Legacy media pushes fake news claiming Trudeau was a victim of “racist slurs”
Episode Stats
Words per minute
183.08136
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
7
sentences flagged
Summary
So, the Liberal Party invents a news story that Justin Trudeau was somehow the victim of racial slurs while trying to attend an event in Surrey, British Columbia. And the entire legacy media ran with the story before even bothering to verify it. The only problem for them is that the story was never true.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
So, the Liberal Party invents a news story that Justin Trudeau was somehow the victim
00:00:17.120
of racial slurs while trying to attend an event in Surrey, British Columbia.
00:00:21.560
And the entire legacy media ran with the story before even bothering to verify it.
00:00:26.820
The only problem for them is that the story was never true.
00:00:31.100
Welcome to a special live edition of The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:39.480
We had so much fun doing the live broadcast last week that we decided to do it again this
00:00:44.720
And I am joined, as per usual, by my producer, Turner producer and journalist, Harrison Faulkner.
00:00:59.620
We talk about this a lot on Fake News Friday, that there's like fake news buried into fake
00:01:03.880
news buried into fake news because there's so many interesting and delicious elements
00:01:08.680
But this was the sort of main headline of the week through the legacy media, which was this
00:01:14.140
idea that Justin Trudeau had been the victim of racist slurs or that he had to cancel a fundraising
00:01:20.160
So, there's this $1,000 a plate fundraising event planned in Surrey, British Columbia on
00:01:26.320
And before the event was even started, basically, the liberals claimed that Trudeau couldn't
00:01:33.840
And they claimed that it was because a crowd of protesters were making racist slurs.
00:01:38.820
So, there were racial slurs being hurled at the attendees and at the fundraisers.
00:01:44.820
And Trudeau, who just got back from being in a war zone in Ukraine, well, he was told
00:01:51.580
it was too unsafe for him to attend this in-person event.
00:01:56.920
You can see the headline there from the Canadian press.
00:01:59.120
It says, Trudeau cancels appearance at an event in BC after protesters hurl racial slurs.
00:02:04.640
And, of course, you can see it's the Canadian press, which is a newswire service in Canada.
00:02:09.160
So, when something's written by the Canadian press, you're going to see it all over the
00:02:13.420
You're going to see it in pretty much every major newspaper in the country.
00:02:19.620
Basically, they all subscribe to the Canadian press and they all run the exact same nonsense.
00:02:25.640
There's so many interesting, again, levels to this story because the entire thing wasn't
00:02:32.620
I saw that you had tweeted, Harrison, something along the lines of, you know, Canadian press
00:02:37.200
It's even worse than that because the Liberals invented it.
00:02:41.060
And then the media ran with it without bothering to verify it.
00:02:49.700
And I know you poured through, I think it was hours of video footage because there's lots
00:02:54.660
of cell phone footage of this protest to verify exactly what was said and what these supposed
00:03:03.260
So why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
00:03:05.700
So the thing it was, is that immediately as the story started to evolve and started to
00:03:11.740
come out, the line from the legacy media, of course, the Canadian press is a wire service.
00:03:16.040
They put out the fact that there were racial slurs being thrown and hurled at attendees and
00:03:22.900
that Trudeau, they kind of made Trudeau out to be the victim at the beginning of it as
00:03:27.580
But of course, there was video evidence of all of this.
00:03:30.240
There were journalists that were covering the protests.
00:03:32.540
There were citizen journalists that were there, kind of half participating and half covering
00:03:39.460
And so, of course, when the reports came out, everyone started looking for video footage.
00:03:44.780
And I'm sure the Liberal Party staffers that were tasked with coming up with this line
00:03:49.580
were also looking at that footage, trying to find the video evidence that these anti-Trudeau
00:03:56.440
Because, of course, Candace, we have seen these videos emerge from other protests and
00:04:01.880
we see how the media responds when accusations of racism get leveled at sort of anti-Trudeau
00:04:12.080
And whenever there's video footage, every Canadian basically has to see it because it gets put out
00:04:16.560
on social media to show people just how bad these anti-Trudeau protesters are.
00:04:23.100
There's no evidence of racial slurs being hurled, as they say, at attendees or at Liberal Party
00:04:32.900
And that was sort of that kind of became the story throughout the week, right, Candace?
00:04:36.480
It was first, here are these horrible anti-Trudeau protesters once again being racist.
00:04:42.300
Again, where have we seen the line of anti-Trudeau protesters being racist?
00:04:49.920
Then slowly, journal outlets started to backtrack and started to change their story because there
00:04:56.280
were there was no evidence to back any of it up.
00:04:58.820
So CDC, the day after, basically totally rewrote the story, rewrote their headline, took out
00:05:04.980
the took out the line about them being racist and made it made it an allegation.
00:05:09.260
And John Kaye over at Quillette, he tweeted this and basically drew the arrows telling you
00:05:18.260
So it went from Trudeau has to cancel the event because protesters were hurling racial slurs
00:05:23.860
to Trudeau cancels appearance at Surrey fundraiser over protest related safety concerns.
00:05:29.640
And then, of course, the rest of the story gets changed to try and cover their tracks.
00:05:33.160
The media goes out, calls anti-Trudeau protesters racist without evidence, runs with the story
00:05:38.320
that the liberals were giving them, liberal party staffers were giving them.
00:05:43.680
I mean, this just seems like something we've seen many times before.
00:05:48.840
Throw out the horrible accusations and then backtrack because there's no evidence to back
00:05:56.280
The liberals accused their opponents of being racist.
00:05:58.580
This is the thing that we have heard the liberals do 1,000 times over the past 10 years.
