00:01:00.000welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:19.720north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show on this wednesday
00:01:29.120july 24th hope you're doing well it is just after one o'clock eastern time where i am in
00:01:34.360beautiful southwestern ontario but wherever you are i think it's i haven't actually been
00:01:38.680outside today i realize so it may or may not be beautiful but it's not flooding like it was
00:01:43.200was that early last week and and certainly in toronto so it is all relative in that sense but
00:01:49.260Anyway, hope wherever you are in this lovely country or world, you're having a great day.
00:01:53.920Whether you're listening live or catching this in a time capsule in the year 2075, we welcome you very much.
00:02:01.840And I hope the world is a little bit less chaotic than it is today.
00:02:06.280But anyway, I want to talk about a few different things here.
00:02:09.180We're going to get into gas prices with the, I'm going to definitely the country's leading authority, maybe even the world's leading authority on gas prices.
00:02:17.120Dan McTagg. That is going to be coming up in just about 15 minutes or so. Also later on in the
00:02:22.760program, why free trade is a bit of a misnomer when you don't even have free trade in your own
00:02:27.780country. You can't take a case of beer from one province to another. And these barriers are coming
00:02:33.220with a huge cost, about $200 billion a year. That's going to be something we tackle later on
00:02:38.980in the program. But I want to begin by discussing this interview. I mentioned it yesterday because
00:02:44.020it had just sort of emerged that it had happened as I was coming on air. And it was an interview
00:02:50.000that was not planned, that is very unlikely on the surface between Kian Bextie of The Counter
00:02:56.560Signal. Now he used to work for Rebel, now he's started his own outlet, and Justin Trudeau. And
00:03:02.640the interview took place where, I mean, basically the only place you can get interview access to
00:03:07.700Justin Trudeau, which is a beach in Tofino, British Columbia. Now, there are a few moving
00:03:12.600parts to this. Number one, Justin Trudeau is on vacation. He decided to take 10 days off until
00:03:18.580the end of the month with his family. I don't know if it's just his kids and him. I don't know
00:03:22.600if Sophie is there as well, but either way, it's a family vacation. He is on the beach in Tofino.
00:03:28.240He loves Tofino, goes there all the time. And this is where Kian Bextie and one of his colleagues
00:03:34.200who goes by Cat Canada on Twitter, she was, I believe, the camera operator at the time. Now,
00:03:40.820why I want to talk about this is because this has become a bit of a flashpoint here
00:03:45.680online you have some people not just Trudeau defenders even some people on the right
00:03:49.760saying this is in poor form it's not fair to ambush someone when they're on vacation
00:03:54.480you shouldn't invade someone's private space there's a time and a place for this and so on
00:03:59.300and then you have a whole other subset if you go like way way way deep into the rabbit hole
00:04:05.020I should have pulled some sample tweets but it's not hard to find you get people that believe this
00:04:09.420was a setup. This was a plant. Justin Trudeau and Kian Bexty were supposedly in cahoots and they
00:04:17.280had planned this as some weird psyop that was endeavoring to humanize Justin Trudeau. And
00:04:23.080I can go through and basically dismantle point by point why it is not a setup. I've known Kian
00:04:29.560for many, many years. I can tell you he is not on the liberal government's payroll. All of the
00:04:35.220theories that have come up for how he got close or how did he get past security these are people
00:04:39.920that know nothing about Canadian security they know nothing I mean I have shaken Justin Trudeau's
00:04:44.420hand more times than I can count this is not something that is difficult to do in Canada
00:04:49.080especially if someone is outside of a structured environment if they think they're just walking
00:04:53.540along a beach now I would say that the relatively lax security in this country around political
00:04:58.500leaders is a feature and not a bug it's because we live in a country in which leaders are not and
00:05:03.660do not feel threatened generally. Now, I'm assuming a time will come when that will change, but
00:05:07.560don't take the absence of Kian being tackled by police as evidence that he had been given
00:05:13.800permission to get close to Justin Trudeau. That being said, once he did get there and Justin
00:05:20.100Trudeau did have RCMP kind of performing a protective bubble around him, he did wave them
00:05:25.620off. And you're going to see this in the clip that I'm going to share in a couple of moments.
