Juno News - Trudeau tells Liberal MPs not to worry because everything is fine

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

00:01:19.640 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lawton show

00:01:29.820 on this monday april 29th 2024 hope you are having a wonderful start to the week so far i saw some of

00:01:37.540 you not a huge number it was a smaller gathering by design at the civitas conference in vancouver

00:01:44.320 over uh the why i shouldn't say over the weekend it was on well i guess it was friday saturday so

00:01:48.320 I guess that was pretty much over the weekend. But that was done with the very, very great work

00:01:54.340 by my colleague, Lindsay Shepard, who put her organizational prowess to the test and I think

00:01:59.400 passed the test with room to spare. So that was a lot of fun. And one of the things that was

00:02:04.940 interesting about it is I was able to speak to a couple of the people that were involved in

00:02:10.220 politics that I interviewed when I was writing this bad boy right here, which I've got to do

00:02:14.380 the shameless plug on. It comes out in exactly one month, less a day. Pierre Polyev, A Political

00:02:20.660 Life. It is a book-length biography of the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, who, again,

00:02:26.800 things can change in the next year and four months. But at this point, the polls are showing

00:02:32.140 is likely to be the next Prime Minister of Canada. Now, one of the things that I, there was an old

00:02:36.760 joke. I forget who did it. It was in an American context, but it was, you know, if the election

00:02:41.000 were held today, voters would be confused because that's not when it's supposed to be.

00:02:45.080 Something to that effect. So if the election were held today, you can't necessarily extrapolate or

00:02:49.320 project forward. But if the election were held today, the Conservatives would be on track. Let

00:02:55.080 me pull up the latest projections here. Most likely to bring in 211 seats. That is about 40

00:03:01.600 seats more than they need for a majority. The Liberals will be down to 67. The Bloc Québécois

00:03:07.460 at 39, the NDP at 24, and the Green Party with their lowly two seats. Those are the latest

00:03:14.320 projections courtesy of 338 Canada, which has a pretty good batting average on this. I mean,

00:03:19.420 pollsters always, you have to take their projections and forecasts with a bit of a grain of

00:03:23.920 salt. But all of this is a lead into this fascinating story in the Hilltimes that I

00:03:28.600 wanted to get to here. The Hilltimes has gotten a Liberal Member of Parliament who's leaked the

00:03:34.640 details of this caucus meeting that Liberal MPs had with Justin Trudeau. And he's telling them

00:03:41.460 not to worry. No, no, no, don't panic. Everything's going to be fine. You can't expect a dramatic

00:03:46.740 boost in public support until next year. So yeah, don't look at the polls this year. You've got to

00:03:52.220 wait until next year. That's when we're going to get them. And this is what the Liberal MP,

00:03:56.740 and not named, but this is what they are quoted as saying to the Hilltimes. Don't expect us to

00:04:02.060 be neck and neck in two months or six months time even. Instead, Trudeau is downplaying

00:04:08.040 expectations. It's like treading water when you're drowning. He was telling us to not freak out while

00:04:14.000 you're drowning, that you stay calm and you can get back to the top for a lot of the members who

00:04:19.020 are below water. So this is this MP who is clearly not too thrilled with what Trudeau was telling

00:04:24.120 them, trying to paraphrase it. But effectively, what this MP is saying that Justin Trudeau was

00:04:28.940 telling his caucus members, okay, I know it sucks now. I know it's going to suck in a couple of 0.95

00:04:34.020 months. It's going to suck in six months, but wait until 2025. He's basically that friend that we all 0.84

00:04:39.520 have when everything's going wrong that says, guys, guys, wait, I have a plan. I have a plan.

00:04:43.340 And everyone around is kind of wondering if I think that the plan is probably going to be worse

00:04:48.840 than what you've been doing up until this point. Because again, when you have been at the helm

00:04:53.080 for eight years as it is. It doesn't matter what your plan for the future is. You've already been

00:04:59.240 the one who created this mess. Now, what's interesting is the Hilltimes went to the PMO.

00:05:03.660 They went to Justin Trudeau's office and said, why were you telling MPs not to expect any uptick

00:05:10.540 in support over the next year? And this is the statement they got from the Prime Minister's

00:05:16.180 Press Secretary. The priority of our government is ensuring fairness for every generation of

00:05:22.440 Canadian. The government is focused on building more homes, making life more affordable, and

00:05:28.200 growing our economy. So I wasn't even hearing like a remote attempt at an answer to the question

00:05:36.200 that was asked. It's about fairness for every generation. They're still doing the, every time

00:05:40.940 they say generational fairness, you have to take a drink. You'll be passed out drunk by, you know,

00:05:45.200 9.30 a.m. on a Monday. But you know what? That is the rule that Justin Trudeau and Christia Freeland

00:05:50.160 and all have put out here. Now, the polling, interestingly enough, is showing that Canadians

00:05:55.320 are not going on board with the budget. They're not going along with the spending, even the capital

00:06:00.260 gains tax, which the Liberals thought would be really good at driving that wedge against the

00:06:04.880 so-called wealthy, the 1%, all of that. Even the capital gains tax hasn't really attracted the

00:06:10.800 level of support that the Liberals want. 74% of Canadians polled in an innovative research study

00:06:17.200 done the other day, said the budget will have a negative impact on the economy. 74%, 16% say it'll

00:06:24.920 be positive. So when you put out your flagship budget that you think is going to be the piece

00:06:29.840 of legislation that will turn around your flagging fortunes, and you get 16% of people in the country

00:06:36.500 to say, yeah, I think that'll make things better, you have got a massive, massive problem on your

