Juno News - Trudeau ＂committed＂ to staying on as calls for resignation mount

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

00:01:19.640 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most reverent talk show here on true north it is

00:01:29.720 tuesday july 2nd the second day of canada's 158th year i hope well here's to 157 more canada

00:01:39.520 it is good to have you here and i hope you had a wonderful canada day long weekend or as i tend to

00:01:46.260 say Dominion Day. But Dominion Day is, I think, a rather interesting example of where we are as a

00:01:54.880 country, because I've always said Dominion Day just by virtue of it being far more traditional.

00:01:59.900 And I think Canada Day is a bit of a hokey name. That's not to say it's a terrible name. It's just

00:02:05.240 Dominion was wonderful. Canada is a dominion. It's a term that comes from the Bible. But the reason

00:02:11.680 I like Dominion Day is just because it's traditional. But there was this proliferation

00:02:15.780 I saw online of anytime someone like me or my colleague William Macbeth or anyone else said

00:02:20.800 Dominion Day, it was accused of being some like weird far right dog whistle, which just goes to

00:02:25.600 show you how anything is far right to those who basically think that even Stalin was probably a

00:02:31.160 little bit too conservative for their liking. But nevertheless, hope you had a good weekend.

00:02:35.480 I went out to one of the small town Canada Day festivities near me yesterday. And on the weekend,

00:02:41.140 I took advantage of having a couple of days off to do something I have never done before.

00:02:45.660 I smoked brisket, not like the Justin Trudeau stuff. No, I smoked brisket and I've done pulled

00:02:53.060 pork. I've done ribs. I've smoked some other stuff like on the smoker. Don't get too many ideas here.

00:02:59.020 I had never done brisket. I was always very overwhelmed by it because, you know, everyone

00:03:03.160 says it's so difficult. And this was on, I think it was Saturday, maybe whatever day it was,

00:03:08.740 I got up literally at 3 a.m. to start smoking the brisket and, you know, put it in there.

00:03:14.560 It basically was ready at, I think, 6 p.m.

00:03:18.000 So all of the time proclamations that I had been given as a bit of a warning ended up becoming quite accurate.

00:03:23.960 To be honest, I was really impressed with it.

00:03:26.400 The flat part, if you know brisket, was a little bit on the dryer side.

00:03:29.580 Not dry. It was a little bit overdone.

00:03:31.760 But the point, which was the main part of the brisket, was phenomenal.

00:03:35.120 So if you've ever wanted to know how to smoke a brisket, I don't know if I could replicate it.

00:03:40.260 I'm going to try to do it again.

00:03:41.660 It is difficult for someone like me to want to invest, what was that, 15 hours in cooking dinner.

00:03:48.060 But now I've got like enough food for the whole week.

00:03:49.940 So this is what we do on the long weekends in my household.

00:03:53.380 But good to have you tuned into the show.

00:03:55.620 We'll talk a little bit later on about this rather stark realization of the safe supply

00:04:01.220 or so-called safe supply program in my own city.

00:04:04.580 but it's one that you would probably find finding similar to in communities across the country.

00:04:09.960 We'll talk about that with Adam Zeevo.

00:04:11.920 And also want to talk a little bit about this weird national export of the carbon tax.

00:04:18.760 The government is not just wanting to make sure Canadians are subject to the carbon tax,

00:04:23.660 but is wanting to promote and push the carbon tax all around the world.

00:04:27.360 So we'll talk about that with our good friend Chris Sims,

00:04:29.400 who returns for a rare Tuesday update in just about 10 minutes or so.

00:04:33.980 But let's first talk about the state of Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party.

00:04:38.400 I think last week, it was one week ago today, that we had the definitive ruling of, well, I should say actually no,

00:04:45.700 it was a week ago today that Torontonians went to the polls in the Toronto St. Paul's riding.

00:04:50.640 It was a week ago Tuesday morning that we got the finding that the Conservative candidate, Don Stewart,

00:04:56.820 had been elected the next Member of Parliament for Toronto St. Paul's.

00:05:00.260 And I think a lot of people may have optimistically expected that Justin Trudeau would not last until the end of the week, that you could basically do what we did with Liz Truss and the lettuce and just have Justin Trudeau versus a head of lettuce and see who can last longer.

00:05:14.420 In that case, the lettuce outlasted Liz Truss. 0.99

00:05:16.980 But I think Justin Trudeau is outlasting the lettuce.

00:05:20.160 If someone were to replicate the experiment here, there has been no massive caucus revolt.

00:05:25.680 There has been no groundswell of public condemnation from liberal MPs.

00:05:29.740 You just had cabinet ministers coming out and saying, yes, our leader has the full confidence in us.

00:05:34.860 We have the full confidence in him. Everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Go, go wild.

00:05:39.000 It's basically like that meme of I think the dog sitting in the burning building saying this is fine.

00:05:43.960 That's basically Justin Trudeau in the Liberal Party of Canada right now.

00:05:48.080 There was one letter, one letter signed by one member of parliament, New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, which came out.

00:05:55.620 I think it was last Friday. And this letter, which was sent to Liberal caucus members,

00:06:00.360 basically had Wayne Long calling on Justin Trudeau to resign, calling on him to step aside

00:06:05.840 as Prime Minister, as Liberal leader, and to let someone else lead the party into the next election.

