World leaders see through Justin Trudeau
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Summary
Justin Trudeau gets the red carpet treatment everywhere he goes, but when he speaks to a foreign parliament, he's booed and derided by some of the most honourable members of the European Parliament. Andrew Lawton explains why.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Just imagine you are a guy who thinks that everyone loves you.
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you're in politics, but people treat you like you're a rock star. You're invited to speak to
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a foreign parliament. You go and you think, wow, everyone around the world wants to cling to my
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every word. And then it becomes just a laundry list of people who hate you. That is Justin
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Trudeau's latest trip to Europe. He's in Europe right now. He's been doing the rounds in Brussels.
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He's been chatting with people in NATO, the president of the European Commission. He gave
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an address to the European Parliament. And obviously a lot of the people there were quite
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pleased to see him. They applauded him. They cheered. I don't want to seem like, I don't want
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it to seem like everyone there booed him. But a lot did. A lot did. There was one MP from Romania
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who just didn't even go. He just decided this is not at all something that I want to do. His name
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is Christian Terhas. Terhas. I have a Romanian colleague who's probably screaming at me right
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now at my horrible pronunciation of a Romanian name. But he wrote on Facebook, I refuse to
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validate the imposition of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who gave a speech in front of the
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European Parliament. The reason why I was not in the hall when he spoke, you can't come to teach
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Putin democracy lessons when you pass with horse hooves over your own citizens who demand that
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their fundamental rights be respected. The difference between democracy and tyranny is not
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given by the geographical location of political leaders but by the values that this promotes
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and this is a tremendously important point he says the west is not a space of freedom as a
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geographical place but as a civilization so he's saying you can't be arrogant and just assume
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because you're a western liberal country that you can lecture other people about how to be
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liberal and how to be democracies that was from christian terhes and there was another member of
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the European Parliament from Croatia who had very harsh words. I won't play it because his speech
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was in Croatian, which is for me even less something is something that I'm even less
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capable of understanding than Romanian. But the translated version is that under your quasi-liberal
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boot, Canada has become a symbol of civil rights violations. The methods we have witnessed may be
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liberal to you, but to many citizens around the world, it seemed like a dictatorship of the worst
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kind. That was Croatian member of the European Parliament, Mislav Kolikusic. And then there was
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this speech from a German legislator, a German member of the European Parliament, who had no
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love whatsoever for Justin Trudeau, Christine Anderson, who called him a disgrace to democracy.
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Take a look. Based on Article 195, I doubt that it would have been more appropriate for Mr. Trudeau,
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Prime Minister of Canada to address this house according to Article 144, an
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article which was specifically designed to debate violations of human rights,
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democracy, and the rule of law, which is clearly the case with Mr. Trudeau. Then
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again, a Prime Minister who openly admires the Chinese basic dictatorship,
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who tramples on fundamental rights by persecuting and criminalizing his own
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citizens as terrorists just because they dared to stand up to his perverted concept of democracy
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should not be allowed to speak in this house at all. Mr. Trudeau, you are a disgrace for any
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democracy. Please spare us your presence. Thank you.
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Preach it, sister. And she, as you heard at the end there, Christine Anderson, the German MEP,
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was getting applause. Now, again, I don't know who these people are. I don't follow the ins and
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outs of the European Parliament. I have two friends who incidentally are members of the
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European Parliament. Those three do not include the ones that I know. But certainly when Justin
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Trudeau goes there and he's used to getting the red carpet treatment, the hero's welcome,
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the rock star accolades, and he goes there and they're saying, what the heck is your problem?
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You think that you can be the one that preaches and lectures and pontificates about liberalism,
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about democracy, about freedom, look in the mirror. And what Ms. Anderson was saying there
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is that you should be here as a leader who's committed human rights abuses, answering our
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questions, not just speaking as though we have something to learn from you. And that is a huge
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point. I mean, Justin Trudeau's whole foreign policy from the time he was elected was that
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Canada was back. The implication there was that under Stephen Harper, no one respected Canada,
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and under Justin Trudeau, we're now a player on the world stage.
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And just like at the G7 in London a year or so back
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when he was trying to solve the Northern Ireland crisis
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here he is now trying to lecture Europeans about democracy
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when Europeans have been incidentally far more receptive
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or far more receptive, rather, to protest movements.
