Juno News - Trudeau stealing Poilievre's housing policy

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.680 north i'm crying but i don't want you to worry if you see like if you're watching on one of those

00:01:29.740 big giant HD screens and you like oh my goodness his eyes are watering he's so sad I mean yes I am

00:01:35.380 sad about the state of the country but I don't even know what happened I just like my right eye

00:01:40.160 just started tearing up so I think it was I'd like cough too hard or something I don't know but

00:01:44.760 I am not necessarily weeping for Canada welcome everyone to the Andrew Lawton show Canada's most

00:01:50.280 irreverent talk show here on True North I was like hoping it would go away by the time the show

00:01:55.540 actually started but it hasn't and now that I'm talking about it it's getting like weirder so I'm

00:01:58.940 going to be like, I'm going to be half crying. So it's like the ultimate in contrast here in

00:02:02.920 real time. But anyway, lots of stuff happening in the world today. Lots of stuff happening in

00:02:07.280 the country. We had the news this morning that Seamus O'Regan, the liberal cabinet minister,

00:02:12.100 longtime Trudeau ally, former journalist is going to be resigning from cabinet. He will be staying

00:02:17.960 on apparently as an MP, but this is again, starting what I believe will be a deluge of liberals

00:02:23.680 saying they just do not want to stick around because they don't want to be on the sinking

00:02:28.380 ship. We also have this news coming around the same time that we learned that Trudeau has been

00:02:32.880 actively courting Mark Carney. Actively, yes. He was pushing in a meeting with Mark Carney on

00:02:38.720 Sunday to have Mark Carney join the government. And this now was leaked to the Globe and Mail

00:02:44.340 once again. So the stories that were coming out this morning should be making Chrystia Freeland

00:02:48.940 feel very, very nervous about her state in the government. Because again, the Liberals are

00:02:53.980 trying to, I never thought I would take Freeland's side, but the Liberals are trying to scapegoat her

00:02:57.920 and make her out to be the problem when it comes to how terribly Trudeau and his government are

00:03:03.480 doing in the polls. But it's interesting how desperate the Liberals are getting because

00:03:08.160 Justin Trudeau came out with a very audacious plan on housing. Let's put that tweet up.

00:03:14.660 Or it's not a tweet anymore. It's a post on X. Here's the deal. We've put money on the table

00:03:19.300 to help cities build more public transit with a catch. To get that funding, cities have to change

00:03:25.100 their bylaws to unlock more apartments and homes near that transit okay so federal funding to

00:03:32.340 municipalities for transit needs to be tied with municipalities building homes near those transit

00:03:38.380 hubs that sounds a little bit familiar I'm having trouble racking my brain at oh I remember roll

00:03:45.220 that clip so quick story from my youth when I was a university student I decided to move in with my

00:03:51.140 dad who lived on the top floor of that little apartment over there. Now, there were two reasons

00:03:56.080 for that. One, my dad's a great guy, but two, right over there, that is Heritage Station. It connects

00:04:04.200 the LRT in Calgary to the north end of the city. So I was able to come dashing out of that apartment,

00:04:10.020 down the stairs, out the door, run down this path. As the bells of the coming train were ringing,

00:04:15.460 jump on the train, open up my books, study last minute for my exams as I traveled all the way

00:04:21.640 across town to university. And what's the moral of the story? We need to approve high-density

00:04:29.320 apartments around every future transit station, something we don't do now. There are many stations

00:04:34.800 across the country that took millions of dollars to build, but there's very little housing around

00:04:40.540 them, even though there's available land. And that means that we're not getting the

00:04:45.180 maximum potential out of the massive expense that we put into those transit

00:04:48.980 stations. The federal government funds transit. My common-sense plan is to use

00:04:54.280 that funding as leverage. I'm going to say to the big city mayors, if you want

00:04:57.880 federal money for your transit station, you have to approve high-density

00:05:01.500 apartments all around them so that seniors and students don't even need to

00:05:07.520 afford a car.

00:05:10.540 hmm tie federal funding to municipalities to municipalities unlocking their housing plans

00:05:19.680 opening up their bylaws and building high density housing near transit hubs sounds very familiar now

00:05:24.620 let me just first say on this i do not believe any one party has a monopoly on good ideas i think

00:05:31.120 increasingly justin trudeau has a pretty good handle on bad ideas but i don't believe that good

00:05:35.800 ideas have to be limited to one particular party because when i pointed out this juxtaposition on

00:05:40.400 Twitter, I had all these people saying, oh, where are you upset that Trudeau is doing it? I said,

00:05:44.300 no, I'm not saying I'm upset or happy about it. I'm just making a point that Poliev has been

00:05:49.060 absolutely nailing the government in the polls. And a big part of the reason why has been the

00:05:54.620 Poliev vision on housing, the rhetoric that he used. And that video he filmed that we shared,

00:06:00.980 I think it was about six or eight months ago, whenever it was. Actually, probably earlier in

00:06:05.040 the fall because there was no snow on the ground and it was Calgary, which means it basically had

00:06:08.520 a one-week window somewhere in August that it might have been filmed. So it was probably about

00:06:12.420 a year ago. But anyway, it's a wonder where it wasn't snow at the stampede last week. But

00:06:17.200 Polyev has been absolutely killing it on the housing file. And the reason is because he's

00:06:22.680 been talking about this in ways that people understand. He's been talking about it in ways

00:06:27.480 that make sense to people. He's been talking about it in ways that help folks who don't

00:06:31.880 understand the ins and outs of housing policy understand what is at stake and understand the

00:06:37.020 problems here. And the narrative that he has started, not just on this, but another policy

00:06:41.500 as well, this idea of quote unquote gatekeepers is something that if you've listened closely has

00:06:46.160 really seeped into the political discourse in other aspects. I hear people sometimes tongue

00:06:50.900 in cheek, but in general, talking about gatekeepers in a way that I just didn't before

00:06:55.780 Polyev really started using that term and making that the linchpin of a lot of what he views as

00:07:01.600 being the problems in government right now. So he's there in that video saying we need to get

