The Candice Malcolm Show - March 31, 2020


The Candice Malcolm Show： Don’t forget – Trudeau under-reacted about coronavirus for two months


Episode Stats

Length

38 minutes

Words per Minute

187.89143

Word Count

7,140

Sentence Count

451

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

The Trudeau government spent two months praising China, defending open borders, and calling Canadians racist. But now we re supposed to praise them and stand in unity as they kill the economy and crack down on basic freedoms? I don t think so.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The Trudeau government spent two months praising China, defending open borders, and calling Canadians
00:00:06.180 racist. But now we're supposed to praise them and stand in unity as they kill the economy
00:00:11.300 and crack down on basic freedoms. I don't think so. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice
00:00:16.820 Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today. I want to do today's show
00:00:25.960 a little bit differently because I think it's so important that there's so much talk right now
00:00:30.400 about all the measures, all the increased measures that the government is taking to keep Canadians
00:00:34.140 safe, to prevent the spread of coronavirus. We see massive outbreaks now in the United States,
00:00:40.400 as well as things continuing to look really, really bad in Europe, especially in places like Spain,
00:00:46.060 France, and Italy. Although in Italy, the daily death toll has sort of flattened and is now actually
00:00:51.900 going down, which is a good sign. Although we're still talking about hundreds and hundreds of
00:00:55.700 people dying every single day from this virus. So everyone's talking about how kind of Canada's
00:01:01.020 doing the right thing now. Justin Trudeau has finally taken control, shut down basically the
00:01:06.480 entire economy and our society. Provincial governments and local governments are increasingly cracking
00:01:12.580 down on Canadians for doing basic mundane things like going to the park or going for a walk. So
00:01:19.100 before we just sort of sit back and praise it all and accept it all, I think it's incredibly
00:01:23.360 important to be critical at times like this. I totally understand that there's value in showing
00:01:28.560 unity, showing solidarity with Canadians. The important message is that people stay at home
00:01:33.700 right now, that we do what we can to prevent the spread in our own local, in our own direct
00:01:39.120 communities and in our own lives. You hear so much, flatten the curve, flatten the curve.
00:01:44.640 I think that's all well and good, but I don't think that the government deserves a pass. I think it's
00:01:49.100 important to hold them accountable, to be critical so that they don't try to do these things again.
00:01:53.940 And we saw it last week when Justin Trudeau introduced the legislation that was supposed
00:01:58.360 to simply be an economic stimulus or bailout bill, basically a bill to reimburse Canadians for the
00:02:05.520 lost work, for the fact that we have to shut down our businesses, the fact that we have to stop
00:02:10.160 going to work. So the idea was just simply to reimburse Canadians for the economic loss from forced
00:02:15.840 government policies. But instead, they sort of introduced a backdoor legislation that blindsided
00:02:21.360 the opposition, asking, basically demanding a power grab for two years, nearly two years, where
00:02:27.120 they would have unlimited powers and taxation powers and spending powers. Fortunately, the
00:02:32.060 opposition stopped the Trudeau government, but that's just a perfect example of why we need to hold
00:02:36.880 them accountable. And even the bill that they ended up getting still gave the government
00:02:41.460 unprecedented powers for the short term, for the interim. It gave the finance minister powers to
00:02:48.180 tax and spend. It gave the federal government new powers under the Quarantine Act. And so not just
00:02:53.680 from a libertarian perspective, not just for libertarians, but all Canadians should be weary.
00:02:58.800 We should discuss and talk about, at least, the sacrifices that we're making, the trade-off that we're making,
00:03:05.020 and have a fulsome conversation about the pros and cons of the policy direction that we are taking.
00:03:11.640 I've talked about this on the show in the past. Justin Trudeau likes to sort of shrug his shoulders.
