Juno News - Toronto Star misrepresents doctor who questioned lockdowns

00:00:00.000 welcome everyone to another edition of fake news friday here on true north rounding up all that's

00:00:14.900 happened in the week that was swimming through the storm that is well you don't really swim

00:00:19.840 through a storm we are sifting through the sands of deception and dishonesty and trying to make

00:00:26.700 sense of it or at the very least just relentlessly mock it so that we can all just laugh as the

00:00:31.540 titanic is sinking harrison faulkner is with me i'm andrew lawton harrison how was the week we're

00:00:36.980 now a couple of weeks into 2023 the week was good but i have to say i'm a little jealous of

00:00:42.420 your upcoming week andrew going off to davos going off to hang out with all your young global leader

00:00:48.140 friends i have to say i've never been this close to a young global leader and i'm not even actually

00:00:52.600 physically that close but but virtually it almost feels the same it's uh it's a pretty incredible

00:00:57.860 feeling to be interacting with uh with a young global leader like yourself for those that don't

00:01:02.880 know i have not actually been made a young global leader now maybe if they like my cover well they

00:01:08.460 like my coverage of davos i shouldn't bother coming back here anyway but yes i am off to davos actually

00:01:14.300 like five minutes after we finish wrapping up this show so if you are tuning in on friday this has been

00:01:20.940 pre-recorded and i'm already in switzerland uh trying to find uh where i can get some sauteed

00:01:25.620 crickets so uh probably everywhere but uh let's dig into what was happening last week in the world of

00:01:31.640 fake news uh this one i find particularly interesting it involves matt strauss who's been on true north he's

00:01:37.940 one of the only if not the only chief medical officer in ontario who's been pushing back against

00:01:44.920 the government's pandemic response and he to his credit didn't interview with bruce arthur of the

00:01:49.800 toronto star who is on the more alarmist side of the covid spectrum and you'd think this might be an

00:01:56.660 opportunity that two people who disagree could at least understand and respect each other but at the

00:02:02.940 end of it when the story was published matt strauss went to twitter and said that things he had said had

00:02:08.180 been misrepresented things he said had been misquoted it was not an accurate representation of anything that

00:02:15.100 happened and he was trying to get some changes which so far have not been made uh what was going

00:02:20.320 on there well wait hold on a second andrew you're telling me that the toronto star misquoted uh an

00:02:27.540 officer of health that didn't quite go along with their narrative i can't believe that that's

00:02:31.360 this is like totally breaking news to me well basically what happened here is as most of you can

00:02:36.360 imagine dr matt strauss the medical officer of health for haldeman norfolk which is a region in

00:02:41.920 southern ontario he was basically as you said andrew the only medical officer of health that i know of

00:02:47.340 at least in ontario and i may be wrong here but the only one that really didn't go along 100 percent

00:02:52.440 with the the kind of messaging we were getting from dr tam and from dr moore in ontario he took a

00:02:58.220 different approach and i think that's why partially he had the gig in haldeman norfolk he was he he questioned

00:03:03.880 uh the decisions to lock down the way we did he questioned the efficacy of mandates for the shot and for

00:03:11.060 masks so of course by doing so he became the target of as you say the alarmists on that on the

00:03:16.800 other side of the debate so basically what happened here is uh matt strauss and bruce arthur uh came to

00:03:23.780 a good faith interview with the uh with the understanding i think that uh matt strauss would

00:03:28.220 have been quoted correctly and in context and his words wouldn't be taken out of out of context but

00:03:34.460 it turns out of course that the article was completely uh out of context it was designed to

00:03:39.780 basically make matt strauss look to be someone he is not and matt strauss as you say probably went to

00:03:44.620 twitter and called out exactly bruce arthur for this he says i did not compare prom to a living

00:03:50.860 death as the article in the toronto star says he did i did not compare mask mandates to the me too

00:03:56.480 movement and i did not say that the only randomized control trials are sufficient evidence for pandemic

00:04:02.900 policy and then he and then he writes this as well this is just a perfect dunk on the toronto star

00:04:08.520 and a highly deserving one too he writes this i understand that bruce and the toronto star are in

