Juno News - July 18, 2023


Trudeau blames "far-right" for Muslims supporting parental rights


Episode Stats

Length

38 minutes

Words per Minute

174.63017

Word Count

6,709

Sentence Count

232

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:00:12.560 I'm still alive. No, I have not died. I have not been kidnapped by the CRTC as a measure of compliance with Bill C-11 and sent off to a re-education gulag, at least not yet.
00:00:25.800 I was actually away for the last couple of weeks and normally I try not to disappear without
00:00:31.400 announcing it not that anyone cares when I leave but just in general I'm like a big fan of the
00:00:35.860 Irish goodbye at parties where you just like sneak out the door but I because the last show before I
00:00:42.260 went away was pre-recorded earlier in the week I forgot to just say at the end of it oh by the way
00:00:47.060 I'm going to be off for two weeks so I was away and I'll tell you where in a second but then I came
00:00:51.980 back and just had like this deluge of emails wondering where I was and if I had been vaporized
00:00:59.000 or otherwise dispensed with. No, I was actually aboard the MS Osterdam, which is a Holland
00:01:05.020 America cruise ship along the Adriatic Sea for the Mark Stein cruise. I've known Mark
00:01:11.180 for many, many years and had the great privilege of not just being a speaker on his most recent
00:01:16.800 cruise but actually being the emcee and near the end of it the guest host and had a grand old time
00:01:23.400 I actually met some of the viewers of this very program who were passengers on the vessel also
00:01:29.680 did a little bit of musical performing oddly enough I was singing with Michelle Bachman I
00:01:34.840 was singing with Tal Bachman no relation but hopefully no video footage from those will ever
00:01:39.540 see the light of day you just have to come on the next cruise and get the show in person but I'm
00:01:45.760 back now and lots of stuff has happened in my absence that we'll try to unpack as the week
00:01:51.360 goes on from the expansion of the government's control of the internet through Bill C-18 and
00:01:57.100 also this latest standoff which we talked about a few weeks ago and seems to have reached a bit of
00:02:02.320 a new boiling point here between Big Trans, the gender ideology group that is really aggressively
00:02:10.240 pursuing this overhaul of what kids are taught in schools and how parents are to interact with
00:02:16.140 schools on one side and on the other side religious Canadians specifically of the Muslim faith now
00:02:22.720 we know that the modern left doesn't really hold religious people in such high esteem but if you
00:02:29.360 look at the diversity bingo cards Muslims have always been in a bit of a special category here
00:02:35.580 No one will criticize an imam for being against gay marriage the way they will criticize some evangelical pastor.
00:02:42.840 That's just the rules of the left today.
00:02:45.600 But there has been an exception made now that Muslim Canadians, by and large,
00:02:50.580 are in a lot of cases speaking up against what their kids are being taught in schools.
00:02:57.300 This came up at the beginning of Pride Month,
00:02:59.540 when you had all of a sudden some Muslim families at schools in Edmonton and London, Ontario and elsewhere
00:03:05.920 that were saying, ah, you know, maybe I'm not too keen on the trans flag being flown at this school
00:03:11.240 or maybe I'm not too keen on all the stuff that's in the school library.
00:03:14.760 These are concerns that a number of Canadians have, even non-religious Canadians, certainly non-Muslim Canadians.
00:03:21.140 But when shared by the Muslim community, it put people in a bit of a tricky spot
00:03:25.360 Because on one hand, we've been told we need to bend over backwards to culturally accommodate various different groups in Canada.
00:03:32.320 But on the other hand, well, we also have to stand up for sexual and gender minorities.
00:03:37.720 So which side do we pick?
00:03:39.900 Well, Justin Trudeau, the left, the media, they said that Muslims are yesterday's news.
00:03:44.780 No longer do we care about diversity in that sense.
00:03:47.500 No longer do we care about their views.
00:03:49.780 But it was a tricky needle to thread.
00:03:53.440 So how did Trudeau do it?
00:03:54.740 Well, he had to come around and go to the old talking points that he loves, which is blaming the right, blaming the far-right forces, blaming American conservatives for Muslims in Canada not loving the fact that maybe their kid could transition genders in school and they'd never know about it.
00:04:15.180 It's no longer the fault of the Muslim.
00:04:17.580 It's the Muslims being co-opted by American far-right forces.
00:04:23.120 This has played into a few uncomfortable discussions for Trudeau and company.
00:04:29.260 And also we've seen some t-shirt battles come about here.
