Shaun Newman Podcast - #262 - Andy Lee

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Independent journalist Andy Lee in recent months had her account removed from Twitter & bank accounts frozen for reporting on Ottawa.   Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

This is Zubi. This is Brett Wilson. This is Brian Peckford. This is Keith Morrison. This is Tim McAlloff of Sportsnet. This is Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Daryl Sutter and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Friday. Man, what a week. It's been Oilers lose game one in heartbreaking fashion, maybe frustrating fashion. They win game two in commanding fashion. And all I got to say is the first round of the NHL playoffs is fan-freakant-tastic. love that there's people in the building and it is just rocking. We got a plus 20 day here this week as well. I tell you what, little kids outside playing, extremely excited.

I was happy to just sit out there and enjoy the sun. It feels like forever since that happened. And for a Friday, I got a new episode sponsor teaming up with Upstream Data. You may recall Stephen Barber episode 163. He is the owner of Upstream Data. While since 2017, they've been pioneering a creative solution prevented and flared natural gas at upstream oil and gas facilities, a problem that has persisted the oil and gas industry since the very beginning. It's waste gas, essentially, right?

And they found a way to pair modular Bitcoin mining data centers to natural gas engines. Together, waste energy is converted into useful work and monetized. Their data centers do not need costly utilities, such as pipelines or power lines, like they're off the grid. And all that is required to start it is a natural gas source and a low-cost internet connections such as cellular or satellite. So go back to episode 163. You can hear all about it or head to upstreamdata.ca and you can find out exactly what they're all about. I'm excited about this. Bitcoin mining meets the Sean Neumel podcast.

I'm excited to see where this goes. And today actually I sit down with the boys. We're going to have a little meeting and we'll get talking about it. So I think that's a super cool partnership. I'm excited to have them on. RecTech for over 20 years, Rectic Power Products have committed to excellence in the Power Sports Industry. They offer a full lineup including Canam, Skidu, C-Doo, Spider, Mercury,

Evanor, Mahindraxor. Their parts department can hook you up with any upgrades. Our odds and ends, as we know, as you use things, maintenance is required. They're open Monday through Saturday. And for further details, you can visit them at rechtechpowerproducts.com We're giving the call at 780870 544, and I'm wondering if Alan is going to allow me to, you know, test drive a unit or two. I think that would be a lot of fun just throwing that out to you, Alan, just an idea. HSI group, they are the local oil field burners and combustion experts that can help make sure you have a compliance system working for you.

The team also offers security surveillance and automation products for residential, commercial, livestock, and agricultural applications. They use technology to give you peace of mind so you can focus on the thing that truly, matters 3902 502nd Streeter get Brodie or Kim a call at 306 825-663-10 and finally Prophet River tomorrow May 7th they have their grand opening of their new building I've been talking an awful lot about this because if you haven't been in the Lloyd area and you haven't been into the new facility they took over the the tier lounge and the buckle and converted them into a brand new store you got to go in in tomorrow May 7th, why not? They're going to have free food. They're going to have

representatives from a whole swath of companies. They have their grand prizes being unveiled. They've got a bunch of stuff going on. So you might as go in, take a look at the new building. If you're out of town, just go to Profitriver.com to see what they're all about. They are the major retailer of firearms, optics, and accessories serving all of Canada. Gartner Management is a Lloydminster-based company specializing in all types of rental properties to help meet your needs. If you're a small little operation, you need a space such as myself, just a room to do some work, or you've got multiple employees. Give Wade Gartner a call, 780808, 50, 25.

He'll get you hooked up. Now, onto the RAM truck rundown brought to you by auto-clearing Jeep and RAM, the Prairie's trusted source for Chrysler, Dodge Jeep Ram, Fiat, and all things automotive for over 110 years. She's an independent journalist, former Maverick Party candidate, who caught a lot of attention when she was removed from Twitter and had her bank account and access limited with her association to the protest in Ottawa. I'm talking about Andy Lee.

So buckle up. Here we go. This is Andy Lee and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Andrea Lee or maybe everyone knows there is Andy Lee. So first off, thanks for hopping on. Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

It's our first meeting. Yeah. Well, it's funny. I, you know, I feel like it's like once every 10 to 12 episodes or something. It's a new social media person I bring on that I follow and I'm like, like, I just want to know more, right? Like you have quite a following. You've broken.

You've been booted off Twitter. You've come back to Twitter. And I go, I just want to hear like, you know, there's only so much you can get out of a tweet. And usually it's very directed to a certain subject. So I thought, why not invite you on and hear part of your story or all of your story or we'll see where it goes. So I guess for the listener, if they don't fall, if they're on Twitter, maybe they don't have no idea who you are. So maybe we'd start there. Who is Andy Lee?

Well, I mean, I'm just a mom, right? I'm just a Canadian citizen. I'm a mom. I don't have any background in politics, journalism, any of that. You know, my mom passed away under lockdown. One of my mothers passed away. And so, you know, I was angry. I got furious. And so I sort of took to Twitter and loneliness and started researching. And I did it anonymously for a long time. But people did eventually track me down and sort of publicly outed me on the YouTube channel. So at that point, you know, I sort of came out and started writing and started podcasting and things like that. I also ran in the federal election.

So, and, you know, I just happened to hit on, luckily, you know, some really good, big stories. I did, you know, a good, really solid series on the Canada Infrastructure Bank and dismantled that and, you know, got a good following over that. And, you know, I did a good story on lithium line cells to, you know, to China. And that was sort of gave me, luckily, you know, a lot of legitimacy. So, you know, I wasn't sort of pushed away as, you know, being sort of the, you know, maybe the fringe or with a far rider or it was hard for people, I think, to discredit my work. And so then it just sort of steamrolled from there. And so, yeah, I mean, I've sort of been covering domestic affairs right now, what was all the protests and whatnot. But,

you know, my heart's really in sort of looking at foreign influence and corporate influence in Canada and how that sort of shaping policy, you know, and maybe shaping policy to the detriment of Canadians. And so that's sort of where I like to specialize. And like I said, you know what? I'm just a I'm just a girl who's, you know, just started doing this and has a pension for for researching. And so there's no sort of glamorous backstory. I mean, anybody, anybody can do what, what I do, right? That's a line I use, right? Like podcasting is anyone can can flick it on. So you're telling me, Just so I'm clear here. It wasn't like you worked at a paper before or anything.

You just started going down the old rabbit hole of whatever you were looking to. And you started seeing something and you're like, this makes zero sense. And then just started talking about it. Am I catching that right? Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, I got sort of, you know, the bug put in me when I saw, you know, what looked like sort of corrupt dealings and things like that going on in our country. and I was really concerned that, you know, these were sort of, maybe they were fringe topics

that, you know, weren't properly covered in mainstream media, weren't addressed. So I do sort of creep into that conspiracy theory, territory. Like, you know, I look at the WHO and their influence and, you know, the WEF and their influence. So I think, you know, the problem is that people aren't looking at this stuff through, you know, a reasonable lens and saying, well, yeah, these are, you know, these are international institutions that have a lot of power, you know, and are we, you know, unfortunately, mainstream media doesn't seem to really dissect how these international institutions are, you know, influencing policy abroad and in different countries and in Canada and things like that. So, and so, you know,

I was able to sort of look at these things, but look at them from a reasonable perspective, like we don't have to go into that, you know, Bill Gates is a cult and all of that, you know, and he wants to depopulate the world and, you know, the vaccines are, our bio-weapons designed to kill us. You know, we don't have to go into that territory, but we can look at, you know, people like Bill Gates and say, well, yeah, he does contribute a lot to the WHO, right? And the WHO, you know, they do a lot of good. You know, they're a good institution, things like that. They do a lot of good work.

but at the same time, you know, they refused to answer questions to Canadian MPs when they were summoned to appear before health committee during the pandemic to answer some questions on the pandemic. So, yeah, we do have to approach these institutions with caution as well, right? So I sort of tow that line where, you know, I go into places where other people might not go. And, you know, apparently there's big demand for that. So, you know, that's what I do. And I'm going to keep on doing it. but try to do it in a responsible fashion where I'm not, you know, feeding, you know, conspiracy theories, you know, is digital ID coming? Digital ID is coming?

We're all going to have digital ID, right? That's inevitable. Is it a good thing? Sure, there's a lot of good things about digital ID. You know, it's easy, it's convenient. It's cheaper in a lot of ways, right? Are there, you know, are there concerns, though? For sure, there's concerns, right?

what exactly is going to be on our digital ID, if it's just identification, fine. When you start linking up banking, you know, then, you know, you fall into a completely different sort of scope where people, you know, who might not have the best banking records, you know, that information is sort of widely distributed to, you know, all kinds of government authorities whenever you use your digital ID. So it's a slippery slope, right? So I try to look at things, but look at them in a reasonable manner where, yeah, there's, there's good and bad applications, you know, and sort of try to, so I think I appeal widely

because, you know, all of what I do is always rooted in truth. And I try to approach things that maybe other people don't want to talk about, but approach them in a way that, you know, is friendly and that's factually based. And, you know, we can raise concerns without sort of falling all the way down the rabbit hole and, you know, following Alice to the Red Queen, right? It's interesting when you mentioned digital IDs and things like that. I just, I mean, you've been removed off Twitter for, for what? And then I sit here and I've been removed off YouTube and I go, for what? And so I think for most conspiracy theorists, because everybody at this point, if you don't stick to the mainstream, that's exactly what you are, look at that and go,

well, it's only a matter of time before they start to abuse it. I mean, look at where we've gone with the last two years. And it's not a far leap to go, if they have everything tied to a digital ID, there will be abused to it. And people like yourself who try and report on that are probably going to be targets right off the hop, right? Or am I wrong on that? Yeah. Yeah, like I said, I mean, I think digital ID is inevitable. And like I said, there's a little of benefits to it. But at the same time, you know, when you look at China's, you know, digital ID, well, I think it was 23 million citizens were denied transport in 2019 because they had, you know, flaws that were linked to their digital identification. So these were very minor infractions, things like you got a ticket for

walking your dog without a leash. You know, do I think that we're going to see that, you know, that extreme sort of, you know, backsliding of democratic rights because of digital ID in Canada? No, but I think it is, you know, I think it is sounding alarm that, you know, we're increasingly becoming a bit of a surveillance state. And the government seems to, you know, to have strong desire to increase surveillance on the internet, on cell phone mobility, things like that. So, I mean, there's a very real privacy concerns. Right now there's a lot of meetings going on in the House Commons on the use of artificial intelligence and, you know, face recognition technology. So I've been listening to those And it's really, really fascinating

about how, you know, they're planning on implementing this sort of technology, what they're going to be able to use it for, and things like that. So, I mean, you know, we have to be able to talk about these things rationally because they're on people's minds. And so that's why I think people, you know, really flocked to me is because, you know, I sort of go into these no-fly zones that other people don't want to talk about.

