Juno News - Trudeau’s War on Guns is a War on Facts

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:06.700 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.880 Coming up, how Justin Trudeau's War on Guns is also a war on facts.

00:00:17.080 Also, he says diversity is our strength. Does that extend to education diversity?

00:00:23.840 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:35.020 Great to have you tuned into the program here as we enter a new era in Canada

00:00:39.880 in which facts don't matter, laws don't matter, the nature of good and bad don't matter.

00:00:45.340 The war on guns is existing from the Liberals, irrespective of all of these things.

00:00:51.300 And you know what? We've talked about this in the past, and I get a lot of pushback from people

00:00:55.180 who aren't gun owners, who are from cities or whatever, maybe they're just from backgrounds.

00:01:00.000 that have never put them in the same room as a firearm.

00:01:03.120 But people that think, well, this doesn't affect me, I'm not a gun owner.

00:01:06.880 You know what? There are 2 million Canadians who are gun owners.

00:01:10.300 But even if you are not, the way the Liberals are taking aim at gun ownership and gun owners

00:01:16.620 matters to everyone.

00:01:18.340 And the reason why is because if the Liberals and the government more broadly

00:01:22.300 has no respect for property, no respect for facts or evidence or constitutional liberties

00:01:27.380 or all of these things, then it's only a matter of time before they go after something

00:01:31.620 that you do own or something that does affect you.

00:01:35.920 The bill that the Liberals tabled today, Bill C-21, an act to amend certain acts and to make

00:01:41.160 certain consequential amendments with regard to firearms.

00:01:43.940 This is the long-awaited bill on firearms reforms, or let's be real, confiscation measures

00:01:49.980 that the Liberals promised after they banned unilaterally and summarily 1,500 different variants

00:01:56.020 of firearms last year.

00:01:57.700 Now, the reason they did that without actually having the long-standing, longer-term bill that

00:02:03.240 they're tabling now is because they did it on the back of a napkin because they wanted

00:02:07.200 to use the political capital they thought they seized from the horrific Nova Scotia shooting,

00:02:12.920 the one that started in Portapique, and devastated that community, claimed so many lives, and by

00:02:18.160 the way, did it without the use of any legally owned firearms.

00:02:24.400 But the Liberals saw that moment.

00:02:26.000 They thought they had enough public support and buy-in because of that horrific attack that

00:02:31.220 they could ram this through.

00:02:32.420 And they're still trying to ride that wave, irrespective of facts, irrespective of all

00:02:38.240 of the things that you'd think would matter and actually should matter if you're talking

00:02:41.480 about taking Canadians' property and essentially barring them from doing something that is causing 0.87

00:02:46.440 no issue whatsoever to public safety.

00:02:49.800 Because gun crime does not come from legal guns.

00:02:53.320 Gun crime does not come from legal gun owners, from law-abiding citizens who happen to like sports

00:02:57.940 shooting or hunting or going to the range or even just collecting.

00:03:01.100 They are not the problem.

00:03:03.700 But let's look at all of the ways that this bill is going to go after them.

00:03:08.240 The government is going to introduce a new red flag law that would basically allow anyone 0.94

00:03:12.840 to go to the court and say, I think you should take away Joe's firearm.

00:03:16.420 I think he's a little bit iffy.

00:03:17.860 I don't like the way that he and his wife are behaving.

00:03:20.920 I don't like whatever the case may be.

00:03:22.320 You could actually use this to petition the court to have their guns immediately confiscated

00:03:27.260 and have their license suspended.

00:03:29.740 Now, to be clear, I actually don't think a red flag law is necessarily the worst thing

00:03:34.540 in the world, depending on how it's done.

00:03:37.440 The problem is that we already have a mechanism in the law that allows police to take away

00:03:42.760 guns from someone who is going to cause harm to others.

00:03:46.080 So what right is this giving authorities on top of that?

00:03:50.780 That still stands to be seen.

00:03:52.240 Also, the surrender of firearms pending legal challenge of license revocation.

00:03:57.780 So now you no longer have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

00:04:02.780 This would require an individual to surrender their guns during a legal challenge of their

00:04:07.280 license or certificate revocation.

00:04:09.940 Fighting smuggling and trafficking.

