Juno News - Trudeau’s international reputation will never be the same

00:00:00.000 The world watched as Trudeau crushed political dissent and stamped out a peaceful and democratic

00:00:05.160 protest. How will this impact Justin Trudeau's reputation at home and abroad? I'm Candace

00:00:09.500 Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show. So as quickly as it began, as quickly as the

00:00:18.560 Trudeau government implemented this emergency act, we learned on Wednesday afternoon that

00:00:22.900 the emergency was over. Trudeau lifted a mere 36 hours after it was voted on and approved in the

00:00:27.700 House of Commons. It's sort of all swept under the rug in the past and Trudeau would like to move

00:00:33.340 on, I'm sure, as quickly as possible, putting this disastrous episode of Canadian history in his

00:00:39.160 past. And he might get away with that. He might get away with that domestically. There may be enough

00:00:43.080 liberal progressive voters who were just sick and tired of the blockades. They were sick and tired

00:00:47.760 of the protests. They didn't like the truckers and they wanted that story to go away. Perhaps they're

00:00:51.740 even happy with Justin Trudeau's use of force. I did notice a lot of people on social media sort of

00:00:57.100 thanking Trudeau and praising him for his use of this emergency act. So perhaps I'll get away from

00:01:03.620 it, get away with it domestically. But I'm not so sure about it when it comes to an international

00:01:09.200 level, when it comes to the reaction of people watching from the outside. And to help me walk

00:01:14.700 through the international reaction and perspectives from abroad, I am joined by Kaveh Cherouz. Kaveh is a

00:01:22.660 lawyer and human rights activist. He's a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute Centers for

00:01:28.640 Advancing Canada's Interest Abroad. Kaveh previously worked as a senior policy advisor over at Global

00:01:34.600 Affairs Canada. He's a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Toronto. Kaveh is

00:01:39.320 great to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.

00:01:41.120 Thank you for having me on.

00:01:43.120 So first, Kaveh, why don't you tell me a little bit about your reaction, your impression overall of

00:01:49.000 the convoy and how Justin Trudeau handled it?

00:01:51.840 So, you know, I think my impression may be a little bit different than the average

00:01:57.400 viewer of your short listeners of your podcast. You know, I am, I am very much a believer in

00:02:04.820 vaccination. I think, you know, vaccine mandates have their place, though not probably as widespread

00:02:10.020 as they are. So I watched the protest and the content of what they were arguing for with a little

00:02:16.780 bit of skepticism, I'll be honest. But I was really mystified by how our Prime Minister and our media

00:02:23.520 reacted. What they questioned at the outset wasn't really the arguments of the truckers and the

00:02:29.480 protesters. It was much more just trying to invalidate their point, calling them racists and white

00:02:34.720 supremacists and sexists and so on, which I think is an unfair way of dealing with the protesters. And,

00:02:41.340 you know, I think what we saw was just a failure of government in various levels and a tremendous

00:02:46.140 government overreach with respect to the Emergencies Act. I'm glad that they've decided to revoke it,

00:02:50.480 but it was never really should have been invoked in the first place.

00:02:53.720 Well, it's so weird, the timeline, because by the time Justin Trudeau declared the emergency,

00:02:58.720 the main sort of artery that people were concerned with, the Ambassador Bridge, had already been cleared

00:03:03.020 using existing laws. And then they canceled debate on the Emergencies Act because the Emergencies Act

00:03:09.260 had already been implemented. And the police action caused by the Emergency Act made it apparently

00:03:14.800 too hectic or chaotic for them to even be able to enter Parliament, which I think is a farce to begin

00:03:19.600 with, because we had a reporter on the ground, Andrew Lawton. He said that on Friday, the activities

00:03:24.520 were happening over by the West End and the Chateau Laurier, which is on a different side of Parliament

00:03:29.080 Hill. The Parliament was pretty open on Friday. It wasn't until Saturday that the police action was

