Juno News - Trudeau's Media Bribery, Corporate Cronyism, and Freedom to Blaspheme

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

00:00:06.660 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.960 Coming up, how the Liberal government is buying off the press.

00:00:16.980 Emmanuel Macron takes a stand for free speech and honouring and remembering Christy Blatchford.

00:00:24.480 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello everyone, welcome along to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:35.560 Another exciting edition, I hope anyway, of the program here on True North.

00:00:40.480 Back in home turf after our field trip to Halifax for Omar Khadr's event at Dalhousie University.

00:00:46.760 If you haven't yet heard it, I did a full post-mortem and recap of that event on the previous episode of the show.

00:00:53.060 And we had a lot of great stuff on there, I think.

00:00:54.900 So do, like I said, try to get caught up if you haven't.

00:00:57.520 But wherever you're listening, it's not a serialization, this show.

00:01:00.800 You can pop in whenever you'd like, but I certainly hope you enjoy it enough to subscribe on whatever you listen on.

00:01:06.120 We have Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify.

00:01:09.220 I think one person has requested a carrier pigeon.

00:01:11.660 I think we're still working that one out.

00:01:13.240 But for the most part, we try to be wherever our listeners are.

00:01:16.340 So thanks everyone for the support of the program to date.

00:01:19.640 I want to get to a few things on the show here.

00:01:23.120 But right out of the gate, I want to show how brazen the government is at trying to buy favorable news coverage.

00:01:31.040 Now, we know this is happening.

00:01:32.400 It's not news in the sense of the fact that this is just absolutely shocking to us.

00:01:36.960 But from the $1.3 billion that CBC gets to the $595 million journalism bailout fund to that story that we talked about last week on the show where the heritage minister, Stephen Gilbeau, was committing to licensing news organizations and then backtracking, but not really.

00:01:56.600 And now we have a story that is just so brazen that you have to just say, okay, if you're going to be this corrupt, at least hide it better.

00:02:05.620 But thanks, I guess, for the transparency, sort of.

00:02:08.940 Black Locks Reporter, which is an Ottawa-based publication that I will say has absolutely been killing it lately, has this great story, Government Pays for Climate News.

00:02:19.280 I should say not a great story, a well-done story.

00:02:22.600 Nothing about the subject matter, however, makes me happy.

00:02:25.900 They found that the $50 million local journalism initiative, which is a program in the Heritage Government Department budget that is supposed to be to bolster local journalism initiatives, as the name suggests, has been co-opted to basically push the government's agenda in a lot of areas of journalism.

00:02:47.280 So this program has now become a slush fund, including money paid out specifically to get media organizations to cover climate change.

00:02:57.240 So this is just so ridiculous.

00:03:00.100 Now, this is from, Black Lock says, records from the Canadian News Media Association, which is an industry-led group. 0.64

00:03:06.800 They found that there were organizations that pitched grant applications to the government and received money for the sole purpose of having reporters to talk about climate change.

00:03:18.660 One, for example, is the Narwhal, which is based in Whitehorse.

00:03:21.800 And the Narwhal wrote,

00:03:23.920 No existing media outlet, be it local, regional, or national, has an environmental beat reporter covering issues in Canada's Arctic.

00:03:32.260 Given the profound ecological changes underway and huge development projects for the region, this is a major gap in civic reporting.

00:03:40.700 Another application came from Nunatsiak News in Nunavut, which has a reporter covering,

00:03:45.940 quote,

00:03:46.480 A key institution for the study of the effects of climate change on the Arctic.

00:03:51.800 And the Winnipeg Free Press.

00:03:53.180 Now, the Winnipeg Free Press is the paper of record in a pretty large Canadian city, a provincial capital.

00:04:00.140 And they had a reporter that was hired because of government funding, quote,

00:04:04.740 Dedicated to climate change.

00:04:07.500 And they say in the grant application, quote,

00:04:09.820 Coverage will be balanced and include both the warnings that need to be heeded,

00:04:15.500 but also new solutions that will provide hope that a greener future is still within reach.

00:04:20.940 The reporter will be dedicated to climate change.

00:04:24.660 The beat will include the politics, economics, cultural, social, and environmental aspects of climate change.

00:04:33.440 Sorry, I fell asleep there.

00:04:36.000 So they say it's going to be balanced coverage, but I want to read this part again.

00:04:40.180 It will include the warnings that need to be heeded, but also new solutions that will provide hope that a greener future is still within reach.

00:04:48.540 So they don't mean balance between alarmists and those who are skeptical of the alarmists.

00:04:55.480 They don't mean balance between these two groups.

00:04:57.560 They mean balance between one side of the alarmism and the other side of the alarmism.

00:05:02.440 So that's like saying, oh, you know, I prefer a balanced diet.

00:05:05.300 I like junk food and fried food.

00:05:07.940 Or, you know, I like balance.

00:05:09.620 I like beer and wine, you know, as far as things go.

00:05:13.040 Well, that is balance, actually.

00:05:14.560 The beer and wine one is balance.

00:05:15.980 But they say it's going to be balanced, and they're going to focus on the warnings and the solutions

00:05:21.320 and try to get us to a greener future within reach.

00:05:24.820 Now, provide hope that a greener future is still within reach.

00:05:29.220 Now, this is the kind of thing that you would expect to hear from Justin Trudeau.

00:05:35.000 That's the kind of thing you would expect to hear from a politician.

00:05:38.340 Oh, cher ami, we must provide hope that a greener future is within reach.

00:05:46.000 I mean, that's the kind of thing you do to make Greta Thunberg happy. 1.00

00:05:49.400 And now this is the mandate of a Department of Heritage grant to a private news organization,

00:05:57.400 or what's supposed to be a private news organization.

00:06:01.900 And by the way, the Narwhal has previously written that it is committed to, quote,

00:06:07.940 tracking government commitments to climate change.

00:06:12.420 And they've talked about climate activism, and they've highlighted climate activists.