00:04:12.080 Actually good to hear the liberals talking about this because they've been pretending that

00:04:16.020 the issues are coming entirely from law-abiding gun owners and that there is no border issue

00:04:20.740 when it comes to firearms.

00:04:23.020 This is, I'd say, the most dangerous provision, however.

00:04:27.000 Help municipalities create safer communities.

00:04:30.680 Support municipalities that wish to restrict handguns.

00:04:33.320 So what this would do is actually allow the municipality of whichever, Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, London, Windsor, doesn't matter,

00:04:43.180 would allow a municipality to ban you from possessing or transporting a handgun, even if you are legally

00:04:50.900 authorized to own that handgun.

00:04:54.180 You've gone through the licensing regime.

00:04:56.420 You have your license.

00:04:57.680 You've registered the firearm.

00:04:59.200 It's yours.

00:05:00.000 You've proven that you're not a menace to society.

00:05:02.020 A municipality could then ban you from having that in your home and also ban you from storing

00:05:09.460 it somewhere else in the municipality.

00:05:12.300 So one of the ideas that's been put forward is central storage.

00:05:15.860 So if you want to own a handgun, well, you can't keep it at home.

00:05:19.400 You can only store it at your range.

00:05:21.060 Now there's a lot of risk with that, but this goes even beyond that because a municipality

00:05:26.420 could say the range can't store it, the gun store can't store it, and you can't store it.

00:05:31.840 And you can't store it with someone else because then they would need to have a registration

00:05:35.240 of it.

00:05:35.700 So what the government is effectively doing is allowing city bylaws to make your legally

00:05:42.120 owned handgun illegal.

00:05:45.600 And before you go down the road of, well, who needs a handgun?

00:05:48.460 It's not about need.

00:05:50.380 There are lots of reasons people have them.

00:05:52.480 Target shooting, collecting, people that have had a history of family members in law enforcement,

00:05:57.340 so they have an affinity for these sorts of things.

00:05:59.660 It doesn't matter.

00:06:00.680 If you're not causing any risk to anyone, you're not shooting people, you do not have

00:06:05.700 to justify, or let me clarify, in a sensible society, you should not have to justify why

00:06:11.740 you need to have that.

00:06:14.200 Legally, the government has said you're safe, you're secure.

00:06:17.740 Here are the rules you have to follow to store it.

00:06:19.700 But now a municipal government can go on top of that and take aim at your property and

00:06:26.020 at your rights.

00:06:27.860 And what do you have to do?

00:06:28.760 Move?

00:06:29.160 Well, what happens if all of the municipalities decide to do this?

00:06:32.180 This is only going to further rural-urban divides that are already very significant and

00:06:37.620 are already dividing Canadians.

00:06:39.000 But this is going to be monumental because, you know, the places like Toronto and Vancouver

00:06:44.140 are not going to hesitate to do this.

00:06:46.900 Toronto has actually been begging the government to give them the power to ban handguns for

00:06:50.860 quite some time.

00:06:51.860 I'm not sure how many handgun owners there are in Vancouver.

00:06:54.560 You probably would have moved to another city if you were the type of person that wanted

00:06:57.840 handguns.

00:06:58.540 But nevertheless, cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, which cover large swaths of the population,

00:07:04.640 are going to avail themselves of this right from the government.

00:07:09.000 Which kind of goes around provincial governments who are supposed to have the ultimate oversight,

00:07:15.220 A, of a lot of the firearms restrictions, and B, of the way municipalities structure.

00:07:21.280 But this is the whole thing that the government is doing now.

00:07:23.800 You could actually be criminalized for violating a municipal bylaw if your municipality decides it

00:07:30.780 wants to make it so that you can't have or use or transport a handgun.

00:07:36.340 So this is what the government is doing here.

00:07:38.540 Death by a thousand cuts.

00:07:40.780 They're going after the ones that they banned last year.

00:07:43.860 The AR-15s, the Mini-14, other variations like that.

00:07:48.640 They didn't go after handguns, but they're basically rolling out the red carpet for municipalities

00:07:53.240 that do.

00:07:54.380 So it will become illegal without the government actually having to have the gonads

00:07:58.300 to criminalize the possession of these handguns.

00:08:01.160 And ultimately, everyone's just going to have to start, you know, living in Okotoks or whatever,

00:08:05.200 because no cities are going to be allowing these things.

