The Candice Malcolm Show - Candice Malcolm and Andrew Lawton discuss the biggest stories of the year

00:00:00.000 We'll look back at the biggest stories of 2021, both the ones that the legacy media completely

00:00:04.780 ignored and the ones that they blew way out of context and way out of proportion.

00:00:09.020 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:16.140 Everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the program. It's great to have you here. I'm really

00:00:19.880 happy that we're able to provide content throughout the holiday, throughout Christmas. I hope everyone

00:00:24.880 had a wonderful time with their families on Christmas and that you're looking ahead to

00:00:29.080 New Year's. Now, for me, I wanted to bring in my colleague and my friend, Andrew Lawton,

00:00:34.000 to join me to sort of reflect on the year that was, look back at 2021 and talk about the biggest

00:00:39.860 stories of the year. And like I said, the ones that the media ignored, the ones that the media got

00:00:43.200 wrong. So first, Andrew, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program. Yes, it's happy to be here.

00:00:48.420 Do we still get to say Merry Christmas? I never know when the statute of limitations on Merry

00:00:53.040 Christmases ends. I feel that way with November 11th and Remembrance Day because I love where

00:00:59.000 a poppy. But then I know that the like protocol is that you have to take the poppy off as soon

00:01:03.060 as you go to the Remembrance Day ceremony. But yeah, it's December. You can still say Merry

00:01:06.780 Christmas. Okay. Well, Merry Christmas to you and all those watching.

00:01:10.340 Thank you. Okay. So for the show today, I thought we'd do something a little different,

00:01:13.800 a little fun. And so I asked you to come up with your own answers to these three questions.

00:01:19.400 And then I have my own. So we can sort of compare notes here. But I asked you to bring the what you

00:01:24.000 thought was the top story of the year, what you thought was the top story that the media just

00:01:27.540 didn't cover and completely ignored. And that what you thought was the biggest sort of media

00:01:32.000 narrative lie or the story that the legacy media just got completely wrong over proportion. So

00:01:36.560 so let's start with your your pick. What was your pick for the biggest story of the year in Canada

00:01:42.600 in 2021? So I almost did a cop out at first and just said, well, clearly the election. But to be

00:01:47.720 honest, I think the election was like the smallest story of the year because we all knew it was coming

00:01:52.100 and the result was kind of the same as it was before the election. So I then kind of went back

00:01:57.380 and I ended up on an unconventional choice. So bear with me here. I thought that the flags being at

00:02:02.700 half mass for as long as they were, was one of the bigger stories of the year. And the two reasons I 0.99

00:02:08.180 think that are firstly, because it really informs the platitudinal way that Justin Trudeau approaches

00:02:14.660 most policy. And the other side of that was also because it involves so many different dimensions to

00:02:21.160 it. Remember, there was no clear line on when the flags would go back up to full mass. There was no

00:02:26.520 metric. And Aaron O'Toole had spoken out about it and it ended up becoming quite a significant theme

00:02:31.560 in the election and for several months after. So my pick, unconventional, but the flags being at

00:02:37.320 half mass for basically five months. Well, excellent choice. I think I think that there's definitely a

00:02:43.180 narrative around that that that that goes to show where we are as a country, this idea that Canada is a

00:02:48.080 hateful, genocidal, you know, state that's been built on on genocide and slavery and all these

00:02:53.740 things that that's sort of the left's chosen narrative. I don't think very many Canadians buy

00:02:58.420 into it. But there was a study and I think it said that about half of Canadians believe that our

00:03:02.420 country is systemically racist. So clearly, that's something that something is a problem that so many

00:03:09.020 Canadians believe that. And of course, all the hectoring from the media, finding every little

00:03:14.240 example of anything and blowing it out of proportion as if that's a sort of defining feature of Canadian

00:03:19.160 life. But also, Andrew, you know, just to give you credit during the election, you were embedded

00:03:24.580 in the Conservative campaign, you followed them on the campaign trail for a week as a journalist.

00:03:30.980 And one of the probably the highlight for us at True North was you asking this question to Aaron O'Toole

00:03:38.200 and him giving kind of a surprising answer because we know that Aaron O'Toole took a very sort of

00:03:42.980 timid approach. He didn't want to talk about any cultural issues. He didn't want to be seen as

00:03:47.820 defending Canada. He didn't he didn't really take very many Conservative positions at all, to be frank.