00:03:15.360 He did it again today during his press conference and just say, it's not up to politicians. We're only
00:03:20.300 looking at experts. We're looking to doctors and epidemiologists. And it's not up to us. It's up to
00:03:25.120 them. That is a cop-out, OK? That is just not how the world works. You're a politician. You're the prime
00:03:31.060 minister of the country. There's always going to be competing data. There are always going to be
00:03:35.080 scientists and experts who disagree with each other. And it is your job to choose a path, to
00:03:41.060 carve out a direction for the country. And you can't just say, you know, don't blame me. Don't
00:03:46.080 hold me responsible. I was just looking to the experts. It's fundamentally up to the politicians
00:03:51.000 and the leaders of the country to make those decisions. So I think that before we, again, go and
00:03:56.160 praise the prime minister for finally doing the right thing, which I think we're sort of going in that
00:04:00.580 direction now with borders more or less closed, with bans on internal travel, with a call for everyone
00:04:06.860 to basically stay at home, especially people who have been out of the country. There's finally a more
00:04:11.900 mandatory 14-day quarantine, self-quarantine. But let's go through how the government spent the past two
00:04:20.340 months. So there's a really good piece in the Edmonton Journal. I know the Edmonton Journal, it's usually
00:04:25.920 not my favorite publication. I went to school in Edmonton and I couldn't stand that paper. It was
00:04:31.240 incredibly biased and left-wing. But for whatever reason, they came up with a great piece of
00:04:37.440 journalism by David Staples over at the Edmonton Journal. And so they came up with a three-part
00:04:42.320 series where they are going to talk about how the government has handled the coronavirus from the
00:04:47.340 onset, from the first time it sort of came up. And we learned about this new foreign virus going
00:04:53.640 around China. China was lying about it. China was trying to hide it. So it starts in January. This
00:04:58.500 is going through January and talking about how the government responded. What Staples did here,
00:05:04.680 which is really interesting, he sort of compared and contrasted what Canada did versus what Taiwan
00:05:10.020 did. Taiwan is a small country off the coast of China, very close to China, very close economic and
00:05:16.040 cultural ties to China. And they took control of this thing like from the get-go. They completely
00:05:22.140 closed off their borders. They closed off travel. They stopped their citizens from being allowed
00:05:25.960 to go to Wuhan. They stopped people from Wuhan from coming in. They really took control of their
00:05:30.160 borders. And because of that, they've had virtually no cases and no deaths in Taiwan. So he juxtaposes
00:05:37.320 Canada's response with Taiwan while also talking about what the Chinese were doing, how the Chinese
00:05:42.720 were hiding this and lying about this and doing things that really, really hurt the global community
00:05:48.040 when it came to containing this virus. And interestingly, Staples leaned on the National
00:05:54.500 Review, which is a great conservative magazine in the United States, who did their own timeline
00:05:58.300 talking about China's evil, evil misdeeds throughout the course of this virus. So what we learned is
00:06:06.440 basically, this is what it comes down to. The first month of this virus, when it was just first
00:06:12.280 being talked about, first being learned about, the Trudeau government basically did three things.
00:06:17.960 They shockingly and kind of disgustingly continued to praise the Communist Party of China, the Chinese
00:06:24.860 Communist Party. So there's plenty of examples here. On January 29th, Chief Public Health Officer,
00:06:31.080 Dr. Theresa Tam, praised the Chinese response. She said this,
00:06:34.520 What we have seen, given my close communication with World Health Organization, is how impressed
00:06:40.200 they are with the work of China. The astonishingly rapid way in which they tried to get a handle on
00:06:45.700 what is causing the outbreak and giving the world the sequence of the virus was very helpful.
00:06:51.080 They've been providing information about cases, which is extremely helpful. You've seen the incredibly
00:06:55.480 extraordinary measures that China has put in place to try to contain this within its borders. I just
00:07:01.380 don't understand why Canada's chief political officer is praising a foreign communist country,
00:07:07.620 which, as we know, again, they lied about this disease. They lied about the human transmission.
00:07:12.220 They shut down journalists. They shut down whistleblowers, doctors and nurses who were initially
00:07:17.700 saying like, hey, this is a big problem. Those people got reprimanded. They got removed. I mean,
00:07:22.800 the Chinese government has just been terrible from the get-go. So why is our chief public health officer?
00:07:27.840 That's supposed to be a nonpartisan, nonpolitical role. It's not her job to be praising foreign
00:07:33.480 countries. Leave that to the foreign affairs minister. Leave that to the politicians. This is
00:07:37.140 supposed to be a neutral, unbiased, serious doctor talking about public health, talking about the
00:07:42.640 best health interests in the country. But here she is, again, praising the Chinese government.
00:07:49.540 Dr. Theresa Tam was not alone in praising China. Canada's foreign minister,
00:07:54.160 Francois-Philippe Champagne. He repeatedly praised China, including in a bilateral meeting that
00:07:59.960 happened on February 14th, where he openly, the Chinese embassy put out a press release saying
00:08:06.960 that Canada had praised their leadership and really, really just laying it on thick. So in an interview
00:08:12.260 on February 7th with Evan Solomon, which was on CTV Question Period, Minister Philippe Champagne
00:08:18.220 said that frequent communication with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has been a positive aspect
00:08:24.000 of the complicated dynamics around repatriating Canadians from the hot zone of Wuhan. Okay,
00:08:30.620 and Canada wasn't just praising China for their supposed great effort and sort of parroting the
00:08:35.620 WHO's praise of China. But there were repeated questions by opposition members in the House of
00:08:43.220 Commons asking the Trudeau government why they weren't taking measures to restrict travel from
00:08:48.800 China, especially at a time where all over Asia, every country that was neighboring China was starting
00:08:53.900 to put in restrictions. We know that Canada sees a lot of tourists, a lot of travelers coming and going
00:08:59.440 from China, especially into the major airports in Vancouver and Toronto. So on January 27th,
00:09:05.560 Conservative MP Todd Daugherty asked the health minister, he said, quote,
00:09:11.580 quote, every day, thousands of passengers from China and elsewhere in Asia arrive at our ports
00:09:15.380 of entry, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. Oftentimes they board domestic flights and connect through
00:09:20.700 Canada and elsewhere in North America. Calling the coronavirus a grave situation, China has quarantined
00:09:26.080 entire cities with millions of people. The World Health Organization now lists the global threat as
00:09:32.060 high. The safety of Canadians is currently dependent upon screening in China and self-reporting by
00:09:37.420 infected passengers. When will the government institute a real plan to include enhanced screening
00:09:43.420 processes? And then in response, Health Minister Hadju says, in fact, our government has been well ahead
00:09:50.020 of the World Health Organization strategies in terms of screening at ports of entry. We have multiple
00:09:54.740 measures to alert travelers from affected regions about what to do if they suspect they have illness.
