The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - May 18, 2022


Emergencies Act

Topics
Emergencies Act claims debunked Mike Moon protests guns and gangs initiative
Hosted by
Jamie Schmal
Mentioned
Jamie Schmael Andrew Scheer Dane Lloyd Steve Bell Brenda Luckey Chief Bell Bill C-63 Mendicino
The Trouble with Travel Energy Affordability

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

204.2

Word count

3,486

Sentence count

188

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Conservative MP Dane Lloyd and his shadow minister for emergency preparedness, Dane Lloyd, take on the Liberal government's claims that the government invoked the Emergency Preparedness Act in response to the Black Friday protests in Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host,
00:00:09.460 Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Kawartha Lakes, Brock, with new content for you
00:00:13.340 every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We do appreciate you joining us here live. If you
00:00:19.320 can't listen to the entire program right this second, remember you can download it and have
00:00:23.980 it on hand later on on platforms like Google, Play, iTunes, Spotify, you name it, it is out
00:00:29.680 there and as always we ask that you like, comment, subscribe, share this program and together we can
00:00:35.160 push back against the ever-moving Liberal agenda. Today we have a great show lined up for you. We
00:00:39.820 have Dane Lloyd, the Member of Parliament for Sturgeon River Parkland in the beautiful province
00:00:44.200 of Alberta. He's also the Shadow Minister for Emergency Preparedness. We are going to talk about
00:00:49.660 the Emergencies Act and some of the claims the government made that just don't seem to be
00:00:56.720 coming true. So, Dane, welcome. If you haven't checked out Dane's social media profile, I encourage
00:01:03.760 you to do that because he has been grilling witnesses at committee and just shooting down
00:01:09.620 one after another of the Liberal government's claims on why they invoked the Emergencies Act.
00:01:15.200 Thanks for having me on, Jamie. No, it's been a really great couple of months for debunking a lot
00:01:20.400 of claims that the government's made and would you like me to talk about a few of those today?
00:01:24.220 Please, yes, absolutely. Well, you know, just an hour ago we actually had our former leader,
00:01:29.460 Andrew Scheer, at the Procedure Committee and they're doing a study on changing downtown Ottawa
00:01:35.280 so that it can be more under the jurisdiction of the Parliamentary Protective Services and we had
00:01:40.220 our friend Ottawa Interim Chief of Police, Steve Bell, at committee and Andrew Scheer asked
00:01:46.100 Chief Bell, did you ask the Liberal government to invoke the Emergencies Act? And Steve Bell said,
00:01:50.300 no, we did not ask. And for those of you who've been following online, I've been asking Minister
00:01:54.600 Mendicino, the Public Safety Minister, to back up numerous claims he's made in Parliament that it
00:01:59.420 was law enforcement that asked the government to invoke the Emergencies Act. And we saw RCMP
00:02:05.300 Commissioner Brenda Luckey at committee last week saying they didn't ask the government to invoke
00:02:08.680 the Emergencies Act. And today we had Ottawa Interim Chief of Police Bell also saying they didn't ask.
00:02:13.480 So it's very quickly becoming apparent that there was no law enforcement asking for the Emergencies
00:02:19.120 Act to be invoked. And so, you know, we're going to have to see what the Minister is going to say
00:02:22.920 about that. Okay. There's also, they made the claim that there were firearms at the Ottawa protest,
00:02:28.560 which you in committee questioned the Interim Police Chief who said otherwise.
00:02:34.700 Well, I mean, absolutely. I mean, in the absence of, you know, hard evidence, there was a lot of innuendo.
00:02:40.280 And, you know, the Ottawa police had made a claim early on during the protest that they had
00:02:45.240 intelligence saying that there was firearms and foreign money flowing into the protests.
00:02:49.680 And sort of people just took that up and ran with it. And then what really set me off was that there
00:02:54.060 was a Toronto Star article that said that a police source had told the journalist that loaded
00:02:58.840 shotguns were found in the trucks at the protest. And so that was the first time that anyone actually
00:03:03.800 claimed that there had been firearms found by police. And so when I asked Interim Chief of Police Bell,