Well, I think it's a... If I can hop in, I think it's a, it's a rise in independent media, right? It's not just Andy Lay. Like there's a ton of people moving away from, I don't know, the mainstream, the CBC for, you know, for Canadian CBC and global. And, you know, I'm just spitting off the, I'm spouting off the couple I can talk to. And there's been a real rise in people that aren't tied to, whether it's a narrative, an agenda, whatever it is. And so I can understand the appeal because people want to. know what's going on. They want to understand, you know, is there their benefits to a digital

ID? Yes, there probably is. But currently as we sit, there's a group of people in Canada that can't leave Canada, can't fly across Canada. So this brings it back to the people going, they're going to abuse it. It's like, while they're abusing things right now, and they won't talk about it, they won't acknowledge them. You know, so it's, I don't think it's jumping off a cliff to, to sit there and look at digital ID and go, this could be really bad under a Justin Trudeau like government, because right now I don't think it's great and we haven't even got there. Yeah, well, I mean, I think, well, I mean, it's no secret that, you know, that sort of the

undercurrent for digital ID and, you know, it was sort of the push to initiate it was, you know, was exasperated by the pandemic. And I think that there's no doubt that they're looking at vaccine passports as being a facet of your digital ID. So you know that your vaccination will, you know, be linked to your mobility rights. It will all be linked to your digital ID. And, you know, there may have been some sort of premise for that at the beginning. But now we know that, you know, the vaccines and I'm vaccinated and I'm happy with my decision

to get vaccinated, you know, but also at the same time, it became a huge voice for the, you know, the people who are against mandatory vaccination because, you know, it's very hard to deny at this point that the vaccines are deeply flawed, but not a panacea, you know, they're not going to get us out of the pandemic. They're sort of, you know, appear to be, you know, a layer of protection right now that, you know, sort of protects people against more severe outcomes and the data still very much supports that for now. But there's no denying that they're also deeply flawed, which means that, you know, the argument for having vaccine passports is also deeply flawed now. So, you know, but it just, the government seems to be adamant to hold on to these,

these policies, unfortunately, that are really, really, you know, dividing our country and putting a real wedge between our citizens. And, you know, they seem determined to hold on to these policies, even as other countries are, you know, dropping them. So it's unfortunate. It's a really, really strange time to, you know, see all this on and to witness. And, you know, like I said, I said over the weekend, I think I tweeted out, you know, you know, I don't have all the answers and I don't have a monopoly on truth. But, you know, whenever I cover a protest, I am always filled with emotion and conflict and self-doubt. And, you know, I see both sides. I see the sides of the protesters. I also see the sides of the residents. So, you know, I'm always filled with internal

conflict and questioning whether I'm doing the right thing. But, you know, when I look at the government sort of holding onto these divisive policies, you know, in the absence of good scientific, you know, justification right now. And when I see them, you know, continue to reinforce these policies without even considering backing down, even though they're tearing the country apart, it's very, very frustrating to witness. It's always, it's always hard. I'm always crying at protests. I'm very, very emotional. You know, I'm a human. I'm deeply flawed. You know, that's, that's, that's part of me. So, but yeah, it's, you know, it always creates this internal battle. And it was interesting covering the last

protest because I did talk to some of our mainstream media as well. I have a good relationship with some of them. So yeah, very much, you know, independent media is on the rise and people are really hungry for it and they're flocking to other news sources. And it's sort of a fascinating, you know, phenomenon to watch, you know, the abandonment of mainstream media. It's also really interesting, though, because I do have a good relationship and talk to and follow a lot of the, you know, the mainstream broadcasters. So, you know, it's really encouraging. because it tells me that maybe, you know, and like I said, I'm constantly self-reflecting and saying, you know, did I say the right thing? Am I too far-sided? Should I bring myself back to center?

Do I have to rein this in? Am I creating division, right, with what I put out? And that's a very real danger, is that I could be pushing people maybe further than they would have gone. So, you know, that's a flaw that I have. But I think as well, you know, when you see collaborative work and talking together and sort of maybe it's a bridge and maybe mainstream media is also doing a little bit of self-reflection and saying, am I doing the reporting that I really want to be reporting on, right? You know, am I doing the stories that I want to be doing? Where is my bias, right? Where am I on the sliding scale? Am I reporting things fairly? Am I talking about the things that, you know, citizens that are on citizens' mind and that they want to be talking about?

So, you know, as much as, you know, independent media and mainstream media seem to be having a battle, I also am extremely hopeful in the future that, you know, maybe we're going to be more collaborative in the future and learn a little bit more from each other. You know, and so hopefully, you know, some of the work that I do can be a bridge. And I'm going to reach out to them on some stories that I'm working on because I've got some really great stuff that I'm digging into. But it's just too big for me to handle. and I don't have the resources that I need to address the stories properly. And it should really probably be reaching all Canadian citizens, not just sort of, you know, the small following that I've got.

You know, that's, I find you very calm for a woman who has experienced some of the things that have gone down in the last, I don't know, whatever, it's been a couple months. I'm curious, if you could lead us through the events, then that has happened. happen when you get your bank account, you know, like, I mean, that hit like not just national attention. That was international attention. Getting your Twitter account frozen was, you know, a small, lots of people have had their Twitter account frozen, taken off. Lots of people have had their YouTube channel removed. That isn't something about your bank account and all the things that came out with that. I guess I just take a step back and I go, that's very balanced of you to

try and act, try and like, be like, am I doing the right thing? Meanwhile, your government is like shutting down everything you have. Yeah, yeah. Well, so that, you know, the weekend that the Emergencies Act was, you know, in the works of being invoked, that was February 12th. Obviously, I got my Twitter shut down. It was suspended. They haven't heard my appeal. They didn't point to any violation specific. So, you know, I was just told that I was permanently banned. So popular opinion was that it was to try to, because I was getting, you know, exponential following at that point. A lot of people were watching my count to find out what was going on with the convoy. Are you in Ottawa at this point, Andy? No, I just got back from Ottawa.

You just got back from Ottawa, but you had been. Yeah, so I was in Ottawa twice with the convoy. So that was the first time that I was there and I had just gotten home and then my account was banned. So popular opinion was that it was to try to sort of quell the what the convoy and what the protest was becoming. It was becoming larger and larger. You know, it wasn't a small French movement that could be discredited anymore. It was getting worldwide attention. And, you know, my videos and things like that in the footage were getting a lot of attention. So a lot of people felt that, you know, maybe somebody put a word in and,

or was reported and was banned for that reason. And we won't know for sure. I did talk to the Justice Center for Constitutional freedoms. We talked for a couple hours. I talked to us about five different lawyers. We've discussed perhaps initiating a lawsuit against Twitter Canada, you know, and trying to get some answers as to why that ban actually occurred and, you know, why they've never addressed, why, you know,

why I got slapped down like that. So that's something in the works. Of course, it would be terribly expensive. It would be a landmark case in Canada. It would pull a lot of funding from a lot of other people that need it. So there's an ethical issue at stake there now because, of course, they're very, very busy right now. And, you know, it would be a massive legal battle. That being said, it may be a legal battle that's worth fighting because, you know,

if we were successful and if we proved that my accounts and, you know, my intellectual property was, you know, improperly and illegally, seized by Twitter, then, you know, that could also lay groundwork that could be very, very important for legal battles in the future, should we see more censorship bills, you know, being an accident and, you know, hate speech laws being an accident in line as the liberal government plans to. So there's, you know, there's obvious benefits to taking that case on, and that would be one of their first opportunities to do so. You know, and again, if we won, we could lay very important institutional framework, you know, that could be the first legal basis in Canada for people

to fight back against genuine censorship. So it's very, very attractive. But again, it's a huge battle, right? You know, talk about fighting. So that's the works. And then there was my banking. Yeah, so the next time I was in Ottawa, I was already deplatformed from Twitter. So I didn't have my account, but I was still there covering it. And that was, you know, so yeah, I just, you know, know, I tried to make e-transfer and my accounts were locked while I was in Ottawa because of suspicious activity. So, you know, I called. I got my accounts unlocked. You know, I cleared the transaction. And then, you know, further transactions continued to be locked by the fraud department. And to this day, I'm still not allowed to e-transfer. That capability has been revoked by my bank. So, you know, it seems to be

sort of whether I was part of a coordinated hit. Again, that's something that I've talked to the Justice Center about. And I've also been informed. So I tried to shift to PayPal to make e-transfers, that PayPal informed me that they will not be allowing me to make e-transfers on their platform with my credit card. So are you, I feel like a dummy in asking these questions at times. But when you're talking e-transfers, are you saying you weren't allowed to accept e-transfers, allowed to send e-transfers, you weren't allowed to use it at all. But I'm not allowed to send out money in any capacity anymore at all. So, you know, I can't e-transfer 100 bucks for my baby.

To this day, you can't send any transfer. Still, yeah. So my debit limits were decreased. PayPal informed me. I'm not allowed to use their platform. But what do they point to? Well, you know, they went away for a long time and had some discussions. and they didn't give me an answer, basically.

So it looks like I've sort of been permanently blacklisted for possible fraudulent activity because I made some e-transfer as well. I was in Ottawa, which, you know, shouldn't really be, shouldn't have been flagged. I mean, it was in Mexico the month before that making e-transfers in Mexico, and nobody flagged those. So, you know, it seems like I was sort of a collateral damage,

maybe taken by the banks. It was interesting. I was watching the committee on the Declaration of Emergency that was last night today. And so they have admitted that most of the banks acted on information given to the RCMP, but then some banks went above and beyond that, you know, that intelligence that was given to them and did take it upon themselves to freeze accounts that they deemed, you know, might be making suspicious activity in in some capacity, you know, perhaps funding the convoy or things like that in Ottawa. So yeah, and as well, you know, I used to have a coin base account that's locked.

