Juno News - Trudeau thinks parental rights are ＂far-right＂

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

00:00:05.320 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.

00:00:12.440 Hello everyone and welcome to you all.

00:00:15.140 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:17.540 I had to look over because I was muted and I had this moment of terror of have I unmuted?

00:00:23.300 And it will be like every Zoom call you've ever been on in the last three years

00:00:26.100 where the person is talking and someone has to be like,

00:00:28.800 Carl, you're muted. And then they have to repeat their crappy old business presentation again. But

00:00:33.620 nevertheless, I was unmuted. So all of this was a waste of time. I just felt like I needed to

00:00:37.300 explain why I just abruptly lurched to my right. I think when you're watching, it's, is it my right,

00:00:43.220 my left? I don't know. In real life, it's on my right. So all of that out of the way, it is good

00:00:48.500 to talk to you here on the Andrew Lawton Show, despite that very odd intro. I am, this is not

00:00:54.400 a rerun. I'm wearing a sweater in June because for whatever reason, in my little basement

00:00:59.540 hidey hole here from where I broadcast my show, it is absolutely freezing. And even though I've

00:01:05.980 turned the air conditioner off and I've covered up the vent, there's a register above me that

00:01:11.480 seems to just perennially shoot down cold air even when I don't want it to. So I'm a little

00:01:16.960 chilly, that's why. But rest assured outside, I think it's actually still chilly outside. But

00:01:21.860 Certainly, if you're from Alberta, this is no surprise to you.

00:01:24.440 You've done the whole wearing sweaters virtually year-round thing.

00:01:28.480 Today, we are going to talk about parents' rights, and I want to delve into this in a few different contexts here.

00:01:33.960 First off, the story in New Brunswick where, good on the New Brunswick government,

00:01:38.520 they've actually taken a stand that no other provincial government in this country has done for parental rights,

00:01:45.120 and they are attracting a great deal of scorn from Justin Trudeau and from the media for doing so.

00:01:50.580 We'll talk about that with Tanya Granik-Allen in just a few moments' time.

00:01:54.720 But I want to begin by talking about something that I didn't anticipate revisiting.

00:02:00.900 Because to be honest, I find this to be a very absurd story.

00:02:05.080 But it's an absurd story that has started to become a little bit more reflective of one of the more unfortunate political developments of our time.

00:02:13.440 And to go back in time a week on this, the trigger was what I thought was, frankly, a petty and dumb tweet from the conservative candidate in Portage Lisker, Brandon Leslie, who we had on the show.

00:02:27.860 We showed the graphic on a previous episode on Thursday.

00:02:31.300 He basically was just sticking a little thumb into Maxime Bernier.

00:02:35.480 That's a very weird visual.

00:02:36.980 He was poking Maxime Bernier.

00:02:39.080 That's a little bit less weird.

00:02:40.520 and saying, you know, unlike Maxime Bernier, I'm never going to go to the World Economic Forum.

00:02:46.140 And then Maxime Bernier responded and said that he is a liar, Brandon Leslie. He's never attended

00:02:51.920 the WEF. And for me, despite finding this to be a pretty inconsequential and stupid fight,

00:02:58.940 I weighed in not because I thought that either one of them was beholden to the World Economic

00:03:04.180 Forum, but because I took umbrage with Maxime Bernier's attempt at revisionism here and saying

00:03:09.880 he had never attended when clearly he had. And I went through the entire argument on my show. I

00:03:15.700 said, here's proof he was there. And ultimately, this came down to Maxime Bernier having a very

00:03:20.880 different understanding of what the word attended means than I do. Now, my claim to Maxime and about

00:03:27.100 that whole thing was never that he was a WEF shill or he was a closet globalist. I take Maxime

00:03:33.340 Bernier at his word as I take Pierre Paulyev at his word that both of them are very critical,

00:03:37.820 and I'm glad they are, of the WEF and its agenda. What I didn't like is Bernier claiming

00:03:43.220 that he had never gone when clearly he had. And notwithstanding, his answer to that was that

00:03:49.420 it was because he was meeting with Canada's allies and other foreign ministers for the whole

00:03:53.760 Afghanistan war, which again is an entirely legitimate reason to be there if that's your

00:04:00.100 goal, but you're still there. And that was the issue. Now, the reason I bring this up again,

00:04:06.040 And I am completely convinced that this is a distraction from real issues, but it's become a very consuming distraction, is because Maxime Bernier has decided to take aim at me and at True North's coverage.

00:04:19.500 He tweeted out just yesterday evening that True North and I are like CBC for daring to have this conversation about his record.

00:04:28.660 And again, he was there as a conservative.

00:04:31.060 He was there at Stephen Harper's behest.

00:04:32.720 No one is disputing that.

00:04:34.260 he was still there and all of his issues and objections to the World Economic Forum didn't

00:04:38.560 come about until much later on, just as the Conservative Party of Canada was all too willing

00:04:44.400 to be a player in the WEF until it no longer became politically advantageous to do so.

00:04:49.920 And the argument I've put forward about this is that the WEF of 2023 is not the same as the WEF

00:04:56.820 of 2008. I think it's entirely legitimate for someone to say, listen, we thought it was one

00:05:01.780 thing. We thought we were doing this. We weren't, or the organization has changed. Whatever the case

00:05:07.140 is, that's not the discussion that we've had. And that's not been the argument from the PPC.

