay is headed towards a coronation.

00:29:33.640 Aaron O'Toole is the true blue conservative.

00:29:36.240 Derek Sloan thinks that none of them are true blue, and he's true blue.

00:29:39.520 And Leslyn Lewis thinks it's time for something different.

00:29:41.980 That's, you know, if I just distill everything down to a single soundbite that is being framed

00:29:48.720 as far as the narrative goes, that's what I would say.

00:29:50.900 Anyway, now, I will say, and I know I have to be very careful here, because I know that

00:29:56.300 people have very strong feelings about all of them, that I was waiting and hoping for

00:30:00.960 someone to just completely, 100% knock my socks off and wow me.

00:30:04.860 It didn't happen.

00:30:05.860 So with all of the candidates, you know, I kind of feel, well, I don't like about this,

00:30:10.340 but I like this.

00:30:11.080 And I don't like this, but I like this.

00:30:12.920 I'm going to have a lot more of a detailed analysis next week, because I wanted to wait

00:30:19.040 until after the debates to really say, okay, this is what I think.

00:30:22.640 And I don't think I'm actually going to do an endorsement, but I am going to talk a little

00:30:25.980 bit more in detail about who I think is probably more likely to give the conservatives what they

00:30:31.440 need moving forward.

00:30:33.200 But the reason I bring it up now is because everyone has to be very careful about the idea

00:30:40.260 of letting identity politics seep into the discussion here.

00:30:45.500 And this is something that came up when I was speaking to Leslyn Lewis, where Leslyn Lewis

00:30:50.420 had said that the conservatives have a diversity problem, which you can agree or disagree with.

00:30:55.240 But a lot of people wrote to me saying they weren't pleased with that because the conservatives

00:31:00.380 have always been the ones pushing back against these identity focused narratives.

00:31:05.600 And what Leslyn Lewis had said was that it's not about identity politics.

00:31:08.840 It's just about understanding that a party needs to reflect the country it wants to govern.

00:31:13.340 So that was the response that she had given.

00:31:16.520 However, her campaign also did a poll just last week or two weeks ago that I found very

00:31:23.240 disingenuous.

00:31:24.300 They polled a bunch of Canadians on the idea of what type of leader they would want leading

00:31:31.720 them.

00:31:31.960 And it listed just a few things about them.

00:31:35.040 And in that was sex and race.

00:31:38.720 And it was, do you want a former cabinet minister who's a non-minority male?

00:31:43.780 Do you want an MP who's a non-minority male?

00:31:46.760 Do you want a PhD holding minority woman lawyer? 0.97

00:31:51.060 And at the end of it, they said, oh, well, you know, 50% of Canadians or 46% of Canadians

00:31:55.300 said they want Leslyn Lewis because they picked her resume out of the four resumes they were

00:32:00.420 given.

00:32:00.920 And it had nothing to do with policies.

00:32:02.820 It had nothing to do with platform.

00:32:04.220 It had nothing to do with vision for the country.

00:32:06.500 It had nothing to do with personal capability or competence.

00:32:09.580 It was, we gave you just a few random details.

00:32:12.460 And we listed these three are white men.

00:32:14.900 One's a minority female.

00:32:16.040 And oh, Canadians said they wanted the minority female. 0.95

00:32:18.860 And I think this was something that I have issues with because Leslyn Lewis is a heck of 0.99

00:32:24.320 a lot more than a minority female. 0.90

00:32:26.200 She's very well educated.

00:32:27.400 She's very smart.

00:32:28.240 But to have this poll and to suggest that it means anything at all, I felt was insulting

00:32:35.280 to the people that Leslyn Lewis is trying to get to vote for her.

00:32:39.840 And to say that, you know, we just need to resort to tokenism, which is really how this 0.67

00:32:44.360 poll came off, I thought was ridiculous.

00:32:47.400 And the reason I'm picking on that particular poll is because I felt that that was probably

00:32:53.520 a very dangerous reflection of one thing that I've seen a lot of people say, which is that,

00:32:59.900 oh, we need to choose who we're going to have lead us based on how it will look to the media.

00:33:04.960 And I'm not just talking about identity politics.

00:33:07.120 I'm talking about in general here now, how people tend to view which foot to put forward,

00:33:12.460 not based on what's right or what's sensible or what's smart, but based on how the media

00:33:17.840 is going to respond.

00:33:20.120 And that's the problem with this idea of, oh, you have to have broad appeal.

00:33:25.220 You have to have, you know, a range of appeal that you give to voters.

00:33:29.600 And this is what Peter McKay's campaign has been saying, that he's the only one that could

00:33:33.520 beat Justin Trudeau.

00:33:34.600 And, you know, we need a sensible, modern, moderate conservative and all this sort of stuff.

00:33:39.040 That's what a lot of his surrogates are saying.

00:33:40.980 And the danger of that is that we have gone down this road before.

00:33:47.780 We've gone down this road before.

00:33:49.260 Andrew Scheer, who I like personally, who I've always gotten along with personally, who

00:33:53.600 I know is a solid conservative, did not run a conservative campaign by any stretch.

00:33:58.620 He went to the most basic of issues of just, you know, pocketbook politics, shied away from

00:34:04.540 a lot of the so-called hardline conservative issues.

