Juno News - Where’s the Accountability？ (feat. Pierre Poilievre)

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

00:00:06.740 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.120 Coming up, Conservative finance critic Pierre Polyev on the We Scandal.

00:00:17.300 An exciting initiative for the Conservative leadership race and for press freedom.

00:00:21.580 And also, cancelled culture takes another victim.

00:00:24.260 Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:36.560 Midweek edition here. It is Wednesday and we are going to put the we in Wednesday.

00:00:42.120 I've been waiting since Monday to use that joke and I finally get to now.

00:00:46.100 You know, Justin Trudeau put out his daily itinerary for Wednesday and it was private meetings.

00:00:50.920 So no public itinerary, no public announcements, no press conferences, no media avail.

00:00:56.340 And all I could think of is, you know, how it looked like the we, the W and the E were capitalized in Wednesday.

00:01:01.760 But I digress. I'm going like full QAnon conspiracy theory on this.

00:01:06.020 In any case, the scandal is continuing to balloon and this is a big problem right now.

00:01:11.380 We know that Justin Trudeau was giving a multi-million dollar contract,

00:01:15.780 almost worth a billion dollars of government money under the control of a charity that has been paying his buddies

00:01:22.520 and his family members and all that stuff.

00:01:25.180 And then Justin Trudeau finally apologized.

00:01:28.180 Now this comes after being rather unrepentant last week.

00:01:31.620 He said he made a mistake.

00:01:33.380 He did the wrong thing.

00:01:34.800 He should have recused himself from the discussions.

00:01:37.300 This is what he said on Monday.

00:01:39.160 This morning, I know people want to hear more about the Canada Student Service Grant Program in particular.

00:01:45.900 I know there are many questions and problems with the way this program has run out, run about.

00:01:51.680 And I know people have concerns about it.

00:01:54.600 I get that.

00:01:55.920 I made a mistake in not recusing myself immediately from the discussions given our family's history.

00:02:04.220 And I'm sincerely sorry about not having done that.

00:02:07.760 Now there are two options here.

00:02:09.560 It's either better late than never or too little too late.

00:02:12.880 And I'm going to probably side with too little too late

00:02:16.200 because of how Justin Trudeau and the Prime Minister's office were talking about this last week

00:02:21.040 by saying, listen, it's only about serving children.

00:02:24.020 It's not about who benefited.

00:02:25.500 They had an option to clean this up weeks ago.

00:02:27.820 They had an option to clean it up last week and they didn't.

00:02:30.620 So I don't think we can really give them too much credit for doing the right thing

00:02:34.700 if it's coming after attempting to deflect and muddle and muddy the discussion for several days.

00:02:40.720 That's my take on this.

00:02:42.500 And now we have another development of this in the National Post

00:02:45.820 that it was the Trudeau government itself that organized and contributed over $1 million

00:02:51.160 to a We Day event in 2017, during which the post says,

00:02:56.960 we likely gave some of that money to Margaret Trudeau to speak.

00:03:00.960 Now, I don't think this is that, you know, this was orchestrated by the PMO.

00:03:04.600 I don't think it's that, you know, they said,

00:03:06.460 all right, we're going to invite you guys to Ottawa.

00:03:08.540 We're going to pay you, but you have to invite my mom to speak.

00:03:11.640 That's the rule.

00:03:12.240 No, but I think it shows the deep and intricately linked ties that exist between we and the government,

00:03:21.160 the longstanding ties, financial and familial.

00:03:24.560 And it really reinforces the question of why on earth did Trudeau think that it was his right

00:03:28.660 to not recuse himself from this discussion?

00:03:31.460 Why did Bill Morneau not think that as well?

00:03:33.700 And by the way, Seamus O'Regan and Katie Telford,

00:03:36.840 also two very high-ranking liberals, one in cabinet, one in the PMO,

00:03:40.700 also have fundraised hundreds of thousands of dollars for we.

00:03:44.720 We found this out last week as well.

00:03:47.260 So all of this is coming to a head right now.

00:03:50.060 And as a taxpaying Canadian, I think most people are looking at this and saying,

00:03:53.680 like, what?

00:03:55.560 You could not get away with this in any other sector.

00:03:58.980 You could not get away with it in any other space.

00:04:00.840 But this is what passes for integrity in Justin Trudeau's government.

00:04:05.260 And look, Mary Dawson, who's the former ethics commissioner,

00:04:08.040 says she's fairly certain that he's going to have been found to have contravened the rules.

00:04:13.400 But I would look at, again, Mary Dawson's thing and say, look, she may be right.

00:04:18.240 But this reinforces why it is so dangerous right now that we have an ethics regime

00:04:22.600 that has absolutely no teeth.

00:04:24.900 It'll cost him 500 bucks.

00:04:26.880 He can cover it by doing just a five-minute speech for we.

00:04:30.320 And that will be enough.

00:04:31.820 And that makes it go away.

00:04:32.860 There's no real remedy that the ethics commissioner can force.

00:04:37.360 And more importantly, there's no real punishment for breaking the rules.

00:04:40.660 Even if you are, as Justin Trudeau is when it comes to federal ethics rules, a repeat offender.

00:04:46.840 So the conservatives on the Finance Committee are calling Justin Trudeau to the committee to testify.

00:04:52.140 This is what the conservatives are trying to seek here.

00:04:55.040 Pierre Paliyev is the conservative finance critic and a member of parliament.

00:04:58.720 He joins us on the line now.

00:05:00.560 Pierre, good to talk to you.

00:05:01.400 Thanks for coming on today.

00:05:02.860 Good to be with you.

00:05:04.360 So let's talk about, I mean, there are a lot of aspects to this.

00:05:08.200 I mean, I made a comment on the show the other day that I think we should be getting a bulk

00:05:11.760 discount on ethics investigations.

