Juno News - Trudeau won't say if any Liberal MPs are implicated in foreign interference

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

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

00:01:30.040 lawton show on true north although i have to say i often revel in being a an independent media

00:01:38.420 voice not necessarily part of the mainstream media in fact let's be real we criticize legacy

00:01:45.020 media outlets a fair bit on this show and at true north there was a great i should have given

00:01:49.580 shauna a graphic to put up there but there was a piece in the hill times today the headline the

00:01:54.540 mainstreamification of andrew lawton this was just so delightful i've gone mainstream now don't hold

00:02:01.180 it against me too much i was this was an interview i did with chelsea nash is a very convivial

00:02:07.660 journalist that we sat down with over lunch i say we it was just me and a photographer for the hill

00:02:13.260 times. A couple of weeks back in Ottawa, she calls me disarmingly friendly, which I think is a great

00:02:20.660 compliment. And there was also another term there. Lawton, who is jovial and friendly, no matter the

00:02:26.400 subject, asserted he is outside the mainstream media. So I will take jovial and friendly, no

00:02:31.820 matter the subject. I will take disarmingly friendly. It was a lot of fun. And I'm so glad

00:02:36.420 if you're a Hilltime subscriber, you can check that out in today's edition. I'm getting old,

00:02:40.940 by the way i on on friday i went to the gym i know breaking news right and i you know strained

00:02:47.500 my hamstrings just a little bit and uh then i was fine and then sunday i like stood up too quickly

00:02:54.380 or something or stood up in the wrong way and now it's like pained me to walk uh since then so i'm uh

00:03:00.940 so if you see me like wincing at some point it's because i like leaned too much on the hamstring

00:03:05.820 and now i'm re-traumatizing myself but regardless great to have you tuned into the show uh we'll

00:03:10.700 We'll talk about more serious matters than my hamstrings and my disarmingly jovial nature because the Liberal government has been in no way interested in being transparent about the possibility of foreign interference, of foreign interference that is infiltrating Canadian democracy.

00:03:29.600 You had Elizabeth May come out basically and say no big deal, everything's fine, she's not worried after reading the unredacted report of the Parliamentary National Security Committee.

00:03:39.780 Then you had Jagmeet Singh come out and say,

00:03:41.900 ooh, he has some grave concerns about this.

00:03:44.120 And now Justin Trudeau has come out and basically said nothing.

00:03:47.880 He started to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the report.

00:03:51.840 He says he has issues and concerns with how they've gone about it.

00:03:55.120 And more crucially, as you see here,

00:03:57.240 not interested in opening up about whether there are any liberal members of parliament implicated.

00:04:02.620 Take a look.

00:04:04.320 Are there currently any MPs in your caucus that are named in the NSACOP report

00:04:07.740 to be wittingly or semi-wittingly participants in foreign interference the issue of foreign

00:04:12.460 interference is one that this government has taken incredibly seriously since 2015 we brought in the

00:04:18.860 national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians over the objections of the

00:04:23.900 conservative party and indeed uh the strenuous resistance of the harper government for years

00:04:29.980 We brought in a renewed NCIRA for oversight over our national security instances.

00:04:38.600 And we created specific bodies of experts, of top civil servants, to ensure the integrity of our elections.

00:04:48.120 We've also called a number of different reports, including an ongoing report on foreign interference,

00:04:54.200 that we're working with right now

00:04:57.480 to see how they can follow up on the NSACOP report.

00:05:00.900 We've heard from Mr. Singh and Ms. May,

00:05:03.020 they have both said that there are no members of their party

00:05:05.540 who are named in their part.

00:05:06.400 So I'll ask you again,

00:05:07.320 are there any current Liberal caucus members

00:05:09.320 named in the NSACOP report that are wittingly

00:05:11.320 or semi-wittingly participants in form of interference?

00:05:13.260 I will allow Mr. Singh and Ms. May to speak for themselves.

00:05:19.080 That was two attempts at asking him,

00:05:21.580 are there Liberal members of Parliament

00:05:23.760 implicated two very artful and no not really artful dodges of that the second one they've said

00:05:30.800 they're a member are there members of yours I'll let them speak for themselves but that prime

00:05:35.540 minister that wasn't actually the question now as it stands there are some doubts about how

00:05:41.200 this information or if this information could even be legally disclosed and some of this goes back to

00:05:47.920 a case that predates this particular report that I wanted to bring attention to now. Ryan Alford is

00:05:54.020 a professor in the Lakehead University Faculty of Law and joins us now. Ryan, good to talk to you.

00:05:59.720 Thanks for coming on the show today. My pleasure, Andrew. Glad to join the mainstream. Thank you very

00:06:05.060 much, sir. You were raised, I mean, you saw something wrong about how this committee was

00:06:11.360 structured before this report came about. Explain for people that didn't follow this why that was

00:06:17.400 and what's happened up until this point? On your clip, you hear Justin Trudeau claiming credit for

00:06:22.520 establishing NSICOP. Two things bear mentioning. One, it's not a proper parliamentary committee.

00:06:28.420 It doesn't have the powers of parliamentary committee. It's technically an advisory

00:06:31.900 committee to the prime minister. So it reports to him, its chair is chosen by him, and he retains

00:06:37.780 the power to redact its reports. So they can't publish or indeed table anything in parliament

00:06:42.860 without the prior approval and redactions of the prime minister.

00:06:46.480 The other problematic element is that its members are stripped of parliamentary privilege.

00:06:51.280 So you saw when its chair, David McGinty, spoke in a press conference.

