Juno News - January 01, 2021


What does 2021 have in store for True North？

Topics
travel and government hypocrisy True North interviews
Mentioned
Andrew Lawton Show Justin Trudeau Candace Malcolm Douglas Murray Doug Ford Chrystia Freeland Andrew Scheer Pierre Poilievre Rod Phillips Conrad Black Barbara Kay Ben Shapiro Rex Murphy Dave Rubin Joe Biden Joe Rogan Borat
The Year of the Hypocrite The hypocrisy of Canada's politicians

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

195.42

Word count

4,034

Sentence count

222

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I chat with my friend and colleague, Candice Malcolm, who has been a key member of the True North team for the past decade. We talk about the challenges of covering the Global Flu Pandemic, and how the team has managed to stay on the front lines of the crisis.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:06.340 Everyone has turned 2020, I think, very deservedly into a punchline.
00:00:10.660 It's been a very bad year in a lot of ways.
00:00:13.140 But for people in media, the silver lining has been there's been no shortage of things to talk about.
00:00:18.180 So for True North, it's been certainly a busy year and I'd say a challenging year like it has been for everyone.
00:00:23.820 But there's also been a lot that we have done.
00:00:25.860 So I wanted to take this opportunity as we are nearing the end of the year here in the next day or so to chat with my friend and colleague, Candice Malcolm,
00:00:34.080 who I will say, despite all of the love and adoration I get from my viewers here,
00:00:39.280 the one question I always get is, you're great, your show's great, but where's Candice been?
00:00:42.980 So, Candice, thanks for coming. Where have you been?
00:00:45.500 Well, first, Andrew, thank you so much. Merry Christmas.
00:00:48.040 I hope you had a wonderful holiday and same to all of your viewers.
00:00:51.920 Yeah, so I've been sort of under the radar for the last few weeks.
00:00:56.060 I had a baby in November and so I've been taking the time to spend time with my family and focus on the newborn and the family.
00:01:05.640 So I've been away a little, but luckily we did a whole bunch of sort of pre-recorded content.
00:01:10.680 So we released a documentary. We had the speaker series.
00:01:13.760 We were doing a lot and hopefully I'll be back in no time at all in the new year to produce new content.
00:01:21.920 Well, I know everyone is very happy for you.
00:01:24.940 I know certainly everyone on the True North team, myself included, is very much.
00:01:29.140 But let's talk about how this year has been because I remember at the very beginning of the pandemic when no one knew what was going on.
00:01:36.640 We were seeing these terrible stories coming out of China and then Iran and then Italy.
00:01:41.240 And you and I, I think with the whole team, really said, OK, we need to be on the front lines of this.
00:01:46.840 We know the mainstream media often gets things wrong.
00:01:49.160 And we did, I remember the daily True North update shows.
00:01:52.700 We were watching Justin Trudeau's daily press conferences so our viewers didn't have to and talking about what was happening.
00:01:59.460 And, you know, it was interesting when we first started doing that.
00:02:03.000 I don't think you or I had any idea.
00:02:05.320 I certainly didn't have any idea that that would still be the story of the day 10 months later.
00:02:11.080 Oh, absolutely not.
00:02:11.960 I mean, it was sort of one of those bizarre things where the narrative was constantly shifting, constantly changing.
00:02:18.040 I remember at the very beginning of the pandemic when it was sort of more conservatives that were arguing in favor of wearing face masks.
00:02:25.020 And so that was so that we wouldn't have to shut down the entire economy.
00:02:28.000 The idea was like, you know, if we just take a few precautions like social distancing and not wearing face masks, then we can keep the economy open and keep going.
00:02:37.040 And now, you know, because of the sort of changing message and the much more, I would say, draconian tone behind some of these demands, you know,
00:02:45.460 you see more and more conservatives opposing things like like wearing face masks.
00:02:49.920 But we've come a very long way, Andrew.
00:02:52.000 And looking back at those early days, you know, it was it was really frightening, really concerning watching the government sort of just go back and forth, contradicting itself, flip flopping, you know, changing its mind.
00:03:05.140 And it was sort of like a bizarro world, the idea which we live through again during the U.S. federal election, where you had a liberal like Joe Biden saying that he would have done better than Trump did in shutting down the economy faster.
00:03:21.880 Well, you know, doesn't take too much of a memory to look back and think, hey, it was January when Trump shut flights down from China.
00:03:29.660 And Trudeau refused to do that. And, you know, it wasn't until three months later that Canada took any measures to lock down travel.
