Juno News - The top stories of 2019 that will be relevant in 2020

00:00:00.000 Sometimes when you do a year-in-review conversation it takes a while to actually

00:00:09.720 stop and think and look back and go yeah what were the big issues of the year

00:00:13.560 before here we are in December and then you look back to January and you're

00:00:16.400 scratching and you go what was big in January and then you go back and you

00:00:19.620 read your old columns and you go oh yeah that thing I totally forgot about all

00:00:23.640 that yeah huge story not happening anymore right now but yeah funny when it

00:00:27.960 happened no that's not what's going on in 2019 because when you think about the

00:00:32.680 stories that are big right now well some of them were big back then in

00:00:36.960 January as well that's a very interesting thing about 2019 the top public policy

00:00:42.240 stories the top politics stories were constant throughout the year and they

00:00:47.880 haven't even gone away let's talk about the first one the China file wasn't the

00:00:52.980 beginning of 2019 it was the very end of 2018 in December 2018 when we arrested

00:00:57.580 Huawei CFO Meng Wang Zhu at the behest of the United States ten days later they

00:01:02.140 detained Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor who are still languishing away in that

00:01:06.680 jail cell we're told that they're going to move towards a more formal process now

00:01:09.800 in the court system and that sounds initially like it's good for them but it

00:01:13.420 could not be good based on the way that the Chinese justice system is not arm's 0.96

00:01:17.800 length from government it is not a case of lady justice being blind and this could 1.00

00:01:22.420 end up being even worse for them as they proceed along here then we watch China ban a 0.92

00:01:27.220 number of our products we've watched their ambassadors say really incendiary

00:01:31.180 things to us and we've just continued to take it and do little in response China

00:01:36.520 said if you ban Huawei there's gonna be repercussions for you I think this is such

00:01:40.840 a bizarre thing to say it's supposedly a private company in China why does the

00:01:45.680 government care so much about it I mean Canada does have various different trade

00:01:49.900 ambassadors and envoys and consultants who work in the Canadian government and help

00:01:54.100 Canadian firms get contracts abroad so they would of course prefer that Canadian 1.00

00:01:58.540 companies do well in other countries but you don't have Prime Minister Justin

00:02:01.540 Trudeau standing up for entire companies threatening countries and

00:02:05.920 threatening others over the care for one company you've got to wonder what is it

00:02:10.540 about Huawei that they want it so much into our 5g grid system and why can't

00:02:15.700 Justin Trudeau just say those two simple words ban it it's not that hard moving on to our

00:02:22.060 next story that was a top story all throughout 2019 I realized I slipped up

00:02:27.460 a few seconds ago and I said oh it's not like Justin Trudeau is willing to risk

00:02:30.760 everything for one single Canadian corporation oh yes he was lav scam SNC

00:02:37.240 Lavalin story that was huge pretty much all throughout 2019 it had a few quiet

00:02:42.220 moments but it really ramped up at different times back in February Justin Trudeau well

00:02:48.280 he said the story is false as reported fake news didn't happen the allegations

00:02:53.860 that he improperly pressured the justice minister into offering this deferred

00:02:58.900 prosecution agreement for SNC Lavalin so they could pretty much walk from

00:03:02.980 facing these these criminal charges criminal prosecution being found guilty

00:03:07.960 meaning they would be barred from federal contracts for a number of years they

00:03:11.320 really didn't want that at all Justin Trudeau said it's all about the jobs and

00:03:15.940 later reporting found out that they're not at risk of taking 5,000 jobs out of

00:03:20.020 this country the CEO himself had said that wasn't the case and Trudeau really

00:03:25.480 lost a lot of political capital there a lot of accusations that he was a fake

00:03:29.500 feminist for his treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott a lot

00:03:34.180 of people saying is this just like that the liberal old guard and the

00:03:36.920 sponsorship scandal stuff way too close to a Quebec company where it seemed like you

00:03:42.160 know there's sometimes jokes like Bombardier which gets a lot of

00:03:45.040 government handouts you kind of joke and you say it's like Bombardier is a is a

00:03:48.400 branch of the Canadian government it's like SNC Lavalin is a branch of the

00:03:51.820 Canadian government but then when you look at lab scam and you think well it's

00:03:54.880 almost more like the Canadian government is a branch of SNC Lavalin when you look

00:03:59.500 at the connections there and who it seems to be the one calling the shots and

00:04:03.940 who's doing who's bidding Trudeau almost willing to risk everything was with his

00:04:08.160 political career to do their bidding the other third story top story of the year this

00:04:13.760 one it wasn't big throughout the year it was big for a brief period of time but it's something

00:04:18.800 that is gonna stick in people's imaginations this is a story you're not gonna forget which

00:04:23.520 is the blackface photos emerging and it was just so so rich and so ironic that a man who 0.99

00:04:31.920 had spent his entire tenure basically tisk tisking this country for being a country of ill intent and

00:04:40.080 rooted in racism and intolerance and so forth pointing a finger at so many people in this good

00:04:45.760 country who I would say are fair-minded and reasonable people Trudeau points the finger at

00:04:50.000 all of those people were they exposed as people who had a near decade-long history of putting in blackface

00:04:57.840 not when they were 12 years old or 17 years old when whatever people make mistakes but when he was

00:05:03.440 in his 20s when he was an adult male and already facing some scrutiny in the limelight now he was

00:05:09.760 the one Justin Trudeau was the one who donned the blackface on so many occasions that he could not 0.74

00:05:16.000 actually remember how many times he had done it well he somewhat persevered there on election day being

00:05:22.240 re-elected at least with a minority it shows that I guess he benefits from a from a sort of double

00:05:27.600 standard that few other people would benefit from but that's a story that uh well people are not going

00:05:34.480 to forget some big top stories there in 2019 what a year

Juno News - December 26, 2019

The top stories of 2019 that will be relevant in 2020

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