Now the world thinks Canadian social policies are the ‘edge of crazy’
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Summary
Tristan Hopper, a columnist with the National Post, asks if Canada is a cautionary tale about the things other countries look up to and say, Can I need to do that? Maybe.
Transcript
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When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners,
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I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
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Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
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Now, is it a country that other countries now look to and say,
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Maybe that is the direction that we're heading in.
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It was just a little while ago at the NATO summit that we had allies questioning our
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very involvement in the G7 because we would not support and fulfill our NATO commitments.
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We've had people questioning our immigration policy, something that used to be looked up to,
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something that would be copied elsewhere in the world, now being viewed as an utter mistake.
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Joining me today is someone who's been thinking a lot about this.
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And if you follow him on X, well, you've seen this.
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And if you don't follow him on X, you should be.
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Tristan Hopper, columnist with the National Post.
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And it's been interesting because as you mentioned, Canada, I'd say, you know, traditionally
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over the past 30, 40 years, either nobody noticed, you know, nobody had any idea of sort
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of domestic Canadian policies or on some things like immigration, we had, you know, a superior
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This was something that if you wanted to design a high immigration system with good, you
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know, good integration, you would see what the Canadians had done.
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If you wanted to pull oil out of sand, you would do what the Canadians would have done.
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So there was a few niche things that we were good at and people would pay attention to.
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What's happened in the last five, 10 years, and, you know, I'm not going to say this is
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Is that there's a whole bunch of social issues in which we have sort of gone more radical than
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I mean, there's there are some issues in which we were sort of early adopters or there was
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European countries that had sort of comparable systems.
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But there's been about four or five issues in which we took up the mantle of it, went farther
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So what you're starting to see, if you just like me, if you just have a, you know, a Google
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alert for any time a foreign country mentions Canada, we used to never be mentioned.
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There's, you know, parliamentary hearings in the UK, anywhere where people are saying,
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OK, if we're going to design this assisted suicide system, let's not do what Canada did.
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And and, you know, we'll do a different version of that.
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So, I mean, the most obvious ones would be drugs, harm reduction, drug decriminalization
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And then there's sort of a few others in which you can sort of look at how we compare to
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So unmade, I think a very good case could be made that we're the most liberalized assisted
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So, you know, there's something that you mentioned off the top before we wouldn't be
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And I always like to point out to people that if you're sitting in a room in a house and
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you don't notice the job that the guy doing the drywall did, that's because he did a good
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If you notice the drywall work, the drywaller did a bad job.
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We function fairly well and we could agree or disagree on politics or direction or what
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And then you say about five, ten years ago is when you figure things really started to
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Kind of ramped up definitely in the last five years.
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And that's that's an interesting argument you make because I'll sort of bring this up
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on social media or in person and you'll get, you know, that reactionary text.
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Oh, you know, government's always it's wasting things and they're inefficient.
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And I'll say, well, OK, well, we did actually not too long ago in this country had a generally
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And, you know, you could argue there was actually a few areas in which the core competencies
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of the government, they did it better than anyone else.
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There's still there's like three areas in which that's still true.
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Every every morning in the shower, I think what part of the government isn't just a disaster
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But most of the world, when they need like, you know, a really cool coin with paint on
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So we print we make that we mint the coins for large swaths of the earth.
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So anyway, everything used to be like competencies, though.
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No, these are not the things that affect our day to day lives.
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It's not as bad as it was a couple of years ago.
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But remember, there were people paying others to stand in line at the passport office to
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keep their spot to go in and get your passport because you couldn't get it without showing
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But it went from an efficient system where you got it, you know, five days after you
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Because I dealt with people during that crisis that were waiting eight, nine, 10 months.
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So, you know, it wasn't a nightmare, but I got it exactly 10 years ago because it was a
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So 10 years ago, I went to a passport office at the close of day.
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So this is sort of a great, you know, it's a perfect 10 year.
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I show up at the passport office and they say, oh, there's no way we're bringing you
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You can come in in three days and then come in in three days.
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I waited for about two, three hours to get it done.
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I mean, I didn't have to abandon my family and quit my job and waited in line for three
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Yeah, there was definitely a decline in service versus I just show up and I was actually in
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I did it at the Sinclair Center in Vancouver 10 years ago.
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Fun fact, named after Margaret Trudeau's father.
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People forget that Justin Trudeau also has politicians on the mother's side.
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So let's look at a bigger issue than the passports.
