The Candice Malcolm Show - Fake News Friday ｜ Legacy media pushed fake news about Freedom Convoy

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to you all. This is another edition of Fake News Friday here on True North.

00:00:16.480 It is Friday, February 24th and it is that opportunity in the week for us to wade through

00:00:22.040 the whirlpool of lies and deception to make sense of it all, debunk the fakery and treachery that

00:00:27.780 lurks among us on the airwaves in print, online, on social media, everywhere else. Enough of a

00:00:33.160 preamble. Let me introduce my colleague Harrison Faulkner, host of Ratioed on True North. I'm

00:00:38.400 Andrew Lawton. Harrison, big week last week that ended up preempting this program with the release

00:00:44.840 of the Public Order Emergency Commission's report. So it's been a couple of weeks since we've chatted

00:00:49.920 in this milieu, but how has the week been for you? Well, the week was good. You mentioned the Freedom

00:00:54.780 Convoy, the Emergencies Act report. Of course, that kind of took the shine out of a lot of the

00:00:59.400 other important stories. But, you know, I was reading the CBC and I came across an article which

00:01:04.080 shook my entire outlook on the country. You know, I was thinking about these important issues or I

00:01:09.480 thought were important issues, but I realized that actually none of that matters. The most important

00:01:13.860 thing is that there aren't enough black-owned wineries in Canada. So, again, this is all part of 0.97

00:01:18.860 the CBC mandate to put the news in front of us that Canadians aren't seeing, to give us the important

00:01:24.760 hard-hitting facts. And these stories are so critical. So, you know, we're going to go into

00:01:29.080 the Freedom Convoy, the Emergencies Act report. But, again, without the CBC, we would never know

00:01:33.960 about these other very important issues. But let's first start off with one of the big takeaways from

00:01:39.660 the Public Order Emergency Commission's report, which was obviously a report that, generally speaking,

00:01:45.480 sided with the government, both in the decision to invoke the act as well as the specific measures

00:01:50.600 that Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland and company used under the Emergencies Act. But one

00:01:56.180 interesting takeaway was the Commissioner's finding that there was quite literally fake news from the

00:02:01.840 legacy media about the Freedom Convoy. He was talking about misinformation and he said, yes, you know,

00:02:07.600 there was some misinformation from people in the convoy protest. But he said, I'm also satisfied

00:02:12.300 that there was misinformation about the Freedom Convoy, which was used as a basis to unfairly

00:02:19.460 discredit all protesters. In one example, protesters were blamed for an act of arson in an apartment

00:02:25.520 building, which the police later confirmed had no links to the protest. And this was a claim that

00:02:32.980 I'll just give you like a 15-second primer on, was repeated by some very senior politicians,

00:02:39.140 including the leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh.

00:02:42.300 Violence is commonplace. We saw an example of this violence, an attempted arson downtown

00:02:49.260 of an apartment building where people started a fire. When they exited, they taped the door.

00:02:59.060 There were many more. I think my colleague, Cosman Georgia's editing there, found like two minutes of

00:03:04.960 that. And I have not seen any apologies from the people doing that. And as Commissioner Rillow

00:03:09.820 mentions, one of several examples of misinformation being propagated and promulgated about the convoy.

00:03:16.800 So it doesn't change the overarching tenor and tone and conclusion of the report. But I think it is a

00:03:22.420 big takeaway that now we have. It's just a matter of what has been adjudicated in this country of

00:03:27.160 finding that, yeah, the media was passing nonsense about the convoy a year ago.

00:03:31.520 Everyone watching the Freedom Convoy knew that that was going on, Andrew. It didn't take a judge

00:03:37.320 to uncover this reality. We all knew this was going on. But you know, it's interesting. Even in

00:03:43.260 the Emergencies Act inquiry hearings, we had the OPP officer, Pat Morris, I believe his name was,

00:03:50.400 he basically said that the media, he called this out in the inquiry itself. So everyone watching that

00:03:57.640 knew that surely if this report was going to be accurate, if this report was going to have

00:04:01.480 anything that Canadians could look at and take at face value, not just assume, well, it's a

00:04:07.860 government inquiry, of course, they're going to clear the government. But if there's anything in it,

00:04:11.600 they had to put this in there because we all saw it. It wasn't just the arson hoax, which of course