00:03:51.820 This was one of the moments of the campaign where he actually did carve out a pretty decent

00:03:55.900 Conservative position because you asked him this very question about about the flags and him saying

00:04:00.340 that, you know, it's time to bring them up. So so so there's a true north element to the story as well.

00:04:04.540 Yeah. And one interesting behind the scenes aspect of that, you know, because I got very friendly with

00:04:10.080 a lot of the reporters that were on the campaign trail and we were all sort of chatting and there

00:04:14.560 was a collective frustration with how many non answers Aaron O'Toole was giving most days when

00:04:20.200 he was asked questions. So it was sort of this this running joke of, oh, well, no news today because he

00:04:24.480 didn't say anything. And this question, he started out as though he was not going to give an answer

00:04:29.960 because he just went through the whole, yes, reconciliation is important. And then it was at the tail end of

00:04:34.460 the answer when everyone has sort of assumed that, OK, it's done. He's not going there.

00:04:38.280 He said, but yeah, it's time for the flags to come up. And there was just this jolt among the press

00:04:43.380 there that were saying, wow, whoa, he's he's making news. He's going for it. So it was a bit surprising,

00:04:49.060 but it ended up becoming the story of the day. And then over the next couple of days, because

00:04:53.080 then the media tried to get Justin Trudeau's response. And eventually, I think it got back where

00:04:57.880 most people, even a lot of people on the left were saying to Trudeau, like, what's the end game here?

00:05:02.700 Right. Like, what is the point other than just doing what Justin Trudeau does best, which is

00:05:06.780 sending empty virtue signals that don't really mean anything, that don't really do anything,

00:05:10.980 but can make him and his liberal followers feel good about something. I don't know. And meanwhile,

00:05:16.640 you know, make make conservatives angry and just say enough is enough. Let's celebrate our country

00:05:20.740 with all its faults. It's not like we're blind to those. We are aware that we're not perfect.

00:05:25.380 All right. Well, for my for my biggest story of the year, I mean, this is sort of two years in a row where

00:05:30.100 COVID is, is everything. COVID is everywhere we look, everything we talk about. There's an element

00:05:35.980 of that. So for me, the biggest story of the year, Andrew, is the enduring presence of COVID in our

00:05:41.100 lives. And not just that, the moving goalposts when it comes to compliance and how we're dealing with

00:05:46.140 it, the sort of, especially in Canada, the media uniformity in the way that these issues are

00:05:50.840 discussed. There's no dissenting opinion allowed whatsoever. And even if you raise some questions,

00:05:57.340 what I found with True North is that the other legacy media journalists sort of turn on you and

00:06:02.160 try to bully you and try to discredit you on social media. We've seen that so much. And interestingly,

00:06:06.600 Andrew, one of the things that COVID has done is it's made conspiracy theorists, made their points

00:06:13.020 validated. We've seen this so many times, like I was looking at an old Justin Ling tweet, right? This is

00:06:17.840 from August 2020. And, you know, he hates us. He hates True North, whatever. And so this particular piece,

00:06:24.020 he is furious at the Toronto Sun column by our colleague, Anthony Fury. And the issue that he's

00:06:31.620 angry about is that he thinks that Andrew, or sorry, he thinks that Anthony is spreading a dangerous

00:06:36.820 conspiracy theory, hinting at the idea that we're going to have a vaccine mandate. And this is my

00:06:41.720 favorite quote here. It says, Anthony Fury, the Toronto Sun and True North crew are actively pushing

00:06:46.920 really, really dangerous misinformation about the pandemic. And they don't really seem to care.

00:06:51.480 So Ling was calling us conspiracy theorists because we were hinting that there might be vaccine

00:06:55.920 passports and vaccine mandates. Of course, that's become true. That's not a conspiracy. That was

00:07:00.680 just us sort of reading the writing on the wall. But, you know, if someone were to stop you, Andrew,

00:07:04.700 in April of 2020, when this thing was first started, when we first started doing our daily shows,

00:07:09.480 a True North update to give updates, if someone would have described what life is like in December

00:07:14.400 of 2021, you wouldn't believe them. You would say, no, that's conspiratorial.

