The Candice Malcolm Show - Fake News Friday ｜ Poilievre takes on F＊＊＊ Trudeau flags

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00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:37.040 It is Friday, January 6th, 2023.

00:00:40.480 The first edition of Fake News Friday in 2023.

00:00:45.000 And let me just give you a bit of a teaser here.

00:00:47.360 We are off to a ringing start for the new year.

00:00:50.920 If you missed it, last week we had the Fake News Awards.

00:00:54.940 And there were a lot of very strong competitors in 2022.

00:00:58.720 Were they not, Harrison?

00:00:59.860 No, there were, Andrew.

00:01:01.080 And some of the early themes this year are popping up already that we kind of touched on with the Fake News Awards.

00:01:08.400 So we've got a little Pierre Polyev action in here.

00:01:10.720 Some PDS.

00:01:12.000 We've got some CBC returning to their old ways.

00:01:14.660 So I guess the saying is the more they change, the more things stay the same.

00:01:18.180 And it looks like, especially with the CBC, Andrew, that's going to be the way it's going this year.

00:01:23.440 Yeah, I was going to say, can they return to something they've never abandoned in the first place?

00:01:27.480 That's a question for the audience to decide.

00:01:30.340 I'm Andrew Lawton.

00:01:31.120 That was Harrison Faulkner.

00:01:32.520 Let's get right down to business here.

00:01:35.100 One of the stories that came up just, again, we had already hit publish on the Fake News Awards, I believe.

00:01:42.040 And this story came up, so we had to kick it into 2023.

00:01:46.500 Pierre Polyev had a last-minute press conference to respond to, among other things, bail issues in Canada,

00:01:53.560 and specifically that horrific slaying of an OPP officer by, allegedly, a man who was out on bail

00:02:00.620 and was banned from having firearms but somehow managed to.

00:02:04.220 And this was something that Pierre Polyev spoke about, and the media could ask, as they're allowed to,

00:02:10.320 questions on anything and everything.

00:02:12.520 And one of them brought up a question about a blog post written by a former conservative leader, Aaron O'Toole,

00:02:18.580 condemning those F. Trudeau flags I know you've seen.

00:02:22.240 There were a few of them at the convoy.

00:02:23.820 I've seen them every now and then on trucks and cars driving around.

00:02:27.560 And I've said before, I'm not exactly a fan of incivility in politics or elsewhere.

00:02:34.680 And Pierre Polyev was asked if he agreed with Aaron O'Toole's condemnation or issues with it.

00:02:41.040 And Polyev gave what I thought was actually quite a measured and intelligent and thoughtful answer.

00:02:47.580 Well, I don't like the flags, and I don't like rage.

00:02:53.600 But I think we have to ask ourselves, why are people so angry?

00:02:58.820 Like, why are people so angry?

00:03:02.080 And the answer is that they're hurting.

00:03:05.620 You know, it's easy for, you know, the political establishment to say, stop all your complaining.

00:03:11.680 But when you're one of the 1.5 million people that went to a food bank in the month of March, it's not so easy.

00:03:20.380 If you're one of the people that went to the Mississauga food bank and asked for help with medical assistance and dying,

00:03:25.200 not because you're sick, but because you can't afford to live, it's not so easy.

00:03:29.020 If you're one of the 38-year-olds living in your parents' basement because it now takes more of a monthly paycheck to own a house

00:03:39.000 than at any time in recorded history, it's not so easy to be happy with the way things are going.

00:03:44.340 If you're one of the people who was over-prescribed opioids and is now addicted to drugs as a result,

00:03:54.360 it's not so easy to be happy with the way things are going.

00:03:58.000 I have never seen so much hurt and so much pain and suffering in our population in my nearly two decades in politics.

00:04:05.860 So yes, of course, we should tell people to be more civil and to reject offensive signs, flags, and language.

00:04:17.840 But we should also ask ourselves, why are people hurting so badly?

00:04:22.140 So he says right out of the gate, he doesn't like the flags.

00:04:25.820 But he said that it would be incumbent on politicians to ask,

00:04:29.500 why is that anger there to such a point that people are going to fly those flags and use that term?