00:04:16.680 did take up a lot of time on the airwaves. It was, of course, also the CBC anchor saying that there was

00:04:23.080 Russian influence, that there was perhaps a Russian influence in the convoy, again, completely

00:04:27.660 unfounded. And on top of that, there's now reporting that the government relied on fake CBC coverage

00:04:33.180 to justify invoking the Emergencies Act. So the basis that the government used to invoke the

00:04:39.140 Emergencies Act was on CBC coverage, which was dodgy at best, fake at worst. So again, we all knew

00:04:50.040 this was the case. It's good to see it in paper, but the reality is, I don't think Canadians can 1.00

00:04:54.400 take much away from this report. The government got away with it, and we all knew that that was

00:04:58.300 going to happen. Yeah, and when you mentioned Superintendent Pat Morris, I should tell people

00:05:03.220 that haven't followed this as closely, he wasn't just some random OPP beat cop, not that that would

00:05:08.100 undermine his comments. He was actually the OPP intelligence officer that was responsible for

00:05:14.780 intelligence and data collection about the convoy for the Ontario Provincial Police. And Superintendent

00:05:19.900 Morris had one line here that what he was seeing in the media did not reflect what police

00:05:25.300 intelligence was showing. Now, some people might be perhaps inclined to make a joke about police

00:05:29.680 intelligence, but his reports were very detailed. And quite frankly, he was saying that the media was

00:05:35.440 talking about this big, violent, insurrection-y white supremacist vibe. And OPP intelligence reports,

00:05:41.420 which some of them were tabled in the course of the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings,

00:05:45.620 were saying, yeah, bouncy castles, people having a good time, it's peaceful, there isn't this violence.

00:05:51.080 So the media was trying to pursue this narrative about the convoy. And as a result, when misinformation

00:05:56.800 did come up, what's now been found is that they deliberately amplified this data, either out of

00:06:03.220 laziness or out of malice. And what Pat Morris said there is exactly what so many Canadians on the

00:06:08.900 ground in Ottawa at the time of the Freedom Convoy were telling me and other independent journalists

00:06:13.700 like yourself. How many times did we go up to people and they said, you know, I saw these reports

00:06:18.480 coming from the CBC that this was a group of angry people. They were racist, perhaps they were waving

00:06:24.220 these nasty flags. And then they said, well, I wanted to go down and check it out for myself because I

00:06:28.560 don't really believe what the CBC says, which is a good rule of thumb. And then that's exactly what

00:06:32.680 happened. They came down to the Ottawa grounds and realized that what they were getting from the media

00:06:36.780 was complete crap. It was not even accurate at all. And there was clearly an agenda on the 0.99

00:06:43.640 part of the legacy media to demonize the Freedom Convoy, to try and make it to be something that

00:06:49.520 it wasn't and it never will be. And that was their attempt. Turns out that I guess they got away

00:06:54.960 with it. I mean, if the government's getting away with it, the legacy media is probably going to get

00:06:58.260 away with it too. But at least Canadians can take away that the justice overseeing the process,

00:07:05.220 Rouleau, called them out on it. So that itself is good. But like I said before, there's nothing

00:07:09.840 really much that we can take away and celebrate from this. It's a dark day for Canada. It's a bad

00:07:14.720 moment for us. And I think this report will probably backfire on Canadians going forward

00:07:19.020 when another government does the exact same thing. Yeah, arson, Russian actors, you get to take your 0.99

00:07:26.120 pick of the misinformation. But there was a lot of it going around, far more than there was of

00:07:29.920 white supremacy and homelessness, food shelter, theft and statute desecration, all of this other stuff

00:07:36.060 that was amplified without factual basis time and time again. And interestingly enough, I know I

00:07:41.980 mentioned this on my show, but it's related to this. So I should include it here. CBC ran this feature

00:07:47.200 on the National about the Freedom Convoy loosely on the one year anniversary. And they failed to include

00:07:54.340 a single person connected to the convoy or even supportive of slash sympathetic of the convoy

00:08:01.060 when they were talking. So they talked to quote unquote experts, they talked to critics, they were

00:08:06.400 talking about where is the Freedom Convoy movement now, but they curiously didn't ask anyone who was

00:08:11.980 in that movement to weigh in or even perhaps an author who might have written a bestselling book that

00:08:16.840 CBC has thus far ignored about the Freedom Convoy. Not sure who that could have been. There's surely

00:08:21.060 someone out there. But this is time and time again, an example of how CBC has only wanted to highlight

00:08:27.140 very specific perspectives about the convoy. What else is going on, Harrison?