00:03:33.140 there. So the whole thing was sort of a politicized attempt to, I suppose, avoid scrutiny. By the time they

00:03:39.800 finally got around to voting on it, Cave, was Monday evening. And at that time, the protests had been

00:03:44.480 cleared completely. And so it didn't even make sense as to why they implemented it in a mere 36

00:03:49.600 hours later. Again, they did remove it. What is your reaction to the sort of, what are your thoughts

00:03:58.380 on the reaction here at home, here in Canada? It seems like a lot of people on social media, a lot of

00:04:03.920 liberals are applauding Trudeau for this use of Emergency Act. A lot of journalists really spinning

00:04:09.160 and justifying it, saying that it was righteous and it was necessary. What are your thoughts on that?

00:04:15.680 Yeah, I've been incredibly disappointed with our media, which, you know, hasn't treated the protest

00:04:21.240 fairly. I don't expect them to support the protesters. I don't expect reporters to be supporting

00:04:25.140 any protest, really, of any cause. They ought to be reporting it fairly. But it seemed like there was

00:04:29.680 very much a particular narrative that the major broadcasters wanted to push, if you read, you

00:04:35.120 know, CBC, CTV, whatever. The line from day one was that this was an illegitimate protest. This was a

00:04:42.220 racist protest. This was a violent protest. And, you know, they cherry-picked information to support

00:04:48.760 all that. But by and large, I think what we saw was that this was a, you know, non-violent protest.

00:04:54.660 There were not really very many arrests. Even the leaders of the convoys that have been arrested,

00:04:58.440 I think it's a conspiracy of mischief. I think that's largely a charge, which is not, you know,

00:05:02.940 a tremendously significant or violent charge that's been brought forth. So it's been disappointing.

00:05:10.000 You know, with respect to the people on social media that are praising Trudeau, I put out a

00:05:14.580 question on Twitter a while ago, and I asked, you know, can somebody explain to me why we needed

00:05:20.180 emergency? Like the things that were being done by police, what is it that the Emergencies Act allowed

00:05:25.080 us to do that we couldn't do before? And I don't think I saw anybody, even, you know, people that

00:05:28.620 were praising Trudeau, be able to give me a good answer to that. And I think exactly as you mentioned,

00:05:32.200 like much of the protest was over by the time the Emergencies Act was invoked. I don't think any of

00:05:38.380 the powers that the government tried to grab for itself were actually needed. So it was really,

00:05:42.540 I think, a disappointing day for a lot of our institutions, our government, and our media.

00:05:46.020 Kevin, you come from an oppressive authoritarian country that punishes political dissident. I'm

00:05:52.420 wondering, when you look at the way that, I mean, you mentioned the charges that were laid against

00:05:57.480 Tamara Litch, and the fact that she was denied bail. When you see that happening, does it concern you

00:06:03.880 at all that there is political retribution going on in our systems and in our institutions here in

00:06:08.100 Canada? It does concern me. So first of all, I do want to avoid some of the hyperbolic rhetoric that I

00:06:13.900 see floating around, right? So I don't think what happened, even though some people might like to

00:06:18.060 think of it that way, I don't see what happened in Ottawa as being an example of, you know,

00:06:22.060 totalitarianism, or this is not what happens in China or Iran or whatever. You know, those countries

00:06:26.940 are far, far worse. There's far less room for dissent. But this was not a very, this was not our

00:06:33.840 shining day, let's just say that. I think, you know, the protesters by and large, because their

00:06:39.400 political message wasn't one that our political elites and our media like. They were portrayed in

00:06:45.620 a very negative light. They simply weren't listened to, they were dismissed. And I think

00:06:49.700 the response, as we've discussed, was a very politicized one. I think, you know, this convoy

00:06:55.760 could have been dealt with in many different ways. Had their message been one that, you know,

00:07:01.380 our political elites supported, I think they would have perhaps met with them, maybe expressed some

00:07:05.840 support for them. At least, you know, giving them a meeting and try to try to listen to them rather

00:07:10.320 than just try to, you know, deal with it in a confrontational way as they ultimately did.