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which is why in a lot of European countries, even ones that had very strict COVID measures,
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you also had very robust protest movements that were forming to combat those things.
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But I want to play a clip from Justin Trudeau's speech before the European Parliament
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Because you may look at these people and say, oh, they're just cranks.
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You can do whatever name calling makes you feel better.
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because that's what all of these MEPs are bringing up.
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His treatment of peaceful truckers and trucker protesters
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that descended on Ottawa up until just over a month ago.
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how he views those protesters. No humility whatsoever, even now.
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In Canada, where 90% of people are vaccinated and our motto as a country is peace, order
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and good government, we saw anti-vaccine and anti-government protests devolve into illegal
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occupations of our communities and blockades of our borders.
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The leaders of those convoys were effective in turning citizens with real anxieties against
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the system best suited to allay those concerns.
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The system best suited to deal with those concerns.
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So he's saying, how dare you protest government when you don't like vaccine mandates?
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Because government is the body that can solve your frustrations and ease your frustrations
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Again, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how he gets around to that conclusion.
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but, oh, they're anti-vaccine protesters, they're anti-government protesters. I think they were
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anti-this government. They were anti-this government. And you know what? I don't think
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they have exactly a position that you could say is inherently off base just because they are
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protesting this government. But that doesn't mean that they were preying on the vulnerable and
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preying on insecurities. No, it was a grassroots movement. The convoy protesters were a reflection
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of anxieties, not with the COVID situation, but with government's response to it.
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And how dare Justin Trudeau get up there? And now, again, I want to just understand,
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let's go back to the Dixie Chicks here. I don't know if anyone has ever compared Justin Trudeau
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to the Dixie Chicks. Actually, they changed their name, didn't they? Aren't they just now?
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And one of my producers tell me, what are the Dixie Chicks called now? Are they just called
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the Chicks? We're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to do like a whole investigative
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series in what the Dixie Chicks are called. But Justin Trudeau and the artists formerly known,
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they're called the Chicks, Sean says. Okay. So Justin Trudeau is like the Chicks. And here's why.
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Because when the Dixie Chicks went over and started trashing George W. Bush,
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one of the things that people found the most offensive about it was that they were doing it
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abroad in that they were not presenting United Front. Now, again, I felt they got a raw deal.
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They misjudged their audience, but that was the anger, is that how dare you go and trash
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Because what Justin Trudeau is doing there, he's taking his show on the road.
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What he used to do when he was in Ottawa having press conferences, maligning the trucker
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protesters, maligning the unvaccinated, calling them Nazis, all of that.
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I mean, I'm not going to defend it whatsoever, but there's one thing to do when you're talking
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Now he's going overseas and continuing that slander.
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He's saying these people are manipulative.
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When of the three core organizers, incidentally, of the convoy, two of them were fully vaccinated.
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They were not anti-government in the sense that they were anarchists.
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They were anti-Justin Trudeau's government's approach to COVID.
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But it's amazing how he just tries to reduce it to the most simplistic conclusion possible
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to make himself the hero of the story so when he goes over to Europe and he starts talking about
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those truckers it shows he learned absolutely nothing and why does he need to be human why
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does he need to show humility here why does he need to show humility he's got a majority government
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now basically because he has the backing of the NDP he's got carte blanche he's got the blank check
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he'll double and triple down on the very policies that caused that convoy to be so forceful and so
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vocal. And I don't mean forceful in a violent sense. I mean forceful in its rhetoric, forceful
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in its dedication and its passion to this. I want to talk about the mandate situation in Canada
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because there's something in this that's very revealing. When the convoy was happening and we
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started seeing provinces lifting this restriction and that restriction, the mask mandate in Alberta,
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Ontario is now mask free. And I realized I hadn't actually enjoyed it. We went mask free in Ontario
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on Monday. And I don't think I did anything because I just live a very boring life at times.
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So I hadn't actually been anywhere for a couple of days to enjoy the official mask freedom.
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But the reason I bring that up is that all of these changes that were taking place,
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people were looking at and saying, well, this isn't the convoy. This was happening anyway.
