Juno News - June 18, 2024


Trudeau says bad polls are because Canadians aren't in ＂decision mode＂

Topics
decision mode foreign interference ESG investing and financial returns
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Jagmeet Singh Barbara Kay Andrew Lawton David Cochran Elizabeth May Steven Guilbeault Brian Lee Crowley Suzanne Collins Douglas Murray Pierre Poilievre Naomi Klein Andrew
Trudeau won't say if any Liberal MPs are implicated in foreign interference Calgarians turn to pandemic-era snitch lines

Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

158.88

Word count

6,815

Sentence count

183

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

29

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, Andrew Lawton talks about Justin Trudeau's desperation tour, anti-semitism on campus, and why going woke for corporations does not mean making more money.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30 Thank you.
00:01:00 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:19 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most reverent talk show here on this tuesday
00:01:29 june 18th 2024 great to have you aboard the program here we are going to cover a little
00:01:35 bit of ground today we're going to talk about anti-semitism on campus we'll talk about esg
00:01:40 scores and why going woke for corporations does not shockingly mean making more money i know so
00:01:47 hard to believe, right? Well, we'll talk about the why that is. But first and foremost, I want to
00:01:52 talk about Justin Trudeau. Now, he is doing the Desperation Tour. He has been doing every podcast
00:01:58 imaginable. He's been talking to all sorts of people that aren't interested in pushing back.
00:02:02 And he also did a rare interview, rare for a prime minister of Canada, on CBC's Power in Politics.
00:02:09 Now, I was on Power in Politics a few weeks ago. It's a fun show. David Cochran, as far as CBC
00:02:14 Sihos Go is, I think, one of the very fair-minded ones there, notwithstanding Trudeau at that one
00:02:19 point gave him some poutine, but we won't hold that against him forever. The thing about it,
00:02:24 though, is that Power in Politics is like a political punditry show. So when, I mean,
00:02:29 they're supposed to have people talking about what the Prime Minister is doing. So when Justin
00:02:33 Trudeau gets on there, it's clear that he's just trying to find any way that he could possibly turn
00:02:38 his fortunes around. And those fortunes are not exactly great. You may have seen the most recent
00:02:43 polling over the weekend, courtesy of Abacus Data, finding the Conservatives with a 20-point
00:02:49 lead over the Liberals. 20-point lead, now that's massive. That is the Conservatives about to take
00:02:56 42% of the vote, the Liberals down at 22%, the NDP not that far behind the Liberals to be perfectly
00:03:03 frank, and Justin Trudeau has been forced to account for why this is, but well, as he told
00:03:09 David Cochran, no, no, the polls, they don't really mean anything. Don't worry about that.
00:03:13 Take a look. Despite that optimistic picture, I mean, the country is still angry. You can see it
00:03:19 in the mood. And increasingly, Prime Minister, a lot of them are mad at you, right? I know you say
00:03:23 you want to beat Pierre Polyev. You keep coming back to that. But what if you are the reason the
00:03:28 Liberals can't beat the Conservatives in the next election? Where do you factor that into your
00:03:32 thought process? Well, I think, first of all, Canadians are not in a decision mode right now.
00:03:37 You know, what you tell a pollster if they ever manage to reach you is very different
00:03:44 from the choice Canadians end up making in an election campaign.
