Juno News - Trudeau thought convoy was political opportunity, not national emergency

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:00:05.580 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.

00:00:09.080 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:00:32.340 I am sorry if I was a little bit sleepy there on the uptake.

00:00:36.780 I was engrossed in a text conversation with my producer, and he said, can I put you on?

00:00:42.400 And then I realized I was on.

00:00:43.740 So I am here now.

00:00:45.180 It is Thursday.

00:00:46.440 No, it's Tuesday.

00:00:47.380 I was so sleepy, I got to Thursday.

00:00:49.300 Tuesday, November 1st, 2022, and we are live from Ottawa.

00:00:55.460 Now, this is not the Public Order Emergency Commission hearing room, I can assure you.

00:01:00.740 This is my hotel room in Ottawa, but the show must go on.

00:01:04.560 And interestingly enough, I should say that the commission hearing is still underway right now.

00:01:11.500 Bridget Belton, who's one of the early convoy organizers, is testifying right now.

00:01:16.020 So I have one of my colleagues keeping an eye on that.

00:01:19.500 We'll have any updates from that as the evening goes on.

00:01:23.100 But the problem is this is actually going to be a really, really intense process over the remaining weeks of this.

00:01:29.980 because originally they scheduled seven weeks of hearings and they're going very late into the

00:01:35.900 evening and it seems like that is pushing later and later. So I want to talk a little bit about

00:01:41.760 what happened today. I also want to talk about the rather explosive evidence that was put forward

00:01:47.540 yesterday which we reported on at True North but I think it bears repeating here. This is a text

00:01:54.640 message conversation that was taking place between two members of the federal government

00:02:01.480 between mary liz power who is an issues and policy advisor in prime minister justin trudeau's

00:02:07.420 office the prime minister's office and alexander cohen who is i think he was the press secretary

00:02:13.760 at the time now he's the director of communications in marco mendicino's office marco mendicino being

00:02:19.320 the public safety minister so you've got a senior political staffer in the office of Justin Trudeau

00:02:25.320 a senior political staffer in the office of Marco Mendicino and they're talking about the convoy

00:02:31.820 narrative let's play a clip from Brendan Miller lawyer for the Freedom Convoy organizers

00:02:38.880 in his cross-examination of former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Slowly

00:02:43.340 all right so what this is sir this is a text message from a fellow by the name of alexander

00:02:52.920 cohen are you familiar with him it doesn't ring a bell sir okay he's with the pro he's with uh

00:02:58.180 minister marciano's office uh minister of public safety and it's between him and mary liz power

00:03:04.480 are you familiar with mary liz power again the names aren't ringing a bell okay she's with the

00:03:09.020 uh prime minister's office so i'm just going to read that to you for you so you have an

00:03:12.560 understanding. And this is from about the 24th, on or before the 24th of January. And it says,

00:03:17.520 I got a quick response. People are into it. Let me know if your boss is too. Happy to help however

00:03:23.060 I can. This is what I sent through though, by the way. Hi, I just had a chat with Alex at PS,

00:03:29.660 meaning public safety, who had a bit of an interesting idea. As you saw in the pod goals

00:03:34.940 chat, the truckers convoy and some of their more extreme comments in brackets, i.e. calling for a

00:03:40.060 January 6th, insurrection, closed brackets, are getting more coverage in the media.

00:03:44.500 Alex was surveying whether there'd be interest in his boss doing some media on this eventually.

00:03:49.060 He was chatting with a mediciano about it right before he went into the Cabinet retreat.

00:03:53.560 Now, I can tell you the Cabinet retreat was on the 24th.

00:03:55.760 That's how I know it was before the 24th.

00:03:57.300 I think there could be an opportunity to get in on this growing narrative of the truckers,

00:04:03.120 particularly with the research that LRB is doing into their backers.

00:04:07.280 My thoughts of the framing here would be similar to what PM slash Blair, meaning the Prime Minister and Minister Blair, said last year when January 6 occurred.

00:04:19.120 And the first thing is, our democracy is something we need to nurture and protect every day.

00:04:23.780 Now, that text message then continues, we will always support the right to peaceful protests.

00:04:28.980 some of the call that organizers of these events are making are concerning and we're taking them

00:04:34.240 seriously in brackets would need something to back this up close brackets we'll continue to

00:04:39.800 monitor the situation closely the fine line to walk would be to ensure we are not looking like

00:04:44.820 we're directing the police which obviously is not the goal here hoping to canvas your thoughts

00:04:49.140 alex said he'd come back to me with a proposal this afternoon when he gets to chat with indiciano

00:04:55.120 again and obviously pending his boss and our uh our interest in looking into this further

00:05:00.720 and if you could scroll down and alex responds thanks i had an initial chat with my boss and

00:05:06.640 he's supportive but wants to wait a day or two there's a danger that if we come down too hard

00:05:11.280 they might push out the crazies and then the response i think that's fair apparently global

00:05:17.680 and others are working on stories maybe see how those land so when i show you this and i

00:05:25.120 And after this, the exact same sort of narrative came out from the federal government following these suggestions from their staff.

00:05:32.020 Is that misinformation?

00:05:35.220 I'm sorry, I can't really comment.

00:05:37.160 There's just not enough context to know who these people are, what they represent, what information or influence they have.

00:05:46.700 so that was a pretty surgical way of doing it now Peter slowly of course says he can't comment

00:05:59.800 on it but you can see if we put those text messages up on the screen there it's actually

00:06:05.300 remarkably candid remarkably candid how these two political staffers engage with each other

00:06:11.860 Mary Liz Power says that, you know, it's all about getting in on this narrative.