00:07:18.520 They're not going to, you know, have these huge campaigns to force mandate vaccines, fire people

00:07:24.680 who refuse and, you know, then turn around and say, oh, well, these vaccines aren't really working

00:07:30.360 the way that we want them to. So now you're going to have to continue with a booster. Like

00:07:33.220 all of this stuff has happened over the last year. It's really just been dystopian to watch. So

00:07:38.660 and now, of course, we're seeing vaccines rolled out for kids. We're seeing the idea of a forced

00:07:45.200 booster, the revolving door goalposts, moving goalposts with regards to what it means to be

00:07:51.560 fully vaccinated. So the fact that COVID is still such a big deal in our lives, Andrew, to me is

00:07:56.020 the top news story of the year. Yeah. And it's not just the presence of COVID, but as you indicated

00:08:01.380 there, the presence of all these government responses to COVID, which oftentimes are worse

00:08:06.840 than the COVID itself in the sense of what they achieve and what they seek to do. And I think that's

00:08:12.200 that's very poignant. And I wish we could say that we were going to leave this behind us in 2021. But

00:08:16.900 with all the discourse around Omicron and, you know, whatever the next six or seven variants

00:08:20.980 that are being cooked up in Wuhan now are, like, it's going to get worse in 2022, I fear. And I do

00:08:26.840 think that's why it's been so important to have independent media actually talking about some of

00:08:31.180 these stories. And like, I remember at the very beginning when you and I were talking, again, this is

00:08:35.440 2020 now, but we were talking almost in a, like a novelty when you get these stories about, oh, you know,

00:08:41.220 someone ticketed for playing in a public park and they were wrong. But I mean, that was just so

00:08:46.400 small potatoes compared to some of the bigger battles we've seen in 2021 with churches being

00:08:51.180 shut down, pastors being arrested. So no, I would definitely agree that still is the preeminent

00:08:55.860 story of our time. Yeah. So, so I was talking to, I was talking to a scientist friend of mine about

00:09:02.760 COVID the other day, and he said that the trajectory of COVID is exactly what you would want, that every

00:09:07.080 variant spreads more quickly, that it reaches more people, but that it is less impactful. So it's

00:09:12.240 having less of a deadly effect each time. It seems like that's what Omicron is looking like. So

00:09:16.680 instead of saying, okay, this thing is probably run its course. We don't need all of these over

00:09:21.020 heavy handed, overreaching regulations. We can start to just, you know, live with COVID. It seems like

00:09:27.740 our government officials and the sort of expert classes evolved from this whole pandemic. It's like

00:09:33.680 they're just clenching onto control. They don't want to let go of that glory of that power. And

00:09:38.260 it's like, you know, there's no such thing as a temporary government program, right? Now that we've

00:09:41.940 lived with this kind of overreaching government presence in our lives, it's going to be a fight.

00:09:46.820 It's going to be a fight to, to win back our freedoms and to go back to the way that things

00:09:51.840 should be in a free and liberal society. Andrew, so again, just more reasons why this is the biggest

00:09:56.660 story of the year. Okay, let's move on and talk about the biggest stories that the media did not cover.

00:10:02.880 So I'll let you go first with this one, Andrew. What was it? What was your biggest story that the media

00:10:06.620 did not cover? For me, and this is a huge one, Bill C-36. And if that number doesn't ring a bell

00:10:13.160 to you, that's because the media was not giving it much attention. This is the bill that the liberals

00:10:17.700 put forward just before, like literally the day before parliament rose for the summer with the liberals

00:10:23.460 knowing parliament wouldn't go back because they were going to call an election. It's the bill that would

00:10:28.920 put a hate speech in the criminal code or sorry, put a hate speech in the Canadian Human Rights Act

00:10:34.660 and also amend the criminal code to genuinely allow for the prosecution of thought crimes. So this was

00:10:41.020 restoring a formerly repealed section of the Canadian Human Rights Act and actually doing more with it.

00:10:47.120 And this is again, a tremendously dangerous bill, significant implications against free speech on face

00:10:53.680 value. It's in the text of the bill. And the media coverage on it was virtually non-existent.

00:10:59.320 And part of that was because the political opposition was virtually non-existent. Darren O'Toole did not

00:11:04.560 utter a word about this when it was released. He did in the campaign come out in the platform and say

00:11:10.400 that he would oppose such measures, but did not utter a word at all. There was talk about Bill C-10,

00:11:15.500 sure. But Bill C-36, which was much worse, was ignored by the conservative establishment

00:11:20.720 and completely ignored by the legacy media as well.