00:06:17.740 So these are agenda-driven examples of reporting.

00:06:22.420 Now, from a free speech perspective, yes, I think that advocacy journalism has a place in Canada.

00:06:28.860 Environmental advocacy is a big thing.

00:06:31.060 If you want to have a news organization that advocates on these issues, that's fine.

00:06:35.160 But you can't have government bankrolling it and not deal with the inevitable problem of government-sponsored

00:06:42.980 and or government-approved journalism, which is what's going on here.

00:06:47.480 And again, you know, we're talking about a $50 million program that is supposed to be about

00:06:54.140 getting coverage of school board meetings, council meetings, all of these things.

00:06:58.860 That's supposed to be this initiative.

00:07:01.260 And the reason is that these issues are not sexy.

00:07:04.580 The school board meeting in White Court, Alberta, is not as salacious as the crying polar bears

00:07:11.500 because the ice caps are melting and all of that,

00:07:13.500 which is why it's harder to find coverage of these things.

00:07:18.400 So civic engagement is huge.

00:07:20.460 And in an age of media consolidation, when local media is dying,

00:07:25.900 there's a place to have local media that's doing these things.

00:07:29.780 But now this program, which I don't agree with the program,

00:07:33.440 but if you're going to do it, you need to do it on those appropriate terms

00:07:37.080 and within the parameters that have been set out.

00:07:39.420 Now you have people that are covering these sexy federal government-approved issues.

00:07:43.500 which are not local issues and getting government money to do it.

00:07:49.400 So even though the $50 million is not a lot of money, it's the principle of the thing here

00:07:54.460 because you've got government directly financing coverage that will help the government.

00:08:02.100 And the reason I say that is because climate change

00:08:04.500 is an issue that the liberals have tried to claim as their own.

00:08:08.240 It's an issue that Justin Trudeau has gotten up and tried to say that he is the savior of the climate

00:08:13.640 and the liberals have tried to say that they're the ones that are going to heal the land,

00:08:17.960 cool the oceans, rebuild the ice caps, save the baby seal, all of this stuff.

00:08:22.340 That's what the liberals are trying to do.

00:08:24.600 So by basically writing checks to news organizations that are covering the climate beat,

00:08:31.780 or as the Winnipeg Free Press says, that are covering the solutions for the greener future

00:08:36.340 to the beyond, the whatever, you're actually saying that government is able to buy favorable coverage.

00:08:44.340 And this isn't to say there aren't local environmental stories across Canada.

00:08:48.900 It's that this is not an issue that's ignored by the media.

00:08:56.540 This is not an area that we don't have coverage.

00:08:58.760 In fact, I'd say we have too much coverage of climate change from the mainstream media.

00:09:03.540 I remember back in December, CBC ran a story sharing its discontent

00:09:07.540 that we shelve our climate concerns when it comes time to do Christmas shopping.

00:09:12.660 And CBC ran a few pieces actually about how Christmas is bad for the environment.

00:09:17.300 And media organizations have tried to make climate change narratives pivotal

00:09:22.260 in anything that they're writing about.

00:09:24.880 We've heard stories about climate change causing this, climate change causing that.

00:09:29.380 If it's cold weather, it's climate change.

00:09:31.040 If it's warm weather, it's climate change.

00:09:32.700 If it's in the middle, it's climate change.

00:09:34.380 If it's raining, it's climate change.

00:09:36.000 If there's no rain, it's climate change.

00:09:37.520 The fact that they call everything climate change means that they can talk about it whenever they want.

00:09:43.480 And this is what the liberals want.

00:09:45.040 The liberals want Canadians to keep talking about this because it will then turn around

00:09:50.320 and allow the liberals to say, well, this is our issue.

00:09:54.340 We're the ones.

00:09:55.200 We're here.

00:09:55.680 We're doing it.

00:09:57.080 And again, it's not about the dollar figure.

00:10:00.020 You have to look at it as part of a pattern here.

00:10:02.420 The $500 million bailout, the CBC subsidy, this talk of licensing media.

00:10:08.960 The government is not respecting a free press.

00:10:12.060 The government is trying to intervene and interfere in the press and basically demand favorable coverage in response.

00:10:22.200 And the government's been saying all along that it's not going to have a hand in regulating content,

00:10:29.000 but its actions are proving otherwise.

00:10:32.900 I mean, imagine if, and I wrote this in a loony politics column,

00:10:36.140 imagine if the previous conservative government says we're going to fund national security reporters.

00:10:42.200 We're going to fund reporters that are going to specialize in terrorism.

00:10:45.740 Imagine if the conservative said we're going to hire firearms reporters,

00:10:51.280 people that are going to talk about firearms policy.

00:10:54.380 Or heck, imagine if a gun magazine, and there are gun magazines in Canada that do great work,

00:11:00.100 great stories.

00:11:00.920 Imagine if, I think Caliber is one of them, put in a grant application and said,

00:11:05.320 we want a reporter that's going to cover firearms policy.

00:11:08.900 How is that any different than an environmental publication going to the government and saying,

00:11:15.680 we want money to have a climate change reporter? 0.97

00:11:19.800 They're both public policy issues.

00:11:21.720 One of them favors the liberals.

00:11:23.500 One of them favors the conservatives.

00:11:25.220 There would be an outcry if the conservatives tried that because you can't buy coverage

00:11:30.220 and expect that people aren't going to give you a little bit of pushback on it.

00:11:34.680 So the Trudeau government is trying to manipulate the landscape of media coverage right now.

00:11:40.720 And it reminds me of when Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former attorney general,

00:11:46.240 had testified that Katie Telford, Justin Trudeau's chief of staff,

00:11:50.400 had promised to, quote,

00:11:52.120 line up all kinds of people to write op-eds,

00:11:55.780 backing the decision that Trudeau wanted Jody Wilson-Raybould to make regarding SNC-Lavalin.