00:06:17.880 Now, what is this narrative, you ask?

00:06:19.600 Well, that narrative is that the truckers are extreme.

00:06:22.940 She says it's a narrative that outlets like Global and others are about to start doing more stories on.

00:06:28.820 I wonder how the prime minister's office knows what stories the mainstream media is working on that are going to be damning to the truckers.

00:06:36.680 And I think the most explosive part of that is the comment from Mr. Cohen from Marco Mendicino's office saying that they don't want to come down too hard on the protesters too early because they don't want the convoy organizers to drop the, quote, crazies, unquote.

00:06:55.060 So there seems to be, I mean, there's a lot in that. There's a tacit understanding that the crazies are a small minority of this movement. But more importantly, it's that the Minister of Public Safety, whose job is supposed to be, I would assume, the public safety of this country, his office wants the so-called crazies in the convoy.

00:07:16.060 it's almost as if the government saw this as a political opportunity rather than a national

00:07:22.820 emergency rather than a public order crisis which is what would be required if at all it could be

00:07:29.180 justified the emergencies act and that's what's on trial right now not officially but unofficially

00:07:35.040 throughout the last three weeks and the next three weeks in ottawa where i am the public order

00:07:40.200 Emergency Commission, which was the bureau, the process rather, that got those text messages

00:07:46.520 released. The government of Canada had to file them in evidence. It was part of its disclosure.

00:07:51.320 But it's fascinating to me. And when I read that, there was a part of me that thinks like,

00:07:56.640 this isn't really newsworthy. We knew the government was trying to score political

00:08:00.860 points off of this, but it still is interesting how brazen they were in that, that the minister

00:08:07.220 responsible for public safety his office was focused on the narrative the communications

00:08:12.620 how do we leverage this for political gain and it was interesting because if the public safety

00:08:18.440 minister was focused on de-escalation on turning down the temperature on making this less of a

00:08:24.300 crisis making this less of an emergency for starters the federal government could have met

00:08:28.980 with convoy organizers but they saw a different way because the more they could point to so-called

00:08:35.120 crazies the more they could come out as being on the winning side of this and that's why in my book

00:08:41.980 the freedom convoy the inside story of three weeks that shook the world which by the way by virtue of

00:08:47.280 having written that a lot of the stuff that's been coming out in the commission has been old news to

00:08:52.520 me which i and i don't say that to gloat i just say that because there's some stuff that i'm like

00:08:56.300 wait wasn't didn't everyone know this and and that's like how you can sneakily feel like oh

00:09:00.220 you didn't read my book you would have known that x had happened like today a great example of that

00:09:04.820 is today so Chris Barber who is one of the most one of the most prominent organizers of the convoy

00:09:11.620 an actual cross-border long-haul trucker himself Chris Barber was testifying this morning he was

00:09:18.560 the very first convoy organizer to speak and they were asking him all sorts of questions about

00:09:23.620 everything including things that he really didn't have anything to do with in the convoy process like

00:09:28.640 there was this one I think it was the government of Canada's lawyer I might be wrong it was the

00:09:33.520 government of Canada's lawyer was giving him a string of these so-called intelligence reports

00:09:37.600 that were being prepared, these daily briefings. And they were asking him questions about like,

00:09:42.900 oh, this one referenced Chrystia Freeland. And oh, this one referenced the World Economic Forum.

00:09:47.480 And Chris Barber's answer was like, yeah, I didn't know. I got those emails. I didn't open

00:09:50.580 them. I know nothing about them. And then the government of Canada lawyer just kept trying with

00:09:54.240 it. And Chris was like, yeah, like I said, I just, yeah, people email me stuff. They text me stuff.

00:09:58.560 You know, whatever, it's there. So really, no, there wasn't that zinger there. There wasn't that silver bullet that I think the federal government lawyer was anticipating.

00:10:09.440 But the reason I bring up Chris Barber's testimony and the dueling narratives surrounding the convoy is to point out this one section.

00:10:19.180 Now, I'm going to play a very brief snippet.

00:10:21.820 And the reason it's a brief snippet is because this was the brief snippet that a global news reporter shared online.

00:10:29.620 And it is a brief snippet that takes a lot of liberties, as does the accompanying tweet.

00:10:35.840 Accompanying tweet, why don't you take a look?

00:10:39.440 Yeah, but you guys raised an enormous amount of money outside of that, right?

00:10:43.200 You were raising thousands of dollars a day in cash and e-transfers, correct?

00:10:48.600 Yeah, the e-transfers would have went into Mrs. Litch's personal bank account.

00:10:54.180 And cash?

00:10:55.760 I don't know what happened with the cash.

00:10:57.140 There was always people donating cash.

00:11:00.040 It was all around, I guess.

00:11:02.360 So that is a bit of an interesting clip.

00:11:05.440 Now, just for context, that was lawyer Paul Champ, who is representing the Coalition of

00:11:10.460 Ottawa Residents and Businesses.

00:11:12.720 And Paul Champ is asking about the money, which was not an aspect of the convoy that

00:11:18.100 Chris Barber was really doing all that much about.

00:11:21.340 And what David Baxter of Global Rights is after the Freedom Convoys GoFundMe got shut

00:11:26.140 down, Chris Barber testifies e-transfers went to Tamara Leach's personal bank account, and

00:11:31.080 he doesn't know what happened with all the cash.

