Juno News - Trudeau and his wife are separating. Should Canadians care？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:01:30.000 Hello and welcome to you all. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show, The Andrew Lawton Show, here on True North on this Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023.

00:01:40.600 Big news day in Canadian politics, although for a talk show, I'm going to just be perfectly candid here and say that if you are expecting me to dunk on Justin Trudeau or his family in any way, you have come to the wrong place.

00:01:58.460 I have, like all of you, seen the news today that Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, have officially announced their separation.

00:02:07.940 They put out joint statements, concurrent statements on Instagram in which they didn't give too, too much detail,

00:02:16.240 but ultimately said there that Justin and I, or Sophie and I, would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations,

00:02:24.700 We have made the decision to separate.

00:02:27.200 As always, we remain a close family with deep love and respect for each other

00:02:32.120 and for everything we have built and will continue to build.

00:02:35.420 For the well-being of our children, we ask that you respect our and their privacy.

00:02:41.400 Thank you.

00:02:41.960 Now, the Prime Minister's office put out its own statement a little bit later on

00:02:46.080 in which it said that the two of them have reached a legal separation agreement.

00:02:50.320 They're going to be co-parenting.

00:02:51.740 Sophie Gregoire Trudeau is going to move out of Rideau Cottage, and all of them are apparently going to be going on a big family vacation next week, which I don't know if it was connected to the separation or predated that, and I don't particularly care.

00:03:07.540 And if you look on Twitter, you see both the best and the worst of human instincts there.

00:03:14.620 Many people that are saying what I think most people would say if someone in their life were to come to them with this news,

00:03:20.300 which is, I'm sorry, and I wish them well, and I know it's going to be difficult for your children.

00:03:24.540 Their three children are 16, 14, and 9, I believe.

00:03:28.600 And while I've never been through a divorce myself, and I've not been through having parents divorced,

00:03:35.020 I know many people who have, and I know it's difficult for all involved, certainly for the children.

00:03:40.420 And you see people that are setting aside their partisanship and saying,

00:03:43.760 you know what, this sucks, I've been there, and I know how bad it is, and I wish everyone well.

00:03:49.060 And on the flip side, you see people who understandably have their own frustration and anger with Justin Trudeau, 0.89

00:03:55.920 who seem to delight in the tumult that is his family life.

00:03:59.940 And let me be the first to say, I share many, if not most, of your criticisms of Justin Trudeau.

00:04:05.440 And I, at the same time, do not wish harm on him or anyone in his family.

00:04:09.660 My belief about Justin Trudeau is that the country would be better off without him as prime minister.

00:04:15.020 I would never say nor feel that anyone would be better off without him as a father or husband,

00:04:20.980 because that's not my place.

00:04:22.480 And if I'm going to be perfectly frank, it's not your place either.

00:04:26.580 And I don't want to sound preachy or judgmental or pearl-clutchy here, 0.97

00:04:30.340 because I understand that in Canada in the last few years,

00:04:33.440 people have felt very personally attacked by Justin Trudeau.

00:04:36.820 When he gets up there and makes the comments he's made

00:04:39.580 about people who believe what they believe,

00:04:42.480 who feel what they feel,

00:04:43.640 and who make whatever medical choices for themselves they do,

00:04:46.160 he has made politics personal.

00:04:48.720 And I understand, on some level, the impulse to be personal in return.

00:04:53.480 But I also understand the importance and value in rising above and never stooping to the level

00:04:59.100 of your opponents. If you feel personally aggrieved, it's probably because you are

00:05:03.700 personally aggrieved and have reason to be by this prime minister. But that doesn't mean that

00:05:08.500 his issue in our lives has anything to do with him being a husband or him being a father. It's

00:05:13.220 the decisions he makes as a political leader. It's the comments he makes in that capacity that

00:05:18.820 are the source of problems. So, well, I can understand even if people want to just quietly

00:05:25.020 and silently say, well, you know, I don't care. That's fine. But his marriage is not fodder for

00:05:31.200 speculation or discussion beyond simply reporting the news as it's been conveyed today that he and