00:11:25.260 Which is pretty wild because, you know, you'd think that the purpose of a free press is to defend

00:11:30.040 sort of the basic freedoms associated with freedom of speech, freedom of the press. And yet

00:11:34.220 they didn't want anything to do with it. I think there's been this weird narrative built up,

00:11:37.940 Andrew, that somehow there's these dangerous right-wing forces that exist online that somehow pose a threat

00:11:44.200 to society or that it could lead to political violence or something like that, even though

00:11:48.540 there's not really any evidence, any evidence that I can see that these shadow groups really exist in

00:11:53.660 the way that the media and the liberal government describe them. What do you think is behind this?

00:11:58.660 Why is Justin Trudeau doing this? He's a liberal. He's supposed to care about the charter. The very

00:12:03.160 first thing listed in the charter is freedom of speech and freedom of press. So why is he doing this,

00:12:11.240 do you think? Well, I think there are two things there. Number one, the government knows that when

00:12:17.960 it uses words like hate speech, they're kind of like assault rifle, which is that people hear them

00:12:22.460 and they conjure an image of what they are that isn't inherently accurate. And most people would

00:12:27.340 say, well, yeah, of course I'm against hate speech. Okay. Ergo, if you're going after hate speech,

00:12:30.980 that's fine. But the reality is those terms lack meaning and they're very political because the

00:12:36.760 government can use them to apply them to whatever they want. So I'm all, I'm against hate speech as

00:12:41.660 well. I think hate speech is deplorable, but you and I may have different definitions of what hate

00:12:46.180 speech is. Certainly Justin Trudeau and I are going to have different definitions of what hate speech is.

00:12:51.080 And I would take the view that even if speech is hateful and deplorable, that doesn't mean it is not

00:12:55.660 protected by free speech. So I think that one of the big explanations to address your question there of

00:13:02.040 the why is because they can. It's wild. It's almost like everything the liberals do. I just

00:13:08.360 cynically think the purpose is to try to trap the conservatives. So they presume that a principled

00:13:13.480 conservative opposition will say, no, no, no, we believe in free speech. We believe in these

00:13:17.900 principles and, and sort of make the case as to why you don't really want to just outright ban this

00:13:23.320 stuff. Because if you take an idea, you ban it, it's just going to push it underground. It's going to

00:13:27.700 make it seem more appealing. And that idea will spread that the best way to combat real hate speech

00:13:32.480 is through daylight, right? The daylight is the best disinfectant they say. And so a principled

00:13:37.540 opposition would make this case. Whereas we don't have that in this country. We don't have that with

00:13:42.460 Erin O'Toole. And so instead, Erin O'Toole just says, okay, whatever you want. And we've seen that

00:13:47.720 with multiple bills. And we saw that earlier in December with the quote unquote, so called conversion

00:13:54.860 therapy bill, which really just banned conversations that people might have with, even with a registered

00:14:01.180 therapist, if they're confused about their gender or their sexual orientation, that's now illegal.

00:14:05.600 And all the conservatives were jumping up and down for joy that this bill got unanimous consent. So

00:14:09.880 the problem is that we don't have a real opposition in this country because the conservatives are so

00:14:15.080 desperate to be loved by the media and sort of fancy people like the liberals, that they're not

00:14:21.060 doing the job they're supposed to be doing, which is opposing the government.

00:14:25.580 Yeah. And I think you're right to point out the conservative default position of being timid. I

00:14:30.500 think that's so huge. And also I think related to that is that in order to take a principled stand

00:14:35.680 for free speech, you need to defend some very unpopular and unpalatable things. Now I have no issue

00:14:41.120 doing that, not because I defend the merit of the comments, but because I defend the right for people

00:14:46.120 to say unpalatable things. That's the whole point of free speech. But there are a lot of people,

00:14:50.660 certainly in the political class that are not comfortable standing up for things that on their

00:14:55.080 surface are bad because they don't want to have to own that. And I think it's actually more important

00:14:59.660 to then return to the principled stand, because if you're consistent in supporting free speech as a

