00:00:37.020So it was a really fun evening on Wednesday.
00:00:40.780It was a crazy debate, and I went through it in some detail with my sort of deep criticisms at every level of the way that the official conservative debate was organized.
00:00:53.560It was hosted by Tom Clark, who was a lobbyist who was once a journalist.
00:00:56.540And just everything about this debate was totally cringy and awful.
00:01:00.480The format, the questions, the way it was all staged, the lack of audience participation.
00:01:06.400My thesis, my theory on it, Harrison, is that it was all planned by the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:01:11.380I'm usually one to defend the Conservative Party against media criticism.
00:01:14.980But I think in this case, what happened was that the Conservatives just caved so much to some of the negative voices that came out from the first debate, which was organized by the independent conservative group, Canada Strong and Free.
00:01:27.200I moderated it alongside Jamil Javani.
00:01:29.540And we allowed for a very free-flowing discussion.
00:01:32.600We really hit on issues that I think matter to Conservatives and to Canadians.
00:01:37.660And apparently the brass at the Conservative Party didn't like it at all.
00:01:40.920They thought that there was too many opportunities for potential liberal hit pieces because the Conservative candidates were able to speak their minds too much.
00:01:56.840That seems to be the sort of the format that was placed onto Tom Clark.
00:02:02.200And he ran from there and also did a terrible job of just the questions, the topics, the way that he wouldn't, the way that he was shushing the media, all the gimmicks.
00:02:11.080It was just layers upon layers of bad.
00:02:13.400And I did go through it in some detail on my show.
00:02:15.940So I don't want to rehash too much of it.
00:02:17.840But there was another element that I think was also very, very important.
00:02:21.820And it became very obvious during the scrum.
00:02:24.720So first of all, if you just compare the debate that was organized by an independent group and independent media, myself moderating it, you know, it was fine.
00:03:16.760They were asking about a variety of important issues that do matter to conservatives and not framed in a sort of gotchu kind of way, asked in a way that really resonates with how Canadians, I believe, feel.
00:03:28.880And then you kind of just suppose that with the legacy media.
00:03:31.880I don't think they had nearly as many journalists who were asking questions in the scrums.
00:03:35.300And the questions that they asked were just stale and falling flat.
00:03:39.500So, Harrison, I'll bring you in on this.
00:03:41.360What was your overall opinion of the debate?
00:03:44.580And specifically, did you see what I saw with the scrums in terms of the legacy media just being sort of caught flat-footed and the independent media being the ones who were sort of the young, ambitious, insightful, excited journalists that were there asking the punchiest questions?
00:04:03.860And again, it just made the legacy media look so bad.
00:04:07.420So, I mean, just to start off with the debate, I touched on this in our live broadcast on Wednesday.
00:04:13.580But the format was so bad and it was so, you know, it was not at all conducive to anything that you could consider to be a legitimate debate.
00:04:22.540They were asking candidates to summarize the greatest threat to Canada and Canadians in 15 seconds.
00:04:28.100And I think it was really bad when the moderator couldn't even keep up with the rules that he was supposed to follow.
00:04:34.200I think largely because it was totally, it made no sense at all.
00:04:39.660But yeah, Candace, you're right about the way, really the difference between the independent media, independent journalists and legacy media based on one, how prepared journalists are for these events.
00:04:52.360And also what kind of questions they come with and really they know what their audience wants.
00:04:57.400So, I mean, in the scrums, what we saw were, you know, legacy media journalists asking the same question because I guess they're not creative enough to come up with anything substantive to ask people who want to become prime minister.
00:05:10.240We saw the French-language Alberta CBC reporter ask both Roman Babber and Scott Aitchison how conservatives can win on climate when the members don't actually recognize climate, which actually isn't accurate.
00:05:27.620It shouldn't take a genius to know that that's a classic liberal media talking point.
00:05:34.260But nonetheless, they couldn't come up with anything unique, so they asked the same question twice.
00:05:39.960A CTV reporter, Bill Fortier, he asked both Jean Charest and Patrick Brown about their thoughts on the format, which everyone agrees was a horrible format.
00:05:48.880But they couldn't come up with anything legitimate to ask these candidates, Candace.
00:05:52.760I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who attends conservative events that independent journalists are full of energy, full of creativity.
00:06:01.300They bring a new level to the work that they do.
00:06:05.380And the legacy media journalists are being caught flat-footed.
00:06:10.020They bring absolutely nothing to the table.
