Juno News - Trudeau tries to sell his carbon tax at the UN

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:16.260 this is the Andrew Lawton Show

00:01:19.280 brought to you by True North

00:01:20.760 hello and welcome to you all

00:01:27.480 we made it through another week

00:01:28.960 it is Thursday, September 21st, 2023. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show. Although I

00:01:36.960 should say if you're not careful and you're typing it out, autocorrect will sometimes shift to

00:01:41.640 irrelevant. But no, I'm not Rosie Barton. This is not CBC. We are highly relevant and very irreverent

00:01:48.080 at times, which every now and then some people take issue with on our side of the spectrum. And

00:01:53.760 they say, well, why do you want to be irreverent? And I would say because we challenge the orthodoxies

00:01:58.380 of our era, which right now, as we saw last week, so very much need to be challenged.

00:02:04.220 Not that last week, yesterday, I guess I should say.

00:02:07.140 Speaking specifically of the Million Person March, which I was very proud to be part of

00:02:11.460 the True North team in covering, it was easy for me because I did it from here.

00:02:15.060 But Harrison Faulkner was out there in the midst of the protests in Toronto.

00:02:21.040 We had Ellie Kenton-Nantel in Ottawa.

00:02:24.180 We had Cosman, Georgia, and Lindsay Shepard out in British Columbia at the Vancouver one.

00:02:29.240 We had other folks from our team at various points.

00:02:32.660 I realize that you can't list everyone, so you have to not list most, because if you

00:02:36.880 list most and not all, you offend the one person you left out.

00:02:40.060 So apologies if I did that to any of my own colleagues here.

00:02:43.680 But the reason I bring that up again is because, and I would stay tuned to True North on this,

00:02:48.560 there's going to be a bit of a wave, as we're seeing, of really unhinged reactions and

00:02:55.380 breakdowns of what happened there as the media really just distills this down into an inaccurate

00:03:01.120 and very unfair caricature of the people that were there. And it's just like I was talking about

00:03:06.180 when you have union activists that are saying it's far right and racist. And then you like

00:03:11.140 pan to an image of a bunch of like happy Muslims and Sikhs that are saying, you know, love,

00:03:15.760 diversity, children. It's like, oh, wow, the face of white supremacy is a little weird right now,

00:03:22.340 but that is the way the media is framing this. We're going to be talking later on in this show

00:03:27.660 with Dominic Carty, who is an MLA in New Brunswick and the interim leader of a new political party

00:03:33.660 that posits itself as a radical centrist voice in Canadian politics. That is the party that was

00:03:41.280 created by the folks behind Center Ice Canadians.

00:03:44.800 It is called Canadian Future.

00:03:46.860 We'll speak about what that is

00:03:48.580 and what it is they're doing in our political landscape later on.

00:03:52.180 Also, Trish Wood will join us for a wrap-up of the third week

00:03:56.460 of the Tamara Leach and Chris Barber trial,

00:03:59.280 which is coming to an end in the next couple of hours here in Ottawa.

00:04:03.520 But first, I want to talk about Justin Trudeau's visit to the UN.

00:04:07.320 I know, I know, it's like the epitome of dog bites, man.

00:04:10.260 Justin Trudeau goes to UN. I think if he had his way, he'd be able to spend all his days

00:04:14.140 at the UN and Davos and not have to worry about the pesky parliamentary process in Ottawa. But

00:04:20.620 Justin Trudeau went back to the House of Commons for one day. He was there for Monday and then

00:04:25.920 like hightailed it out of there so quickly to hitch his plane or hitch a ride on his plane

00:04:31.400 to New York City, where he's spent a few days reveling in the world of sustainable development

00:04:37.480 goals at the United Nations. Now, Trudeau has done this in a way that we shouldn't be all that

00:04:44.640 surprised by. Let's be real here. He's going and not talking about anything dissimilar from what

00:04:49.960 he talks about when he's here. But I want to just begin by setting the stage for this, because this

00:04:55.700 SDG consortium here, presided over by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, sounds all

00:05:03.200 nice and benign, but it really isn't. This is a clip from Secretary General Gutierrez.

00:05:09.560 Eight years ago, member states gathered in the hall to adopt the sustainable development goals.

00:05:17.120 With the world watching, including 193 young people in the balcony, holding blue lamps of hope,

00:05:25.540 you made a solemn promise. A promise to build a world of health, progress, and opportunity for

00:05:32.840 all a promise to leave no one behind and the promise to pay for it

00:05:41.080 oh yes that's the key caveat they're saying the quiet part out loud the countries didn't

00:05:46.600 just agree to the vision they want for the world they agreed to pay for it but that means that

00:05:52.360 they agreed for us to pay for it they often leave out that last part which is that canada

00:05:58.920 is not paying for anything canadians are paying for things now antonio guterres a literal socialist

00:06:05.000 is the guy that gets up there and talks about how the world's burning and the only thing that can

00:06:08.920 save it is if everyone comes together and does his bidding and that of the united nations agenda

00:06:15.000 more broadly now this is an agenda that your prime minister our prime minister justin trudeau has

00:06:20.280 all too willingly adopted this is a a little quote from him talking about how the sdgs are

00:06:27.320 pretty darn important. Co-chair of the Secretary General's SDG advocates, why are the SDGs so

00:06:35.760 important to you and for Canada? Well, I think they're just important, period. What we're seeing

00:06:42.040 right now everywhere around the world is a level of anxiety about the future that I don't think

00:06:48.420 we've ever seen at this level before. I mean, whether it's the real impacts of climate change

00:06:53.440 are increasingly felt by everyone whether it's the spreading of conflicts and instability in

00:07:00.000 terms of food in terms of energy all around the world whether it's a pandemic that knocked us all

00:07:05.920 for a loop people are worried and people are worried that they're you know going to be able

00:07:10.880 to offer a better future to their kids and that's not obvious even in wealthy places where that had

00:07:17.200 always been the story um people are really not certain about the future so showing that as a

00:07:23.520 world we can focus on the basic building blocks of success the the the sdg goals are what is

00:07:32.080 necessary to create a successful planet full stop over the coming decades not just a list of nice

00:07:41.200 to haves they are necessary that was a comment in an interview in march it dovetails on this other

00:07:48.560 one now where justin trudeau is lamenting that uh we are off track on these things we're not doing

00:07:54.880 enough to meet these have pointed out the 2023 special edition of the sdgs report is sobering

00:08:03.840 The fact that nearly 50% of SDG targets are moderately or severely off track is alarming.