00:05:13.500 But we're talking about a situation here that I think is continuously rearing its head,

00:05:20.040 which is just a fundamental disrespect for the federal ethics laws and just, I'd say,

00:05:25.020 for political integrity in general.

00:05:28.340 I agree with you.

00:05:29.480 I think the problem we have here is that the prime minister thinks he's a king.

00:05:38.100 He has been told his whole life that he's a prince.

00:05:40.980 And princes and kings often don't think that the rules of the realm apply to them.

00:05:49.320 So he would probably subconsciously anyway say, yes, normally it would be unethical for a prime minister to direct a billion dollar sole source contract to a group that had paid his family 300 grand.

00:06:04.540 But I'm not, I'm no mere mortal.

00:06:08.820 I'm not a normal prime minister.

00:06:10.960 I'm a prince and a king.

00:06:12.960 And I can do whatever I want.

00:06:14.940 I think that is the prime minister's personal sentiment.

00:06:19.180 I think that's how he views the world.

00:06:21.820 And the media, the mainstream media on Parliament Hill, not the media out in the real world, but those around him in the precinct,

00:06:30.760 reinforced that notion.

00:06:31.900 And they were doing everything they could during the pandemic to treat him as though he was a king who would come out of his castle

00:06:39.920 and grace us all with his presence daily, giving declarations and edicts for us all to follow.

00:06:49.480 And that even questioning his conduct was completely, almost treasonous.

00:06:55.280 And I think through that experience, he started to think that he could just do anything he wanted.

00:07:00.760 And he did.

00:07:02.640 And when you mentioned questioning, the Conservatives have now tried to get him before the Finance Committee to answer questions.

00:07:10.080 I mean, there are two aspects of this.

00:07:11.800 Number one, how likely do you think it is that that'll happen?

00:07:14.320 And number two, what is it that you can really get out of this?

00:07:17.320 I mean, it does seem plain as day what happened.

00:07:20.060 What more is there that you think we need to learn?

00:07:22.020 Well, we want to know where this idea came from.

00:07:26.720 I mean, he continually claims that the public service concocted this scheme.

00:07:31.700 Andrew, I used to be the minister responsible for employment and training.

00:07:37.820 And I can tell you there's no way the bureaucracy in that department would have concocted this idea.

00:07:43.160 It just doesn't make any sense, especially given that the purported purpose of the program is to pay young people

00:07:51.860 to help charities and non-for-profits.

00:07:55.480 But there's already a program that does that.

00:07:57.600 It's called the Canada Summer Jobs Program.

00:08:00.380 In fact, the amounts that they subsidize hourly wages is similar to what Trudeau proposes with this new scheme.

00:08:09.740 So, in other words, it's basically a duplication of something already done within the public service.

00:08:16.920 I would be stunned if public servants, knowing that, and they do, would have recommended farming the program out that they already run inside.

00:08:26.140 And so, I believe that we need to find out where this idea originated.

00:08:31.780 And I suspect that what we will find as we follow the breadcrumbs is that it was the Trudeau, the Team Trudeau, the elites around him,

00:08:41.220 and those who stood to profit from this transaction, who concocted it, rather than public servants.

00:08:48.880 You mentioned something interesting there about the pre-existing program.

00:08:52.700 If you were to take out the Trudeau-We connections and all of the connections between Bill Morneau and We and Seamus O'Regan and We

00:09:00.220 and take out all of those things, does it seem like it was just a bad program in general?

00:09:05.560 I mean, or something that was unnecessary, even if you take out the conflicts of interest?

00:09:09.840 Oh, absolutely. It's a ridiculous concept. 0.91

00:09:12.880 I mean, you know, Orwell warns us that whenever governments abuse language, they're probably abusing other things at the same time. 0.52

00:09:21.180 And to start with, he calls it a paid volunteer program.

00:09:24.860 Well, that's impossible.

00:09:26.440 I mean, you can't, you can't, you can either be paid or you can volunteer, but you can't be paid to volunteer.

00:09:32.320 If you're paid, then you're not, by definition, a volunteer.

00:09:36.100 Then it's a summer job, a la Canada summer jobs program.

00:09:38.940 Exactly. It's a summer job.

00:09:40.320 Now, they needed to invent a new name, though, in order to justify a new program.

00:09:45.700 And that was the only reason why this program, why this name was created.

00:09:51.800 They would have loved to just say it's a summer job program.

00:09:54.920 But if they did that, then they wouldn't have been able to justify creating a separate billion dollar sole source contract.

00:10:00.920 Everyone would have said, well, why wouldn't you just use the program that already goes by that name?

00:10:06.020 So whenever you see language that is abused, you'll see other abuses.

00:10:12.020 You know, the other thing, Andrew, I would point out is that so often with these scandals, they result from governments doing things that they have no business doing in the first place.

00:10:23.460 Right. Like the sponsorship program, you know, was it really justified for any government to be putting advertised, advertorials and advertisements up at these events all over a particular province?

00:10:38.560 No, not really. That's not the role of government.

00:10:41.080 A billion dollar gun registry.

00:10:42.600 Well, I mean, even if it had cost one dollar, it was something the government should not have been doing.

00:10:47.560 And here again, we have government interfering with the charitable sector to effectively corrupt the very meaning of a benevolent word like volunteer.

00:10:58.640 Again, not the role of government.

00:11:01.240 And so whenever governments venture outside of their core purpose, they tend to attract corruption or perhaps it's the other way around.

00:11:11.180 Perhaps corruption attracts government outside of its core mandate.

00:11:16.440 Yeah, that's a really great point on this.

00:11:19.040 And, you know, I'm all for finding ways that we can, you know, perhaps download the bureaucracy's responsibilities and find private sector delivery of services.

00:11:27.280 But that doesn't seem at all like what this was.