00:06:14.180I did hear those CBC questions about climate.
00:06:16.820It reminded me of how Catherine McKenna, the former environment minister, the liberal politician from Ottawa, she was critical of the debate that I moderated online because she was like, apparently they didn't talk about climate change.
00:06:30.040And, you know, there you have the loyal, dutiful CBC journalist jumping in to say, like, let's all fearmonger about climate change.
00:06:37.940And I did appreciate how Scott Aitchison kind of smacked that question down because he's like, you know, you're misrepresenting what actually happened.
00:06:46.420So let's play that so you can see this question, the way that it's framed by the journalist.
00:06:51.300And then you can see Scott Aitchison, who is by no means like, you know, a grassroots conservative or someone who's like really into cultural battles and anti-media.
00:07:01.520But even he was pretty firm in just saying what you're peddling isn't true.
00:07:05.940And I think your point, Harrison, about how it's just liberal talking points, he sort of embarrassed the CBC journalist.
00:07:53.860And I think you heard tonight some great ideas about how we can move forward with a credible climate change plan that doesn't actually punish the most vulnerable in our society.
00:08:01.480And just one final point, Harrison, on the climate change issue.
00:08:05.480I would say I talked to a lot of conservatives.
00:08:07.200I talked to a lot of sort of both party insiders and what I would classify as just sort of the general conservative base.
00:08:13.720And I think most people do agree with climate change.
00:08:17.760And most people believe that there's human causes.
00:08:20.480Well, I think when they vote for something like this and the message or the motion from the convention, which was from a couple of years ago,
00:08:29.360what they don't like is the drumming up of fear, the alarmism, the media narrative that if you don't have the exact kind of policies like Trudeau and the liberals when it comes to the Paris Accord and shutting down oil and gas and bringing in new punitive taxes on the middle class and on people, on consumers, then you're an out-of-touch picket.
00:08:48.380Like the thing that conservatives resent is like the entire narrative being pushed by the CBC.
00:08:52.920And here is the CBC once again, like not giving up on it and pushing it once again.
00:08:58.120Yeah, it's this idea, Candace, that the only way that Canada can play a role in trying to advance, I guess you could call them climate goals,
00:09:06.700is if we basically shoot ourselves in the foot and destroy all of our natural resource production while continuing to import oil and gas from the rest of the world.
00:09:16.780There was very few people who, well, obviously in the legacy media, no one wants to talk about that.
00:09:22.180But even still, a few people talk about the fact that, you know, that's the liberal way to approach climate change.
00:09:29.460And conservatives have an understandable frustration with that approach.
00:09:33.700It really is an anti-Canada perspective.
00:09:36.940And no wonder conservatives don't want to engage in that kind of dialogue, really.
00:09:41.840Anytime a liberal journalist or a legacy media journalist is peddling those liberal talking points,
00:09:47.480you know exactly what they're trying to do, which is just to try to embarrass conservatives or put them on the back foot and make them dance to the liberal tune.
00:09:57.380And we see it every election that they say, like, if you don't have a specific plan to reduce emissions, therefore you don't care about the environment.
00:10:04.640And I think that it's time for conservatives to really grab this narrative and say, no, no, the dichotomy you're proposing is wrong.
00:10:11.040You can care deeply about protecting the natural environment.
00:10:13.280And we can do that by, you know, preserving our lakes and rivers and our forests and making sure we plant more trees and making sure we don't dump sewage into riverways and things along those lines,
00:10:23.600while also promoting very low emission Canadian oil and gas, which is, you know, innovative and clean and all these things.
00:10:30.240And I did think that the debate itself got into that a little bit.
00:10:34.240And there was some kind of good conversations around Canada's role in producing oil and gas.
00:10:38.920But this lazy question from the CBC, essentially just repeating the same question to the candidates, just shows, to me, it's laziness.
00:10:47.520And then same with this other question about the format.
00:10:50.540Of course, everyone agreed the format sucked.
00:10:52.620But it's like, you have one question to ask to the next potential leader of the Conservative Party who has a good shot of becoming prime minister.
00:11:00.760And you're going to waste it by complaining?
00:11:17.780And again, just, you know, these sort of young, energetic independent media really, really outshining the legacy media.
00:11:27.040And I know very few people watch these scrums at the end of debates.
00:11:30.000But for those of us that did, it was quite illuminating.
