Juno News - Toronto police apologize for serving coffee to anti-Israel protesters

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:16.160 this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true north

00:01:20.680 hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here kicking

00:01:29.960 off another week in 2024 it is monday january 8th and boy is it an absolute pleasure to see you i

00:01:37.600 mean i can't see you but i am looking into a camera and i'm just picturing all of you behind it

00:01:42.840 uh just beaming back or going about your day wondering why i'm blathering on still nevertheless

00:01:47.240 we are just kicking things off here and it's going to be a great show i hope uh this is going to be

00:01:52.260 our last week before we take the show on the road to the swiss alps now you may remember we've done

00:01:59.820 this a couple of times now and the the well the why i'll tell you a couple of things here we're

00:02:05.560 going to davos switzerland which is uh in the swiss alps is where all the billionaires and

00:02:12.320 gajillionaires gajillionaires is once you convert it to canadian dollars uh cavort and plot world

00:02:18.280 domination and all that stuff it's not quite as sinister or dramatic as that but you do see a lot

00:02:23.680 of plotting and scheming there namely for ways to get you to live with less to forgo your cars

00:02:30.480 well all of the people then get on their private jets and go back because they play by different

00:02:36.320 rules than we do so that is what we're going to be doing next week the world economic forum's

00:02:41.220 2024 annual meeting is here and as i mentioned i can't remember if i mentioned it last week or not

00:02:47.220 but i'll tell you anyway we're going with a larger team this year so sean and i are going to be

00:02:53.140 going again he came with me last time uh the first time i i just went alone so we like keep

00:02:58.980 adding more people each time uh this occasion we'll see my colleague true north journalist

00:03:05.220 cosmon georgia also there and the reason is because there's been such an insatiable demand

00:03:11.700 for world economic forum coverage from the true north audience i've had a number of people that

00:03:16.260 have emailed me and said i've donated specifically to this coverage of yours so we will hopefully do

00:03:22.180 you all justice but what i wanted to share about this on this particular occasion with you

00:03:27.860 is that the world economic forum does not want us there at all so in 2022 the first time we went

00:03:36.900 there we we tried to do things properly we reached out months and months ahead of time to their media

00:03:41.700 relations folks and said hey we we'd love to be there and cover it and we'll behave and all that

00:03:46.420 and no response whatsoever we try to try to try and we went anyway because i've as you know i've

00:03:52.020 never let not being accredited get in the way of going and doing my job and one particular gentleman

00:03:57.860 i spoke to there from the world economic forum i had reached out to me after the words and he said

00:04:02.660 listen next time if you have trouble getting accredited email me directly so i did and to his

00:04:09.220 credit he made good on his offer and last time we went with accreditation i didn't have one i should

00:04:14.100 have pulled out the badge i didn't have one of those nifty white badges that means i'm a global

00:04:17.940 elite. The white badge with the blue line, by the way, if you're just a white badge, it means you're

00:04:22.340 the spouse of a global elite. So you're still important, but not that important enough. The

00:04:27.380 horrendous grammar of that sentence. But I got my little lowly media badge, which at least let me

00:04:33.320 get inside and let me score a couple more of those gourmet hot chocolates you heard me raving about

00:04:38.020 last time. And so be it. But here's the thing. Much of what we saw with the media badge was really

00:04:45.340 not that different from what we had on the outside. We were still finding the best place

00:04:50.480 to get a hold of people was on their way into security outside of the secure zone.

00:04:55.700 There are only a few corridors that most people come and go through during the day and during the

00:05:00.920 week. We also found that even when you get into the secure area, there are a lot of buildings you

00:05:08.140 can't go to unless you have a white badge. So the main conference center where all the events are

00:05:13.920 happening, we couldn't go to unless we had advanced permission. And they would only give

00:05:17.920 you advanced permission for like some weird chunk of the day. So I had like a 45 minute period where

00:05:23.320 I was allowed to walk around and it was a busy 45 minute period. I spoke to the king of the

00:05:28.460 Belgians. I spoke to the president of Serbia. I spoke to the president of Kosovo. They were

00:05:32.700 obviously on opposite sides of the room, chatted with the president of Lego, who did not want to

00:05:37.980 talk about plastics bans because I was curious what that would mean for him. But nevertheless,

00:05:42.840 Nevertheless, we went in, didn't get hugely more content from the inside than we would

00:05:49.500 have on the outside.

00:05:50.080 But we did have a couple of things, one of which was FaceTime with Klaus Schwab.

00:05:54.860 Now, the only time I've ever seen him was very briefly in a conference room when I was

00:05:59.540 about to ask him a question and he put up his hand and said no and walked into the room

00:06:04.220 behind.

00:06:04.680 So maybe not the most productive interview, but still it was an opportunity to ask a question

00:06:09.720 which he did not want to take up.

00:06:12.840 So all of this is a bit of a wind up to where we are now, which is that once again, the World

00:06:17.780 Economic Forum is blocking True North from being in the secured areas. We are not allowed to attend

00:06:25.780 the conference itself. Now, no one flagged any issues with my behavior or my conduct last time,

00:06:33.780 even Klaus Schwab. I mean, he put his hand up, he walked away. I didn't chase him. I didn't

00:06:37.880 tackle him or anything like that. There were no issues. In fact, a couple of the staff from the

00:06:42.760 World Economic Forum that I had spoken to through the week. We had friendly enough encounters. So

00:06:47.600 why are they changing their tune this time around? Well, one of the changes is that the guy who went

00:06:52.480 to bat to let me in, who is a true believer in the World Economic Forum, so much so that he doesn't

00:06:58.120 think any scrutinizing media pose a threat to the organization, he is no longer there. He's moved

00:07:05.640 on to other things. I don't know where or why, and I don't think there's anything suspect there.

