Trudeau’s Wokest Week (Ft. Andrew Lawton)
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Summary
Justin Trudeau has introduced a temporary ban on handguns in Canada. It s the latest in a week of radical, extreme, left-wing policies from gun bans to hard-drug legalization. To help us make sense of it all, True North senior journalist Andrew Lawton joins The Candice Malcolm Show.
Transcript
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unleashes a torrent of radical, extreme, woke, far-left policies this week.
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It's been the wokest week in Canadian history, from gun bans to hard drug legalization to refusing to admit that the pandemic is over.
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I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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It's like every woke idea in Justin Trudeau's head is coming out in the form of public policy.
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It's really wild just to keep up with all of the things that are going on.
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And so to help us make sense of the world and to break down some of the more extreme policies that we are seeing is True North senior journalist, Andrew Lawton.
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Andrew, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining us.
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It's not pouring, well, I mean, it is still pouring rain where I am, but I'm not in the rain like last time I was on your show.
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Well, we are, honestly, I couldn't believe the callousness of Justin Trudeau in introducing a gun ban like this just a week after the horrific news event down in Uvalde, Texas.
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It seemed like the most sort of callous, calculated, just opportunistic, kind of icky thing I've seen in politics in a long time.
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And, you know, maybe it's good policy, good politics because a lot of Canadians don't like guns.
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We don't have the same sort of gun culture, certainly, that they have in Texas, but it just seemed so opportunistic.
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And I'm surprised that more journalists aren't sort of calling him out on it.
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He produced a fantastic documentary, Assaulted Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.
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So you're sort of our resident gun nut around here, Andrew, and I'm hoping that you can help us understand what exactly Justin Trudeau announced.
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He called it a freeze. It seemed more like a temporary ban to me.
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So what is different and what is your reaction to it?
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So what they're doing is actually saying that no more handguns, once this legislation passes, will be able to be purchased.
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And this is a bit of a contrast, a significant contrast from the big gun ban they did that kind of triggered Assaulted two years ago,
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So there's quite a different change in tactics here.
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But I think the point that you introduced a moment ago is the key one.
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There is no Canadian gun ownership problem that stems from law-abiding gun owners.
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There's an American problem that Justin Trudeau wanted to piggyback onto.
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Well, and it just seemed like such an, again, unbelievably callous.
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I'm surprised that the media hasn't sort of jumped on it.
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But, okay, so in the U.S., the concern is that, you know, young people, people who are mentally unstable,
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aren't being properly screened, and they're able to go and buy, you know, machine guns or whatever you call them,
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Canada, we don't have the problem with mass shooting.
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If anything, there is a problem, though, with handguns, with crime, mostly in urban centres in places like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal.
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So I'm wondering, Andrew, do you think that this gun freeze or gun ban, temporary ban, will help address that issue at all?
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Because when you look at the problems, I mean, the two big centres for this, Toronto and Surrey in British Columbia,
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the problems are inner-city gang-related problems.
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They're guns that are overwhelmingly illegally smuggled in from the U.S.
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So there is a connection in that sense to the American gun ownership system.
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But they're not coming from the lawful market in Canada.
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So if you try to do what Justin Trudeau is doing in his own words, which is close off the legal handgun market in Canada,
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it actually does nothing to deal with the firearms that are at the root of this gun crime.
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And to be fair, there is stuff in this bill that goes after smuggling.
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There is stuff in this bill that goes after the border and stiffer penalties.
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And I'd say that the thing that he's really focusing on here, going after the law-abiding,
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is entirely disconnected from where we do have an issue with guns in Canada.
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And it's not from lawful licensed ownership, which has an insane amount of hurdles to go through.
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And just, I mean, the government admitted this too.
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There was a story in Reuters where a reporter had asked a government official,
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do you think there's going to be this run on handguns because of this?
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And the official said, no, no, no, because they're so regulated and hard to get.
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I mean, it's a group that's overwhelmingly conservative.
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I think handgun owners in Canada are about, you know, 700,000 in number.
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So it's an easy group to score political points off the backs of because people that don't understand guns,
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that don't understand gun owners, that don't think you need to have that,
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or that are confused about what the laws are, will say, oh, yeah, yeah, no one needs a handgun.