00:05:29.280But the reason I'm wanting to give it a bit of context here is just so you know what the two
00:05:33.200debates are that are taking place about this number one this was a setup it was staged number
00:05:38.340two okay maybe it wasn't a setup and it wasn't staged but it was unfair he shouldn't have done
00:05:43.120it it's not civil it's not polite okay now that we have those arguments i've got thoughts on both
00:05:48.360of those but let's just roll a bit of the clip now this is a a 13 minute video that the counter
00:05:53.660signal has posted this is an excerpt that shows i think the general tone and tenor of what happened
00:14:34.040He has invited this treatment from the media
00:14:35.640by treating the media with such contempt.
00:14:37.660Again, Kian was one of the journalists
00:14:39.500who at the time with Rebel News needed to sue
00:14:42.320to get into the Leaders' Debates Commission's debates in 2019. True North was there as well.
00:14:48.420We were banned by a government agency from doing our job as journalists.
00:14:53.560And every day, despite that, despite that, the liberals still have the same attitude towards
00:14:59.120independent journalists, the same attitude that prevents them from doing their work.
00:15:04.260So look, maybe you don't like Key and maybe you don't like the idea of what some people
00:15:08.480are characterizing as an ambush, but Justin Trudeau is reaping what he has spent the last
00:15:14.200several years sowing. And that is where I think, again, the pearl clutching is a great way of doing
00:15:19.960this. Chris Selle had a point, he was with the National Post. He said, if Justin Trudeau doesn't
00:15:25.440like the job that much, he's the prime minister of a G7 country, if he doesn't like people asking
00:15:29.520him questions, then he can just quit already and move on. But the thing that is so fascinating is
00:15:34.820that when you look at these mechanisms that are in place that tend to block access, these mechanisms
00:15:40.000in place that tend to prevent people from being able to ask a question to Justin Trudeau, it's
00:15:44.760because his staff doesn't have confidence in him. It's because his staff is not convinced that he
00:15:49.540could do the Pierre Polyev thing and turn around an interaction with a journalist in a way like
00:15:55.440that. Now, I'd say that this exchange with Kian shows that he can at times do it. He can at times
00:16:01.420flip the script take charge or at least take a level of control of a conversation and and end
00:16:07.260up doing it but it's not about what looks good for him it's not about whether he's capable or not
00:16:12.220the whole point is is that it took uh kian baxi several thousands of dollars for him and his
00:16:18.860videographer to get on planes go to tofino get he posted like a screenshot of his credit card
00:16:26.780bill or whatever to you know get on one of those harbor air float planes to go to the beach and i
00:16:32.380don't know how long they were waiting like i joked yesterday that finding trudeau is kind of easy you
00:16:35.980just sort of look on the beach and there he is but i don't know if they were walking up and down the
00:16:38.940beach for eight hours i don't know how long it took for them to do it but i do know that they
00:16:43.580did it and they did it well and i would suspect that if kian were allowed to go to trudeau press
00:16:49.100conferences he wouldn't have had to do that because it simply would not be worth it it simply would
00:16:54.380not be worth it and you'd already have that access and that's where i find this to be just
00:16:59.820such a profoundly dismal state of affairs i've told the story often of when christia freeland
00:17:05.260who was at the time the foreign affairs minister she was co-hosting this so-called global conference
00:17:10.860for media freedom in london england i was there covering it and she was having a press conference
00:17:16.700and at the media freedom press conference decided to ban me to ban true north from attending it also
00:17:22.460Sheila Gunn-Reed as well. And it was just by a fluke that all of the other journalists there
00:17:28.460were really minded to support press freedom. And they said, well, Freeland, we're not going to go
00:17:32.800to your press conference unless you let everyone in. That solidarity doesn't happen on a normal
00:17:37.740basis. That solidarity doesn't happen in the case of what Kian Bextie and others are dealing with.
