Full Comment - Rex Murphy on the 'progressives' that are recklessly vandalizing Canada's legacy

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's Anthony Fury. Thank you so much for joining us here on Full Comment. I could come

00:00:09.780 up with some elaborate introduction for today's topic and today's guest, but let's be honest,

00:00:14.300 today's guest is the iconic Rex Murphy. So what more do I need to say? Okay, well, let me say at

00:00:18.560 least this then. Rex and I are going to focus our conversation today on the dismantling of

00:00:23.380 and disrespect for Canada and its institutions under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. How's that?

00:00:30.000 For a trigger warning. Rex, hello, sir. Welcome. And how are you today? I'm doing all right.

00:00:36.020 How are you? I got a bit of a cold, so I'll warn your listeners if they hear something that sounds

00:00:41.000 like the abominable snowman trying to get out of a drift. That's just me hacking. Okay,

00:00:46.120 we'll consider it maybe something of a metaphor for the theme for the topic here that something

00:00:51.220 is clouding things. Something is getting in the way. Something viral and plague-like.

00:01:00.000 You've been writing a lot about the institutional morass that is perhaps coming over us here in

00:01:07.520 Canada, and there's a bit of inertia behind it, but it also seems like it's a bit willful on the

00:01:11.780 part of the current occupant of, I won't say 24 Sussex Drive, but that little cottage he's hanging

00:01:17.200 out in these days. What's going on with Justin Trudeau and our institutions?

00:01:21.080 Well, let's take the extremely most recent. As we are talking, it was yesterday that we had

00:01:31.260 the appointment of what I'll call an interim governor general. In other words, the previous

00:01:36.900 one, as everybody knows, either got dismissed or finally got bored enough to leave. The point I'll make

00:01:43.960 on that is that a governor general, at least in symbolic, and here's the term we all like to use,

00:01:50.520 the iconic terms, is the highest of the highest representatives that the constitutional or monarchical

00:01:58.280 democracy of Canada has. When Ms. Payette left, it didn't seem to be of any urgency whatsoever that

00:02:06.240 that particular role should be filled. It just passed by, took its time, and now that we're

00:02:13.840 in smelling distance of what looks like an opportunistic election, okay, I think we better

00:02:20.880 appoint a governor general. Now, that's just an illustration of a much graver and much more

00:02:27.800 extended demonstration of the casualness or the indifference with which Mr. Trudeau has approached

00:02:34.940 what used to be the venerable traditions of Canada. I'll start, COVID gave some cover to this,

00:02:42.380 but the dismission and the sidelining of parliament and parliamentary function for almost a year and a 0.54

00:02:49.660 half, and these little pathetic, I call them Brady Bunch Zoom calls to the highest institution in the 0.70

00:02:57.500 country. We had, again, others have pointed out the same analogy, but we had 18 and 19 and 20-year-old 0.86

00:03:05.820 grocery clerks, and by the way, we should honor them and at least give them a tax break. They were the

00:03:10.860 only ones that stood up for the whole damn thing. They could show up to work every single day, but you 0.98

00:03:16.220 couldn't get even a portion, I'm just saying a portion, of the national MPs and cabinet ministers,

00:03:23.660 so hey, 20% of them. It's a big room to show up every day because this is the House of Commons. This

00:03:32.140 is the government of Canada. Then you had, at another point, when Mr. Monroe was still finance minister,

00:03:40.780 before he went on various weed junkets to enlarge his portfolio. You had him at one point, I'm sure

00:03:48.700 under the instigation of the PMO, asking, oh, I wonder could I have spending authority for the next

00:03:55.180 two years without having to traipse down to the parliament? I'd like to be kind of unlicensed to

00:04:02.620 pass out billions of dollars. That was denied, but the fact that he was even asked for, it was a great

00:04:10.460 injury to the very principle of our commons government that the House controls the spending

00:04:18.300 and the control and accounting of spending is the absolute center of its real power.

00:04:24.300 And on top of that, again, you have ministers being dismissed. You have, as I said, these empty

00:04:31.740 virtual settings. You have the prime minister. This isn't the best of all. He let loose more money than

00:04:37.900 Scrooge McDuck and Mark Zuckerberg combined in the last year and a half. And where did he do it?