00:04:32.660 Now, here's the thing.
00:04:34.180 When you're a politician, you're going to get people coming up to you all day long, every day, saying,
00:04:39.380 I want a picture with you.
00:04:40.540 And I don't think you're reading the t-shirts of everyone that comes up.
00:04:44.200 Now, ideally, a good staffer is going to scan the t-shirts of everyone in line and say,
00:04:49.300 oh, hang on, we can't let that person get within arm's reach of Pierre Polyev or Danielle Smith or Pierre Trudeau
00:04:55.500 just because they know that the media is going to make a huge stink of this.
00:05:00.300 But this is what happens every now and then.
00:05:02.620 Pierre Polyev gets a photo taken at the Calgary Stampede with this guy here
00:05:07.400 who's wearing a t-shirt that some people have said is offensive, and then the media pounces on him.
00:05:13.740 I can't read the exact wording, but it's basically like a straight pride t-shirt to some extent.
00:05:20.500 And Danielle Smith also got suckered into this as well.
00:05:24.040 We have a photo of Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, also being snapped.
00:05:29.680 I believe in her case it was at the Calgary Stampede as well.
00:05:33.360 And in the picture that she got snagged, oh yeah, there we go, same shirt.
00:05:38.440 Now, funnily enough, thank a straight person for your existence is what the shirt says.
00:05:44.120 So take from that what you will.
00:05:46.260 But both of these people were then maligned in the media, as is the common response to stuff like this.
00:05:53.440 And the Zapruder-like analysis of the photo, trying to figure out every angle of it.
00:05:58.880 Was there a second t-shirt? We'll never know.
00:06:01.140 Global News ran this piece.
00:06:02.980 What message does the Danielle Smith straight pride photo send to Albertans?
00:06:07.820 I suspect the message is that people just walk up to Danielle Smith and get photos taken with her from time to time.
00:06:15.040 And this one was great about Pierre Polyev.
00:06:18.600 Mums the word as Polyev, Calgary MP, stay silent over hate t-shirt photos.
00:06:25.720 Now, the reason I bring this one up is a little bit of a curious diversion,
00:06:30.160 because it's not the straight pride photo that is the hate t-shirt,
00:06:34.840 but a different photo of a conservative member of parliament, Jasraj Singh Hallan,
00:06:40.780 who was photographed with a few Muslim chaps in Alberta.
00:06:45.540 But let's take a look at this offensive hate t-shirt that Global News has decided to identify.
00:06:53.400 Leave our kids alone.
00:06:56.520 Oh, there's a Canadian flag on the t-shirt.
00:06:59.180 Maybe that's why it is a hate t-shirt in the eyes of Global News.
00:07:03.200 So these are the shirts that Global News, without describing, says are hate t-shirts.
00:07:09.040 Now, this is a global headline on an otherwise reasonable enough Canadian press story.
00:07:14.340 But a few Muslim folks say, leave our kids alone, and this is a hate t-shirt.
00:07:19.620 Maybe it was actually Ann Coulter and Mark Stein that just, like, forced those poor, hapless Muslim guys into those shirts.
00:07:27.060 Because after all, as Justin Trudeau says, it is the American right that's responsible for Muslim Canadians speaking up and raising issues with what their kids are being taught in schools.
00:07:37.580 Now, I said a few weeks ago that, yes, it's all well and good when Muslims and evangelicals and I think just in general, most parents can all be on the same side of an issue.
00:07:49.300 I don't know what these folks believe about any number of other things.
00:07:53.440 So I don't believe that this alliance will necessarily extend to other political issues,
00:07:58.420 but I do believe that it has revealed in the liberal narrative on diversity issues a bit of a fault line,
00:08:05.480 which is that they only love diversity when they don't have to reckon with ideological diversity.
00:08:10.900 Once we have people thinking differently, well, that is not the type of diversity that we hold up as being Canadians' strength or Canada's strength.
00:08:19.980 I want to talk about this and some other issues on the parental choice front with Alyssa Globe, who is the co-founder of RightNow and joins me on the line.
00:08:28.980 Alyssa, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:08:32.080 Thanks for having me. Glad you aren't vaporized.
00:08:35.180 Well, we'll see how things go by the end of the show here.
00:08:39.060 Now, just for context here, RightNow is a very effective pro-life political group.
00:08:43.980 And I know often the pro-life cause or social conservatism is viewed as being, I think in some cases, a very Catholic thing, certainly a Christian thing.
00:08:53.880 But that's not really true in a meaningful way.
