Juno News - Trudeau is wrong – Canada is broken

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:04.840 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.680 Hello and welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:19.340 It is Tuesday, February 7th, 2023, and I am back.

00:00:24.220 Yes, I was unfortunately away last week as I believed that I was just a little bit sick.

00:00:32.780 I didn't know what I had.

00:00:33.620 Turned out I had pneumonia, which I have never had well conscious before, which is in and

00:00:39.100 of itself a bit of a long story.

00:00:41.520 But I have had for the last three weeks a bit of a cough and it wasn't going away.

00:00:46.120 And I had the wherewithal to see my family doctor who said, well, actually, yes, you

00:00:49.500 have pneumonia, which is perhaps why you are still hacking away.

00:00:53.160 So the downside of this is that I'm still a little bit sick, or I have a little bit of a lingering cough, and I'm hopefully going to get through the show without blowing out your speakers slash eardrums by hacking into the microphone.

00:01:07.040 But if I do, I want to apologize in advance, and it is likely very fitting because the theme of the show is why everything is broken, and I guess that includes my lungs for the time being.

00:01:17.380 But I thank you very much to those of you who sent messages in saying, where are you?

00:01:22.460 I didn't have the ability to announce my absence because I didn't know I was going to be absent

00:01:26.220 until I no longer had a voice with which to make such an announcement.

00:01:30.620 But I am back, and it might be a little bit of a short show.

00:01:33.600 We'll see.

00:01:33.980 If I, by the end of it, have just completely keeled over in the middle, it was probably not meant to be.

00:01:39.140 But thankfully, I have a relief pitcher coming in in about 15 minutes.

00:01:42.900 the great Stella Ambler, former Conservative Member of Parliament, will be joining me to talk 0.55

00:01:48.400 about the battlegrounds of municipal politics, which oftentimes do not get nearly the attention

00:01:54.540 they should, but I think are tremendously influential in politics. And she is taking

00:01:59.980 aim at wasteful, bloated city councils head on. So we will talk about that with Stella Ambler,

00:02:05.320 who again, I had to bump last week because I was going to have her on. And it was hard to have her

00:02:09.780 on when there was no show to have her on. So thankfully, Stella was a good sport and was 0.99

00:02:14.160 happy to join today. I want to talk about the brokenness of this country, though, because this

00:02:20.400 has become, if you've been following Canadian politics, a political issue when I actually

00:02:26.200 didn't know that was the case. And I want to pull up here. I wasn't going to, but I have to promote

00:02:30.800 myself a little bit. I wrote a substat column in September of 2022. So this is now what? October,

00:02:38.520 november december january february so uh coming up on five months ago that i wrote nothing worked

00:02:45.720 and that was basically my own version of everything is broken before it became

00:02:50.600 trendy in conservative circles to say that everything was broken and i didn't think i was

00:02:54.520 making a political point i wrote this column i didn't talk about justin trudeau i didn't talk

00:02:59.320 about pierre polyev i just talked about the fact that when you try to navigate the world

00:03:03.960 nothing is working the airline can't deliver your bags customs can't clear you through

00:03:09.720 the passport office can't give you a passport the restaurant doesn't have the server to bring you

00:03:14.200 your food there isn't the thing you need at the grocery store this was not a political observation

00:03:19.800 on my part this was just a cultural observation looking around and seeing that hey it seems like

00:03:25.400 everything in society right now is either completely broken or at the very least not

00:03:31.160 functioning the way it is supposed to be. And this has become in the months since then,

00:03:37.600 and I'm not saying that I influenced Pierre Polyev in any way, but in the months since then,

00:03:41.680 this has become a key theme that Pierre Polyev has been bringing up when he speaks across the

00:03:46.200 country, which is just the brokenness of the system in this country. And when I say the system,

00:03:51.260 I'm talking about the broadest sense here. It isn't just about the public service and

00:03:55.660 it isn't just about the passport offices, but I think there's a brokenness on a human level.

00:04:01.160 which is contributing to a brokenness on all of the levels that are comprised of what humans are

00:04:07.580 doing. And I think there's also in general, and this is the more esoteric point, an abdication

00:04:13.580 by people of how broken things really are. And as such, an abdication of any really ability to fix

00:04:22.100 these things. And this has become the key point of distinction between Justin Trudeau's approach

00:04:28.020 and Pierre Polyev's approach.

00:04:29.340 Pierre Polyev is saying, look, things aren't working.