00:04:44.700 Did he go to the House of Commons where vast announcements are made? No, he stuck up some

00:04:50.300 plasticine tent and invited four or five of his favorite reporters every morning as he walked down

00:04:56.140 the steps to the cottage and executed expenditures, the greatest that we have seen since Canada was a

00:05:05.020 country. Oh, yeah, one other. This is very recent and a lot more, I would say, charged. We know of the

00:05:14.780 recent upcomings of the residential schools and the unmarked graves. We also know that following that,

00:05:22.940 and we do not know by whom, and it most likely, I will make a guess, is not Aboriginals at all.

00:05:29.340 Right. But we've seen 10 or 15 churches burn down. We haven't seen the heritage minister comment,

00:05:37.500 by the way, on the 104-year-old church of a native community. Right. But churches are,

00:05:43.820 think about this for a second, an institution. They were the center of the Charter of Rights when

00:05:49.980 it was first brought in. Religion has been around for 2,000 years, but there's been a very casual,

00:05:57.420 from a prime ministerial perspective, a very casual reaction to, here's a word, to an epidemic

00:06:05.500 of arson burning of ecclesiastical structures. Now, I know it's in an inflamed context, pun intended,

00:06:13.900 but nonetheless, when there is civic destruction of places of worship under any kind of banner,

00:06:21.260 under any kind of motivation, it is to be condemned. And others have pointed out,

00:06:27.820 perhaps if it were a less familiar traditional religion, there would be all sorts of condemnations,

00:06:34.860 but he seems reluctant and slow to come out on this one. So to wrap it up, and it should be wrapped up,

00:06:40.700 he has taken a very light, a very casual, a very disinterested engagement with the institutions of

00:06:51.580 the commons, with the principles of accountability, with respect for the commons itself. And it seems to

00:06:59.500 be that this particular image government, if it can fix the focus so individually on himself, that may

00:07:06.060 have been the point of all those announcements on the back of the cottage, because it made a singular

00:07:11.740 image. Whereas in the House of Commons, even if it was virtually 30 or 40 people only, nonetheless,

00:07:19.340 he would be in a group. So yeah, we've lost the Canadian understanding of why these things count.

00:07:28.220 We don't realize that institutional strength is part of the bindings of democracy. And the more we

00:07:35.580 dismiss traditions and habitat statues, the more we weaken our hold on who we were and who we are.

00:07:43.260 If I can be so bold, I want to add one thing to the list. It goes back a number of years. He was

00:07:48.060 he was already liberal leader, but he hadn't become prime minister yet. And I always remember this day,

00:07:52.540 I was still living up in Ottawa when it happened, when Trudeau banished, banished liberal senators

00:07:59.820 from the liberal caucus, and he got rid of them. And we were all told it was this genius thing,

00:08:03.580 because he's actually making them independent senators and blah, and we were given all of this

00:08:06.860 spin and so forth. To me, that was such a, I don't want to call it like a Maoist move. It was the end

00:08:12.460 of institutional respect in terms of your elders, in terms of, you know, the record keeping of what

00:08:19.420 what the Liberal Party had traditionally been. I mean, that was him kind of saying, all right, you know,

00:08:24.060 this is the end of history. Now it's Trudeau moving forward. And wherever I want to personally take

00:08:28.940 this thing. Well, the very precise word for it is simple. It's imperious. I own the chair now and

00:08:37.180 whatever I say goes. And again, he does have certain assistance in this, in that his physical disposition,

00:08:46.780 his presentation, the looks, makes him seem to be not harmless, but a very agreeable person. The smile

00:08:55.420 is wide and permanent, and the manner is gentle and soft-spoken. But when you look at the actual

00:09:03.180 motions, I mean, who was he to declare a change in the function of the Senate? Who was he to ask

00:09:13.980 that, I think we'd like to expand billions and billions of dollars without parliamentary approval,

00:09:18.780 just for a couple of years? Who was he to be the first prime minister in history,

00:09:24.300 not to have a budget every year? We had to wait two years for a budget during the greatest expenditure,

00:09:30.140 at least since the Second World War. And we still know very little about this $450 billion.