00:06:07.900
And it's almost become a joke or a meme on the political right that's like the racist
00:06:14.980
But typically the role of a journalist, Harris, you know this, you went to journalism school,
00:06:20.420
So you don't just run a headline based on what a liberal MP told you.
00:06:24.700
You could at least write alleges and liberals, right?
00:06:29.820
No, they ran it as fact, as truth, that there were racial slurs, even though there's no such
00:06:36.320
And it wasn't just the CBC that had to change their headline.
00:06:39.320
The Canadian press also changed their headline pretty much exactly like the CBC one that you
00:06:46.600
It went from the protesters were hurling racial slurs, which was unverified and untrue,
00:06:50.840
to Trudeau cancels appearance at event in BC amid angry protests.
00:06:56.120
So, you know, they're still trying to classify the protesters.
00:06:59.560
Anyone who's anti-Trudeau is either a racist or just an angry conservative.
00:07:04.420
And so those are the sort of like the two boxes that they can put you in.
00:07:09.720
We're going to be seeing this a lot in our country because it's just the go-to media shtick.
00:07:15.020
That's basically their favorite line of attack against Canadians.
0.89
00:07:18.440
It's like, if you don't like our glorious prime minister and you have the gall to protest
00:07:24.100
against him, then there must be something wrong with you.
00:07:30.480
And I want to show a clip because this is what it looked like, right?
00:07:33.340
You have the prime minister of a country who is not very popular, right?
00:07:36.660
He won with the lowest ever percentage of the vote in the last election, 2021.
00:07:45.760
People aren't happy with the way that he handled COVID.
00:07:53.640
Every prime minister, every politician gets protested.
00:07:57.820
But somehow the media is just so protective over Trudeau and they just treat him like this
00:08:14.840
Pretty much every protest is full of angry people.
00:08:17.940
That's one of the defining characteristics of a protest is that people are angry enough
00:08:22.300
that they're going to leave their home, go to a public place and show their political
00:08:25.400
dismay as part of the democratic process again.
00:08:28.340
So you can see what this looks like with your own eyes and then you can draw your own conclusions
00:09:10.520
So as far as protests go, Harrison, that's pretty tame. I mean, there's a sizable group of people. They're saying Trudeau must go. That's pretty standard political chanting there. And look, if you ask me and I'm asked to analyze the crowd and what's going on, I would just say a group of protesters, well within their political rights, I imagine that many of those people who showed up have been disproportionately harmed by Trudeau's heavy handed measures and by the government's heavy handed response to COVID.
00:09:38.100
Maybe some of them lost their jobs. Maybe some of them lost their businesses or their livelihood. Maybe some of them can't travel. They want to leave Canada and they cannot.
00:09:46.720
I would imagine that many of those people have very legitimate grievances, very legitimate reasons as to why they're protesting. The media doesn't care. If they don't try to get to know the protesters, they don't try to give them a voice.
00:09:57.700
Instead, they just go right with the playbook of anybody who protests Trudeau is evil and wrong and therefore we must demonize them and frankly further marginalize them, make them more angry.
00:10:10.240
And, you know, any wave of populism that we are seeing, it is the media and it is stories exactly like this one that are contributing and making the problem even bigger.
00:10:18.460
You know, there's a reason why there's so many angry people and so many people who don't like the media and it's exactly because of stories like this. Harrison, what do you think?
00:10:28.300
Yeah, I mean, Trudeau has been getting this reception at almost every city that he visits in Canada.
00:10:33.280
So the idea that they were caught off guard, his security team was caught off guard by this protest, obviously is not true.
00:10:39.440
He was in a he was in a First Nations community before this and he was getting he was getting brutally heckled by the First Nations people there calling him.
00:10:49.440
They went some of them were calling him a criminal. I mean, this guy is is totally unpopular in this country.
00:10:55.580
Wherever he goes, he's getting brutally heckled. And no wonder these people are so frustrated. Right, Candace?
00:11:03.280
He will be he basically told Canadians during the election that the unvaccinated are some of the worst people.
00:11:11.200
I think there's there's a clip of him in French, you know, connecting them to being rapists and things like this and going so far misogynistic, he called them.
00:11:20.240
And then he bans them from getting on airplanes and leaving the country.
00:11:24.420
So they're trapped in a country in which the leader demonizes them constantly and they're being wedged out of society by a government.
00:11:32.320
And yet the expectation is that this that the media needs to cover for the prime minister.
00:11:38.620
And I put this out earlier in the weekend. It's just about this is the state of the legacy media.
00:11:44.360
This is why we have this show about fake news, because the story should be the legacy media should be reporting.
00:11:50.060
This prime minister can't go to a city in this country without getting brutally heckled wherever he goes.
00:11:57.060
Instead, the story is these protests are so terrible.
00:12:02.020
And the prime minister needed to cancel his event because of these horrible protesters.
00:12:10.040
No wonder they obviously have a huge issue with the prime minister.
00:12:13.760
If the legacy media has any interest or any ambition to try and regain some trust that they have lost from Canadians, maybe they should try and do some actual journalism.
00:12:29.920
Don't just take the liberal media talking points because a political staffer will always do what a political staffer does.
00:12:35.560
They will put out a line that protects their boss.
00:12:37.480
It's it's not it's it shouldn't be a surprise that liberal staffers are coming up with with allegations of racism when there aren't any.
00:12:45.280
The surprise is when the journalists themselves run with that story without doing any actual journals, without doing any actual verification.
00:12:53.100
And then, of course, have to backtrack because they get caught with their you know, they have to they have to really walk away with their tails between their legs.
00:12:59.440
This is another example of them doing Canadians a huge disservice.
00:13:02.860
Well, and and and then they're dishonest, even in that, right?
00:13:07.180
Like they were caught putting out a story that was based on liberal spin that wasn't verified.
