Juno News - Trudeau laments rise of ＂populist right-wing forces＂

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

00:01:19.700 north hello and welcome to you all the andrew lawton show on true north it is tuesday june 11

00:01:30.720 2024 great to have you tuned in here and i was if you've used twitter or x as they call it now

00:01:37.420 you'll notice it's changed a lot in the last few months since the elon musk take over now some of

00:01:42.900 the changes are good i'm not worried about being censored or throttled or anything like that

00:01:46.620 But the algorithms are a little bit weird, yet oddly mesmerizing in the same way.

00:01:51.840 So I was just looking at Twitter.

00:01:54.240 I try to get my finger on the pulse of things before the show begins, and I'm seeing some

00:01:58.820 video clip.

00:02:00.660 The caption is, she cheated on him and was using him for the game, so he decided to smash

00:02:06.600 the ball and take all the money, leaving her with nothing.

00:02:09.800 And it's a 35-second clip from some reality game dating type show that I've never heard

00:02:15.940 of with people I've never heard of and I have no interest in and I don't follow the account that

00:02:20.200 posted it but by George I watched that whole clip as though I was just entranced and engrossed in

00:02:25.780 it so the algorithm is doing something right and I lost 35 seconds of my life that I'll never get

00:02:30.300 back which I have tried to get back by making you deal with 35 seconds of your life as I tell you

00:02:35.400 the story but in any event yesterday we had a not a wardrobe malfunction but a caffeine

00:02:42.120 malfunctioned on the show. So I made sure to like drink half of my coffee today before it got into

00:02:47.400 the studio. So hopefully I don't spill this all over as I did yesterday. But fortunately, no

00:02:52.180 equipment was harmed in the making of this show. I can't say the same for Justin Trudeau's polling

00:02:57.960 numbers, which have been incredibly, and it would appear irreparably harmed in recent months in

00:03:04.100 particular, where the Conservatives look to have at some points a 20 point lead over the Liberals

00:03:10.140 And some polls, the NDP could even be there for second place

00:03:13.820 and the Liberals will be relegated to being the third party

00:03:17.100 as they were previously before Justin Trudeau took the helm.

00:03:20.940 But it's interesting when you talk about all of this,

00:03:23.900 when you talk about all of what's happening to Justin Trudeau,

00:03:27.200 there is a part that's missing,

00:03:29.240 which is that he never wants to acknowledge his own part.

00:03:33.000 He's never wanted to acknowledge his own part in why he is so unpopular.

00:03:37.800 And we don't do the whole horse race thing on the show where every day I say, oh, this poll has someone up two or down one or up three.

00:03:44.380 But you have to talk about the big trends.

00:03:46.860 And when the polls are not moving, when Justin Trudeau continues to be flagging and he continues to be not able to resonate with voters,

00:03:54.500 there is something there that is not just an anomaly that you can pin down on the Nanos methodology or the Angus Reid methodology.

00:04:02.020 It's every poll by every pollster.

00:04:04.380 The only thing that changes is the margin.

00:04:06.620 So what does Justin Trudeau think is the big issue facing democracy today?

00:04:12.400 Take a look.

00:04:14.160 Around the world, a rise of populist right-wing forces in just about every democracy that we've seen.

00:04:23.940 And it is of concern to see political parties choosing to instrumentalize anger, fear, division, anxiety.

00:04:36.620 My approach has always been to respond to it, to understand it and to look to solve it,

00:04:42.360 to roll up our sleeves, work hard and with ambition for this country and for our future.

00:04:47.220 And I continue to be convinced that Canadians are thoughtful about the challenges we're facing

00:04:55.460 and ready to see them solved rather than just allow themselves to have their anger amplified without any solutions offered.

00:05:04.800 oh the rise of far-right populist forces now there are probably some voters that are saying

00:05:11.900 absolutely it's about darn time but justin trudeau's view is that this is the menace to

00:05:16.420 democracy now there are a few things here number one is what he's calling far-right and populist

00:05:21.760 now i can't separate these comments from the context this week of the eu elections in which

00:05:26.760 a lot of right-wing parties had tremendous success so much so that there's been a lot of

00:05:31.580 finger wagging from many people on the left about what's happening. But the part of democracy that

00:05:36.740 people don't like is that sometimes you lose and sometimes other parties win. And when other

00:05:41.560 parties win, you shouldn't look at it as some terrible ordeal. You should look at it as a

00:05:46.560 victory because voters had to decide. And clearly what this other group was talking about mattered

00:05:52.780 more to people and offered more solutions than what you were offering. But this is where I bring

00:05:58.360 back into a canadian context justin trudeau complaining about far-rise populist forces

00:06:03.240 means that he's trying to say that when pierre polyev is doing well in the polls and again if

00:06:08.120 they keep up if he wins against justin trudeau that what's happening there is actually bigger

00:06:14.200 it's just a part of some global right-wing evil scary populist wave it's nothing to do with justin

00:06:19.960 trudeau nothing to do with pierre polyev there's just a global force all the people that went to

00:06:24.440 the polls. We're motivated by what happened in Europe. They're motivated by Trump. They're

00:06:28.760 motivated by Orban. And they just decided, yeah, I'm going to vote for this, you know,

00:06:33.240 Puer, Puer, Polly, Polly, Polly. I've never heard of him, but I'm just going to vote for him anyway.

00:06:39.140 It doesn't really work like that. It doesn't work like that at all. So when Justin Trudeau

00:06:44.840 gets up there and says that all of these things are part of this global trend,

00:06:49.740 He's trying to say that it's not his fault.

