00:02:17.180And if you are not going to be at the conference, do join us online on that stream.
00:02:21.100That'll be Thursday afternoon, just in two days' time here.
00:02:24.620I just as a point of apology here, we're starting a little bit late today because my house was flooding and I think might actually still be flooding right now.
00:02:35.560I had to like just run into the studio to start the show.
00:02:38.020So if I just end up underwater by the end of it, you'll understand why.
00:02:41.700But I think I can just get around with just swishing my feet around in it.
00:02:45.200So for now, we are still afloat and hopefully we'll make it through the rest of it.
00:02:51.480But a big news in Ottawa that I want to get to, which is the Liberal government finally agreeing to let Katie Telford testify about Chinese interference into Canada's elections.
00:03:02.160The Liberals had been filibustering on committee for quite some time, not even letting a motion to compel her as a witness get to a vote.
00:03:09.520There was even a little whisper that the vote in the House of Commons was going to be a confidence vote.
00:03:15.720although eventually Justin Trudeau decided it wasn't going to be and Katie Telford magically
00:03:20.680agreed to testify and the NDP somehow decided to abandon its firm stand in support of the motion
00:03:26.140to rejecting the motion which was put forward by the Conservatives. I want to speak now to
00:03:31.920a Conservative MP, former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer who joins me on this. Andrew is
00:03:37.800this a win even though the motion itself was defeated? Well I guess I would say it's an
00:03:43.680improvement, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a win because we're still far short of the
00:03:49.240independent public inquiry that is actually needed to get to the bottom of this scandal.
00:03:55.520All that we've done now is got to the point where after throwing up all kinds of procedural
00:04:02.860roadblocks and filibustering and virtually liberal MPs reading the phone book at committee
00:04:10.460to prevent this from coming to a vote, we finally broken that logjam. And now Ms. Telford will1.00
00:04:17.020appear. But you know, it's just one more reminder that the Liberals only climb down when they try
00:04:23.040literally everything else. You know, we could have had this motion adopted three weeks ago
00:04:29.180and save the taxpayer all the money that goes to having committee meetings during break weeks and
00:04:35.460things like that. And we might have even heard from Ms. Telford already. Instead, the Liberals
00:04:39.560desperately tried to prevent that from happening. Climb down today is an improvement, but still not
00:04:44.680where we need to be. Well, and I would also point out that even when she is testifying, there's no
00:04:50.520guarantee that it will be all that transparent. We've seen as recently as the Public Order
00:04:55.400Emergency Commission, how all of these different tools in the toolbox, like cabinet confidence,
00:05:00.200solicitor-client privilege, national security, come out in ways where people really can't even
00:05:05.480assess if it's being used honestly and in good faith. So are you concerned or predicting that
00:05:11.780we're going to see national security reasons used to basically cloud any answer of substance during
00:05:17.760her testimony? Absolutely we are. In fact, the ink wasn't dry on the statement from the Prime
00:05:26.360Minister's office that Ms. Telford would be appearing and Justin Trudeau was out in front
00:05:31.340of the cameras telling people that, look, there's going to be a lot of questions she can't answer.
00:05:35.480Well, that's, again, another point to reinforce why Canadians need a public inquiry.
00:05:43.920We have to create, when I say we, I mean the government has an obligation to be open and transparent with Canadians
00:05:50.540and create a process whereby senior officials who have been briefed on how the communist government in China
00:05:59.200was funneling money through to liberal candidates.
00:06:03.120and these are not my words. These are reports that are coming from CSIS. We have to have
00:06:08.980officials be able to testify openly about this. We're talking about our election system. We're
00:06:14.300not talking about secret agents in other countries who we can't blow their cover because there'd be
00:06:21.280repercussions on their lives here. We're talking about people who put their names on the ballot.