00:07:10.200 But the reason that that matters is because with him gone, there was no real point of

00:07:15.160 contact I could go to that I had a relationship with.

00:07:18.560 I've emailed pretty much anyone and everyone I knew was there, went through all the official

00:07:23.120 channels, and they will not even give me the opportunity to apply for accreditation because

00:07:29.100 they have a password protected page to even apply and you have to get the password from

00:07:33.740 someone and no one's giving it up.

00:07:35.460 So we are still going.

00:07:37.000 And I think it says more about the World Economic Forum than it does about True North, and than it does about me, that they do not want scrutinizing independent journalists there.

00:07:47.040 They do not want people that are not part of their invited few.

00:07:50.660 And one of the dynamics I've spoken about in the past here that I find interesting is how much of the media in attendance is not there to report on it.

00:08:00.260 They're not there to cover it.

00:08:01.680 They are there because they are invited guests.

00:08:04.140 For example, one frequent flyer in Davos is the editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail.

00:08:09.160 You've got reporters and editors from the New York Times, from MSNBC, from CNBC, from CNN,

00:08:15.060 that are all there with their white badges because they are among the elites being feted and venerated.

00:08:22.060 They are not there to report on what's happening.

00:08:25.240 They are not there to call out, to hold truth to power in any meaningful way or any way whatsoever.

00:08:30.640 so in that way I think it may be look I think being in the room as much as we're able to is

00:08:37.060 obviously a benefit because it just gives you that much extra of an opportunity even if it's

00:08:41.960 you know 10% more access or 20% more access it gives you that much more but not being in the

00:08:48.720 room says more and I think in a way it is a bit of a reward for our coverage that they were

00:08:54.180 evidently so threatened by what we did last time around that they do not want me rubbing shoulders

00:08:59.280 even if in a friendly but journalistically integral way to have access.

00:09:05.300 They don't.

00:09:05.800 So we are still going back.

00:09:07.440 And I think, if anything, we are only going to lean more into our coverage and what we're doing,

00:09:11.640 which is so paramount, I believe, to speaking the truth.

00:09:15.940 The World Economic Forum is not a problem because it's this evil, shadowy cabal of people

00:09:20.540 that are pulling the strings on the world and trying to do all this stuff that affects you.

00:09:25.020 It's bad because they are doing this in the light of day.

00:09:28.940 because they are sitting around putting out these policies

00:09:32.040 that leaders in countries like Canada and the Netherlands

00:09:35.560 and the United Kingdom and even the United States

00:09:37.480 are all too happy to go along with.

00:09:40.180 That is the reason why this is a story.

00:09:43.020 And I've always said to people in our coverage here

00:09:45.140 that the World Economic Forum,

00:09:48.380 you don't need to invent conspiracy theories.

00:09:51.080 Just take them at their word

00:09:52.580 when they talk about the world they want.

00:09:54.640 And that is in and of itself more damning

00:09:57.080 and more of an indictment of the organization than anything you could concoct about like the

00:10:01.860 shadowy puppeteers in the mountains. They are not all that shadowy and I wouldn't even say

00:10:07.040 they're puppeteers. I think they are people that are putting forward a very dangerous and very

00:10:11.340 aggressive policy agenda that our elected leaders are all too willing to go along with. And I think

00:10:17.640 there's a lot more scrutiny we need to put towards them. For example, no one in the Canadian

00:10:22.720 Parliamentary Press Gallery, so far as I can tell, has ever asked Chrystia Freeland about her role

00:10:27.700 as a member of the Board of Trustees for the WEM. When I tried to ask her, she ran away and scurried

00:10:34.560 as quickly as she could through security. Oh no, sorry, I got her on the other side of security.

00:10:38.800 She scurried into one of the secure areas into which I could not follow her. You may wonder,

00:10:44.120 why does that matter? Well, would we allow a Deputy Prime Minister of the country to sit on

00:10:49.420 a corporate board or to be a lobbyist? No. Well, why should she be able to sit on this

00:10:54.560 non-governmental organization that has an aggressive policy agenda that it wants countries,

00:11:00.360 including Canada, to go along with? Seems like a reasonable question, right? Well,

00:11:05.320 you won't find legacy media in Canada willing to ask it. And by the way, I had to go all the way

00:11:09.600 to Switzerland to be able to get into the same room as Chrystia Freeland to be able to ask the

00:11:14.520 question myself, even if she didn't give an answer. The CEO of BMO, you may recall last year

00:11:20.660 I spoke to him on the streets of Davos about why he wanted to, by his own admission in a call that

00:11:26.320 was tabled before the Public Order Emergency Commission in Canada, treat the convoy protesters

00:11:32.000 like terrorists. No one in Canadian media asked the question. No one from BMO got back to us when

00:11:38.040 we asked them for comments about it. But on the streets of Davos, you tend to run into the rich

00:11:42.800 and powerful. And they can't hide from you as much as they try to in the safety of their Ottawa

00:11:47.660 or Toronto offices. So all of that is why it is important to be there. And it's why we're going

00:11:52.600 to go. And it's why we are not going to be dissuaded from doing our work by something as

00:11:58.320 simple as not having one of those pesky identity identification badges, which by the way, people

00:12:04.440 got mad at me for this. I had to get a PCR test to get one of those badges. I had to do this like

00:12:09.360 weird, uh, saliva gurgling thing, which I won't, I was about to mimic it for you, but I won't,