00:06:42.560 hands. The Conservatives are on track to receive well over 40% of the vote. And this is distributed

00:06:48.580 across the country. This isn't just in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Upper BC. This is in parts of the

00:06:55.760 country that the Conservatives will need if they're going to have a majority. Now look,

00:06:59.880 the Conservatives have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the past. The 2019 election

00:07:04.360 was a winnable one. This was the Justin Trudeau blackface election. The 2021 election was a 0.91

00:07:11.180 winnable one. This was the so-called unnecessary election. So yes, conservatives could absolutely

00:07:16.720 bungle this, but if they have the right team of candidates, if the leader stays on track and stays

00:07:22.320 on message, that part is especially critical, then we are able to, I think, turn things around a

00:07:28.660 little bit. But what's fascinating about all of this is how unwilling Justin Trudeau is to look

00:07:34.740 in the mirror. And I am not in the business of giving liberal members of parliament advice,

00:07:39.740 And I should say they're not in the business of listening, even if I were to.

00:07:43.240 But liberal MPs have a tool in their toolbox that we never hear discussed.

00:07:47.940 They could give Justin Trudeau the old Aaron O'Toole.

00:07:50.380 They could give him the bum's rush out of caucus. 0.95

00:07:52.420 They have something called the Reform Act.

00:07:54.380 As MPs, they are able to initiate a vote on Justin Trudeau's leadership,

00:07:59.600 and they could have him out the door in one single caucus meeting.

00:08:03.780 They could have a letter on a Monday or a Tuesday.

00:08:06.780 they could send the letter if it was signed by, I forget the threshold, but a certain number of

00:08:10.860 MPs, then they could put this to a vote at a caucus meeting. And Justin Trudeau could literally

00:08:15.580 be out the door as leader in nothing flat. But they're not doing that. They're not doing that.

00:08:22.780 And I wonder how long liberal MPs are going to sit down and accept what Justin Trudeau is telling

00:08:28.340 them here, which is, no, no, I have a plan. We're going to turn it around. It's going to work out

00:08:32.620 great. Don't you worry, guys. It's all going to be fine. Obviously, the MP that leaked the details

00:08:37.760 of this caucus meeting to the Hilltimes wasn't satisfied. We know there have been a couple of

00:08:42.020 other little ones that we are going to see here as well. But what's fascinating to me,

00:08:49.920 fascinating to me in all of this is that we have not seen more liberals just for self-preservation

00:08:56.200 alone, for self-preservation alone, say, you know what? We want to lengthen our careers.

00:09:05.120 We want to lengthen the time that we have around here. Some of them may have just thrown in the

00:09:09.520 towel and they say, look, we know we're not going to win again. We know we're done. Let's just ride

00:09:12.780 this out until the bitter end. Other ones though are not so easily hoodwinked, you'd think. There

00:09:19.400 are some MPs. Let me just go back to those 338 projections for a moment. Liberals could go to

00:09:24.600 67 seats. Now there's a range there, anywhere from 50 to 94, but 67 is kind of the sweet spot right

00:09:31.160 now that the 338 projections are saying. So if you're one of those 67 and you want to make sure

00:09:37.580 you get reelected, you need a liberal party that's going to put its best foot forward.

00:09:42.980 And I've always maintained that Justin Trudeau's biggest threat is going to come not from Canadian

00:09:47.880 voters, but from his own caucus. That was my theory. I've started softening on the theory a

00:09:52.700 little bit because there has been no movement in that caucus. But my goodness, for just their own

00:09:58.740 survival, the liberals need to get rid of this guy. Now, that would probably not be what Pierre

00:10:03.820 Polyev wants. If you're Pierre Polyev and the conservative team, you're probably champing at

00:10:08.240 the bit to get a liberal led by Justin Trudeau, a liberal party led by Trudeau, because then you

00:10:14.860 can be the change party. You can be the anti-Trudeau when clearly this guy is not resonating.

00:10:20.180 If you caught my show last week, I was talking about how hilarious it is that Justin Trudeau

00:10:24.620 thinks the problem is that Canadians haven't heard from him enough. So he's been going on

00:10:28.760 this podcast tour. He was doing the podcast with Vox last week. He did one with Freakonomics.

00:10:35.360 I should have actually pulled something in his interview with them that I found hilarious. He

00:10:43.360 called himself a social activist a social activist this is what he said the exact quote here i'm

00:10:52.400 ultimately a social activist who's going to look to how i can have a positive impact on the world

00:11:00.400 you are the prime minister of canada you are the head of government of this country

00:11:04.160 you have won three elections you've had a tremendous opportunity to put whatever change

00:11:08.800 in place that you want and he is still trying to say oh i'm just this left-wing progressive activist

00:11:13.920 type which i mean look maybe you want to say he is but the thing about activists is that activists

00:11:18.720 are not actor i mean he's an actor in the the sense of you know drama teacher but uh the thing

00:11:23.760 about him is that he is in a position where he could be actioning things that he wants and the

00:11:29.040 progressives i think were fed up with him even before people on the right were because the

00:11:33.040 progressives had such high hopes for him that he didn't deliver on it's like okay he gets in

00:11:37.360 he legalized his pot. Everything else just kind of goes by the wayside. He hasn't reconciled with

00:11:42.000 Indigenous people. He hasn't fixed gender inequality. He hasn't done all of this. It's

00:11:46.020 just been window dressing, and people have absolutely tired of it. Now, I do want to do,

00:11:50.940 just before we move on to our next guest here, I want to do a little bit of an I told you so

00:11:56.080 moment. So last weekend, this past weekend, Vashi Kapelos on CTV did a sit-down interview

00:12:03.440 with, or sorry, she did a, she's CTV, yeah, I think she's CTV, sorry, I mixed it up.