00:07:05.880 municipal gatekeepers out of the way justin trudeau coming out with a very very similar

00:07:10.120 pledge we are going to get the gatekeepers out of the way he doesn't use that language of course

00:07:14.760 but he's talking about the very same thing which is leveraging federal funding to municipalities

00:07:19.880 to make sure that homes are being built now there are many many discussions we could all have about

00:07:25.160 this about how much there is a federal role if there is a federal role in municipal policy

00:07:31.000 remember municipalities are the domain of provinces provincial governments are the ones

00:07:35.160 that set the parameters for what municipalities can do so i understand why some constitutional

00:07:40.600 purists are a bit uncomfortable a bit skittish you might say about this but the point that i

00:07:46.040 would raise in contrast to this is that it's about the funding if municipalities weren't relying on

00:07:51.240 federal funding they should be able to do what they want but if they're going to be going hat

00:07:54.920 in hand to the federal government and asking for money he who pays the piper calls the tune the

00:08:00.040 federal government has every right to say yeah we'll give you the money if we need to see this

00:08:04.120 and that because the federal government should not be putting money into municipalities

00:08:08.200 if it's not serving what the government's priorities are when they start making those

00:08:13.240 transfers it's not meant to be a subsidy it's meant to be very targeted and very specific

00:08:18.680 in what it's trying to achieve so i have no issues with the federal government putting

00:08:23.160 strings on that money and i have no issues with justin trudeau doing it if he wants to take on

00:08:27.400 what is on the surface a good policy fine but anything he does now and this is the fundamental

00:08:33.000 reality of a government that has been in there for nine years. Anything he does now is done

00:08:38.540 because of responsiveness to politics. If he believed in something, if he had the political

00:08:42.920 capacity to do something on any file, he would have done it in the last eight, well, I guess,

00:08:48.000 eight years now. But he, no, nine years, he would have done it by now. And that I think is the part

00:08:53.620 that a lot of people tend to forget here. Because the liberals have in their platform in the past

00:08:57.620 talked about this. They have talked about wanting to do stuff like this. And what was interesting

00:09:02.420 about all of those discussions is that anytime they brought it up, it was really a nothing burger.

00:09:07.140 No one paid much attention to it. And clearly the liberals didn't care enough to do it. The

00:09:11.120 liberals did not care enough to make this a part of what they are doing in government. Whereas now

00:09:15.720 a guy like Polly Yev comes out in the middle of a housing crisis and says, there are a lot of

00:09:20.280 problems with this. Here are what the solutions we're going to do. And it's interesting too,

00:09:24.920 because he has been talking about all sorts of things he wants to do, but the liberals still

00:09:29.320 love to say, why is he not releasing his platform? And the answer to that is quite easy. Well, first

00:09:34.660 off, he's the opposition leader. It's not his job to have a platform until the election. And now we

00:09:40.340 have the other little tidbit here, which is that apparently if he does release a platform, you're

00:09:44.620 just going to take everything in it, put a veneer of red paint on it, and you're going to pass it

00:09:49.340 off as your own. So why would Pierre Polyev write the liberal platform for the liberals when he is

00:09:54.860 doing absolutely fine. It was funny enough, I was doing, as you may have recalled, because I

00:10:00.540 shamelessly plug it by having it over my right shoulder, but I had a book about Pierre Polyev

00:10:04.720 that came out, which has now been eight weeks on the bestseller list, which I'm very grateful for.

00:10:09.560 And it was interesting because I was doing the media rounds when the book came out and for the

00:10:13.880 next few weeks. And every now and then you would be talking to a journalist and it would be like

00:10:18.840 a left-leaning journalist. And they would clearly not love Polyev, which is absolutely fine. People

00:10:23.960 can make their own decisions. And they would say, well, shouldn't he be doing this? And shouldn't

00:10:28.400 he be doing this? And shouldn't he be doing this? And I can't remember which interview it was. It

00:10:32.860 might have been a CBC interview where I said, listen, maybe you think he should, but no one

00:10:38.740 can look at his poll numbers for the last six months and say that what he is doing now isn't

00:10:45.060 working for him. And that part, I think a lot of people miss is that when you look at a party that

00:10:49.880 is as popular right now as the conservatives under Pierre Polyev are. He really doesn't need

00:10:54.320 to be doing anything apart from what he's already been doing. And that's been working. Whereas

00:10:58.080 Justin Trudeau is in the opposite situation, which is nothing that Trudeau is doing is working.

00:11:03.600 Nothing that Trudeau is doing is turning things around. And instead of looking inward and saying,

00:11:08.580 perhaps we need to change what we're doing. Instead, the approach from Trudeau is to find

00:11:14.040 everyone else to blame. Blame Chrystia Freeland. Blame Stephen Harper. Blame Mike Harris. Blame

00:11:19.560 Jody Wilson-Raybould. Blame that guy that stole his lunch money in the second grade. Matthew Perry,

00:11:25.000 believe it or not, the late Friends actor, he used to beat up Justin Trudeau in school. Let's blame

00:11:29.000 Matthew Perry for all of this. Blame everyone but himself. Justin Trudeau is the least self-aware

00:11:36.020 person in Canadian history because he has no sense of his own role, his own influence, his own

00:11:42.560 unpopularity. He's the guy standing out there getting booed and pelted with tomatoes.

00:11:48.640 Do you know what he is? He's the guy, I just saw this clip recently. I'm not a huge Simpsons

00:11:53.200 viewer, but I know there are many Simpsons viewers in our midst. I saw the clip recently

00:11:57.180 of Mr. Burns sitting in a movie theater. And at the end of the movie, everyone starts booing it.