00:12:14.980 I'll spare you that image. Uh, but there's weird saliva gurgling thing. And my badge would only

00:12:18.920 be activated when my test was negative. So it was like the epitome of like the digital ID version

00:12:23.960 of the future they want right there. Uh, but I don't know if they're doing the, uh, the gurgle

00:12:27.780 tests for, uh, the delegates and media and whatnot this time around. But I had all these people

00:12:32.540 saying, why did you give them your DNA? I was like, well, we all do what it takes to get the

00:12:36.500 story. So with that aside, we'll have more coverage as the week progresses and a little

00:12:41.180 bit of a glimpse at what you can expect next week. And then of course, next week, we will be doing the

00:12:45.300 show live from Davos. So you won't want to miss that. But I do want to talk about something closer

00:12:52.180 to home here. And this is something that is, I don't want to say I'm in disbelief because very

00:12:57.360 little surprises me, let alone shocks me. But I do think it is quite disgraceful. Now you may

00:13:03.160 remember during the Freedom Convoy protests a couple of years back, there were horses that were

00:13:09.560 as part of a crowd control maneuver deployed. And there was, I've talked about this a lot and it's

00:13:14.220 in my book, but there was a break in the formation at one point and the horses lurched forward and

00:13:20.100 ended up knocking over a woman who had a walker, an indigenous woman by the name of Candace Ciro.

00:13:25.680 Now the use of mounted police in crowd control is incredibly controversial for a number of reasons,

00:13:32.040 as is the use of indiscriminate things like pepper spray, which was also used, as I learned the hard

00:13:36.720 way, that same time. But those horses didn't belong to the Ottawa police. They didn't belong

00:13:42.060 to the RCMP. They belonged to the Toronto Police Service. They shipped up their horses because the

00:13:47.360 Toronto police, it was believed, could play a role in containing the protest. The Toronto police also

00:13:52.580 shipped up this drone that they had. And I, on the last day when they were kind of packing up to go

00:13:59.000 home, I stumbled upon the Toronto police crew taking a selfie with their bajillion dollar drone

00:14:05.760 because you know what better way to celebrate a job well done than using that equipment to take

00:14:09.820 a big proud selfie in front of Parliament Hill. That is how the Toronto police handled one

00:14:14.560 particular protest in recent memory in Canada. This is how Toronto police were handling a protest

00:14:20.260 in Toronto over the weekend. I told them they can't come back otherwise he would have said okay I

00:14:25.120 instead. Okay, I'll just ask just so. How did you get coffee from the police? We're not the police. Someone

00:14:42.960 has brought it for us, but the police won't let them in. So the police are now becoming our little

00:14:48.260 messengers between us i don't know i have no idea what's going on

00:14:54.580 so that is a gentleman in a keffiyeh i'm using gentlemen in the most liberal way possible which

00:15:01.380 has been taken up as the sign of resistance against the israelis against jews uh being

00:15:06.900 hand delivered a carton of coffee by a toronto police officer right up there with rcmp officers

00:15:12.980 helping people with their luggage across roxham road in quebec now oh apparently toronto police

00:15:18.100 didn't buy the coffee. No, they were just delivering it to the point where the protesters

00:15:22.080 blocking a bridge in a Jewish neighborhood. Remember the talk about critical infrastructure

00:15:28.060 a little while ago? Yeah. Blocking a bridge on Avenue Road in Toronto, getting hand-delivered

00:15:33.400 coffee by Toronto police. Now, the Toronto police chief has said that he is launching a full inquiry

00:15:39.620 into everything that went down on that one day. But I think it's true the Toronto police have

00:15:44.140 picked their side here. And it is people who are in Toronto's Jewish community, not even in the

00:15:49.820 community, just Jewish people in Toronto, that I believe should be very nervous about what is

00:15:55.260 likely to come here. Ari Goldkind is a criminal lawyer in Toronto. It's always good to talk to

00:16:00.620 him. He joins us now. Ari, good to talk to you, sir. I mean, you as a criminal lawyer, I know,

00:16:05.440 have probably a greater skepticism of police than many people do. But what's your read when you see

00:16:11.020 this so Andrew let's I appreciate that introduction and let's not leave out that I am a Jew in Toronto

00:16:16.460 now I don't believe in the man upstairs I believe in Judaism culturally and that there is something

00:16:22.720 unique about my culture this has nothing to do with religion so I can tell you that this is

00:16:28.340 as somebody Andrew that you would know has been very outspoken to support the police let's be

00:16:35.120 very clear about this Andrew I'm a criminal defense lawyer and I make a very healthy living

00:16:39.820 going after cops but when I'm not in court and sometimes even when I am in court I am very

00:16:46.680 supportive of the police and what they have to deal with that stops today on this issue this is

00:16:53.740 one of the most disgraceful situations I have ever seen in Toronto policing and I've been doing what

00:17:01.200 I do for over 20 years you look at the double standard here you look at the way the rule of

00:17:07.060 law has been tossed to the side, somehow Tamara Leach, Chris Barber, truckers who didn't want to

00:17:13.260 be forced to take a vaccine that doesn't really work, and I'm pro-vaccine, and I'm still saying

00:17:18.320 that, who wanted to be able to earn a living, pay their mortgage, somehow they were threats to

00:17:24.140 Canada. But these people, as you mentioned, Andrew, who are nowhere near a consulate,

00:17:29.880 nowhere near a legislature have specifically picked a Jewish area. And not only were they

00:17:37.820 smart to do it because they wanted to test, what would the pushback be? Well, the pushback is

00:17:43.540 absolute submission. And people who understand the word submission and how it comes into play

00:17:50.360 here, I'm using it for a very specific term, because this has as much to do with Palestine,

00:17:56.120 Andrew, as you and me flying to the moon tonight, which ain't going to happen. This is purely Jew

00:18:03.060 hate. This is purely Canada's fastest growing demographic, proving that not only do they have

00:18:11.060 the Trudeau government in their pocket, Mr. Poliev, and I say this, Andrew, I'm a fan of his.