00:12:08.700 She did a sit-down interview with the president of Poland, and she asked a question that I think

00:12:14.380 is a very well-suited one for leaders of European nations. This is that clip.

00:12:19.620 I want to ask you a bit about your visit specifically here to Canada. You mentioned

00:12:22.640 defense spending. I'll get to that in a moment. You're here at an energy conference, and I have

00:12:27.720 spoken to a number of other European leaders in the past few months about Canadian energy in

00:12:32.540 particular and efforts underway in Europe to wean itself off of any kind of

00:12:36.800 dependence on Russia. Poland has been largely successful in that so far. I'm

00:12:40.820 wondering though when it comes to in particular liquefied natural gas, if that

00:12:44.360 is a Canadian product Poland is interested in? Of course, yes. If only 0.91

00:12:51.860 Canada is ready to supply its energy gas to Poland, we have got our energy

00:12:57.680 terminal in Świnoujštje right now. It has got reloading capacities. We're extending them. We

00:13:03.480 are extending the terminal and we also have plans to set up another LNG terminal in the part of

00:13:11.420 Gdańsk. If Canada offered its LNG to us and if this gas could be bought attractively at attractive

00:13:21.140 prices, well, we have been receiving gas from US companies. We have been receiving gas also from

00:13:26.500 Qatar. In the same way, we would be ready to negotiate, to talk and to accept Canadian gas

00:13:33.380 as well. Even more so that there is an investment connected with one of the LNG terminals on the

00:13:40.000 eastern coast of Canada. And there is our PKA Arlen, our concern, our company participating in

00:13:46.800 that. So he's saying there, oh, absolutely. Yeah, we love Canadian LNG. We'd like to buy it right

00:13:53.600 now we have to get some from the US but also some from Qatar we'd rather buy from Canada let's get a

00:13:58.440 good market price if only the Canadian government were willing to offer it and this is a great

00:14:03.180 question it was a phenomenal answer not all that a surprising answer energy independence and energy

00:14:08.440 security are crucial in Europe countries that don't want to have to be reliant on Russian oil

00:14:14.440 and gas will be able to buy from elsewhere if only elsewhere is willing to sell it so Justin

00:14:20.580 Trudeau, he's the guy that gets up there and says, oh, there's no business case. But why I found that

00:14:25.280 interview with the Polish, the head of Poland so fascinating is because I had said something two 0.77

00:14:31.020 weeks ago at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference that proved eerily prescient.

00:14:36.960 I must say, I've been quite surprised that Justin Trudeau keeps inviting European heads of

00:14:42.680 government and state here, because every time they come, they all do an interview with, you know,

00:14:46.880 Vashy Kapelos or something and say, oh, I'd love to buy LNG. And then Justin Trudeau has to come

00:14:50.740 out and say, oh, there's no business case. Am I right or am I right? I even got the interviewer

00:14:57.320 right. I said, oh yeah, every time the European heads of state come, it's Vashy Kapelos they sit

00:15:01.260 down with and say they want to buy Canadian LNG. And not two weeks later, here we have

00:15:05.620 the Polish president coming. And he's the president, right? Not the prime minister.

00:15:11.120 I get them mixed up in these new fandangled republics and all of that. The constitutional

00:15:16.260 monarchy is the right one. He is the president. But the fascinating thing is this is literally

00:15:22.540 happening. Every time one of these European heads of government or heads of state comes here,

00:15:27.480 they're asked the very obvious, very sensible question. They give the obvious, sensible answer.

00:15:31.800 And in the end, we are all forced to deal with the fact that Canada is the one putting barriers

00:15:36.820 and roadblocks here. I want to shift gears to an entirely different topic. You may have seen

00:15:42.140 in Montreal that the very worst of American academia has been imported to Canada in the 0.82

00:15:49.160 sense that there is now an encampment at McGill University in Montreal that is inhabited and

00:15:55.220 occupied by these anti-Israel protesters that are making all sorts of demands, among others,

00:16:01.160 that the university divests its endowment funds from anything connected to Israel, that it severs

00:16:06.600 ties as a school with Israeli enterprise. And we've also heard reports of very anti-Semitic

00:16:12.620 rhetoric and statements, students being harassed for no other reason than their Jewish identity

00:16:18.140 and in the values that a lot of Jews, most Jews have of supporting the state of Israel's right

00:16:25.020 to exist. And what was fascinating about this is that McGill has kind of just said, oh, well,

00:16:30.300 oh, I don't know, all shocks. They've given very little in the way of any sort of pushback as we

00:16:36.180 have an encampment that is now entrenching itself and will soon I suspect balloon to other campuses

00:16:41.760 Barbara Kay is a columnist with the National Post and the Epoch Times and actually got to see her

00:16:46.520 over the weekend briefly at the Civitas conference Barbara always lovely to see you thanks so much

00:16:51.880 for coming on today a pleasure a pleasure Andrew oh we uh you're muted there oh perfect I got your

00:16:58.120 audio now let me ask you Barbara first off about whether you're surprised by this I mean you've

00:17:02.940 lived in montreal for i don't know about all your life but certainly for many years and you've seen

00:17:07.420 what's happened since october 7th was this unexpected at mcgill no not at all because

00:17:14.140 uh this is kind of like a meme right now uh in fact i can't believe there would be a university

00:17:19.740 campus um anywhere in north america that would consider itself uh respectable if it didn't have

