Juno News - Trudeau admits he's bungled the immigration file

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 this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.720 this is the second day in a row this has happened it happened yesterday where we have this nifty

00:01:31.060 little plan on all the stuff we're going to talk about and then like i don't know 30 seconds before

00:01:35.020 the show goes on air justin trudeau drops a bit of a bombshell we had a little bit more lead time

00:01:40.640 today and it's not as big a bombshell but erin o'toole appeared before the foreign interference 0.91

00:01:46.760 Commission this morning and he made some comments that I'm like okay I let me just rearrange some

00:01:53.140 stuff I'm gonna get it in there so it will be a bit of a packed show welcome everyone to

00:01:57.440 the Andrew Lawton show on this Wednesday April 3rd 2024 Canada's most irreverent talk show here

00:02:05.000 the big story I wanted to legitimately follow up on what did come out just before we started

00:02:11.460 of the show yesterday see a little bit of a look behind the scenes we do this show live and part

00:02:16.700 of the reason for that is that it is far much more fun to do the show live because if something

00:02:21.740 happens you just roll with it and you have some fun with it if I just lose the ability to speak

00:02:26.980 as happens from time to time believe it or not I just have to laugh it off I'm not like oh well

00:02:31.520 maybe edit out that second syllable or oh I don't like how I pronounce that word and then you just

00:02:35.940 I have again you just have your opportunity one time and one time only but also in a breaking

00:02:41.660 news context it's useful we used to do the show pre-taped and part of that was just because it

00:02:46.680 was a podcast and podcasting is generally not an immediate type of format and Sean is a very

00:02:52.540 diligent editor so I'd record this great show at 7 a.m and think okay I've got the day off let's

00:02:57.960 just go and you know tend to the lilies outside I don't know if we have lilies and if we do I've

00:03:02.700 never once tended to them but anyway and then she would oh yeah we'll edit it and then uh you know

00:03:06.960 at 2 30 we're about to hit publish and oh what do you know the core premise of my show has now been

00:03:12.620 uh has now been see i'm losing the ability to speak has now been trumped by something that

00:03:17.320 happened in the interceding hour so we do it live we have fun with it and i hope you enjoy it as well

00:03:21.840 but you don't have to listen or watch live you can catch us in the podcast on the youtube on

00:03:27.200 on facebook at a certain point if you're in like a foreign country you might be able to

00:03:31.680 but you can't in Canada because of Bill C-18 nevertheless let's talk a fair bit about oh yes

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00:03:43.240 them ideas but if you subscribe to Andrew Lawton on Facebook which I hope you do hello that's me

00:03:48.420 there is an opportunity you can catch the show there so yeah thank you for that Sean so let's

00:03:55.020 talk about this immigration thing so Justin Trudeau yesterday had that remarkable little

00:04:00.200 bit of candor that we shared a clip from this is a more truncated version of it we cut out all the

00:04:06.960 fluff and left just the essence of it here that you need to see to get what he's saying take a look

00:04:12.220 it's really important to understand the context around immigration every year we bring in about

00:04:18.960 450 now close to 500,000 permanent residents a year and that is part of the necessary growth

00:04:27.400 of Canada. It benefits our citizens, our communities. It benefits our economy. These are the levels

00:04:34.900 that we have stabilized and grown steadily over the past years because that's what Canada

00:04:40.300 needs to continue to have a strong economy and strong communities. However, over the

00:04:46.320 past few years, we've seen a massive spike in temporary immigration, whether it's temporary

00:04:53.280 foreign workers, or whether it's international students in particular, that have grown at a rate

00:05:00.320 far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb. Ooh, a massive spike in immigration, and it has 0.71

00:05:11.280 been far beyond, not just beyond, not just a little bit beyond, far beyond what Canada has

00:05:16.740 been able to absorb. Now, this is the guy who, as there was an illegal migration crisis underway,

00:05:24.600 he puts out this tweet. We should just have this tweet. To be honest, we should just have it ready.

00:05:28.940 We used to use it so often that says, hashtag welcome to Canada, a tweet that my colleague

00:05:34.340 Candace Malcolm has found through access to information documents. Legitimately, the department

00:05:39.460 understood was causing people to go to the border illegally because, oh, well, the prime minister

00:05:45.280 of Canada said that there's basically this red carpet waiting for us at Roxham Road, so let's

00:05:49.940 just go on in. And this was legitimately spiking illegal immigration in Canada. So this idea that

00:05:56.060 immigration is something that comes with consequences for a country, they can be good

00:06:00.720 consequences or bad consequences, depending on the type of immigration, is something that Canadians,

00:06:06.720 apart from Justin Trudeau, have always understood. If you do the Stephen Harper thing and you

00:06:11.520 prioritize economic migration, people that are willing and able to integrate into Canadian society,

00:06:16.500 people who have, oh you're not allowed to say the word anymore, Canadian values, those people

00:06:22.460 will enhance and improve the fabric of the country. That is when diversity can be your strength as a

00:06:29.780 nation. If you're talking about people that are going to be, for whatever reason, drains on the

00:06:34.520 public system, people that are not going to contribute to Canadian society, people who do not

00:06:38.320 share the fundamental values that Canadian society requires, they will create problems in a country.

00:06:44.700 This is the path available, or the two paths available, when a country is looking at immigration.

00:06:50.220 And there are economic barriers, there are economic considerations, and there are also, of course,

00:06:56.380 considerations that go beyond pure economics. And this is the criticism people have had,

00:07:01.320 even about some of the things that Conservative leader Pierre Polyev has said on this issue.

00:07:05.820 But right now, this is just on the economic side alone.

00:07:08.780 Justin Trudeau is admitting that we have seen an influx in immigration

00:07:12.260 that has been more than Canada can absorb.

00:07:15.960 More immigrants in this country than we have houses for, 1.00

00:07:19.900 than we have jobs for, than we have social services for,

00:07:23.120 than we have healthcare resources for.

00:07:25.980 And all of this, he describes as though it's just sort of happened.

00:07:29.420 You just wake up one day and, oh, what do you know?