00:12:04.020 And this was, I guess, a film he had produced. And the little lackey sycophant beside him says,

00:12:09.260 no, no, no, they're not saying boo. They're saying boo-erns. So that's basically everyone

00:12:14.720 around Justin Trudeau and Justin Trudeau himself, is that the advisors are saying,

00:12:20.780 no, they're not saying boo, they're saying Trudeau. That's effectively what's happening

00:12:27.520 with Justin Trudeau. The Simpsons colleagues among my team here, I know are going to be very

00:12:33.480 happy that I have made a Simpsons reference. And if you are a Simpsons fan, there's actually a

00:12:37.140 Simpsons reference in my book about Pierre Polyev because Polyev himself is a bit of a Simpsons fan

00:12:42.520 and pulled one practical joke to that effect well in Taiwan.

00:12:46.520 And if you want to know the rest of it, it's on, I don't know,

00:12:48.440 I'll just say like page 184 or something.

00:12:50.480 I made that up.

00:12:51.400 It might not be, but it's around there.

00:12:53.440 Anyway, so we'll talk about all of these changes.

00:12:57.420 And again, the cabinet shuffle that might be looming is a bit interesting.

00:13:00.880 Seamus O'Regan, I mentioned earlier, stepping down.

00:13:03.380 He is not going to be seeking re-election as a liberal, I suspect.

00:13:07.460 And I haven't had a chance to read his full statement ahead of now,

00:13:10.620 but it just came out.

00:13:11.560 it's a two-letter statement here. So I'll try to pick up the Coles notes. He said,

00:13:17.040 I have informed the Prime Minister that I intend to step down. I shall not be seeking re-election.

00:13:21.340 There it is. I intend to serve as a member of Parliament until the next general election.

00:13:25.520 These are difficult decisions. Being chosen as MP in three elections over nine years by the people

00:13:30.300 of this riding has been a great honour. But ultimately, my family comes first. I need to be

00:13:35.380 a better husband, son, uncle, and friend, and this job means and deserves a lot of time in order to

00:13:41.520 do it well. Ten years ago, my husband and I made the decision that I run. We dedicated a year to

00:13:46.380 campaigning, and we won, and then it goes on, and he talks about how proud he is of all the roles

00:13:50.360 he's been in, veterans affairs, indigenous affairs, national resources, labor, seniors.

00:13:54.740 How many portfolios does this guy have? Anyway, and by the end of it, he is not running again,

00:13:59.680 and there are going to be a lot more liberal MPs, I suspect, that in the next six months,

00:14:03.920 certainly when they return in September find that this is what they're going to have happen

00:14:08.440 and what's the timing of this is noteworthy because you have MPs that were in Ottawa slaving

00:14:13.720 away for I mean for good money mind you but in Ottawa for quite a while they go back to their

00:14:19.440 ridings about the third or fourth week of June they've been back in their ridings now for a few

00:14:23.620 weeks I think the reality will set in by the end of summer when they realize that all of the liberal

00:14:30.120 parties campaigning over the summer hasn't turned around the polling and when they also realize

00:14:34.400 they're kind of dreading going back to Ottawa and they realize that they have a lot more fun in

00:14:38.660 their community with their families being around being popular and then they go back to Ottawa and

00:14:44.000 they realize just that they're getting bludgeoned and pummeled at every corner and I think that's

00:14:47.520 when the reality will set in that a lot of these people don't want to run again and if I were the

00:14:51.580 liberals right now I'd be very nervous at wondering who you're going to find as candidates

00:14:56.540 in a lot of ridings. Remember, the poll numbers are showing an absolute wipeout. The Liberals

00:15:02.300 are going to have to spend every ounce of strength, every dollar they have on protecting

00:15:07.380 ridings. When they lose St. Paul's, that means that they have to take a riding such as St. Paul's,

00:15:12.800 Toronto St. Paul's, that they've never had to really do anything in, and they have to spend

00:15:17.540 campaign resources to win that seat back, to say nothing of swing ridings they would love to pick

00:15:23.660 up elsewhere in the country. I want to shift from the national to the local here, because there is

00:15:29.380 a national tie-in, of course. Toronto this week had massive, massive flooding. I saw some of the

00:15:34.820 just horrendous videos of people that were getting their cars just covered in water. I think the DVP

00:15:40.560 or the ramp onto the DVP was terrible, and you had a cascading waterfall down the steps of Union

00:15:46.300 Station. I was nervous that Howard Levitt, a lawyer you may recall, he's been on the show before,

00:15:51.520 When there was flooding in Toronto a decade ago,

00:15:53.660 he famously ditched his $200,000 Ferrari

00:15:56.420 because he had a plane to catch.

00:15:58.160 And I was thinking this week

00:15:59.360 that someone should do a welfare check

00:16:00.680 on Howard Levitt's new car.

00:16:02.320 But all of that notwithstanding,

00:16:04.600 the flooding was there.

00:16:05.900 And Brian Lilly in the Toronto Sun

00:16:07.480 had a great piece out

00:16:09.400 where he talked about how much this exposes

00:16:11.260 how so much of Toronto's priorities

00:16:13.660 have been on these luxury items,

00:16:15.500 on these virtue signaling plans

00:16:17.060 like bike lanes, as far as the eye can see,

00:16:19.380 when core infrastructure just isn't there.

00:16:22.480 But no, no, no, it's not infrastructure to blame, Olivia Chow says.

00:16:26.220 It is people with big driveways.

00:16:29.300 I do want to talk a bit about climate change.

00:16:34.120 It's real.

00:16:35.380 We are expecting sort of almost doubling the number of severe rainstorm days in 15 years.

00:16:44.660 So we have to redouble our effort to have mitigating actions because we have to do more prevention work.

00:16:58.120 If you're talking about long-term mitigation effort, providing incentives for homeowners and for people that have big parking space

00:17:07.800 because the stormwater is not running off properly, the ground is not absorbing the rain,

00:17:14.660 as a result the runoff is severe and it causes even more flooding and that's one of the reasons

00:17:20.100 why basements are flooded it is a severe problem and we really seriously have to

00:17:28.180 deal with climate change because these kind of days are going to be a lot more frequent

00:17:35.060 climate change and big driveways big parking spaces those are the two sources of the big

00:17:40.820 flooding in olivia chow's eyes the mayor of toronto justin trudeau he doesn't care as much

00:17:44.900 about the big parking spaces just the climate argument uh our thanks go out to all the first

00:17:50.740 responders who stepped up uh the city workers who are there the hydro workers who continue to work

00:17:56.580 to try and re-establish power for those who lost it it was a significant event and i want you to

00:18:03.620 know that we're all there to work together to make sure that not just people get supported through

00:18:09.220 this, but that this happens more and more infrequently in the coming years. The reality

00:18:14.480 is, though, that with climate change, there are going to be more extreme weather events.

