Juno News - Unions declare war on parental rights protest

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:16.960 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:20.740 Hello and welcome to you all, Canada's most irreverent talk show,

00:01:29.720 The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North, kicking off another week.

00:01:33.300 It is Monday, which means we have our good friend Chris Sims

00:01:37.240 from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation joining us in just a little bit of time.

00:01:42.040 And Jack Fonseca from the Campaign Life Coalition

00:01:44.900 will be here to talk about the million-person march.

00:01:48.700 I should clarify, it seems to have like five different names.

00:01:52.320 At first, it was like the Million Man March, and then the Million Person March, and then

00:01:55.840 the Million March for Children, and the March for a Million Children, and the Milching, 0.99

00:01:59.880 Milching, Milking, Milking, Marching Millions.

00:02:02.300 I don't know.

00:02:02.860 I've seen like a whole bunch of different names for it.

00:02:04.560 But we're going to go with the Million Person March on Wednesday, taking place at 9 a.m.

00:02:08.820 across the country in cities from London to Ottawa to Calgary to Toronto to Kelowna to

00:02:14.380 Chatham to, I think, Kamloops has one as well.

00:02:17.100 And at its core, it is a protest for parental rights.

00:02:21.260 People are going to be pulling their kids out of school.

00:02:23.780 And as a result, it's a little bit interesting to see how many of the unions have decided to get up in arms about this and start pushing back.

00:02:32.420 You may have seen circulating on social media, there was a Zoom call that took place over the weekend

00:02:37.700 in which several union reps from CUPE Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Labour,

00:02:43.320 the Canadian Labour Congress, all got together to put their heads together, such as they are,

00:02:49.220 and come up with ways to push back against this. As one trans activist said, they want to stop it

00:02:55.920 dead in its tracks. Now, this call leaked and everyone's like talking about it as though it's

00:03:00.860 some big, huge bombshell. I mean, the reality is they wanted people to be involved. They wanted

00:03:05.180 this thing to be seen. They're not talking about anything that you didn't already know they were

00:03:09.920 talking about. But the thing is, they believe there is a pressing crisis afoot right now. They

00:03:15.040 believe it is a crisis of hate, that there is hate, hate, hate, hate, hate going on. And that it is

00:03:20.760 the parental rights movement that is the great purveyor of hatred. And it was an interesting

00:03:26.400 little thing to see. This is Patty Coates, who was one of the union organizers outlining why they

00:03:32.580 were having this rapid response call. To kick us off, I'm going to turn it over to OFL President

00:03:38.640 Patty Coates, for a welcome and a land acknowledgement. Patty.

00:03:44.800 Thanks, Rob. I want to thank everyone for being here on such short notice. As you saw from our

00:03:53.840 memo that we sent out, there's a number of protest events that are taking place all across Canada.

00:04:02.240 We can't just let this be idle. We need to be able to organize. We need to connect with our communities in Ontario. From what I know, there's approximately 22 different events that are taking place, and there could be more now.

00:04:20.580 But as allies and those that protect workers' rights, protect our kids' rights and the rights of trans and our 2SLGBTQ plus community, we felt it very important that we do come together to fight against the rise of hate.

00:04:41.840 and we're seeing it in province across province across province we're seeing it now in our

00:04:46.880 education system with our premier and education minister has put forward with regards to the

00:04:55.200 obligations of teachers and school boards educators and school boards and so that's why we're here

00:05:03.600 we're trying to connect with all of you to talk about what's happening in our communities and

00:05:09.200 what we can do as allies and supporters uh to fight against the hate uh within our communities

00:05:17.840 i should have poured a bunch of shots and we could have all done a drinking game that you 0.99

00:05:21.760 could play along with at home it's one o'clock i'm sure it's you know five o'clock somewhere

00:05:25.120 of course actually it's not really five o'clock anywhere it's five o'clock like over the atlantic

00:05:28.640 but uh it's six o'clock in the united kingdom right now so there we go the then every time they

00:05:34.080 say the word hate you could have just taken a shot and you actually would have been just passed out

00:05:37.920 drunk already after that two-minute clip yeah poor sean he says he was doing the drinking game and

00:05:42.880 he's already too drunk to continue the show so if the remaining clips don't fire it's because sean

00:05:47.280 was doing the drink every time they say hate uh and then we have shawnee paul or chandra lee paul

00:05:55.200 who i i don't know the affiliation or title uh who weighed in as well and again talks about

00:05:59.680 coordinated hate this is scary i'll be honest with you as a member who is a proud queer individual

00:06:09.200 and activist who's been doing this work for days over 30 years now um it is in my experience my

00:06:17.760 personal experience the first of this time that i've seen here in canada of this super broadly

00:06:24.720 and coordinated hate right across the country of this time.

00:06:33.340 We are seeing a set of protests that are all being done simultaneously.