00:17:43.700So all of that is to say, I am not troubled by this in light of that context. I do believe
00:17:50.780generally that we should let politicians have a personal life, no matter how much you may loathe
00:17:55.180them. I don't like the idea of protesting at people's homes. I don't like the idea of harassing
00:17:59.920people at home. I don't like the idea of harassing anyone or doing anything of the sort when they're
00:18:05.700around their family. But asking questions as a journalist on a beach, which is not a place that
00:18:11.360carries a public expect or an expectation of privacy, when you have no other opportunities
00:18:17.480to do that I think is entirely justifiable that's my position I'm open to people disagreeing so if
00:18:24.220you have other thoughts on it weigh in in the comments this has been more people have been
00:18:28.520talking about like the extraneous aspects of the interview than have been talking about the
00:18:33.780interview itself on social media now admittedly that was before the the interview was released
00:18:38.520but let's talk about one thing we can find a lot more unanimity on among this audience I suspect
00:18:43.300which is the devastating impacts of the carbon tax, one of many, not the only thing driving up
00:18:49.320the cost of living, but it is in fact doing it. Now, that being said, there is an interesting
00:18:55.220piece that I wanted to get to on gas prices generally, which is that the Competition Bureau
00:19:01.020is suspecting there may be a little bit of anti-competitive conduct that is, to use the
00:19:07.480watchdog's word guiding gas prices the competition bureau is looking at a company called
00:19:14.240calibrate canada which they suspect is guiding gas prices at 100 or 1700 fuel stations across
00:19:22.160the country if you want to understand fuel prices there's only one guy in canada that knows
00:19:28.300everything about them and that is our good friend dan mctagg who is the president of canadians for
00:19:33.420affordable energy and also a former Liberal Member of Parliament back when that meant something very
00:19:38.700different from what it does today. Dan, it's good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:19:43.340Good to be here, Andrew, and thank you for the invitation. I didn't realize gasoline was
00:19:48.080such a big deal these days. It certainly wasn't with the Competition Bureau 40 years ago,
00:19:52.36030 years ago when it was after this file, but glad to see that they're on it nevertheless.
00:19:56.720Yeah, it's interesting because I think anecdotally everyone would assume there was some sort of a
00:20:01.580passive collusion going on because you know everyone has seen the intersections with three
00:20:06.300gas stations where one drops their price and then you know half an hour later the next one does and
00:20:10.540then half an hour after that the other one does but but what is it they're actually thinking is
00:20:14.700happening here that may be illegal potentially well i think they're probably looking at uh
00:20:19.260conspiracy which is that uh the you know a couple of these gas stations are gathering in the dark
00:20:23.900of night under you know dimly lit lamps on some street corner and saying hey this is the price
00:20:28.300we're going to be setting for the next several days they may also be looking at the wholesale
00:20:32.060price of gasoline which uh brings us into the whole ambit of you know why are wholesale prices
00:20:37.340very similar between competitors um this of course has always been a concern that you have you know
00:20:44.140three or four suppliers shell sorry excuse me pedro canada uh imperial being the big players
00:20:50.620across much of canada of course our regional players irving in the east coast and uh to the
00:20:56.300the west uh west coast chevron of course now of course which is uh uh parkland refinery in in uh
00:21:03.900in uh in vancouver uh these are smaller players but they tend to look at the wholesale price of
00:21:09.580gasoline they look at the canadian dollar and they come up with a a formula which basically suggests
00:21:15.420which way the price is going to go now in some parts of the country it's usually 48 hours after
00:21:20.300the price or 36 hours i should say after the price is settled on u.s markets uh we get a wholesale
00:21:26.620price indication that doesn't necessarily mean gas stations need to jump on it but in most major
00:21:31.620cities across canada they do which of course is the reason why i began predicting gas prices well
00:21:36.680over 30 years ago um at the same time i was out writing a little report that lost in time report
00:21:44.020of the liberal committee on gasoline price in canada you'll see uh it's about 26 years old and
00:21:48.580yours truly was was chair of that at the time I was concerned about the loss of competition
00:21:54.180particularly among retail gas stations however this is always going to continue to be an issue
00:21:59.640we know that gasoline prices tend to be also diesel prices tend to be jet fuel prices tend to
00:22:05.480be heating home heating oil prices and so where energy prices go and how their influence do with
00:22:13.380I think not just the political direction of this country but the whole issue of affordability which
00:22:17.980something i've been on for several years as you can see from above i have every expectation that
00:22:23.260the competition bureau of course is being guided by new uh mandates uh the mandate of course would
00:22:29.500be uh you know nudge nudge wink wink we uh we want to make sure that there's no green washing that
00:22:35.660is to say people making claims that they're doing something clean uh quote-unquote uh anti-fossil
00:22:40.540fuel uh when in fact they're not uh and so i think the the bureau itself has now gone from
00:22:45.900being a defender, a cop on the beat when it comes to competition, to bringing in and inviting some
00:22:53.640of the political partisan considerations, including climate change and, of course,
00:22:57.980all the issues, the many taxes that go with it, Andrew. How many independent variables are there
00:23:04.420that are inputs to gas prices in Canada? You have to watch in Canada, Eastern Canada,
00:23:11.840So Atlanta, Canada, Quebec and Ontario tends to follow the New York mercantile exchange or the market at New York is where our wholesale price comes from.
