00:01:02.460Just general thoughts on what we're seeing in Ottawa and how this has evolved over the last week or so.
00:01:08.100Well, the Canadian Trucking Alliance took a formal position opposed to the trucking convoy.
00:01:12.900So I don't know who comprises this group.
00:01:16.560So probably would just be the individual truckers and doesn't seem to have the support of the large trucking companies.
00:01:23.260That being said, man, are they ever getting a lot of support from the public?
00:01:27.740It's almost like we've got two realities.
00:01:30.040If you watch mainstream media, all you'll do, all you'll see is individual cases where people are acting like yahoos or they're putting up controversial flags.
00:01:40.140but if you go to the alternative media you see a lot of canadian flags and young kids and street
00:01:46.740parties and bollywood parties and so to me it depends on what kind of media you're going to
00:01:52.240how you're going to perceive this effort but but clearly people are fed up with the restrictions
00:01:57.300they want a clear timeline for when they come to an end and they're not getting that from their
00:02:02.040from their governments and we're going to follow up on much of what you just said but rob set the
00:02:06.900seen for us from your perspective uh of what you're watching in ottawa well it's appropriate
00:02:11.180that the winter olympics are uh are going on right now because it reminds me of canada's moment back
00:02:16.540in uh in 2010 in vancouver where the world was watching canada and canada did did itself so
00:02:22.360proudly um with i think it won the medal total and uh and everything else uh in that olympic
00:02:28.960in that olympic games and this is literally canada's moment on the world stage is what
00:02:32.580is happening right now people are watching this all over the world um what the truckers were able
00:02:37.640to do is is in a very um peaceful uh non-violent effective way they were able to unify i would say
00:02:45.700um the majority now of of individuals who are fed up with having their freedoms eroded by the
00:02:51.040government um are fed up with the divisions that the government has made in society the i would say
00:02:57.320the discrimination that those who are not vaccinated which have had to put up with over
00:03:02.860the last two years and I mean they literally have have galvanized the public on this and
00:03:09.800to Daniel's point yeah I mean the mainstream media which hardly anyone watches anymore the
00:03:14.320legacy media they of course are trying to frame these individuals the way Justin Trudeau has which
00:03:19.380is white supremacists bigots you know uneducated etc etc anti-vaxxers which they're not
00:03:26.860And if you look to any of the reports on the ground, whether it's through social media or through the independent media, these people are regular, hardworking, everyday Canadians.0.51
00:04:16.300And Danielle, you spent a lot of time doing radio commentary,
00:04:19.260and you've written, you know, for newspapers for decades now. Is it fair to say, of course,
00:04:26.780it's fair to say that it's one-sided. Do you think there's a directive in newsrooms to report this
00:04:32.660one angle? You know, I think what happens is that newsrooms take their direction from what
00:04:38.600political leaders say. And this is the mistake that Premier Jason Kenney made right out of the
00:04:44.900gate when he tried to ally himself with the trucker convoy saying darn right we don't want
00:04:49.600mandates on truckers but then truckers looked back at him and said well wait a minute we don't want
00:04:53.560we don't want mandates on anyone either that's what the coots border crossing blockade is all
00:04:58.140about it's it's that one is specifically directed at the provincial government and its vaccine
00:05:03.740mandate its vaccine passports and so the problem I find that with all of the political leaders in
00:05:09.260Canada is none of them have created the counter narrative to help pave the way to have people
00:05:14.920feel comfortable that we can reduce restrictions and people will still remain safe. You look at
00:05:21.580the language and they've talked about this as being a pandemic of the unvaxxed and that the
00:05:27.060unvaxxed are the ones who need to be ostracized and isolated and targeted. And what they should0.93
00:05:34.300have been doing for the last number of months is talking about who's at risk. Those who are
00:05:39.380vulnerable, those who are older, how we're going to protect them, how we can protect them in a
00:05:43.320different way. They should have been paving the way for why it is vaccine passports and mandates0.99
00:05:48.020don't work. If everyone's getting Omicron, I mean, this is the most ludicrous thing. You've got0.52