00:34:07.400 And as a result, where did it get him?

00:34:08.900 He increased his vote count, but he lost.

00:34:11.000 He lost and lost in such a way that he didn't even get to stay on as leader, that the knives

00:34:15.280 were out for him from his own party.

00:34:17.440 People saying that he was too conservative and not conservative enough.

00:34:21.220 So at the end of it, Andrew Scheer didn't even have the support of either the red Tory

00:34:25.220 or the blue Tory faction of the party.

00:34:27.840 So when you take that to the current race, we don't have the benefit the conservatives had

00:34:33.700 in 2017, which was like 13, 14 candidates to choose from, where you had everyone from

00:34:39.000 Lisa Raitt to Kevin O'Leary, from Rick Peterson to Deepak O'Brien.

00:34:43.060 May he rest in peace.

00:34:43.900 We don't have those options right now for Kennedy.

00:34:46.580 You've got four.

00:34:47.640 You've got four people, which means that the idea of finding someone who checks off every

00:34:52.080 single one of your boxes is probably not going to be there.

00:34:55.680 You have to choose who do you think is the best within that.

00:34:58.420 And it's a ranked ballot.

00:34:59.720 So given that you have two people that are very directly appealing to social conservatives,

00:35:04.420 Derek Sloan and Leslyn Lewis, and one who's trying to appeal himself as the second

00:35:09.160 choice for social conservatives, Aaron O'Toole, if Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan do very well,

00:35:15.120 Aaron O'Toole will win.

00:35:16.660 I'm convinced that Peter McKay needs to win on the first ballot if he is to have any hope

00:35:21.540 of actually emerging the victor of this race overall.

00:35:25.120 But again, he also, I'm seeing from a lot of people who are fond of Peter McKay, not just

00:35:31.320 Atlantic Canadians and Quebecers, but people from other parts of the country as well.

00:35:36.300 The number of MPs that he has endorsing him, of MPs that I'm like, you're not a PC red 1.00

00:35:41.200 Tory type.

00:35:42.120 But I think that a lot of them believed that they had to hitch their trailer to what they

00:35:48.020 thought was the winning campaign.

00:35:49.280 And I think early on, everyone thought it was going to be a lot more clear of a coronation,

00:35:54.240 which I don't think is happening right now.

00:35:56.840 So all of this is to say, here's what I'm looking for in the debates.

00:36:01.080 And here's what I think conservatives with a small c, ideological conservatives need to

00:36:05.960 look for.

00:36:06.460 Someone who is going to be conservative, but not just speak in soundbites.

00:36:11.080 Someone who's going to articulate what conservatism actually means, how it applies to Canada,

00:36:17.060 and more importantly, how to sell it.

00:36:19.560 Because I do believe that there is an issue in Canada, not that the message that conservatives

00:36:24.840 sell is wrong, but that they have not done a good job ever of selling it.

00:36:29.640 And they shy away from it.

00:36:31.020 They hide from it.

00:36:31.680 They don't want to talk about these things.

00:36:33.300 In leadership races, everyone's all about, okay, defund the CBC and stand up for free speech.

00:36:38.580 And then in general elections, everyone's all about, well, the marginal tax rate, you know,

00:36:43.320 we move it down half a percent.

00:36:44.640 And then this tax credit and that tax credit.

00:36:46.600 I'm like, no, we need fire breathers.

00:36:48.860 If we've learned nothing else from the United States in 2016, it is that we need fire breathers

00:36:53.840 in politics in Canada.

00:36:55.480 And that means that you need to have actual fire that you're breathing and you need to

00:36:59.880 have actual breath to breathe it.

00:37:01.820 And sometimes you get neither.

00:37:03.700 Sometimes you get one or the other.

00:37:05.000 We need both.

00:37:05.620 We need a message that's worth, you know, shouting from the rooftops.

00:37:09.420 And we need someone who's prepared to shout it and actually sell it and not shy away

00:37:13.380 at the first sign of backlash, which, you know, is going to come no matter what.

00:37:17.980 I mean, even if Peter McKay, who's the former leader of the progressive conservatives, who's

00:37:22.360 a moderate red Tory guy, even if Peter McKay wins, you know, he's going to be like, you

00:37:27.160 know, the worst, most evil hard line right winger ever to the media anyway, regardless of

00:37:32.880 whether he is or not.

00:37:33.780 So if you're going to get tarnished for being that, I'd rather have someone who's actually

00:37:37.200 open to being that if that's who they are.

00:37:39.800 And authenticity is a key factor here as well.

00:37:42.860 So do watch the debate.

00:37:44.440 Do let me know what you think of it.

00:37:45.480 And if you don't want to watch it, I'll be tweeting it at Andrew Lawton.

00:37:49.060 We've got to wrap things up.

00:37:51.140 My thanks to all of you for tuning in.

00:37:53.040 We'll talk to you next week.

00:37:54.180 More of the Andrew Lawton Show then.

00:37:55.680 Thank you.

00:37:56.180 God bless.

00:37:56.760 And good day, Canada.

00:37:57.980 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:37:59.780 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:38:07.200 www.tnc.news.com

Juno News - June 17, 2020

The Never-Ending Lockdown

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