00:03:36.760 So, you know, we've had we've had a crazy year in terms of the government messaging and the things that we've been told, the back and forth.
00:03:43.700 I think I think trust in institutions like the government and like the media is at an all time low just from just from my perception.
00:03:52.760 I don't know if there's any polling that backs that up, Andrew, but I think that really this idea that we need to trust experts when those experts are just constantly changing their mind is ridiculous.
00:04:04.260 And I think that in that it has created an opportunity for independent journalists like you and I at True North, because, you know, we're not so obsessed with with parroting the talking points and and enforcing this idea that that every expert must be correct.
00:04:19.920 And we must, you know, turn off our minds and just listen to whatever the edict is of the day will know, you know, there still needs to be scrutiny.
00:04:28.080 There still needs to be questioning just because someone's an expert doesn't necessarily mean that they know any better when it comes to, you know, a mysterious virus from China.
00:04:36.440 And I think a lot of people are just completely fed up and sick of these of these orders that we're getting without necessarily the evidence and the data backing it up.
00:04:48.800 There's a clip from the original Borat movie that I just remembered, and I haven't thought of that movie since it came out, you know, 10 or 12 or however many years ago, when Borat is at the United Nations and he's just completely making a fool of himself doing things that make no sense.
00:05:05.020 And they keep cutting to the expert panel on TV, where people who pretend to know exactly what he's doing talk about, oh, well, why he's doing this is because this and why he's doing this.
00:05:15.180 And there's been a lot of that in the pandemic where we are all in unprecedented territory.
00:05:19.660 No one knew what we were dealing with.
00:05:21.880 No one knew the implications of it.
00:05:23.360 But you take people that are paid to have an opinion.
00:05:25.980 They're paid to say things.
00:05:26.880 And I say this knowing full well what I do for a living, but I don't pretend to have the answers if I don't.
00:05:32.180 And that's the problem that we have.
00:05:33.680 And this was something that True North started looking at long before COVID came along, which was the sort of expert industrial complex.
00:05:42.480 But this year, I really think that the circumstances have established why it's so dangerous to really cede everything to rule by experts.
00:05:51.020 Absolutely, Andrew.
00:05:52.160 And there's just some questions that beg being asked.
00:05:55.120 I mean, when the virus first came out, you know, the epicenter was a basically unknown large city, large industrial city in China called Wuhan.
00:06:05.120 No one had really ever heard of Wuhan before.
00:06:07.420 It was hardly ever mentioned in the media.
00:06:10.400 One of the interesting things about Wuhan is it is the home to China's biological warfare labs. 0.97
00:06:16.600 And I remember raising that question just sort of, you know, kind of almost not casually, but just without having a lot of evidence connecting it, but just saying, hey, look, this is the center of China's biological labs.
00:06:31.400 Why isn't that being dug into? Why isn't that being questioned?
00:06:34.460 And merely just for raising that question and making that observation, I started getting, you know, hit pieces written about me and people calling me a conspiracy theorist and sort of having this backlash against me just for just for asking the question.
00:06:49.060 And, you know, last time I checked, the role of a journalist is to ask questions, sometimes uncomfortable questions, and sometimes the questions that you ask don't lead anywhere, and sometimes they do.
00:06:58.600 But the idea that you shouldn't be able to ask certain questions, it just seems so out of line to me.
00:07:04.040 And I think that that, again, really has been center in this entire COVID pandemic, all the government lockdowns, is that, you know, we're not really supposed to question the orders that are coming down.
00:07:16.340 And yet, Andrew, as you know, sometimes they just make such little sense.
00:07:20.980 And when you have so much on the line, you know, a small business owner, a restaurant owner, anybody who earns their living by going out into the world, and governments taking that livelihood away from them, it's incredibly serious.
00:07:33.700 And, you know, it deserves pushback and scrutiny.
00:07:36.680 I think, to me, one of the most disappointing things that's happened this year, and, you know, Justin Trudeau has been awful, but we expect that at this point.
00:07:45.180 I've been really disappointed in Doug Ford and the sort of hysterical tone that has been taken.
00:07:51.460 I mean, you know, the biggest story right now, and I know you've been talking about it on your show, is with the minister, Rod Phillips, being down in St. Barts.
00:08:00.120 And, you know, the reaction to that from Doug Ford himself has been so over the top.