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So this is if you look at sort of drug policies.
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And again, it's very Canadian to sort of be, you know, social issues.
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We're going to have a more liberal version than the United States, for instance.
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But drug policy is sort of that perfect example of we saw harm reduction was sort of being
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And I can get into why we did not embrace the Portugal model.
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We did half or a quarter of the Portugal model.
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Yeah, we embraced a very warped version of the Portugal model.
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Actually, if you brought, if I pitched the Portugal model at, say, I'm in Victoria right
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now, at like Victoria City Council, I would seem like some right wing fascist.
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Because Portugal, I don't know if, you know, if you've treaded over this, I don't want to
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But Portugal, the sort of classic decriminalization model, as they said, okay, we'll decriminalize.
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They were coming out of literal fascism, Portugal, not too long.
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So they actually did have a much more acute problem with people refusing to admit they
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I mean, I would argue the stigma was much lower in Canada.
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But they decriminalized with, we're going to crack down on drug dealers real hard.
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And if you're caught smoking in a playground, smoking crack in a playground, we're not going
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to say, oh, okay, could you please move it over there?
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You know, we are going to put you in a drug court, and then you have to go into treatment,
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So yeah, that's a lot different than everyone does drugs everywhere all the time, and there
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So yeah, this is something where if you're sort of looking for comfort in the rest of
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the world, say like, okay, our drug problem is bad, but at least it's as bad here.
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I mean, I've looked at maybe I can pull up some of the stats, but this is one of the areas
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in which we are rapidly becoming the worst on earth.
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So when you look at overdose deaths, I think it's like we're in the top three.
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It's the United States, Scotland, which isn't quite a country, but it's part of the UK.
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But if you just counted Scotland, Scotland's got up there with us.
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So Canada, the US and Scotland and no one else is even close.
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So like, oh yeah, we have an overdose problem in say, you know, Italy.
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But when you look at Canada, it's well beyond anything else.
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So I always make the comparison of when harm reduction started.
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I always tell her, 2017 is a whole different world when you were born.
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But speaking in BC, 10 years ago, you had like one safe consumption site.
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You had a few needle exchanges and that's basically it.
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And now, you know, safe consumption sites in every major town, you know, you've got safer
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So we've leaned into harm reduction harder than almost anyone else.
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Um, so I think as a Canadian, you would assume, oh, okay, you have safe consumption sites in
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Um, you guys are super liberal and they'll say, no, no, no, we've, we just kind of started
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Uh, we didn't just open insights and then they put out a bunch of studies and then everyone
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I was in Glasgow, the much more gritty industrial city.
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And I was in Edinburgh and I wasn't just staying in the downtown cores.
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Um, I was all over the both major cities, downtown cores, but elsewhere.
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And I did not see things as bad as I see here in every city that I traveled to.
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There weren't the encampments on the scale that we have.
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There was not the filth and the, you know, I haven't been to Vancouver in a little while,
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but I, I understand, uh, it's not as pretty as it used to be in parts of the downtown.
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I mean, Victoria has always been, I don't want to say, um, I'm a child of the city.
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Um, and I don't want to say it's always been, I mean, I, when I was, uh, I worked in the
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So, you know, there was a visible homeless problem.
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Um, but, um, you didn't have whole sections of the city.
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Like you'll walk two, three blocks and it's contained.
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If you're a cruise ship passenger, you cannot see it.
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Um, but two, three blocks in which the majority, the plurality, if not the majority of people
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on the street are twisted on drugs, um, you know, bent over.
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Uh, and one thing I've noticed, uh, in recent months, and I think I'm, I'm seeing data to
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I have not gone downtown without seeing at least one or two ambulances, full sirens running.
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So this is one example that you're saying we are now a cautionary tale.
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So are, are other countries looking at us and saying, don't go that path or tread carefully?
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This definitely has come up in terms of, uh, assisted suicide.
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Uh, so the UK, I think there's, there's a lot of countries in the, uh, in, in Europe who
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are looking at, uh, similar to where we were about 10 years ago, uh, in which, you know,
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we have a large number of old people at the last later stages of dementia or Alzheimer's.
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Uh, we don't want them on breathing machines, scared, not knowing where they are.
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We want to, you know, the death with dignity argument from 10 years ago, which by stats
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You know, 80% plus, uh, want a system in which we can sort of euthanize people with terminal
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illnesses before it gets into its latter stages.
