Western Standard - May 11, 2023


Trudeau abandons the Liberal party


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

197.29282

Word count

1,030

Sentence count

65


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In response to a proposal from the Liberal Party of Canada, the party wants to ban the use of anonymous sources and stories in order to protect the privacy of whistle blowers and whistle blazers. But what does that mean for the freedom of the press?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Elected individuals, they're actually independent of the parties they're members of.
00:00:04.680 I mean, if you're a MLA or an MP, you are legally bound to represent your constituents, not necessarily the party, even though you're tightly tied to the party.
00:00:13.820 So MLA's, MPs, they can be ejected from their own parties if they cross too many lines,
00:00:18.120 but there's no legal obligation of any kind for an elected official to support the policies of a political party.
00:00:23.500 That's the way it should be.
00:00:24.960 Elected officials must be free to be able to put the interests of their constituents ahead of the interests of their party.
00:00:30.000 If only they did that more often.
00:00:31.960 Now, Prime Minister Trudeau, this is something you don't hear from me very often.
00:00:35.280 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is correct in distancing himself from a bizarre and rather outrageous policy resolution proposed and accepted by the Liberal Party membership at their last convention.
00:00:45.560 Their policy calls for Ottawa, too, and this is in quotes,
00:00:49.060 explore options to hold online information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platform
00:00:55.540 and to limit publication only to material where sources can be traced.
00:01:00.000 Now, in other words, what they're saying with all that word salad there is they want to ban publication of news stories that are based on anonymous sources.
00:01:08.200 Now, Canada's protection of whistleblowers is already terribly weak,
00:01:11.580 and it forces government operatives with a conscience to either stay silent when they see government malfeasance
00:01:16.760 or to leak information in what they feel is the public interest.
00:01:20.760 Now, a few of them are going to leak if their anonymity can't be protected.
00:01:24.760 Anonymous sources, I mean, they're important.
00:01:26.440 They exposed some of the atrocities committed in the Vietnam War by American soldiers.
00:01:30.560 I mean, that helped change some of the tone on things, as well as the government efforts to cover it up.
00:01:35.280 Anonymous sources also brought improper national security agents surveillance activities that had been conducted against U.S. citizens and foreign officials to light in 2013.
00:01:44.460 The government had overstepped, and anonymous sources exposed that.
00:01:47.320 And, of course, who can forget the Watergate scandal?
00:01:49.820 Well, that never would have been exposed without anonymous sources.
00:01:52.700 Currently in Canada, somebody well-connected with CSIS has been leaking document after document
00:01:58.700 on Chinese Communist Party interference in Canadian elections and affairs,
00:02:02.560 while the government's ignored the issue.
00:02:04.940 And so it's a little wonder that authoritarians in any government,
00:02:07.920 and the Liberal Party of Canada Loyalists want to ban the use of anonymous sources and stories.
00:02:13.360 It doesn't make such a ban right, though, or feasible.
00:02:16.100 Such a policy would surely turn the national press against the Liberal government, finally.
00:02:19.960 And it would likely be found to be unconstitutional once it hit the courts, and it would.
00:02:24.360 Even Trudeau knows this.
00:02:25.540 Even Trudeau.
00:02:26.240 And with uncharacteristic clarity, he said that policy is not a policy we would ever implement.
00:02:32.620 Thing is, though, that puts the Prime Minister at loggerheads with his own party.
00:02:35.720 And it could threaten the solidarity within a party known to typically run a pretty tight ship.
00:02:40.580 I mean, Liberal Party members debated the policy in good faith
00:02:43.620 and expect their leader they support to follow through with it.
00:02:46.860 Now look, members of political parties, and all of them,
00:02:49.180 create bad policies at their conventions all the time.
00:02:51.360 This isn't new.
00:02:52.480 Conventions tend to be dominated by activists within the parties,
00:02:55.220 and their resolutions can often be unrealistic.
00:02:57.620 Usually, though, political leaders will just quietly ignore the bad policy resolutions
00:03:01.580 and hope the members will be satisfied with that.
00:03:03.700 It's unusual when a leader has to come out swinging and condemn their own party's policy
00:03:08.160 before the ink has even been dried on the resolution, though.
00:03:10.780 And that's just how bad this Liberal Party notion is.
00:03:14.200 Policy resolutions, though, do reflect the leanings of party stalwarts,
00:03:17.920 even if they may never actually make it into government bills.
00:03:20.940 The Trudeau government has been at war with the free press for years,
00:03:23.440 so it isn't surprising that Trudeau's supporters felt emboldened enough to pass a policy
00:03:28.280 calling for something as absurd and intrusive as trying to ban the use of anonymous sources and stories.
00:03:33.720 Almost every move by the Trudeau government in the last few years has been focused on the control of citizens,
00:03:37.940 whether through illegalizing types of hunting firearms or bills to control media,
00:03:42.100 such as C-18 and C-11, which are solutions looking for a problem.
00:03:45.840 And they say those bills are threatening free expression and free press.
00:03:50.240 The government's obsessed with trying to control national messaging,
00:03:53.860 and they've pushed those bills through, despite criticism from press, academia, and even some of their own senators.
00:03:59.360 Now, like eager children trying to impress parental figures,
00:04:02.620 the Liberal Party members likely felt Trudeau would have been giddy with their move
00:04:06.300 to try and further handicap Canada's free press.
00:04:08.820 They didn't realize how far out of bounds they were going.
00:04:11.160 Instead of being applauded by their leader, they found themselves chided by him.
00:04:15.580 Now, will the sullen and rebuked Liberal members now just back off
00:04:19.740 and accept their leader's rejection of their policies,
00:04:21.820 or we're going to finally see some cracks start to form in that party?
00:04:25.580 Trudeau's been a leader, their leader, for a long time,
00:04:28.060 and surely there's some ambitious souls within the party ready to take a crack at the top job.
00:04:32.500 So for a change, Trudeau decisively and quickly did the right thing.
00:04:36.520 And ironically, that might be the beginning of the end of his worship status within the Liberal Party.
00:04:41.680 Hell hath no fury like that of a Liberal member scorned.
00:04:45.040 Well, that's what's got me with the federal news today and seeing what's happening.
00:04:48.080 So we'll see how that goes over with his party members.
00:04:50.420 I can't see them being too amused with that.
00:04:52.860 You put that time in, you have the debate in, and then within days,
00:04:56.120 the Prime Minister said, ah, well, no, no, no, we're not doing what they say.
00:04:59.740 Well, what's the point of being a member?
00:05:00.880 No.
00:05:02.580 No.
00:05:02.660 No.
00:05:02.760 No.
00:05:03.260 No.
00:05:03.700 No.
00:05:03.820 No.
00:05:04.820 No.
00:05:05.420 No.
00:05:05.820 No.
00:05:11.000 No.
00:05:12.200 No.