00:15:05.680 general concept, as a general ethos, then you don't need to get into the details of, oh, what about this

00:15:10.700 comment and what I have said that you don't need to because you're consistent. So I don't even engage

00:15:15.000 on the specific merit. Same as when we were talking about individuals that have been

00:15:19.240 deplatformed. And someone would say, well, do you agree with them saying X? And I say,

00:15:23.120 I don't care. I don't care what they say. It could be, you know, Mahatma Gandhi speaking. It could be

00:15:28.180 Mother Teresa. It could be Milo Yiannopoulos. There's a trio that is one for the ages. It doesn't

00:15:33.580 matter if you're consistent about it and you focus on the importance of freedom. You don't need to get

00:15:38.020 dragged into that. But the conservatives have never quite been on sure enough footing to do that.

00:15:42.860 Well, these conservatives, no. But I think the broader issue, of course, is the media narrative

00:15:48.240 that they don't want. They know that the media will frame it exactly how the liberals have asked,

00:15:52.640 exactly what the liberals say. And so exactly to your point, rather than, you know, the headline

00:15:57.420 being Aaron O'Toole defends free speech, it will be Aaron O'Toole defends this horrible, horrible Nazi

00:16:03.080 who said this deplorable thing, which, you know, Aaron O'Toole might not be sophisticated enough to fight

00:16:08.160 back against that. He wants to avoid any mention of that. But in the process, he is completely

00:16:13.000 selling out conservative principles and putting us in a dangerous position as a country where we

00:16:17.500 don't have anyone to fight back against these horrific assaults on our freedom, Andrew. So good choice.

00:16:23.800 I tend to agree. My biggest story of the year, to me, has to be the assault on Christians in this 1.00

00:16:29.240 country. And we've alluded to it a little bit. This is pretty wild, Andrew, because it's particularly

00:16:33.540 happening in Western Canada. You would think the Western Canada of the whole country would be

00:16:38.080 the sort of least likely place where we would see these sort of sustained attacks on Christians.

00:16:42.420 But I'm talking about two stories in particular. The first is the arrest and prosecution of a

00:16:47.500 handful of pastors, mostly in Alberta. We had Artur Poloski, we had Tim Stevens, and then another

00:16:53.020 fellow pastor in Manitoba named Tobias Thyssen, who was arrested, all of whom, there are probably

00:16:59.560 others as well. I don't know if you can think of any others, Andrew, but there were so many that were

00:17:03.480 arrested for the crime of holding church services. And a lot of times this was, you know, at the same

00:17:08.700 point where something else was open. You could go to a restaurant, you could go to a sports arena,

00:17:13.140 you could do all kinds of things. We're starting to open up again. And yet, for some reason, we are

00:17:16.820 still going after a religious sacred ceremony for people in a time where we need hope, where we need

00:17:24.780 community. And the fact that they were arresting and making examples out of these pastors was

00:17:29.560 despicable, Andrew. In fact, you know, if this was happening in another country, you would see

00:17:33.860 conservative leaders, people like Jason Kenney, I hope people like Aaron O'Toole, speaking out

00:17:37.860 against it, if we're seeing this happen in China or, you know, in somewhere in the Middle East.

00:17:42.420 Yeah, it's happening in Canada, and no one bats an eye at it. And of course, the media doesn't cover it.

00:17:48.400 And then the sort of other story that had to do with Christians was the burning and desecration 0.64

00:17:54.640 of dozens and dozens of churches across Canada in the summer. And, you know, sometimes it was

00:18:00.300 barely reported. It was reported as a local story. And none of it was ever tied together. We at True

00:18:05.180 North, of course, took the opposite approach. We had a story called a map of the churches that had

00:18:10.820 been vandalized or burned since residential school story announcement. We kept updating this piece

00:18:16.220 as it came. At this point, there were 68 churches across the country that were either burnt to the

00:18:22.340 ground or desecrated. And again, this was one of our biggest news stories on our website this year

00:18:28.040 because no one else was doing this. No other media outlet was keeping track of them or giving you a

00:18:32.280 tally or giving you maps and filling Canadians in in the way that they clearly wanted because this

00:18:37.360 was such a big story for us. Andrew, but again, this sustained assault on Christianity and its 0.99

00:18:42.880 institutions and its house of worship and the fact that the media was just nowhere to be found.