00:18:19.120 So we need to continue to step up on our fight against climate change. We also need to continue

00:18:23.960 to be making investments in resilient infrastructure that can handle what the future is holding.

00:18:30.120 We know over the past number of years, we've made about a dozen investments in flood resilient

00:18:36.640 infrastructure and various measures from the federal side onto the city of Toronto and we're

00:18:43.640 going to continue to be there to make sure that people are safe and that infrastructure needs

00:18:50.660 are met long into the future in this great and growing city. Brian Lilly from the Toronto Sun

00:18:57.600 returns to our program and it's always good to see you. Brian, thanks for coming on today.

00:19:01.620 Thanks for having me. And you thought of Howard Levitt's car. Very good point. I thought,

00:19:06.920 it's raining hard. Has anyone checked on the Science Centre? Because if you've been following

00:19:12.300 Ontario politics, you'd think that the Ontario Science Centre was the be all and end all.

00:19:16.140 Quite frankly, if you don't live in or near Toronto, you forget it exists. And if you live

00:19:22.020 in Toronto, you forget it exists. But one of the reasons they closed it was the roof was in danger

00:19:26.720 of imminent collapse from heavy rainfall or snowfall and that was pretty heavy rainfall the

00:19:33.520 other day but um can i read you something from a little while ago that the city put out when it

00:19:40.080 comes to rain i'm gonna throw on my glasses here and read this direct it city council said that

00:19:46.480 they need to start planning uh and developing new programs for future disaster mitigation including

00:19:52.160 urban flooding that reflect the reality of climate change and include investments for municipal water

00:19:58.560 and sewer infrastructure that can mitigate the risks uh from future storm events that are

00:20:03.920 anticipated to increase both in frequency and severity andrew that was written in a report for

00:20:10.720 the july 2013 flood and it was published september 2013. so that's 11 years ago and where did the

00:20:19.920 city flood on tuesday in exactly the same places and just to give you one more tidbit we had 70

00:20:27.920 percent of the rain that they had back in 2013. it's almost 140 millimeters back in 2013 we didn't

00:20:35.600 even crack 100 millimeters parts of the city got close about 98 millimeters so about three to three

00:20:42.880 and a half inches but most of the city didn't get that and we still saw that massive flooding so

00:20:49.760 if you're going to invoke climate change then show the courage of your convictions and actually do

00:20:54.480 something but instead politicians whether it's justin trudeau or olivia chow they just want to

00:20:59.680 use climate change like a get out of jail free card in monopoly yeah and you mentioned i mean

00:21:05.280 the obvious point to some but i don't think it gets enough discussion which is that they invest

00:21:09.440 in and they spend i use their language for a moment it's not investing they spend they spend

00:21:13.840 money on all the things that don't matter i mean they spend money on bike lanes which in a lot of

00:21:19.120 ways yes there's a place for them but nowhere near the extent to which they're looked at and

00:21:23.040 you certainly see that in you know calgary and edmonton when those cities you know which you

00:21:26.400 can ride your bike in you know three days a year basically uh do it but in toronto it's like yeah

00:21:30.640 we've got all these bike lanes but we don't have enough uh maintenance for water uh water downpours

00:21:36.960 so olivia chow said that the city is something like 26 billion uh in the hole for infrastructure

00:21:43.440 over the next 10 years that's 2.6 billion a year that on average um so well why why aren't you

00:21:52.720 putting the money into that instead we're renaming young dundas square to sankofa a word that means

00:21:59.760 nothing to most torontonians we had to all look it up and ask what it means and then find out there

00:22:05.120 was a bizarre story behind it they've just approved another 100 kilometers of bike lanes

00:22:11.840 now if you're in the downtown core like i am some of these bike lanes get used heavily

00:22:16.640 and you know sometimes i use them i walk i cycle i take the subway i drive i you know whatever mode

00:22:22.720 of transport works for me that's what i use but there are parts of the city where they're going

00:22:27.520 to be expanding the bike tracks in ways that make no sense because the traffic isn't there

00:22:33.840 they're trying to induce demand they tell us we can't build more roads because it'll cause more

00:22:38.800 people to drive but they're building more bike tracks for the same reason they want more people

00:22:44.160 on bikes they want more people out of their cars okay fine that's a nice to have when your sewer

00:22:51.840 infrastructure does not work and can't handle i mean they're talking about this as a once in a

00:22:57.760 century storm it's not a once in a century storm it's not even close to that it's a heavy day of

00:23:04.240 rain that was preceded by several other days of medium, mild to medium rain. Our city infrastructure

00:23:12.240 should be able to handle that. And if you keep saying climate change is real, like Olivia Chow

00:23:17.500 kept saying this, climate change is real, we have to mitigate it. Okay, part of your mitigation

00:23:22.060 measures is making sure that your sewers can work, but they're not doing that. It's beyond

00:23:28.400 frustrating that most of the media is letting her get away with this uh i said it on tuesday

00:23:34.720 afternoon we can't let her get away with this and so far everybody has they're just oh yeah climate

00:23:39.840 change okay well then what are you going to do about it well and it's also i mean we're a country

00:23:46.960 and toronto is no exception to this that gets a lot of snow and and when that snow melts there is

00:23:51.680 a lot of water and sometimes and sometimes there is the no pun intended perfect storm that comes

00:23:56.480 down so the idea that this is not something we should be prepared for is just absolutely the

00:24:02.160 most unconvincing argument ever absolutely and as far as being prepared for it look we have an

00:24:08.800 emergency operations center in the city of toronto that was stood up early tuesday morning and we