00:08:08.800 And this is another great one, by the way.

00:08:10.620 The government will ensure mid-velocity replica firearms are prohibited.

00:08:15.380 Now, I'm going to give you the summary of this.

00:08:17.940 If you have a toy gun that looks like a government-banned gun, that's going to be illegal to buy or sell.

00:08:25.060 So if you have it, you're fine, but if you've got a toy gun, even an unregulated airsoft rifle

00:08:29.980 that happens to look like an AR-15 or even, I mean, theoretically, a paintball gun would qualify,

00:08:35.940 well, tough luck.

00:08:36.760 That's going to be illegal.

00:08:37.720 So you're going to be able to keep your so-called replica, but you can't transfer it.

00:08:41.840 You can't import it, export it, sell, buy, anything like that.

00:08:45.940 And it's only good if your air gun doesn't look like a conventional regulated firearm.

00:08:50.860 So, oh, goody. So you can still have like the giant bright green Nerf gun or whatever,

00:08:54.980 but you can't have an airsoft gun that looks cool enough to actually want to own it.

00:09:00.300 So toy guns are now part of this so-called scourge on society.

00:09:05.540 The irony is this was supposed to be the buyback announcement.

00:09:08.780 We were supposed to be hearing about the government's buyback plan,

00:09:11.460 but they didn't actually have a buyback plan here.

00:09:15.160 They've just said they're going to come up with one in the future.

00:09:17.300 The one thing we do know is that it's not going to be mandatory.

00:09:21.440 So it will actually be voluntary.

00:09:23.560 So whoop-dee-doo, you have a choice. 0.95

00:09:25.400 You can sell your AR-15 back to the government or you can hold on to it.

00:09:29.720 But if you hold on to it, you cannot do anything with it ever again until the end of time.

00:09:34.940 You can't buy one.

00:09:36.540 You can't sell one.

00:09:37.600 You can't import one. 0.98

00:09:39.140 You can't shoot one.

00:09:40.080 You can't take it to the range.

00:09:41.380 You can't even will it to someone after you've died.

00:09:44.160 You are just sitting on basically a piece of metal.

00:09:48.260 This is what the government is trying to do.

00:09:49.980 So this is going to make it so that when people do sell them back to the government,

00:09:53.940 which incidentally, how do you sell something back that the government never had in the first place?

00:09:58.060 It's confiscation with a little bit of a financial aspect.

00:10:01.440 It is not a buyback.

00:10:02.700 There is no transactional value here.

00:10:04.740 This is a gun grab.

00:10:06.220 So what the government is doing, again, pretending that it is giving you a choice,

00:10:12.420 pretending that it's giving you the opportunity here to make a decision for yourself when in

00:10:16.900 actuality, they're just trying to make it so convoluted and so difficult that most people

00:10:21.340 will just go along with it because what the heck else are you going to do?

00:10:25.880 And again, before you say, well, who needs an AR-15?

00:10:29.500 This is not about need.

00:10:31.720 And by the way, as much as the AR-15 tends to get most of the brunt of the discussion here,

00:10:36.360 there were a lot of the 1,500 guns and gun variants that the liberals banned that were

00:10:40.820 used for hunting.

00:10:42.420 So when they say, well, these were just guns that were used to kill people, for starters,

00:10:46.420 even sport shooters are not using them to kill people.

00:10:49.020 But there were guns that were owned by indigenous people, people in rural areas, people in the

00:10:53.180 north that were actually being used for hunting, were being used for sustenance.

00:10:57.940 And the government has now decided that these things are all banned.

00:11:02.060 So it's not just about going after AR-15s because, oh, well, who needs one of those?

00:11:06.380 There were guns that were actually essential to people's daily lives that were caught up

00:11:11.300 in this ban.

00:11:12.000 And the liberals have never acknowledged that.

00:11:14.800 The liberals have never acknowledged that.

00:11:16.560 They've never owned up to it.

00:11:17.780 They've never walked back from that.

00:11:19.460 They've actually continued to double and triple down on that.

00:11:21.980 Even today, with the line that we keep hearing over and over again, including most recently

00:11:26.600 from Bill Blair, that the guns the liberals are going after are only for people who want 0.58

00:11:32.360 to kill people. 0.70

00:11:33.280 Earlier this morning, Minister Lumetti and I had the honor to present to the House Bill

00:11:38.840 C-21, a bill that went passed will significantly strengthen gun control in Canada.

