Lindsay Shepard is a cultural commentator with True North Canada who sprung into the spotlight when she dared to show a Jordan Peterson video in a university class. She s also the author of her new book, Diversity and Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis.
00:03:30.240I think they trace all this back to 2013 or 2014, around then.
00:03:35.860So I'm someone who hasn't known anything else.
00:03:40.140And so it's hard for me to say, whereas other people have, I mean, there's some who say Marxism in universities and that kind of stuff goes back way, like, decades.
00:03:50.940But the social justice orientation on campus is kind of all I've ever known.
00:03:57.380And it does, it goes back to high school, too.
00:04:00.220But it's even worse now, I would say, for students.
00:04:04.040Every single elementary school in Canada basically says they're on, what, like, unceded territory and stuff like that.
00:04:10.380And that's a very political statement.
00:04:12.400You know, you're telling, you're priming these kids to think that they don't belong in the place that they were born or the place that they're living and going to school.
00:04:21.580Yeah, I remember it going back to high school, but it was more of a half of a joke, more of an idea.
00:04:28.120These old white men are controlling everything.
00:04:33.540I don't recall a teacher saying anything like that until I got to college, until we had a media teacher telling us what was what in her world.
00:07:12.320I was going to say, one of the best comments on there is, if you're not careful, you're going to get elected to government with that attitude.
00:07:18.580And also lots of comments saying, oh, I thought you would have known better after what you went through at Wilfrid Laurier.
00:07:24.320And it's like, okay, obviously, just read the description, and you can tell it's a joke.
00:07:28.720I lost a lot of subscribers after posting that.
00:07:31.400Well, it sounds like it's time for another one.
00:07:33.400On a more serious note, have you heard any of the diversity-related arguments, like, somewhere along the lines of what is actually being parodied here?
00:07:41.620Have you heard any arguments that have made sense or made you think that maybe there's something deeper to be explored there?
00:07:49.740Like, that we should hire people because of their skin color or gender?
00:07:54.320No, more like, I understand that's ridiculous, but more along the lines of, let's go with the native argument, for example.
00:08:02.400I'm sure in your travels by this point, you've been accosted by a lot of people who have said pretty much what you've said in the video.
00:08:10.180Have any of them had any ideas that you think are worth exploring?
00:12:53.300So I do believe that, you know, buying alternative meat products and not consuming meat is good.
00:13:01.540And on the flip side, there was this woman.
00:13:08.700She was actually in the news recently and she owns a clothing shop in Tofino, Euclid in B.C.
00:13:14.400It's called Pina and it's just her designs.
00:13:18.000I think she prints mostly on clothing that is made in Vancouver, too.
00:13:21.920So not made in China, but made in Vancouver.
00:13:23.680And I saw that I was familiar with her shop and I just was looking at her Instagram one day and I saw that she was writing about how it's wrong for kids to wear masks.
00:13:35.720And pretty much right after seeing that post, I bought something from her shop because I was thinking I want to support business owners who are speaking out against this.
00:13:44.720I think recently she was in the news because she compared wearing masks to residential schools, which I mean, we can criticize those kinds of comparisons.
00:13:54.640But I do want to support business owners who speak out and I think we should do that.
00:14:01.640I think people are very apolitical about their money a lot of the times and they think they won't make a difference, blah, blah.
00:14:07.540But I think it's a good way to live is only and it makes you feel better, too, to to really buy from people who you're aligned with and boycott people who are doing everything that's contrary to a free society.
00:14:22.420I mean, chapters, their their policy is two years and older needs a mask.
00:14:58.000I want to get more into the lockdowns later, but I just want to ask you, do you think that this sort of thing, like what you just mentioned,
00:15:03.800has it turned into sort of a virtue signal, just as so many other things have, but wearing masks, taking a vaccine and spouting off on social media about it?
00:15:14.800Do you think there's a lot of that other than as opposed to this being for my health and this is what's right, more of a popularity thing?
00:15:21.720Yeah, absolutely. You can kind of tell like so I've been confronted, you know, over the past year about not wearing a mask,
00:15:31.280not social distancing or like one lady confronted me because at the mall, I my toddler was trying to go through the exit door instead of the enter door.
00:15:42.700And you can tell they just love to tell you you're wrong and they love to to tell you what to do.
00:15:50.980And I like I think it's people refer to it as petty authoritarianism. Right.
00:15:55.140I mean, you know, and interestingly, it's most of the time it's other women trying to tell me what to do.
00:16:00.760Like I was at a ski resort skiing one day. And I mean, so, you know, you have to wear a face covering when you go skiing,
00:16:09.620which is and it's just silly because when you're skiing, you are outdoors.
00:16:14.780Your equipment kind of makes you not near other people. You're wearing gloves, etc.
00:16:20.660And so for one second, I wanted to take down. I think it's called a snood, my snood, because it was just gross.
00:16:29.340Like when you're skiing, it gets wet, it gets snowy, like your snot is in it.
00:16:34.340Like, I don't want to have that on my face. So I pull it down and immediately, you know, the woman's like, you need to put your mask on.
00:16:41.400Like, they just they just love it. And it's it's the women in my case, always women telling me what to do.
00:16:48.440So that's interesting, because I also see women as being more vocally against this stuff.
00:16:53.840So it might be something worth exploring you, not me, because you're smarter than me, of the core possible correlation between this,
00:17:01.640because I'm noticing more women declining to wear masks, opening more businesses, things like that and standing up against it.
00:17:11.420So it's interesting that women are more, I think I don't have a study to back this up.
00:17:15.380But I think what I've noticed is more emboldened in both directions, both directions.
00:17:19.260It sounds like something else I wanted to talk to you about was you mentioned it to Ezra Levant,
00:17:24.440how you were sort of thrust into this position. And I want to get you to expand on that.
00:17:28.580So let's show that short clip, Justin, of Lindsay talking to Ezra.
00:17:33.160No, as I write on the blurb of the book, I went from going from a nobody to going viral.
00:17:38.920So I had no social media accounts. I was not active in that kind of sphere at all.
00:17:44.300And this book tells the story of being thrust into those issues and learning about free speech and political correctness,
00:17:53.700those kinds of issues really quickly and immersing myself in them,
00:17:57.140because I just kind of found myself in the middle of something.
00:18:01.240Now, you mentioned there you didn't have social media accounts until you're sort of thrust into this.
00:18:05.200Besides everything to do with promotion and the public profile you have now,
00:18:09.540would you prefer not to have them, to not have to engage in the sort of the social media world?
00:19:59.340And I mean, I found out about that online.
00:20:01.700I find out about anti-lockdown rallies online.
00:20:05.860But then, you know, I'm the kind of person who then finds out about it and still shows up in person.
00:20:11.660Whereas I think a lot of people, I don't know, they wouldn't show up in person.
00:20:17.020But yeah, and it's the same reason why I'm frankly quite surprised that students in university, or even students, yeah, no, students in universities, why they're not speaking out against school being online.
00:20:33.160I mean, they're paying the same fees just to be sitting in front of a screen all day.
00:20:37.780And no one in Canada has said anything about that, or protested, or marched, or anything, which is pretty surprising to me.
00:21:03.980In that, the anti-lockdown crowd, they're concerned about jobs and family finances and paying rent and, in some cases, government overreach, as demonstrated by the nonsensical fines that have been given out by bylaw officers and the nonsensical closure of parks.
00:21:22.460We've now got a $180 billion deficit to deal with, and that was the figure from a couple weeks ago, so it's surely more now.
00:21:30.040So how is this deficit going to affect the quality of life for the next generations of citizens who will be the ones responsible for paying that off?
00:21:39.680A year later, Lindsay Shepard, have we changed our feelings about it at all?
00:23:25.580And I did a video about this for True North.
00:23:27.260I emailed, you know, the health departments of the provinces that have seen lots of anti-lockdown rallies with hundreds or even thousands of people.
00:23:34.940And I said, what kind of case numbers are you seeing from these rallies?
00:23:39.400And I'm pretty sure the answer is zero.
00:23:42.600They wouldn't respond or they would just say they can't collect the data because, you know, the people who would go to those protests will lie about they won't get tested and stuff like that.
00:23:53.680I mean, I'm someone who has been living my life almost completely the same, except for what I'm literally not allowed to do, like cross the border into the U.S.
00:24:15.300You sound like a career criminal to me.
00:24:18.460You sound like a career criminal is what it's come to.
00:24:22.060Do you support any of the political parties' responses in Canada to all of this?
00:24:27.360Well, I was happy to see the end of the lockdown caucus.
00:24:33.620So I think the three main figures are Maxime Bernier of the PPC, Derek Sloan, who is now an independent MP, kicked out of the Conservative Party, of course, and Ontario MPP, Randy Hillier.
00:25:29.500It's not that simple in terms of who can I point to that's going to support my views on this.
00:25:35.860Even though I'd say at least 25% of the country is probably anti-lockdown, there's not even 25% of the support from politicians.
00:25:44.900And nor has the Conservative Party actually mentioned anything about it other than wanting to commission a study about the effects of it or how it was dealt with.
00:27:46.060But Derek Sloan, I think, was the closest we were going to get, especially in the Conservative Party, to saying anything that was out of line.
00:27:52.060Now, comment on this as much or as little as you want.
00:27:55.200But are you as disappointed, and I am, in the Conservative Party's inability to speak out against lockdowns, against freedoms being taken away?
00:28:05.020There is barely a mention of the quarantine facilities, the forced confinement, I'll call it.
00:28:10.160How do you feel about their response to that from that party?
00:28:14.380Yeah, it seems like what they're really focusing on is, you know, how slow the vaccine response is.
00:28:21.320And, you know, you see the media talking about how slow the vaccines are coming into Canada.
00:28:26.320I don't care about the vaccine at all.