00:08:57.020 If you look at the landscape of Canadians, a lot of the values that you talk about are shared by virtually every religious group on the face of the earth except for the United Church.
00:09:07.140 yeah and i mean we just on our podcast this week interviewed a transgendered canadian commentator
00:09:13.880 named julia malott who's also speaking out about this so even people within the lgbt community are
00:09:19.320 talking about not targeting children with gender ideology so it's not just a religious issue it's
00:09:24.860 not just a muslim issue or a christian issue it affects canadians of all different walks of life
00:09:29.620 across party lines and polls show this as well as people who are speaking out about it
00:09:34.040 yeah and i think in this particular case we have a lot of people people that have been pushed
00:09:40.140 to something that was more gradual at first i mean that famous audio clip from an edmonton school
00:09:47.540 that came out uh where the teacher is chastising the muslim students for not going along with the
00:09:52.420 pride stuff because everyone else had to go along with their ramadan stuff is basically her
00:09:57.320 argument and the catchphrase of that it's not a joke Mansoor is one that rings true and you see
00:10:04.140 in New Brunswick here how a leader who I would say has not been particularly useful on a lot of
00:10:09.520 other issues certainly not through COVID Blaine Higgs ended up becoming a very strong leader on
00:10:15.580 this and even in the face of massive criticism including from within his own party has held the
00:10:20.500 line on parental rights. Yeah I think Canadian politicians specifically in the Conservative
00:10:26.000 party, whether it's provincial or federal, have to look at what Blaine Higgs is doing and emulate
00:10:30.260 that if they want to actually connect and invigorate their voting base. Because not only
00:10:35.700 is he taking a stand on an issue that a lot of Canadians care about, specifically in the
00:10:40.860 Conservative Party, but like I said, across all party lines, but he's also not backing down. He
00:10:45.000 is getting absolutely eviscerated in the mainstream media and by the opposition, but he's not backing
00:10:51.820 down whatsoever. And when polls come out about this issue in New Brunswick about parental consent,
00:10:56.840 if your child wants to socially transition in schools, the majority of Canadians are on side
00:11:01.580 with Higgs, the overwhelming majority of Canadians, I think it was only 18% that are actually on the
00:11:06.460 opposition. And then the majority of people who live in Atlantic Canada are also on side with
00:11:11.020 Blaine Higgs. So that's why when the opposition says, oh, we should have a leadership review or
00:11:15.220 threaten an election, they actually don't want that because they know they're going to lose.
00:11:19.300 Yeah, I mean, I spoke about the New Brunswick stuff a few weeks back.
00:11:23.460 And what's shocking, if you look at it, is that it actually is a very modest bill.
00:11:28.800 I mean, it's not even, I mean, I would say it could have gone a lot further and still be on side with where a lot of Canadians are.
00:11:34.800 But it doesn't do what the critics accuse it of doing.
00:11:37.820 It doesn't out anyone to their parents.
00:11:40.160 In fact, it is not empowering schools to reach out to parents without consent in general.
00:11:45.300 It's just saying that if a child wants to go through this transition, a child under the age of 16, I think it is, they need a parent to consent to that.
00:11:54.780 So it's not a road of communication towards parents here.
00:11:59.340 And I think that, you know, what's shocking to me about this is that the core argument for people that support the criticism against Blaine Higgs,
00:12:08.200 for people that support the denunciation of Muslim families and other families is really that
00:12:13.760 schools should be keeping secrets from parents. I mean, that's effectively the argument here.
00:12:19.820 And I've never heard anyone come out and refute that. Yeah, I mean, it's not a very good argument
00:12:25.080 when your whole talking point is that parents are the enemy. And when we've tried to separate
00:12:30.280 parents from their children in the past, it hasn't worked out too well. I think we should
00:12:33.460 learn those lessons throughout Canadian history. So why are we trying to do it with this issue?
00:12:37.460 It's just nonsensical.
00:12:39.320 It hasn't worked out.
00:12:40.320 And parents, you know, Canadians are parents.
00:12:42.540 A lot of Canadians are parents.
00:12:43.800 They are not the enemy.
00:12:45.340 Parents know what's best for their children, not teachers.
00:12:48.460 And, you know, what they're trying to do is separate those children from their parents
00:12:52.820 so that if parents do try to intervene, well, then the teachers or the schools or most likely
00:12:57.680 the government is their savior.
00:12:59.780 And that's ultimately what they want to be seen as.