00:05:12.980 But in the last several days, this segment that I did on my show that I thought was done after

00:05:18.420 Maxime Bernier and I spoke about it, and I said to the audience, listen, you've heard my side,

00:05:23.200 you've heard his side, make up your own mind. This has continued for almost, I mean, basically for

00:05:29.420 four days since then, my tweets have been nonstop in my mentions. My Twitter mentions have been

00:05:36.000 nonstop about this issue, and it's gotten very nasty. It's gotten very personal, and I don't

00:05:41.160 really care about that. If people are that insecure about their own party and their own leader,

00:05:46.340 which is what this comes from, that they believe they are incapable of answering a tough question,

00:05:52.340 that says a lot more about your chosen party and your chosen leader than it does about anyone else.

00:05:58.360 the accusations that I have gotten along this vein or that True North has sold out, that I've

00:06:03.860 secretly been on the take and I've been getting money from Pierre Polyev or Klaus Schwab or a

00:06:08.900 combination of the two. I don't even know what the conspiracy theory is suggesting right now,

00:06:13.660 but it's an odd thing. And I've always made a joke on this show that I often get criticized

00:06:19.180 by conservative loyalists and PPC loyalists for being too sympathetic to the other. And sometimes

00:06:24.980 it'll be over the same interview and the same discussion. Indeed, after I spoke to Maxime

00:06:29.700 Bernier on Thursday, I had conservative loyalists saying, oh, you know, you're a PPC sellout because

00:06:35.580 you're giving him more airtime. And then I had the PPC loyalist that didn't like my line of

00:06:40.100 questioning and wanted to string me up as being some, again, conservative shill. It's very

00:06:44.980 difficult to keep track of this. I have always been very clear on where I stand, which is not

00:06:50.720 having a particular party. I have voted PPC and I have voted Conservative. And I share that with

00:06:56.620 you just so you understand that I'm not one of these people that believes that truth lies

00:07:01.040 exclusively with one party. I ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in 2018, and I have been

00:07:08.060 probably more critical of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party than most other Progressive

00:07:14.260 Conservatives in Ontario because I thought it was vehemently wrong. I vehemently disagreed

00:07:19.800 and thought it was incredibly wrong how Doug Ford took his majority government in 2018

00:07:24.120 and chose to use it and has continued to.

00:07:27.460 So anyone who thinks it's a gotcha to point out that I was a candidate when it's not been a secret.

00:07:32.040 I have like 10,000 signs with my name on it.

00:07:34.100 Like you're not really unearthing anything there.

00:07:36.700 So all of this is to say that I have absolutely no regrets

00:07:40.800 about the discussions and coverage that we did on this last week.

00:07:45.240 I have no regrets at all about giving the PPC attention

00:07:49.180 when no one in Canadian media was.

00:07:51.380 And I said last election,

00:07:52.780 I went on the road with Aaron O'Toole and the Conservatives.

00:07:55.420 I went on the road with Maxime Bernier and the PPC.

00:07:58.220 Both were figures who had a story to tell

00:08:01.160 and had issues to talk about

00:08:02.480 and contributed to the Canadian political discourse.

00:08:06.160 And ultimately, the reason I'm talking about this now

00:08:09.820 is to say that I do not care about your fragility

00:08:15.000 if you are so insecure

00:08:16.960 that you think Maxime Bernier looked bad on my show that you're done with True North. I do not

00:08:22.040 care because you are someone that doesn't actually want to be challenged. You are someone that

00:08:27.460 doesn't want to have a real discussion or a real dialogue or a real debate. You are so insecure

00:08:32.880 that if I'm agreeing with you, you think I'm good, but if I disagree with you, you think I'm bad

00:08:38.140 rather than saying, oh, I didn't like his position on that and here's why, or oh, I did like his

00:08:42.480 position on that. And here's why. And this is part of an increasingly, an increasing frustration I

00:08:48.900 have with the direction of politics right now. It used to be that you may like or dislike a

00:08:53.420 broadcaster or columnist, and sometimes they'd be on point and other times they're not. But the

00:08:58.100 amount of times right now that people will share a piece, not because they agree with the methodology

00:09:03.080 of it, but only because they agree with the outcome. And then they will turn on the author

00:09:08.640 of that piece the next time they write something that perhaps the reader disagrees with. And the

00:09:15.280 battle between the conservatives and the PPC is a vicious, nasty one. Both sides think the other

00:09:22.480 are dangerous to democracy. They both think they're sellouts. They both think each other

00:09:26.320 are grifters. And I've been absolutely fine to cover both and declare neutrality between the

00:09:32.460 to, and I'll continue to. But when Maxime Bernier, who has never, never had anything unkind to say

00:09:40.540 to me to my face, nor have I ever said anything unkind to him in his face. And after that interview

00:09:45.280 on Thursday, we had a lovely chat off air talking about it. And he said, oh yeah, you're doing great

00:09:50.680 work. And thanks for letting me come on. And then he turns around and says, we're like CBC for having

00:09:56.080 it. CBC for having that interview, like CBC for having that discussion and asking him these