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I want to play a clip for you because Justin Trudeau was asked about this question.
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He was asked whether or not or why his gun ban seems to target lawful, law-abiding gun owners.
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What would your message be to firearms groups that are saying, you know,
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the handgun ban continues to just target lawful gun owners?
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And, you know, it's similar criticism to other gun legislation saying it's not going to target people that are breaking the law anyways.
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I think people need to be careful about misinformation and disinformation in this.
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We've explicitly and specifically not targeted law-abiding firearms owners
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because those who currently own and operate handguns safely and store them safely
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We're simply saying that we are freezing the market,
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and in the future it will not be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns in Canada.
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and this is a comprehensive, multi-step path towards that.
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Yeah, I don't know how he's justifying saying that because it only targets the law-abiding.
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Again, it doesn't target people that have no respect or regard for the licensing system,
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people that haven't gone through the background checks and the regular compliance measures
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But again, he's preying on misinformation here and on people that don't actually understand
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how hard it is to get one of these things in Canada.
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Well, it's interesting because if I was a reporter there, I would have asked a follow-up.
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Because we're talking about, like, I don't understand.
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And then also that little dig that he does at the beginning,
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and this has become like a tick for the prime minister.
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It's like anytime he gets a question that has some kind of criticism built in,
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he goes right to misinformation and disinformation.
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I've heard him do this multiple times to journalists,
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not just independent journalists, but legacy media journalists,
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where he sort of accuses them of misinformation and disinformation.
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And I know it's a little off topic because we're talking about guns,
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What do you think of the prime minister kind of slipping that in
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Like, I really genuinely, honestly don't understand what he's talking about
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when he says it's misinformation, disinformation,
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Well, it's his go-to, because he doesn't think there is any legitimate criticism of him.
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So if someone is criticizing him or criticizing a policy of his,
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the broader environment that we live in right now,
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where we're told that the biggest threat to national security
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is online radicalization and misinformation, disinformation.
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There's, what, three different bills that the liberals have cooking up
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that targets news organizations and free speech on the internet.
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And, again, they go back to this misinformation, disinformation.
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You have national security specialists using these buzzwords.
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Andrew, I mean, why doesn't anyone call the prime minister on this?
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Why don't journalists push back when they hear him
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they're ever going to be the target of the regulation.
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They don't feel that the regulation of media is a bad thing.
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In fact, it protects them because it prevents their competition there.
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or I shouldn't even say that, maybe they understand
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and they just don't care about the broader implications of this policy,
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about a world in which all media has to go through this government conduit,
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because, as we know, and as True North has been talking about relentlessly,
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which is the government channel, government-funded,
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Well, I mean, you saw Trudeau just sort of throw that out
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at what I presume is a legacy media journalist there.
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There's just so many levels of absurdity when Justin Trudeau talks,
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Well, that's not the only sort of big, shocking news story of the week.
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Andrew, I want to ask you a bit about, on Monday,
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there was a House of Commons vote on whether or not
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Canada would be ready to lift the remaining COVID restrictions.
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So many other places around the world have already done away with them,
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and they've sort of learned to live with COVID,
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The Liberals and the NDP joined together to vote against this motion.
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So there was just one Liberal MP and one independent MP,
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along with the Conservatives that voted for it.
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Why is Canada dragging its heels when it comes to just moving on
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except for to spite people, to spite the unvaccinated.
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I mean, that seems to be the big thing that Justin Trudeau wants to do.
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But let me tell you, it is literally just Canada.
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When I flew to Zurich to cover the World Economic Forum conference last week,
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you could tell who the Europeans were because they all like ripped off their masks
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because they can walk around maskless in airports.
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Everyone's walking around, no vaccine passport in Switzerland, no masks, none of that.
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And then the second you get on the Air Canada plane,
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And at one point, I was sort of reminded that I was coming home
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when I saw a flight attendant wake up a guy who was sleeping
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because his mask had slipped half a millimeter below his nose or something like that.
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If you look at Justin Trudeau and his cabinet ministers,
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they're selectively wearing masks depending on which meeting they're in
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And it's like, you can tell that they don't believe it anymore.
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They aren't buying into it, but we all have to.
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And the vaccine mandate for internal travel is insane.
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There's a big legal challenge afoot right now against this.
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I think the convoy embarrassed Justin Trudeau significantly.
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And I don't think he wants to relent on anything that the people in that convoy wanted.
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And maybe I'm drawing too many conclusions there.
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But I think spite towards this people that Justin Trudeau holds in contempt,
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which he feels are the only people asking for changes, is really what's motivating this.
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I mean, just this week, the WestJet CEO is on a plane in Europe and he tweeted out
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how kind of almost giddily that, oh yeah, mask free in Europe.
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And he didn't, you know, take aim at the government, but you could tell implicitly
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he was saying, what is it that is different in Europe?
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What is it that the science says here that it doesn't say in Canada or vice versa?
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And WestJet's CEO also came out this week and said, we've got to get rid of the mandates.
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I think the tourism implications of that may be a point of evidence in favor of dropping them.
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If there was ever justification for them, there isn't now.
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I think you're totally right about spite because we saw this non-binding motion put forth by the
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And then the next day, Trudeau announced that they were extending their restrictions, which
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It's telling people who are vaccinated that they can't, sorry, people who are not vaccinated
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that they can't come to Canada, people who are unvaccinated, they can't leave Canada.
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Anecdotally as well, I have flown around a little bit and I noticed that every flight
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I get on, the pilot comes on and sort of reluctantly apologizes and says, we know,
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And you could just tell that everyone is sick of it.
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I was flying from Ottawa to Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago.
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And as soon as we went over U.S. airspace, the pilot announced that you could take your
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And, you know, the pilot was excited to announce this, like, don't worry, you don't have to
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I instantly took my mask off and then I looked around at it or nobody else did because I
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realized it was all bureaucrats on the plane, either American or Canadian.
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Yeah, going from one capital to another, that's a good, I feel bad.
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I'm glad you survived that flight, to be honest.
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And I don't even think the pilot was right, but you better believe I wouldn't be complaining
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because, I mean, flights I've been on, they've kind of claimed, you know, Transport Canada
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jurisdiction over the entire flight, even if only a bit of it's in Canada.
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And I think this is the thing, people, but these measures everywhere else I find are decreasing
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Like if you go around, even in some medical clinics right now in Ontario, masks are required,
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The airline industry, the aviation sector is like the one thing that the federal government
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They can't control your neighborhood corner store.
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They can't control all of these other spaces, but they can control air and rail travel.
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And I think there is something to, I just want to make these people suffer and I want
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And to speak to the science, our friend, Senator Denise Batter, she was in the Senate
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the other day and she made an incredibly good point that really, you know, for all the times
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that we hear from Justin Trudeau that this is based on science and we always have to follow
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Denise makes a great point about how there's nothing really scientific about this measure.
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I'm going to play that clip for you, Andrew, and I'll get your reaction to it.
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Senator Gould, according to a recent article, a UK public health agency report published
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this month showed that after a second dose of Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine, effectiveness
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fell from 65 to 70 percent to as low as 15 percent by 25 weeks afterwards.
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Most people in Canada received their second dose a year ago.
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And I would also add that even booster doses, which were heralded as like the next frontier
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in this, have been abysmal at protecting people against the latest variant, the Omicron variant.
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I mean, the boosters, booster efficacy is pretty much non-existent, which is why people like
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me that went, you know, for the first two years or I guess year and nine months of the pandemic
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without really knowing that many people who had COVID, it quickly over the winter and even
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in the last couple of months has become like everyone knows someone or multiple people that
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have gotten it. And they're all fine, generally speaking. I don't know anyone that's had any
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serious ailment from COVID in the last few months. But there is no justification for it. I mean,
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we got vaccinated in large numbers. Vaccination hit its saturation point where no matter how many
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mandates and restrictions there were, as many people got vaccinated as we're going to, at that
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point, you have to just move on and say the people that thought the vaccines were affording
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them protection. Got it. And everyone else didn't. They made their choices. Okay. We decided it was
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safe enough to open restaurants. We've opened everything else. Why can people not get on a plane
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in their own country? It's part of the thing I think, Andrew, and I'll let you react to this,
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is that if they loosen the rules now, they're kind of admitting that they were wrong. I mean,
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from Denise Batter's point, after 25 weeks, so we're talking half a year. For me, I got my second dose,
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what, over a year ago in May. So a little over a year ago. That means for the last 30 weeks or so,
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I have had less than 15% protection. I feel like the Trudeau government is just doubling down because
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admitting that these policies don't work sort of undermines the case that they've been trying to
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make for the last year. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think you're right about that. It
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undermines it. And the thing is, by not releasing these things sooner, they've made it more difficult
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because now there's never going to be that magic moment where, okay, one day it's unsafe, the next
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day it's safe. There have been points in the past where you could really draw a line and say, okay,
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you know, case counts are here or hospitalizations are here. But now that, I mean, it's so insignificant,
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people have moved beyond this. We don't have a mass hospitalization crisis. We don't have
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all of these things tripping public health alarm bells that were there, or people said were there
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some months ago and certainly a year ago. So there isn't any moment now where the government
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has even said, we will do it when this happens. We will lift the restrictions because there is no
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metric now. When they're making things up as they go and not regarding science as being the basis of
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policy here, there's no metric that can even justify it. So ultimately, whenever it happens,
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it's going to be just on the whim of Justin Trudeau. What a crazy way to govern. And speaking of this,
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I don't know that you and I necessarily see eye to eye when it comes to the issue of decriminalizing
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drugs, Andrew, but I can't understand why a prime minister would sort of unilaterally announce that
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one province out of 10, they're now legalizing drugs or decriminalizing hard drugs. We're talking
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about hard drugs. We're talking about opioids, cocaine, ecstasy, MDMA. So as of January 31st,
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2023, Canadians over the age of 18 will be legally able to possess 2.5 grams of these hard drugs.
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And we're told that the purpose of this is to combat the rise in drug overdoses and this sort of
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epidemic of opioid addiction and drug overdoses. Do you think decriminalization is the best way to help
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Well, I think that you're asking a question there that I would say no to. But that doesn't mean I'm
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not for decriminalization. And I'd say there are two things. Number one, I'm a libertarian. And when
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you're talking about people that are doing things to themselves, however unhealthy or risky they are,
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I think that they need to be able to make these decisions for themselves. But I say that recognizing
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addiction is a disease. And despite the challenges that you see from drug addicts in a lot of
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communities, especially in BC, I think this needs to be dealt with. I think when people who are using
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drugs are breaking other laws, those other laws need to be enforced. And I think that's what a lot
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of the activists don't really want to talk about. Because I do know that families are very much
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affected by this. Businesses are affected by it. I see it in my city of London as well, which is
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rapidly, I don't know if it's reaching BC level numbers, but it's certainly rapidly rising in drug use.
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But I think there's another side of this, though, which is you look at the status quo,
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has this helped? Has this worked? And some people may say no, and there's de facto decriminalization.
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A lot of the times in BC and elsewhere, police are only going after those who have volumes where
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they'd be trafficking anyway. So there's been effectively a decriminalization policy.