00:17:26.700 something like this going on an encampment uh because that's what uh that's what is done to

00:17:31.420 show what a great social activist you are and especially uh it would be especially uh

00:17:37.820 anticipated at universities where there's a large jewish presence as there is at mcgill so

00:17:42.940 no it doesn't surprise me at all how about mcgill's response to this because they've basically

00:17:50.060 in a lot of ways it looks like they've washed their hands of it and we had uh students that

00:17:54.140 were sent out through the student association which is supposed to be i don't know advocating

00:17:58.460 on things like tuition fees instead send out students the death toll in Gaza, which based on

00:18:04.860 very, very sketchy numbers from the Gazan Health Authority, there we go, just basically pinning

00:18:10.780 the deaths of 31,000 people on Israel. And this is the type of rhetoric that students at McGill

00:18:17.560 are being bombarded with. Well, you're right. They're not specific about who's dying or how

00:18:25.080 many, it might be that 30,000 have been killed, but what they don't specify is that according to

00:18:31.200 Israel, 13,000 of them have been terrorists and Hamas has not denied that. So the ratio of those 0.96

00:18:38.620 killed to civilians killed to militants is actually in urban warfare of this kind quite low.

00:18:46.080 But, you know, they'll tell you all kinds of things because they get their information from

00:18:51.200 sources that are not reliable. They are determined to make their case for support against Israel,

00:18:59.040 that's their main concern is to call Israel out as an evil nation and that's the message. 0.59

00:19:06.160 And they're delighted to be active like this on campus. This is what students do. You may remember

00:19:12.400 in 1968 there were similar demonstrations against the Vietnam War and they were also taking over

00:19:18.480 the campuses in fact that was our first experience of students actually taking over campuses and uh

00:19:24.720 the administration losing control of the uh of what was happening on their own campuses

00:19:30.720 of course in those days the message was peace and love and now it's intifada and hate so that's

00:19:37.120 changed um but um i did expect it and i agree with you that the administration is acting in a very

00:19:43.920 namby-pamby way because they're not quite sure what to do and they're afraid to take muscular

00:19:49.060 action as is required. Well and one of the things that and again you always end up when you're

00:19:54.480 talking about any display of this nature with this whataboutism and you know a lot of people

00:19:59.020 that had no issue with the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa are saying they've got they want police

00:20:03.020 to come in and crack skulls here and the flip side people that wanted police to crack skulls

00:20:07.320 in Ottawa with the Freedom Convoy are saying oh no no this is the right to protest so I think 0.52

00:20:11.440 there's hypocrisy all around. But the one point I'll stress here is that universities have a

00:20:15.820 demonstrable track record of treating different demonstrations differently. Like I bet if the

00:20:20.380 McGill University Pro-Life Society were to stage a, they would be gone in no time. And here we have

00:20:28.000 an encampment of this nature. It's very anti-Israel, bordering on, depending on the rhetoric of the

00:20:33.360 individual person, anti-Semitic. And McGill is saying, well, we'd like to come up with a resolution.

00:20:37.440 we'll try to talk we'll try to engage and that's not a group that they afford to other or right

00:20:41.760 they afford to other groups no they're afraid of this group uh they're not afraid to act as you say

00:20:47.680 uh with politically incorrect groups such as pro-lifers um and uh they certainly wouldn't

00:20:54.080 tolerate for one second uh you know people that that are saying were that were anti-immigration

00:21:00.000 or uh in any way in any way asserting themselves as as white canadians or anything like that uh

00:21:06.960 There's a set menu for who is considered racialized and who's considered the victim, and the Palestinians are one of them, and it does not occur to them that these expressions of hatred for Jews, because Jews are not on the victim list, to say, you know, for this one time, we have to agree, the numbers of anti-Semitic incidents and hate incidents are so high,

00:21:35.540 I think we're going to just have to include this group of Jews on our campus as amongst the racialized and we can't let this continue to happen. In the United States, we have seen states, Florida and Texas, where the governors have said, no, this just isn't happening. 1.00

00:21:54.320 You private universities have codes of conduct.

00:21:58.080 You're not applying them.

00:21:59.100 And by the way, of course, McGill has a code of conduct, just like all the other universities.

00:22:03.960 They are not applying their code of conduct.

00:22:06.320 Their code of conduct does not allow for harassment on the basis of nationality or affiliation of any kind.

00:22:14.640 I mean, they may not like Zionism.

00:22:17.940 That's too bad for Jews, for most Jews.

00:22:21.200 I think you froze there for a moment, or at least it did on, oh, I got you back now. Sorry, I might be on my end here. This is the glory of doing things live. But I'll ask you about the, well, okay, let me take a step back here. If we talk about what's led us to this point, there have been people sounding the alarm about the increasing rhetoric, the ratcheting up of language.

00:22:42.640 At first it was, not at first, but early on we saw people protesting businesses, especially in Toronto, that happened to have a peripheral connection to Israel or no connection at all.

00:22:52.540 It was just connected to someone who was Jewish.

00:22:54.840 And then you go to this protest against McGill.

00:22:57.080 Of all the people complicit in what Israel is doing, if you want to believe that Israel is in the wrong here, I put McGill University very low on that list.

00:23:05.600 So the idea of targeting your ire at McGill when you have an issue with Israel and the IDF and the Mossad and all of that is absurd.

00:23:14.400 And even if they got what they want or what they say they want and McGill were to divest its funds from Israel, which is not even handled by the university.

00:23:21.460 They have an external fund there and sever ties with Israeli academics.

