TVO - Friday, May 24, 2024 - 08:00 p.m. (ET) - Segment #1

Like, if you came here yesterday morning, it was-- it was empty. It was dusty. There was a bunch of peoplejust hanging around. And now, you know,if you look over there, it's... it's a community. ANNOUNCER: Take two politicians... You're coming around I can feel it, just wait till tomorrow. With opposing points of view... How do you compare a statue, to children's remains that are being found in residential schools? And send them on a blind date to debate an issue. I don't believe that there are any significant number of real racists. I disagree with you, like, 100%. Can political rivals find common ground? Watch your step, she's gonna rock. Political Blind Date. A TVOOriginal. Begins Wednesday at 7pm. May is Leave A Legacy month. During this month we're asking you to consider the impact that you can make by leaving a gift in your will to TVO. By doing so you support TVO's commitment to fostering lifelong learning and providing equitable access to educational resources for all Ontarians. Your gift ensures that TVO can continue to innovate and create programming that reflects diverse perspectives enriching the lives of people and strengthening communities across the province. Your legacy could help shape the future. So thanks for considering this. NARRATOR:This is the inside story of how, in the 70's and 80's, a cast of unapologetic mavericks revolutionized the tranquil world of tennis. You can't be serious.You cannot be serious! Geniuses on the court... (Crowd cheering) TV ANNOUNCER:Oh, I don't believe it. They were superstarsoff it. Who's got star presence?They have. At a time when sportwas embracing historic cultural change. Sports are a microcosmof society. It reflects what's going onin the world. Continues Thursday at 9. You want me to what? You want me to go around the world... 80 days? It was game changing. It's changed travel programs forever. That was where the fun began. I'm standing on the top of the world! Britain was to send an ambassador abroad. I mean, we could do a lot worse than send Michael Palin. ANNOUNCER:But this time, Michael Palin is travelling back to revisit some of his most memorable adventures. It's better than first class. Anything could happen, and you have to be able to deal with it. It was actually unrehearsed. This was a whole new fresh way of looking at the world. But he was in there with the people! Whether around the world, from pool to pool, the pacific rim, the Sahara, and the Himalayas. That kind of travelling, you are learning things all the time. Michael Palin: Travels of aLifetime. Begins Tonight at 10pm. MAN: We're asking today why Chinatown matters. MAN 2: It's a gateway to millions of immigrants who continue to come here. ANNOUNCER:Chinatowns throughout North America are under threat. Because of COVID, we lost a lot of business. We're basically neighbours to a lot of very wealthy and affluent neighbourhoods. MAN 3: Construction of a new City Hall destroyed half of Chinatown and now big developers are moving in. If governments don't support these kind of small neighbourhoods it's a disaster long-term. MAN 4: The city wants to build one of the largest vertical jails in all of the world. They want to demolish this entire enormous building. But they won't disappear without a fight. WOMAN: This is a really a battle for the soul of Chinatown. WOMAN 2: And if we don't fight back that's how we're gonna lose everything. This is Chinatown. This is the culture that we built. (Chanting) This is Chinatown! This is Chinatown! This is... Big Fight in Little Chinatown: ATVO original Sunday at 8pm. (Serene music)

[ ] >>> Tonight on "the agenda", john michael mcgrath and I with our weekend onpoli podcast. >> In a perfect world there might be a better argument for decriminalization if we had, you know, robust wraparound social services for people who are using drugs and people who are addicted. I'm not going to scandalize anybody by saying those wraparound services do not currently exist in ontario. [ ] [ ] >> Steve: how's it going partner? >> Good, a bit of a quiet week in ontario politics. The legislature sitting this week but british politics, the british prime minister rishi sunak has called a snap election they did have me wondering, I've only ever covered ontario politics in the area -- era of fixed election laws. 2014 a bit of an exception but otherwise. I was curious, do you miss the era of the feverish speculation about when will the premier, you know, call an election and all that energy about snap elections? >> Steve: no. [ Laughter ] >> Steve: I used to think there was a great deal of effort around wednesday going to call the election, this week, next week? Does this policy get introduced because he's got an election? Anyway, way too much effort worrying about when it would be called but I will say it's kind of neat that this guy -- the british prime minister, has called this election right out of the blue. Nobody was expecting it. He's 20 points down. Most people think it's sort of a suicide mission but, you know, you never know about these things. >> The campaign will be fun to watch. We have a day job but I will be keeping one eye on british politics for the next little while. Election day in the united kingdom, july 4th. As I say, I will be interested to see how that all turns out. >> Steve: july 4th was not a great day for great britain as I recall in 1776 but we will see how it goes this time. >> Yeah, I can't imagine why they would pick that date, I'm sure there's some reason, but they've done it now. >> Steve: await go. Anyways, onto issue one. [ ] >> Steve: in 2021 the ontario government introduced and passed changes into the provinces campaign finance laws. For the first time since the charter of rights and freedoms was adopted in 1982, the ontario legislature invoked the notwithstanding clause to shield the law from judicial review. But the courts have reviewed the law anyway and this week the legislation was before the supreme court of canada. You are watching the proceedings. What do you want to tell us? >> So this case has been running for years, depending on where you start, it predates the ford government entirely, but I will try to summarize this succinctly. In 2021 the ford government introduced this bill to impose new spending limits on third parties, anybody in an election who isn't a registered political party. Bill 254 which they introduced in 2021 extended third-party spending limits from six months to 12 months. And did not increase the dollar amount that those third parties were allowed to spend. So a pretty substantial restriction on the speech rights of third parties in ontario elections. >> Steve: for sure. The political context is obviously important. Everyone more or less acknowledges that this was aimed specifically at groups such as working families, which was an incredibly successful attempt to I guess put together an alliance of public-sector unions and run very tough ad campaigns against exclusively the progressive conservative party. They were always couched as nonpartisan campaigns but frankly they were directed right at the pc party mostly for the benefit of the liberals. >> Yes, this was hardly a secret when the government introduced this legislation. In 2021 however, in ontario court struck down the crucial bits that we are talking about about bill 254 saying they improperly fringed on peoples free-speech rights under the charter. In june of that year the ford government reenacted those changes with bill 307. This time invoking the notwithstanding clause, section 33 of the charter of rights and freedoms. >> Steve: presumably the fact that the court is considering all of this and you and I are talking about it means the discussion is not over. >> Right, he did not end there. I will do a little bit of remedial civics year. It's one of our specialties here. The notwithstanding clause allows the federal parliament or any provincial legislature to declare that a law operates notwithstanding some parts of the charter, but it's not a