00:13:11.780
As soon as they got the researchers to try to find any clip or any verification that there were actual racist comments being made by these protesters, they quickly realized that that story doesn't hold up to any water.
00:13:32.080
You know, they didn't they didn't make it clear that they had changed the story.
00:13:35.700
They just quietly rewrote those headlines, quietly rewrote.
00:13:38.600
In the case of the CBC, we wrote like half the article because the original story just wasn't true.
00:13:48.180
I want to talk about Toronto Star piece as well that that also covered it.
00:13:51.940
They added in a different angle, which was that they claim that the protesters were carrying a noose, that one of the protesters was carrying a noose.
00:14:00.240
And somehow that is the reason why Justin Trudeau wasn't able to go.
00:14:04.840
So I just want to read a little bit of the story because it's pretty amusing.
00:14:06.760
So it quotes an individual called Brayden Cayley, who is a former liberal staffer.
00:14:12.280
He tweeted a picture that he took at the event of a protester dressed in camouflage with the word Trudeau and treason on a wooden cross.
00:14:23.560
So Cayley, who now works for Canada 2020, which is a liberal think tank, this Toronto Star piece, very subserviently calls it a nonpartisan think tank, even though it's completely staffed by liberal insiders and former staffers.
00:14:39.440
A noose was brought to the door of an event with Canada's prime minister last night.
00:14:44.400
The escalating toxicity being stoked by the extreme right this year is beyond dangerous, except for the Toronto Star picture disputes that claim.
00:14:53.560
In the picture, you could see the picture on the screen here.
00:15:00.640
So, no, they didn't bring a noose to the front door of an event with the prime minister.
00:15:05.440
Well, the prime minister didn't bother to show up.
00:15:07.360
But but but but the but the noose was clearly on the truck and the truck was in the parking lot.
00:15:16.120
And when I saw this story, what I immediately thought of, Candace, was when protesters on May Day, which is this sort of.
00:15:24.580
It's a celebration, right, for the socialists in our society.
00:15:28.640
And they came to Queens Park in 2019 with a guillotine basically covered in like a prop guillotine as this was a prop noose.
00:15:37.060
They brought a guillotine to Queens Park and they had a Doug Ford effigy.
00:15:42.020
Basically, I mean, you take you take that and then you compare it to a some angry Canadians with a with a prop noose saying that Trudeau was committing treason.
00:15:55.260
Obviously, we're not going to sit here and say either is OK.
00:15:57.840
But the idea that this is some outstanding, you know, circumstances, these are these are horrible circumstances that no politician has ever had to deal with, Candace.
00:16:09.680
And it's disappointing that it is commonplace in Canada.
00:16:16.680
And at this point, I think opposition to Justin Trudeau is not even very political.
00:16:20.540
It's kind of actually passed left versus the left right political divide.
00:16:29.780
We've seen examples of this that have been way worse.
00:16:32.120
And of course, we actually have a clip of this.
00:16:34.720
Stephen Harper, who was giving a speech at a rally, was rushed by a protester on the stage.
00:16:41.080
And he just brushed it off and kept talking and made it and made a joke about it, because that's frankly what a leader should do.
00:16:47.460
A leader should not be trying to wedge and divide people.
00:16:51.460
He should understand that this is part of the job.
00:16:55.360
People do not like you when you're the leader of a country.
00:16:59.740
But instead, of course, instead of instead of wallowing in and needing the press to to cover him and to make him feel better, Harper just goes along with it and goes on with it with his day because people want to hear what he has to say.
00:17:11.600
Like the people who paid Trudeau to hear what he had to say in Surrey.
00:17:15.960
Let's play that clip just to show you the difference between Justin Trudeau, the way he responds to these incidents, and the way someone like Stephen Harper responded to an incident like this.
00:17:26.280
Strong decisions at the national level on taxes, on spending, on deficits.
00:17:33.740
They would significantly raise those risks, friends.
00:17:52.820
So he even puts a joke at the end there, Candace, just for good measure.
00:18:07.620
And, you know, Harper just takes it in stride and makes a quick joke about it.
1.00
00:18:10.980
I mean, look, this happens at political events all over the political spectrum, all over the country, all over the world.
00:18:16.060
Like, again, they just the media just treat Justin Trudeau with these little kid gloves like, oh, he's so precious.
00:18:22.200
Oh, it's so dangerous for him to be around these angry, toxic right wingers.
00:18:27.160
And you're right, they could just completely ignore the fact that this happens to politicians of all stripes, and it has been, you know, dating back to forever, basically.
00:18:36.820
So, you know, that's pretty much what we've come to expect from the legacy media.
00:18:44.240
Well, I want to talk about, we reached sort of a dubious anniversary this past week, which was the one week, one year, sorry,
00:18:50.540
the anniversary of the story of the unmarked graves that were apparently discovered at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
00:18:59.620
You all recall the sort of escalating events that happened.
00:19:02.900
So we had a chief put out a press release that went viral, went around the world.
00:19:06.960
It made international headlines, got exaggerated, you know, a story about a supposed unmarked graves turned into mass graves,
00:19:14.880
turned into evidence of genocide, turned into burning down churches and tearing down statues and canceling Canada Day.
00:19:20.540
And, you know, our flags being at half-mast for, what, five, six months, the election 2021,
00:19:27.220
the media sort of forced this issue upon us, even though, according to polls, it was like a very low issue for Canadians.
00:19:35.120
It wasn't even the top 10 in terms of what they cared about in the election.
00:19:38.100
And yet, I think it was like, what was it, 27 minutes of the federal debate in 2021 was focused on reconciliation.
00:19:45.420
So this is a story that really, really took on a life of its own.