My credit card providers told me I'll never be able to purchase cryptocurrency anymore with my credit cards. Why? Or through my bank accounts. You know, it's just, it's been flagged. I'm not allowed to do that. So obviously I got nailed very, very hard and flagged very, very hard by my banks, you know, presumably because I was in Ottawa, making e-trans

have you, just, have you tried switching banks? Have you tried talking to different banks? Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to try switching. I mean, I don't want to get into your banking history by any stretch of imagination. I just hear it and I go, I'm done with my bank right now, because like I said, it was really, you know,

a bizarre sort of smackdown. and the conditions, even though I've cleared the transfers and explained the transfers, they seem to persist. So I'm done with that thing, right? I've just finalized a divorce, so we're splitting our accounts right now. So that's going to be part of it. So I was going to do it before, but I just thought, you know, once my divorce has done, I might as well just take that and roll it over to another institution and, you know, see how that goes. And I don't really expect these problems to persist. Like I think, I think my account was just flagged for possible fraudulent activity. I was very openly supportive of the protest, the convoy.

I donated. I was very, very open with that. So, I mean, that's all readily available information. So unfortunately, it looks like, you know, I was punished, you know, in part because of this invocation of the Emergency Act that gave thanks sort of extraordinary extra digital powers to freeze bank accounts. You know, I listened to that entire, like what you just said there, and I go, so how are you so chipper about this? And I mean that like literally. I mean, I got, I interviewed Chris Barber and I've said this multiple times. Like when I interviewed him, the convoy hadn't even left yet. I honestly can't remember half the stuff we talked about. It would have been meaningless because honestly, at the end of the day, like it was, it was a harmless 30 minute interview from him on the side of the highway. And I feel like I know what a harmless interview is. I mean, I've been doing this long enough to go like that.

I mean, all you got to feel for was maybe who one of the key figures at one point in time was in there. And that got my entire YouTube count removed. I'm pretty sour about that because I go, that to me is extreme censorship, right? Like of. That's interesting. And you go, and so I look at this thing and I hear your story and I go, like this has the makings of being very dangerous. And yet you're on your side going, you know, like it's just part of the process and they were probably tired and I go, gee, you're either

extremely hopeful that everybody up in the top is on the up and up or I don't know. I'm like, you got to give me a bit more, Andy. I'm like, how is this? Well, you know, I spent a long time being angry and, you know, I did put out some angry rants, some nights. If you could have the late night tweet, there was definitely a couple of nights when I had obviously been into some wine and I decided is to, you know, fling out, you know, some, some angry tweets into my echo chamber. So it's just sort of, you know, I've just sort of accepted that, you know, there's not much that can be done now. I just have to follow this. You know, if we, you know, if we do end up securing funding for lawsuits,

then I have to pursue this. And, you know, I'm much more. useful to everybody if I'm calm and collects it and, you know, sort of don't let my emotion take over, you know, I'm much more better when I'm level-headed. So I just have to sort of try to quell, you know, some of my inner instinct, which is to be like, oh, I'll give you kudos on this side, because I, once again, I'm bringing back up something that happened, like, it's like two months ago now, right so like i i fully understand that i'm rehashing old things but there's going to be a lot of people who had no no no no clue right i mean obviously people who fall along know everything that's going on i uh i i hear you and i'm just like hmm that's really that's really interesting i

you're a investigative journalist right that's to me and i look at our government right now and i can rationalize a lot of things they do a lot of things they do i'm like oh like i have little trust in you right now and we got you until 2025. And so, but I mean, we've all been the Ottawa convoy. I don't know. You were there twice, you mentioned. Did you see in your travels? You know, I had my travels. Did you see anything that was nefarious or that would be questionable, that type of thing that would maybe raise suspicions on people? I personally didn't see anything, you know, overly concerning or nefarious. Yes, you know, was there some, you know, some really rowdy behavior? Yeah, sure. You know, was there

some drunken public behavior? Yeah, there was a lot of that, right? You know, I didn't really see anything concerning from a, you know, a safety standpoint or, you know, a violent standpoint until maybe the end. You know, probably the most awful thing I saw and this was something that I witnessed myself was, you know, the harassment of mainstream journalists. you know, trying to be fair. I understand that people are very, very angry with, you know, how things were reported. Of course, when, you know, you get called overbred the name in the book by people who don't know anything about you. There's going to be a tremendous amount of hurt and anger.

And so that was really laid bare during the protest. And it was sort of out for everybody to see. And, you know, we did see a lot of heckling of journalists. I felt, you know, I felt torn at the same time. I was very sympathetic with the protesters, having been portrayed in that light and having sort of set out on this journey to, you know, make it my God's given, you know, duty to protect these people from some of the stories that were being told about them and to try to debunk the myths. Like, you know, I was read on the arson story and I helped debunk that with Jonathan

Kay. You know, I was at the press conference when it was said that weapons were found and Chief Bell said that there were weapons found. And they were investigating weapons being found. And of course, that was found out to be false. There were some stories put out about threats of rape. And, you know, I contacted Ottawa police and they said that no reports have been filed. So I was really, you know, trying to get ahead of all that. Of course, that was all in my old accounts conveniently, which is now as we're, you know,

as we have the Emergencies Act inquiry going down. So that's sort of an interesting fast of all that. But some, yeah. Have you, have you been, you mentioned you've been following along with the investigation in the emergencies act? Has anything caught your attention there? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, there's a lot of things that catch my attention. Like I said, I mean, this morning, it's just trying to even pull answers out of these, out of these people. You know, you hear the committee sort of saying, I'm asking you for the third time. I'm asking you one more time.

You're not answering my question. I just want a yes or no. So, you know, just to go through these committees and hear that shows that, you know, obviously they know that the grounds that they used were extremely shaky to begin with to invoke the Emergencies Act. I think the most striking thing was during the first committee when Perrin BD and he was sort of the architect of the Emergencies Act. So he was one of the people who, you know, helped create the Emergencies Act as a follow-up

to the War Measures Act. And when he testified, he said, you know, it's very important that we get an independent inquiry, which we're getting now. Of course, unfortunately, the independent inquiry is headed up by a long time liberal donor and, you know, a formal liberal lawyer, of course, as appointed by Justin Trudeau. So that's the independent inquiry. But he said the independent inquiry was extremely important, you know, even a judicial review would be extremely important. And he said, you know, if the inquiry found that the act was invoked on fallacious grounds, that is false grounds, that's very, very important to know. Excuse me. So, I mean, just the fact that he even threw that out there, you know, I think spoke volumes as to what he thinks. And he also said that even if the act was shown to be invoked in propriety and it was justified, its uses were justified, it's very, very important to alter it and to make amendments to the act so that it cannot be used against protesters again in this fashion. So, you know, the very man who sort of created this act, you know, has voice concerns that this, it should never be used again in this fashion, which to me is sort of a, you know,

a roundabout admission saying that he felt that it was improperly applied. So that was one of the most striking testimonies that I've found so far that I really took to heart and thought, well, you know, if the man who created this, says that, you know, he's extremely concerned about how it was applied, then that, that says a lot. Yeah, I, I have my own thoughts on the Emergency Act being put in. I haven't been paying attention to the testimony as anything like that. So it's always interesting to hear somebody who's following along what's stuck out. The fact the guy who architected it is saying he didn't agree with it, maybe not as many words. It doesn't seem to surprise.

me because it seems like anyone who architected anything in regards to COVID and protocols to now this, what they wanted it for was completely overran with what the government's actually did, right? So it seems like we're just perpetually going down this rabbit hole of the, you know, like the government getting to, like, I'm trying to figure out. You talk about the you know, the independent inquiry, the person who's a liberal donor, et cetera, et cetera. And you go, like, do they just assume everybody won't pick up on that? Does nobody, they're like, oh, they're going to pick up on it, but they can't do anything about it.

And at the end of the day, what does it really matter? Right? Like, I'm trying to really rack my brain on why they continue to do this because it just plays out over and over and over again. So it doesn't surprise me. It doesn't even get my blood going. I'm just like, well, and there's another opportunity for an independent look that isn't so independent.

But that's been the, you know, prerogative of this government since it came in. Yeah, well, you know, I think that they just don't, I think they just don't care anymore, to be honest, because it really doesn't get out of, you know, the independent media circles. You know, you're never going to see a headline saying that Trudeau appointed, you know, former liberal lawyer and longtime liberal donor

to, you know, spearhead his usage of the Emergency Act against protesters. I mean, most of the bulk of the population of Canada are never going to know that. So I think that's, you know, that sort of goes back to the importance of, you know, trying to look for a bridge in between independent media and, you know, mainstream media and things like that. It's not that nobody puts it out. I mean, we know, you know, a lot of post media people still put out really good, really good reporting and expose this stuff, right? the Sun, the National Post, you know, they'll go into it. But for the most part, you know, you won't see that on a lot of other networks, unfortunately. So, you know, I think that they just don't care at this point. You know, they really feel like they're a little bit intouchable.

And I mean, let's face it, if this inquiry came out with anything that was extremely damning, it could very well possibly be the end of Justin Trudeau. You know, in a lot of ways the protest was quashed, but in many ways, you know, for all the people who said that they wanted to topple the government, well, in many ways, you know, they have come probably as close to anybody as ever got to toppling this government. You know, Trudeau's popularity took a huge plunge after that on both sides, you know, he lost a lot of support for that, you know, for many ways, in some ways because of this crackdown, but in some ways because he didn't, you know, he didn't do anything sooner as well. So, you know, so I think that it's a very, very important.

And I don't think that they had any qualms about, you know, maybe. It's really a bit hard when, you know, you have to question the independence of your judicial system, right? And that's hard territory to go into. But, you know, did he appoint somebody who may be a little bit more sympathetic, right? The answer is yes. I mean, I think that it's the answer is yes. I think it was very, very important for them to do that because, like I said, I think the outcome of this inquiry could, you know.

The lovely thing, the lovely thing about the Americans is they'll just call a spade a spade, right? It's not like, well, it's like, no, he was appointed by Trump. Chances are he's leaning that way. I mean, why else would Trump appoint him or vice versa, Obama or Biden or whoever, it doesn't matter. In Canada here we like to go, I don't know, like, it's like, no, I mean, we can just call a spade of spade. It's kind of what's gotten us into this situation is that we just won't, we just won't call a spade of spade and be done with it.

It's like at this point, I, I, maybe I'm wrong on this, Andy, and maybe you can, you can talk me off this ledge, all right? I would argue that Canadians, we're always going to be split and divided on, you name a topic for the most part, as simple as the NHL, we will be divided. But right now, I feel like majority of Canadians lean towards, we just need a new prime minister. Like we just need, he isn't good. And he's not like he's not a true leader anymore. He's falling everywhere. And I would say majority of Canadians, but maybe I'm wrong on that. And I feel like that's something that we all kind of agree on.