00:08:13.920 We need an immediate course correction and acceleration of progress.

00:08:19.540 But as many have said, it's just half time.

00:08:23.540 We can do this.

00:08:27.520 We can do this.

00:08:30.260 We can.

00:08:31.320 We really, really can.

00:08:33.200 I really mean it. We can do this. These SDGs, let me just take a step back. These are 17 goals that

00:08:40.140 United Nations member states all came together in 2015 to agree on. Now, I should say to point

00:08:47.060 out the elephant in the room, it was a conservative government in Canada that signed Canada onto this

00:08:52.620 at the same time they were doing the Paris Climate Accord. And I know this is a criticism that you

00:08:57.440 often get from notably PPC supporters towards the conservatives, and it's a fair criticism.

00:09:02.560 And the only real argument that you could use to defend this is, well, it's just what every

00:09:07.620 country does. That's the only real defense. Well, we just went along with it. And we didn't really

00:09:12.660 mean it, but we said what we had to do. And if you look at the website for the SDGs, they're

00:09:17.600 very seemingly benign. Number one is no poverty. Well, who's going to stand up and say, well,

00:09:24.660 I actually, you know, I know it's not politically correct, but I like poverty. The second is zero

00:09:29.760 hunger i i hate being hungry and you know i'm making light of it there is a very serious hunger

00:09:35.040 issue in the world i do not like that people are going hungry number three good health and well

00:09:40.320 being i am in no position to lecture anyone about this but it is a very good goal quality education

00:09:47.120 most of these things are very normal and acceptable and palatable things the problem of course is when

00:09:55.440 you drill down and look at the mechanisms that the un believes are necessary to get to this point

00:10:02.000 for example we look at let me just pull up the number here 13 goal 13 is climate action there

00:10:10.400 is obviously going to be a significant bit of politicization here it's take urgent action to

00:10:16.400 combat climate change and its impacts you look at the targets and indicators and 13.2 is to

00:10:23.200 integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning. So this means

00:10:29.940 that when countries have signed on to this, they're not just signing on to the theoretical

00:10:34.120 goal of ending hunger, ending poverty, ending climate change. They're committing themselves,

00:10:39.700 it's not binding, but they are choosing to bind themselves to this pledge to integrate measures

00:10:45.420 into national policies, strategies, and planning. And I share that with you so that you have the

00:10:51.040 context for what's happening when Justin Trudeau gets up there today and makes this call at the UN.

00:10:57.600 We all know that pollution has a cost. We're seeing that every day.

00:11:05.740 Together, we can make sure that pollution has a price too. In Canada, our price on pollution

00:11:14.940 not only ensures big emitters pay their fair share, it also returns money collected directly

00:11:22.240 to families through rebates. In fact, the rebates put more money in people's pockets

00:11:29.420 than the vast majority pay into the system. So here he is, first off, blatantly telling a falsehood

00:11:38.860 about the nature of the carbon tax. I mean, the way he describes it, we all make money from it.

00:11:43.720 Like, did you know that, that you actually make money from the carbon tax, that when you have

00:11:48.400 to pay more for groceries and pay more for gas and pay more to heat your house, that you're

00:11:52.300 actually coming out on top? Because that's the argument he's making there. When you get that

00:11:56.180 little piddly climate action payment or climate action incentive, as they used to say it, that's

00:12:01.360 supposed to just make you forget about everything else. So, goody, the carbon tax is actually a

00:12:06.360 great gift to us. Well, if people are making more from this, how is it doing all the things the

00:12:11.300 government claims it's going to do and claims it's doing. It's not. But here's the problem.

00:12:17.040 The carbon tax is one of the single biggest contributing factors right now to the rising

00:12:21.740 cost of living that is directly within government's control. Inflation has a government role,

00:12:27.280 yes, but the carbon tax, the government could literally flip a switch and the prices on all

00:12:31.860 of those things, the carbon tax effects would go down. And then the indirect costs, for example,

00:12:37.100 the price of shipping a cauliflower to your grocery store, that trucker had to pay more in

00:12:43.060 carbon tax to get the fuel. That is an indirect cost, which would come down conceivably as well.

00:12:49.120 But he is now calling for every country around the world to follow Canada's lead. At a time when

00:12:57.580 global inflation is pushing more and more people into poverty, he gets up there and says to the UN,

00:13:03.120 And, you know, forget about the fact that people in my home country are losing their homes and can't afford to buy groceries.

00:13:09.800 We all need to do this.

00:13:11.040 We all need to learn from Canada's example right now.

00:13:14.760 And this is the problem.

00:13:15.900 The SDGs get a bit of a conspiratorial rap sometime.

00:13:20.360 Canada is not beholden to these things.

00:13:22.540 Canada agreed, but Canada still has the authority to decide what policies it wants to enact.

00:13:28.240 The problem with Justin Trudeau is not that he's bound by these things.

00:13:31.360 It's that he wants to be bound by these things.

00:13:34.520 He's actually the great evangelist for the Sustainable Development Goals.

00:13:38.560 I don't know if it's possible to put a screenshot of it up, but if you saw that clip that I

00:13:42.960 just played from Justin Trudeau speaking, he's wearing a pin that looks like a trivial

00:13:47.920 pursuit board with, you know, the little colored pie wedges.

00:13:51.160 Well, that is the official logo of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

00:13:55.500 Each one of those wedges represents one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

00:14:00.220 So you go up there and wonder, why is this guy wearing, why is he, when did it go out of vogue to wear a Canadian flag when you're representing Canada at the United Nations?