00:05:52.580Justin Trudeau doing a press conference because he's isolating due to COVID and he's double vaxxed
00:05:57.960and he has a booster and he's saying the solution is more vaccines. Like there's some mismatch here
00:06:02.920when you have people who have gone through and done all of those, all of the jabs and are still
00:06:07.280getting COVID, you have to come to the conclusion that it doesn't really make sense to have
00:06:12.080isolation and vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. And the real problem is that none
00:06:16.640of the politicians are saying that. And as a result, none of the media are commenting on it
00:06:21.580either. And so they've created, I think, a polarized environment because they haven't given
00:06:25.600the media the permission to cover the other side of the story. The other side of the story has been
00:06:31.020out there in the alt media for a long time, but nobody's managed to break through and get the
00:06:35.860mainstream media covering it the same way. Yep, fair enough. And Rob, just pick up on that. But
00:06:41.520I'd say this, few politicians, even on the conservative side, to Danielle's point, have
00:06:47.440been for the last couple of years suggesting there's an alternative way to go that we could
00:06:51.300reduce, limit some of these mandates. I believe Candace Bergen did yesterday, raise it in the1.00
00:06:56.280House of Commons and say, you know, Canadians are ready to move forward. Obviously, Jason Kenney
00:07:01.500making an announcement today, and we're going to see we're going to see some of these restrictions
00:07:04.980lifted. Finally, is that part of the problem that the politicians on the opposite side of
00:07:10.720of the Liberals haven't exactly been freedom fighters themselves?
00:07:14.800Yeah, absolutely. The conservative movement has not been served well. The freedom movement,
00:07:19.960I would say, has not been served well by conservative politicians in this country.
00:07:23.500It has actually been in some ways more frustrating.0.99
00:07:27.580I mean, you expect Trudeau with his, I would just say, with his lack of ability to tell the truth and his devotion to the woke religion that he's a part of, you would expect the stupidity that we've seen out of him.0.98
00:07:39.760But to see it coming from our conservative leaders has just been down.0.97
00:07:43.780These are individuals that were elected on platforms that focused on individual freedoms, on economic freedoms, on the importance of small business and so forth.
00:07:52.760they they've been complete sellouts jason kelly kenny's been a sellout uh mo until recently has
00:07:58.420been a sellout uh doug ford's been a disaster uh it it really is awful and the problem is is that
00:08:05.300there's been no one on the other side to uh take a look uh at things and make the argument as i've
00:08:11.420seen uh pierre polly they make recently thank goodness o'toole is gone there's another completely
00:08:16.020failed leader literally failed um but to see the argument made on this a to point out the lies
00:08:22.740of the left on this issue particular with regards to children i mean i can't believe what we've done
00:08:27.200to our children in this in this pandemic that's that should be a whole segment in and of itself
00:08:31.620the abuse frankly that's occurred there but um just just the the inability of them to put an
00:08:37.700argument together with regards to freedom versus safety and understand that there is a balance
00:08:42.460between freedom and safety you cannot make everyone safe and you do not want to force 100
00:08:47.860percent safety on people if that means taking away 100 of their freedoms or most of their freedoms
00:08:52.760that's what people died for in our wars and that's that's something that we value here and there's
00:08:57.680been no discussion about the balance between freedom and safety from uh our conservative
00:09:02.860leadership and it's been a huge disappointment uh well the people are speaking about freedoms
00:09:08.580danielle and uh you know i wonder if they caught if they caught the federal government by surprise
00:09:43.720and end these restrictions. Yes? Yeah. And I think Angus Reid must have been taken by surprise by
00:09:48.620that, that you saw a clear majority in Alberta, a clear majority even in Quebec, a higher majority
00:09:53.420saying the restrictions must come to an end and people must take measures to protect themselves.
00:09:58.480So I, but here's the thing, look at how the mainstream media is covering this. If you look
00:10:02.460at some of the stories today, you will find that the polls suggest that half the people still want
00:10:08.360to keep the mandates and the passports and half don't, half the businesses want to keep them and
00:10:12.440half don't. And you've got columnists saying, well, but people will still want to travel.