00:06:40.060 They're all being set for 9 a.m. in each of their time zones in every single province

00:06:47.920 of this country in multiple states of these provinces and it is really scary it is extremely

00:06:56.640 similar as to what has been happening in the u.s and we are very very worried about what

00:07:04.400 could be coming next um i am zooming in from takaranto uh otherwise known as toronto the

00:07:11.840 place in the water where the treaties are standing and uh i'm i'm extremely worried about what's

00:07:16.880 and so what what we're seeing is um a a far right extreme response to uh inclusive education

00:07:30.560 oh a far right extreme response that is in addition to the coordinated hate

00:07:37.600 now let's not mince words here what we're talking about are parental rights the protests have been

00:07:45.280 for parents to have more oversight and authority as they've always had and as they're supposed to

00:07:49.840 have over their children's education they're not resisting inclusive education they're not 0.74

00:07:54.960 resisting the fact that trans people are going to be taught in schools that gay people are going to 0.97

00:07:59.040 be taught in schools that they're going to be gay teachers and trans teachers uh they're resisting 0.98

00:08:03.760 the i mean look most of the people on this call are teachers and many of them as you can see on

00:08:08.000 the zoom call they all have the various pronouns in their bio this is already an inclusive education

00:08:14.000 system as evidenced by all of these people on this call who work within the education system.

00:08:20.280 That's the part here that I find so baffling is that they've already basically won. But when in

00:08:26.020 New Brunswick, the premier says, you know what, if a kid wants to change their gender and pronouns

00:08:30.920 at school, maybe we think parents should have a say in that and be able to consent and have to

00:08:35.840 consent. And then similar pushes in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and finally in Ontario, the

00:08:41.520 conservative government that conservatism forgot, or that forgot conservatism, I guess, has also

00:08:46.660 started talking about this with Doug Ford railing against indoctrination, because it is a popular

00:08:52.340 policy. Parents believe they should have autonomy over how their children are raised, that parents

00:08:59.620 are the first, best, and primary educators for their children. And it isn't just about a disagreement,

00:09:06.440 and, oh, we disagree on this part of it, they actually despise.

00:09:10.860 They despise the very people who are raising these issues,

00:09:14.040 who are planning to protest on Wednesday.

00:09:16.440 This is a clip from Emily Quayle.

00:09:18.300 Now, she's been an activist and organizer in Ottawa.

00:09:21.660 She's not a teacher, but she's a graduate student, I believe, at Carleton,

00:09:25.740 and that's why she's a member of CUPE.

00:09:27.760 And just listen to her rhetoric about the protesters

00:09:31.100 that believe in parental rights.

00:09:34.480 The fascists are organizing in the streets.

00:09:36.440 I'm a researcher at Carleton and my focus is fascism in Canada and the signs that I've seen that we're rising that this is far more than just like a far-right transphobic protest. 0.80

00:09:47.680 They are fundamentally racist. They're fundamentally anti-union. They are fundamentally queer and transphobic.

00:09:53.140 And it's just a matter of time before they come to us. 0.72

00:09:55.940 And the only way, the best way that the fascists have been stopped in the last hundred years has been when we unite in massive numbers in the streets. 0.99

00:10:04.240 they're fascists they're fascists they're racist they're fundamentally transphobic now 0.96

00:10:12.260 i actually they're fundamentally racist she said now i actually interviewed a couple of the 0.99

00:10:17.480 fundamentally racist organizers of this protest a couple of weeks ago sean do we have an image

00:10:23.300 from that interview oh my goodness look at how fundamentally racist they look that's the

00:10:29.480 fundamentally racist Kamil al-Sheikh and the fundamentally racist Bahira Abdul Salam. You can

00:10:36.220 see they're just white supremacists, the kind that are Middle Eastern and wear a hijab, that kind of 0.98

00:10:41.340 white supremacists. You may not be familiar with them, but according to the great union activists,

00:10:46.620 these are racist white supremacists because how else could they ever be engaged in the dialogue 0.87

00:10:52.400 around parental rights? And it was interesting. One of the speakers actually spoke about the need 0.98

00:10:57.840 to stand up against oppression in the same way that they stand up against, like, anti-Muslim

00:11:04.080 oppression. And I'm like, you guys are the ones oppressing the Muslims right now. Because when 0.94

00:11:07.740 the Muslim families get up and say, ah, you know what, we love tolerance and diversity and all of

00:11:12.140 that, but maybe we're not too keen on this gender stuff in schools. Now, all of a sudden, they're 1.00

00:11:17.100 lumped in. I mean, the Muslim community must be very confused right now. These people that were 1.00

00:11:21.640 welcomed with open arms by Justin Trudeau seven years ago, and now are being denigrated as, like,

00:11:26.880 white supremacists. And they're like, is this like a mistranslation? No, these people are just

00:11:31.380 absolute lunatics. That's all that's going on here. And if you look at this, I'll share one 1.00

00:11:36.740 more clip for you because it explains why they're so scared. I mean, this whole crisis call that

00:11:42.660 these union folks had a hundred and some odd people gathering. I mean, when union people

00:11:46.820 gather on a weekend, you know, you know, it must be serious business because well, anyway, you get

00:11:51.480 the joke. But this is Vicki Smallman, who talks about why it is that they're so worried.

00:11:57.020 And the disturbing thing I have to say about all of this is while it's really easy to sort of say,

00:12:02.680 well, these are fringe voices, these are, you know, the convoy, you know, writ large, etc.