00:18:18.140 He's been extraordinarily silent about this. Doug Ford has been extraordinarily silent about this.

00:18:25.320 People are unwilling or afraid to take a line in the sand here because they know where the votes are. And I can assure you that Jews like me and people with the last name Goldkind, the politicians have done the math. My numbers don't matter anymore. My demographic doesn't matter anymore.

00:18:45.620 Then you add in to the end of my answer, Andrew, the Toronto police being feckless, in my view, aiding and abetting ongoing crimes. There are ongoing crimes here. Just masking at an assembly is a crime that got people arrested at the G20.

00:19:05.020 just the coffee and the donuts and the mealy mouth feckless response from the chief of police who's

00:19:12.120 anything else if this isn't a wake-up call to non-jewish canadians andrew forget that there

00:19:19.020 aren't you know i'm a dwindling number but if you think this is just about jews andrew or your

00:19:25.560 audience say oh it's just the jews don't worry about it i'm sorry i'm at the top of their food

00:19:30.200 change simply because i'm jewish but when they're done with me you're the next infidel and that

00:19:37.320 hopefully is something that the canadian public is waking up to you gave a lot there that i i want to

00:19:44.660 unpack so i'll try to be somewhat systematic but you can see i get very wound up about well and

00:19:50.240 as you should i mean this is i mean for me it offends me on so many levels but for you it's

00:19:54.760 personal and i it's personal i know a lot of people that live in that part of toronto and i

00:19:58.600 I can't overstate what you've said there about where they're protesting.

00:20:03.740 I have a very, very high threshold, as the convoy demonstrates, for how disruptive protests should be.

00:20:10.200 But I think there's a caveat there, which is that they should be targeted towards government.

00:20:15.520 I believe there is a different standard of blocking Wellington Street than there is of blocking some private residence because you don't like someone.

00:20:24.000 And that was why when we saw the displays against businesses in Toronto, it was very, very different.

00:20:29.660 And when we see this, again, even if we want to say that they have a right to make their point legally, which is dubious, you have to ask the why.

00:20:37.780 And why are they on Avenue Road? Why are they on that bridge?

00:20:41.420 And that, I think, is, I think, a very, very crucial point here.

00:20:45.640 And you're right, because it is about Jews. It is not about Israel.

00:20:49.600 and let me put it to you like this because you have a very intelligent audience andrew that is

00:20:56.560 not heard by elites it is not heard it does not count i consider a lot of people watching you

00:21:04.320 they're forgotten but they're the actual canadians that make this country work every day day in and

00:21:10.360 day out and i pose this question andrew to your audience this will be a shorter one because it's

00:21:15.220 your show and i don't want to dominate it even though i have said what we're watching i dominate

00:21:19.060 on your show when i'm on it's all good you do and i love your voice but this is all about submission

00:21:23.540 to a force from the east anybody knows what i'm saying that's what this is if you don't understand

00:21:29.300 what i'm saying just read demographics just read how many jews are left in the world and my birth

00:21:35.460 rates and just read about the other religion and that demographic and that birth rate just

00:21:41.140 read the difference in numbers i can say them but people think i'm making it up 1.8 billion and

00:21:46.260 growing of the religion that is dominating canada 15 million and dwindling of people with the last

00:21:53.460 name gold kind but here's the question that i pose to your audience who i think are continually

00:21:58.180 forgotten in this country if there was exactly what we're seeing here with a jewish residential

00:22:05.620 neighborhood just for your audience across canada andrew this is a jewish residential neighborhood

00:22:11.700 There are delis there. There are Jewish delis. There is nothing of any government, any infrastructure, anything there just for people to understand this.

00:22:23.100 Now, imagine if the same thing was done in an Islamic area or in an area where there is a mosque or just a generally significant Muslim population.

00:22:35.800 there would be fire and brimstone and i say this i'm not being facetious andrew there would not

00:22:43.400 only be fire and brimstone from trudeau who remember when there was the hijab hoax was on it

00:22:49.460 like white on rice he was completely silent here for about a week there would be fire and brimstone

00:22:55.540 from politicians there would be fire and brimstone from mass media not just true north and people who

00:23:03.020 have to do the journalism karima you saw the video yeah why is that not why is she the one

00:23:09.440 where the viral video has gone worldwide versus i mean look i'm a big fan of mass media you know i

00:23:15.860 i do a lot of television andrew i i'm like let's be real about this but again then you ask yourself

00:23:23.060 if this was around a mosque or a generally muslim area in toronto of which there are many very

00:23:29.400 specific ones there would be fire and brimstone and hell to pay but as your audience is probably

00:23:36.040 thinking rhetorically no jew or christian despite how passionately we might feel about an issue

00:23:43.340 would ever do would ever ever do what we see these men doing and these men by the way andrew

00:23:52.300 all either on the public dole or at the bank of overseas laundered mummy and daddy money

00:23:59.960 and many of your audience doesn't realize Andrew that you are paying the food rent and shelter

00:24:06.700 of these men that are wishing that I be dumped into the sea it's outrageous it's obnoxious but

00:24:14.100 here because I am a lawyer Andrew it is also unlawful and the police are not only enabling it

00:24:21.540 They are aiding and abetting it. Not one of your viewers, Andrew, if there was a crime in progress, would be able to aid and abet live on video and not get arrested. But I'm sorry, we're now doing Timmy's and coffee runs and helping them block. It's astounding to me. And as you've seen, because you've been on my show, and you and I have debated this, I do believe this is the beginning of the end.