00:18:47.980 Yeah, it's the last acceptable prejudice. I mean, there have been stories in the last few years

00:18:51.980 when someone has vandalized a mosque or a synagogue, which is also deplorable. And Justin

00:18:58.260 Trudeau will put out a statement. He'll condemn it. He'll call an address. He might even go and visit

00:19:03.640 the site of it and have a meeting and talk about the importance of fighting against Islamophobia and

00:19:08.100 in some cases, anti-Semitism. But when dozens of churches had been burned, had been vandalized,

00:19:13.540 had been threatened, he was literally completely silent. I don't just mean he didn't say a lot. I mean,

00:19:18.920 for the longest time, for weeks, he was completely and utterly silent, had no condemnation,

00:19:24.740 finally gave a half-hearted one when it became such a bigger story. I think thanks in large part

00:19:30.500 to the reporting of True North and other independent media outlets. And then as well,

00:19:35.440 you had that lawyer or the head of the BC Civil Liberties Union saying that, you know,

00:19:41.460 we should burn it all down. And that was something that, again, was met with a lot of defense and support

00:19:46.100 from several of the elites in the civil liberties world or so-called civil liberties world and

00:19:51.860 government. So this is a very real problem. And, you know, in Ontario, we had two churches,

00:19:57.920 notably, actually three. There was Harvest in Windsor. There was Trinity Bible Chapel in the

00:20:02.960 Kitchener-Waterloo area. Church of God in Elmer down in Elgin County. Churches that had their doors

00:20:08.740 locked on them because they were refusing to comply with measures that were restricting them but not

00:20:15.140 restricting the grocery store and the liquor store. It's so wild. Such a double standard,

00:20:20.680 Andrew. And you say it's the last acceptable prejudice. I agree, except for now there's an

00:20:26.180 even newer and more acceptable prejudice, and that is against unvaccinated people. That's like the only 0.91

00:20:31.320 group that we're allowed to. Yeah, that puts you at the very, very bottom of the totem pole.

00:20:36.320 Okay, let's move on to the last question I had for you, Andrew, which is, so we talked about the

00:20:43.340 stories that the media did not cover, but we know that the media is mostly just guilty of creating

00:20:47.980 these total fake narratives that just have no connection to real life. And they're so easy to

00:20:54.360 pick apart that it's sort of self-explanatory. But I wanted you to pick out what you thought was the

00:20:59.540 biggest story of the year that the media either got completely wrong or they completely blew out of

00:21:03.560 proportion. I think the, for me, this was a slam dunk, the People's Party of Canada. Now, at first,

00:21:09.620 this was one that the media didn't cover. When Maxie Bernier launched his campaign, I was at the

00:21:14.880 press conference he did in Ottawa, and there were a bunch of reporters there. He took like 40 minutes

00:21:19.680 of questions. And then at the end of it, no one really ran any stories. No one actually ran any of

00:21:25.600 the coverage. And for the longest time, we were seeing polls that had Bernier up at 9%, 10%, 12%

00:21:31.820 in Alberta and parts of Ontario. It was up even higher than that. And the media was just completely

00:21:37.960 doing a blackout. We know he wasn't in the debate. And it was only near the end of the campaign when

00:21:43.900 people realized this wasn't a blip, that the media started to pay attention, but even then didn't

00:21:48.660 really understand or seek to understand where it was coming from. They didn't understand that a big

00:21:53.660 part of the PPC support was not coming from disgruntled conservatives, but was coming from

00:21:58.240 people that had been traditional non-voters, people that had voted green or NDP. In past elections,

00:22:04.320 a lot of natural living types that were against vaccine mandates because of their own personal

00:22:10.020 ethos that are not politically conservative. So there was a very diverse support base there. And we

00:22:16.740 covered not just the conservative campaign, but also the PPC campaign. I was on the road with Maxine

00:22:22.140 Bernier for a few days in Alberta and saw this coalition that the media just simply wasn't

00:22:27.600 covering. Well, no, it's so true. And then even to add another element onto that, when the media

00:22:34.640 finally did start covering Bernier and the PPC, they did it in such a condescending, mean-spirited,

00:22:42.060 disauthentic, unauthentic way because they painted these people as if they were anti-vaxxers or anti-science

00:22:51.200 or quacks, like fringe far right. We saw a lot of stories that had that undertone that really,

00:22:56.780 instead of trying to understand and respect Canadian voters who are part of a political

00:23:01.740 trend, even if it's a political trend that you don't have respect for, instead of doing that,

00:23:06.780 the media just completely took the worst of the worst and held that up as an example of who these

00:23:12.580 voters were. I can't imagine them treating Green Party voters or NDP parties with party voters

00:23:18.660 with such disdain the way that they showed towards the PPC.