00:07:31.900 We've had 1.2 million people come into this country every year,

00:07:35.220 including permanent residents and temporary residents. And of course, I mean, the share

00:07:40.100 of the country that is temporary residents has skyrocketed up. It was a few years ago at I think

00:07:46.860 2%. Now it is over 7%. And this has happened on Justin Trudeau's watch because he actually did

00:07:53.240 not believe or did not accept that there would be adverse consequences to doing this in such a

00:07:59.980 dramatic way. And I know that all the press progress losers are going to take like little

00:08:04.420 bits of discussions like this out of question. This is not a rant against immigration because

00:08:08.940 it's actually immigrants to this country who are the most poorly served by an immigration system

00:08:14.880 that is as broken as the one over which Trudeau has presided for two reasons. Number one, because

00:08:20.540 they're coming to the country and this bounty that Canada has been able to offer them or has told it

00:08:25.900 that it will offer them is not there for them. And also because when people start to see fractures

00:08:31.420 in the community, what do they do? They start looking at immigration and its role.

00:08:37.040 And when you have a government that is as aggressive on immigration numbers and turning

00:08:42.280 it into a game, how high can we get the number as this liberal government has, it turns Canadians

00:08:47.920 against immigrants. It turns Canadians against the immigration system. Because if your choice is

00:08:54.840 the status quo or no immigration, a lot of people are going to say, well, this certainly isn't

00:09:00.280 working. And if these are the only two alternatives, then I'm going to go with this immigration averse 1.00

00:09:05.600 position. And that's a very dangerous position because we have a birth rate that is absolutely

00:09:10.860 in dismal territory. Canada's only population growth has come in the last several years

00:09:17.060 through immigration. So let's discuss where this consensus has gone. Half of Canadians,

00:09:23.640 according to one poll, this was, I believe, a Leger poll, say immigration is simply too high.

00:09:30.280 39% of those polled say that this was something that has attributed to exacerbating housing issues.

00:09:38.240 21% say immigrants are draining societal resources.

00:09:41.940 Again, this is not about whether these people are right or wrong.

00:09:44.460 It's that that's the perception and you can't have a pro-immigration consensus in a country

00:09:49.240 when half the population is thinking immigration is too high.

00:09:53.700 You also then have polls of immigrants.

00:09:56.320 This one also alleged 84% of immigrants.

00:10:00.280 who came to Canada in the past decade say their life is significantly or somewhat more expensive

00:10:06.880 than anticipated. Now, more expensive doesn't mean worse, but it does mean that these people

00:10:11.680 came to this country thinking life was going to be one way and have found that it hasn't actually

00:10:16.980 panned out in that manner. So this is an incredibly important issue. Now, I go back to Justin Trudeau's

00:10:23.740 comments and the critical question, the million dollar question, why is he throwing himself under

00:10:29.220 the bus. Well, for starters, he's not actually throwing himself under the bus. He's doing the

00:10:34.140 Trudopian thing that we know and love because it is so entertaining where he says it's society that

00:10:39.760 has a learning opportunity. Society has to learn from this. We all have to learn from this. We all

00:10:44.840 have to look in the mirror. He does blackface. It's a learning opportunity for everyone. He 0.99

00:10:49.020 gropes a reporter. We all have to do better. It's the same old song and dance. This is an issue

00:10:54.380 where he says Canada has done this.

00:10:57.020 No, your government did this.

00:10:58.840 Your government was the one that made this call.

00:11:02.700 But I think there's a reason that is very deliberate.

00:11:05.360 This was not a gaffe.

00:11:06.560 This was not a slip of the tongue.

00:11:08.060 This was not a mispeak.

00:11:09.120 This was Justin Trudeau carving out

00:11:11.380 a very deliberate position on immigration.

00:11:14.700 And I think one reason that stands out

00:11:17.060 is that he sees this as actually a wedge issue

00:11:19.960 for the Conservatives.

00:11:21.380 He sees that the Conservatives

00:11:22.440 are not all in agreement on this issue.

00:11:25.020 You have Pierre Polyev doing very, very well

00:11:27.280 among members of a variety of ethnic communities,

00:11:30.600 people who in some cases are very pro-immigration,

00:11:33.780 in some cases are more skeptical of it.

00:11:36.400 But there's a reason that Pierre Polyev

00:11:38.220 has been a bit reticent on his own beliefs on this.

00:11:41.660 Exactly what number the conservatives

00:11:44.200 would put as their target

00:11:46.260 is something he has not answered.

00:11:48.420 This was a clip, I've shared it before,

00:11:50.480 from my year-ender with Pierre Polyev back in December.

00:11:55.400 Immigration, it isn't just housing that needs to be taken into consideration.

00:11:58.720 It's also jobs, social services, just geography here.

00:12:02.380 So knowing what you know about the country,

00:12:04.660 do you think those targets from the Liberal government are too high,

00:12:07.320 that 500,000 per year target?

00:12:09.680 Well, it's not 500.

00:12:10.700 As you know, it's 1.2 million now.

00:12:14.300 The answer is that we have to bring the numbers in line

00:12:17.700 with the number of houses that are built,

00:12:20.000 The growth in immigration should not exceed the amount of housing stock we add, the number of doctors we add, and the available jobs.

00:12:30.340 But if you were Prime Minister now, what would that number be?

00:12:32.400 What would your projection be?

00:12:33.620 I don't have a target for this year, but what I would say is when I launch my platform, it will explicitly link the population growth to the growth in the housing stock to the growth in the number of doctors and nurses.

00:12:50.000 and to the availability of jobs.

00:12:52.640 So it could be lower.

00:12:53.340 It will be mathematically driven,

00:12:55.080 not by arbitrary targets to generate virtue signaling headlines,

00:13:00.740 as we have right now.

00:13:01.760 It will be mathematically driven by the growth in the housing stock,

00:13:05.720 the growth in the supply of doctors and nurses to treat people,

00:13:09.660 and the availability of jobs.

00:13:11.020 But if I were to say to you just the number,

00:13:13.160 a term that you yourself have used in exchanges of this,

00:13:16.360 you can't give one.

00:13:17.100 Well, of course, I can't because I'll be forming government at this rate in 2025.

00:13:23.440 And we'll have to set the numbers based on the conditions in that year.

00:13:29.040 So it was interesting, actually, the fallout from this.

00:13:32.840 There was a lot of Rorschach-ing going on.

00:13:35.960 You know, the Rorschach-ing plot test where you look at it and everyone sees what they're going to see.