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And I've already talked in the past about how I think the convoy effect was definitely real.
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But the reason I bring this up now is that there was a lot of pushback to the convoy
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asking them, why are you focused on federal politics and Parliament Hill and Justin Trudeau
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when all these mandates and all these restrictions are provincial? And the response to that was that
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they're all integrated. There are federal restrictions, there are provincial restrictions,
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and even the holdout provinces like BC are lifting their provincial restrictions. What's left? It's
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the federal mandates. It's the federal vaccine mandate for travel, for quarantine, for testing,
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the federal vaccine mandate for air travel, the federal vaccine mandate to work for the public
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sector, to keep your job. If you're an unvaccinated public servant right now, you are still on unpaid
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leave or you've potentially been terminated. And the government is giving no indication,
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zero indication whatsoever of when that's going to change. Take a look. I wanted to play this on
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the previous show and I didn't get around to it. This is Jean-Yves Duclos unable to give a very
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clear answer to when life is going back to normal by the federal government's standards.
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We would all like to know by what time COVID-19 will end. And in fact, we would all like COVID-19
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The truth is that COVID-19 is still here in Canada
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And that's what I think we should be mindful of
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We will want to apply the least disruptive measures
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in order to protect the health and safety of Canadians.
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And the conversation will evolve as the situation evolves.
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I need you to translate a liberal minister speak to plain English.
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I don't want all the, I don't want the accusations of Francophobia.
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But he's basically not able to give a clear answer.
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Just, oh yeah, everyone wants to get back to normal.
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It seems like what you're doing now is pretty darn disruptive.
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Banning people from getting on airplanes, from getting on trains, from having jobs.
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setting the tone that this is allowed, setting the tone that this is acceptable, that this is
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a normal way to function in society. I mentioned last week or two weeks ago, British Airways went
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mask-free on its airplanes. And in the US, this is now a big thing as well. You've got US air
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carriers that are saying that the second Joe Biden lets us not mandate masks, masks are gone
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on our planes. There's one story in particular. This one's in the LA Times. The airlines are
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pushing Biden. The airlines are saying to Joe Biden, we want you to drop the mask mandate for
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air travel because they know that normalcy is never going to come if people have to cover their
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faces. No one is ever going to feel normal when they have to wear a mask. And the beleaguered
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tourism sector is not going to fully recover unless it feels normal to travel. And the mask
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is a symbol of the pandemic and the unendingness of the pandemic, to make up a word. The mask is
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a symbol of it. The mask is a symbol of compliance, which is why the mask has become like the greatest
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cultural artifact of the generation. You get people that are saying, you know, make sure to
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wear your mask so you tell people the pandemic is not over. They're not even saying that the mask is
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about protecting them anymore. They're saying they want to be seen wearing it. What was it in
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mean girls on Wednesdays, we wear pink. Now it's on days that end in wise, we wear masks.
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This is the statement. This is the fashion item of 2022. If you want to signal your virtue.
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And my view on this is do what you want. I've never been opposed to masks. I've been opposed
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to mask mandates. I've never been opposed to vaccines. I've been opposed to vaccine mandates.
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I've never been opposed to businesses making decisions for themselves. I'm opposed to
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mandating it. And Trudeau has conflated all of those, which is why he gets up there in front
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of the European Parliament and starts saying that, oh, these are just a bunch of anti-vaccine,
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anti-government protesters. Because he has a zero tolerance level for dissent,
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zero tolerance level for pushback and criticism of his own government.
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And this isn't going to go away. This is absolutely not going to go away.
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And the reason I bring up all of these things here is so that we understand how we are not
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out of the woods just yet. Some of the most locked down jurisdictions in the world are
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beating Canada to reopening. New Zealand is a great example of this. New Zealand is the home
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of COVID zero insanity. New Zealand is the country that locked down for like a dozen cases. New
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Zealand is the country that was like Australia, like the UK, trying to prohibit people from doing
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very basic things like going outside at certain points, especially in some parts of the country.
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New Zealand is going mandate free now. Well, in Canada, you cannot get on an airplane unless you
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are vaccinated. You can't get on a train unless you're vaccinated. You can't work for Canada Post
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unless you're vaccinated. And there are other examples of this. I just published a story
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yesterday about Sun Life Financial. I had a number of Sun Life employees separate from one another
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reach out to me and tell me that Sun Life had imposed a vaccine mandate that was very broad.