00:11:45.220 And with this bill, we are keeping our promise to Canadians to reduce gun violence by strengthening

00:11:50.780 our laws, prohibiting firearms which were designed only to kill, by placing significant and effective

00:11:57.320 new restrictions on guns that are used by criminals, and by creating a regime to remove firearms

00:12:03.240 from dangerous situations made deadly by the presence of a firearm.

00:12:08.420 On May 1st of last year, our government took the extraordinary and necessary action to prohibit

00:12:14.420 over 1,500 tactical assault-style rifles.

00:12:19.300 These were weapons not designed for hunting or sports shooting activities, but rather for

00:12:23.580 their efficiency as weapons designed to kill.

00:12:26.300 They're combat weapons designed to be used in tactical situations.

00:12:30.140 They're just trying to stir up this fear, this misplaced fear that doesn't align with the

00:12:35.720 realities.

00:12:36.260 We don't have a massive gun crime problem compared to other jurisdictions.

00:12:39.820 And when we do have gun crime, it's coming from gangs in cities, not from people or institutions

00:12:46.420 or organizations that will at all be affected by this confiscation and disarmament.

00:12:52.660 So this is not going to be a package of reforms that will do anything.

00:12:58.140 And one reporter had actually indicated this.

00:13:00.340 He said, you know, yeah, there have been people that have been gunned down by legal firearms and

00:13:04.820 illegal firearms.

00:13:06.120 He was talking about the legal with a shooting at Dawson College.

00:13:08.920 How is this criminalization going to functionally stop someone from doing that?

00:13:14.520 Same as the Portapique, Nova Scotia massacre, the rampage there.

00:13:18.120 How would anything prevent someone who already was acquiring guns outside of the law from

00:13:24.320 undertaking such acts of violence?

00:13:26.380 It simply wouldn't.

00:13:28.060 And Bill Blair, during today's announcement, had even acknowledged that in a way.

00:13:31.360 He said, well, you know, the problem with the buyback plan is that we don't know where

00:13:34.720 all these guns are and who has them.

00:13:36.360 Uh, so we're going to force people who don't want to sell them back to register them.

00:13:40.700 Oh, okay.

00:13:41.720 Well, well, great.

00:13:42.480 So the people that don't register them were criminals who don't care about the law.

00:13:46.880 So the only people penalized, the only people even affected are those who show a willingness

00:13:52.340 and conscientiousness to engage with the law in the prescribed manner.

00:13:57.380 As in law-abiding gun owners aren't the problem.

00:14:01.300 So anyone who says they are is being willfully disingenuous or actually just has no idea what

00:14:08.000 they are doing.

00:14:08.940 There was one particular point, though, that really jumped out at me that I had to share.

00:14:13.520 Because again, we can talk about this person disliking guns, this person liking them.

00:14:18.480 I get not everyone is going to like them.

00:14:20.300 I get that.

00:14:21.120 Not everyone's going to understand them.

00:14:22.520 I understand that, too.

00:14:23.900 But that is different than willingly and willfully making stuff up, which Justin Trudeau did when

00:14:32.100 he made this comment about self-defense, about personal protection.

00:14:36.460 In Canada, people can use guns for hunting and for sport shooting, not for personal protection.

00:14:44.040 And there is no need for military-style assault weapons anywhere in this country.

00:14:51.760 So that is factually untrue.

00:14:54.840 You actually can, in this country, use anything for self-defense, for personal protection, as

00:15:00.880 long as it is proportionate to the level of risk that you were facing.

00:15:05.200 Now, in some way, he is close to something that's correct.

00:15:09.640 You cannot own a gun for the purpose of personal protection.

00:15:13.520 If you are doing your interview with a firearms officer because you are trying to get a license

00:15:18.300 and they say, why do you want it?

00:15:19.620 If you say, for home defense, you're not going to get your license.

00:15:22.400 So that's true, that you cannot own it for that primary purpose.

00:15:26.040 But you are allowed to use your firearm to defend yourself.

00:15:29.580 Now, that doesn't mean police won't try to charge you and that you won't have a massive,

00:15:34.100 massive fight ahead when you try to have those charges dropped, as has happened in a number

00:15:38.060 of cases in Canada.