00:07:15.820 It seemed very un-Canadian to me. It seems to me that Canadians are known internationally as being

00:07:21.220 good-natured, friendly, willing to listen. You know, the whole quip about how Canadians say sorry 0.94

00:07:27.360 constantly all the time, even if it wasn't their fault. That's the sort of quintessential

00:07:31.760 Canadian. And even Justin Trudeau, I had John Kaye on my podcast, I think it's two weeks ago now.

00:07:37.340 And he talked about how, you know, the young Justin Trudeau, when he was first running for office,

00:07:41.360 he would go and he would listen to even separatists in his writing. He comes from an area in Montreal

00:07:46.480 that has a large separatist faction. And he was really open and willing to listen. And to me,

00:07:53.160 you know, I'm not a Trudeau fan. I never have been. But that point that he used to be willing to

00:07:59.880 engage and listen to people, even though he disagreed with. It seems like part of the issue

00:08:05.080 here was that, you know, we had a group of people who worked throughout the pandemic, right? They

00:08:09.920 didn't have the luxury of doing what you and I are doing, which is working from home and going on

00:08:14.560 Zoom calls and carrying on with our lives in a digital way. You know, these people had to get up

00:08:19.360 every morning and go face the reality of living in a world with COVID. They had to do grueling work,

00:08:25.920 you know, make sure that we could get, you know, food and supplies and gasoline and all these

00:08:29.560 really important things. It seems like this entire class of people have been taken for granted. And

00:08:33.520 the fact that they showed up in Ottawa, they, at the time when they showed up, they had a great deal

00:08:38.500 of support. You saw Canadians lining freeways and, and, you know, hosting big potlucks to feed the

00:08:43.960 truckers and to support them, lining the overpasses, Canadian flags everywhere. It seemed like a little

00:08:48.300 bit of a positive moment of a political uprising saying, you know, let's, let's thank and pay attention

00:08:54.460 and give a due hearing to the working class people that kept our country and our economy going

00:08:58.940 for the last two years. And it just a disrespect that Trudeau showed them by immediately treating

00:09:04.760 them like they were scum, basically, that they were unworthy of a hearing. To me, that was so

00:09:11.380 un-Canadian. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. And I think, you know, if you take a step back and 1.00

00:09:15.220 look at it, you know, as an outsider, if you're not kind of mired in all these discussions, let's say

00:09:19.820 you don't live in Canada, you're just observing it. You see two things. One, you see Justin Trudeau,

00:09:24.900 the story that had been told about him in the progressive media, the liberal media for many

00:09:28.960 years, that story fell apart, right? Like the story was, Justin Trudeau is a man of the people.

00:09:33.280 He listens to the people. He likes to be inclusive. And I think the world saw kind of what we Canadians

00:09:38.800 that have observed this closely have seen for many years, which is that that story is actually not

00:09:42.680 true. There is a limit to what Trudeau is willing to tolerate. There are people, there are classes of

00:09:48.220 people that he's just not willing to listen to. If their views clash with, you know, what he, you know,

00:09:53.900 he's pretty self-righteous. And if he thinks that you have abhorrent views, he simply will not engage

00:10:00.360 with you, which is, I think, rather unfortunate. And I think the second thing that people saw was this

00:10:09.580 class distinction that you're describing. Suddenly there were, you know, working class people that

00:10:15.300 don't have the luxury of working off of Zoom, showing up to the nation's capital, demanding respect.

00:10:20.520 And suddenly there were, you know, there were, again, media and political elites who have managed

00:10:26.940 to weather this pandemic pretty well, not taken very many losses, frankly, in terms of, you know,

00:10:32.460 haven't taken much of a financial hit. And they were sneering and laughing at working class people.