00:08:32.560 So Andrew, this very important story from the Globe and Mail, well, they dropped two important

00:08:36.880 stories. The first one on Friday was about CESIS election interference. This one, equally as important,

00:08:43.480 is about gender neutral acting categories for Canadian Screen Awards. Of course, this is an opinion

00:08:49.140 article from Matthew Chantelois, who thinks that acting categories for Canadian Screen Awards, you know,

00:08:55.140 the awards shows that you never watch. They're too biased. They're not gender neutral enough.

00:09:01.840 Having a male acting category and a female acting category, that's old world stuff, Andrew. We need 1.00

00:09:06.820 to move to the new world where everyone gets lumped in together and we can just become this one

00:09:11.300 lifeless, homogenous pot of actors. Yeah, I mean, I think you're burying the lead here, Harrison. I think

00:09:16.940 the real breaking news takeaway here is that there's something called the Canadian Screen Awards, which I

00:09:21.340 don't think Canadians knew about. And I think I might have vaguely seen something on like a poster

00:09:25.520 in the subway several years ago and had forgotten about until now. So I guess in terms of ginning up

00:09:31.060 some publicity for the Canadian Screen Awards, he's done something very useful here. But yeah,

00:09:36.060 the issue is that it's too binary. So he thinks the Oscars should also do away with best actor and best

00:09:43.020 actress. The Grammy should do away with best male singer, best female singer. And it's an odd thing

00:09:50.220 because when you break out the categories into that binary, you actually have twice as many awards and

00:09:54.600 you're ensuring that there's always going to be female talent recognized each year, which we've been 0.90

00:09:59.100 told is a very important thing to do. So the idea that we need to just throw them all in one giant

00:10:04.680 non-binary gender neutral mess just seems to be a solution in search of a problem here. 1.00

00:10:11.600 Well, there's a couple of points to make on this, Andrew. First being that the Canadian Screen Awards,

00:10:17.120 again, I did a little bit of research before we did the show today on this Canadian Screen Awards,

00:10:22.200 and it's basically because none of us watch it. What it is, it's like the participation prize for

00:10:26.920 Canadian movie, I hesitate to call them stars because we don't really know who they are, but Canadian

00:10:32.140 movies, television, it's like the participation prize before they get to the real award, the Oscars.

00:10:37.340 Now, again, if they do this gender neutral thing, Andrew, I did realize this, 0.98

00:10:40.400 it will help clean up the historical record here because you never know, we're moving to a part

00:10:46.580 now where an actor could be a man one day, they could play a man's role in a movie, and then they

00:10:51.600 could transition to becoming a female or vice versa in the case of Ellen Elliot Page. You know, this way, 0.99

00:10:58.580 actually, if we look back, we can say, well, it makes more sense that it's gender neutral because

00:11:02.280 that way they're not switching back and forth. You know, you don't have one person winning male prize

00:11:06.780 and then one person, the same person winning the female prize. This way, we're moving into the new

00:11:10.800 world, Andrew, the brave new world of one big gender neutral mixing pot of actors and actresses.

00:11:19.340 Well, I guess we'll have to get rid of those words too now. I guess what it'll be, actors?

00:11:23.700 Yeah, just actors. We default to actors or act-exes, maybe.

00:11:28.240 Act-ex, that's more like it.

00:11:28.780 Like a new one.

00:11:29.420 That's more like it.

00:11:30.040 How this all started was there's this CBC show that we have mocked on Fake News Friday

00:11:34.860 before, so we're familiar with it not as viewers in the sense of enjoying it, but as viewers

00:11:39.680 in the sense of Fake News Friday producers. It's, I can't remember the name of it, but

00:11:44.200 oh, it's Sort Of, it's called, as in like sort of relevant, except not really. Sort Of

00:11:48.920 is a CBC comedy in the broadest sense of the word about a non-binary Pakistani Canadian

00:11:56.380 nanny. I mean, what show isn't these days? But the show stars Bilal Begg, who is a Canadian

00:12:02.980 writer and actor who themself is non-binary. I always want to make sure I'm being respectful

00:12:10.640 here. But Bilal Begg did not apply in either category because of a discomfort with the male

00:12:16.040 female binary. Now, I think this is a missed opportunity. Bilal should have applied in both

00:12:20.180 categories, and that way you double your chances of winning. Problem solved.