00:12:09.480 All of it is being validated and platformed and echoed by provincial governments and by the

00:12:16.620 federal conservative party right which offers a bit of a legitimacy and they

00:12:21.120 have decided that it is politically expedient to essentially throw trans 1.00

00:12:28.680 kids families queer families queer people queer workers kids under the bus 1.00

00:12:33.480 in order to win votes I mean we see in Manitoba right now actual bus ads from

00:12:40.140 conservative candidates because they're in a provincial election using parents

00:12:45.600 rights rhetoric as the hook. It's really crappy. Now, I'm not one of these people that believes 0.98

00:12:53.700 that the popular is always the right. You know, something could be popular and wrong. Vaccine

00:12:58.800 mandates are a great example of that. But there's a little bit of an interesting takeaway in what

00:13:03.140 she's saying, which is that they're concerned by how many people disagree with them. They're

00:13:08.200 concerned by how many people are taking up the mantle of parental rights. They're concerned about

00:13:13.780 how common these views are that they're railing against and going to the walls for. And if you

00:13:19.060 look at some of the rhetoric that you've been getting from the NDP, in all honesty, it's

00:13:22.860 actually quite baffling. These people, the hill they're prepared to die on is sex changes for

00:13:27.940 children, which is why the rhetoric against the Conservative Convention and the policy resolution

00:13:32.740 opposing gender affirming care, as they call it for children, was so unhinged. And in this particular

00:13:38.500 case, we're not even talking about anything that is out of the norm of what parents expect. And

00:13:44.700 it's not just conservatives, far rights, white supremacists, racists. It's just normal parents

00:13:49.620 that want to have some level of oversight on what their children are being taught and more

00:13:53.840 importantly, how it's being taught. And when you see a group that includes a lot of teachers

00:13:59.120 gathering together and they're so offended, so offended that parents may want to exercise more

00:14:07.040 authority over educating than they do, that should be a huge red flag. Why do these people think they

00:14:13.300 deserve that much power over what happens with your kids in the classroom? And that I think is

00:14:19.280 the problem here. Now, one thing I'll point out just on a lighter note before we go to our next

00:14:23.880 guest here, our first guest, I guess, is also our next guest, is that all, I mean, this is, I'm just,

00:14:29.500 this is indulgent on my part, so you'll have to bear with me, but we've all had to deal with the

00:14:33.980 land acknowledgements, which are supposed to be a part of Truth and Reconciliation. At union events,

00:14:38.900 I learned that the land acknowledgement is like half of the meeting. Take a look.

00:14:43.060 So with that, I'm going to go to the land acknowledgement, and then I will pass it back

00:14:50.400 so we can start our conversations. Today, because we are joining this meeting from places across

00:14:57.760 indigenous territory. I'd like to begin this acknowledgement by honoring the

00:15:02.840 lands each of us are on, which has been the site of human activity since time

00:15:07.720 immemorial. It is a traditional territory of First Nations, Métis and Inuit

00:15:12.940 peoples from across Turtle Island. I'm attending this meeting from Innisfil in

00:15:17.860 the community of Alcona, which is the traditional land of the Anishinaabeg

00:15:22.000 people. The Anishinaabeg include the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi nations,

00:15:28.780 collectively known as a Council of Three Fires. Please share in the chat the

00:15:35.860 indigenous territories that you are joining this meeting from. But as we

00:15:40.420 gather here today, these nations continue to experience ongoing colonialization

00:15:46.180 and displacement where land acknowledgments are offered in place of

00:15:50.240 land itself this territory is part of the dish with one spoon wampum a treaty made between the

00:15:57.600 Anishinaabe Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee where nations entered into an agreement to protect the

00:16:02.960 land and responsibly care for its resources in harmony together and I think you know that's all

00:16:10.640 very fitting because we all need to be working in harmony as we move forward and as we know

00:16:18.480 you know, our Indigenous peoples have been oppressed for years and years, millennium in time,

00:16:32.880 and we're seeing that oppression again with two-spirited people, with our 2SLGBTQ communities,

00:16:41.200 so coming together at a meeting like this I think is very important, and we're very

00:16:48.000 appreciative of the treaties that are on our lands uh the treaties that we should all be following

00:16:54.320 uh and that we all become uh stewards of our land so with that i'm going to pass it over

00:17:02.320 back over to rob and uh we'll uh

00:17:07.040 that was the longest land acknowledgement i've ever i mean the land acknowledgement lasted longer than

00:17:12.800 confederation has basically up to that point uh which is uh particularly odd because i kind of

00:17:17.520 of thought at virtual events, you didn't have to do the land acknowledgement because you're all

00:17:20.840 gathered. But the loophole there to the Ontario Federation of Labour is everyone has to do their

00:17:25.120 own land acknowledgement in the comment section. So for like the next, if you watch the video for

00:17:29.220 the next half hour, the chat is just like popping up with everyone's land acknowledgement when

00:17:33.700 they've already like moved on like seven topics by then. So the reason I poke fun of those because

00:17:38.840 they're all just theatrical. I mean, they all cloak themselves in this language that has nothing

00:17:44.000 to do with any real problems that exist in the world. And even Indigenous people are often the 1.00

00:17:49.440 ones who call these things empty words more than anything else. But to talk about the more serious

00:17:55.320 point here is that we have parents that are coming together and people in this country from all walks

00:18:01.100 of life, all backgrounds, faith groups, in many cases, political groups. And to these union

00:18:06.500 activist. It's just a far right, convoy 2.0, white supremacist. And at its core, what is it that is 0.94

00:18:14.640 being debated? I'm not saying there aren't different belief systems that exist and different goals and

00:18:20.000 all of that. But for the most part, the call is we want the schools to back off on the aggressive