00:04:34.680 I don't think that diagnosing where anger in the electorate comes from is a bad thing.

00:04:39.500 I think all politicians should be trying to understand that, even if they don't agree with people.

00:04:44.480 Well, what did the media latch in on on this, Harrison?

00:04:48.180 Well, the media, unsurprisingly, decided to say that, well, Pierre Pauliev's condemnation of the F. Trudeau flags wasn't enough, Andrew.

00:04:58.560 It just wasn't enough to satisfy the media.

00:05:01.680 Of course, who could have guessed that what they really wanted Pierre Pauliev to do was do what countless conservative leaders have done in the past,

00:05:08.700 which is basically turn around and go back to their normal ways of kind of condemning and distancing their own base.

00:05:15.100 Instead, as you pointed out and as we just watched, Pauliev gave a very measured response and said,

00:05:19.960 of course, it's wrong to have profanity-laden flags and bumper stickers and kind of inject that into politics.

00:05:26.720 But if you're not looking at where that's coming from, then you're not really doing your job as a politician.

00:05:31.860 After all, what are they there for anyway, other than to represent the interests of the people?

00:05:36.880 So classic, this is so classic of city news.

00:05:39.420 They classified this story as local news.

00:05:42.720 Now, there is a crisis of local news happening because a lot of these news outlets are failing to cover local stories.

00:05:47.420 But I would say, Andrew, that an article about Pauliev not going far enough, not criticizing his base far enough, doesn't really fall under local news.

00:05:56.900 In fact, when you only quote a political scientist who is obviously coming from the left side of this discussion,

00:06:02.980 who's obviously coming from a place that is in opposition to Pierre Pauliev, again, that can't be local news.

00:06:10.200 Why do these legacy media journalists always do this?

00:06:12.580 They always say, well, here's a news piece, and all we're going to do is cover one side of the political spectrum,

00:06:18.180 make conservatives look bad, and there you go.

00:06:20.300 That's some local news for you. 1.00

00:06:21.520 It's just ridiculous. 0.75

00:06:23.200 Yeah, it's what we call in journalism a single-source story, 0.54

00:06:26.800 in that it relies on the comments of just one person.

00:06:29.980 In this particular case, the person has no connection to the story whatsoever.

00:06:33.800 It's a political science professor from Mount Royal University, Laurie Williams, who says,

00:06:40.460 Pauliev is basically saying it's the fault of the prime minister and a better leader will unite Canadians.

00:06:46.640 But it's not clear to me what Mr. Pauliev is doing is in any way uniting Canadians.

00:06:51.880 It looks to me like it's stoking divisions, unquote.

00:06:55.260 So what Professor Williams is saying is that, well, you know, Pierre Pauliev is not being a unifier.

00:07:00.520 Well, that, again, veers in, not veers, it actually just completely Kool-Aid mans through the wall

00:07:06.340 of the territory here of just general political commentary that has nothing to do with F. Trudeau flags,

00:07:13.180 nothing to do with Pauliev's comments on the F. Trudeau flags.

00:07:16.640 It's just the professor saying, yeah, you know what, Pierre Pauliev, I don't know what he's doing to unite Canadians.

00:07:21.940 And, well, no, all he was saying, and you don't even need to like Pierre Pauliev to accept this and understand this,

00:07:28.440 is that, hey, I don't like those things, but if we're seeing there's a problem with them,

00:07:32.980 maybe it's helpful to understand why people are upset.

00:07:36.020 Maybe it's helpful to understand what it is in this country that isn't working right now.

00:07:39.800 And the idea that you can just find one person in Canada that doesn't like something and write a story about that,

00:07:46.840 I mean, we've been doing it all wrong.

00:07:48.180 I mean, we could just say, you know, man on Dundas Street doesn't like what Justin Trudeau just said at that press conference.

00:07:54.020 Yeah, and headline is, a headline is, Canadians can't stand what Justin Trudeau just said when it's just one man on Dundas Street.

00:08:00.120 Yeah, we find two of them and boom, we've got ourselves a story.

00:08:03.120 Canadians, plural.

00:08:03.640 Overwhelming, booming majority.

00:08:05.600 No, exactly.