00:12:01.580 So, you know, Katie Telford's like in the OR and the dying liberal poll numbers are on the table in front of her.

00:12:07.980 And she's like, get me some op-eds, stat.

00:12:10.020 But this is what the liberals have been able to do.

00:12:12.520 They've had these cozy, cozy relationships with media organizations where they're planting op-eds,

00:12:19.040 they're buying CBC, they're handing over poutine to, I think it was David Cochran of CBC.

00:12:24.220 They're doing all of these things.

00:12:26.460 And the response is a liberal press.

00:12:29.180 Oh, and by the way, not to mention Unifor.

00:12:31.200 Unifor, the anti-conservative union getting a place on the journalism panel

00:12:37.080 that the government relies on to define who a journalist is

00:12:40.680 and to define how that money is going to get doled out.

00:12:45.140 So there, I mean, there are plenty of practical reasons

00:12:47.480 about why the government shouldn't be bankrolling media in general.

00:12:51.360 And I've talked about these with the bailout,

00:12:53.720 which, incidentally, I hope conservative leadership candidates will take a stronger stand against.

00:12:59.380 And I know Marilyn Gladue has said it's gone.

00:13:02.320 I think Aaron O'Toole has said it's gone as well.

00:13:04.960 The bailout sets a double standard.

00:13:08.620 Some industries are the old yesterday's industries, like manufacturing.

00:13:12.800 Trudeau says, ah, you know what, get new jobs, retrain.

00:13:15.760 Doing the Joe Biden thing, basically.

00:13:18.000 Telling people to learn to code.

00:13:20.040 And then you've got Trudeau saying, oh, no, no, but we need to save local media.

00:13:23.620 Well, call me a cynic.

00:13:27.120 Call me whatever you want.

00:13:28.180 People do anyway.

00:13:29.380 But when Trudeau is deciding he's going to intervene to save this particular industry,

00:13:34.920 when this particular industry is the one that can decide or can alter the narrative about Justin Trudeau,

00:13:42.520 it seems to explain why he wants to give the media sector such preferential treatment

00:13:49.980 compared to manufacturing, forestry, mining.

00:13:53.700 I mean, you look at the carbon tax.

00:13:55.480 The carbon tax is killing a lot of sectors in Canada.

00:13:59.340 In fact, it's killing sectors that have typically been the backbone of the Canadian economy.

00:14:04.460 Those jobs he doesn't care about.

00:14:06.260 He cares about S&C Lavalin jobs because, oh, they're in Quebec.

00:14:09.280 He cares about media jobs.

00:14:10.780 Why?

00:14:11.520 Because reporters that have been given checks by the Liberal government are either going

00:14:16.460 to be directly beholden to the Liberals or, at the very least, will allow a perception

00:14:21.620 of that beholden nature to permeate among the readers.

00:14:26.860 Either way, it calls into question the media reporting that happens.

00:14:32.100 And when the Trudeau government is specifically sponsoring, which is what this program is doing,

00:14:37.660 including individual jobs to cover beats that the Liberals want covered, that the Liberals

00:14:43.880 are legislating on, there is absolutely no way you can say this is not a gross conflict

00:14:50.180 of interest, putting the word gross, I guess, as being the key word in that.

00:14:55.880 But this is what's passing for good policy.

00:14:58.700 This is what's passing for good government. 0.94

00:15:01.180 It's ridiculous and it's got to stop.

00:15:03.640 We'll be back in a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. 0.76

00:15:10.960 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:15:13.680 You know, I mentioned before government cozying up with the media sector, and I've got to

00:15:24.240 say corporate cronyism is not entirely limited to the media.

00:15:27.920 We had the MasterCard story from a couple of weeks ago, and now we've got another Canadian

00:15:33.040 company that seems to be focusing on being in the Liberal good books, perhaps looking for

00:15:38.460 or waiting for a check of its own.

00:15:40.640 This is a story that True North actually broke.

00:15:44.860 TELUS is promoting Liberal compliant phone plans on its website.

00:15:49.900 Now, this is not, you know, I'm a firm believer in free speech, as you know, and the reason

00:15:54.520 I think free speech is so important is because oftentimes if you let people speak their mind,

00:15:59.140 they tend to out themselves.

00:16:01.980 And you don't need to do anything.

00:16:03.380 You can just say, aha, this is what they think.

00:16:06.060 And this is a scoop that comes from a very deeply hidden investigative place, the TELUS

00:16:12.020 website.

00:16:13.380 But TELUS on its website has a new program called the True North Affordability Program,

00:16:19.720 which I don't think we have the trademark on True North, but I assure you this True North

00:16:24.640 on which this show is broadcast has nothing to do with TELUS's True North Affordability Program,

00:16:30.300 which is actually a little stamp, a green maple leaf with a checkmark and a black wording

00:16:36.100 that says True North Affordability.

00:16:39.020 And that stamp is on certain phone plans that TELUS is offering.

00:16:43.920 Now, what TELUS says is that the True North Affordability stamp means our plans line up

00:16:50.680 with the Liberal Party benchmark for wireless affordability.

00:16:54.440 The page goes on.

00:16:55.420 As part of their campaign, the Liberal Party pledged to make cell phone bills more affordable.

00:16:59.980 It goes on.

00:17:01.000 Our TELUS peace of mind plan for a family of four provides more data than the sample plans

00:17:05.700 referenced by the Liberal Party.

00:17:08.060 For more details, including the chart released on Liberal.ca, please see the Liberal Party

00:17:12.980 proposal.

00:17:14.040 And then there's a link to the Liberal Party proposal.

00:17:16.820 And at that link is a partisan Liberal policy document from the campaign in which the Liberals

00:17:24.260 promised what they call more affordable cell phone bills.

00:17:27.440 And that was a policy proposal that, according to this document, says the Liberal government

00:17:33.360 will take strong action to see cell phone bills come down by 25%.

00:17:38.620 This will save a family of four almost $1,000 per year.

