Why is Trudeau refusing to do anything on the China file？
Episode Stats
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166.35422
Summary
A Canadian man was told to take off a t-shirt expressing his support for Falun Gong in order to be allowed to attend a Dragon Boat Festival in which he was wearing a shirt expressing his free speech rights in case it offended the Chinese agenda.
Transcript
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more and more Canadians now wondering why is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refusing to do
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anything on the China file nothing to hit back none of the things that have been recommended by
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the various ex-diplomats academics opposition politicians saying please do something do
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anything ranging from banning Huawei now well you don't like that okay file a complaint against the
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World Trade Organization you don't want to do that okay withdraw from the Asian Investment
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Infrastructure Bank no too too much for you okay well at least when the ambassador calls us white
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supremacists can you maybe actually hit back at that and and tell him that's unacceptable can you
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please just do something no he's not he still refuses to and every single week they tighten
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the screws on us more and more now some of this is big picture stuff diplomacy and trade that may
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not be seen to affect day-to-day Canadians lives but the latest story wow it is a troubling and a
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chilling one and shows that this spat has maybe permeated just to day-to-day interactions in
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Canadian society showing the sort of low-level pressure that China is putting on us so this
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latest story from the post media papers there's a gentleman who was attending the Ottawa Dragon Boat
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Festival and he was wearing a t-shirt showing his support for Falun Gong well the CEO of the
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Dragon Boat Festival allegedly went up to him and said take that shirt off I don't want you wearing
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that you'll be booted from the festival and so will other Falun Gong practitioners why well allegedly
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one of the excuses that he gave is he said well the embassy the Chinese embassy they're one of the
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financial sponsors of this event and we don't want to upset them excuse me now this isn't just called
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the Dragon Boat Festival of Ottawa or what have you it's called the Tim Hortons Dragon Boat Festival
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Tim Hortons being the marquee sponsor of course Tim Hortons very emblematic of Canadian culture
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the Canadian way of life so we have this Canadian event but a guy's being told to take off a t-shirt
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expressing his free speech rights in case it offends the Chinese agenda and this is happening in our
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nation's capital with people attending a Dragon Boat Festival are you kidding me so this idea that
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we can just pause and maybe release Meng Wang Zhu just smooth things over and we'll go back to
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business as usual it's not true this is permeating too deep into our culture right now it's it's getting
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into society I mean we may see more stories like this things happening on a on a very sort of person
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to person community level the real thing that's going to have to happen here and we're hearing a lot
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of experts come forward and say this is we're going to have to have a national conversation a really
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serious one about what we want our relationship to be with China moving forward just how much leverage
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we want this authoritarian communist regime to have over us and our way of life now the prime minister
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doesn't seem to want to have that conversation but it's one that we're going to have to have