00:08:05.480 I mean, yes, obviously, it's a contradiction when a politician is traveling after telling you and I not to travel.
00:08:12.360 But if the government was really serious about a rule that we're not allowed to travel, why haven't they shut down the airports?
00:08:18.240 Why are there still flights going in and out of Pearson, Toronto, daily?
00:08:22.320 I mean, I'm down in the Bahamas right now.
00:08:24.400 I've been down here for some time.
00:08:26.140 And I know there's daily flights that are coming in and out.
00:08:29.280 So if the government truly does believe it's beyond the pale and terrible to get on an airplane and travel, why haven't they shut down the flights?
00:08:38.160 Why haven't they shut down the airports?
00:08:39.280 It doesn't make any sense.
00:08:40.600 So, you know, we're in a situation where you're allowed to travel.
00:08:43.560 It's not against the law.
00:08:44.780 There are flights going in and out.
00:08:46.480 And yet, somehow, when you do it, it's this horrible offense.
00:08:51.140 I don't understand.
00:08:53.820 Yeah, and this was the point I raised earlier in the show, which is that I'm very much pro-travel, but I'm anti-hypocrisy.
00:09:00.560 And when you have the government, on one hand, saying, don't go anywhere, make it the year of the Ontario staycation.
00:09:06.420 And then, on the other hand, you know, buggering off to St. Barts and then not wanting to disclose where he was or when he was coming back and that sort of stuff.
00:09:14.880 I'm, you know, very much in team, let's try to live our lives.
00:09:17.400 And, you know, the reality is the politicians who keep talking about how dangerous things are in Canada right now,
00:09:24.140 they shouldn't blame people that are going to vacation destinations that, in many cases, have fewer cases than exist in Ontario.
00:09:31.080 So, I mean, that's the other irony of this, is that if someone is not breaking the law, they've made a decision,
00:09:36.420 they're comfortable with the risk, which always exists when you travel, then I would say have at it.
00:09:41.340 But this year, you are bang on that we are not supposed to ask the questions this year,
00:09:46.020 whether it was Paddy Hajdu telling people that they were feeding conspiracies if they asked about China's numbers,
00:09:51.900 people calling you a conspiracy theorist for talking about or asking about, rather, the biology lab,
00:09:57.680 and even with politicians' conduct.
00:09:59.560 I mean, this idea that politicians have put forward is that we're all supposed to be a united front,
00:10:04.520 which, sure, may well be true, but that doesn't mean that you have to accept without scrutiny
00:10:09.640 and without skepticism guidance from people that have demonstrably been getting it wrong.
00:10:15.120 Well, and Paddy Hajdu is another example of someone who also was traveling all over the West Street North,
00:10:20.240 broke the story of how many places...
00:10:21.040 And the media outrage, nowhere nearly as strong as it was on her.
00:10:24.060 Right, and same with when she was caught in an airport not wearing a mask.
00:10:27.340 Well, supposedly there was a bag somewhere that was full of food, and so she was exempt from that role.
00:10:32.040 But, you know, when it was happening to Andrew Scheer, there was no such exemption.
00:10:36.200 And look, yeah, for my case, you know, one of the reasons that we decided to come down to the Bahamas
00:10:42.900 was to get away from Ontario and the crazy governance up there, the hospitals that are full, the mismanagement.
00:10:49.520 You know, like I said, I had a baby, and my experiences going to the doctor's offices and the hospitals in Toronto
00:10:55.980 were pretty outrageous, just given how slow everything was, how much they made you wait,
00:11:00.880 how long everything took, you know, how kind of quickly they'd rush you in and out of services.
00:11:06.680 You know, the whole idea behind having a universal health care system is so that supposedly everyone gets good care,
00:11:12.520 but it really felt like they were skimping out and not giving the care that I needed and that I demand.
00:11:19.840 And, you know, one of the other things is that being locked down in a cold climate isn't very fun,
00:11:25.840 especially with little kids.
00:11:26.720 So I think it's a great idea to go somewhere where you can be outside, where you can get fresh air,
00:11:32.400 you can get vitamin D.
00:11:33.900 And then as far as the whole government approach, I just think it's truly outrageous,
00:11:40.480 the idea that we're supposed to just say yes to everything and go along without question,
00:11:46.500 especially, Andrew, when there's such a strong ideological component behind it.
00:11:51.500 And I'm talking about Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland and the whole Green Reset bragging about the idea that this is an opportunity
00:11:59.120 to somehow, you know, change our economy and move away from the driving forces of our economy,
00:12:06.680 which are our energy and fossil fuel.
00:12:09.240 There is an ideological component.
00:12:10.500 They're trying to, you know, do whatever they said, a great reset to produce some kind of a green utopian economy,
00:12:19.100 which is totally ridiculous and unfeasible, as anyone who's looked into some of the technologies that they're talking about knows.
00:12:27.180 And we focused on that very thoroughly in the Green Hypocrisy documentary series, Andrew.
00:12:32.100 But, you know, of course, Canadians should question and, of course, Canadians should push back against the rhetoric
00:12:37.540 and against often really, really contradictory, hypocritical positions that the government has been forcing upon us.
00:12:48.000 Yeah, and I do think the Green Hypocrisy documentary is great for two reasons. 0.92
00:12:52.880 Well, for many reasons, but two chiefly right now.
00:12:55.440 One of them is that it was putting a lot of these issues into a greater perspective in a way
00:13:00.960 that I even think an environmentalist would appreciate.
00:13:03.680 If you're someone that cares about the environment, you care about climate,
00:13:06.680 you might not agree with everything that was in that series,
00:13:09.320 but you would very much agree that what government's doing isn't really dealing with the problems they say they're dealing with.
00:13:15.000 And the other part is that for us, this year had its challenges.
00:13:18.640 I know True North had a lot of projects that we wanted to do.
00:13:21.060 I personally did that we just couldn't do this year because of the pandemic.
00:13:24.780 And travel restrictions and other things.
00:13:26.940 So it was really great for us to be able to produce a big, significant project like that that really resonated with people.
00:13:33.980 Yeah, well, thank you, Andrew.
00:13:34.940 I know we did have other plans and they included, you know, we were supposed to do an entire across Canada tour.
00:13:41.720 You and I were going to be traveling.
00:13:43.260 We had Douglas Murray, the British author and thinker.
00:13:46.420 He had already had his flights booked and we had this whole thing planned.
00:13:49.260 And of course, we had to postpone that, potentially cancel that because of COVID and the restrictions and the uncertainty of it all.
00:13:57.540 But I think that we still had a very strong year.
00:14:00.380 I think that to me that the big things that stuck out were, you know, the launching of the Independent Press Gallery,
00:14:07.100 which you were a large part of, our inaugural event, which was supposed to be a debate among all the conservative candidates.
00:14:12.700 And, you know, we sort of dealt with the circumstances.
00:14:15.860 You were on the ground last minute and turned that into really a wonderful fireside chat event.
00:14:21.860 And that was really the highlight of the year, Andrew.
00:14:24.240 And I give you all the kudos in the world for that.
00:14:26.720 But we did a lot of other things.
00:14:28.260 I think that the speaker series was really fun.
00:14:30.720 I did a lot of really, really compelling interviews.
00:14:34.240 I sat down with Rex Murphy, Pierre Polyev, you know, Conrad Black, Barbara Kay, Dave Rubin.
00:14:41.420 There was a lot of really big names.
00:14:42.980 Douglas Murray.
00:14:44.320 I thought that was great.
00:14:45.440 Maxine Bernier as well.
00:14:46.640 We did a good interview.
00:14:47.920 And then the Green Hypocrisy. 0.94
00:14:49.320 And I think that it shows, you know, how we were able to sort of pivot, how we were able to, you know, change what we were focused on.
00:14:58.300 Because the idea of doing live events wasn't possible.
00:15:01.100 So we started doing a lot more interviews, a lot more Zoom events, you know, testing out the different technologies.
00:15:07.920 And I think we found some successes that were going to carry on into the new year.
00:15:11.920 Yeah, very much so.
00:15:13.060 And I appreciate the kind words about the fireside chat.
00:15:15.560 I don't know if I would, like, relive that day again.
00:15:17.640 But it was still, in the end, one that we can be very happy and very proud of.
00:15:21.480 And even in general, the conservative leadership race, I think, is a point of pride.
00:15:25.420 Because so often these things are covered through the mainstream media's lens and really in mainstream media terms and context.
00:15:34.520 And for us to actually provide a conservative, small-c conservative approach to the issues at stake in the leadership was something that was just completely absent from that race.
00:15:44.080 And, I mean, you and I have joked about it in the past, that live stream that we did of the results show that was supposed to be, I think it was, you know, supposed to be like 45 minutes and ended up being over eight hours.
00:15:53.940 Again, another day that I wouldn't relive, but we can still be proud of.
00:15:57.380 So there was a lot of room for the perspective that we bring and the analysis that we bring.
00:16:03.300 What do you want to do with that in 2021?
00:16:04.780 Well, I think that we're going to build off the successes that we've had.
00:16:09.180 You know, you give a great example with the leadership race.
00:16:11.520 I think a lot of Canadians just discovered True North and realized, oh, wow, I don't have to watch, you know, the party that I vote for, the party that I care about, through the lens of the CBC, where they demonize everything and they make it seem controversial just to hold very basic conservative values or Christian values or family values.
00:16:29.100 So we provided that alternative. And again, just growing off of that, I know we have a lot more sort of hard-hitting interviews, other documentary series we're looking to expand.
00:16:41.100 We've still got our investigative journalism team. We're digging out new stories, putting pressure on politicians in Ottawa in ways that the mainstream media just doesn't, the parliamentary press gallery.
00:16:53.400 We're sort of challenging them. I mean, the idea that they have complete reign over Ottawa and that no one else has any right to ask questions.
00:17:02.080 We're challenging that not just through True North, but also through the independent press gallery, the idea that journalists can get accredited without being part of that establishment media, that sort of dying breed of big, big corporations running these media companies.
00:17:18.320 I think we saw a bit of a preview, Andrew, of what's possible during the US election, where, you know, big, big, you know, high-paid journalists on CNN didn't have the influence that they used to.
00:17:32.120 You saw the rise of a lot of independent journalists, a lot of independent outlets outshining the mainstream media.
00:17:38.320 You know, more people get their news from Joe Rogan and his podcast on Spotify or Ben Shapiro and his Daily Wire show on YouTube than do, you know, watch the mainstream media.
00:17:50.520 And I think that that same thing is possible in Canada and we're, you know, carving the path towards that.
00:17:56.300 So I think we've got a lot of really exciting projects and ideas and a lot of momentum that we're going to carry on into 2021.
00:18:04.160 Yeah, very much so. And a lot of the things that I wanted to do in 2020, I haven't forgotten about.
00:18:08.840 We just had to move them back. So maybe I'll have twice as much on my plate this year.
00:18:13.160 Who knows? But you know what? It's all fun stuff and I love doing it.
00:18:15.940 And I'm so grateful still that you founded True North and continue to see this organization through all of the different turns and pitfalls and highs and lows of 2020 and beyond.
00:18:26.380 So, Candace, thank you very much. Congratulations again on the lovely new baby.
00:18:30.640 And thank you for coming on and giving us an update on what's happening for you and for the organization.
00:18:36.200 Well, thank you so much. You know, I think family is just so important and I'm enjoying every moment of staying home with my with my baby and focusing on that right now.
00:18:45.900 But I haven't forgotten about True North, Andrew.
00:18:48.360 And, you know, I just want to quickly say to the viewers, you know, it was it was a really uncertain year.
00:18:54.640 There was really a lot of people losing their job, losing their livelihood, and we didn't really know what was going to happen with True North.
00:19:00.980 We paused all of our donation attempts. We we stopped fundraising because we just didn't feel right asking people for money.
00:19:07.480 We instead encouraged everyone to donate to their local food bank.
00:19:10.520 We even created a map for Canadians to find their closest food bank so that they could go and volunteer and donate and help.
00:19:17.440 And I was just sort of floored, you know, once the economy sort of started to open back up again in the summer, we started doing our donation pitches again.
00:19:27.080 And I was just floored by the support and generosity of our viewers, of our fans out there, because, you know, really, they're the ones that keep us going, Andrew.
00:19:36.520 And it was like they appreciated what we were doing more than ever.
00:19:39.540 And we actually saw increases in the amount of money that we were making, which helped us, you know, hire new journalists and do new projects.
00:19:46.820 So I really just want to say thank you so much to everyone watching, everyone who supports our work and helps keep independent journalists and journalism alive in Canada.
00:19:58.300 It's so needed. It's so important.
00:20:00.440 And again, we've got a lot more in store for the new year.
00:20:03.980 And Andrew, I know, you know, when I'm away, you're doing a lot more.
00:20:07.260 You're covering a lot of the editing and overseeing the team and the work and everything.
00:20:12.340 So thank you so much for the work that you do.
00:20:14.640 You're really, really a core part of truth.
00:20:16.760 We would never have the success that we did without all your work.
00:20:19.860 So thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for that.
00:20:23.740 Well, thank you.
00:20:24.280 And I certainly echo that gratitude to the viewers.
00:20:26.940 Thanks very much, Candice, and happy new year to you and the family.
00:20:29.500 Thank you.
00:20:30.060 Thank you.
00:20:31.180 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:20:33.100 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.