00:10:37.060 And I think that class distinction really was sharpened as a result of the convoy protests.

00:10:43.040 I think it was hard to look at it and not see that class conflict brewing just underneath the

00:10:47.980 surface in Canada. I completely agree. And it still surprises me to see journalists and sort of

00:10:54.260 talking heads on CBC and the Globe and Mail, you know, dismissing this idea, saying that, no,

00:11:00.020 it didn't have anything to do with class. No, these protesters really were truly dangerous and not

00:11:04.160 even sort of stopping to take pause and take stock of the situation, just out of hand rejecting it,

00:11:08.840 which to me will lead to much more of these kind of problems in the future. I want to shift a little

00:11:14.460 bit, Cave, to talk about the international reaction, because, you know, we're in our Canadian bubble,

00:11:19.660 and we see things every day, day in, day out. Perhaps we get like too deep into it. You mentioned

00:11:25.220 that, you know, people who pay a lot of attention, we know that Trudeau is a charade mostly, and that

00:11:32.580 he's not this open, inclusive person. He's very rigid in his ideology. Let's talk about some of the

00:11:39.680 foreign reactions. I know that there's been a lot of American Republican politicians who have really

00:11:44.160 been following this closely, really concerned about just some of the practices, seizing bank

00:11:50.540 accounts, shutting down the GoFundMe account. Some of them are using very hyperbolic language, like you

00:11:55.260 mentioned, calling Trudeau a tyrant and a dictator. But some of them are making strong points as well

00:12:00.840 about the dangerous use of power, especially when it comes to seizing bank accounts. Let's talk about

00:12:08.140 American reaction first. What do you think of the idea that Justin Trudeau has become sort of political

00:12:12.440 fodder for the right in the US? And they're kind of using him as a punching bag to warn about what the

00:12:18.560 Democrats would do if they if they had more power? Yeah, I mean, I think that's what's happening.

00:12:23.220 Frankly, I, you know, if I work for the prime minister, I don't know if I would welcome that or

00:12:28.600 try to fight against it. I'm not really sure. I mean, I think there is some advantage in Trudeau

00:12:33.660 portraying himself as a punching bag of the American right of Fox News, because I think that strengthens

00:12:38.620 his standing with his own supporters here at home who see, you know, any attack from the American

00:12:43.460 right as a sign that you're good and righteous. But I think, you know, I am not really one that

00:12:50.200 listens a lot to Fox News. Again, I, you know, I'm on your show. I love listening to what you do. But

00:12:54.840 I think my politics may be a little bit different than your average viewer and listener. But I think

00:13:01.000 it is concerning that we are being portrayed so negatively in the United States, at least among,

00:13:08.260 you know, 50% of the population there sees us as sliding towards undemocratic practices. I think

00:13:14.440 that's a really dangerous road for us to go down. And, you know, I don't think Justin Trudeau has

00:13:20.020 really anybody to blame but himself, like he could have really handled this differently. You know, we saw

00:13:23.680 tweets from sitting members of Congress calling Canada tyranny, welcoming refugees from Canada and so on.

00:13:30.200 And, you know, a lot of it was hyperbolic. But I think it speaks to the fact that people are

00:13:35.120 realizing Justin Trudeau is not all that he's cracked up to be. And that, you know, Canada is

00:13:41.020 not the nice hunky dory place where everybody gets along that there are real tensions here and that

00:13:45.240 we have a government that inflames those tensions. Certainly. And it's not just the American political

00:13:50.340 right, Kaveh, because I've noticed comments from British MPs in the UK, in Australia as well.