00:04:31.380 Things are broken.

00:04:32.200 Canada is broken.

00:04:33.600 Justin Trudeau has not just said that that's wrong in his view,

00:04:37.360 but he has said that it is an offensive concept,

00:04:40.640 that he draws the line in his words.

00:04:44.060 He draws the line when Pierre Polyev gets up there

00:04:47.000 and says that things are broken.

00:04:48.620 Take a look.

00:04:49.120 Mr. Polyev might choose to undermine our democracy by amplifying conspiracy theories.

00:05:01.400 He might decide to run away from journalists when they ask him tough questions.

00:05:07.200 That's how he brands himself.

00:05:09.300 That's his choice.

00:05:11.240 But when he says that Canada is broken, that's where we draw the line.

00:05:17.560 This is Canada.

00:05:19.120 And in Canada, better is always possible, but I don't accept Canadians and politicians

00:05:34.020 that talk down our country.

00:05:36.020 let me be very clear for the record Canada is not broken

00:05:50.020 Canada is not broken that's the point that Justin Trudeau wants to hinge his legitimacy

00:06:03.000 and his credibility on, that Canada is functioning just fine.

00:06:07.280 Sure, we can always do better, but how dare you talk down to this country?

00:06:11.660 And let me say that one of the biggest failings collectively of this country is, I think,

00:06:17.340 the tendency to be satisfied with abject failure and the tendency to be satisfied with inferiority

00:06:25.260 because, oh, we're better than someone else.

00:06:28.280 We accept failure of our healthcare system

00:06:32.080 because, oh, well, it's not the American system.

00:06:35.420 We accept failure of our foreign policy

00:06:37.600 because, oh, well, you know, we have a different role to play.

00:06:39.840 We're just, we're the peacekeeping nation,

00:06:41.580 even though we send like three and a half peacekeepers a year now.

00:06:44.560 So that's one of the biggest lies that Canadians tell themselves.

00:06:47.740 We settle for inferiority

00:06:50.220 because we have no sense of national pride

00:06:54.440 that is rooted in any sort of meaningful, cohesive, unifying national identity

00:07:00.820 that makes us want to strive for better.

00:07:04.560 And this is something that I say not because I am unhappy with this country,

00:07:09.960 not because I am not proud to be Canadian, 0.51

00:07:11.900 but I say it because I think Canadians have, largely speaking,

00:07:16.240 and I don't mean every individual Canadian,

00:07:17.920 but I mean Canadian institutions, the media, academia,

00:07:21.300 certainly the Canadian government right now.

00:07:24.440 has allowed this inferiority mindset to take hold where we get so offended so offended at the idea

00:07:33.000 that someone might say things aren't working that we don't actually look in the mirror and realize

00:07:37.180 things aren't working take for example this whole nonsense that happened in my absence which to be

00:07:42.080 honest might have actually contributed to my pneumonia and it spreading more because i was

00:07:46.660 just like uh so bothered by the infectious arguments being put forward by the ndp that

00:07:51.180 apparently it had some bacterial effect who knows I'm not blaming them for this entirely but when

00:07:56.480 the NDP get up there and start trying to condemn Tucker Carlson from Fox News because they have the

00:08:02.600 chronic inability to accept detect and take a joke and Tucker Carlson to his credit responded to this

00:08:11.020 very aptly by saying that you know Canadians get so excited when you notice them they get so excited 0.59

00:08:16.060 they're like the stalker in the bedroom that you know they're always focused on the U.S. but the

00:08:20.900 U.S. doesn't know they exist most of the time. So he responded to it perfectly. But he makes this

00:08:25.440 comment, you know, about, oh, maybe we should just invade Canada and liberate them from Justin

00:08:29.160 Trudeau. Everyone jokes about it. They laugh about it. They move on. And this becomes like a political

00:08:33.840 crisis in the House of Commons, where the NDP, the Liberals are condemning Tucker Carlson.

00:08:39.200 When the Conservatives don't, everyone jumps at them for supporting the armed invasion of Canada.

00:08:43.640 Like, this is not what a serious, legitimate country does in its hall of government.