00:06:52.580 He's trying to tell his own people,

00:06:54.220 no, no, no, populism is the problem, not me.

00:06:57.220 Blame the right, blame the populace,

00:06:59.120 blame Trump, blame Polly F, blame everything.

00:07:01.920 Don't blame me.

00:07:03.900 When the reality is it's Justin Trudeau

00:07:05.720 that's been presiding over this country

00:07:07.180 for the last 10 years.

00:07:08.320 If things have gotten so bad that there is this anger,

00:07:11.700 that there is this,

00:07:12.580 and Chrystia Freeland even recognized this yesterday,

00:07:15.140 this burning wrath by average people,

00:07:18.000 that's the government's fault that's the government's fault because the government

00:07:22.720 has allowed things to get that bad in the country that people feel that but even if you were to say

00:07:29.340 that all of this was a big global trend it were it's nothing to do with Trudeau even if you were

00:07:34.100 to accept that point do you honestly believe Justin Trudeau's second part of that line which

00:07:40.100 is that he has only brought understanding and solutions understanding and solutions so when

00:07:46.180 people feel alienated and disconnected. He has just brought understanding and solutions.

00:07:52.320 It's not like he's ever called a group of fringe minority or anything, right?

00:07:58.020 To underline the close to 90% of truckers in this country are vaccinated, like close to 90%

00:08:07.940 of Canadians. Over the past many months and years now, Canadians have stepped up to protect

00:08:17.740 each other, to protect our frontline workers, to protect our elders, to protect our young

00:08:21.920 people, to protect people like truckers who are putting food on our grocery store shelves.

00:08:28.900 Canadians have stepped up to do the right thing, to protect the freedoms and the rights

00:08:35.580 of Canadians to get back to the things we love to do.

00:08:40.640 We know the way through this pandemic

00:08:44.620 is by getting everyone vaccinated.

00:08:49.680 And the overwhelming majority,

00:08:52.400 close to 90% of Canadians have done exactly that.

00:08:58.120 The small fringe minority of people

00:09:02.600 who are on their way to Ottawa

00:09:04.480 or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing do not represent the views of Canadians

00:09:15.400 who have been there for each other, who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other

00:09:23.700 is the best way to continue to ensure our freedoms, our rights, our values as a country.

00:09:29.740 Hmm, that didn't sound like understanding or solutions to me. Maybe it was a one-off. Maybe when he's talking in French, he comes across as more understanding and solution-oriented.

00:09:59.740 often misogynes, often racist, it's a small group, but it takes place.

00:10:07.540 And there, we have to make a choice as a leader, as a country.

00:10:11.040 Do we tolerate these people, or do we say, well, let's see,

00:10:15.340 the most people, almost 80% of the Québécois, have done what they need to do,

00:10:19.240 they have been vaccinated, we want to come back to what we like to do.

00:10:23.840 It's not these people that are going to block us.

00:10:26.140 oh weird okay people who don't get vaccinated who are against vaccines are they're in two categories

00:10:33.540 one is well maybe we can convince them and persuade them but if we can't do that if they

00:10:37.400 really don't want to get vaccinated they're misogynist they're extremists they're racist

00:10:42.020 they're all of this so again i'm not hearing this commitment to understanding this commitment to

00:10:48.160 solutions this rise against the anger this rise above the anger i'm not hearing it maybe i've

00:10:54.540 been wrong i know he's done some gaslighting on this in the past when eva chipia the lawyer

00:10:59.220 representing the organizers of the convoy was cross-examining trudeau during the public order

00:11:05.120 emergency commission what did he say oh i never called the unvaccinated names no no siree gambling

00:11:11.120 in this establishment never never happened i'm squinting because i'm just so frustrated by

00:11:16.280 a lot of this but it's easy and almost hilarious when he gets up there and says populism is the

00:11:21.640 problem. The far-right forces are the problem. He's trying to say that he is not. And I realize

00:11:27.540 that the Liberal Party does not have a lot of options. The Liberal Party, if its members,

00:11:31.920 if its caucus members were to want to get rid of Justin Trudeau, they don't really have a

00:11:36.240 mechanism to do so. The Conservatives decided to activate this section of what's called the

00:11:41.320 Reform Act, where caucus members can vote to get rid of their leader, like Aaron O'Toole

00:11:45.120 did, well, had happened to him. He didn't really do it. He was not too keen on that.

00:11:49.600 but the liberals don't and it won't be until they have an election lost that they'll really

00:11:54.320 have a leadership review so there are always rumors swirling I saw some by a journalist this

00:12:00.180 week saying oh yes Justin Trudeau is going to resign this summer maybe he doesn't maybe he

00:12:05.220 does doesn't really matter if you're Mark Carney and you're waiting in the wings you probably want

00:12:10.460 Justin Trudeau to go completely over the cliff and drive your party into collapse and then you

00:12:15.760 come because whoever leads the Liberal Party into the next election is going to be a sacrificial

00:12:20.860 lamb. So you want like an interim leader so that the party just accepts, yeah, this isn't going to

00:12:25.440 happen. We'll take our lumps, we'll get our floggings, our lashings out of the way, and then

00:12:30.200 the new leader will come in. And that's kind of what happened with Justin Trudeau, post Michael

00:12:35.520 Ignatieff. But all of this is besides the point in some ways, because right now you do have an

00:12:40.960 anger and a frustration in Canadians. And there is a lot of victim blaming going on

00:12:45.900 whenever this is brought up. We spoke about this in the context of media, where people look at the

00:12:51.260 decline of trust in the media, and they start blaming the people who distrust the media instead

00:12:56.040 of blaming the media and saying, well, what has the media done to deserve this or not deserve

00:13:01.020 this? How can the media regain trust? People like Justin Trudeau look at his declining fortunes

00:13:06.280 in politics. And instead of saying, maybe I'm not the guy that Canadians want right now,

00:13:12.480 they say something along the lines of, well, you know, Canadians are being co-opted.