00:10:00.920 questions when his own public statements are in contradiction with the record, which was very easy

00:10:07.620 for me and for anyone else to find. I have to say, give me a break. Give me a break. And I don't

00:10:14.060 actually think my integrity is imperiled there because people can see for themselves that he is

00:10:19.360 trying to rewrite history when he claims that he was never at this conference, despite being an

00:10:23.720 invited guest of the World Economic Forum at that conference. And again, I do not have an issue with

00:10:29.760 him being there in 2008. I have an issue with him going there and claiming he wasn't. That was what

00:10:36.340 this whole thing was. And had he not made that claim, this would not be an issue. But you can

00:10:42.620 tell how insecure his own supporters are about their standing. And if you look at poll numbers,

00:10:49.980 not particularly surprising, given that the PPC is unlikely to achieve the electoral results it

00:10:56.540 had in 2021, but they are so uneasy about their own position in the Canadian political landscape

00:11:06.180 that even the most inconsequential of critiques and criticisms to them is like going nuclear.

00:11:14.440 It is scorched earth to them. Unbelievable. Well, I want to say this is going to be the last time

00:11:19.340 I'm going to have to talk about this, but I know that by talking about it now, the Twitter mentions

00:11:22.440 are going to flare up again, and we'll probably have to do this in a couple of days, except to

00:11:26.220 say that all of these people that say, oh, I'm unfollowing true north because they're controlled

00:11:30.160 opposition. I say, okay, see you later. Anyway, let's talk about the things that really matter.

00:11:35.740 And again, I realized that we have to be able to walk and chew gum. We have to be able to talk

00:11:39.780 about multiple issues. Sometimes they're big, huge world pressing issues. Other times they are

00:11:45.160 little deviations and distractions that perhaps form part of a larger story. But the reason I

00:11:50.540 want to get to this bigger one is because right now parents across this country do not care

00:11:54.940 who went to the WEF in 2008, they care about what their children are being told in schools and what

00:12:00.920 their children are being taught in schools and what their children are doing in schools, which

00:12:05.420 has become part of the landscape of discussion in New Brunswick, which I must admit is a bit odd

00:12:11.060 because New Brunswick has never been the province that I thought would be claiming a spot on the

00:12:16.040 front line of the culture war, but it is a province that has taken a stand for parents' rights

00:12:20.380 originally by making it so that if you are under 16 and you are in school and you want to start

00:12:26.680 using a different gender and different pronouns and different names, the school would have to go

00:12:31.380 to your parents and get consent. Now, New Brunswick has made some amendments to this,

00:12:36.340 and I want to get into the details because I think the nuance is a little bit important here.

00:12:40.280 But what they've effectively changed is that if a child does not want their parent notified,

00:12:47.400 Instead, it gets referred to a social worker, which I actually think is incredibly important.

00:12:52.540 Anyone who's ever had children in school will know that you need parental consent for anything.

00:12:59.860 You need parental consent for absolutely anything.

00:13:02.920 You want to go and take a five-minute bus ride to some field trip, you need parental consent.

00:13:08.720 The idea of changing your gender does not strike me as less consequential than a field trip.

00:13:14.920 But this has also attracted a great deal of ire from the liberals and from the media.

00:13:19.660 And in Justin Trudeau's case, it is all an example of far-right hate.

00:13:23.780 Take a look.

00:13:28.580 Apparently, that wasn't Justin Trudeau in blackface.

00:13:30.700 That was actually a black screen.

00:13:32.360 Apparently, that clip did not play for some reason.

00:13:34.860 We will get to that in a moment.

00:13:36.980 But it's basically Justin Trudeau saying that all of this, what's happening in New Brunswick,

00:13:41.140 is an example of the far right harming trans youth. He says it's about the rise in hate. You

00:13:47.580 talk to parents of all religious groups, of non-religious groups as well, and they are

00:13:52.000 finding this is not about hate. This is about wanting to know what's happening to their children

00:13:56.300 who are under increasing threat from all sorts of sources of information. And it is interesting to

00:14:02.060 see the way that the minority position is dominating in government and media here, but it

00:14:08.300 is a minority position. We talked to Colin Craig in May of 2nd Street about a poll showing that it

00:14:14.340 is actually the majority of parents that think this is entirely common sense, what New Brunswick

00:14:20.100 is doing. Tanya Granik-Allen joins me on the line now. She is formerly the head of Parents as First

00:14:26.260 Educators and also hosts a great show over at the news forum called Counterpoint, on which I have

00:14:31.720 been very privileged to be a guest. Tanya, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:14:36.100 Great to chat with you about this very important topic, Andrew.

00:14:39.560 I know that you waged a very, I don't want to say successful, I think it was successful in some ways, battle against the Ontario sex ed curriculum going back some years.

00:14:50.160 And we saw, I think, a little bit of a precursor to what's happening now in that, and that there was this coalition that existed that wasn't just about, you know, right wing evangelical white supremacist hate mongers, as Justin Trudeau would say, but was a families of very diverse ethnic and religious background.

00:15:07.540 And we're seeing huge amounts of that right now.