00:06:11.340 Now, Althea Raj, who wrote about this in the Toronto Star, said she was told that more

00:06:15.620 Liberals were going to sign the letter, that more caucus members were going to,

00:06:19.220 and effectively they got cold feet. So MPs are just terrified right now of criticizing Justin

00:06:26.300 Trudeau. The Liberal Party has managed to make it so that no one who has frustrations with him

00:06:31.920 and his leadership even has an outlet. They're not calling a national caucus meeting. MPs who

00:06:37.040 were terrified of speaking up have just decided to be cowed into submission. We had the report

00:06:43.660 from justin ling also in the toronto star last week that steven gilbeau this this was fantastic

00:06:49.140 by the way so steven gilbeau was at the union station business lounge in toronto so he's waiting

00:06:55.140 to get on a via rail train and he's just like openly on the lounge just talking about oh yeah

00:06:59.940 so and so wants to get rid of him uh oh yeah we need oh so yeah no we gotta rob all the fan he

00:07:05.020 said this about justin trudeau and this mp and this mp and as it happened sitting like i don't

00:07:09.960 know, five feet away from him was Justin Ling, who decided to do the grab the low hanging fruit

00:07:16.320 of journalism as he should have and just say, you know, start furiously taking notes. And he wrote

00:07:21.000 about that. He wrote about just what he was hearing from Stephen Gilboa waiting to board a train

00:07:25.280 station in the Via Rail business class lounge. But the amount of damage control that came out

00:07:30.880 from the PMO after that, after hearing that call, Gilboa saying, no, this was one sided. He didn't

00:07:36.500 hear everything and other MPs saying, oh no, he should have asked me, I would have clarified this.

00:07:41.780 The PMO was terrified because they knew that it was evidence of their minister trying to do damage

00:07:48.440 control. And then they basically came out and said, oh, we never asked him to do that. No,

00:07:52.440 there was no problem. Again, the nothing to see here defense. So the liberals believe that they

00:07:58.940 are in an absolutely great place. And because their MPs do not have the temerity, do not have

00:08:04.420 the courage or the backbone to stand up to their leader. Justin Trudeau is going to stay on the

00:08:08.560 ballot until the next election. I'm convinced of this. And here, I mean, this is why he's doing

00:08:13.520 the media rounds now and doing interviews and talking about this as though he knows he's not

00:08:18.680 going anywhere. Take a look. In terms of personal contemplation, if there's any discussion or a

00:08:25.180 thought for you of a 10th candidate as prime minister, because as I have you, I would be

00:08:31.020 remiss if I didn't ask about what has happened in the last week since the by-election in Toronto

00:08:36.660 St. Paul's and the calls from caucus members and former cabinet colleagues. They say it's

00:08:42.240 time for a new leader. Listen, there's always going to be lots of reflection after a tough

00:08:47.420 loss, but there's also so much to do, and I am committed to doing the work of building a better

00:08:53.060 Canada every single day. So I look forward to next year's Canada Day, and I look forward to

00:08:57.800 many more canada days this is this is the kind of work that we have to remember really really

00:09:04.040 matters there are tough days and there are better days but canadians are strong and resilient and

00:09:09.720 that's why we keep moving forward i look forward to many more canada days next canada day the

00:09:16.520 canada day yeah all the canada days canada day is great oh by the way i'm not going anywhere

00:09:20.500 he says he's committed to staying on and of course why would he feel like he's going anywhere he

00:09:25.540 Justin Trudeau is like the guy in the movies who any movie it happens in many many movies

00:09:31.000 who everyone thinks is up against the wall the police know they've got him and they're wondering

00:09:36.340 why this guy is so cocky because they don't realize that someone has like broken into the

00:09:40.300 evidence locker and destroyed the key piece of evidence so he knows he knows that he's won

00:09:45.060 and that's the case of Justin Trudeau right now he is coming out here and he is making all of

00:09:50.640 these claims of him staying on because he knows that his party is not going to get rid of him.

00:09:56.080 He knows that Wayne Long is the entirety of the so-called resistance against Justin Trudeau

00:10:01.860 because all these other people that were going to sign the letter have just been

00:10:05.160 stunned into submission. They've been scared, they've been threatened, whatever. And again,

00:10:09.540 these are very short-sighted liberal MPs because so many of them know they're going to lose the

00:10:13.720 next election. So what power it is that Justin Trudeau wields over them, I have no idea and I

00:10:19.940 don't particularly care but it's amazing if you look at their spin it's evolved considerably from

00:10:25.980 even last week to now about why they lost Toronto St. Paul's now let's put the map up this is the

00:10:31.080 map the electoral map the political map of Toronto as of well Tuesday at 4 44 a.m it's all liberal

00:10:39.220 liberal liberal liberal liberal and then blank right in mid I don't know what blank means but

00:10:43.260 right in the middle of midtown there is Toronto St. Paul's now represented by a conservative for

00:10:48.040 the first time in 31 years now why did the liberals lose well the first couple of days of spin was all

00:10:55.360 ministers coming out and saying well yes we're disappointed but we're going to listen and we're

00:10:59.620 going to really pay attention and we're going to hear what people want and we're going to

00:11:02.620 this is it's now evolved it's now about they're no longer interested in what they did wrong they're

00:11:07.740 no longer interested in listening to canadians they're no longer interested in taking stock

00:11:11.980 This was Karina Gould, the Liberal cabinet minister, pushing out her own spin.

00:11:17.200 Liberal MP suggests party needed stronger ground game in Toronto St. Paul's vote.

00:11:23.260 So the reason they didn't win is because they weren't canvassing enough.

00:11:26.760 The reason they didn't win is because they didn't have as good a get-out-the-vote effort as the Conservatives did.

00:11:30.900 Now, the Conservatives may well have done a tremendous get-out-the-vote effort,

00:11:34.460 but getting rid of a riding that you've held for 31 years cannot be blamed on mere ground game.

00:11:40.240 The reality is not that they didn't have enough volunteers.

00:11:43.320 Leslie Church, the Liberal candidate, was not the problem.

00:11:46.580 The problem was Justin Trudeau and the Liberal brand.

00:11:50.040 I just love that.

00:11:51.580 I find that to be just so fascinating here.