00:23:25.920 You're changing nothing.

00:23:27.640 So that's the issue is that it's not even like it's an effective protest because their issue, they claim, is with Israel.

00:23:33.560 And I think when you look at it through that lens, it becomes apparent their issue isn't with Israel.

00:23:38.460 Their issue is much broader than that.

00:23:40.660 I think it is broader, of course.

00:23:42.140 It's very anti-Western as well as anti-Israel.

00:23:46.260 And they know that they're probably not going to change the boycott.

00:23:50.760 All their efforts at boycotts of Israel have failed because it's not in their gift to tell the university where to place their funds.

00:23:59.540 And they know that.

00:24:00.660 But they are going after hearts and minds.

00:24:03.280 they have been very successful in that endeavor and the more noise they make uh on the campuses

00:24:09.440 and and it's a central place it lends itself uh to you know big open spaces to encamp uh the

00:24:16.160 universities could end this very quickly by uh by taking the ringleaders and expelling them that's 0.77

00:24:22.560 what they have done in in florida and and in texas and it's been very effective that's the end of the

00:24:27.920 protest. They could expel a hundred students or suspend a hundred students. They could end this

00:24:35.040 very easily. So these students are activating either knowingly or unknowingly for a revolution

00:24:43.920 and to do that they have to change what's acceptable to what is unacceptable. They have to

00:24:51.440 turn Jews into pariahs. We saw that at Columbia that Jews were advised to go home, they weren't

00:24:56.800 safe they caused the university to have to go on to online classes this is a big victory for them

00:25:03.760 because they they are showing a lot of muscle and uh you know people get the message uh we

00:25:11.920 we had better start appeasing these people or uh things could get violent and and out of control

00:25:19.360 i i think it to me it's very obvious what is happening and the only way to combat it is very

00:25:25.680 swiftly and very and to enforce your own codes of conduct and it's it's at a certain stage it's easy

00:25:31.440 to do and later on it isn't so easy to do uh why they have chosen the path of appeasement perhaps

00:25:38.240 it's because the message from the top from our prime minister is non-messaging uh and he doesn't

00:25:44.000 seem to care about uh the rampant anti-semitism that that uh finds finds its ground zero at the

00:25:51.120 universities but but spreads with the demonstrations all through society uh it it creates a mood it

00:25:56.880 creates a mood it creates a feeling that well maybe you know if they're that angry maybe they're right

00:26:02.320 um and it does change hearts and minds so they they are winning the propaganda war by uh with

00:26:08.560 these tactics and so i'm sorry to see it and i'm sorry that so many intelligent people in the

00:26:13.440 administration are failing to do their duty sad one one of my very sad indeed one of my favorite

00:26:19.840 Canadian columnist Barbara Kaye always a pleasure Barbara. Thank you Andrew. Thank you and this is

00:26:25.760 going to get worse before it gets better and by that I think the first step is that we'll see this

00:26:31.280 balloon at other university campuses. I think it was uh Ottawa U which has preemptively said yeah

00:26:36.880 we're not going to stand for this. I mean if you want to try it at Ryerson, well you can't say

00:26:40.480 Ryerson anymore, if you want to try it at Toronto Metropolitan University you have to like get there

00:26:43.840 already are like basically like a homelessness encampment on the streets of downtown Toronto

00:26:48.160 know, so you might have to move over some tents to build yours. But, you know, at other schools,

00:26:52.900 I don't see this as being all that out of place. Now, I mean, how many students want to stick

00:26:57.740 around once exams are done? I don't know. And in that sense, it's a little bit less disruptive than

00:27:02.020 had they done this during the school year. And I wonder if that's going to be the excuse we hear

00:27:05.400 from the schools of, oh, well, you know, where our campus is pretty much empty anyway this summer,

00:27:09.600 some nonsense like that. So I'm not, by the way, taking the anti-free speech view. I believe that

00:27:15.220 you have a right to express your opinion. I do believe that at times you can be disruptive in

00:27:21.500 doing that. I also believe that you have a right to enforce your property and that's what these

00:27:26.660 universities are only selectively doing as we see. So with that let's pivot back to the topic we kept

00:27:34.180 us going on last week which was plastics. We had the big UN plastics conference in Ottawa. The

00:27:39.700 federal government announced the forthcoming plastics registry. Countries around the world

00:27:44.460 including Canada, working towards a plastics treaty. Now, I should have done the plastic 0.91

00:27:49.360 straw gag again. I don't know if, Sean, we have that photo we can pull for later on, but

00:27:53.260 you may recall when the Supreme Court struck down the federal government's plastics ban, I celebrated 1.00

00:27:58.060 by a big, giant batch of plastic straws that had been, you know, hidden away because I didn't want

00:28:04.360 the plastic police to come knocking and collect them. And then we saw a lot of Canadians very 0.86

00:28:11.040 happy about that because canadians hate no one likes paper straws not even the people that make

00:28:15.440 them don't like them no one likes paper straws they're terrible but stephen gilbo said this

00:28:22.240 i i feel that there's large consensus on the fact that we we need to ban certain single-use plastics

00:28:28.480 we need to do better and increase recycled content for for the fabrication of of of plastics and i

00:28:35.040 I've even heard some very large multinationals tell me we want to have access to recycled

00:28:42.980 plastics so we don't need to use virgin plastics anymore.

00:28:47.940 We need to do a better job in designing plastics so that they can be more easily reusable or

00:28:53.560 recyclable.

00:28:54.560 We need to do a better job on labeling.