00:09:38.300 It's simply too large to have been accounted for. The Auditor General, there's another disrespect,

00:09:44.460 the Auditor General was denied the supplementary funds needed to at least attempt to keep track

00:09:50.860 of all these things. So yes, it ties into, and I don't want to overdo it, but it can't be ignored.

00:09:58.220 The earlier statement, which is now a classic in the memory of those who have a memory for politics,

00:10:04.060 is that Canada is the first post-national state. It has no core values. What in the name of a subsidiary

00:10:13.580 god is that supposed to mean? What are you prime minister of if you have no idea of what the central

00:10:21.420 essentials of a country of this age and span and history and accomplishment? Where's the affection

00:10:29.580 for it if there's no center? What is the Canadian identity now? And he said there isn't one, so there

00:10:36.620 you go, blank slate to Vula Reza. He gets to remake it. I mean, it's really, it's paint by numbers,

00:10:41.980 color your world right now, Canada.

00:10:44.460 I don't know. It's a hard thing to kind of grasp, but you know, when you hear these,

00:10:51.260 I regard it as moronic. It's like, Coke is it was a slogan, I think, somewhere in the 70s. 0.86

00:10:58.300 Coke is it. Maybe you just stop for a second. It is so absolutely, infinitely vague. The it

00:11:07.100 could be anything and everything or nothing. And we have now build back better. Well, what was torn

00:11:15.100 down? We're talking about an epidemic, a medical catastrophe. There were no structures taken down.

00:11:20.620 There were no buildings burst off. We didn't cancel the present infrastructure. We didn't stop

00:11:26.140 the oil industry, the car industry. This is not a war in any efficient, non-metaphorical sense.

00:11:34.460 But now that we've spent the best budget we've ever, ever had, and we're drained of money,

00:11:39.740 there's this weird thing about, we're going to build back. Oh, by the way, don't worry. We're not

00:11:44.700 going to build back worse. We've opted to build back better. And that's supposed to surprise you,

00:11:53.660 the last adjective. I mean, these are nonsense statements, but they operate as functioning

00:12:00.940 slogans in this new slouch world that we have. And by the way, I should toss this in because it sounds

00:12:07.820 not too one-sided, but too dedicated. The conservatives have been pathetic, with the exception 0.99

00:12:14.780 of one or two, and you know who they are. But the conservative opposition to this and 0.99

00:12:19.900 the strength of their voice, the dedication and energy they should be putting into pointing out

00:12:25.340 the deficiencies, especially during this medical panic, the incompetence at the beginning,

00:12:33.740 not to ban flights, ban flights, racism, non-racism, get the vaccines, no vaccines, ventilators.

00:12:39.500 This has been one of the most mismanaged, dire crises of our time. And you almost have to,

00:12:47.100 well, you had to read you and some other people to get an idea that all things are not well.

00:12:51.980 They don't want the big questions. That's the problem with the conservatives,

00:12:55.020 with any opposition all across Canada has failed. They don't want the big questions. I know in Ottawa,

00:12:59.740 they're just so caught up in questions of process. So they love, they love the We Charity thing,

00:13:04.540 which was obviously an atrocity and they should, because it was all about who gave this document to this 0.84

00:13:08.380 personal work. They love the process. But the thing with the pandemic is, you know, it's the,

00:13:12.540 it's the big question. Do we actually need to be responding this way in the first place? Maybe,

00:13:17.820 dare I humbly suggest that maybe, you know, all these crazy restrictions aren't all entirely

00:13:23.020 necessary. But no, Aaron O'Toole would not touch a single bit of it. Well, again, I think it even goes

00:13:28.300 beyond, I agree with you there, that you take this specific issue. You see that also in the NDP. I mean,

00:13:34.380 Jagmeet Singh more or less is Siamese with, politically speaking, with Justin Trudeau.