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Um, so yeah, there's definitely, there was the research going on in the UK and they did
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have experts to come in and say, okay, well, um, if you don't have safeguards in place,
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you will very quickly have what Canada had, um, in which, um, we were, I think eighth, seventh
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or eighth in the world to bring in, uh, assisted suicide and then, uh, or made.
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And then almost immediately, um, you have instances in which, you know, there's someone
00:14:47.800
at Veterans Canada counseling people to undergo MAID.
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Um, there's people, you know, getting MAID just because of, uh, underlying poverty issues.
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I interviewed, um, the guy that blew the whistle on that for a previous episode of Full Comment,
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um, could not believe that that was what was happening time and again, not, not just one person.
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And those are not happening in the United States.
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So they, um, even, you know, name me your most hippie state, you know, Colorado, uh, Oregon.
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And they, they brought on, uh, assisted suicide euthanasia earlier than we did, um, California,
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But what they did is the checks were much harder.
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Um, there's just, it wasn't nearly as liberalized as Canada.
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So, I mean, they've certainly had headline worthy, um, controversies connected to the
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system, but they didn't have broad-based massive abuses almost everywhere, uh, connected to
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So yeah, if you are designing a, a, an assisted suicide system, which I think a lot of countries
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are, you would look to Canada as a cautionary tale.
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I mean, one of the things just in raw data, um, our rate is going way faster than almost
00:16:00.140
So California, it sort of, you know, goes up for a little bit and it sort of plateaus,
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um, which you would argue would just reflect the number of people who would have gotten,
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uh, made, uh, if it had been, or euthanasia, whatever they call it under a prior system.
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But, uh, Canada, ever since we introduced it, it's gone up 30% per year, every year.
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And we don't know when it's going to plateau, you know, it's, we're about, I mean, I'm Vancouver
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I've seen estimates that, uh, made represents 10% of all deaths on Vancouver, which is the
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So, I mean, does that keep going until you sort of plateau at 10% and within that 10%?
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I remember writing a while ago that it has surpassed things like influenza and pneumonia,
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uh, chronic liver disease, uh, that we were having more people killed by MAID, it, it has
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So, I mean, you could argue, I mean, the sort of pro-MAID argument is, well, those would have
00:17:01.060
So this is just, you know, we're, we're giving someone an option to, you know, bow out, you
00:17:05.960
know, two weeks before cancer would have taken them anyway.
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But, uh, Sharon Kerkey writing for the National Post has sort of pointed out the numbers are
00:17:14.580
How many cases among them are the sort of edge cases, the anecdotes that we've reported
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on in which someone has a history of suicide attempts, goes to a hospital, someone approves
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them, the family tries to stop it, it's too late.
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And, you know, they're otherwise healthy and they were approved for MAID.
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Oh, the woman applying because she said, I can't afford an apartment.
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But that's right, which is everyone now, we're all, but, uh, in terms of, uh, yeah, just
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if you're looking at the raw data, um, yeah, I'm, I'm pulling up second only to the U.S.
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Uh, that's, that's a 2023 report from the Commonwealth Fund.
00:17:51.340
Um, so again, we're sort of tied with, uh, so when you look at like Australia or other countries
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that you would assume just offhand, like, well, if it's bad here, obviously the rest of the
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Anglosphere, they're going to have a problem with the drug overdoses.
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And then, no, you look at the chart, it's, it's the United States, it's Canada, and then
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Obviously housing affordability, worst in the world.
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Um, I think actually port to bring up Portugal again, I try not to mention Portugal, but,
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um, they, uh, they recently pulled ahead of us and start in terms of raw and affordability.
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But what's interesting about Portugal is they're all, it's a housing bubble and they're already
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sort of at the tail end of it, um, because they're a normal country.
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Uh, they're like, oh, okay, we, we, you know, things got nuts.
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A bunch of people are going to lose money and then it's going to be affordable again versus
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Canada where we're at the top of the unaffordability.
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All of the indicators show that it's going to be unaffordable forever.
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Um, there's, there's nothing dialing us back from that.
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So, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not telling anything that people didn't know anymore,
00:18:53.580
but yeah, we are the model of how to have a housing system get completely unaffordable
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We're now consistently in terms of raw unaffordability.
00:19:06.320
So income to, uh, to rents and to, to housing costs, we're at the top of the OECD and it's
00:19:12.800
Are you the person that convinced Pierre Paulyev that everything in Canada is broken?