00:03:47 And fundamentally, and it's not just Canada, but everywhere around the world, and indeed
00:03:52 I was talking this with other leaders at the G7 and in Switzerland at the peace conference
00:03:57 for Ukraine, everywhere people are struggling with high inflation, with cost of living issues,
00:04:05 interest rates, with housing challenges, with child care challenges, all these
00:04:09 things. We are doing better than many countries. Doesn't make a difference to
00:04:15 someone who can't pay for their groceries, but the way people are
00:04:18 everywhere facing a certain amount of frustration. And I truly believe that as
00:04:23 we choose to step up on solving those challenges, to contrast with political
00:04:29 vision that so far consists from the Conservatives of just making people more
00:04:34 angry and saying everything is broken i know canadians are pragmatic people who focus on
00:04:39 solutions and that's exactly what we're going to be doing he reminds me when he says oh well
00:04:45 canadians aren't in a decision mode he reminds me of christine lagarde the head of the european
00:04:50 central bank telling me back in davos when i wanted to ask her a question of i'm in a quiet
00:04:55 period right now you just come up with some desperate reason by which you don't need to
00:04:59 to answer the question but Canadians are not in decision mode which is true the election is not
00:05:04 yet happening he is basically saying there that ah when Canadians are going to vote that's when
00:05:10 they're all of a sudden going to come back home to daddy there I'm Justin Trudeau is daddy in this
00:05:14 equation so take from that what you will but Trudeau is basically saying that when it's time
00:05:18 to vote Canadians will really realize then in decision mode that the liberals are the ones
00:05:25 that have their back, that Justin Trudeau is the guy. And the conversations they have with every
00:05:30 single pollster going for basically a year now, those conversations are not an accurate
00:05:37 representation of how Canadians feel. Funnily enough, when the polls show the Conservatives
00:05:41 beating the Liberals, the polls aren't valid. When the polls back in the day used to show the
00:05:45 Liberals up ahead, all the polls were showing the Liberals up ahead. That was the weird sort of way
00:05:50 that politicians tend to view polls. When they're in their favor, they are good. When they're not
00:05:54 in their favor? Ah, well, they're just polls. The only poll that matters is the one on election day.
00:06:00 The reason I bring this up, though, is because the liberal desperation is quite something. And
00:06:04 I think liberals increasingly, as I've remarked time and time again, are going to have to realize
00:06:09 that Justin Trudeau is the problem and start mounting a campaign to get rid of him if they
00:06:14 want to, because he is not going on his own. And again, I'm not telling the liberals what to do.
00:06:19 I'm not urging anyone to be removed from office. I'm just saying that if the liberals want
00:06:24 him gone, he has not shown any indication that he will be going anywhere of his own volition.
00:06:31 And it's interesting when you see the way the Liberals managed to fumble pretty much every
00:06:36 single issue. Foreign interference, an issue that could have been one where there was political
00:06:41 unanimity, could have been one in which everyone reached across the aisle, has even then become a
00:06:46 partisan football. You had Elizabeth May the other day saying, where's the bar? Sorry, no,
00:06:51 what she said, something about foreign interference. You also had Jagmeet Singh saying something as
00:06:57 well. And you had these two opposing views, basically. Elizabeth May saying, oh, well,
00:07:03 there's really nothing there and I'm not worried about it. And Jagmeet Singh saying, yeah, I've got
00:07:08 some issues with people in Parliament. And Justin Trudeau refusing to say anything, refusing to say
00:07:14 if any Liberal members of Parliament were implicated, instead turning it around on the
00:07:19 opposition. But I wanted to show this clip. This is a clip that is rather fascinating to me
00:07:26 because Trudeau is talking. This is the same interview he did yesterday with David Cochran
00:07:31 on power and politics. And I won't do a windup here. I'll analyze it afterwards, but pay very
00:07:38 close attention to how he speaks in this. But is it tenable to just go on without names attached
00:07:43 to some of these allegations? I mean, Jagmeet Singh has said that there's nobody in his caucus
00:07:47 he needs to worry about.
00:07:49 Can you say the same thing with comfort and clarity?
00:07:55 I hadn't known that Jagmeet said that.
00:08:01 I would be wary of any party leader
00:08:04 drawing any sort of conclusion like that.
00:08:07 Including Mr. Singh?
00:08:08 I would be wary of any party leader
00:08:10 drawing any conclusion like that.
00:08:11 There is a range of issues around foreign interference
00:08:15 that our security agencies, that our various institutions are engaged in.
00:08:23 We know that foreign actors are trying to interfere in all different parties 0.99
00:08:30 in many different ways and protecting the integrity of our parliamentary system
00:08:35 and of people who choose to step forward in Parliament from false or misleading accusations
00:08:41 that may well be the goal of some of those countries wishing to interfere.
00:08:45 is requiring a level of thoughtfulness that is not always conducive to selling newspapers or headlines,
00:08:54 but is what a responsible government must do to continue to engage in foreign interference.
00:09:00 And I'll remind you, we are the government that has brought in more measures, more structures,
00:09:07 more ways to deal with foreign interference than any other, because no other government ever did anything on that.