But we still won't call a spade a spade when it comes to, you know, like, I don't know. Canadian, we're a funny little bunch here. Yeah, I mean, we're much more docile and passive, you know, on the northern side of the border of North America for certain. You know, we don't really like to get as politically fired up and things like that, right? We're a little more apathetic towards politics and things like that. And that's, of course, gotten us into trouble. That's sort of how we came to be here. You know, I think that maybe both sides of the fence are thinking that it's time for Trudeau to retire, especially, yeah, because his popularity has taken a plunge in.

And we're seeing conservatives gain a lot of points when they don't even have a leader right now. They really are gaining in the polls, you know, in pools all around. So, you know, do I think Trudeau has any intention of stepping down, though? No, no. The narcissist in them is not going to let that happen. Even though I feel like it could be in the best interest of the party. But I've never known him to do anything that's in the best interest of anybody. except for himself.

I don't think, unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen. Speaking of the Conservative Party, the race, have you paid much attention

to the Conservative Party at all? Yeah, I mean, I'm paying attention not to, not to everybody, but so I did go out,

so I did hear Pierre speak at one of his rallies in Calgary. I did talk to him, and, you know, said hi and things like that. What did you,

what did you, you make of the conservative party knocking three people off the ballot even though it looks like they made all the requirements? Yeah, I was going to, you know, I saw that earlier and I was a little bit concerned. I have to read more about the specifics of that. Well, Joseph Borgo was on the show with Theo Flurry last week, and they had just made the number. They'd exceeded the number and signatures and everything else. And so I think it shocked everybody that they didn't get on the official ballot. And then there was two more that said the same thing. And you go, oh, that's interesting. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. I'm learning this political world is a little bit

murkier than one would hope. Yeah. It is interesting that they would do that because I don't know if any of those candidates were a real, you know, particular threat. It's kind of a crazy leadership race. I mean, like, there's so many, so many people in it, right? So it's sort of wild, you know, to witness. There's a lot of excitement over this leadership race. So, you know, if I go back, if I go back, Andy, if I go back to what you said, maybe before we even started, you were talking about trying to like quell the movement or the right side of the move,

far right, whatever, what they did to guys like Joseph Borgo and stuff was you're right. I would argue right now, Pierre Pollyev is almost a shoeing. I could be wrong on that, but the way he's gone across the country,

you're like, oh man, that is going to be, that's going to be tough to be. I just, I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to look at it that way. And so you had all these, you had the three extras. And Joseph Borgow, I mean, I've met him multiple times, obviously having Theo Flurry as his, you know, kind of shotgun in the seat with him as he goes and made his tour.

You're like, this could be interesting. Like, this could be interesting to hear what he has to say on the stage. I certainly enjoy Joseph in the studio when we talked. But I think we all step back and go, like they just made the number just before the deadline. like this will be interesting if they can even make a stir, to be honest, right? By them not allowing them in the race is going to give them more mojo than by allowing them to go in. Maybe I'm wrong on that. But it's another move to try and stop people from getting their voice heard.

And anytime you do that, it's sure to come bite you in the ass. At least that's what I would think is going to happen here at some point. I just don't know if that's conservatives or what happens. and I'm speaking directly to Joseph Orgoe and his team because I feel like that one I can't quite wrap my head around. I just, and I'm sure there's a couple of logical explanations or maybe there isn't. And that's what gives fueled all these conspiracy theories. It's because literally he made the number. You got the signatures.

So did two others. They said the exact same thing. Conservative party like, nah. And so maybe a guy needs to get a conservative party member on to hear exactly why they won't let him make. because, I mean, that seems strange. I think that seems strange to everyone. Yeah, I mean, it is, it is curious because it's sort of like, well, what would have been the harm on letting these people run on the ballots, you know,

what was what was going on there, right? What was the motivation behind it? And, yeah, arguably, you know, they're going to get far more, they're going to get far more publicity now than they had before, right? And they're going to get a stronger sort of movement behind them because, you know, even though they're not allowed to run the leadership race, but if they run in the future, perhaps, they're going to get a lot more attention

than probably if they were just allowed to run and that controversy around it wasn't created. So a little bit of a, yeah, I mean, you know. I mean, even use your scenario, and I don't mean to sit here and make light of bank accounts, getting removed from Twitter, all that stuff. Believe me, I was following you before all that stuff happened. That stuff happens.

And all of a sudden, like they try and, quiet you down. It doesn't matter what motivation we assume is there. After that happens, I feel like you became a household name for a little bit with everyone trying to rally behind you of like, why would they, why would they remove you from Twitter? Why would they pull your bank account? This is how extreme Canada is getting. You became synonymous with what they were trying to do. And I would assume you probably saw that. I'm sure it was not an easy time. But instead of them, just letting you continue on reporting and talking about what's going on. They tried to take your voice and like just squeeze it out. And now there's, I mean, there's crazy stories going around. I can imagine

the stories that are being told about you now. I've certainly felt the impact of that just on my side. So, and I'm just, I'm a simple man. But at the same time, it's like you probably felt the impacts following wise and everything else just by them trying to do like control how the message was getting out. Or am I wrong in that? It was, you know, did they, is it like Star Wars, right? If you strike me down, am I going to come back more powerful than you imagine? Like, you know, is it like an Obi-1-Konovi phenomenon? Yeah, it probably is, right? I mean, it's probably counterproductive to whatever, whoever was trying to. You just gained a whole new following because you dropped Star Wars in Yeah, I'm a tricky too.

Yeah, so anyways, yeah, no, I think it is very much that phenomenon is that, you know, I think that it's counterproductive to whatever was trying to be accomplished. You know, obviously somebody didn't want, you know, what I was showing the world about Ottawa and what I was showing them about protests that sort of went against the popular narrative. You know, obviously somebody really didn't want to get that out. people are still reporting me. I just got locked out last night. This is the second time I've got blitzed. If they nail me again, though, you know, I think that that's why Twitter actually won't hear my appeal was I think that they were underprepared for the backlash that they received.

I don't think that they were expecting. And God bless the followers who, you know, got me trending and put out hashtags and made up hashtags and all that stuff and everybody who retweeted and, you know, rallied behind me. But I think that Twitter was underprepared. for that. So I think they're now in the position where they're sort of like, you know, do we backtrack on banning her and let her back? Or, you know, do we rule on the appeal and say, no, you're permanently banned, you know, and sort of cause all that, you know, that flogging to continue that they, that they endured for getting rid of me and unceremoniously chirping me. So I think that's why they're just simply not hearing my appeal months later. They just won't address it, you know. I mean,

I've sent them everything. I've sent them, you know, my, my, my, my, my, federal election papers, you know, newspaper articles I've written. I've been on the news. I've been in the news. I've been on the radio. I've been on TV. You know, so, you know, there's a legitimate person here behind this account, you know, one that, you know, I didn't see any basis for them doing what they, what they did to me. So I think that's why they're just sort of like, we're just going to ignore this and hope she goes away. And, you know, it could be also why they're not going to ban this account. You know, again, even though this account really isn't, my new Twitter account really isn't linked to me. It's part of our show. So Mark uses it. Tom uses it. You know, we all

use it together in post-deaf, so it's not really registered back to me. So, but I think they're going to probably think twice about nailing it again, you know, in light of the facts of, you know, what, what they had to endure for, I mean, months later, people are still saying bring back her account. So, um, and, you know, maybe are those policies going to change under Elon Musk? And I went, right. Um, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see, you know, uh, there was a, a whole bunch of people came back as soon as it was announced like a whole, like the, the first day that it was mentioned Elon Musk was buying Twitter. The amount of people I hadn't seen in ages, eons, all came flooding back. It was, it was, it was an interesting day. Now,

you're starting to see the odd person removed again and everything else. So it isn't exactly Twitter of old, but it's, it was definitely an interesting day or two after Elon announced that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, do I think that Elon's going to go out there and say, you know, free Hannah bananas. No, I don't think so. But I would like to see, you know, I think that there's probably a lot of appeals that are just sitting there and not being addressed like mine. And, you know, like I said, just because the way I twittered, you know, I didn't just retweet stuff. Like I, you know, I did these huge threads, you know, these 50, 60 tweet threads. And these threads sort of became the backbone for articles. And everybody contributed

to them. And, you know, so that was sort of, you know, where I was actually publishing my work. And so that's sort of why we're talking about going after Twitter under copyright laws because they seized my intellectual property. And those were the basis, you know, the backbones and sort of, you know, the bones that I wrote articles on. And they were also the basis for books that I'm writing, you know, and I've talked to optimum publishing about getting a book out there based on sort of, you know, the Twitter feeds that I've done and things like that. So, you know, that was sort of my property. So that was the big problem I had was not. not so much that, you know, they banned me. They're a private platform. I mean, if someone

banned me, they can ban me all they want. It was more like, I was like, I want my, my threads back. I want you guys to give me my work back, right? I want you to allow me to access that and get it back because it's mine. I made it, right? And are you violating copyright laws by taking it and not releasing it to me? So that's sort of the conundrum that we're in is, you know, should we fight that war and whatnot? But yeah, so I would, I would hope to see that Elon would sort of address some of these appeals that are, you know, sitting in the pipe not being addressed. I talk about Michael Sanger a lot. Michael Sanger was suspended shortly after I was suspended. So, of course, he wrote, you know, a book about Xi Jinping and how he sort of met the book

was called Snake Oil and how China sort of their lockdown propaganda was spread throughout the world and how they sort of, you know, push this theory that lockdowns were the only way to go and how this this idea that, you know, lockdowns were the only way to proceed was also adopted by the WHO and was very much enforced by the WHO. So, you know, he detailed that really, really nicely in his book. And he was also deplatformed. And so now he's actually suing the U.S. Surgeon General because the U.S. Surgeon General gave direction that some accounts should be shut down for spreading COVID misinformation. information. The only problem is that the people who are spreading that COVID misinformation actually ended up being right. You know, so when they were saying vaccines prevent transmission and people

were saying, no, they're not preventing transmission, right? We're getting breakthrough cases. There's issues with the vaccines. You know, they're not exactly what they've been sold as. So, you know, all those people who were de-flatformed, some of those de-platformings were directed by the United States Surgeon General. And so, you know, author Michael Sanger is, is, I'm a lot of people. actually suing them, you know, for de-platforming him and other people and essentially censoring him. So that's a fantastic, very interesting case that I'm going to be following closely along with him on. Very fascinating, interesting, smart individual. You know, he did a fantastic job documenting all of the propaganda that was put out by the Chinese Communist Party, you know, that sort of said, no, this is the way that you have to.

to do it. You have to follow our model. Even though, you know, there was no sort of precedent for lockdowns in any pandemic plans, you know, prior to this, all of a sudden, all the world was copying this. And he actually just put out an article today that's great about how Italy was the first to sort of fall victim to this. And we know that Italy had really, really brutal, long, long lockdowns. And they had some of the most strictest lockdowns. And so they were one of the first countries that adopted this model, you know, based on what China said had to be done. But it's just the problem is that, you know, the lockdown scenario is sort of falling apart now. We're open in Canada for the most part.