00:13:57.980 Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party says, I can't quite believe Trudeau's behavior. I knew

00:14:02.360 it was bad, but this is frightening. John Redwood, who's a conservative MPs at Canada's PM is dividing

00:14:07.580 his country by using strong arm tactics against freedom protesters and democracy leaders need to

00:14:13.000 find a way to allow protests or listen to protesters while keeping roads open. To me, that seems very

00:14:19.660 reasonable. And I sort of welcome this sort of outside criticism because, you know, perhaps Trudeau's

00:14:26.520 too ensconced in his partisan world to listen to conservative opposition. He's not going to listen

00:14:31.940 to the truckers. He might revel from Fox News and Republican condemnation. But I think sort of sober

00:14:38.400 criticism from serious minded officials, certainly in the UK. But, you know, we also saw a member of the

00:14:48.380 European Parliament, Romanian MEP commenting on this, you know, some other sort of big, big, big

00:14:56.020 leaders. Do you think any of that will get through? Or do you think Trudeau is just to do again ensconced

00:15:02.680 in his own? Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't know if Trudeau necessarily cares a lot about what people

00:15:07.380 outside his bubble say. That's just the impression I have. I mean, I don't have no line into people. I

00:15:11.880 suspect, though, that he's getting bad advice and he's making a very limited worldview. What I want

00:15:17.520 to talk about is something else slightly, though, which is like, yeah, you know, on Twitter, a lot

00:15:21.560 of politicians, especially on the right, have spoken up. But it's actually I'm actually perhaps in some

00:15:26.420 ways less interested in what people are saying on Twitter and thinking about what somebody observing

00:15:30.260 Trudeau, you know, in Beijing or in Moscow or in Tehran would think. And, you know, observing Trudeau's

00:15:39.540 reaction of the protest tells them a couple of things. One is that he simply doesn't have a good

00:15:45.420 handle on what's happening in his country, right? Like we just saw chaos in our country for three

00:15:49.500 three weeks. A prime minister who barely took action, who just demonized a part of his population.

00:15:56.500 And then because he hadn't done very much and couldn't get his act together, suddenly decided

00:16:01.640 to overreach, did it for a couple of days, realized that it was ridiculous and it was polling very badly.

00:16:06.060 So he just pulled back. So we just end up looking clownish on the world stage.

00:16:09.420 So if you're sitting in Beijing and you look at Canada, Canada just simply does not look like a 0.99

00:16:12.840 serious country. And this is just one data point, right? There have been several years worth of data

00:16:18.600 points of Canada just not being a serious country, not having a serious foreign policy, not taking a

00:16:23.620 particularly tough line on any of these bad regimes around the world. So I think that's thing one that

00:16:28.480 they see. And the second thing that they see is, look, this is a perfect justification now for us to

00:16:33.120 crack down on whatever way we want. And we've seen sort of hints of that yesterday. I think I saw a tweet

00:16:36.660 from the Chinese embassy in Ottawa, if I'm not mistaken, talking about, you know, how the crackdown

00:16:41.660 was terrible and we would never behave this way in China, which is ridiculous. But it's the kind of 0.99

00:16:45.960 thing that dictatorial regimes look for to condemn democratic ones. And I think, you know,

00:16:53.480 we just, we, Canada, the government of Justin Trudeau just handed a win to these dictatorial regimes

00:16:59.260 because they can incorporate that in all their speeches in international fora and point to Canada and

00:17:02.900 say, look at what you did to those truckers. Look at the power grab that you just engaged in. Why,

00:17:08.980 you know, what standing do you have to criticize us? And I think that puts us in a much, much weaker

00:17:12.100 position. This just simply from a foreign policy perspective wasn't really thought through.