00:11:53.620 It's, oh, well, the reason we lost was, no, it's not that they hate Justin Trudeau.

00:11:58.680 It's not that they hate the carbon tax.

00:12:00.000 It's not that Canada's broke.

00:12:01.020 It's a ground game, ground game.

00:12:04.220 That's the one.

00:12:04.720 We didn't do the ground game properly.

00:12:06.740 It is insane.

00:12:08.060 and you see the way that the liberal government has just been so absolutely beleaguered on pretty

00:12:13.560 much every file imaginable and you wonder where it's going to go from here and unless liberals

00:12:19.600 start to find a backbone and say we don't want you here to their leader to Justin Trudeau

00:12:24.580 nothing is going to change now to be clear I am absolutely I don't actually care I don't care

00:12:30.960 whether Justin Trudeau is there or they replace him with some seat filler until the next election

00:12:36.320 It makes no difference to me, and I don't really think it makes much of a difference to the country, because anyone that would be there to fill his seat, to be an interim prime minister, they're on the same path. There'd be a path dependency from the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, and nothing they do is going to really depart that dramatically from what Justin Trudeau is doing now.

00:12:58.720 Now, that being said, I would say that the Liberals, if you look at polling numbers,

00:13:03.140 there was that one piece in the National Post today that looked at an Angus Reid poll,

00:13:07.020 finding that even if Justin Trudeau were not the leader,

00:13:09.520 the electoral fortunes of the Liberals are unlikely to be helped much, if at all.

00:13:14.360 Canadians are still not going to vote for the Liberals.

00:13:17.340 So if they want to put Dominic LeBlanc or Anita Anand or Chrystia Freeland or Mark Carney or whomever

00:13:23.700 in that seat in the next election,

00:13:25.960 it's not going to make a huge difference.

00:13:28.860 So we have a few different players here.

00:13:31.300 The Conservatives have been raring to go.

00:13:32.840 They're saying, bring on the election.

00:13:34.060 They want it now.

00:13:34.720 And understandably so,

00:13:35.680 because they're on track to have well over 200 seats

00:13:38.440 in a majority if the election were held today.

00:13:41.260 But you have two things standing in the way

00:13:43.340 of any major change.

00:13:45.100 One is Justin Trudeau is not going anywhere

00:13:47.100 and no one in his party seems to be too bothered by that.

00:13:50.780 The other is that the NDP are not interested in having an election. Jagmeet Singh has not yet qualified for his pension, so pay close attention to what happens in February. He might all of a sudden find a bit of a spine come February.

00:14:04.860 But what's interesting is that there was another poll showing that NDP voters, only 40% of them, sorry, only 40% of Canadians view the NDP liberal deal as beneficial.

00:14:19.380 40% of NDP supporters aren't even convinced it's a good idea.

00:14:22.720 So apparently you have just like six in 10 new Democrat voters, new Democrat supporters

00:14:28.560 that are happy with selling out their whole party, their whole ideal set for the liberal

00:14:35.020 government to keep it in power a little bit longer.

00:14:37.400 So NDP voters need to speak up as well and tell Jagmeet Singh they're not too keen on

00:14:42.640 this.

00:14:42.900 Again, I do think that the pension theory holds a lot more weight the more you think

00:14:47.880 about it and the fact that the NDP is just a perennially broke party.

00:14:52.720 that really can't afford to go to the polls anytime soon but what's happening here Trudeau

00:14:57.400 is going to skip the Calgary stampede not that winning votes in Alberta was necessarily going to

00:15:01.620 be what he had in mind for a plan moving forward but he's basically just hiding he doesn't want to

00:15:07.720 be around people that don't like him and that pretty much leaves out well the entire country

00:15:11.800 right now speaking of Alberta let's go to our friend Chris Sims here for a rare Tuesday check-in

00:15:17.780 given the holiday yesterday she is the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

00:15:22.180 Chris, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:15:25.220 Likewise. I didn't hear that, so he's skipping the Calgary Stampede.

00:15:30.960 Can you hear me?

00:15:31.760 That's according to the Western Standard anyway, confirmed by an email from the PMO.

00:15:36.960 So basically, they are not interested in – well, he's not interested in being there,

00:15:41.880 and I think Albertans are probably just as pleased because I don't think they were ready to give him the white hat welcome by any stretch.

00:15:46.920 But we've talked a lot, you and I, over the last year about the carbon tax.

00:15:51.480 It's become an incredibly unpopular tax.

00:15:53.520 It's costing Canadians a lot of money, despite the proclamations that it's not.

00:15:57.540 What I find interesting here, and you drew my attention to this, the government has spent

00:16:01.980 $1.7 million promoting the carbon tax around the world, so promoting global carbon taxes.

00:16:09.240 So they don't just want people in Red Deer and Strathroy and Halifax to pay the carbon

00:16:15.120 tax.

00:16:15.420 They want people in Baku and Tallinn and Paris to pay a carbon tax as well.

00:16:21.480 talk to me about this. Yeah. So it's one of those things where I had to take a double take at it

00:16:26.300 because I couldn't tell right away if it was 1.7 million or 1.7 billion. And the fact that I didn't

00:16:32.560 blink at the difference speaks volumes because they just as easily could have been a billion.

00:16:37.840 But in this case, it's 1.7 million dollars with an M. And we found this out through freedom of

00:16:44.320 information requests with the federal government through our investigative journalist, Ryan Thorpe

00:16:50.240 there in Ottawa. He and Franco dug this up. And yeah, it turns out they've spent around $800,000

00:16:55.940 in change or so, Andrew, on bureaucrats keeping seats warm and watering houseplants there in the

00:17:01.780 national capital region, trying to promote adopting a carbon tax in other countries.

00:17:07.840 And what I find spectacularly sad about this is that they fail. They're really bad at this.