00:24:46.020 I think you're a bit more optimistic than me, but hopefully this is a wake-up call to people

00:24:50.640 throughout this country, because certainly it's being watched around the world.

00:24:55.360 One of the challenges, and we saw this especially during the convoy protests, is you get police

00:25:00.160 that say, well, you know, we need to get our marching orders from political leaders. And

00:25:04.820 then you get leaders in government that say, well, we don't direct police. And you end up with a lot

00:25:08.860 of buck passing here. And in the end, no one gets done. So where is the leadership supposed to come

00:25:14.420 from is it supposed to be the toronto police service that unilaterally go in there and say

00:25:18.380 we're going to deal with this or do you need to get a doug ford to come out and say uh this is

00:25:22.140 the expectation so that's such a wonderful question because it's you know passing the

00:25:26.520 buck which is what these people do better than anybody else the right hand doesn't speak to the

00:25:30.280 left i am tired of watching these politicians ontario solicitor general i use that word

00:25:36.760 specifically ontario solicitor general is doing nothing but tweeting he's tweeting that this is

00:25:43.240 unacceptable. You're the frigging solicitor general. He's also Jewish, I should point out

00:25:50.880 as well. Michael Kirzner. I mean, James Pass, look, and I'm sure these are good people. If they

00:25:55.560 joined us right now, we'd have a grown up adult discussion. I'm not, but you're the, you're not

00:26:01.080 Ari Goldkind tweeting. I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I take cases. I'm not the solicitor

00:26:06.300 general. And to see these people sitting on Twitter, I mean, using their thumbs to your

00:26:13.560 question, they shouldn't have to do anything. The Toronto police brass, this is not even a

00:26:19.120 frontline policing issue to me, Andrew, as much as I have no problem throwing anybody under the bus.

00:26:25.520 These frontline officers who stand around and watch death threats be issued, let's not forget

00:26:31.020 that little event in the Eaton Centre that the police are themselves standing with their hands

00:26:36.240 behind their backs handcuffed. There's a word for people like this. It starts, well, I'm not

00:26:40.520 going to say it, but it's a word that is in adult movies where they're just standing around like

00:26:45.580 feckless. I don't want to say it. At the end of the day, you cannot have a police force

00:26:51.620 that picks and choose who gets to commit crimes and who doesn't. And I can make so many of the

00:26:59.560 points you've probably made before I joined you this afternoon, Andrew, about the double standard

00:27:03.920 of the freedom convoy bank accounts frozen the second in the g20 that protesters masked

00:27:12.360 the second they concealed their identity which many of these ghoulish and ghastly jew haters

00:27:18.260 are proud to do live on video the police step in and andrew just for your audience to know what the

00:27:25.640 police standard is because a lot of people think just go in and you know it's a reasonable ground

00:27:31.260 to lay a charge. Doesn't mean there should be a conviction. Doesn't mean you worry about a good

00:27:35.680 defense lawyer like me or the thousands of good defense lawyers can get them out of the charge.

00:27:40.560 It's, is there a reasonable ground to lay the charge? And I can lay out for you, Andrew,

00:27:45.080 right now, and I won't do it, four or five sections of the criminal code that a first-year

00:27:51.740 moronically woke, dumb, unmeritorious first-year law student in so many of our crappy new law

00:27:59.000 schools in Ontario and in Canada would be able to look at and say, yep, I'm watching that crime

00:28:04.400 happen right on video. And for the police to stand there and do nothing, I don't even care about the

00:28:10.500 politicians being mealy-mouthed. I care about the police saying, we're trying to help or de-escalate.

00:28:16.680 And what they're really saying to you, Andrew, is these men, these Jew haters, are so violent and

00:28:24.460 so unpredictable and so predisposed to violence that if we move in, it's going to create a riot

00:28:32.580 rather than quelling this? I'm sorry. What a lack of courage. And by the way, what a complete

00:28:40.420 dereliction of duty. Very well said, Ari. Just to end on a very, very distinct but lighter note,

00:28:49.720 do i understand correctly that this is a bit of a special day for you it is and uh i didn't know

00:28:55.260 that you know that but someone gave me a little heads up during the interview well i won't ask

00:28:59.780 you how old but i will say a very happy birthday we are uh very well served as a country by having

00:29:04.900 you doing what you do so thank you i appreciate that and hopefully your audience watching me

00:29:09.040 right now doesn't think i look the big 5-0 but apparently it's a crazily significant i can't

00:29:14.480 even believe i'm 50 andrew oh i didn't know you were i just knew it was your birthday i didn't

00:29:18.300 know is a milestone birthday i am 50 and it feels insane to me because i still feel like an 18 to

00:29:24.020 22 year old same exact person bigger bills bigger mortgage bigger responsibility but exact same guy

00:29:31.200 so i can't figure out how i am saying i am 50 years old i just don't get it well you've got

00:29:36.720 the energy and the vigor of an 18 to 22 year old but with much more experience at doing what you

00:29:41.380 do well happy birthday ari and thank you so much for coming on today always good to be with you

00:29:45.500 Andrew. All right. Thanks very much, Ari Goldkind, criminal defense lawyer in Toronto. We will follow