00:08:50.900 And the fact that you have Justin Trudeau saying Canada is not broken and the NDP wasting

00:08:56.780 time on condemning Tucker Carlson for making a joke about Canada and any Canadian who has

00:09:02.540 been unable to work for the last few years, Canadians who lost their job because of vaccine

00:09:07.080 mandates, Canadians whose families were torn apart, Canadians that are dealing with or

00:09:11.380 know someone who's dealing with an opioid addiction, all of these people are looking

00:09:15.100 around saying, wow, you are really committed to this idea that everything is fine, that

00:09:20.340 everything is all hunky-dory. And the problem, I think, is very internalized. There is a brokenness

00:09:27.860 in a lot of people that is going to take years to repair, if it will be repaired at all. The

00:09:34.960 pandemic was such a huge part of this because the government drove a wedge between families.

00:09:40.740 They drove a wedge within families. I had someone message me today, and I haven't actually responded,

00:09:46.380 And I probably won't respond because it's a very bad faith message.

00:09:49.960 So consider this my response.

00:09:51.740 And I don't know if the person's watching this show.

00:09:53.780 They probably aren't, as you will hear and detect in a moment.

00:09:57.420 But someone accused me and accused True North of driving wedges into families and dividing

00:10:05.180 families and being divisive because we were critical of vaccine mandates.

00:10:11.640 They aren't accusing the government that advanced vaccine mandates of being divisive.

00:10:16.380 They're accusing us, me and my colleagues, for calling this out of being divisive.

00:10:23.320 And this is probably someone who the sense that I got from reading the message is that

00:10:27.240 they have some family member who likes True North and who was telling them all sorts of

00:10:31.000 stuff that they read on True North and they don't like it.

00:10:33.440 So they're probably claiming that we're responsible for the divisions in their family.

00:10:37.960 And I don't want to get involved in the business of someone else's family.

00:10:42.480 It's not my place.

00:10:43.520 I've actually taken aim when governments and institutions have tried to do exactly that.

00:10:49.880 But the reason I think this is such an important issue is because people in this country are

00:10:56.560 divided and government, rather than being unifying in the time of crisis, decided to

00:11:02.880 champion more and more of those divisions, to repeatedly, fervently champion and advance

00:11:10.820 more divisions.

00:11:11.880 so you have family members in this country that aren't speaking to each other

00:11:16.380 and this is a direct product of what the championing of various vaccine mandates of

00:11:23.220 divisive rhetoric of polarization by the media by the elites by the political class all of this over

00:11:28.800 the last few years and you have institutions that are never going to recover you've got labor

00:11:34.380 shortages supply chain shortages you've got people that don't support the fundamental idea of free

00:11:39.480 speech because they reframe it around this idea of harm. And I'm going a mile a minute here and

00:11:46.320 I'm not trying to make this an exhaustive detail-oriented show. I'm talking about the

00:11:51.680 fundamental bigger picture assertion here that if you think things are not broken right now,

00:11:58.220 you are absolutely delusional. And I think Justin Trudeau is either trying to gaslight Canadians

00:12:05.680 into thinking that this brokenness that real people are experiencing does not exist or he

00:12:11.140 himself just has his head so far into the sand he doesn't realize it because everything is fine in

00:12:16.640 his world everything's fine in his life he doesn't have to confront the brokenness that everyone who

00:12:22.820 voted for him and everyone who didn't vote for him but still got him as their prime minister

00:12:27.540 is living with right now now i take issue with anyone claiming that a politician including

00:12:34.320 Pierre Polyev is going to fix this because I believe that these are problems that were

00:12:41.040 exacerbated by the political class but these are not exclusively political problems these are

00:12:48.620 problems that exist at a societal level they're problems that exist at an individual level and

00:12:54.380 you'll hear all the time people talking about this idea of a pandemic amnesty of do we forgive those

00:12:59.640 that did all this stuff.

00:13:00.740 And I am totally in favor of people moving on

00:13:04.660 if they're able to.

00:13:06.520 But I don't expect people that were denied the right

00:13:09.140 to see family members,

00:13:10.620 denied the right to get on planes,

00:13:12.060 denied the right to leave the country.

00:13:13.820 I don't take issue with those people perhaps saying,

00:13:17.280 you know what, I'm not able just to move on from this.

00:13:20.480 I'm not able to forgive and forget,

00:13:22.680 to live and let live, to let bygones be bygones

00:13:24.940 because you all realized when it was too late

00:13:27.320 to do anything about it,

00:13:28.500 that you were wrong and that you championed this evil, segregationist, divisionist approach

00:13:35.620 to politics, to life. Because this is bigger than politics. And this is the problem. The idea that

00:13:44.140 Canada is broken is now becoming a political punching bag, but there's no platform that

00:13:49.280 Pierre Polyev can put forward that's going to heal Canada. None whatsoever. Now, again,

00:13:55.380 you could say theoretically that he could stop the damage, that he could stop making it worse.