00:13:40.360 Where, you know, conservative supporters were saying,

00:13:42.460 ah, yes, this is a thoughtful, very devoted, clear answer on immigration.

00:13:46.480 and people that are a bit more critical of Pierre Polyev

00:13:49.200 looked at it and said,

00:13:49.920 oh yeah, he's dodging, he's not saying the number.

00:13:52.480 I see both sides of it.

00:13:53.640 On one hand, he doesn't just want to put a random number

00:13:56.200 on the board and say, that's the target.

00:13:58.040 But he's saying, these are the factors

00:13:59.700 that we will use to get to that target.

00:14:01.780 But again, it's an issue where the Conservatives

00:14:04.160 have had a bit more trepidation

00:14:05.660 than they have on many others.

00:14:07.360 And I've talked about this on the show in the past.

00:14:10.020 It's something that they'll need to deal with.

00:14:12.220 And I think that's why,

00:14:13.600 to go back to Justin Trudeau's motivation,

00:14:16.480 That's why Justin Trudeau is approaching this issue the way he is, because he is seeing that

00:14:22.840 the conservatives don't actually have one cohesive position on immigration. So if Justin Trudeau can

00:14:28.740 actually outflank the conservatives on immigration, it will form a bit of a wedge in the conservative

00:14:34.440 base. The conservatives will have to somehow scramble for the votes of the ethnic communities

00:14:39.400 that might be pro-immigration, very pro-immigration, and people that are a bit more immigration

00:14:43.520 skeptical. And again, I'm distilling this down into a very crude dichotomy and binary here,

00:14:49.860 which is not. I mean, you can be very pro-immigration and not pro-unfettered immigration.

00:14:55.000 That's what I am. That's what I think most sensible Canadians are of whatever ethnic or

00:15:00.620 racial background, be they native Canadians or be they people that got here 10 minutes ago.

00:15:05.680 But I think that's what Justin Trudeau is doing. I think he's trying to create a wedge

00:15:09.020 in the conservatives that they will have to do, that they will have to take, put the issue back

00:15:14.060 on Pierre Polyev, force him to give a number, and the second Polyev takes the bait, the second Polyev

00:15:19.520 says that that number will be lower than 500,000, Trudeau will have to say, oh, and then all of a

00:15:25.140 sudden we're going to see that flip once again. But if I were Mark Miller, the immigration minister,

00:15:29.900 I'd be wondering, you know, what exactly is Justin Trudeau saying about your performance there? That

00:15:36.960 is something or if I were I guess Sean Fraser who had the file before he got pushed into housing

00:15:42.220 I would say this is not exactly a ringing endorsement for him so I want to talk about

00:15:48.280 this Aaron O'Toole business and I'm going to get to that very shortly but I want to talk about the

00:15:52.760 firearms file first and foremost here we had news from Saskatchewan they've appointed a new

00:15:58.480 chief firearms officer which is increasingly important in an era in which provinces are

00:16:03.700 finding they've got some tools in the toolbox to not go along with the federal government's gun

00:16:08.780 grab. Now, I talked about this on the show last week. You may recall the federal government has

00:16:13.440 spent tens of millions of dollars on this buyback, which they announced four years ago and have not

00:16:20.260 yet taken a single gun. Now, from a taxpayer perspective, I say, oh, this is waste. I don't

00:16:25.180 like it. It's inefficient. From a firearm zoning perspective, I'm like, oh, that's great. Just keep

00:16:29.680 it going. Keep the boondoggle underway. This was something that we heard from Premier Danielle

00:16:35.500 Smith in Alberta on this. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has splurged $42 million

00:16:41.640 on its firearm buyback program without confiscating a single firearm to date. Should the federal

00:16:47.340 government try again to implement the program, would your government consider invoking the

00:16:51.840 Sovereignty Act in a bid to protect the property rights of law-abiding Albertans? Well, I call that

00:16:56.160 a success that they haven't been able to seize a single law-abiding firearms owner's gun. So

00:17:00.740 I wish them continued success at being able to achieve zero compliance with their program. And

00:17:06.900 we are not going to do anything to help them. We believe that the issue is the illegal firearms

00:17:11.780 getting into the hands of gangs and organized crime coming across the border. And the federal

00:17:16.680 government should be focused on that, not focusing on taking guns away from sport shooters,

00:17:20.340 duck hunters and and farmers i'd love to see more of this in every province across the country

00:17:28.080 provinces often have taken the view that oh well firearms law is criminal it's federal but

00:17:33.720 provinces have a fair bit of authority on there whether it's a loophole or explicit rights you

00:17:40.380 could debate and discuss but when alberta said that it would not use police resources to go after

00:17:46.440 firearms, the federal government was kind of screwed because they didn't have another card

00:17:51.400 to play. All they could do was finger wag. And I would say, all right, finger wag all day long.

00:17:56.260 Rod Giltaka is joining us once again. He's the executive director of the Canadian Coalition for

00:18:01.300 Firearm Rights. Yeah, Rod, this must be a bit conflicting for you too, because on one hand,

00:18:05.940 you're a taxpayer paying for this program. But on the other hand, your guns are still safe for now.

00:18:11.120 Well, we're certainly in good company with everyone that's angry about a Rive scam as well,

00:18:15.600 right? So everyone is feeling the taxpayer pinch when it comes to the Liberals' incompetence and

00:18:23.920 their corruption. Yeah, it's going to be like ARCan is the new government app where you have to

00:18:28.640 log your AR-15s and whatnot. But let me talk to you first and foremost about the provincial

00:18:35.160 response here, because oftentimes I think even firearms advocates have many, it seems like,

00:18:41.940 really just focused on the federal government. And if you get a liberal government like we have

00:18:46.060 now that's very hostile to gun owners, they kind of just say, all right, well, we're in for a rocky

00:18:49.420 ride here. But this has been a relatively recent advent, it seemed like, where provinces are really

00:18:54.460 stepping up their game and saying no to this. Well, they are stepping up their game, at least

00:18:59.100 Alberta and Saskatchewan have lined up behind the CCFR and the other applicants in our lawsuit.

00:19:05.880 We're in the appeals process right now, and they are stepping up as interveners.

00:19:11.940 So we're really happy to not be going it alone.

00:19:15.380 And those two provinces are really making a statement,

00:19:18.300 I think, for their citizens.