00:12:24.280 Well, that's some thinking strategy here, but you're downplaying this Sort Of show, Andrew.

00:12:31.040 You're not giving it enough credit, you see. It is the award winner. It is the winner of

00:12:35.540 the CBC Gem Peabody Award. So come on, now you say Sort Of relevant. Jeez, it's the CBC

00:12:42.100 Gem Peabody Award winning show featuring the Pakistani non-binary nanny. I mean, this is some

00:12:48.040 serious stuff. Let's not downplay it at all for our audience.

00:12:50.940 No, they should redo that old Fran Drescher show, The Nanny, and make it about a Pakistani 0.99

00:12:56.600 non-binary nanny. That's the way you can ensure that you get the Peabody Award and also win

00:13:02.000 a gender non-neutral, wait, no, gender, no, neutral, not non-neutral. A gender neutral. See, it gets so 0.83

00:13:07.820 complicated when you do this. Actor and actress is easy. I've remembered this. Hollywood's been

00:13:12.120 structured around this. You know, I might just watch this for the sole purpose of seeing like some

00:13:18.640 old-timey actor invariably slip up and then be heading right towards the cancel mill on this.

00:13:26.160 So I couldn't even tell you after all this story when or where the CBC Screen Awards are,

00:13:31.160 the Canadian Screen Awards. But if you watch them, be mindful that they might be getting less

00:13:35.020 binary by the day. This is one you teased at the very beginning of this program here. Now,

00:13:40.460 I don't know if you're a wine connoisseur. I certainly enjoy wine. And well, I think it's easy

00:13:45.840 to poo-poo Canadian wines. There are some good ones and some good wineries. And when I go for a

00:13:51.940 wine, I say, oh, yes, you know, it's a little bit oaky or, you know, oh, the tannins are a little

00:13:57.100 bit nicer. Oh, look at the legs and the glass. And it's a full-bodied. I don't think, you know.

00:14:01.960 We need to get some wine content on the show, Andrew, from you. We need to get perhaps a little

00:14:06.500 wine tasting. No, I'm all for the True North Wine Hour. They keep telling me not to do it, but I should do

00:14:10.020 maybe Fake News Friday will be Fake News Wine Day before long. But I never sip a wine and think,

00:14:16.940 I don't think there was enough black representation in this.

00:14:22.140 Well, Andrew, because that's because you're not, you're not thinking about the progress we need to

00:14:26.320 make as a society in this country. I'm not, I'm not a wine woker. No. Or a woke winer. No, you're not.

00:14:31.600 You've got to be thinking about the color of the skin of the person who picked the grapes to make

00:14:36.960 the wine. You have to think about the color of the, the skin color of the person who was involved

00:14:42.000 in the whole process. You know, over the, what was it, over April, I was able to go tour a French

00:14:48.040 winery. And it was a great experience. I got to see all these things again. Like you, though,

00:14:52.040 I didn't stop to think about the skin color of the workers at that winery. That just, I think,

00:14:57.040 shows my inherent bias, shows the fact that I'm not really living in the Canada the CBC wants us to

00:15:02.520 live in, which, as they say, you know, we need to think about this. I love how it starts.

00:15:06.160 Of course, black people in Canada's wine industry say they are underrepresented and it's time to

00:15:10.780 examine the culture and break down barriers that hold others back. Again, this is the kind of

00:15:16.200 hard-hitting journalism that all Canadians really want to see. It's why we pay them so much money.

00:15:20.780 Yeah, they quote in this story, Trina Plamendon, who is a BIPOC wine consultant. Again, I didn't know

00:15:27.980 this was a job title. Like, to be a wine consultant in and of itself, I think, is a pretty niche position.