total blank check, you can't use section 33 to restrict peoples voting rights or their mobility rights, and you can't use it to override rules about how long legislatures can go between elections or without sitting at all. So the notwithstanding clause was a key part of the political bargain that got us the charter in the first place, but nobody wanted to give provincial premier the right to make -- a dictator for life. >> Steve: we don't like that here. So back on campaign finance laws, what's the latest? >> The same public-sector unions who originally fought for party spending limits went back to court after the legislature passed a bill 307 arguing that the changes were just a restriction on free-speech rights but in fact amounted to an attack on ontarians rights to cast an informed vote. >> Steve: so let's understand this. Free-speech cases, the notwithstanding clause wins the day. However if it's about voting rights, ontario or any other province for that matter cannot use the not was standing clause. >> Exactly. So the first ontario court that heard this argument dismissed it saying that this is a free-speech case, not a voting rights case and the notwithstanding clause applied and there was nothing really more to say. Things got more interesting at the ontario court of appeal where a majority of judges there held that it was, in fact, a voting rights issue, they accepted that argument and in that case the notwithstanding clause was not permissible where the government could not invoke it. They declared the law no, and void. Not surprisingly the government appealed that decision to the supreme court of canada which is how we found ourselves there this week. >> Steve: the country's highest court does not usually announce a decision on the same date that they hear arguments, and they held to that practice this time as well. You listened to the arguments over the last couple of days. I know you always like to remind us, I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on tv, but go ahead, what stood out for you? >> I think one of the things that I found very interesting was a refreshing amount of honesty about the politics behind all of this. We already mentioned the fact that the law was all but expressly targeted at public-sector unions, the justice reiterated that point several times in the arguments, saying, I think at one point he said something like the reality is that this law is not going after billionaires, this is targeting public sector unions. Another point that a different lawyer made for one of the interveners was that the only reason that this case was before the supreme court at all was because this is a voting rights issue that had effectively tried to shoehorn a case into an area of the law to specifically thwart the use of the notwithstanding cause and had all sorts of warnings about that. I don't want to make it sound like there weren't actual, you know, arguments about constitutional principle and those important things, there definitely was a lot of that as well. But it was very clear that both the lawyers making their arguments and the justice hearing them really understood the centrality of the politics to all of this. >> Steve: sometimes when you listen to the questions the judges ask the lawyers, you get a sense of how they are going to vote. Do you have a sense of how the court is going to weigh in on this? >> I would not say I have a clear idea of, you know, which justices are going to come down either way, but I do think if you look at some of the recent presidents, I would be very surprised if the court decided to thwart the use of the notwithstanding clause in this case, if I can put it that way. We have already seen actually thanks to this port government, there was a recent case where, and I'm talking here about the premier's decision to cut toronto city council in half back in 2018, that eventually went to the supreme court and one of the issues was exactly how broadly do we define voting rights under the charter. The supreme court or at least the majority in that decision held a more restricted view of voting rights act did not want to define it very broadly and expansively. So as I say, I would be very surprised if the supreme court adopted that more expansive view in this case but as I will say again, I am not a lawyer and we will see. >> Steve: and life is full of surprises. >> Absolutely. >> Steve: that's why they argue the cases. Very good. Without it's onto issue two. [ ] >> Steve: doug ford's government is nothing if not tough on crime. The premier lets it be known whenever possible that he is pro- police and prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent criminals from getting away with stuff. So it was with interest that we notice this week that the province is offering some people charged with drunk driving offences a deal.

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