00:13:16.680 Remember the million person march when you had, in a lot of cases, Muslim families, Muslim families

00:13:22.860 standing up and saying, we do not like our kids being taught a lot of this over the top pride

00:13:28.220 stuff. And what did Justin Trudeau say? Well, these are just people being co-opted by the far

00:13:33.580 right in America. Because the idea that, oh, maybe this group that he has tried to claim as his own

00:13:39.300 political coalition has not exactly fallen in love with what he's done as prime minister.

00:13:46.300 So right here you have, again, this idea that we should look at everything other than the

00:13:51.380 perpetrators, everything other than the people who are genuinely to blame for why no one likes

00:13:56.840 them, why no one is too keen on them. And again, I mean, you got to commit to the bit. Remember

00:14:00.640 last week when jennifer o'connell that liberal member of parliament said boo who get over it

00:14:06.580 in the house of commons committee room because the conservatists were talking about foreign

00:14:11.480 interference they were talking about foreign operatives that were collaborating wittingly

00:14:16.300 with canadian members of parliament and senators and she was just saying boo who get over it and

00:14:21.340 it became this thing where she tried to uh you know do the whole who are you going to believe

00:14:25.520 me or your lying eyes sort of thing. And she's continued to double down on this. So Frank Caputo

00:14:31.600 has announced a motion that he wants to have voted on. Now, I think a lot of this is theatrics,

00:14:37.220 but you can see the motion on your screen here. He basically said that she needs to apologize

00:14:43.880 for it, apologize for her comments. Now, Jennifer O'Connell has come out and said this, which I

00:14:52.340 find hilarious frank was hurt i interrupted him only brought up heckling not the very real issues

00:14:58.660 of foreign interference thin skin cpc mps whining i expose their hypocrisy they lie about me because

00:15:05.700 i tell the truth about them looking forward to tomorrow bring it on so uh you know pierre

00:15:11.940 polyev has bring it home jennifer o'connell has bring it on actually a funny story i think this

00:15:17.060 is a funny enough story i don't think i'm out of uh out of line for telling it so i ran into

00:15:22.340 last week, or no, it was a few weeks ago. I was covering a rally that Polyev was holding in

00:15:28.200 Etobicoke. And Adam Chambers, who was on the show last week, I ran into him and he was there with

00:15:32.760 his young child. And Pierre's whole thing is, you know, bring it home. That's the tagline.

00:15:38.660 And the child was like just tired of the rally at this point and said, you know, I want to go home.

00:15:43.720 I want to go home. And Adam said, no, no, no, bring it home. Bring it home. It was a rather

00:15:48.840 cute moment that i'm sure the liberals or ndp would turn into something else but but all of

00:15:54.040 this is i i think interesting right now because we are seeing this liberal disarray we're seeing

00:16:00.600 the liberals right now really not know what to do and if you're a backbench liberal member of

00:16:06.200 parliament you're finding yourself at risk of losing your seat if you're a liberal in the gta

00:16:11.880 that was elected in 2015 if you're a liberal in parts of vancouver and british columbia you are

00:16:17.720 right now facing a very real loss that is preventable in a way, that would be preventable

00:16:22.780 if your party, if their party did not actually have the record it had and was so unapologetic

00:16:29.580 and so unrepentant. And that I think is where we are really seeing the negativity going to come

00:16:36.280 out in full force. It's why the liberals are doubling down on the abortion narrative. It's

00:16:40.920 why they're doubling down. We're going to have assault rifle day pretty soon where the liberals

00:16:44.780 are going to be talking about all sorts of stuff that no one else but them is talking about. They're

00:16:49.480 going to be introducing debates that no one is having. And in the past, they've had success with

00:16:55.460 this. You can't deny that it has been an effective tactic at times, but I don't think it's going to

00:17:01.000 give them as much success this time. I don't think it's going to give them as much success this time.

00:17:07.160 Simply put, because we are seeing the Canadians are seeing through it. We're seeing that Canadians

00:17:14.340 are just not buying it right now and and poliev has because i've done so many interviews funnily

00:17:19.780 enough my book came out uh two weeks ago last week in the week before i just did this marathon

00:17:24.900 of interviews including by the way i should own up to this so i i've done i think 31 interviews

00:17:32.260 with cbc so i did one on power and politics am i 31 or 20 29. so i was 31 or 29 but i did an

00:17:42.260 interview with power and politics i did one uh yesterday with cbc ottawa and i did another one

00:17:47.860 with uh cbc's the house with uh catherine cullen which came out on the weekend but then you do

00:17:53.060 this thing where i've never done it before but i've heard about it where you basically just lock

00:17:57.700 yourself in a room and you do back-to-back 10-minute interviews with every cbc radio market

00:18:03.780 in the country basically and they all ask the same questions basically one of them you know

00:18:08.820 know every now and then one might like freelance a bit or go rogue but so by the end of it your

00:18:13.220 answer has totally changed from the first one just because you got bored of giving the first one

00:18:16.980 uh but you do this and it was like a three hour interval on one day and a three hour interval on