00:08:06.280 And this political science professor, just in case anyone was, you know,

00:08:09.300 not exactly sure where this professor was coming from on the political spectrum here,

00:08:15.080 she even says that the question needs to be asked, what is it that represents conservatism?

00:08:19.760 Because, oh, well, if Pierre Polyev is not fully denouncing the F. Trudeau flags,

00:08:24.640 then maybe that's what represents conservatism.

00:08:26.920 And it's just a bizarre, bizarre take.

00:08:28.900 Again, you can't classify this as local news.

00:08:31.300 I'm sorry.

00:08:32.000 Local news is like weather, you know, maybe some bad, maybe some bad criminal act that happened in a local area.

00:08:38.180 But local news can't be a professor from Alberta commenting on a press conference made in Ottawa

00:08:44.400 from basically just using one political side of the discussion. 0.94

00:08:47.920 It's completely ridiculous.

00:08:49.080 No wonder there's a crisis in local journalism and local news, because, goodness gracious, 0.89

00:08:53.980 this is not local news.

00:08:55.700 Yeah, and I think that there was a fair bit of, just to take a 30,000-foot view of this,

00:09:01.160 a fair bit of trying to stoke some division between Aaron O'Toole and Pierre Polyev here.

00:09:06.880 I think a lot of people, now that Aaron O'Toole is no longer the conservative leader,

00:09:10.920 he becomes the elder statesman that is the benchmark against which all other conservative leaders

00:09:15.980 should be measured.

00:09:16.740 Same as George Bush was once a war criminal, and then he was that guy, why can't all Republicans

00:09:21.680 be like?

00:09:22.580 Stephen Harper was once the, you know, kitten eater of the conservatives, and now he's like,

00:09:27.720 well, why couldn't, you know, why can't all conservatives just be like Stephen Harper?

00:09:31.180 So now Aaron O'Toole is going to be the one that the media goes to for insightful analysis

00:09:36.840 and what should be the conservative perspective, and I think this was a little bit of a glimpse

00:09:42.280 of that.

00:09:43.360 Let's talk about our old favorite, I don't want to say punching bag on the show, because

00:09:48.160 we punch and kick at the bag, but CBC, which ran the most lazy annual journalism that exists

00:09:57.460 in North America, and it's every single year, like clockwork, by 9.43 a.m., Canada's richest

00:10:04.680 CEOs have already earned the average worker's annual salary.

00:10:08.900 This is January 3rd.

00:10:10.980 It's a report that, again, literally comes out every year.

00:10:15.300 Here's the one in 2022.

00:10:16.800 Here's the one in 2021.

00:10:20.820 Here's the one in 2020.

00:10:23.160 I'm not going to go back, but it's the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which does this

00:10:27.700 every year.

00:10:28.340 They calculate down to the minute based on the annual income of the average top earning

00:10:34.360 CEOs versus the average income of the average workers, and they try to draw this point that

00:10:39.800 there is tremendous wealth inequality and income inequality, which there is, but let's just

00:10:46.520 point out the problem with this report.

00:10:48.880 You are comparing the top 100 paid CEOs, which is an elite group within an elite group within

00:10:56.760 an elite group, against the general population, as though this is representative of anything

00:11:02.900 other than the obvious point, which is that, hey, high earning CEOs make more than lower paid

00:11:08.740 entry-level workers.

00:11:10.000 This is not groundbreaking journalism, but the media goes along with it every single year.

00:11:17.320 It's, like you just said, it's super lazy.

00:11:19.560 It takes talking points from the NDP.

00:11:21.800 It's exactly what we've come to expect from the CBC, and we've got many examples later

00:11:25.840 on in the show of just this sort of thing coming from them.

00:11:28.820 But you know that it's lazy because the same arguments get rolled out over and over and over

00:11:33.680 again, and the article always results in the same conclusion.

00:11:37.040 And I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but too bad, I'm going to anyway.

00:11:40.420 At the end of the article, here it goes, right here.

00:11:43.060 Most notably, it suggests imposing a small wealth tax on the rich.

00:11:46.960 So all of this, Andrew, who could have guessed?

00:11:49.160 It's just a, it's just a, it's not a, it's the boiled down argument is tax the rich.