00:19:20.060 And they're saying, you know,

00:19:21.500 what the federal government is doing is unreasonable,

00:19:24.360 not only just in the firearms file, right?

00:19:25.980 But in this case, you know, about guns.

00:19:28.120 And we're not gonna stand for it because, you know,

00:19:30.800 we work for you.

00:19:32.200 So I don't know, like I say,

00:19:34.720 I'm really happy that we're not standing alone.

00:19:36.640 I'm really happy that governments are doing things

00:19:39.000 in the interest of their citizens.

00:19:41.040 And yeah, we're really happy.

00:19:43.540 I've had on the show Alberta's chief firearms officer, Terry Bryant, who's been like just a tremendous advocate for the sport and a tremendous administrator as well.

00:19:53.120 When I was, you know, waiting like four months for my handgun to clear, Alberta was like processing these things in like a week, it seemed like.

00:20:00.920 Now we have in Saskatchewan a new CFO appointed.

00:20:04.120 I don't know if you've had any dealings with Murray Cowan before.

00:20:06.940 I think we're going to have him on the show next week.

00:20:09.560 But what are your expectations there from what Saskatchewan's doing with that firearms

00:20:13.500 office?

00:20:14.820 Well, my expectations are they're going to continue on doing the great things that they're

00:20:17.980 doing.

00:20:18.360 I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with Robert Freeberg, who was their

00:20:24.640 CFO in Saskatchewan, who is now the commissioner of the Saskatchewan firearms office.

00:20:31.300 And I tell you, it's just here's a bureaucrat that is thoughtful.

00:20:36.560 and I think the most important thing is

00:20:39.120 he doesn't believe that he's at war

00:20:40.620 with his own citizens

00:20:41.640 and in particular people

00:20:43.420 that would subject themselves

00:20:44.980 to the process of obtaining

00:20:47.220 and maintaining a firearms license.

00:20:49.820 So they've done, I think,

00:20:52.140 in that province as well as Alberta,

00:20:53.960 focused on the most important aspects

00:20:55.860 of the firearms office

00:20:57.180 or the duties of the CFO,

00:20:58.600 which is to increase compliance

00:21:00.760 with the act and regulations

00:21:02.600 and work towards increased public safety.

00:21:05.960 That's really the mandate, not in enforcement and prosecution of licensed gun owners, which

00:21:14.120 is what the federal government right now is focused on.

00:21:17.700 So at the end of the day, we think that owning firearms legally is really important and that

00:21:25.320 there's a regulatory framework around that and ensuring the public is safe in light of

00:21:32.180 that, but focusing on where violent crime really comes from, which is gangs. There's a domestic

00:21:37.280 violence aspect to it. And it's a lot of that stuff is fueled. Almost all of it is fueled by

00:21:42.040 smuggling and illegal manufacturing. Now, when we talk about provinces appointing their own CFOs,

00:21:47.700 just to go back to the civics of this for a moment, what is it that a CFO can do differently?

00:21:53.140 Because yes, the core regulations, the core law is federal, but we see wildly different experiences

00:21:58.920 in different provinces, depending on their CFO.

00:22:01.260 So what is it that they can really do

00:22:03.060 that is more favorable to people like you and I?

00:22:06.780 Well, in the case of Saskatchewan,

00:22:08.180 they passed their own Firearms Act.

00:22:11.000 And what it did, so I'll give you one example.

00:22:13.120 It's quite complicated.

00:22:15.020 I don't claim to know everything,

00:22:17.740 but I'll give you one example.

00:22:19.400 In the Firearms Act,

00:22:20.680 if you store your firearm in a way

00:22:23.480 that is in contravention with the Firearms Act,

00:22:25.860 it's a criminal offense.

00:22:26.980 it triggers a criminal code charge immediately so that will basically for a law-abiding citizen

00:22:33.860 destroy their lives basically it's a weapons charge and that might be as you know as innocuous

00:22:39.460 as you know my guns are in the safe but i may not have were in a locked case but i may not have put

00:22:45.540 a secure locking device on the firearm or i forgot that or i left a magazine in a gun in a gun safe

00:22:50.580 like those are those result in life destroying criminal charges so saskatchewan has said you know

00:22:55.780 what maybe it's maybe it's a um a case of making sure people are in compliance and providing

00:23:01.940 education and some motivation for them to make sure that they're storing their firearms correctly

00:23:07.300 and in the case of let's say handguns these are these are registered firearms held by people that

00:23:12.580 get a criminal record check every single day electronically right so this is not this is not a

00:23:17.540 criminal enterprise so that's so what the with the firearm saskatchewan firearms act does is it takes

00:23:22.820 that offense that was a federal criminal offense in the criminal code and turns it into a regulatory

00:23:28.180 offense so they'll face a fine or maybe even seizure of their firearms until they take a

00:23:32.660 course or what have you so there's there's reasonable remedial action in incorporated

00:23:38.100 into that and people don't get their lives destroyed for an administrative oversight so

00:23:43.700 these are some of the things that a a forward-thinking reasonable chief firearms officer

00:23:48.980 can get going in their own province and reside over a regime that's far more reasonable and

00:23:55.860 proportionate, I would say. You mentioned the lawsuit that the Saskatchewan and Alberta

00:24:01.280 governments have joined as interveners. Now, I should say, when you're David going up against

00:24:05.980 Goliath, an organization which may be a very robust organization, but you're going up against

00:24:11.000 the government, it's good to know at least you have some governments on your side, at least in

00:24:15.200 some way here so that's in the appeal what's the what's the essence of the argument on this case

00:24:19.840 well probably the most important one is the administrative aspect of our argument so

00:24:24.940 in the criminal code uh it clearly says that the government can't ban firearms that are

00:24:31.280 appropriate for hunting and sporting use and it's it was written in there for a reason it's not an

00:24:35.940 accident that it's in there the government decides well you know what we're going to violate that um

00:24:40.460 and we think we had the administrative authority just to override the criminal code using an order

00:24:44.940 council we're not even going to you know we're not going to need legislation or anything for

00:24:48.140 that kind of stuff we're just going to do it especially when it's on the heels of something

00:24:52.300 like the spree shooting in nova scotia that's they thought well you know what nobody's gonna

00:24:56.860 nobody's going to push back against us and we're just going to do this thing so we sued the

00:25:01.420 government for that reason the um federal court judge in the case said oh yeah well the government

00:25:07.740 can pretty much do whatever it wants even if it's doesn't have the authority to do what it's supposed

00:25:12.780 to do we disagree with that ruling our our legal team which is one of the best in the country said

00:25:19.340 we should have won on this there's no reason why we should have lost there are a lot of independent

00:25:23.820 people out there that said you absolutely should have won this we're appealing it because we might

00:25:29.100 think we might suppose there's all kinds of monkey business going on there and at least we have the

00:25:34.300 department of justice in two canadian provinces that agree we should have won that administrative

00:25:38.620 aspect. So they're lining up behind us. So, you know, it was the government overstepping its

00:25:44.720 authority. Not the first time we saw this government doing that, but hopefully we get

00:25:48.680 a proper resolution this time. All right. Well, we'll keep our eyes peeled on that as it works

00:25:53.040 its way through the process. Rod Giltaka, always a pleasure, sir. Thanks for coming on. Thank you.