00:15:11.440 Yeah, well, what happened in 2016 or 2015 when the new sex act curriculum was introduced in Ontario was, as you said, was a coalition of LGBT, atheists, a lot of Muslims came out and rallied on Queen's Park.

00:15:24.400 It was a broad spectrum of parents who just said, you know what, we want control.

00:15:27.900 We don't want to be handing our kids to the government with carte blanche.

00:15:31.480 And as for the success of the repeal, well, it would have been successful had Doug Ford not flip-flopped and actually kept his promise and actually repealed the gender theory that he said he would.

00:15:41.440 So, you know, the chickens are coming home to roost and kudos to New Brunswick for doing something about it.

00:15:46.760 Yeah, let's talk about that because, you know, we had Jason Kenney in Alberta, ostensibly a firm, solid conservative premier when he was elected.

00:15:55.460 Doug Ford in Ontario.

00:15:57.100 We now have Danielle Smith in Alberta.

00:15:59.080 I mean, New Brunswick, yes, has a conservative government, but they've never really kind of

00:16:03.760 blipped on my radar as being like the red meat fire breathing type of conservative. So do you

00:16:09.220 know how this happened there? Do you know why this was the province to really go into this battle?

00:16:14.060 Well, tiny little personal note, I was born in New Brunswick, so they produced this conservative

00:16:18.120 meat. Okay, well, that's why. All right. So good for New Brunswick. I'm from St. John's originally.

00:16:23.140 So from what I understand is there were some complaints amongst parents that they were

00:16:27.880 concerned about a policy 713 that was introduced a few years ago. Sorry, I forgot the exact date,

00:16:32.640 but a few years ago, which allowed the establishment and kind of integrated protections or

00:16:38.380 alleviated a lot of concerns about LGBTQIA++ communities. You got it on the first try,

00:16:46.320 by the way. That's impressive. I keep trying to add the new letters,

00:16:49.720 but it's hard to keep up. Anyhow, so there were a lot of changes made. For example,

00:16:55.080 the introduces introduction of gay straight alliances was made with policy 713 that still

00:16:59.400 exists a child in new brunswick can join a gay straight alliance without parental consent that

00:17:04.360 still exists that was not changed many things just you know how to deal with inclusion and

00:17:09.560 you know gender neutral bathrooms all sorts of things like this so now with under the

00:17:14.680 conservative blaine higgs government they decided to review it allegedly upon concerns from parents

00:17:19.800 that they had been hearing and let's face it parents are really upset we're hearing more and

00:17:24.200 and more parents are concerned i wouldn't be surprised if they received dozens and dozens of

00:17:27.960 complaints if not hundreds i i'd argue probably thousands of parents who have concerns and so

00:17:33.080 they made three material changes to me this doesn't go far enough but hey step in the right

00:17:37.800 direction and the one that seems to be catching most of the attention is now teacher like a student

00:17:44.120 under 16 so if you're 17 or 18 you can do what you like but if you're under 16 you cannot change

00:17:50.120 your personal pronouns or identify your personal pronouns without your parents consenting and if

00:17:55.720 your parents haven't consented then the child can be then taken to have some discussion with i think

00:18:00.280 a social worker or something and see what path they can proceed to then get that kind of consent

00:18:05.480 from their parents but this again is parents are in charge not the government and of course parents

00:18:11.160 should consent for anything that happens in the school that is their job their children

00:18:15.880 are their their responsibility not not the school they they have a responsibility but that's granted

00:18:20.360 from the parents yeah and i think you're you're right there and when you point out like kind of

00:18:25.480 what is still the policy in new brunswick what is still the law and what this is it makes the

00:18:30.920 outrage over it all the more absurd that we're talking about something very minor here and and

00:18:36.360 also let's be honest here no one is saying the school will not acknowledge the preferred gender

00:18:42.280 and preferred name and preferred pronouns of a student. Quite the contrary. They're just saying

00:18:46.340 the parent needs to be involved. So it still is a recognition of this underlying thing that people

00:18:51.700 may have issues with. And I think all parents, regardless of where you are on the political

00:18:56.240 spectrum, should appreciate that here you have a government that's saying, we're going to respect

00:19:01.860 parental rights full stop. And again, I wish they would apply that to also all these extracurricular

00:19:07.860 activities that perhaps are questionable but in this case that that's a good thing and any

00:19:12.860 Canadian should encourage that kind of action to protect parental rights because we've seen

00:19:19.700 throughout the last decade an erosion of parental rights. Two other points I want to highlight that

00:19:24.920 have been our changes within this policy is now for the gender neutral bathrooms they're saying

00:19:29.880 they're now going to have to be private gender neutral bathrooms so kind of like unistallers

00:19:34.040 And the other thing is they're going to remove that a child can join the sports for with the gender identity that they identify with.

00:19:43.600 So to me, that says, OK, we're going to protect girls sports.

00:19:46.720 And in my opinion, halt female erasure because I'm a mother of daughters and I can tell you they play sports.

00:19:52.800 And I have grave concerns with the erasure, the erasing of girls sports that's going on right now when biological males are allowed to compete against against girls.

00:20:02.720 It's terrible.