00:28:57.340 And I think all of these things, or many of these things, we can agree that we all need

00:29:01.880 to do that, everyone around the world, so that there is a level playing field and we

00:29:06.240 don't end up with a patchwork of policies and measures around the world, and that even

00:29:10.440 the private sector is calling for. Large multinationals are saying we need a legally binding plastics

00:29:17.300 treaty, which is obviously in stark contrast with the position of the Conservative Party

00:29:21.480 of Canada, who just issued a petition saying we need to bring back plastic straws because

00:29:26.200 there's no environmental problem with plastics where there are 200 countries in the world

00:29:32.060 Unilever, Pepsi and Coca-Cola who profoundly disagree with the Conservative Party of Canada's

00:29:37.740 position on plastic pollution. A consensus maybe there's a consensus among the types of people

00:29:45.640 with whom Stephen Gilbo cavorts you often find them scaling buildings and getting arrested

00:29:50.740 maybe there is a consensus among those people but there's not a consensus among ordinary Canadians

00:29:56.020 that the plastics ban is the way to go and that plastic straws should be just relegated to exile

00:30:03.440 here. I want to welcome in our old friend Chris Sims, our Monday correspondent and the Alberta

00:30:07.780 Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Chris, what about you? Are you hearing this

00:30:12.560 rumored consensus around the plastics ban? Of the ban on plastic straws, you probably saw,

00:30:21.540 of course, the famous now picture of Premier Danielle Smith, your co-host. Is she still

00:30:25.780 your radio co-host are you i don't know i've never been technically just relieved of my guest hosting

00:30:31.180 duty so i'm not sure andrew is always on standby at any moment to step in as alberta premier so just

00:30:36.740 in case he throws down the microphone and leaves that's what he has to go do so premier daniel

00:30:40.720 smith had a pretty funny joke where she had i think she was drinking a ginger ale and she had 0.98

00:30:44.840 two plastic straws shoved together and she was drinking it like this and it's one of those things

00:30:49.780 right? Where I think it's more than just it being silly to have this kind of gross paper straw

00:30:56.180 that's disintegrating in your drink. I think it's because this has really gotten up into people's

00:31:01.180 faces, right? Like what you're choosing to eat with, right? What you're choosing to eat, that

00:31:06.860 sort of stuff. That's really kind of a domestic personal choice. And I think the plastic straw

00:31:12.100 thing versus the paper straw thing really bugged people. And so I think it's emblematic really of

00:31:18.100 how this government is operating. What I found interesting is that it sounds now like he's trying

00:31:23.740 to make noise that perhaps a global treaty on plastics and everybody agreeing on plastics

00:31:30.460 might be too complicated. That's the first time I have ever heard that minister tap the brakes on

00:31:37.600 anything. Now, I could be misinterpreting him, but some of the tone that was coming from Minister

00:31:42.560 Guy Bo there, I found a little bit more slowed down than he usually is. I'll also point out that

00:31:49.580 people just don't want these sorts of bans. So in the city of Edmonton, for example, there's now

00:31:55.320 this big bag fee. It's 15 cents per bag, and then it's going to be going up to 25 cents per bag.

00:32:01.980 Pretty soon it's going to be $2 per reusable bag. You know, those things that are filling up all of

00:32:07.980 our sink cupboards and all of our pantries, at least speaking for myself. And so that's really

00:32:12.580 costing people a lot of money and people are pushing back on it. They push back on it so hard

00:32:17.000 in Calgary, Andrew, that they've had to repeal it. So Calgary tried doing this whole, you're going to

00:32:22.040 have to pay every single time you use a bag. And now they've had to back off on it completely. So

00:32:27.020 I think they are getting some serious pushback on this. Yeah. And I mean, my view on the plastic

00:32:32.520 straws thing has never been that plastic straws are my hill to die on. It's that a government

00:32:37.020 that's going to regulate something so small and so minor will also regulate the big things that

00:32:42.920 do matter. And I think you need to push back against these small incursions. And to be fair,

00:32:47.940 a lot of companies now are keeping with the plastic straws. Now, I don't know if that's

00:32:51.780 just because they're buying into the environmental argument or if it's just because they're not

00:32:56.340 exactly confident that the ban won't be reimposed or they had to invest so much in all of this

00:33:01.120 inventory and redo their supply chains around it, whatever the case is. But I've never been

00:33:05.400 against individual companies doing that.

00:33:07.800 It's always been when government is the one

00:33:09.820 that manages it and manipulates it.

00:33:11.460 And absolutely, if they're going to,

00:33:13.640 because that's how regulation comes.

00:33:15.180 That's how government grows.

00:33:16.300 They regulate the things that people are already doing.

00:33:19.040 And then they start encroaching

00:33:20.220 a little bit more on other things.

00:33:21.720 And at a certain point,

00:33:22.940 the regulatory regime has gotten so large,

00:33:25.400 you can't really dismantle it.

00:33:27.340 Yes, exactly.

00:33:28.100 And before you know it,

00:33:29.260 you're trying to balance all of your groceries

00:33:31.340 leaving the store.