00:24:16.240 still had the dvp flood if you're not from toronto you don't live here it's a major highway that runs

00:24:23.040 into the city the city could have and should have shut it down early it runs next to the

00:24:28.400 dawn river which flooded and it flooded over the dawn valley parkway turned it into the

00:24:33.920 dawn valley seaway they should have had that shut down earlier and the fact that they didn't

00:24:41.120 was poor management and i know that true north clipped some of the same things that i did from

00:24:47.440 mayor chow's scrum she came out and was completely unprepared so between the emergency management

00:24:53.440 center not uh getting this right and shutting down highways and roads that were completely flooded

00:24:59.440 before cars ended up in them before we needed to rescue a dozen drivers um that should have

00:25:05.280 happened but it didn't do to bad management chow came out and couldn't answer basic questions why

00:25:10.880 bad management either she did not ask the questions that needed to be asked that she knew

00:25:15.440 journalists would be asking like why wasn't it closed earlier i don't know which other roads are

00:25:20.800 closed ones near rivers these were horrific answers that you know i've shown it to political

00:25:26.320 staffers across the spectrum because they they said no way no she didn't say that and send them

00:25:31.840 the clip and they all have the same reaction oh my goodness how did she go out to speak like that

00:25:37.120 you know we can all clap about or clap back at the the boys in the short pants or the the kids that

00:25:43.360 that brief politicians, but they're there for a reason. And that's to make sure that they have

00:25:48.960 the information to share with the public. Chow didn't ask for it. Her staff didn't give it to

00:25:53.820 her. She looks foolish. The whole city looks foolish. And in the meantime, once we're through

00:25:59.340 it all, she just says, climate change, get us jail free. I don't need to put money into things that

00:26:04.980 are beneath the ground that people can't see. I can invest in shiny new things that will get me

00:26:10.180 votes and unfortunately that's what politicians do across the country and she's also going to try and

00:26:15.380 you you mentioned the big parking uh do you know why she's doing that why because she wants a rain

00:26:23.860 tax oh is that so it is that yeah because they they they walked back on that one a couple of

00:26:28.580 months back when there was so much incredible pushback but that you don't think that's dead

00:26:32.180 forever no i don't um look the rain tax exists in many municipalities it might surprise you where it

00:26:38.100 does just in and around here i believe it's kitchener mississauga orillia or just a few

00:26:44.420 but my colleague warren kinsella he wrote on it back in march we put her on the front page of

00:26:49.940 the toronto sun i believe we had her in a singing in the rain pose and a yellow slicker and i love

00:26:55.780 the god bless the toronto sun we have fun but you know we talked about it as a serious issue and it

00:27:01.060 is the rain tax is something that every progressive politician that i've covered for the last two to

00:27:07.380 three decades i've been at this about 25 years what doesn't matter where i've covered city hall

00:27:12.580 at some point someone tries to push for a rain tax and it's like a carbon tax they say it's for

00:27:17.700 a specific environmental cause it just goes in general revenues it's like the people that say oh

00:27:22.740 we need to improve the taxes to improve the roads it just goes in general revenues and they spend it

00:27:28.340 on whatever they want the roads aren't better uh the temperature doesn't go down the rain doesn't

00:27:33.300 stop falling you know you know this they want to tax you for every square inch of your roof your

00:27:40.660 deck your patio stones your walkway up to your door your driveway that's what they want to do

00:27:47.460 and it's all just another way another revenue tool as kathleen wynne used to say in the hallowed halls

00:27:53.780 of queen's park where i'm sitting now it's a revenue tool that's all it is yeah it'll have

00:27:59.540 i mean toronto it's talk about the great city rural divide because torontonians are just like

00:28:04.020 praying for drought because they'll save a few dollars whereas everyone in the real world

00:28:08.100 realizes how they need rain you just got to prepare for it brian lily always great reading

00:28:12.020 your stuff in the toronto sun including this piece of yours on the uh whole uh to do about

00:28:17.780 the flooding in toronto great stuff and thanks for coming on today thank you all right i wanted to

00:28:22.980 shift gears ever so slightly we'll be talking about the crazy virtue signaling environmental

00:28:27.220 policy again in just a couple of moments rearing its head in British Columbia but I wanted to talk

00:28:32.000 about something that took place south of the border but for whatever reason I kept me up at

00:28:37.640 night not all night it kept me up for a good 30 minutes or so but I was thinking about it a lot

00:28:41.800 and I had a spirited discussion with a friend of mine in an interview I did on her show in Australia

00:28:46.980 about this and she tended to disagree with my perspective which believe it or not some people

00:28:51.920 are allowed to do and you may have seen this video circulating in the wake of the attempted

00:28:56.760 assassination of Donald Trump. And it was a video of a man who filmed it confronting a cashier

00:29:04.200 at Home Depot in the United States. Take a look. Darcy Waldron. Yeah. Okay. From Cayuga.

00:29:12.480 And you think that the shooter should have been a better shot? Is that what you posted on Facebook?

00:29:18.720 I am at work. You think that the shooter should have been a shooter, huh? I am at work.

00:29:23.360 Yeah, I think that's pretty messed up. Pretty anti-American if you ask me. As a veteran, I'm disgusted. What have you provided to this country? Huh? I'm sorry. This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous. And I'm making you famous.

00:29:43.900 and he certainly did Home Depot responded as this video went viral amplified among other people by

00:29:52.680 libs of TikToks Home Depot said hi this individual's comments do not reflect the Home Depot or

00:29:57.820 our values we can confirm she no longer works at the Home Depot so the uh 10 that's the sense that

00:30:05.240 I get out of that is that she was terminated I I believe it's possible she quit but I think from

00:30:10.980 the context and the timing, she was probably fired. And just to put into perspective, this is

00:30:17.280 what she said. She said in her comment on Facebook, too bad they weren't a better shooter. He is the

00:30:24.700 definition of corrupt and evil, unquote. Now, I disagree with that. I think it's reprehensible to

00:30:30.700 wish violence upon a political opponent. I think you can believe that Donald Trump is corrupt and

00:30:35.420 evil if you'd like but wanting the shooter to have had better aim is to me entirely unacceptable

00:30:42.100 now I can believe that's unacceptable also believing that this woman has a right to live

00:30:47.240 in this world and has a right to have a low-paying job working as a cashier at Home Depot this wasn't

00:30:54.480 something she said at Home Depot this wasn't something she was saying in the lunchroom this

00:30:58.300 wasn't something she said on the floor she said something on Facebook and then some guy took a

00:31:04.740 camera to her, hunted her down, wanted to, quote, make her famous, unquote, and then got her fired.