00:17:15.780 So not only are they wasting Canadian taxpayers' money on something silly and frivolous, like trying to convince a foreign country to impose a tax on its people, but they're terrible at it. 0.88

00:17:26.460 They haven't succeeded in doing so.

00:17:28.480 Like, I'll just point out the United States of America, it's obviously our closest neighbor, biggest trading partner, huge ally, blah, blah.

00:17:35.620 I just finished driving across three states, actually, came home yesterday.

00:17:38.880 And they, number one, depending on how you slice it, it really looks like they reduced their emissions under Trump.

00:17:47.280 And that is largely because they increased their use of natural gas, reading they do not have a national carbon tax in the United States of America.

00:17:56.840 And even though their chirpy little sister up here in Canada has been urging them to do so, they still haven't imposed one on their people.

00:18:04.500 So if we can't even convince the United States to have a national carbon tax, why are we wasting money trying to convince countries further afield to do so?

00:18:13.560 There are two things that come to mind on this.

00:18:15.900 Number one is that talk about a race to the bottom is that, you know, we've been saying to the government, you know, even if Canada were to bring its emissions to zero, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans because emissions are global.

00:18:26.000 So the government says, OK, we'll see you that argument and raise you.

00:18:30.640 Everyone has a carbon tax there.

00:18:32.120 You can't say we're ignoring the global picture.

00:18:33.880 But the other thing, and this is what I think is so key here, the greatest detriment that a carbon, well, one of the greatest detriments a carbon tax poses is that it eliminates any competitive advantage that Canada might have and investing in Canada might have relative to other countries.

00:18:49.120 So if you're to say, oh, why would I invest in Canada, which has a carbon tax, when I can invest and open up my factory in, oh, I don't know, in Czech Republic, say, because they don't have a carbon tax.

00:19:00.680 The government's trying to make it so that everyone is being punitive, so that everyone is penalizing industry.

00:19:05.980 And as you note, other countries are saying, nope.

00:19:09.320 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:10.100 Because they know that this is not helping the environment.

00:19:12.740 They know it's not reducing emissions because if you start punishing people financially for an essential, OK, heating your home in the winter is essential.

00:19:21.800 Growing and eating food is essential.

00:19:24.200 Shipping your supplies to people who need it and getting to work.

00:19:27.480 Those are all essential things.

00:19:29.540 People aren't flying their private jets around the world to, you know, cop conferences for reducing your emissions.

00:19:35.280 Right. They're not. This is not a have yacht issue.

00:19:37.740 This is a normal working class sort of thing, and yet they're still financially punishing us. 0.89

00:19:43.240 And if you take that viewpoint around the world, of course, they have working people and working

00:19:47.420 populations and normal families around the world. And Canada, our little academic class there in

00:19:53.420 Ottawa, trying to say, you know what you guys should do? You should punish people for driving

00:19:57.520 to work and heating their homes. They're rightly telling us to go get lost. The problem here,

00:20:02.440 though, of course, Andrew, is that this is again costing Canadian taxpayers money. $1.7 million

00:20:08.180 and it's not nothing. It's also growing the size of our bureaucracy. And it's the same sort of

00:20:14.020 thing that the former New York City Mayor Giuliani had when it came to crime. It's the broken windows

00:20:18.980 theory. If you allow for jaywalking and broken windows and graffiti, you're going to have

00:20:23.940 increasing levels of crime. Same sort of thing with dumb things like spending money on promoting 0.91

00:20:30.540 a carbon tax internationally. It doesn't work. It wastes money and it grows government. So again, 0.92

00:20:35.920 I'm really glad that the folks there at the CTF in Ottawa's office dug this stuff up because it

00:20:40.760 points out how absolutely pointless this is. I will point out, I just filled up in Montana on

00:20:45.740 my way back across into Alberta. That's why my voice is so ratch because I was screaming at a

00:20:49.880 concert for like three hours, but I filled up there. It's like 30 cents, around 30 cents cheaper

00:20:56.360 there per litre same octane for gasoline than it is even here across the border in Alberta and

00:21:03.220 that's comparing Montana to Alberta. I can't imagine what the difference would be going from

00:21:07.320 a really red state to a really liberal state or province up here in Canada. Yeah I think you're

00:21:13.040 right about that and you know I go back to the race to the bottom dimension of this here because

00:21:18.060 we always forget that in a well we don't but the government does or chooses to ignore that

00:21:23.120 in a globalized economy, you have to be able to sell what you are offering better than other

00:21:29.180 places around the world. Now, obviously there are shipping costs that have to be factored in there

00:21:33.180 and maybe Canada can say, okay, we have a bit of a comparative advantage to say the US market

00:21:37.640 because of our proximity to it. But the fact that in Canada, it's so expensive to manufacture

00:21:42.180 things. Labor is a part of that. Yes, the carbon tax adds to it. And we have to stop looking at

00:21:47.160 these things in isolation. The left loves talking about intersectionality. Well, let's talk about

00:21:51.460 intersectionality of taxes and regulations and all of these things here.

00:21:56.060 I might steal that from you.

00:21:58.060 It's all yours.

00:21:59.280 It's all yours.

00:22:00.200 Really good analysis and spot on.

00:22:01.840 And to your point, exactly.

00:22:03.320 So people might remember this big foo for awe that was happening between the prime minister's

00:22:08.680 office, PMO, and parliamentary budget office, PBO.

00:22:12.840 Ottawa loves their acronyms just like the armed forces.

00:22:14.700 So what was happening was the PBO, parliamentary budget officer, had figured out, spoiler alert,

00:22:21.460 that the carbon tax costs people money, even with their precious rebates factored in.