00:33:33.080 In fact, just this past weekend,

00:33:34.760 when I managed to go get our groceries I was watching this lady and she clearly you know 1.00

00:33:39.300 I don't know if she didn't have the money to buy another bag on top of another bag that she must 1.00

00:33:43.520 have forgotten in her car but she was trying to leave and you know those little roast chickens 0.98

00:33:47.700 that come in like the plastic container thingy and they've got the little cardboard sleeve

00:33:51.820 she had three of them in her hand like she grabbed like this like without the bag and she's trying to

00:33:58.340 get past the lottery counter and they're about to fall out and so luckily one of the checkout ladies 1.00

00:34:03.500 ran after her and just gave her a paper bag, like, shh, don't tell anyone here, right? And she

00:34:09.480 managed to make it to her store. And this is what I'm getting at is, yeah, is that the hill to die

00:34:13.440 on? Well, logically, no. But that's such a personal thing, right? They're right up in your grill,

00:34:18.940 right at the grocery store counter all the time. They're right there for your meal with your family

00:34:23.360 at the restaurant all the time. And to your point, I think that then is what gives them

00:34:28.100 more incursion into your life. And further, on the idea of a global issue when it comes to plastics,

00:34:35.640 a couple of years ago, it was in the New York Post, and I'm trying to recall from memory here,

00:34:40.040 I think they reported that nine out of 10 of the plastic polluting rivers in the world were in

00:34:47.400 Asia and in Africa. Meaning this is not a problem, you know, that terrible idea of the garbage patch 0.99

00:34:54.260 and the big floating amount of plastics pollution in the ocean,

00:34:57.360 it's not coming from North America and it's not coming from Europe.

00:35:01.440 So why the strange impositions on Canadians?

00:35:04.260 I have never seen someone pick up a coffee cup and throw it into a river.

00:35:10.700 People would have a stroke in Canada if you watch somebody do that.

00:35:14.840 Further, I often see volunteer organizations from every walk of life,

00:35:20.000 that's often what they'll go do is pick up litter in the spring

00:35:23.660 and make sure our shorelines are nice and clean.

00:35:26.080 And so it would be probably smarter for the Trudeau government

00:35:29.180 to encourage that sort of behavior instead of always with the stick,

00:35:33.600 which doesn't result in anything.

00:35:35.500 Yeah, and a lot of it, I mean, it's funny because the government

00:35:38.340 will always use moments where it believes it has political capital to do big things.

00:35:43.660 So in Canada, we've seen firearms law that have done this.

00:35:46.680 A lot of the push for a plastic span came after that viral video of a sea turtle,

00:35:50.520 a poor sea turtle that had a plastic straw suck up its nose. 1.00

00:35:53.120 it was tragic it was difficult to watch it also was not canadian's problem and it was not canadian's

00:35:58.300 fault this was the you mentioned it earlier this was the danielle smith uh picture uh where she 0.67

00:36:03.660 celebrated the plastics ban and uh engaged in a consumption of ginger ale there i i still like

00:36:10.980 mine better though this because i was a bit more celebratory i think than the premier was there we

00:36:15.160 go. Yeah. That was mine. Take that sea turtles. Take that sea turtles. No sea turtles were harmed

00:36:23.720 in the making of that gag. But again, it's the little things that matter. Yeah, for sure. And

00:36:28.820 you know what? The sea turtle picture, and I remember it because it was very impressionable,

00:36:32.680 right? And it's awful. It reminds me, I grew up in the eighties. It reminds me of this video

00:36:37.000 footage that all of us eighties kids saw of, you know, those six ring plastic things that go around

00:36:42.440 a six pack oh yeah yeah yeah the um yeah it showed a duck i was gonna describe them and i

00:36:47.760 realized you already did i know exactly what you're talking yeah it showed a duck and this

00:36:51.280 poor bird this waterfowl don't remember what kind of duck sorry but this waterfowl had this around

00:36:56.600 its neck and i remember this video was everywhere and this is way before the interwebs kids but it

00:37:01.780 really made an impression and so now you can find like any gen xer if you watch them with those

00:37:06.340 things they're snipping them into little tiny pieces before my wife does that as well and i 0.96

00:37:10.900 always wonder maybe she got the video. I guarantee you she saw the video of this duck and so this is

00:37:15.440 my point is that people who are in a position to care do care and they take efforts to make sure

00:37:23.000 that they aren't endangering the environment and I think that's what annoys people a lot is when

00:37:28.380 they see something like this coming from the Trudeau government saying you know what guys

00:37:32.040 I've got this how about you guys figure out how to balance the budget or maybe run the passport

00:37:36.860 office in town. I can figure out my recycling in my own home. And on top of this, if they start

00:37:43.160 getting into something like a plastics registry, I just shudder to think at how much money they're

00:37:47.860 going to spend on this. To your point earlier, with the failed long gun registry, we wound up

00:37:53.020 blowing almost $2 billion on that thing. And it didn't make Canadians any safer from the lawful

00:37:59.360 duck hunters here in Canada. Same thing going with this current gun confiscation. Again, taking

00:38:04.700 firearms away from law-abiding firearms owners, they haven't seized a single one yet and they've

00:38:10.160 already blown millions of dollars. So just imagine what kind of money they could burn with the

00:38:15.020 plastics registry here in Canada. So I wanted to move to your old province here for a moment,

00:38:20.700 British Columbia. British Columbia is a useful test case for a lot of things. I think for drug

00:38:25.440 policy, it's been a useful test case now because this is what happens when the decriminalization

00:38:31.160 harm reduction left gets its way uh but also on the carbon tax because bc had a carbon i was

00:38:35.960 going to say before it was cool it's not cool now but bc had a carbon tax before the federal

00:38:39.920 government pushed one so we've got a fair bit of runway in bc to see what a carbon tax does and

00:38:46.000 shocking answer is chris emissions have gone up up not down with a carbon tax and thank you for 0.77

00:38:54.680 giving me a chance to highlight this because this is something that was brought up i did a debate

00:38:58.140 sorry I talked to another show host but it wasn't for very long and I didn't all right get lost