00:17:44.020 Now, telecom in Canada is an absolute mess.

00:17:46.900 And one of the reasons for this is the lack of competition that takes place in Canada.

00:17:52.280 And you remember how much the big three, Bell, TELUS, and Rogers, fought tooth and nail during

00:17:58.440 the Harper government when there was a proposal for Verizon to enter the market. 0.80

00:18:03.340 And it was so ridiculous.

00:18:04.840 I was a big supporter of it because more choice means lower prices. 0.97

00:18:08.540 But in the end, Verizon just said, screw it.

00:18:11.100 This is not something we want to deal with.

00:18:12.660 So the Liberals are trying to artificially manipulate phone companies down.

00:18:17.820 And when this was announced during the campaign, there was a lot of confusion as to how.

00:18:23.280 And it seems to be based on them asking nicely.

00:18:26.740 It's based on the Liberals asking telecom companies nicely to please lower their prices and hoping

00:18:32.920 that they'll comply.

00:18:34.900 Now, I was skeptical when this was announced that it would actually happen.

00:18:39.280 And then Navdeep Bains, who's the industry minister, had written an op-ed in the National

00:18:45.040 Post, or I think it was the Financial Post, actually, a couple of weeks ago.

00:18:49.380 And in the op-ed, he had said that the government is working with its industry partners to doing

00:18:54.380 this and getting the phone bills down.

00:18:56.340 So whether you like the Liberals or not, whether you're skeptical of the proposal or not,

00:19:00.740 the government is trying to do this or is planning to do this.

00:19:04.120 The problem with TELUS is that its website is not crediting the government of Canada.

00:19:10.600 It's not saying that we're complying with forthcoming government regulations.

00:19:14.700 It says we are complying with the Liberal Party.

00:19:18.800 Liberal Party, Liberal Party, Liberal Party, Liberal.ca.

00:19:22.400 It's like a Liberal campaign ad, basically.

00:19:25.460 So TELUS is shilling for the Liberal telecom plan.

00:19:30.180 And this has not yet been changed.

00:19:32.480 I know that we reached out to TELUS, and at the time that I record this, we have not

00:19:36.060 heard back.

00:19:37.200 However, what's happening here is I think the TELUS person that was contacted really

00:19:45.320 misunderstood what was being asked of them.

00:19:47.640 This is purely speculation on my part, but I'm guessing the government went to the telecom

00:19:53.020 companies and said, listen, this is what we've promised.

00:19:55.340 We really need you to play ball.

00:19:56.900 And TELUS said, yeah, yeah, OK, if the government's going to be doing it, we'll go along with it.

00:20:00.660 But seem to be mistaken for whether the government of Canada was making the request or the Liberal

00:20:07.580 Party of Canada was making the request.

00:20:10.440 And you may think that is a semantical distinction, but it's not.

00:20:15.500 It actually is significant because the Liberal Party is a partisan entity.

00:20:20.840 The government of Canada is the state.

00:20:22.920 And both of them have different implications when they start telling companies what to do and when

00:20:30.040 companies start doing it.

00:20:32.060 Because if TELUS, which is one of three major cell phone providers in Canada, decides to go along with

00:20:39.060 it because it's a Liberal proposal, well, all of a sudden you've got a multi-billion dollar

00:20:43.800 corporation that is, I'll use the word I used earlier, shilling for the Liberals.

00:20:49.080 So now if you're a TELUS customer and you're on the TELUS website and you're looking at

00:20:54.940 plans, there's a page telling you, oh, the Liberals gave me this phone bill.

00:20:59.600 This is this price I can afford because the Liberals did it.

00:21:04.180 Now, if the Liberals want to tell you that, that's fine.

00:21:06.620 If the Liberals want to run ads saying, hey, that phone bill of yours is cheaper because

00:21:10.840 of us, fine.

00:21:11.900 That's what partisan entities do. 0.97

00:21:14.360 But you can't have the best of both worlds.

00:21:16.960 The Liberals have banned companies and, well, actually the Conservatives banned corporate

00:21:21.420 political contributions.

00:21:23.260 The Liberals have maintained that.

00:21:25.820 But now to turn around and say, but we're going to accept this support from a corporation.

00:21:31.080 Now, is this just some marketing intern that just had no idea what was happening? 0.97

00:21:35.220 Or is this something more insidious?

00:21:37.020 I don't know.

00:21:38.060 But the point is that TELUS is actively promoting a Liberal policy that isn't even law yet,

00:21:45.140 that hasn't been incorporated or enshrined in the federal law to which, yes, they would

00:21:52.560 have to apply.

00:21:53.340 They're saying, oh, yeah, we're doing this because the Liberals did it and it's great.

00:21:56.200 And we're even going further than the Liberals.

00:21:58.200 And they've put forward these samples and we're going along with it.

00:22:01.420 And part of me wonders if they just want to get their own little $50 million check after

00:22:05.780 MasterCard was able to cash a big one last week.

00:22:09.260 So now you've got companies lining up at the trough, which is why I said corporate welfare

00:22:14.000 needs to end.

00:22:15.060 Because when you have government and corporations getting into bed, everyone loses in these sorts

00:22:20.520 of situations.

00:22:21.560 And this is an area that, I mean, shouldn't be a left-right issue.

00:22:24.380 And again, I always, I get tired a lot of the time of the whataboutism.

00:22:30.020 But it also is illuminating in some ways because you have to flip everything to see if there's

00:22:35.780 consistency.

00:22:36.360 You have to say, all right, well, if the Conservatives did this, what would be the response?

00:22:40.080 If the Liberals did this, what would be the response?

00:22:42.880 And a lot of the time you expose pretty brazen hypocrisy when you do that and pose those thought

00:22:49.900 experiments to people because the media response is rarely consistent, rarely consistent, if

00:22:56.160 ever, on these sorts of things.

00:22:58.960 It's, it's, and it's not going to get better unless people call it out.