00:10:16.880And so we're still going to need to have this infrastructure so people can get a vaccination
00:10:20.640certification in order to be able to travel. So people are having a hard time breaking out
00:10:25.000of the paradigm. The fact of the matter is we always had the ability at the federal level to
00:10:30.720keep track of vaccinations. Yellow fever, for instance, we didn't need to have this massive
00:10:35.820system of QR codes and impose it on the private sector for us to be able to get a yellow fever
00:10:41.480certification so that we could travel to South America. They managed to create a system that
00:10:46.520allowed for that. That being said, I don't think that we should have vaccine mandates when we
00:10:50.000travel. And that's part of what the truckers and the convoy is standing for. The problem that we
00:10:56.000have is that we've got politicians who've been led by polls all the way along. So we've had this
00:11:00.960terrible cycle where the politicians get up and say, oh my gosh, be afraid, be very, very afraid,
00:11:05.080be very afraid. Then their medical officers come up and say, oh my goodness, it's terrible. You
00:11:08.840got to be afraid. You got to be very, very afraid. So then the media says, we're going to be very
00:11:13.060afraid and you should be too. And then they do a poll and it says, it validates, we need more
00:11:17.100restrictions. And so then it goes back to the politicians and we end up with this cycle. That's
00:11:20.900why as much as I'm frustrated that the legacy media has not given the balance that I think is
00:11:27.040out there and is important and why everyone's taken by surprise by this, it begins with political
00:11:32.060leadership. Political leaders could have looked at the data. They could have looked at what was
00:11:36.820happening elsewhere in the world, and they could have started charting a course to get people more
00:11:41.560comfortable with the idea that there's a different way of doing this. I mean, look at the UK, Denmark,
00:11:46.140Sweden, Norway. If they've managed to find a pathway out of restrictions, why are we pretending
00:11:51.740that Canada, for some reason, is not going to be able to? And so I predict that we're going to see
00:11:57.360a couple of things. We're going to see again a major backlash with the measures that Jason
00:12:04.540Kenney announces today. And what I'm worried about is because he's not talking the talk and
00:12:10.780he's not bringing people along with him, are we going to do the seesaw back and forth, 180 degree
00:12:16.480turns that we've seen out of his leadership for the last two years? That's where the lack of trust
00:12:20.220is. I need to, I'll watch the, for his comments today, but I've been talking to MLAs and it has
00:12:26.460been a knockdown, drag out fight behind the scenes, trying to get the premier and the health
00:12:32.020minister in particular to move forward, realizing that these restrictions have got to go. They no
00:12:36.440longer have public support. And so I don't know which side has actually won that debate yet. We'll
00:12:41.460find out when we see the press conference. It's amazing to me, Danielle, and Rob, we'll toss it
00:12:47.440over to you. It's amazing to me that the MLAs seem pretty much unified. I mean, I suppose there are
00:12:53.760some few that would suggest that we need to keep these mandates and restrictions in place. But
00:12:59.220the MLAs are hearing from the people and the people are saying move on. So you would you would
00:13:04.460expect the premier to follow that advice, no? You know, caucus democracy in this in this country is
00:13:13.520is really, I would just say party democracy is at a real crisis point. You've probably had the same
00:13:20.900conversations with MLAs that I have. It is almost unanimous that this in Alberta, between the MLAs
00:13:28.200that this program the vaccine program needs to passport program needs to come down and yet the
00:13:35.120the premier has dithered and has denied it and has you know refused to be at caucus on certain days
00:13:42.040or just coming in for a couple of minutes and then and then leaving without the vote happening
00:13:46.960and so forth you know it just it's really something else it's bad enough that we don't
00:13:52.340have free votes in the legislature on issues but now it seems that it doesn't even matter what your
00:13:56.480caucus wants it's what the leader wants and uh you know i'm i just think uh you know i'm hoping
00:14:02.040things will will will change here in alberta in the next couple months and hopefully certainly
00:14:06.520and uh federally it looks like it is already starting to change which is good to see well
00:14:12.020let me pose this question uh danielle to you uh you both raise great points uh the caucus
00:14:17.780seems seems unified uh mlas are hearing from their constituents and that's you think where
00:14:23.840one should be making their decisions based upon. That's why we govern. However, the premier is
00:14:30.840listening to the bureaucrats in Alberta Health Services and the government officials as well,
00:14:35.960who present a different side of the story. And I'm not justifying that and suggesting for a
00:14:41.240second that he should be listening to that group. But do you think that's part of the problem? He
00:14:45.000gets it in one ear from all those freedom fighters saying, let's move forward. And then the other
00:14:49.040is, oh, there's big trouble on the horizon if we do. Well, and it is true and a sad reality that
00:14:56.200we face today, the governance by public opinion polls. I mean, I think what you need is somebody
00:15:01.840to come in with a base of principles that you can then have a pretty good idea of how it is they're
00:15:07.380going to respond when an issue comes up. And I thought, I think we thought we had that when we
00:15:11.540elected a UCP government. And that's what it has taken everyone by surprise. When I look at how
00:15:17.560this issue is unfolding in other conservative jurisdictions, we are completely offside with
00:15:23.100that. And it's never made sense to me because we have more conservative governments than we have
00:15:28.920liberal or left-wing governments. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, the
00:15:34.380CAC used to be seen to be a conservative government. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, someone just reminded
00:15:39.480me, PEI as well. And why haven't they gotten together and talked about a conservative approach
00:15:45.860to ending this? Why is everybody just walking in lockstep with what the prime minister has said?
00:15:50.960I think that's sort of the biggest disappointment to me is, as Rob points out, it has really all
00:15:55.860been leader-led, and the leaders aren't even collaborating or cooperating with each other.
00:16:00.720They all seem to be captive to their chief medical officers. And I don't know if we ever
00:16:06.280really understood how much power there was in the Public Health Act. The Public Health Act was
00:16:10.500written when we had typhoid and when we had cholera and when we had smallpox. And it was designed to
00:16:16.120give extraordinary powers to the chief medical officer to deal with very localized, serious,
00:16:22.280acute cases. It was never intended to be applied on a broad-based measure across the entire province
00:16:28.340in all circumstances for two years. That's a misapplication of the law. And I have no idea
00:16:34.740why the governments haven't gotten onto this and started reining in the power of the public health
00:16:39.480officials. I want to be able to save some time to talk about COOTS and what's happening there.
00:16:45.240Rob, frankly, I'm surprised that you haven't, or maybe both of you, saddled up and
00:16:50.120written down to see what's going on. It's been quite the Freedom Convoy in COOTS as well.
00:16:59.000Yeah, it has. And I think it's a beautiful thing. I just think that the whole Freedom Convoy,
00:17:07.200and that would include what's going on at coots and in capitals around the around the country
00:17:12.440right now and now around the world as people are copying canada of all things um is one of the most
00:17:17.320important uh i would say events uh certainly in recent canadian history and i would say canadian
00:17:24.180political history because it's a canadians are not like this you know we're the peace order and
00:17:28.540good government crew uh most of the time and to uh we we we're very deferential to our authority
00:17:35.180in most cases and to see the nation rise up like this peacefully but effectively real effectively
00:17:43.420and say you know what until this is solved we're going to make life a little bit miserable and
00:17:48.860we're going to use our peaceful protest powers of peaceful protest to make sure that we're heard
00:17:54.240and you know we're not we're not going to take no for an answer and they're being persistent
00:17:59.620The question and the fear that I have now is, particularly in Ottawa, is what does Justin Trudeau do? I mean, he, in my view, is close to a, he has very tyrannical leanings, let's put it that way.
00:18:16.840And his rhetoric is dangerous. It's hateful. He continually tries to make these truckers, turn these truckers, paint these truckers as white supremacists, as obviously racist, violent people, which they're not.
00:18:33.740And I'm hoping that the nightmare scenario doesn't happen where he does something like in the southern U.S. where he six the dogs on these good people and gets the military involved and all of the awful things that could happen there.
00:18:49.680That is, I think, the question for this week.
00:18:53.200That's what I'll be watching to see if this this semi tyrannical leader that we have decides to go a bridge too far.