00:14:09.820 Because when Justin Trudeau speaks at the United Nations, he is not Canada's representative in New York.

00:14:16.720 He is the United Nations representative to Canada.

00:14:19.760 And that is such a crucial point here, is that he wants to represent the global community, the so-called global community in Canada, instead of representing Canada itself, which should be his job.

00:14:33.220 And that's one of the great contrasts between Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau.

00:14:37.800 We have that image up.

00:14:39.160 Correct me if I'm wrong.

00:14:40.800 I don't recall Stephen Harper ever wearing that Sustainable Development Goals pin.

00:14:46.000 Now, admittedly, he was out of office not long after the SDGs were cemented, so maybe the UN

00:14:50.880 branding department hadn't made the pins yet, but I don't think he ever would have worn a pin like

00:14:56.140 that. And I may have told this story previously when my producer, Sean, and I were walking around

00:15:01.860 in Davos, you'd like walk up to someone and you'd say, oh, wow, this guy must work for the UN. He's

00:15:06.680 wearing that UN pin. And you look at his name tag and it's like, oh, that's Brad Smith, the CEO of

00:15:11.780 Microsoft? Like, why is he wearing a UN pin? Shouldn't he be representing Microsoft? Why is

00:15:17.420 Justin Trudeau wearing a UN pin? And these things are incredibly important for people to take note

00:15:24.320 of here, because we have as a country national sovereignty. The United Nations, people who

00:15:29.840 defend it against critics will say, well, hang on, the UN doesn't have an agenda of its own. It only

00:15:35.660 has the agenda that is given to it by its member states. That's kind of true. I would argue it's

00:15:41.620 untrue when you look at how the UN Secretary General takes such a prominent role in shaping

00:15:48.220 discussions and when the UN is putting out policy resolutions and agendas and all of that.

00:15:53.200 But at its core, Canada could look at this and say, no. Canada could look at this and say,

00:15:58.420 you know what, screw this. We're representing our national interests. And yes, we're committed if we

00:16:03.400 can be a part of the solution to reduce hunger and reduce poverty and all of that stuff. But we

00:16:08.900 are not going to bankrupt our country because all of these people are clinging to you know

00:16:15.340 UN SDG number 13 as being some trump card over sovereign countries and their national interests

00:16:24.600 and uh it's really interesting because you look at these discussions and you'll see like the head

00:16:29.040 of the Maldives or the head of Tuvalu get up there and say we're drowning we're drowning everyone

00:16:33.680 needs to have a carbon tax so we can get rid of this and then you look at these ribbon cuttings

00:16:38.720 they're doing for these waterfront resorts. And you're like, well, you know, if you think your

00:16:42.060 country is going to be underwater, maybe you shouldn't be investing in waterfront property.

00:16:46.040 There's a little bit of an issue there that I have in understanding the logic and rationale

00:16:51.360 behind this. So thank you for coming to my TED Talk, as we say. We will move now to a story

00:16:58.880 that's been brewing in Ottawa for now three weeks. It is the criminal mischief trial of Tamara Leach

00:17:05.060 and chris barber and what's interesting about this we haven't been able to cover it from the

00:17:10.360 courtroom because i you know can't broadcast live from you know courtroom number three or whatever

00:17:14.740 they're in but we've been keeping an update and i've been keeping tabs on it and there's been

00:17:18.920 some great reporting that's been taking place uh some of it from robert krychuk of rebel and also

00:17:24.400 from trish wood who we had on alongside jacqueline vine and a couple of weeks ago about a documentary

00:17:30.940 they're putting together on Tamara Leach called the Trials of Tamara Leach. But I wanted to bring

00:17:36.400 Trish Wood back onto the show for a bit of an update on how things have been going. Trish,

00:17:40.920 good to talk to you. This week has been a bit interesting because we've seen

00:17:44.720 some double speak from one of the witnesses from what he said during the Public Order

00:17:50.440 Emergency Commission and what he's now saying in the prosecution of Chris and Tamara. What's going

00:17:56.620 on well it's quite interesting because well let me just say um you're lucky you're not covering

00:18:02.260 the trial because it's one of the most boring things i've ever been involved in as a journalist

00:18:06.700 and most trials as you know andrew are full of drama they create their own culture they create

00:18:12.560 their own stories remember oj and you know if the glove doesn't fit you must quit and all that

00:18:17.580 wonderful stuff that happened this trial is a huge drag on one's attention i mean maybe it's the you

00:18:25.940 know the the air flow problem in the courtroom or something along those lines but generally it is a

00:18:33.340 case the crown's case is a case in search of a narrative the crown has not explained in any

00:18:42.440 sensible way exactly why he's leading the evidence he's leading in the order he's leading the

00:18:48.660 evidence he and she he has a second chair young young woman he's leading and the whole thing has

00:18:54.760 turned into and I don't want to be disrespectful to the court I quite like this judge and I've said

00:18:59.920 so before I think I said so the last time I was on she's pretty interesting tough smart doesn't

00:19:04.920 miss a trick and is managing a whole bunch of really crazy stuff that's going on quite well

00:19:09.900 but I it's becoming a big kind of evidentiary blob you know you you're not being trained as they

00:19:18.440 as a good lawyer will kind of put it out day after day to start thinking about the case in a certain

00:19:24.480 way and you're like oh yeah well that could you know that maybe that could be true maybe they

00:19:29.060 did do it or maybe they didn't do it it's just kind of throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping

00:19:34.000 it's going to stick that that feels like what's going on and i don't get it i do know i'm sure

00:19:39.480 you know too that this is not the first crown this is not the original crown um that he was

00:19:45.880 removed and i don't exactly know what happened there i i know that he was pretty zealous and

00:19:51.800 was seen to be zealous, which is not necessarily a good look in a trial that's already being

00:19:56.960 accused of being political. So they brought these two in. Tim Radcliffe is the lead chair.