00:23:04.200 I mean, you look at Bombardier, which is a company that's absolutely in the hole right

00:23:07.600 now and has been and has always been a company that only exists based on subsidies.

00:23:13.440 And that's probably the test case on why corporate welfare is a terrible idea.

00:23:18.620 So we'll have an update on tnc.news if we get an update from TELUS, but you can check out

00:23:24.420 the details of that story there.

00:23:26.060 Before I take a break here, I want to mention something that has been, it's a very online

00:23:33.380 thing.

00:23:34.240 And I realize that I'm making it more real by saying it, but I want to address it because

00:23:38.120 I'm not actually hiding anything.

00:23:39.760 Over the last couple of days, since I got back from Halifax, I've been getting a ton of

00:23:45.560 messages, tweets, Facebook things from people angry that I supposedly ignored a veteran who

00:23:52.560 was protesting outside the Omar Khadr event on Monday night in Halifax at Dalhousie University.

00:23:58.300 And I said on Tuesday, it was a crappy night.

00:24:02.040 It was cold.

00:24:03.120 It was freezing rain.

00:24:04.480 I was out there for an hour and a half talking to a lot of people.

00:24:07.960 And there was one particular veteran there by the name of Jeremy McKenzie.

00:24:12.540 I've since learned who I'd never heard of.

00:24:14.600 And the first time I saw him in my life was Monday night.

00:24:16.940 He was wearing medals.

00:24:18.300 He was doing a long time Facebook live.

00:24:22.020 It looked like or a YouTube live.

00:24:23.300 But he had his phone running.

00:24:24.700 He was doing commentary.

00:24:25.600 He was talking to people.

00:24:27.080 And he was interviewed by someone else who was covering this thing.

00:24:31.640 And you may have seen the interview.

00:24:33.280 The interview has been just, it's gone absolutely viral.

00:24:36.900 This guy, very passionate, very angry about Omar Khadr going in, especially with him being

00:24:42.620 an Afghanistan veteran himself.

00:24:44.680 And the narrative that has somehow emerged with a corner of the internet is that I ignored

00:24:52.580 him and that I snubbed him in some way, which was certainly not the intention.

00:24:57.240 The reality is I was out there at that event before anyone else was.

00:25:03.580 The first veterans to arrive, I interviewed because at the time I was focused on getting

00:25:08.920 content.

00:25:09.820 And I wanted to get a cross section of perspectives.

00:25:12.160 People that were protesting Khadr, supporting Khadr, people that were unsure.

00:25:16.700 And I spoke with on record, I think three veterans on record, and I chatted with a couple

00:25:21.160 of others.

00:25:21.920 There wasn't just the one demonstrator.

00:25:23.900 There were, I'd say, maybe a dozen and a half, and many of them wearing military insignia.

00:25:30.400 And I didn't know this particular veteran was the one that I needed to talk to.

00:25:33.940 But everyone's telling me since that I needed to.

00:25:36.320 And, you know, it's interesting because I don't like this idea of rushing to assume the

00:25:42.920 worst, which is what a lot of people online tend to do.

00:25:46.420 That seems to be the entire backbone of Twitter.

00:25:49.960 But my rationale, if I'm doing streeters, which is what they're called, talking to people,

00:25:55.440 interviewing various people, trying to get a cross section, is you want to get people

00:25:59.700 who whose voices are not otherwise going to be heard?

00:26:03.540 This guy was doing a Facebook Live.

00:26:05.240 This guy had been interviewed by someone else.

00:26:06.980 I don't want to get the same coverage that everyone else is getting.

00:26:09.580 So I talked to the other people there that weren't being spoken to by anyone.

00:26:13.780 There's no conspiracy there.

00:26:15.500 There's no concealment of anything.

00:26:17.660 The fact that everyone has seen the video of this guy and is saying, why didn't you talk

00:26:22.020 to him, suggests that I didn't need to.

00:26:24.220 His message is already out there.

00:26:25.560 So if you have heard this, I assure you, there's no conspiracy.

00:26:29.920 I thank everyone who served for their service.

00:26:32.120 And I know that sounds redundant.

00:26:33.560 But in true, in true honesty, I thank those who have served for their service.

00:26:38.160 And that includes Jeremy.

00:26:39.740 That includes Frank McLeod that I spoke to.

00:26:41.800 That includes Kai, who I spoke to.

00:26:43.680 Anyone who I spoke to who served, I'm grateful.

00:26:46.460 And even those who I didn't speak to, I'm grateful as well.

00:26:49.960 But again, the response to our Omar Khadr coverage has been overwhelmingly positive.

00:26:54.980 So I do want to thank you again, if you were a contributor to that initiative.

00:26:59.300 And we're going to do more things like that when there are events worth covering.

00:27:03.760 But in this case, there was basically no one in the media that was prepared to give

00:27:08.900 a detailed accounting of what happened.

00:27:10.960 And I've actually looked at some of the other coverage that has come out of that event.

00:27:14.960 And it hasn't been all that extensive.

00:27:17.500 Just a few little clips.

00:27:19.020 So I'm glad we were there, especially in retrospect.

00:27:22.040 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:27:27.360 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:27:30.180 Let's take a little look outside of Canada.

00:27:35.840 Because the free speech issue, one of the most fundamental issues to Western civilization.

00:27:41.280 Certainly one of the issues about which I care more than anything else.

00:27:45.120 And a very positive free speech statement from Emmanuel Macron, the president of France,

00:27:51.600 who continues to be hit or miss, I find.

00:27:54.460 Macron, like sometimes he's really great.

00:27:56.240 And other times I find he's just abysmal.

00:27:58.380 On climate, I can't stand him.

00:28:00.120 On free speech, I think he's an all right guy.

00:28:03.600 There was a situation in France that's been going on in the last little while,

00:28:08.480 where a schoolgirl posted an anti-religious diatribe on Instagram.

00:28:14.460 Now, I don't normally cover schoolgirl Instagram footage.

