Juno News - December 30, 2020


The Top Canadian Stories of 2020

Mentioned
George Floyd Sophie Gregoire Trudeau Durham MP Erin O'Toole Justin Trudeau Derek Chauvin Bill Morneau Leslyn Lewis Theresa Tam Peter McKay Derek Sloan Craig Kielberger Michael Kovrig Andrew Scheer Jason Kenney Michael Spavor Javad Zarif Patty Hajdu Jay Hill Alexandre COVID-19 and 6 more
Are religious services an essential service？ The Year of the Hypocrite

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

153.85

Word count

1,735

Sentence count

84

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

2019 was a big year in Canada, and it wasn't even the end of the year! On January 8th, a plane carrying Canadian citizens to Ukraine was shot down by Iran, and the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is still investigating the cause of the crash. Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic was declared a pandemic, and Canada shut down the border to non-essential travel.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. Well, we've made it to the end of the year, which means it is time for True North's
00:00:09.320 top 10 stories that defined 2020, in a more or less chronological order. So let's jump right in.
00:00:16.920 At number 10, we have Ukraine International Airlines flight shot down by Iran. On January
00:00:22.500 8th, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines flight 752, an airliner leaving from Tehran, Iran to
00:00:29.660 Kiev, Ukraine, was shot down by Iranian surface-to-air missiles minutes after takeoff.
00:00:35.640 Of the 176 passengers and crew members on board, 138 had ties to Canada. The Islamic Republic of
00:00:43.200 Iran initially tried to cover up their wrongdoing by blaming the explosion on engine troubles and
00:00:48.280 mechanical failure, but eventually they had to admit to firing the missiles. Though Iran has shut
00:00:53.960 Canada out of the official investigation into this tragedy, the Canadian government is still looking
00:00:58.640 into the full series of events. About one month after the deadly plane crash occurred, Justin Trudeau
00:01:04.840 was criticized for amicably shaking hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
00:01:11.040 At number 9, blockades and protests break out in the name of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation.
00:01:16.980 From January to March, climate protesters were occupying ports and railways nationwide to signal
00:01:22.800 opposition to the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline in Northern BC. These protesters claimed they wanted
00:01:28.920 to shut down Canada. They halted hundreds of trains and delayed the transport of cargo nationwide.
00:01:35.480 Dozens of arrests were made. The protesters were apparently acting in support of a handful of
00:01:40.400 Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs who disputed the construction of the pipeline on their territory.
00:01:45.460 But the elected Wet'suwet'en chiefs and the other hereditary chiefs approved of the project,
00:01:50.460 so it was only a handful of hereditary chiefs who didn't approve. In May, the Trudeau government
00:01:55.240 quietly made a deal with the hereditary chiefs to the exclusion of the elected ones. The agreement
00:02:01.840 gives the hereditary chiefs sweeping powers over natural resource development. Construction work
00:02:07.940 on the LNG pipeline continues, but the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs applied to have Coastal GasLink's
00:02:13.180 Environmental Assessment Certificate terminated, and a judicial review decision is pending from the BC
00:02:18.900 Supreme Court. At number eight, COVID-19 is declared a pandemic. This year, social distancing
00:02:25.400 became part of our daily vocabulary. Our provincial and federal public health officers became household
00:02:31.320 names, and if you didn't have a Zoom account before, you probably have one now. That's because
00:02:36.480 on March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the outbreak of the coronavirus
00:02:41.760 was officially a pandemic. This threat to our health, along with the ensuing government-mandated
00:02:47.660 lockdowns and mandatory mask policies, have defined the year 2020 more than anything else.
00:02:53.740 Small businesses have been permanently shutting down as a result of the lockdowns, there have been
00:02:58.300 mass job losses and layoffs, and mental health is at an all-time low. Children and youth have had