00:20:03.380 they should have those sports protected for them. Yeah. And let's talk about that for a moment,

00:20:07.880 because often when we discuss this, we're talking about athletes that are more senior. I mean,

00:20:14.020 we talk about this in the context of the Olympics, and I think there's a fundamental issue here that

00:20:18.320 is one of fairness when you're talking about this. When you're talking about high school students,

00:20:22.740 there are other implications here that go beyond just the fundamental philosophical approach on

00:20:28.340 it, such as scholarship, such as awards, such as acceptance into university athletic programs,

00:20:33.700 which look at your ranking. And that is, I think, so important here that you could have some really,

00:20:38.340 really dedicated athletic 16-year-old girl that's working her butt off to perform well at track and

00:20:45.280 field or swimming or whatever. And then some 17-year-old boy one day decides that he wants

00:20:51.180 to be the number one female swimmer that year. And all of a sudden we have a girl who, and I don't

00:20:57.120 want to sound dramatic here, but a girl whose, you know, life options are going to be limited if she

00:21:02.220 were otherwise going to be at that standing. Sure. Well, when you have girls who've worked

00:21:06.620 for a decade, maybe trained almost daily in their sport, and now, and I have, again, I have

00:21:12.520 competitive daughters. I have nieces who compete. What are you saying to them when you say you're

00:21:17.400 never going to be good enough because you don't have that biological advantage that that biological

00:21:21.340 male has who's now you're going to compete at? That glass ceiling, you will never shatter.

00:21:25.040 What are you doing to those girls' self-confidence?

00:21:27.540 And all the women should really be,

00:21:28.980 and all the moms should be standing up

00:21:30.140 to protect their girls in their sports

00:21:31.720 and those sports should be protected.

00:21:33.520 But, you know, I guess to Justin Trudeau,

00:21:35.700 I'm probably just a far right actor

00:21:37.340 because I'm just a parent

00:21:38.320 who's really trying to protect my rights

00:21:39.980 and look out for my kids.

00:21:41.920 I mean, you've obviously been,

00:21:44.160 and those who you met during your time running PAFE

00:21:47.200 and in politics are parents

00:21:49.460 that are a lot more engaged on this issue than others.

00:21:52.500 And I'm curious if you have a sense of how many parents are just sort of dropping their

00:21:57.860 kids off at school and saying, I assume everything's going to be fine versus how many are paying

00:22:02.860 attention.

00:22:03.300 Now, I think that the number of people paying attention is probably increasing, but I also

00:22:07.300 think in general, in politics, people generally are far too trusting and too deferential.

00:22:12.120 And I just don't know what you're seeing there.

00:22:14.260 Well, I think that there have been certain key moments in Canadian politics, which have

00:22:19.300 really forced parents to wake up.

00:22:21.480 uh in ontario for example yes the introduction of that radical sex ed curriculum by kathleen

00:22:25.560 winn forced parents to wake up with and then when i ran for leader and really

00:22:29.160 drummed that issue parents woke up covet a lot of parents woke up in covet they were forced to

00:22:35.080 kind of observe their online schooling with their children and kind of said well what are they

00:22:38.920 actually learning and do i like that so no matter what you thought about covet lockdowns there were

00:22:43.240 several some silver linings and and for one of them i thought you know parents are now getting

00:22:47.160 to see what happens in the classroom and i know teachers struggled and kudos to them but the

00:22:51.400 governments are forcing them to deliver a curriculum that a lot of teachers actually

00:22:54.840 really don't feel comfortable delivering they don't want to talk about the seven gender identities

00:22:59.880 a lot of parents a lot of teachers don't want to talk about they don't want to be compelled to teach

00:23:03.960 that uh so i think that was another demarcation point and of course you know just you know i i

00:23:10.680 know canadians always want to be very separate from america and i appreciate that and we definitely

00:23:14.200 are. However, what happens down south does reflect here. And I think what Ron DeSantis,

00:23:19.560 the governor of Florida, has done in Florida with a lot of his legislative actions, I think has

00:23:25.400 caused a lot of noise in the media in the U.S., and that's spilled over to Canadian media. So now

00:23:30.220 we're saying, hey, why is this happening? And now you're seeing a lot more action at the school

00:23:34.340 board meetings after we've seen action the last few years in Virginia, in Florida, and so on and

00:23:39.600 so forth. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And I would also say that if that's what it takes

00:23:45.080 for Canadians to start paying attention, then I'll absolutely take it. Because even if the

00:23:49.280 issues are different, if seeing what's in a library in Florida is kind of causing them to

00:23:54.240 ask the same questions here, you're going to find out much more accurately what the situation

00:23:58.760 students are grappling with and parents are grappling with here. On that vein, let me ask

00:24:04.100 you whether you're optimistic because i know in ontario we saw last fall there being this campaign

00:24:10.000 that we haven't really seen in canada in a while to run on school board elections for people that

00:24:14.180 were critical of this and it wasn't really all that successful but i think doing it itself was

00:24:18.860 was quite good and mobilizing and getting more people engaged do you think even a year later

00:24:23.720 that that would be different if that election were held this fall well actually i think i actually

00:24:29.080 would change i changed my opinion i think in fact last fall there was quite a few success it's it's

00:24:33.680 really hard to break through a lot of these establishment school board candidates who've

00:24:37.360 ran for 20 years and i know pafe i think they ran over 100 candidates and i can tell you right now