00:09:13 so it's fascinating to me because on one hand first off he was just remarkably unprepared
00:09:20 because jagmeet singh had said that quite a while before that interview as i understand it
00:09:25 and justin trudeau is seemingly so baffled by that oh no no party is immune from this that
00:09:30 would include his own well why has he not made any moves why has no one been removed from caucus why
00:09:36 on one hand is he saying ah yes no one should be uh feel safe here and on the other hand sending
00:09:41 out dominic leblanc to say well we've got concerns with how the nsi cop came to its conclusions we've
00:09:46 got concerns with the report the liberals are looking to be the party that has stood to benefit
00:09:51 the most from foreign interference in canadian democracy part of this is because foreign actors
00:09:57 that want to infiltrate canadian institutions will of course back the winner which for the last
00:10:01 three elections has been the liberals but more crucially and i think this is the really significant
00:10:07 point here the liberals have been the most ideologically on side certainly when it comes to
00:10:13 china and china's interest the liberals have not taken the view on china that most nations
00:10:19 that value their sovereignty would and that certainly in the past the conservatives have
00:10:23 taken up so again i'm not at all saying that foreign interference does not affect different
00:10:29 parties i'm saying that if you're foreign interfering if you're foreignly interfering
00:10:33 if you're an interfering foreigner, whatever the term is, if you are trying to meddle in Canadian
00:10:37 democracy, as I've remarked, you're not exactly going to get much bang for your buck in going
00:10:42 after Elizabeth May or Jagmeet Singh. So you're basically going to go after one of the two parties
00:10:48 that has historically held victory in this country that has held office. And in the last three
00:10:52 elections, the Liberals have been the winners. So this is where Canadians should look at this and be
00:10:57 very very nervous about a prime minister that is not willing to be transparent a prime minister who
00:11:03 could as we talked about yesterday on his own effectively with a stroke of a pen disclose the
00:11:10 names release the unredacted report but instead he has chosen not to so justin trudeau when he
00:11:18 comes out there and says oh well canadians are not in a decision mode right now that's the only reason
00:11:23 were not coming across well in the polls no canadians are not supporting you and your party
00:11:28 in the polls because you have just been bungling every single file that you have had your hands on
00:11:33 you've had the reverse midas touch for i'd say certainly the last five years some would say you
00:11:38 know the last nine years that the liberals have been in power and foreign interference an issue
00:11:43 that really comes down to the core question of canada's democracy and we're going to be delving
00:11:47 into this on thursday in a longer interview with brian lee crowley this is something where the
00:11:53 liberals have once again decided to turn a blind eye to it they have turned a blind eye to it
00:11:58 they have chosen to keep things shrouded in secrecy instead of this government that said
00:12:03 it was going to be the most transparent government to ever happen in the face of the earth amazing
00:12:08 how far we have fallen from that the government that said it was going to overhaul access to
00:12:13 information and transparency and openness and has now fought canadians in court has fought the
00:12:18 the Speaker of the House in court has fought time and time again to keep the government closed off,
00:12:24 to keep information closed off. And it isn't just on foreign interference. It was on SNC-Lavalin.
00:12:30 It's on their carbon tax. They don't even want Canadians to see the economic analysis of the
00:12:35 carbon tax for crying out loud. A government that can't be transparent about its tax policy
00:12:41 cannot be transparent about anything else. And this is why Canadians have, for several other 0.93
00:12:47 reasons, turned on a government that was once welcomed with such open arms. I want to turn to
00:12:53 an issue that has become very near and dear to my heart, not as a Jewish person, but as someone who
00:12:58 has a great deal of love for the Jewish people and a great deal of sympathy for all they've had
00:13:03 to endure over the years and over the last nine months in particular. It's no longer news to talk
00:13:09 about anti-Semitism on campus. Things that a year ago or two years ago would have been front page
00:13:14 News are now relegated to the back pages because we just expect on universities people to say
00:13:19 horrendous things about Israel and the Jewish people. Just last week we learned that McGill 1.00
00:13:24 University's dissidents, their anti-Israel group, were going to be hosting a summer camp. Oh that
00:13:31 sounds so charming. What summer camp is this? Well it is a summer camp for quote-unquote
00:13:36 revolutionaries and this is the youth summer program. Now when I went to a summer camp I think