00:23:23.100 No, not at all. And I mean, just the imbalance there of the Greens versus the PPC, I think is

00:23:27.880 interesting because the Green Party was just in a perpetual state of turmoil that involved the

00:23:33.040 resignation. And well, it was going to be an expulsion, but I think she resigned before they

00:23:37.280 got to her of Anna Mae Paul. But the Green Party was still being treated as though it was just this

00:23:42.240 entirely normal, happy, peaceable alternative to the mainstream party is when the Green Party

00:23:48.120 paled in comparison to the PPC. And again, this is not an endorsement of PPC. I don't have a stand,

00:23:54.620 I don't endorse any party, but I'm all about endorsing the idea of covering the PPC and covering

00:24:01.120 the narratives. And the mainstream media certainly was ignoring what was happening there, which we know

00:24:05.820 from the numbers was not as significant as those 12%, 13%, 14% polls were suggesting, but was still

00:24:12.060 a pretty significant trend in the election. Absolutely. And the fact that Bernier wasn't

00:24:17.220 allowed into the debate. So you had this ridiculous spectacle where you had Anna Mae Paul, who doesn't 0.98

00:24:22.420 really have any political background. You could tell that she was really out of her depth when asked 0.66

00:24:26.400 about any issue that wasn't related to the environment. And then they wouldn't let Maxine Bernier,

00:24:30.540 who's a former cabinet minister, almost the leader of the Conservative Party, he lost by a hair.

00:24:35.000 Could you imagine, Andrew, if someone came that close to winning the liberal leadership and then

00:24:40.080 ended up splitting off and forming their own sort of liberal adjacent party? The media would be all

00:24:44.740 over it. That person would be a star. But of course, because it's a conservative on the right,

00:24:47.960 they had to come up with the worst accusations and really, really just malign him with character

00:24:54.920 assassinations that didn't suit, didn't actually have any living connection to Bernier and what he

00:25:02.600 actually was about and what he actually stood for. So I tend to agree with your choice. Well,

00:25:06.920 for my choice, Andrew, I'm sort of going to bring this whole episode full circle because I think

00:25:10.760 that the biggest story that the media got wrong and blew out of proportion was the story of the

00:25:15.700 mass graves at residential schools. And I say that tongue in cheek because there were, of course,

00:25:19.680 no mass graves found at residential schools. The story, you know, when it first came out,

00:25:24.760 it was really vague and unclear. And I think that the way that the uncertainty sort of compounded

00:25:31.620 with reporters filling in their own words. So, you know, the original news release from the

00:25:36.820 T'Kem Loops Band was, we have discovered graves at our school, basically at this former site of

00:25:44.220 residential school. We use ground penetrating radar. Nobody really knew what that meant. So the

00:25:48.660 headlines were saying bodies were discovered, graves were dug up, you know, children's remains

00:25:54.120 were found. They were found in mass graves. There was just a huge disconnect from what the media was

00:26:00.080 writing. Well, it wasn't just Canadian media. It was a global media. It was BBC, New York Times,

00:26:04.840 Washington Post, all of these big outfits, as well as the CBC and Globe and Mail and Post Media in

00:26:10.420 Canada, completely botching the story. And then it kind of took on a life of its own where, you know,

00:26:17.220 everyone had to agree that Canada had committed genocide. Everyone had to agree that this was a crime 0.61

00:26:22.360 against humanity. And everyone had to agree that Canada was awful. We're going to cancel Canada 0.98

00:26:26.160 today. And to bring it back to the first story we talked about, that we were going to lower that flag

00:26:31.000 and basically just hang our heads and shave. Of course, none of that was wrong. When they finally

00:26:35.040 got around to the presentation by the scientists about the ground penetrating radar, we learned that

00:26:41.540 the science is really unclear, that the researchers themselves said that there was no way to know how many