00:03:03.820 educational and extracurricular opportunities taken from them, domestic abuse rates and alcoholism are
00:03:09.660 increasing, and thousands of elective surgeries were cancelled or postponed in the name of
00:03:14.380 keeping hospitals open for COVID-19 patients that, for the most part, didn't come. For the first three
00:03:20.680 weeks of the pandemic, Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, was advising against wearing
00:03:26.300 masks, but she flip-flopped in April, and in the coming months, masks actually became mandatory across 0.97
00:03:32.160 Canada. In addition, Liberal Health Minister Patty Hajdu claimed in the early weeks of the pandemic that border
00:03:38.660 closures would be ineffective at slowing the spread of the virus. But days later after saying that, the
00:03:45.300 Liberal government announced that it was restricting international flights, and on March 17th, Canada
00:03:50.900 and the U.S. reached a mutual agreement to close their land borders to non-essential travel, and the border
00:03:57.480 has remained closed ever since. At number seven, another Trudeau government ethics scandal. In April, the Trudeau
00:04:05.120 Liberals announced a new $912 million Canada Student Service Grant program that would reimburse youth for
00:04:12.720 volunteer work performed during the pandemic. WE Charity, an organization founded by Mark and Craig Kielberger,
00:04:20.000 was announced as the recipient of the no-bid contract to administer the program. Serious concerns of cronyism were
00:04:28.320 raised when the public realized Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the PM's wife, hosts a podcast with WE,
00:04:34.960 and Justin Trudeau's mother Margaret and his brother Alexandre have received thousands of dollars in
00:04:40.720 speaking fees and expenses from WE. In addition, Finance Minister Bill Morneau had received a complimentary
00:04:47.600 family trip from WE, and two of his daughters are tied with the organization. In light of this information,
00:04:53.440 the WE contract was cancelled and the organization has fallen from grace, Morneau resigned as finance
00:04:59.120 minister, and Trudeau is currently under investigation by the ethics commissioner in what is his third
00:05:05.200 ethics investigation. Or at least I think it's the third. I've kind of lost count. Number six,
00:05:11.120 separatist sentiment is on the rise in the West. In the months after the October 2019 federal election,
00:05:18.000 separatist sentiment began brewing in Alberta and Saskatchewan, as many in these two western
00:05:23.600 provinces became fed up with the undercutting of the oil and gas industry by the Trudeau Liberals.
00:05:29.120 Alberta is the epicenter of Canadian industry, but because of the equalization payment system,
00:05:34.240 the fruits of Albertan labor are sent off eastward, as Alberta itself slips into economic distress and a
00:05:40.720 hostile job market. As the federal government makes vague claims of transitioning to a green economy and
00:05:46.800 moving towards clean energy, Albertans and Saskatchewanians are left wondering what will become of them.
00:05:52.880 The WEGZIT movement has more support than you might think. Former Conservative MP Jay Hill founded
00:05:58.240 political party WEGZIT Canada, now known as the Maverick Party, in January 2020, and a February 2020 poll
00:06:05.920 found that 78% of Alberta and Saskatchewan residents believe Ottawa has lost touch with average people from
00:06:12.720 the two provinces. In addition, according to a survey conducted by the Western Standard in May,
00:06:18.320 41% of Albertans stated they would either definitely or probably vote to secede if presented
00:06:24.480 with a referendum. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced that in October 2021, the province will
00:06:30.240 be holding a referendum to scrap equalization from the constitution. Number five, Black Lives Matter
00:06:36.800 protests take place across Canada. On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis man George Floyd tragically died during
00:06:44.000 a confrontation with a police officer. After Floyd allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill at a nearby
00:06:50.320 convenience store, he was arrested by Officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd's neck to restrain him.
00:06:57.760 Floyd's heart stopped due to the neck compression and the fentanyl in his system, and his death was ruled a homicide.
00:07:04.320 Because Floyd was a black man and Chauvin is white, Black Lives Matter protests consisting of hundreds