00:13:42 the graphic might have been uh kids playing with bubbles or kids uh you know paying playing hopscotch
00:13:47 and the chalk or maybe kids doing that parachute game where you lift the parachute up in the air
00:13:52 and you sit under it uh but these youth summer campers uh well i see them all wearing kathiyas
00:13:58 uh they're reading i don't know if those are quran's or if it's the new hunger games book
00:14:03 that suzanne collins has coming out uh one of them is holding what appears to be uh well it's
00:14:09 firearm of some kind i don't know uh what kind exactly it's a little blurry there maybe an ak-47
00:14:14 of sorts but this is what they're promoting this summer camp has been widely condemned although
00:14:20 by all accounts it will still be going on because it doesn't happen with any official standing
00:14:25 heck maybe they'll even get some canada summer jobs funding from the government who knows
00:14:29 but one group that has been conspicuously silent throughout all of this has has been the group you
00:14:33 would expect to be the most vocal about this the jewish studies programs on university campuses
00:14:39 now when i was at university i took a class on the jewish history of north america which was a
00:14:45 fascinating class i learned a great deal about how integrated jews were in the historic and
00:14:51 cultural fabric of canadian and american society and there were a lot of programs just like that
00:14:56 around the country and a lot of professors in these spaces that have not been speaking up about
00:15:00 this. Barbara Kaye wrote about this in a piece of the National Post where she is
00:15:04 one of my favorite columnists and I suspect one of yours as well if you read
00:15:08 there. Barbara always good to talk to you thanks for coming on today. It's a
00:15:12 pleasure to be here Andrew thanks for having me. So I'll start I let's accept
00:15:16 your premise at face value because I think you're very correct about this I
00:15:20 have not seen a large and vocal condemnation from these or any other
00:15:24 academic groups but is this coming from a tacit or explicit agreement with these
00:15:30 activists or is it coming from fear that these professors do not want to stick their necks out
00:15:35 and be even further marginalized well first i should say that uh although jewish studies you're
00:15:41 correct the jewish studies departments have been institutionally pretty mute uh there have been
00:15:48 many individual jewish academics who have been quite vocal but they are vocal as individuals or
00:15:56 as part of some very um ad hoc uh networks academic writers networks and they write op-eds
00:16:03 and they you know write for all kinds of publications i have no core but they tend to
00:16:07 be the pariahs for doing well either they're let's just say that they're out there on their own
00:16:15 i mean i don't think they're condemned uh in their you know professionally i don't think they face
00:16:20 cancellation within their departments uh but institutionally the jewish studies departments
00:16:26 and the jewish studies the association of jewish studies uh which is an american organization i'm
00:16:32 not sure if it covers uh canada as well they have been um not only uh not vocal uh in opposition
00:16:43 to all this uh anti-zionist and anti-jewish activity uh but they are officially one might say
00:16:51 sympathetic to the anti-zionist movement many of them some of them are active in the bds movement
00:16:58 just i'll give you one example um a former rabbi in my synagogue in montreal described this to a
00:17:04 group of us uh at a learning day at our synagogue he said he had he had when he'd been a rabbi and
00:17:11 And then he had taught in the Jewish Studies Department at Drew University.
00:17:15 And he said he went to, this was two years ago, he went to the annual conference of Jewish Studies, the Association of Jewish Studies, which is for that discipline.
00:17:24 And he said the theme of the conference was justice.
00:17:29 And he said the major push of the conference was justice for the Palestinians.
00:17:37 And he described one exhibit, an artistic exhibit that was a series of photographs of Palestinian children, only you didn't see their faces.
00:17:46 You just saw their outstretched arms and on their arms they had with Sharpies written, you know, tattooed numbers, which I don't have to tell you is a Holocaust inversion tactic of just the lowest and the really very undignified. 0.94
00:18:06 and very hurtful, needless to say, to those who remember the Holocaust
00:18:11 or who have had relatives killed in the Holocaust.
00:18:13 So this idea of using the Holocaust against ourselves 0.78
00:18:17 in order to whip up a sentiment of a very acute level for Palestinians
00:18:26 as opposed to, and this is the kind of thing you see quite often,
00:18:31 And it comes under the heading of what I would call pathological altruism, in which you're so concerned with the harms that your side of a conflict is causing to the other side that you won't take your own side.
00:18:49 You know, what was that definition of a liberal? Someone who won't take his own side in an argument? Anyways.