00:18:26.660 teaching of gender ideology in classes. We want this to be something where parents have the right

00:18:31.540 to tell kids these are contentious issues. There is debate in the medical community, debate in

00:18:36.220 academia, debate in the law. So the idea that teachers should be able to just take this very

00:18:41.960 uber-progressive pro-gender ideology position and teach it in schools without parents having a say

00:18:49.220 is fundamentally wrong. That is what's being discussed here. It's not anti-inclusion. It's

00:18:54.900 pro-parental rights. It's that simple. Jack Fonseca is the political operations director for

00:19:00.440 the Campaign Life Coalition, which has been a supporter of this big event coming up. And he

00:19:05.380 joins me now. Jack, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today. You're welcome. Thanks for

00:19:09.880 having me on. Just to back up here for a moment, I mentioned earlier in passing the Conservative

00:19:14.860 Convention, which I timed very well with this march we have coming up. And a lot of the response

00:19:20.740 we saw to those anti-gender ideology motions being passed were just hysterical from people.

00:19:28.120 Yeah, it was, you know, it came from the left, from the far left, the media and some LGBTQ2S plus activists.

00:19:38.400 But essentially, what those two motions consisted of that passed or those two policy resolutions, I should say,

00:19:45.640 which are now official Conservative Party policy and passed by a very large majority,

00:19:50.000 was that the first one was that basically that the Conservative Party opposes sex changes for

00:19:58.780 children under the age of 18, that we oppose chemical or surgical mutilation of children

00:20:07.540 under the age of 18. And that's just common sense. I mean, kids under 18 can't get a tattoo without

00:20:12.600 the consent of their parents. They can't drive. They can't have sex. They can't get married.

00:20:17.840 You know, so all of this makes sense. Why it would be controversial to anybody to say that a child whose brain, the prefrontal cortex that's responsible for making decisions, which doesn't develop until the early 20s for human beings,

00:20:36.280 um why they should be allowed to to make a decision to cut off uh perfectly healthy body

00:20:43.440 parts or to take puberty puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that are have irreversible

00:20:49.060 damaging effects to the body it's crazy it's crazy that anyone would say yeah yeah that should be

00:20:53.940 totally permitted and then the other uh oh sorry go ahead no i was just going to add to that point

00:20:59.340 and and we have people that are part of this growing and it's quite a heartbreaking group

00:21:03.360 called detransitioners, people that have gone through this because they had enthusiastic

00:21:07.760 doctors or parents when they were children and have lived to regret it because this thing that

00:21:12.120 was driving it was a sense they outgrew when they did reach maturity. Yeah, absolutely. And,

00:21:18.240 you know, the science has always backed that up. Even the American Psychiatric Association in the

00:21:23.900 Diagnostics and Statistics Manual admits that if children are just left alone, by the time they

00:21:32.060 enter into adolescence, they will have 88% of, I believe it was 88% of boys or 88% of girls and

00:21:40.640 up to 95% of boys will no longer persist in the belief or the concern that they're of the opposite

00:21:48.920 sex, that they will outgrow that sexual confusion. And that's if we just leave them alone. And that's

00:21:54.760 from the American Psychiatric Association. So this is fact. This is real science. And what

00:22:01.500 the gender activists, the transgender activists are throwing at our children, indoctrinating kids 1.00

00:22:07.180 in the schools, right in the classroom, as young as kindergarten, five years old. It's absolutely

00:22:12.360 criminal. It is child abuse, telling them that they might be the opposite sex, that they might

00:22:17.720 be trapped in the wrong body, and that they need medical or surgical interventions to be fully

00:22:26.820 human or to be fully who they are that is just child abuse it's crazy to fast forward to the

00:22:33.860 march this week you have communities across the country it started with a couple of muslim

00:22:38.880 organizers but they were very clear they wanted evangelicals and catholics and atheists and jews

00:22:44.800 and anyone that believes in this core message here you know i think for me at its core is that these

00:22:50.620 are very live issues the fact that it was being debated at the conservative convention the fact

00:22:54.940 that there is debate in the medical community, suggests that we're not at the point where we have

00:22:58.880 this universally accepted approach to this issue that can be taught to children in the same way

00:23:04.700 that, you know, one plus one equals two, or the alphabet starts with A and goes to Z can be,

00:23:09.820 right? Yeah, that's right. It's, and this, you know, the fact that there, that this march is

00:23:16.280 happening with close to 100 locations, perhaps it's surpassed 100 locations by now in, I believe

00:23:22.980 it's all of the provinces and one of the territories. And this is going to be huge

00:23:28.280 across the country. It demonstrates that no, the average Canadian and especially parents

00:23:33.100 don't agree. The consensus is not settled by any means. And in fact, it's rejected. The

00:23:39.380 notion that children can declare themselves to be the opposite sex, opposite from their

00:23:45.360 biological reality, it is rejected by parents. And that's going to be borne out in this protest

00:23:51.100 across the country on Wednesday.

00:23:54.560 I don't know if you saw that whole union confab

00:23:57.960 that took place in which all of these labor people

00:24:00.760 got together.

00:24:01.640 I mean, the level of venom they have towards parents

00:24:05.640 really is what it comes down to.

00:24:07.440 It was quite astonishing, not all that surprising.

00:24:09.380 And again, I don't want to say this is representative 1.00

00:24:11.160 of all teachers, but many of these people are teachers.