00:19:50.640
Viewers of the show know that I was quite skeptical of the story.
00:19:58.140
A lot of the information was really very bare bones, let's just say.
00:20:04.720
But it's interesting to see one year later, Harrison, how the story took a life of its own.
00:20:10.720
And I did an interview with Tom Flanagan, who's a professor of political science, a retired professor,
00:20:15.880
who's basically studied this issue of First Nations relations his entire career.
00:20:20.380
He called this the biggest fake news story in Canadian history, the greatest fake news story in Canadian history.
00:20:26.480
And it's interesting to see one year later how it's being covered,
00:20:29.500
because I think there's been a lot of people in the media coming around to the points that myself and some others made early on,
00:20:37.520
that this story doesn't really hold a lot of water and it doesn't really add up.
00:20:46.320
So you have the National Post, Terry Glavin, writing.
00:20:48.940
He said, the year of the graves, how the world's media got it wrong on residential school graves.
00:20:53.800
And so he's sort of coming to the conclusion that the same, again, the same thing that myself and others were saying early on,
00:21:00.780
which is that, OK, he writes in the following weeks, well, the term mass graves generally gave way to unmarked graves,
00:21:07.820
a cascade of breaking news events purported to reveal several discoveries of what eventually added up to more than 1,300 child burials
00:21:15.960
at other residential schools across Canada, except that's not what happened in those places either.
00:21:22.540
Glavin continues, he said, as for the most recent uproars, not a single mass grave was discovered in Canada last year.
00:21:33.380
Several sites of unmarked graves that captured international headlines were either already known cemeteries
00:21:38.980
or they remain sites of speculation, even now unverified as genuine grave sites.
00:21:44.380
And then he makes a point that I've made before that people in Coeses, the reserve in Saskatchewan,
00:21:49.560
where Trudeau famously took that picture where he's taking a knee there, that wasn't a discovery.
00:21:56.880
That was a known grave site. That was a known graveyard that included people who were both First Nations
00:22:04.920
So basically there's just a lot of information that was never verified, a lot of stuff that wasn't true.
00:22:10.840
And yet what you see on the other side, so you see a lot of sort of more sensible reporting,
00:22:14.320
more sensible analysis saying, you know, I think that we probably over-exaggerated a little bit
00:22:19.860
and this led to all kinds of sad, unfortunate occurrences, including burning down churches
00:22:28.800
And also, you know, just this added feeling of victimization and hopelessness for people in First Nations community
00:22:34.740
who now, some of them truly believe that these residential schools were like Holocaust centers
00:22:40.280
and that people were just being mass executed, which is not verified, not true.
00:22:46.040
You know, you still have people on the political left who double down on the fake news narrative.
00:22:51.240
So I want to go to Jagmeet Singh's tweets about this.
00:22:54.000
He tweeted basically just, again, doubling down and verifying the nonsense.
00:22:58.880
One year ago, 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children were found at a former residential school in Kamloops.
00:23:04.480
Since that terrible discovery, the bodies of hundreds of other children have been uncovered at similar sites
00:23:18.300
The bodies of other children have been uncovered.
00:23:24.000
And nothing has been uncovered because there haven't been any excavations, right?
00:23:27.740
The only way that we know that these, or the only reason we suspect that these might be unmarked graves
00:23:34.480
is because of a preliminary ground penetrating radar report that was put out.
00:23:42.760
It found that it was 200 Harrison and that these were soil disturbances.
00:23:49.140
So again, you know, you have facts and then they just don't line up with the narrative.
00:23:54.820
And so now you have these people out there pushing this narrative and it just really falls flat.
00:23:59.780
I just want to show one more piece and I'll get your reaction.
00:24:02.080
There was an op-ed over in the Globe and Mail written by two individuals.
00:24:08.440
Reconciliation can't be achieved with only symbolic gestures.
00:24:11.300
And they sort of double down on all of the narratives that this is genocidal and that this proved genocide.
00:24:16.560
I just want to point out, this is sort of a funny aside.
00:24:20.900
One of the authors of this piece is a First Nations professor.
00:24:24.620
The other one describes himself, Ian Mosby, he describes himself as a settler scholar,
00:24:30.420
an assistant professor of history at the Toronto Metropolitan University.
00:24:33.780
So that is the university formerly known as Ryerson.
00:24:37.900
I've never seen anyone describe themselves as a settler scholar.
00:24:44.720
Well, I mean, there's so much to talk about with this and we could really do.
00:24:50.300
I mean, first, I think the first thing we should look at is what a lot of journalists have refused to cover.
00:24:56.120
This story really, to me, is a failure of journalism.
00:24:58.700
We at True North, you in particular, Candace, did an excellent job at picking through the facts,
00:25:04.040
at picking through, sorry, the claims and getting to the facts about what was going on
00:25:07.440
at a time when it was politically unpopular to do so.
00:25:10.920
So that, we, you know, True North readers and other people were kind of seeing through a lot of this,
00:25:17.280
but it was really a major failure in journalism.
00:25:19.520
First, we should show people watching right now what the basis was for all these claims.
00:25:24.940
Claims that basically led to a summer in which churches were burned across our country and vandalized.
00:25:34.400
Egerton Ryerson's statue at Ryerson was toppled.
00:25:36.420
A summer of destruction, really, that was caused by ground-penetrating radar findings
00:25:46.100
And frankly, don't even show what is being claimed to, what they're claiming to show.
00:25:52.780
So why don't we show the audience what these ground-penetrating radar findings even look like?
00:26:00.740
This is what a ground-penetrating radar will show you.
00:26:04.080
It'll show you soil disruptions, which could be anything.
00:26:08.340
And even the First Nations leaders admitted to this in the inquiry findings, Candace,
00:26:16.760
These could have been graves that were of adults.