00:03:09.760 I expected him to say yes, that there had been firearms found at the protest. But when he said
00:03:14.120 otherwise, I think that's a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that a lot of these claims that
00:03:19.440 are being made, you have to really look deeply into them, because you later find out that they're not
00:03:24.340 true. Well, we also heard the Prime Minister and others in Parliament talk about kind of dark money
00:03:31.900 that is funding this, the protest that was that was in Ottawa. Turns out that's not true either.
00:03:39.500 Well, and this was really interesting. This was sort of earlier on testimony. We actually had
00:03:43.060 FinTrack, which is Canada's agency for tracking, you know, terrorist financing and organized crime
00:03:48.760 financing. And when we had them come at committee, they said, look, this funding is predominantly coming
00:03:54.160 from Canadian sources. They are small donations from people who are frustrated about the COVID-19 mandates.
00:03:59.760 There was significant funding coming from small donors in the United States as well. Not the
00:04:05.860 majority, as the government was claiming. Certainly not Russian money, as the CBC had previously sort of
00:04:11.820 implied was happening. Not state foreign-backed money. Not organized crime money. Not terrorist money.
00:04:18.120 It was just money from regular people who are, you know, protesting the government's actions. And so,
00:04:23.420 you know, when the government was talking about dark money, we had GoFundMe, we had GiveSangGo come to
00:04:27.380 committee. And they really shot down that claim from this government.
00:04:31.920 So, we also heard the government say that there was people being harassed about potential arson in
00:04:37.840 that apartment building. Turns out that that group was not connected to the protesters at all.
00:04:43.400 Yeah, that was really disappointing, you know, because, you know, we had this case where there was a
00:04:49.060 terrible arson attempt. And then you see all these politicians jumping on it, trying to lay the blame on
00:04:54.720 the convoy before there was any evidence to suggest that the convoy members had been involved. And I was
00:05:00.860 always very suspicious about it because the guys in the videos that we saw were wearing masks. And,
00:05:05.820 you know, you would think that a convoy of protesters who are protesting mandates and masks, you know,
00:05:10.640 why would they be wearing a mask to go into an apartment building to set it on fire? And, you know,
00:05:15.240 so we have these politicians, predominantly the NDP and the Liberal politicians, who are claiming that,
00:05:20.500 you know, this is a, this is the convoy protesters. They have ill intent. They want to do harm and
00:05:25.200 kill people in the city. And, you know, when the facts come out, the Ottawa police apprehended these
00:05:30.120 individuals and they had nothing to do with the protest.
00:05:32.600 That's right. And, and I think they, the person caught on video dancing on the tomb of the unknown
00:05:37.340 soldier was, was questioned by Ottawa police. And it turns out that person had nothing to do with
00:05:43.080 the convoy either. So I think one after another, the, the reasons why the government was talking about
00:05:49.280 invoking the emergencies act are, are coming down around them. So at the end of the day,
00:05:54.380 what does the government have left or what are they using as the justification for invoking that?
00:05:59.500 Well, what really bothers me is the government is now basically saying the ends justify the means.
00:06:05.940 So it doesn't matter how they dealt, they're, they're claiming, it doesn't matter how they
00:06:09.000 dealt with the protest. They just got rid of them. And that's what the people wanted.
00:06:12.560 Well, we've seen in history, how governments that say, well, it was necessary. We had to do it.
00:06:17.160 And that justifies doing it. And it's like, no, we live in a nation that is governed by the rule
00:06:21.160 of law. And the emergencies act is a very specific piece of law that gives the government
00:06:26.040 extraordinary powers to limit the rights of Canadians in extraordinary situations.
00:06:31.260 And, but with extraordinary power comes extraordinary responsibility and a need for
00:06:36.580 extraordinary accountability. And what we've seen from this liberal government is they don't want to
00:06:40.680 be accountable. They don't want to answer questions about the evidence that they use to justify the