00:11:33.320 And you're like, oh, wow, that sounds like Tamara Leach was making away with millions.

00:11:37.220 And then Rachel Gilmore, also of Global News, tweets the following.

00:11:42.500 When Chris Barber is asked about the money the convoy raised, quote, the e-transfers would have went into Ms. Leach's personal bank account.

00:11:49.720 As for the cash, he said, I don't know what happened with the cash.

00:11:53.380 I left out two words from her tweet there, which are at the very top, when she says, oh, wow, treating this as explosive, treating it as a bombshell.

00:12:02.220 Like Chris Barber has just admitted that Tamara Leach was putting all the money in her personal bank account and then they don't know what happened with the cash.

00:12:09.400 The reality is that clip, which I think was 22 seconds long, condensed what was a minutes long exchange that covered a range of these issues.

00:12:21.460 And it took it in a way that deliberately misrepresented the actual discussions.

00:12:26.720 Now, the reason Chris Barber doesn't know what happened with all of the cash, and specifically, that's referring to cash donations that were given after all the account freezes, after the GoFundMe was shut down, after the court order prohibiting people from donating to GiveSengo, and people were giving truckers cash.

00:12:44.840 Chris Barber said, yeah, I wasn't involved in that, so I really don't know what happened.

00:12:48.760 I know people were giving out envelopes to truckers, but I wasn't overseeing it.

00:12:52.760 So when he's saying, I don't know what happened to all the cash, he means that he literally was not involved in that part of the operation.

00:12:58.880 And the money going into Tamera Leach's personal account, this is like as old news as it gets because nothing has been re-litigated and discussed more about the convoy than the money.

00:13:11.900 What happened here was GoFundMe initially released $1 million of the funds that have been donated.

00:13:17.900 They didn't have a corporation set up at this early stage.

00:13:21.740 So GoFundMe needed to give it to someone.

00:13:24.340 So Tamara Leach was the one who set up the account.

00:13:27.020 They had a plan in place to distribute the money.

00:13:30.060 So GoFundMe transferred a million dollars into a personal bank account in Tamara Leach's name,

00:13:35.320 which was only used for convoy funds.

00:13:38.300 It wasn't the account that she used to buy her groceries or to go and buy a canoe from Canadian Tire.

00:13:43.920 I don't know if Tamara Leach has ever bought a canoe from Canadian Tire.

00:13:47.160 That was just the weirdest incident I could come up with as far as like a possible personal

00:13:51.760 purchase.

00:13:52.260 So I've been in Ottawa too long.

00:13:53.840 I'm starting to be weird.

00:13:55.200 And Tamara Leach had this account.

00:13:57.640 Then people also wanted to send direct e-transfers.

00:14:00.000 They went into that account.

00:14:01.280 It was all in one place.

00:14:02.640 They had a finance committee.

00:14:05.160 GoFundMe, release that million dollars.

00:14:09.260 Tamara took, I think it was like 20,000 or 17,000 out of that account.

00:14:14.560 Then TD froze it.

00:14:16.220 and they froze it very early on under their fraud prevention and that account has never been

00:14:22.380 unfrozen and this is before the emergencies act this is before the Ontario court order this was

00:14:28.040 all happening really quickly and really early on the reason that's important is because this is all

00:14:34.360 public record this is all raised judicata as they say it's already been adjudicated it's already

00:14:39.480 known it's already out there that's not what raised judicata means bear with me Latin's a

00:14:43.140 little rusty it hasn't been litigated yet because the case is ongoing but it's not a surprise

00:14:48.060 so this idea that Tamara Leach was somehow siphoning money which seemed to be the implication

00:14:54.740 I should say not the implication made by lawyer Paul Chan but by a lot of people on Twitter based

00:15:00.280 on a couple of reporters that really haven't been too closely following I'd say even Chris's

00:15:05.000 testimony let alone the remainder of all that came up today so what's happened here is the

00:15:12.200 convoy organizers are finally speaking. They're finally telling their story. And in doing so,

00:15:19.680 it is completely shattering this narrative that we know Justin Trudeau's office and Marco

00:15:24.420 Medellino's office were trying to peddle alongside the mainstream media of this being a protest that

00:15:30.480 was rooted in extremism. And Bridget Belton, who I believe is testifying at this moment,

00:15:36.840 one of the things she said just before the show started, I have to share here,

00:15:40.440 because one of the lawyers asked her what she saw in Ottawa,

00:15:45.340 what she saw, and this was her answer.

00:15:50.200 What were you seeing in Ottawa on Wellington Street?

00:15:55.300 Love, unity, people happy.

00:16:01.020 This had been two years.

00:16:03.380 People had been suppressed.

00:16:05.460 Two years.

00:16:07.060 People were struggling.

00:16:08.980 Two years.

00:16:10.440 that our government had told us, shame your family.

00:16:15.460 Do not allow them to come to Christmas.

00:16:17.440 Do not allow them to come at Easter.

00:16:19.100 Do not allow them to come to your home if they are not vaccinated, if they don't wear a mask.

00:16:24.860 There was a lot of hate in Canada, and the Toronto Sun supported it, or the Toronto Star, excuse me, supported it.

00:16:33.300 People were evil towards each other, and that is not what I saw in Ottawa.

00:16:37.560 I saw love. I saw unity. I saw Quebec with Alberta. I saw Ontario with Quebec. Hugging.