00:29:51.520 this as the week progresses. Yeah, that was a very half-hearted apology from the Toronto Police

00:29:56.720 Chief. Oh, no, no, no. We were just passing along the coffee. We weren't serving the coffee. We

00:30:01.500 didn't buy them the coffee. Give me a freaking break. We are in the midst of a new year, but of

00:30:07.100 course, some things never change. One of those is government waste. Yes, it's the gift that keeps on

00:30:13.640 giving if by gift you mean debt that keeps on amassing. There was a new report from our friends

00:30:19.020 at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation this morning and this report found that over the last decade

00:30:26.260 like this is a 10-year period one of the government's great pastimes has been like

00:30:31.560 giving its own employees awards and just like patting themselves on the back through the public

00:30:37.180 service awards. Now I didn't know that public servants needed awards I didn't know they had

00:30:42.820 earned awards. In fact, if you look at a report last year from the Parliamentary Budget Officer,

00:30:48.080 it found that federal departments fell short of meeting half of their performance targets. So

00:30:54.680 I don't know what awards they're given. This is not necessarily like the big Golden Globes and

00:30:59.560 the Oscars and all of that. But still, they've spent half a million dollars over the last decade.

00:31:04.300 Most of that was just on like custom trophies. But then there's also a hefty fat catering bill

00:31:10.660 that gets thrown in through that as well.

00:31:13.580 So this has just been one aspect of this

00:31:15.920 when you just see a great disconnect

00:31:17.600 between the way government deals with things

00:31:21.360 and the way people in the real world tend to deal with them.

00:31:24.980 Now, I don't know if you've been, I know judgment,

00:31:26.880 if you in the last 10 years

00:31:27.900 have been giving yourself awards

00:31:29.960 and you've been hosting these galas

00:31:32.900 to give yourself the awards

00:31:34.100 and you've been getting these fancy, fancy trophies

00:31:36.800 to remind you of just how incredible you were,

00:31:39.900 maybe that is what flies for you. Again, I don't want to be too judgmental a person here,

00:31:45.220 but we want to talk about this in a bit more depth here. So we have joining us our Alberta

00:31:50.180 correspondent, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's Alberta Director, Chris Sims. Oh, apparently Chris

00:31:56.300 has turned off her camera. So I don't know if we're going to get a Chris appearance in a moment.

00:32:00.520 We'll get Chris in just a second here. But let me just read through some of the greatest hits from

00:32:05.560 this year. This is, I should be precise, $476,000. That's what taxpayers said to spend. Now,

00:32:16.120 this is from 2012 to 2022. But the hilarious thing is they launched this award in 2005 with

00:32:25.460 14 award categories to recognize government employees who demonstrated excellence in

00:32:31.740 achieving results. So excellence in achieving results for Canadians. So if you've been feeling

00:32:37.660 like you've been really getting results from your public servants, Chris Sims from the CTF. We have

00:32:42.220 her at long last. Chris, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on. Sorry, I always get a

00:32:46.180 gremlin. Just before I go on your show, my camera clicks off. So yeah, this was great work that was

00:32:50.920 done by my friend and colleague, Ryan Thorpe. He is our resident investigative journalist.

00:32:56.580 A lot of folks may not know this, but we actually have a full-time investigative journalist

00:33:01.300 paid on staff at the Taxpayers' Federation. We did this, Andrew, because as you know,

00:33:07.060 investigative journalists are an endangered species now. And so we created this little

00:33:12.320 terrarium for him, and he now lives under his little heat lamp in Ottawa. I think he lives

00:33:17.140 down the street from Franco Teresano. And Ryan dug up these great AATIP documents that showed

00:33:23.260 that not only, Andrew, are they doing this Public Service Excellence Awards, which started under

00:33:28.420 prime minister paul martin by the way 10 years ago uh but they also do this big catering gala

00:33:34.020 they actually had duck prosciutto like i didn't know that you could do that i thought prosciutto

00:33:40.860 was like pork like i'm totally showing my roots here but apparently like it must just be you can

00:33:48.100 turn no duck prosciutto in lethbridge is there no at least not i did hang on on this i i got i did

00:33:53.680 an artist rendering of the menu before the show started. I used, there's this program called

00:33:59.400 Mid Journey, which is like a photo generating AI. And I basically plugged in the government's

00:34:04.840 catering menu here so I could get a sense of what these bureaucrats were getting. Sean,

00:34:09.420 can you put the graphic up? There we go. So this is charcuterie featuring cured Arctic char

00:34:15.360 and duck prosciutto. I didn't ask the AI engine to do the champagne in the background. It just

00:34:20.800 kind of got the sense on its own that the government of canada employees were probably

00:34:24.520 having champagne uh but yeah that that is the ai pretty good actually ai generated uh government

00:34:30.080 charcuterie platter i think the arctic char is the pink stuff on the left and i think the duck

00:34:34.740 prosciutto is the stuff in the middle just to the left of the green olives but uh like i said i

00:34:39.200 haven't seen duck prosciutto so i i don't know for sure me neither well maybe when you go over to

00:34:44.180 the weft forum they'll throw some for you over the wall they're not letting you in but maybe

00:34:48.900 they'll send you a doggy bag this this is this is what's so annoying okay is that you'll have the

00:34:54.460 government say something like oh well we've been fiscally responsible for the past 10 years or

00:34:59.160 whatever and then the moment you tell them hey you guys are wasting a lot of money they get all

00:35:04.180 huffy and they're like what do you want to cancel first education for children or health care for

00:35:09.040 old people it's like well maybe don't throw yourself an awards gala for bureaucrats maybe