00:13:02.340 So I think this is, you know, as long as you said, it doesn't go far enough.
00:13:06.600 But another thing I want to mention too is that in Ontario, I don't think a lot of people know this, this is already a policy that parents do not have to be notified when their children socially transition in schools. This is something that's coming up in New Brunswick because Blaine Higgs is reversing a policy that was kind of quietly passed, but this is already a policy in a lot of different provinces, including Ontario.
00:13:27.920 Yeah. And you've, through right now, launched a petition to basically stand with Blaine Higgs. But more about the mechanisms being used here is that he's actually facing a calls for a leadership review. So I can't stress enough that there are parents that, you know, again, it's hard to find an issue in politics that is as unifying as this, but somehow it hasn't unified the PC party in New Brunswick.
00:13:52.700 Yeah, and I mean, you know, petitions are good to show solidarity. But the, you know, specific reason why we use our petition is so that we can build our supporter base so that when a leadership review does come, we will actively sell memberships and support that politician that is speaking out. So in this case, Blaine Higgs. So not only will we show, you know, solidarity through a petition, but we'll also use that to actually effectively give him the votes that he needs to win.
00:14:18.860 so just in in the bigger context here i mean we we have this i'll say a coalition i mean it's a
00:14:25.880 very thin coalition between uh you know some transgender folks like you mentioned between
00:14:30.980 muslim canadians christian canadians i think in general just a lot of parents that are not
00:14:35.760 particularly religious or political do you think this is kind of a one-time deal that you know when
00:14:42.000 it comes to what kids are being taught in schools everyone can get together but the second you
00:14:46.560 deviate from that issue everyone kind of goes back into their corners again no i do think that
00:14:51.800 it will unify a lot of people and it will start with the gender ideology issue but i think people
00:14:56.900 are a lot more unified on social issues in general and culture wars are facing different parts of the
00:15:02.260 world and they're coming to canada they already are here and a lot of conservative politicians are
00:15:07.660 uh you know reticent to talk about these issues but they are here and people care about them and
00:15:12.840 And so, you know, I think that in order to win, to motivate the base, to win future elections, there will have to be a solid opposition taking a stand on these issues, taking a stand with parents, taking a stand with people of all different faith backgrounds, and really protecting family values in Canada because our children are being targeted.
00:15:34.900 I mean, just in Manitoba, recently in a city of Manitoba, they were putting in different really sexually explicit books in the library, and they actually had to change one of their school board meetings from the school board to a gymnasium because so many people were pouring in because this was an issue that they cared about.
00:15:52.920 You can see these rallies happening in Ottawa and London in different parts in Calgary, where people of all different faith or non-faith communities are coming together and they're growing bigger and bigger and bigger.
00:16:04.040 And the more it's similar to the COVID issue, I feel like, because the more that Trudeau tries to make an enemy of Canadians like he did with the COVID issue, like you're a fringe minority, when that's clearly not the case, the more people are going to rise up.
00:16:16.020 So in a sense, the more, you know, these teachers in Edmonton say your ideology doesn't you don't belong in Canada to these Muslim students or Trudeau says, oh, this is a far right Americanization of the issue, the more people are going to stand up.
00:16:29.800 And I'm glad to see it.
00:16:31.740 Yeah. And I just I mean, when you have like, let's say a Catholic and a Calvinist and a Wesleyan Armenian in a room, they can all find no shortage of things to yell at each other about and disagree about.
00:16:43.160 But when you talk about sort of core values issues and core moral issues, they're all going to be in agreement on 99.9% of things. Same as if you extend the room and throw a Sikh in there and a Hindu guy and a Muslim and a Jew. And again, they can disagree with lots on Indian politics, on Middle Eastern politics, but on these core values and moral issues, they'll agree on things.
00:17:04.300 And that divide and conquer thing that we see from the media and from the government is such an important tool to take note of here, because any time abortion, for example, comes up in an election, the media and Justin Trudeau's team will all make it seem like there is a much broader consensus around their side on this than actually exists in Canadian society.
00:17:26.700 Even if people in Canada will disagree on, well, you know, rape and incest or third trimester, second.
00:17:33.560 I mean, the majority of Canadians is on a different side than the liberal government is on this.
00:17:40.800 Yeah. And, you know, to use Trudeau's words, it's often the fringe minority that have the views of Trudeau, like less than 10 percent of Canadians, you know, 18 percent of Canadians want, you know, don't want children to be able to secretly socially transition.