00:04:13.200 an awkward position they were wrong about vaccine mandates wrong about mask mandates wrong about

00:04:18.260 border restrictions and wrong about school closures i wish toronto star would acknowledge

00:04:22.240 its mistakes rather than double down by misrepresenting the facts the matter of my views i've

00:04:27.040 texted bruce but so far nothing has changed so yeah they were wrong about that they were wrong about

00:04:32.800 as as strauss says all of these things in the pandemic and yet now they're still trying to

00:04:37.520 misquote doctors who in in many many people's eyes were on the right side of this stuff what a

00:04:42.500 surprise andrew yeah and what was interesting is that bruce arthur decided to say that these were

00:04:47.840 not factual errors they were just mere differences of opinion he tweeted out i see matt strauss has

00:04:53.800 registered some complaints about the piece and he and i have exchanged some views on that needless to

00:04:59.020 say i disagree with his interpretations those agreeing with him are mostly distrustful of media

00:05:04.460 and angry about covid restrictions so he views it bruce arthur as though anyone who takes issue with

00:05:11.300 his reporting uh just is uh distrustful of the media and they don't like vaccine mandates and mask

00:05:17.400 mandates now this is particularly interesting when you take into consideration that the toronto stars

00:05:22.640 public editor has interceded here and has actually made corrections and clarifications on the article

00:05:30.840 you can see it there now uh this one is a correction from january 11th this column has been updated a

00:05:37.900 previous version mistakenly said that dr strauss compared mask mandates to the me too movement and

00:05:44.720 then a clarification now i don't know what the difference between a clarification and a correction

00:05:49.100 is here but a clarification this column has been updated dr strauss didn't say that only randomized

00:05:55.440 control trials are sufficient evidence for pandemic policy so i guess now the toronto stars public

00:06:01.160 editor is to bruce arthur distrustful of media and angry about covid restrictions because he evidently

00:06:07.120 didn't agree with bruce arthur's interpretation of this there are lots of things that you could have

00:06:12.160 different opinions on but the old line is that your facts have to be the same across the board right

00:06:18.080 i mean when you're when your own editor is basically saying that you're wrong and then you go out on

00:06:24.380 on twitter and say well those that think i'm wrong are uh distrustful of media as you just say then

00:06:29.720 that's a pretty bad sign uh that you're you're kind of not heading in the right direction there bruce

00:06:35.000 it's not really what we would consider to be uh you know right along the tracks of the journalist

00:06:39.660 code of ethics but look it's the toronto star they're the same people that posted that hideous front

00:06:44.560 page back during a few years ago basically just saying that people in canada are saying the

00:06:50.040 unvaccinated can go to die i mean that was the implication of that that front page i don't think

00:06:54.500 many canadians are going to forgive them for that and this is just the same sort of thing even the

00:06:59.220 editors have to come in and clean up the mess that their journalists are making but seriously i mean

00:07:03.460 this should be the basics this should be basic stuff here and they can't even get that right

00:07:07.880 no and just i mean matt strauss had made a very apt comment on this in response to bruce arthur's

00:07:14.200 distrust of the media thing and he said you know there's a very simple way to foster trust which is to

00:07:19.380 tell the truth he said step one tell the truth that's all the steps i know seem to work so i

00:07:24.660 don't think that bruce arthur is doing his part to restore trust to the media by any stretch no

00:07:30.920 certainly not andrew but there's always one thing we can rely on when it comes to fake news friday and

00:07:35.880 thankfully it has not changed in 2023 that is the cbc coming in to always give us something good to mock

00:07:43.280 and make fun of and this story came in from the cbc a couple days ago and it's just it's absolutely

00:07:49.080 hilarious the way when you read it you think to yourself clearly what's going on here is the cbc

00:07:54.320 is coming in to try and make an example out of an officer of the rcmp who dared dissent against the

00:08:00.820 government dared make fun of the prime minister he needs to be made an example of and and basically

00:08:05.680 ridiculed on cbc very uh very eastern world i would say of the cbc here not like that not like

00:08:12.460 it's totally foreign to them but this is what the article this is the headline of the cbc article

00:08:16.580 bc mountie's anti-trudeau website raises concerns about discriminatory views within the rcmp so