00:17:16.200 That's true. How can Canada stand here on a high horse and claim that we are the, you know,

00:17:21.640 spokespeople and the advocates for global freedom and democracy when we use that? Yeah,

00:17:27.600 you're right. There is a, I'm not sure if it's the same one, but someone who's working for a state

00:17:32.240 broadcaster in China said, so Hong Kong cannot invoke the national security law against violent

00:17:36.700 petrol bomb throwing mobs, but Canada's Trudeau can invoke emergency powers to crack down on peaceful

00:17:41.380 pro-freedom protesters. So it makes him seem quite hypocritical. I got to ask you about this one,

00:17:45.680 Kaveh, former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I haven't heard about him in a while. I know he used

00:17:50.740 to make a lot of press and he used to say pretty outrageous things on Twitter. He was always

00:17:53.540 the person that anytime someone would get kicked off of Twitter, it's like, wait, you're allowing

00:17:58.580 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who's like calling for genocide or whatever he's calling for, but you're kicking

00:18:03.560 off this guy. So anyway, he jumped in and bashed Trudeau. He says the violent crackdown on freedom

00:18:09.240 convoy has nothing to do with freedom of speech or human rights. How coercion could be related to

00:18:14.860 liberty and freedom of choice, freedom. First of all, to your readers and listeners, I urge you,

00:18:19.360 if you do not follow Ahmadinejad on Twitter, please do so. He's regularly quoting rap lyrics,

00:18:24.740 talking about US sports. It's a very, very bizarre Twitter feed. But yeah, I mean, amidst all this

00:18:31.640 Holocaust denial and so on, he decided to take a shot at Justin Trudeau. Obviously, I don't put a

00:18:35.640 lot of stock in what Ahmadinejad says. He's a bit of a clown and he himself should be charged for the

00:18:39.980 way he reacted to protests in Iran. But I think, again, this speaks to the point I was making earlier,

00:18:44.860 which is like, there is also an optics war happening that we ought to be cognizant of,

00:18:49.160 right? How do we look to the outside world? And we look terrible to the outside world. We looked

00:18:53.600 dictatorial. There is no comparison between what happened. I want to stress this. I mean,

00:18:57.940 what happened in Ottawa and what happened in Tiananmen or what happens in Tehran when

00:19:00.920 governments crack down. These are different things. But we look bad. We look terrible. And we should

00:19:06.840 have thought about how this would be interpreted in capitals across the world. And I think next time

00:19:10.960 Iran takes the stage of the UN or the UN Human Rights Council, when we criticize them, they will 1.00

00:19:15.300 turn around and say, look, you had peaceful protesters in your street and you froze their

00:19:19.240 accounts and you attacked them. Who are you to say anything to us? And I think we end up looking

00:19:23.500 silly as a result. So again, as I said, nobody thought this through beyond sort of very petty

00:19:29.260 domestic parochial domestic politics. You're right. You're right. It was it was it was like a

00:19:34.060 knee-jerk reaction. It was like Trudeau didn't really do anything that, you know, the police kept the

00:19:37.680 peace on the ground in Ottawa for the first two, three weeks. Trudeau kind of poured gasoline on

00:19:41.520 the fire by name calling and refusing to meet. And then all of a sudden it was such a huge situation

00:19:45.180 that he needed to use like, you know, the biggest tool in his toolbox, which wasn't even in his

00:19:49.740 toolbox. He had to go out and invent a new tool to use it. You mentioned the freezing of bank

00:19:53.600 accounts. And I want I want to talk a little bit about this, because to me, when I think of people

00:19:58.580 who support Trudeau, I think of the sort of young entrepreneurial class, people who are

00:20:03.160 interested in technology, people who, you know, go out and start companies and might be big into

00:20:08.760 like the crypto world. So I've been I've been really amused and interested to see more and more

00:20:13.640 tech leaders in Canada and around the world outright condemning Trudeau, not just condemning him,

00:20:18.840 but talking about the very dangerous precedent that he is setting for other wannabe dictator,

00:20:25.080 dictatorial regimes in using these these tools. So, you know, we had 200 that the government has

00:20:30.680 confirmed 208 bank accounts have been frozen. That's more bank accounts than the US government

00:20:34.920 froze after 9-11. Right. And there was no due process. There was no, you know, no recourse,

00:20:42.680 essentially, they just froze your accounts. Some of them are being refrozen. Now, we don't know

00:20:46.600 exactly why some people's accounts are being frozen. Some people claim that their accounts were frozen,

00:20:50.760 even though they're not part of the convoy, they just donated to the convoy.

