Juno News - Who's actually threatening national unity？

A classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accuses premiers in this country of threatening national unity. He accuses them of creating a "national unity crisis" by opposing proposed amendments to Bill C-69, a piece of legislation that could make it almost impossible to build new oil and gas projects in Canada.

00:00:00.000 Talk about a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

00:00:13.140 Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, stepping forward to accuse

00:00:18.240 premiers in this country of threatening national unity. Him accusing them of

00:00:23.880 doing this. And what's the Backstory Bill C-69, that highly controversial piece of

00:00:29.620 legislation that a lot of expert observers say is going to make it almost

00:00:33.280 impossible to build new oil and gas sector projects in this country. That's

00:00:37.720 how high of a threshold they will be putting a whole bunch of environmental

00:00:41.200 assessment rules attached to it. Now the traditional lawmaking process in Canada

00:00:46.060 typically unfolds where a political leader puts forward a piece of

00:00:49.300 legislation and then it goes to committee, both for MPs in the House of Commons and

00:00:53.500 in the Senate for senators to look at, and they hear testimony from a bunch of

00:00:57.280 witnesses and then they propose various amendments to the bill. Sometimes a few, a

00:01:01.940 few dozen, maybe even a hundred amendments. And the government adopts quite a number

00:01:06.100 of them and they moderate the bill. They take people's views into consideration.

00:01:09.820 While the Senate has heard from a lot of people who are very concerned about this

00:01:13.840 legislation and they've proposed almost 200 amendments to this bill. And now

00:01:20.380 Justin Trudeau, according to one government source speaking to the Canadian

00:01:24.040 Press, will have none of it or almost none of it. They're planning to actually

00:01:28.700 say no to about 90 percent of those amendments. Basically most of the

00:01:34.600 substantial idea is to try and improve this bill and get broad buy-in from all

00:01:39.220 across society on this legislation. To both be responsible stewards for the

00:01:43.380 environment but to continue actually growing the economy and protecting jobs.

00:01:48.360 Because just the other day we had 4,000 people out in the streets in Alberta

00:01:52.220 protesting this legislation. Regular folks who are saying they're worried about what

00:01:56.480 it's going to mean for them and their families. So it's in this whole scene where

00:02:01.480 Justin Trudeau makes these national unity accusations. Because six premiers signed a

00:02:06.920 letter, sent it to Trudeau, said if you don't accept these amendments you are causing a

00:02:11.960 national unity crisis. And you know what he does? He doesn't turn around and say well

00:02:16.160 thank you, thank you for your letter, we'll take this into consideration. He turns around and tries to

00:02:20.880 smack talk them. And accuses them of threatening national unity by what? By drawing attention to

00:02:29.140 the issue that caused the national unity problem in the first place. I mean it's the classic case of the

00:02:34.140 kindergartner saying, I know you are, but what am I? It's quite something that not only is he not willing

00:02:40.140 to actually talk about amendments with this legislation, but he's pretty much vilifying

00:02:44.140 anybody out there who wants to talk about it. And he's accusing others of creating national unity problems.

Juno News - June 12, 2019

Who's actually threatening national unity？

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