00:26:20.820
Nothing proves that, you know, children were buried here in mass graves.
00:26:27.260
And especially if you take Jagmeet Singh's line, it's not accurate to say that whatsoever.
00:26:33.680
Now, also, it's the media coverage of this story that I think is so shocking.
00:26:39.800
The idea that there was very little scrutiny from the legacy media candidates on this whatsoever.
00:26:45.560
Obviously, now, a year later, it's turning out to kind of unfold and most Canadians are starting to catch on.
00:26:52.780
And it's a shame because what really happened was the emotions of Canadians were swept up because of,
00:26:58.420
I think, a lot of understandable sadness and disappointment about this news.
00:27:06.780
And I think all of us wanted to feel as though there was something we could do.
00:27:10.560
But the fact is that if the truth was just put out there at the very beginning,
00:27:15.500
I think Canadians, who may now be much more skeptical of what they hear in regards to reconciliation,
00:27:25.260
I think Canadians and First Nations communities would have a better, would be on a better, similar page.
00:27:32.220
But now there's a lot of skepticism because I think most Canadians feel they were basically being fed
00:27:37.560
mistruths or spun truths to try and whip up a lot of division and frustration.
00:27:51.420
The New York Post, which is one of the oldest newspapers, I think it's the oldest newspaper in the United States,
00:27:56.560
today they ran a story that calls the Kamloops Mass Graves the biggest fake news story in Canada.
00:28:04.060
And the headline says it was, it's been debunked by academics.
00:28:09.640
And it's really being, I think the people that it hurts the most are First Nations Canadians.
00:28:16.380
And it's such a disservice to media, of the media, not just to all Canadians,
00:28:21.020
it's a disservice to all Canadians because there was genuine remorse and contrition
00:28:24.140
and people really just felt awful and wanted to do something.
00:28:26.580
And I think that the sort of goodwill that was offered will be compromised when Canadians learn
00:28:32.560
that, no, this is not actually what happened and more Canadians are.
00:28:36.140
I just noticed anecdotally from the comments, like a year ago when I was first sort of raising
00:28:40.880
some questions about it, I would say that 90% of the comments were people telling me I was wrong
00:28:45.780
and I was on the wrong side of history and it was evil to question this.
00:28:49.160
And now when I read comments, it's like flipped.
00:28:52.680
It's like 90% of people are skeptical of the story and 10% still remain genuinely remorseful.
00:28:58.700
It's also obviously a major disservice to First Nations people, as I mentioned, this idea that
00:29:03.040
we're now teaching them that they are the victims of a genocide.
00:29:07.320
And imagine trying to live a normal life in a society where you're told that your ancestors
00:29:11.580
were targeted and murdered systematically by the state.
00:29:15.220
Like, that's not a healthy environment for a society.
00:29:20.740
Interestingly, so Jonathan Kaye, who we mentioned earlier in the program, he sent out a tweet
00:29:25.100
basically just reiterating this stuff and pointing out that Jagmeet Singh was pushing misinformation.
00:29:31.700
He says, these have always been described as suspected graves since no bodies have yet
00:29:36.720
And then he says, if Jagmeet Singh is information indicating otherwise you should share it with
00:29:39.700
media, otherwise you shouldn't say that these bodies were unearthed.
00:29:45.200
So a local reporter in Kamloops, an individual called James Peters, he replied, and I think
00:29:50.340
that his replies are very sort of exemplary of the mindset of the media.
00:29:55.400
So he just says, this particular brand of skepticism has become popular among certain strains of
00:29:59.820
deniers and contrarians, especially on Twitter.
00:30:02.440
It's all theoretical until the remains are exhumed.
00:30:07.720
So right off the bat, he says, like, how dare you be skeptical of this story that's not verified?
00:30:12.340
He calls Jonathan Kaye a name, deniers, which, you know, we've heard that a lot before.
00:30:18.120
Originally, people who were called deniers were Holocaust deniers.
00:30:23.160
They're mass grave deniers, like they're First Nation unmarked grave deniers.
00:30:29.560
And then just saying, anyone asking questions is counterproductive and harmful.
00:30:33.680
And then he goes on to say, denies the efficacy of groundbreaking radar and the work done by
00:30:40.540
Well, I watched Dr. Sarah Bilyeu's presentation, and she was the one who said, she said during
00:30:47.580
her presentation that, first of all, there's no way to confirm.
00:30:53.520
And the only way to determine whether or not there are human remains down there and whether
00:30:58.180
or not they belong to children, whether or not they belong to children at the residential
00:31:00.500
school, the only way to determine any of that is through excavation.
00:31:03.880
I think a lot of Canadians generally believed that there was going to be some kind of excavation,
00:31:09.480
And of course, there's no plans for any of that.
00:31:12.820
And so this is just going to be an ongoing case of people basically saying, you know,
00:31:19.360
on the one side, let's find some facts and let's verify them.
00:31:21.860
And the other side, people basically saying, how dare you?
00:31:24.580
How dare you try to verify or try to get facts to prove the story?
00:31:31.420
Because we all just have to take this fact and then use it as a weapon to basically beat
00:31:37.280
down Canadian society and say that Canada is a horrible, awful, racist, genocidal, colonialist
00:31:43.900
And that's pretty much where the left is these days.
00:31:46.440
And there's no way that the media and people in government who were pushing this narrative
00:31:51.440
without any facts, there was no way they didn't know what the product, what was going to come
00:31:56.460
from this, which was basically a, an unprecedented wave of anti-Canadian sentiment being spread
00:32:01.580
by basically being spread throughout our society.