00:11:33.560Well, Harrison, I wanted to keep on this topic of energy and oil and gas, because there was a big decision that came out this week, which was that a superior court in Alberta, an Alberta appeal, a court, sorry, voted that the punitive harmful Bill C-69, which was the law that required all kinds of really intensive assessments, including like gendered assessments,
00:11:55.360that would, you know, impact whether or not projects would be allowed to go through in Alberta.
00:12:01.140Basically, this idea, like, you know, I think it was dubbed the No More Pipeline Bill by critics in Alberta, because it was just this really punitive environmental bureaucracy that was placed, this onus placed on oil and gas companies, pumping companies before getting anything approved.
00:12:16.520So the Alberta government pushed back and said, this is this is against the Constitution, they challenged it.
00:12:23.360And a court in Alberta found that that was right, that that that that they agreed with a true to with what they agreed with the Kenny government in Alberta, that this environmental impact law was unconstitutional.
00:12:35.220And I want to I just want to talk because you know, the theme of the show, and we call it fake news Friday, because the idea that the media, they pretend to be straight news journalists, they pretend to be neutral, but really, what they're doing is activism.
00:12:49.780And it's just a charade, like they pretend to be neutral, but they're not. And this is one of the stories that you might not see it the first time you read it, or most people might not catch all the nuances.
00:12:58.780But when you read through a piece like this, which it was written by the Canadian press, of course, it means that it appears in newspapers and websites all across the country.
00:13:08.180This this one here we have it was it was placed in global news, but but typically CP runs and everything including, you know, sites that people think of as conservative, like the National Post or the Toronto Sun, they run CP stories, as well, CP stands for the Canadian press.
00:13:20.840I'm just going to go through this basically line by line, because it is incredibly biased. And this is this is in a nutshell, is what we mean when we're talking about fake news, and the biased landscape in Canada.
00:13:33.800Okay, so here's a piece, the headline says, Alberta appeal court says federal environmental impact law, not okay. So so here we see right off the bat, it kind of gives us a little explanation of what just happens as Alberta's top court said Tuesday,
00:13:48.640that the federal government's environmental impact law is unconstitutional, and Ottawa almost immediately announced its plan to appeal. So so in the first paragraph, we don't even get the news, and we get the reaction from Ottawa. So it's not about how this law is unconstitutional, it goes right to Dustin Trudeau plans to fight back. Then we paragraph two, it says the Alberta Court of Appeals strongly worded opinion. So the Impact Assessment Act is an existential threat. Notice this scare quotes there around existential threat.
00:14:18.460To the division of powers guaranteed by the Constitution, to the division of powers guaranteed by the Constitution, and has taken a square quote, again, wrecking ball to the constitutional rights of the citizens of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The majority of judges sided with Alberta, arguing that the legislation allowed Ottawa to put provinces in an economic chokehold, and give it the means to choose winners and losers. Okay, so so we have three paragraphs there, Harrison, that sort of establish the story. And in it, it's already torqued, right?
00:14:48.460The decision that the decision that the one that won, right, that there was a vote, and that decision one, they just pulled scare quotes to kind of like, make a mockery of it, basically. But again, stressing the fact that we're not done with this, and that Ottawa is going to appeal. Okay, so so that's the first three paragraphs, fourth paragraphs, it goes straight to Justin Trudeau, right? It doesn't go to the judge who wrote the decision, it doesn't go to anyone in Alberta, the Kenny government in Alberta, who are the ones pushing that this review,
00:15:16.460it goes straight to Justin Trudeau, basically defending himself, saying the justification behind putting the bill in place in the first place. Then we have four paragraphs in a row of Justin Trudeau quotes. Okay, so so so we're not getting a fair idea of what is going on, why this case was determined, we're just hearing Justin Trudeau's justification. I just want to pause right here, Harrison, because if you go back to any of the laws that Stephen Harper wrote in the former conservative government, that were struck down by a court,
00:15:45.560that the emphasis was exactly flipped, right? It would be like, this judge, this heroic judge wrote this decision, scrapping this horrible law that Harper tried to introduce. And it would be all about quotes like bashing the government, whereas here, it's flipped, they don't quote the decision, they quote the prime minister explaining himself and saying why he is right, right off the top. Okay, this is incredibly biased. This is the origin of a fake news story. And then it kind of goes on and on and on to provide a bit of background.
00:16:14.660There's a couple paragraphs here about, again, why the Alberta government challenged it. And then the first quote that we hear from a judge Harrison, is not from the judge who, again, wrote the decision and determined that this was unconstitutional, but from a dissenting opinion. So one of the justices that voted against this decision, saying that the federal environmental law is a valid exercise in constitutional authority.