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They used to have one going back to the summer that gave employees an alternative that they
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could do if they were not vaccinated, which was rapid testing.
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So if you work in an office, if you work in a Sun Life financial center, you have to be
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fully vaccinated or you're going to be placed on unpaid leave and essentially fired.
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And again, my position on this, which I know a lot of you disagree with, but my position
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is that private companies should be able to make their own decisions, but no one should be
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celebrating those decisions. No one should be celebrating the culture and climate that the
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federal government is setting. Because again, if you are a sun life and anyone wants to get mad
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at you about this, you can say, well, listen, I mean, our policy is what the federal government's
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policy is. So the federal government is very much setting the tone here. When they say masks on
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airplanes, they're saying that, you know, it's not safe to get back to normal. So other people
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take their cue from that. When they say that you can't work for the federal public service unless
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you're vaccinated, other companies are going to say, well, if the federal, I mean, this is going
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to sound crazy to some of you, but there are some people out there that think, well, if the federal
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government is doing that, it must be the right thing to do. I know, I know. It sounds like a joke,
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but believe it or not, this government still has a level of legitimacy and authority to some people.
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so that's the direction that people go with this and and again this isn't going to end
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unless people start taking a stand and that's exactly what the convoy was and the convoy did
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move the needle the convoy absolutely moved the needle again we have a conservative party of
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canada right now where most of the leadership candidates are very unequivocal that they are
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against vaccine mandates and vaccine passports the interim leader is taking a harsher and firmer
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position on this than the previous leader, than Aaron O'Toole did. But as we've seen in the last
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couple of days with the Liberals and NDP combining forces here, it doesn't really stop them from
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having that majority level of influence. There's a question here that Emma writes, which is a very
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good one. She says, Andrew, what do you think comes next after the pandemic is over? Will
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politicians be held accountable? This is a huge question, and I don't have the answer. I think
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that if we do get what the Liberals have said we're going to get, which is a period of the
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next three years uninterrupted with no election, then for a lot of people, they will just move on.
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COVID will be, we hope, a distant memory by 2025. I mean, Ontario is a great example of this. There's
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an Ontario election coming up in about two and a half months, which I think is very significantly
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driving the lifting of restrictions now, because I don't think Doug Ford could win an election all
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that easily if he were still dealing with a province that had mask mandates or vaccine
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passports. So he needs to be able to do the mission accomplished thing and say, we won,
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we beat COVID, and then the restrictions can come back in the fall. And at this point,
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I'm not optimistic that they won't in some form, either federally or provincially in the fall or
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the winter, even if there's a bad flu, doesn't even need to be COVID. We could have a bad flu
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season. And I would not be surprised if the vaccine passports come back, if the mask mandates come
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back, if two weeks to flatten the curve comes back, all of that. Because what these governments
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have found is that a lot of people tend to welcome that. So people showing that they aren't actually
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welcoming that is important. And I understand the powerlessness. I understand the powerlessness.
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I'm going to have an interview coming out tomorrow with conservative leadership candidate Mark
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Dalton. And the reason I mentioned it is because I just recorded it before I did this show. He
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wasn't able to come on live. And one of the things he's advocating is a COVID review. He wants a full
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review, a full inquiry into the pandemic, not just the pandemic itself, but the government's response
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to it. And I think that that is an important thing here. Now, Royal commissions, commissions,
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inquiries, investigations, I mean, these things are limited in scope because they're only as
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powerful as a government's willingness to abide by them of a government's willingness or interest
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in their results and with the liberal NDP coalition they have now stacked the deck
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so they can control any committee just like the emergencies act committee there's going to be a
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committee investigating the use of the emergencies act but the liberals and NDP are working together
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on it and they have control of it so I mean the conservatives the Bloc Québécois can you know
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wave their hands in the air and say, but, but, but, but ultimately there's no need for the
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liberals to go along with it. The only hope of any accountability there is going to be in the courts.
