The Federal Leaders Debate was a colossal waste of time. It was heavy on leftist pet causes and light on any economic or COVID-related issues. In other words, it was typical insider Ottawa terribleness that turns Canadians away from engaging in politics.
Plus, CBC’s fact-check bends itself into a pretzel to defend Trudeau’s spin and the Canadian Press highlights “undecided voters” — all fringe leftists who hate conservatives.
It’s Fake News Friday on The Candice Malcolm show!
There is only one pro-life party in Canada and it’s the Christian Heritage Party, leader Rod Taylor says. He joined the Andrew Lawton Show to explain why he thinks Christian values are needed in Canadian politics.
A new poll released by Leger ahead of Thursday’s English language Federal Leaders’ Debate found that Canadians believed Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau to be the most out of touch with the everyday realities they are dealing with.
The online survey which was commissioned by Postmedia, polled 3,002 Canadian residents over the age of 18 between September 3, 2021 to September 6, 2021. A similar poll using a random sample would have a margin of error of ±1.8%, 19 times out of 20.
When survey respondents were asked to rate the most disappointing characteristics of each federal leader, Trudeau was found to be the least understanding of Canadians’ struggles.
In the poll, 24% of people said that the Liberal leader lacked an “understanding of what ordinary Canadians are dealing with.” Meanwhile, only 16% said the same of Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole, whereas NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh scored 10% in this category and Bloc Quebecois Leader Francois Yves-Blanchet received 9%.
Additionally, when asked whether Trudeau was “out of touch” with voters’ concerns, 30% of Canadians responded in the affirmative. On this question, O’Toole scored 15%, Singh received 8% and Yves-Blanchet received 7%.
“If you think back to 2015, he really connected. That was one of the things people talked a lot about, is that he really connected with the average Canadian on those major issues,” Leger’s Executive Director Andrew Enns told Postmedia.
“This is a bit of a flag as to why that Liberal campaign is really not taking off to the degree that perhaps they thought it might.”
According to the latest poll on voter intentions, the Conservatives have a slight lead over the Liberals. A recent Nanos poll revealed that 32.6% of Canadians said that they would cast their ballot for a Conservative candidate if an election were held today.
Meanwhile, only 30.6% of Canadians said they would be voting for a Liberal candidate in their riding.
The federal Liberal candidate for New Brunswick Southwest Jason Hickey admitted that the party may tax people who are selling their homes if Justin Trudeau is re-elected on September 20th.
On Thursday, the Conservatives posted a video of Hickey speaking about a potential home sales tax.
Justin Trudeau’s candidate admits the Liberals have a plan to tax the sale of your home. It’s time for change. pic.twitter.com/QpJnuKvotl
“But of course, anyone selling their primary residence, if you do make money on that, unfortunately you will have to pay tax on that,” said Hickey. “I wouldn’t agree to that either, but it’s what we have to do.”
However, the Liberal Party Press Box posted a tweet with another video of Hickey, claiming the footage the Conservatives posted was misleading.
“I don’t think we plan on bringing that forth – I don’t think we do that,” said Hickey in the Liberal Party’s clip.
The Liberal Party accused Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner of lying when she shared the Conservatives’ video. Rempel said that calling her a liar is a serious charge.
“Your message is defamatory and must be removed immediately,” said Rempel. “Alternately, you’ll be getting a libel notice shortly.”
The Liberals have promised to establish an anti-flipping tax on residential properties, requiring people to live in them for at least one year. People who encounter changes in life circumstances such as pregnancy, death, new jobs and divorce will be exempted from the anti-flipping tax. No rate has been specified for the proposed tax.
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 2020 spent $250,000 researching a home equity tax. Organizers of the project equated homeowners to lottery winners whose residences were tax shelters. The objective of the project was to identify solutions that could level the playing field between renters and owners.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a press conference on Tuesday that if re-elected, there will not be a home sales tax.
“We will not do that,” said Trudeau. “That is something that we are not interested in doing.”
Hickey, the Conservatives and the Liberal Press Box could not be reached for further comment in time for publication.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says the government must step in because social media companies aren’t doing a good enough job at keeping “hate speech” off their platforms.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday night after the French leaders’ debate in Gatineau, Que., Singh said existing hate speech laws are not sufficiently preventing radicalization, though he didn’t explain at what point he thinks protected speech becomes “hate speech.”
“The Liberal government (has) acknowledged that there is a problem, but they haven’t acted in six years,” Singh said. “They haven’t done anything to take on hate speech online, and without any action from the government, we’re leaving it in the hands of the web giants or the social media giants, and they are not equipped, nor have they shown, really, the willingness, to take on online hate. They allow it to spread, and I believe it is the government’s responsibility.”