00:19:00.860all right danielle coots and uh and trudeau you know it's i would love rob to talk to talk a bit
00:19:07.520about this because he's the lawyer and i'm not but this whole phrase of peace order and good
00:19:12.480government i think it's become a shorthand to the federal government can do whatever the heck it
00:19:16.840wants and we just have to be peaceful and orderly about it and that's not in my view what it should
00:19:21.440mean it means that there's a social contract between governments and their people and yes
00:19:26.760we will have peace and order, but we also expect to have good government. And it's not good
00:19:32.340government to have policies in place that cause us to isolate and ostracize our friends and our
00:19:38.180family and our co-workers for months and months on end with no end in sight. I mean, that's the
00:19:43.600thing that has really troubled me about the vaccine mandates and the vaccine passports is
00:19:48.420no one was very clear about when or if they would ever end. And you don't make a permanent firing
00:19:54.860decision for somebody who has been a veteran employee on the basis of what is supposed to
00:20:00.160be a temporary measure. That's what I think is causing the truckers to not back down because I
00:20:05.540think that this has been the issue is we've never seen a pathway out. And to Rob's point, perhaps
00:20:11.800it's because there is no pathway out because there hasn't been any thought given to when this
00:20:17.480would come to an end. We all know that Pfizer is working on yet another repurposing or retooling
00:20:22.960of its vaccine so it can address omicron well omicron has already gone through and so what's
00:20:27.600the next variant is this how it's going to be that these passports get turned on and off with every
00:20:32.480new variant until you're getting two or three jabs a year that that's what people are fighting
00:20:37.520the other thing that people are fighting is that it's not just about whether the truckers can go
00:20:42.240cross-border because remember the federal government has said they want every federally
00:20:47.040regulated industry to have vaccine mandates so that's broadcast media radio and television
00:20:53.360broadcast media is all the telecom companies it's all of the grain elevators it's the ports
00:20:58.480it's um it's the banks and so are we going to get to a point where to be able to get a bank account
00:21:04.880you're going to have to be vaccinated because you won't be able to walk in the door i have no idea
00:21:09.040but the fact that this is just this is the line in the sand that's been drawn because the federal
00:21:14.400government has so much more planned. They have so much more coming. And I think this is the reason
00:21:20.260why we want to see this win. We want to see it win so that they don't end up rolling out the full
00:21:24.520plan. And we want to see it win at Coups so that Jason Kenney, Scott Moe together become the first
00:21:30.120premiers to turn it around at the provincial level so that other premiers will follow.
00:21:36.560Well, I agree with what Daniel said on this.
00:21:42.540I think that it is peace, order, and good government.
00:21:46.240And when there's not good government, that's the social contract that's broken.
00:21:50.240But there's something that people need to be really concerned about.
00:21:54.320And I don't want to be seen as trying to whip up emotions or be hysterical or paranoid or anything like that.
00:22:01.880But there have been some very, I don't know, like Orwellian, 1984 Orwellian things that have happened here in the last couple of years, particularly in the last few months.
00:22:13.400Like even on this trucker convoy, the fact that the government was able to essentially force Facebook and GoFundMe to go fund these case to pull the funding that had been raised for these truckers to pull down the they were able to shut down the group on Facebook a couple of times.
00:22:32.420um there all of the qr codes everything else this has been a bit of a practice a bit of an activity
00:22:38.780for the for the i would say for the woke left for the federal liberal party which is the
00:22:43.620representative of the woke left as far as i'm concerned to uh to practice or to test drive
00:22:50.400uh certain control measures over the media uh over funding uh of their opposition uh over over
00:22:58.160cutting funding of opposition to their to their platform and what they believe the way that
00:23:02.800they've treated doctors and and and and all sorts of people that have come out against
00:23:08.140their their policies and so forth and I think that if you want to talk about the next variant
00:23:14.320yes there is the next variant one of the other next issues is going to be climate change it's
00:23:19.060going to be the climate crisis and don't be surprised I'm telling you right now do not be
00:23:24.020surprised if these same methods are used to restrict movement, to restrict how much you
00:23:30.640can travel, to restrict what you can drive. These passports are not, these are things that
00:23:37.580the left believes are necessary in order to deal with controlling the population, to deal with
00:23:44.520problems that they see as problems, whether that be health problems, whether that be the climate
00:23:51.700crisis as they as they term it these are dangerous things and that's why i think right now it is
00:23:56.800critical that conservatives see this for what it is see it for the danger that that it is and and0.68
00:24:02.400put a stop to it whether that be a coots in ottawa or anywhere else and these premiers these
00:24:06.820conservative premiers they need to be the first ones in line to to put a stop at a provincial
00:24:12.320level well he's got me scared daniel uh how about you you know the funny thing is though rob a lot
00:24:19.380of people are kicking the same things around on social media and everywhere else that you're
00:24:22.480saying. So you're not saying what a lot of people aren't thinking. It is frightening though.
00:24:28.000And it is frightening because, you know, I've started watching this social credit
00:24:32.360scoring develop in China a few years ago. So I know what Rob is talking about and the fact that
00:24:39.100it is on the ground being implemented in places in China where they can monitor with facial
00:24:46.220recognition software to identify citizens so that you can get a score based on how good a citizen
00:24:52.700you are and then that impacts your ability to get lending it impacts your ability to travel freely
00:24:58.300it impacts your ability to leave the country if if one country is doing it and we're adopting some of
00:25:04.220the same control mechanisms i don't think we should be surprised that some people are worried
00:25:08.540that that's the direction that the government wants to go i mean didn't i don't know if we
00:25:12.300talked about this before but didn't mastercard roll out a a card that is linked to how much co2
00:25:19.900emissions they track you consuming and then it turns off once you've got to a certain level of
00:25:23.980co2 emissions i guess it's like a gas card or something and nope that's it for you i guess you
00:25:28.140you do zoom meetings for the rest of the work year once you run out of once you run out of credit so
00:25:33.020i i think that they're the i think they are linked and the fact and the reason rob links them is
00:25:39.180because the left is linking them they're talking about these two things uh being equivalent that
00:25:43.740this is the kind of measure that we need to see on the on the climate front because humans face
00:25:49.500an existential crisis is how they're putting it to to us and if that's the case then wouldn't you
00:25:54.300want to take these kinds of extreme measures i think what they didn't anticipate though is that
00:25:59.980just the severely normal canadian the severely normal albertan could only be pushed so far
00:26:06.060you can push and you can justify and you can say okay well i can take this measure
00:26:10.540because i want to be able to go see my kids play sports or i want to be able to go see my sick
00:26:16.620mother in the u.s but once they've gotten to a point where they they pushed a person past the
00:26:22.460point where they can't justify it to themselves anymore i i didn't expect the breaking point to
00:26:28.620be this big we've seen convoys in the past on different issues but i i think they've pushed
00:26:34.140the the majority now of canadians past the breaking point and to rob's point i just i have
00:26:40.940a lot more confidence in premiers at being able to turn back the dial on this i'm not so sure
00:26:46.620about the prime minister um so the question will be does he get replaced there's already some
00:26:51.180rumblings at the federal level about uh whether or not he's going to survive his leadership i mean
00:26:56.140i don't think that you can escape the capital and go hole yourself up in a private residence and do
00:27:01.420and do zoom press conferences because you're afraid of the people i don't know that you can
00:27:05.660come back from that i mean perhaps the only way to change the channel is for the federal liberals
00:27:10.380to realize the writing on the wall and to change their leader in the same way that the conservatives
00:27:14.620did we've seen an immediate change of tone out of the conservatives with their change in leadership
00:27:18.460maybe that's what we should be looking for at the federal level level with the liberals great points
00:27:23.180um look partisan shots aside uh the way that the prem the way that the prime minister has handled
00:27:29.820this defies leadership. It is absolutely the opposite of what a good leader would do. He's
00:27:37.580not been in the trenches. He has not met with these folks. He has not tried to do anything to
00:27:44.300bring down the temperature with this. In fact, he's increased it. Guys, we're running out of
00:27:48.780time. I want to turn to you for final comments, Rob. I want to start with you. How does this end
00:27:53.920and where do you see this playing out?