00:11:53.680 The rest of it's just fluff about all the top CEOs are making too much money, and we're

00:11:57.980 going to get into the details of the compensation structure.

00:12:00.140 But it, it takes straight out of the NDP talking points.

00:12:03.880 Jagmeet Singh tweeted this a couple days ago, talking about how he's not for the big grocery

00:12:09.380 CEOs.

00:12:10.380 He's not for big oil, not for the super rich.

00:12:12.660 And, and all of that, of course, here it comes just in time for the CBC annual article.

00:12:17.520 All of the top CEOs are making way too much money after 43 minutes of working one day. 0.81

00:12:22.500 Oh, it's just ridiculous.

00:12:23.560 Oh, and not to, just, just to add one more point to this, Andrew, the CBC, even though

00:12:28.800 they write the same article every single year, they still managed to get something wrong.

00:12:32.180 They still managed to get something that needed clarification.

00:12:34.640 They put out the story yesterday and they had to update it to include, yes, to include

00:12:39.360 Monday.

00:12:39.960 So they included the Monday paid holiday, which of course they didn't lead within the headline

00:12:44.920 because how better, what, what, what a way to grab clicks, make a juicy headline like

00:12:49.400 that that isn't even really accurate.

00:12:50.580 So there you go.

00:12:51.640 Just a classic CBC, buy the book, playbook sort of, sort of thing.

00:12:55.800 And again, lazy journalism, just embarrassing stuff.

00:12:59.340 Yeah.

00:12:59.820 And look, I'm not going to deny that there is significant inequality.

00:13:04.200 In fact, in the pandemic, the executives, the people running these companies got significant

00:13:09.320 bonuses.

00:13:10.220 The stock market did very well, but the real economy for laborers was very difficult and

00:13:16.000 people did lose their jobs.

00:13:17.220 People did lose income.

00:13:18.080 And I don't want to deny that phenomenon here, but the people that raise this don't

00:13:23.340 actually have solutions beyond tax the rich because they actually have an issue with capitalism

00:13:29.000 more than they have an issue with the specific numbers that they're bringing up here.

00:13:33.140 But if we want to be about the numbers here and stick to real news here, here are some numbers

00:13:37.460 from CBC's senior management compensation summary.

00:13:41.260 Now, the last one I found was from 2019, and you can see here, total cash compensation, the

00:13:47.340 president and CEO's range between $430,000 and $563,374.

00:13:56.500 The executive vice president's total cash compensation range is $302,000 to $648,000.

00:14:05.260 And the vice president's range there is $274,000 to $603,990.

00:14:14.360 Now, in the case of both the executive VP and the VP, the range, the top end of the range

00:14:20.740 is more than double the bottom end of the range.

00:14:23.240 So this is, I think, a fair bit illuminating about CBC's precision here on their numbers.

00:14:28.480 But this is, again, what CBC executives are making, and the compensation for the average

00:14:35.200 worker, the average private sector worker in 2021 was just under $58,500.

00:14:42.700 So that means that CBC's executives are making more than 10 times what the average private

00:14:48.880 sector worker is making, but they don't include that in their story.

00:14:52.820 No, and Andrew, and they also don't include things such as inflation taking up a large chunk

00:14:58.220 of people's earnings and making those earnings appear or actually feel a lot smaller than

00:15:03.500 they appear.

00:15:04.680 That would be a good, worthy piece to add to this article.

00:15:07.260 But of course, no, no, it's just tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich.

00:15:11.100 Not so much, hey, here's a solution, or here's what the central bank, here's what the government

00:15:15.860 is doing to cause this problem.

00:15:17.840 None of that, of course.

00:15:18.640 It's just, let's go after the big CEOs.

00:15:21.000 They can take it because they make $14 million on average and tax, tax, tax the rich.

00:15:25.880 Lazy, embarrassing stuff.

00:15:27.180 Maybe the CBC should be spending more money on their talent and their journalism than their

00:15:32.180 CEOs, who I guess aren't doing very much these days, because like we just see, they're doing

00:15:36.660 the same stuff every year.

00:15:38.660 Well, we know that the public sector was not very much dealing with what the private sector

00:15:44.820 was dealing with as far as the job-related issues.