00:19:23.060
So, uh, it's, I think the one time, the one time I think actually, uh, I, there was, uh,
00:19:30.600
Tim Horton spit out this donut without getting into the details of what the donut looked like.
00:19:34.980
It, it, it looked pornographic to me and I pointed this out and then the donut was cut
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I think that's the only time someone actually listens.
00:19:45.360
Um, but you know, Paulyev came out with this statement a while ago saying everything feels
00:19:55.320
That seems to be the sentiment of an awful lot of Canadians.
00:20:00.680
Just speaking from, I mean, purely on the housing.
00:20:03.300
So, uh, I've made the argument, uh, that, uh, there's a number of things that you sound
00:20:13.120
The Canadian armed forces put out a document that said, you know, racism is the system and,
00:20:19.220
you know, they're an inherently racist organization.
00:20:21.420
And as a result, they need to, you know, sort of categorize people by race.
00:20:25.960
And some people get better treatments and some people get worse treatment, you know, based
00:20:34.040
So I think there's a number of things in Canada, just from a policy angle that are really nuts
00:20:39.760
and you can't believe they're happening until they sort of hit you, you know, personally.
00:20:43.940
Um, and we've reported on any number of those, the national post, but yeah, just that sense
00:20:49.640
I think, um, I didn't realize until now how many times we had elections, uh, in Canada
00:20:55.800
in which you would sort of be voting on issues that didn't tremendously affect you personally.
00:21:01.020
So you, you'd sort of vote for a party and, um, you know, this, this is what I agree on,
00:21:05.480
but you could, after that election was over, you know, fast forward three, four years, it
00:21:10.580
wouldn't really be, you wouldn't really be able to tell who had won if you weren't politically
00:21:15.920
Um, but if we see a bunch of crazy political numbers happening, you know, demographics voting,
00:21:23.280
supporting the conservatives that have never done so and may never do so again.
00:21:26.720
Um, I, I think it's because, uh, there has just been a number of areas in which you can
00:21:35.100
Uh, this part of town didn't used to be intensity.
00:21:37.920
Um, you know, this playground didn't used to have needles over it.
00:21:41.260
Um, you know, I didn't used to have my car stolen every year.
00:21:44.720
Um, you know, it used to be two, every two, three years.
00:21:47.900
And again, these are not, I mean, we have the stats to back this up.
00:21:50.620
This is not just me going off of some anecdotes from, you know, holy crap, conservatives,
00:21:55.460
Um, the, the, the, the federal justice minister has had his car stolen three times.
00:22:01.200
And then what was the, uh, what was the other one that was sort of perfectly summed up?
00:22:06.200
I, oh, I guess that was the one where he had his official car stolen three times.
00:22:13.400
I'm someone offended that nobody wants my Jetta.
00:22:18.080
Uh, we're going to take a quick break when we come back more on Canada being a cautionary tale
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and, and how we ended up here with Tristan Hopper.
00:22:25.460
So how did we get to the point where everything's broken?
00:22:29.840
Uh, Tristan, one thing that I'd say to you is I think that most of us have just been going
00:22:39.740
And we haven't been paying attention to things.
00:22:43.220
And same time, you've had a bunch of activists say, you know what?
00:22:52.060
And we just say, oh, well, yeah, okay, that's fine.
00:22:57.280
And I think that's how we end up with what we now look at and say, how the hell did you
00:23:03.640
It's sort of a macro version of, uh, this happened a few times when I was coming, growing
00:23:09.040
I remember there would be a few instances of which you just have a school board.
00:23:12.680
This used, used to seem to mostly happen in the United States.
00:23:17.620
You know, some, some mom with a lot of time in her hands, she's going to run for the trustee.
00:23:21.240
And then a bunch of, you had a bunch of like religious conservatives figuring out, oh,
00:23:27.720
So this happened like, you know, a few times, uh, that was sort of the classic case of, you
00:23:33.700
Government takes, gets taken over by activists.
00:23:35.820
And then you're like, why am I being taught that evolution is a sin?
00:23:39.380
And so I think a macro version of that has definitely happened, um, in Canada.
00:23:46.100
I mean, and in terms of just us not paying attention and Canada sort of being at the
00:23:51.060
extremes of this, uh, this is something I pointed out at the time.
