Juno News - Trudeau's Bill C-11 is a gateway to censorship

00:00:00.000 welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:00:04.100 this is the Andrew Lawton show brought to you by True North

00:00:08.600 hello and welcome to you all this is Canada's most irreverent talk show the Andrew Lawton show

00:00:18.660 here on True North Tuesday June 21st 2022 just after four o'clock eastern time two o'clock

00:00:25.980 Mountain Time, 5.30 in Newfoundland and Labrador. Hopefully you are having a wonderful start of the

00:00:33.060 week so far. As you note behind me, the Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that shook

00:00:39.300 the world, is not so subtly placed in an effort to very overtly tell you to buy the book. And it

00:00:45.540 seems to be working because a moment ago, our executive producer just sent me a message demanding

00:00:50.220 to know where his book is. Well, it's right behind me and it can be yours for the low price of $21.99

00:00:55.320 their unnamed executive producer. Thank you very much for your support. And to all of you who have

00:01:00.460 sent me very kind messages, letting me know you've pre-ordered the book, in some cases,

00:01:04.520 multiple copies. What I tell people is buy one for you and one for Justin Trudeau, and I'll happily

00:01:11.460 sign both of them for you. And you can mail those all the way over to, it's not even called Langevin

00:01:16.280 Block. I forget what they've renamed it to. It's like they've renamed it to this really boring,

00:01:20.400 I think, the office of the prime minister. So it's now no longer the prime minister's office

00:01:24.760 in Langevin bloc it's the prime minister's office in the office of the prime minister

00:01:28.840 or something unoriginal like that this is like a tangent of tangents a tangent on a tangent so

00:01:35.240 uh thank you very much for your patience we're going to be speaking later on about this

00:01:39.400 this new single-use plastics ban that the liberals are reviving which is a great way to just tell

00:01:44.760 people that you are doing something when you're not doing anything so they don't want anyone to

00:01:49.160 look at all the other things we're going to be talking about so they say hey think of the baby

00:01:52.920 turtles think of the baby turtles well i am thinking of the baby turtles and i'm also thinking

00:01:57.300 of how this single-use plastic thing will only inconvenience canadians and be very harmful to

00:02:03.420 canadian industry so we will talk about that later on in the show and also i'm not going to do too

00:02:08.880 much on it today because i haven't had a chance to go through all the documents but this story

00:02:13.560 that just broke this afternoon from the halifax examiner a story showing how the rcmp commissioner

00:02:20.480 Brenda Luckey, was running interference, political interference, for Justin Trudeau and for Bill

00:02:27.680 Blair after the Nova Scotia massacre a couple of years back in Portapique to make it easier for 0.93

00:02:35.080 them to ram their gun control measures through. This is not the role of the RCMP. It has shades

00:02:41.200 of SNC-Lavalin all over again. I will mention it later on in the show in a bit more detail,

00:02:46.120 but I'm going to reserve a full episode for that later on in the week or most of the episodes. So

00:02:51.680 if I'm not talking about it today in great depth, that's why, because I haven't had a chance to read

00:02:56.340 all of the source documents. But I do want to talk about another burning issue here first,

00:03:00.860 which is Bill C-11. Now, I try not to bog people down too much in the legislative numbers,

00:03:07.860 because these bill numbers do change in the previous parliament to now. This was formerly

00:03:12.740 C10. It's been brought back as C11. It's the bill that will monumentally change internet regulations

00:03:19.120 in this country. And by change, I mean vastly expand the federal government's regulatory

00:03:24.980 authority over the internet. And by the internet, I'm talking about things that people post on social

00:03:30.340 media, certainly the work that independent media outlets like True North are doing. And as much as

00:03:35.360 the government says, no, no, no, it's not about censorship. It's just we're modernizing. That's

00:03:39.740 what they say. We're modernizing the regulations. Well, they can call it whatever they want. They

00:03:44.800 can put the lipstick on the pig as much as they want. The reality is they're making it so that

00:03:49.700 the CRTC is the gatekeeper on your speech and my speech on the internet. And even if they don't

00:03:57.100 intend to use this power for evil, they're giving themselves power over internet content. And it's

00:04:03.220 not conspiratorial to point that out. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation published a report this week

00:04:09.340 on C11, a fatally flawed gateway to government censorship. Jay Goldberg of CTF is the lead

00:04:17.040 author on it, but I was also pleased to see they collaborated with Michael Geist, who's been

00:04:21.640 sounding the alarm about C11 back when it was C10, even before the conservatives started opposing

00:04:27.180 the government on this. He's the reason I think anyone knows about this bill, quite frankly,

00:04:32.040 but it's great to have Michael Geist involved in this and great to have Jay Goldberg on the show

00:04:36.660 Now, Jay, thanks for coming on today. Good to talk to you.

00:04:39.920 Great to talk to you.

00:04:41.300 So let's start with the why you're doing this first.

00:04:44.460 I don't disagree at all with the premise. I don't disagree with your findings.