00:06:54.380 He said, we had to accept that we don't have parliamentary privilege

00:06:58.320 because we serve on this committee and we're made privy to these confidential documents,

00:07:02.620 which, by the way, parliament has a right to see anyway.

00:07:05.380 But now when the prime minister is claiming, well, I have issues with the way that they created this report,

00:07:11.280 not only are they gagged, but their hands are tied.

00:07:14.940 And one thing that I'll note here,

00:07:16.940 and this may get into the weeds

00:07:18.520 for how a lot of Canadians view

00:07:19.940 the institutions of government in Canada,

00:07:21.620 but it's very relevant,

00:07:22.620 is that a prime minister is not meant

00:07:25.380 to be the guy in charge of parliament.

00:07:27.360 A prime minister can be fired by parliament.

00:07:29.340 He has to have the confidence of parliament.

00:07:31.640 And that's where, even if in a majority parliament,

00:07:34.020 it looks like the prime minister

00:07:35.320 may have this autocratic power,

00:07:37.720 the reality is there is a check and balance there.

00:07:39.960 Now, in this case, we have a minority parliament, but even if all of the other parties were to gang up, if you will, NSACOP still would be subject to Justin Trudeau, you're saying.

00:07:50.180 Exactly right. And that's the problem. So in 2005 and years afterwards, there were issues with the production of documents to parliament.

00:08:00.000 And there was a finding of contempt of the parliament by the government of Canada, which was very serious.

00:08:04.980 But no one ever doubted that parliament has the right to these documents.

00:08:09.140 If they say, we want to see this, they have the right to see it.

00:08:11.940 It's their call because they are the people who hold the government accountable.

00:08:15.660 That's called responsible government.

00:08:17.460 So creating a system where the only people who have actually seen these documents are

00:08:22.140 subject to 14 years in prison, if they reveal in parliament what they're otherwise entitled

00:08:27.640 to say and discuss, we've got a severe constitutional crisis.

00:08:31.340 You know, even among the most liberally minded when it comes to access to information, there's

00:08:36.980 always an understanding that things to do with national security are in a separate category i

00:08:42.020 mean so so let me ask you why should this be any different why should you be able to do an end run

00:08:47.540 around national security just because of parliamentary privilege to begin it's the

00:08:53.540 prime minister's assertion of national security and you can see the problem with that when we

00:08:57.380 look at the wuhan lab documents so it took years and finally there was a special committee struck

00:09:03.540 and counsel to it were two former Supreme Court of Canada justices. And the conclusion was that

00:09:08.500 the reason for withholding the documents wasn't national security. It was because they were

00:09:12.500 potentially embarrassing to the government. So when documents are withheld on the basis of

00:09:16.340 national security, it's not really clear that they're being withheld because they are dangerous

00:09:21.060 to national security. And the question is who gets to make the call there? Is it the prime minister

00:09:25.860 who stands to lose in this situation when we see that he's been involved in obfuscation and

00:09:30.580 that he's used this pretext of national security to avoid political embarrassment or is it parliament

00:09:35.700 because the notion here is that parliament has procedures the gagging provisions of the national

00:09:42.420 security intelligence committee parliamentarians act apply even if a parliamentary committee was

00:09:47.220 to hold an in-camera meeting which is to say if the chair of a parliamentary committee like the

00:09:51.700 house of commons public safety and national security committee says we want to hold a meeting

00:09:56.260 Under conditions of confidentiality, no one may talk about what's going on in the committee.

00:10:00.340 And there, a member of this committee spoke about what they saw in NSICOP.

00:10:05.080 They would still be subject to criminal prosecution.

00:10:07.780 Here we see that, given that Parliament has its own measures to protect confidentiality,

00:10:13.440 that the measures in NSICOP are more about maintaining the control of the executive, namely the prime minister.

00:10:19.660 Yeah, and as you note with the Winnipeg Lab case and other ones,

00:10:23.220 there have been a number of examples where this government has taken a very selective view

00:10:26.960 of privilege and confidence. I go back to the Public Order Emergency Commission where

00:10:31.740 they said, oh, we don't believe in secrets. We're waiving cabinet confidence. We're waiving

00:10:36.180 cabinet privilege. You can see everything. Oh, but we aren't waiving solicitor-client privilege

00:10:40.260 because we don't want you to see that document there. So there is this selective nature which

00:10:44.660 makes you wonder and not even really wonder all that hard about, okay, are they picking and

00:10:49.320 choosing based on where they know things are likely to blow up in their face.

00:10:53.640 That's the most pertinent example you could have given, because what we had there was

00:10:57.620 the whole purpose of the inquiry, the Rouleau Commission, as it was called, to determine

00:11:02.560 whether or not the invocation of the Emergencies Act was lawful, was stymied, because the document

00:11:08.060 that presented the legal case, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General's legal analysis

00:11:13.720 for why this was in fact warranted, which was presented to the cabinet and was the sole basis

00:11:18.980 for their decision was withheld from the public inquiry. That was absolutely scandalous. If we

00:11:24.800 had a less supine media, people would have seen this as obviously a cover-up. The point of the

00:11:29.600 inquiry is purposeless at this stage. But the level of manipulation there really should give

00:11:36.020 people pause. So you, as I said, were on to this even before we knew this particular issue was

00:11:43.000 going to come up here. You brought a lawsuit that ultimately went against you at the Court

00:11:47.680 of Appeal for Ontario, which found that no parliamentary immunity should not protect

00:11:52.320 you if you're a member of parliament or, I guess, theoretically, a senator that

00:11:55.840 divulges this. You said you want to take this to the Supreme Court, but explain where their

00:12:01.880 rationale was at the Court of Appeal. Right. So the Court of Appeal rejected the conclusions of

00:12:06.960 the Superior Court. The Superior Court said you can't take away parliamentary privilege from

00:12:11.700 members of parliament because it's constitutional in nature. And there's a lot of Supreme Court

00:12:16.240 cases that speak to that very point. The most important one, New Brunswick Broadcasting,

00:12:20.900 it states that parliamentary privilege must be absolute if it's to be effective.

00:12:26.000 So here they've said, okay, well, with ordinary legislation, we've taken away this constitutional

00:12:32.140 right of members of parliament. The point of my suit was to say, this can't be done other than

00:12:37.740 via constitutional amendment. The problem with the bill, as it was introduced in parliament in 2017,

00:12:42.840 over the objections of the Conservative Party at the time was that members of Parliament didn't

00:12:48.640 understand that they were amending the Constitution of Canada. They didn't understand that their right

00:12:53.300 to speak freely in Parliament had constitutional status. And the reason why it has constitutional

00:12:57.860 status is because it doesn't belong just to them. It belongs to the people of Canada who have the

00:13:02.940 right to elect representatives who can actually perform government oversight effectively.

00:13:08.620 Yeah. And that was, I think, a very important point. And do you believe that the government

00:13:13.380 knew it was doing an end run around the constitution, or do you believe they just

00:13:16.640 didn't even really consider that? They should have known better. I think the position that

00:13:22.600 they took, and this was based on parliamentary law officers coming in and testifying before

00:13:27.160 parliamentary committees, is that no, it isn't amending the constitution. There's a way for us

00:13:31.820 to do this because it's only a minor abridgment, right? But the problem is they didn't bring in

00:13:37.440 legal experts who could have pointed to the significance of those supreme court cases

00:13:41.840 and i i implored them to do it and you can go back and look at my testimony before the senate

00:13:46.400 committee which was considering this in 2017 i said there are legal academics that might disagree

00:13:51.760 with me but you should hear from them you should try to get to the bottom of whether or not the

00:13:56.080 supreme court would view this as constitutional or not before you pass it and they didn't do so

00:14:01.360 because they wanted this legislation that badly.

00:14:04.420 So if we look at the way forward here, as it stands,

00:14:07.620 if a member of parliament were to decide this really needs to be in the public interest,

00:14:11.900 they could go out and read from the unredacted report but face jail time for doing so.

00:14:17.920 And perhaps there might be some renegade that wants to do a come and get me over this.

00:14:22.940 But your view is that there's a way to really keep the spirit of parliament alive here

00:14:27.960 and make that supremacy of parliamentary privilege apply to ENSECOP.

00:14:33.780 Absolutely right.

00:14:34.900 I mean, what I achieved in 2022 in the Superior Court

00:14:37.800 was for that particular provision of the ENSECOP Act to be struck out.

00:14:42.040 So the committee could still function.

00:14:43.920 It could still perform all the valuable services that it's been doing.

00:14:47.220 But if the prime minister redacts the documents

00:14:50.560 and then lies about what's in the unredacted document,

00:14:54.080 they would have the power to correct him on the floor of the House of Commons.

00:14:57.300 I think that's just basic governmental oversight. That's what I achieved in Superior Court in 2022.

00:15:03.400 But then the government of Canada decided to appeal against that judgment.

00:15:07.180 Yeah. And we mentioned, I mean, obviously you're dealing with the legal arguments here,

00:15:10.440 but you have to not view the politics of this in isolation because this is exactly what's

00:15:14.780 happening. We have three different leaders who have professed to have read this document,

00:15:18.900 giving three wildly different interpretations of what went into that document and what is in the

00:15:24.720 document itself. And, you know, everyone criticizes Pierre Polyev for not wanting to accept the

00:15:30.240 briefing on this. But if he does, he's then, you know, going to come out and say his own thing.

00:15:35.340 And realistically, no one in this country can decide who's right.

00:15:40.700 Well, David Mulcair put it, sorry, Tom Mulcair put it quite succinctly. That's a trap. Why would

00:15:46.540 you go in there, read these documents, submit yourself to the undertaking that you not talk

00:15:51.600 about it and then think that you could do something about it afterwards. Very interestingly,

00:15:56.300 when Elizabeth May was, let's say, rather candid about what she saw, or at least made strong

00:16:00.780 representations about what she saw, it tended to support the political position of the Prime

00:16:04.940 Minister of Canada. Do we really think that in that situation, the decision would be made to

00:16:09.820 prosecute that person? And then we have to think about what would happen in the opposite political

00:16:13.780 scenario. When someone said the Prime Minister has been obfuscating, I've seen those names and

00:16:18.860 they include liberal members of parliament. I think in that situation, you have to imagine that

00:16:23.140 perhaps some prosecution might be on the table. Well, it's a fascinating one. Any idea on the

00:16:29.460 timeline of getting this to the Supreme Court? Well, the millstones of justice grind very slowly.

00:16:34.700 I'm filing this this week. The government files their response in about a month. I think by

00:16:39.680 December, we'll hear if Supreme Court wants to take this case. If they do, the hearings will be

00:16:44.140 in spring of next year decision potentially before the election all right well appreciate that very

00:16:49.580 much professor ryan alford always appreciate your insights thank you for coming on always my pleasure

00:16:54.380 andrew all right good to see you i think i last saw ryan in the london ontario airport he had been

00:16:59.820 at a little conference down in london always great to chat with him uh we will definitely follow this

00:17:05.580 but i i want to just make a point on this because online there still is this conspiracy theory about

00:17:09.980 pierre polyev and the security clearance and all of that ian brody who is the former chief of staff

00:17:15.100 to stephen harper he's also a phd holding a university of i think he's still a university

00:17:20.140 of calgary professor yes ian brody has talked about this he said you know polyev is a member

00:17:25.580 of the privy council he's a member of his majesty's privy council he has by all accounts the

00:17:31.820 ability to read whatever materials the government wants to put in front of him but he has chosen

00:17:38.700 because the government has put this ridiculous threshold in place as ryan alford was saying

00:17:44.300 there they have to accept a gag and read this and just imagine what would happen if pauliev were to

00:17:50.060 read this report and in the report sees there is a liberal member of parliament shilling for china

00:17:55.260 say he can now he cannot go in question period and say prime minister why are you not kicking

00:18:01.420 blank out of caucus he can't do it he can't i mean he could work around it and maybe risk

00:18:08.540 having the hammer crack down on him, but he could not go to the House of Commons, even on the floor

00:18:14.160 of the House of Commons, and say whatever it is, say whatever it is that he needs to to hold the

00:18:19.440 government to account. That's why, as Thomas Mulcair says, as Yves-Francois Blanchet once said,

00:18:23.900 it is in fact a trap to go along with this. And again, what was interesting too is that the CESIS

00:18:30.780 Act, I just was alerted to this this morning in a Globe and Mail piece, the CESIS Act actually

00:18:35.460 gives CSIS the opportunity to go to the leader of a party and say, yeah, you should be aware of this

00:18:41.100 thing that affects your party. So they won't tell Polyev about a liberal MP. They won't tell him

00:18:46.140 about a new Democrat. But if there was a conservative MP or a conservative candidate,

00:18:51.040 CSIS could go to him and tell him what their concerns were. The conservatives say that has

00:18:56.740 not happened. They have received no such briefing, no such alert from CSIS. Now, CSIS may be fumbling

00:19:03.080 the ball this has happened on a couple of occasions but it could also be that these are not

00:19:07.320 issues that are in the conservative caucus these are issues that are in the liberal caucus the only

00:19:12.520 caucus which by the way the leader has not come out and denied having any members of parliament

00:19:18.520 implicated so take from that what you will but you should pay attention to trudeau's refusal to even

00:19:24.440 answer the question uh and you may think that they want to apply this whole national security thing

00:19:30.040 to anything that makes them look bad, including the government's own carbon tax projections.

00:19:34.760 They fought tooth and nail to keep these from being published. They told the parliamentary

00:19:38.580 budget officer, yeah, you can look at them, but don't you dare talk about them. They put a gag

00:19:42.920 on him. And Chris Sims and her colleagues at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation have figured out

00:19:48.980 exactly why that is. Chris, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:19:53.700 Thanks for having us on.

00:19:55.120 Now, again, the Liberals may want it, but it's not a national security secret. We can talk

00:19:59.860 about these figures that we have seen what do the numbers tell us it's pretty brutal andrew and it's

00:20:05.500 no wonder really why now it turns out the trudeau government didn't want the parliamentary budget

00:20:11.040 officer reporting this number so if i can just rewind the tape back to when everybody understood

00:20:16.960 from the parliamentary budget office where they had come up with two different scenarios one was

00:20:21.940 just the base cost okay of monica filling up her little honda civic hatchback how much that cost 0.96

00:20:28.120 her. Translation, that was around $6 or $7. Oh, look, 8 out of 10 people get more back in rebates 0.75

00:20:33.840 than they pay out. The problem there was, of course, the PBO did his homework, and they had

00:20:39.100 a secondary calculation which talked about the economic impact of the Trudeau government's

00:20:44.340 carbon tax. So that means, of course, how much the farmer is paying to grow the food with the

00:20:48.580 carbon tax, how much the trucker is paying to fill up the big rig to bring you the food,

00:20:52.520 how much you pay for home heating. You get the idea. And there, that just blew it out of the

00:20:57.500 water. There, I think it was over $900 per year per Alberta household with rebates factored in.

00:21:04.700 Fast forward to very recently, the parliamentary budget officer had said, you know what,

00:21:10.240 I've gone back and have done some new calculations. And then all of a sudden,

00:21:14.040 the Trudeau government was like, shh, like, stop talking about it. And so that was super weird,

00:21:20.200 right? And that, of course, got everybody interested, including the opposition saying,

00:21:24.420 cough up the data. Well, very late last week, cough up the data they did. Now, we don't have

00:21:30.720 the breakdown of per person yet or per province yet, but we're working on it. We've got a team

00:21:38.220 of folks who are working on this in Ottawa right now. So big picture, Andrew, it looks like in the

00:21:44.360 year 2030, the carbon tax is going to cost the Canadian economy around $25 billion. Now, that's

00:21:54.260 just in that one year. I need to stress that. That is not the cumulative cost of the carbon tax

00:22:01.620 between now and 2030. That's just for this singular year. Now, the data sheets and the

00:22:07.760 spreadsheets we have here are mind-boggling. You know when you open up an Excel spreadsheet and

00:22:12.760 you've got that little slider on the right where you can move stuff up and down there's so many

00:22:17.000 rows of data in just one of these tables that that little slider is like the size of a peppercorn

00:22:23.100 like i can't even remember how many rows of data are in these models so it's pretty crazy but

00:22:29.020 big shot is that it's around 25 billion by 2030 so it's no wonder they wanted to keep it under wraps

00:22:34.540 yeah but again so costing the economy that this is the carbon tax that we're told is quote unquote

00:22:39.760 revenue neutral right yes it's weird that it can be revenue neutral yet somehow have a 25 billion

00:22:46.140 dollar annual cost to the economy how do we get there yeah exactly just add government that's how

00:22:51.420 you get there they can just take whatever they want and try to spin a narrative out of it and

00:22:56.100 in all seriousness uh this is where the math just never holds up and just bringing people back to

00:23:01.340 the original cause of the carbon tax here in north america in 2008 the bc liberal government brought

00:23:07.860 in what they called and promised was going to be a revenue neutral carbon tax. That was under then

00:23:13.900 Premier Gordon Campbell. Now, to be fair, on paper, initially one could argue that it was revenue

00:23:21.220 neutral because back then it was about three or four cents per liter. And they also put forward

00:23:26.740 a corresponding income tax cut right across the board. So the nerds in universities and economics 0.99

00:23:33.680 classes could say, yeah, on paper, this is revenue neutral. But the problem there is it doesn't

00:23:38.700 factor in the nature of government and the nature of people, right? Because government, of course,

00:23:43.260 is people. And if they can find a revenue stream, i.e. a vampiric tax they can sink their fangs 0.99

00:23:49.000 deeper into, that's exactly what they're going to do, Andrew. So after a couple of years in BC,

00:23:54.380 what did they start doing? They took in, say, a billion dollars for argument's sake for the

00:23:59.180 carbon tax. And then to make it look revenue neutral on the budget, that's where they just

00:24:03.660 started filing all their random tax credits for everything. Like old people tax credits, 1.00

00:24:09.300 fitness gym. So when you're going to the gym and pulling your hamstrings, you got a fitness tax

00:24:13.160 credit for that. So this is what government does. And now we have the Trudeau government saying

00:24:18.360 something silly, like you get more back than you pay in. Well, this shows that is obviously not 0.70

00:24:24.500 true. Yeah. The same isn't true for the Canadian economy. The same isn't true for the country.

00:24:28.400 this is it and for people people watching your show know the deal but when you're talking to

00:24:33.600 your uncle or your sister-in-law or somebody who still doesn't quite get it they can say things

00:24:37.920 like oh well that's just the economic cost who cares about that okay the economy is not some

00:24:43.860 alien force that does not affect your day-to-day life everything you do where you're filling up

00:24:49.200 your car when you're purchasing food that was grown when you're thinking of buying a house

00:24:53.160 when you're fixing your vehicle, all that stuff, that's all the economy. It's working around you

00:24:59.700 like the force, okay? If you tax that thing and you blow a $25 billion hole in the side of its

00:25:06.820 hull, you're going to have some troubled waters. Well, and I always want to take the bigger picture

00:25:12.540 on this because the carbon tax is based on a number of premises. It's based on the premise

00:25:16.680 that man-made global warming is caused by the emissions that are regulated by the carbon tax.

00:25:22.420 It's predicated on the fact that the carbon tax will result in the reduction of those emissions.

00:25:27.320 It's predicated on the idea that even if Canada were to reduce its emissions, that will cause a global reduction.

00:25:35.020 And one of the arguments Michael Binion from the Modern Miracle Network has made is that you could make Canada's emissions go up and lower global emissions because we are more efficient with our energy production than other countries are.

00:25:48.340 So that's one argument that's put forward.

00:25:50.140 but you bring this up all the time. And I think it's important. We have about 1.5% of global

00:25:54.980 emissions that are Canada's responsibility and no carbon tax proposal, no environmental proposal in

00:26:01.640 Canada has proposed getting that even down to 1% say. And even if it did, that would be a drop in

00:26:08.140 the bucket globally. Thank you. And I think this is worth pointing out because you and I, you know,

00:26:14.400 we can sit here and bang our heads against the wall about the carbon tax quite a bit.

00:26:17.860 but every now and then I think it's important to reach across the aisle and try to meet people

00:26:22.800 where they are. So let's say for argument's sake, okay, that your key issue is global emissions,

00:26:29.660 okay, keeps you up at night, gets you out of bed in the morning. It's the reason why you've gone

00:26:33.680 to university to pursue a trade or whatever it is that's a calling for you. Okay, let's meet them

00:26:39.480 there, okay? It still doesn't work. This equation still doesn't work because as you point out,

00:26:45.760 Canada is responsible for about 1.5% of global emissions, okay? We also have a gigantic honking

00:26:53.920 boreal forest that a lot of scientists keep trying to gently point out, but few people seem

00:26:58.760 to understand or talk about. So, okay, let's set that aside. Look at the math. Look at just the

00:27:03.140 emissions. Even if Canada ceased to exist tomorrow, God forbid, and we stopped heating and eating and 0.68

00:27:09.480 growing our food and driving to work, it wouldn't make a dent in global emissions. So for the folks

00:27:14.520 who are truly gripped with this fear that we're all going to boil the planet in the next 18 months

00:27:19.920 or so and that Canada is responsible and that using a carbon tax will reduce that, that doesn't

00:27:25.700 even make sense to meet them with their own math, Andrew. So then why not look at the big end of the

00:27:31.880 arithmetic problem and say, okay, where is there a global democracy with a big population that has

00:27:38.020 a really heavy emissions output right now? India. Okay, we've worked with India quite a bit. It used

00:27:43.340 be a commonwealth country there's a lot of interchange there what if we sold them our

00:27:47.500 natural gas instead of them burning wood and animal dung every single day guess what the

00:27:53.740 government of india is begging us to sell them natural gas from canada so that would reduce

00:27:59.420 global emissions that column in that graph would go down and we wouldn't need a carbon tax here in

00:28:05.260 canada which is doing absolutely nothing by the way here in canada we're still getting increasing

00:28:09.900 emissions in canada the government's own data between 2023 and 2024 shows an increase in federal

00:28:18.220 emissions in canada even though we have a carbon tax this lines up perfectly with bc well and that

00:28:24.060 brings i mean the other premise or one of the other premises is that the emitting activities

00:28:29.020 are discretionary which is in the case of rural canadians absolutely wrong i'll give an example

00:28:34.540 of this so i live in southwestern ontario so when i drive to toronto which i i try to avoid but i've

00:28:39.180 had to a few times as of late you go on the 401 and there's a lane carved out at several points

00:28:45.180 for carpooling or electric vehicles the high high occupancy vehicle lane and you look in this and

00:28:51.340 oftentimes it's empty and the reason when you see people in it that have two or more people in their

00:28:56.700 cars i'm not convinced a single one of them has chosen to carpool to use the lane they are people

00:29:03.660 who happen to have an extra person in the car and say oh great i can use the carpool lane today

00:29:07.900 but it's not actually incentivizing behavior. It's just ultimately penalizing everyone else on the

00:29:13.180 road. And I think the same is true of the carbon tax, where very few people are choosing to live

00:29:19.500 differently because driving their kids, driving to work, these things for a lot of people are

00:29:24.720 not choices. These are now things that are simply penalized when you have to heat your home or fill

00:29:30.840 up your tank. Yes, exactly. And so any way you look at this argument, these folks in the Gibo 0.57

00:29:36.900 mentality, in Minister Stéphane Guibo's mentality, who are really zealous about this sort of stuff,

00:29:43.320 they're always lost for an answer. Because any way you come at them with the cost of the carbon tax,

00:29:47.960 oh, shows you the data is actually costing people big time money. With the emissions, oh, once again,

00:29:53.480 here in Canada, emissions are going up anyway, and we're not the ones that are contributing to the

00:29:57.960 big time global emissions. So why don't we focus on that instead? And bingo, exactly this. So I

00:30:04.180 wanted to quickly talk about this okay so when the carbon tax was first hatched in north america

00:30:08.880 again going back to bc and trudeau used british columbia as a model that's why i keep going back

00:30:13.720 to it because it's a template okay government is just like high school you get in with the cool

00:30:17.720 crowd and you're a follower so this is what they're doing okay i i was never getting in with

00:30:22.100 the cool crowd you'll have to come up with a better explanation neither but you know here we

00:30:26.240 are i was a drama kid so take a look there right and so what they were also promising is that with

00:30:32.320 this big shiny new carbon tax that was revenue neutral when there's a chicken in every pot

00:30:36.740 is that it would create an abundance of affordable, accessible, abundant, consistent,

00:30:44.480 alternative energy, okay? That people would be able to switch, okay? It's like switching between

00:30:50.920 a plastic bag and a little nylon bag that you brought from home. It's annoying, sure, but

00:30:55.520 that's kind of a switch, right? There's no switch for the vast majority of people to make in Canada.

00:31:01.880 Yes, there are those hardcore people who managed to live with a pedal bike and a solar panel on

00:31:06.460 their roof. We're talking with the vast majority of folks. They don't have a way of switching

00:31:10.960 their energy source. And it's been since 2008. So the government's solution to all of this has

00:31:17.220 been no solution. It's simply become now a financial punishment for heating your home,

00:31:24.160 driving to work and feeding your kids. People are backed into a corner and the government

00:31:29.320 keeps hitting them with this carbon tax, which is a punishment. And the Liberal government,

00:31:33.920 by the way, used the term punishment in an interview. So now we're at this weird crossroads

00:31:39.580 where they're trying to move the goalposts, Andrew, and talk more about wealth redistribution

00:31:45.840 and being fairer to poorer people and taking away from middle class and working class people and

00:31:52.080 handing it to the folks who could never afford a car in the beginning. They didn't talk like this

00:31:57.240 when they first launched the carbon tax.

00:31:59.240 When they first launched the carbon tax,

00:32:00.940 they said it was going to be revenue neutral,

00:32:03.260 that it would reduce emissions

00:32:05.120 and it would create a whole bunch of alternative energies

00:32:08.440 that everybody could use.

00:32:10.440 None of those things has happened.

00:32:13.300 Very well said.

00:32:14.560 I know you'll keep on this, Chris.

00:32:15.720 We'll perhaps get an update from you next week.

00:32:17.900 Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:32:19.960 Always a pleasure.

00:32:20.840 Thank you.

00:32:22.060 Our Monday tax fighter, Chris Sims.

00:32:24.120 Always good to check in with her.

00:32:25.860 We are packing a lot into the show today, but bear with me.

00:32:28.580 We're going to move right on here because this is a fascinating one.

00:32:31.740 And I actually had a conversation about this with someone the other day.

00:32:35.120 We were talking about this idea of wokeness, which is, I think, increasingly become only a term used by people who are criticizing wokeness.

00:32:43.000 But the idea itself is one that's certainly championed by a number of institutions, incredibly by governments, by academic institutions and many others.

00:32:52.580 And the problem with it is that it is ingrained in it as this idea of identity politics

00:32:58.180 and pitting groups against each other.

00:33:01.300 We start to define people by their group identity rather than by their individual identity.

00:33:06.120 And when you look at diversity, equity, and inclusion policies,

00:33:09.400 you see they're trying to solve one problem and are ignoring, or in some cases, creating another.

00:33:15.020 Our friends over at the Aristotle Foundation did what I found to be a fascinating study

00:33:20.260 looking at poverty and race in Canada,

00:33:22.560 and they found that most of the poor in Canada are white.

00:33:26.920 So how are these people being helped

00:33:28.460 by so many of the pro-inclusivity measures?

00:33:31.500 The fact remains, they really aren't.

00:33:33.380 This study was done by Matthew Lau and David Hunt,

00:33:36.140 the latter of whom is the research director

00:33:38.360 for the Aristotle Foundation and joins us now.

00:33:41.400 David, good to talk to you.

00:33:42.260 Thanks for coming on today.

00:33:45.660 You are muted there.

00:33:47.360 I don't know if you can unmute on your end

00:33:48.660 if it's something Sean will have to do. Yeah, I'm not hearing you. All right, well, we'll get

00:33:57.420 that sorted out in just a moment here and bring David Hunt back in when it's resolved. But the

00:34:02.600 study is called Poverty and Race in Canada, Facts About Race Discrimination and the Poor. Sorry,

00:34:09.980 Sean, you say it looks normal. Are you saying that like you hear him and it's just me or?

00:34:13.720 oh no he doesn't hear him either okay we'll uh we'll get that sorted out and we'll have

00:34:19.300 david back on but the uh the piece is called poverty and race in canada facts about race

00:34:23.800 discrimination and the poor uh just since since i have a moment here let me just share on an

00:34:29.100 unrelated subject this poll that i found interesting uh so you may have seen on the

00:34:33.120 weekend abacus had a poll that came out showed the conservatives with a 20 point lead over the

00:34:40.480 Liberals. But also in that poll, interestingly enough, was that Canadians are looking at

00:34:46.260 immigration as being a top five issue, which it hasn't been certainly in recent memory. Immigration

00:34:52.860 is now more motivating to voters than climate change. So that's a fascinating point that we'll

00:34:58.000 probably delve into a bit more tomorrow. But I believe I heard in my ear, David Hunt is with us.

00:35:02.580 David, good to have you. Thanks for coming on today. Hey, thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:35:06.580 so let me ask you first and foremost about why you decided to look into this because race is

00:35:11.940 obviously a bit of a landmine issue especially when your thesis is as it ultimately came out to

00:35:16.760 be that we have this problem facing white canadians that's not really being explored

00:35:22.420 hey thanks for that question andrew i think actually this is in part why the aristotle

00:35:27.180 foundation exists is as you said this is this is a topic that perhaps others don't want to cover

00:35:33.340 and I think we're a brand new think tank and there are issues we need to talk about because

00:35:38.020 they impact everyday Canadians. And in the case of this study, it's impacting the most

00:35:43.580 disadvantaged Canadians. And it's a topic that others don't want to talk about, but we got to

00:35:47.280 talk about it. And the reality is, hey, who actually are the poor in Canada? And why do

00:35:55.200 we have funding in this country that is based on the color of your skin? And that in this case

00:36:00.780 leaves out the overwhelming majority of those who are poor in Canada.

00:36:06.440 So we have different programs.

00:36:08.100 I mean, there are anti-racism initiatives, there are anti-Islamophobia initiatives,

00:36:11.660 anti-Semitism initiatives, there are anti-poverty initiatives.

00:36:14.480 Are the anti-poverty initiatives specifically targeting diverse groups instead of the poor

00:36:21.080 whites that you're talking about?

00:36:22.860 Yeah, no, there will be programs that are available to many, but the fact that there

00:36:28.820 are any, and frankly, there are a number of programs that are under the guise of anti-poverty

00:36:35.120 reduction, but whether or not you qualify is not based on a financial criterion or criteria,

00:36:42.380 it's based on the color of your skin. Do you fall under one of the minority categories? Or in some

00:36:48.000 cases, it's very specific where it's for perhaps Indigenous only or for that matter, Black-only

00:36:54.280 funding uh this study frankly we should probably do a follow-up study where we actually go through

00:37:00.200 and identify like what are all the programs that was beyond the scope of the study we were looking

00:37:04.280 at here was simply okay here's the statistics canada data of who is poor in canada uh and and

00:37:11.960 the fact that so many are being left out why frankly is there any programming that is judging

00:37:18.680 people based on the color of their skin and providing poverty relief based on skin color we

00:37:24.600 think that's that's illiberal and frankly i'm canadian look if you looked at raw numbers canada

00:37:31.880 is a 70 white country so if every group was affected by poverty equally you'd have more

00:37:38.120 impoverished white canadians than minority canadians how is it proportionally though are

00:37:43.480 minority communities more disproportionately affected by poverty is that how the government

00:37:48.440 justifies this imbalance i i would assume so because because yes like let's be real um both

00:37:54.680 especially let's take two groups indigenous canadians and black canadians they are more

00:37:59.240 likely to be in poverty and that is an issue but what's the root cause what's the reason for that

00:38:04.360 is race the reason why they're in poverty and and we would argue just by looking at the data 0.99

00:38:10.040 we would say no race is not the primary factor another study that we did back in october with

00:38:15.400 matthew lau looks at income in the country and when it comes to income uh white canadians are

00:38:21.160 actually not even in the middle uh there are many different ethnic groups say or what statistics

00:38:25.640 canada calls cohorts uh there are many uh that make more income than than white canadians and

00:38:31.640 what's interesting uh is when you control for education for example just just one of many

00:38:36.760 things you can control for and just compare your indigenous canadians with non-indigenous canadians 0.57

00:38:42.360 once education is plugged in there's almost no differences in some areas like for example if you

00:38:49.000 have a medical degree and you're indigenous you're going to be making more money on average

00:38:52.360 than those who are not indigenous same as if you have a phd or a master's so the causes of poverty

00:38:59.720 at least in canada are not based on race where do you live are you living in a metropolitan area or

00:39:05.080 do you live out in in the country that's going to affect um whether or not you're in poverty and

00:39:09.160 your income again what's what's your level of education uh are you religious or not religious

00:39:14.200 there's there's so many different factors what we're saying here is even though yes there are

00:39:18.680 particular groups that may be disproportionately um in in poverty race is not the cause for that

00:39:26.920 so if we're going to solve these problems let's not be allocating resources based on race because

00:39:32.120 we're not going to get to the root issue yeah and it's interesting because you know the left

00:39:36.440 uses the term intersectionality to talk about, you know, the way that if you're a black trans

00:39:42.360 indigenous person in a wheelchair, your experience is going to be different than if you're just a

00:39:50.060 black woman who's able-bodied and all of this. And I think there's truth to that. I mean,

00:39:54.380 life is full of disadvantages and advantages and no person has, you know, well, few people have,

00:40:00.700 you know, the best optimal thing in every way of their life. You know, I'm a white male,

00:40:05.760 but I'm also overweight. And, you know, like, for example, so it's stuff like that. And I think

00:40:10.300 that what's interesting is that they don't actually look at all of these different categories

00:40:14.920 and all of these different groups. One area that's often missing is urban rural, which,

00:40:19.220 as you mentioned, is hugely, hugely influential. And I think even indigenous, if you were to take 0.99

00:40:24.460 the where they live in the country factor into that, I think you'd see a lot of variety within

00:40:30.140 indigenous populations and and also education level as you mentioned is is key as well i mean

00:40:35.900 if you're to use the old like show that you know people of my age are familiar with fresh prince

00:40:40.300 of bel-air well you know that experience of that black family in i think well in beverly hill and

00:40:45.820 bel-air is going to be a heck of a lot different than some you know rural white working class 0.68

00:40:51.260 family from you know northern alberta say and and that's why it's it's critical we have these

00:40:56.460 conversations and although this study is particularly provocative right because we're

00:41:00.060 saying hey uh there's more white people in poverty than every other ethnicity combined

00:41:05.580 but but to open up this this proverbial can of worms to have these conversations in terms of hey

00:41:11.180 if we're seeing canadians that are falling behind that are disadvantaged well of course we want to

00:41:16.300 do something about that and that's right but let's get at the root so towards the end of this this

00:41:21.260 short study what we we we point to the what's called the success sequence and this this was

00:41:26.620 um not introduced but popularized by the brookings institution down in the states

00:41:31.820 and thereby by no means a conservative think tank but they popularized this concept and what they

00:41:36.780 found is in the united states uh roughly 97 of americans who finish high school get a full-time

00:41:44.780 job get married have kids do it in that order 97 by the time they get to their 30s they're not going

00:41:52.220 to experience poverty and poverty to find in the absolute sense uh lacking the bare necessities of

00:41:58.220 necessities of life so that that study was then replicated by scholars at the university of

00:42:02.780 virginia only a few years ago looking at millennials uh so our our age cohort and and

00:42:08.140 same thing they replicated the study found 97 of millennials that finished high school then got a

00:42:13.740 a full-time job and got married had kids did it in that order 97 in their 30s are not in poverty

00:42:20.380 so that was then replicated in canada and christopher sarlo with the fraser institute

00:42:24.540 replicated the study in canada just a few years ago and found it's not 97 in canada

00:42:29.260 it's over 99 that follow the success sequence are not in absolute poverty as adults so is everyone

00:42:36.700 going to get married no is everyone going to finish high school no is everyone have a full-time

00:42:40.060 job no but but what the big takeaway there is is there's there's certain cultural norms that that

00:42:47.340 are tried and true frankly over the centuries and if we put these things into practice and it from

00:42:52.380 a policy perspective if we make it easier for for more people to get on that yellow brick road so

00:42:58.460 to speak to get on that success sequence we're going to alleviate much of of the the worst

00:43:05.020 effects of poverty and frankly there'll be much fewer people in canada in poverty if we follow

00:43:09.580 things like the success sequence and and whatever those norms are that feed into that well we had

00:43:14.780 an op-ed from you over at true north about this and people can read the study for themselves at

00:43:18.940 the aristotle foundation's website uh aristotlefoundation.org david hunt good to talk to

00:43:23.900 you thanks for coming on today hey thank you andrew all right that does it for us for this

00:43:28.620 afternoon we will be back tomorrow in just uh what is it 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of

00:43:33.340 canada's most irreverent talk show uh let us know what you think about this in the comments wherever

00:43:38.300 you are watching and we will talk to you next time thank you god bless and good day to you all

00:43:43.420 thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:43:46.360 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:44:08.300 We'll be right back.

00:44:38.300 We'll be right back.

Juno News - June 17, 2024

Trudeau won't say if any Liberal MPs are implicated in foreign interference

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