00:18:21.640 the next day of just non-stop cbc interviews so it's a lot of fun they're interested in pierre

00:18:26.340 polyev they're interested in covering my book about him which you can get it's behind my shoulder

00:18:30.860 there you can't have that one but it is on amazon it's on the toronto stars bestseller list the

00:18:35.780 Globe and Mail bestseller list. You can get it at Indigo. But the reason I'm bringing this up right

00:18:40.840 now is because CBC has an interest in Pierre Polyev. The Toronto Star has run three or four

00:18:46.260 stories about my book. They have an interest in it. So I think you have people that are

00:18:50.660 on the political left or editorially aligned to the political left that right now are realizing

00:18:56.400 maybe just maybe we can't treat this guy the same as every other conservative leader. Maybe, just

00:19:02.900 maybe, he's not actually the guy that we've been trying to make him out to be. Now, some of these

00:19:09.380 people are reaching this conclusion honestly. They're reaching the conclusion because they

00:19:12.980 realize that, okay, people are more complex. We don't want to turn them into a caricature. It's not

00:19:17.540 fitting of democracy. Other people are just realizing, okay, what we're doing now isn't

00:19:22.240 working. And by the way, I know people all the time will say that this is a pro-Poliev show.

00:19:29.320 it's not. I've made criticisms of him. I've said things that are supportive of him. My book

00:19:34.100 does both sides, which I think is why CBC has found so much in there that it wants to talk

00:19:39.260 about. I lamented the other day that Mark Miller, the immigration minister, had approvingly tweeted

00:19:44.220 out an excerpt of my book. So clearly the liberals have found something in there. But you need to be

00:19:48.920 able to have these discussions. And right now, the conservatives are providing the most viable

00:19:54.360 alternative to the liberals, the most electorally viable alternative to the liberals. So you have

00:19:59.620 to look at this contrast and take it at face value in a lot of ways. And what it means, what it's

00:20:05.820 likely to look like is where there's some speculation and debate. And I won't claim to

00:20:11.120 be able to authoritatively say what a Polyev government would do if he's elected. But I can

00:20:17.400 look at the track records of Trudeau versus Polyev just in the last year. And I can look at all of

00:20:24.340 this and say that right now there are two discussions taking place. There are two

00:20:29.820 discussions. I'm going to have an interview later this week with John Rustad, who's the leader of

00:20:33.560 the BC Conservatives. And the left has always said that in BC, everyone is just left wing,

00:20:40.680 but that's not actually the case. It's not actually all that true. And I think the fact

00:20:45.020 that we're seeing in BC, the Conservatives do so well right now in the polls, similarly to

00:20:50.240 the federal conservatives although not quite that dramatically is i think a sign of this and one of

00:20:55.520 the reasons bc is important to look at is because you've seen a significant divide in the way that

00:21:00.000 province has dealt with drug policy and this has been an area where even the ndp government there

00:21:05.200 has reversed itself but this is not exclusively a british columbia problem many of you may know

00:21:10.480 i live in london ontario and my city uh very quickly i i saw about a decade ago maybe eight

00:21:17.040 years ago or so started to become just as notable on the drug issue as many other communities and

00:21:25.360 you had these weird pockets where you'd look at you know vancouver and london and i never quite

00:21:29.920 understood why that was why london had become this hotbed for it and there are political reasons for

00:21:36.480 this as well in terms of how london has chosen to deal with this issue over time and some of these

00:21:42.400 have come to a bit of a flashpoint in recent months as we've seen the debate wage on and one

00:21:48.580 of the former advocates for what's called safe supply has become one of its most prominent

00:21:53.760 critics right now. She was on the show in the past on a panel we did exploring a lot of these issues

00:21:58.880 and I wanted to bring her back on now as she had a fantastic piece in the National Post this week

00:22:04.100 looking at London as a case study here. Dr. Sharon Koivu is an addiction medicine physician and

00:22:10.660 joins me now dr koivu good to talk to you again thanks for coming on today thank you very much

00:22:15.940 for having me so just to start with london here for a moment because this is my own community

00:22:22.100 it's my own city and i i've spoken to so many people who have uh just refused to go down they've

00:22:27.700 refused to go to parts of it they've talked about feeling unsafe so so we have this issue here in

00:22:33.220 the city and i know that for for you you've seen this very closely over the course of your career

00:22:39.700 but but why has london become so unique in some ways i think that's a very good question and it's

00:22:47.220 a somewhat complicated answer but i'm going to try to give a quick answer london was a place

00:22:54.100 that had a significant problem with opioid use during what i would refer to as the purdue um

00:23:01.380 the purdue driven opioid crisis when we had a lot of use with with oxycontin um we had a lot

00:23:08.900 of prescribing of opioids that switched to a drug called hydromorph cotton when Oxycontin was taken

00:23:14.500 off the market. When that happened, we had a problem with people injecting hydromorph cotton,

00:23:20.980 which led to problems with a heart valve infection and HIV becoming a problem in London.

00:23:28.740 And we tried to fix that problem by putting more drugs at it, by giving out Dilaudid,

00:23:35.060 which is the same drug, is hydromorph content. And to people who were high risk, who were sex

00:23:40.900 workers particularly, we fixed the, or we really helped the problem we were aiming for, which was

00:23:49.300 to reduce the heart valve infection and HIV. But we've kind of been playing whack-a-mole and we've

00:23:55.540 been trying to fix things with more opioids. And with doing this, we've created more problems.