00:16:38.660And then here we see that judge, and then here we see that judge, and then here we see that judge, the dissenting judge, and she gets these quotes. The justice is named Sheila Grekel. And we have, let's see, one, several quotes from her, even though she's not the one that wrote the decision.
00:16:53.100It goes on to quote, University of Calgary environmental law scholar, who also pointed out that, well, this will probably get overturned by the Supreme Court, so this isn't even really all that important. A couple quotes from her, again, downplaying the fact that this, this, this decision, this law was just struck down.
00:17:12.900Then we have another professor from, from another university, kind of echoing that idea. And we have a third professor, again, just, just kind of chiming in with their, you know, opinion about what's going to happen next. So all this just to say, this piece is incredibly deceitful. And this is what comes across as straight news. This is what is expected in our country. This is frankly, again, one of the reasons why I started True North, one of the reasons why I think
00:17:42.220independent reporting, not just podcasts and opinions and opinion columns, but also just the reporting and the news sites, why we stress doing that here at True North. I mean, we're a small shop, compared to a huge outlet like Canadian Press, it gets syndicated across almost every newspaper and political website in the country. But, you know, this is this is the mindset, this is the way they write news stories is it's just it's so dishonest and deceitful, and frankly, biased. What do you think about it, Harrison?
00:18:12.220Well, your, your, your, your assessment is exactly right. Start, start with the headline, not okay, is how they described the Alberta court decision, which the Alberta court ruled that it was unconstitutional, but not just that it wasn't okay. They really boil it down there and make it seem as though they, they kind of just only a little bit disagree with this. They don't, in fact, they declared it unconstitutional. And they don't quote, they actually don't get a full quote from the, from the written opinion of the majority on the court.
00:18:41.160They don't, they don't quote, they don't quote that anywhere. All they take is the hyperbolic words to describe the, the, the decision from, from the judges. So there's no actual, there's, there's no real news in this story until I think 29 paragraphs into the story, Candace, when they decide to finally quote Jason Kenney. And this is not just a small deal. The, this, this court challenge was, I think, also brought, brought along
00:19:11.160to the, that, that take a serious issue with a piece of legislation that has now been ruled to be unconstitutional. And yet we don't get any opinion from the judges that, that made the ruling. And we don't hear from the premier that spearheaded this fight until 29 paragraphs into the story.
00:19:26.160And this is a, this is an issue I have with a lot of what we see from legacy media, Candace, which is a, a diehard commitment from these journalists to bury the information that actually matters to readers way down into the, into their story, water down headlines and bury the lead.
00:19:43.260So that people who aren't going to read this, I think too long of an article, um, they're not going to get to the part where Kenny talks. I'm not going to get to the part where the judges actually give their opinion. They're going to give up halfway through because that's kind of the standard. Now that's the, that's the, uh, attention span that most readers have. So journalists know this, they use these tactics to their advantage. And again, this is why we do this show to try and show Canadians, uh, that this, this kind of news that you're getting from the Canadian
00:20:13.260press, which gets, as you said, syndicated across the country, uh, can't be, can't be taken at face value. It requires scrutiny and it requires serious attention.
00:20:22.640It's hilarious that Justin Trudeau gets, you know, the first four paragraphs, or sorry, he gets four of the first seven paragraphs with his quotes. And then Kenny, the one who led the charge who won, I mean, the quote from Kenny is great. It's like, I'm jubilant. This is a huge win for Alberta. You know, they, they, they bury that in the 29th paragraph and, and even to go even further in the absurdity, the,
00:20:43.120the, the story ends, it says there were 17 interveners in this case. And then it says seven of the interveners, including a wide for a wide array of environmental and legal groups, as well as first nations were in support of Ottawa. So, so even though, uh, Alberta had 10 interveners and the feds only had seven, they, they, they went through and emphasize the importance of those seven interveners who were in support of Ottawa. Like it's just like every, every paragraph of this piece is, is a total farce.
00:21:10.940And this is a kind of quiet disservice that is done to Canadians.
00:21:14.500And Ken, it's right at the bottom of this article here as well, as you point out, they, the second last paragraph shows that not only did they get supported, not only was Alberta supported by Ontario and Saskatchewan, they were also supported by three first nations and Indian resource council.