00:16:46.700 I saw people happy. It was the best thing that happened to our country in two years.

00:16:55.100 She saw love. She saw unity. She saw Quebecer. She saw Albertans. She saw Ontarians. She saw

00:17:00.760 them all together. And she saw people that were happy. Does that sound like the menacing group

00:17:07.180 of extremists that warrant a crackdown. And it's interesting. There's been a lot of discussion

00:17:13.800 about the effect that the convoy had on residents of Ottawa and businesses in Ottawa. And I think

00:17:19.180 these are absolutely concerns that are worth hearing about. I don't like this binary that

00:17:23.120 nothing bad happened, that no one was uncomfortable, that no one was. I don't like some of the

00:17:27.580 really bizarre and extreme language like traumatized and phantom honking and all of that.

00:17:32.720 But there were certainly effects. It was disruptive, and no one can say otherwise.

00:17:38.220 But I want to hear more testimony on how transformative it was.

00:17:42.740 And I want to talk about this in two different contexts.

00:17:45.700 I'll play a clip first, because I do want to be very diligent in reporting what's been happening at the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings.

00:17:52.400 But I also want to offer my own thoughts on this after.

00:17:54.740 This is a clip from Chris Barber, one of the Convoy organizers, who talked about—actually, I'm going to play two clips here.

00:18:01.520 The first clip is, I think, an interesting one of just him talking about his vaccination status, because I want to put a human face on how vaccine mandates affect people, people like, again, Chris Barber, who was fully vaccinated, but was still one of the leaders of this national protest against vaccine mandates. Take a look.

00:18:19.900 Is there any other ways that the, again, doesn't matter the level of government for the purpose of the question,

00:18:28.320 is there any other way that the public health restrictions relating to COVID-19 affected you personally?

00:18:34.960 Personally, when the COVID vaccine passport came in, it made things a little tricky.

00:18:40.600 We're not allowed to enter restaurants anymore.

00:18:44.960 I trucked throughout the whole pandemic.

00:18:47.380 I never stopped.

00:18:48.420 I was eating in my truck.

00:18:52.840 I had a coffee pot, a coffee maker in my truck.

00:18:55.460 The restaurants were closed.

00:18:56.380 Gas stations were closed.

00:18:58.100 Bathrooms were closed.

00:19:00.100 It was really tricky.

00:19:01.140 I remember about two weeks into the pandemic thinking this isn't worth it and going home.

00:19:06.060 And then the customer demands kept climbing.

00:19:08.680 So I ended up, I stayed.

00:19:11.800 Did you yourself get vaccinated?

00:19:13.500 Yes, sir.

00:19:14.240 Why did you make that decision?

00:19:16.080 I've spent the better part of 16 years running my company,

00:19:19.040 keeping the big carriers away from my customer base,

00:19:21.260 and I was at risk of losing all that hard work

00:19:23.960 to not being able to cross the border anymore.

00:19:30.660 So that, I just wanted to slip that in there,

00:19:33.280 because I think that a lot of people forget that when the government,

00:19:37.960 for example, talks about how, oh, you know, most truckers are vaccinated.

00:19:40.820 Well, a lot of them did exactly what Chris Barber did,

00:19:43.840 where they got vaccinated because they knew it was their only way to function in the world.

00:19:47.200 And a coerced choice is not a real choice.

00:19:51.640 I mean, that's what we're always told about consent is that, you know,

00:19:54.320 consent is not something that can be true or authentic when you're backed into a corner.

00:19:58.820 And that was the case with a lot.

00:20:00.780 And I don't want to put words into Chris Barber's mouth.

00:20:02.620 You can hear what he said in his own language.

00:20:05.100 But I wanted to go back to that idea of the transformative effect of the convoy.

00:20:09.300 So Bridget Belton, a woman who was at her wits end, and I posted a clip on Twitter.

00:20:13.720 I won't play it here because it's very long.

00:20:15.680 It's like five minutes.

00:20:17.040 But you should go onto my Twitter after the show, not now, after the show, and take a

00:20:22.380 look.

00:20:22.560 And it's this very tearful, emotional video that she posted after she had just a horrendous

00:20:27.740 encounter at the border when she was going back and forth across it as a trucker.

00:20:31.620 And she was tearing up on the stand today in Ottawa watching this video and then teared

00:20:37.040 up as she spoke a little bit later on about her experiences and what these mandates did

00:20:41.600 to her.

00:20:41.880 But you contrast that with the clip we played a couple of moments ago of her saying, yeah, in Ottawa, people were happy.

00:20:47.460 And for the first time in two years, it was just this world that we thought had been taken away from us.

00:20:52.620 And to go back to this Chris Barber clip, he talked a lot on the stand about being an online troll and just being a guy that gets into fights and posts rude memes and all of that.