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says "it's government's responsibility" to regulate online hate speech to prevent radicalization. pic.twitter.com/GharHk6Wzb
Singh said a government response must involve the power to “remove immediately misinformation that incites hatred and act quickly to stop the spread of those type of messages online.”
Such a move would likely involve fining social media companies if they fail to purge content prohibited by the government within 24 hours, as the Liberals have proposed.
Singh added that Trudeau’s purported inaction on regulating online speech has resulted in “people being radicalized.”
He did not provide any examples, but said “some of the worst massacres in Canada recently were the result of people who were radicalized by online hate.”
On the day of the last House of Commons sitting before the election, the Liberals tabled Bill C-36, which would reinstate a previously repealed section of the Canadian Human Rights Act allowing for prosecution of online “hate speech.”
The section was scrapped by the previous Conservative government amid concerns about its effect on free speech after the Canadian Human Rights Commission used it to target bloggers and authors.
Singh was asked how much consideration he would give to protecting freedom of expression in any attempt to regulate online speech, but he did not address this in his response.
The Criminal Code already prohibits hate speech in Canada, with a high threshold for prosecution. Efforts to combat hate speech through human rights laws lower this threshold considerably, giving human rights tribunals wide latitude to pursue cases even in the absence of a complaint.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms derided Bill C-36 as “frighteningly despotic and totalitarian.” The People’s Party of Canada said it would be used as a tool to criminalize everything but “far-left woke speech,” eventually.
While the Conservatives were initially silent on C-36 when it was introduced, the party’s campaign platform closed the door to using human rights laws to address online speech.
Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole pledged on Thursday that if elected his government would put an end to the import of goods produced through forced and enslaved labour.
According to a press release on the announcement, O’Toole singled out the Chinese Communist Party for its mass encampment of Uyghur Muslims.
#POLICY: Canada’s Conservatives will stand up for human rights and ensure the world’s worst human rights offenders don’t profit from these abuses. pic.twitter.com/IWcxzFARuh
“For years, we’ve known Uyghur slave labour is being used by China’s Communist regime in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to produce products like cotton, tomatoes, and solar panels for export,” said O’Toole.
“As prime minister, I won’t hesitate to act against this disgusting practice and ensure that the worst human rights offenders don’t profit from these abuses.”
The Conservatives pledged to revise supply chain legislation and regulation to enforce an import ban on goods produced through forced labour.
“Through legislation similar to that proposed in the Senate through Bill S-216, Canada’s Conservatives will ban the importation of any goods produced by entities or within regions which are known to employ slave labour,” a policy backgrounder states.
If passed, Bill S-216, or the Modern Slavery Act, would impose “an obligation on certain entities to report on the measures taken to prevent and reduce the risk that forced labour or child labour is used at any step in the production of goods in Canada.”
Canada’s allies, including the US and the UK, have passed similar laws including the July 2021 Forced Labour Prevention Act which was passed by the US Senate in July 2021.
According to Conservative critics, the Liberal government has done very little to punish China for its use of slave labour.
A recent report by the Globe and Mail found that Canadians were still able to purchase goods produced in the Xinjiang region where forced labour is common despite government measures requiring companies to attest that slave labour had not been used in the manufacturing process.
The media scrum proved to be much more interesting than the French Leaders’ Debate on Wednesday night, as Justin Trudeau lost his marbles and went off the rail against independent media in a long-winded response to Rebel News.
Also, True North’s in-house pollster Hamish Marshall joins the show to discuss the effect of lockdowns on this election and if strategic voting will become a threat to the Conservatives.
A Toronto city councillor who pushed for vaccine passports to be implemented in Ontario was a vehement opponent of the practice of police carding in 2015, social media posts reveal.
Last month, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam urged the Ontario government to implement a sweeping vaccine passport system similar to the one currently in place in Quebec.
Ontario needs to work with all MPPs and follow Quebec's lead to introduce a vaccine passport ASAP. The 4th wave is knocking. The 4th wave is here.https://t.co/LFUAl3KFKK
Under the program, digital proof of vaccination would be required to enter so-called non-essential services such as restaurants, bars, events and other locations.
Along with producing a vaccine passport, Canadians will be required to also provide photo ID to access those public settings.
In 2015, Wong-Tam tweeted about how the practice of carding, or police officers stopping people who meet the description of wanted crime suspects to produce identification, was a form of racial profiling.