00:21:28.320So that's kind of important information. Don't you think that that debunks the narrative of the liberal government, that this is for environmentalism and for first, for first nations communities.
00:21:37.080Uh, but of course that's the lead. It's at the very bottom of the article. Second, last paragraph.
00:21:43.180It's, it's, it's really wild. I mean, it's, it's funny because it's so bad, but this is, this is what they pass for news and they're proud of it. And they put it out. They don't think anything of it. And it, you know, it just takes, you literally go through every paragraph of this piece and complain about the way that it is written.
00:21:57.020Well, again, that, that is why True North is here. Uh, this is why you should read your news from True North and not these hacks in the media. Let's move on to the next story, Harrison.
00:22:07.120This is one that's sort of the gift that keeps on giving, uh, for us because the, every, every, it seems like everything about the Freedom Convoy has been debunked at this point.
00:22:15.400Like everything the liberals said, everything Justin Trudeau said during the convoy. I actually think that Roman Babber made that point at Wednesday night's debate that everything the legacy media was saying and everything the Trudeau government is saying turned out to be false.
00:22:26.440Well, we can just add one more thing, um, to the list. As, as you recall, Justin Trudeau, uh, made it clear. He said in April that when illegal blockades hurt workers and endanger public safety, uh, police were clear that they needed the tools not held by any federal, provincial or territorial law, hence why they invoked the emergency act.
00:22:45.480So Trudeau was saying that it was because of the police because of the RCMP. Well, as we heard in the special, uh, committee, that's looking into this national inquiry into the emergencies act and the use of it, uh,
00:22:56.320which, which I might just add is entirely framed by Trudeau, you know, a liberal appointed, um, person to head this thing. The entire thing is framed not to provide scrutiny at Trudeau as to why he used this, you know, powers and act that, that, that is really supposed to be reserved for wartime, but instead to, you know, look into the reasons that, uh, the truckers were bad and the truckers were evil and, and all this stuff, like the way that it was framed is completely reverse of what the purpose of the, uh, the inquiry is, uh, push all that aside.
00:23:26.320You know, the, the, the, the, the inquiry itself interviewed the, um, the commission itself, sorry, interviewed the, uh, RCMP commissioner, Brenda Lucky during her testimony. Uh, she, she basically just said, no, this wasn't the case. So why don't you, why don't you tell us a little bit about that Harrison?
00:23:41.040Yeah. Um, so in, obviously the, the, the narrative that we were receiving from the liberal government and from Justin Trudeau was that they had no choice but to enact the emergency, to invoke the emergencies act, because that's what law enforcement were requesting the government.
00:23:56.320Until I believe Tuesday for someone involved in the joint committee to ask Brenda Lucky, the RCMP commissioner, if this was the case directly, if she had requested that the emergencies act be invoked by the government, she said no.
00:24:12.040And, and she went further to say that, uh, in her, in her communication with other law enforcement agencies, uh, that she didn't hear that as well from them.
00:24:19.260Um, we have the clip for this and we're going to play that clip now.
00:24:21.380Um, Senator, uh, sorry, um, Commissioner Lucky, we've heard multiple times from ministers and others that the emergency act and the tools provided were specifically requested by police leadership.
00:24:33.260As a law enforcement agency with primacy for national security, did you ask the government or representatives for the invocation of the emergencies act?
00:24:41.240No, there was never a question of requesting the emergency act.
00:24:52.040Do you know of any other police leadership that asked specifically the government for, for the invocation?
00:24:58.240No, we actually reached out to various police agencies when there was talk about some of the authorities within, that they were proposing.
00:25:04.900And of course we were consulted because we were the ones who would be using those authorities.
00:25:10.280So we were consulted to see if they would be any, of any use to police in these, in the context of the freedom convoy.
00:25:16.940So Candace, this is what, this is what really, uh, makes me frustrated about this entire process.
00:25:22.660Not only are we just getting the information now that, um, Trudeau's narrative is crumbling even more than it already has.
00:25:30.440Because these committee meetings that are of high public interest, you would think a lot of Canadians would want to know what's going on and hear and be involved in this process.
00:25:40.000These committee meetings are happening at 9 p.m.
00:25:42.720The only way you can watch them is if you go to CPAC or Parle View, which is the, uh, which is sort of the live feed of these committee meetings,
00:25:51.020which frankly, most Canadians either don't have time to do or even know where these websites are.
00:25:55.180And as you said, Candace, the inquiry is being headed by a former liberal staff or judge.