00:17:55.680 What I find interesting about this whole situation is that, you know, the LGBT community originally started to say, you know, we, we want equality, we just want to be treated like everyone else and be left alone. And it's now become, you know, in Toronto, they want to force kids to go to drag queen story hour in their schools without being able to opt out. So now it's become, you have to do this, and there's no way out.
00:18:21.900 And ultimately, what the other side is saying is we just want to raise our kids. We just want them to go to the school and be left alone. We don't want different views being pushed down our throat. Like, for example, what happened in Regina with Planned Parenthood, they get into the schools, they do their presentation on God knows what.
00:18:38.700 And then a 14 year old leaves with a stack of cards, which has the ABC alphabet of sexuality.
00:18:45.760 And some of the terms are about urinating and defecating on your partner and being sexually attracted to a television without this isn't even a joke.
00:18:53.940 This is teaching kids about these really weird kinks that are that Planned Parenthood say are legitimate.
00:19:01.740 So ultimately, as parents, as Canadians, we just want to send our kids to school.
00:19:06.960 we want to be able to have the freedom to teach them whatever we want to teach them when it comes
00:19:11.780 to our faith and we don't want things being shoved down our throat and I think that's
00:19:15.480 they're pushing the envelope way too far by targeting kids and and refraining from being
00:19:20.380 able to opt out and that's why you're seeing this backlash right now very well said right now
00:19:25.680 co-founder Alyssa Gallobe always good to talk to you Alyssa thanks for coming on today thanks for
00:19:30.600 having me all right that was Alyssa Gallobe you can watch the great work that right now is putting
00:19:36.120 out at itstartsrightnow.ca. And when I mentioned the mismatch on this issue between what, on one
00:19:43.560 hand, the government media class tells you people think and what real people think, we should
00:19:49.600 sometimes see Justin Trudeau having to be a little bit humbled. He was speaking in Halifax the other
00:19:54.640 day at the North American Indigenous Games, which I'll be perfectly frank, I'd never heard of
00:20:00.180 until today, but they do all sorts of games that are steeped in Indigenous tradition.
00:20:04.760 things like canoeing and lacrosse and a number of other sports and sporting events
00:20:10.800 and Justin Trudeau was the guy giving the kickoff speech
00:20:14.380 and didn't exactly get a warm reception.
00:20:19.020 Hello my friends.
00:20:22.620 We've been waiting for this moment.
00:20:26.920 We've been waiting for this time for a long time
00:20:29.760 of a 2020 edition of the North American Indigenous Day
00:20:34.160 had to be postponed because of the pandemic.
00:20:39.060 Hmm, I wonder if all of those kind Indigenous folks
00:20:42.620 have been co-opted by the American right as well.
00:20:45.560 After all, anyone else who criticizes Justin Trudeau
00:20:48.580 is just an American far-right operative.
00:20:51.620 Now, again, I'm not sure I would agree with everyone in that room
00:20:54.880 on any number of issues politically.
00:20:56.540 I don't know if they're booing him over lack of clean drinking water on reserves in Canada.
00:21:02.020 Maybe they're booing him because he has kept the Racist Indian Act in place.
00:21:06.060 Maybe they're booing him because they just don't like him.
00:21:09.020 I don't know, and it doesn't particularly matter to me.
00:21:11.900 But as I said on Daily Brief this morning with Cosman Georgia,
00:21:15.860 it is interesting when groups that the Liberal government has tried to claim a monopoly over,
00:21:21.200 like Indigenous people, like racial minorities and religious minorities,
00:21:25.120 When all of those folks are booing Trudeau, it makes you wonder if this is a political project that is nowhere near as popular as it thinks, and certainly one that is in decline.
00:21:39.080 This is exactly what it is that we have been talking about for many months on this show.
00:21:43.920 And I mean, I've said you should never underestimate Justin Trudeau.
00:21:47.240 The guy literally won an election when he was found to have been parading for most of his adult life in blackface.
00:21:54.180 I mean, Katie Telford, his chief of staff the other day, had tweeted about, you know, the bigotry of conservatives.
00:22:00.460 And I just, I should have just pulled the tweet to put on the show today.
00:22:03.200 But I just took the picture of one of the many pictures of Justin Trudeau in blackface and just put the caption,
00:22:10.040 Day-O, after all, that was one of his go-to party songs.
00:22:14.000 So anytime the Liberals accuse someone of being racist, we should literally just hold up the picture and go,
00:22:19.300 Day-O, me say Day-O, daylight come and Trudeau.