We're open. We're free. Some of us are vaccinated. Some of us are not. Mask mandates are being dropped. And cases are falling off. Right? So, and it just sort of people don't seem to want to see, look at what's right in

front of their face, our public health officials, because then of course, you know, if they acknowledge the fact that maybe we didn't have to, you know, we're okay without masks, you know, we are sort of going to follow it, perhaps seasonal, you know, ebb and flow of respiratory viruses, you know, that we see with common respiratory viruses. You know, they would also have to face the idea, the concept that maybe we didn't need these extreme measures all along. So I think that that's, part of the reason why in Canada we're seeing them try to hold on to mask mandates and travel vaccine passports and trying to maintain a little bit of that, that narrative that this is required for public health, because if they drop them, then I think that we're going to have

to address the fact that maybe the entire plan was flawed. You know, maybe the entire thing was flawed from the get-go. Maybe we never really needed these extreme measures. Maybe we didn't have to close schools. Maybe we didn't have to socially distance children. Maybe we shouldn't have closed playgrounds. Maybe we shouldn't have masked our kids. I think that that's going to call on to question all of those things that we did and put them under sort of scrutiny. You know, if the government back paddles and releases all measures and we continue to see cases fall. What do you think? That's a lot. That's a lot. I just gave you to chew on. Well, I think at some point that has to happen. There's no reason to hold on to measures just to save face and not to ask the tough questions, right?

The last two years, we're fun for no one. We can be as hard on any which side we want to be. But at the end of the day, the travel restrictions that are still going on make zero sense. Some of the articles that have come out saying unvaccinated, vaccinated, spread, this, that. it just it doesn't matter anymore we're on to the 12th wave of whatever variant and it is following a similar pattern to maybe flu season maybe not it doesn't like and then you go like some of the things that have been implemented over the course of two years were bad shit crazy i just didn't you know at the time i didn't realize that but like i'll speak about little kids i got little kids

putting masks on them while they play sports now somebody will say putting masks on them at all. I'll take a step and go, putting masks on them while they play sports is bad shit crazy. Right. And so at some point here, I think we all know half the stuff didn't need to be done. But everybody was under the thought process that you get this thing, you die. Well, just go look at the statistics from pretty much any country you want. That's not the case at all. I mean, depending on your age bracket, depending on a bunch of things specifically. civic to you, all of a sudden, you start to realize this isn't the smallpox. Everybody's going to die from a one-year-old all the way to 90, evenly in everything else. At some point,

and I have a hard time understanding government can't admit wrong, but at some point the mandates have to come off, Andy. Like, they just, they do. And if that means that now there's an inquiry into why we did things wrong, well, that probably needs to happen because there's a lot of things we didn't do right. Alberta was a prime example. They had a pandemic response. They didn't use it. They didn't use it.

So it's like, well, why was that? Well, are we going to have an independent investigation of that? I don't know. Maybe we should. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that there's going to be a lot of inquiries in the years to come. And I think we're going to be unpacking this for decades and decades and I think that in the future people are going to look back and say, Yeah, these people were bonkers, right? Look at some of the stuff that they did. I mean, like I said, I just got, you know, I showed you this morning and it reminded me of, I just got this sort of test emergency alert on my phone here this morning, right? And that brought me back to, you know, when we used to get bombarded by these COVID emergency alerts, right? This, you know, this constant fear bombardment. We were locked down. And, you know, we used to put out COVID emergency.

see lockdown alerts and our phones are always going off blaring, you know, and I mean, like, what the hell were we doing there? Right. I mean, everybody was watching the news. We were all glued to the news. You know, it was just sort of one of these like things that you have to say, you know, did we just contribute to anxiety and traumatize people? Yes.

You know, by subjecting them to this repeatedly over and over and over, right? And, I mean, the psychological damage is real. you know, that's all a real, very collateral, you know, side effect of all this. Absolutely it exists, right? We're going to see it persist, you know, forever, I think. You know, I think that some people are never going to get over that fear that, you know, we sort of instilled that, you know, we're all potentially a bio weapon. So, you know, all this bonkers stuff is going to be looked at.

And like I said, I don't think it's going to be dissected very kindly in light of the fact that most people are now shedding restrictions and we're all okay. And, you know, did vaccines have a part in that? Absolutely. I do believe that. Like I said, I mean, I was, but, you know, are they flawed? Yeah, absolutely, right? They're not a penancea. You know, they were sort of one method that we used. And, you know, they absolutely should be not mandatory, right, in light of the fact that they're not an eradicating vaccine. So, I mean, when you look at it, so I always, I'm always fascinated because my partner, he's diabetic and he's triple vaccinated. And he got COVID when we were in Mexico. He tested positive. So we both had to go into isolation and test. And I'm only double vaccinated. I went against all guidelines.

And I had a five month gap in between my two vaccines, right? So I had like this massive gap. You know, you were supposed to get it within 12 weeks, right? That was like what was ingrained in us. So I had more than five months in between my two shots. And I spent, you know, a week in isolation with them testing. I never got it. Right? So, I mean, you know, you have to look at this and say that there's obviously more to it. You know, it's not just as simple as if you're vaccinated, you won't get it. Or if you're

not vaccinated, you're going to get it, right? There's a lot more stuff going on here that we don't know about, you know, transmission and why some people get it and why some people don't. So there's, you know, there's still so much that we don't know. I mean, it's incredible after two years of this, the amount of what we actually still don't know is insane, right? After all this study, after everybody in the world, yet the problem was is the government approached it and a lot of the narrative approached it as we have all the answers.

Just get this done. Get this done. And then everything will go back to normal and then it didn't. And if you get this next one, it'll go back. Oh, and nope, it doesn't. and we're going to segregate part of the population because they're extremely dangerous. Oh, wait, maybe not. And, and, and, and it just kept going, keeps going on.

I mean, people can't fly across the country right now. People can't leave the country. Yeah. I mean, it's great that we have the convoy that put so much pressure on Ottawa, that it removed mandates, you know, in the West almost immediately, and it's filtered across now to pretty much the entire country. Yeah. But we still have a travel ban.

We still have all these weird things going on that make zero sense. And the only, like there's no, it doesn't feel like in two weeks, it's all going to be gone. It just doesn't. That's, we're in this strange world. Yeah, we're sort of in this never-ending loop that we're just not getting out of, right? It's like Groundhog Day every day, right? Didn't I just hear this? I mean, Dr. Tam was up the other day.

She was saying, now's not the time to drop mask mandates. We're in the middle of the sixth wave. I'm like the sixth wave that's done and over. We're like crashing, right? COVID cases are crashing. And, you know, you're still up there sort of flogging this dead horse when all the data is saying otherwise that we're doing very, very, very well. Yeah.

And then we've got these, you know, these crazy studies coming out that were, I mean, when you talk about propaganda, I mean, you should have seen, you know, Canadian MSM grabbing onto the. the studies saying that the vaccinated were more at risk being, you know, subjected to unvaccinated people. Yes. Yes. Let's, let's cause more division in a population. Like, smack my head off the table. I think, you know, I could sit here and cause myself stress. I'm curious. I'm going to, I'm going to switch gears on you because I'm curious what Andy is working on currently. Or maybe something you want the audience to know all about that you have just released. I'm going to let you take it

anywhere you want to go, unless you start breaking down COVID statistics. Because I would love to hear something that, you know, before we started, you mentioned foreign influence and how it's shaping Canada. I'm willing to go wherever you want to go. And maybe I just gave you an open path. Maybe I didn't. But the COVID thing to me has to be talked about because people need to understand that even where we sit right now, they're still trying to hold on to stupid things.

But I think people know that. So I'm curious. what is Andy work on? I've always got my, you know, my sort of pause everywhere, right? I've always file on ATPs every day and ATIPs every day. You know, I've got like hundreds of documents a day that I've got to try to pour through and, you know, stiff through and stuff. So when I'm working on a bunch of stuff.

So there's a new lithium mine sale that's going through that I'm working on because the history behind this company is really, really bizarre. You know, so they're looking to acquire controlling stake in two lithium mines that are in Thunder Bay. And like I said, the history. Who's trying to get controlling stakes? Sorry. There's a Chinese company called Yahuah. And so they've put in a bid for two lithium to take a controlling six percent stake in two lithium mines in city areas of ultra lithium and Thunder Bay.

So a sale similar to this was what got our government in Hart. hot water last year when I sort of put that story out in October 2021. You know, I was questioning why we were selling off mine assets to, you know, the Chinese state. And of course, that ended up getting them in hot water with U.S. lawmakers. You know, U.S. Congress has written to Canada. They want all the, all the information, any documentation, any correspondence between our government, in and amongst themselves and between the U.S. government regarding that sale.

So I got them in quite a bit of trouble there. And so now we're in a similar situation here. But this one's even weirder when you look at the backstory of these companies. You know, they trace to like five individuals who have a holding company in China. You know, it's called like Wenzhou Entertainment Real Estate Services. And it's this weird shell company and there's only five people on it. And so one of the members of this holding company is on the board of directors for the Canadian company. So right there, sort of like there's a big conflict of interest.

And, you know, this company just came up with like $10 million out of the blue. I can't find any financing and I can't find what they do, you know, to make this purchase. So, you know, it's sort of this, you know, this web of companies and I'm trying to pause through and get to the bottom of and, you know, figure out exactly what's going on here. And, you know, my gut influence is that at the end of the day, I'm going to see what we'll see is that there's sort of other companies who are trying to take a stake. And so this is a lot of the ways that Canadian companies are taken over, particularly by Chinese state companies, is you'll see two companies that appear separate to each get stakes. And then later on, they'll go on and they'll merge. Right. And then all of a sudden, you know, your Canadian company is done for.