00:35:14.940 don't hand out antique gold trophies on glass marble bases. Just stop doing that. Don't hire

00:35:23.540 a photographer. Don't literally roll out a red carpet for yourselves. This is all taxpayers'

00:35:30.240 money. We have to stress this, okay? We know there are some corporations, if you're a big company,

00:35:34.820 you do give out awards for a job well done, but you all chip in over the year. People donate

00:35:42.200 their pay to this fund and they'll have like a big dinner and then they'll recognize people and

00:35:47.900 you'll get some little crystal thing and you keep it on your, on your shelf. No, no, this is not

00:35:52.440 coming from their own little fund. This is taxpayer funded awards galas here. I misunderstood. I

00:35:59.640 thought the red carpet was just like a gender reveal for the debt. Like you just, we roll it

00:36:04.140 out and it's like, Oh, we're in the red today. That's such a good idea. We should do that next

00:36:09.320 time with the debt clock well it's all you don't even need to buy a black carpet it's always red

00:36:13.000 every year that's the reality of it that's it we're gonna put that with the debt clock next

00:36:17.220 time we do a debt clock tour we're just gonna roll it out and that's gonna be the reveal that's

00:36:21.500 a brilliant idea so i i'm looking at this too and they might as well make all the trophy snowflakes

00:36:27.300 because this is really just the snowflake award thing here where you've not even done your job

00:36:31.740 well but we're going to give you an award for not doing it because you didn't do it better than

00:36:36.260 anyone else didn't do it in the company. Yeah, it's not only awards to bureaucrats,

00:36:40.880 it's participation awards to bureaucrats that we're handing. Like every now and then there's

00:36:46.800 a moment that happens in our current crazy wacky culture. And this is one of them. This is just

00:36:51.800 peak woke silliness of handing out a participation trophy to a bureaucrat at taxpayers expense while

00:36:59.240 eating duck prosciutto. I just realized when I did the AI photo, I forgot to put in the pork

00:37:05.740 terrine uh so there was also a pork we didn't do the ai we'll have to like bill another ten

00:37:10.280 thousand dollars and put is that a paste or is that a soup a pork tree yeah it's like a it's like

00:37:15.620 a pate okay yeah but a pork pate so they took the pork out of the prosciutto and instead put it into

00:37:21.240 the terrine when the terrine should have been duck they're going all freaky friday here uh this

00:37:25.200 this is all that sean and i are going to be eating next week in davos this reminds me of speaking of

00:37:30.240 davos which you have to fly to i assume you're not gonna you're not gonna parasail no we're not

00:37:34.820 doing like the Greta Thunberg transatlantic sailboat or anything. You'd be there in a month.

00:37:41.240 Oh, we missed it. Time to go back. And in January. No, you died. Don't try to do that.

00:37:45.880 This reminds me of the in-flight service that the governor general had, right? We all had to look up

00:37:52.000 what beef Carpaccio was, but she was eating it. I knew what beef Wellington was from Bugs Bunny,

00:37:57.720 but I had to look up what beef Carpaccio was, but we all paid for it. This is the thing, folks.

00:38:02.560 there's literally no pun intended so much fat to trim here that they blew almost half a million

00:38:08.400 dollars on a public service trophy ceremony over the past decade harper government included i will

00:38:16.380 point out this sort of nonsense was going on under the harper government's nose too there was also

00:38:21.500 one i looked up one of the uh documents uh this was in 2021 where they even spent i think it was

00:38:28.620 like $37,000 on a virtual event. So they didn't even like have to all be in the same room and it

00:38:35.300 still cost them $20,000 for, no, $15,000 for trophies, $20,000 to develop an online platform

00:38:44.080 because apparently $200 for a Zoom subscription was too complicated and a $2,000 speechwriter.

00:38:50.520 So even your crappy human resources award show, you can't even just write the speech on the back

00:38:56.440 of a napkin like every other crappy boss does you hired a speech writer right and or you can't even

00:39:02.360 get one of your millions of middle managers who are keyboard warriors at the best of times to

00:39:08.020 write a speech on their own time no you had to contract that out we should a tip the speech i

00:39:15.220 want to find out what speech we got for two thousand dollars that's a really good idea if

00:39:19.000 you're listening ryan thorpe i want to get the speech he wants the speech okay i will mention

00:39:23.560 that to Ryan. And just to put a poetic note on this, the Taxpayers Federation, this is definitely

00:39:29.700 going to be in the running for a Teddy Waste Award. We do our own awards show that the foundation and

00:39:36.100 the organization pays for itself. It gets tons of media coverage and it's announcing government

00:39:41.980 waste. We hand out trophies for that. There's a big gala, but we keep the trophies. Andrew,

00:39:50.420 I got one of these trophies once that I built myself.

00:39:53.220 Do you remember that show Babe with the pig?

00:39:55.920 Oh, yeah, Babe the Pig, yeah.

00:39:58.160 Babe the Pig is actually now the pork terrine that the bureaucrats are being served.

00:40:02.820 2023 wasn't good to him.

00:40:04.480 That's just too much art.

00:40:05.780 That's perfect.

00:40:06.400 I love it.

00:40:06.840 It doesn't have a government grant attached to it.

00:40:08.500 That's good.

00:40:08.800 I took a Babe piggy bank from the thrift store I found, and I spray bombed it gold, and I glued it to some wood.