00:24:03.140 So we now have a program in London that gives out large quantities of opioids that aren't witnessed,

00:24:10.260 refer to it as safe, and I think it's really important to remember prescription opioids got

00:24:15.620 us into the problem we're in. Opioids aren't safe, they are toxic, illicit fentanyl is toxic,

00:24:24.100 hydromorphone is toxic. And now we've increased the availability of opioids on the streets of

00:24:32.740 London. And we did it in a way that most people weren't even aware. I was very involved in the

00:24:38.420 town hall meetings on the supervised consumption sites. So people knew that we were going to be

00:24:45.300 having con supervised consumption sites people weren't aware of um the

00:24:53.700 sort of giving the safe supply program where we're giving out large amounts of opioids to people

00:24:59.460 and and really weren't able to understand some of the side effects that they were seeing from that

00:25:04.740 i think some of them they blame the supervised injection site on um but but by doing that we've

00:25:11.220 really increased we've increased the amount of opioids on the street we've decreased the price

00:25:17.460 of opioids on the street and um we've essentially flooded london with opioids which has also led to

00:25:25.780 an increase as people become addicted to to one thing they seek something stronger it's kind of

00:25:32.660 driven um people to sell their drugs in exchange for fentanyl it's helped drive the fentanyl crisis

00:25:40.020 So, we particularly have driven that in London, and we can see that London is different.

00:25:49.020 So, we have a program that's different, and London was similar to Ontario for our overdose deaths, our eMERGE visits, for example.

00:26:00.020 And since the program has started, we've actually gone up and up and up.

00:26:04.020 Up and up, we are much higher in our overdose deaths

00:26:08.220 than the general population of Ontario,

00:26:10.760 and is significantly higher

00:26:12.460 in our emergency department visits.

00:26:14.620 And certainly in what I see in the hospital

00:26:16.520 with infections related to injection drug use,

00:26:18.960 particularly dilaudid use.

00:26:21.280 So we've created a problem that is worse in London

00:26:26.280 because of what we were trying to fix in the first place.

00:26:29.900 So you raise an important point there, Dr. Cloivu,

00:26:32.920 in that there's a knee-jerk reaction

00:26:34.960 and I think a moral argument

00:26:36.620 that often gets made about drugs.

00:26:38.160 But if we want to restrict this

00:26:39.300 just to the science and to the data,

00:26:41.220 we now have eight years of data on this.

00:26:43.220 And we've seen, as you know,

00:26:44.640 more infections, more patient deaths.

00:26:46.760 We certainly see diversion.

00:26:48.320 And I think there are some people

00:26:49.600 try to downplay that,

00:26:50.740 but we know it exists.

00:26:52.200 So how do the advocates of safe supply

00:26:55.180 account for that?

00:26:56.160 Because they are convinced,

00:26:58.540 or at least they claim to be convinced,

00:27:00.020 that the data are on their side.

00:27:01.560 I think that I don't have complete control of how they use their data.

00:27:09.420 But you hear the arguments.

00:27:10.840 Oh, I hear the arguments.

00:27:12.020 And I guess what I'd say is something working doesn't mean that its side effects aren't bad.

00:27:18.320 And one of the things I'd like to compare this to is actually if you're just looking at if something works.

00:27:23.400 So if you're looking at nausea of pregnancy, for example, and being nauseated in pregnancy can be quite serious.

00:27:30.400 it can cause problems to the mother, problems to the fetus, so a good treatment is important.

00:27:36.320 If you're just looking at benefits, thalidomide is probably one of the best drugs

00:27:42.000 to take to help get rid of nausea of pregnancy, but it has significant side effects to the fetus

00:27:50.080 if it's taken in the first trimester and can cause a decrease in the limbs. So seeing a benefit

00:27:55.440 doesn't mean that the side effects don't outweigh the benefits. So when people are saying they see

00:28:03.200 a benefit, they may be. But I also would say we don't know for sure what the benefits are from.

00:28:11.280 So when we started this program, we've also got people into primary care. We know primary care is

00:28:18.960 important wound care hiv care wraparound services housing first programs just engaging in a program

00:28:29.120 increases um people's ability to stabilize and we didn't really look at what part of the program

00:28:38.000 was actually effective we so i'm sure that people are seeing for some individuals in the program

00:28:46.240 they feel that they're benefiting but some of that benefit would have been from the other parts of

00:28:52.960 the program and they didn't compare it to other programs that are so much safer like opioid agonist

00:28:59.600 therapy programs and getting people into a um on something like people we've uh we've briefly lost

00:29:11.520 Dr. Sharon Koivu. We'll work to get her back on the line in just a moment here. It's quite

00:29:17.820 fascinating to me. And again, I understand the emotionally charged arguments on this. I do. I

00:29:23.240 understand why people are getting very frightened. Because again, there's an inherent absurdity

00:29:28.120 to let's give people suffering with drug addiction drugs and think that that's going to work.