00:32:03.560
Again, labeling our country as this horrible, evil place and basically drawing connections
00:32:10.200
to the very worst, very worst countries in history to Canada, which is the best country
00:32:17.480
One of the, one of the places that is the freest place on earth, a country that people all
00:32:20.900
over the world would, would give an arm and a leg to come to.
00:32:23.900
And we had our flag lowered for almost six months in a, in a, in a perpetual state of
00:32:30.980
mourning for something that there was just no evidence to back up.
00:32:34.980
And the assault on, on Christian communities in Canada throughout the summer that this caused
00:32:41.860
And the fact that it got so little attention compared to the, compared to the, the unmarked
00:32:47.400
burial claims that just didn't have any evidence to me, there's no way, Candace, that this,
00:32:53.980
the response that we saw from Canadian society was not anticipated when people started putting
00:33:01.440
this stuff out there without any fact, without any, without any evidence and leaving it up
00:33:07.520
And of course, some people come to the very worst conclusions and some people want to get
00:33:18.960
But also several people, several people, several journalists and politicians.
00:33:22.780
And to this day, Jagmeet Singh saying that it's, it's unbelievable without evidence.
00:33:31.020
And it really, it's, I think it's a stain on Canadian journalism.
00:33:34.060
And now we have New York Post, we have, we're going to have international outlets that were
00:33:39.640
pushing this narrative coming out and saying, actually, there's no evidence to back it up
00:33:45.320
It makes us look, I think it doesn't put us in great light.
00:33:49.320
Well, and it's also part of a broader trend, right?
00:33:52.140
I know Douglas Murray has a new book out called War on the West.
00:33:54.940
And the idea that they go after sort of the national figures, the historical figures of
00:34:00.600
a country to try to undermine the very legitimacy of that country, we see it happening in the
00:34:05.500
UK with Winston Churchill, you see it happening in the US, even with Thomas Jefferson or Abraham
0.54
00:34:11.500
Lincoln in Canada, definitely happened with, with John A. MacDonald, where he, you know,
00:34:16.400
he's just completely in the eyes of so many elites, he's just beyond the pale, you know,
00:34:21.840
that that doesn't just hit John A. MacDonald, it hits at the core of Canada and our identity.
00:34:27.400
And I want to stay with this topic, though, of sort of political culture wars that are
00:34:35.880
I mean, you know, the biggest news story in the world was just the unspeakable, horrible
00:34:40.120
tragedy that happened in Uvalde, Texas, still trying to put together the details of that,
00:34:45.300
And you and I were talking before air about this new timeline that came out that's just
00:34:48.460
really unconscionable, the idea that the police waited over an hour before going in to stop
00:34:54.020
this gunman and waiting for backup, while parents were frantically urging them to go inside.
00:34:59.760
For me, when I look at the story, I see, you know, a picture of a very isolated and disgruntled
00:35:07.140
mentally ill young man with no father in the picture, a mother who was using drugs, you
0.93
00:35:12.840
know, he shot his own grandmother, like there's severe dysfunction in this young man's life.
00:35:17.740
Interestingly, you know, an 18 year old male shooter, exactly the same profile as the shooter
00:35:22.860
in Buffalo, New York, in terms of age and gender.
00:35:26.680
You know, it seems to me that there's a broader societal problems, there's probably policing
00:35:31.400
problems, there's, you know, definite social breakdown, you know, this guy spent a lot of
00:35:37.720
time on social media sites like Reddit and Instagram.
00:35:41.920
There's so many things that you can analyze and try to understand.
00:35:44.800
I mean, you can't understand a horrible, unspeakable tragedy, you never will.
00:35:48.580
But it's interesting how the political left and the news media sort of knee jerk reaction
00:35:57.520
In the case of Buffalo, they went straight to, you know, white supremacists, evil right
00:36:03.560
They don't want to, they take like the most simplistic perspective and use it as a political
00:36:08.320
weapon against the public instead of really trying to understand what happened, understand
00:36:12.840
It seems like Uvaldi was a pretty horrific case of police inaction.
00:36:17.300
And I'm saying this as someone who is generally very pro-police.
00:36:20.180
But when I read the details there, it's really just very difficult to understand what was going
00:36:26.720
All this is just to say that whenever there's a big tragedy that's easily exploitable by Democrats
00:36:33.440
in the US, it just seems to quickly make its way up to Canada.
00:36:35.940
So we saw this a few weeks ago with the Roe versus Wade case where all of a sudden Justin
00:36:40.620
Trudeau used that as an example to say that he was going to provide more abortions in Canada
00:36:45.700
and that they were going to allow Americans to come up to Canada to have abortions.
00:36:49.580
You know, when it came to the Buffalo shooter, instantly they were trying to tie the trucker
00:36:55.040
convoy and this guy Pat King and then Pierre Poliev to the murderer.
00:36:59.640
And then now with Uvaldi, almost instinct, like knee-dirk reaction and the media run with
00:37:05.060
We saw the Ontario liberal leader here in Ontario, Stephen Del Duca, putting out this tweet
00:37:10.400
saying what happened at Robb Elementary School in Texas.
00:37:12.760
My heart breaks for his children and teachers who've lost their lives.
00:37:16.180
The need for gun control has never been clearer.
00:37:20.020
And, you know, calling for more gun control in Canada.
00:37:22.960
Likewise, there's this CTV City News story saying new gun control measures coming in Canada,
00:37:29.080
So he's already, he doesn't have a specific policy in mind, but he's ready to pounce, ready
00:37:34.680
to capitalize on the horrible tragedies that are happening in the United States by somehow
00:37:40.460
pretending that the gun rules in Texas are anything remotely similar to the gun laws in
00:37:46.160
Ontario or that the underlying social problems that are occurring in the United States, like
00:37:54.180
Some of them, you know, the problem with societal breakdown, with family breakdown, the problem
00:37:58.980
with isolation, especially during COVID, these young isolated men, you know, being told whatever
00:38:07.360
Um, and then spending a bunch of time on social media, you know, that, that was a problem before
00:38:14.380
Um, but, but, but to sort of import these culture wars into Canada, pretend it's, it's
00:38:21.500
Like, I don't know how else to describe it, Harrison.