00:05:38.260 his wife are separating and they're going to try to do what's in the best interest of their children

00:05:42.740 with whom no one can credibly have any issue political or otherwise the one thing i will say

00:05:49.340 about this is that i know for years there's been rampant speculation about the marital status of

00:05:55.760 the trudeaus i mean i think it was probably commonplace online during the 2019 election

00:06:00.680 people were saying all sorts of things about oh so-and-so's moved out and it's a fake marriage

00:06:05.600 and it's a sham marriage and look i i maintain that if canadians were being deceived in some way

00:06:11.840 there is a political dimension to this there's a political angle to it and absolutely that's a

00:06:16.540 fair discussion to have but it also serves no one's interest it serves no one it doesn't help

00:06:22.620 make the country a better place and it certainly doesn't elevate the state of political discourse

00:06:27.400 in Canada and the reason I bring that up is to say that people from the outside looking in can

00:06:33.320 probably draw different conclusions about a family dynamic than whatever the people in that

00:06:38.160 may be drawing themselves. And as a Canadian taxpayer, I would look at Justin Trudeau and

00:06:44.600 say that my life is neither improved nor made worse, depending on whether he is married or

00:06:51.140 separated or divorced. It's not at all the case. And I say this, not again, because I'm trying to

00:06:59.680 chastise any individual people that may just be consumed by their own understandable frustrations

00:07:05.840 and dislike of the man personally.

00:07:07.500 But at the very least, there's a practical aspect of this,

00:07:11.020 which is that you don't make your side look particularly great

00:07:14.640 if you start reveling in this or relishing in this.

00:07:19.160 And I think that's probably the most important takeaway.

00:07:21.640 Even if you do hate the guy with every fiber of your being,

00:07:24.900 practically speaking, you're not helping your cause

00:07:27.020 by sharing it the way some people have been online.

00:07:30.940 And interestingly enough, I would also point out here

00:07:33.880 that in the case of Sophie Gregoire Trudeau,

00:07:37.240 she has not been as much a public figure herself

00:07:40.160 in the most recent couple of years.

00:07:42.860 And I mean, whether that's because of anything going on

00:07:45.380 on the family side of things, I have no idea.

00:07:47.420 Or maybe she just, like Lorene Harper, 0.53

00:07:49.480 decided she didn't like being the center of attention

00:07:52.380 and didn't actually like the public aspect of the role as much.

00:07:55.900 Or maybe the novelty wore off,

00:07:57.760 as I could understand it doing for many, many people

00:08:01.220 after having to put up with that for a few years.

00:08:03.500 But the one thing I would point out here is that there are a lot of people that I think feel a level of ownership over public figures' personal lives.

00:08:14.100 And this is not just true of politics.

00:08:15.780 This is true of people who are in the limelight in some other ways as well, you know, Hollywood celebrities and whatever.

00:08:22.760 And I've always had a lot more of a sympathetic spot for some people, and I'm not going to name names because there are many of them,

00:08:30.140 But some people that have decided they don't want to make their personal life at all part of the public discussion and people that have made that decision for themselves.

00:08:38.040 But it's harder to do in politics because in politics, people expect a family unit.

00:08:43.340 And that is something that politicians have an obligation to project.

00:08:47.920 And I believe that in the cynicism of politics, it's very easy to understand how someone might try to keep an illusion alive for longer than they should.

00:08:57.720 And that's a general comment, not one that's directed at anyone in particular.

00:09:02.060 The one story I'll tell on this is that a member of parliament that I know, who's no longer a member of parliament, told me when she was first elected that all of the rookie MPs were in this room for some orientation of some sort.

00:09:17.360 And one of the longer-serving MPs had told her, rather matter-of-factly, to look around,

00:09:23.780 and he said, one-third of the spouses you see here will be out of the picture in the next few years.

00:09:31.480 And she thought that was a very odd observation, and then she looked four years later,

00:09:35.440 by the time the next election rolled around, and saw that, indeed,

00:09:38.500 about one-third of those new members of parliaments were divorced or separated.