00:06:45.140 act. And I think we're setting a very dangerous precedent as a country. If we don't hold this
00:06:49.720 government accountable and they're not transparent about the reasons for invoking the act.
00:06:53.740 Well, the whole reason around the legislation to provides for that kind of sober second thought,
00:06:58.700 if you will, to understand not the reasons for the people protesting or whatever causes the
00:07:05.640 emergencies act to be, to be started, but the thought process within the government to what led to
00:07:13.180 that decision. That's, that's what is supposed to be analyzed and, and to see whether or not
00:07:17.920 they made the right decision. Maybe they didn't, but, but because there is that period when it starts
00:07:22.840 to when the, the vote happens, and of course it could be an invasion or something could happen
00:07:27.320 where the government needs that power, but we need to understand why and what led to it.
00:07:31.760 Well, this is, you know, we've been saying over the past two years, unprecedented has been said too
00:07:35.740 much, but really this is unprecedented. This is the first time this law has ever been used.
00:07:39.160 And so we as parliamentarians are making history in this country because the way that we're acting
00:07:44.720 and the, and the things that we accept, the standards that we set today are the standards
00:07:48.240 that are going to be used by future generations when they're faced with the same challenges.
00:07:52.080 So as conservatives, I think we have a very important role to play in standing up for civil
00:07:56.020 liberties and standing up for accountability at the parliamentary review committee through the
00:08:00.980 inquiry that's being carried out. We need to stand firm because if this law is going to be used in
00:08:06.500 the future, I mean, there might be some more left-wing groups that, you know, maybe they are
00:08:11.320 the ones that are having their rights abused in the future. And so we need to stand up for the rights
00:08:14.620 of all Canadians and make sure that governments of all stripes are utilizing the Emergencies Act
00:08:19.940 in the appropriate way.
00:08:21.300 Absolutely. And, and I think as we go through this process, I think it's going to become clear
00:08:26.440 to Canadians that existing laws were available that could have been used to, to move the protesters
00:08:33.720 out of the downtown core.
00:08:35.960 Um, I think there was existing laws that, that could have maybe prevented it from, from getting to where it was.
00:08:41.460 There was existing laws that could have, uh, dealt with, uh, numerous issues like the tow trucks,
00:08:46.320 which the government has claimed, you know, the, the criminal code gives them the power to compel the tow trucks.
00:08:50.220 Now, if the protest turned into a riot, we have something in this country called the Riot Act,
00:08:55.100 and that would have given, uh, the police the authority to break up the protest.
00:08:58.940 But the protest never met the legal threshold of a riot.
00:09:02.560 And so that's why the government had to invoke the Emergencies Act, because in Canada, uh, we have a right to protest.
00:09:08.120 It's, it's in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:09:10.100 And so the government couldn't get rid of a lawful protest until they turned it into an unlawful protest.
00:09:17.260 And they had to use the Emergencies Act to do that.
00:09:19.640 And so, in, in some sense, they did need to use the Emergencies Act, but they needed to use the Emergencies Act
00:09:24.660 in order to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in order to suspend the Charter rights of Canadians.
00:09:29.400 And in that aspect, it was necessary for them to use it, but was it right for them to use it?
00:09:33.660 Absolutely, I don't think it was not right. It was absolutely not right to use it.
00:09:36.820 Right. I, I think they also had the still existing law to, to, to move cars that were blocking kind of critical infrastructure
00:09:44.120 or the, the right of others to, to have their way.
00:09:47.260 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, uh, something I observed during the protest is that there was always a lane
00:09:52.580 down Wellington Street that was open for emergency services.
00:09:55.940 And I do know that looking at the evidence that there was, uh, some coordination between the protesters
00:10:00.260 and Ottawa Police early on during the protest to ensure that there were available lanes, uh, for emergency vehicles.