00:21:03.640 there literally the federal government entered into evidence two memes that chris barber shared

00:21:11.140 about honking one of them is a modified parody screen grab of buffalo bill in silence of the

00:21:18.180 lambs and the other was i can't remember the other was just like a trombone or a trumpet i can't

00:21:23.520 actually see it on the screen right now so i'm going from memory it's not that i don't know my

00:21:27.180 wind instruments but i i love the brass section i don't mean to offend the brass section out there

00:21:31.400 i think it was a trombone and it was again making a joke about honking but the memes

00:21:35.580 are now evidence of a national emergency but chris talked about how he even reformed and changed

00:21:42.340 the way that he engages with the world and communicates and it was the convoy that did that

00:21:47.900 take a look this media report says that you texted to miss leach i know he's had issues

00:21:56.180 I've got skeletons in the closet too do you see that yes do you recall texting

00:22:01.700 that to miss Leach yes okay what were the skeletons in your closet well I've

00:22:05.660 been like I've said before I've been an internet troll for many years at this

00:22:10.040 point in time was there something in whether it was there anything in

00:22:12.800 particular that concerned you about what you had done on the internet nothing

00:22:16.820 that was related to the convoy what about things that were unrelated to the

00:22:20.620 convoy yes what concerned you I used to post nasty distasteful memes via share

00:22:30.640 memes or or just posting online in a negative way and it's the Commission's

00:22:38.560 understanding that some some members of the media identified certain Facebook

00:22:43.140 posts that you had made and and had reported on them or tweeted about them

00:22:46.780 is that something you were aware of at the time yeah they've been circulated

00:22:49.420 quite some time okay and these include Facebook posts that contained racist

00:22:56.600 and anti-Muslim comments is that a fair characterization yes okay and I expect

00:23:01.660 you may be asked questions about those by some of the parties and I wanted to

00:23:04.720 give you an opportunity now if you wanted it to speak to some of the

00:23:08.800 racist or anti-Muslim things you posted well I can honestly say that if anybody

00:23:13.160 learned anything or grow grew more during the convoy it was me I I was I was

00:23:20.060 a different person nine months ago whatever it was ten months ago coming

00:23:26.240 out here and seeing the amount of love and the people of all different colors

00:23:31.460 all different race everything it was it was such a diverse crowd of people here

00:23:35.400 there was so there were so many tears there was so many hugs there was so much

00:23:40.400 laughter there was so much it was it changed the person it changed me how did you change

00:23:49.520 uh it just it it humbled me i guess it uh it made me realize that uh that a lot of

00:23:56.640 those stuff that i used to post on the internet before was was very distasteful and uh there's

00:24:02.240 a better way to do it so that i think is so key here and if i can just sort of wrap up that strain

00:24:13.360 of thinking on this when i was writing my book i interviewed as many of you know i've talked about

00:24:18.160 it a bit before so many of the organizers and volunteers at all levels i interviewed people

00:24:23.280 that were just ordinary truckers people that went out to support them on overpasses people that had

00:24:28.080 very key roles in the operation. I couldn't speak to everyone. But the one thing that I really took

00:24:34.520 away from it, and one of the reasons it was so difficult, is that every interview I did,

00:24:38.680 with few exceptions, would go hours and hours and hours. And it was because these people just

00:24:44.980 absolutely were transformed and changed by this chapter, by the convoy. And it was so meaningful

00:24:53.780 in their own lives. And it was so meaningful to the country. And that story was one of the reasons

00:24:59.880 I wrote the book. And it's a story that has been completely absent from the mainstream media

00:25:03.860 coverage. Up until today, it's been completely absent from the Public Order Emergency Commission's

00:25:08.720 hearings. And I think it has to be one of the enduring parts of this whole thing. When you hear

00:25:12.520 from people like Bridget Bell and people like Chris Barber, and later on from Tamara Leach,

00:25:16.780 people that had lost hope in very real ways in the country that they've called home for their

00:25:22.380 entire lives. And then the convoy comes along and they feel something again. And that that is seen

00:25:27.500 by Justin Trudeau as a political opportunity, an opportunity to wedge people he doesn't like.

00:25:33.840 And they do that by pretending that it is a national crisis and a public order emergency

00:25:39.940 is absolutely shameful. We're going to shift gears here a bit. I want to bring in my very good

00:25:44.680 friend and fellow, I don't even know, independent media guy just seems too trite, but I'll say

00:25:50.680 independent media titan aaron gunn who hails from the west coast uh aaron good to talk to you thanks

00:25:56.660 for coming on today great to chat with you as well andrew it's great to be here so just on the i want

00:26:03.180 to get to your documentary vancouver is dying in just a moment but you're a bc guy and i think

00:26:08.640 oftentimes bc gets very misunderstood by the rest of canada because you really have two provinces

00:26:14.940 there you've got vancouver and then you've got the rest of british columbia and the political

00:26:19.680 culture is very different but a lot of people forget the convoy originated in delta bc and

00:26:25.340 obviously more people joined in alberta saskatchewan but but it was a very key part of this

00:26:29.940 and i was wondering just how that story in bc has unfolded outside of like the the downtown

00:26:36.160 vancouver bubble yeah well bc i mean you mentioned it's two provinces in one it's arguably three or

00:26:43.580 four i suppose uh you got the interior you got vancouver island um and then to your point where

00:26:48.800 it started in delta there um yeah i think there's been a lot bc is a weird place because we've had

00:26:54.080 some of the most repressive vaccine mandates in the country but also had some of the most relaxed

00:27:02.320 uh other covid restrictions i guess i guess you might call i remember in ontario you guys were

00:27:07.740 shutting down restaurants and for the most part everything in bc was pretty relaxed so

00:27:12.100 it's kind of a two-faced approach here in in bc um but i think it's for the most part this was a

00:27:19.040 canadian story and what was happening in bc was happening in alberta saskatchewa ontario quebec

00:27:23.840 obviously uh atlantic canada so um i don't think there's anything specific to bc just the same sort

00:27:30.600 of thing that was happening everywhere else one of the stories i think of the pandemic which

00:27:36.360 has not been fully explored yet i think more and more people are starting to

00:27:40.260 talk about it is how the lockdowns, the get to COVID zero, zero cases exacerbated all of these

00:27:47.860 other issues. I mean, we've heard anecdotally, and there's been some data about this, of

00:27:51.380 drug overdoses, suicides, mental health, domestic violence. A lot of these issues,

00:27:56.420 I mean, specifically on drugs, are very real issues in BC. And I was wondering if you could

00:28:02.000 speak in general and in Vancouver specifically about whether these things have just gotten worse

00:28:08.000 because they've always been getting worse in the last few years,

00:28:10.720 or whether you think there is a connection between that trend

00:28:13.640 and the lockdown issues that we've seen elsewhere.