00:09:43.040 it. And this was a Conservative MP, but the trend is true for Liberals and New Democrats as well.

00:09:49.480 And I mentioned yesterday when I was talking about Chrystia Freeland and her flying back and

00:09:54.660 forth from Ottawa to Toronto as often as she does. And I said, absolutely, I am fully on board with

00:09:59.340 calling out the climate hypocrisy of someone who says we all need to, you know, fly less and then

00:10:04.140 who decides to commute daily from Toronto to Ottawa or almost daily. And the comment that I

00:10:09.460 made was that I'm not going to begrudge a member of parliament making a decision that lets them

00:10:14.340 spend more time with their family and this is actually one of those issues where my principled

00:10:20.360 pro-taxpayer stance is at odds with my belief in the institution of family because technically

00:10:27.000 members of parliament are able to fly their spouses back and forth from Ottawa to their

00:10:31.540 riding and as a taxpayer I'd say well you know they make enough money they should pay for those

00:10:34.840 flights themselves. But I also believe that if that helps keep families together, that might be

00:10:40.360 a useful investment in the long run. And I would say to conservatives, particularly social

00:10:45.960 conservatives, to keep your eye on the prize here, if we believe that the family is the foundational

00:10:50.660 building block of our society, then supporting strong families at an individual level should

00:10:57.120 always be the goal. Above partisanship, above politics, family should be something that we

00:11:02.340 celebrate, and it's very difficult to keep that together for people in this day and age with all

00:11:07.300 of the challenges of the modern world, and politics adds many more of those. So yes, I did dip my toe

00:11:14.820 into the waters of moralism on today's show, but I also feel it's a bit of an important message,

00:11:20.780 and to try to just take that step back and realize that this is not a victory for anyone, nor should

00:11:26.580 the dissolution of a marriage be seen as such unless we're talking about one of those horrific

00:11:31.920 cases that involves abuse in which case yes you know someone is better off without them but that's

00:11:36.640 not at all a comment about this situation this is just a point in which we should probably set the

00:11:42.500 politics aside because there are a great many real issues to deal with ones that continue to be a

00:11:47.240 problem for Canadians one of which is housing and I must say this has always been somewhat of an

00:11:54.120 issue on the back burner for people because for the longest time it seemed to not rise to the

00:11:59.680 level of crisis but over the last decade and I think certainly the last few years we've seen

00:12:04.420 the price of a house get more and more out of reach for people in which now this headline in

00:12:10.220 McLean seems entirely uncontroversial to point out the end of home ownership for generations

00:12:16.860 middle-class Canadians have been sold on the promise of home ownership that promise was always 0.80

00:12:22.100 flawed today it's simply broken that was from june we've seen a litany of news stories from

00:12:29.300 all over the map about how canadians are unable to afford new houses this is true of young families 1.00

00:12:34.660 of people that have been born in canada and it's true of the hundreds of thousands of people

00:12:39.620 immigrating to canada who land here and all of a sudden find that they cannot afford to live here

00:12:45.300 they can't even afford to put a roof over their head let alone buying any of the other costs and

00:12:50.500 It's rather interesting that we have Justin Trudeau's immigration minister, Sean Fraser,

00:12:54.660 now becoming the housing minister, tasked with solving a problem that some people say

00:13:00.120 immigration has contributed to, maybe not as the primary driver, but certainly as a

00:13:05.980 significant one.

00:13:07.760 And then we have Justin Trudeau turning around and deciding to just wash his hands of it

00:13:12.800 and say it's not his problem.

00:13:15.120 Take a look.

00:13:18.100 But I'll be blunt as well.

00:13:19.720 housing isn't a primary federal responsibility. It's not something that we have direct carriage

00:13:26.240 of, but it is something that we can and must help with. That's something we disagreed with our

00:13:31.580 previous conservative colleagues when Stephen Harper's government, with Pierre Polyev being

00:13:37.000 a big part of it, pulled themselves entirely out of the housing business for 10 years. And

00:13:41.520 There's a lot of missed opportunities through that.