00:20:03.180 I don't know. Maybe it's a last minute thing. Maybe they're just not up to speed on their

00:20:07.520 own evidence. But I am not hearing anything bad about Chris Barber and Tamara Leach day after

00:20:14.260 day after day after day. I mean, it's kind of crazy. And I don't think even like I've been

00:20:20.820 following Canadian press a little bit because they've been sort of okay. I don't think even

00:20:25.580 the people who are inclined to look at, mainly the legacy media, the people who are inclined to look

00:20:32.040 at Tamara and Chris in the worst possible way, even they're playing it kind of straight because

00:20:36.660 there's not really anything going on. The nub of it, I think, is the phrase, hold the line.

00:20:42.060 And how will that be interpreted? And what did it mean? And what did it mean when various people

00:20:46.960 said it i also think it will be about at the end of the day uh the interpretation of the phrase

00:20:53.920 mischief because that can be legally interpreted multiple ways too but we don't even have a

00:20:58.400 framework of language in this case yet so it's a really really strange thing to be participating

00:21:06.320 and sitting there in the gallery yeah yeah and just to talk about the pace of this there were

00:21:12.080 initially 22 witnesses the crown was planning to call yeah i believe there was talk about adding

00:21:17.760 more but just for context here we are about to wrap up the third week of trial there are

00:21:22.800 under the original schedule three days left and they've gone through three witnesses yeah so

00:21:30.080 here's what's going on there aside from the fact that the witnesses are not saying anything

00:21:35.520 inculpatory about taking a long time to say nothing is that they're taking like well they're

00:21:39.840 they're not even saying bad things about the defendants, right? Which you would think the

00:21:43.620 crown witnesses would be. But there's a lot of procedural stuff that I don't quite understand.

00:21:50.760 And I, look, I give, trials are really, really hard work, Andrew. I mean, you're in trial all

00:21:57.300 day, on your feet, working really hard, and you go home at night and you prep more. It's a really

00:22:02.200 tough gig for both sides, actually. So I have some sympathy for them. But what I don't understand is

00:22:08.700 why the Crown Attorney, primarily Tim Radcliffe, who is the lead chair, was not better prepared

00:22:15.220 because a lot of the reasons that we're seeing this slow going with the witnesses is that

00:22:22.440 simple rules of evidence don't seem to have been being adhered to. So we'll just get going

00:22:29.660 and they'll get three questions and answers out from one of their witnesses. And then there is

00:22:34.360 an objection, which the defense is perfectly entitled and should be doing on behalf of their

00:22:39.960 client. And then a long, long discussion on simple things like I know with Mr. Ayotte, who's on the

00:22:46.080 stand now, one of the issues was, did he have notebooks? What notebooks can buttress what he's

00:22:51.960 testifying to in court? And my understanding from when I was there the other day is that he didn't

00:22:57.220 have any. So that then becomes a big thing. How do you know what you know? And how do we know that

00:23:01.880 you're saying, what you actually know, you know, like there are reasons that they do all these

00:23:05.360 really specific things, these rules of evidence in a trial, and they don't, it's not that they're

00:23:11.120 not being adhered to. That's maybe not a fair thing to say. That would be perhaps for an appellate

00:23:16.320 court to sort out later, but they seem to be coming to Mr. Radcliffe as a bit of a surprise.

00:23:22.960 So I don't know if, if, if Justice Perkins McVey is being a stickler or if there really is something

00:23:31.180 hinky about the way they are bringing the evidence to court and some of it makes you know the

00:23:36.680 complaints about it makes sense to me obviously if you're defending your client you need to know

00:23:40.440 exactly what the crown's going to lead so you can prepare your defense and your you know arguments

00:23:45.080 i mean court really is about arguing right and in order to to prepare yourself you need to know what

00:23:51.440 they're going to lead and whether it's credible and where they got it and all that stuff and

00:23:54.880 that didn't seem to be being happening so this is dragging and i will say that the judge

00:24:00.760 is saying that you know she looks kind of irritated at times and not yet irritated with

00:24:07.640 defense now they're not leading evidence yet but but uh she does seem somewhat irritated with it

00:24:13.080 with this crown and with the process no one wants this no one wants to be a judge in charge of a

00:24:19.260 proceeding that's sort of crawling along the eyes of the country you know are on this and um i you

00:24:26.420 know, I'll say this, Andrew, I'm not a purely objective observer. I was a journalist long

00:24:30.740 enough to know that I, you know, I do have sides a bit in this. I can sort out truth from non-truth,

00:24:37.300 but I do wish these charges hadn't been laid. And I, you know, I kind of favored the convoy.

00:24:43.300 I think people know that. But putting that aside, I feel like everybody involved in it,

00:24:49.200 including the judge, wants this case to be decided on the facts as they're presented,

00:24:55.020 whether you think the charges should have been brought or not and uh i think it's going to be

00:25:00.380 really really difficult for the crown to prove its case in this maybe you know maybe that's wishful

00:25:04.940 thinking on my part but yeah some of the clips that i was told were played earlier on in this

00:25:12.780 trial had nothing to do with tamara leach and chris barber and and you know it's funny because

00:25:18.380 the crown made a point of saying early on in his opening remarks you know we're not this is not

00:25:22.460 trying them for their political beliefs. And I believe he had also made a comment about it not

00:25:26.900 being about the convoy itself. And yet his case has involved trying to basically put the convoy

00:25:33.900 on trial. Well, I almost want to put my hand up and say, Mr. Radcliffe, so why did you lead that

00:25:40.220 clip? What am I supposed to glean from that? Because I'm not getting it. There was a guy on

00:25:44.560 from the Sûreté to Quebec. This is how kind of absurd some of the evidence is. And he was part of

00:25:52.000 what they were calling the Green Squad.

00:25:54.080 And if you remember when they brought the convoy down

00:25:57.680 and by this time, bear in mind,

00:26:00.320 Tamara and Chris had already been arrested.

00:26:02.460 They weren't even there.

00:26:03.420 This was-

00:26:03.800 Yeah, just for the audience to be aware,

00:26:05.840 they were arrested before the major police operations

00:26:09.200 took place.

00:26:10.200 So, I mean, anything that happened after that point,

00:26:12.540 I mean, yes, you could argue maybe

00:26:14.120 they had encouraged it before,

00:26:15.680 but they weren't there.

00:26:17.120 They weren't involved.

00:26:17.880 They were in a cell.

00:26:19.220 They were in a cell, yeah.

00:26:20.580 so so the certee quebec is doing this i guess it's called a clearing operation or at least

00:26:25.720 that's what the military calls it and then he was with the green squad and there was a point where

00:26:30.620 he's kind of talking about what they're doing you see this i believe it was body cam footage

00:26:35.880 and this is kind of heartbreaking too that here are these far right you know terrorists according

00:26:43.240 to some people including legacy media all these guys kind of military age guys uh chanting love

00:26:50.560 over fear right they're not misbehaving they are they're standing calm and true and chanting love

00:26:58.160 over fear in the face of this really overpowering police presence i think at that point the police

00:27:03.360 were behaving as well and not not dumping on them but here they are they're all on their black block

00:27:08.720 and it's you know very scary and we don't know what's going to happen and then there was kind

00:27:13.600 of a moment where this um this uh police officer from from the sq says well and then we went for

00:27:19.920 lunch and so of course the defense council lawrence greenspan says something like well you went for

00:27:26.480 lunch so so there's this big moment of we've got to you know secure the area from these scary people

00:27:33.440 but we're going for lunch so i mean there are moments that maybe are not like intended to be

00:27:40.800 really representative of what's going on they actually were like it wasn't they weren't so

00:27:45.760 scared that they couldn't go to the chateau laurier for lunch he clarified he wasn't eating

00:27:50.240 at the chateau laurier no one can afford that they took their lunches to the chateau laurier

00:27:54.880 so that's the kind of stuff we're seeing right i mean i haven't seen anything in the videos

00:28:00.400 that did anything but really uh act as exculpatory evidence for the fence except there are chance of

00:28:08.160 hold the line i know that's going to be discussed forever and ever but it is showing um some

00:28:15.760 pretty how can i put subdued behavior on behalf of the protesters and i don't know if you remember

00:28:20.880 this if i said this on the last show but when they first started showing these these videos

00:28:25.520 and you're like oh what's going to be in them they're going to be so terrible and and what

00:28:29.440 happened was the the protesters looked pretty responsible but also in these clips there were

00:28:37.120 photographs and images of the police beating protesters in the head and and the judge noticed

00:28:43.920 that you know she noticed so whatever they're leading it always seems it's kind of like dare i

00:28:50.240 say um the roadrunner and the coyote like they keep dropping the anvil on i maybe i'm overstating

00:28:56.880 it but do we know when they're going to settle the trial schedule itself just to get back to the

00:29:03.200 housekeeping side of this because i again the dates that were originally planned they were going

00:29:07.360 to i believe run tomorrow as well i i they weren't running fridays but i believe they're scheduled to

00:29:12.400 to go tomorrow and then they were going to take a two-week break and finish off october 11th to

00:29:17.200 13th and i know they've talked about needing to add more dates has that been settled yet not as

00:29:23.040 far as i know but i came back yesterday so i don't know if there's been movement on that i

00:29:28.060 i get the sense that they've still got a long way to go with this and and it's also interesting too

00:29:35.180 because covering it then becomes a problem right it costs money to be in ottawa you know i'm paying

00:29:40.840 hotels and la la la as you all know and you're like nothing's really happening you're waiting

00:29:46.740 for the big trial moment and nothing is happening it's all almost all procedural none of it's making

00:29:55.020 very much sense and you kind of go home at the end of the day thinking man what am I going to

00:29:58.740 write about so I've been writing about how bumpy the train ride was going down to Ottawa

00:30:03.820 I was writing about other trials I've covered I mean there's not all that much to say and yet

00:30:09.780 But this is a massively important trial in Canadian history, isn't it?

00:30:13.680 And if they are convicted, then we better know why it happened.

00:30:17.260 And that's essentially why we're all there and still kind of hanging in with something

00:30:21.460 that even a lot of the protesters have disappeared at their point too.

00:30:25.520 Trish Wood is the host of Trish Wood is Critical.

00:30:28.980 And you should always follow the work she does because you are never going to be disappointed

00:30:32.520 if you do.

00:30:33.080 Trish, thanks so much, as always, for coming on.

00:30:35.640 Thanks, Andrew.

00:30:36.320 Have a good day.

00:30:37.240 All right.

00:30:37.620 Thank you very much.

00:30:38.600 yeah and i mean i had initially planned to go up for the last few days i figured i'd sit in for

00:30:43.660 closing arguments come out do my show go back into the now i don't even know when the final days will

00:30:48.160 be like i could go up for october 11th to 13th and actually my birthday is the 14th so maybe i'll

00:30:54.540 just spend my birthday alone in a courtroom in ottawa or something but uh the the reality is

00:30:59.460 this is not going to be a particularly enjoyable uh experience if this goes on for weeks and weeks

00:31:05.900 and weeks and as Trish says they're not really getting anywhere with it so that's the point of

00:31:11.880 it I know we get periodically people asking why are you not covering the we are covering but you

00:31:16.640 know you can't film in courtrooms nine times that will actually like 99 times out of 100 in this

00:31:21.920 country so this is one of those ones where we have to just pop in from time to time but I do want to

00:31:27.640 talk about this story that came about this week which is a bit of a deviation from what we've been

00:31:33.080 talking about the rest of the show, which makes it a good note to end on for the week. A new

00:31:37.440 political party. Now, I should say that there are a great many political parties in this country.

00:31:42.640 You've got the Communist Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party. You've got, I think there was a

00:31:46.500 Marijuana Party at one point. So you've got a bunch of parties that don't really do anything

00:31:51.120 and are kind of just existing on paper only. And then you have parties that come on and they want

00:31:56.440 to make a splash because they feel they are filling a void that the status quo is not addressing.

00:32:02.080 And that is what this new initiative seeks to do.

00:32:05.520 It is a party formed by the folks behind Centre Ice Canadians, which was formerly Centre Ice Conservatives.

00:32:11.520 It is called Canadian Future and is being led in the interim by New Brunswick MLA Dominic Carty, who joins me now.

00:32:18.820 Dominic, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:32:21.320 Hey, thanks for having me on the show. Appreciate it.

00:32:23.200 So let me just ask first and foremost, I know this is being presented as a centrist party,

00:32:28.080 which is a term you often hear kind of appropriated by both sides. Do you view this

00:32:33.440 as a party for conservatives that don't like Pierre Polyev or liberals who don't like Justin

00:32:38.300 Trudeau? We'll take both and lots of other people who are fed up with politics in general. We've had

00:32:43.460 some support coming even from other parties because there's, I think, a feeling that we've

00:32:48.900 ended up with kind of a mushy politics where you've got this kind of sterile debate about left

00:32:53.480 versus right based on a 200-plus-year-old idea about how we should run our economies.

00:32:58.440 We've got 100-plus years now of ideas and evidence about how to run mixed economies.

00:33:03.620 We know that's generally what works.

00:33:05.080 To me, the big fight right now is about do we have an open society or a closed society?

00:33:09.140 Do we fall in line with the models of governments that we're seeing pushed by the Chinese and

00:33:13.380 the Russians around the world, clearly trying to influence Canada directly and indirectly?

00:33:17.720 And do we have a party based on evidence?

00:33:20.080 Because I think that's something that all the parties have slipped away from as the years of left-wing postmodernism made truth somewhat relative.

00:33:27.780 And that's now being a mantra embraced by the right, where we have, unfortunately, Mr. Polyarov out campaigning Max Bernier, talking about the World Economic Forum and how apparently it's running our lives, which has got to be one of the daftest things I've ever heard.

00:33:39.940 And I'm getting kind of fed up with people saying that Canadians aren't responsible for what happens in Canada.

00:33:44.420 We're not subject to shadowy foreign influences.

00:33:47.000 We're a sovereign country.

00:33:48.000 We can make this place better.

00:33:48.980 We built it.

00:33:49.740 we can fix it. Oftentimes when people call themselves centrist, they usually kind of cloak

00:33:56.080 it in saying they're fiscally conservative and socially liberal, which I find is somewhat

00:34:00.360 counterintuitive because it still sort of falls into that left-right dichotomy here. How do you

00:34:06.140 define what a centrist is in the context of what your party seeks to be? Yeah, although I think

00:34:10.860 that these definitions change, right? And you look at the Soviet Union, it was pretty damn left when

00:34:15.220 it came to the economy, but it was also pretty right-wing when it came to social structures.

00:34:18.920 It was not the land of free love and progressivism that some of its modern day young adherents like to imagine that it was.

00:34:27.240 So when I say center, I'm talking about being a radical centrist.

00:34:31.560 So I'm not talking about some mushy middle with softened down versions of policies taken from the old lines, supposedly left, supposedly right parties.

00:34:38.740 I'm talking about the sharp end of the arrow, getting some really aggressive policies in Canada that will help to fix some programs that we have,

00:34:46.180 but also really changed the direction of the country because I think people are kind of tired

00:34:49.560 after a number of years of Mr. Trudeau's cheerful of somewhat empty ways. And I think that's why

00:34:55.720 Mr. Polier is doing well in the polls. But I'd have to hope again that at some point,

00:34:59.480 either he shapes up and stops spreading conspiracy theories and starts actually

00:35:03.280 sharing some real solutions or that we'll be there to help try and fill that void because

00:35:07.400 there's got to be something better than having two parties, neither of whom accept that there's

00:35:11.040 such a thing as reality. I wonder how true that is, though. I mean, Pierre Polyev won the

00:35:17.240 conservative leadership with a resounding margin. I mean, greater than in, I mean, even Stephen

00:35:21.980 Harper, who was the founding prime minister and founding leader of the party, he had 69%

00:35:27.380 of the supportive members. You also have the conservatives polling right now at 40 some

00:35:33.460 odd percent, which in Canada is a pretty significant margin. So I just, where is the

00:35:39.340 political homelessness that you're describing of people that are uncomfortable with the

00:35:43.580 conservatives as an alternative to the liberals? Well, uncomfortable with the conservatives and

00:35:47.460 the liberals. We did a big poll about five months, I think, ago now, and over 2,000 people across the

00:35:54.040 country. And the numbers came back pretty much evenly on the both liberal and Tory side, people

00:35:59.160 saying they felt their parties were both of them becoming more extreme, less representative of their

00:36:03.460 values, less interested in talking about actual plans to fix the country's problems, more interested

00:36:08.340 in scoring points off of their opponents. And the sentiments about that were just about even

00:36:12.480 on both sides. You had stronger core base support for Mr. Polyev, which makes sense because I think

00:36:18.440 in the end, he became leader and not to compare him too closely, but through the same sort of

00:36:22.440 process that Mr. Trump became Republican nominee in the States by reaching out to a lot of people

00:36:26.620 who've never been involved in politics before, which on the one hand is great because we need

00:36:30.820 to get people engaged. And one of the things that kills democracies is when people give up on it.

00:36:34.800 But at the same time, when you use social media and the algorithms that drive increasing divisiveness, conflict and extremism, which is literally built into the algorithm because human beings like seeing fights and battles and arguments and people being grumpy with each other, that when you fall down that rabbit hole, it's hard to know when to stop.

00:36:51.920 And I assume that's how we had a Mr. Polyarif starting off pretty calm and reasonable, a guy with years of parliamentary experience who I know a lot of his colleagues have great respect for him, and now is out there out looning Max Bernier talking about the World Economic Forum and vaccine conspiracies and other things like that.

00:37:10.100 We're not going to be able to hold our...

00:37:11.440 What vaccine conspiracies has Polyarif spoken about?

00:37:14.040 uh what fact let's go through the list he has actually officially said that regardless of the

00:37:20.400 conditions under no circumstances would canada ever introduce the measures that we saw during

00:37:25.180 the covet uh pandemic how is that a conspiracy theory though let's let's see you can disagree

00:37:32.100 with it but if he's saying he's against vaccine mandates i don't see how that's a conspiracy

00:37:35.620 theory let's let's imagine a world where mr polyarver's prime minister and we have an outbreak

00:37:40.000 of a disease with, let's say, five times the fatality rate of COVID, 10%. You honestly think

00:37:45.380 he's not going to put a mandate in place? You honestly think that's an honest statement about

00:37:49.300 what he intends to do if that situation comes up? Of course not. So lying to achieve political

00:37:54.740 points is something that I personally really believe is at the heart of why we're seeing

00:37:59.360 populist movements rise up around the Western world, because people are mad about elites lying

00:38:03.520 to them. But if you try and replace those same disconnected elites, which the Liberal Party and

00:38:08.520 Mr. Trudeau represent absolutely pitch perfectly. But if you try and replace them with just another

00:38:13.160 set of adjustable facts that aren't necessarily grounded in reality, we're just contributing to

00:38:18.540 the problem and it's going to make things worse. And he'll have a lot of supporters if he doesn't

00:38:22.840 get in and follow through on some of the things he's campaigned on as opposition leader. And I

00:38:26.540 think that any party that doesn't campaign in opposition the way it intends to govern

00:38:29.500 is being fundamentally dishonest and contributing to degrading democracy.

00:38:33.520 Political parties, I think, generally tend to be followers more than leaders on a lot of issues

00:38:37.920 in general i mean you even mentioned that your initiative did polling you wanted to see where

00:38:41.520 canadians were before you took a particular course which i think is reasonable a lot of

00:38:45.760 the things you're talking about that you don't like about the conservatives are things that

00:38:49.120 there is a constituency for that is supporting the conservative so is your problem not with

00:38:55.440 where canadians are rather than where the conservative party of canada is i know because

00:38:59.920 there's no other option right now that if we've got this large chunk of the population that say

00:39:03.760 that they've traditionally voted liberal or conservative in some cases going back and forth

00:39:07.440 as lots of people do or with the other smaller parties that they're saying that there is no

00:39:11.520 option that brings together people who just to list a couple of examples believe that climate

00:39:16.160 change is real want to fix it don't believe that throwing money at problems is the way to fix it

00:39:22.320 following down on that policy we have a real not a lead anymore because we gave it up but we have

00:39:28.160 an established nuclear industry if we're talking about a climate crisis why aren't we aggressively

00:39:32.240 building nuclear power plants and exporting them around the world so that we can make canadian

00:39:35.680 jobs, make Canadian money, help do our part to reduce carbon emissions and help other countries

00:39:40.480 that contribute way more than we do to the carbon emissions to cut them down. I don't care what the

00:39:44.640 cause of climate change is. It's happening right now. And if the basic science says that reducing

00:39:49.240 carbon is going to help mitigate it, I'd rather have a slightly cooler planet where we can figure

00:39:52.740 out how to handle the swimming, usually nuclear power plants, creating a minuscule amount of

00:39:58.940 nuclear waste. All the waste in the world, I think, would fit into two Olympic-sized swimming pools,

00:40:02.600 All of it created since the 1940s. So right there, no one's talking about that in a serious way.

00:40:08.060 That's got to be something that happens in the next mandate if the people who are most

00:40:12.680 pessimistic about climate change are wrong. And if people believe they're right, regardless of

00:40:17.460 whether you do or not, in the end, that means that there is an opportunity to make money

00:40:21.260 and an opportunity to address people's fears in something that's going to make the world better

00:40:25.660 by actually reducing the emissions and hopefully reducing the horrible summer that we had with

00:40:30.600 the floods and the fires raging across the country. Let's make some money off this,

00:40:35.120 make the world a better place. But to have a party that's fighting against the idea that we

00:40:39.020 should transition to a new post-petrol economy, it's like campaigning 100 years ago against

00:40:43.800 transitioning to the petrol economy. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. If you were generally

00:40:49.300 someone looking to advance your country 100 plus years ago, and you're saying, you know what, guys,

00:40:52.980 I think the Amish have got the right idea. Let's stick with the horse and buggy. Let's avoid those

00:40:56.660 fancy newfangled cars humans are supposed to progress and innovate let's put money into

00:41:00.580 research and development to deal with the climate issue bring scientists to canada that sort of

00:41:04.780 industry always has a knockoff and helps us in all kinds of other sectors that's just one example

00:41:08.620 then we could talk about defense and international yeah well just on the climate though for a moment

00:41:13.740 if your belief is that this is the the hole in canadian politics right now one issue one issue

00:41:20.100 yeah but but this party and this movement and this radically centrist approach how do you explain the

00:41:24.920 2021 election when Aaron O'Toole did exactly what you're describing on climate. He came out with a

00:41:30.700 conservative answer. He said, climate change is real. It's a problem. And here's what we're going

00:41:35.660 to do. There was going to be a cost associated with that. He really kept a lot of the conservative

00:41:41.580 policies that the conservative flank of the party were trying to push forward at bay. And he

00:41:47.580 completely fell short in winning the election. So how do you explain the 2021 election when the

00:41:54.300 Conservatives really did exactly what you're saying they needed to do? Because no one trusted

00:41:59.460 Aaron O'Toole because he campaigned one way when he was campaigning to be leader in opposition

00:42:03.940 and then tried another way when he was campaigning to be prime minister. And I think Canadians are

00:42:08.880 smart and they could tell that he wasn't being consistent in his messaging. So there's a real

00:42:13.120 fear that when the Conservatives are saying one thing that sounds a little bit more moderate,

00:42:16.940 that they're actually talking about something much more extreme. And when you have the Conservative

00:42:21.900 Party candidate outlooting the Bernier candidate in the Winnipeg by-election, Manitoba by-election

00:42:27.480 recently. By opposing vaccine mandates? No, by in that case saying that Max Bernier was a tool

00:42:32.820 of the globalists who went to WEF meetings and Pierre Polyarif would never allow that to happen.

00:42:37.820 I'm sorry to keep on going on about the WEF. But since you do, let's drill into this because

00:42:43.720 Justin Trudeau this morning is at the UN talking about the virtues of a carbon tax. I've covered

00:42:50.020 the world economic forum i've been there reporting on it uh you'll oftentimes hear people talk about

00:42:54.960 all the great things they need to do on pardon me did you get the microchip implanted you all set

00:42:59.740 no no i didn't i needed to stay a day late for that but but they talk about all of these very

00:43:04.080 aggressive and i would say very radical environmental proposals so is your position

00:43:08.340 that you cannot criticize that without being loony you can absolutely criticize it and let me let me

00:43:13.680 start right now the wf is an expensive talking shop of rich people trying to make themselves

00:43:18.220 feel relevant in a way that is, in terms of the way it actually impacts power politics around the

00:43:22.720 world, nearly completely meaningless. Anyone really think that anyone's going to listen to what

00:43:27.480 Iran has to say about women's rights or that Somalia has to say about climate change? It's

00:43:33.020 a talking shop that allows occasional serious work to happen. I'm talking about the UN in this case,

00:43:37.080 but most of the time it's a vast waste of time and money and is controlled by dictators.

00:43:41.880 And the WF-

00:43:42.420 How is that different from what Polly Eva said about the WEF?

00:43:44.920 How is that different from what Pierre Paulieva said about the WUF?

00:43:48.940 Because Pierre Paulieva goes on about globalists, which is code for anti-Semitism.

00:43:53.440 Pierre Paulieva said that he will not allow his ministers, you talk about freeing people to do what they want.

00:43:57.740 Hold up, hold up. Are you accusing Pierre Paulieva of being anti-Semitic?

00:44:01.900 Let me finish. If I can finish my answer, I'll come back to that quite often.

00:44:04.000 Okay.

00:44:04.600 That the WUF, he's not going to allow any of his ministers or government officials to attend any of the meetings of the WUF.

00:44:10.100 That's his great stand against the globalist threat that's threatening all of Canada.

00:44:13.700 it. This is rubbish. Canada is not broken, and we are not under the sway of some shadowy foreign

00:44:20.460 tentacled octopus that's trying to dominate our lives. Anything wrong in Canada, we can fix.

00:44:25.700 We've fixed things before. We've built this country out of the ice and the snow. We can

00:44:29.240 do it again to face these new challenges in the 21st century. What we don't need is people

00:44:34.200 dog-whistling anti-Semitic tropes. And anyone who doesn't think the attacks on George Soros and the

00:44:39.220 WUF, don't have an anti-Semitic tangent to them, needs to go and read a little bit more

00:44:43.080 about anti-Semitism.

00:44:44.080 So do you, do you believe, okay, let me be perfectly frank.

00:44:46.500 Do you believe Pierre Polyev is anti-Semitic?

00:44:48.480 I have no idea.

00:44:49.320 I know that his party is peddling tropes that have their roots in anti-Semitism.

00:44:53.760 His party, which has been one of the most stalwart defenders of Israel for the entirety

00:44:58.260 of its existence, you think is going down the road of anti-Semitism.

00:45:01.040 I would ask you how you, the folks in the Republican Party who were similarly stalwart

00:45:06.680 supporters of Israel for most of Israel's history, and have now become infected with

00:45:10.360 populists who are largely influenced by ideas coming in from other countries, namely Russia,

00:45:16.120 who are spreading a radical anti-Western agenda in the guise of traditional Western values.

00:45:21.120 And unfortunately, we're seeing that picked up by elements of the Conservative Party. And it's why

00:45:24.820 a lot of people don't feel comfortable with the Conservative Party. And one of the reasons Andrew

00:45:28.420 Scheer didn't win in 2021, despite people being increasingly fed up with Justin Trudeau.

00:45:33.720 I think I will get a lot of angry emails from Jewish supporters of the Conservative Party that

00:45:39.160 don't see what you're describing there. I can, again, go and look at the tropes,

00:45:44.480 the stuff that's being shared around the WF, globalism and George Soros. Go and do a tiny

00:45:49.580 bit of reading produced by B'nai B'rith and the other Jewish advocacy organizations talking about

00:45:54.040 how this is part of the global rise in anti-Semitism. And then those folks are

00:45:58.620 welcome to contact me and I'll happily debate them on the subject. Just getting to the forward

00:46:02.980 looking part of your party here as we're already over time, are you planning to field a full slate

00:46:07.720 of candidates in the next election? We'll see. I mean, that's my job the next year is to build up

00:46:12.140 the party as the interim leader. I had some background doing that and work overseas. I've

00:46:16.760 worked with dozens of different parties in different countries. If I can get the party up

00:46:20.760 and running and we're able to be prepared with a full slate, that's awesome. Our goal is on

00:46:24.500 quality more than anything else. We want to try and restore the idea that becoming a member of

00:46:28.600 Parliament's a serious business. Make sure that we offer candidates a lot of training on how the

00:46:32.980 parliamentary system works, the people who are going to try and rip them off, scam them and the

00:46:36.580 public. There's a lot of things that can be done to make sure we have a better legislature rather

00:46:40.400 than pretending our institutions are broken. Dominic Cardi, Interim Leader of Canadian Future.

00:46:45.300 Thank you for coming on. Thanks. All right. Thank you very much for that. What a way to end the week

00:46:51.620 there. But my thanks to Dominic and to Trish for coming on and for all of you tuning into the show.

00:46:56.540 We will be back on Monday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:47:02.120 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:47:05.180 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:47:07.700 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:47:26.540 We'll be right back.

00:47:56.540 We'll be right back.

Juno News - September 21, 2023

Trudeau tries to sell his carbon tax at the UN

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