00:10:00.400 We have trained our CBSA officers to ensure they have the tools they need to support people who may be
00:10:05.860 ill. We have worked with partner airlines to ensure there is information on flights. So again, it
00:10:10.860 entirely relied on honesty of individuals, of self-reporting, of people who are sick to sort of
00:10:17.160 come forward and say, look, I have the virus or I'm ill. Whereas we know that no one was doing that.
00:10:23.300 People weren't doing that. People were trying to, in fact, hide their symptoms and lie in order to do
00:10:27.900 the travel that they wanted to do. That's not just people from China. It's still happening today
00:10:32.620 with Canadians trying to return to Canada amidst all the travel bans and all of the new precautions.
00:10:38.340 So instead of taking the threat seriously and instead of looking at where the origin of this
00:10:45.320 disease was coming from, the Trudeau government took a totally different approach. And that was to
00:10:50.500 essentially say that this was all just a matter of racism and bigotry on behalf of Canadians against
00:10:57.040 Chinese people. So again, on January 29th, Dr. Theresa Tam said on Twitter,
00:11:03.380 I am concerned about the growing number of reports of racism and stigmatizing comments on social media
00:11:08.000 directed to people of Chinese and Asian descent related to the coronavirus. Racism, discrimination,
00:11:14.240 and stigmatizing language are unacceptable and very hurtful. Again, that is a political statement.
00:11:19.380 That is a political statement coming from a person who's supposed to be a neutral doctor.
00:11:24.020 So how are we supposed to take Theresa Tam's health advice seriously when she's also sitting there
00:11:30.240 pearl clutching and calling Canadians racist? The concern was not the stigma against Chinese people
00:11:37.600 or people of Asian descent. The concern was not about racism. The concern was about public safety
00:11:42.620 and our public health. The Trudeau government didn't seem to realize that back then. They didn't
00:11:46.660 seem to care. And so they kind of fell back on what they're comfortable with. And we know that
00:11:52.220 Justin Trudeau is the most comfortable when he's standing on his high horse, looking down his nose
00:11:57.120 at Canadians and calling us racist for any number of imagined reasons. And so Justin Trudeau repeats
00:12:03.360 this language again. February 1st, he says, there is no place for discrimination driven by fear in
00:12:09.960 Canada. As he delivered marks at the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration in East End of Toronto,
00:12:15.400 Trudeau condemned racism linked to the coronavirus outbreak, which originated, as we know,
00:12:20.240 in Wuhan, China. So instead of taking the threat seriously, they kind of fell back on their familiar
00:12:25.320 territory of talking about how this is nothing more than just xenophobia. It's an excuse to,
00:12:31.980 for Canadians to just, you know, take off the mask and show our race is true colors. That's according
00:12:37.180 to not just the liberals, but also our neutral public health official or the top doctor, the top public
00:12:44.580 health official in the country, Dr. Theresa Tam. So those are the two main approaches they took first.
00:12:51.340 First, they praised China. Second, they blamed Canadians and blamed it all on racism. And then
00:12:56.360 on top of that, we've talked about this many times on the show, they defended their open borders. So
00:13:01.120 they repeated over and over and over again that closing the borders wasn't going to help, that it
00:13:05.640 wasn't going to stop the disease. Disease is no, no borders. We have plenty of plenty of examples.