00:06:25.960We're talking about political parties who have to openly disclose where they spend their money
00:06:30.080and how they raise their money. And we can't have the government hide behind bogus excuses
00:06:38.500for not answering important questions. So look, we'll hope that Ms. Telford is open
00:06:44.760and transparent. We're not going to hold our breath because she has the same problem that0.99
00:06:48.520Liberals have, which is they seem to be allergic to sunlight. But it's one more tool that the0.98
00:06:54.820opposition parties are using to both highlight the importance of this issue and try to get
00:06:59.900answer on behalf of Canadians. Obviously, there's been a lot of effort going towards
00:07:04.960getting Katie Telford to testify in the first place. So let's back up here, Andrew. Why do
00:07:10.300the Conservatives believe she is such a pivotal figure in this? What is it that you believe she
00:07:15.280has that will contribute to the sunlight, if you will, on this scandal? That is a great question
00:07:21.480because we hear from the Liberals this idea of like, oh, you don't need to hear from Katie
00:07:26.880Telford because ministers answer for their departments and ministers are the ones that
00:07:32.180are ultimately responsible. I should point out that Katie Telford has already testified at
00:07:36.660committee twice on other issues. So that argument is phony right off the bat. But secondly,
00:07:44.460Katie Telford is not just some random government official. She's not just some random liberal to0.99
00:07:49.100use Justin Trudeau's own words. She has two roles really. One as his chief of staff when it comes
00:07:55.580to supporting the Prime Minister's work in running the country, but she's also a senior
00:08:00.680official within the Liberal Party of Canada.
00:08:03.480And that is where we also need to shine the light.
00:08:06.220What did the Liberal Party itself know?
00:08:09.980People who have run campaigns, people who do fundraising for the Liberals, every party
00:08:14.700has people who go out and build relationships and build networks and raise funds and get
00:09:31.740So I guess it is the hypothesis that you and your party has going into this, that the Liberals were just so incompetent,
00:09:38.860they weren't really paying attention, didn't know it? Or do you believe that the Liberals
00:09:42.000knowingly accepted support from China in the 2021 and 2019 elections, the 2019 election being the
00:09:49.240one in which you were the conservative leader? Well, you know, I don't want to get too far ahead
00:09:54.100of what I believe might happen. But I think what we're, but I'll tell you what we do know.
00:10:00.280We do know that there are senior people, senior officials at our intelligence agencies who have
00:10:06.100taken the unprecedented step of leaking some of this information to the media and uh and these
00:10:12.900these individuals these these these officials who work for these agencies are putting themselves in
00:10:18.300grave danger uh that we're not just talking about you know people that are now at risk of getting
00:10:24.520fired there are legal consequences for leaking this type of information and what they are saying
00:10:29.900when when they talk to the media uh and their and their names are protected and they're anonymous
00:10:35.140they are saying that they briefed the government, they briefed the Liberals, and that nothing was
00:10:41.160done about it. And so that's what we're trying to understand. Why? Is it the case that Justin
00:10:47.440Trudeau knew that his candidates, his party was receiving this type of support, and just shrugged
00:10:54.880his shoulders and said, well, as long as he's the beneficiary of it, he's not going to lift a finger
00:10:58.440to stop it? What level of detail did they know about? At the very least, it's starting to look
00:11:08.080like a case of negligence and not responding to very serious and grave threats. But I don't want
00:11:15.360to get too far ahead of myself here, and I don't want to get too far ahead of what we know for
00:11:20.240sure, what the facts we know. Again, I use all this to reinforce the point that I shouldn't be
00:11:25.460sitting here speculating. You shouldn't be wondering. Your viewers shouldn't be trying
00:11:30.520to read between the lines and fit the pieces together. We should have a public inquiry
00:11:34.900with someone that people can trust, someone who's not compromised, someone who doesn't have strong
00:11:39.780links to the Liberal Party or Justin Trudeau personally, who can go through and sort through
00:11:44.320the facts and come to a conclusion as to what the government did wrong and what it should have done
00:11:49.820earlier. That's why we need a public inquiry. So let's just look at the forward aspect of this,
00:11:56.920because we know that David Johnston, the new special rapporteur, former ski buddy of the
00:12:01.860Trudeau family, maybe current ski buddy, I don't know, is looking into this. He is going to advise
00:12:06.700whether or not he thinks there should be a public inquiry by late May. At this point, I mean,
00:12:11.920we've already seen as recently as this week that the Liberals like to use the confidence motion
00:12:16.560tactic as a bit of a fake out to get the NDP to fall in line. So there could very conceivably be
00:12:22.220an election before we even have a public inquiry, let alone the results of one. So if we are talking
00:12:28.760about a vulnerability in our democratic process, that's still there right now. Well, you're exactly
00:12:34.580right. You know, first of all, you know, this phony title, this made up position of our special
00:12:41.560rapporteur you know it sounds uh sounds very fancy you know i don't know if you have to wear
00:12:46.600a tie when you're in his presence and you know how low you might yeah the monocle everyone gets
00:12:50.200a lot in their special rapporteur where's my waistcoat i need to get dressed for the rapper
00:12:55.240who's coming um i mean it's just ridiculous but if you thought it was ridiculous just in and of
00:13:00.440itself justin trudeau found a way to make it more ridiculous by appointing david johnson uh someone
00:13:06.280who brags about growing, having his kids grow up with the Trudeau kids at their chalet in the
00:13:13.600Laurentians. I mean, if we're trying to think about what the, what it might look like to be
00:13:18.000part of the Laurentian elite, I mean, this is it. Literally. It's a literal Laurentian. Usually
00:13:23.060they're figurative Laurentian elite. This is a literal Laurentian elite. That's right. You know,
00:13:27.740the types of people who, who have chalets in the Laurentian and, and put their kids in skiing
00:13:33.100lessons together. Not a group I've ever been a part of, but Justin Trudeau thinks that it's
00:13:38.880appropriate to name a card-carrying member of his close family circle to this post. It's just
00:13:45.260ridiculous. I mean, David Johnson is a close family friend of the Trudeaus. He also sits on1.00
00:13:53.520the Trudeau Foundation board. This is the very foundation that accepted money that had links
00:13:59.080back to the same communist regime that is interfering in elections now and sat on that
00:14:04.620for years. They only returned the money when they got caught. And David Johnson sits on that board.