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But even if that's the case, I'd look and I'd say that criminal prohibition has not stopped
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all of these problems that we see in communities across the country, across North America. So if
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there is some way that we could just take that criminal aspect out of the equation and make
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treatment available and more widespread, I think that would be desirable. And I realize there are
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a lot of ifs there, but I don't think that anyone can say that the situation we have today is a
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Well, I would take just the opposite position, because I grew up in Vancouver. And even in the
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90s and the 2000s, drug use is rampant, right? Like people are using cocaine, people are using
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ecstasy, people are using heroin. It's everywhere. And that was under a regime that, you know,
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like you said, they look the other way. And so this whole idea that, like, to me, this signals from
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the Trudeau government, like, we're just kind of throwing our hands up, and we're not going to
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have a policing element at all. And I think the reality is that living in a city like that,
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living in Vancouver, where drugs are everywhere, everybody uses drugs. And when I say drugs, I mean,
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mostly marijuana, people smoke pot, or they take other kinds of, like, lighter drugs, I guess. But
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then a lot of people do move into the heavier stuff, Andrew. And it's not like it's a personal,
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internalized use, right? When you're using drugs, there's externalities. Go take a look at the
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Lower East Side of Vancouver, and see sort of the, what I think is, is, I mean, it looks like a war
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zone. There's just people with no, no dignity whatsoever. No one's taking care of them. There's
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no, there's no care, there's no hope, you know, people are just indulging in the most sort of
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self-destructive behavior possible. And now we have, we already have a situation where there's safe
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injection sites, and where there's government enabling this kind of thing, where you can get your
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drugs tested to make sure that they're not poisoned, or what have you. And now you have
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the true government signaling, like, hey, we're going to take more steps to enable this, this sort
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of incredibly destructive behavior. It's not just Vancouver, that it happens, the cities all over
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Canada, as you mentioned, even in, in little London, Ontario, but certainly Calgary, Vancouver,
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Toronto, any big city, Edmonton, even, I've seen heavy, heavy drug use. And I just, I just can't
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understand how taking a step towards allowing more people to use this to enter into this type
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of lifestyle, like how that's going to help minimize drug addictions and minimize the harm
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that comes from drugs. Well, I think you have to look at the motivation. And the question is,
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are we trying to, and is this trying to normalize and endorse drug use? Or is it trying to reframe the
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way that we try to get people off of drugs? And I'll be the first to admit, I know there are
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activists out there that are completely okay with the normalization of after people that say, yes,
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it's a legitimate life choice, not just it's your choice to make, but it's a legitimate thing that
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we shouldn't get in the way of. And I have significant issues with so called safe supply
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programs that try to say that, you know, we should be able to offer people a quote, unquote,
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safe version of the street drug they're using, because this isn't working either. And I think that does go
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down the road of normalizing. But if we are trying to get people off of drugs, and we're trying to get
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people into the pipeline, and we have treatment available to them, the rationale that I do think
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has some merit is that people shouldn't be afraid of getting arrested if they want to seek that. Now,
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I would be completely okay with some stopgap, a measure that said, you have to go through treatment,
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or you have to face charges for whatever the offense is, I think that would be a legitimate in
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between. What I don't like is, and you and I probably agree on this is this idea that criminal
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law is now like locality dependent, this thing that's supposed to be national, now changes depending
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on where in the country you are, which is not supposed to be how criminal law is.
00:24:11.500
Well, I don't mind the idea that if you if you're found with heroin or drugs, heroin or cocaine or
00:24:16.940
something, you have the choice of going into treatment, or face charges. But but it seems like this,
00:24:21.440
this obsession with what they call small amounts, that that there's no there's no penalty whatsoever.
00:24:26.140
If you if you're caught with heroin, and you say, Oh, it's just for me, then it's like, Okay, go ahead,
00:24:31.020
have a great day, sir. But if you're not breaking any other law, what's the problem with that? If
00:24:35.420
you're not doing anything else illegal? Well, it's it's like the question is, Andrew, like, what kind
00:24:40.400
of society do you want? What kind of like world you want to live in where we as a society and our laws and
00:24:45.460
our political leaders say, you know, yeah, there's no meaning to life, there's no you have no dignity
00:24:50.600
to your body, you can go ahead and completely desecrate yourself. And you can you can take
00:24:55.640
heroin until you die. And this is just that's just another lifestyle choice, right? There's there's no
00:25:01.420
moral good or bad. And I think that when you get down that path, where you're saying to people,
00:25:06.220
go ahead, you know, you do your heroin and just keep to yourself. It's like, again, go spend some time
00:25:11.460
in in the Lower East Side of Vancouver, I lived in San Francisco for two years. It is a disgusting
0.61
00:25:17.960
hell hole of a place to watch people, the lack of dignity, watching people defecate on the streets,
0.99
00:25:24.760
watching people sleeping, watching people chewing off their fingernails, watching people struggling
00:25:29.560
through the addiction, the horrible addictions that come along with drugs. And then of course,
00:25:34.700
we know when they when they run out of drugs, and they want their next kick, what do they do?
00:25:38.740
They go out and rob people, they go out and rob stores, they break they smash windows, they
00:25:42.980
they destroy the city. And again, go to go to Lucy that if I Laurie's side of Vancouver, go to
1.00
00:25:48.600
the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, and you will see hell on earth, right? And so it's like,
00:25:54.880
again, what's the problem? It's other people, it's it's it's their life, they can destroy it all
00:25:59.200
they want. It's like, at some point, you have to ask what kind of community do you want to live in?