00:10:06.540 So that's something that, you know, I think the evidence is, is going to show is that there was a certain level of, uh, you know,
00:10:12.660 cooperation with the protesters to ensure that, you know, public safety would be protected to a certain extent.
00:10:17.960 Okay. I know we're running out of time here. I did want to ask you about this.
00:10:20.820 Uh, we're talking about the NDP motion today in, in the House of Commons.
00:10:24.520 And, and just, uh, to, to, to, to give our viewers and listeners some idea, it's talking about the high gas prices, right?
00:10:30.920 We're, we're seeing over $2 a liter for regular, $2.30, probably more for diesel for a liter.
00:10:37.440 The NDP are saying that, uh, oil and gas companies are making record profits, which, which they are.
00:10:42.760 But at the same time, they're saying that the, the Canadian government needs to stop using taxpayers' dollars to subsidize the, the oil and gas industry.
00:10:52.260 But I think at the bottom line is the only, they don't actually get subsidies.
00:10:56.060 It's just, uh, tax benefits that are available to every single business in, in kind of the resource sector,
00:11:03.520 writing off your losses, the exploration, uh, tax credits, that kind of thing.
00:11:08.260 Um, but what would this do to the price of gasoline if this motion were to take effect
00:11:15.260 and, and the, the government to basically take away any tax, uh, measures that are available to any business,
00:11:23.600 but only target the oil and gas industry?
00:11:26.340 Well, it would be devastating.
00:11:27.580 We have to remember the reason why, uh, there's so much tightness in the oil sector today
00:11:31.900 is because we had seven years of low oil prices.
00:11:34.420 Um, you know, because of the shale revolution in the United States,
00:11:37.820 OPEC, Russia was providing oil.
00:11:39.840 And so there was a lot of underinvestment in developing new oil resources.
00:11:43.420 We didn't have the pipelines we needed in Canada to grow our sector because of government regulation and opposition.
00:11:49.060 And so for the NDP to come in and say the solution right now is to basically tax the oil companies more
00:11:54.780 by removing, um, their ability to deduct their, their losses from the last seven years,
00:11:59.440 what that is going to do is that's going to lower oil and gas investment in our country.
00:12:03.420 And when you lower that oil and gas investment,
00:12:06.120 that means that you're going to have a lot higher oil and gas prices going into the future.
00:12:09.980 So perversely, I think what the NDP are trying to do is actually going to make energy more unaffordable in this country.
00:12:15.340 And I find it ironic because this is exactly what they've been wanting to do for the last,
00:12:19.540 well, over seven years.
00:12:20.460 They've wanted to make energy unaffordable so that people would move over to more renewable energy sources.
00:12:25.840 But I think what we're finding is, is that these renewable energy sources are not currently capable of meeting the needs of a modern industrialized nation.
00:12:34.300 And I don't think they're going to be capable of replacing oil for a number of decades.
00:12:37.940 And so while we're doing this right now, we should be trying to work with the oil companies to make every barrel,
00:12:42.980 the cleanest barrel possible, not being punitive with these companies, uh, by, you know,
00:12:48.020 going after them and trying to tax them more, which is only going to lead to higher prices at the pumps. 0.63
00:12:52.000 Absolutely.
00:12:52.580 We'll, we'll quickly, just one more thing.
00:12:54.160 Well, conservatives are always talking about the energy portfolio.
00:12:57.520 It's not an either or situation.
00:12:59.380 We want to have an abundance of energy.
00:13:01.260 So we look at all available sources and the market helps to decide this and, and a whole bunch of other things.
00:13:08.120 But, uh, you know, conservatives aren't against renewable energy, but we're not against shutting down the oil and gas sector
00:13:13.700 and only putting all our eggs in one basket because that basket isn't prepared to deal with the, the supply that's needed in terms of electric vehicles, batteries, you name it,
00:13:23.340 that, that we'll need to make this work.
00:13:25.660 Well, I mean, and you've got to look at what companies are the ones that are investing the most in renewable energy.