00:14:09.680The Trudeau Foundation is implicated in these allegations and he's on the board. I mean,
00:14:15.000he should have refused this appointment. And Justin Trudeau has done a terrible thing to
00:14:19.380his friend. He's done a terrible thing by using David Johnson in this manner, which is now going
00:14:25.860going to have a blight on his public service record that he's decided to work with Justin
00:14:32.980Trudeau in this way. If Justin Trudeau is truly his friend, he would never have asked him to do
00:14:37.300this. So again, you know, this is just another reason why we continue to push for our call for
00:14:42.640an independent public inquiry. Andrew Scheer, always a pleasure, sir. Thank you so much for
00:14:48.740coming on today. Thanks very much. That was a conservative MP, former conservative leader,
00:14:55.640also former House Speaker, and he's had all the roles there.
00:14:59.320So I appreciate him taking the time to weigh in on this today.
00:15:02.200He was the one yesterday that came and I think very pointedly pointed out the circumstances
00:15:08.000about this Conservative motion and the Liberals' obfuscation.
00:15:11.860And I just want to point out the NDP here.
00:15:13.940And I've always said I don't want to make the mistake of attributing or ascribing relevance
00:15:18.680to the NDP in the current political climate.
00:15:21.060But take a look at this clip of Jagmeet Singh saying he will support the Conservative motion if Trudeau doesn't let Telford testify.
00:15:31.800Just to be clear, then, you're willing to accept the fact that this could go to the Ethics Committee at some point with Katie Telford being there and the whole list of people that the Conservatives want to bring forward.
00:15:43.320You're willing to go the whole gamut if the Prime Minister doesn't allow Katie Telford to speak.
00:15:48.820Well, we're saying very clearly that there's an opportunity in 10 minutes where the government's going to show us if they stop the obstruction and if they allow the chief of staff to testify, then if they don't do that, then we will support the opposition motion, which is the entirety of that motion.
00:16:08.480So you want to appear at PROC, you want the committee that's filibustering right now to stop that, her appear there, and if that doesn't happen, you'll vote with the other parties on that.
00:16:26.460So, yeah, I think that Katie Telford should testify, and I'm going to support the motion to get Katie Telford to testify if Katie Telford doesn't voluntarily testify, but the Liberals served her up.
00:16:37.260So Jagmeet Singh all of a sudden doesn't have to support the motion.
00:16:41.640And you can tell that even when he's pretending to be the big tough guy, he's uncomfortable
00:16:45.660going up against the Justin Trudeau liberals.
00:16:48.100And he's really uncomfortable doing anything that might be seen as supporting the conservatives.
00:16:53.400And it's amazing how easy it is for the liberals to control the NDP.
00:16:58.860And the confidence vote thing was, I think, a big part of this.
00:17:02.180So yesterday, the Liberal House leader is floating this little test balloon out that I'm not saying it's not, maybe it will be, maybe it won't be. And of course, that means to the NDP, you better vote with us because if you don't, the election is going to come and you're going to have no money and you're going to go from having 24 seats to having 18 seats and you're going to cease to be as irrelevant as you are. You're going to somehow manage to be even less irrelevant.
00:17:28.040So that's when the Liberals start talking about making things confidence motions.