00:24:43.360 that some of those trustees are the ones making the news headlines who are committed to protecting

00:24:47.920 children protecting parents and making sure that uh things like gender identity theory isn't being

00:24:53.520 forced down down parents don't and that's something actually i want to go back to that

00:24:57.120 previous point you said why now like why are parents really upset now i think it's just it's

00:25:02.640 just too much i think it's i think the the the gender identity theory which again it's it's not

00:25:10.960 rooted in science sexual neuroscientists like like dr deborah so who's a sexual scientist will tell

00:25:15.760 you there are only two genders so when science is not backing it up and when this is still being

00:25:20.960 rammed down the the is which forced in the classroom kids are learning this i think parents

00:25:25.840 are wondering what's going on and they're they're very concerned and i think there is just too much

00:25:30.560 happening altogether. And I think, you know, for the radical activists who are pushing this,

00:25:36.080 I think you've overplayed your hand this time. Yeah, I think you're right about that. And I

00:25:40.800 guess the one thing I would ask you about that I'm a little bit concerned on is the teacher

00:25:45.760 factor here. Because we all heard that clip last week, I played it on this show, It's Not a Joke,

00:25:49.760 Mansour, of this teacher in Edmonton just berating the Muslim students in the class for not getting

00:25:55.120 on board with the whole trans thing. And it was actually interesting and remarkably transparent

00:26:00.640 because her argument was, well, they all put up with your Ramadan stuff, so you've got to put up

00:26:05.780 with their pride stuff. She was basically making this claim that diversity needs to be a two-way

00:26:11.080 street. But when we look at this in the context of what we're seeing in New Brunswick, the activist

00:26:16.400 teacher is the one that I'm not sure will comply with the policy. And the province has itself said

00:26:22.380 they're not going to be going on a witch hunt and seeing what classroom behaviors are kind of

00:26:27.260 unfolding here. So are you concerned that there won't be enforcement to go along with this?

00:26:32.880 Well, I think with any policy, parents expect that if this is the policy for the classroom,

00:26:37.960 it should be followed. Nobody, of course, nobody wants a chilling effect in the classroom,

00:26:42.660 like teachers should be free to, you know, speak. But if this is the policy, you have to work within

00:26:46.360 that cadre. And so I am concerned. I mean, what's the point of having a policy if there are no teeth

00:26:51.480 to it if there's no teeth yeah it's like doug ford's academic freedom policy for universities

00:26:55.300 it's just like right yeah right what was that all about but um you know and parents expect

00:27:02.340 governments to respect their wishes and to respect their their their parental authority

00:27:06.740 so again kudos to the the conservative governor of blaine higgs in new brunswick for bringing this

00:27:11.840 forward yes i hope they do enforce it this is and this is so small potatoes protecting girls sports

00:27:17.340 making sure they're uninstallers for the gender neutral bathrooms and just getting parental

00:27:21.080 consent on pronouns if you can't enforce that my goodness so for those teachers who really want to

00:27:26.760 overplay it and and don't want to respect and comply with 713 you are violating parental trust

00:27:32.600 and authority that we've placed into you so i really would hope that you would not and i think

00:27:36.200 to be quite frank for the most part teachers really don't want to go down this path anyways

00:27:40.200 nobody wants these to have these kinds of discussions it's really become a burden in

00:27:44.280 the classroom and i think most teachers will just do the right thing and say okay we'll follow the

00:27:48.840 the policy. We're just, you know, we're doing our job. Yeah. And doing the right thing here,

00:27:52.680 as you mentioned, not radical, it's respect parents. So I think that is a very important

00:27:57.460 step moving forward. Hopefully other provinces will take this up as well. Tanya Granik-Allen,

00:28:01.920 former president of Parents as First Educators and now host of the News Forum's Counterpoint.

00:28:06.740 Thank you so much, Tanya. Thanks, Andrew. All right. It is always great. We haven't talked to

00:28:11.080 Tanya in far too long, so glad to have her back on the show. Let me just say, first off,

00:28:15.680 on the Unistall bathroom thing. I am totally for gender neutral Unistall bathrooms. This to me

00:28:23.020 seems like a very comforting thing to have in general for people. What I find interesting

00:28:27.920 is how many of the trans activists don't want that. So here we have a proposal that's put

00:28:34.060 forward, which is a little bit more expensive to put into action, but you know what respects

00:28:38.060 anyone. It means that no woman has to share a bathroom with a man. No one has to go to a bathroom

00:28:43.100 and wonder. It also means that no one has to be in one stall and wonder, you know, what that weird

00:28:48.760 noise in the next stall over is. Everyone should be happy. Everyone wins. But the people that

00:28:53.240 criticize this don't actually want to be accommodated. They want to be obeyed. And it's

00:28:59.300 interesting if you see some of the rhetoric online, it's not that they want uninstall bathrooms. It's

00:29:04.440 that they want the right to use the other bathroom. And that is where it's the same as women's sports.

00:29:10.580 They don't just want a third category.

00:29:13.180 Most people would say, all right, we're fine with a third category for people who, for

00:29:17.020 whatever reason, don't want to compete with their biological sex.

00:29:19.460 They want into the other category.