00:13:47.800 Now, it was a bit of an interesting one,

00:13:50.500 and possibly the nuance of it escaped you

00:13:53.180 if you were someone with a shorter memory

00:13:56.040 or someone who blissfully doesn't have to,

00:13:58.660 as a matter of their job, pay attention to politics every day.

00:14:01.640 But some dutiful conservative staffer decided to put together

00:14:05.120 a little bit of a montage on how Trudeau himself has evolved

00:14:08.460 on how central housing is to the federal government.

00:14:11.240 Take a look.

00:14:14.080 A liberal government will prioritize significant new investment in affordable housing.

00:14:20.260 For too long, a first home has been out of reach for far too many.

00:14:24.060 It's time to change that.

00:14:26.040 But I'll be blunt as well.

00:14:27.880 Housing isn't a primary federal responsibility.

00:14:41.140 now i should say funnily enough one of the like lessons i think you learn on the first day of

00:14:54.340 political communications is not to amplify your opponent's messaging but actually canada's housing

00:15:00.280 minister sean fraser uh retweeted that video he literally shared pierre pauliev's and the

00:15:06.260 Conservative Party of Canada's video on this and offered his own little chastising of it,

00:15:11.860 calling it out of context. Sean Fraser mentioned here it's an edited and misleading clip

00:15:16.320 coming from a guy who recently held a press conference to call someone's home

00:15:20.380 a shack. Well, yes, it is edited because that's how you put together a clip from 2015 and one of 2021

00:15:26.700 and one of 2023. Otherwise, it would be a three-year-long video, which even the most patient

00:15:31.200 among us wouldn't exactly be able to handle here. Is housing a federal responsibility? Well,

00:15:37.060 Justin Trudeau seems to think it was up until the point at which it wasn't. Scott Aitchison

00:15:41.520 is the conservative housing critic and a former conservative leadership candidate and is returning

00:15:46.300 to the show. Scott, good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me

00:15:51.760 here. So let's talk first off about this question of where the about face happened, because I've

00:15:58.200 heard over the years, many, many announcements and programs and campaign announcements and

00:16:03.500 platform pieces from the prime minister talking about housing. So to just kind of wash your hands

00:16:08.940 of it and say, oh, it's not really a federal thing anymore is a bit convenient. Well, no one should

00:16:15.240 be surprised. This is the ultimate photo op and talking points prime minister. When it sounded

00:16:22.200 good to talk about housing, he talked about it, but then he just woke up recently and figured out

00:16:26.220 that in fact it's a crisis some of your viewers may recall but I asked the former minister of

00:16:31.260 housing many times if he thought that the housing situation in Canada was in fact a crisis and he

00:16:37.320 couldn't use the word but now they've caught on they've realized that it's a mess they realize

00:16:41.540 that that young people new Canadians first-time home buyers people looking for a place to rent

00:16:47.660 to get out of their parents basement there's there's nothing we have a supply crisis in this

00:16:52.000 country. They've just figured it out. And instead of taking responsibility for their failed programs,

00:16:58.420 keep in mind, in 2017, Justin Trudeau stood in front of the cameras and promised his national

00:17:03.620 housing strategy. He called it life-changing. He called it transformational. Well, here's the

00:17:10.620 transformation, Prime Minister Trudeau. Eight years later, house prices have doubled. Rent has

00:17:17.060 doubled mortgages have doubled interest rates have skyrocketed that's your record that's the

00:17:25.080 transformation so that's why he's advocating responsibility now because he screwed it up so 0.96

00:17:30.020 badly it's a crisis and it's his making when do you think he was wrong do you think he was wrong

00:17:35.900 when he was saying it was a federal issue or do you think he's wrong to say that it's not now

00:17:39.880 because there is an argument that it's under the constitution not one of these things that

00:17:43.820 is relegated to the federal government yeah listen he's he's wrong to say it's not a federal

00:17:50.060 responsibility now it's everybody's responsibility every level of government we're all in the same

00:17:54.820 business here we're in the business of helping canadians uh and this is an area where canadians

00:17:59.480 need particular particularly a lot of help and you've heard pierre polyev talk about this issue

00:18:04.500 so passionately and he's bang on it's every level of government that's involved but the

00:18:10.080 but municipalities are the, are the front lines. They are the front line.

00:18:23.880 I believe we may have lost. Oh, there we go. We got you. We go. No, we lost Scott.

00:18:28.960 Do we have them back? No, we have them back now. Sorry.

00:18:33.000 Please continue.

00:18:33.960 but local politicians and their delay tactics cause and you know increase the cost of every

00:18:39.960 unit that gets built in this country and of course the federal and provincial governments

00:18:43.440 you know they're involved in housing as well the federal government needs to be more active in a

00:18:48.060 leadership role and Pierre talks about actually leveraging federal dollars whether it's

00:18:53.100 infrastructure money for water and sewer pipes or infrastructure money for transit leveraging that

00:18:58.320 money to cities to get results. Dollars for doors. No more pandering, no more patting everybody on

00:19:04.240 the back saying, oh yes, we're going to work together. Justin Trudeau's promised that for

00:19:07.820 eight years and he's made it worse and worse and worse. Does that risk though centralizing

00:19:14.620 and nationalizing a process that should be kept more local? I mean, I understand that the core

00:19:20.440 problem and I understand when you have a population that's growing, whether through immigration or

00:19:24.800 other means and you have a housing issue that's already reeling itself as being quite of a problem

00:19:30.220 I just don't know if we want the federal government to be a part of that solution given

00:19:34.460 in general what happens when we try to centralize or central plan things yeah no I'm not suggesting

00:19:40.160 that the federal government take over development approvals process at all I have a lot of experience

00:19:44.940 with that as a mayor and as chair of planning what I'm saying is that the federal government

00:19:48.480 can hold municipalities feet to the fire make decisions just make a decision we've got we've

00:19:54.960 got to move forward we've got to be working together uh and if municipalities aren't

00:19:58.560 interested in playing ball then the federal government can use its leverage to say you've

00:20:02.240 got to play ball or we're not going to support this infrastructure that infrastructure uh and

00:20:07.680 and those municipalities that do get it that do get the job done that do meet their targets for

00:20:12.640 housing pierre talks about making sure they get a they get an infrastructure bonus so we'll work

00:20:17.520 with people. That's our goal. Now, Justin Trudeau would have you believe that Pierre is angry and

00:20:22.360 nasty and all this kind of stuff. He's presenting solutions. Unlike Justin Trudeau, he's presenting

00:20:29.840 solutions. And Canadians are desperate for those. John Ibbotson had a piece in the Globe and Mail,

00:20:36.380 I think it was yesterday, in which he wrote that the Liberals must fix the housing crisis before

00:20:40.900 it undermines support for immigration. And the point he's making there is that when we see,

00:20:45.640 a federal government working up to 500,000 immigrants per year. We see housing prices

00:20:50.220 that are already unaffordable, especially in really high immigration cities like Toronto 1.00

00:20:54.500 and Vancouver. This is going to cause Canadians to really take out their housing angst on

00:20:59.720 immigration. I was wondering, I mean, first off, do you see immigration as being a contributor

00:21:03.440 to the housing problem? I see immigration as a crucially important thing for Canada. We need

00:21:09.960 to keep growing. We need more Canadians to help grow our economy and to do the jobs that we

00:21:15.600 need people to do but this is another symptom of what's wrong with justin trudeau and his

00:21:20.240 government they haven't planned one bit for the increasing numbers of new canadians they haven't

00:21:25.520 thought very much about attracting the skills and abilities that we need to help build new homes

00:21:30.960 they they haven't they haven't planned any of this stuff they haven't they haven't worked

00:21:34.780 nearly as well as they should oh we lost uh scott again there there we go we have him back on we're

00:21:44.840 we're rebounding here. It's not C-11, it's the internet, I promise. So they haven't worked as

00:21:50.000 well as they should though. Well, no, this is the point that Justin Trudeau has broken our

00:21:56.060 immigration system and he hasn't planned for the increasing numbers of Canadians that we need in 1.00

00:22:00.900 this country. And so as a result, you see more and more new Canadians, immigrants coming to this

00:22:06.660 country who can't find a place to live either. But we need to be attracting the skills and abilities

00:22:11.220 to help us build the housing that we need because labor is one of the other crucial elements to 0.57

00:22:16.020 building more homes. We need more homes and we need the skills and labor to get it done.