00:15:38.980 But you legally can use a firearm for self-defense based on all of the case law we see of people

00:15:45.480 who have had those charges dropped.

00:15:48.360 So Justin Trudeau is actually saying something that is fundamentally untrue here when he misrepresents

00:15:54.460 the law in Canada and says that a gun serves no purpose for personal protection.

00:15:59.260 So this is very important because facts still matter.

00:16:04.640 Maybe not in the course of making the legislation that we saw today, but they should matter and do

00:16:09.880 matter if we want to have an honest discussion about firearms.

00:16:12.980 And I'm all for that.

00:16:14.120 I'm all for an honest discussion because I know that if you have an honest one, it's going to

00:16:17.700 lead to facts that do not justify the gun grab that the government is imposing right now.

00:16:23.580 We've got to take a break.

00:16:24.720 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:16:27.400 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:16:37.840 Among the most famous words in Canadian politics by now, diversity is our strength.

00:16:43.540 Well, is that true in the education system across the country in the various provinces?

00:16:48.760 A new report from ARPA Canada, the Association for Reform Political Action, says it is and actually

00:16:54.620 lays out some really important recommendations on how we can get more diversity in education,

00:17:00.080 which ultimately is more choice for parents and by extension, a better array of options

00:17:05.540 for students.

00:17:07.000 The report just came out.

00:17:08.780 It's called Educational Diversity, right to the point about what it's about there.

00:17:12.780 Joining me from ARPA Canada is lawyer Andre Schutten.

00:17:16.400 Andre, good to talk to you.

00:17:17.340 Thanks for coming on today.

00:17:19.020 Well, it's so good to be on the show.

00:17:20.100 Thanks very much for having me.

00:17:21.740 Now, like I sort of alluded to earlier, we hear lots of talk about diversity.

00:17:25.960 What is it in this context?

00:17:28.440 Yeah, diversity is very important.

00:17:30.820 I think in this country, we recognize it.

00:17:33.600 All kinds of different people come to the table with different experiences and different

00:17:38.120 ideas.

00:17:38.960 And that's usually going to be a strength for us.

00:17:41.960 The problem when it comes to education is that when it comes to diversity, we're not

00:17:46.960 thinking broad enough.

00:17:48.860 We're not thinking about a diversity of cultures or a diversity of institutions or of groups.

00:17:56.860 And that's where I think we need to see more diversity.

00:17:59.560 Right now, while there might be a diversity of people within one big education system, a single

00:18:09.960 system, there's not a diversity in approaches to education in different institutions providing

00:18:16.620 education for our kids and not a diversity in recognizing that there's different philosophical

00:18:22.160 and pedagogical philosophies around education.

00:18:25.800 So we're just advocating for a lot more of that.

00:18:28.600 And the outcome will be best for all kids.

00:18:32.080 We have as available options right now, homeschooling, private schools, even so the vast majority

00:18:39.940 of students enrolled in the report mentions this are in the public system and under the

00:18:44.520 banner of the public system, Catholic schools, charter schools if you're in Alberta or the

00:18:49.660 general public public school board.

00:18:51.620 And I think it's somewhere in the range of around 92% or just shy of that that are choosing

00:18:56.380 to be in a publicly funded school.

00:18:58.500 So they have the options.

00:19:00.320 What's not diverse about the system if parents can choose to go into them and are just in

00:19:05.100 large numbers choosing to go into the public stream?

00:19:08.700 Yeah, I think that number is actually pretty staggering.

00:19:11.860 When we see that 92% of Canadian kids are being educated by the state, by the civil government,

00:19:20.340 we would start as our foundation.

00:19:22.620 Our first step is to say, well, who's actually first responsible?

00:19:25.960 Who's primarily responsible for the education of our children?

00:19:29.080 And I say that responsibility lies on parents.

00:19:31.940 But when certain options are just off the table because of, let's say, finances or because

00:19:39.700 they're not being promoted enough or made available enough, that becomes a problem.

00:19:45.880 I think a lot of parents aren't even aware that independent education, education provided

00:19:51.140 not by the state but by other actors, that it's a good option, that it's an option that should

00:19:56.520 be embraced.

00:19:57.020 And certainly in some provinces, like in Ontario, there's certainly no financial support for

00:20:05.680 that kind of education.

00:20:07.460 And so that's going to speak volumes.

00:20:10.820 Some of the messaging around public education is basically that a good citizen ought to send

00:20:18.100 their child to a state-run school.

00:20:20.320 And I think that kind of messaging needs to change as well.

00:20:23.240 When I was raised, and I was raised in Ontario, and I've lived here all of my life, the private

00:20:30.380 school was just for the really rich kids and the really wealthy kids.

00:20:34.320 And that was the image in my mind that the private school had.

00:20:38.080 And I've learned later on in life that that isn't in fact the case, that there are a lot

00:20:42.800 of private religious schools, I'd say are the most notable examples, where people who

00:20:46.680 have very just average middle-class family incomes find a way to scrape and scrounge and put

00:20:52.800 their kids in these private schools.

00:20:54.680 And you're right, they have to do it really while paying for two educations.

00:20:58.600 Their taxes are still going towards the public school system, and then they're paying a tuition

00:21:02.700 in the private school system.

00:21:04.360 One of the recommendations in this report, which I think is very important, is allow education

00:21:09.000 funding according to a per capita formula for all public school, independent school, and

00:21:14.400 homeschooled students.

00:21:15.380 So am I understanding that correctly?

00:21:16.880 That if you're a parent and you want to go to a private school, you could take that tax money

00:21:21.420 that you're paying towards the public school and reallocate it.

00:21:25.060 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:25.820 That would be one way of doing it.

00:21:27.400 Now, there's different ways of doing it, but that's the basic thrust of it.

00:21:32.700 What are we interested in supporting as provincial governments in this country?

00:21:36.900 Is it to support a system?

00:21:39.020 Is it to support one big system?

00:21:41.120 Or is it to support students?

00:21:42.540 And if it's to support students and to empower parents to make good decisions for their own

00:21:48.100 children, then let the money follow the child. 0.97

00:21:51.240 Don't let the money just go to a system and fund the system.

00:21:55.020 And so that kind of a model will, it's going to have a couple of good effects.

00:21:59.460 One is going to increase, I think, efficiencies because those schools, various schools will want

00:22:05.320 to be able to have your child come to their school so that they can educate them and develop

00:22:12.500 their curriculum and so on.

00:22:14.680 So there's going to be better efficiency.

00:22:16.920 But importantly, from our perspective, it's going to increase responsibility, the ownership

00:22:21.460 of the responsibility and the decisions of parents.

00:22:24.180 Parents are going to be not saying, well, civil government, you take care of making sure my kid

00:22:28.160 gets a good education.

00:22:29.120 Rather, it's each parent is going to say, now I'm invested.

00:22:32.400 I want to investigate how things are going at that school, because if it's not going

00:22:35.720 well at this school, I'm going to pull my kid out and put them in that other school 0.95

00:22:39.120 where they're learning better, they're reading better, they're doing better on their math

00:22:42.660 scores, they're understanding concepts like biology and chemistry better.

00:22:48.420 There's no more bullying over here compared to there.

00:22:51.140 And that they can make those kinds of decisions and freely do so without too much concern.

00:22:56.780 How solid is the evidence on academic performance that you just mentioned in comparison

00:23:01.880 between these two public or private options?

00:23:04.780 And I'm including homeschooling in private.

00:23:08.040 Yeah.

00:23:08.400 So across the board, independent schooling produces a better result for students.

00:23:14.180 Their marks are going to be higher than students coming out of the public system.

00:23:19.100 And we see that in other jurisdictions.

00:23:20.660 And we see that in Canada itself.

00:23:22.800 In fact, and this is actually really important, is that independent schooling increases the

00:23:30.220 performance, particularly for marginalized students and economically disadvantaged students.

00:23:37.280 So the people that we should be most concerned about, students from racialized communities,

00:23:42.200 for example, or students that are very poor, come from poor parts of cities and parts of the

00:23:47.840 country, they're going to do better when we have independent schools in the area.

00:23:52.500 In fact, there's even studies that show that where there's an independent school close by

00:23:57.420 a public school, that the public school students will do better.

00:24:01.320 It'll actually increase even their performance.