Now it's a Chinese company. So they've got a very sophisticated method where they, you know, this is how they operate. So that's what I suspect is we're going to see with this Canadian company. So that's one thing. Another thing is there's this really crazy warehouse in BC that I found. And so it's, you know, I've got all these pictures of Chinese workers that are, they look like they're assembling rapid tests. And, you know, it doesn't look like they're very sanitary conditions. So, you know, I started digging into this story.

and, you know, I sent people out to this warehouse. So there's no distinguishing features on this warehouse. All the lease records go back to an energy company. So, you know, but yet they're in there. Then they're making rapid tests. And the brand of rapid tests that they're making is the company is Artron. So Artron is a laboratory at biotechnology facility in British Columbia and in Burnaby, BC. and so they were licensed to make rapid tests, I think late last year, early this year by Health Canada.

So they were giving this emergency licensing because we had this huge backlog and this need for rapid tests. So Health Canada authorize them. Now the story from Artron is that their tests are 100% manufactured in Canada and actually called and talked to representatives. And I've got them on record saying, yes, they're 100% made in Canada, all the components. The problem is that in this weird warehouse in BC, there's all these components for COVID-19 tests that are going to Artron. But if you look at the Bill of Ladings, they originated in Shandong, China. And if you go back and find import records, it looks like Artron is importing most of their tests from a sister company that they work with called Oshuang, and that's in Shandong, China. So if you go back and you look at records,

they're importing all of this stuff it looks like from China. So they're lying to us at the very least about, you know, what these rapid tests are. The other, you know, there's so many weird parts of the story. So I'm still working out. The other thing is that I've got chats and Chinese from the workers and they say that they're, you know, they're assembling these tests in poor conditions.

There's some of them that are questioning whether they're being exposed to harmful chemicals. So the interesting thing about these tests is that, the reagents, the extraction buffers, all the components of them are not listed. And so shortly after these tests were authorized by Health Canada, Health Canada actually put up a recall notice on their website, warning people that some rapid COVID tests, rapid antigen tests, may have toxic components. And so they said, you know, do not, you know, allow contact with skin,

do not allow contact with eyes. do not, you know, allow children, put these things out of reach of children, do not allow pets to get in touch with these things. Well, I mean, these tests are set home with BC school kids. These are sent home and distributed at schools. So it's like was this Health Canada notice put out in light of the fact that these tests were, you know, were distributed and okayed by them? And are they talking about these RTRON tests? and are these workers, I mean, I think regardless, sorry, excuse me, my kids got me sick, but it's not COVID.

So I think the big concern is that, you know, regardless, we've got workers who are voicing concerns about unsafe work conditions. So I've gone to WorkSafe work B.C. And said, I want you to go out to this weird warehouse. Sorry, I'm just going to grab a drink and try to figure out what's going on there. And so the other strange thing about these rapid tests in particular is that they've been banned by the FDA. So they're actually not allowed to be sold in the United States. Further to that, I went back and I looked at FDA seizure lists.

And Artawan Laboratories, components of their rapid test kits have actually been seized, you know, from being imported. So they've actually been seized and put on, I'm going to say it's a blacklist, but it's actually a registered. but it's actually a red list. And so that's another weird thing is sort of like, well, I mean, we've got these shipments actually being blocked in the United States and being seized. Now all of a sudden they're being imported through Vancouver. And the FDA is saying that not only did they not authorize these tests,

they actually put out recall notices saying that these tests should be pulled. So, you know, and then we've got health. Canada on the other hand saying, no, these tests are great. We're going to distribute them to everybody in schools. So it's really, really bizarre. It's just this crazy story. And it sounds too crazy to be true, but I've got to track down and get to the bottom of it. And so this is one of the things that I might reach out to mainstream media and ask them if they would give me a hand. Health Canada, I've had reported it to them. I sort of got the runaround for a bit. I'm curious, Andy, as you go along. I must be a straight. I must be. I must be.

be a strange guy as I stumble through that. I go, you, how did you stumble? Because you, you said you didn't, you weren't a journalist before, right? No. When did you start doing this? When did you like start digging? Like, what was the first thing that set you off is like, I want to look into this? And the reason I ask is because I get asked all the time, why do you got a background and radio? I'm like, no. Like, I just like talking to people, right? I just, I enjoy hearing different people talk and everything else. But it is a commonplace question. And as you talk more and more, I'm like, how on earth do you stumble into a warehouse in BC? And the thing is, I actually kind of get it as you get further along into it. Like, I can see how those scenarios present

themselves. But if you rewind the clock back, when did you first start investigative gate of journalism? And what set you off? Like, what was what was like, I got a, like, I got a. into this. This doesn't make any sense. Probably like, I mean, one of the first things I did, and this was sort of what really motivated me, one of the first things I did was I covered the Iranian election boycott. So this wasn't domestic, but people were looking for journalists because Iranians were planning on boycotting their election because they knew that Ibrahim Racy, somebody who executed, you know, perhaps 10,000 of political prisoners in Iran, was going to be chosen by how many,

to be the president and the people were not going to vote for them. So they needed help filming their polling stations empty, showing that they were boycotting the election, showing that their election was fraud. So I helped do that and I sort of packed up all these videos and I tagged Stephen Harper in and I sent it off to Stephen Harper. And Stephen Harper went on and gave a big talk about Iran. And, you know, he said,

I saw that the Iranians boycotted their elections. I saw that their election was a fraud. That sort of really, that's when I really got bit by the bug because I thought, holy cow, I just witnessed election fraud in real time. You know, I actually saw this happening. And, you know, maybe Stephen Harper said what he said because he saw what I did or maybe he saw it from other people. But I was very motivated by the thought that I had this social media tool. And, you know, I could use it for nothing or maybe I could really influence policy. and I could influence politicians, right? And I could change things. And maybe I could help people.

So, you know, I got involved with a whole bunch of international groups after that, you know, people in Pakistan, people outside the Great Firewall, people in Hong Kong, you know, people in Afghanistan, you know, everywhere, right? And so I have this really great following in the international community. So, you know, when I say I stumbled upon the story, it was because somebody, I've got translators who helped help me. work with documents that I get, you know, and help translate, you know, documents that I'm sent and things like that, documents in in Chinese. And so one of my translators was sort of, and I have people who monitor, you know, we chat and we both, because we know that these are sort of, you know, platforms that are used, you know, somewhat as disinformation platforms by the Chinese Communist Party. But they're also used a lot by, you know, Canadian citizens.

or immigrants who are, you know, English isn't their first language. So I get people to monitor these platforms for me. And so they actually stumbled across this chat of workers saying that they were going to get lawyers and they were being mistreated and things like that. So somebody just stumbled upon this chat and sent it to me and I was like, well, where did this come from, right? And I thought it was coming from China. But then when we actually tracked down these workers, they ended up originating in this warehouse

in British Columbia. So, you know, it was just sort of one of those things that, like I said, I just happened to fall upon. And, you know, if I didn't sort of, you know, dedicate myself and if I didn't have people helping me, you know, I might have just, because I just got sent a screenshot of Chinese, right? And I was like, what am I looking at, right? So I called on some of the people that helped me. And I just said, can you help me track down the people who were in this chat?

I want to know where these people are from, what they're talking about. And so, you know, people help me do that. And then, you know, that trial led me to this warehouse in British Columbia, you know, assembling tests that are authorized by Health Canada. So, you know, just you never know where you're going to find sort of story. And it's really hard because I get so much and I try to get through as much as I can. You never really know where something is going to lead, right? And you can just discount something. You really have to sort of try to follow every trail.

And every trail I follow doesn't lead somewhere, right? Of course, I end up hitting dead ends and things like that. But, you know, a lot of the times I'm getting better at following the trial as I go. And like I said, I think that's why people were so upset when I was deplatformed because it wasn't just, I always said it wasn't just my work. It was our work, right? We all contributed. We all helped. You know, people helped me find political donations, lobbying records, financial transactions, right?

Annual reports. All those things that I use, you know, people would. go out and help me find all those. So I think, and I think the other thing is, you know, the irony is that when you censor somebody like me, I mean, our government talks and talks and talks about, you know, hate on the internet and, you know, how people aren't accepting and things like that.

And, you know, there's not inclusivity and things like that. When you looked at my social media, it was sort of a wild at success because I connected with people all over the world that I never thought I dreamed I would connect with. And, you know, even people who didn't even speak my language, And, you know, we connected over, over my work and my research and gained a rapport. And I learned so much. And they learned so much.

So, you know, by all standards of measurements, my social media was doing exactly what social media was meant for. Right. It was connecting people. It was creating understanding, learning, education, tolerance, all of those things, all those good things that, you know, we want to see. So, you know, to see it sort of banned in light of that was, you know, it was pretty outrageous, I think. And I think that's where a lot of the outrage came from is that, you know, it was sort of a tolerant, safe space where, you know, I had a lot of people and, you know, I try to do some advocacy work for some minority groups and things like that. And of course, my children are Chinese as well. So, you know, I have a great fondness for, you know, Chinese people. And, and, you know, very, very concerned about sort of Jishim being in the crackdowns and you're very, very concerned about what's going on in Hong Kong, you know, and I do talk to people in Canada who translate for me, who can't actually come forward. We have to do it in secret through ProtonMal just because

they're genuinely worried that, you know, the Chinese Communist Party could actually find out that they're doing translation work for me and that maybe their families might be harassed back in China. So I mean, these are very, very real dangers that these people are putting themselves through. This is a reality. This is actually happening. It's happening in our country. So it's really, really stunning. So, yeah, I mean.

You got to, did I hear that right? You have Chinese children? Yes, Chinese children, yes. Yes, my children are Chinese. Half Chinese, yes, absolutely. I'm, as I go along, I'm like, all right, Tron. I got to find a little more. to Andy. Like I've spent an hour with you now and I'm like, I'm trying, I wanted to bring you on.

I wanted to talk about who Andy is, right? And of course, certainly things are going on. And I've let us on this merry chase of where we're going. How many years then have you been doing investigative journalism? And maybe I missed it. I really just started. So I only joined Twitter in October 2021. And so I didn't really start investigating things. I think I wrote my first article, maybe in about, or no, sorry, I joined Twitter in October 2020. Excuse me. So I've been on Twitter just over a year. So it was probably about six months after being on Twitter that I started writing articles and things like that and really getting more into investigative work.

Spencer Fernando helped me out. He retweeted, he didn't know who I was. He retweeted my first article and helped me build. my audience that way. So that was very, very kind of him. And of course, I support his work. And then, yeah, I was just sort of lucky because a lot of the other independents, I think of ourselves as having a good relationship. We're not competitive or anything like that. You know, we sort of boost each other and support each other, you know, Western Standard Rebel News, right?