00:24:14.400 And I really asked the question of

00:24:16.400 why should we not be calling them out?

00:24:20.120 And why are more people not calling them out for believing that they should be the ones that make these decisions?

00:24:25.400 Because that's really what they're saying. They're saying they know better than parents.

00:24:28.600 Yeah. Yeah. You know, schools have become toxic.

00:24:31.020 The truth is the reality of the matter is that our public education system, both public schools and Catholic schools, too, that are government run have become indoctrination centers.

00:24:40.340 They're brainwashing centers. They're run by Marxists.

00:24:43.680 Most of these, you know, there are some good teachers.

00:24:45.620 I know I talk to them privately, the minority of good teachers who don't agree with what's being with the brainwashing that's happening in the schools and they feel alone and they feel, gosh, if I speak out against this anti-scientific nonsense, I'm going to be fired.

00:25:01.900 I'm going to be disciplined. But the problem is that the Marxists who run the colleges that teach the teachers, they are Marxists.

00:25:10.240 They want to fundamentally, they want to undermine Western society, which is built on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and they even want to undermine science and the belief in truth and reality because it serves the Marxist agenda.

00:25:29.100 And unfortunately, you've got young teachers now, the ones who get taught at these teachers' colleges are indoctrinated with this ideology, this transgender and gender fluidity, all of this ideology.

00:25:42.540 They're brainwashed to believe that it's human rights, that they're fighting for civil rights somehow if they're teaching this in the classroom and hiding it from parents.

00:25:51.000 if they're actually helping children to impersonate the opposite sex and use opposite sex names and hide it from the parents,

00:25:58.460 these teachers are being taught that they're doing something good, that they're actually being good people and good teachers.

00:26:06.200 And the opposite is true, that what they're doing is they're participating in child abuse.

00:26:10.460 And the reality is, if you look at what transitioning at school leads to, where, you know, teachers are saying,

00:26:17.460 yeah, okay, we'll hide it from the parents. We'll let Johnny call himself Susie at school

00:26:24.640 and live a double life that's separate to the life that he lives at home. What they're doing

00:26:30.460 is putting children on the path to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and for many of

00:26:35.800 them, gender mutilation surgery, the amputation of perfectly healthy body parts. And I don't want 0.99

00:26:42.100 to skip over the dangers and harms of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. These are not

00:26:46.620 harmless, you know, like taking an Advil. Puberty blockers are extremely dangerous.

00:26:52.180 They're very harmful. They make bones brittle. They bring on osteoporosis.

00:26:57.060 They stunt the growth of children. There's many, many studies that have shown that they produce

00:27:05.360 infertility, so sterilization. Can a child at 10 or 11 or 12 years old when puberty blockers are

00:27:11.320 typically given can they truly understand the decision to become permanently sterile to never

00:27:16.440 be able to have children of course not of course not and um you know dr john whitehall a professor

00:27:23.560 in pediatrics at western sydney university in australia um he he he has cited from his research

00:27:31.240 that while on puberty blockers quote the volume of the brain decreases at 10 times faster than

00:27:37.880 the aging process end quote so you think about that we're putting kids on puberty blockers

00:27:43.800 which causes the volume of their brains to decrease 10 times faster than the natural aging

00:27:49.800 process and then the next step is uh is um hormone therapy cross-sex hormones and you know that is

00:27:58.440 linked to uh all kinds of cancers um you know cancer of the breast prostate um ovaries uh the

00:28:05.480 the vagina, cardiovascular problems, you know, this is, it's really butchery of children. This 1.00

00:28:14.040 is child abuse. It's inhuman. And this is why parents are coming out of the woodwork and joining

00:28:20.000 this Million March for Children to protest this form of child abuse that is happening right in

00:28:27.540 our schools. And which one are you, which one are you going to be at, Jack? I think I'm going to be

00:28:33.420 at the possibly the Kitchener one. Okay, wonderful. Well, they're all over the place. I was seeing

00:28:39.260 this morning on the website, I was looking at the list of them. And I think like, as I refreshed the

00:28:44.040 page 10 minutes later, they had added another one or two of these. So it's going to be large.

00:28:48.060 I know they were using the term million. I don't know if it's going to be a million people. But

00:28:50.940 certainly, if you look at the polling that's been done on this, it's a majority of parents that I

00:28:55.580 think fundamentally align with the policy we're seeing in New Brunswick that we're hearing discussed

00:29:00.300 in Ontario that Manitoba and Saskatchewan are talking about. So definitely this is not the

00:29:05.340 fringe minority, as Justin Trudeau and some of those union folks would have said. Jack Fonseca

00:29:11.100 is the political operations director with the Campaign Life Coalition. Good to talk to you,

00:29:15.420 Jack. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks very much for having me. All right. We'll have a little

00:29:19.880 bit more on this tomorrow and a bit of a postmortem on Wednesday. Some of the marches are going to be

00:29:25.540 going probably still while we're on air on Wednesday. So we'll try to get some of the early

00:29:30.080 footage and talk about that. I won't be out there because I have to be back at the show. So I won't

00:29:35.260 be covering it on the ground. I do want to turn to bread though. I was trying to think of like a

00:29:40.020 witty transition. Well, transition. There we go. We'll transition to bread. There we go. It wasn't