00:29:22.800 And anytime someone is unwilling to accept accommodations because they want something

00:29:28.220 with no compromise, tells you a lot about what they actually want and what their motivations

00:29:33.660 are.

00:29:34.380 And the erasure of women, the erasure of girls, the erasure of girls' sports is absolutely

00:29:39.700 asinine.

00:29:40.300 you look at what J.K. Rowling has had to put up with a woman who checks every single left-wing

00:29:45.740 box there is, except one. And she used to check that box because standing up for women used to

00:29:51.660 actually be a very noble and worthy cause for people on the left. But oh no, J.K. Rowling

00:29:56.340 doesn't go along with the idea that she, when she was staying in women's shelters, should have had

00:30:00.580 to shack up with some big burly man in a dress. And she gets canceled. Her books get burned. They

00:30:07.300 get ripped out of libraries, people start protesting her publisher, and thankfully she

00:30:11.700 has been unrepentant on this because it is absolutely crazy that we have just thrown away

00:30:17.780 truth and thrown away compassion and thrown away human dignity and the dignity of women,

00:30:23.180 all in the name of appeasing this mob. This mob who doesn't even represent a statistically

00:30:28.020 significant group of people. For how much the trans issue dominates in political discourse,

00:30:34.060 you'd think we were talking about 25% of the population. We're not. We're talking about 1%.

00:30:39.940 We're talking about less than 1% in large cases, because we're talking about people

00:30:45.000 that oftentimes are not content just to go and get the sex change and be passable. We're talking

00:30:51.360 about people that want to be in the gender neutral category. They're non-binary. They want to change

00:30:55.900 on any given day. And then they also want to go into women's sports and they want to go into

00:31:00.100 women's shelters and they want to go into women's bathrooms and women's change rooms and

00:31:03.540 women's only events. And this is something that society should not have to deal with.

00:31:10.560 When we are offering, in the case of the Unistall bathrooms, an accommodation that makes everyone

00:31:14.800 happy, and they're saying no, they're saying that is, in Justin Trudeau's eyes, far right.

00:31:20.080 What on earth is not far right, if that's far right? I mean, you're basically saying that

00:31:25.400 anyone who believes that parents should have a say in how their children are educated

00:31:29.440 is a radical right winger. Let's try if we can play that clip one more time. I don't know

00:31:34.800 if that issue is resolved or not. But unfortunately, as you all know, we don't

00:31:39.680 have to go as far as Uganda to see hateful rhetoric on the rise. We're seeing that angry,

00:31:47.420 hateful rhetoric rise on our continent, particularly targeting trans people.

00:31:53.360 Trans people are among the most vulnerable people in the 2SLGBTQI plus community, facing

00:31:59.980 high rates of violence and suicide.

00:32:03.380 And far-right political actors are trying to outdo themselves with the types of cruelty

00:32:09.520 and isolation they can inflict on these already vulnerable people.

00:32:14.600 Right now, trans kids in New Brunswick are being told they don't have the right to

00:32:20.260 be their true selves that they need to ask permission well trans kids need to feel safe

00:32:27.060 not targeted by politicians

00:32:35.220 it's not all that shocking how he refers to uganda and new brunswick in the same breath

00:32:42.020 as he's talking about hate uganda where it is illegal to be gay and new brunswick

00:32:46.740 where the school is completely fine to have you represent yourself by a different gender,

00:32:52.440 by a different pronoun, by a different name, so long as your parent is notified and consents if

00:32:57.560 you are under 16. By the way, under 16 includes five-year-olds. It includes four-year-olds. It

00:33:03.660 includes kindergarten students, grade one students. The response that you get to this from people that

00:33:09.920 oppose this policy change in New Brunswick is not, well, I understand that it's important to have

00:33:16.320 this. I think 16 is an issue. I think maybe you should be able to self-identify at 14 or at 12.

00:33:22.020 They don't say that. They actually object fundamentally to the idea that a parent

00:33:27.480 should have any say whatsoever or even any knowledge. If a five-year-old goes to class

00:33:34.960 and says, I am a girl and I want you to call me Susie and I want you to let me wear this dress

00:33:42.600 that I shoved in my backpack that I found outside the school.

00:33:45.800 I don't know why there's a, forget that part.

00:33:47.980 I'm saying five-year-old who goes in and demands,

00:33:50.460 I want to be called Susie and I'm a girl.

00:33:52.400 These activists think that the parent should not be notified about that

00:33:56.380 and also that the teacher should comply with that

00:33:58.780 and the school would comply with that.

00:34:01.980 So their issue is not, well, maybe the age is the problem.

00:34:05.360 Their issue is with what is happening at all.

00:34:08.560 They don't believe that parents have a role in children's education.

00:34:12.600 And by the way, I mean, this idea that children are adults is a bit of a weird one, given how

00:34:19.300 schools treat children in every other way. As I mentioned earlier, if you want to go on a field

00:34:24.140 trip, you've got to get parental consent. If you act out in class, if you get into a fight,

00:34:28.760 parents are going to be notified. If you are to make a comment about wanting to harm yourself,

00:34:34.700 you are going to get a call back home. One person here has told me that their parents got called

00:34:40.580 because they drew a skull in class

00:34:42.400 and the school thought they might be suicidal.