00:22:24.180 comes home. That's what we should, that was what I was doing on the Mark Stein cruise, although not
00:22:28.180 Deo. I wasn't doing like the Trudeau version of party entertaining because how dare these people
00:22:33.940 lecture everyone else on racism that doesn't exist when their leader has legitimately done a
00:22:40.920 bona fide example of racism through most of his adult life. So many times he can't even remember.
00:22:48.280 We're going to be talking with Gleb Lysak of the C2C Journal in just a few moments time here.
00:22:54.860 But I just want to talk about this in the context here because he put forward a great essay in C2C Journal
00:23:02.700 in which he talked about a simple meat and potato recipe for making a pandemic.
00:23:09.500 And he talks about this in basically two main pieces of detail.
00:23:14.540 One is the reliance on PCR.
00:23:16.880 They were all the rage through 2020 and 2021 and kind of into 2022 as well.
00:23:23.440 You used to have to do one if you wanted to get back into your own country.
00:23:26.900 And also the over-reporting of COVID death numbers.
00:23:31.300 Both of these things were crucial pieces of evidence that the government relied on
00:23:36.440 in explaining just how dangerous and dire things were.
00:23:40.700 And these things ultimately became the cornerstones of the pandemic narrative that really carried much of the last three years.
00:23:50.220 So it's a very thoughtful piece.
00:23:51.640 And as I've said on the show, it's a bit challenging sometimes when we had to live through this to want to stay in this terrain for so long.
00:23:59.860 But I also believe there is, generally speaking, a sense of justice that people need.
00:24:04.940 A lot of folks are not prepared just to live and let live and offer that so-called pandemic
00:24:10.060 amnesty.
00:24:11.160 I saw a video from some ostensibly right-of-center commentator today giving an apology for comments
00:24:18.620 he made about unvaccinated people, for example, earlier in the pandemic.
00:24:22.360 And I watched this apology video, but it offered no sense of why it was wrong and no sense
00:24:28.520 of why he believed what he believed and what changed.
00:24:31.420 Now, I'm a big believer that if someone is going to go through an evolution in how they think and how they approach an issue, we should encourage it and we should welcome it, but you've got to show your work and you've got to explain what it is that has actually changed as opposed to just demanding forgiveness because you realize that whatever view you had a year ago or five minutes ago is no longer in vogue with the audience that you have now.
00:24:56.420 And I think that's the key thing here whenever anyone's talking about the idea of pandemic amnesty.
00:25:03.100 So we'll talk about this in the context of this essay here with Gleb Lysak, who's a C2C contributor and also a researcher and IT professional.
00:25:13.360 Gleb, good to talk to you. Thanks very much for coming on today.
00:25:18.300 Andrew.
00:25:19.520 So, I mean, you've actually distilled a very complex concept into fairly simple terms here.
00:25:26.080 But am I understanding your point correctly that you feel the two sort of big data issues that we saw here came down to the PCR tests and the related but also distinct phenomenon of the death counts?
00:25:40.580 Yeah, that's pretty much was the idea, right?
00:25:43.740 The COVID waters were very, very murky.
00:25:48.960 And there are all kinds of things that come into equation.
00:25:52.100 the government response the officials the media uh hospitalizations the bands hospital band
00:26:02.740 utilization and stuff like that so so many things so to me it was important to distill this to those
00:26:12.900 key concepts that pretty much drove everything else right so we had cases and we had deaths
00:26:19.140 cases would uh estimate the scale of that uh let's call the disaster right and the deaths
00:26:30.340 would estimate the severity everything else was kind of in between or supported by all those
00:26:37.060 numbers so that's why i wanted to take all those side components out of the equation and just
00:26:49.140 plug the major numbers in and present them in a way that not only highlights the aspects of this
00:26:58.520 COVID pandemic, but would also apply to any pandemic going forward. Because ultimately,
00:27:06.940 if we're going to have another one, it will be gauged by the same numbers, cases and deaths.
00:27:13.180 that's it yeah and and i think both are challenging i mean originally cases were the
00:27:19.460 thing that everyone cared about because you know cases were the way you'd measure how widespread
00:27:24.620 something was in in a community and at a certain point when i forget which wave it was i don't know
00:27:30.400 if it was omicron or something when we saw cases just completely swell but deaths continued to be
00:27:36.680 in decline and uh you know the idea of at that time taking anything meaningful of cases when
00:27:41.980 people, myself included, were testing positive despite having zero symptoms of anything. So,
00:27:48.220 I mean, that is not a meaningful positive result. And whether it's that it's a false positive or
00:27:54.420 your case is so mild that you don't even know you have it, to me, is not necessarily relevant there.