00:39:02.300 I did a debate on TVO with Steve Bacon I wasn't debating him but I was debating a University of

00:39:10.340 Ottawa professor and he said something to the effect of and I'm paraphrasing well emissions

00:39:14.740 in British Columbia have gone down no they have not and in fact if you pull up the government

00:39:20.340 website and you can pull up the actual data I don't know if you guys have the screen captures

00:39:25.180 there it looks like a super boring website but you can click on something called provincial inventory

00:39:30.780 and it pulls up this spreadsheet and it goes way back to like you know the 1990s right so there we

00:39:36.620 go so this is the british columbia government website if you click on the provincial inventory

00:39:43.100 there where you see that hyperlink and it pops up into an excel sheet and from there you can take a

00:39:49.180 look at the data. So the BC Liberal government, led by then Premier Gordon Campbell, introduced

00:39:55.340 the provincial carbon tax in British Columbia back in 2008. So it came into effect in fiscal year

00:40:02.300 2008-2009. Back then, just to note, they introduced it as being revenue neutral.

00:40:08.860 On paper it was because they did do a corresponding income tax cut that year,

00:40:12.860 but very quickly it became just a huge tax grab. So spoiler alert. But if you go to the actual data

00:40:18.460 site and you take a look starting in 2009, you can see how many total megatons of carbon CO2

00:40:26.800 was emitted that year. Then if you follow along 10 years, okay, so 10 years is usually a good

00:40:33.120 data set. Go from 2009 to 2019, emissions went up, Andrew, by more than 7%. Even if we wanted to

00:40:45.160 include the terrible years of when people were locked in their homes or businesses were shut

00:40:49.800 down and they weren't allowed to travel, right? During the pandemic and the lockdown years of

00:40:53.860 2020, 2021, it still went up by nearly 2%. So this is the whole point. When the BC government

00:41:01.900 first hatched this carbon tax back in 2008, which by the way is the model, the Trudeau government

00:41:07.080 has said out loud that British Columbia is their model for the carbon tax. So what you see there,

00:41:12.240 they're the canary, right? So they promised back in 2008 that their carbon tax would stop at $30

00:41:18.540 a ton, be revenue neutral, reduce emissions, and that they would provide a whole bunch of

00:41:24.780 alternative affordable energy sources. None of those things is true today.

00:41:30.300 The problem that I have with this is that the sensible response is that someone says,

00:41:36.260 oh, wow, I guess this isn't working. But that's never the way they go. The way they go is, wow,

00:41:40.980 we're not doing it aggressively enough, or it would have been worse if we didn't. And that's

00:41:47.400 the most challenging part of this is that you're making an incredibly valid point that will be

00:41:52.080 completely reversed in meaning by the people that brought us in here in the first place.

00:41:56.400 You're right. And that is often what they say. So on the first one, wow, that means we're not

00:42:01.080 doing it hard enough. Okay. What do you guys want? Like you already see record lineups for food

00:42:08.500 banks, okay? You already see people not being able to afford to heat their homes. So the average

00:42:14.980 Alberta family, for example, is going to be out more than $900 this year, net, with the carbon

00:42:21.580 tax. That's caused by the carbon tax. The folks in British Columbia, they're getting screwed even

00:42:27.040 more, frankly, Andrew, because by the time a two-person working family hits around $72,000 a

00:42:33.420 year around there out there, they get zero for a rebate. So if you are a hairdresser and you're

00:42:40.520 married to a grocery store manager, you're not getting any rebate in British Columbia.

00:42:45.440 Like all of the middle class there is getting completely screwed on the carbon tax. So my 0.91

00:42:49.460 question to them then would be, okay, what do you want? You want people freezing to death in the

00:42:53.840 dark? What do you mean do it harder? And secondly, the idea that, oh, well, if we hadn't done it,

00:42:59.080 would have been higher than it would have been. That's magical thinking because we can't know.

00:43:04.760 We cannot know that. And what's interesting here is that politicians will promise you all sorts of

00:43:09.880 things. Like I mentioned, they said it was going to stop at $30 a ton, be revenue neutral, reduce

00:43:14.440 emissions, all that great stuff. And then when their scheme doesn't work out, they run out onto

00:43:19.480 the pitch and they move those goalposts really fast. I've also heard people say, oh, well, you

00:43:24.200 know, there's more people there now. Okay, so what then? You want to shut down immigration to British 1.00

00:43:28.200 colombia is that your plan because none none of this makes sense every single time they try to

00:43:33.640 set something up it doesn't work and it doesn't make sense and what's super frustrating is that

00:43:37.800 when you give them a mathematical solution of okay tackle the big end of the arithmetic problem

00:43:42.840 sell natural gas to your point with the with the polish leader there sell natural gas to india

00:43:48.360 reduce their super heavy duty emissions they don't like that answer they're clinging to this

00:43:53.560 carbon tax in almost a religious way even though it's not working yeah very well said all right

00:43:59.560 well great points all around chris we will check oh no i'm off next monday so we'll check in with

00:44:03.460 you in two weeks oh but uh thank you so much as always for coming on always great to talk to you

00:44:07.960 chris from the canadian taxpayers federation safe travels all right thank you and that does it for

00:44:13.140 me don't worry you got me the rest of the week still folks uh we will be back tomorrow in just

00:44:16.900 23 hours and 15 minutes here on the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent talk show with true

00:44:22.560 North. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew

00:44:27.700 Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:44:52.560 We'll be right back.

00:45:22.560 We'll be right back.

Juno News - April 29, 2024

Trudeau tells Liberal MPs not to worry because everything is fine

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