00:28:17.320 But a young teenager named Mila had basically shot from the hip on religion.

00:28:25.260 And it has sparked a great deal of backlash because she was taking aim at Islam.

00:28:32.280 She was taking aim at Islam. 0.68

00:28:34.160 And she ended up being forced out of her school and was criticized by France's justice minister,

00:28:43.080 Nicole Belloubet, calling the attack on religion, quote, an attack on freedom of conscience, unquote.

00:28:49.800 Now, this girl has received death threats.

00:28:53.260 She's not been named in full by the press, but I think she's been identified on social media.

00:28:58.560 And the school apparently has had to, like, they needed to find her a new school. 1.00

00:29:05.800 The government has had to find her a new school. 0.98

00:29:08.160 It's gotten so bad.

00:29:10.180 But this is protected free speech.

00:29:13.860 Blasphemy is protected free speech.

00:29:16.360 So Macron has said something that I think is so essential.

00:29:20.900 Blasphemy, quote, is no crime, unquote.

00:29:24.380 Quote, in an interview, he says, quote, in this debate, we've lost sight of the fact that Mila is an adolescent.

00:29:29.860 We owe her protection at school, in her daily life, in her movements.

00:29:33.660 And that he's basically turning back against all of the critics of Mila and saying,

00:29:39.100 you guys need to respect that what she's doing is entirely valid within free speech.

00:29:44.280 He says, the necessity is separate from the criticism of religion.

00:29:48.220 The law is clear.

00:29:49.260 We have the right to blaspheme, to criticize, to caricature religions.

00:29:54.520 The Republican order is not a moral order.

00:29:57.320 Bam.

00:29:58.640 I mean, that is essential.

00:30:00.200 And it shouldn't need to be said.

00:30:02.160 It shouldn't need to be said that we have the right to blaspheme, to criticize, to caricature religions.

00:30:07.560 But it's more and more true in this day and age that we do.

00:30:11.480 This year marks 15 years since the Danish Muhammad cartoons were published.

00:30:17.160 Cartoons that got people killed, that got assassination attempts to be the norm for political cartoonists, for journalists, for columnists.

00:30:25.180 We obviously have Charlie Hebdo, another situation that has emerged within the last 15 years where people died because they dared criticize a religion.

00:30:34.480 The so-called religion of peace, whose radicals decide to turn around and kill those who mock them.

00:30:44.240 And it's about mocking the radicals.

00:30:46.880 The radicals don't like that they're portrayed as violent and they respond by being violent.

00:30:53.100 And yes, you are in some ways taking your life into your own hands if you speak freely,

00:30:57.800 but it is not the role of the state to say, oh, you've crossed a line.

00:31:01.900 You've been too offensive.

00:31:02.940 And good for Macron for recognizing that.

00:31:05.680 Good for Macron for saying that because so often anyone who is guilty of wrong speak is subjected to massive victim blaming

00:31:12.760 where people say, oh, well, you shouldn't have said that.

00:31:14.560 I mean, we're about tolerance.

00:31:16.780 We're about freedom.

00:31:18.340 And a case that comes to mind is that of Elizabeth Sabadich-Volfe.

00:31:23.220 And she's not a household name, but she was actually guilty.

00:31:27.600 She was found guilty of speaking out against Islam, even though what she said was true. 1.00

00:31:37.420 She spoke about the fact that the prophet Muhammad had engaged in a sexual relationship with a child. 0.99

00:31:43.340 She went to the point of saying Muhammad was a pedophile. 0.92

00:31:47.100 But what she did was part of the free critique of religion. 0.92

00:31:53.660 People have said vile things about Jesus.

00:31:55.940 People say vile things about Judaism, about Islam.

00:31:58.580 And you may think this is in poor taste.

00:32:00.420 You may think it's in poor form.

00:32:01.780 But it is absolutely permissible in a free society.

00:32:05.100 But Elizabeth Sabadich-Volfe was actually convicted by a European human rights court,

00:32:11.820 a European human rights court for the offense of wrong speak.

00:32:16.920 And this was something that, again, should not happen in a free society.

00:32:23.720 You should be able to say, oh, man, I don't like how she insults my religion. 0.53

00:32:26.440 That's terrible.

00:32:27.120 I'm not going to listen to her or I'm going to fight back against her, but not with violence

00:32:31.480 and certainly not with the arm of the state.

00:32:34.200 So, again, I feel absolutely terrible about what's happening to this girl in France.

00:32:39.060 But I am encouraged, at least, that the French government is not bending the knee.

00:32:44.560 The French government is saying, you know what?

00:32:46.220 We're going to protect her because the right to speak freely is a fundamental right in a

00:32:51.640 free society, which supposedly there's hope for France still being.

00:32:55.700 When we come back in a moment, a little bit of a tribute to a fallen warrior in the free

00:33:00.760 speech fight, Christy Blatchford.

00:33:04.200 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:33:10.660 Welcome back.

00:33:11.800 Before I close things out from the show today, I want to honor a woman that has had a tremendous

00:33:17.760 impact in Canadian politics and Canadian culture and Canadian media.

00:33:22.440 And I'll say an impact in my own life as well.

00:33:24.640 And that is Christy Blatchford.

00:33:27.440 Now, I know that there have been many, many tributes to her and obituaries from people in

00:33:32.420 the last few days since she passed from a cancer battle.

00:33:36.580 And I would encourage you to read some of these because some of them are truly exceptional and

00:33:41.260 moving.

00:33:41.600 The stories that you hear from her about helping those, even those competitors, younger journalists,

00:33:49.520 sharing sources, sharing information, a woman that genuinely cared about her craft and cared

00:33:55.120 about the story she was covering.

00:33:56.920 And a woman who cared a great deal about all of the people that she covered.

00:34:02.800 Well, I shouldn't say all of the people, but when she was covering crime, the people that

00:34:07.820 were victims of heinous and horrendous crimes.