Well, the thing is, as one goes up, you can pull the others up with you. certainly, certainly you're competitive, but if one dies off, it doesn't help you any for them not to be there because they can help, you know, that's networking 101. I hear that. Yeah, I guess I find your like rise not very interesting, right? Like I guess I just, I couldn't figure out when you were talking. Well, when you were talking, I was like, man, she must have been doing this for years and I just didn't know. And then you say, no, like 2020, 2021, I'm like, okay, no, no, never mind.

I guess I followed pretty much from the beginning. It's just your brain, the way you approach subjects or find is just different than mine. That's as simple as it is, right? Which is a good thing. That's not a bad thing. It's just when I listen to you talk about a story and how you follow it down the rabbit hole, people will probably say I do the same thing with interviews, but it's just, to me, it seems different. I go, ah, that's interesting how you, you know, once again, I go back to the warehouse.

I'm like doing this thing where I spin on a, on the hamster wheel. I'm just like, how on earth do you get there? And I hear you talk about the translators and everything that leads you there. And I'm like, that's still. And I'm sure there's listeners who go, how did Sean ever get on to X, Y, Z, whoever the guest is? And it's the same type of thing. As your network grows, you get filtered these different people. You're like, how on earth did I get this person?

This was pretty strange. I got, you know, there was a ton of people who were asking questions on Twitter and everything else, and I hope we've done a decent job of answering a few of those for the listeners. Another one they just came in was the Maverick Party. And I know you had connections to the Maverick Party. Maybe you still do. Have you been following along with the leadership race there? And on top of that, do you think that a Western party like that will ever gain track

against the conservatives. Like, I mean, obviously it gained traction, but like, it's a little different than gaining traction and becoming a popular movement. No, I mean, well, I ran for the party, right? So I've got a great relationship with them. And, you know, I love the party. I love all the members. They're all, you know, they're all very genuine candidates.

You know, they're everyday people who, you know, just want to make a difference and who are very, very passionate about doing that. And, you know, sort of fighting an uphill battle. So yeah, I am following the leadership race. Unfortunately, I just actually talked to Jay Hill this morning. Unfortunately, I'm going to be away. There is an event coming up on 14th. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be there.

Yeah, so, I mean, it's really hard. I think it's really hard to say, I mean, is it going to gain more traction? I think maybe that, and I don't want to discredit it and say no, because there's a lot of people who are supportive of it, right? I mean, I got a decent amount of votes for my first election. and having no funds, no resources, you know, no anything, right? So I think that there is a deep desire still, but I think, you know, a lot of their popularity

is going to depend on what happens in the next election. I wouldn't discount them because, you know, the party was just formed really immediately before the last election. You know, so we didn't, they didn't have a lot of time to organize and things like that. It was, you know, very, very rushed, you know, to have to get together and have to get candidates and everything and get them out there in time for the election call, which, you know, Justin Trudeau had to call the election, you know, the day

after Kabul fell. Of course, it was an emergency. It had to happen. So, and, you know, resulted in Canadians being left behind in Kabul and translators. And to this day, I'm still, I still have people emailing me every single day talking about they're being stranded in Afghanistan or some of them have made the way to other countries and are looking for help. So every day I'm manning these emails from people who have, you know, heard about me for whatever reason and, you know, still trying to get people in touch with immigration Canada and get them, you know, address through the proper channels and things like that. The good news is that some people have actually come back and have been maybe not brought

to Canada, but some people did safely make it to the UK from Afghanistan after, you know, I sort of led them in the direction of people who are doing work and things like that. Anyways, sorry, it was total tangent. It's just a frustrating facet of stuff that, you know, that, you know, this government's failed at where, you know, people have to pick up the slack, you know, and sort of deal with this humanitarian crisis of their creation. So, you know, it ticks me off that I'm still getting these emails, you know, where are we? six months, seven months after Kabul fell. But anyways, so I think a lot of it's going to depend on the next election. I think that if we see the liberals re-elected

and if we see the Conservative Party failed to sit, I think that there's going to be a lot of hunger for a separation movement. There's already some hunger for it. But I think that that will be a serious turn. point if we see conservative again fail to win another election. I think that might be the breaking point where, you know, we might get into referendum territory and things like that. You didn't throw your hat in the ring again to run? Well, I'm not saying I'm not going to run in the future. I'm just, I've kind of got my hands full right now. I am still involved with the party

and I do work with the Electoral District Association and things like that. So, and, you know, we've got a chat. Like I said, love all these people. They're just, they're good Canadians who have decided to, you know, throw their hat in the ring about something that they're, they're passionate about, and they're very, very passionate about it. So, you know, we've got a group chat. So we chat every day to each other. You know, am I going to throw my hat into the next election? I can't really say, given that that might be years down the road. I'm not, I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing at that point. But I wouldn't, you know, count it out either. So, okay. Well, here. Here's a question that will rewind the clock then.

What did Andy Lee do before Maverick Party, investigated journalist, what were you doing before that? What was your, you know, like for me, it was an oil field worker, right? And before that, a hockey player, right? I mean, a lot of people remember me. I had the missing teeth, and they've since been fixed, and there was a lot of outrage over that. It was kind of funny. But you get the point. Now, what was Andy Lee doing?

So I worked in medical radiation technology. So I worked, you know, before this, I was in the Great Toronto area. I worked at Hamilton House Sciences at McMaster. And I worked at Credit Valley Hospital as well. And I sort of specialized in interventional radiology. So that was my thing. You know, so we're talking about, you know, catharizations, embolism, procedures, interventional.

So sort of any medical surgical procedure that's done with radiological guidance, that was sort of what I did. Sort of fascinating when I was at Credit Valley. I was one of the first actually people who were exposed to SARS and had to quarantine because of the 2003 SARS pandemic. So, you know, I got a phone call saying, you know, you've been exposed to this, you know, this crazy SARS. You were in contact with the SARS patient.

and we need to quarantine, you have to choose a hospital, you can't go back and forth in between hospitals anymore. So I chose to stay and work at, you know, in Toronto and sort of work with SARS patients because that was a grueling thing. Of course, SARS had a, you know, mortality rate, even in healthy individuals of, you know, closer to 11%. So it was a very, very scary respiratory virus. A lot of parallels, you know, came from China. We didn't know where it came from. there was very little warning given to us. You know, the fortunate thing about SARS is that it wasn't anywhere near as virulent as coronavirus is, as this COVID-19 is.

So, you know, we were able to very quickly contain it, you know, and we actually sort of got rid of, got rid of SARS for all means and purposes. And we didn't need a vaccine to do it. We were able to do it through, you know, rigorous contract tracing and things like that. And of course, that all laid that sort of the preparation, the groundwork in our pandemic plan, which I read by Dr. Teresa Tan, you know, that we were supposed to follow during COVID-19. And for whatever reason, didn't follow at all. So that was that sort of an interesting thing about my path.

So this isn't my first pandemic. So, you know, I did sort of work with serge patients and things like that back in 2003. So I feel like it's also giving me perspective. And, you know, it's a little bit telling when, You know, I have worked with SARS and, you know, when I feel completely different about COVID and the risks related to COVID and things like that. I'm not saying it's entirely risk-free, right? Of course, we do know that it can have, you know, deadly effects to subsets of our population. So, you know, not to not to downplay that danger.

It does exist, but, you know, is this sort of, you know, is at the same risk as we saw with SARS? No, definitely not, right? It's more even close. you know, I'm not really scared personally of COVID-19 at all, right? I don't feel like it's a very, very minimal risk to me. And, you know, to my family and to my children, things like that. So, you know, it's kind of a neat facet, my past. And then to see me coming out and speaking up for, you know, the anti-vaccine movement

and, you know, coming out against masks and, you know, social distancing and all that stuff is, it's a weird twist of fate. but I felt sort of compelled to do it, you know, in, you know, in absence of maybe, you know, giving these people the support that these has served, right? And of course, we haven't seen a lot of mainstream media. Unfortunately, coming out with, you know, a more centralized view, you know, and they sort of viciously went after those people. And that was sort of a lot of what fueled my interest in the convoy to begin with.

continue to I mean it feels like everything's back to normal but there's still are glaring there's just glaring examples of where it isn't back to normal right so it's been the strangest two years and now it's strange because everybody believes everything's back to normal because you know the mask mandate's gone and the QR code thing you don't need for the restaurants and you don't need this that and everything but it isn't exactly all back. It's funny how a conversation can lead us back here so many times. As you can probably tell with me, I'm like, I'm like so many people. I'm just ready to be done talking about it. Like I just, I want to move on with life. I want life to move on past COVID because I think it's okay to downplay it.

It doesn't mean that it isn't dangerous, but we downplay driving a car and driving a car certainly has its, you know, here in Western Canada. some of the worst weather known to man for eight months of the year in the dark. And we downplay the dangers of that all the time. And yet all of us do it. We go on with life. And it's just become a normal part of life. I mean, I think it's okay to downplay after it was,

you know, build as being this thing that was going to kill everyone. And we better lock everybody down. We better mask everybody. We better cancel school. And then we better cancel all sports. We better cancel everything. And then you're not allowed to see your,

your friends and family for Christmas and you're not a lot of going to the I mean I can go on and on and on and on yeah don't gather with your family don't don't let your unvaccinated family members into the house right um I mean there there was all I mean there's all this crazy stuff that that happened right it was it was uh you know I I I always said you know we we've sort of been participants the biggest psychological experiments uh you know ever ever sort of conducted right Yeah. Well, let's do this. Let's slide into the final five brought to you by Crude Master Transport. Shout out to Heath and Tracy McDonald's. Support is the podcast since the beginning. It's a quick little segment here at the end, maybe in one or two topics for five or less minutes. I try and keep that on track, so I don't keep you here for four hours. I mentioned it to you before we started. When Will Smith smacked Chris Rock and everybody applauded. I went, oh man, it's open season on comedians. And that's, and that's dangerous.

And my initial thought was like, Dave Chappelle, while Dave Chappelle got attacked on stage. You do. Thoughts on that? Like, is that not just wild? Like, I mean, we've all been to a comedian who maybe goes overboard, can say some obscene things, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that is a comedian. I mean, heck, there was a show called, you know, the roast,

of whoever, and that's all they did for an hour, was roast somebody to allow, well, not to allow, but I mean, the fact that Dave Chappelle got tackled on stage is wild to me. Yeah, well, I mean, it's really interesting. I'm just looking at some of the stuff that's coming out here. Yes, some of the weird it takes because, you know, some of it's, you know, some of it's linking it to, you know, white supremacy, of course. I don't know what that. Everything's linked to white supremacy.