00:28:01.260 But people were still trying to make policy on that and saying, well, the high cases mean we
00:28:05.460 need to keep mask mandates in place. We need to keep X, Y, and Z in place.
00:28:09.500 Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. I think it was around January 2022 when Omicron was at its best. And the cases were through the roof. And people started wondering, like, why are we really counting those? Right? And how are we counting that? And is it the effort and counting that brings up the cases up? Or is it actually the cases themselves? Or the disease?
00:28:39.500 so it was becoming very apparent and laughable that counting cases the techniques of counting
00:28:45.660 cases they demand for cases or forcing everybody to test was what was driving the case numbers
00:28:54.620 as soon as they stopped counting cases disappeared
00:29:00.140 is your view on the pcr test that it was being used for something that it was never intended to
00:29:06.780 be used for and that the the issues that you've identified were more accidental or or was your
00:29:12.540 view that this was being deliberately used because it would give this number that would then support
00:29:19.260 all of these policies the government wanted to put in i guess the question is was this in it was
00:29:23.420 this something that was a byproduct of a bad policy or was this a policy that was designed
00:29:28.540 in your view to be more manipulative in my personal opinion and again i'm not claiming to be
00:29:34.700 the final instance of everything so everybody can anybody can read the article and make up their own
00:29:39.900 mind i'm not trying to draw any conclusions but since you're asking me personally i think it was
00:29:44.700 a deliberate attempt there's absolutely no way for me how a medical a science a scientist or expert
00:29:55.500 in uh pcr testing for example or any of the testing of insort would legitimately authorize
00:30:02.940 PCR to be a clinical diagnostics tool. Judging from that, it was totally inappropriate to use
00:30:11.340 it as a clinical diagnostics tool. You can use PCR, and PCR is a great technology, right,
00:30:16.780 that allows you to, let's say, estimate the presence of certain pathogen within the population,
00:30:22.780 because it's totally probabilistic. So you can apply it to masses and come up with a probabilistic
00:30:29.020 estimate of how much of that particular pathogen virus or whatever is present within a certain
00:30:34.700 group of population but when it comes to clinical diagnostic deciding whether a particular person
00:30:40.860 is sick it has a disease it totally fails to do its job because it's a probabilistic tool it's
00:30:50.620 never been designed for clinical diagnostics it's very it's uh the the very inventor of this
00:30:57.100 technology questioned that, not specifically for COVID, but for viruses in general, right?
00:31:04.920 So to me, it's absolutely impossible how a medically knowledgeable person can make a
00:31:15.140 decision to use PCR for clinical diagnostics, which inevitably follows that it was a deliberate
00:31:20.940 attempt to exaggerate cases through misuse of the PCR.
00:31:27.100 And I said at the beginning, when we look at cases and deaths, that the two are different, but they're very related because the PCR testing and, you know, for example, you couldn't go to a hospital with a broken leg without getting a COVID test meant that all of a sudden people that never would have been tested on their own were getting logged as COVID hospitalizations.
00:31:49.480 And if something happened where you died, we know that there was this issue of people dying with COVID versus of COVID, which messed with the numbers.
00:31:58.460 And I mean, you had some stories in the US where someone, you know, went in with a motorcycle accident that killed them and they were logged as a COVID death because they happen to have COVID or something like that.
00:32:08.580 And you had governments say, oh, you know, we're trying to do our best to filter these cases out.
00:32:13.540 But the two really are interconnected in the sense that someone gets a PCR test, someone is a COVID case, someone dies of something.
00:32:21.880 All of a sudden, the natural instinct is to log them as a COVID death, regardless of what killed them.
00:32:29.200 Yeah, and I can even share my personal story.
00:32:32.700 And I'm sure many people would probably know someone with whom something similar happened.