00:18:54 yeah and i would also point out too that studying something you know women's studies gender studies 0.99
00:19:02 you know jewish studies all of these things it doesn't necessarily mean that there is a support
00:19:08 for the group being studied i think you know one example of this there was i forget the name of the
00:19:13 university but there was like some men's studies department that was launched and you looked at the
00:19:17 uh faculty for it and it was like every single one of them i think probably hated men more than
00:19:22 anything else in the world and you know jewish studies that you used to see a lot of jewish
00:19:27 professors in there but a lot of them are not necessarily zionists and and again nor should 0.72
00:19:32 they be necessarily there shouldn't be a litmus test if you're able to teach the material and
00:19:36 teach it well but the reality there is that a lot of these departments a lot of the social sciences
00:19:43 in general have all been taken over by this oppressor oppressed dynamic and when you can't
00:19:49 even teach math or chemistry without talking about decolonizing their curricula uh certainly
00:19:54 in jewish studies you're seeing those very same dynamics and i think that's why a lot of these
00:19:57 departments have been so silent on this well i agree with you and i i think the this whole the
00:20:04 the whole um rubric under way of intersectionality in which jews are routinely excluded uh they are
00:20:13 not considered intersectionality is of course the intersectionality of all victims the oppressed
00:20:21 and jews are never included in the category of the oppressed they are always part of the oppressor 0.99
00:20:26 group so it it sort of conflates jews with um their state and as you say uh many jews are not
00:20:34 particularly zionist but when jews in authority over other students or in a position of authority
00:20:41 over students and they're in a Jewish studies program become actively anti-Zionist or are part
00:20:47 of the BDS movement or are teaching anti-Zionism rather than teaching it as part of, you know,
00:20:56 history and here's the situation today and here is when Zionism, the concept started and who
00:21:05 started it and who was for it and who was against it. That's history. But once you already have a
00:21:10 Jewish state, and Zionism obviously won the argument, you can't keep arguing that Zionism 0.88
00:21:21 is a curse, as Naomi Klein has called it. You cannot say it must be ended. How do you end
00:21:30 Zionism? You would have to end Israel in order to end Zionism. So it's a very different kettle 0.56
00:21:35 of fish last night uh the monk debates andrew um i don't know if you saw them but anyways uh
00:21:40 wonderful international lawyer natasha uh hausdorf teamed up with douglas murray the in
00:21:46 the incredible douglas murray and they were discussing this very thing and um natasha said
00:21:52 look uh you don't have to be a zionist but but think of it as this way it's like if a mother
00:21:58 and a father or sorry if if two parents a man and a woman get married and they they say they don't
00:22:03 want to have children they've they both agree they don't want to have children but by accident
00:22:08 they have a child you don't you don't agree that it's okay to murder the child i mean because they
00:22:14 didn't want it right like so we have a state with seven million jews in it that's half the world's 1.00
00:22:19 population and for anybody in jewish studies today to be arguing that not only was zionism a mistake
00:22:26 but it's a mistake that has to be rectified then you have to be very careful with your words what
00:22:31 What do you mean? It was a mistake. And now the state of Israel is illegitimate for that reason. 0.78
00:22:37 You know, I'd be happy if all kinds of movements that ended up in national movements that, you know, had been considered illegitimate before they became nations.
00:22:50 Israel was created as a nation along with many other nations in the Middle East.
00:22:55 nationalism was not a thing a century ago and it became a thing so this i this idea that you could
00:23:04 just loosely play with the idea of yeah you know zion is a big mistake uh let's try something else
00:23:11 and and there's something else that a lot of jewish studies professors are into now
00:23:16 is this thing called diasporism which is yeah zionism was a big mistake uh you know what
00:23:23 uh we need to be jews who uh we we we repudiate zionism and uh it's good jews were meant to live 1.00
00:23:32 in exile because their their rationale is uh uh it is unnatural for jews to have power over anybody 0.98
00:23:42 else okay for other people when you have a very very extreme subset of orthodox jews that believes
00:23:47 that but it's an incredible incredible minority there it's there's it's so fringe that i i never
00:23:53 even include the natura carta people are like um they're crazy people uh i i consider them literally
00:24:00 crazy they are living in such a bubble of and they are have no influence whatsoever except in so far
00:24:07 as they are used as tools uh you know by palestinian the palestinian isms and um yeah i mean but but
00:24:17 nobody no jew i know ever even mentions them in a calculus of uh where are we going and what's
00:24:23 happening in the world they they are beyond beyond the pale so beyond the pale that orthodox jews 1.00
00:24:31 want nothing to do with them and even chabad and all these other people they they're off the map 1.00
00:24:36 but we're talking now about very mainstream people uh who do have influence and authority in
00:24:41 in universities, they're academics. They are in, you know, institutions like Hillel and
00:24:47 all kinds of places where young Jews look to them as models and authority figures. And they're saying
00:24:55 we should be happy in exile. We should not have power over other people. We've misused it.