00:13:10.840 So Dr. Theresa Tam, on January 29th, she, this is from the Edmonton Journal piece, she spelled out
00:13:17.700 her own philosophy with a focus on the main line of defense being the country's hospitals, not its
00:13:23.480 borders. This is a virus that can cross borders. This is a layer of a multi-layer response. So
00:13:29.320 Theresa Tam really kind of doubled down on the idea that she was more concerned about making sure that
00:13:34.360 people like coronavirus were safely going to hospitals and that there was just no point in stopping
00:13:39.420 the border because the border was not going to be able to stop this virus. She reiterated that on
00:13:44.640 February 3rd. She said, the advice is provided to travelers. World Health Organization advises
00:13:50.580 against any kind of travel or trade restrictions. This is February 3rd. The World Health Organization
00:13:56.120 advises against any kind of travel or trade restrictions, saying they are inappropriate and
00:14:01.780 could actually cause more harm and good in terms of our global effort. We had that reiterated by
00:14:08.520 health minister, Patty Haju, who said that the more countries that have outbreaks, the less relevant
00:14:13.860 borders become. A virus knows no borders. And then Justin Trudeau, as recently as March 5th, March 5th,
00:14:20.600 he says he strongly affirms Canada's open border approach to reporters. He said, we recognize there are
00:14:26.760 countries that make different decisions. The decisions we make is based on the best recommendations,
00:14:31.740 the World Health Organization and the tremendous health experts who work within Canada and around the
00:14:36.400 world. We know that keeping Canada safe needs to be done in the right way. We're going to keep doing
00:14:42.040 the things that actually keep Canadians safe. There's a lot of misinformation out there. There is a lot
00:14:47.020 of knee-jerk reaction. This isn't keeping people safe. This is having real challenging impacts on
00:14:52.660 communities and community safety. So it's interesting that they basically spent more than two months from
00:14:57.960 January 1st until basically the second week of the first or second week of March, reiterating this
00:15:03.640 entire philosophy that they have, that they want to stop a campaign of fear, that they want to protect
00:15:10.360 people from the Chinese community from a stigma and racism, that they want to keep the borders open.
00:15:17.020 They reiterated this. They doubled down on it. They said it over and over and over again.
00:15:21.840 Meanwhile, meanwhile, this virus was spreading all over the world. It reached far off places,
00:15:27.600 far away from Asia. It hit Italy. It's hit Iran. At this point, the numbers were really,
00:15:33.020 really starting to look bad in those places. And it wasn't until basically mid-March that all these
00:15:38.500 politicians kind of had their eyes open. They had an awakening and they did an about-face and changed
00:15:45.780 course on all of this stuff. So all the stuff that they had said before, they changed, they did an
00:15:50.640 about-face on, particularly the borders. So how are we supposed to sit here and praise them for closing
00:15:55.840 the borders when they spent months defending the borders? And during that time, allowing the virus
00:16:01.860 to get into the country to spread to a point where we can no longer contain it and we have to put the
00:16:07.820 entire society and the entire economy on hold. Again, I don't think that we can just easily forgive
00:16:13.460 them, but there's just so many people out there that say, look, now's not the time to have a political
00:16:18.400 conversation. Jonathan Kaye, who is the editor over at Quillette, which is a great publication,
00:16:22.760 he's also a columnist, over at the National Post. He had a thread on Twitter, which I think
00:16:29.020 represents what a lot of people are thinking. I just happen to disagree with this. So Jonathan Kaye
00:16:34.940 says, I see a lot of people tweeting about holding the Canadian government to account for screwing up
00:16:40.520 the coronavirus response. Yes, they screwed up early, as did every country except South Korea and Taiwan.
00:16:47.880 What's important now is a policy going forward, not scoring points over the past,
00:16:52.760 he continues. Canada's fortunate coronavirus policy is being conducted in the realm of adult
00:16:57.300 discourse. This isn't the U.S. where states in D.C. are hashing things out based on tweets,
00:17:02.720 Trump's mood, White House intrigues and gubernatorial bluster. Focus on policy. Plenty of
00:17:08.160 time for political talk later. This doesn't mean giving the libs a pass on everything. Opposition
00:17:13.660 parties were correct to oppose the Liberals' grab and no holds barred fiscal policies till the end of
00:17:18.840 2021. I don't see the point in obsessing endlessly over health decisions made months ago.
00:17:24.220 Most governments made similar mistakes. One defining aspect of this pandemic is that government defaulted
00:17:29.880 early to their baseline neurosis. This is an interesting analysis here. He says, in China,
00:17:35.880 it was international image. In the U.S., it was Trump's ego and the economy. In Canada, it was fake
00:17:41.400 racism, accusations and lectures. In the U.K., it was populist skepticism. But the responsible leaders have
00:17:47.920 moved on from that. I think people know that I like a good culture war knockout as much as the
00:17:53.420 next guy. And in some countries, such as the U.S., those wars are inescapable because the political
00:17:58.280 culture is so pathologized that even the Grim Reaper wears red or blue. This isn't Canada. Let's keep
00:18:05.140 it that way. I appreciate some parts of that. I think it's interesting, the idea that everyone kind
00:18:09.840 of fell back on their basic neurosis, he calls it, that in Canada, the impulse is to just blame a problem
00:18:17.180 on fake racism accusations and lectures. I think that's probably pretty true. And I do appreciate
00:18:23.020 that Canada is a less politicized, less partisan country than the United States, that we can all
00:18:29.620 come together and kind of get past some of the political squabbles that we have. So I do appreciate
00:18:35.500 that. But I just completely reject the idea that we can't hold the government accountable. I don't
00:18:40.400 think it's about scoring points. I think it is about holding government accountable for spending two
00:18:44.460 months, insisting on open borders, praising the communists in China, and scolding us as racist
00:18:48.900 instead of taking the tough measures that were implemented. There were a lot of people saying,
00:18:52.520 look, we need to take these tough measures. The Trudeau government rejected it. And if you read
00:18:55.940 through the Edmonton Journal article that, again, I say is really well done, you should go check it out.