00:29:45.680 like a segue about yeast or dough or anything like that. I was trying to come up with like a

00:29:48.980 clever one, but I couldn't in the interim. But we will talk about the grocery crisis. Now you

00:29:55.080 already know as Canadians that there is a crisis at the grocery stores. You go like we all do. You

00:30:00.700 see the prices on the shelves. You know how they've been going up and up and up. And the government

00:30:05.480 has seen its poll numbers go down, down, down. So the result is simply that, oh, well, we have to

00:30:13.120 find a new bogeyman. So the federal government did the big tough thing. They've summoned all of the

00:30:18.120 grocery executives to Ottawa for a finger wagging, which is taking place right now, believe it or not,

00:30:23.820 about 30 minutes ago. They all started walking in and the media was trying to get them. And

00:30:29.080 oddly, the grocery companies were doing this all wrong. They should have been coming out and

00:30:34.200 chatting with reporters and saying, yeah, this is terrible. We hate this. You should know about all

00:30:38.580 the costs we have to deal with and the carbon tax. But instead, one guy, the head of Costco says no

00:30:44.480 comment. Galen Weston of Loblaw just walks by silently. There was a guy from Metro that stopped

00:30:51.100 and chatted for a little bit and just said, oh, I'm looking forward to a good meeting and an

00:30:54.380 exchange of ideas. The head of Sobeys, I don't think said anything. So these people are letting

00:30:59.300 themselves be portrayed as the villains here, which is what the government wants. This is what

00:31:04.280 Justin Trudeau said when he announced this grand summons. It's not okay that our biggest grocery

00:31:12.120 stores are making record profits while Canadians are struggling to put food on the table.

00:31:18.280 So Minister Champagne will be calling on the heads of large grocers to come to Ottawa

00:31:23.040 with a plan to address the rising cost of food.

00:31:27.640 And we expect to hear from them by Thanksgiving on what their plan is to stabilize prices.

00:31:43.840 And let me be very clear.

00:31:46.180 If their plan doesn't provide real relief for the middle class and people working hard to join it, then we will take further action and we are not ruling anything out, including tax measures.

00:32:01.700 It is not acceptable.

00:32:04.860 It is not acceptable and we will not stand.

00:32:08.960 Oh, well done, sir.

00:32:11.460 Well done.

00:32:12.400 He offered nothing.

00:32:14.480 He said it's terrible and we're bringing them here.

00:32:17.560 It is unacceptable.

00:32:19.720 It is unacceptable.

00:32:21.020 I'm doing my, I can't do it

00:32:22.120 because every time I do a Justin Trudeau impersonation,

00:32:25.620 I can like just feel the testosterone seeping out.

00:32:27.940 And I don't think I have that much to begin with,

00:32:29.380 to be honest.

00:32:29.960 But in any case, we are looking at the landscape here.

00:32:33.960 He's promising unspecified tax measures, tax measures.

00:32:38.440 So just think about that for more than five seconds here.

00:32:43.240 What are those tax measures?

00:32:45.460 Are you going to tax groceries to make groceries cheaper?

00:32:48.660 No, you're going to tax grocery stores. 0.99

00:32:50.920 And what are grocery stores going to do when they have this extra burden that they have to spend on their taxes?

00:32:56.100 They're probably going to pass it on to their consumers.

00:33:00.020 It's easy to look at the corporations and be like, oh, the big profits are scary and evil and all of that.

00:33:05.300 But if you look at the overhead that any business in Canada operating needs to contend with,

00:33:10.560 certainly grocery stores, you are going to see they're dealing with inflationary pressures as

00:33:15.380 well. And they're entitled to make a profit because they are private companies. So the NDP

00:33:20.700 plan, if you look at Jagmeet Singh's proposed law here, is basically that we need to ban

00:33:25.040 grocery store profits and ban price gouging and price fixing. Oh yeah, those things are already

00:33:30.360 illegal. So your proposal to ban price fixing to lower groceries is not going to do anything.

00:33:35.960 You know what they're not talking about? Getting rid of the carbon tax. Maybe they should be.

00:33:40.240 Chris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

00:33:44.160 and our regular Monday contributor starting last week.

00:33:48.160 It's good to have you back, Chris.

00:33:49.160 Thanks for coming on.

00:33:50.280 Thanks for having us on.

00:33:51.780 So, I mean, the elephant in the room here,

00:33:53.600 like the one thing that government is doing,

00:33:55.740 like you can't control what Galen Weston does

00:33:58.120 and what all these other no-name, no pun intended,

00:34:00.960 what these no-name grocery executives do,

00:34:03.260 but you can control what you as the government of Canada do.

00:34:06.660 And hey, you've got this big giant thing that everyone agrees

00:34:08.800 is driving up the cost of groceries. Yeah, for sure. I was watching that press conference last

00:34:14.380 week and just wanting to bang my head against the steering wheel as I was listening to it.

00:34:19.380 Prime Minister, the call is coming from inside the house. Okay, this is on you. Your carbon tax

00:34:27.580 is making groceries cost more. And to break that down, a lot of people will say, oh, well,

00:34:32.920 farmers get an exemption. Yes, they do for their vehicles, but they don't for their barns or for

00:34:40.660 grain drying. Okay. So the very, the parliamentary budget officer themselves has explained that the

00:34:47.620 carbon tax is going to cost Canadian farmers around a billion dollars extra between now and

00:34:55.520 2030. So within the next seven years, Andrew, that's an extra billion dollars of cost. And

00:35:01.180 And that's because, of course, they use natural gas and propane to dry their grain.