00:28:18.240 I think the lockdowns basically poured fuel on the fire.

00:28:22.600 So it was already bad.

00:28:24.360 The policies that the government were pursuing were making the problem worse.

00:28:28.440 And then the lockdowns, the impact of reduced government services,

00:28:33.540 and also just a feeling of isolation, I think, for a lot of people,

00:28:37.500 i think exacerbated uh that problem uh that was already bad and was already getting worse so i

00:28:44.000 we can see now that covid's over the drug overdoses are still there um so i i think if that if that

00:28:51.420 if that makes sense you had a fire that was already burning and and government policies

00:28:55.100 during covid just threw a whole bunch of uh of gasoline on on top of it let's take a look at the

00:29:01.900 trailer for Vancouver is Dying.

00:29:07.160 People are afraid in Vancouver. You shouldn't have to walk down the street looking over your

00:29:11.700 shoulder, but that's the way it is now. You just kind of get used to this being part of what it

00:29:16.100 means to be a Vancouverite. This isn't normal and this is actually something wrong and that we

00:29:20.640 should hold our political leaders accountable for presiding over something that is clearly not okay.

00:29:26.180 We had a good city in the 90s. What the f*** happened?

00:29:28.400 What is happening to Vancouver?

00:29:31.600 One of the wealthiest and most naturally beautiful cities in all of North America

00:29:36.180 has been beset by skyrocketing crime, violent attacks and a crippling battle with addiction

00:29:42.580 that's literally left thousands of people dead.

00:29:46.560 But what is at the root of all these problems?

00:29:49.660 Do police have the tools they need to do their jobs?

00:29:52.920 Are violent offenders being released with little to no regard for public safety?

00:29:57.660 and has an ideological obsession with so-called safe supply and free drugs

00:30:02.860 overshadowed the desperate need for treatment, recovery and rehabilitation.

00:30:08.880 Harm reduction. Somebody's got a sense of humour, man.

00:30:11.200 Because that shit ain't helping nobody, man.

00:30:13.080 It's helping everybody get high more.

00:30:14.980 Everywhere you look that this stuff has taken hold significantly,

00:30:19.740 cities have become destroyed.

00:30:21.380 My name is Aaron Gunn and this is Politics Explained.

00:30:27.660 the whole thing is incredibly well done not just the the trailer but i think the trailer gives

00:30:35.900 people a sense of it uh it's made i think a pretty significant impact already i think you had

00:30:40.940 the premier of alberta danielle smith uh share it uh just a couple of days ago let me ask you

00:30:46.620 first off why you did this and what the overarching message is of it well i think like some of the

00:30:53.300 other journalism i do in this this series specifically um it was it was an issue that

00:30:58.020 that confounded me and i i wanted to know why as someone who's lived in british columbia coastal bc

00:31:04.100 especially uh you know over the past 20 years and watched as this problem has gotten worse and worse

00:31:10.260 homelessness drug overdoses up from when the problem was supposed to be bad 20 years ago 150

00:31:16.240 deaths per year now up to over 2 000 uh what's going on why are we pumping more and more money

00:31:22.320 at this problem and nothing is getting better and then you saw the one of the side effects of this

00:31:27.060 or the symptoms with crime has just absolutely been exploding uh here there's four violent random

00:31:33.640 stranger attacks every day on the streets of vancouver where random people are just getting

00:31:37.460 attacked this isn't gang related or anything like this so what is happening and like trying to kind

00:31:42.260 of peel back the curtain and and look past some of the kind of the same mainstream media talking

00:31:48.480 points and figure out what's actually going on and and like you said it's just uh it's it's been

00:31:53.360 explosive and um i think it's it's getting close to two million views now uh although one thing

00:31:58.880 that we can take away which was great uh week and a half after we released it the municipal

00:32:03.600 elections were held here in in bc and going into it the incumbent mayor who we were very critical of

00:32:10.480 uh was about tied in the polls and he ended up losing by about 20 points so

00:32:14.320 So we'd like to think the video played a little bit of an impact on that result.

00:32:18.900 Yeah, it's always good to get results in such a clear and, you know, rooted in metrics way.

00:32:25.600 I will ask you about the drug thing specifically here, because I know in a lot of cases it's very ideological for people.

00:32:34.000 It's never been, in my experience, where folks discuss this in terms of what's the best way to deal with this crisis.

00:32:40.820 You have people that very much are part of this permissive, ignore the criminal law.

00:32:46.760 They use terms like harm reduction approach.

00:32:48.980 And then you have other people that are the more traditional law and order types.

00:32:52.640 Are you still seeing that on left, right lines?

00:32:55.540 Or is it starting to change?