00:19:00.920 One of the things that they were really concerned about was, again, protecting the minority Asian
00:19:05.680 community in Canada, which, again, is all well and good. You need to protect minority rights in any
00:19:10.460 country. But they were so concerned about trampling the liberties, the civil liberties and economic
00:19:16.920 freedoms of people who had just come from China, that they refused to take any measures. And yet,
00:19:21.360 here we are now at the end of March, and they've taken those measures for the entire society. And I
00:19:26.160 didn't see the same sort of caution and trepidation about doing that to all Canadians, that they were so
00:19:31.680 concerned about doing to a small group of a subset of people in Canada just one month ago. So I think
00:19:38.840 it's important that we hold them accountable, like I said. And it isn't just that. It isn't just that.
00:19:44.380 There's a lot of misnomers that are being put out there. So basically, the Trudeau government has done
00:19:49.200 a complete about-face. And now they're entirely just so concerned about stopping the spread that
00:19:54.380 they're willing to take any measure possible, any measure possible, including putting millions and
00:19:59.800 millions of Canadians out of work. And so when someone loses their job, or when someone's business
00:20:05.060 is teetering on the brink, I know that there are government programs that are promised to
00:20:09.940 reimburse and compensate businesses. But that doesn't stop the fear and anxiety that so many
00:20:15.160 business owners have about not being able to make their payroll, not being able to pay their expenses,
00:20:21.100 what they're going to do. And the idea that the government is just simply able to write endless
00:20:25.400 checks and sort of mend all of those needs is complete nonsense. It's complete nonsense.
00:20:29.960 There are thousands of thousands of Canadians that are going to go bankrupt because of this.
00:20:34.880 Thousands and thousands of businesses that are going to go bankrupt, regardless of all of the
00:20:38.960 measures that the Trudeau government takes. There are people who... Let me give you an example.
00:20:43.020 If you just open a restaurant, if it was your lifelong dream to open a restaurant, you borrowed,
00:20:48.020 you saved, you did everything you could to launch the restaurant, and you launched it on March 15th,
00:20:54.680 it doesn't matter what the Trudeau government does. You're not going to be able to
00:20:58.040 bridge that gap and make it last. And even when this thing all ends, which at this point,
00:21:01.960 we have no idea when it will or if it will. I mean, we hear from the health officials that this
00:21:07.240 could be months and months away, that we could be stuck in this situation until June or July.
00:21:13.220 I'm sorry, getting 75% of the wages to pay your employees is not going to bridge that gap
00:21:17.660 for so many people. And that's not to say anything about the sort of culture of young freelancers and
00:21:23.660 people who run their own businesses, people who do startups, people who really need a good economy
00:21:29.120 in order to just survive. All of those people are going to be irreparably damaged. And so when you
00:21:35.860 look at public health concerns, like you look at the public health concern about coronavirus, and I'm
00:21:40.060 by no means trying to downplay coronavirus. I think that it is very wise and sage advice for people to
00:21:46.700 stay home. I personally am now in my third week of, sorry, I'm now in my fourth week of being self
00:21:52.980 isolated and staying at home. The only time I have left the house in the last four weeks is to go
00:21:59.240 grocery shopping, which I've done twice, to go to the hospital when I got my own coronavirus test and I
00:22:05.380 tested negative, and then just to go for family walks around the neighborhood with my husband and my
00:22:11.560 young son. So I am self isolated. I'm not going out. I encourage everyone watching this to do the
00:22:17.380 same, to not risk it, to not go out. There's no, there's no real reason to, there's no point in
00:22:21.840 doing it. But that said, I think that the policies that the government is taking, and not just in
00:22:27.920 Canada, but all over the world, the idea that we're just going to sort of press pause on the global
00:22:31.940 economy, hope that the virus will pass, and then we'll press unpause and the economy will somehow
00:22:36.880 be exactly the same. I think that's a very, very risky policy. I think it's a risky decision. It was
00:22:42.360 made hastily, and we don't know, we don't know how it's going to turn out. We don't know whether that's
00:22:47.260 going to be the right choice. We don't know at the end of all of this, if we're going to learn like,
00:22:51.180 hey, the coronavirus mortality rate is less than the seasonal flu. We all kind of overreacted. Yes,
00:22:57.920 we know that it's much more transmissible. It spreads a lot faster. It's much more contagious.
00:23:02.240 But we could learn that it's much, much less deadly than the flu. And there are plenty
00:23:06.780 of experts and epidemiologists. There are plenty of epidemiologists out there who believe that
00:23:13.080 when this is all said and done, we're going to learn that the mortality rate for this thing
00:23:17.320 is less than the flu. So yes, I think hopefully, hopefully what happens is this thing goes behind
00:23:24.960 us. We get a vaccine. We get a treatment for this disease. And we stop in its tracks before it gets
00:23:32.020 as deadly as many predict. That's my hope. My hope is that we look back at this whole saga of 2020,
00:23:38.320 and we think of it as the year we massively overreacted. The year that we decided to tank our
00:23:44.540 own economy, the best economy the world has ever seen, the year we decided to tank our economy out of
00:23:50.540 an abundance of caution for a disease that turned out not to be as bad. That's what I hope will happen.