00:26:02.680
What kind of country do you want to live? What kind of place do you want your kids growing up in? And
00:26:05.520
to me, I've seen that. And it's not something that I would advocate for anybody. I mean, I feel
00:26:10.420
sorry for I feel sympathy for people who are down that lifestyle. But I think that the reason that
00:26:14.940
they go down that path is because they have no other option. There's no one there to help them. A
00:26:18.500
lot of times they have mental health issues. And I think that there's a lot better ways to actually
00:26:23.420
help those people and stop them from using drugs than to say, okay, well, it's just for your
00:26:27.740
personal use. So go have it have a good day, sir. That that would be my that that's where I stand.
00:26:31.880
Yeah. And again, I don't think this is a legitimate life choice. The question is,
00:26:36.960
do I trust government to be the arbiter of what your life should look like? And the answer is a
00:26:42.380
resounding no, because I don't think and I know it's a bit of a straw man. But I don't think we
00:26:46.340
want a world where the government is the one that decides the appropriate level of risk for for other
00:26:51.200
activities people partake in, whatever they are. I realize drugs destroy families, I realize drugs
00:26:56.540
destroy communities. And interestingly enough, you mentioned San Francisco, I had heard about all of that
00:27:01.700
with like the human excrement on the streets. I just didn't know how true it was like literally
00:27:06.220
my first time and my only time in San Francisco. Like I walk out the door of my hotel, which is very
00:27:11.680
nice hotel. And there it is on the side of the sidewalk. So very much a real thing. I just don't
00:27:17.780
think that criminalization is the path to do it. I think you have private charity groups, you have a
00:27:23.640
lot of advocacy groups that are working on this, that I think should and could be doing a lot more on
00:27:28.700
this to get people off of drugs. I just don't think the prohibition model has worked. And I think that
00:27:33.840
what we have now is a reflection of that. I mean, I think that that could be the case when you look
00:27:40.100
at something like marijuana, and you could say, okay, if someone's using marijuana, the only person
00:27:44.460
that they're really impacting is themselves. But when you're talking about these other drugs,
00:27:48.100
I mean, it's so clear that there's externalities, because you're not living, you know, if these people
00:27:52.400
could take drugs and just be in like a complete, you know, sorry, they could be in a room with like,
00:27:58.820
like padded walls or something like that, then it's like, okay, I guess go nuts. But the reality
00:28:02.880
is that they do them out on the street. And there's all kinds of runoffs. And to me, again, this is like
00:28:09.220
peak woke Trudeau pushing the most sort of whatever the trendiest leftist cause of the day is. And I think
00:28:17.720
I think it's just completely the wrong, the wrong choice. Andrew, I want to ask you one more one
00:28:22.580
more question. Maybe we can end on a on a note that we actually agree on. Another thing that
00:28:27.140
happened this week is that the liberals push for the end of debate on the Online News Act. This is
00:28:32.480
Bill C-18, which would determine who is a qualified journalist and who is not a qualified journalist.
00:28:39.440
So I'm wondering, what's your take on the liberals doing this this week as well?
00:28:44.640
Yeah, I don't know if I made the cut yet. Maybe we'll have to wait for a little while to
00:28:47.380
figure out if I'm on the approved list. Generally speaking, this government's record would suggest
00:28:51.180
no. You know, it's funny because the great the main criticism about C-18 is that it's government
00:28:56.860
control over the internet and government control over speech. And there's a particular poetry
00:29:02.220
in government shortening debate and cutting short debate on a bill whose primary criticism is closing
00:29:08.700
off the marketplace of ideas. So all I have to say is, you know, at least they haven't lost their sense
00:29:13.500
of humor. A sense of irony there. All right, Andrew. Well, thanks so much for joining the show. It's
00:29:18.340
always great to hear your perspectives, opinions. And thanks for all the great reporting you do for
00:29:22.200
True North. Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for giving me a place to do it. All right. That's
00:29:25.960
Sandra Lawton. I'm Candice Malcolm. And this is The Candice Malcolm Show.