00:11:29.580 This was really just expanding the bureaucracy to a group that wouldn't even have the accountability.

00:11:34.760 You're absolutely right.

00:11:35.740 And this is something we always have to watch out for.

00:11:38.400 You know, this happens again and again.

00:11:40.460 And we as conservatives, we say, look, let's remove government and allow either the private sector or the societal sectors like charity and philanthropy to replace it.

00:11:52.520 And then what happened?

00:11:53.760 But we have to be careful that we don't get the opposite of what we are looking for.

00:11:57.400 So instead of, in this case, instead of vacating the space, the government vacating the space so that the volunteer and charitable sector could fill it, they tried to nationalize the volunteer and charitable sector.

00:12:13.300 And instead of expanding the role of society and shrinking the role of government, they did exactly the opposite.

00:12:21.320 And we see this, for example, with the infrastructure bank.

00:12:24.420 We'd all we'd all like to see more private sector investment in infrastructure.

00:12:29.340 But with the infrastructure bank, what they're doing is the opposite.

00:12:32.060 They're taking things that are already privately financed and nationalizing the risk.

00:12:36.700 So it's we have to be very careful to watch the real meaning of words and actions to determine if government is, in fact, just grabbing more power and controlling more and more of our lives.

00:12:50.960 I mentioned earlier on in the show, one of the big problems is that our ethics infrastructure that we have for investigating and pursuing these doesn't really have any teeth.

00:13:00.700 And we know this because Justin Trudeau has been found to have violated this multiple times and other parts of his government as well.

00:13:07.080 What do you think needs to be done to reform the ethics and conflict of interest process so that there's actually some heft behind it when they go after lawmakers that have broken the rules?

00:13:17.180 Well, listen, I think that the problem with the previous violations is that the police didn't do the job and we have law enforcement for to to apply the criminal code.

00:13:33.120 In the case of the Aga Khan Island, the police simply just didn't do the job.

00:13:37.240 There are provisions in the criminal code that ban government officials from accepting benefits from entities that are that are seeking assistance from government.

00:13:50.100 And so in the case of the Aga Khan Billionaire Island vacation, Trudeau took two hundred thousand dollars of vacations from someone asking him personally for a 15 million dollar grant.

00:14:04.280 That's a criminal code violation.

00:14:06.360 That the RCMP doesn't disagree with me on that, by the way.

00:14:10.920 We wrote them, they wrote back and they didn't say, you know, no, he didn't break the law.

00:14:14.540 We found exculpatory evidence.

00:14:16.620 They said, no, we can't productively pursue an investigation.

00:14:19.400 Those are the words that the letter said.

00:14:21.520 So what the hell does that mean?

00:14:23.020 You can't productively pursue an investigation where you were you stopped?

00:14:26.540 Did someone in the government block you from doing your job?

00:14:30.320 You know, so in other words, the RCMP did not do its job.

00:14:34.920 And frankly, if the Mounties felt they were implicated in that scandal, they should have just referred it to a different police force to do an independent criminal investigation.

00:14:45.500 And so and I think maybe that's what the Mounties are going to have to do in this case.

00:14:50.780 Just simply say we're too close to the prime minister.

00:14:53.660 The cabinet appoints the RCMP commissioner.

00:14:57.460 Maybe the Mounties ought to simply redirect the complaint to the OPP, the QPP, the Ottawa Police Service or some other police entity that is not compromised by prime ministerial power.

00:15:11.240 So do you think the police should be involved in this situation as well, then, just to be absolutely clear?

00:15:16.280 I do.

00:15:16.760 I don't I'm not saying I haven't concluded that there was a criminal code breach.

00:15:21.600 I'm neither a police officer nor a judge.

00:15:24.680 So I don't have the and I know we don't all we don't have all the facts yet.

00:15:29.140 But I certainly think that the police should examine whether or not there was a breach of trust, whether or not the prime minister considered the payment to his family to be an inducement, you know, that motivated him to create this extremely unusual contract.

00:15:50.420 And and and so there should be a high level inspector investigator with a police force go in, establish all of the facts and determine whether or not the criminal code applies.

00:16:02.840 Just turning before we wrap things up here to the broader financial state of Canada right now, we found out last week a deficit over three hundred and forty billion dollars.

00:16:13.880 I know that a lot of that was inevitable, just given government forcing people to shut down their businesses.

00:16:19.080 So you have to have a bit of relief there.

00:16:21.480 How much of that do you think was avoidable, though?

00:16:24.240 I mean, I mean, I know that you've been critical, as has the leader of the Conservatives right now, Andrew Scheer, about a lot of the programs and how they were delivered.

00:16:31.800 Do you think that we could have had an even smaller deficit?

00:16:36.260 Oh, there's no doubt we should have gone into this with a balanced budget from 2016 until 2019.

00:16:44.160 The world economy was hot.

00:16:46.940 And for for some of that time, not all of it, some of that time, commodity prices were high and the U.S. economy, which we have the privilege of neighboring, was on fire.

00:16:59.000 And therefore, we had all the winds blowing at our backs.

00:17:03.540 And there's no reason we ought not to balance the budget in that time period.

00:17:08.400 If we had, then the balance going in would have been strong.

00:17:12.200 The deficit would have been smaller.

00:17:13.780 And the debt load we carry, total debt load, would have been about 80 or 90 billion dollars smaller than it is right now.

00:17:21.080 The other thing I would point out is that the programs that are designed to respond to COVID have serious anti-growth, anti-work attributes.

00:17:32.720 Like if you're on this CERB program, you go back and earn more than $1,000.

00:17:37.100 They kick you from the CERB to the curb.

00:17:39.260 So a lot of workers are saying that they can't go back to work and they can't earn money for 16 weeks.

00:17:46.520 We should remove that anti-work penalty, let people earn more than $1,000 and let them phase out their CERB as they earn more with their jobs.