00:08:24.180 discriminatory views within the rcmp actually that just means an rcmp's rcmp officer making fun of

00:08:31.160 justin trudeau so apparently andrew making fun of justin trudeau is discriminatory views but i want to 0.63

00:08:36.840 read to you some of this before getting your thoughts on this because it is just ridiculous

00:08:40.280 it starts off with this the church of trudeau website was online last november and early december

00:08:46.760 and featured theatrical performances by a man dressed up as multiple characters in what appears

00:08:52.620 to be satirical political commentary about the prime minister and what the site referred to as

00:08:58.120 quote left-wing liberal ideologies cbc news has confirmed the identity of the man in photos and

00:09:03.980 videos on the website as bc rcmp officer brent lord in one of the four videos cbc news has obtained

00:09:11.280 lord plays the role of a character he calls father b and professes to be the high prophet of the church

00:09:17.240 of trudeau as he explains what the website is about stating our religion teaches the importance of

00:09:22.640 socialism of canceling everyone that offends anyone of being woke and highly emotional we'll talk about

00:09:28.400 on the nose there because it turns out that for making jokes about the prime minister canceling

00:09:32.880 everyone this poor rcmp officer for that exact thing is now being canceled go figure andrew yeah

00:09:40.120 and this is a challenging one because in general i i think there are standards for police officers that

00:09:46.000 are different than there are for people in other sectors but they're allowed to have political opinions

00:09:51.880 they're allowed to have political views i don't know which way the rcmp is going to land here i mean if

00:09:56.660 he were tasked with protecting justin trudeau i could understand how this might make people wonder if he

00:10:01.600 was the best candidate for the job but if he's just a general police officer he wasn't doing this in

00:10:06.480 uniform he wasn't even mentioning his name on the website i don't really think many people in the bc

00:10:12.060 interior would care well right exactly and that's that's that's the truth this guy isn't bc interior

00:10:18.300 rcmp officer he's not you know a uh a private security detail of the prime minister or a cabinet minister

00:10:25.100 and it just kind of goes along this line andrew of of demanding ideological conformity we saw this

00:10:31.100 with the freedom convoy and the cbc article actually brings this up how many instances did we see of

00:10:35.980 videos going viral where police officers either outwardly showed their support to members of the

00:10:41.640 freedom convoy or protesters uh or they themselves were seen um you know just kind of not acting the

00:10:48.940 way that i guess the ottawa establishment wanted them to which is completely hostile and almost nasty

00:10:54.440 towards these protesters if they weren't you know demanding that they that they stand down and

00:10:58.900 yelling at them for daring to uh hold unacceptable views and in the eyes of the cbc and uh ottawa

00:11:04.680 establishment these officers were supporters of the freedom convoy and we saw we saw politicians we saw

00:11:10.380 news articles come out demanding that these these officers face punishment it's almost as if we're kind

00:11:15.920 of losing humor in this country it's like we can't joke about what's really going on we can't have a laugh

00:11:20.720 i think if you were to ask this rcmp officer to say your job now the the prime minister is coming

00:11:26.720 to your area your job is to defend the prime minister i don't think because he makes fun of

00:11:31.500 the prime minister he would be he would all of a sudden not do his job i think it's just i think

00:11:36.920 we're just losing reality here we're losing this sense of humor in this country and i i don't know i

00:11:42.120 think it's sad to see it's a humor is going to go to die here if we can't have a laugh and have a joke

00:11:46.480 of course the cbc goes out and demands comment from the rcmp demands comment from other former

00:11:52.500 officers and former uh chiefs of police saying this is this is horrible this is awful no officer

00:11:58.180 should be doing this come on come off it let's just have some fun have a joke here and there

00:12:03.060 and i think everyone will be fine at the end of the day well the challenge with these sort of

00:12:07.800 professional standards rules is that they only seem to be enforced in one direction we're seeing

00:12:12.780 this ontario in ontario with jordan peterson and the college of psychologists you can mouth off

00:12:17.720 about as much as you want about the left lefty wokey stuff and no one seems to care if he were

00:12:23.140 taking aim at some conservative thing i don't think this would be on anyone's radar but because he's