00:38:24.480
It's like, they're just manipulating people who have emotional takes on these issues that
00:38:31.660
Their knee-jerk reaction is let's ban all guns or let's, you know, make sure that abortions
1.00
00:38:36.560
are codified in our, in our chart of rights and freedoms or something like that.
00:38:42.440
And then, and then the liberals capitalize on it and the media like cheers and applause
00:38:51.460
And I think, I think it's really, I think it's a really bad practice.
00:38:55.100
I don't think it does anyone in, in Canada any good when politicians jump on horrible
00:39:02.240
Um, when things are so fresh, we, we knew this was going to come because it always does,
00:39:07.640
Candace, it all, it always comes when there's something that is dominating the news cycle.
00:39:12.120
There's, there's almost this need for, uh, figures in Canada to, to do something about
00:39:18.700
Um, and we, I mean, the horrible takes on the, on the shooting in, in Texas, obviously don't
00:39:26.600
just stop with, with, uh, Stephen Del Duca's comment about the need for more gun control.
00:39:30.740
Um, the idea that there, there can be any comparison to the issues we're seeing in the
00:39:36.880
United States, these, these ongoing horrible shootings at schools, that, that is, that is
00:39:43.580
The idea that we can even compare, um, any of that to what happens in Canada is just not
00:39:50.360
We have other problems, significant problems, but the idea that we can ride this and say,
00:39:55.060
well, because of that, because of what happened in Texas, um, we need to push for Canadian,
00:40:02.620
It's, it's, I think, I think it's frankly disgusting because the, these parents and these
00:40:08.620
students, um, who had classmates and family and children, um, taken from them, um, and,
00:40:15.620
and, and, you know, teachers who had lost their lives, these people should be left alone.
00:40:20.260
Their tragedy should not be used to push political narratives.
00:40:24.040
And, and of course we can take, you know, we, that's, that's just the Texas example.
00:40:28.500
Of course, there's the abortion example, um, which shouldn't surprise anyone that Justin
0.99
00:40:32.580
Trudeau jumped on that to push his own narrative.
00:40:34.760
I just really wish in Canada, we set a standard Candace where our politicians don't, don't use
00:40:45.260
It would really, I'd really appreciate it if we could stop doing that.
00:40:48.300
Um, I think everyone would be better off for it.
00:40:51.080
Um, and I think if Canadian politicians wanted to, um, advance legislation and, and use,
00:40:56.140
use the media to advance legislation, they should at the very least use Canadian examples
00:41:10.360
And I mean, the, the, the liberals are the king of this because it was after the horrific,
00:41:14.600
horrific, horrible mass shooting in Nova Scotia that Trudeau very, very quickly came out with
00:41:23.360
And, uh, you recall that was the one that Aaron O'Toole originally opposed.
00:41:27.320
And then as soon as he got a little bit of pushback from the media during the election,
00:41:30.500
Um, but, but the liberals always use news stories, uh, to, to their advantage.
00:41:34.980
Uh, but this is particularly callous, uh, given that, uh, the, given that is, is we're in the
00:41:45.000
Um, interestingly though, just as, as a sort of local related story, um, there was a man who was
00:41:50.720
roaming around a school area in the Scarborough area of Toronto, uh, yesterday, and he was
00:41:58.020
Uh, he was holding a gun, turns out it was a BB gun.
00:42:01.080
Um, but the police wasted no time, which is quite frankly, the opposite of what seems
00:42:06.260
Again, the timeline, you read through it, it's just mind boggling.
00:42:09.920
Um, this guy was, was outside the school for, I think it was 14 minutes firing his weapon
00:42:15.400
before he actually went into the school, Harrison.
00:42:17.240
So the police had ample opportunity to take this guy out.
00:42:20.120
The, the school had ample opportunity to lock down and lock their doors and, and prevent
00:42:29.840
And, and, uh, it's again, just, just so unspeakable and so horrible.
00:42:33.660
But, uh, again, there, there's no, there's no political tragedy out there that Justin Trudeau
00:42:38.220
and other liberals won't jump to take advantage of.
00:42:45.400
This was a story that circled around this past week that apparently, uh, 15, 16% of legacy
00:42:51.540
media journalists are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:42:54.860
Headline says alarming levels of stress are harming, harming the mental illness, sorry,
00:42:59.960
harming the mental health of Canadian journalists and media workers.
00:43:03.120
So woe is me, it is so hard to be a journalist, Harrison, and you, you read some of these stats
00:43:11.400
This explains so much of fake news Friday and why we are here.
00:43:14.680
Uh, so according to this anonymous online survey that was conducted in, uh, the end of
00:43:20.340
2021 by, by journalists themselves, self-reporting about themselves, a full 69% of journalists
00:43:28.040
46% report depression, 15% report post-traumatic stress injury.
00:43:34.600
So, so, so the majority of journalists in this country self-report having some kind of
00:43:40.700
mental duress or, or instability, uh, that, that, that, that, that really reflects in, in,
00:43:46.760
in their reporting, I think in the way that they handle the news and the way that they
00:43:50.080
try to victimize themselves and make it seem like they, you know, they, they, they have
00:44:02.240
Um, I'm actually surprised it's not higher because my, my, my assumption is, is that, you
00:44:07.740
know, almost all Canadians could say that they report some kind of online harassment.