00:29:34.980 But even if you overcome that and you don't care about that argument and you move beyond that,

00:29:40.120 it's not doing what it's supposed to do it's not actually turning this thing which is inherently

00:29:46.080 unsafe into something that is safe and this was an issue that was raised back when needle

00:29:51.180 dispensaries and crack pipe dispensaries were becoming a thing and I remember this in London

00:29:56.720 probably what eight years ago or so and it's happened elsewhere and you'd look at this and

00:30:00.960 say you know drugs are not unsafe just because of the delivery mechanism they're not just unsafe

00:30:06.380 because people might reuse a needle they are unsafe because drugs are unsafe and drugs uh

00:30:12.540 certainly of these uh these varieties are incredibly incredibly dangerous to people so

00:30:18.700 i i'm i'm looking at this and i'm seeing this big divide between the so-called expert class

00:30:25.260 and where a lot of ordinary canadians are and i was actually at a a social event uh believe it or

00:30:29.980 not i get invited to those like once every three or four years i was at a a social event not that

00:30:34.460 long ago and i was talking to someone very very anti-conservative did not like polyev didn't like

00:30:39.740 danielle smith didn't like the right uh probably doesn't like me but anyway and this person had

00:30:45.420 said well you know the one thing i'll say about danielle smith i love what she's doing on drugs

00:30:51.580 i love that she's you know going to force people into treatment because this was an issue that

00:30:56.220 transcended the left-right divide it transcended that and this was someone who actually found that

00:31:02.140 this was a a policy because again they're looking in their community and they're seeing they're

00:31:08.220 seeing what so many others in this country are seeing and they're wondering why no one's doing

00:31:14.140 anything about it so when you hear and i would encourage you to go back and look at my panel

00:31:18.860 discussion that i had on this show with uh sharon koivu and uh julian summers dr julian summers who's

00:31:25.340 a psychologist and adam zeebo the uh journalist with the national post and we talked about this

00:31:30.220 We talked about it from a number of different angles.

00:31:32.780 And what's notable about Drs. Koivu and Summers is that they were advocates for this.

00:31:38.360 They were not just ideologues.

00:31:39.780 They were advocates for this who saw the data, who saw the research, and then from there

00:31:45.400 realized that, okay, this isn't actually working.

00:31:49.500 This is not doing what we thought it was going to do at best.

00:31:52.560 And at worst, it's making things far worse.

00:31:55.300 So we have to move on in a couple of moments.

00:31:58.420 but we do have Dr. Koibu back on now. So I want to just at least get one or two more questions

00:32:03.760 here before we talk about LNG, which is a far less controversial issue. Dr. Koibu, thank you

00:32:08.600 for reconnecting here. Let me just ask you, as we kind of look at the way forward on this,

00:32:14.320 there are people that, like I said, are against harm reduction in general, the people that would

00:32:19.040 not like supervised injection sites, that wouldn't like needle dispensaries and all of that. Where do

00:32:25.020 think is the optimal point at you know the harm reduction that works versus the harm reduction

00:32:30.460 that doesn't i think speaking specifically about harm reduction harm reduction um by definition

00:32:37.900 can't harm others if it's reducing harm it's really important that it doesn't harm the community and

00:32:43.580 certainly not other people so i think we really have to be aware of harm reduction but i also

00:32:48.460 think when i started in addiction work we talked about the four pillars prevention treatment harm

00:32:54.220 reduction and enforcement. And like anything where you have a structure, if you only have one pillar,

00:33:00.540 things fall down. And putting all of your emphasis on harm reduction at the expense of prevention

00:33:07.820 and treatment and even enforcement, we lose the ability to really get a complete

00:33:15.420 comprehensive approach for people. We need prevention, but we also know prevention

00:33:21.180 includes about accessibility. When things are very accessible, cheap, easy to access,

00:33:30.140 you have an increase of people using them. We need to decrease access to opioids. We

00:33:35.820 knew that during the opioid crisis. We also need to look at social determinants of health

00:33:41.340 and trauma and really be working to have mental health care and services to help prevent people

00:33:48.140 from getting into a problem with addiction. We need to have treatment and that treatment needs

00:33:53.260 to include things that are proven, such as opioid agonist treatment, as well as other options for

00:33:59.980 people. In harm reduction, I think we have to go back and look at supervised injection sites.

00:34:05.180 I do think they have merit, but they were meant to help engage people, get them into care,

00:34:13.180 connect them with resources and help people do motivational interviewing to get into a recovery

00:34:20.220 program. But extremely important that a supervised injection site engages with the community that

00:34:26.860 they're in and works to ensure that they're a safe place to be for that community and do not add

00:34:34.300 harm to the community. I think that's extremely important. And enforcement, sometimes I do not

00:34:42.220 feel people should be criminalized for their addiction, which is a mental health issue.

00:34:46.780 But I think the importance of enforcement in helping to work with communities,

00:34:52.940 even helping to engage people into recovery is something that we are now really overlooking.

00:34:59.660 So we need to be balancing all of those pillars and make sure we provide appropriate medical

00:35:06.540 treatment for medical illness, engage the community, and make sure that while we're doing

00:35:12.320 this, we aren't making things worse for individuals and for society. Dr. Sharon Koivu's op-ed in the

00:35:19.960 National Post, quote-unquote, safe supply, has only worsened the addiction crisis in London. And I note

00:35:26.740 that safe supply is always in quotation marks throughout your piece, which I think is a very

00:35:31.440 important bit of punctuation there for the discussion at hand. Dr. Koivu, thank you very

00:35:36.120 much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. We'll certainly talk about this in further detail in

00:35:42.600 the future. I know it's an incredibly important subject and it's one that's ravaging individuals

00:35:46.740 and communities alike. And I think we are seeing the tide turning on this, but you certainly have

00:35:52.280 this small group of very loud activist types that, I mean, Dr. Koivu is very diplomatic in the way

00:35:58.180 she speaks. Adam Zeebo is diplomatic, but a little less so. He shoots from the hip a bit more

00:36:02.200 because he's, you know, again, he's in the business of delving in to these groups in a way

00:36:08.560 that, you know, he doesn't have the patient load to deal with. But I think it's fascinating to me

00:36:13.500 to see this, to see this discussion and to see it turning. But still, the status quo is, you know,

00:36:19.340 it's remaining the status quo in a lot of ways. So we'll move on to another subject here. I said

00:36:23.740 we'd talk about LNG. So this has become a bit of a hobby horse for me because I love when you have,

00:36:29.780 On one hand, you know, Justin Trudeau will get up there and say there's no business case for LNG export.