00:15:33.720 To be a BIPOC consultant seems to be an increasingly relevant position. But a BIPOC

00:15:38.340 wine consultant, I don't know if she's a consultant on BIPOC wines, if she's a wine consultant who 0.92

00:15:43.900 happens to be BIPOC, or if she consults on BIPOC winery. So there are different strains that you

00:15:49.820 could take from this job title. But what Trina Plamendon says is that the biggest barrier for 0.92

00:15:54.880 black people trying to get into the wine business is not seeing themselves represented,

00:15:58.960 which leads to a belief that a future career isn't possible. I would hesitate to say that

00:16:05.440 systemic racism is holding back black people from jobs in the wine business in Canada. I think it's a

00:16:11.220 very snobby and closed business. A lot of the times you have family connections and pedigree that are

00:16:17.260 getting people in. So there certainly may be an existing demographic. But if you can become a BIPOC

00:16:22.800 wine consultant, surely you can also penetrate the wine industry regardless of your skin color.

00:16:28.800 I love this part in the article where they're quoting a black wine cellar owner. So clearly

00:16:33.500 this man's been able to break down the structural barriers that the CBC have so eloquently described

00:16:38.420 for us. I love this part. He says,

00:16:40.280 Byfield says he has heard from black wine consumers who have told him that they were uncertain if

00:16:44.940 they'd be welcomed at wine tours, tasting rooms, and wine stores. They were intimidated by the

00:16:50.600 process, he said, and that just kept them away. Is he talking about the LCBO here? It's a very strange

00:16:57.000 line, Andrew. I've never heard this before, that black people are concerned that they won't be

00:17:01.620 welcomed in wine stores. I'm pretty sure that they'd take anyone's money for booze. That's kind of how the

00:17:07.200 government works and operates these stores. I've never heard that line. It's very eye-opening stuff,

00:17:13.340 I've got to tell you.

00:17:14.860 Well, I mean, he's talking about wine tours. So presumably he's talking about winery. But even then,

00:17:19.920 I'm not aware of a winery in Ontario or elsewhere in Canada that's ever turned anyone away because of

00:17:25.660 their skin color. Our colleague at True North, Rupa Subramanye, weighed in on this. She said, you know,

00:17:30.820 3.5% of Canada's population is black. They're an incredibly relevant group. There's a significant

00:17:37.040 history in Canada of black history, especially in Nova Scotia and Southern Ontario. So I think

00:17:43.100 it's critical to the country's story, but it's a small demographic group. So Rupa is saying here,

00:17:48.020 singling out a particular group that's statistically unrepresented in a certain sector

00:17:51.900 as a share of total population is one of the problems. There's also an unproven inference that

00:17:57.180 underrepresentation is because of discrimination and racism. She says there are lots of reasons why

00:18:02.780 blacks, South Asians, Persians, et cetera, don't own wineries in Canada. And they're asserting 0.84

00:18:07.700 without evidence that racism is to blame. So I thought that was a very good comment from Rupa,

00:18:13.320 who again, is not taking aim at the underrepresentation of people of Indian origin in

00:18:17.720 owning wineries. Well, again, these are the kinds of things like, you know, for example,

00:18:21.920 I don't think Andrew will see a CBC article about the underrepresentation of white people in the

00:18:27.460 shawarma business, for example. But again, that's the, that's basically what I wouldn't want. I

00:18:31.820 wouldn't want white, white shawarma. No, I wouldn't want to wait. I want the person who has like the 0.98

00:18:35.920 recipe that's been in their family for like 45 generations from Syria to make my shawarma.

00:18:41.280 Well, fair point, fair point. But I'm still going to take the point. The point stands that I don't

00:18:46.180 think we're going to see an article from the CBC like that. But again, one can hold out hope just like

00:18:51.320 you can hope that maybe the CBC would ask you to do an interview on the national with the freedom

00:18:55.560 convoy. I think in both instances, we'd be waiting quite a while. Yeah, it all comes full circle.

00:19:01.460 Well, that wraps us up for today. Another edition of Fake News Friday in the can here. I hope you have

00:19:06.600 a wonderful weekend. We'll be back next week with more of the program and all of the other shows on

00:19:11.740 True North, including Ratioed with Harrison Faulkner, the Andrew Lawton Show with yours truly,

00:19:15.660 the Rupa Subramania Show, and perhaps Wine Wednesday, if that finally gets approved by management. So

00:19:21.140 have a great weekend, everyone. We'll talk to you soon.

00:19:25.560 We'll talk to you soon.

The Candice Malcolm Show - February 24, 2023

Fake News Friday ｜ Legacy media pushed fake news about Freedom Convoy

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