00:13:40.860 But every now and then, Charlie Angus on the We Scandal provides a rocket of opposition. But

00:13:46.940 you notice it's very specific, it's always the one issue. But I'd go further than you. It's not that

00:13:52.540 the opposition doesn't take on the big issue, and there are a couple of the big issues. If Mr.

00:13:58.540 Trudeau maintains we have a post-national non-core identity, why is it Mr. O'Toole or his

00:14:06.460 predecessor, Mr. Scheer, why aren't they spelling out a unified idea for Canada? I mean, I love this

00:14:13.100 one statement by the former Trudeau. I thought it was good then, I think it's good now. Who speaks for

00:14:21.500 Canada? There has to be one voice that speaks of its central themes, its necessary preoccupations,

00:14:30.060 the mood of the generality of its citizens, the things we most adore from our past,

00:14:39.260 that emphasizes the continuities and the sustaining ideas and themes and relationships

00:14:46.060 that make us a unit. But in the present context, under the liberal idea anyway,

00:14:53.660 it seems, A, the national idea is some distant, vague miasma that they can't even determine what

00:15:01.420 it is. But secondly, they are fascinated. They are fascinated by the subsets of the various groups.

00:15:09.100 If it's not a sexual alliance, they go mad for all of the parades. Well, that's fine. But then it will

00:15:17.420 be something else. And then it will be grievance studies. It will be all these subtopics. What will

00:15:23.100 we do about conversions here? I'm not criticizing this, but they break down everything to an atomic 1.00

00:15:30.620 scale. And they got one policy for one particular group. They got another policy for that. They emphasize

00:15:37.180 group or racial identity or sexual identity. Listen, the first identity of every Canadian

00:15:45.340 who is a Canadian acting in his or her civil moment, not at home, in her civic being,

00:15:54.300 is citizen. There's the one we're all on the same page. We all share the same carry. We all are citizens

00:16:02.780 of a common enterprise called a country called Canada. And I would like to hear the word citizen

00:16:10.540 a hell of a lot more than I hear all of these subsets and subcategories. I know we must do this

00:16:17.100 for A, B, C, D, E, F, G. There is a thing called the Canadian citizen. There are 10 provinces and three

00:16:24.460 territories. They have common things. They have lasted for, in some cases, 150 years. We are bound together.

00:16:32.060 We've been in wars. Remind us of why we are a country as opposed to a splinter group of loosely aligned

00:16:39.740 or sometimes hostile provinces. And within the provinces, one group or subset striving to get

00:16:46.460 advantage or opportunity ahead of another. It's extremely divisive. I mean, it's really

00:16:52.540 splitting people into these different groups. Whereas I don't, you know, Canada Day, for instance,

00:16:55.980 we were just told we're not allowed to celebrate Canada Day because this, that, and the other,

00:16:59.900 they're in the splinter groups and so forth. I don't know why they don't do more to step forward

00:17:03.260 and say, you know, whatever is, let's talk to your point about parades and LGBT rights and so forth.

00:17:07.580 Why don't we point out the fact that, well, there's gay and lesbian folks in uniform in every police

00:17:11.100 force or they're out serving the Canadian armed forces. They're putting their life on the line for

00:17:14.860 everyone. There you go. That's a rallying thing, bringing us all together. I mean, talk about that

00:17:19.580 stuff, celebrate that, but oh no, let's focus on the divisive aspect of it instead, which is very frustrating.

00:17:25.260 It is always pointing out the individual characteristics of the collective's concern

00:17:32.220 and highlighting their disparities or their grievances. And all you're doing is setting up a

00:17:37.420 terrible contest between one group who has an ascendancy one moment, the Me Too movement at its grand

00:17:44.700 moment, then Black Lives Matter and every now and then. But where's the collective understanding?

00:17:50.300 Where are the appeals or the support for the idea of us all? This is the weakest time that Canada has

00:18:00.220 been. I remember 67, when they had the Expo and it was in Montreal and there were ruminations of

00:18:07.820 Quebec. But that, even if it was amateur or something of a Disney World moment, it was still a happy time.

00:18:15.100 Right. By the way, there's nothing wrong with occasional and controlled bursts of civic happiness.