It's becoming clear that #carding is an issue that can't be ignored. McMurtry: "violation of Human Rights Code." pic.twitter.com/As3zaRoqJ7
True North reached out to Wong-Tam to ask whether she held the same views when it comes to the vaccine passport but did not receive a response.
According to official statistics, vaccine hesitancy is highest among black Canadians and some Indigenous populations.
“Certain sub-groups in Canada are more likely to report COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. These include black Canadians, Indigenous peoples, newcomers, and younger adults, among others,” a federal government backgrounder claims.
Recently, Ontario’s Advocate for Community Opportunities Jamil Jivani came out against the government’s plan to implement vaccine passes, saying it would create second class citizens.
“I agree with Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s comments on July 15, when he said vaccine passports will create a two-tiered, ‘split society.’ Provincial mandatory vaccine passports will further marginalize a significant number of Canadians who are already struggling in our economy,” Jivani said on social media.
Justin Trudeau isn’t saying whether Canada is still engaging in genocide against Indigenous women and girls.
In 2019, Trudeau said he accepted a finding from an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls that a “genocide” was currently taking place in Canada.
“We accept their findings, including that what happened amounts to genocide,” Trudeau said at the time.
Asked Wednesday night in a post-debate scrum in Gatineau whether that was still the case, Trudeau side-stepped the question, instead touting his visit to a former residential school in Saskatchewan.
Justin Trudeau avoids answering whether Canada is still committing "genocide" against Indigenous women and girls, as he said in 2019, but touts his government's "concrete steps" to move forward. pic.twitter.com/v7plv6u3j8
“When I visited Cowessess First Nations to grieve with them over the unmarked graves of the children that we had so cruelly mistreated as a country and ripped away from their families over the past many, many generations and decades, we also took a very concrete step forward on removing kids at risk from the provincial system of treatment and keeping them in their communities, in their language,” Trudeau said.
“And it is concrete steps like that that actually doesn’t (sic) just grieve over the terrible tragedies of the past but takes steps to correct and move forward that makes all the difference.”
Trudeau was referring to the June 2021 announcement by the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan of a burial site with 751 unmarked graves near the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School. However, a local band member said the graves were in an existing cemetery and included children and adults, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Weeks later, Trudeau signed an agreement transferring child welfare responsibilities from the provincial government to the Cowessess First Nation itself, saying children “need to be kept by, protected by, supported by, and taught by their communities.”
Trudeau did not say how this move counters the “genocide” assertion in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry report, which said genocide is driven by “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.”
The Cowessess graves were announced weeks after a similar claim of 215 unmarked graves at a site near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Researchers later clarified that the findings included roughly 200 graves.
At the time, Trudeau ordered flags at Canadian government buildings be lowered to half mast, where they’ve remained since. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has said it’s time for the flags to be raised again, arguing a commitment to reconciliation requires pride in Canada.
The People’s Party of Canada “will not be ignored.” A recent campaign email urged supporters to stand outside the Federal Leaders’ Debate venue to protest Maxime Bernier’s exclusion.
Approximately 20 protestors chanted “Let Max Speak” outside of the French debates on Wednesday and more are expected to gather on Thursday for the English debate.
According to the Leaders’ Debate Commission, to be eligible to participate in the debate, a party leader must either have at least one MP in the House of Commons, have a national support level of at least 4%, five days after the date of the election call or have received at least 4% of the vote in the 2019 federal election.
There are also a few dozen PPC supporters here. Mostly civil though a counter protester started arguing about lockdowns. pic.twitter.com/eRMtHipyRd
Although the PPC did not meet the criteria, they have been consistently polling ahead of the Green Party, which will be included in the debate.
According to an exclusive True North poll, the PPC and Greens are effectively tied nationally. Further, the PPC is ahead of the Greens in Ontario, on the Prairies and in BC. The PPC also has candidates in over 90% of ridings across the country, while the Greens have candidates in less than 75% of ridings.
The PPC is attracting more attention than most of the major political parties. Google searches for Bernier’s party outnumber all of the other parties. The PPC is getting more than double the searches than the Conservative Party, almost four times as many searches as the Liberal Party and almost six times as many as the Green Party, which is lagging behind the others.
Bernier has previously said that the decision to exclude him “confirms the existence of the political establishment cartel which has sought to deny the existence of the PPC since its inception.”
The PPC has accused “establishment elites in the government and media” of silencing them. Bernier says the media has portrayed the PPC as “racist and intolerant” and has not included them in their daily coverage.
The PPC claims that Bernier was excluded because he will disrupt the mainstream narrative and that if “given a credible platform, his message will resonate with average Canadians.”