00:25:02 But everybody else is allowed to have power over Jews. I mean, if we should be happy to live in 1.00
00:25:10 exile then we're basically saying we we are um contracting out our right to have power over
00:25:17 anybody and and but you can have power over us you can have power over us but we can't have power
00:25:22 over anybody else so how did that work out for us throughout history not so well not not that you
00:25:28 know i i was about to ask you you know what what jews think of a certain subject and then as i was
00:25:32 doing so the old joke of you know three jews and five opinions come to mind is that you know jews
00:25:36 can't even necessarily agree with themselves, let alone each other on a lot of matters.
00:25:39 Well, that's true. But the upside of that is, it's both an upside and a downside. The upside is
00:25:44 we grant anybody in Israel, here, any Jew can say what's on his mind or her mind without fear
00:25:54 of getting bumped off or even spat at or getting doxed on. I mean, we allow perfect freedom of
00:26:04 expression within our people and our people we are we are bonded not as christians are by belief
00:26:13 we are bonded by peoplehood so we admit to without resentment yeah there's super orthodox and there's
00:26:22 totally secular there's atheists and there's this and that we don't care we don't care what we care
00:26:27 about is your uh your commitment to jewish peoplehood and to um uh furthering the healthy
00:26:37 interests of the jewish people now you that that doesn't mean you have to support israel and
00:26:43 everything that israel does you don't have to support zionism you don't have to support any 0.99
00:26:46 of that but it doesn't give you license to align yourself with the enemies of the jewish people
00:26:53 And to say, yeah, you've got the right idea. Yeah. Eliminating Israel. Good idea. And that's what, you know, these groups like Independent Jewish Voices and Jewish Voices for Peace, they're using their status as Jews to join in the chorus of voices that wish Jews would disappear from the face of the earth. 0.97
00:27:17 And they are abetting them and giving comfort to them and saying, speaking as a Jew or, yeah, my grandmother, who's dead, unfortunately, in the Holocaust, would have approved. 0.80
00:27:29 That's that's something that you see people like, you know, I've seen Jews say, oh, she she definitely would have been on on BDS. 1.00
00:27:38 She definitely would have been ashamed of what Israel's doing. 0.94
00:27:42 I don't think so.
00:27:42 These are the same as the Christians that say, you know, Jesus would have been trans or something. You see all of this weird revisionism. But I wanted to ask you about that, Barbara, because there is, to use the language and worldview of the left here, which talks about privilege as, you know, basically meriting or taking away the merit of your position.
00:28:03 And a lot of the Jews that do this, I've seen, are ones that have tremendous amounts of privilege. 0.96
00:28:09 They are Jews that have not had to deal with anti-Semitism, or at least not that I would see.
00:28:14 They're Jews that oftentimes are coming from very upper middle class, if not outright wealthy families.
00:28:19 And you see this in other groups as well.
00:28:21 I mean, the number of environmental activists whose parents are these billionaires or something is insane.
00:28:28 But that doesn't really matter when you're saying the quote-unquote right things.