00:04:48.340 The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, though, a lot of people think is out there for balanced budgets and low taxes.

00:04:53.880 Why is sounding the alarm of a government censorship a priority for the CTF?

00:04:59.280 Well, it's at the core of our mandate because our priorities are lower taxes, less waste and more accountable government.

00:05:05.380 Now, it definitely falls under number three. As you said, if we are going to hand over to the

00:05:10.420 government and bureaucrats the power to filter what we see online and deprioritize things that

00:05:16.400 the government may not like, and again, you said it properly, they're saying they may not use it

00:05:21.180 now, but it's definitely there to be used in the future. It's a major accountability concern,

00:05:25.680 and that's why we're all over this issue. Just looking at it here, let's set the stage for

00:05:31.100 what you're really delving into is your issue the content of the legislation specific provisions in

00:05:37.980 it or is your issue the existence of the legislation at all do you think it's just an

00:05:42.220 unnecessary bill in the first place it's absolutely unnecessary and it's because as we say in the

00:05:48.220 report canadian content is thriving like never before netflix has hundreds of millions of dollars

00:05:53.820 invested in cancon and we had six billion dollars of foreign investment in canadian film and television

00:06:00.220 in 2020 the first year of the pandemic that was a record so the government's out there claiming

00:06:05.420 this is for canadian content well canadian content is thriving so clearly that's just a red herring

00:06:11.340 what they're trying to do is regulate free speech and free expression that's why we're so concerned

00:06:16.220 and so the whole bill needs to be scrapped let's talk about this canadian content cell aspect here

00:06:22.220 because this is a relatively new talking point that the government wasn't pushing as much when

00:06:27.740 they were advancing this under its former iteration c10 in the last parliament because

00:06:32.620 back then they were talking about modernization we're just updating the broadcast requirements

00:06:37.420 we're updating the crtc rules they were just trying to position it as being this natural evolution

00:06:44.140 of the regulatory framework in canada surrounding broadcasters namely tv and radio they do seem to be

00:06:51.260 focusing a lot on this canadian content angle now and maybe it's just me perhaps they've done

00:06:56.940 polling on this and realize that, yeah, you know, Gladys in Sarnia, Ontario and Jean-Pierre in

00:07:02.200 Montreal love Canadian content. So that's the way they can shoehorn this thing in. But in doing so,

00:07:08.000 what they're effectively saying, and JJ McCullough has made this point, who's a YouTube streamer in

00:07:12.780 Canada, is that, you know, YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, they need

00:07:17.620 to showcase Canadian content more. Just as your television and your radio has to showcase Canadian

00:07:23.360 content so does your internet uh platform service streaming platform whatever you want to call it

00:07:29.920 and the whole point of the internet is that everything is at your fingertips already

00:07:35.680 absolutely that's the whole thing about the internet that's why we have the internet

00:07:40.400 and i think actually sean spear had a really good column where he was pointing out

00:07:44.400 that the chretchen government the last time these things were looked at explicitly decided

00:07:49.280 not to regulate the internet because the internet was seen as something different and this is very

00:07:54.320 different than tv and radio because as you say people have this stuff at their fingertips and

00:07:59.120 if they want to find canadian content they can find it online anytime it's on netflix it's on

00:08:04.480 streaming services it's very easy to find so again that's why this was kept separate in the 90s

00:08:10.320 and so the government's rationale for trying to do this it just doesn't make any sense

00:08:15.040 One of the things, I mean, again, this may work against the overarching point here because I am

00:08:20.540 saying and you're saying that Canadian content is already ubiquitous and available. One of the

00:08:24.820 great things I have enjoyed about Netflix and to a lesser extent, Prime Video is that you get a

00:08:30.140 window into other countries' content. You can log on and I've found shows from Spain and Denmark,

00:08:36.760 notably, that I've absolutely loved that I might not find under C11 if all of a sudden I have to

00:08:42.460 scroll past all the Canadian stuff that the government has made Netflix put on the home

00:08:46.560 page. And I don't see it, especially if other countries were to follow suit. And that's the

00:08:51.400 thing. We as Canadians would lose out if Denmark had its own version of this. And they had to

00:08:59.060 promote Danish content to Danes and Spanish content to Spaniards and Canadian content to

00:09:03.840 Canadians. And we lose what we're supposed to embrace about Canada, which is all of these

00:09:09.100 different cultural influences that we have access to. Absolutely. And I've actually been on a number

00:09:14.800 of radio stations where sometimes they are broadcasting in English, other times other

00:09:20.620 languages, communities all across Canada that are waking up to these concerns. Whether they want to

00:09:25.620 watch shows that are from India or China or South Korea, there are ethnic communities here in Canada

00:09:30.440 that love foreign content. And we are supposed to be a multicultural country that according to

00:09:35.920 justin trudeau you know that's what we are and that's what we embrace well the reality is bill

00:09:40.880 c11 would make that content less accessible uh that's a huge concern but also as you said other

00:09:47.440 countries could retaliate they can promote their own content but even more than that if there are

00:09:52.880 certain companies that are operating abroad and they're in charge of uh content that's been sent

00:09:59.600 in from abroad to canada if these companies don't want to deal with all of these regulations that

00:10:04.720 the crtc can be putting in they can simply block canada as a market altogether so some foreign

00:10:10.640 content could very well just be blocked we may not be able to see it in canada because these

00:10:15.680 providers don't want to jump through all the hoops that the crtc is setting up for them

00:10:20.880 we're obviously talking about this in the context of entertainment content i want to turn to news

00:10:26.160 and commentary for a moment because this has been one of the big i i'd say inconsistencies in the

00:10:31.760 the government's messaging on this. In the previous parliament, Stephen Gilboa at one point

00:10:36.580 said, no, no, no, news will be exempt from this. So all the media got off his back about it because,

00:10:41.780 okay, we're safe. We don't need to care about this. But the thing about that, that I would

00:10:45.420 point out as an independent journalist who works outside of one of these mainstream media

00:10:49.960 environments is that, you know, the government has already said that it does not view True North

00:10:54.000 as one example, as a journalism outlet. That's the liberal government's position.

00:10:59.060 okay fine so what are we then are they going to force canadians to watch us i mean okay there's

00:11:05.960 a part of me that might enjoy that in principle but but or i might enjoy it in practice but not

00:11:10.380 in principle or are they going to all of a sudden say oh no no you guys don't count you're off the

00:11:15.100 home page because all of a sudden government's going to have to start making judgments about

00:11:19.260 which canadian content qualifies as being sufficiently canadian to force in front of

00:11:25.220 people. And you get into this point, whether it's targeted politically or not, where government or

00:11:31.220 some government agency or some tech company deputized by government is having to choose

00:11:36.380 which content Canadians should see and which stuff they shouldn't see. That's exactly right. And I

00:11:42.260 think not enough of the conversation is in that place. I think that people are just saying on the

00:11:47.220 government side, well, we need to promote Canadian content. And that's necessarily a good thing. But

00:11:52.300 there's actually no clear definition of what Canadian content is. And if you look at what

00:11:56.480 the CRTC is doing, there's a film out there called Gotta Love Trump. It's a biopic of the

00:12:02.120 Trump presidency, Trump's life. It's considered Canadian content by the CRTC because there was

00:12:07.300 an American producer. You've got The Handmaid's Tale, which was a TV series that was made based

00:12:12.320 on the book by the very famous Canadian author, Margaret Atwood. Well, that's not considered

00:12:19.160 canadian content because the producer was in the united states so already these people don't know

00:12:23.960 what they're doing in terms of you know figuring out what's can con and so we're going to give them

00:12:28.520 10 times the amount of power if not more and then figure it out and allow this to filter into news

00:12:34.040 and other things so it's just very very dangerous this is not something the government should be

00:12:38.600 deciding upon and the minister has also said pablo rodriguez has come out and said we're not actually

00:12:44.440 going to tell the CRTC what the regulations should be or how they should define Canadian content

00:12:50.040 until this is actually passed into law and signed by the governor general that is completely

00:12:55.240 backwards legislation that is like going to a used car dealership buying the car and then

00:12:59.720 looking at the inside of it afterwards it's completely flawed but that's what they're

00:13:03.800 trying to push on Canadians yeah I mean for those who have the good fortune to not have immersed

00:13:09.560 themselves in this CRTC regulatory environment over the years. The way they've governed music

00:13:15.320 is they have this system called MAPL, M-A-P-L. And in order for it to be Canadian content,

00:13:21.440 you have to check off two of the four boxes. And M, I'm just pulling it up here to make sure I

00:13:26.600 don't get it wrong. M is music. So the music has to be composed by a Canadian. A, the artist,

00:13:32.300 the music has to be performed by a Canadian. P, performance, the musical selection was performed

00:13:38.220 or recorded in Canada. And L, the lyrics are written by a Canadian. So if the music and

00:13:44.000 lyrics are written by a Canadian, but it's performed by a Norwegian in New Zealand,

00:13:49.480 that's Canadian content. Conversely, if someone records it in Canada, but they didn't write the

00:13:55.660 music, the lyrics, and they're not Canadian, it's not Canadian content. So you have all of this.

00:14:00.280 And I remember years ago, Heart, the American band from Washington was Canadian content because of

00:14:05.760 just this, even though they were not Canadian. And they got a lot of airplay in Canada for that.

00:14:10.500 So it forces all of these weird rules and guidelines. But again, I think we can talk

00:14:16.860 about the desires and the goals and all of that. But fundamentally, it's does the government have

00:14:22.980 the right to curate what we see online? And that really is, in my view, and you may disagree with

00:14:28.860 this, Jay, but that's like the fundamental question here. That is the fundamental question.

00:14:33.080 the internet was created so that we can see everything at our fingertips and the government

00:14:37.080 also keeps trying to roll out this argument that well we have to protect canadians online so whether

00:14:42.680 you're talking about child pornography or you're talking about hate speech this is all regulated

00:14:48.040 through the ministry of justice this is part of the criminal code if that's what their concern

00:14:53.000 is regulating dangerous things online such as those you can look at strengthening the criminal

00:14:57.960 code other than that there should be absolutely no reason why the government is filtering what we 0.89

00:15:02.840 can see and share online and in this bill they are handing the crtc the power to do exactly that

00:15:10.040 and this should also affect and people should realize it affects individuals because the head

00:15:14.920 of the crtc came and testified he said user generated content is on the table we will have

00:15:20.440 the power to regulate that so as you said that's youtube videos that's tick tock that's not just

00:15:25.480 you know what's on netflix this is very personal and it will get down to the lives of every canadian

00:15:30.840 and it will affect you individually is your fear that this will be used to target

00:15:38.360 political speech or do you think that is taking the conspiratorial thinking a step too far

00:15:44.680 well for right now the government says they're going to do it based on whether or not they think

00:15:48.840 the content is canadian as we've said it's a very flawed process on figuring out what's canadian and

00:15:54.280 and it'd be very easy for the government to decide

00:15:56.860 that certain things on certain networks

00:15:58.760 they don't think should be considered Canadian.

00:16:01.100 But it also opens the door to future decisions.

00:16:04.720 You're strengthening the CRTC,

00:16:06.660 you're giving them the capacity

00:16:08.880 to filter what we see online.

00:16:10.900 If they have the capacity to do it for one reason, 0.75

00:16:13.480 which is Canadian-ness, 0.81

00:16:14.860 if two or three years from now they come out,

00:16:16.780 and I'm sure you heard Minister Mendicino

00:16:19.160 talk about the need to maintain social cohesion in Canada,

00:16:22.600 If a year or two from now, they decide, well, that should also be our goal, and they give that mandate to the CRTC, then absolutely we should be concerned.

00:16:29.840 So they're laying the groundwork for that.

00:16:32.400 Whether or not they do that today is a question, but whether or not they have the capacity to do that is not a question.

00:16:38.720 Under this bill, they will have the capacity to do exactly that.

00:16:42.120 The report is over at taxpayer.com, written by Jay Goldberg of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Bill C-11,

00:16:49.960 a fatally flawed gateway to government censorship.

00:16:53.420 Jay, thanks for coming on today.

00:16:55.580 Thanks for having me.

00:16:57.280 You know, one thing I will point out here

00:16:59.640 is that let's use the government's own motivations against them.

00:17:03.400 There's nothing more Canadian than the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:06.440 I'm Canadian.

00:17:07.220 I broadcast the show in Canada.

00:17:09.220 I record it in front of a Canadian-bought studio equipment set.

00:17:14.240 I have a mostly Canadian audience.

00:17:16.240 True North is Canadian.

00:17:17.140 We're as Canadian as maple syrup, poutine, beavers, and hockey.

00:17:22.060 So if they want to promote Canadian content, we have to demand, demand that True North

00:17:27.920 is up there on the front page.

00:17:29.180 Now, I don't support that, but I will say that nothing would make the government move

00:17:34.060 off of this quickly enough than having to promote Canadian independent media sources

00:17:38.960 who are telling people why this stuff is so damaging and so dangerous.

00:17:44.400 So that would be my little PSA here.

00:17:46.320 you know again even if we could theoretically benefit from this which i don't think we would

00:17:50.460 because government would draw this line and they'd be like oh no we got we got to draw around there

00:17:54.480 yeah we got to draw around true north and rebel news and post-millennial and western standard and

00:18:00.240 all of that other stuff but it points out the inconsistency here that promoting canadian content

00:18:06.340 is not what they're after what they're after is fundamentally expanding the power of the state

00:18:11.800 the regulatory power of the government. And we see this happening time and time again in other

00:18:17.080 areas. We're going to be talking about the plastic span in just a couple of moments here. But I do

00:18:21.960 want to spend a little bit of time between topics here talking about this story in the Halifax

00:18:26.880 Examiner that I alluded to at the beginning here. And again, this is very new. I haven't read all

00:18:33.440 the documents. I'm just going based off what's in front of me here. But the thing is, I'm

00:18:40.080 I'm not surprised. I'm surprised things are as brazen as they are. The headline RCMP Commissioner

00:18:48.080 Brenda Luckey tried to jeopardize mass murder investigation to advance Trudeau's gun control

00:18:53.940 efforts. So what happened here, according to the Halifax Examiner, is that Brenda Luckey,

00:19:00.240 quote, made a promise to Bill Blair and Justin Trudeau's office to leverage the mass murders

00:19:06.180 in Portapique, Nova Scotia, to get their gun control ban passed.

00:19:10.560 Remember, it was just weeks later that they introduced a couple of gun control measures,

00:19:15.160 including the Order and Council banning the AR-15 and other similar firearms.

00:19:19.960 And it was Lucky who pressured the Nova Scotia RCMP to release weapon details used by the

00:19:26.820 killers to justify the government going after it when they normally don't release such details

00:19:33.180 and they won't because they don't want to compromise the information they have as part

00:19:37.820 of the investigation. So what happened is the RCMP had found all of this and weren't saying

00:19:45.720 things because they were going through it. And Brenda Luckey was telling them, no, no, no,

00:19:48.920 we have to do it. And there's one particular document. And again, I'm going to devote more

00:19:53.700 time on this later in the week, but there's one particular document I saw here, which has the

00:19:58.260 money quote, that Brenda Luckey said that the Nova Scotia RCMP didn't understand that the

00:20:03.780 directive was tied to, quote, pending gun control legislation that would make officers and public

00:20:10.220 safer by or through this legislation. So directly tying orders she was giving to her subordinates

00:20:17.140 for political gain for the liberals. The RCMP commissioner, who the government says, oh, no,

00:20:23.860 no, no, they're independent. We don't direct them. We didn't tell them what to do in the convoy. We

00:20:27.760 don't tell them what to do about this or that. They're independent. We couldn't order them even

00:20:31.680 if we wanted to. All of a sudden are releasing or holding back investigative details based on

00:20:37.860 what's politically convenient for the government. I would encourage you to head on over to

00:20:43.740 halifaxexaminer.ca after the show and read this for yourself. And like I mentioned, we're going

00:20:48.380 to get to the bottom of this later this week. But I want to talk about if we're in a theme

00:20:53.300 show this week and a theme show today about government regulating your lives we talked about 0.97

00:20:57.700 them regulating your internet let's talk about them regulating your beverages the liberals have

00:21:03.340 come out this week with announcements of details about their ban on single-use plastics it's not

00:21:09.460 the first time they've come up with this we've known it was just around the corner although

00:21:14.500 interestingly enough i didn't think they were going to do it so quickly because throughout

00:21:19.680 covid single-use items were pretty much the saving grace of a lot of organizations food

00:21:25.520 service organizations hospitals because of cleanliness sanitation and hygiene rules but

00:21:31.680 by the end of 2025 the federal government will ban companies from importing or making plastic bags

00:21:38.240 and takeout containers they'll also go after most single-use plastic straws stir sticks and cutlery

00:21:45.600 the six pack rings that hold cans and bottles together will get a little bit more time uh in

00:21:51.440 june 2024 will have their sale banned as well so what we're having happen here by the end of next

00:21:58.080 year is some of the bands going in place and then adding more and more of them but this is happening

00:22:04.000 all within within just a couple of years so significant effect not just to the manufacturers

00:22:08.560 who produce these things in canada but all the businesses who rely on these things and i i think

00:22:14.400 there's there's two sides to this here there's obviously the consumer aspect of this and also

00:22:21.040 the producer aspect of this so let's talk about both of those with katherine swift who is the

00:22:26.080 president of the coalition of concerned manufacturers and businesses of canada

00:22:30.800 katherine it's good to talk to you thanks for coming on today my pleasure as always andrew

00:22:35.600 now just before we get into the nitty-gritty of this uh some people are going to say oh my goodness

00:22:40.400 what am i going to do without my water bottles well justin trudeau has the answer oh you mean

00:22:45.680 the uh paper box uh water thingies yeah let's let's hear it in his words

00:22:53.200 yeah we have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of water out of when we have water

00:23:00.640 bottles uh out of a plastic uh sorry away from plastic towards uh paper um like drink box water

00:23:09.360 bottles sort of things there we go we've got options don't we

00:23:17.280 yeah well it's what this announcement is is yet another virtue signaling uh you know policy

00:23:28.080 statement that will have virtually no impact on the environment that's how it's coached of course

00:23:35.440 is that it's a great environmental procedure. But the funny thing is, Andrew, and it's funny in a

00:23:44.640 sardonic sense, not a hilarious sense, is that this seems to all have been driven

00:23:51.120 by some little kid in grade school in the US who did a project on that poor turtle that we saw

00:23:59.600 that had a plastic straw in its nose. And of course, it was about the issue,

00:24:06.000 and it's a serious issue, of plastics in the oceans. The reality, however, is Canada contributes

00:24:12.880 virtually zero of the plastics that are in the oceans. It comes from a handful of countries,

00:24:18.960 the usual polluter nations, the Chinas, the Indias, Africa, and so on. And again, this has

00:24:27.600 been driven by a PR campaign not a tangible need and the plastics industry just to give them their

00:24:36.320 due has done immense work on recycling there's very sophisticated technology that promotes the

00:24:43.360 recycling of plastic products and the reuse of them as well so it's it's you know the so-called

00:24:48.400 circular economy kind of thing and and that of course isn't acknowledged at all so you the

00:24:54.480 comment you made earlier we just came through a pandemic where plastics basically saved us

00:25:00.800 in the medical of course in the medical field they're irreplaceable um and in food in food

00:25:06.880 service they're irreplaceable so one i i saw some quote from someone from the restaurant sector

00:25:12.800 saying how what am i going to do with soup i can't put soup in a plastic in a paper box or whatever

00:25:20.160 And what strikes me, though, at a time when we have a pretty dysfunctional economy in Canada

00:25:26.780 right now, people can't get passports. We have an immigration system that has a waiting list of

00:25:33.380 over four years, for goodness sakes. We have our airports are dysfunctional. We see governments

00:25:39.980 in debt up to their eyeballs, notably the federal government. This is going to add to the dysfunction.

00:25:45.100 The poor restaurant sector that got hammered during the pandemic, they're scrambling to get even plastic containers for takeout.

00:25:54.380 And of course, takeout is still hugely popular, and part of that is a hangover from the pandemic.

00:25:59.440 So this is simply going to add to inflation for consumers and add to more dysfunction in our economy for the very important food service sector.

00:26:09.080 Really, it defies belief that at a time like this, there aren't bigger priorities for our government than some virtue signaling announcement about paper or plastic bags, takeout bags in grocery stores and plastic straws.

00:26:22.780 Yeah, I mean, you mentioned ocean plastic, Catherine, and that's an important topic.

00:26:27.100 I looked it up just before the show.

00:26:28.700 There was a massive study a few years ago, and of all the ocean plastic, 90% of it came from 10 rivers, eight of them in Asia, two of them in Africa.

00:26:38.240 So not one of them in Europe, not one of them in North America, even South America or Oceania.

00:26:43.680 It was 90% of the ocean plastic just from those rivers alone.

00:26:47.340 And others are coming from, again, I mean, I went to Thailand a few years ago.

00:26:51.120 You look out in the water, abandoned fishing equipment, people dumping garbage.

00:26:54.780 It's not coming from Canadian, American, European industry.

00:26:59.340 And then we also look at cost here.

00:27:01.260 So I've been to restaurants that have invested in biodegradable food packaging materials that look and feel like plastic, but they're actually made of plant starch and stuff like that.

00:27:13.040 And you think, OK, that's a great idea. Their customers want it and they'll pay a premium for that.

00:27:17.220 But you look at the cost of those things and some of these things are four to 40 times more than the plastic fork or the plastic container than to buy in.

00:27:27.940 And so that money has to come from somewhere.

00:27:30.300 And like everything else, is the business that's serving food absorbing the cost or are they passing it on to their consumers and so on?

00:27:37.340 And this is not just about flipping a switch and using some alternative that comes in that's just as available and just as affordable.

00:27:45.480 It simply isn't the case.

00:27:47.360 No, it's not.

00:27:48.360 And even if it were obtainable, that's the other problem.

00:27:52.400 We know that we've got supply chain issues in every sector of the economy right now to varying degrees.

00:27:58.520 And a lot of these alternatives to plastic packaging are not even available for any amount of money.

00:28:05.540 No, and they're specialized processes that are still being developed that not everyone is doing.

00:28:10.400 Exactly. And of course, they're in great demand right now as well as the economy comes out of the pandemic.

00:28:15.540 So, oh, yeah, there's all kinds of issues.

00:28:17.400 But once again, though, this government has had a track record of making the big grandiose

00:28:24.520 announcement. Guibo, Environment Minister Guibo was on a beach in Quebec when he made this

00:28:29.940 announcement. Well, that was no accident. He wanted to remind everybody about that turtle.

00:28:34.700 That's why he was on the beach. But there's no follow through. There's no sensible saying,

00:28:41.420 okay, we have all these plastics that do perform an important role in our society. So what are we

00:28:47.920 going to replace them with? Should we have some kind of a period of adjustment and so on? And as

00:28:52.980 you noted off the top, and I don't think this was an accident, a lot of these measures are geared

00:28:58.660 for late 2025 when, hey, coincidentally, the agreement between the NDP and the Liberals is

00:29:07.060 expiring. And is this something that maybe the Liberals think, oh, we'll lay this little trap

00:29:12.980 for a future potential Conservative government, because they'll look like bad guys down the road

00:29:18.480 if they try to reverse this policy. So this is pure politics. We all want to do something

00:29:24.840 sensible for the environment. But let's do something that actually has a positive impact.

00:29:30.100 It doesn't just let some minister stand up and flap his gums and pretend to be doing something

00:29:36.040 useful. I know your coalition works with a lot of manufacturers. It's in the name. And I should

00:29:41.860 say, by the way, we were very privileged, True North, to be honored at your most recent dinner

00:29:46.500 among independent journalists and media outlets in Canada. And I know I mentioned it on the show

00:29:50.980 a few weeks back, but thank you again for that, Catherine. But I will say, are manufacturers in

00:29:56.200 the plastic space able to pivot to industrial plastics and move on from this? Or are there

00:30:02.480 manufacturers that just focus on these sorts of consumer plastics, whose production is basically

00:30:07.900 being outlawed now? Well, both actually, because there's some, and this is something that I think

00:30:13.700 a lot of people don't understand, is that we start to ban, and a ban is ludicrous in this case,

00:30:19.960 but when you start to actually ban outright certain types of plastics, it does affect the

00:30:24.840 manufacture of other types of plastics that I think your average person would go, well, I can

00:30:29.580 do without a grocery bag, but boy, that syringe they use, that disposable syringe that's made out

00:30:38.520 of nice, clean, pristine plastic, I can't do without that. It also affects those other plastic

00:30:44.700 products because they are manufactured by some of the same companies. But there are also some

00:30:49.180 manufacturers who only produce some of these limited products. I think too, there's been

00:30:56.500 quite a lot of investment in recyclable, decomposable plastic products. Plastic bags are

00:31:03.420 a good example. They are somewhat more expensive, but there's been a lot of progress made. What

00:31:08.120 happens to those? Are they suddenly not allowed anymore either, even though there's a lot of

00:31:13.780 science that's gotten into them to ensure that they are able to be composted? So there's so many

00:31:19.040 aspects to this. It's a simplistic announcement that won't accomplish what it's supposedly going

00:31:25.240 to accomplish. But again, you've got a nice flamboyant announcement by the minister and

00:31:31.000 some people that don't know all the nuances of the issue are going to think it's actually

00:31:35.600 effective. Paper straws, I think, are one of the most absurd creations known to man because

00:31:43.240 they don't work. I mean, anyone who's ever used a paper straw, if you nurse your drink for more

00:31:48.280 than 10 minutes, your paper straw will disintegrate in real time and cease to be of value to you.

00:31:53.920 but I think there's something to that because it shows the shortcomings of what on the surface

00:31:59.820 might seem like it's a workable idea. But in practice, like you mentioned earlier,

00:32:05.000 you can't put soup in a paper bowl. You can't, I mean, maybe everyone will have to do that with

00:32:08.840 Tim Hortons tried to do years ago and serve them in the bread bowls, which are, you know,

00:32:12.780 soggy by the end of it, but at least, you know, they don't just melt away like the paper does,

00:32:16.880 but it sounds good on the surface and there's no thought as to the application in there and that's

00:32:25.000 i think the big problem here is that all of a sudden the government's just signing this fiat

00:32:28.980 that will fall on everyone else to figure out and it's not going to work no and you're absolutely

00:32:35.940 right there's some quite unintended consequences i think it was starbucks that to eliminate some

00:32:41.940 plastic uh in a in a lid design they had they came up with some cup that kind of had almost like a

00:32:48.500 sippy cup type oh yeah yeah the starbucks sippy cup it makes you feel like you're four

00:32:52.140 than the original cup was so yeah it when you don't think through policies when you just want

00:33:00.460 that big pr splash and you don't really worry about how it's gonna be implemented or what the

00:33:06.220 true impacts are going to be after the fact these are the kind of weird uh weird outcomes that you

00:33:10.940 get. And I'll guarantee you this policy is going to have a whole bunch of them. There's many,

00:33:17.580 many better ways to go about sensible environmental policy. And sadly, this isn't one of them.

00:33:24.760 One thing that struck me, and I don't know when it was within the last year or two,

00:33:29.200 McDonald's decided they would start doing the paper straw thing nationally in Canada. And

00:33:34.260 McDonald's is like up there with Walmart as far as just being one of the most hated corporations

00:33:38.280 in the world. So when McDonald's sold out to Big Paper Straw, I was like, they're never going to

00:33:43.520 love you. Like the people that hate you are never going to love you. But you know what, if their

00:33:47.180 consumers wanted it, their consumers wanted it. There was something that struck me about that.

00:33:51.380 A lot of these companies have flipped over to these things without government intervention at

00:33:56.140 all. Now, maybe it's because they just saw the writing on the wall and wanted to be prepared

00:33:59.900 before the regulation happens. Or maybe it's because they feel that there is a value to their

00:34:04.520 business and doing it. But if it is the latter, and I think it is, because again, I've been to

00:34:09.060 small independent restaurants that have done that sort of alternative packaging and plant-based

00:34:15.380 cutlery thing before, and they do that because their consumers want that. It strikes me that

00:34:20.080 even if this is the way things are headed, society will move business there in a much

00:34:25.700 more realistic timeframe than regulation will. Oh yeah. And probably with better outcomes as

00:34:31.660 well, because you'll leave it up to businesses to do the sort of sensible things that are actually

00:34:36.020 doable and affordable. Because ultimately, yeah, consumers are going to pay for all of this one

00:34:40.400 way or the other. And we already have enough inflationary pressure right now. Goodness knows

00:34:44.880 we don't need any more. But it's kind of like what I said at the outset. You have these policies

00:34:50.660 that are not measured. That's the other thing. You've got to measure them. And societal impacts,

00:34:56.620 when you look at things like smoking in society, they showed that societal viewpoints had a lot

00:35:02.940 more impact on people quitting smoking than any kind of regulation or diktats from any government 0.99

00:35:09.300 or stupid warnings. Of course, they're now increasing our warnings apparently on every 0.96

00:35:13.040 single cigarette, so I hear. And no, changing views in society. And there's a lot of things

00:35:18.960 that do feed into that, of course, that do change people's views. But I mean, I've always been a

00:35:24.360 stickler for measurement. If you want to announce a policy you say is going to accomplish X,

00:35:29.260 whatever that may be, then let's measure it a couple, three, four, five years from now.

00:35:34.880 Government never does that. And they never do it for a reason because they know their policies

00:35:40.660 are not accomplishing the goals they claim they are. Yeah. You mentioned the cigarette thing.

00:35:46.600 The government wants to know it's not enough now to put the health warning on the box. They want

00:35:51.600 to print it like on the cigarette itself so you can't like take an individual cigarette without

00:35:55.840 seeing this you know this thing is going to kill you and then i also saw last week that health

00:36:00.080 canada wants to slap warning labels on ground beef and ground pork because they're not whole

00:36:05.400 products so they want to put health warnings on that so anytime you go and get some ground beef

00:36:10.100 to i don't know make meatballs or spaghetti sauce or your own hamburger patties you're going to get

00:36:14.920 the government screaming at you that this is going to kill you and i i think we're probably there

00:36:19.980 near there with plastic like where they're just going to put like you know they're going to like

00:36:23.480 etch some little warning on the plastic spoon so that just as you're bringing it up to your mouth

00:36:27.780 you can get a glimmer through your minestrone soup there that you know this is going to kill

00:36:31.520 a baby turtle and then you just put it down and uh use your hands i mean this is what we're all

00:36:35.620 headed towards yeah i gotta figure you know the health canada bureaucrats badly botched any

00:36:41.780 pandemic management they screwed that up royally uh they gotta have way too much time on their 0.95

00:36:47.440 hands they're not doing the jobs they should do uh but why they're getting into such dumb things 0.89

00:36:52.400 as labeling cigarettes causing saying ground beef there you know label you have to put it on the

00:36:57.560 cover of a ground beef package that it's uh it could be harmful to your health at a time when

00:37:02.780 ground beef is probably one of the more affordable meat products that most families can manage to buy

00:37:07.980 these days uh also it is a it is a industry based in alberta and let's not forget that alberta

00:37:14.040 doesn't vote liberal and therefore richly deserves to be punished at every turn so that's another

00:37:19.800 that's another factor that's attached to that too but once again if we have yeah you know you raise

00:37:25.220 an important point there and the more i see this like i i file just on a completely unrelated note

00:37:30.140 i filed over two years ago and accessed information request with health canada about something that

00:37:35.220 i've now forgotten about and they said oh no no our health canada staff are too busy to process

00:37:40.160 this with the COVID management. And I'm thinking, well, you're having enough time to start talking

00:37:44.780 about warning labels on ground beef. So maybe the pandemic truly is over. Catherine Swift joining me

00:37:50.720 on the line, who is the fantastic president of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and

00:37:56.120 Businesses of Canada. Catherine, thanks so much for your time as always. Thank you, Andrew. Always a

00:38:01.160 pleasure, Andrew. All right. That was Catherine Swift. And just before we wrap things out here,

00:38:05.960 I've had people messaging me throughout the show. I haven't read them all saying, what am I

00:38:10.140 going to do I don't know how I'm going to live without plastics again I've given you the answer

00:38:14.000 I will give you the answer again but all is not lost we've got alternatives

00:38:18.340 we have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of water out of when we have water

00:38:28.220 bottles out of a plastic sorry away from plastic towards paper like drink box water bottles sort of

00:38:37.580 things see we laughed at the time but that's all we're gonna get in the next little while is drink

00:38:43.940 water paper box bottle water bottle bottle bottle drink box things things so that's what we're that's

00:38:49.520 the only thing that will be legal in canada by 2025 gotta end it there my thanks to all of you

00:38:55.120 for tuning in to the andrew lawton show a reminder the book comes out on friday the freedom convoy

00:39:00.760 the inside story of three weeks that shook the world we've been an amazon bestseller since we

00:39:05.840 announced it, although we've gone up and down in the ratings. So if you haven't pre-ordered your

00:39:09.860 copy yet, do head on over there and see if we can get back up to where we were and perhaps even

00:39:14.560 crack number one. We haven't gone higher than number two yet. So I hope you do that. And if

00:39:19.540 you get the book on Friday, let me know what you think about it. Unless you didn't like it,

00:39:23.040 then don't let me know. But I hope you like it. With that, we'll bid you adieu and talk to you

00:39:27.540 later this week, folks. The Andrew Lawton Show on True North. Thank you. God bless and good day to

00:39:32.560 all for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - June 21, 2022

Trudeau's Bill C-11 is a gateway to censorship

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