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

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 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.97

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 0.67

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 0.99

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 0.95

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 0.95

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 1.00

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 0.99

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.

The Candice Malcolm Show - March 31, 2020

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

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