00:22:26.420 Every common sense person already knew this, of course, but they did the math there. And what's

00:22:31.460 really startling is that you take a look exactly to your point, Andrew, the GDP cost. Okay. So we're

00:22:37.620 not talking just generally people filling up their minivans or their pickup trucks directly,

00:22:42.180 or even paying, you know, the carbon tax on their, on their heat bill, which is insane.

00:22:46.500 But if you just look at apples to apples, the GDP cost, so the difference between Bill Jones

00:22:53.460 starting a manufacturing plant in Montana with no carbon tax versus starting a manufacturing plant

00:23:00.580 in Alberta with a carbon tax, that difference is costing the Canadian economy billions of dollars

00:23:09.060 per year. And again, that's just the economic cost that the PBO was factoring in there.

00:23:14.340 And that, of course, is why the prime minister's office was kicking and screaming for weeks, Andrew.

00:23:18.660 And they didn't want to release this information, but they finally had to cough it up last week.

00:23:22.840 And it's really damaging.

00:23:24.740 And we found that all of the arguments used to justify the carbon tax have not held water.

00:23:30.380 We know it does penalize Canadians.

00:23:32.780 There is a, I mean, and that's even just based on the government's own analysis here.

00:23:36.500 So this idea that, oh, most people are coming out ahead.

00:23:38.620 Well, if so, there wouldn't be a point in it.

00:23:40.820 Yeah, exactly.

00:23:41.780 That's, I always like pointing that out.

00:23:43.920 because you can flip it around and say, oh, well, okay, if it makes everybody rich,

00:23:48.180 heck, make the carbon tax $500 a ton. We'll all be rich, right? That's idiotic thinking. That's

00:23:54.800 childish thinking. I would only insult children. That's really silly to think that because of

00:23:59.280 course, taxes don't make you richer. And number two, exactly to your point, if it's not financially

00:24:05.200 punitive to use a substance, then how do they expect the use of that substance to be reduced?

00:24:12.820 if it's not hurting you in your wallet, so to speak, as they try to say, and deterring you from

00:24:18.520 using it, then what's the point of it, right? This is the whole argument, right, with using

00:24:24.060 paper or plastic bags, right? Or having a deposit on your pop can. If it's a deterrent to throw it

00:24:30.380 in the garbage versus recycling it and getting your money back, that's how their thinking worked.

00:24:35.820 But the problem is, is that's not how it worked out. In theory, that's what they were trying to

00:24:40.400 do for years. Spoiler alert, people still need to get to work. They still need to eat. They still

00:24:44.860 need to heat their homes. And that is why even though Canada has a carbon tax, our emissions

00:24:50.540 continue to go up. Even though British Columbia has been the oldest jurisdiction with the carbon

00:24:56.040 tax for the longest time, since 2008, their emissions nonetheless continue to rise steadily

00:25:03.360 because people use this as essential fuels. And so, yeah, it's not working because it's not

00:25:09.940 reducing emissions. It's not working because now they're trying to spin this and saying, oh, well,

00:25:14.500 it was only ever meant to make you richer anyway, and here's a rebate. If that were true, Andrew,

00:25:19.640 why did the Trudeau government blink when it comes to Atlantic Canada, right? They came out

00:25:26.000 and admitted, yes, this is a financial burden for people to pay a carbon tax on their home heating

00:25:32.100 oil, which is largely used in Atlantic Canada, especially in places like Nova Scotia and Prince

00:25:37.540 Southern Island. Why did they then come forward and say, you know what, we're suspending the

00:25:41.880 carbon tax, but just on this fuel and just for the next three years, like any way you slice it,

00:25:47.880 this is not working out for them. So explain to me where you think this is headed, because

00:25:54.720 we know that, I mean, correlation is not causation, but we know that polyamorous and

00:25:59.300 conservatives have been surging in the polls for months now. We know that if you could really

00:26:03.960 attribute one policy to him, even if you're only a casual political observer, it's going to be

00:26:09.080 axe the tax. So the conservatives have taken up getting rid of the carbon tax, as I'd say at this

00:26:13.860 point anyway, their flagship policy. That might not be the reason they're doing so well in the

00:26:18.320 polls, but it certainly isn't hurting them. And I think that, again, even people that were kind of

00:26:22.760 okay with the carbon tax have realized that in an inflationary economy, it's a luxury item. It's

00:26:28.160 okay, maybe we could afford it in 2015, we can't afford the carbon tax now. Do you think that will

00:26:33.620 remain in place do you think that sentiment will remain yeah i think so and exactly to your point

00:26:38.900 because people just can't afford things so inflation is just astonishing i haven't checked his math but

00:26:45.780 i would recommend people go look i found him on instagram there's a gentleman there now again i

00:26:50.260 have not gone in a deep dive and checked his math but it looks generally correct there's a gentleman

00:26:54.900 that has like a walmart kind of um a shopping cart right i guess you can do that i don't actually have

00:27:00.500 the app but apparently within the app you can go back through your order history and he shows it

00:27:05.220 on the screen and he shows that what he used to spend around 100 i'm guessing around 180 or so

00:27:11.940 back in 2015 he says he's now spending around 400 or so on pretty much the same items and so he was

00:27:20.500 trying to point this out he was just a regular guy trying to point out what inflation is like

00:27:24.580 here in canada that was astonishing and it really shows like if anybody who's at the grocery store

00:27:29.700 who keeps an eye on their prices realizes how much things are costing. Add to that the price of fuel

00:27:34.660 and the price of housing. It's just astonishing for people. So yeah, to your point, I do think

00:27:39.940 that axing the tax is going to continue to be a main driving force with the popularity of any

00:27:46.180 party who wants to promote it, by the way. And it's really interesting to see Pierre Polyev and

00:27:50.900 the Conservatives make a full 180, thank you very much, after that weird little flirtation they had

00:27:57.140 with their version of a carbon tax so glad to see them on the right track i will point out by the

00:28:01.700 way i just i saw that your audible is now available for the pierre pauliev book so i just ordered it

00:28:07.460 i just ordered it on my phone so i'll be listening to it this week but to your point i do think this

00:28:12.100 is going to be a major issue and i think it will continue to be a major issue even if we have to

00:28:16.420 wait for a year and a half because i'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news it's just going to get

00:28:21.300 worse because the trudeau government they've got a massive deficit they have no plans to ever

00:28:26.260 balance the budget they have no concept of money and so like the budget fairy gods are not going

00:28:32.020 to descend upon canada and just fix things they have to balance the budget and do smart things

00:28:36.660 and they're just refusing to do so so yeah i do think that's going to be a centerpiece

00:28:41.540 very well said uh chris uh now you might just be stuck with a view of chris right now because my

00:28:47.700 producer sean just told me his power went out oh there we go i'm back he switched to a uh

00:28:52.420 a hot spot there so you might have had to just like pick up the show from there because we

00:28:55.860 We couldn't switch cameras one way or another.

00:28:58.840 Oh, be still by eating art.

00:29:00.580 Yes, that is the book that's over my shoulder there.

00:29:02.820 Pierre Polyev, A Political Life,

00:29:04.880 now available on Audible, eBooks, Kindle, Indigo, Amazon.

00:29:08.340 It's available anywhere.

00:29:09.200 So Chris, thank you so much.

00:29:10.720 Hope you enjoy the book.

00:29:12.000 I will.

00:29:12.440 Thanks, Andrew.

00:29:13.300 All right.

00:29:13.680 Thanks very much.

00:29:15.040 I was very nervous.

00:29:16.100 Sean just sent me a message that my power is out.

00:29:18.420 I'm like, well, okay, but what does that mean for me?

00:29:19.960 And then apparently it meant that we got a nice long close-up

00:29:23.020 on Chris Sims.

00:29:23.680 But you know what?

00:29:24.160 if you need to close up on someone, uh, better on Chris than on me. So I think we should probably

00:29:29.580 just do the whole show with her. I could just, you know, dub it and, you know, we'll go, go that

00:29:33.100 way. But, uh, anyway, let's, uh, let's take a moment here. Uh, this is a story that's closer

00:29:38.500 to home for me in, I live in, uh, Southwestern Ontario, as many of you well know. And the

00:29:43.660 reality is in the city of London, it, uh, we used to just be this nice little quiet, sleepy city

00:29:50.520 It was more conservative culturally, not necessarily politically.

00:29:55.080 And I remember even a decade ago looking at the drug situation in Vancouver and seeing that as a problem over there.

00:30:01.640 And London very quickly became, around that time, 2015-2016, one of the worst cities in terms of a drug problem.

00:30:10.300 London was one of the cities that early on embraced needle distribution, crack pipe distribution, all of these other things.

00:30:17.000 and all of that is novel and quaint compared to what we're seeing now with the proliferation of

00:30:23.740 so-called safe supply now this has been an issue we've talked about at a relatively length well

00:30:29.940 we've talked about it at length I had Dr Sharon Koivu on the program a couple of weeks back and

00:30:34.600 she used to well she is an addiction medicine physician in London but she used to be a significant 0.99

00:30:39.560 champion of so-called safe supply and she did what any other scientist and researcher does she 0.79

00:30:44.600 followed the data. And the data showed her that these things were not only not helping people

00:30:50.560 with drug addiction, but they were making things worse. She saw another number of key metrics

00:30:54.720 continue to rise and in fact balloon. Well, now we have another report from our friend Adam Zivo,

00:31:01.200 who is with the National Post and also is the founder of the Center for Responsible Drug

00:31:06.460 policies, the seizure, police seizure of hydromorphone pills skyrocketed 3,000% after

00:31:14.900 the city's safe supply or so-called safe supply expansion going back to the year 2020. This is

00:31:22.260 massive, a 3,000% increase given that this was finding these hydromorphone tablets were finding

00:31:31.040 themselves being diverted to the black market. Police were seeing this, didn't really say

00:31:36.440 boo about it, didn't speak up, didn't take aim at any of these policies in any public way. And in

00:31:42.160 fact, Adam Zivo, as he's recounted in his article here, he had a heck of a time getting some of the

00:31:47.260 information that was necessary from police and getting this disclosure. And there was a former

00:31:52.380 London police sergeant who has now become a documentary filmmaker that was trying to do

00:31:57.420 similar stuff. He was trying to do research on this and was finding himself getting absolutely

00:32:02.120 stonewalled. But in early June, the deputy chief of the London police service, Paul Bastian,

00:32:08.740 confirmed to Adam Zeebo that hydromorphone seizures have gone up. Just to put some raw

00:32:13.560 numbers on here, in 2019, the London police had fewer than 1,000 tablets seized. In 2020,

00:32:21.080 that number had increased sharply. And when you get to 2022, over 30,000, and they're expecting

00:32:28.600 this year, it will match or exceed last year. So we have seen a massive, massive increase

00:32:36.000 in this. This is just one drug in one city in Canada, but I think there's probably a bigger

00:32:42.900 picture here that we'll see. Adam Zivo joins us on the show again. Good to talk to you, Adam.

00:32:47.100 let's just talk about this here because diversion is something that there is irrefutable evidence

00:32:53.080 it's happening you've pointed to like ads on reddit threads promoting diverted drugs we've seen

00:32:59.420 these numbers yet still the activists and advocates of safe supply i i mean in some ways

00:33:04.980 pretend it's non-existent at all or when they are confronted with the evidence just downplay it

00:33:10.080 considerably but this is not an insignificant increase no i mean like going from 1 000 pill

00:33:16.240 sees in 2019 to 30,000 pills sees in 2023 is huge. Most people, when they hear these numbers,

00:33:23.040 they don't really have any frame of reference, but we have to remember that just two or three

00:33:27.400 of these pills is enough to induce an overdose in an opioid-naive user, such as a teenager.