00:23:55.540 And I'm not saying it will. But I do think that it's important to lay out the choice that we're
00:24:01.480 making. And I think that there's a lot of people presenting a false dichotomy. I'll give you
00:24:05.800 an example of, this is just sort of a random guy on Twitter, but I think that his sentiment
00:24:10.400 is what a lot of people on the left are saying right now. So I'll use it as an example.
00:24:14.800 He says to me, he says, so in response to my point that I was making, that doctors and
00:24:22.840 epidemiologists don't all agree with each other. And that's the problem with just saying we're going
00:24:26.440 to listen to doctors and epidemiologists is that, well, they don't all think with one collective
00:24:30.400 brain. And there's a lot of different theories, a lot of different models out there. So you can't
00:24:34.020 just say, let's rely on what the doctors say, because the doctors don't disagree. And so this
00:24:38.280 individual, he says, and when the experts disagree, do you err on the side of public safety or the side
00:24:44.360 of profit? Because you seem to be advocating for the latter. So I think this is a complete false
00:24:47.920 dichotomy to say that on the one side, we have public health concerns. The other side, we just
00:24:52.820 have like a bunch of greedy capitalists who want to make money. You know, who cares if a lot of people
00:24:57.540 die? It's just all about the bottom line. That's a totally, totally false dichotomy. And it's very
00:25:02.400 silly because we're talking about death and misery on both sides. Let's be clear. We're talking about
00:25:07.780 people who, if we decide to say, you know what, we're not worried about the coronavirus. Everyone
00:25:13.480 just go about your daily lives. And you know what, we're going to lose like 1% of the population.
00:25:19.160 That is a incredibly deadly decision to be made. And that's probably the wrong decision. But if we
00:25:25.280 say the opposite, you know, we're going to do everything we can just to save one life. So every
00:25:29.800 single person is mandated by law to stay inside their house and not leave. We're also going to
00:25:35.700 probably lose, I don't know if we're going to lose 1% of the population. But there are plenty of
00:25:40.260 studies out there that suggest the economic misery and suffering that comes as a result of a global
00:25:46.400 recession. And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about basically a Great Depression.
00:25:50.800 It's something that we haven't seen for 100 years in this country. So let's talk about the health,
00:25:57.220 public health concerns that come from a Great Depression. There was a study in The Guardian that
00:26:02.040 found that unemployment causes about 45,000 suicides worldwide. And this is a study from a
00:26:08.240 few years ago before any of this happened. We know that in Alberta, I've talked about this on the show
00:26:13.180 before, the University of Calgary looked at the suicide rate in the province during the sort of
00:26:22.140 ups and downs of the ongoing saga with the price of oil. And they found that for every one point
00:26:30.260 that the unemployment rate increased, there was a 2.8% increase in the province's suicide rate.
00:26:37.120 And just keep that in the context of the fact that Canada's unemployment rate just jumped from 5.8%
00:26:43.320 all the way up to 14%. All the way up to 14%. So a nine point increase, each one of those nine points
00:26:49.980 could be correlated to a 2.8% increase in suicide. And it isn't just suicide that is a result of a
00:26:58.080 massive economic downturn. There are also all kinds of problems, everything from substance abuse to
00:27:04.220 domestic and spousal abuse. People get involved in the sort of underground economy, which could lead
00:27:10.260 to greater crime rates. There are all kinds of unintended consequences that come from a massive
00:27:15.260 economic downturn that need to be weighed against the health concerns that is a result of coronavirus.
00:27:21.480 So it's not simply about public health versus profits. No, it's the public health concerns of
00:27:26.920 a global pandemic like coronavirus versus the public health concerns of a massive Great Depression,
00:27:33.220 like the one that we've just plummeted ourselves in without any kind of a fulsome debate over the
00:27:39.040 pros and cons of what we were doing. So basically, I just think that we should be weary of that. And that's
00:27:45.020 to say nothing about the kind of ongoing kind of crackdowns, I'll say, against our civil liberties
00:27:51.100 that I think are pretty much over the top. I mentioned this, I think I mentioned this in the
00:27:56.680 True North update. There's a park across the street from my house, and I like to take my little son there.
00:28:00.580 There's a swing set and a slide and all the kinds of stuff that you see at a park. Not a very busy park.
00:28:07.140 There's not that many people that go there. But last week, I woke up to see a Toronto,
00:28:11.480 the City of Toronto employee with yellow tape, taping up the whole thing, basically saying the
00:28:17.300 parks are closed, you can't bring your kids to the park. I think that is massive overstep. I mean,
00:28:23.300 I go to that park every day, I see kids and families, everyone just naturally spaces out,
00:28:28.460 everyone understands that we're in the midst of a global health crisis. People aren't really
00:28:33.240 congregating. Like I said, I went for a walk over the weekend. And every time I saw another person,
00:28:38.480 both parties would go out of their way to make sure that we weren't getting within the six feet.