00:17:55.300 Same with the rent and wage subsidies.

00:17:57.960 Both of them require businesses keep their revenues down 30 or in some cases 70 percent below pre-COVID levels.

00:18:06.920 So that requires businesses to artificially suppress revenues in order to get government support.

00:18:14.300 They should remove that and make those scalable programs so businesses are always better off with an extra sale or an extra dollar of revenue.

00:18:22.680 Those kinds of pro-growth policies would allow businesses and workers to recover.

00:18:27.960 It would reduce dependence on government and increase the taxes that businesses and workers pay under the existing rates.

00:18:38.240 And so we need a pro-growth agenda now.

00:18:41.560 We cannot set the government and the Bank of Canada cannot simply pay the wages of the nation forever.

00:18:46.920 And I guess that just in closing, we know there's a conservative leadership race on right now.

00:18:52.180 The election could be theoretically at any point in the next couple of years.

00:18:56.560 What do you think the conservatives moving forward need to do, either in running for an election or even if they form government, to get the books in check?

00:19:04.820 I mean, because obviously you have to close that deficit somehow.

00:19:07.740 You don't want to raise revenues by increasing taxes and certainly cutting spending is going to be something that will unleash the mass of criticism that conservatives are so accustomed to.

00:19:18.180 What's the what's the answer there?

00:19:19.400 Well, I think we need a pro-growth free market agenda that will unleash the economy.

00:19:25.920 We have, you know, trillions of dollars of natural resources locked beneath the ground because of anti-development legislation like C-69, C-48.

00:19:38.080 We have a tax system that punishes work and business earnings.

00:19:44.160 We have some of the slowest approvals for normal economic activity.

00:19:50.560 It takes almost three times longer to get a warehouse approved for construction in Canada as it does in the United States.

00:19:57.220 Just as one example, we need to remove all of those those obstacles to unleash the full power of free enterprise that will generate the wealth necessary to phase out our deficit over time.

00:20:12.320 And make our enable our people to carry the enormous debt load that governments have thrust upon them.

00:20:23.200 Conservative finance critic Pierre Paulyev joining me on the line.

00:20:26.360 Pierre, thanks so much for coming on today.

00:20:27.900 Great to talk to you.

00:20:28.700 Yeah, great to be with you, Andrew.

00:20:29.800 Thank you very much.

00:20:31.100 We've got to take a break.

00:20:32.080 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:20:36.280 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:20:42.320 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:20:44.900 You know, we've been talking about coronavirus alarmism and the We Scandal and what else alarmism have we been talking about?

00:20:52.540 We've been talking about cancel culture alarmism.

00:20:54.820 We have a bit more on that later.

00:20:56.260 We haven't talked about the climate change alarmism in quite a while.

00:20:59.400 And I think it's time we do because of this little music video of sorts, commercial, I don't even know what you want to call it, put out by Burger King, which is I know not the place you go to for your intellectual public policy stimulation.

00:21:12.460 But nonetheless, Burger King is wading into the climate change global warming fight with this cow farts and burps are no laughing matter.

00:21:21.100 They say they release methane contributing to climate change.

00:21:24.600 That's why we are working to change our cows diet by adding lemongrass to reduce their emissions by approximately 30%.

00:21:31.700 And then you get this video.

00:21:33.780 When cows fart and burp and splatter, well, an anal laughing matter, they're releasing methane every time they do. 1.00

00:21:44.420 And that methane from the rear goes up to the atmosphere and pollutes our planet warming me and you.

00:21:53.560 You know how at the height of the Dixie Chicks scandal, when they had criticized George Bush, someone had told them to shut up and sing.

00:22:14.200 This is the opposite of that.

00:22:15.760 This is stop singing and just cook burgers.

00:22:17.840 And by the way, I know I look like I ate a lot of fast food.

00:22:19.880 I don't.

00:22:20.560 But when I have, I'm never really going to Burger King.

00:22:23.460 I'm not a fan of their burgers.

00:22:24.960 So maybe just, you know, bow out altogether.

00:22:26.860 But it is interesting when the people who are vilified by the climate crusaders decide that they want to be on the woke side.

00:22:34.860 They want to be on the cool side and capitulate to them.

00:22:37.420 Except they don't seem to realize that all of the critics see them as the problem.

00:22:42.980 So people that go on about bovine flatulence being the greatest menace to society since, you know, the incandescent light bulb or something.

00:22:50.760 They just think we should all be vegans.

00:22:53.100 This is what Joaquin Phoenix talks about when he goes and speaks.

00:22:56.340 This is what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks. 0.97

00:22:58.960 This is what all of these PETA activists try to say.

00:23:01.760 You know, maybe if they can't get us to eschew meat on humanitarian grounds, we can do it on global warming grounds.

00:23:07.980 So with the exception of the fact that the video is spectacularly bad, and I think that's intentional, they're doing what, you know, the David Suzuki Foundation loves to do and all of these other environmental groups, which is put a cute kid out front so you can't be mad at them.

00:23:21.660 Because if a kid's telling you to do something, you're not going to be like, oh, you know, go shut your mouth.

00:23:26.300 This is the whole Greta Thunberg dilemma.

00:23:28.900 By the way, has anyone heard anything of Greta Thunberg as of late?

00:23:32.860 The one thing that coronavirus has done is sidelined the jet-setting climate crusaders.

00:23:38.900 So Greta Thunberg, who I have no personal ill will or animus to, she has had nothing to do because everyone's been preoccupied.

00:23:46.020 So the media fawning over her has at least been put on hold for now.

00:23:50.780 But the alarmists love to put a child out front.

00:23:54.200 And, you know, the interesting thing is they would love nothing more than for people to not eat meat.

00:24:00.260 This is the whole point.

00:24:01.480 And I take the view on this that there is going to be a natural cycle of things.