00:33:33.240 So essentially, these 30,000 pills is the equivalent of 10,000 overdoses. And as Dr.

00:33:40.440 Sharon Koivu pointed out when I interviewed her for this piece, these seizures represent just a

00:33:44.940 drop in the bucket of what is flowing throughout the city overall. So we're looking at probably

00:33:50.480 hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pills flowing through London, Ontario because of safer

00:33:55.780 supply. Let me just ask you about this, because if you look at one drug, you look at hydromorph

00:34:01.520 and you see an increase, it's not all that surprising that if diversion happens, that when

00:34:06.040 this product is given an expanded access in a particular point in time, that you're going to

00:34:11.140 see an increase of it. My question would be, and I don't know if we have the data on this,

00:34:15.560 is there a net increase in drugs in the city or has hydromorph just replaced something else that

00:34:22.120 would have been seized had these tablets not been? And in that case, you know, the activists would

00:34:26.480 argue maybe it's healthier because this is better for you than some of these other things.

00:34:30.920 Well, it's hard to talk about the net number of drugs, net amounts of drugs flowing through a

00:34:35.320 city. That's incredibly hard to track. However, from my understanding, Safer Supply has not

00:34:40.460 replaced the illicit drug supply, but has in fact only subsidized it. The reason why Safer Supply

00:34:45.640 clients sell their drugs in the first place is because hydromorphone, though it may be as powerful

00:34:49.540 as heroin, is only about 2% as powerful as fentanyl. And so for a fentanyl user, hydromorphone,

00:34:58.660 even in large doses, is useless. So they sell their Safer Supply to buy fentanyl. And if all

00:35:03.940 of these Safer Supply clients are purchasing fentanyl and flooding the streets with their

00:35:08.520 hydromorphone, that indicates the dental market is still very active and that safe supply is not

00:35:13.080 replacing it or mitigating it, but rather is subsidizing it. And I think that's very

00:35:17.160 concerning. Now, when we want to look at other metrics that quantify diversion in London,

00:35:24.740 Ontario, so Dr. Koivu did do a chart review of her patients in Victoria Hospital. So she reviewed

00:35:30.780 200 patient charts between January and June of 2023. And she found that 30% or 33% of the

00:35:38.200 patients who were not enrolled in a Safer Supply program, self-reported accessing hydromorphone

00:35:43.400 diverted from Safer Supply. Also, CAMH recently released a report that looked at self-reported

00:35:50.580 drug patterns or drug use amongst Ontario high school students and middle school students.

00:35:55.760 And they do this survey once every two years, and they found that between 2021 and 2023,

00:36:01.080 three, the number of students who self-reported using pharmaceutical opioids for non-medical

00:36:08.740 reasons skyrocketed by about 70%. And the number of students who said that these opioids were

00:36:14.260 easily available also skyrocketed by about 40%. So all of these indicators suggest that there is

00:36:21.980 a huge influx into the supply of pharmaceutical drugs. I mean, prices used to, like these pills

00:36:29.480 used to cost $20 each. Now they sell for about $1 to $2. And that it's not dissuading people

00:36:35.060 from using dangerous substances. It's getting into the hands of kids and hooking them into

00:36:40.240 addiction, which then eventually escalates to fentanyl use and then kills them.

00:36:45.280 So if a lot of these drug users are offloading hydromorph to buy fentanyl, who's the market for

00:36:52.500 hydromorph if a lot of these drug users are getting rid of it because it doesn't do what

00:36:56.520 they want it to do. Well, that's the thing that's so pernicious about this diversion is that the

00:37:01.200 people who buy this hydromorphone tend to be newer users. Let's look at kids as an example.

00:37:07.060 I've interviewed dozens of kids who have told me all about how hydromorphone has become very

00:37:11.840 popular in their schools or in their communities. This is predominantly in BC. And they say that

00:37:18.340 they weren't aware of how dangerous the drug was, right? They know that heroin is bad and that they

00:37:25.120 shouldn't do heroin. And the fact that you often have to inject heroin is a very powerful way to

00:37:31.160 dissuade people from experimenting with it. But when a kid is at a party and someone hands them

00:37:36.940 a pill and they hear hydromorphone and they have no clue what it means, and they're told that it's

00:37:41.720 just a prescription pain medication, which is marketed as safe from the government, they're

00:37:46.480 much more likely to try it. And they don't realize what they're getting into until they're already

00:37:51.220 addicted uh now that's one group other groups include uh people who are in recovery and who

00:37:59.540 have lower opioid tolerances and who know not to mess with fentanyl and not to mess with heroin

00:38:06.180 but think that hydromorphone is something that they can handle once again because it's marketed

00:38:11.140 as safe and if the drug is so cheap how serious could it be i interviewed an addiction outreach

00:38:17.540 worker in ottawa who estimated that 90 percent of safer supply clients in that city divert their

00:38:23.860 hydromorphone and he had friends because he used to be a heroin user so he had friends and

00:38:28.020 acquaintances who got hooked onto the drug and a common theme was that they thought it was maybe

00:38:34.100 as potent as a tylenol 3 which is still an opioid but it's much weaker because the drug was so cheap

00:38:39.140 you know it was one dollar a pill so what happened in 2020 that changed this in london so much

00:38:48.420 well so safer supply was first piloted in 2016 it was initially marketed as a way to uh help stabilize

00:38:56.900 the lives of vulnerable sex workers essentially if we give them the drugs that they want then they

00:39:01.940 have fewer reasons to sell their bodies on the streets to make money to buy drugs then it was

00:39:06.580 quickly expanded uh to become what we know is safer supply today so it was available to anyone