00:28:43.000 So whether that would be crossing the street or sort of standing aside so that I could push a
00:28:47.840 stroller and go the other direction, everyone is taking the precautions. There was not a single
00:28:52.080 interaction that I had where somebody came within six feet of me. So the idea that we can't trust
00:28:57.300 citizens to do this, we have to tape off parks, I think is really over the top. And that's not
00:29:02.800 the only thing. Montreal closed all dog parks and community gardens. The city of Toronto closed
00:29:07.840 playgrounds, dog parks, and stopped gatherings. Ontario extended its emergency declaration banning
00:29:16.200 all gatherings of five people or more. There was a mandatory quarantine in a Jewish community in
00:29:24.160 Montreal. The Tosh Jewish community was placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine on Sunday after 19
00:29:30.980 members tested positive. The decision to quarantine 4,000 members of the Hasidic community
00:29:36.220 in Montreal has nothing to do with religion, said Quebec's public health minister, everything to do
00:29:41.280 with epidemiology. So again, under normal times, if a community was just all of a sudden singled out and
00:29:48.040 placed on self-quarantine, you know that the journalists and the left-wing activists would be
00:29:52.200 jumping up and down, ringing the alarm, setting their hair on fire, but they don't bat an eye when it's
00:29:57.360 happening just because of this coronavirus. There's also been plenty of arrests. A woman in Newfoundland
00:30:03.020 was arrested twice in one week for ignoring a self-isolation order. Interestingly, this woman
00:30:09.000 didn't have any symptoms. She wasn't sick. She didn't have coronavirus. She appeared to maybe be
00:30:13.780 homeless, but the police just kept arresting a woman just for being out in the street, even though
00:30:19.060 she wasn't sick. So I don't know exactly what she was doing. But again, you know, where are the
00:30:23.720 civil liberty activists asking about these things? And, you know, again, the forced shutting down
00:30:29.640 of our economy. We know that nearly a million Canadians submitted an EI application, so they're
00:30:35.420 already out of work. And we know that there are public health repercussions. So I just think we
00:30:40.340 should have a conversation about it. I'm not saying that one way is right or the other way is right,
00:30:44.460 but it just seems odd that in Canada we haven't had any kind of public conversation about this and
00:30:49.180 everyone is just sort of united in standing behind the prime minister and saying, yes, take further
00:30:53.780 and further tough measures. Don't worry about the economy. Don't worry about civil liberties.
00:30:57.400 Just do everything you can. I think that there should be more people pushing back against it,
00:31:03.360 and I'm more than happy to do that. Okay, let's talk about fake news. Okay, this is sort of the
00:31:08.580 definition of fake news because so the prime minister has been doing a daily press conference,
00:31:12.980 and then on top of that, the sort of cabinet that's in charge of the cabinet ministers that are in
00:31:18.300 charge of the coronavirus response team have been holding their own press conference, and so that
00:31:23.080 usually includes Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, as well as Dr. Theresa Tam, and then a few
00:31:28.820 other cabinet ministers, whoever is sort of relevant in whatever they're announcing or proposing. So
00:31:33.620 last week, all of a sudden, all the journalists in those rooms cared about was this story from Global
00:31:39.140 News. The story came from Mercedes Stevenson, who's a great reporter, and it was basically a
00:31:44.820 speculation, though. The piece was Trump looking to put troops near Canadian border amid coronavirus
00:31:49.760 fears. The American government officials inside Donald Trump's White House are actively discussing
00:31:54.780 putting troops near the Canadian border in light of U.S. border security concerns around the new
00:31:59.760 coronavirus pandemic, sources tell Global News. So anonymous sources are the basis of the story,
00:32:05.600 and it's kind of speculation. They're saying people and sources are telling Global News,
00:32:10.480 we're hearing that perhaps someone inside Donald Trump's White House are actively discussing the
00:32:17.140 potential possibility of putting some troops at the border. And that was it. There was no
00:32:22.700 confirmation. There were no quotes. There were no named quotes, like a quote where someone was willing
00:32:27.360 to put their name behind it. It was just basically a story saying maybe they're kind of thinking about
00:32:32.200 doing this. If you had been watching those press conferences, you would have thought that there was
00:32:37.100 a smoking gun. There was already military presence, that there were tanks lining up at the Canadian
00:32:43.660 border to stop people from coming over because the media just totally overreacted. Every single
00:32:47.700 question, okay, not every question, many, many, many questions were being thrown at both the Prime
00:32:52.900 Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland asking about this, talking about this. Freeland gave
00:32:58.160 this sort of long, elegant speech about the importance of rules-based diplomacy and the importance of the
00:33:04.060 Canada-U.S. economic and trade relationship. And basically said this would really hurt the
00:33:10.400 relationship we'd have. The journalists were just all over it. It sort of enabled their bias against
00:33:16.320 the United States, their anti-Americanism and their hatred for Donald Trump to come to the surface.