00:12:28.580 doing it against the liberals that is getting everyone's back up against the wall here i just

00:12:33.480 to your point about being able to have a laugh there's this one former west vancouver police chief

00:12:38.860 that cbc quoted here cash heed who says when you're a public servant especially with the rcmp

00:12:45.000 where you've taken that oath of service to canada and you make those satirical videos you have the

00:12:51.560 memes of this particular character trying to be funny i find it disturbing yes nothing as disturbing

00:12:57.080 as satire and memes and character acting i mean the guy may not be daniel day lewis but i think he

00:13:02.940 can do uh his little father g or kenny g or papa john or whatever his character it's not only that

00:13:09.320 this this is hilarious andrew it's like in another video the cbc article writes lord gives a speech

00:13:15.200 about federal immigration policy while wearing a jester's hat and claims the goal of the policy

00:13:19.660 is to bring in one and a half million liberal voters to canada hey sorry but uh you might be a

00:13:25.220 little too on the money there andrew for uh the cbc's liking it's i mean it's just funny it's just

00:13:30.620 hilarious yeah we should wear jester hats into our uh into our show here yeah maybe we should

00:13:34.820 add some costumes add add some new dimensions to fake news friday um oh it's just it's it's it's

00:13:41.920 hilarious to me i i think it's i think it's funny and like i said let's just have a laugh here let's

00:13:46.860 just have some fun it's the the fact that it's all out it's the fact that it's all out in the open

00:13:50.800 and that we have the internet now is what has kind of played the opposite effect i think a lot of

00:13:55.760 people thought it would open up conversations open up humor but really it's becoming more difficult i mean

00:14:00.400 i guarantee you that back in the day without the internet rcmp guys would be would have been

00:14:04.340 joking about the prime minister all the time but it's because it's out there online that's the

00:14:08.900 problem and now i don't know i don't know how much longer we're gonna be able to have jokes about

00:14:13.280 about all this stuff and people in in the public service making having having a laugh like why can't

00:14:18.260 we have that well we will not be cowed by this because if you're not laughing you're crying here and

00:14:23.900 i don't actually quite know what i'm to do with this next story here which comes from you guessed

00:14:29.380 it cbc using my new year's resolution to free my tree and myself from the bondage of colonization

00:14:38.840 so this one is going to be a little bit of a tough one to go through because i've read the column four

00:14:45.720 times and each time i come out more confused about what it's actually about so maybe harrison you can

00:14:53.280 explain this to me if i'm not getting it right but the sense that i understand here is this woman

00:14:58.700 marina commanda westbrook who's writing in cbc first person she is indigenous she's uh from she's

00:15:06.920 from the anishinaabe nation and she had a fake christmas tree this year and she's had fake christmas

00:15:14.780 trees before and she didn't want to throw it out with the lights on because it was like a pre-lit

00:15:22.200 tree and it was broken and the lights were broken so she instead took a pair of scissors and started

00:15:27.360 to cut away the broken lights and she snipped away at the wires and then she started feeling for the

00:15:33.420 tree and she said she recognized that she was releasing the tree from the bondage of appearance

00:15:40.000 and glitter and in the end she said there were 30 meters of wire and broken bulbs and this brought her

00:15:47.100 back to her childhood where her family had a shiny silver aluminum tree that had lights that her dad

00:15:53.160 checked and fixed and replaced and she's attempting to rescue this fake tree from its broken lights

00:16:00.660 now here's where it gets a little bit weird if it isn't weird already she says that the wires have 0.99

00:16:09.960 come to represent to her the bounds of colonization and she was experiencing freeing her pretend tree

00:16:19.860 from the wire bondage okay i i'm confused again but i have to i have to say andrew that was a that was

00:16:28.700 actually an excellent summary of this article i didn't i did i i don't even know what i just said

00:16:33.680 no but i know that the words mean but when they're put together in that way i actually don't know i could

00:16:39.800 have just given a recipe for french toast for all i know like i don't even know what that means what

00:16:43.460 i just said so again i i'm i'm not going to be any better at this i also had uh quite a lot of