00:36:35.360 And then, as I've joked in the past, and it keeps happening, Vashi Kapelos will interview all these foreign heads of government and heads of state that come to Canada, like the prime minister of Greece and the, I forget it was the prime minister or president of Spain and the chancellor of Germany and, you know, ask all of them about LNG.

00:36:51.120 And they're all like, oh, yeah, we'd love to buy Canadian LNG.

00:36:53.780 So there is actually a market.

00:36:55.320 There is a business case.

00:36:56.360 One of the holdups, though, has always been the limitation of refineries and export terminals.

00:37:01.880 Well, we have an export terminal at long last nearing completion in British Columbia,

00:37:06.800 so I think it's time to have a bigger picture discussion about the future of LNG.

00:37:11.340 Philip Cross is back. It's been a little while, but it's always good to have him on the show.

00:37:15.320 He is a senior fellow with both the Fraser Institute and Macdonald-Laurier Institute

00:37:19.640 and had an interesting piece about this in the Financial Post.

00:37:23.560 the figures show Canada needs more LNG projects. Philip, always good to talk to you. Thanks for

00:37:28.800 coming on today. My pleasure, Andrew. Thanks for having me back. So where does this argument that

00:37:34.380 there's no business case come from? Because every time you see people lining up to buy it,

00:37:38.520 that strikes me as a pretty compelling business case. Well, it certainly doesn't come from the

00:37:42.800 business community. And as you noted, it doesn't come from our potential customers overseas who

00:37:47.380 were very anxious to access Canadian LNG. The idea that it's not economic only seems to

00:37:56.260 occur in the head of our prime minister and perhaps some bureaucrats who don't know anything

00:38:02.160 about business cases. But clearly there isn't just a business case, there is an outstanding

00:38:08.660 business case. It's been proven by the Americans who built any number of LNG terminals and made a

00:38:15.420 fortune exporting from them to Europe at the peak of when LNG prices hit extremely high levels just

00:38:24.220 after Putin's invasion of Russia. But there also are opportunities in Asia. The main advantage is

00:38:34.320 we're going to get a higher price for a product we're already producing. Instead of selling it

00:38:38.660 for a very low price to the United States, we can access prices overseas. So it's not even clear that

00:38:44.720 going to have a major impact on emissions or any of that yeah and what's interesting too is that

00:38:50.320 when canada exports lng or you know canadian oil and gas in general it allows other countries that

00:38:56.720 are not as quote unquote green realizing that's a loading term to have an alternative to say coal

00:39:02.080 and and you know one of the things that has always been missing from this discussion

00:39:06.080 from a lot of people is that emissions are a global calculation not a domestic one

00:39:11.040 so when and i've heard michael binion of the modern miracle network make this point that

00:39:15.520 you know we could increase emissions in canada and have a net reduction of emissions globally

00:39:21.040 if we allow canadian energy which is produced with very high standards to access the international

00:39:26.400 market but that part's missing and there's so many barriers that are put up really by ideology

00:39:32.080 towards canada being a major player on this market it seems yeah i can't agree with you

00:39:37.520 more about the global emissions i mean i have to laugh i heard on the local radio station this

00:39:41.760 morning driving into ottawa that ottawa is finally conceding that it's not going to achieve its

00:39:47.280 target of a 43 reduction in emissions well my goodness i can't imagine anything more pointless

00:39:53.920 than calculating the emissions at the local level uh in the city the city boundaries of ottawa is

00:40:00.800 going to be one way and once you get out it'll be different yeah yeah i mean it's it's a purely

00:40:05.280 theoretical calculation anyways even at the national level um in fact i'll be writing about

00:40:10.800 this in an upcoming uh op-ed in the post about how you know when we measure emissions there isn't

00:40:16.560 somebody from stack and doesn't go outside and and you know measure something uh or stand on top of

00:40:22.240 the coach building and start measuring you know emissions uh it's a theoretical calculation

00:40:28.160 emissions in this country for example blew through the roof last year when we had all those forest

00:40:32.400 fires. And yet that doesn't enter into the official calculation. So the whole business

00:40:40.260 of calculating emissions is very vague and model-based at the best of times. But the

00:40:51.420 broad lines are that we can be sure that LNG from BC is going to have lower emissions

00:40:57.160 than coal being burned in in china so uh if emissions are your only focus it's still a

00:41:04.520 no-brainer how much does i mean if it's possible to even quantify but but how much does investor

00:41:11.560 confidence and investor tolerance wane on these sorts of projects when you see activists that in

00:41:17.880 some cases very successfully disrupt these things because i know there have been a couple of isolated

00:41:23.640 examples where companies have said listen this just isn't worth the hassle anymore

00:41:28.600 well they certainly have had an impact i mean you know kinder morgan sold

00:41:34.360 got out of the oil pipeline business in for trans mountain because of the fears about the delays

00:41:42.440 i was just reading the um stephen mayer's book about justin trudel in which he talks about how

00:41:48.440 Well, Premier Horgan out in BC, he wasn't that opposed to pipelines.

00:41:55.040 He certainly wasn't opposed at all to LNG.