00:31:14.360 He served his country, it sounds like. He was a veteran. I thank him for his service. But my

00:31:18.680 goodness, what a despicable asshole. People in this country and people around the world,

00:31:24.840 including in the United States, are struggling to get by. What point are you making by trying

00:31:30.880 to get someone fired from their job at a Home Depot. Now, to be fair, there are some jobs where

00:31:35.920 I think your perspective on this matters a great deal. True North reported on two university

00:31:40.400 professors that made comments I think were a bit concerning. Now, those are the ones that won't

00:31:44.340 lose their jobs, by the way. Those are the ones that have job security. But in that case, we're

00:31:48.380 talking about people in tremendously influential positions. And even so, my goal isn't to get them

00:31:53.540 fired. My goal is to have debates about this, to have discussions. Candace Owens, Sean mentioned,

00:31:59.480 And she was fired by the Daily Wire over a lot of her comments on, you know, Israel and stuff that she had said.

00:32:06.080 But again, even in that case, it's not about whether she deserves to lose her job for her opinions.

00:32:10.860 It's just in that case, she was exposing herself to be an idiot on a lot of things.

00:32:15.120 So Ben Shapiro said, maybe I don't want to put someone who has, you know, no intelligence up as some sort of first figure that we should be listening to.

00:32:22.760 And it's an editorial position.

00:32:24.360 Sean's just writing the show right now because he keeps making all these good points before I get to them.

00:32:27.800 But yes, he says she's a pundit and it's an editorial choice too.

00:32:31.880 But we're talking about consequence free speech versus free speech, which is this perennial divide you always hear about where, yes, you can speak your mind and you have consequences.

00:32:42.400 The First Amendment protected this woman from saying what she did on Facebook, but it didn't protect her from the consequences of it.

00:32:48.520 And as a libertarian, yes, I think that Home Depot has the right to do what it did.

00:32:52.880 The guy who filmed her, as much as I think he's an asshole, he had a right to do what he did.

00:32:57.380 she had a right to say what she did. So I'm not talking about the legal aspect here. I'm not

00:33:01.660 talking about what we should or shouldn't prohibit or allow as law because we need to prohibit

00:33:07.460 censorship itself and just allow free speech. I'm talking about the sensibility. I'm talking

00:33:13.680 about the mentality that people have when they engage on things like this. Because when people

00:33:19.620 go after the Home Depot cashier or the Starbucks barista or the person who's working the drive

00:33:25.180 through line at McDonald's or whatever. When you go after serving people in the service class,

00:33:30.220 the service class of labor, what you're saying is basically that there are some people that

00:33:34.180 should be banned from the workforce because of their opinions. There are some people that they

00:33:40.140 just believe things that are so wrong. They don't have a right to earn a minimum wage living. They

00:33:45.540 don't have a right to work. They don't have a right to do anything. And the implications of that

00:33:50.900 are very, very concerning for many reasons.

00:33:53.960 Number one is simply practical.

00:33:56.280 If you take people that already harbor unpopular views

00:33:58.780 and you marginalize them even further,

00:34:02.100 what are you gonna do?

00:34:02.660 You're gonna further radicalize them.

00:34:03.980 You're gonna further remove them from civil society.

00:34:07.540 The other part of this is that you have to look

00:34:09.700 at the context of all of these things.

00:34:11.700 There are a lot of folks in this country who dislike Trump.

00:34:14.360 There's a subset of those that don't have the wherewithal

00:34:16.360 to realize maybe you shouldn't wish death on him.

00:34:19.260 These people exist.

00:34:20.320 the answer to the left's cancel culture

00:34:23.300 and make no mistake

00:34:24.120 cancel culture has been an instrument

00:34:26.100 and a tool of the left for many years

00:34:27.660 the answer is not to lower yourself to their level

00:34:30.920 the answer is not to turn around

00:34:33.420 and try to weaponize cancel culture

00:34:35.460 against those same people

00:34:36.860 because in the end who wins?

00:34:38.720 no one

00:34:39.340 we all lose

00:34:40.940 now I've been through the cancel culture mob before

00:34:45.080 now I've come out on the other side of it

00:34:46.660 but it hasn't been without pain

00:34:48.000 it hasn't been without difficulty

00:34:50.420 But I make a point, having gone through that experience,

00:34:53.580 when I've seen people that have been targeted by the mob,

00:34:55.620 and I'm actually trying to reach out to this woman

00:34:57.420 because I do feel for her,

00:34:58.580 even if I would probably disagree with her

00:35:00.540 on anything and everything.

00:35:01.940 I've reached out to people and I've said,

00:35:03.940 listen, I'm sorry for what you're going through.

00:35:05.400 No matter what it is, it doesn't matter what you said.

00:35:07.780 I'm sorry because I know it's difficult.

00:35:09.940 And there are some people that don't want to hear from me

00:35:12.760 because they still believe, no, no, no, I'm better than you.

00:35:15.780 But the whole point with cancel culture

00:35:17.540 is that everyone loses.

00:35:18.560 It is an absolute race to the bottom.

00:35:21.640 And what I'm asking people here is not that you like everyone.

00:35:24.620 I'm not even asking that you respect everyone.

00:35:26.700 I'm just asking that you understand there are people that inhabit the world alongside

00:35:31.260 you that you're not going to like and you're not going to get along with.