00:18:21.100 And there was a spirit abroad in Newfoundland, in Northern Labrador, in BC, that we know we got all

00:18:28.140 these faults and we know we even have crimes. But we also had so much more. We built so many good

00:18:35.500 things. We've had so many good people. We've had sailors that jumped off of storm-tossed ships. We've had

00:18:43.740 soldiers who went to war. We've had mothers who cared for children in circumstances that you cannot

00:18:49.580 imagine. In other words, we've had the heroics of the ordinary people and the heroics of the standard

00:18:56.220 hero. There's a great saga here. But no, no, come up to the most recent 150th anniversary. I wrote about

00:19:02.220 this for sure. I don't even know if we were aware that we were celebrating 150. It was so flat,

00:19:10.060 so low-key, so uninspired. And usually, because Mr. Trudeau was so good at this,

00:19:17.340 he's a specialist, some sort of daily apology or something.

00:19:21.580 Oh, he totally did that then. It was outrageous. And a little quibble that I've always been meaning

00:19:26.380 to make about Canada 150. The headline musician, up there on the stage with Justin Trudeau and Sophie,

00:19:31.820 the headline musician for the performance, Bono from U2. And I'm like, excuse me?

00:19:37.900 No. Like, you know, why? Because it's, you know, his buddy and the globalist, this and that,

00:19:41.820 and all the issues. No, no, no. Canada 150, what you do, you get on the phone to the managers in LA

00:19:46.300 or wherever they are, to Brian Adams' manager, to Celine Dion's manager, and you say, all right,

00:19:50.460 you're either going to be here July 1st, or the RCMP is going to come and take your passport and make

00:19:54.300 you perform on this stage. You get Brian Adams, he just kicks butt with the, you know, that album,

00:19:59.260 back in the 80s. My lord, that's Canadian, a Bono. Really? No, because it was just a reflection of

00:20:05.180 Trudeau's own issues. I think at that time, by the way, I mean, you had, in some sort of

00:20:12.220 Parnassus Peak, you had Leonard Cohen, and you had, in another place, I admire greatly his lyric

00:20:21.340 gifts, Gordon Lightfoot. This man has been writing quite amazing songs. I'm even leaving the music

00:20:27.420 temporarily out of it. These yearning, nostalgic, melancholy pieces he puts together are very

00:20:34.940 powerful language. So, you know, you've got the intense talent to put on a Canadian, and by the

00:20:41.900 way, so many, many more. You've got them, not the state performers, not the ones you're always looking

00:20:47.020 at. Right, right. But there's a harvest of extremely competent, extremely artistically

00:20:53.580 accomplished people. And you don't go to Bono. You go to Bono when you want to put a rubber band

00:20:59.020 on your wrist and pretend that you're saving the African poor. 0.97

00:21:04.380 Ah, that is something. Yeah, I mean, it's so emblematic, I think, of the Trudeau kind of headspace.

00:21:13.740 And you mentioned the Auditor General and disrespect for that, and it made me think of

00:21:17.820 the Integrity Commissioner, no, Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Mary Dawson. And I'll

00:21:22.060 never forget, well, I do forget, but Lauren Gunter writes about it every few months. So he always

00:21:25.420 reminds me, because it's such an indication of Trudeau's headspace, where Mary Dawson sat down

00:21:31.900 and interviewed him about the conflict of interest thing and so forth. And it was ultimately concluded,

00:21:36.220 well, Trudeau doesn't really see himself as like a day-to-day manager. And you said the word

00:21:41.660 earlier, Rex, the imperial thing. He just sees himself as kind of this combination, you know,

00:21:46.380 mascot, hype man, the guy from on high who just gives the directions, the big thinker. But, you

00:21:51.740 know, don't bother him with the actual work stuff. So that's why we can't really have a conflict of

00:21:55.660 interest because, you know, he's not really doing the day-to-day work. I mean, this is what came across

00:21:59.900 in Mary Dawson's interview with Trudeau in terms of how he described his job.

