Juno News - October 27, 2021


Trudeau appoints an environmental radical as environment minister


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

195.49028

Word count

630

Sentence count

37


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Stephen Guabeau has been named Environment and Climate Change Minister in Justin Trudeau's new cabinet. Is this a good or bad move? What will he do in his new role? What are his priorities now that he's not Catherine McKenna's Environment Minister?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I don't usually get too excited by cabinet shuffles, but Stephen Guabeau, named as Environment and Climate Change Minister, I mean, come on.
00:00:14.500 If you thought Catherine McKenna was divisive, if you thought she was extreme that she rubbed people the wrong way, you ain't seen nothing yet.
00:00:22.800 But Stephen Guabeau, what's he going to do as Environment Minister? I don't want to speculate because I don't want to give the guy any ideas.
00:00:30.880 But there are a whole lot of people across the country, particularly in Alberta, who heard this news and, well, let's just put it mildly, they were not pleased.
00:00:40.380 First of all, Stephen Guabeau, quite controversial in his former position as Heritage Minister.
00:00:44.940 All of those nonpartisan experts, professors, and lawyers who were saying, these pieces of legislation, Bill C-10, Bill C-36, this is like internet censorship laws.
00:00:55.320 And Guabeau, he was unapologetic about them, wanting to push them through, saying, we've got to act now, we need this stuff now more than ever.
00:01:02.520 He was undeterred. He really seemed like a true believer when it came to that stuff.
00:01:06.900 But guess what? That was just his side gig. That was just something that I guess Trudeau said, hey, can you do this position for a while?
00:01:12.680 The thing he's really passionate about is environmental activism.
00:01:17.720 In fact, let's just be plain and simple, call it what it is, environmental radicalism.
00:01:22.080 Because I know you've all seen that picture of Stephen Guabeau being taken by the police.
00:01:27.740 He's in what looks like an orange jumpsuit.
00:01:30.420 And you're like, what's all that about? Is he actually a prisoner walking around in a prison yard?
00:01:34.360 Or did he escape from prison? And they got him back in and so forth.
00:01:36.880 No, that's not it at all. If you look closely, you'll see there's a little Greenpeace logo on it.
00:01:40.820 So it was the outfit that he was wearing as a Greenpeace activist, a protester, to, I guess, draw further attention to himself and what he was doing.
00:01:48.500 But he was running afoul of the law as he was doing some of those Greenpeace stunts.
00:01:53.200 And then you have that photo taken of him from a number of years ago, although still very much an adult, where the police are taking him away.
00:02:00.280 He was very much involved in some of the more radical initiatives of Greenpeace.
00:02:04.680 This guy's a true believer.
00:02:06.680 And look, if he's going to do that, he's not going to say, okay, yeah, the carbon tax, I take your point.
00:02:13.240 Maybe we don't actually need to ratchet it up.
00:02:15.880 Maybe we don't need to escalate it.
00:02:17.500 We can pause it for now.
00:02:18.880 No.
00:02:19.680 Whatever is on the table now, whatever Catherine McKenna said, okay, the carbon tax needs to be this much.
00:02:25.360 Well, Stephen Guabeau is going to say it needs to be that much or that much.
00:02:27.900 Sure, well, the sky's the limit.
00:02:30.560 Like I said, I don't want to give him any ideas, but this is someone to watch, someone to keep an eye on.
00:02:37.040 A lot of times, cabinet ministers are just randomly assigned positions for whatever reason.
00:02:42.220 And I guess they get their marching orders from the PMO, and they're just kind of a seat filler in that situation.
00:02:48.000 When it comes to Stephen Guabeau, uh-uh, that's not what's going on here.
00:02:51.700 This guy, his heart is going to be in it.
00:02:54.100 And the thing is, the PMO and Justin Trudeau, they know that.
00:02:58.060 They know who they are getting with this guy, which tells you that whatever crazy stuff Stephen Guabeau is about to say or do
00:03:05.600 in his capacity as environment and climate change minister, well, that's the stuff that Justin Trudeau wants him to say and do.