00:35:34.640 And if we want to be better and if we want to fight against cancel culture, we can't

00:35:38.740 be the ones that decide to take it up and use our own version of it, meet out our own

00:35:42.940 consequences and penalties to the people that we've decided should be marginal because of

00:35:47.860 their views.

00:35:48.420 I do not at all agree or respect with what this woman said, but my goodness, am I so sorry for what she has been targeted with and something that will carry her and haunt her for many, many years, I suspect, just because some guy with a grudge wanted to get his pound of flesh from someone who in his life was a nobody who he hadn't heard of before and who he will forget about probably in three or five days.

00:36:12.040 I got that off my chest.

00:36:13.400 I wanted to get back to the politics here

00:36:15.320 because there was in British Columbia

00:36:17.500 a furthering of what's become the norm now in politics,

00:36:21.180 which is the war on plastic.

00:36:23.160 Now, I spoke about this a few weeks back on this show

00:36:25.840 and we talked about why the government

00:36:27.140 was just so scientifically wrong

00:36:28.980 to view plastic as a toxin,

00:36:31.560 but that is effectively what it's committed to doing

00:36:33.560 at the federal level.

00:36:34.780 The Supreme Court will ultimately get to weigh in

00:36:37.280 on whether the government's plastics ban is appropriate,

00:36:40.640 but British Columbia has decided to go out on its own here and ban plastic and styrofoam takeout

00:36:47.680 containers. So if you want to go and pick up whatever you like from takeout in British Columbia,

00:36:53.220 you want to go and get something from the Cactus Club, they cannot give it to you in a styrofoam

00:36:58.600 or plastic container. So what does that leave you? What does that leave you? It'll leave you

00:37:03.220 paper, I guess. So if you order paper, you're going to hopefully not have soup that will just

00:37:08.440 melt through it before you get home. There are some very expensive

00:37:11.400 alternatives that have come out that are made through biodegradable materials.

00:37:15.080 But even then we're talking about a war on plastics here.

00:37:18.840 And what do people do with a lot of these containers? They reuse them.

00:37:21.880 But that's no longer allowed. Joining me on the line now

00:37:25.560 is our good friend Catherine Swift. Catherine good to have you on the show.

00:37:29.240 Thanks for coming on today. Nice to see you as always Andrew.

00:37:33.320 So we've talked on the show in the past actually you and I have spoken about it

00:37:36.680 about why they're just so profoundly wrong these mandates but there there is a huge cost aspect to

00:37:42.840 this as well because the plastic alternatives are either ineffective when you look at paper-based

00:37:48.200 products or they're incredibly expensive like some of these more environmentally friendly ones and

00:37:53.720 for small businesses especially in the food service industry this is not insignificant

00:37:59.480 oh and it's also excuse me it's also inflationary obviously because the

00:38:03.880 when the you know the the margins in some of these business in fact most of these businesses are

00:38:08.440 incredibly slim they can't absorb a big increase in the cost of containers so that gets passed on

00:38:13.800 to the consumer so it's also an inflationary policy and what gets me is that if you actually

00:38:19.080 look at the these alternatives they're often worse for the environment than the plastics are

00:38:24.360 there is a good solution here the plastics industry in canada has actually been very

00:38:28.760 innovative and productive in putting forward solutions for starters we have a lot more

00:38:34.440 I guess calling it biodegradable plastics might sound like an oxymoron but there are products

00:38:39.560 that are biodegradable and look very some of them aren't really plastic but they look a lot like

00:38:44.280 plastic and they perform the functions pretty much equally as well as plastic and a lot as you say

00:38:50.440 as well the whole legal environment is up in the air right now we had a federal court decide

00:38:56.360 uh steven guibo and his plastics are toxic uh notion was not scientific it had no basis in

00:39:02.840 reality or science or fact and so they they overturned that decision so right now we're

00:39:08.200 kind of in limbo guibo has said he'll appeal it but he hasn't done it yet and as we know the courts

00:39:13.240 don't tend to move very quickly in this country and we're likely to have an election at least in

00:39:16.920 the next 14 months or so please uh let's have one um but so i i really wonder i guess bc bc's also

00:39:24.920 coming up for an election. And I was noticing in some of the background I read on this issue,

00:39:29.240 they seem to feel they have strong support out on the left coast there for the plastics band.

00:39:36.180 So I would suspect this is purely politically motivated. They want to look like they're

00:39:39.800 doing something before the election. But again, when you actually look at the facts,

00:39:45.780 definitely higher cost, definitely less effective, because I've seen some of these paper containers

00:39:51.940 and you get them home and they're like mush, you know,

00:39:54.440 and like you say, you hope you're not wearing your dinner

00:39:56.320 instead of eating it.

00:39:57.640 But also, when you actually do the research on them,

00:40:01.560 they're actually often worse for the environment.

00:40:03.820 So a lot of this is tokenism, as you say, virtue signaling.

00:40:07.540 And what worries me in particular,

00:40:09.340 and again, we'll have to dig into it a wee bit more,

00:40:11.300 but what worries me in particular about this BC's plans

00:40:15.880 is apparently their next step is things like plastic film,

00:40:20.140 like what you see a lot of your food in.

00:40:21.940 and plastic containers like styrofoam and some other plastic versions that contain meat and

00:40:28.420 things like that. When you get into replacing these things, you're getting into unsanitary food

00:40:34.260 because these items are incredibly effective. They keep things clean. They keep our food clean

00:40:40.020 and fresh. They often are good for the environment because if you have stuff that stays

00:40:45.140 fresh or longer, you don't throw them out. You're not wasting anywhere near as much food.