00:20:54.040 So, you know, we have the co-founder of Ethereum talking about how, you know, this is just

00:21:02.360 really difficult to wrap his head around. You had the founder, one of the founding COO of PayPal,

00:21:09.720 saying Justin Trudeau just created a cast of economic untouchables. Can we stop this dystopian

00:21:14.120 policy from taking hold in America? I noticed quite a few, you know, obviously, Elon Musk has been

00:21:19.880 commenting on this sort of since day one. But I'm wondering what, first of all, what you think

00:21:24.760 about this in terms of, you know, Justin Trudeau and some of the core people who might have supported

00:21:29.560 him in the past, but also the sort of precedent that this may set for future leaders trying to go

00:21:35.480 down this dark path. Yeah, quite frankly, I mean, I think when it comes to the Emergency

00:21:39.320 Act, this is the story that we should be focused on, right? A lot of the other stuff, I think, is maybe

00:21:44.120 just noise. But this is the truly dangerous stuff. And as you mentioned, you know, some people in

00:21:49.800 Silicon Valley and elsewhere are pointing it out. And we ought to be listening to this really carefully.

00:21:53.720 The idea that in our increasingly cashless society, you can simply freeze people out because they

00:22:00.760 expressed the political idea you didn't like. I think we just got the first taste of it. And it's

00:22:06.520 an incredibly, incredibly dangerous sign of what's potentially to come. And I think it's all the

00:22:13.240 reason for us to speak up against the Emergencies Act, its invocation, and now, you know, demanding

00:22:17.880 an inquiry into why it happened, and what the mechanisms were by which the government decided

00:22:22.680 to freeze or the banks decided to freeze certain bank accounts. Because this is a sign of creating,

00:22:29.800 as you mentioned, I think David Sachs was the one that wrote this on in Barry West's substack,

00:22:34.360 of creating a social outcast class, people who have undesirable ideas that we just don't want to deal

00:22:41.240 with. And the way to do that is just to just to freeze them out. They can't go and set up their

00:22:45.240 own financial institutions, right? The idea had always been, well, you know, if you can't speak

00:22:49.800 on this platform, you can go to some other platform. But if you freeze people's bank accounts,

00:22:53.160 if you freeze their cryptocurrency, they, you know, become homeless, they can't pay their mortgage,

00:22:58.440 they can't do any of the things they're supposed to do. This is an incredibly dangerous sign. As I

00:23:04.360 mentioned, this is, you know, people have been warning about a social credit system to come that,

00:23:08.120 you know, countries like China are implementing. I don't think we're quite there yet. But this,

00:23:13.320 this does not bode well, for what's to come in our future. And I, there was, there was an op-ed

00:23:18.200 in the New York Times by Ross Douthat. And he was talking about, you know, Canada can be understood

00:23:23.720 as kind of a, the incidents in Ottawa can be understood as a battle between the practicals

00:23:28.200 and the virtuals. The practicals being, you know, the truck drivers and the virtuals being people that

00:23:32.280 work on the knowledge economy. And this is probably the most potent weapon of the knowledge economy,

00:23:37.560 right? Being able to freeze people's assets and make them non-persons in our economy.

00:23:43.000 And, you know, talk about a class war. That is something that the working class ought to be 1.00

00:23:47.480 really, really worried about. And those of us who sympathize, you know, I'm not working class, but

00:23:51.560 I certainly sympathize with the plight of the working class. We ought to be fighting back against 1.00

00:23:56.520 this because this can go down a very dangerous path.