00:24:03.680 So you see that more in jurisdictions like British Columbia, for example, that does support independent

00:24:09.580 schools a whole lot more than Ontario does.

00:24:13.220 Although independent schools don't quite get equal funding compared to the public system.

00:24:19.620 I have to go back to that 91.8% number to get the precise figure of people that are in

00:24:25.380 the public stream when they have theoretically the choice to go elsewhere, notwithstanding the

00:24:30.440 cost issues we've raised.

00:24:31.960 But I do have to ask, is that, in your view, just because of a lack of option or feeling

00:24:37.660 like they have a lack of option?

00:24:38.960 Or is that expressing a preference?

00:24:41.000 Because if that many people or even a large subset of that are just choosing that system,

00:24:45.760 is this really just a small minority of parents that you're trying to advocate for a solution

00:24:51.680 for in this report?

00:24:53.660 Yeah, again, a fair question.

00:24:55.660 And I think that there certainly are parents that do just prefer the local school up the

00:25:02.560 street, you know, a big, large school that's in their neighborhood.

00:25:07.320 And it can also be considerations like, you know, the local school, the local publicly funded

00:25:12.460 school, right?

00:25:13.140 We'll have a lot more options than a lot of independent schools do, like, you know, larger

00:25:18.260 gyms, maybe swimming pools, huge athletic facilities and those sorts of things.

00:25:24.660 But again, that would come back down to that question of funding and having, you know, the

00:25:31.860 extra financial resources to develop those programs.

00:25:34.500 If more resources like that were made available, I think when parents had a fuller range of options

00:25:41.280 there, they would start making better use of it.

00:25:44.680 But it's certainly not only about the money.

00:25:47.600 I think that there is, you know, there's been a culture that has developed over the last,

00:25:52.240 you know, 30, 40 years that that's very dependent on the civil government when it comes to education.

00:25:59.960 And it's going to lead to worrying developments down the road.

00:26:05.140 I mean, this is more at the philosophical level, Andrew.

00:26:07.660 But I think that where we depend on the civil government to not only fund, not only regulate,

00:26:16.560 but even to provide, you know, the moral and pedagogical raising of our children, that's

00:26:24.400 a problem because it results in, among other things, it results in a lack of responsibility

00:26:29.860 on the part of parents towards their own children, a lack of drive and determination to make those

00:26:36.840 kinds of decisions for your own kids.

00:26:39.440 And I think that that could be a problem.

00:26:42.180 Then the other thing I would note is that that number is shifting slightly.

00:26:46.460 That 91.8% of people in the public school system is slowly but surely decreasing because I think more

00:26:53.960 and more people are being a little upset with how the quality of education in public schools and what's

00:27:00.560 going on in a lot of these mega schools in particular.

00:27:02.780 And actually, this last year with the whole COVID pandemic and what's happened with a lot of the

00:27:09.800 schools, I think that's actually provided us an opportunity to really evaluate, is this the best way

00:27:14.880 to do education for kids?

00:27:16.760 Is it to cram all kinds of kids through a, you know, through a big 3,000 student school

00:27:23.740 and run them through that way?

00:27:27.460 Or is there better ways to do schooling still maybe with an institutional school, but one that's

00:27:33.480 much smaller and it's culturally or religiously connected with the families that support it?

00:27:40.060 Going way back to 2007, I remember when in Ontario, the topic of faith-based schools and

00:27:47.980 funding faith-based schools publicly became a very toxic political issue.

00:27:52.460 Then PC leader, John Tory, who had a great many other flaws, this wasn't one of them though,

00:27:56.660 had raised this idea and there was a massive backlash.

00:27:59.560 And I realize a lot's changed in the last 14 years, but a lot of people, I think, and I say

00:28:04.680 this as a Christian, a lot of people get very, I think, instinctively uncomfortable with the

00:28:10.480 idea of funding faith-based schools, irrespective of the Catholic school funding, which people

00:28:15.240 seem to find is okay when other denominations aren't.

00:28:18.740 But the curriculum itself, is your view that there would be a core standardized curriculum

00:28:23.340 and then everyone would be able to build on top of that?

00:28:26.060 Or do you think that, honestly, we need to strip it back down and let individual schools

00:28:30.380 or school boards develop a curriculum in accordance with some sort of baseline standard?