I just read an article in the Western Standard, I think it's Western Standard, talking about environmental racism and how it all comes back to those dirty white people. And I'm like, oh, this is, but of course, every conspiracy theory, sure, leads back to basically what I am, a white male. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how many, you know,

people are sort of cheering it and saying he, you know, he deserved it for his take on transgender people. people and things like that. You know, I don't know if I agree with with what he put out, but it is free speech, right? You know, you have a right to listen or not to listen. You know, you have a right to agree. You also have a right to be offended. But is that sort of justification for assault, you know, and a lot of people are saying, you know, comedy is dangerous, right? And and we're, you know, we're triggering people with comedy. And comedy is dangerous now.

You know, it's just sort of like, I think it's a, you know, I think it's a part of a sort of a pattern that we're seeing. The pattern that we're seeing is that, you know, a lot of people are just taking stuff way too seriously, right? And, you know, in historically speaking, it's probably more conservatives that took themselves way too seriously. But I think, you know, we're seeing a real shift in, you know, You know, maybe now it's liberals that are taking themselves far too seriously and, you know,

you know, not sort of lightening up and having laugh at things and things like that. So, yeah, I mean, poor Dave Chappelle, right? I mean, you know, sort of is assault on comedian's fair, right? I mean, no, Chris, he didn't deserve it. You know, I thought Will Smith should have been charged. but a lot of people applauded him for sticking up for Jada, right? I'm like, oh, I mean, I don't know, since when do we? You know, and I also question, you know, when we're talking about white

and supremacy and all these racial, you know, it's racial nonsense, I also look at it as, you know, if the tables were turned and if this was a white man hitting another white man, you know, would the repercussions and the reaction have been same. And that's a that's sort of a question I don't have an answer to. But it's something that I pondered from time to time, you know, if, you know, if we had a white comedian on stage, of course, and we asked us and, you know, if somebody, a white man had gone up and sort of, you know, hit him in the face, you know, where we have seen the same excuses come out and things like that. And like I said, I don't know. It's just something that's, you know, a thought that's gone through

my head. And there's always thoughts going through my head. So that's one facet. So yeah, I mean, poor Dave Chappelle, right? I mean, comedy is under attack. It really, really is. You know, people are just are taking the stuff far too seriously. And, you know, it doesn't matter if you support the transgender community or not. I mean, Dave Chappelle is a right to go up and, and say what he thinks about it. And, you know, I don't think we can, it's a really pretty slippery slope when you know you're calling comedy hate speech. I don't want to live in a world of though comedy. No, I don't think we should.

I just lived through two years with pretty much no comedy, no human interaction, no laughter. That's, I'm never going back there. And the fact that comedians are being attacked is absurd. Comedians, if they suck at what they do, Andy, and nobody's laughing, they ain't on the stage. You're talking about Dave Chappelle, who's arguably the great. comedian of all time, arguably. And that's by his peers, not by Sean Newman's standard.

And if we get to the point where you can attack people on stage, you know, like, that is absurdity. Like we're like we're going down this road that everybody's triggered. Well, get over it. Move on with life. Like we have to, we have to find a way to be better than this because Dave Chappelle getting tackled is as absurd as Chris Rock getting slapped, honestly. Like, that's, that's what they do on stage. That is their profession to try and pretty much trigger the whole crowd and have some awkward laughs and have some knee slappers and everything else. They're always on the edge of what is right and what is across the line.

And some people love across the line. Yeah. Well, I mean, across the line gets hits, right? Like, I mean, that's just, that's just a fact. It's, you know, it's a fact of life. It's the fact of, you know, social media. It's a fact of comedy. you know, you don't get, you don't get any sort of support being, you know, passive.

And, you know, some of my biggest stuff on this, you know, that's something I'm trying to curb is, you know, sometimes I like to lay on these really scaling blows against people, you know, and it was sort of known for these spectacular takedowns and public shamings. But I'm trying to sort of curb that instinct that I've got to do that and sort of, you know, be more of a journal. was to be a little more professional and get away from that, even though a lot of that stuff is really, really popular. Even though the mainstream, that's exactly what they do. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, trying to also be cognizant that, you know, like I said, because I'm here and I didn't expect to be

here, and it is a little bit wild that I'm here. And I agree, it's really, really bizarre, right? This world of social media. But you don't have to be really, really careful now with, more careful with what I say, how I say it, you know, because I can, you know, create maybe real world repercussions for people if I speak out against them. So I have to be very, very cautious, more cautious, you know, just because I don't want to make somebody's life held because I have a political opinion on them. You know, that's not my, that's not my goal, but, you know, that is sort of, I'm getting into that territory where, you know, if I, if I sort of give an opinion on, somebody or if I say something detrimental, you know, we will get a lot of followers and things like

that coming and, you know, making comments and things like that. So I mean, this is sort of the ugly underbelly of social media. Yeah. Where you do see these huge pylons and things like that. And maybe, maybe the, you know, maybe the people who, you know, are getting piled on, maybe they earned it. Maybe they didn't. But, you know, I have to be very, very careful now, um, how, I sort of wield this and make sure that I'm wielding it responsibly. And, you know, if I'm going to land a blow that that person really deserves that, that blow, right? So, you know, try to be better.

Not to say that people didn't deserve it in the past. You know, I don't usually go after people that I don't think deserved it, right? But, you know, just to be cognizant, I think it's really important. And, you know, I think that that's where mainstream media has fallen apart is that I don't think that they wielded their influence properly when they talked about unvaccinated people. You know, I don't think that they were responsible in the way that they use the rhetoric and, you know, the way that they sort of, you know, sicked vaccinated people on unvaccinated people. the way that they put forward their headlines, their opinions, you know, the ugly things that, you know, they've linked ugly anti-baxers, you know, and, you know, painted them as conspiracy theorists, not jobs. Yes, they were very, they were very one-sided. And on top of that, they assume they had all the answers.

Yeah, you know, we saw Andrew, I was really stunned during the convoy. You know, we saw Andrew coin gone. And, you know, he said that the protesters were a bunch of antisocial yobbs, you know, who had too much time on their hands and, you know, dot, dot, dot. And I was like, holy, like, how do you, how do you get off saying that? Right. And people are watching you. And this is, you know, this is, they're pulling that information, right? And, you know, you're influencing what they're thinking about these protesters.

And, you know, where do you get off? when you've got that sort of power, you know, influencing people in that way and being that ugly, right? And so, you know, I guess it's just, you know, in being close to. And then we saw, you know, we saw that actually manifested this past weekend with the biker rally. So we saw the same rhetoric, right? They're racist, misogynist, conspiracy theorists, you know, they're violent, they're extremists, dot, da, da, da. So I mean, all. of that came out, Jim Watson, Mayor Jim Watson of Ottawa was out there parroting that about this biker convoy. I spent time with the biker convoy. You know, I didn't see them cause any trouble at all.

They're extremely cooperative with police. You know, I didn't see any, any of the things that media and our politicians and, you know, some of our police officers painted them as. I didn't see any of that. But, you know, there was, I'm going to say alleged because there was no charges have been laid, but there was, of course, a hate crime and alleged hate crime being committed against the Bikers Church after the, you know, the biker protests in Ottawa. So that the church was, you know, littered with thumbtacks. People sprayed, you know, fuck you fascists on the side of it and all these things.

And so, you know, I think that was, you know, one of the, it was a real wake-up call for me for myself, like I said, to be more cognizant of how I put things out there because I thought, you know, for the last week, we've seen all this ramping up of this rhetoric saying that these bikers are a bunch of troublemakers, a bunch of no-good troublemakers. And the result of this was Ottawa residents actually vandalizing a church that from what I understand does very good work. and committing a hate crime against these people that did nothing aside from right around the city with policemen on the weekend. So, you know, all of this has actually manifested itself into a real world crime being committed against innocent people, right? By not speaking the truth. By, yeah, maybe, you know, by being biased, right? you know, by being irresponsible and how you report, you know, by, you know, blanket smearing these people. And like I said, I talked to these, but I want to talk to them more, actually, because I'm

fascinated by what they've done. You know, they've got sort of a little bit of a free kitchen. You know, they've got obviously a lot of the members are bikers or former bikers, but a lot of the people that I talk to, you know, they said, this church saved me. You know, I used to be an alcoholic. I used to be a drug addict. You know, I was part of organizing. crime, things like that. And, you know, these people actually saved me. So, you know, and this is what happens, as far as I'm concerned, as a direct result of irresponsible reporting and irresponsible storytelling on part of politicians in media, right?

This resulted in real world backlash against people who probably didn't deserve it at all. pretty crazy, right? So I mean, you know, when we look at how we report and things like that, it's like, well, you know, are we, are we fueling this, you know, this crisis and this divide, or are we actually trying to to make steps to bridge it and bring people together, right? Or are we pushing people further apart? You know, is media contributing towards the, that hate crime crisis that our governments say exist, right? I'm doing the rules of playing that. Yeah.

So, you know, all the good questions. Well, I'm watching the clock and I'm going, I've kept you a very long time. I appreciate you giving me some time, Andy.

It's been nice to sit and chat with you. See you face to face. We have talked on the phone before, but that was a while back now. So I appreciate you coming on and giving me some of your time. And, well, thanks again.

Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah. So follow me. I've got my own show. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Yeah. How do they find you? So, so I'm at Real Andy Lee show on Twitter. Of course, that's probably a, you know, a limited time only thing. So you can follow. We have the Real Andy Lee show on YouTube.

And, you know, I'm going to be getting my website up and going. I'm terrible procrastinator because I'm always got my pause in stories and things like that. But we do have a website, the Real Andy Lee show. And so people are going to be able to follow our shows. And, you know, we've got some great guests already lined up. So I'm going to be sort of turning tables and doing what you're doing. You know, and so that's a big step for me. And so, yeah, we're sort of, you know, I'm working with Mark Paternity from Saga 960am and Tom Quiggin from the Quiggin reports and Pete Serente from Tofu TV. So, you know, we're sort of expecting me to be deplatformed again.

So we're trying to get as many people to, you know, be aware that we're out there on different platforms and I think the next time I get booted off Twitter, that'll probably be the end of me. I'll probably just, you know, go solely to my show and ask people to, you know, for people to work with me there. Okay. Well, thanks again for giving us some time and best of luck. I mean, I'll be following along with Twitter on whatever you're working on. I'm sure a ton of people are and be looking forward to seeing what you do with your show.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. It's been great. Until next time, right? Live love and proper. Absolutely. Hey, thanks for tuning in today, guys. I hope you enjoyed it.

We are back Monday. So please go enjoy the weekend. Kick some ass. Enjoy life. And we will catch up to you next week.