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And if you've been a listener or viewer of the show for a long time, you know, I have a fairly
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pessimistic view of the Canadian judiciary and of the charter of rights and freedoms, not because I
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don't fundamentally agree with the values, but because a constitution is only as good as the
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mechanisms that enforce it. And our government has found courts that are far too deferential
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for my liking, but great for governments when it comes to giving them the latitude to break
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your charter rights, especially in the COVID era. So I obviously support the legal challenges from
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the Canadian Constitution Foundation, from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association,
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all of these challenges into the Emergencies Act. The Justice Centre for Constitutional
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Freedoms is challenging the federal air travel mandate. A lot of these things. I mean, these
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lawsuits are all good. The government will be forced to defend themselves. But it won't matter
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if the fundamental ethic of the government to respect freedom, to respect choice, isn't there.
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And there is no accountability unless voters in 2025 refuse to forget. If voters in 2025 say,
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hang on, I know what you did. I remember the Emergencies Act. I remember your crackdown on
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peaceful protesters. I remember when you went to Europe and started just bashing and trashing
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those peaceful protesters. I remember all of that, and I'm not going to vote you back in.
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And again, I'm not telling people how to vote, but I'm saying that if you are
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angered or frustrated or dejected, whatever the feeling is, you can't lose that emotion
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going into the 2025 election just because a few years will have passed by then.
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And that, I think, is the very important point of all of this.
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I do want to talk a little bit about another story that emerged from the convoy here because
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I've seen this circulating a fair bit. There's a gentleman by the name, and I don't know him,
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I've never met him, and I had never heard of him until today, but Martin Joseph Englehart,
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who is from Hope, British Columbia, and he was a protester in the Freedom Convoy.
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And there's a CBC story of him saying he regrets going. And the reason he regrets going is because
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he spent his life savings to support it. And this story is circulating, talking about how terrible
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the Freedom Convoy organizers were. And it seems to suggest, or when people read it, they seem to
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be taking from it that someone was making off with huge amounts of money from the Freedom Convoy's
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organizing team. And I read through the story and the story is actually pointing the blame at
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government or should be. It should be pointing the blame at government. So here's the too long
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didn't read version. So he has lost $13,000 because he was buying fuel for people. He was
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buying food for people. He was giving money to other people there on the promise that he was
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going to be reimbursed from all of the millions of dollars that were being donated through GoFundMe
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and later GiveSendGo and in some cases in cash. And CBC has seen this. They've seen his bank
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statements. He was e-transferring hundreds of dollars here and taking ATM withdrawals and
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buying stuff from truck stops and all of that. And it was like 13,000 worth. And then he went
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back home and apparently he had a political disagreement with his landlord. So he got
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evicted from his home. That's not really the convoys fault, but it just shows that this guy
00:25:33.240
has had a really raw deal in the last little while. And he's blaming the convoy. And people
00:25:38.580
are saying, why wasn't he reimbursed? I'm like, well, the answer to why he wasn't reimbursed is
00:25:42.780
pretty obvious because the government was freezing pretty much every not pretty much the government
00:25:48.660
tried to freeze every single avenue of funding for the convoy so if they were going to reimburse him
00:25:56.840
through give send go money they couldn't because the government prohibited give send go money if
00:26:01.440
they were going to reimburse him through go go send me money they couldn't because the city of
00:26:06.120
Ottawa lobbied GoFundMe to cancel the fundraiser and refund all the donations. If they were going
00:26:12.780
to even reimburse him through crypto accounts, well, they couldn't do that because the court
00:26:16.600
managed to get crypto wallets frozen. The only money that was donated through these official
00:26:23.320
channels that ever got released to the convoy was $1 million that was released from the early days
00:26:28.560
of the GoSendMe account. And when that money got into the TD Bank account for the convoy, TD froze
00:26:34.500
it and then handed it over to the ontario court as a connection to that class action i think it
00:26:40.500
was or it might have been the class action it might have been the ontario government's freezing
00:26:43.780
of it but there was some legal action where the organizers have said they were not able to get one
00:26:48.180
single dollar through those channels to the truckers that's not the fault of them that is
00:26:55.460
the fault of the government that is the fault of the government for making it so that these
00:27:01.780
lawfully given donations these lawfully given donations could not make it to the peaceful
00:27:09.060
protesters that were relying on them and and i feel terrible for this guy because he had a good
00:27:14.980
heart he was saying you know what i trust these people i want to help these people not everyone
00:27:19.620
had thirteen thousand dollars of savings so he people needed fuel people needed food he said
00:27:24.020
yeah yeah i'm gonna do it and and maybe he was too trusting some people are trying to jump up
00:27:28.980
up and down and mock the guy saying, well, sir, if you're right, and you know, blah, blah, blah,
00:27:32.780
blah, blah. But I think it's disgusting. And I think that this is something that we can
0.95
00:27:36.580
squarely blame, place the blame on the government for, not the convoy and not the people. But this
00:27:44.200
is exactly the attitude. People are now rejoicing in this man, feeling like he's in a financial
00:27:49.860
hole from which he's never going to get out. Because you have rhetoric from people like
00:27:54.620
Justin Trudeau in Europe, in Ottawa, anywhere. Rhetoric from people like Justin Trudeau that
00:27:59.280
says, you know, how dare these people, how dare these people protest vaccine mandates?