00:39:12.180 really uh who was severely addicted and this was a pilot project and there was a lot of research

00:39:17.860 that suggested on paper that it was doing well i mean most of these evaluations and studies were

00:39:22.900 incredibly low quality most of them just involved interviewing safer supply clients and asking them

00:39:27.060 do you like this program where you get free opioids and when they predictably said yes this

00:39:31.300 was framed as objective evidence of success so based on these evaluations safer supply was

00:39:37.060 expanded nationally in 2020. The COVID pandemic was used as the impetus for this. Essentially,

00:39:43.700 the argument was that we needed new emergency guidelines to provide these drugs to drug users,

00:39:49.300 to encourage them to shelter in place, or to prevent them from going into withdrawal or

00:39:53.860 overdosing because they couldn't access their normal drug dealers. And then this emergency

00:39:58.740 situation was very quickly established as safer supply. As we know today, there was a scope creep,

00:40:04.820 much in the same way how we saw a scope creep in London, Ontario. So that expansion hit all of

00:40:12.740 Canada and allowed many more pilot programs to open up and regular prescribers to provide safer

00:40:18.720 supply. So we saw a huge increase in access and consequently a huge increase in diversion.

00:40:25.620 Are you convinced that London is any sort of outlier here or that this is something that if

00:40:30.300 were to get the data in other cities would be pretty much an identical uh identical situation

00:40:36.780 i would assume that the data is fairly consistent across major cities where safer supply

00:40:41.180 is being run uh i actually am very interested in reaching out to different police uh departments

00:40:47.180 and asking them for their data hopefully they'll respond uh what i would say is that the data that

00:40:52.700 we have coming out of british columbia suggests that there is a huge problem there that is

00:40:57.020 uh as bad as if not worse to what we're seeing than in london so earlier this year uh a high

00:41:04.940 level official from the bc associations of police who was the deputy chief of the vancouver police

00:41:10.620 department testified in parliament that approximately half of the hydromorphone

00:41:15.900 that is confiscated in bc or has been confiscated in bc recently can be attributed to safer supply

00:41:22.140 and we have to keep in mind that when you look at the numbers approximately five percent of the

00:41:28.220 hydromorphone patients in the province are safe supply patients so five percent of these patients

00:41:33.580 account for fifty percent of the total seizures so that would require them to divert a truly huge

00:41:40.780 amount of safer supply uh to have such an impact on the market it's it's i wouldn't say i'm

00:41:47.820 surprised by it but i i'm disappointed that tracking these numbers was not just a given

00:41:53.580 when rolling out and developing these programs that the governments that approved these that

00:41:58.140 were pushing these didn't just want this information up front that you're having to

00:42:01.820 go to police and hope that they hand it over well here's the problem is that safer supply advocates

00:42:08.700 and harm reduction researchers often do not want this to be measured uh so they make only wonder

00:42:14.620 Well, yeah. So they make only the most cursory attempts to measure diversion. Oftentimes there's studies that measure diversion amount to asking safer supply clients, do you divert your drugs? And if so, why? As if you're going to get an honest response from that, any quantitative studies that exist, which are very scarce to begin with, make no attempt to measure diversion.

00:42:36.780 when the Alberta government pushed for tracing elements to be included into safer supply drugs.

00:42:44.580 So for example, special chemical indicators, special dyes, special colors, the federal

00:42:50.800 government refused, even though this was highly practical, because these kinds of tracers have 1.00

00:42:55.080 been used in the United States already to track counterfeit drugs. And in fact, Dr. Andrea Sarita,

00:43:01.220 who is the founder of the original Safer Supply program in London, who is basically the progenitor

00:43:07.500 of Safer Supply and the city's main advocate for Safer Supply, said to parliamentarians earlier

00:43:13.360 this year that she opposes putting in tracing elements because these tracing elements would

00:43:18.920 be stigmatizing, which is, it's absurd. What kind of mental gymnastics do you need to believe that?

00:43:24.320 like as if people would somehow feel stigmatized from taking their pink pills on the streets

00:43:32.180 in full public view versus their white pills, let alone the fact that chemical tracers cannot

00:43:38.560 be seen by the public. You know, no one's going to notice the worst case scenario, just like,

00:43:43.760 you know, put it up to your mouth like this if you really need to. Yeah, it's absurd. And when 0.54

00:43:49.460 when you have safer supply advocates using such absurd arguments to contest the need for tracing

00:43:57.860 elements in safer supply, I think that's suspicious. And I think that we also have to

00:44:03.000 keep in mind that many safer supply advocates think that diversion is a good thing. Once again,

00:44:07.560 Dr. Andrea Sarita has often defended diversion and has said that, you know, it is better for

00:44:13.740 someone to access diverted safer supply than illicit street drugs. But once again, going back

00:44:18.160 to my earlier comments. It doesn't seem that people are choosing to use safer supply in lieu

00:44:23.560 of illicit street substances. This safer supply is merely adding to the total drug supply

00:44:29.620 and creating a very dangerous gateway into harder substances.

00:44:35.120 Adam Zivo, great work. As always, the piece in the National Post is, as we've been talking about,

00:44:41.040 hydromorphone pills seized in London skyrocket 3,000% after safer supply expansion. Great work,

00:44:47.240 Adam thanks for coming on today thanks for having me on the show all right thank you that does it

00:44:52.500 for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show in just 23

00:44:57.060 hours and 15 minutes same time same place hopefully with fewer technical glitches but we'll roll with

00:45:02.540 the punches as we always do thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to

00:45:08.100 the Andrew Lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:45:17.240 We'll be right back.

00:45:47.240 We'll be right back.

00:46:17.240 You

Juno News - July 02, 2024

Trudeau ＂committed＂ to staying on as calls for resignation mount

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