00:07:10.560 and often thousands of people broke out internationally in the following months, and calls to defund the police
00:07:16.960 became almost mainstream. While protests in the US frequently involved violence, looting, and assault,
00:07:23.520 protests in Canada were mostly peaceful with the exception of some assault and looting in Montreal.
00:07:28.960 At a June Black Lives Matter demonstration in Ottawa, Justin Trudeau kneeled in solidarity
00:07:34.240 with the estimated 4,000 protesters in attendance, even though pandemic-related social gathering measures
00:07:40.480 were in place. Canada's chief public health officer, Dr Theresa Tam, said that the protests were fine,
00:07:46.880 so long as no one yells.
00:07:48.960 One thing that people may want to consider is that, of course, wearing a mask is important, but shouting and
00:07:56.240 making really loud projections can potentially increase the risk.
00:08:03.040 At number four, Erin O'Toole elected new leader of the Conservatives.
00:08:07.600 At approximately one o'clock in the morning on August 24th, 2020, after voting machine glitches
00:08:13.280 delayed the Conservative Party leadership race ballot count by several hours, Durham MP Erin O'Toole was
00:08:19.120 elected leader of the official opposition. O'Toole, who replaced former CPC leader Andrew Scheer,
00:08:25.360 ran a true blue campaign and ran against rivals Peter McKay, Leslyn Lewis, and Derek Sloan.
00:08:31.200 Since the race, former MP Peter McKay has re-exited the political scene,
00:08:35.440 lawyer Leslyn Lewis announced she will be running to be MP for Haldeman Norfolk,
00:08:40.240 and Derek Sloan continues to serve as MP for Hastings, Lennox, and Addington.
00:08:45.280 Number three, the opioid crisis worsened. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated Canada's opioid crisis.
00:08:52.400 From April to June 2020, there were 1,628 opioid-related deaths nationwide. This represents
00:08:59.600 the highest quarterly count since 2016, which is the year data collection began on this issue.
00:09:05.360 77% of opioid toxicity victims are male. In British Columbia, there were over 100 overdose deaths
00:09:12.240 each month from March to August 2020. And as for Alberta, 2020 will be the worst year on record
00:09:18.880 for opioid overdoses. Between January and October, the province recorded 904 overdose deaths. And on
00:09:26.080 December 23rd, the number of COVID-19 deaths in Alberta was 890.
00:09:31.760 2. Canada-China relations remain baffling. In December, Rebel News broke the story that the
00:09:37.680 Canadian military was providing training to China's People's Liberation Army in 2019. Even as China was
00:09:44.720 holding, and continues to hold, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spav were captive on trumped-up
00:09:50.960 charges of espionage. In addition, Chinese generals attended special programming at Canadian Forces
00:09:57.200 College in Toronto, and People's Liberation Army soldiers observed cold-weather training exercises at the
00:10:03.920 Canadian Forces base in Petawawa in 2018. The two Michaels have now been detained in China for over
00:10:10.000 two years. The communist regime in China is also currently suppressing the rights of its Uyghur Muslim
00:10:15.280 population through forced sterilization, re-education camps, and internment centers.
00:10:21.520 And at number one, the COVID-19 vaccine arrives in Canada. As we approach the end of the year,
00:10:27.920 everyone is talking about the COVID-19 vaccine, of which the first batch arrived in Canada in December.
00:10:33.280 The vaccines, which are being developed by pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna,
00:10:38.000 are controversial because they were produced so quickly, and there are concerns that getting
00:10:42.320 inoculated may become mandatory if you want to take commercial flights, enroll your children in
00:10:48.080 certain educational or extracurricular programs, or enter some private businesses. While many are
00:10:53.360 excited to get the shot and think it'll make life normal again, others wonder why we need mass
00:10:58.800 vaccination for a virus with such a high recovery rate. Well, that was the year 2020 in Canadian news.
00:11:06.000 I'm Lindsay Shepard with TrueNorth, and I'm excited to see what 2021 has in store for us.
00:11:10.720 And here at TrueNorth, we will keep bringing you top-notch commentary and coverage. So with that, happy new year.