00:41:57.660 He let that one go ahead.

00:41:59.700 But he was just worried.

00:42:00.640 He wanted to keep his coalition together, and he was worried about environmental activists

00:42:04.160 disrupting the work sites and embarrassing the government.

00:42:08.660 So, you know, the militant environmentalists do have an impact and have a disproportionate

00:42:16.060 uh and excessive voice in in determining whether these projects go ahead or not

00:42:24.380 so what's happening now because you noted that there's already been since the uh i think it was

00:42:29.100 the kitamat project was you know basically nearing completion that there's already been

00:42:33.420 a bit of a resurgence in discussions about others well and not just because we've finally completed

00:42:39.980 one in Canada, I mean, you know, only in Canada, but it's a combination of a project finally being

00:42:53.180 completed here in Canada, but at the same time, the Biden administration has given in to their

00:42:58.540 environmental lobbyists and have temporarily frozen any issue of permits for any new projects.

00:43:06.140 Now, there are several projects already underway in the U.S. that will continue to go ahead.

00:43:10.040 So it's not like there's a moratorium, you know, like they impose on the Keystone Pipeline.

00:43:15.820 But nevertheless, it's an indication that particularly if Biden should get reelected and next year or this year, later this year,

00:43:24.900 and then, you know, doesn't care about getting reelected again and therefore, you know, gives into the environmental lottery even more.

00:43:31.040 that, you know, there may be a real opportunity for Canada to gain back some of the very large

00:43:37.380 amount of market share that we've lost to the US in developing LNG up to now. So, but these

00:43:43.220 projects take decades to get the permitting and the building done. So it's something we have to

00:43:49.340 start on right now. We can't wait for, you know, another administration in the US to come and go

00:43:56.680 before we decide oh yeah maybe there's a market here i think what happened in europe you know

00:44:01.960 with the german chancellor and so on uh coming over here in a panic shows that you know you have

00:44:07.480 to have that capacity ready well ahead of emergencies uh you never know when emergencies

00:44:12.440 are going to come along or when extraordinary events will happen uh and so it's it's best to

00:44:18.760 have the capacity in place and be ready for them yeah and one of the biggest i think counterpoints

00:44:24.680 when Olaf Scholz, who I think triggered the discussion of this, certainly from, you know,

00:44:30.160 the perspective of the business case aspect of it. When that came up, one of the arguments that

00:44:35.780 was made by critics of Canadian LNG or of expanding it was, well, yeah, I mean, if we started it,

00:44:41.480 you know, way back, sure. But the whole point is we couldn't do anything now to serve what he's

00:44:46.980 wanting now. So when you hear that argument happening, it's like, well, great. Well, that

00:44:51.960 means you know the best time was yesterday but the second best time is today yeah and at one

00:44:56.840 point you know when lng canada finally went ahead it was part and parcel of what were at the time

00:45:02.600 20 project proposals uh now some of them were just never going to go were just flyers but clearly

00:45:09.100 there was serious commercial interest in developing several of them uh and some of them needed to be

00:45:15.420 in the east coast to access the european markets most of the discussion now is on the west coast

00:45:19.840 to access Asian markets, we should diversify. I mean, the important thing to understand in all

00:45:25.660 of this is that right now we are landlocked into just the U.S. market for basically all of our oil

00:45:33.340 and gas. We have to, and as a result, the Americans, not being stupid, pay us very low prices knowing

00:45:39.400 that we don't have an alternative. We need to access overseas markets. It will get us a better

00:45:45.020 price and it will give these overseas markets a diversified source of supply and they won't just

00:45:52.380 be held hostage by the Americans. So it's in everybody's interest to diversify, to access

00:45:58.780 higher prices. And to do that, you have to build capacity and you have to do it preferably on both

00:46:06.860 coasts. But there's any number of proposals out there on both coasts. Businesses have indicated

00:46:13.420 that they're willing to i mean even if some politicians think that there isn't a business

00:46:18.140 case as long as businesses are willing to take the risk and absorb the losses i don't know why

00:46:22.700 it's any business of anybody except them um you know and as long as firms are willing to to take

00:46:30.460 that risk i i think it's in our national interest to diversify our our our markets and get higher

00:46:37.420 prices very well said philip cross senior fellow with the mcdonald laurier institute author of this

00:46:43.740 great piece in the financial post uh that we were talking about here the title of which is

00:46:48.940 the figures show canada needs more lng projects philip good to talk to you thank you my pleasure

00:46:55.260 thank you all right that does it for us for today since he mentioned stephen marr's book i got to do

00:47:00.220 another shameless plug of pierre pauliev a political life available now on amazon indigo and wherever

00:47:06.940 fine books are sold. And oh, I should probably tell you as well, I have an event coming up

00:47:11.380 next week in Winnipeg, my first ever foray into Manitoba. So take from that what you will. I've

00:47:18.280 never been there until now, but this is what's bringing me. And that is going to be on June 20th,

00:47:24.760 2024 at noon. It's a lunchtime event at the downtown convention center. And if you want

00:47:30.700 some details about that. You can go to conservativeclubwpg.ca, conservativeclubwpg.ca.

00:47:39.500 And that's going to be a lot of fun. I've already had a couple of people email me to tell me they

00:47:43.240 will be there. So see you soon, but also I'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's Most

00:47:48.040 Irreverent Talk Show. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:48:00.700 dot news.

00:48:30.700 We'll be right back.

Juno News - June 11, 2024

Trudeau laments rise of ＂populist right-wing forces＂

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