00:40:49.620 so i think that next step could be even worse in a number of ways and even stupider frankly uh for

00:40:55.940 the environment so i think we got a lot of virtue signaling going on here we've got also this

00:40:59.860 unsettled legal environment where we don't know a if it's going to be appealed uh and and if so

00:41:05.940 then this could change dramatically so why they're doing it now i think it's all the upcoming bc

00:41:10.260 election and interestingly enough we've seen in other jurisdictions with various bands such as

00:41:16.660 Calgary that even environmentally friendly reusable alternatives are captured by the ban. There was a

00:41:22.420 case in Calgary where a store decided to have its own reusable bag and it was told no no no because

00:41:27.780 of the plastic bag ban you can't do this and in Cal and at BC I was looking at this and it sounds

00:41:32.820 like their ban is even going to capture some compostable plastics and biodegradable plastics

00:41:38.980 so they're doing the same thing which is that even some products that have been made specifically to

00:41:42.580 avoid the purported issues with plastics are still being banned anyway yeah no and this is what i was

00:41:48.820 alluding to earlier we have yeah we have a very innovative industry in canada that they're coming

00:41:53.160 up with good stuff all the time that that recycles a lot of plastics are almost infinitely recyclable

00:41:59.020 as well if we had some better recycling systems we'd have much less of an issue with plastics in

00:42:04.360 general uh going into waste and that's somebody's behavior that's not necessarily banning or

00:42:09.260 whatever. That's people's behavior that has to change, but also to make it easier for people

00:42:14.060 by, you know, by making these processes of recycling and so on a lot more transparent,

00:42:18.980 a lot more convenient and so on. But you're absolutely right. I know for me, my kids laugh

00:42:25.020 at me because I call myself the container queen. Whenever I see a container, I, oh, I love that

00:42:30.620 container. I'm going to keep it for, and I recycle them myself multiple, multiple, multiple times

00:42:35.960 until they virtually fall apart.

00:42:37.700 And I know an awful lot of people that do the same thing.

00:42:40.480 So the innovativeness of the industry

00:42:43.180 is not being acknowledged and accepted.

00:42:44.960 And I know the story of Matt Calgett was a food co-op

00:42:48.040 and they had these very innovative Canadian product

00:42:51.240 that could be used around the world,

00:42:53.520 successfully have a great export industry.

00:42:55.660 You know, there's all kinds of pluses

00:42:56.900 that could be made of this.

00:42:58.500 And yet instead the government chooses this,

00:43:00.540 you know, this dull weapon of bans

00:43:04.760 instead of refining it, looking at positive solutions

00:43:08.120 and often making things worse.

00:43:10.620 And that's the part that kills me.

00:43:12.180 A lot of these alternatives end up being worse

00:43:14.440 and it squelches, you know,

00:43:16.080 our industry is very important in Canada.

00:43:18.320 Our plastics industry, it employs a lot of people.

00:43:21.160 It again produces a lot of taxes for government

00:43:23.480 as all industries do and so on.

00:43:25.800 So I think to have a lot more confidence in them

00:43:28.220 to produce some innovative products

00:43:29.760 that help to solve the problem

00:43:31.380 rather than these bans that cost us all

00:43:34.440 often worse and are not based in science. I have to ask you, Catherine, you and your group

00:43:41.880 notwithstanding, where is the industry on this? And just as a bit of context, when this topic

00:43:46.560 arose a while back, I tried to get one of the head of the big plastics advocacy group in the

00:43:52.360 country on the show and originally was like, yeah, let's set it up. And then eventually,

00:43:56.140 oh, we have to cancel and nothing back. And I suspect they didn't want to talk to quote unquote

00:44:00.980 conservative media and i've had similar issues with some of the heads of oil and some of the

00:44:05.220 major oil and gas companies and i i have to wonder that because small and medium businesses and

00:44:09.860 certainly your organization have been spoken up but a lot of the big players in this seem to just

00:44:14.100 be taking it yeah this is not uncommon though andrew in all industries it's not unique to plastics

00:44:20.420 we find the big guys typically don't want to rock the boat they want to go along to get along and

00:44:25.380 that's foolish to my way of thinking because they're basically betraying their members they're

00:44:30.020 not sticking up for the truth and the facts in their industry we have a number of plastics

00:44:34.580 manufacturers in our membership and i've spoken extensively to them i've learned a lot more about

00:44:38.580 plastics than i knew a couple of years ago i'll tell you that much uh and and they're there they

00:44:43.460 have a very simple kind of motto and they say plastics belong in the economy but not in the

00:44:49.220 environment and that is when you get to more innovative solutions with better products that

00:44:54.180 degrade in a landfill or you know fulfill uh the environmental imperative a lot better uh but also

00:45:01.460 the whole recycling thing we don't recycle very well and as i mentioned earlier plastics are

00:45:06.500 eminently recyclable and often almost infinitely so and they're so innovative again it's it's

00:45:13.060 plastics under the you can't look around the room you're in right now and not see a hundred things

00:45:17.620 that have plastic in them and and it has it has revolutionized our medical system when are they

00:45:22.980 going to start to say we're going to replace uh some something we're going to put in your body

00:45:27.380 uh which plastics is the perfect answer for because again it's it's hygienic it's uh it's uh

00:45:33.300 durable low cost you know all that good stuff plastics have been revolutionary and positive

00:45:39.220 on balance for our economy and of course there's some negatives as there is with anything but we

00:45:43.460 can do a lot better having practical solutions not these you know uh blunt instrument bands

00:45:48.980 that do a lot more harm than good. Catherine Swift, President of the Coalition of Concerned

00:45:54.340 Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada. I'm sorry I missed your big flagship dinner a couple of

00:45:58.980 weeks back. I was out of town, but I heard it went well, and always good to talk to you, Catherine.

00:46:03.220 You too, Andrew. Bye. All right, thanks very much. That does it for us. We will be back next week with

00:46:08.740 more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, and I have to say, I forgot to mention earlier, I'm sorry

00:46:12.180 I missed yesterday. I was away Tuesday, and I had no voice yesterday, and it seems to have come back

00:46:17.700 enough that I could manage through this. So I'm glad that happened. Glad you stuck with me. We

00:46:22.280 will talk to you all next week, but have a good weekend, everyone. Thank you. God bless and good

00:46:26.980 day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to

00:46:32.520 True North at www.tnc.news.

00:46:47.700 We'll be right back.

00:47:17.700 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 18, 2024

Trudeau stealing Poilievre's housing policy

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