00:22:22.840 I know there have been, and it gets outside of the housing file slightly, but there have been a

00:22:27.680 number of discussions and studies and news reports in recent months about inflation and about the

00:22:33.540 cost of goods at the grocery stores. And we are seeing in general a cost of living crisis in this

00:22:39.220 country. But housing is the absolute worst part of that for people. I mean, if you look at the

00:22:44.580 numbers, you said doubling in eight years. No one can say credibly that if they've been working at

00:22:49.380 the same job for eight years, their salary has doubled in that time. No, absolutely not. And

00:22:54.400 listen, I think there's a lot of Canadians that are realizing now that there are consequences

00:23:00.300 to massive deficits and to government borrowing gobs and gobs of money. When the federal government

00:23:06.840 borrows billions and billions of dollars to give some canadians 500 to help with the cost of

00:23:12.920 groceries that now cost thousands more dollars it's actually making the situation worse it's

00:23:18.040 not helping he's just trying to buy people for their he's trying to buy their votes uh with their

00:23:23.640 grandchildren's future it it's it's a disaster and it's of his making and we need to fix it we

00:23:29.400 need to clean up the fiscal mess in ottawa because that is the that is how we're going to get

00:23:33.560 inflation down it's how we're going to get the economy working properly again it's how we're

00:23:37.560 going to get more homes built it's how we're going to make opportunity available again to all

00:23:41.400 canadians when you look at the the trajectory moving forward i mean my big concern here is that

00:23:47.560 even among existing homeowners who have kind of scraped their pennies together to put a down

00:23:53.000 payment down they've gotten a mortgage in we've had interest rates go up uh people are going to

00:23:57.560 have to renew those mortgages at some point and i'm worried there's going to be an additional

00:24:02.520 part of this crisis that we haven't seen yet when people can't even afford to keep their homes

00:24:07.960 well this is exactly it i can tell you i have some personal experience with this i have a variable

00:24:12.120 rate mortgage on my house a year ago it was 1.55 percent today it's 6.8 percent my mortgage payments

00:24:20.280 have doubled a lot of canadians can't afford an extra 200 a month in extra costs you know these

00:24:28.360 are the real life consequences of reckless spending and reckless borrowing justin trudeau and his team

00:24:34.760 have caused this do you think there is in general a nimbyism problem that is a national one or is it

00:24:44.280 really just concentrated in certain parts and i guess to put a different spin on that question

00:24:48.680 are there places in canada you think you're doing this really well right now that are really leaders

00:24:53.320 on where we need to see on the housing file well listen it's a complex process all the

00:25:07.400 all right we've uh we've lost uh scott there for a moment here uh so we will have to uh just wrap

00:25:12.280 things up there but my thanks again to scott acheson thank you very much scott for uh coming

00:25:17.160 on really good to talk to you and appreciate your insight on this thanks andrew all right

00:25:21.400 right. Thanks very much. And apologies to everyone for those technical glitches. I mean, it is

00:25:25.920 convenient. Anytime we get a technical glitch, people always want to blame Justin Trudeau

00:25:29.160 somehow, which again, totally sympathetic with wanting to do, but I'm not sure we can do this

00:25:33.700 on the internet file here. One thing that I find is a bit interesting here, and I wanted to bring

00:25:39.500 up just as a follow-up to what we were talking about yesterday insofar as Chrystia Freeland and

00:25:45.560 her uh decision to say she oh i just bike everywhere and ride my bike everywhere i saw

00:25:51.180 someone on twitter that was had like a bounty on of like trying to track down a photo of christopher

00:25:55.620 freeland on a bicycle because i'm not sure uh that anyone believes she's just been like riding

00:25:59.740 around the neighborhood in i think she's in rosedale or university rosedale or whatever and i

00:26:03.640 i am not at all suggesting anyone do the whole like vigilante paparazzi thing i'm just saying

00:26:08.400 that most politicians especially in the u.s they love to like do the really contrived bike biking

00:26:13.400 photo op where, you know, their limo drops them off like a block away from their photo op. And

00:26:19.200 then they pull the bike out of the trunk and they get on this bike they've never been on in their

00:26:23.020 life and just, you know, ride like they do it every day. Justin Trudeau did that. And I think

00:26:26.980 it was the 2019 election when he like kayaked up to his own press conference. And I'm like,

00:26:31.660 but he was more convincing than like Pete Buttigieg was a couple of years back on the bicycle. So

00:26:37.120 Justin Trudeau has done like the phony photo op thing better than a lot of other people have.

00:26:42.220 one thing I wanted to say just in follow up to my discussion yesterday with Justin Ling in which we

00:26:47.900 talked about political polarization I've had a number of emails from that discussion that have

00:26:53.300 been incredibly favorable and one thing I believe wholeheartedly is that the only way we get over

00:27:00.480 the political polarization problem and the partisanship problem we have in society is by

00:27:05.600 having conversations with people with whom you have disagreements and what was interesting is

00:27:10.920 that I didn't actually have too, too many disagreements with Justin Ling in that interview.

00:27:15.600 We have a lot on other stuff, like on the Freedom Convoy and on political themes. And we talked

00:27:20.200 about that when I was on his show. But on the idea of people coming together, on the idea of

00:27:24.940 resisting cancel culture, these were actually, and I was quite encouraged by this, fairly universal

00:27:29.900 beliefs. So that report that we were discussing came out this morning. And some of you said,

00:27:35.280 you know what, I don't like Justin Ling. I don't want anything to do with him. I don't want to

00:27:38.500 listen to the interview. That's your prerogative, but I would encourage you to actually read the

00:27:42.660 report itself and you'll find it's somewhat of an equal opportunity report and that it takes aim at

00:27:48.420 conservatives and liberals, people on the left and the right, and how that and those sort of

00:27:53.500 decisions and tribes and the tribal configuration has contributed to the inability for people to

00:28:00.300 discuss their differences. So I would highly recommend you give that a read and give the show

00:28:06.420 a listen. And I know that we've had some comments on our YouTube and Facebook as we've been going

00:28:12.680 live of people that aren't exactly thrilled with my belief here that we should butt out of the

00:28:19.540 familial dynamic of the Trudeau family. And I'll reiterate the point that I made at the beginning

00:28:25.860 of the program there, just as we close here, in that there are very, very real political challenges

00:28:32.100 in this country, very real policies this government has unleashed on people that have

00:28:36.840 destroyed our civil liberties, that are making life in Canada unaffordable, that are doing

00:28:42.080 a tremendous deal of damage to the very fabric of society.

00:28:46.420 And Trudeau being separated is not at all one of them.

00:28:50.720 It is not in the top five, the top 10, the top 50, the top 100 problems that I have with

00:28:56.120 the Trudeau government.

00:28:57.060 And if I can humbly direct you in some meaningful place, I would say that is probably the case for you as well.

00:29:05.000 That it may be politically convenient to score some points off of him, but I hope we don't actually see partisanship dwindle and decline into that.

00:29:13.420 That does it for me for today.

00:29:14.900 We will be back on Friday with a special edition of The Andrew Lawton Show that I am very much looking forward to and hope you will enjoy.

00:29:21.740 That's coming up in a couple of days' time.

00:29:23.680 And you are tuned in to Canada's most irreverent talk.

00:29:26.480 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:29:56.480 We'll be right back.

00:30:26.480 We'll be right back.

Juno News - August 02, 2023

Trudeau and his wife are separating. Should Canadians care？

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