00:23:59.480 Well, it's so true. And that was an excellent op-ed that Ross wrote. But even more than that,

00:24:04.600 it's sort of like taking cancel culture and like applying it throughout your entire life. It's not

00:24:10.200 just like, oh, you don't, you no longer get a voice on Twitter. It's like, you don't get a house

00:24:13.960 anymore. I mean, it's really scary that the jump there, but using the same sort of logic of like,

00:24:19.320 you know, you know, I've worked for big corporations. I don't know if I want to

00:24:23.400 outsource adjudication of these issues to some compliance officer in some bank somewhere,

00:24:29.480 right? Like they are just not equipped to deal with this. And anytime you raise this issue,

00:24:33.160 I think the standard answer is, well, you know, the courts will eventually adjudicate.

00:24:36.680 It's like, well, you know, have you tried working through the court system? Like, you know,

00:24:39.800 you will spend years and years trying to clear your name or unfreeze your bank accounts. Lives are

00:24:45.080 going to be ruined in this process. And this is an incredibly dangerous tool in the hands of

00:24:49.720 governments that want to abuse it. You know, next time, and I say this to my friends that

00:24:54.440 are left of center, that are liberals, like next time the conservatives take over, you may not like

00:24:59.400 who's being targeted by these same rules. So if you don't want the conservatives to use it, maybe you

00:25:04.600 should put that weapon down right now. But anyway, I think this is something that's obviously we've got

00:25:08.280 a sign of it in Canada, we're going to see it increasingly, I think, in different democratic

00:25:12.360 countries. And all we can do is just fight back. Scary, scary stuff there, Cavey. Well, thank you so much for

00:25:18.600 helping us break this down and understand. I want to ask you a final question. I saw you write on

00:25:25.480 Twitter a couple days ago that you think that this will have a long term negative effect for Trudeau.

00:25:30.200 It just fundamentally changed the way that people see him. Do you still feel that way? Or do you think

00:25:34.920 Trudeau is going to recover from all this? I do. And I noticed that you responded and you

00:25:39.240 disagreed with me. And I think this is a healthy disagreement to have. I think ultimately, I don't

00:25:43.160 hold Justin Trudeau in particularly high regard. I think he's a man who has a very good sense of

00:25:48.520 optics. And he has sold himself and part of like he has bolstered himself at home with his

00:25:55.800 reputation abroad and his reputation up until recently has been stellar abroad. As you know,

00:26:00.440 he's a good looking young energetic man who's very progressive and whatever. And this incident

00:26:05.960 just made him look very petty and mean. And I think it's really difficult for him to recover

00:26:11.480 his golden boy reputation abroad. And if he doesn't have that at home, he ends up looking,

00:26:17.800 you know, much, much weaker and much less interesting. And I think he's just finally

00:26:21.240 exposed for who he is, which is kind of a shallow and petty man.

00:26:24.360 Okay, well, I all agree with that. We can end it there. Kaveh Shrews, 0.84

00:26:27.480 McDonnell Lawyer Institute. Thank you so much for joining the Candace Malcolm Show.

00:26:30.120 My pleasure. Thanks so much, Candace.

00:26:31.800 All right. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm. This is the Candace Malcolm Show.

00:26:37.080 You still have Ryo, how much more at the interpretive record?

00:26:39.880 I'll see you around,

00:26:41.720 hon. Now back to Mr. Holmes.

00:26:42.840 We're watching this on Twitter.

00:26:43.400 We're watching this on Twitter,

00:26:44.520 we who's on Twitter.

00:26:45.400 That's so funny,

00:26:45.660 he'll be a little bit older,

00:26:46.320 but in English you can pick on characters,

00:26:47.720 the-

00:26:49.840 It is.

00:26:52.000 And I'll probably say,

00:26:54.360 but we're at least stay on a Ko einen,

00:26:55.960 and we're always looking up at Leopanoo State.

00:26:58.200 Hence how much kioska we're getting stuck on,

00:27:00.380 and I'm just expecting that

00:27:01.640 pretty much better because we don't have places

00:27:03.720 anything new.

Juno News - February 28, 2022

Trudeau’s international reputation will never be the same

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript