Audio – Page 21 – Freedom Party of Ontario Archive

Marc Emery on personal responsibility, wealth redistribution, and charity

Aug 011984

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

In 1984, the leftist London Union of Unemployed Workers (LUUW), led by activist John Clarke, performed a sit-in at the office of London Mayor Al Gleeson, to bring attention to the financial situation of two London mothers. In this recording, radio host Wayne Maclean had Clarke and London alderman Joe Fontana on the show as guests to discuss the LUUWs activities. Marc Emery, then Freedom Party of Ontario’s Action Director, calls into the show in response to Maclean’s comment that the ease with which one can get welfare makes us an “enlightened society”. Emery asserts that most of ones problems are the result of the decisions one has made. He takes particular issue with Maclean’s comment that the threat of government enforcement of tax laws is “just a perception”.

You can listen to the entire 1 hour and 35 minute broadcast. Emery calls in at approximately the 1 hour, 26 seconds mark:

or listen just to an excerpt from it, being Emery’s call into the show:

Joe Fontana versus Marc Emery on a Taxpayer funding for the 1991 Pan Am Games

All, FPO Panelist

Jul 241984

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

In July of 1984, then Freedom Party of Ontario Action Director Marc Emery, together with volunteers from the Freedom Party of Ontario, went door-to-door distributing a letter opposed to taxpayer funding for the Pan Am Games. A local contingent of businessmen and municipal politicians had tendered a bid for London, Ontario to host the 1991 games, and the bid included a budget in which taxpayers would be stuck with picking up the lions’ share of the tab. Emery had submitted his letter to the local London Free Press, which had declined to print it. After Emery’s letter was distributed door-to-door, a No Tax for Pan Am Games Committee was formed, which published a number of newsletters to keep opponents of taxpayer funding for the games aware of developments. Ultimately, in early 1985, Emery and Freedom Party were successful: thanks largely to their organized opposition to taxpayer funding for the games, public outcry against public funding for the games ultimately resulted in Canada’s then federal Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport, Otto Jelinek, issuing the announcement of a 5 year freeze on taxpayer funding for sporting events. The London bid was dead. The 1991 Pan Am Games were held in Cuba, at the expense of Cuban taxpayers.

In this Radio 98 episode of Wayne McLean’s show “Hotline”, Marc Emery and then London alderman Joe Fontana debated taxpayer funding for the London Pan Am Games bid.

Note: This audio is captured from a cassette tape. The recording on side 2 of the tape suffers from speeding-up and slowing down of the tape that appears to have been caused by variable slowing of the tape reel during the recording of the broadcast (the tape, itself, is not stretched or creased or otherwise damaged and the cassette mechanism moves freely). This digital capture plays side 2 continuously after side 1, such that the audio irregularities are heard during the second half of the recording.

Fraser Committee on Pornography (1984): Gail Hutchinson, Marc Emery, and Robert Metz

All, FPO Featured

Feb 101984

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

On February 9, 1984, a federal commission on pornography and prostitution held hearings in London. Marc Emery and Robert Metz attended and each gave testimony. The following day, “The Wayne McLean Talk Show” host Wayne Mclean discussed the commission and pornography. Featured guests were John Bowles, Gail Hutchinson, and Marc Emery. Liberal MPP (later Ontario Premier) David Peterson is interviewed. Robert Metz called-in later in the broadcast to clear up some of the mistaken impressions that other callers had about his and Marc’s testimony at the commission.

Excerpts (McLean, Hutchinson and Emery, Metz):

Emery and Metz versus the Ontario Board of Censors’ Chair, Mary Brown

All, FPO Call-in

Feb 061984

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

It’s early February of 1984, and everyone’s talking about pornography and censorship in Canada. Federally, the Fraser Committee on pornography is holding cross-Canada hearings. On this particular date – estimated to be February 6, 1984 – the Chair of the Ontario Board of Censors, Mary Brown, is the guest of Wayne McLean’s talk radio program on Radio 98, in London, Ontario. She fields calls from the show’s listeners, including Freedom Party Action Director Marc Emery and Freedom Party president Robert Metz. Both take on Brown over censorship.

Excerpt (Marc Emery):

Excerpt (Robert Metz):

Whole Recording:

Bill Paul Interviews Marc Emery (December, 1983)

All, Pre-FPO Featured

Dec 151983

1980-xx-xx.emery-thumb2 AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

Before Freedom Party of Ontario was founded in 1984, one of the founding members of the party – Marc Emery – was the publisher of the London Metrobulletin, the owner of the City Lights Book Store in London, Ontario, and a recent candidate for alderman in that city. By 1983, his activism and publishing had made him a well known proponent of individual freedom in the London area.

This is Bill Paul’s first interview of Marc Emery. Emery discusses his political orientation, feminism, libel laws, his 1980 founding of the London Tribune newspaper, his newer London Metrobulletin tabloid, Ayn Rand, and more. The exact date of the interview is not known, but Paul and Emery discussed the fourth issue of the London Metrobulletin, which issue included a reproduction of a passage from the December 2, 1983 Ontario Hansard, which indicates that this interview was recorded in December of 1983.

Marc Emery versus civil disobedience by Students Against War (1983)

All, Pre-FPO Call-in

Dec 011983

1980-xx-xx.emery-thumb2 AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

At some point during 1983, Jennifer Moore of Students Against War was the guest of the Wayne McLean talk radio show on AM 980 (London, Ontario). Moore’s group had apparently been involved in some sort of poorly organized “civil disobedience”, affecting the Mayor of London. Although the group’s aims are not clear, the group apparently was anti-American, anti-nuclear weapons, and anti-NATO. Marc Emery – then publisher of the London Metrobulletin and owner/operator of City Lights bookshop – called in to get some answers.

Marc Emery excerpt:

Fraser Committee on Pornography (1983): Marc Emery, Justice Minister Mark MacGuigan, Robert Metz

All, Pre-FPO Call-in

Nov 211983

justice-minister-mark-macguigan AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

In June of 1983, Canada’s Justice Minister, Mark MacGuigan (Liberal) announced the formation of the Fraser Committee on pornography and prostitution. In November of 1983, Justice Borins of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice stated that, due to the looseness of the definition of obscenity, a person could be in a position where they did not know they were breaking a pornography law until they were convicted in court. It was announced that the committee would commence cross-Canada hearings in or about early to mid December of 1983. This recording is estimated to have been made in mid-to-late November of 1983. It is an episode of Hotline, hosted by talk radio personality Wayne Mclean. Marc Emery calls in to express his views. Later, the Justice Minister called in. Robert Metz called in response to MacGuigan’s call.

Excerpts: Mclean, Emery, MacGuigan, Metz):

Marc Emery on the dangers of criminalizing the speech of the prejudiced

All, Pre-FPO Call-in

Oct 251983

1980-xx-xx.emery-thumb2 AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:
It’s 1983. Freedom Party of Ontario has not yet been founded. At least two high-profile historical revisionist deniers of the Holocaust in Germany have been making headlines for their anti-Semitic behaviours. In Alberta, Jim Keegstra has lost his teaching job for telling his students a number of false allegations concerning Jewish people (he alleges a world-wide conspiracy, denies the Holocaust, etc.). Meanwhile, in Toronto, another anti-Semite, Ernst Zundel (a man hailing from Germany, originally) is distributing literature alleging that the number of Jewish people murdered by the Nazis has been exaggerated by Jews in an effort to get money from the German government. Understandably, therefore, there is concern that such false allegations will cause people to turn against Jews in Canada.

On October 11, 1983, four-members of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) testified to a Canadian Parliamentary Committee on Racial Minorities. They, proposed, among other things that the word “wilfully” be deleted from the criminal code provisions relating to hate speech (i.e., so that a person could be found guilty whether or not he “wilfully” did what he did, in order to make findings of guilt easier). So, on October 25, 1983, London (Ontario) talk radio host Wayne McLean invited the Chair of the Steering Committee for the Canadian Jewish Congress, Sharon Wolfe, to be his guest.

After discussing the CJC’s concerns and recommendations, McLean took calls from his listeners. He then spoke with Roy McMurtry (then Ontario’s Attorney General), who said that anti-Semitism was on the rise. He said that there is more anti-Semitic literature around, apparently because of the “aftermath…continuing occurrences in Lebanon” (a reference to ongoing terrorist activity in Lebanon, involving the anti-Jewish, anti-Israel Palestine Liberation Organization, Hezbollah, and their Iranian and Syrian backers. NOTE: just two days prior to this broadcast, an American Marine barracks and a French barracks in Lebanon were each truck-bombed by a group calling itself the Islamic Jihad, killing 299 American and French soldiers).

After speaking with McMurtry, McLean took more calls from listeners, including Marc Emery. Emery, who had interviewed Jewish victims of the Holocaust and had written about the Holocaust in his London Metrobulletin newspaper, calls in to explain the dangers of criminalizing even false and hurtful speech. When McLean asks if Emery wishes that it had been possible to pass a law to stop the expression of hate speech in Germany, Emery points out that they did have such a law in Germany: a law that banned speaking ill of Nazis.

After taking calls from Emery and others, McLean also spoke with Alan Borovoy (general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association), who, like Emery, spoke against the criminalizing of speech.

Marc Emery Excerpt:

Complete Recording:

Robert Metz vs. Gail Hutchinson on Censorship and Pornography

All, FPO Panelist

Mar 031983

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

In 1983, before Freedom Party of Ontario was founded by Robert Metz and others, Metz was president of a London-area riding association for a political party called Unparty (Unparty folded at the end of 1983). Dr. Gail Hutchinson was a London area radical feminist who (with her London Status of Women Action Group, LSWAG) in the early eighties, led campaigns to ban or otherwise censor the wide range of things she considered “pornography”. As a result, in those years, pornography “dominated the news” in London (in the words of then talk radio host Wayne McLean).

On March 18, 1983, McLean dedicated two hours of his radio program to the pornography issue. His guests were Hutchinson who advocated censorship, and Metz, who opposed censorship. McLean especially wanted to know how his guests defined “pornography”, what if any effects it has on people, and whether (or how) it should be banned or otherwise censored.

NOTES: All commercials have been removed from this recording, but none of the comments made by the host, guests, or callers. All news stories (which played intermittently), except one, have been removed. The one news story relates to a French bill proposing jail terms for publishing derogatory statements about women. Near the middle of the program, the show blocked broadcast of something that someone had said. The blocking takes the form of a few seconds of annoying buzzing and beeping.

Pornography and Censorship: 6X News Report

All, FPO Featured

Mar 011983

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:

In this radio 6X FM news report, reporter John Collins interviews Hutchinson and Metz about censorship, and about what if any difference there is between “erotica” and “pornography”.

Older Entries Newer Entries