00:14:00.040 I certainly don't think Trudeau is going to heal Canada because he has a vested interest

00:14:04.180 in it being broken. It's working for him because the liberals, the people that vote for Justin

00:14:10.740 Trudeau, their world is fine. They weren't the ones who were vaccine mandated out of their jobs.

00:14:15.900 They weren't the ones who have been grappling with these very real struggles that are taking

00:14:21.480 plan. I mean, look at the discussion in Vancouver right now. Pierre Polyev talks about Vancouver's

00:14:26.740 Lower East Side and he talks about it as being hell on earth. And the media has a freak out

00:14:32.100 about it. The mayor of Vancouver has a freak out about this because to them, everything is hunky

00:14:36.660 dory. To them, it's a, well, yeah, we could always do a little bit better. It's like when you talk

00:14:42.120 to Iran about its human rights abuse. Well, yeah, we have some challenges we have to deal with,

00:14:48.400 but who doesn't let he who's without sin cast the first stone and it's this collective global

00:14:54.640 gaslighting that is taking place and that is not helping anyone get better so i'm going to say that

00:15:02.440 there is a brokenness i don't want to be the doomsayer here because i don't actually have

00:15:07.080 the solution but i'm telling you that you have to at least recognize the problem before you can

00:15:12.560 diagnose it you have to diagnose it before you can begin to find a solution for it but certainly do

00:15:18.080 not accept a politician looking at you looking at your life or looking over you they're looking

00:15:22.960 past you they're not even looking at you as an individual and and saying how dare you identify

00:15:28.860 a problem how dare you call out the fact that the world as it's structured right now the country as

00:15:34.840 it's structured right now isn't working for you we'll have more on this in the weeks ahead i mean

00:15:40.960 the poll that came out was i thought a very tremendous one 67 percent of canadians if you

00:15:46.720 haven't seen this 67% agree that Canada is broken now just to put that in political terms I there

00:15:53.940 has never been a government in this country certainly not in the last century that has had

00:15:58.780 67% of the vote so to get 67% of people more than two-thirds to agree on something to even get that

00:16:07.480 many to agree that the sky is blue I think would be a challenge but 67% agree with Pierre Polyev's

00:16:13.220 assertion, agree with my assertion, agree with the very real challenges that Canadians are putting

00:16:18.520 forward that this country is broken. So Justin Trudeau is not only wrong, but he's not even

00:16:25.300 fooling people. And I think that's an important message. And that's where a bit of hope may come

00:16:30.320 through this and that people are not being duped into this. People are not letting themselves

00:16:35.160 be gas lit. So we will revisit this, but I want to talk about some battlegrounds that oftentimes

00:16:41.560 do not get nearly the attention they deserve and that is the fights taking place in municipal

00:16:47.520 politics now in Ontario we had a round of municipal elections just a few months ago there were some

00:16:54.240 contentious school board battles as well school board another area where I think more people

00:16:59.220 certainly those on the right need to pay a bit more attention but a new municipal watchdog has

00:17:05.020 started to take aim at these big bloated city council budgets they are coming out guns blazing

00:17:11.100 Stella Ambler, the former Conservative Member of Parliament, now the President of Municipal

00:17:16.140 Watch, calling out municipal madness.

00:17:18.500 Stella, always good to talk to you.

00:17:19.840 Thanks for coming on today, and congrats on the launch.

00:17:27.260 The ability to talk about this, the opportunity, I'm kind of thrilled.

00:17:31.740 Well, I'm glad.

00:17:32.680 You were very kind enough to invite me to speak at the Albany Club when my book, The

00:17:36.840 Freedom Convoy, came out.

00:17:37.940 so happy to return the favor at least a little bit here. You've done federal politics. I know

00:17:43.480 you've been involved at all levels. Why do you think municipal politics is where your efforts

00:17:48.540 need to be focused now? Yeah, actually, it does kind of segue into that. I have been involved

00:17:56.360 mostly in my long political career at the provincial and federal levels. And, you know,

00:18:03.960 But just recently, I realized that there's no opposition built into the municipal level.

00:18:10.180 So in Ottawa, we have the House of Commons and question period, and everyone knows who

00:18:15.960 the opposition party is and their job is to oppose the government.

00:18:19.280 And it's the same in the legislatures across Canada, opposition is built right into the

00:18:27.320 city into the system and that actually provides uh automatically a level of oversight and and

00:18:34.840 we don't have that uh at the local level and so i've been finding that folks are just ordinary

00:18:42.360 canadians are very concerned about what's happening in their cities and towns and they

00:18:47.640 they just don't know what to do about it they they they need help and so i thought well i'd like to

00:18:53.320 help them speak out and call out examples of silliness and nonsense uh in in the municipalities

00:19:01.480 i call it madness by the way you know i like the alliteration municipal madness so it works we'll

00:19:07.960 get to some of the specific issues in a moment here uh certainly in an ontario context in most

00:19:13.320 provinces bc is a bit of an outlier here there aren't political parties at the municipal level

00:19:18.360 Sometimes you see things that loosely resemble slates, but oftentimes I think the real advantage of municipal politics is that you can have somewhat more independent-minded people.

00:19:29.180 They aren't whipped.

00:19:30.280 But in your view, is this a left-right issue?

00:19:34.400 Absolutely not.

00:19:35.480 Of course, I come at it personally as a small C conservative, and there's nothing wrong as conservatives, as people who want to see more transparency, restraint, fiscal restraint.

00:19:50.940 But, you know, it's not, municipal politics is not generally partisan.

00:19:56.840 There are no political parties involved other than, as you say, BC.

00:20:00.080 But I find, though, that so it's not partisan in nature, but it's more to in my mind about common sense.

00:20:08.960 You know, we really need to take a look at what folks are doing.

00:20:13.780 You talked about government. There's a there's a whole debate in Canada now is is government broken.

00:20:19.380 Right. And so I thought about this municipally and I thought, well, I'm not not sure if broken is the right word, but certainly there needs to be some perspective brought in.

00:20:29.740 There are far too many municipalities who are overspending, overtaxing, overregulating, and just the kinds of policies and programs that they're putting into place are sometimes not even in their jurisdiction to have any say.

00:20:47.520 And yet they waste resources debating it, studying it. And, you know, I think we really we need someone to call that out. And I want to be the person to do that.

00:20:59.740 Yeah, I mean, I generally have a years-long crusade against bylaw enforcement, which I feel is probably a department that I would support abolishing wholesale.

00:21:09.720 I won't get you to comment on that because I don't want you to be off the ground before you're really off the ground with this.

00:21:15.600 But the one thing I will point out is that there have been so many issues where someone is fined for something so ridiculous.

00:21:23.220 A case in Oshawa recently where a group of volunteers were fined because they wanted to distribute food and necessities to the homeless and they didn't have a permit from the city to do it.

00:21:33.520 I once had a ticket because I was legally parked in front of my own house, but the car was facing the wrong direction.

00:21:40.300 And it was just for a very silly reason because I was rearranging things in the driveway. 0.99

00:21:44.320 But very stupid stuff like that that comes up. 0.99

00:21:47.140 And every time I hear about these things, it's like, oh, yeah, it's a $50 ticket. 1.00

00:21:51.260 It's a $60 ticket.

00:21:52.380 But it's part of a culture, I think, that is bigger than that in municipalities, which is this really incessant need to regulate these very minute details about people's lives.

00:22:03.140 I have a friend in London, so you two could meet up for coffee and he could tell you about his fight with the city over a particular tree on his property.

00:22:13.700 I won't go into the details but suffice to say he he wrote many letters to the mayor to his

00:22:21.560 councillors and I don't think he won in the end but the level of bureaucracy needed to deal with

00:22:29.140 that was he just it was oh it was startling to him he could not believe what happened you know

00:22:36.480 I think a lot of the issues too stem from municipalities municipal councillors wanting

00:22:42.920 to uh maybe even prove their worth let's say and and they they want to signal that they are

00:22:52.120 on top of the issues of the day so they declare climate emergencies for example

00:22:57.820 and you know what what good is that really going to do um then it that trickles down a little

00:23:06.000 further into let's say natural gas bans which are all the rage now and you know there are places

00:23:15.120 like montreal where you can't have a wood burning fireplace anymore um yeah it's really uh the

00:23:21.920 issues are are not within their jurisdiction they're wasting our tax dollars just by talking

00:23:27.920 about them and and if they if if even if even if the province um you know andrew i saw a report by

00:23:36.160 the uh ontario's independent electricity system operator that said that yes we could ban natural

00:23:43.360 gas by by the year 2050 and it would cost approximately 400 billion dollars so this is

00:23:50.000 the sandbox that municipalities are playing in now right it's just let's stick to service delivery

00:23:56.720 there's there's enough of responsibility to go around and when your responsibilities are water

00:24:03.600 water quality um fire ambulance police roads transit um and parks and records the more and

00:24:13.120 there's a there's a ton that of uh that that they have policies and programs that they already have

00:24:20.720 have to do so and now they're getting into you know how people heat their homes and um

00:24:27.360 and and you know frankly the people who are losing are the people who can afford it the least um the

00:24:33.680 people who can't afford to retrofit their home for a hundred thousand dollars uh to to use a heat pump

00:24:40.400 instead of um instead of natural gas for example you mentioned london with city island in ontario

00:24:46.720 A friend of mine told me this story years ago that I've never actually shared on the show, and I should now, because he had a visitor that was coming in from out of town who was driving through London, and they drove by this, you know, giant multi-million dollar water park the city built.

00:25:00.000 They drove by these stupid metal trees that the city had built and spent money on.

00:25:04.940 They drove by all of this stuff that the city had spent millions and millions on to bring the city up to this global standard they had set. 0.96

00:25:12.080 and the only thing the person noticed was that like the potholes were going to destroy his car's

00:25:16.980 suspension so it's like cities need to do the things that like do the bare minimum before they

00:25:22.040 get to these really lofty aspirational things but right now like there's the big discussion going on

00:25:26.720 of these so-called 15 minute cities and redesigning the entire urban planning to make everything a 15

00:25:32.900 minute uh jaunt from your house and it's like focus on the basics first like if you were able to do

00:25:38.280 all these core things well i might have confidence that you could do the big stuff well but cities

00:25:43.460 aren't doing that by and large oh the the fifth nothing scares me more than these 15 minute cities

00:25:49.380 uh the more i go down that rabbit hole and the more afraid i become that municipalities more

00:25:57.100 municipalities in canada won't start looking into this i think edmonton is it edmonton or

00:26:02.460 a new market has definitely talked about it. Edmonton has as well, I believe. Yeah, I wasn't

00:26:09.320 sure. I've been reading a bit about Edmonton because they're proposing, I believe it's a 7%

00:26:19.280 tax hike, property tax hike, over the next four years. So, you know, I mean, compounded, if you

00:26:26.660 think about what that adds up to. Most people just can't afford this. In my old stomping grounds

00:26:33.640 of Mississauga, they just passed what the mayor called a no frills budget with a only 3% tax

00:26:41.360 increase, which is twice as big as last year's increase. And it includes, so no frills, which

00:26:50.560 they consider to be very frugal, I guess. And they're holding back. That still includes a 2%

00:27:00.380 increase in salaries and compensation for all non-union employees, including the councillors

00:27:06.700 and the mayor. And it includes $22 million more for salaries and compensation. Plus,

00:27:14.440 I hate to tell you some I think it was 10 or 14 more bylaw overnight bylaw officers so if you

00:27:23.520 park your car the wrong way again there'll be someone in Mississauga who will give you a ticket

00:27:28.620 for that I appreciate the forewarning there but yeah I learned my lesson once on that one but

00:27:33.800 let me ask you then Stella do you think the problem is that provinces are being too lenient

00:27:39.080 with how they let municipalities run their affairs or do you think that the problem is

00:27:43.840 actually at the municipal level and that we have to just change the culture there i think in certain

00:27:49.920 some provinces the the the provincial governments are not helping uh but i think they're doing to

00:27:56.160 be honest with you the municipalities are doing enough damage on their own um there aren't too

00:28:02.160 many um um i i don't think you could blame the provincial government for example for an ottawa

00:28:09.120 lrt that doesn't run when there's freezing rain um that really you know you can't really blame

00:28:14.400 the province for that as we might try but you know we can't we can't blame the we can't blame

00:28:20.720 the bc government when vancouver decides to buy electric fire trucks that pump 40 less water

00:28:28.720 which you know becomes a public safety issue i mean frankly in some cases i wish i i wish the

00:28:35.680 provinces would step in um but you know you know i don't think we're i won't hold my breath for

00:28:40.960 that to happen i i know you've just launched a municipal watch within the last couple of weeks

00:28:46.080 here but do you have a first big battle in mind do you have the goliath you want to slay first

00:28:52.560 i'm working on so many things but i and every time i i i think okay i've found it the one

00:29:01.200 i i get an email from someone because because the response has been just incredible um i i'm

00:29:08.320 already overwhelmed with emails i'm sure you can understand people have so much to say and so much

00:29:14.320 to talk about so what while i'm do i am researching a big project um on on increase in number of

00:29:24.000 full-time employees so so wait for it because because i'm going to i'm i'm looking into that

00:29:29.360 i've studied about 20 cities so far and it's already shocking but i want to gather more data

00:29:36.880 and uh and on the the the growth in cities so population versus full time but then i'll get an

00:29:43.520 an email from someone like i did this morning in calgary who asked me the question

00:29:49.600 why is it that a municipal councillor in the city of calgary has three staff

00:29:54.560 three employees in his or her office and MLA's only have one is the so it's little thing and I

00:30:03.600 think okay well that's not something I need to spend hours researching but on the other hand

00:30:09.200 wait a minute why are things like this happening and you know again does it pass that common sense

00:30:15.920 sniff test and does it does it tell you when you hear about things like this does it tell you that

00:30:22.020 municipality the city or town is actually looking out for people and putting people first or are

00:30:30.260 they are they putting their own interests first or are they trying to somehow just be politically

00:30:38.100 correct or virtue signal on some particular issue so this is these are the kinds of things that so

00:30:46.660 So I start out on the lofty aspirational level and then I stop and think, wait a minute,

00:30:53.660 maybe I should do something about the fact that maybe I should call attention and shine

00:30:59.760 a light on the fact that municipal councillors are staff heavy.

00:31:04.340 And to be honest, it sounds like you need to run for a Calgary City Council so you'll

00:31:08.060 get three staffers to help you get through the workload.

00:31:10.660 Exactly.

00:31:12.020 Exactly.

00:31:12.500 I do have some help, some volunteers and some interns, and that's going very well.

00:31:19.480 But my hope is that I can form, with all of these people who are emailing from across the country,

00:31:27.120 I can form a coalition of local watchdogs who will also help me.

00:31:31.860 And so far, that's going pretty well.

00:31:34.000 Well, it's an important battleground.

00:31:35.740 And, you know, it's easy to take aim at the Canadian government.

00:31:37.880 There's just one.

00:31:38.560 It's easier to some extent to take aim at provincial governments.

00:31:41.240 We've got 10 of them.

00:31:42.020 And when you get to municipalities, you're talking about hundreds of large and medium-sized ones,

00:31:46.540 not to mention thousands beyond that.

00:31:49.080 So I think it very much needs some scrutiny here.

00:31:51.640 I'm so glad you're doing it.

00:31:52.780 People can learn more at municipalwatch.ca.

00:31:55.920 President of Municipal Watch, former MP Stella Ambler.

00:31:59.020 Always a pleasure, Stella.

00:32:00.080 Thanks so much for coming on today.

00:32:02.020 Thank you, Andrew.

00:32:02.800 It was my pleasure.

00:32:03.920 Hey, thank you.

00:32:04.440 We'll definitely have you back on as you get and start working through those battles there.

00:32:08.360 And I have, to pat myself on the back here, made it through my first pneumonia edition of the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:14.300 Everything's broken in country, including my lungs.

00:32:17.280 So thank you very much.

00:32:19.380 We'll be back tomorrow with more of the program here.

00:32:22.960 But if you want to support the work we're doing at True North, you can head on over to donate.tnc.news.

00:32:27.940 Donate.tnc.news.

00:32:29.680 And I would also tell you that our friends at secondstreet.org have done a new documentary,

00:32:36.760 which I would very much encourage you to check out.

00:32:39.720 It's called Defund Putin.

00:32:42.020 And the question is really, how can Canada cut Vladimir Putin's military budget?

00:32:46.020 The documentary from secondstreet.org is available over at defundputin.ca.

00:32:52.620 And I believe we have the trailer for it that we can play for you right now.

00:32:59.680 Oh, we don't have the trailer.

00:33:05.500 But this is the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:33:07.900 We will be back in just a couple of, well, but not a couple of days.

00:33:12.320 We'll be back in one day.

00:33:13.520 That's all on True North, the Andrew Lawton Show tomorrow.

00:33:16.180 Thank you.

00:33:16.560 God bless and good day to you all.

Juno News - February 07, 2023

Trudeau is wrong – Canada is broken

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