00:35:05.720 They also use natural gas and propane to heat their barns.

00:35:09.900 So all those chickens and pigs and cows that need to survive the Canadian winter, guess

00:35:15.900 what?

00:35:16.900 They live in heated barns and we eat and use them all the time.

00:35:21.620 And then, of course, it's the truckers who are bringing the groceries from the farm to

00:35:26.620 the stores.

00:35:27.780 then it's the stores themselves that have to keep the lights on, and quite often that's using

00:35:31.980 natural gas. And so it's very clear that the carbon tax, Trudeau's carbon tax, makes stuff

00:35:38.680 cost more, including groceries. And to hear him float this idea of a tax measure is just

00:35:45.220 mind-boggling because taxes make things cost more. And this reminds me, that was that old

00:35:52.160 Reagan quote remember what is it if it moves tax it if it stops moving regulate it like if it stops

00:35:58.540 moving subsidize it and I think if it keeps moving regulate exactly like there are some ideological

00:36:04.800 politicians that just think more government is the answer and in this case it just certainly is not

00:36:11.020 yeah and look I'm not going to look at Galen Weston and say that he is lily white in this

00:36:15.820 I mean a lot of corporate executives have to be very ruthless and they are making a lot of money

00:36:20.400 on this, but they're also doing what the system requires and allows, which is to make money. And

00:36:25.660 the profits have not actually increased as much as the government likes to claim that it is,

00:36:31.340 because the reality is it's their costs as well that are increasing. They're dealing with any

00:36:35.900 inflationary pressures that exist outside of the grocery stores. It's not like everything has

00:36:41.260 stayed the same and then boom, the retail cost has been jacked up because of inflation.

00:36:45.400 Exactly. There's no magical supplier that these people are using. We all get them from the same sources and from the same places. They don't have an inflation free store that these planners and these folks get to go to. And yeah, think about it. What we just watched was a handful of people go into a building. Are we really to believe that it's these handful of people that are maniacally making food cost more? Are we older than 12 years old?

00:37:13.280 We all know how these systems work, or at least we should. And the idea that we have a government now that's been in power for eight years, and by the way, they've got ministers, they've got deputy ministers, they've got staff who are supposed to know the basic economics of this stuff.

00:37:30.300 for them to turn around and just use this as a scapegoat when it's they who are largely causing

00:37:36.320 this problem also due to inflation because they've been printing money. Remember, the Trudeau

00:37:41.860 government printed $300 billion out of thin air. That is going to make inflation much, much worse,

00:37:49.600 which of course increases the cost of food. And so we can all see them. We should all know this.

00:37:55.320 It reminds me of Dr. Thomas Sowell, who, by the way, is still with us. He's 93, Andrew, and just put out his latest book. He recommends asking three questions of a politician or bureaucrat who comes up with a great new idea, like a grocery tax or regulating the price of groceries.

00:38:15.080 He says you should ask three questions. You should ask at what cost, compared to what, and what evidence do you have? This fails on all three of those questions.

00:38:27.380 we've heard some ridiculous ideas that are likely to be bandied about by the government

00:38:33.140 because they're going to grocery stores and saying you need to come up with a solution by 0.56

00:38:36.900 thanksgiving so they should basically just announce a sale on turkeys and say that's our

00:38:41.320 plan we've marked down turkeys 20 so canadians can have their thanksgiving dinner and then tell

00:38:46.240 the government to a pound salt i mean a pound of salt might be too expensive now but the thing that

00:38:51.040 i would point out is that there are going to be ridiculous ideas like jagmeet singh's whole thing

00:38:55.140 of pass a law to lower prices.

00:38:56.820 You basically have to either legally cap prices,

00:39:00.720 which does not solve the problem at all.

00:39:03.580 And, or you have to do something insane

00:39:06.060 like nationalizing a grocery store

00:39:08.420 or creating a national one,

00:39:10.740 like basically just bringing back the bread line.

00:39:12.580 You know, it's been out of vogue for the last 30 years,

00:39:14.260 but we can bring back the bread line.

00:39:16.100 The Soviets have nothing on Trudeau's Canada.

00:39:18.300 Like, I don't know what other options

00:39:20.100 are on the table, really.

00:39:21.700 I've heard that language and it's scary.

00:39:25.140 It's scary. They shouldn't even be thinking about those sorts of things. Ask anyone who lived in the Soviet Union or in one of those Eastern Bloc countries what it's like to line up for onions and bread.

00:39:38.280 I have a friend who lived in the Soviet Union, and they used to take a train for nine hours in one direction with these large oilcloth sacks on their backs, Andrew, to gather sausages because they were so salty and so full of spices that they wouldn't have to be refrigerated.

00:39:55.800 They had to do this just to get meat.

00:39:57.900 This was in the 80s.

00:39:59.700 This was not back in the 1950s.

00:40:02.240 And this is because they were controlling the price of food.

00:40:05.880 We mustn't do this. Just to give people an example, think of what the government controls in your life right now. The healthcare system, the passport office, things called Service Canada, etc. Do you get awesome prices and great service at those places? No?