00:25:58.340 All right. I mentioned, so it's actually a good segue here because I want to talk about the 2021

00:26:03.060 election. And Aaron O'Toole, a name we probably haven't heard for a little while, he was the

00:26:09.060 leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Before that, he was the true blue, rock-ribbed, iron-clad

00:26:14.940 conservative that was going to be the unflinching conservative, true blue, as he said, against the

00:26:20.400 squishy, moderate, red Tory Peter McKay. That was the narrative of the 2020 Conservative Leadership

00:26:25.640 race. Aaron O'Toole wins. And in 2021, he forgets everything he said in 2020. When he campaigned in

00:26:33.380 the leadership on defunding CBC, he campaigned in 2021 on, well, maybe we just commission a report

00:26:40.220 that's going to look at the business model of CBC and see if there are ways to modernize it.

00:26:44.580 When he said in the leadership, he would be unflinching in conscience rights for members

00:26:49.060 of parliament. In 2021, he said, if you're running on this platform, you better fall in line. When he

00:26:54.860 said in 2020 that he was the pro-freedom candidate. He said everything the opposite of that when

00:27:01.260 COVID and vaccine mandates came. You may recall in 2022 when the Freedom Convoy, this is after

00:27:08.220 he had lost the 2021 election, the Freedom Convoy was on its way to Ottawa and Aaron O'Toole was

00:27:13.620 asked about these demands that truckers were making to lose the vaccine mandate and he said

00:27:18.840 all right we support truckers. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to set up vaccine clinics

00:27:23.400 at truck stops. Yeah, you really got him there. So this was Aaron O'Toole. Now Aaron O'Toole

00:27:30.700 made some profound just blunders in that 2021 election. He flip-flopped on policies. He flip-flopped

00:27:39.260 on his position on guns. He was pro-gun and then he was pro-gun control. He flipped on so much in

00:27:45.720 that election, much of it within the span of just like a few questions from reporters. That would be

00:27:51.000 enough to get him to roll on policies that were literally in the printed, bound, glossy, laminated

00:27:56.900 platform books. And then he gets asked, but he's like, oh yeah, no, no, no, we're going to take

00:28:00.320 that. Literally, they took out a section on firearms from the platform that had already

00:28:04.620 been sent out because he got a couple of nasty questions from, I don't know, the Toronto Star

00:28:08.640 or whatever. So this is all the lead up to this morning when Aaron O'Toole took the stage before

00:28:14.340 the Commission on Foreign Influence in Canadian Elections. And he said why it is that he really

00:28:20.160 lost in 2021. Take a look. So what was your understanding then based on the modeling

00:28:26.500 on election day of where the conservatives would end up in terms of seats that day?

00:28:35.400 Yeah, reliving those last few days of the campaign. We went from winning the seat count

00:28:40.900 a week before the election with a small modest minority to on election day losing the seat count

00:28:49.240 and still winning the popular vote. We saw the vote changing largely on the vaccine

00:28:54.920 and the vaccine mandate issue. But on election night, when we knew we were going to lose,

00:29:03.320 my campaign manager had said, our models and how the vote goes, you should end up with about 127, 0.99

00:29:11.000 128 seats, which will be a historic level for opposition. And when you consider it was a

00:29:17.320 pandemic election we we were largely on the wrong side of public opinion on on the vaccine mandate

00:29:23.720 issue which is in my view why the prime minister called the election um that was being briefed to

00:29:29.960 me to say calm down you did okay um you'll you'll be able to live to fight another day and and stay

00:29:37.880 on as leader so i went in that night feeling okay we're going to end up with 127 128 seats

00:29:44.440 and as returns were coming in that night not that I asked for any detail but that night

00:29:51.420 there was already clear indication that a number of ridings were vastly outside of our modeling

00:29:57.900 window and the the ridings were the same ridings that we had been complaining about

00:30:03.300 so the the interference stuff is is by the way completely accurate yes the conservatives were

00:30:11.100 targeted by the Chinese regime in 2021, in the ridings in which there is ample evidence to

00:30:17.840 suggest that interference took place, it was not enough that it would have swayed the overall

00:30:22.820 result. But it would be very easy. It would be very convenient and nice and probably help

00:30:27.320 Aaron O'Toole sleep at night to say that, oh, his loss was everyone else's fault. His loss was

00:30:32.240 China's fault. His loss was the vaccine mandate's fault. He says in that clip that the conservatives

00:30:38.500 were on the wrong side of the vaccine mandate issue. Now, what he means is that the conservatives

00:30:44.120 were wrong to oppose vaccine mandates. Now, there's a premise embedded in that, which is that

00:30:49.660 the conservatives really did oppose vaccine mandates. Now, yes, technically, when Justin

00:30:54.500 Trudeau came out and said that he wanted vaccine mandates for the civil service to get on planes,

00:30:59.940 the conservatives did take a softly critical position of that. But when they criticized it,

00:31:05.920 they weren't dealing with the essence of the issue.

00:31:08.360 They weren't actually saying, this is fundamentally wrong.

00:31:11.260 You can't deny people's civil liberties.

00:31:13.280 You can't force this on people.

00:31:15.380 No, they were pussyfooting around it.

00:31:17.440 They were saying, well, yeah, you know, we don't like it.

00:31:19.660 Same as when the trucker mandate came in.

00:31:21.500 They weren't saying this is fundamentally wrong.

00:31:23.340 They were saying, well, I mean, supply chains are already pretty rough

00:31:26.840 and, you know, it's the grocery store shell.

00:31:28.660 Like, they weren't dealing with the issue in the way that it needed to be dealt with.

00:31:33.720 And if anything, the Conservatives just went along with this line that, well, he's politicizing vaccines. We don't want to talk about them. They shouldn't be political. It's too important. So he was accepting the Liberal premise on a lot of these very damaging and very dangerous COVID policies.

00:31:50.200 Now, let me be perfectly frank when I point out that I think a lot of Canadians did support

00:31:55.440 what Justin Trudeau was doing.

00:31:57.360 I've lamented that fact on a number of occasions.

00:32:00.480 Canadians were calling bylaw enforcement officers on their neighbours.

00:32:04.440 Canadians did re-elect Justin Trudeau, but the problem was not that the Conservatives

00:32:09.100 were too anti-vaccine mandate.

00:32:11.380 If anything, the problem was that they were not anti-vaccine mandate enough.

00:32:15.720 But moreover, I don't buy the fact that the change in fortunes for the Conservatives was largely or even minimally because of the vaccine issue.

00:32:25.660 No, it was because the Conservatives had a leader which could not articulate what the Conservatives believed, what he believed.

00:32:32.340 They had a leader who would flip on anything he had said even a year and a half earlier about what he would do if he were elected Prime Minister.

00:32:39.960 and more importantly, the amount of daylight between him and Justin Trudeau had just shrunk

00:32:45.840 to a tiny little sliver of a glimmer by the end of the campaign. So this idea that we could just

00:32:52.680 look everywhere else but inward to figure out why the Conservatives lost the election

00:32:58.040 is a very convenient, very convenient path for Aaron O'Toole, but it is historic revisionism

00:33:04.140 at its worst. This is an issue. I'm ambushing my next guest because I didn't say that I was going

00:33:10.820 to talk about this, but I feel Tom Marazzo's up on this. He's a retired captain with the Canadian

00:33:15.700 Armed Forces and author of the book, The People's Emergency Act, and joins me now. Tom, you must

00:33:21.300 remember that when O'Toole comes out, the trucks are on their way to Ottawa, and he says, all right,

00:33:25.960 all right, I got this, guys. Vaccine clinics at truck stops. That's the answer to the mandate.

00:33:30.420 oh you're muted there

00:33:34.360 nope we're still uh still can't hear you there

00:33:39.820 all right we'll get to we'll get that sorted out in just a moment uh but so what i was going to

00:33:45.840 talk to tom about and we'll get to this as well is this uh story actually quite a dismal story that

00:33:51.360 we have talked about in the past soldiers are increasingly reliant on food banks these are

00:33:57.620 soldiers men and women who put on a uniform to serve their country and do so incredibly

00:34:03.400 courageously not for a huge amount of money but Canada has not even provided the bare necessities

00:34:09.800 to these people we've had reports uh one in the Ottawa Citizen that came out where Canadian

00:34:15.540 Forces personnel had to rely on food donations while undergoing training in Ottawa because of

00:34:21.460 high living costs there and a lack of support from the military we also see that in New Brunswick

00:34:26.620 demand has been doubling at food banks in large part because of the Canadian Forces base in

00:34:33.440 Gagetown. The food bank there has reported a doubling of the number of military personnel

00:34:38.600 seeking assistance. This goes back to the beginning of COVID. I think I hear rumblings

00:34:43.720 from what sounds like Tom Marazzo's microphone there. So we'll get Tom back on here. Tom,

00:34:49.340 I think I can hear you now. So we'll get to the food bank stuff, but just, I mean,

00:34:53.860 Aaron O'Toole's revisionism, that the Conservatives, first off, took a strong position against vaccine mandates in 2021, but then that they lost because of that is just baffling to me.

00:35:04.260 Yeah, that was extremely frustrating to me personally, but also a lot of people that I know.

00:35:09.060 And, you know, going back to the convoy itself, I remember, and I was quite surprised by it, the fact that the Conservative Party used the actual convoy protest in Ottawa as a means to dethrone Erin O'Toole from the party.

00:35:27.940 So initially we took that as a very, very positive action on behalf of the Conservative Party.

00:35:35.420 And then Candace Bergen became the interim leader. She did a photo op with a couple of truckers. The next day went into the House of Commons and said, basically, OK, truckers, you've proved your point. Now go home. Right. Which we saw as a massive slap in the face. And, you know, I'm not here to bash conservatives overall. I've done enough of that, you know, as of late.

00:36:00.300 But, you know, it was very frustrating because we thought that there was going to be an opportunity where the Conservative Party, the official opposition to the Canadian government, were going to get our back.

00:36:12.580 And that's not what happened at all.

00:36:14.680 In fact, they used us for their own personal political gain.

00:36:19.140 And I think the convoy itself was an opportunity for the Conservatives to dump the leader that they really had a lot of buyer's remorse from.

00:36:27.560 but we weren't the beneficiaries of that so in a sense my takeaway is that the convoy itself was

00:36:34.620 very convenient for the conservatives but it wasn't overall helpful to the rest of Canada

00:36:39.380 at that time especially not the six million unvaccinated Canadians yeah I take I take a bit

00:36:46.520 more of a sympathetic view of Candace Bergen's position than you did and again I don't know

00:36:51.780 what's in her mind on that but what I took from what she was saying was that you guys didn't have

00:36:56.600 a champion in the political system, now you do. And again, you could debate and haggle over whether

00:37:02.940 that was an accurate position, but I think that the convoy showed that there had been no real

00:37:09.720 leader in the political system. And I've given credit to Maxime Bernier for being the only

00:37:13.460 political figure in that election that was doing it. But when I say in the system, I'm talking

00:37:17.720 about the fact that no PPC member of parliament had been elected, and that includes Maxime Bernier.

00:37:22.860 and you know the problem is is that you had this groundswell that caused the convoy and then you

00:37:29.420 had the convoy itself which caused a lot of other people to look around and say oh yeah yeah these

00:37:34.240 guys these guys are right and what's fascinating there is that it was only then that the conservatives

00:37:39.880 started to take on this issue is that old you know line about you know i need to know where my people

00:37:44.460 are going so i can lead them and that was really where the conservatives were on this so i think

00:37:49.020 you're right to point out that they only took that position when other people, including you,

00:37:54.020 had laid that groundwork and showed that, hey, there is actually a movement here.

00:37:59.100 Yeah. And I, you know, a lot of frustration people had, and this is a comment,

00:38:04.180 and I'm going to be fair to Pierre Polyev. You know, when he does things I don't like,

00:38:08.700 I call it out, but I have to be fair to him. A lot of people attack him because they say,

00:38:13.440 where were you during the, the mandates, the lockdowns and all that stuff.

00:38:17.900 But the thing is, you know, people like him, he was not the leader of the

00:38:22.500 conservative party, he was the, the finance critic, and he did an absolutely

00:38:27.480 exceptional job at his portfolio, which was to criticize Trudeau in the finances.

00:38:32.780 Had he been maybe the critic for, you know, health Canada, or maybe one of the

00:38:38.260 other departments, then you could kind of say that, right?

00:38:41.600 So, so we had this sort of glimmer of hope that maybe when he came in, he was

00:38:46.840 going to be, um, you know, more, more of that fight that he has had, but he's

00:38:52.480 become more sort of, uh, fixated on sort of smaller issues, not necessarily going

00:39:00.040 back in time and looking at, you know, issues to me that are important, like,

00:39:05.740 you know, investigating what happened during the COVID lockdowns, investigate

00:39:09.960 several of those things, all related specifically to COVID-19, I would like to see more of that

00:39:16.680 stuff. So, you know, I think Canadians expect a lot from conservatives. You know, I think what we

00:39:25.600 need is somebody as intelligent as Pierre Polyev, because he's a very intelligent person, very

00:39:32.160 articulate, can get his point across much better than what I'm doing currently at the moment.

00:39:37.320 But at the same time, you know, we want somebody who's bold, somebody who is strong, somebody that can say, you can look at that, that person and say, yeah, that guy's got my back.

00:39:50.480 Like that guy is the guy that I'm going to go stand behind when it comes to something really, really difficult.

00:39:56.460 But I think that they've been overly cautious.

00:39:59.040 I don't think they've been bold enough until recently.

00:40:02.220 I think people like Larry Brock, Larry Brock, without a doubt, is my favorite conservative

00:40:07.020 member of parliament because he's tough, he's bold, he's very decisive, he's aggressive

00:40:13.120 in his pursuits.

00:40:15.340 That is what I would imagine to embody conservative politicians right now in this time.

00:40:22.360 But we're seeing a little bit, you know, I think it's changing.

00:40:27.700 I'm seeing some signs of changing.

00:40:30.320 I just don't see that they came at the right time.

00:40:33.920 I think the Conservatives have been too conservative in moving forward with things that are important to average Canadians like myself.

00:40:42.400 No, and that's fair.

00:40:43.820 And again, you actually were incredibly good on that, considering I gave you zero notice until I asked the question that I was going to ask you about that.

00:40:50.600 But the issue I wanted to talk about leans on your experience as a veteran in the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:40:57.020 We've had, I mean, just a couple of more reports. This is not a new problem by any stretch of

00:41:02.200 veterans relying on food banks. And listen, I mean, there is a big place in my heart for men

00:41:09.460 and women who serve and, you know, notwithstanding issues that I've talked about on the show with,

00:41:13.940 you know, morale in the Canadian Armed Forces and lowering standards and all of that. People

00:41:17.660 that do that, for whatever reason, deserve commendation, but they're not even getting

00:41:22.200 the bare minimum, which is the ability to buy food. Why is this problem happening, first off?

00:41:28.440 Well, I would definitely say it's the same experience right across Canada. It is this

00:41:34.260 inflationary pressure that has been brought on by, you know, the government. I mean, the government

00:41:41.120 controls monetary and fiscal policy, and the things that we've seen over the last eight years

00:41:46.600 are horrendous now this like you said is not a new problem i can remember back as far as 1999

00:41:53.960 so i had joined the regular force military in september of 1998 and mclean's magazine put out

00:42:01.400 this very scathing review on the the uh the the state of the canadian military they did a story

00:42:08.680 about a young uh second lieutenant he was going through to become a pilot but he was working in

00:42:14.920 the mall in Saskatchewan as a part-time security guard because he was trying to feed his family.

00:42:21.560 You know, there's somebody who wants to serve, but they can't afford to serve. Now, even in my own

00:42:27.480 case, you know, there was a time I was just desperate. I wanted to join the regular force

00:42:32.200 military and I was thinking seriously about joining as an enlisted non-commissioned member.

00:42:38.680 But I looked at it, I'm like, I can't afford to do that because of all the student loans that I

00:42:42.920 I have, and this is going back into the late nineties and I was already an

00:42:47.540 enlisted person in the reserves at the time, you know, but that McLean's

00:42:52.640 article that came out saw sweeping change across the, the, the, the pay

00:42:57.060 in the compensation for the Canadian military.

00:42:59.360 You know, my rank level at the time that that article came out was also

00:43:02.960 second Lieutenant and that, that April, I saw my pay go up just over 14%.

00:43:10.280 But, you know, many of the other ranks had much smaller pay increases.

00:43:15.880 So, you know, the, the attempt or the justification at the time was to say,

00:43:19.420 oh, we want to make it sort of on an even playing field as firefighters

00:43:23.680 and maybe police officers. 0.79

00:43:25.560 But I don't think that the Canadian forces has ever been able to meet

00:43:29.020 that, that standard.

00:43:31.340 And there's one big, big reason why that, that happens.

00:43:35.300 And you know, that article you're talking about in New Brunswick, I lived

00:43:38.400 Oromocto. I lived in military housing in Oromocto in the late 1999 and up to 2001. I lived in

00:43:48.320 Petawawa. But there's something that does happen. Okay, so imagine you're a young soldier in New

00:43:57.280 Brunswick, okay, where the cost of living in New Brunswick at a certain time was much, much lower

00:44:02.320 than say Toronto. Well, I was posted to Toronto, uh, in 2008, I was posted to Toronto and it,

00:44:10.800 there's no military housing in a place like Toronto. Okay. So you have to live on the economy.