00:34:11.340 I didn't know Christy Blatchford well.

00:34:14.080 I interviewed her a couple of times.

00:34:15.760 And in fact, I will say that I had decided not to interview her anymore because there were

00:34:21.500 two incidents where I had booked her to appear on my show and she forgot and wasn't there.

00:34:27.260 And I was live on air wondering where Christy Blatchford was.

00:34:29.940 In both cases, she had responded.

00:34:31.840 I think in one case, she was walking the dog.

00:34:33.500 And in another case, she just forgot and her mom was on silent.

00:34:36.320 But, you know, these were outliers from everyone else I've talked to.

00:34:40.280 She was incredibly professional on the ball.

00:34:42.820 Oftentimes, if she was covering a trial, would be there hours and hours early.

00:34:47.400 And I actually got to know of her through her political writing, which came about in her

00:34:52.900 later years.

00:34:53.920 But I thought that she was so exceptional because of her ability to write and her ability

00:34:59.860 to keep the audience captivated, which was so rare in Canadian media and is so rare in

00:35:09.580 Canadian media.

00:35:10.680 And part of this, I've tried to figure it out.

00:35:12.800 Part of it was that she only covered the stories that she wanted to cover.

00:35:17.200 And in a lot of cases, that resulted in a very wide range of content.

00:35:21.560 For example, I knew her as being the trial columnist and I knew her as being the political

00:35:26.020 columnist.

00:35:26.600 She was the one assigned to cover the PyeongChang Olympics.

00:35:29.740 She loved the Olympics.

00:35:30.860 She loved sports.

00:35:31.920 She covered the Olympics.

00:35:32.980 She covered other issues.

00:35:34.120 She covered campus politics.

00:35:35.940 She covered Lindsay Shepard's story initially.

00:35:38.660 And she had a very wide range.

00:35:41.000 And I've always hated columnists that are one-trick ponies and broadcasters as well.

00:35:45.440 And that was one of the influences that I had when I started out in radio.

00:35:49.300 I never wanted to be the one that just kept myself confined to a box and only did things

00:35:56.100 within that box.

00:35:57.220 She did what a lot of columnists don't do, which is leaving the studio, which is going 1.00

00:36:02.380 to find the story, which is doing original work, which is never being afraid to inject

00:36:07.380 herself into it.

00:36:08.720 And there was a reason that her stuff resonated with people because she understood people.

00:36:15.560 Because she was writing about the things that she felt and experienced or the things that

00:36:20.020 she knew others around her did.

00:36:22.760 And she always had her finger on the pulse of the people that she covered because she

00:36:27.420 covered a lot of the everyday ordeals and struggles or the stories that were emblematic

00:36:33.680 of these things.

00:36:34.360 And she ended up being ahead of the curve on so many of these issues.

00:36:38.720 But I also think what's essential to understand about Christy Blatchford is that she was the

00:36:45.740 one they couldn't cancel.

00:36:47.800 She was the one they couldn't cancel.

00:36:49.680 I mean, she was, in some respects, a fire-breathing right-winger.

00:36:53.020 That was how people viewed her.

00:36:54.640 And I don't think she was, by the way.

00:36:56.480 I mean, she was more culturally conservative.

00:36:58.520 But she was not a partisan by any stretch.

00:37:01.400 But she was respected by everyone she worked with.

00:37:04.100 Even people she yelled at for messing up her headlines, apparently, still respected her

00:37:09.020 and liked her.

00:37:09.700 And that takes talent and skill to be loved by the people that you dress down.

00:37:15.280 But she couldn't be canceled because everyone knew where her heart was.

00:37:20.620 And everyone knew how talented she was.

00:37:22.760 And everyone knew that when she took a story, she was going to bring it to life.

00:37:26.940 And the reason she could do that is because she understood.

00:37:29.600 She understood the core issues that were at the center of what she was writing about.

00:37:35.940 And I want to play, before I say farewell for this episode, a clip from a speech she gave last year

00:37:41.900 at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom's George Jonas Freedom Awards dinner.

00:37:47.280 She was the recipient of the award.

00:37:48.820 And she spoke about justice and the importance of maintaining fairness in the justice system.

00:37:56.340 But she captured something that I had never heard before, which was how victims and victimization

00:38:03.920 transformed for the worse the justice system.

00:38:07.500 And how a lot of the victim culture we see now can really come back to some of these changes.

00:38:12.560 And in this, you hear not just her intelligence and her way with words, but also her tremendous wit

00:38:17.840 and the manner in which she communicates and why she was such a powerful columnist for so long.

00:38:23.540 Here's that clip.

00:38:24.320 But in the 80s, there emerged this idea that, as one advocate put it at the time,

00:38:30.040 quote,

00:38:30.500 The politicians long ago recognized the needs of criminals, but they forgot about us.

00:38:35.720 A justice system that doesn't want fair treatment for both sides is not a fair system.

00:38:40.100 The problem is, victims of crime were never meant to be a part or one of the two sides.

00:38:47.340 Justice in this country and in most Western democracies isn't supposed to be a contest

00:38:52.140 between victim and perpetrator, but rather one between state and perpetrator.

00:38:57.640 Thus, it's the state of New York versus Blatchford, or in Canada, Regina versus Blatchford.

00:39:03.560 It's not Blatchford versus the poor SOB she killed. 0.61

00:39:07.320 And trust me, I have a list of likely contenders.

00:39:10.100 Of course, the broader societal interest of public safety and protection

00:39:16.880 incorporate the narrower interests of those who have been hurt or damaged by crime.

00:39:21.820 But traditionally, that's where the victim's role began and ended.

00:39:25.400 And that's as it should be, I think.

00:39:28.520 That's what the rule of law at its simplest is.

00:39:31.300 We all agree that we will not seek vengeance and take the law into our own hands. 0.99

00:39:37.580 If you burn down my house, I will not burn down yours in retaliation and perhaps rape your wife for good measure. 1.00

00:39:44.380 Instead, I will call the cops. 0.99

00:39:46.080 The cops will investigate, and you may be charged, and at some point you may go on trial.

00:39:50.140 But in 1989, the federal government passed the Victims' Bill of Rights.

00:39:56.300 And over the next decade, this being Canada and redundancy always the goal, the provinces passed their own versions.

00:40:03.420 What all these bills really did was provide victims with the right to information about court appearances, release dates of offenders, that sort of thing.

00:40:13.300 But before you knew it, there was also the victim impact statement, which is delivered at sentencing and allows a victim or a victim's family to talk publicly about their loss.

00:40:24.920 What these turned out to be were first steps.

00:40:28.400 In May of 1995 came the trial of the serial killer Paul Bernardo.

00:40:33.600 I suppose if I were truly modern, I wouldn't name him either, but I'm not, so I will.

00:40:38.080 I remember that trial like it was yesterday and could talk about it for weeks.

00:40:44.120 But for these purposes, let me just say that it turned the notion of victims being an uninvolved third party on its ear.

00:40:52.460 Bernardo was accused and, of course, convicted of genuinely terrible crimes.

00:40:57.300 He was a serial rapist who moved on to murder, with his lovely then-wife Carla Homolka at his side.

00:41:02.520 They were co-stars in the deaths of three young women, 0.97

00:41:06.980 Homolka's own baby sister, Tammy, and teenagers, Lassie Mahaffey, and Kristen French.

00:41:13.080 Worse, Bernardo was way ahead of his time.

00:41:16.640 Long before Terrant live-streamed his slaughter in the Christchurch mosque,

00:41:21.260 well before Luca Magnata made and posted a video of his killing of the student, John Lynn,

00:41:27.540 Bernardo taped his attacks on young girls.

00:41:29.800 It was new, and because it was new, it was especially terrifying.

00:41:35.200 And the first thing that happened was that the trial of Homolka, which went first,

00:41:39.500 was closed to public and to the American press,

00:41:42.820 and subject to so many publication bans, it was essentially held in secret.

00:41:48.140 Then, at Bernardo's trial, the presiding judge, a lovely man named Patrick Lassage,

00:41:53.800 decided at the behest of a lawyer representing the French and Mahaffey families

00:41:58.880 that the public and the press wouldn't be able to see the videotapes,

00:42:03.220 which were the single most critical piece of evidence against Bernardo.

00:42:07.400 This was because, the lawyer for the family said,

00:42:10.120 if the tapes were played in public, the families would have to watch them too,

00:42:15.080 and because to play them publicly would violate their daughter's dignity and privacy rights.

00:42:21.720 The families, through their lawyer, Tim Danson,

00:42:25.000 asked for formal intervenish status in the trial,

00:42:27.860 and astonishingly, though the judge said he was doing it as an indulgence and not a right,

00:42:34.640 Lassage granted it to them.

00:42:36.100 Victimhood was also expanded in another way at that trial.

00:42:42.440 Because the videotapes were missed by the cops

00:42:45.000 in their search of the Bernardo Homolka marital home,

00:42:48.780 the government determined it needed Homolka as a witness against her former husband.

00:42:53.480 And fair enough, for a time, they did need her,

00:42:56.620 and she was more than happy to oblige.

00:43:00.180 Prosecutors duly lined up an array of shrinks 1.00

00:43:02.520 to paint her as a victim of Bernardo herself.

00:43:04.960 Why, she was a battered spouse. 0.99

00:43:07.800 No, she was a compliant victim of a sexual sadist. 0.97

00:43:11.340 No, no, she had PTSD or traumatic amnesia.

00:43:15.860 Six months before Bernardo's trial started,

00:43:18.500 the tapes were belatedly found in a clusterfuck that is too complicated to explain here.

00:43:23.060 But those tapes showed Homolka not as a victim, 0.95

00:43:27.520 but as Bernardo's accomplice, an eager, lip-licking participant in the sexual assaults of those three dead young women 0.68

00:43:35.420 and several others, and who on tape seemed as perfectly capable of murder as her darling husband. 0.61

00:43:41.640 The tapes showed that Homolka had forgotten about some of the sexual assaults

00:43:47.840 or perhaps lied about them.

00:43:50.480 At least one police chief and one prosecutor wanted to breach her plea deal because of that,

00:43:56.040 but there was no will to do it at 720 Bay Street where the Attorney General's big guns work.

00:44:01.020 There, they had all bought into the vision of Carly Curls, as she called herself, 0.97

00:44:07.200 as the victim of a very bad man.

00:44:11.500 In fact, Homolka was both participant in the early and middle years of her relationship with Bernardo

00:44:16.900 and their rape and murder spree, and then, in its dying days, but only then,

00:44:22.800 so for about five minutes, his victim.

00:44:26.460 Yet her plea deal, 12 years for her involvement in three deaths, survived,

00:44:32.380 and after serving every last day of her sentence, she was free.

00:44:36.420 Many people persist in seeing her as a victim, just another sad example of the toxic male.

00:44:42.420 One of those people was a lawyer who represented her while she was still in prison,

00:44:48.300 a Quebec lawyer who really believed in Homolka's victimhood.

00:44:52.440 Sylvie Bordelay was a true believer. That's a lawyer. 1.00

00:44:56.720 Years later, I learned that it was Bordelay's brother, Theory, who married Homolka,

00:45:01.660 and I remember thinking, fine, you like her so much, you have her at your Christmas table every year.

00:45:08.380 And she did. And that remains one of the few threads of justice in Homolka's story.

00:45:25.260 Blatch, you will be missed.

00:45:27.380 That does it for me. Thanks, everyone, for your time in tuning into this show here.

00:45:31.640 We'll be back next week with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:45:35.760 I'm Andrew Lawton. Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:45:39.000 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:45:41.080 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - February 13, 2020

Trudeau's Media Bribery, Corporate Cronyism, and Freedom to Blaspheme

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