00:40:22.660 Well, you probably don't want them controlling the cost and price of your food and the stores

00:40:28.380 where you can buy your food. That's a really bad idea. And a grocery tax is a super bad idea.

00:40:36.200 What needs to happen here is the government needs to climb down. They need to realize,

00:40:41.820 okay, we had the best of intentions to help the environment or give them whatever out they need,

00:40:46.660 but it isn't working. We realize now, we didn't mean to, we realize now we're making food costs

00:40:52.980 go up. So we're going to scrap these carbon taxes and use technology to help clean the air

00:40:58.160 and help the environment. That's what needs to happen here. Egos need to be checked and they

00:41:03.120 need to make a better decision. We've spoken about the carbon tax, which is obviously a big

00:41:07.900 one. The other one that no political party in Canada will touch is supply management, which

00:41:12.340 I know tends to anger my rural Ontario audience, but I'm sorry, generally speaking, no one outside

00:41:18.560 of dairy farmers supports supply management. Canadians have to pay for it. It is something

00:41:23.400 that the government would have to deal with the transition of pretty significantly. You have to

00:41:28.200 buy back a quota that farmers have in good faith purchased and spent a lot of money on. But also

00:41:34.140 So this is driving up the cost very much in a very easily calculated way of milk, of eggs,

00:41:42.100 of poultry to some extent.

00:41:44.100 And this is something the government could do.

00:41:46.120 And to be honest, I'm actually amazed the liberals have not taken up the supply management

00:41:50.480 cause because for them, they don't really lose votes like the conservatives do, because

00:41:54.160 let's face it, they're not winning in farm country as it is.

00:41:57.340 That's a great point.

00:41:58.380 And anytime you start getting into people's food and how it is supplied and what kind

00:42:03.300 of food they can get here in Canada, you get into some really choppy waters. I'll put it this way.

00:42:09.340 This government doesn't seem to do homework, complexity, and nuance well. They just seem to

00:42:16.860 kind of reach for goals that they think are attainable, and all that stuff in the middle

00:42:22.200 is just going to take care of itself. If you started looking at something as heavy and complex

00:42:27.340 and long-lasting as supply management, you're going to have your best and brightest in the room,

00:42:31.780 and it's going to take years.

00:42:33.900 I don't see that happening with this government.

00:42:35.940 It's more like you said at the top of this,

00:42:38.240 the easy bogeyman, the easy photo op.

00:42:41.240 And yeah, to your point, folks,

00:42:43.520 if you're running a massive corporation,

00:42:46.260 like a major grocery store chain,

00:42:48.420 you need to get some media training because-

00:42:51.060 Oh yeah, no, if you saw that,

00:42:52.520 like they blew this.

00:42:54.260 They should have been the nice guys

00:42:55.920 and been like, yeah, this is, we agree.

00:42:58.180 This is terrible.

00:42:59.160 You should know all the things that we're doing.

00:43:01.000 And this is what we need the government to do.

00:43:02.820 Instead, when they just walk by without blinking, it lets the government framing of them stick.

00:43:09.420 Yeah, it makes them look like the bad guy.

00:43:11.360 And hey, I'm not a grocery expert.

00:43:13.060 I don't work for a grocery store, but I am pretty good at media.

00:43:16.660 And you shouldn't do that.

00:43:18.260 You should be more open.

00:43:19.740 You should be more forthright.

00:43:21.120 You should say something like, I last saw an economist say that the grocery portion,

00:43:26.080 the grocery portion, mind you, of their profit is around 3%.

00:43:29.740 so not including the add-ons like the frying pan that you're impulse buying because you forgot to

00:43:34.920 get some earlier or the pharmacy element just the groceries they should have had a really easy stat

00:43:40.240 like that like three percent right on the top of their head and say you know what we're here to

00:43:44.920 help we're making about this amount but we're gonna listen real hard and you know we'll let

00:43:49.820 you know how it goes that took 15 seconds yeah no very well said chris sims alberta director

00:43:57.240 for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:43:59.560 Always good to talk to you.

00:44:00.520 We will see you next Monday.

00:44:01.980 You betcha.

00:44:02.880 All right.

00:44:03.320 Thanks very much.

00:44:04.180 That does it for us for today.

00:44:06.160 We'll be back in just, what, I don't know,

00:44:08.160 23 hours and 15 minutes

00:44:09.940 with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:44:12.460 Make sure to check out donate.tnc.news

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00:44:18.660 And if you are in Alberta

00:44:19.860 or you are willing to travel to have a good time,

00:44:22.780 we are hosting our first ever live in-person event

00:44:25.740 on Saturday, October 21st in Calgary.

00:44:28.880 It is called True North Nation.

00:44:31.520 I'm going to be there.

00:44:32.460 Rupa Subramania is going to be there.

00:44:34.240 Harrison Faulkner, Rachel Emanuel,

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00:44:39.320 You won't want to miss that.

00:44:40.380 It's going to be a lot of fun.

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00:44:44.500 But if it doesn't work,

00:44:45.560 you'll have wanted to be at this one

00:44:46.780 just so you had your chance and didn't miss it.

00:44:48.800 But I hope to see you there.

00:44:50.200 We will talk to you tomorrow.

00:44:51.300 Thank you.

00:44:51.760 God bless and good day to you all.

00:44:53.400 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:56.780 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:23.400 We'll be right back.

Juno News - September 18, 2023

Unions declare war on parental rights protest

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