00:22:03.420 Yeah, I also read that. It's, again, so casual. But I don't know, maybe it's illustrative of even

00:22:12.300 something broader than a prime minister's reign over a country. We seem to be wandering out of a

00:22:19.020 lot of sensible, conventional understandings of things, what were substantial understandings,

00:22:26.940 substantial truths, truths that were true in mathematics and in philosophy. We've become so

00:22:33.980 comforted and taken care of, and not under the pressures that so many people of the globe face.

00:22:42.220 We do not have famines. We do not have wild natural disasters on the scale of tsunamis, for example.

00:22:50.140 We haven't tasted civil war. We haven't had want since the 30s. I mean, in Newfoundland,

00:22:55.660 if you've got any kind of a memory, and especially if you remember your parents,

00:23:00.620 you know the days when people actually did not have food, did not have shelter, did not have heat,

00:23:09.100 when infant mortality was vicious, when tuberculosis was, when polio in the 50s closed the schools almost

00:23:16.300 every year, and you knew a child yourself. You were lucky it wasn't you. Your neighbor going around

00:23:22.380 with his legs strapped to a couple of pipes because they'd withered from polio. But we've jumped so far

00:23:29.340 out of that that I think we've become careless of all the gifts that we have. We don't pay attention

00:23:36.220 to how we got them, and we're not securing them. And so now we can afford to experiment in truly insane

00:23:43.020 ideas. I notice, for example, that this trans phenomenon, that people are getting fired, 1.00

00:23:49.900 I really cannot believe this. In certain institutions, universities, or corporations,

00:23:56.220 if a man or a woman, but particularly a woman, makes a really big assertion that, you know, 0.96

00:24:01.420 a person with testicles, and hairy legs, and a loud voice, and all that stuff, that he is a man, 0.96

00:24:09.980 and he is a man, and he's not a woman, and a man can't be a woman, they get fired. I mean, 0.99

00:24:17.420 why did we spend the last hundred thousand years getting down from the trees and wandering through

00:24:22.620 the plains till we get to the point where we have rockets on the outer planets, and decide that,

00:24:28.220 oh, you can call a woman a man if you want to, and if he or she feels like it, and we'll pass laws to 0.98

00:24:33.660 make sure you do. But this is so careless that it's dangerous. The laws part, and the firing part,

00:24:40.620 and you know, you mentioned civics earlier, Rex, and one thing that really disturbs me now is we no

00:24:45.820 longer have a sense of civil society in terms of an idea of community that is something distinct

00:24:52.300 from government. And the number of times people now look to a problem in their community, their

00:24:59.100 street, their wherever, even in their own homes, and they don't say, how can I solve this problem?

00:25:04.300 How can we solve this problem? Let's get the neighbors together. Let's get the band back together.

00:25:07.900 No, just demand it from government as this sort of like, you know, total absolute solution. I mean,

00:25:15.020 where did this come from? And it really frustrated me during the pandemic that we didn't see enough

00:25:19.500 community leaders step forward and lead. Well, again, I can't say how it came about,

00:25:26.140 except that I do underline that with the emergence of these vast and miraculous, again,

00:25:33.260 we've lost our sense of these miraculous technologies in the one we're using now.

00:25:40.300 I recall, if you don't mind a slight digression, when I had to write a column a long time ago

00:25:46.140 in Newfoundland, and I was 70 miles from St. John's, I had to lug out to the small table in the

00:25:52.780 kitchen, about a 200-pound typewriter, and then you'd wrestle with that and put it on six carbon

00:25:59.980 papers. Then I had to call a local bus, not really a bus, but it was a van. And I had to get up at six

00:26:08.780 in the morning, rain shine or some, and stand outside the door until he wheeled by. And I would

00:26:14.700 give him the six pages wrapped in plastic. Then he would drive it for three hours until he brought

00:26:19.580 it into the newspaper. I would then have, if I was lucky because the phone service was bad,

00:26:25.260 try to get in touch with the newspaper to see if indeed it had arrived. And then if they had any

00:26:31.260 problem with it, they weren't going to spend another $1.50 calling me back out 70 miles away.