00:33:21.020 And they really pushed hard. Okay, the only problem is that the story didn't really have any basis in
00:33:27.100 reality. And it didn't come to fruition. It didn't actually happen. So the very next day, there was a report
00:33:33.400 in the Wall Street Journal that says the U.S. drops proposal to put troops at the Canadian border. The
00:33:39.860 Trump administration dropped its consideration of plans to send U.S. military forces to the Canadian border to
00:33:46.740 help with efforts to combat the new coronavirus, U.S. officials said Thursday, disclosing that decision after
00:33:52.320 Canadian officials had strenuously objected to the idea. So just one day later, we learned that the
00:34:00.320 story wasn't true. It was something that maybe they were talking about. Maybe it was a proposal.
00:34:04.440 We don't even know if it had actually been agreed upon or if there were any steps. But it looked like,
00:34:09.660 you know, there was sort of this win for Canadian officials. Like Canada strenuously objected. And so
00:34:14.840 the decision was dropped. I just think that this is the perfect example of the creation of a fake
00:34:21.440 news narrative, something that never was going to happen. And then it didn't happen. But somehow it
00:34:26.240 wrapped up an entire week of news cycle and news stories in Canada. Tons and tons of ink were spilt
00:34:32.020 over a story that was never going to happen. And I wanted to also just quickly give this one an
00:34:36.820 honorable mention in the fake news category. So this is a, okay, this is a poll that came out on March 28th.
00:34:44.660 And it asked Canadians about the approval of leaders handling of the COVID-19 crisis. So the question
00:34:51.280 asked was, there has been a lot of talk lately about the outbreak of the new coronavirus disease,
00:34:56.660 COVID-19. Do you approve or disapprove of how each of the following leaders has responded to the crisis?
00:35:02.780 Okay, so Francois Legault, the premier of Quebec, gets just an astonishingly positive response. 95%
00:35:10.340 of respondents of polls, of people polled, said that they approved a 95% approval rating. That is wild.
00:35:17.020 And then we see similarly high numbers in the high 60s for BC Premier John Horgan, Ontario Premier
00:35:23.000 Doug Ford, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Prime Minister Dustin Trudeau, and Jason Kenney.
00:35:28.100 They all range from 65% to 68%. And then for some reason, for some reason, the poll included Donald
00:35:35.140 Trump, President of the United States, who according to Canadians who took part in this poll, only 20%
00:35:42.560 approve of Donald Trump, 77% disapprove. So I just have a couple of questions for these pollsters.
00:35:48.720 Why would you include a foreign leader in this poll? If you're going to include a foreign leader,
00:35:53.260 why not include the president, China? China is the epicenter of this disease, of this virus. They
00:35:59.500 were the ones that lied. There was a study that came out that said, had China not lied, and had they
00:36:03.420 given the information that they had when they had it, that this virus would have been contained
00:36:07.460 globally by 95%. So 95% of the suffering and the death out there can directly be linked to the
00:36:14.800 Chinese government's response. And yet we don't see the Chinese government on this approval list.
00:36:20.200 We don't see the Ayatollah of Iran. Iran is the second biggest outbreak after China. We don't see
00:36:26.220 approval rating of any of the leaders in Europe that also allowed this virus to get to Canada. But for
00:36:31.360 some reason, we have Donald Trump, and we know that Canadians, according to this poll,
00:36:35.360 overwhelmingly disapprove, which also shows that, you know, we know that the Canadian media love to
00:36:42.420 pick on Trump. We know that they create a straw man out of him, that they take his words out of
00:36:46.140 context, and they use him as a punching bag. Anytime they want to report something negative, they kind
00:36:50.140 of ignore what the Canadian government is doing. They don't bother digging in and looking into the
00:36:54.220 Trudeau government. They just turn right to Trump, use him as a punching bag. And I guess 77% of
00:36:59.100 Canadians agree with that media take on Donald Trump, and they think that he is doing a bad job,
00:37:04.180 which, again, is kind of interesting because this is a point that Jonathan Kaye made. Everybody kind
00:37:08.680 of screwed this up at the beginning. Everyone did it in their own different ways. And it's more
00:37:13.700 about how everyone's kind of playing catch up now. And I think you could probably say that Trudeau and
00:37:17.360 Trump are in a similar position in that regard. They both should have done a lot more, and they
00:37:21.780 didn't. I will just say, at least Donald Trump closed travel from China. He closed travel from the
00:37:27.900 European Union well before the Canadians did. And at the time when he did that, he was criticized
00:37:33.120 by the media, by the Canadian media, for going too far and for being unfair and saying, you know,
00:37:39.920 another one of Trump's travel bans. This is Trump acting like a dictator, yada yada, saying what they
00:37:45.720 do. So I just find it interesting. I have no idea why the Canadian polls included Donald Trump other
00:37:51.660 than the fact they just wanted a punching bag. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in,
00:37:56.080 and we will be back again on Thursday. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.