00:26:45.960 people were buried, whether they were children or adults, whether they had anything to do with the

00:26:49.900 residential school. Their estimate wasn't 215, as every media outlet had reported. It was probably

00:26:56.120 more like 200. And then, you know, all of the other stories that came out of it, other reserves making

00:27:03.000 similar accusations. You know, we heard from people in their community saying, well, you know, these

00:27:08.520 graves were found in a graveyard. They used to be marked, but the gravestones eroded over time. And we

00:27:14.920 don't know whose graves these belonged to. This was also a community cemetery. And one of the cases

00:27:20.640 in Lower Kootenay, the cemetery predated the residential school by about 30 years. And it was

00:27:25.080 actually associated with a hospital and not with a residential school. So there's just so many holes

00:27:29.560 in the story, Andrew, that the narrative just bared no similarity whatsoever to the facts on the

00:27:35.740 ground. At times, I felt like I was one of the only reporters in the entire country that was even

00:27:39.400 bothering to look into this stuff. And again, because of that, this was a huge story for us at True

00:27:44.500 North. My report, Six Things of Legacy Media Got Wrong, also became one of the biggest sites

00:27:50.040 in the history of our website. So I think that Canadians started to sort of see through the myth

00:27:54.980 and realize that there's more to the story than the ridiculous narrative headlines that were being

00:28:00.020 pushed by legacy media. Yeah. And I think you did absolutely tremendous work on that. And I'm still

00:28:05.780 very proud to have been not on those projects because you were taking the lead on it, but to have been

00:28:09.960 working with you in general as you worked on this. Because one of the big challenges, and you

00:28:14.100 mentioned the word narrative there is important, is that you can't let facts get in the way of a

00:28:18.640 narrative to a lot of the people that are pushing narratives. That's the attitude they take. And I

00:28:23.200 would say it's entirely possible to deplore residential schools and Canada's past treatment

00:28:28.000 of Indigenous people, while also raising questions in a journalistic fashion about any allegation that's

00:28:33.500 made about anything. And I do think that the deference that we are expected to take on the Indigenous 0.66

00:28:40.200 file is something that very much clouded the mainstream media's willingness to ask questions

00:28:46.240 that would be asked about any other group making a claim. If you say, you know, so-and-so murdered my

00:28:51.240 daughter. Asking for details about that has nothing to do with not believing or challenging. It's doing

00:28:56.760 your job. It's doing your due diligence. And there was, I think, a lot of fear, a lot of fear that

00:29:02.580 anything you do to poke around and ask questions and try to demand proof was going to be stepping on

00:29:09.360 the toes of the Indigenous communities, which media did not want to do.

00:29:14.020 And it's sort of a sad state where we would rather just take these terrible accusations against our

00:29:19.220 country at face value than bother doing a little bit of journalism. Because, of course, I agree.

00:29:23.840 Like, I'm the last person to defend a residential school program. It was a big government-centralized

00:29:28.440 program that sought to break up families. That's complete opposite of what conservatives believe

00:29:35.420 in and want. But at the same time, it's like, I care about the truth and I care about facts. And I

00:29:39.900 think that that is sort of what led, you're right, that's what should lead all journalists. And the

00:29:44.240 fact that it was just True North, maybe a few other L's, but hardly, not even. I didn't even really see

00:29:49.820 post-media pick up this issue other than my own reports in post-media. So really, a chill over the

00:29:56.560 legacy media out there because no one really wanted to be seen poking around on this issue

00:30:01.840 and raising questions. Well, again, Andrew, I think that all of these stories we talked about

00:30:06.940 just confirmed the reason why True North exists, the reason why True North is doing so well,

00:30:11.500 the reason why True North is growing, and we have a bigger audience than ever. And, you know,

00:30:14.940 you've been with us pretty much since the very beginning. And it's so great to watch our team

00:30:19.020 expand and continue to grow and, you know, the reports that you and I do continue to have the reach.

00:30:25.040 So I just want to say, yeah, it's great to have you on the team. It's great to have you

00:30:28.380 part of True North, the leading force here. And thank you so much for joining the show today.

00:30:33.500 Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for all your work.

00:30:36.440 All right. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Candice Belcom, and this is The Candice Belcom Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - December 29, 2021

Candice Malcolm and Andrew Lawton discuss the biggest stories of the year

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