00:26:36.780 In other words, it was a day's labor and some of the physical, the typewriter, 0.99

00:26:42.300 merely to get the damn useless column into a newspaper. Now I could be on the backside of the 0.98

00:26:49.260 moon and write a book and have it down here faster than that. We have walked past all of these great

00:26:56.860 miracles as if they were real. And we have children who have in their hands more knowledge

00:27:02.940 than the Library of Alexandria if A, they knew about it, and B, they could get it. These things have

00:27:08.700 made us indifferent to and ignorant of the basic skills of being human beings. 50 years ago back home,

00:27:18.860 any man that was worth a man, I wasn't one of them, they were building houses, building boats.

00:27:24.860 No one ever built a house themselves. The neighbors got together. They could put it up in two or three

00:27:29.020 weeks. If a fire went out, if the electricity failed, there was always someone who could fix it.

00:27:36.700 And, oh, you can't charge me for that. Well, where is that now? Whereas it certainly can't be in the

00:27:42.140 cities because you don't know the neighbor next door to you in the condo, but also a certain kind of

00:27:48.780 what I would call cheap wealth. You can buy big dinners or you can get a fancy coat,

00:27:54.380 but the real wealth is a bit of knowledge, skill, and independence. And the independence streak is

00:27:59.900 the one that is most declining. And secondly, that's tied to this identity politics where you

00:28:05.260 maintain that the collective identity is the dominant identity and is the agent of identity.

00:28:11.420 It's a crazy idea, but it really has hold the ignorance of specialization. I will say,

00:28:16.460 as someone who has small children in Ontario school system, the curriculum is very troubling

00:28:21.660 these days. And the other thing is it's pulled from the headlines. So right away,

00:28:25.580 whatever the thing people is prattling on about on social media and so forth, whatever the kind of

00:28:29.900 moral panic, social panic of the day is, it gets itself into the classroom almost immediately.

00:28:35.100 And it's happening in all the classrooms. This isn't just one or two teachers.

00:28:40.380 I've seen part of the curriculum for the grade nine mathematics and science of the Halton School

00:28:46.780 Board. And it's a social justice document. There's nothing about numbers. There's lots about

00:28:55.260 colonialism, imperialism, homophobia, name the topic. This is in a curriculum for grade nine science,

00:29:05.100 and mathematics. And it has more so-called social underpinnings. It has propaganda, to be blunt,

00:29:14.540 but it hasn't got numbers, and it hasn't got experiments. And it is not focusing on the thing

00:29:20.140 it is required by morals and law to focus on. Build their minds, not inject them with prefabricated

00:29:30.220 attitudes that suit your teacher's or school board's perspective.

00:29:35.900 And the problem is, what are these kids going to be able to do when they get out of school other

00:29:39.420 than tear down institutions? Well, the problem also is if you're a reasonable parent and you see this,

00:29:45.260 and they do, because I was given it by parents, what does the parent do? Should I take him or her out?

00:29:51.500 This is not school. But no one really wants to say that. By the way, where are the teachers?

00:29:56.780 I know that there are sane teachers. I know there are intelligent teachers.

00:30:00.940 Absolutely.

00:30:01.420 There are careful teachers. They know this stuff is wrong, and they should be saying it.

00:30:06.540 And I think that's part of the problem, that throughout all of these different professions,

00:30:12.460 lines of work, there's a whole lot of people who know... Here, I'll give you a great example. I

00:30:16.300 write a lot about the pandemic. I'm saying, this does not add up. And I'll get emails from

00:30:21.100 very prominent people in various fields, but in the medical field as well, who just say,

00:30:26.060 yeah, I'm on board with what you've written or what your reporting has been. And I'm so glad this

00:30:29.900 one doctor has spoken out and so forth. You know, please keep doing it. Oh, by the way,

00:30:33.740 don't tell anyone you heard from me or my name, because I can't or I won't because of X, Y, Z,

00:30:38.140 and so forth, even though this is the biggest crisis of our time. All right, see you later.