00:17:31.820They're trying to tell the NDP, you better stay in line.
00:17:55.040Well, you know, I forget what I was doing that day.
00:17:57.500And we're not really going to be any closer to the answers.
00:18:00.300Now, I don't think a public inquiry is going to be as transcendent as the conservatives tend to.
00:18:05.740But I also agree that we can't do nothing, which is the most recognizable position to what the liberals are doing now.
00:18:13.260Transparency is very much hard to come by, which brings us to this topic, which is one we mentioned a little bit ago when the process was put in motion.
00:18:23.420But there is underway now a national citizen's inquiry into Canada's response to COVID-19.
00:18:31.380Now, this was initially going to be led by Preston Manning,
00:18:34.860although Preston Manning was appointed by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to lead the Alberta inquiry.
00:18:40.400So he was replaced by broadcaster Trish Wood.
00:18:43.400Trish Wood recently stepped down and has been replaced by Michelle LeDuc-Catlin,
00:18:49.260who we'll speak to in just a moment here.
00:18:51.060But I want to set the stage with what this is about, because we know that government is not itself the body that wants to investigate itself.
00:19:01.520When government investigates itself, it tends to come out with a result that looks curiously like it's exonerating itself, which defeats the purpose of the investigation.
00:19:10.300So the National Citizens Inquiry is led by citizens.
00:19:16.260they're going across the country and operating far more transparently than the government has
00:19:20.780when it comes down to COVID. But what is it? What is it going to do? And what should people keep an
00:19:25.860eye out for? Michelle Leduc Catlin joins me on the line now. Michelle, good to talk to you. Thanks0.92
00:19:31.460so much for coming on today. My pleasure. Thank you, Andrew. Oh, I don't think we have. We do
00:19:37.940it, Michelle. There we go. I can't hear you, though. You can't hear me? No, I think you are
00:19:43.560muted we'll try to get that sorted out in just a moment here there we go i got it sorted out i
00:19:49.640apologize if you missed at the beginning of the show i said that i was dealing with a major
00:19:54.280flooding issue in the home so i was worried that everything else has just malfunctioned as well but
00:19:58.760it is good to have you here so explain first and foremost what a citizen-led inquiry can do because
00:20:05.240people can talk about things people can have their opinions but at the end of it
00:20:08.600what's the outcome of this that you'd like to see yeah it's a really good question because
00:20:12.920it's never been done before so i you know you could answer it a couple of ways one is that we
00:20:17.480have no idea what the outcome will be and i think the main the main impetus is going to be how people
00:20:25.160participate so the main the power of this inquiry is going to be the degree to which citizens
00:20:31.560participate so the commissioners are going to put out a report by the end of their five commissioners
00:20:39.000they will put out a report, it will be in a public space. And at that point, we will have
00:20:47.000recommendations and hopefully the government will act on them. But I really believe that it's going
00:20:52.120to be the people, you know, when they, how the people respond and how we participate, it's going
00:20:57.860to determine what happens with those recommendations. Is your goal to bring together people to raise
00:21:04.060explicitly criticisms and critiques of it or are you also wanting to engage people that believe
00:21:09.660the government may have done a good job if such people even exist apart from the government
00:21:15.020themselves right well government officials have been invited to testify this is an open inquiry
00:21:21.260as i said it's never been done before but we're certainly looking to report on what was done right
00:21:27.360as well as what was done wrong and what we can do better in the future so let's talk about the
00:21:33.700process here? I know the first round of hearings just started up last week in Truro, Nova Scotia.
00:21:39.500What's the trajectory moving forward? Yeah, so the process is that people are applying to testify.
00:21:48.060They are sworn in, so they are under oath when they testify. They are cross-examined
00:21:54.600by lawyers. Then the commissioners get to ask them questions, and then the people attending
00:22:00.720the hearings the audience can ask them questions questions are brought up to the front and the
00:22:05.120commissioners will ask the questions that the audience has um we all the hearings happen in
00:22:12.000three-day increments so we are in toronto next march 30th 31st april 1st then we move west we
00:22:20.320go to winnipeg uh saskatoon red deer victorian vancouver and then we go back to quebec and then
00:22:27.840we end in Ottawa. Now, are you looking at provincial and federal, and I guess
00:22:33.540theoretically municipal responses here? Absolutely. I mean, we've heard some quite
00:22:40.360shocking testimony from people at all levels in terms of provincial, municipal, and community
00:22:47.760levels at this point. Nothing federally, but as I said, they are invited. One of the things that
00:22:54.640really strikes me here is that a lot of the people that push the most heavy-handed and
00:22:59.920Orwellian responses to this are kind of backtracking on it now or quietly hoping
00:23:06.840everyone moves on. We've seen around the world people that were, I'd say, quite vicious about
00:23:11.500pushing vaccine mandates. If you look at some European country, mandatory vaccination. Just
00:23:16.140last week or two weeks ago, the German health minister, who at one time was trying to get a
00:23:20.860mandatory vaccine bill passed was last week talking about vaccine injuries and how the pharma
00:23:25.540companies need to compensate people. So there has been this walk back, but it's not been a reckoning.