00:23:53.580
It was a major scandal in, uh, the UK, Scotland specifically, and still kind of is, uh, this
00:24:00.040
was a factor in Nicola Sturgeon stepping down as first minister of Scotland, uh, that she
00:24:05.180
had approved, uh, sort of a gender bill that would allow, uh, male sex offenders, uh, to
00:24:12.200
move to, uh, women's prisons, um, you know, without any operations.
00:24:17.160
So you, you did have instances in which someone goes to jail as a male transitions and says,
00:24:23.640
And now, you know, you had women's groups saying, well, now there's a bunch of women,
00:24:26.600
um, you know, with a rapist in their midst, um, you know, uh, biologically intact.
00:24:34.060
This was a huge deal at the time when this was all playing out and, you know, leading
00:24:39.060
to the resignation of our first minister, I was saying, oh, this is, this is the policy
00:24:49.860
Someone brought it up at a, uh, a press conference and said, Hey, uh, what's with your, uh, your
00:24:57.360
Uh, I thought you said you were, you were Mr. Inclusivity, uh, to Trudeau.
00:25:02.980
And he said, oh yeah, I'll get rent on that ordering council.
00:25:10.400
And then you just have to, I mean, you can find the, uh, the terms you, you've got an
00:25:16.780
If, if somebody says all you need is self ID and then they can be transferred to a
00:25:21.720
So there's any number of those in which, um, or again, to bring up the UK, the cast report
00:25:27.820
in which they're saying, oh, okay, this is, uh, you know, this has been a, a major scandal
00:25:32.380
in which we've had clinics too readily, um, sort of taking autistic, uh, youth and sort
00:25:39.200
of, you know, diagnosing them with gender dysphoria and getting them on possibly irreversible
00:25:43.320
It's the exact same system in Canada, um, if not more aggressive than the UK and just
00:25:50.940
So yeah, it is, it is, it's this weird, bizarre world where maybe we just assumed that, um,
00:25:57.420
our, our, our government wasn't, we could be because we had about a hundred years of Canada
00:26:04.500
We, it was, it was, it's very rational to assume that whatever the hell they were doing
00:26:08.240
in Europe or the United States, we would have a watered down safe version and we wouldn't
00:26:13.620
I, this is the first time I can think aside from like social credit or eugenics in which
00:26:21.180
When Elon Musk did his interview with, uh, Jordan Peterson recently, and he talked about
00:26:26.960
puberty blockers and such, I said, okay, well, now that this guy who everyone pays attention
00:26:32.240
to, whether they love him or hate him, sometimes they pay more attention because they hate him.
00:26:36.700
Maybe now we'll have that discussion on puberty blockers and a discussion of what was in
00:26:41.040
the cast report because that cast review happened.
00:26:47.480
It was major news to a degree in the States, kind of ignored here, written about by a couple
00:26:53.700
of people at the post, a couple of people at the sun.
00:26:56.780
And as you say, same policy is just, just keep on going by, let, let the activists run the
00:27:06.120
Uh, and I, I looked up the Canadian association of pediatricians or whatever their society
00:27:12.300
They still have, uh, gender affirming care starting whatever age they feel like.
00:27:18.360
Whereas the, in the UK, their top court has just upheld, um, the, uh, the change that said
00:27:25.920
no to puberty blockers for minors, uh, a change by the way that was embraced, not just by the
00:27:30.960
conservatives who were in power when that review came back, but also the labor party said, yes,
00:27:39.180
So, uh, that it is, it is strange, uh, to see on, on these particular issues to see, uh,
00:27:46.600
to see it sort of being approached from sort of a good faith argument.
00:27:50.180
But, and yeah, when you look at these statistics, when you look at the polls in Canada, um, these
00:27:54.920
are things that are happening, um, without the sort of approval of the electorate.
00:27:59.660
So if you ask people, um, Hey, what do you think about transgender people?
00:28:03.140
Should they have, should they be discriminated against if your kid came out as trans or, you
00:28:07.720
know, your neighbor's trans, is that going to be an issue for you?
00:28:10.200
And it's, you know, it's an 80, 20 issue, like 80%, um, 75, 80% saying, no, they shouldn't
00:28:15.960
be discriminated against, you know, full equality.
00:28:20.380
And then you'll, you'll ask, well, what about in schools?
00:28:24.200
If a seven-year-old, um, says, oh, I like trucks.
00:28:30.740
Um, should it be the policy of the school to immediately affirm that seven-year-olds,
00:28:35.860
you know, gender dysphoria without questioning and then potentially not even telling the
00:28:39.620
parents if on the request of the seven-year-old.