00:28:36.860 Yeah, I think those things are definitely things that would need to be explored and so on.

00:28:41.000 But at base, I think the civil government has an interest in well-educated citizens.

00:28:48.100 So, you know, if an independent school, let's use a faith-based school, let's say there's

00:28:52.760 a faith-based school that exists and says, oh, we're educating kids.

00:28:56.020 But by the time these kids hit grade three, they still can't read.

00:28:59.060 By the time they hit grade eight, they can't do basic division or multiplication.

00:29:03.700 Well, there's a major problem there.

00:29:05.060 And I think that school's not doing what it's supposed to be doing.

00:29:09.060 And I think the civil government has an interest in ensuring some basic standards when it comes

00:29:15.300 to reading, writing, arithmetic, you know, history, science, civics, and so on.

00:29:21.620 But I think it has to be relatively limited because, you know, how far do we want to go?

00:29:26.300 We want to have still a diversity of options when it comes to pedagogical styles, like classical

00:29:32.020 education versus what we see today, which is standard in public education, or Montessori

00:29:37.600 schools, or there's all kinds of different approaches to education.

00:29:41.920 Let's let that diversity happen because there's a diversity of kids.

00:29:45.360 I look at my own family to make it a bit personal.

00:29:49.360 I have a son who's right now thriving in a classical school, which really focuses on the

00:29:55.060 liberal arts.

00:29:56.360 And I have a daughter who's not yet in school, but I don't think she's actually going to do

00:29:59.840 all that well in that kind of a school.

00:30:01.180 There might be another school where she'll do much better in, where she'll thrive in, 0.95

00:30:05.080 where she has gifts and talents that will be better expressed in a different kind of school 0.99

00:30:09.580 with a different pedagogical model.

00:30:11.160 So I think we need to be able to accommodate that.

00:30:14.040 But frankly, sending my kids to two different independent schools will break the bank.

00:30:19.280 So we've got to figure out how to do that.

00:30:21.860 The limits that the civil government has when it comes to the diversity of educational options

00:30:26.280 makes it very, very difficult for us to choose what's best for our kids.

00:30:30.460 And that's a problem in a diverse country like Canada. 0.60

00:30:34.200 And it sounds as though being in Ontario like me, you have the worst available option available

00:30:39.740 to you when it comes to that.

00:30:41.600 Yeah, exactly.

00:30:42.700 Exactly.

00:30:43.160 And again, when you look at the law, and so I'm a lawyer and I often will look at this

00:30:49.600 kind of thing through the lens of the law.

00:30:51.360 I mean, there's enough things in our charter, for example, that would encourage a diversity

00:30:57.420 of institutions when it comes to education.

00:30:59.180 I mean, take section 2023 of the charter, which talks about a multicultural society and

00:31:06.820 how all of our rights and freedoms have to flow through that kind of a lens.

00:31:11.600 Well, a great way to enhance our multicultural society is by enhancing a diverse spectrum

00:31:18.960 of educational choices.

00:31:20.660 That's section 27 of the charter, sorry, not section 23.

00:31:24.180 And actually, when you look at international law, you see even stronger language for independent

00:31:28.960 education.

00:31:29.580 There's some really neat things that have been passed both at the European Parliament and

00:31:34.040 at the UN, which speak about how we have to respect a child's parents' religious

00:31:41.100 and cultural identity when it comes to issues like education.

00:31:44.720 And I think that we can learn from the international community on this.

00:31:48.940 The report Educational Diversity, published by the Association for Reformed Political Action,

00:31:54.860 ARPA Canada.

00:31:55.820 Joining me from ARPA Canada is André Schutten, General Legal Counsel and Director of Law and

00:32:01.300 Public Policy.

00:32:02.080 André, thanks so much for coming on.

00:32:03.520 Really fascinating topic.

00:32:05.180 All right.

00:32:05.520 Thank you so much for having me.

00:32:07.200 That does it for us for today.

00:32:08.640 We'll be back in just a few days with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here

00:32:13.100 on True North.

00:32:13.940 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:15.320 Thank you.

00:32:15.820 God bless and good day.

00:32:17.200 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:19.360 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:32:24.480 The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:33.900 Thank you.

00:32:34.280 Thank you.

Juno News - February 16, 2021

Trudeau’s War on Guns is a War on Facts

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript