Juno News - June 06, 2022


Trudeau won’t admit the pandemic is over


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

204.0415

Word count

1,003

Sentence count

69

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Justin Trudeau wants to get rid of Canada's anti-vaccination laws, but the opposition is stronger than ever. This week, we talk about why Canada should stop wearing face masks on planes, and why it should just live up to the rest of the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 On Monday, there was a House of Commons vote on whether or not Canada would be ready to lift
00:00:04.920 the remaining COVID restrictions. So many other places around the world have already done away
00:00:09.280 with them. They've sort of learned to live with COVID and everybody's moved on. In Canada,
00:00:14.160 not so much. The Liberals and the NDP joined together to vote against this motion. So it was
00:00:21.860 defeated by a count of 117 to 202. So there was just one Liberal MP and one independent MPL
00:00:29.980 along with the Conservatives that voted for it. So I wonder what's your take on this? Why is
00:00:34.940 Canada dragging its heels when it comes to just moving on and learning to live with COVID?
00:00:40.600 I don't know if I could answer the why, except for to spite people, to spite the unvaccinated. I mean, 1.00
00:00:47.060 that seems to be the big thing that Justin Trudeau wants to do. But let me tell you, it is literally
00:00:51.860 just Canada. When I flew to Zurich to cover the World Economic Forum conference last week, the
00:00:58.220 second people got off the plane, you could tell who the Europeans were, because they all like ripped 1.00
00:01:02.280 off their masks, because they can walk around maskless in airports. And on the way back, same
00:01:07.480 thing, you know, everyone's walking around no vaccine passport in Switzerland, no masks,
00:01:12.360 none of that you go through the airport, you're mask free. And then the second you get on the Air
00:01:16.420 Canada plane, because they're regulated by the government, you've got to put your mask on. And at
00:01:21.060 one point, I was sort of reminded that I was coming home, when I saw a flight attendant wake up a guy who
00:01:26.140 was sleeping, because his mask had like slipped, you know, half a millimeter below his nose or,
00:01:30.380 or something like that. So it is insane. It's completely theatrical. If you look at Justin
00:01:35.660 Trudeau and his cabinet ministers, they're selectively wearing masks, depending on which
00:01:40.340 meeting they're in and which thing they're in. And it's like, it's you can tell that they don't
00:01:44.720 believe it anymore. They aren't buying into it. But we all have to and the vaccine mandate for
00:01:50.520 internal travel is insane. There's a big legal challenge afoot right now against this. And I
00:01:56.220 don't think they want to give an inch. I think the convoy embarrassed Justin Trudeau significantly.
00:02:01.280 And I don't think he wants to relent on anything that the people in that convoy wanted. And maybe
00:02:06.800 I'm drawing too many conclusions there. But I think spite towards this people that Justin Trudeau
00:02:12.040 holds in contempt, which he feels are the only people asking for changes is really what's motivating
00:02:17.860 this. Although the opposition is growing. I mean, just this week, the WestJet CEO is on a plane in
00:02:23.440 Europe. And he tweeted out how kind of almost giddily that Oh, yeah, mask free in Europe.
00:02:28.760 And he didn't, you know, take aim at the government. But you could tell implicitly,
00:02:32.120 he was saying, What is it that is different in Europe? What is it that the science says here that
00:02:37.300 it doesn't say in Canada, or vice versa? And WestJet's CEO also came out this week and said,
00:02:42.900 we've got to get rid of the mandates. They're killing tourism. Now, my view is that they're just wrong.
00:02:47.620 I think the tourism implications of that may be a point of evidence in favor of dropping them. But
00:02:52.760 I think they're long gone. If there was ever justification for them, there isn't now.
00:02:58.140 Well, a couple of things. I think you're totally right about spite, because we saw this non-binding
00:03:02.940 motion put forth by the conservatives. It got voted down. And then the next day, Trudeau announced
00:03:08.300 that they were extending their restrictions, which, again, it's punitive, right? It's telling people
00:03:13.180 who are vaccinated that they can't, sorry, people who are not vaccinated that they can't come to
00:03:17.460 Canada, people who are unvaccinated, they can't leave Canada. So it's punitive in nature. Anecdotally
00:03:23.260 as well, I've flown around a little bit. And I noticed that every flight I get on, the pilot comes
00:03:29.060 on and sort of reluctantly apologizes and says, we know, we know this policy is still in place.
00:03:34.000 We're sorry. It's not up to us. It's we're following Canadian federal regulations. And you could
00:03:38.520 just tell that everyone is sick of it. I want one other story. I was flying from Ottawa to Washington,
00:03:43.980 D.C. a few weeks ago. And as soon as we went over U.S. airspace, the pilot announced that you
00:03:48.820 could take your mask off. And, you know, the pilot was excited to announce this, like, don't worry,
00:03:54.140 you don't have to wear it anymore. I instantly took my mask off. And then I looked around that
00:03:58.120 or nobody else did, because I realized it was all bureaucrats on the plane, either American or
00:04:02.960 Canadian. Yeah, going from one capital to another. That's a good, I feel bad. I'm glad you survived that 0.99
00:04:07.820 flight, to be honest. And I don't even think the pilot was right. But you better believe I
00:04:12.480 wouldn't be complaining. Because, I mean, flights I've been on, they've kind of claimed, you know,
00:04:16.760 Transport Canada jurisdiction over the entire flight, even if only a bit of it's in Canada.
00:04:22.420 And I think this is the thing, people. But these measures everywhere else I find are decreasing in
00:04:27.300 compliance. Like if you go around, even in some medical clinics right now in Ontario, masks are
00:04:32.240 required, but people generally aren't wearing them. The airline industry, the aviation sector is like
00:04:37.440 the one thing that the federal government can control, they can't control your neighborhood
00:04:41.440 corner store, they can't control the grocery store, they can't control all of these other
00:04:46.140 spaces, but they can control air and rail travel. And I think there is something to,
00:04:51.380 I just want to make these people suffer. And I want to make these people hurt. 0.93