00:23:32.120I've not seen any government officials that have really come out and said, you know what,
00:23:36.160we got it wrong. We're sorry. In fact, if anything, they've just fed more and more
00:23:40.340into this idea of trying to preserve the narrative. You know, I think that where the inquiry is coming
00:23:47.780from is we're starting with a blank slate. We want people to hear the evidence. We're not interested
00:23:54.300in the politics of it. This is nonpartisan. We heard from people of all political stripes who
00:24:00.280were witnesses at the inquiry. There are a couple of objectives. One is to have people's stories
00:24:06.800heard. So we have experts, we have world-class experts presenting evidence, but we also have
00:24:12.880ordinary Canadians who were harmed by the mandates by government policies in fact a poll was done
00:24:19.440that three out of four Canadians felt that they experienced harm due to the policies we're not
00:24:26.480hearing from those people those are the people whose stories need to be told they need to be
00:24:31.200told for posterity so that we have the record of them and they need to be told so that Canadians
00:24:37.600can begin to heal our divisions because i really believe this is an olive branch this is a way to
00:24:43.280say look you may have agreed with these policies but look what's what the outcome was for these
00:24:49.200people i mean people's lives have been destroyed surely we can do better and i think if we tap into
00:24:55.280that if we tap into the inherent kindness and compassion that canadians are known for that
00:25:00.800something good will inevitably come of this obviously we just had in the fall the public
00:25:06.240Order Emergency Commission. So the idea of an inquiry is not something that's a foreign to
00:25:10.780people. This is going before that. This isn't about the Emergencies Act. It's not about the convoy.
00:25:14.980Are you really starting here at March 2020? Yeah, I mean, we're talking about everything.
00:25:23.020We're talking about the impact of masks, of lockdowns, of the shots, of policies that
00:25:31.020that have people lose their jobs everything everything is on the table and what is it that
00:25:37.660you envision happening at the end of this so you'll come there will be a report of some kind
00:25:43.260what do you want that document to be what do you want the legacy to be
00:25:47.420i want i think we want it to be a legacy of truth we want a document that tells the truth that is
00:25:54.380evidence-based that tells the truth about what happened what we did and how we can do better
00:26:01.020So one of the things that really struck me about the government response to COVID is that we've talked about this on the show before, there was an abdication of decision making to the so-called experts.
00:26:12.540And oftentimes we would come up with information that kind of disproved what the experts were saying, and the experts would oftentimes contradict themselves.
00:26:20.400And some people would give a charitable interpretation of this, that, well, you know, the evidence changes, and when you get new evidence, you amend your previous thesis and move on from there.
00:26:29.640but a lot of the times I think people were expected to have a blind trust in experts which
00:26:35.640as we saw did not suit everyone well people had a lot of harm at the hands of some of these
00:26:40.920measures and I know your inquiry is looking into that but but let me just ask about the role of
00:26:46.140the experts here do you think there could be an enduring re-evaluation of how we engage in people
00:26:51.500that how we engage with people that have letters after their name quite frankly and and you know
00:26:55.600how much deference we have in policy making to these people. I think that's inevitable. I think
00:27:00.660it's going to have to happen, particularly when you hear testimony like that of Dr. Phillips,
00:27:06.000Dr. Patrick Phillips, who filled out 10 vaccine injury reports. Nine of those were rejected
00:27:15.000and an investigation against him was started by the college. They also contacted all nine of those
00:27:24.260patients told them that his diagnosis was incorrect and encouraged them to get another
00:27:30.140another vaccine yeah so inevitably we're going to have to look at what an expert is
00:27:36.340and are they being censored are they being allowed to speak we also heard really damning testimony
00:27:42.740from um a woman who worked worked for the nova scotia board of health i believe and she had data