00:24:07.760 We know that people are going to eat meat.

00:24:09.780 We know that cows have to get out that gas somehow.

00:24:13.300 This is not enough of a reason, I think, to sell to people stop eating it.

00:24:18.080 So as far as what Burger King is doing, listen, if there's an organic, and I don't mean that as far as organic food is concerned,

00:24:24.800 but organic is, in other words, like a way that you can do this without a radical change by putting lemongrass in cows' diets, then fine.

00:24:33.400 I mean, I like lemongrass in Asian cuisine.

00:24:35.120 I mean, if Burger King wants to do a lemongrass burger patty, for example, I might give it a try if it seems to be unique or seems to be tasty.

00:24:43.060 But it's fine.

00:24:44.080 It's the idea of trying to win over a side that's never going to be all that fond of what you're doing.

00:24:51.780 And I think that's what's happening here.

00:24:53.240 And, you know, we had gone a little bit without having to hear about how we're all destroying the planet.

00:24:58.880 And now it seems like we're getting back to that now.

00:25:01.840 So everyone's going to be talking about destruction.

00:25:05.100 We've got to take a break.

00:25:05.860 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:25:08.700 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:15.140 We are back on The Andrew Lawton Show, and we have a very exciting announcement for you.

00:25:20.180 Two weeks from today, there is going to be another debate among the Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidates.

00:25:27.120 All four, Leslyn Lewis, Peter McKay, Aaron O'Toole, Derek Sloan, they're all going to be there in Toronto broadcast live.

00:25:35.180 True North is going to be carrying it, and yours truly is going to be one of the moderators for the debate.

00:25:41.080 Now, this is a really exciting initiative, and it's one being pushed by the Independent Press Gallery of Canada.

00:25:47.280 Now, the Independent Press Gallery is a new organization that's meant to be a counterbalance to the closed-off and, quite frankly, inaccessible and unfree parliamentary press gallery.

00:26:00.280 The monopoly that has allowed the government to bar independent media, including, again, yours truly, from covering elections, from covering the work of government, from covering federal election debates, all of these things.

00:26:13.740 So, Candace Malcolm, who's my boss and friend here at True North, is now the president of the Independent Press Gallery.

00:26:20.800 She's pushed this initiative forward, and I think it's a fantastic one.

00:26:24.280 I'm not involved in any leadership role in it.

00:26:26.620 I'm just an aspiring member of the Independent Press Gallery, and I was very grateful to have the opportunity to be co-moderating the debate alongside Candace in just a couple of weeks,

00:26:38.260 and very grateful that all four candidates agreed to come.

00:26:41.200 This debate is something that is so desperately needed.

00:26:45.120 I've been covering the Conservative leadership race since the beginning, actually, since even before the race began.

00:26:51.260 And the questions that the mainstream media asks about it, the coverage that the mainstream media gives, is not really relevant to small-c Conservatives in Canada.

00:27:00.900 If you look at the official debate that the Conservative Party did,

00:27:04.080 all of the questions that the media were asking afterwards in the scrums were about abortion and systemic racism.

00:27:09.940 That was it.

00:27:10.920 And those, quite frankly, aren't the issues that most Conservatives care about, aren't the issues that most Conservatives are talking about,

00:27:16.960 and aren't the issues that the leadership candidates wanted to be talking about.

00:27:20.340 So our goal in this debate is to actually ask the questions that matter to Conservative Canadians, and to all Canadians,

00:27:27.300 and actually asking questions that are putting a perspective forward and inviting a perspective and a dialogue that the mainstream media isn't doing.

00:27:35.600 So it's going to be absolutely fantastic.

00:27:37.380 I want you to mark your calendars for it.

00:27:39.320 July 29th, 2020.

00:27:41.800 It's going to be streamed at independentpressgallery.ca,

00:27:45.100 and we'll also have links here at True North for you to access it,

00:27:48.560 and there may even be an opportunity for you to submit a question.

00:27:51.720 We'll have more on that later.

00:27:53.060 But I wanted to put a plug in because this is going to be an absolutely great initiative,

00:27:56.560 and I'm so honoured and pleased to be a part of it.

00:27:58.980 And it's coming up very quickly.

00:28:00.500 I know a lot of Conservative Party of Canada members have already gotten their ballots in the mail.

00:28:05.640 Many people may have, if they already knew who they were voting for, returned them already.

00:28:09.640 But the whole point is, for people that are undecided,

00:28:11.780 we want to give yet another opportunity, and I'd say an even better one,

00:28:16.020 to figure out where the candidates stand, how they stack up against one another, and all that jazz.

00:28:21.580 So that's all coming up pretty soon.

00:28:23.280 Just very briefly here, every now and then you get a story that you just wonder how on earth it happens.

00:28:30.340 And this particular story comes from Midland today, in the town of Midland, Ontario,

00:28:35.820 where a bit of a sex scandal has embroiled the municipality,

00:28:39.940 specifically the city council or town council of Midland,

00:28:43.840 Carol McGinn may lose 15 days of pay because of conflict of interest allegations.

00:28:49.700 The integrity commissioner investigated her conduct after complaints were made against her by the deputy mayor.

00:28:55.860 And basically, the question comes down to whether she was using resources for the town-employed spouse.

00:29:04.860 She is in a long-term, permanent, intimate relationship with a unionized employee of the town

00:29:11.160 who could potentially be impacted by the town's decisions.

00:29:14.580 This is what the report said.

00:29:16.440 Now, Councillor McGinn says she didn't think there was a pecuniary interest.

00:29:20.160 She didn't think that there was any reason that there would be a conflict here.

00:29:24.060 But then it gets a little bit odd because she says that the reason she didn't think it was a problem

00:29:30.180 is because this partner wasn't her main spouse, but rather her polyamorous secondary spouse.