00:15:48.180 They are still complaining about being asked to go back to work in person.

00:15:53.180 There was a column by Lynn Ward, who is a career public servant.

00:15:58.040 She's worked for the federal government for over 10 years.

00:16:00.740 She's taking aim at the, quote, one-size-fits-all hybrid work model that the government put in 0.99

00:16:07.780 place to demand that employees come back even part-time to the office.

00:16:12.460 And she says for knowledge workers, which is, I guess, what is supposed to describe people

00:16:17.760 in the public sector.

00:16:18.660 Take from that what you will.

00:16:19.560 Well, there are a lot more pros than cons to working from home.

00:16:22.880 And she says the pandemic gave us the opportunity to rethink our outdated workplace methods like

00:16:28.500 having an office.

00:16:29.780 And she says, does it really make sense to go back to our old way?

00:16:33.260 She likens it to going back to the horse and carriage for a few days a week when you have

00:16:38.780 the opportunity of the automobile.

00:16:41.560 So, you know, just to give one example here, I file in the course of my work a lot of access

00:16:46.380 to information requests, which are requests that you can file to gain access to government

00:16:51.060 documents, which are technically the public's documents.

00:16:54.360 And access to information requests have never been slower than they have when employees have

00:17:00.140 been working from home.

00:17:01.420 And they'll be they'll say, well, you know, we need an extension because that division is

00:17:05.340 not yet in the office.

00:17:06.280 So they don't have access to these records and and these files.

00:17:09.300 So the idea that it's somehow more efficient to have everyone working from home, just setting

00:17:15.380 aside your arguments about whether that's preferable, it simply isn't true in a government

00:17:19.920 context.

00:17:20.760 No.

00:17:21.160 And to be fair, this knowledge worker, what's your name again?

00:17:24.100 Lynn Ward.

00:17:24.880 If there was an award for putting everything you could possibly imagine, all these terms,

00:17:31.120 all these all these words that the far left are using these days to try and bolster their

00:17:35.820 arguments into one article, she would certainly be given that award.

00:17:39.820 I mean, let's where do you even start?

00:17:41.280 You've got this triple demic.

00:17:43.580 She talks about the danger of the triple demic, the flu, RSV and covid.

00:17:48.160 I should note, RSV is basically hitting toddlers, right?

00:17:52.420 So so these knowledge workers at the public service, they're very afraid of this triple 1.00

00:17:55.800 demic of flu, RSV and covid.

00:17:58.560 Pretty embarrassing.

00:17:59.740 Then she goes to climate change, Andrew.

00:18:02.080 So if you how could you have guessed that actually a return to work is bad for the

00:18:05.560 climate because you have to take public transit.

00:18:07.960 You have to take a car to work.

00:18:09.700 Oh, my goodness.

00:18:10.240 We're not done there, though.

00:18:11.520 Take a look at this.

00:18:12.120 She brings in microaggressions as well. 1.00

00:18:13.920 By being by working from home, she doesn't have to face microaggressions in the office.

00:18:19.040 I face less harassment and microaggressions by working remotely.

00:18:22.300 I no longer feel like I'm being judged for the clothes I wear or the way I style my hair.

00:18:27.280 Less focus on my personal physical attributes means more focus on my actual work contributions.

00:18:32.900 And then she writes, we're exhausted.

00:18:34.380 Flexible work arrangements and the ability to work from home has been a savior to reduce

00:18:38.260 daily stressors.

00:18:40.040 Well, I can't imagine how stressful it must be to be a knowledge worker with the public

00:18:43.460 service.

00:18:44.240 What a tough, tough gig they have.

00:18:46.480 But my goodness, the prospect of going back to the office.

00:18:49.720 It's just horrifying, Andrew.

00:18:51.300 Now, her bio says that she is a member of the LGBTQ plus community.

00:18:57.500 So is she saying that there's like rampant homophobia in the public service that she?

00:19:02.380 Well, serious point.

00:19:03.380 Because if that's the bigger story, if that's what she's experiencing when she has to work

00:19:07.560 in the office is significant discrimination and microaggressions from her colleagues.

00:19:12.840 But my point is like she's throwing absolutely everything at this just to see what's going

00:19:18.320 to stick.