00:32:56.780 Because I think it's very difficult to take the abstract, no, no, no, we need to give

00:33:00.760 these people what they want attitude when your car is getting broken into, when your

00:33:04.780 business is being broken into.

00:33:06.140 And I've seen it on a smaller scale in my own city, London, which has a very significant

00:33:10.820 and growing drug problem.

00:33:12.060 And I'm curious if it's shifting in Vancouver.

00:33:17.240 That there is a growing realization,

00:33:19.240 which is why I think the video has resonated

00:33:21.520 in the way it has, that what we're doing now isn't working.

00:33:24.880 I think that is the consensus that is forming.

00:33:29.520 And also I think moving away from,

00:33:32.840 I think what some of those who were big proponents

00:33:34.660 of harm reduction always try to paint this picture

00:33:39.660 of a binary choice between like the war on drugs where, you know, you're throwing people who are

00:33:45.800 using drugs in jail versus what they're doing. And that's just not the case. There's lots of

00:33:49.860 countries in the world that have taken different approaches. You know, just because you're not

00:33:54.280 throwing people in jail, you know, for simple possession doesn't mean that the solution has

00:34:00.820 to be we're now just handing out free drugs. There's a case in Vancouver where they were

00:34:04.180 putting basically heroin in vending machines uh to supply the the the drug addictions of these

00:34:11.880 people and i think um the other point i just wanted to go back to your first question of what

00:34:16.420 really got me into this was this there's a big marketing push in british columbia and i think

00:34:20.640 it's happening in other provinces as well about stigma about you know this problem is all to do

00:34:26.360 with stigma we need to de-stigmatize the situation and when you drive down the streets of vancouver

00:34:33.000 Victorian, you see people lying here and just dying en masse and overdosing en masse. It's not

00:34:38.460 because of stigma. It's not that there's too much stigma on drugs. It somehow led to people

00:34:45.360 using drugs and dying. It doesn't even make any sense. So really exploring this topic and trying

00:34:51.780 to get to the bottom of it was, I think, important. I remember when I first went to San Francisco a

00:34:58.860 few years back I had been I had seen the conservative parody of San Francisco online of

00:35:05.180 like people defecating on streets and you know homeless people in every corner and drive and I

00:35:10.280 was like okay yeah yeah whatever and then I went there and it was exactly as I had been told like

00:35:16.260 the parody was real and it was actually quite upsetting because I had seen you know old photos

00:35:22.140 and videos of San Francisco looking like a wonderful place and it is just geographically

00:35:27.100 a beautiful place and vancouver is very similar and i don't know if you'd say vancouver is worse

00:35:31.720 or better than san francisco or if it's even a necessary comparison but it's a city that

00:35:36.920 has so much like it's a beautiful city it's got culture it's got dining it's got the ocean but

00:35:43.860 it's also a city that is just like a hellscape in some ways

00:35:47.940 yeah i mean there's a lot of parallels on on the west coast of the united states with what's

00:35:54.240 happening on the west coast of canada british columbia is actually a significantly higher

00:35:58.180 death rate from overdoses than than say washington state or california so the problem is is very acute

00:36:05.240 uh here and the permissiveness around drugs handing out free drugs i mean if you ask the people in

00:36:11.880 vancouver that are pushing these policies they would say that they are the vanguard of kind of

00:36:16.980 progressive drug policy in north america and i would argue that the vanguard of of disastrous

00:36:21.700 drug policy but they certainly are the ones that are pushing the limits the most and this started

00:36:26.260 if you go back to i think it's 2002 where insight opened the first safe injection site in north

00:36:31.560 america where people were allowed to to go and shoot up illicit drugs and ever since that point

00:36:37.560 it seems to me that as the results keep getting worse and worse and worse their response is always

00:36:45.180 that it's just because we haven't gone far enough and it's just amazing when you contrast that with

00:36:49.800 other countries uh in europe like portugal and sweden and others who have taken dramatically

00:36:54.740 different approaches with with way better results and yet where it's just it's so ideological here

00:37:00.340 in british columbia um and it's it's it's sad to see the results and it's i mean it's not surprising

00:37:06.940 you see the left do this on other issues as well where it becomes almost like this religious like

00:37:11.520 devotion to ideology that to the point of which you just ignore things that are happening right

00:37:17.100 in front of your face, which is, I mean, downtown Vancouver, you know, you'd have to, it's amazing.

00:37:24.040 You can see it visually in front of you, the results of these failed policies.

00:37:28.320 I will say it's very inconvenient for libertarians like me, who would say in theory, yes,

00:37:36.160 legalize all drugs. You know, if you use drug, it harms only you, not other people. Therefore,

00:37:40.260 it's like smoking. It's like if you do it on your own and it hurts you, it's no one else's problem.

00:37:44.760 So what's your response?

00:37:46.460 Because I know you and I see eye to eye on a lot of issues.

00:37:48.960 So how do you respond to that?

00:37:50.420 Why does the libertarian fantasy break down in reality?

00:37:57.620 Well, so there's a couple.

00:38:00.600 I mean, there's the drug issue.

00:38:02.400 There's the criminal justice issue.

00:38:04.080 This documentary covers a lot of it.

00:38:05.900 But part of the problem is that these people develop drug addictions.

00:38:11.440 these drug addictions cost a lot of money to maintain you obviously can't be uh when you're

00:38:17.640 in a when you're perpetually high you can't maintain a job or whatever so you resort to

00:38:22.900 crime it usually begins with petty crime and right now i interviewed the head of the police union

00:38:28.540 uh and police officers who you know they arrest the same person for the exact same crime twice

00:38:35.620 in 24-hour periods repeatedly.