00:34:44.200 Imagine if all of these activists said,

00:34:46.100 well, that was a violation of his privacy rights.

00:34:48.520 The schools never should have notified.

00:34:50.180 And the joke would have been on them

00:34:51.540 if he got home and heaven forbid something had happened.

00:34:56.820 So all of this is the reason why parents

00:34:59.540 should absolutely be active participants

00:35:01.840 in their children's education.

00:35:03.880 I think gone are the times that you can be trusting

00:35:05.540 that once you just drop your kids off at the school door,

00:35:07.580 they're gonna come back learning English

00:35:09.980 and, you know, math and history and geography

00:35:13.440 because right now, well, history is gone

00:35:15.540 and they've replaced it with gender studies apparently.

00:35:17.820 So, and I think math is gone too

00:35:19.160 because math is like colonial and white supremacist

00:35:22.300 or so I read in the Guardian.

00:35:24.000 But the whole point of this is that we have a situation now

00:35:29.200 in which for whatever reason, New Brunswick has decided

00:35:31.500 it wants to take, as Tanya said,

00:35:33.300 even a very low stand for parental rights

00:35:36.460 and even something so relatively minor and benign

00:35:39.640 is being cast as far right by Justin Trudeau and the activist mob, which is probably a,

00:35:46.900 those are probably not two distinct groups. But nevertheless, I just want to briefly point out

00:35:52.240 here on the institutional power we have in Canada. Russell Brown, who is a Supreme Court justice

00:35:57.840 appointed by Stephen Harper, and by all accounts and by his record, quite a good justice. He was

00:36:04.000 one of the few that actually pushed back against the confinement and constrainment of liberty we've

00:36:09.280 seen, especially on the Beverly McLaughlin Supreme Court. He retired over the weekend.

00:36:14.900 And I don't want to rehash the whole backstory on this. There was this like ridiculous

00:36:17.840 investigation into him because he was down in Arizona and he'd had a few drinks. And I don't

00:36:23.640 know, apparently he was just a little friendly with someone at the bar. And it ended up where

00:36:28.140 this 30-year-old Marine got into a fight with him. And it was like a thing that even if it happened,

00:36:33.060 which I was very skeptical of the narrative that was told, it was not something that was warranting

00:36:37.900 an investigation, let alone a retirement. But nevertheless, Justice Brown has retired. And

00:36:43.520 the first thing I thought of when this headline came up is, Justin Trudeau's getting another

00:36:49.560 Supreme Court justice. This means that by the time the position is filled, Justin Trudeau will have

00:36:55.220 stacked six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court of Canada. Six of nine. Now, when you are

00:37:02.940 in power for as long as Trudeau has been there, pushing eight years now, this is not altogether

00:37:07.720 uncommon. Stephen Harper, I believe, had appointed seven justices in about 10 years. So the challenge

00:37:14.000 though is that Stephen Harper's justices more often than not ended up voting against him and

00:37:19.440 ended up deciding against the conservative government, whereas Justin Trudeau's justices

00:37:24.360 have been a continuation of really reinforcing the power of the state. So he's going to get

00:37:30.360 another one. And if you look at when retirement's coming up, because Supreme Court justices have to

00:37:36.000 retire at 75. If there is a conservative government, say, from 2025 to 2029, I believe

00:37:43.740 there's only going to be one judge retiring in that four-year period, and that's going to be

00:37:49.100 a conservative appointed judge. So the best the conservatives could do if they win in 2025,

00:37:54.780 or if the PPC wins a sweeping majority government in 2025, because that's going to happen,

00:37:59.620 then they'll only be able to hold one judicial position that's it so we are going to in this

00:38:09.360 country for at least the next 10 years have a trudeau dominated supreme court of canada and

00:38:15.320 i don't say that because i have a solution to that problem i just say it as a bit of a warning

00:38:19.880 and to buckle up because it is going to be a rough ride but all the more important to speak truth to

00:38:24.840 power, and all the more important to have a population that is on side on the cause of

00:38:30.120 liberty. I've often said that the only reason the Supreme Court gets called in is because we have

00:38:34.540 people that keep voting for governments that are depriving them, and I'll say us, because I'm in

00:38:38.800 the trenches on this one too, of our liberty. So that's why we do what we do, and we are going to

00:38:43.560 keep on doing it. My thanks to all of you who play a part in supporting that. If you want to keep

00:38:48.020 independent media going, you can head on over to donate.tnc.news, donate.tnc.news. And we accept

00:38:55.340 truly and are grateful for all contributions to the work that we do. And like I always say,

00:39:00.260 I don't care if you agree with me or disagree with me. In fact, life's more fun when we all

00:39:04.380 disagree with each other on several occasions. But when you are getting into the thick of talking

00:39:10.560 about politics, you can't be everything to everyone. And anyone who expects that of someone

00:39:14.580 is really begging to be pandered to, which doesn't suit anyone's interest. So with that PSA out of

00:39:19.900 the way, we will talk to you all tomorrow. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show. Thank you,

00:39:24.140 God bless, and good day to you all.

Juno News - June 13, 2023

Trudeau thinks parental rights are ＂far-right＂

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