00:19:18.820 It's like it's antiquated.

00:19:20.740 It's inconvenient.

00:19:21.740 It's bad for climate change.

00:19:23.120 There's a triple demic and the microaggressions and, you know, the Lindbergh baby.

00:19:27.900 And it's like she's just throwing anything and everything and be like, surely one of these

00:19:31.140 arguments is going to make its way through.

00:19:33.780 Now, full disclosure, I am in my home right now.

00:19:37.080 I work from home.

00:19:38.240 True North doesn't have an office.

00:19:39.520 I am not against work from home.

00:19:41.420 I love it.

00:19:42.380 But I also think that it's your employer that gets to be the one to make that call.

00:19:47.680 If, you know, Candace Malcolm were to say, hey, everyone's got to come into the office

00:19:50.600 today and that's the part of the job that we're all doing and there's a case for why

00:19:55.880 it has to be done, then that is the prerogative of the employer.

00:20:00.760 And, you know, I'm all for trying to find flexibility when flexibility works, but I don't

00:20:05.900 think we can say that it's just a 100% superior thing to have everyone working from home.

00:20:11.540 I know of a number of workplaces where the opposite has been the case.

00:20:15.240 Well, Andrew, also, I'm just going back to the top of this article because I thought to

00:20:18.180 myself, wait a minute, in my prep, I did read that this wasn't full-time back to the

00:20:22.180 office.

00:20:23.140 No, it's not.

00:20:24.200 It's like our time.

00:20:25.380 It's a couple days.

00:20:26.680 It's a couple days a week.

00:20:28.400 She wrote this entire CBC.

00:20:30.180 What is it?

00:20:30.640 This is an opinion section.

00:20:31.600 So they've gone with the opinion instead of the analysis.

00:20:34.220 I think analysis is reserved for the journalists, right?

00:20:37.400 That's their way of getting around it.

00:20:38.760 But this opinion piece has been written because she has to go back to the office, her and her

00:20:43.640 colleagues, hold on to your seats here, guys, two to three days of the week.

00:20:48.600 Hold on.

00:20:48.900 What is it?

00:20:49.580 Yeah, two to three days a week.

00:20:51.480 So it's not even all the time, but yet because of this, it's going to increase costs

00:20:56.020 for child care.

00:20:57.100 Grandparents don't want to have to take on the burden of looking after children.

00:20:59.880 Although all of these knowledge workers, all of these public servants, I'm just going

00:21:04.180 to go and call them knowledge workers from now on because it's just too funny, but they

00:21:07.740 all, they all had no problem working from home or working at the office before COVID.

00:21:10.980 But now of course the triple demic, the equity, diversity, and inclusion targets, Andrew

00:21:16.200 climate change.

00:21:17.360 It just can't be done.

00:21:19.160 It just can't be done.

00:21:20.060 So I guess work from home it is.

00:21:21.760 And maybe there'll be like a mutiny in the public sector.

00:21:24.340 They'll just say, we're not going into the office.

00:21:26.140 This hybrid model is not working for us.

00:21:28.140 Just unbelievable.

00:21:28.980 See, yeah, I think the government, I think the government made a mistake here because

00:21:33.120 they're saying when they say come back part-time, the implication there is that, well, it's

00:21:38.180 not really that important.

00:21:39.440 We want you to just phase you back in.

00:21:41.060 They should have said, you know what?

00:21:42.100 Five days a week, come back in.

00:21:43.960 If that's, that's the most compelling argument for it, because now it's like when they're

00:21:47.540 trying to push this idea of flexibility and hybrid, now people are going to say, well,

00:21:51.700 if it doesn't matter to you, then maybe I should just be home five.

00:21:54.840 Oh gosh.

00:21:55.340 Anyway, all right.

00:21:56.400 We have to end things there, whether you're working from home, working in an office, or

00:22:00.300 you are sunning in Jamaica like our prime minister.

00:22:03.480 Hope you enjoyed this show and have a fantastic weekend.

00:22:07.280 We will see you next week.

The Candice Malcolm Show - January 06, 2023

Fake News Friday ｜ Poilievre takes on F＊＊＊ Trudeau flags

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