00:44:11.540
People who spend a lot of time online, uh, realize that whenever you have a platform with
00:44:15.380
anonymous users, there's going to be some just nonsense that's tweeted or, or, or
00:44:20.640
And, you know, the, the, the fact that you would dwell on that is, is just beyond me.
00:44:25.280
Um, but to go through a little bit more, they say that 35% experienced harassment in the
00:44:29.240
field, 46% of journalists in Canada report high risk drinking and 26% Harrison describe
00:44:38.460
So, so we have a heavy drinking group of journalists reporting the news.
00:44:43.240
53% have sought medical help to deal with work, stress, and mental health.
00:44:47.040
And 85% have never received training on mental health or trauma at work.
00:44:53.300
So, uh, are you sure you, uh, you sure Harrison that you want to enter this profession?
00:44:59.160
You can, you can get out, but it doesn't really paint a very rosy picture of life as a journalist
00:45:05.180
Well, it sure does explain quite a lot, doesn't it?
00:45:08.540
60% have some, you know, are crippling with shaking anxiety.
00:45:16.680
We could, we could, we could really make a lot of jokes.
00:45:18.460
Some, some probably not as not too appropriate for the show, uh, about these numbers, but
00:45:26.120
We we've seen this so, so often ever since the trucker convoy, there were all these events
00:45:30.940
about, about journalists under attack and, and, you know, the, these, you know, the threats
00:45:35.660
to journalism and, and the war on the news it's there, they're, they really have, I
00:45:41.040
think, found a new gear of trying to put themselves and make themselves out to be the victims.
00:45:45.720
And, you know, I wonder Candace, if maybe just maybe running with a story without verifying
00:45:51.980
it and saying that Canadians who were upset at the prime minister were hurling racist
00:45:57.460
And, and then having to backtrack might have to do some, some little bit about some of
00:46:03.820
the online harassment that these journalists are facing.
00:46:06.000
It might just be because their reporting has been so horrendous over the past, what is,
00:46:11.540
it feels like over the past, really the past year, they've really gone to a few years since
00:46:16.060
I mean, it's just, they've stopped reporting and just started becoming stenographers for
00:46:21.400
So maybe that has to do with it, uh, just a little bit that, that they basically are pitting
00:46:26.380
Canadians against each other and running with the government lines.
00:46:29.580
I mean, what, what else can we pick out of here?
00:46:31.340
Uh, the 15% that report, uh, PTSD Candace, I wonder, uh, cause I would probably say that
00:46:38.780
maybe, uh, getting pepper sprayed by, uh, riot cops and getting, you know, shot with tear
00:46:45.880
gas, uh, as the independent journalists, um, as Andrew Laudan and as Alexa Lavoie were, uh,
00:46:59.180
They understand what goes into being a journalist.
00:47:02.120
Um, but imagine if these legacy media journalists in their cushy corporate subsidy, uh, subsidy
00:47:08.860
journalist offices, they're the ones that are reporting PTSD.
00:47:13.180
Imagine if those people who seem to be so thin skinned and frankly weak, imagine if they had
1.00
00:47:18.240
to do the job that like independent journalists, like the ones that, that we have at true North
00:47:22.800
and the ones that are at rebel, imagine if they had to do that job.
00:47:25.520
I mean, I don't know if they could do, they probably couldn't even take a day of it, Candace.
00:47:29.360
I mean, for, for, for, for, to what independent journalists, like I'd like to see them, you
00:47:32.900
know, working on like an oil rig for a day or, or driving a truck.
00:47:36.320
Like, like these, like these poor pampered little journalists.
00:47:40.820
It's like, it's like, Oh, Oh, my life is so scary.
00:47:46.300
It's like, yeah, it's because of your reporting.
00:47:48.600
The reason that people, uh, you know, have pushed back online and say things is because
00:47:53.940
they don't like being called racist and they don't like the way you characterize them.
00:47:59.740
They, they sit, journalists sit there and hurl the craziest accusations of the Canadian
00:48:04.960
And then they face the tiniest bit of pushback and they, you know, they do panels at, at
00:48:10.500
Ryerson university or Carleton called the media versus the truckers.
00:48:14.540
Like they, they, they really see themselves on the front lines.
00:48:17.380
And, you know, the, this whole idea, I mean, I've spent a bit of time in Ottawa and I've
00:48:22.020
met many of the people, the parliamentary press gallery.
00:48:24.380
None of this is too surprising for me that, you know, that these people lead very sad, miserable
00:48:28.480
lives, um, 46% are heavy drinkers or sorry, or high risk drinkers, whatever that means
00:48:36.260
I, I, I could have told you that, uh, you know, from, from going to a political event
00:48:40.640
So really kind of a sad profession again, Harrison, I would, I would just say it's, it's not too
00:48:53.780
If only I received mental health training at work, Candace, then maybe it might make it much
00:49:00.280
Maybe true North will do some, some kind of program.
00:49:02.960
I don't, I, it's, it's, it's just, uh, it's, it's also fitting.
00:49:06.700
And, uh, in, in all seriousness, though, we, we, we love what we do and it's a lot of fun
00:49:10.700
to poke fun at these journalists because they're just so clueless and they're really bringing
00:49:16.580
the worst kind of division to our society that they're importing us culture wars.
0.62
00:49:23.560
They're, they're lashing out at Canadians or sneering at Canadians.
00:49:27.840
They're saying that our very foundational history is racist and genocidal.
00:49:32.180
Like, you know, all of, all of the fury, um, that they faced, they had coming.
00:49:38.100
So I'll just, I'll just leave it at that, uh, for today, Harrison.
00:49:41.440
Well, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
00:49:47.500
That's true North journalist and producer, Harrison Faulkner.