00:28:46.640
Me liking, me being fine with my transgender neighbor is very different than, um, uh, a
00:28:53.020
gender ID policy in schools, uh, that sort of takes the word of seven-year-olds on their
00:28:59.600
That's, now I'm on the other side of the equation.
00:29:02.380
Um, so yeah, we are at sort of this weird, in which I sound like a crazy person whenever
00:29:07.260
I'm at a dinner party, I'm trying to explain, no, this is the actual, it sounds like I'm
00:29:10.900
just making this up and this is some project 2025 thing I, I came up with, but you can look
00:29:16.680
Project 2025 is going to bring back the Pizza Hut, uh, buffet.
00:29:19.760
So, uh, that's one of the online jokes about, uh, all the things that are in project 2025
00:29:26.040
that aren't, nobody knows what it is on, on, on the gender issue.
00:29:31.160
I, uh, I remember it was prior to the, the start of the 2023, 2024 school year and I was
00:29:40.280
out at a news conference with, uh, Ontario's then education minister, Stephen Lecce and a,
00:29:48.380
an Angus Reid poll had just come out showing a well over 70% of Canadians said, oh no, you
00:29:55.160
should not be transitioning kids without telling their parents.
00:29:59.820
Uh, and I'm with a reporter from a major Canadian news outlet who says, oh, I've got to ask them
00:30:08.840
They said, and I said, well, like you saw this poll that's, that's out, showed them the
00:30:15.400
I said, if you've got, I forget if it was 72 or 78% saying no, don't do that.
00:30:22.220
I said, then that's not the controversial position.
00:30:27.540
They're the ones holding the controversial point of view.
00:30:30.600
Explain this to the reporter was, we're, we're waiting for Lecce to come out, still got up
00:30:35.400
So about your controversial policy that, uh, parents are against.
00:30:42.240
We have a disconnect with a lot of our media, a lot of our academia from where just normal
00:30:46.900
everyday people are normal everyday people uniting across partisan boundaries that don't
00:30:54.300
And then are, you know, it sounds crazy talking about the elites, but you've got a bunch of
00:31:00.480
people in the chattering classes that are not connected.
00:31:02.640
I can't diagnose where it comes from, but you know, I can, I can, I can provide any number
00:31:08.800
of, of, of data points to show that something has happened in Canada in the last five, 10 years
00:31:13.940
in which we have a number of policies in which there is no comparison anywhere else in the
00:31:21.100
And, uh, also generally, uh, they don't appear to be working.
00:31:25.300
Um, so, you know, on drugs on, uh, you know, assisted suicide.
00:31:29.480
But I think we've gone in on these policies in sharp contrast to a lot of our sort of
00:31:34.120
former policies in which we were early adopters.
00:31:36.700
I mean, it's only, it's not too long ago, 20 years ago, in which Canada was an early adopter
00:31:42.320
I think we were one of the first two in which it was sort of a done at the parliamentary
00:31:49.620
And then that was, that was the opposite of what's going on now.
00:31:53.700
Canada was being mentioned around the world as, okay, you bring in gay marriage and, you
00:31:58.460
know, it's just going to be a bunch of bearded guys, uh, you know, living, you know, in monogamous
00:32:06.600
It's, it's, you know, the counterpoint, the counterarguments aren't as dire as maybe
00:32:12.480
So, you know, flip to, uh, now Canada adopts a sort of social policy no one else has and
00:32:21.960
Um, so, um, it's sort of the opposite of what we were used to doing, um, is if Canada
00:32:29.460
is doing something, it's, it's usually working well and should be a model to others.
00:32:33.560
Um, I know one of the, the other issues that we've, uh, uh, taken a lot of criticism for
00:32:40.440
of late, at least from countries that we would share a common history or political philosophy
00:32:47.280
with, uh, is bill C 63 online, that was one, yeah, this was, so this is a bill that on the
00:32:55.360
one hand is supposed to be about protecting children.
00:32:58.320
And then you read the other part of the bill and, and I can see the government setting themselves
00:33:02.800
up to say, you're either with us or with the child pornographers.
00:33:06.240
Um, so don't criticize this part of the bill where we will, you know, arrest you, uh, and
00:33:12.080
put you under house arrest, uh, because you might say something later.
00:33:18.880
And again, I'm just going to, when I point out the rest of the world, yeah, I'm pointing
00:33:23.920
out Europe and the Anglosphere and I'm ignoring most of it.
00:33:27.920
You know, it's, it's, it's us in our pure countries, all the sort of, you know, rich places
00:33:35.400
Um, but, um, anyway, um, the C-63 was sort of an interesting example because this was,
00:33:41.860
uh, you had the Guardian and the Spectator and, um, in the UK, and again, the fact that
00:33:48.700
a piece of legislation, Canadian legislation is getting any interest.
00:33:52.820
I mean, they didn't even care about the British North America Act, which is a piece of UK
00:33:55.620
legislation, you know, related to us 150 years ago, but that you have a piece of Canadian
00:34:00.840
legislation making headlines across the UK and everybody has an opinion on it and left
00:34:06.680
The opinion is what the hell's going on with Canada?
00:34:09.480
Um, because again, you have, uh, Europe does not have the absolutist approach to free speech
00:34:17.000
Uh, there should be limits on hate speech, et cetera.
00:34:20.700
And even then, uh, you have, you sort of had people taking notice all across Europe and
00:34:26.200
of course they've noticed in the United States saying, okay, there's a, there's a country
00:34:30.180
that shows up to all our summits and stuff, and they've completely lost their minds on
00:34:35.560
They're talking about life sentences for, you know, uh, a form of speech.
00:34:41.820
So the life sentence in Bill 60, C 63 was you had to advocate for a genocide.
00:34:46.100
Um, I, I think that's, that was sort of the most extreme, but, um, which I'd be worried
00:34:51.340
about because the word genocide has certainly been thrown around in a lot of inappropriate
00:34:55.880
So I don't think it should be encoded as something that's a life sentence.
00:35:00.180
It's all the time on the streets of Toronto these days, and it's everywhere on social
00:35:06.020
So, uh, that, that was sort of a classic example of, uh, yeah, Canada comes out with
00:35:13.500
And I think, you know, normally if we were putting together something for internet speech
00:35:17.940
controls, you would expect the Canadian version of that to be, okay, it's, it's not
00:35:24.300
It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here's our version.
00:35:27.500
Um, most, uh, unimaginative headline worthwhile Canadian initiative.
00:35:32.820
So that joke doesn't land with, you know, younger people.
00:35:38.400
So you're going to, you're going to give drugs to the wildlife, uh, or what's, what's
00:35:43.820
So do we, uh, have a way out other than just, uh, electing a radically different government
00:35:56.540
I mean, cause you do, we are in a situation in which, you know, the populists are still
00:36:01.640
Uh, so, I mean, the, the populists that is just, oh, we just kind of want a reasonable
00:36:10.640
That's still generally describes us as a country.
00:36:14.000
Um, I mean, you, you can say there is a lot of executive authority in the Canadian government,
00:36:18.620
um, as I'm sure comes up often in this podcast, uh, there is more executive authority in the
00:36:23.160
Canadian federal government than basically anywhere else in the democratic world.
00:36:29.160
Uh, but, uh, you do have at the federal level, um, that could be one of the reasons in which
00:36:35.020
we've gone so extreme so quickly is, you know, with an order in council, you can completely
00:36:39.280
remake, you know, how gender in prisons works and nobody even knows, knows about it.
00:36:43.840
So you can also have a reverse order in council.
00:36:46.120
So yes, you could have a situation in which, um, a bunch of things that have gotten nuts
00:36:52.820
because of, you know, federal executive orders can be reversed with the federal executive
00:36:57.600
But I mean, this has, this has happened at, uh, you know, this has happened at the city
00:37:03.540
So if I was to think of just an ideal in terms of how we get out of this, how we stop
00:37:09.860
having the most extreme version of, I mean, I mean, it's a mixture of sort of a change
00:37:15.320
I mean, the best case scenario is we, we have sort of a nationwide quiet revolution.
00:37:20.780
Um, you know, Quebec in the 1960s, everybody just kind of wakes up, says, I don't want to
00:37:25.380
I'm not going to, you know, Quebec stopped going to church.
00:37:28.180
We're, we stopped going to woke church and you stop nodding along to policies that are
00:37:32.780
super dumb, you know, at your university, uh, you know, faculty meeting.
00:37:37.060
Um, or, uh, it, it gets kind of uglier and you have, um, I think probably, I mean, the
00:37:44.240
optimist in me says that's what's going to happen.
00:37:46.460
It's going to be sort of, we used to have eugenics on the books in this country and then
00:37:51.000
it wasn't, they were on the books for way longer than they should have been.