00:44:17.520 So the government came up with this scheme or the military where they were, they were paying

00:44:21.200 people something called PLD. It's your, it's a cost of living differential. And it was about

00:44:26.240 fifteen hundred dollars if you were posted to toronto on top of your pay but it was also taxed

00:44:32.560 right it goes on to your gross income so really what it comes down to is you're getting about

00:44:37.120 nine hundred dollars uh maybe eight hundred dollars to live in somewhere around the gta

00:44:43.600 okay years ago and it just and that would have to cover a housing differential and also food

00:44:49.760 you know cost correct yes absolutely it does that was an all-in oh wow yeah so so a lot of

00:44:55.200 people were reluctant to say hey i don't want to get posted to toronto from say petowall where the

00:45:00.400 cost of living is is pretty uh decent where i could live in military housing so when i lived in

00:45:06.800 gage town i was in military housing my rent on a military we call them pmqs uh private military

00:45:13.760 quarters was 400 a month plus utilities okay and that's controlled by uh cfha which is canadian

00:45:21.920 Forces Housing Authority or association, whatever it is, I don't know what the agency. So CFHA was

00:45:28.300 controlling that. But then the Treasury Board got involved eventually with CFHA and they said,

00:45:34.740 hey, these are government assets and according to Treasury Board rules, you need to now start

00:45:41.880 charging fair market value for that housing. Okay, so this puts another pressure on soldiers

00:45:49.560 and their families because now they have to pay fair market prices for those those homes in those

00:45:56.120 areas now it's very very difficult to do that when you know you go from a place like petawawa

00:46:03.080 where you're you're paying local prices on homes or or a mock to new brunswick where i was

00:46:08.780 now all of a sudden you're getting sent to calgary or you're getting sent to edmonton or you're

00:46:13.640 getting sent to large cities what about to quebec city where you're posted now you have to pay those

00:46:19.540 local like military housing is no longer a means for you to equalize your federal pay across the

00:46:27.460 country because the cost of living is very different from different military base to

00:46:33.620 different military base to different base so you're either going to move into very old and

00:46:40.180 not so great military housing and pay fair market value prices or you're just going to go buy a house

00:46:46.180 in the economy in the local area right and now if you purchase a house two three years later you

00:46:51.940 could be posted to another place and have to sell your house and get a new mortgage and do all that

00:46:57.060 so it's it's you know very difficult for canadian forces members to make these rapid changes every

00:47:05.060 three to four years if they're being posted somewhere because housing in canada affects

00:47:09.620 not just soldiers who don't have affordable military housing anymore they they have the

00:47:15.220 same fair market prices that everyone else has so it's difficult when your pay isn't increasing very

00:47:20.900 much yeah and you're right to point out that a lot of these are general issues i know there are a lot

00:47:26.340 of people who aren't in the military listening saying yeah i'm using a food bank i i'm having

00:47:29.620 these difficulties and absolutely i'm sympathetic to that soldiers are in a very different spot

00:47:34.420 though because the demands that are being placed on them because of the job i mean in the private

00:47:38.260 sector if you're getting moved around a lot oftentimes you're able to bargain for something

00:47:42.900 in that that's going to cover uh that expectation one of the other considerations as well if you've

00:47:48.900 got a spouse that spouse is being carted around the country as well which means they're less

00:47:54.260 likely to be able to build up their own career which will earn enough of an income to offset

00:47:59.460 this because they're getting relocated as well so uh you know very few military spouses are able to 0.99

00:48:04.900 do what they would have to or be able to do if their spouse were anything other than a soldier

00:48:10.860 And, and that's a very, very important point.

00:48:13.460 So if you were to go to a place like CFB Petawawa, which is, you know, uh, not too

00:48:18.480 far, I think it's about two hours, uh, Northwest of, of Ottawa, that is a very small community.

00:48:25.120 The next community over the biggest one is Pembroke, Ontario.

00:48:28.400 And that's where a lot of the spouses would go to try to find employment. 1.00

00:48:32.940 Okay.

00:48:33.420 But guess what?

00:48:34.920 The, which has 14,000 people in Pembroke, by the way, I just looked that up as you said

00:48:38.860 that.

00:48:39.160 Yeah. And you know what? Pembroke, great little town, but the issue in Pembroke is nobody in Pembroke changes jobs. The joke used to be you either retire or you die in the position you've got in Pembroke. Nobody, no employer wants to invest time hiring a military spouse, knowing that in, you know, two to four years, they're going to have to replace that person. And this is a real, very, a real phenomenon.

00:49:03.920 So the only people I knew that ever got hired, like spouses, were if they were lawyers and if they were teachers, because, you know, there's a teacher getting posted out with her military spouse, male or female, or a lawyer, and then a new one is coming into town.

00:49:21.340 So the jobs were very, very difficult in a place like Patawawa to get employment.

00:49:26.840 Now, if you're in Oromocto, New Brunswick, you've got to drive 20 kilometers and hope you can get a job in Fredericton.

00:49:32.560 If you're in Toronto, it's a little bit different because it's not a military town.

00:49:38.560 Edmonton, St. Hubert, I think, is the area that's around CFB Edmonton.

00:49:44.860 These are the different dynamics at play.

00:49:47.540 And you're right, it really does harm the career opportunities for a spouse.

00:49:53.460 I mean, look at the effect it would have on a pension for somebody who has to quit their job every two to four years.

00:49:59.680 and if you're an officer's wife it could be a lot shorter than that you know my average posting was

00:50:05.000 I did 12 cities in 24 years you know so you're you're really moving around quite a bit and it's

00:50:12.320 hard for spouses to earn a long-term pension you know that's another dynamic to this yeah no very

00:50:18.920 very well said Tom thank you so much as always for coming on always good to talk to you thanks Andrew

00:50:24.400 Thank you.

00:50:24.780 All right.

00:50:25.140 Tom Marazzo, author of the book, The People's Emergency Act.

00:50:28.640 And he rolled with the punches there, took on another topic, which I appreciate on the fly.

00:50:32.980 That does it for us for today.

00:50:34.300 We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:50:38.220 See you in, what are we at?

00:50:39.700 23 hours and 10 minutes by this point.

00:50:43.700 So we'll talk to you tomorrow.

00:50:44.620 Thank you.

00:50:45.040 God bless.

00:50:45.640 And good day to you all.

00:50:47.780 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:50:49.580 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:51:19.580 We'll be right back.

00:51:49.580 We'll be right back.

Juno News - April 03, 2024

Trudeau admits he's bungled the immigration file

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