00:23:22.200And that varies by day. So if we're on a daily today where it's up a couple of pennies, that could mean a one cent increase.
00:23:27.960A couple pennies a gallon could mean a cent or two increase come 24 hours, 48 hours from now.
00:23:32.980So we're likely looking at a scenario where that would happen by Friday.
00:23:36.540um western canada so from thunder bay if you can believe it or not right up to the uh right up to
00:23:42.780vancouver's uh limits uh the lower mainland is another market and that's really driven by the
00:23:48.160chicago spot market and of course we have the vancouver lower mainland and victoria so vancouver
00:23:54.940island is also influenced by what's called the pacific northwest uh market and that of course
00:24:00.420means whatever happens in the united states tends to be the price we're going to pay within 48 hours
00:24:04.760at least gas stations will be forced to pay and including you have to include in that of course
00:24:09.000the value of the Canadian dollar very important to recognize because Andrew is many people tend
00:24:13.880to overlook in their so-called you know millions of dollars in federal government subsidies to come
00:24:18.760up with these studies that surprise nudge nudge wink wink antenna support the government's position
00:24:24.840they tend to overlook the fact that Canadian dollar continues to sink in 137 pennies to buy
00:24:30.760one us dollar adds about 24 to 27 cents a liter to the price of gasoline and that's not even
00:24:36.280including the issue of taxation they not the one but the two carbon taxes that we now have in
00:24:40.360canada and to go back to the retail aspect of this how much latitude do uh gas companies have
00:24:48.360do you know pumps pump stations have in their prices when these are going up and down i know
00:24:54.040costco you know locally is notoriously good for having a few cents uh less but but but how much
00:24:59.320of a buffer do they really have to to pad that out if they want to undercut their their competitors
00:25:04.760well you have to look at what's called a retail margin and you have to look at your market if you
00:25:08.440have a lot of people coming through so what they call throughputs you have a lot of uh you know
00:25:12.36020 30 000 liters a day and you have several hundred cars coming in then you know your your
00:25:17.240margin doesn't have to be as high it could be seven six five cents at costco or you have other
00:25:22.120ways of cross-subsidizing that as costco would for instance with uh you know with uh uh rewards
00:25:28.520programs or better yet uh you know you paying 60 65 a year to uh to have access to their pumps i
00:25:34.760can't just walk into their pumps without showing my you know my costco uh uh membership uh before
00:25:40.920getting that so that's a bit of an advantage also the amount of fuel you can use if you can walk in
00:25:45.960and say hey listen i can move a million you know liters of gasoline and one given a week or diesel
00:25:50.760the equivalent or supreme you're going to get the attention of the refiner because the refinery runs
00:25:56.200you know 24 7 365 days a year and so uh those who can move volumes tend to get a little bit of a
00:26:02.600better discount than say you know barney's bait and tackle and uh you know gasoline emporium uh
00:26:07.640would uh in an off-site you know situation where they don't get a lot of traffic nevertheless it
00:26:12.920takes everyone pays within a few cents the same for wholesale price of gasoline there are discounts
00:26:18.520casco costco might get on a day like today where they rack price that the so-called wholesale price
00:26:24.120uh you know say for uh regina being a dollar 4.9 might be buying it for 99 cents so they get five
00:26:30.120cents off any competitors in the area because of the large volumes they can move they still have
00:26:35.400to have a retail margin in order to cover the cost of honoring credit cards cost of uh you know of
00:26:41.640keeping the plaza open paying the staff or whoever is there and that's why you know you can't do
00:26:46.760these things for free we often see many variations in prices across the country even within cities
00:26:52.840where some gas stations tend to have a lower price than others they hope that they can get
00:26:56.520more attract more to their station by you know lower slightly lower prices but the really i
00:27:02.120think the story here and i've said this for some 30 odd years now is that the real competition is
00:27:06.760at the retail level the last eight or nine cents a liter and that's what it comes down to eight or
00:27:11.160nine cents is all the gas station has control over and so you know if they suddenly remove that after
00:27:16.5205 p.m in a given afternoon and have zero margin they're running seven cents lower than everyone
00:27:21.480else obviously they're going to get most of the traffic and there are many websites some which
00:27:25.980i've worked with in the past gas buddy for instance which are devoted to letting people
00:27:29.760know when that happens how that happens where the best deals are i wanted to just in in the last
00:27:35.000couple of moments i have with you here point you to this tweet ryan turnbull who's a liberal member
00:27:39.180of parliament had shared uh this he says a new report says canadian carbon tax did not cause
00:27:45.000hike in gas prices or inflation the conservatives will deny this at all costs they just can't handle
00:27:50.880the truth. So I would say, and I think you would agree that we can't say every increase in gas
00:27:57.480price has been attributed to the carbon tax, but the design of the carbon tax was to increase gas
00:28:03.280prices. That was the point of it. So I don't know how the liberals are saying that there is no
00:28:07.740connection to increases and the carbon tax. It makes no sense. And I was member of parliament
00:28:12.520for Whitby for several years. So, I mean, I know where Mr. Turnbull is trying to come from,
00:28:16.860but when you get an organization that you pay 35 or 50 million 52 million to to come up with some
00:28:22.160kind of weird study that doesn't include some experts who know what the hell they're talking
00:28:25.560about i.e me uh you know that there's a problem and uh you know that this is uh from a political
00:28:31.260point of view and i'll put my 18 years as a liberal member of parliament uh hat back on
00:28:34.920and say either you do want the carbon taxes to work to deny and to encourage people to or
00:28:40.820discourage people from buying fossil fuels or you don't and uh so it's an argument if he's making
00:28:46.520the argument this isn't inflationary, then it obviously is not working, which brings into
00:28:50.280question Mr. Turnbull and the Liberal Party's attempt at trying to suggest that carbon taxes
00:28:55.000are indeed useful. In fact, they're extraordinarily expensive. Canadians understand that. Most do not
00:29:00.940get back what they put in and we're not just talking about fuel for transportation, but also
00:29:05.200energy costs, things like keeping your home heated and the cost generally as it cascades
00:29:10.980through the economy of all these things. Now, we have a country with two carbon taxes,
00:29:14.260British Columbia being a very good example where you have 17.61 is the first carbon tax the second
00:29:19.940the clean fuel standard the BC LCFS is short for BC low carbon fuel standard about 18 19 cents a
00:29:28.820liter now and that's gonna be surprising I fought the government over there many years ago on this
00:29:33.220point when they said there was 12 mystery cents it's actually about 18 or 19 now and that's
00:29:37.620because the cost of a credit carbon credit which is about 500 which British Columbia is very
00:29:42.580transparent about it's 500 bucks per credit for every 110 dollars is four cents a liter so for
00:29:48.020that's according to the federal government's own uh um uh rias or uh regulatory implementation act
00:29:57.060uh study so for every 110 dollars of carbon credit which is 500 today in british columbia
00:30:02.740it's four cents four cents times uh a break in 110 into five from 500 you're talking uh
00:30:11.06015.8 plus gst so you're about 18 cents a liter roughly for the second carbon tax that's what's
00:30:17.220adding the cost of living more importantly last year at this time canadian dollars 131 pennies
00:30:22.340to buy us dollar today 137 that's adding about two cents a liter the price of gasoline that's
00:30:27.380a function of the fact that the world has very little interest in buying canadian commodities
00:30:31.540and canadian currency it's a a tragedy uh before i let you go dan when should i fill up
00:30:36.740well this weekend looks pretty good i would say uh by friday you'll see prices drop a little bit
00:30:42.500more than they are now and right across the country an average decrease of about two cents a
00:30:46.260liter so i'm waiting until friday to fill up uh some can get it take advantage of this tomorrow
00:30:50.660if you're atlantic canada i've just given the information out there uh diesel down two cents
00:30:55.300gasoline down 1.5 that's likely to be good for thursday and friday quebec ontario uh it's pretty
00:31:02.340much the same down about a penny and of course western canada you've seen prices spike up they're
00:31:06.980likely to drop about two cents a liter uh with the lower mainland vancouver staying in the 181 183 range
00:31:13.700all right well you heard it here first first everyone uh dan mctagg president of canadians
00:31:18.020for affordable energy thanks so much for coming on dan really good to talk always a pleasure thanks
00:31:21.540for having me andrew all right dan was always back when i work in talk radio dan was always
00:31:25.140like our favorite radio guest because it was like again like everyone would call in and be like wait
00:31:29.460I need to know what's happening with gas prices.
00:31:57.600And if I haven't put you to sleep by that,
00:31:59.040Do pay attention because it is costing the Canadian economy about $200 billion a year, according to a new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
00:32:08.700If you want to know how it relates to you, six years ago there was a Supreme Court ruling that basically said you cannot take beer from Quebec to New Brunswick.
00:32:16.520So if you find cheap beer on one side of the border, you are not allowed to take it to your home in New Brunswick.
00:32:22.040That was the famous Camo case, which is important because the Constitution is so very clear that there should not be any trade barriers domestically in the country.
00:32:31.880Yet we have so many of them, provinces that are treating their own economies as separate from others, and when we are all part of the same country here.
00:32:39.400But it is coming, like I said, at a cost.
00:32:41.920I want to welcome into the show to talk about this from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Director of Alberta and Interprovincial Affairs, Keeley Lepke.
00:33:00.780There's lots of them and they differ from province to province.
00:33:04.140But we're seeing barriers with regards to certain sectors.
00:33:08.560We're seeing barriers to the free movement of labor across the country.
00:33:13.180So if you're certified to work in one part of the country, that doesn't automatically mean you can start working in another part of the country.
00:33:20.280Services. It's not just easy to pick up your business and move to another part of the country
00:33:24.280and start operating your business in other areas. And with the flow of goods, we know that we can't
00:33:30.120get all different types of products from all provinces and territories into our home province.
00:33:34.920It's not as simple and straightforward as that. So lots of barriers exist across the country that are
00:33:40.600hurting Canadian businesses as well as consumers at a time when affordability is top of mind for
00:33:45.080many people it is and you know i'll ask in another way of where these costs come from like so that
00:33:52.440200 billion dollars a year that's a pretty significant number where what's what's contributing
00:33:56.040to that so you know there's there's quite a few examples but really by eliminating internal trade
00:34:01.720barriers we can improve camda's productivity by allowing businesses to transport goods and services
00:34:06.760more easily more cheaply um you know reduce delays caused by differing provincial regulations
00:35:41.080So there's a role for each of the provinces to play when it comes down to this, how they're currently going at fixing these barriers is by going to a table called the RCT.
00:35:52.240The RCT was created under the Canada Free Trade Agreement, and it's basically a table where they come together, they identify barriers and they sit and argue about, you know, whose regulations and rules are the best.
00:36:04.240So if you think about first aid kits, for example, prior to the RCT, first aid kits were different in each province.
00:36:11.060And if you had a business that operated across multiple provinces and territories, you had to make sure that your employee had access to that province's first aid kit.
00:36:20.480So if you think about a truck driver who required a first aid kit in their vehicle, they would have to have multiple different first aid kits to be in compliance.
00:36:29.560So what provinces did is they came to the table and argued about who had the best size of Band-Aids
00:36:34.200and they came to an agreement on who had the best first aid kit, you know, and now it's been decided
00:36:39.480seven years later that we have one first aid kit across the country. Great, but that's way too slow
00:36:45.320to be removing some of these barriers. So what CFIB is recommending is something called mutual
00:36:50.200recognition. Instead of coming to an agreement all sitting around the table fighting over Band-Aid
00:36:55.160sizes let's just say you're in Alberta business and you want to use a BC first aid kit no problem
00:37:01.320we recognize that that BC first aid kit is good enough for folks here in Alberta um you know we
00:37:07.720are not so different as a country we do have unique differences um in the different regions
00:37:12.120and whatnot but we are not so different that um first aid kit should be viewed so differently
00:37:16.760across the country there's many examples of that all right well definitely something we should
00:37:22.920keep an eye on and yeah, call your MPP or your MLA or your MNA. I think those are all, I think
00:37:27.460those are all three. Uh, I'm in Ontario. It took me like years to learn and they weren't all MPPs,
00:37:31.880but anyway, uh, great, uh, great topic. And hopefully we'll get some change on this in
00:37:36.220the future. Akili Lepke, thank you so much for coming on. Good to talk to you.
00:37:39.800Yeah. All right. Uh, that is a fascinating, like, okay, maybe not fascinating topic,
00:37:45.860but it's an important topic. And, and that Kamo case was great because it illuminated exactly
00:37:51.000how absurd it is that a guy who lives in New Brunswick that, you know, wants to go and buy
00:37:55.000some cheap beer in Quebec then gets pulled over and fined once he crosses the Quebec-New Brunswick
00:38:01.260border to get back home because, you know, heaven forbid you carry beer across a provincial line
00:38:06.660as though it's, you know, like the Berlin Wall or something. But anyway, that does it for us for
00:38:11.900today. We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North. This is
00:38:16.700the Andrew Lawton Show. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to the
00:38:21.960Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.