00:28:33 in the same way that all of the indigenization of curricula now and the importance of connecting to
00:28:39 your people to history doesn't apply to jews because jews are also bound by their history
00:28:44 and by their connection to the land that we now call israel but that that deep connection doesn't
00:28:50 matter when you have been maligned as the quote-unquote oppressor that's right you i mean
00:28:55 you can you can say uh oh uh as some diasporas do they say oh yeah all that stuff about uh
00:29:01 next year in jerusalem and uh my heart belongs to zion and all that that's just romantic stuff
00:29:07 it's like a metaphor it doesn't literally mean that uh jews have to be attached to the land of
00:29:12 israel well sorry but it does and and if you want to detach yourself from the jews i don't care you 1.00
00:29:18 know say i'm not a jew anymore i'm out of here fine all i ask is you know what don't dump on
00:29:24 the rest of us and don't don't help other people who would really like to see us disappear uh is
00:29:29 that too much to ask really and don't say speaking as a jew uh you know even trotsky in in in in the
00:29:36 soviet union uh he he uh his name used to be lev bronstein uh but he didn't say speaking as a jew
00:29:44 i'm a party member and i i believe that uh you know jews should be uh uh persecuted people like 0.99
00:29:52 just you know decide one or the other i'm not with you i'm out of this people
00:29:56 goodbye good luck and you know i'll just go my own way but the privileged jews you're talking 0.99
00:30:02 about yes they're the university crowd uh they want to be part of the herd they've bought into
00:30:06 the whole intersectional thing they've bought the whole uh and they're very full of self-righteousness
00:30:11 they see themselves as a new prophets um and they are using their they're weaponizing their their
00:30:17 status their social sociological status uh as jews uh to abet a perniciously anti-semitic 1.00
00:30:26 movement uh and then there's the the jews that are just plain ignorant and they're 1.00
00:30:31 what i call useful idiots who go along because they get all their news from tick tock and they 1.00
00:30:37 um they're incurious they don't know anything about history they they know nothing and they're just 1.00
00:30:43 they're foolish silly people they need a cause they're looking for something they they they have 0.99
00:30:48 no connection to their jewish history or past or communities uh no no deep connection anyways and 1.00
00:30:54 and uh they don't have a cause so they're looking um and in a way they they feel they're this is a
00:31:01 social justice cause they've been trained to think that way they think that is that that
00:31:07 israel is a colonialist state which it isn't it isn't an apartheid these are all
00:31:12 libels but they believe them why shouldn't they their propaganda mill uh you know the the bds
00:31:18 crowd their propaganda mill is phenomenal because they don't have to worry about studying or doing
00:31:24 anything constructive in life this is their whole life is is relentless propagandizing against
00:31:32 israel and the jews well i appreciate it very much and like i've said to you in the past barbara i'm
00:31:38 so grateful you continue to use your voice in the way that you do when there are so many costs to
00:31:44 doing so in this day and age and i appreciate it very much barbara k thank you thank you andrew
00:31:49 all right thanks again always good to chat with barbara k could not no natural segue from that
00:31:54 to our next subject i was going to try to think of one but i just couldn't so i'm moving on we're
00:31:58 doing when i used to work in talk radio i like you could just throw to the commercial break and not
00:32:01 not have to worry about the segue but i do want to talk about esg because this is something we
00:32:05 hear a lot of environmental social governance it's often done by companies that want to look
00:32:11 woke and say that they're being progressive and you see it tied in with things like the
00:32:15 sustainable development goals and all of these other things and you often hear people sell esg
00:32:21 because every company wants a good esg score people saying that it actually is good for business
00:32:27 too that it's not selling out the bottom line it's not negative to the shareholders well a new
00:32:32 study from the Fraser Institute casts doubt on that it says there is not in fact any evidence
00:32:36 supporting a positive correlation between ESG ratings and stock market returns this looks at
00:32:42 310 companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange the study author joins me now Stephen Globerman
00:32:48 senior fellow at the Fraser Institute Stephen good to have you on the show thanks for coming on today
00:32:53 thank you for having me so just for people that aren't as familiar with this
00:32:57 what is an esg score and what are companies doing to boost their number
00:33:04 sees that rate the company's performance along those dimensions environmental activity
00:33:12 social activity which is related to who you're hiring how much you're paying your employees
00:33:21 and governance which is related to how the company is is is run and uh the rating agencies use uh
00:33:29 different specific measures along those three dimensions and then aggregate these measures
00:33:35 to come up with an overall rating for a company uh and uh companies um uh pay for these rating
00:33:43 uh services because in part they use it to promote uh their their in their performance their their
00:33:50 sustainability performance, just to use a broad term to cover those dimensions.
00:33:58 Investment managers use those ratings to promote their ESG mutual funds and exchange traded funds
00:34:08 to generate business from investors who are concerned about those issues when they place
00:34:16 their money in different types of assets.
00:34:18 and you've looked at 310 companies on the tsx you've looked at their stock market returns and
00:34:26 find no correlation whatsoever positive or negative between the two correct well let me just
00:34:32 uh clarify one point which is an important point what what we look at is the change in the esg
00:34:39 rating and then we relate that to stock market performance going forward and and the reason
00:34:46 that's an important qualification is that a stock price will change because new information about
00:34:56 the company's ongoing prospects have changed. So the change in the rating is important because
00:35:04 that really can be considered new information about a company's ESG profile. And if investors
00:35:12 are really concerned about ESG profile, then it's the new information that they're going to react
00:35:18 to. And yes, what we did was we looked at the relationship between the change in the ESG rating
00:35:25 across our sample of companies and the performance, the stock performance, which includes, by the way,
00:35:33 dividend payments and any stock splits over the next up to 12 months beyond the rating change,
00:35:41 which seems a reasonable amount of time to expect investors to react to that new information.
00:35:48 And as you said, there's no statistically significant relationship,
00:35:54 meaning any relationship we saw could be due to chance with relative confidence.
00:36:03 As we know, stock market returns themselves can be very fickle.
00:36:07 They're often influenced by a company's profitability, but not exclusively so.
00:36:11 And you're not looking at a company's financial, you're not looking at a company's profitability specifically, you're looking at the stock market return.
00:36:19 So have you in other studies you've seen in the US, because I know this hasn't really been done in Canada, seen a relationship between changes in ESG scores and how much a company is making one way or another?
00:36:31 Well, you're quite right that the focus of most of the studies, including our study, our recent study, is on stock market returns.
00:36:40 But the reason you want to look at stock market returns is because you can't observe future changes in profitability looking at accounting statements.
00:36:49 The stock market return, and particularly the change in the price of a stock, reflects what the broad millions of investors think is the future profitability outlook for the company.
00:37:06 So looking at the stock market, changing the stock market price is really effectively looking at expectations about future profitability, which are not observable if you look at the counting statements.
00:37:20 Now, you might say, well, why not do a very long time series study and look at changes in future profitability?
00:37:27 Well, that could be another piece of research, but it's not just the stock price change.
00:37:35 It's also because many ESG proponents argue it reduces the risk of a company.
00:37:41 And so it's the risk adjusted returns that you want to look at.
00:37:45 And that goes beyond profitability.
00:37:47 And we have controls for that in our study, controls for the risk profile of the company.
00:37:55 So what we're looking at is the stock market's expectation of future profitability adjusted for expected risk.
00:38:02 one one of the things that and i realize you're a scientist you're following the numbers here
00:38:08 you're not trying to you know make the numbers fit a thesis but there are going to be people
00:38:12 that are very hostile to the esg score and the whole regime there that say okay well there's
00:38:17 no point and there are going to be people that are supportive of it that say okay well it doesn't
00:38:21 cost them anything so it can't hurt well it does cost uh and and that's an important point uh in
00:38:28 In fact, there was a piece yesterday in Globe and Mail where a CEO of a small Canadian company was referencing the significant cost to his company of complying with ESG reporting requirements.
00:38:46 So, yes, the issue really does ultimately boil down to what are the costs and benefits of setting up a regulatory environment where all this reporting has to be done so ESG ratings can be created if there doesn't seem to be a relationship between ESG ratings and basically the efficiency performance of the company.
00:39:12 yeah and i think that's a very significant point and you have i mean i've seen this covering the
00:39:18 world economic forum meetings in davos you have all of these companies that are bending over
00:39:23 backwards to meet these targets and they're you know integrating with all of these different
00:39:27 agencies and you've created this entire industry on esg consulting and esg like all of this and
00:39:34 people are making huge money on this uh the shareholders aren't though well the shareholders
00:39:40 Are not. And of course, it raises an obvious question. Why are people investing in ESG themed mutual funds? They're paying higher fees to invest in those funds. They don't appear to be getting the net returns that people who are getting who are investing in conventional asset categories. Why do they do this?
00:40:03 And really, all you can say, I think, with any kind of reasoned analysis is that there are non-financial benefits that are being realized by these investors, whether it's feel good that we're doing something good for the environment or we're addressing income inequality or racial discrimination.
00:40:27 That really is very hard to test.
00:40:30 surveys suggest that people do expect to earn higher rates of return, but they're not. And I
00:40:39 think that fact needs to be made more widely known. If people continue to want to get psychic
00:40:47 benefits or warm glow feelings from how they're investing, that's their business. But they should
00:40:52 be informed about what the expected returns will be. Very well said. People can check out the study
00:40:58 for themselves over at fraserinstitute.org esg investing and financial returns in canada and
00:41:05 stephen globerman good to talk to you i appreciate your time today good to talk to you andrew all
00:41:09 right thank you that does it for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of canada's
00:41:13 most irreverent talk show here on true north thank you god bless and good day to you all
00:41:18 thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north
00:41:23 at www.tnc.news.
00:41:53 We'll be right back.
00:42:23 We'll be right back.