00:32:40.560 so my wife's aunt in moscow russia right i'm not talking about canada anymore i just because it's
00:32:47.760 been pretty much all over the world in moscow so my my wife's aunt she was very um unhealthy
00:32:57.440 individual with tons of various diseases she was she had difficulties moving around the home
00:33:05.760 the home and um pretty much she needed help from someone else like she could not be on her by
00:33:12.880 herself so finally she she got to the point where she had to be brought into the hospital
00:33:19.040 in 2020 uh for something completely different not not covered at all right she had enough other
00:33:26.160 problems to be worried about so after about a week or two i don't remember exactly but
00:33:32.320 she was finally diagnosed with covet uh basically the test came up positive from which point she
00:33:40.880 got moved from this uh ward whatever she was in into the covet ward and she died there
00:33:48.720 and i handled the story right wow um i have i have other other personal stories to share but
00:33:56.320 this is just an example of what was happening in hospitals people were tested basically daily
00:34:02.640 in 2020 2021 for covet because of the the pcr test nature obviously sooner or later it would
00:34:11.360 give you a positive result which triggers moving the person to a different world where they would
00:34:17.200 be treated uh from from covet or get no treatment at all as as in initial stages of disease uh that
00:34:27.760 was the advice don't do anything pretty much right uh as opposed to being treated from what they
00:34:33.600 suffered from so it was completely mistreatment of the people that got them killed in those
00:34:42.000 covet words i'm not talking about covet treatment i don't want to go in that area yet but
00:34:47.760 that's pretty much the very very common scenario you get moved to the covet world you know you're
00:34:52.240 not you're you're mistreated and you die and the death certificate says you died from covet well
00:34:58.000 because the pcr test was positive well sir i mean it's certainly a simple and logical concept you've
00:35:04.000 put forward here glab you know cases plus deaths equals the story of the pandemic but if each of
00:35:10.400 of those premises is fraught with its own data challenges then we we are seeing exactly what
00:35:16.080 you've described here and what you go into more detail in in your essay in c2c journal making a
00:35:21.840 pandemic a simple meat and potato recipe and again we've only really scratched the surface here but
00:35:27.200 i would encourage people to read that for themselves gleb lysic thank you so much for
00:35:30.960 coming on good to talk to you thank you have a good day all right you too gleb and let me just
00:35:36.320 add one additional component to this the pcr test people made an absolute fortune off of those i i
00:35:44.280 talked about a switch health a while ago which was this company that uh came up and it is basically
00:35:49.640 one of the most i'm i don't want to get sued here but it's like people should look into just what
00:35:56.160 switch health did a company that basically uh has no utility now but had gone from being non-existent
00:36:03.660 to being the contractor that you had to go through
00:36:07.200 if you were landing in Canada
00:36:08.740 because you had to do this entry test.
00:36:11.540 A company that then all of a sudden
00:36:13.320 started doing these DIY COVID tests
00:36:16.040 that you could buy for, I think, like 150 bucks each
00:36:18.360 as a partnership that was helped
00:36:20.820 by the former CEO of Air Canada
00:36:22.560 and then promoted by Air Canada.
00:36:25.480 But in general, I mean, I do some work with a client
00:36:28.760 that's not true north in the United States.
00:36:30.440 So I ended up going across the border a couple of times
00:36:33.380 when the border was closed, because I had a working reason to be there. And even so, I had
00:36:39.380 to do a COVID test to get back into my own country. And the thing is, if you had no medical need for
00:36:45.380 it, you'd need to pay for these COVID tests. And because Canada had this rule where the test had
00:36:50.960 to be done in less than 72 hours before when you went to the border, you would need to pay for
00:36:56.820 these expedited tests. So you'd spend like $200 US, $250 US to get a COVID test. In Canada,
00:37:04.240 labs were charging very similar amounts if you wanted results in. So people were making a fortune
00:37:09.140 off this and turning back positives in some cases for people that had no idea there was anything
00:37:15.260 wrong with them, except for a PCR test telling them when the only reason they got the test was
00:37:20.840 for some travel related reason or because they were trying to go visit grandma in a long-term
00:37:25.780 care home. No one's sick, but all of a sudden someone has made money off this test, which tells
00:37:30.880 you you're positive. And if you need a test to tell you you're sick with something, you're not
00:37:34.640 actually sick. So the case count was incredibly flawed from the get-go. Now, where I go from here,
00:37:42.140 I don't know, because obviously if you are going to have a pandemic or you are going to have a virus,
00:37:47.400 yes, you need to test people and yes, you need to log deaths. But when the data collection process
00:37:52.540 has become politicized and, I would argue, weaponized.
00:37:55.920 You need to do what Gleb Lysak was doing here
00:37:58.600 and take a bit of a retrospective on this
00:38:00.820 and have a more honest accounting.
00:38:03.320 And it would be nicer if we could have had this much sooner than now.
00:38:06.920 That does it for us for today.
00:38:08.660 We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show
00:38:11.920 here on True North, The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:38:14.100 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:38:17.040 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:38:19.100 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.