00:16:50.200 difficulty comprehending this piece from my from my perspective here it looks as though she thinks that

00:16:57.940 using real trees would be bad because you don't want to put a tree that'll go right back into the

00:17:03.600 landfill and you don't want to kill a good tree so you don't want to kill a good tree so you want to

00:17:07.880 use fake trees she has a fake tree and then she says that um back in the day 50 years ago her family

00:17:14.100 had a shiny silver aluminum tree i'm assuming that that would be a fake tree as well unless there's some

00:17:19.200 sort of species of trees out there that i've never seen before so she's had fake trees now but but

00:17:25.720 again the the lights are colonization the lights are the bondage of colonization and you don't want

00:17:32.000 to uh but but again you don't want to impact the environment andrew so the real tree is killing

00:17:37.120 the environment but also now the plastic tree is killing the environment so you don't want to do

00:17:41.540 that either so instead we're just going to do no tree right we're going to have no tree anymore

00:17:45.620 because you know heritage and traditions they they you got to axe the tree because it's a part of the

00:17:51.100 christmas tradition so that's got to go and of course it's all wrapped up in colonization again i i am i am

00:17:56.780 really struggling here and that because i i make this assumption because at the bottom of the article

00:18:01.140 she writes this instead of buying another artificial tree pre-bound in the wires that have come to

00:18:06.560 represent to me the bonds of colonization i will welcome my my mitig relatives which i guess is short 0.59

00:18:12.880 form for her her it means tree in a in anishinaabe okay okay i didn't get that but okay so i will welcome

00:18:20.980 my tree relatives into my home and dress them honorably and brightly okay so that's the cbc that's

00:18:28.920 what the cbc is telling us um andrew i have to tell you this is this might be even more absurd than the

00:18:35.500 crossword puzzle story from the cbc i really don't know what to say about this yeah so just to bring it

00:18:42.520 up to speed a little bit here from what i understand so she believes as an indigenous woman her family name

00:18:48.460 translates to rotting wood she has a connection to the earth and to trees that's all fine now i thought

00:18:54.400 a fake tree wouldn't really trigger that i i feel like with a fake tree that's not like a relative of

00:19:00.780 yours if you are the relatives of the real trees uh now that's something she has a connection with so

00:19:06.720 that's fine but so because originally she was saying that she wanted to just take the lights off

00:19:11.800 so that she could reuse the tree instead of just throwing the whole thing out because the lights were

00:19:17.020 broken which i think is actually quite important because we do just make things that are not meant

00:19:21.480 to last and then we throw them out but then she says she wants to like give it another season and

00:19:25.540 then she's going to throw it out next year so i i feel like i'm still missing the point here but you

00:19:30.420 know what if if she feels freed and liberated by snipping the lights off the tree then who are we to judge

00:19:37.180 right i mean i i think i think at the end of the day all we can look at this and all we can do is look

00:19:41.900 at this and say well you know the cbc for all their faults andrew you know we like to make fun

00:19:47.640 of them but every now and then an article comes along like this and it really makes you question

00:19:52.100 the uh the relationship between humans and trees and and nature and and the really important

00:19:57.920 questions that uh often don't get enough coverage in canadian media so you know with all of cbc's fault

00:20:03.800 i think we can say good on you cbc thanks thanks for this this is this is kind of the kind of stuff

00:20:08.800 that you know you can sit on for the entire weekend after hearing us talk about it and really

00:20:12.820 ask yourself that same question how how do you feel like your pretend tree you know uh you know

00:20:19.000 impacts the environment and and and adds to the adds to the uh feeling of colonization great stuff

00:20:24.520 oh well you know what the christmas season keeps on giving that's all i can say there

00:20:28.480 that does it for us for today harrison faulkner on the other end andrew lotton over here

00:20:33.320 i am off to davos now so do stay tuned to true north's coverage from the world economic forum

00:20:39.220 annual meeting starting next week actually starting this weekend we'll give you a little bit of a

00:20:43.800 scene setter there that's going to be all at tnc.news but in the meantime thank you and have a

00:20:49.440 wonderful weekend everyone

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Juno News - January 13, 2023

Toronto Star misrepresents doctor who questioned lockdowns

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