00:13:30.260 You're looking at companies like Suncor, like Enbridge, like British Petroleum.
00:13:33.780 These are the companies that are investing in things like biofuels, windmills, solar panels, co-generation of their facilities.
00:13:39.660 I mean, these are the technologies, carbon capture and sequestration.
00:13:42.700 These are the technologies that are going to enable us to decarbonize our economy at a rapid rate.
00:13:48.540 And so going after these companies punitively is only going to set back the cause of renewable energy,
00:13:53.540 which of course the conservatives support developing more renewable energy.
00:13:56.860 For sure.
00:13:57.360 So, Dane, we always give the guests the final words so you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
00:14:02.740 We can talk about the Emergencies Act, the oil and gas sector, whatever you want.
00:14:06.440 The floor is yours, the conflict, you name it.
00:14:09.240 Well, I mean, one issue that, you know, I bring up a whole other can of worms here is that I received an ATIP a number of weeks ago
00:14:15.600 that indicates that the government's much-vaunted guns and gangs initiative that they launched back in 2017.
00:14:21.600 They said, over five years, we're going to put $325 million to combat guns and gangs.
00:14:26.780 And we've found that after five years, they spent less than half of that.
00:14:30.400 They spent less than $140 million of that promised $325 million.
00:14:34.160 And now they're launching this billion-dollar-plus gun registry and gun buyback plan to go after law-abiding gun owners.
00:14:41.580 Meanwhile, we're seeing violence explode across cities in this country.
00:14:44.660 We just saw a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs, I think, in a carjacking with a firearm.
00:14:49.460 I mean, this is terrible.
00:14:51.520 And so we need the government to be looking at common-sense solutions.
00:14:53.900 And the fact that they were underspending their budget on, you know, providing law enforcement the tools to go after guns,
00:14:59.340 illegal guns, and gang violence, I mean, I think that's partially the reason that we're seeing the rise in violence.
00:15:04.780 And this whole billion dollars going towards law-abiding gun owners,
00:15:08.280 I know that can be used a heck of a lot better going to community groups to get youth out of crime,
00:15:13.620 going into stopping the illegal flow of firearms over the border,
00:15:16.780 and giving the police, you know, the power to go after organized crime
00:15:20.720 and break up these violent crimes before they happen.
00:15:24.040 So that's what we need to see more of in this country.
00:15:26.680 I think for the government, it just seems easier to go after a group of law-abiding firearms owners
00:15:33.020 and kind of give the false sense of security that they're actually doing something.
00:15:36.560 Oh, absolutely.
00:15:37.340 And, I mean, it's such a fake narrative.
00:15:39.300 And I think it drives the liberals' wedge politics by going after law-abiding firearms owners.
00:15:44.260 It makes them look like they're doing something.
00:15:46.300 And in reality, though, like, I think what we really want to see is an increase in public safety in this country.
00:15:51.500 And I think the conservatives have a much better approach to this by going after criminals and illegal guns.
00:15:57.240 And I think that's going to be the approach.
00:15:58.700 I think we saw it under the previous conservative government,
00:16:01.280 that we had crime rates trending solidly down in this country.
00:16:05.000 And it's only been since the liberals came into power that we've seen a large uptrend in violent crime in this country.
00:16:10.240 And so, clearly, their approach is not working.
00:16:12.720 And our approach did have an impact.
00:16:15.120 Well, we can even go into Bill C-75,
00:16:17.180 a bill that lessened a lot of the sentences for pretty serious crimes.
00:16:21.600 But, unfortunately, we're out of time.
00:16:23.380 I do appreciate the ability to have you here and talk about these issues.
00:16:27.840 So, that's Dane Lloyd, the Member of Parliament for Sturgeon River Parkland.
00:16:31.040 He is also the critic for emergency preparedness.
00:16:34.320 Always a wealth of knowledge.
00:16:35.400 We do appreciate his time.
00:16:36.840 We appreciate your time as well.
00:16:38.200 We have new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time.
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00:17:00.600 As always, low taxes, less governments, more freedom.
00:17:03.740 That's the blueprint.