00:37:55.700
Um, but, uh, it wasn't controversial when we got rid of it.
00:38:02.460
But, but what I see happening here and, you know, you live in, in the heartland of
00:38:07.940
wacko drug policy, uh, British Columbia, uh, Pierre probably have gets in and says, all
00:38:16.620
And federal funding is not going to injection sites anywhere.
00:38:21.820
What will happen will be a five to 10 year lawfare going through the courts to try and
00:38:29.020
force the federal government to hand out free oxy or free opioid pills?
00:38:33.760
Oh, there's any number of nightmare scenarios I can name.
00:38:36.640
Um, so if you, yeah, uh, the Senate, I mean, you have a Senate mostly appointed by Justin
00:38:43.040
Trudeau, independent senators who were not loyal to a party.
00:38:48.000
You got your, you got your, you got your Senate nightmare scenario in which the Senate says,
00:38:52.240
oh, you know, Pierre probably ever is a fascist.
00:38:54.200
We got to maintain, you know, these are section seven rights.
00:38:57.160
Uh, and we're just going to vote down everything.
00:38:59.800
And then you've got a big fight with the, with the Senate.
00:39:02.180
You've got your Supreme court nightmare scenario in which, uh, they're going real hard on,
00:39:07.940
um, you know, because we've seen any number, we saw those court decisions at the BC level
00:39:13.720
in which doing drugs in a park is a section seven charter of rights and freedoms, security
00:39:21.320
So you could have the Supreme court loses their mind and they say, no, no, no.
00:39:23.900
Smoking up in a playground is a section seven, right?
00:39:25.760
So for people that don't know when British Columbia was going through their decriminalization
00:39:30.340
phase, which they still are actually, um, and, and there were complaints about people
00:39:35.080
doing heroin and smoking crack in, in parks, NDP premier government, by the way, so this
00:39:40.500
is, this is David EB saying, this is ridiculous.
00:39:50.700
And the court said, no, you can't tell someone not to do heroin in a children's playground.
00:39:57.760
Which, uh, interestingly, uh, when, uh, the playground, I used to, when my grandma was
00:40:02.720
alive, um, the playground we went to was actually within sight of David EB's, what is now David
00:40:10.520
We would have walked past his office to go to this playground.
00:40:12.520
And yeah, that's sort of your classic urban BC playground experience, uh, playground that
00:40:17.360
eventually we couldn't go there because we would show up and there'd be two people completely
00:40:24.340
And I'm like, maybe this isn't a great place to bring a centenarian and two young children.
00:40:29.000
Uh, she was pretty deaf and blind, so she had no idea what was going on.
00:40:32.220
Neither did the children, but I figured it was a safety issue.
00:40:36.220
Well, we'll, uh, we'll see if we can get out of this in the coming future, but I think it's
00:40:40.320
going to take a lot more, as you say, a lot more than just one election.
00:40:43.200
Yeah, but it could be, I mean, you could, I mean, yeah, if you have to cut me off because
00:40:46.360
you're running out of time, but BC, it's sort of a classic example, just at the political
00:40:50.240
level where you've seen massive, huge, overwhelming, nothing like this has ever happened, support
00:40:58.180
And they were the PPC of BC just a few years ago.
00:41:05.280
That's not happening because of their tax policy or because, uh, this is happening because
00:41:10.860
a whole bunch of normal people, the people that we run into at, you know, barbecues who
00:41:15.780
aren't entirely sure who the president of the U S is.
00:41:19.020
Maybe I'm just describing my family, very politically out of it.
00:41:21.940
People, uh, a bunch of those people said, why are there, you know, why is this playgrounds,
00:41:34.200
It's a bunch of people seeing a political policy impact them personally in a way that
00:41:39.780
maybe they have never experienced before in their entire life.
00:41:42.220
This used to be, you know, a government, a bad government policy didn't used to affect
00:41:47.160
you outside of your tax return or, you know, maybe getting a passport.
00:41:50.960
And now people are seeing a noticeable difference between their lives now and the way it was within
00:42:02.060
And, and I don't mean that in, um, you know, uh, a fancy way.
00:42:10.000
In, in, in the public sphere, my life is great.
00:42:15.560
Follow him on social media, read him in the national post.
00:42:25.180
This episode was produced by Andre Proulx theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:42:30.820
Remember, you can subscribe to full comment on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get
00:42:35.100
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