00:38:38.100 Like they'd arrest them.

00:38:39.020 The literal revolving door scenario.

00:38:40.580 The literal revolving door.

00:38:42.100 They get put in prison.

00:38:43.160 They get released on a promise to appear.

00:38:45.220 They go and commit the exact same crime,

00:38:46.960 and the cop, just by happenstance,

00:38:48.960 ends up arresting them again.

00:38:50.980 So the criminal justice system, in fact,

00:38:54.480 is a big part of this problem as well.

00:38:56.780 What I would say with addiction and libertarianism is,

00:39:01.140 um i mean i i kind of view it as as a parallel of if you wouldn't allow um at least i think most

00:39:11.360 versions of libertarianism wouldn't allow for slavery like the right of somebody to basically

00:39:15.480 sell themselves into slavery and i think with these hard drugs like are talking crystal meth

00:39:21.360 and heroin and these kinds of things um eventually these people basically lose the ability to to act

00:39:28.980 rationally um to to to process kind of the uh look out for their own best interests make make

00:39:35.620 uh um as as the addicts that i interviewed would talk about they would commit crimes and do things

00:39:41.860 that morally they would never have otherwise done or were never raised it just becomes your sole

00:39:46.580 focus uh in life is achieving the next high and everything ends up revolving around that

00:39:52.100 and i just don't think that's something that is that is really sustainable in a free

00:39:56.180 and open society.

00:39:58.240 I think there should be as few rules as possible,

00:40:00.860 but we still need certain rules

00:40:03.560 or else things descend into chaos and anarchy

00:40:08.400 like we're seeing in parts of Vancouver.

00:40:10.760 Where can people watch the documentary?

00:40:13.640 People can watch the documentary on YouTube.

00:40:16.480 So you can type in Vancouver is dying on YouTube

00:40:19.460 and it should pop up,

00:40:21.620 or you can visit my channel,

00:40:23.180 which is youtube.com slash AaronGunnBC.

00:40:26.180 And you should definitely give Aaron a follow on YouTube anyway.

00:40:30.700 But do check out the documentary.

00:40:32.180 It's a great one.

00:40:32.920 Aaron Gunn, great to see you as always.

00:40:34.860 Thanks for coming on today.

00:40:36.400 Thanks for having me.

00:40:38.220 All right.

00:40:38.880 That was Aaron Gunn, Independent Media Tycoon.

00:40:42.200 That's the term I'm using.

00:40:43.980 And I said Titan earlier, not tycoon.

00:40:46.480 Now he sounds like the Monopoly man.

00:40:48.000 So in any case, the one thing I'll say on Vancouver before we end,

00:40:53.360 I mean, it's easy.

00:40:54.200 conservatives used to get into this habit I found of just like rolling the rise at British Columbia

00:40:59.580 and I think it was fascinating when we saw as Aaron alluded to earlier during the first and

00:41:04.860 second waves of lockdown Quebecers with their so-called conservative government getting a

00:41:09.000 curfew Ontarians with their so-called conservative government getting a vaccine passport Albertans

00:41:14.260 with their so-called conservative government getting vaccine passports as well and meanwhile

00:41:18.300 the NDP government in British Columbia was like yeah yeah the restaurants they can stay open you

00:41:23.280 can keep going there and it is weird that that same place as aaron said then has like the most

00:41:27.580 enduring vaccine mandates for its public civil servants so absolutely crazy and again i go back

00:41:34.160 to the public order emergency commission why this was such a national movement because people had

00:41:40.800 different concerns and different issues chris barber in his testimony said my issue was the

00:41:45.520 cross-border trucker mandate bridget belton's and her issue was the cross-border trucker mandate

00:41:50.220 but other people were saying there was one guy we don't have a photo of it because i'm just like

00:41:54.440 throwing this uh at my producer uh so don't feel like you're missing something sean it's okay

00:41:59.620 but there was like one of the great signs that i saw in during the convoy was a guy

00:42:04.880 canadian tire i want to go to canadian tire that was a little bit tongue in cheek but that was the

00:42:11.420 whole point is that even that was taken away from unvaccinated quebecers the right to go to

00:42:16.660 Canadian Tire if for whatever reason that was what you wanted to do on a vendredi or whatever

00:42:22.340 and that's ridiculous and people brought all of these to Ottawa and when they were there they

00:42:28.200 felt it was this incredibly meaningful moment in their lives and to Justin Trudeau that was a

00:42:33.440 national emergency we got to end things here I want to thank all of you by the way who

00:42:38.080 subscribed to our YouTube channel we had a hundred thousand subscriber goal by the end of the month

00:42:43.140 It was a bit of a nail biter, but we made it there before midnight last night.

00:42:46.820 So I thank you very much for that.

00:42:48.420 And if you value the work we're doing, please head on over to donate.tnc.news, donate.tnc.news.

00:42:54.400 And you can do a one-time contribution or even better sign up for monthly contributions.

00:42:58.720 And we have some big perks planned for our insiders in the months and year ahead.

00:43:04.240 So I thank you to all who are supporting us.

00:43:06.360 We'll talk to you tomorrow with more updates from the Public Order Emergency Commission live from Ottawa.

00:43:12.120 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:43:13.440 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:43:17.120 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:43:19.660 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - November 01, 2022

Trudeau thought convoy was political opportunity, not national emergency

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