00:40:18.020 like i think it cost four dollars like and that was the prototype that was the original teddy

00:40:23.800 sure and it's right behind me here in my office like it's back there like next to the millennium

00:40:29.000 falcon like it's just pretty good stuff it's pretty good stuff and so this is what we're saying

00:40:33.780 we're not saying you can't have fun we're not saying you can't award people for truly doing

00:40:37.960 a good job no participation uh trophies allowed but you have to be real you have to realize that

00:40:44.300 real people are paying for this okay taxpayers are strapped they can't afford most normal things

00:40:50.800 and the idea of you guys handing each other awards on a red carpet while eating fancy duck

00:40:56.280 and gold trophies being handed out the optics of this are terrible and they need to stop it

00:41:02.340 like they don't need to reduce it they need to stop doing this uh one other story you flagged

00:41:08.480 just before we went on air here what's this about a federal plastics registry yeah this is a big

00:41:14.100 thing i think i think it's gonna be a big thing it could turn into nothing where they get spooked

00:41:18.340 and they they run away from it like they did when they floated their idea of a pickup truck tax

00:41:22.660 which was a real thing and it was in a government report i will stand by that and then they ran

00:41:26.980 away from it saying oh no no nothing to see here you caught my hand in the cookie jar

00:41:30.900 so now the federal government is putting out word basically saying uh we want to get

00:41:38.100 feedback from people about having a plastics registry. So what this looks and smells like

00:41:44.500 is you might remember years back groups like the OECD and the United Nations put out an idea of

00:41:52.580 EPR, Extended Producer Responsibility. What that means in normal people talk is that a pizza place

00:42:00.500 or a bulk barn, for example, would be responsible for every bit of packaging

00:42:05.380 that leaves their store forever so they're the ones that then need to track it and as a consumer

00:42:13.080 you would need to pay an extra fee for using a pizza box so this is what this sounds like

00:42:18.280 our alarm comes from the fact that the government is terrible at most things like awful they couldn't

00:42:25.600 organize a two-car parade okay their last registry of the long gun registry was a disaster

00:42:31.940 It didn't make anybody safer, and it ballooned to, I think, close to $2 billion in 1990s money.

00:42:38.880 That's a ton of money wasted.

00:42:40.560 The idea that they're going to start a plastics registry, for what?

00:42:45.060 Like your little olive containers?

00:42:47.180 Does that include the wrap that goes around your meat?

00:42:49.460 Like toys?

00:42:50.420 Like what are they talking about?

00:42:52.340 This just reeks of boondoggle, and we wanted to flag it for people because they squeaked it out late in the day on December 29th.

00:43:00.940 like in the middle of the big fog that people are usually in between Christmas and New Year's.

00:43:05.840 So big flag, take a look at the, just look at the government website, plastics registration.

00:43:12.020 Well, yeah, I mean, it's insane. And it's going to be bureaucratic, regulatory, red tape,

00:43:18.420 burdensome, all of that. When I first saw the plastics registry, I was concerned that like

00:43:22.940 Kim Kardashian would have to cancel her upcoming Canadian tour.

00:43:25.840 Because she no longer exists.

00:43:27.340 Yeah, she couldn't register with the government in time to do the plastics registry. So there we go. But it's insane. And the serious point of all of this is that this is the kind of thing that forces companies to say, I'm just not going to do business here.

00:43:41.380 Yeah, exactly. This is, I had tons of conversations with independent restaurant operators. It was heartbreaking during the lockdown in British Columbia, where they were contacting me because they were also cracking down in Vancouver on single use items. And there was this, I remember this poor guy, he's been running his restaurant for the last five years leading up to the lockdowns.

00:44:04.140 Then the lockdowns hit. And here he was trying desperately to stay afloat and was selling food

00:44:09.560 out the door or a takeaway, as they would call it in the UK. And then he was nailed with, I think,

00:44:15.180 I think his costs of his containers for food, I think they quadrupled out from under him because

00:44:22.120 of the new regulations that were being put in. But I think it was by the city itself.

00:44:26.320 Imagine that now at a federal level. And keep in mind, Vancouver was going full crazy. They were

00:44:33.160 going to try to start forcing people to all share a communal pool of sippy cups in order to ban

00:44:39.960 single-use coffee cups like i'm not kidding everybody in vancouver would have had to share

00:44:45.620 this communal pool of shared cups and so that's where these ideas come from or places like that

00:44:52.380 and this could be nothing this could turn into nothing um they could be floating it as a trial

00:44:57.640 balloon and it could disappear and you'll never hear about it again i would love to think that

00:45:02.200 it could be used as like a return it recycling depot thing which most people are used to doing

00:45:07.640 with their cans and bottles but not lately lately the last 10 years especially with especially the

00:45:13.820 federal government it gives them a chance and the cost will quadruple and it also won't work

00:45:19.360 so this is where we're really trying to flag this for people all right chris sims the alberta

00:45:24.700 director for the canadian taxpayers federation i know we'll be doing the show from davos next week

00:45:28.680 We'll still have you on in the Monday slot here.

00:45:31.360 Thank you so much, Chris.

00:45:32.580 All right.

00:45:32.860 Be careful over there.

00:45:34.100 All right.

00:45:34.500 I will.

00:45:34.980 Not too many pork tureens for me.

00:45:36.380 You never know what's in them.

00:45:37.560 That does it for us.

00:45:38.620 For today, we'll be back in 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of Canada's most irreverent

00:45:43.580 talk show here on True North.

00:45:45.300 Thank you.

00:45:45.900 God bless and good day to you all.

00:45:48.640 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:45:50.860 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:58.680 We'll be right back.

00:46:28.680 We'll be right back.

00:46:58.680 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 08, 2024

Toronto police apologize for serving coffee to anti-Israel protesters

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