00:28:04.900
How dare these people protest my government? Who do they think they are?
00:28:09.680
Oh, they're just anti-government, they're anti-vaccine. No.
00:28:13.360
The fact that a guy was willing to drive from Hope, British Columbia to Ottawa
00:28:17.340
and spend $13,000 of his money, regardless of whether he thought he was going to get
00:28:22.200
reimbursed or not is because he was that motivated by it. The story that he had, why he joined the
00:28:29.380
convoy, he says he's not political. He doesn't even know if he agrees with all the convoy,
00:28:34.380
but why he was there is because he couldn't go to someone's funeral during COVID. That was for him
00:28:40.120
the final straw. That was the last straw for him. CJ writes, is he allowed to raise money? I have
00:28:47.180
no idea. I mean, obviously when the CBC story came out, there may be a few people that want to give
00:28:52.460
him some support, but everyone would be so terrified now. He's a guy who by his own admission
00:28:57.880
was a trucker at the convoy. If he were going to say, I'm accepting e-transfers, everyone's going
00:29:02.780
to be terrified that their accounts are going to get frozen if they dare donate to him. Because I
0.57
00:29:07.580
want to read a line from this story here, which I'm trying to do a bit more digging into. Anglehart
00:29:12.860
said he's unable to access his account because it remains frozen. More than 250 accounts linked to
00:29:20.240
people and businesses involved in the convoy protests were frozen after the Emergencies Act
00:29:24.620
was invoked. It is March 24th. The Emergencies Act was lifted, I believe, on February 23rd,
00:29:31.820
so one month and one day ago. The government said that all of the frozen accounts have now
00:29:36.200
been unfrozen, yet this guy says his bank accounts are still frozen more than a month after the
00:29:42.460
emergencies act was lifted uh basically five six weeks almost from when the convoy ended
00:29:49.180
and he's saying his and again i can't verify it this is cbc's reporting so take from it what you
00:29:55.180
will but that's the situation there are still accounts frozen and this guy wasn't an organizer
00:30:00.720
this is just some guy he was a supporter and i guess the bank thought he was a heavyweight because
00:30:06.580
he was transferring money back and forth trying to get support to truckers so that 13 000 made
00:30:11.740
them think that he was one of those big fish that they wanted to go after in the crowd of 250.
00:30:18.480
So if you read stories like this, and I'm sure there are others, if you know of anyone in this
00:30:22.840
boat, please let me know. I want to hear their stories. I want to tell their stories.
00:30:28.540
This is the fault of the government. This is not the fault of the convoy. This is not the fault of
00:30:33.720
the people who supported the convoy. This is a reflection of how the government took an approach
00:30:39.200
that had nothing to do with making the streets of Ottawa safe,
00:30:43.040
that had nothing to do with protecting critical infrastructure.
00:30:45.720
It had everything to do with punishing political dissenters.
00:30:52.660
My thanks to all of you for tuning into the program.
00:30:55.240
We'll be back tomorrow with a new edition of the Andrew Lawton Show,
00:30:58.560
an interview with conservative leadership candidate Mark Dalton,
00:31:09.200
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:31:11.840
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.