00:29:37.360 This is kind of a fun one here.

00:29:39.260 The respondent's position states that she is polyamorous, does not, in our view,

00:29:44.440 alter our finding that her domestic partner is her spouse under both the code and the MCIA.

00:29:51.240 That's the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.

00:29:54.200 And then it goes on.

00:29:55.080 The report states she advises that they do live together.

00:29:58.160 However, he doesn't always sleep at home, nor does she.

00:30:01.180 And although they are life-intimate and life-sexual partners,

00:30:04.000 she is polyamorous, gender-fluid, and pansexual.

00:30:07.260 They are not spouses, unquote.

00:30:09.820 So now we have, like, everything being redefined, people being cancelled, all this confusion.

00:30:14.920 And now we can't even accept that the word spouse has a solid meaning

00:30:18.280 because if you are a polyamorous, gender-fluid, and pansexual zitty counsellor, 0.50

00:30:22.480 well, that might be your wiggle room.

00:30:23.920 Not that kind of wiggle room.

00:30:25.500 But that might be your wiggle room to get out of it and say,

00:30:27.360 oh, no, no, no, it wasn't that spouse.

00:30:28.940 It was the other one.

00:30:30.220 Oh, boy.

00:30:31.040 All right.

00:30:31.540 When we come back, a final wrap-up of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:30:35.540 Stay tuned.

00:30:40.060 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:30:42.700 Welcome back.

00:30:47.860 This is kind of a fun story here from The New York Post.

00:30:50.980 Teens are dressing up as mask-wearing grandmas to score alcohol.

00:30:55.960 Yeah, I didn't think that it was too difficult to find alcohol,

00:30:58.800 but I guess in the United States, when the drinking age is 21,

00:31:01.480 you've got to work a little hard on it sometimes.

00:31:04.100 So a new TikTok trend has emerged

00:31:06.340 where teenagers are dressing up in grandmotherly clothes,

00:31:09.760 putting a mask on so you can't see their young face,

00:31:13.080 and then going to the liquor store

00:31:14.400 and buying a bottle of whatever it is that the kids these days drink.

00:31:18.080 A couple of different photos here.

00:31:19.700 I know you can see them on the screen.

00:31:21.240 It's actually quite impressive.

00:31:22.800 I reward points for effort.

00:31:26.140 You know, in fact, when I was underage,

00:31:28.180 there were only a couple of occasions

00:31:29.640 that I tried to, like, sneak alcohol from the store.

00:31:31.840 And in both cases, what I did was just buy a gift bag.

00:31:34.880 I mean, I liked nicer stuff anyway, so it was okay.

00:31:37.120 I was a bit of a, you know, an alcohol diva from a young age.

00:31:40.040 So when I was there, I'd buy a gift bag

00:31:42.080 and, you know, put on a collared shirt,

00:31:43.500 and they never ID'd.

00:31:45.140 I never had to use a fake because I was never actually carded.

00:31:47.900 But again, I also quit while I was ahead.

00:31:50.020 So the pandemic has opened up that door

00:31:52.220 because everyone has to be masked.

00:31:53.700 You can just put on a wig,

00:31:55.620 put on your grandmotherly clothes,

00:31:57.200 cover your face, and no one is any the wiser.

00:31:59.960 And you can see in one case there,

00:32:01.420 it looks like the teen on the left in the baggy white shirt

00:32:03.680 is doing a celebratory dance

00:32:05.840 after getting away with buying a bottle of...

00:32:08.360 I'm trying to see what it is in the bag there

00:32:10.360 that Grandma's wearing.

00:32:11.740 Is it like a cider?

00:32:12.640 It's like a really bright can.

00:32:14.080 So I feel like if you were to work at a liquor store

00:32:16.480 and Grandma's buying, you know,

00:32:17.860 a bright pink can of cider,

00:32:19.860 maybe you should ask a couple of extra questions

00:32:22.320 just to see.

00:32:23.520 But you know what?

00:32:24.340 As I said, points for effort.

00:32:26.620 Kids are nothing if not ingenious

00:32:28.480 when it comes to finding ways

00:32:29.960 to get around the bans on buying alcohol

00:32:34.240 and all that jazz.

00:32:35.580 This is something really, really unfortunate.

00:32:39.200 And, you know, it's easy when we're talking

00:32:40.760 about cancel culture

00:32:41.740 to be happy when the left is cannibalizing itself

00:32:45.120 and be happy that, you know,

00:32:47.180 that schadenfreude term,

00:32:48.420 delight in the suffering of others.

00:32:49.740 But I don't because I think that culturally

00:32:51.760 we're all worse off in the end when this happens.

00:32:54.300 And here's an example this week

00:32:56.440 when an ostensible liberal commentator,

00:32:59.440 a center liberal commentator and columnist,

00:33:02.020 Barry Weiss,

00:33:02.940 has had to leave the New York Times

00:33:05.040 because of a profoundly negative turn

00:33:08.660 where the New York Times

00:33:09.720 is no longer interested in being the paper of record,

00:33:13.360 but they're more interested in capitulating

00:33:15.100 to the woke brigade on Twitter.

00:33:18.200 And Barry Weiss, who's quite accomplished,

00:33:20.080 and I've actually been a fan of her work,

00:33:21.520 even if I don't agree with her on everything,

00:33:23.460 has resigned.

00:33:24.800 She issued an open letter

00:33:26.380 talking about her gratitude and optimism

00:33:28.860 when she was hired three years ago.

00:33:30.900 She said that, you know,

00:33:32.000 there's a lot of work that the Times had to do

00:33:34.440 to basically reach out to other perspectives,

00:33:38.020 centrists, conservatives,

00:33:39.160 and others who would not naturally think

00:33:40.760 of the Times as their home.

00:33:43.200 And she said she was proud of that effort.

00:33:45.240 However, Twitter is not on the masthead

00:33:48.200 of the New York Times,

00:33:49.340 but Twitter has become its ultimate editor.

00:33:52.020 Weiss writes,

00:33:53.480 as the ethics and mores of that platform

00:33:55.580 has become those of the paper,

00:33:57.180 the paper itself has become increasingly

00:33:59.980 a kind of performance space.

00:34:02.880 Stories are chosen and told in a way

00:34:04.660 to satisfy the narrowest of audience

00:34:06.760 rather than to allow a curious public

00:34:09.460 to read about the world

00:34:10.440 and then draw their own conclusions.

00:34:12.780 I was always taught that journalists

00:34:14.720 were charged with writing

00:34:15.840 the first rough draft of history.

00:34:17.560 Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing

00:34:20.580 molded to fit the needs

00:34:21.840 of a predetermined narrative.

00:34:24.140 She goes on,

00:34:24.980 and I think everyone needs to read this

00:34:26.420 at her website, barryweiss.com,

00:34:28.400 but she goes on to talk about how

00:34:29.820 she's been called a Nazi and a racist, 0.88

00:34:32.560 and despite the fact that she herself is Jewish, 0.76

00:34:35.180 she's been talked about the fact

00:34:36.400 that her colleagues have openly demeaned her

00:34:38.620 and mocked her

00:34:39.740 just because she is guilty of wrong things.

00:34:42.700 She's not aligning with the woke narrative

00:34:45.280 that is supposed to have been adopted

00:34:47.160 by everyone on the left now,

00:34:48.920 and in the same way that a lot of other people

00:34:51.160 who are like J.K. Rowling on the left

00:34:53.920 and in alignment with the left

00:34:55.000 but might not go 100% of the way,

00:34:57.860 they are now canceled.

00:34:59.920 Now, I had someone the other day

00:35:01.420 after Monday's show

00:35:02.840 accuse me of using the word woke too often 1.00

00:35:05.520 and saying it's a stupid word, 0.99

00:35:06.820 and there was like one segment last week 1.00

00:35:08.800 where I used the term woke like,

00:35:11.080 I think it was like nine or 10 times

00:35:12.600 in the span of a few minutes.

00:35:13.900 This show I've used it,

00:35:14.920 I think I just used it

00:35:15.720 my third reference right now.

00:35:17.080 The whole point of the word woke,

00:35:19.620 I don't actually support the word.

00:35:21.960 I use it because it's kind of a mocking way

00:35:24.700 of talking about this culture

00:35:26.540 that the left has done.

00:35:27.700 Woke is kind of like hip

00:35:29.420 but to social justice things.

00:35:31.460 I had to explain, believe it or not,

00:35:32.920 I had to explain the word woke

00:35:33.980 to my boomer parents the other day.

00:35:36.080 Lovely people,

00:35:37.060 but it's very difficult

00:35:37.900 to explain something to them 0.97

00:35:39.100 that you find ridiculous and absurd 0.94

00:35:40.680 and to try to explain it in a way 0.94

00:35:42.740 where you're not just like rolling your eyes 1.00

00:35:44.320 and talking about how stupid it is. 1.00

00:35:45.920 So I did my best 1.00

00:35:46.780 and that was what I came up with.

00:35:48.120 It's like hip to social justice things,

00:35:50.600 aware to whatever

00:35:51.600 the social justice narrative is.

00:35:53.720 But the great thing about it

00:35:54.740 is that people on the left

00:35:55.740 use it in a supportive way,

00:35:57.480 people on the right use it

00:35:58.620 in a pejorative way,

00:36:00.760 and the word itself

00:36:01.740 still has the same meaning.

00:36:03.360 But Barry Weiss's crime,

00:36:04.960 like Jonathan Kaye's,

00:36:06.460 like J.K. Rowling's,

00:36:07.720 is that they don't go 100% of the way

00:36:10.200 and the direction they're supposed to.

00:36:11.980 So then they face the cancel mob.

00:36:14.780 And the fact that,

00:36:16.400 you know,

00:36:16.640 say what you will about the New York Times,

00:36:18.200 but the New York Times

00:36:18.920 didn't used to be

00:36:20.080 this terrified space.

00:36:22.660 And remember what happened

00:36:23.820 when they ran a column

00:36:25.720 from a United States senator.

00:36:27.380 There was a mutiny afoot

00:36:29.000 in the editorial department

00:36:30.560 as though you're not supposed

00:36:31.980 to use comment pages and columns

00:36:34.080 to express differing perspectives.

00:36:36.580 And even the publishing industry.

00:36:38.640 Publishing has always been a space

00:36:40.100 where you can publish radical ideas,

00:36:42.340 very controversial ideas,

00:36:43.640 and everyone has to just,

00:36:45.080 you know,

00:36:45.380 accept that this is the work of publishing.

00:36:47.700 And now editors are saying,

00:36:49.140 I won't work on this book.

00:36:50.220 People that are, you know,

00:36:51.200 just copy staff are saying,

00:36:52.780 I'm not going to work on this book.

00:36:54.500 And that's why there was a backlash

00:36:56.220 against J.K. Rowling's publisher.

00:36:58.660 So people are not even prepared to say,

00:37:01.040 I'm going to put my feelings

00:37:02.900 at the door to do my job.

00:37:06.060 Now, let me tell you something

00:37:07.000 on a personal note here.

00:37:08.580 I've worked in radio.

00:37:10.240 I used to do a daily talk radio show

00:37:12.180 in London, Ontario.

00:37:13.380 And I also guest hosted

00:37:14.780 in Toronto, Calgary,

00:37:16.340 and a few times

00:37:17.280 on the nationally syndicated

00:37:19.200 Roy Green show.

00:37:20.200 And I had a blast.

00:37:21.500 And, you know,

00:37:21.900 in a lot of these,

00:37:22.720 I would work with producers.

00:37:24.180 And, you know,

00:37:24.500 I try to come up with,

00:37:25.700 and I think overwhelmingly

00:37:26.580 throughout my career,

00:37:27.880 the vast majority of the stories

00:37:29.580 that I do are stories

00:37:30.600 that I've found.

00:37:31.600 But I would work with producers.

00:37:33.040 They'd send ideas.

00:37:33.880 They'd help line up guests.

00:37:34.900 And all of that stuff.

00:37:36.080 And I had producers

00:37:37.660 at various points

00:37:38.840 that I knew

00:37:39.980 I was diametrically opposed to politically.

00:37:43.040 I had, in one case,

00:37:44.060 a producer.

00:37:44.980 She was absolutely fantastic.

00:37:46.620 She was a lefty vegan.

00:37:48.840 Fine with me.

00:37:49.900 She was a lefty vegan.

00:37:51.360 I was a, you know,

00:37:52.360 Bible-thumping, 1.00

00:37:53.040 hardline conservative.

00:37:54.180 And that is absolutely fine

00:37:55.820 because, you know what,

00:37:56.600 it worked.

00:37:57.040 She came up with stories.

00:37:58.060 She would put guests on.

00:37:59.360 We had a blast.

00:38:00.160 There was no,

00:38:01.000 that I was aware of anyway.

00:38:02.740 You know,

00:38:03.080 I can't do this

00:38:03.800 because I disagree with you.

00:38:05.260 And I've had other producers as well.

00:38:07.100 And it's the same thing

00:38:07.940 because you have a job to do.

00:38:09.540 So the idea that people

00:38:10.540 who work in an editorial perspective,

00:38:12.820 in a production capacity,

00:38:14.340 the idea that people

00:38:15.640 who work in a publishing industry

00:38:17.920 are unable to,

00:38:19.780 or unwilling to allow

00:38:21.560 someone that they don't agree with

00:38:24.420 to succeed or to even exist

00:38:27.480 is in and of itself

00:38:29.160 the essence of cancel culture.

00:38:31.900 And in the case of the New York Times,

00:38:33.420 I mean, again,

00:38:34.320 liberal paper,

00:38:35.100 I get it.

00:38:35.660 Their editorial bias is liberal.

00:38:37.800 That's fine.

00:38:38.580 There's space for that.

00:38:39.840 But the idea that

00:38:40.740 in an op-ed department,

00:38:42.560 in an editorial department,

00:38:43.820 in a column department,

00:38:44.800 in all of these spaces,

00:38:46.220 that someone would be forced out

00:38:48.020 for having the wrong opinions

00:38:49.840 is absolutely shameful.

00:38:52.760 And again,

00:38:53.140 I could take delight

00:38:54.260 in the left eating its own,

00:38:55.600 but I won't

00:38:56.120 because I know that

00:38:56.960 we are on the losing side

00:38:58.400 of this battle.

00:38:59.520 And it's going to continue

00:39:00.960 to get worse and worse

00:39:02.320 unless people start

00:39:03.740 to push back against it.

00:39:04.960 And that's where we are now.

00:39:06.140 I mean,

00:39:06.460 we're at a reckoning right now.

00:39:08.180 When the cancelled is growing,

00:39:09.760 the club of the cancelled,

00:39:10.780 as my friend Mark Stein calls it,

00:39:12.100 is getting larger and larger,

00:39:13.840 surely there are more and more people

00:39:15.360 that would be willing

00:39:16.140 to link arms and say,

00:39:17.220 okay, we're going to push back

00:39:18.220 against this.

00:39:19.160 But the problem is

00:39:20.060 is that even a lot of people

00:39:21.380 on the left

00:39:22.080 who have gone through

00:39:23.060 being cancelled

00:39:23.860 are not quite willing

00:39:26.440 to lock arms

00:39:28.500 with people on the right

00:39:29.660 who have been cancelled.

00:39:31.320 Because they're still like,

00:39:32.180 oh, well, I mean,

00:39:32.680 yeah, I mean,

00:39:33.220 my opinions were about,

00:39:34.240 oh, no,

00:39:34.460 I don't want to be in line

00:39:35.200 with those opinions.

00:39:36.520 And that's where we are now.

00:39:37.760 But people have to realize,

00:39:38.680 listen,

00:39:38.940 this is a trend.

00:39:39.840 And it's why I defended

00:39:41.360 the woman in Central Park,

00:39:43.500 Amy Cooper,

00:39:44.140 that everyone called

00:39:44.700 Central Park Karen.

00:39:45.820 It's why I've defended

00:39:46.960 Barry Weiss.

00:39:47.660 It's why I defended

00:39:48.400 J.K. Rowling.

00:39:49.240 Because if you don't stand up

00:39:50.920 for your political opponents

00:39:53.160 when their right

00:39:54.540 to free speech

00:39:55.360 or their fundamental

00:39:56.760 essence of free speech

00:39:58.080 is being threatened,

00:39:59.040 you don't actually believe

00:40:00.500 in that idea

00:40:01.660 as strongly

00:40:02.320 as you think you do.

00:40:04.100 We have to end things

00:40:05.520 for today.

00:40:06.620 My thanks to all of you

00:40:08.160 who tuned into the show

00:40:09.020 and also to Pierre Polly

00:40:09.920 have for coming on.

00:40:11.000 We'll be back next week

00:40:12.160 with more of Canada's

00:40:13.120 Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:40:14.780 Thank you,

00:40:15.280 God bless,

00:40:15.820 and good day.

00:40:16.680 Thanks for listening

00:40:17.340 to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:40:18.760 Support the program

00:40:19.580 by donating to True North

00:40:20.820 at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - July 15, 2020

Where’s the Accountability？ (feat. Pierre Poilievre)

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