00:30:43.020 I've encountered this so often that it is really depressing. We don't have to put our lives on the

00:30:53.340 when we go to a school board meeting and disagree with one of the school board members. And if we don't

00:30:59.900 like a certain aspect of the curriculum, let's use that as the example, because it really isn't

00:31:05.100 teaching mathematics. It's teaching some sort of vague, ideological, temporary, and fadistic

00:31:12.860 preoccupation. And we should say to that school board member, look, get that foolish stuff out of 0.97

00:31:18.700 here. And let's see a well-designed mathematics program and backup for those students who need it 0.93

00:31:25.260 in their calculations and in their understanding of mathematical concepts. I don't want imperialism

00:31:31.820 and colonialism when I'm doing the exponential equation. Save that for later. It doesn't take

00:31:38.540 much courage. That's what bothers me. In an institution, in the CBC, in a corporation, some fool on Twitter

00:31:47.660 says, I am offended by that. Or this puts me in an unsafe space. Well, enjoy your space, 0.96

00:31:56.540 mister or madam. How come the institutions don't have the courage of their own sense? Most institutions

00:32:03.500 now have as their primary purpose either ducking social criticism or endorsing it. They do not do the

00:32:11.820 business that they are in the business to do. Broadcasters are not more concerned with information

00:32:17.740 and communication than they are with making the necessary adjustments to fit the latest equity

00:32:24.300 requirements. And in the present moment, the Black Lives Matter movement absorbs more of the thinking

00:32:30.380 attention, I would say, of the CBC. Then how in the hell can we get our audience back? Everybody is

00:32:37.020 bending to the wind of the moment. That is not the way to build a society. It's not the way to build a

00:32:43.100 city. And it is certainly not the way to consolidate a country. Look, and I respect a traditional mob

00:32:50.140 because you actually have to get up off the couch. You have to get the pitchfork from the garage. Maybe

00:32:53.820 you have to unlock the garage. And then you have to gather in the town square. I mean, it takes a

00:32:57.980 little bit of effort and you have to reconfirm that you're committed to it and so forth.

00:33:02.380 Now the mob, you don't get off the couch. You just remember you tweet. And the tweet is

00:33:06.780 so short. I mean, it's not anything real. It's not anything serious. And people were supposed to

00:33:11.660 go after people with these little things. And to your point about people losing their jobs,

00:33:15.580 somebody writes one word, two words, one brief sentence, and that's it. You know, they become

00:33:20.060 persona non grata. And this stuff is getting caked into the system more and more now. And we've got Bill

00:33:25.640 C-10 and Bill C-36, which is all designed to just further punish people for these minor missteps that

00:33:31.840 are most of them are just not things to get worked up about after all. And yet we almost want to

00:33:37.220 legally codify this sort of like manic attitude that we have now.

00:33:41.720 Well, again, I'll offer one. There used to be, you know, you're far younger than I am, so you won't

00:33:48.780 remember this. There's no possibility that you can. But once upon a time, there was such a thing called

00:33:54.880 the press and the news media. Again, it's so far beyond your time.

00:34:00.260 I don't recall it.

00:34:00.760 You probably can't even fantasize what it is. And it's something really stupid and really silly. 1.00

00:34:05.800 Like, well, they wouldn't have known it then. But if they could have imagined that 1.00

00:34:09.800 some clown under a spider's web in the basement said something nasty about a public figure or

00:34:16.520 an employee that the senior management of the company would immediately, or the universities in 0.66

00:34:21.920 particular, because they're really good at getting rid of the people that they think might

00:34:26.780 cause them some difficulty with the Twitter public, in the days of the news media, they

00:34:32.640 would they would say, let's have a look. Let's find the person who sent the damn tweet. Let's 1.00

00:34:37.180 examine whether it was coordinated. Let's see if there was a campaign. Let's examine these

00:34:42.980 things. Likewise, with protest movements. I am so ill. When you hear that, oh, seven protesters

00:34:49.800 stood on the Yonge Street and barred off traffic. Well, a reporter would say that, yes, there are

00:34:56.720 protesters. They do have a cause. But who are they? Are they official? Are they self-appointed?

00:35:02.520 Did they just get up some morning and decide that they were this organization? Environmental

00:35:07.200 organizations. The environmentalists in British Columbia are opposed to the old wood cutting.

00:35:15.120 Well, who are they? Have they been at others? Is this their profession?

00:35:18.020 Why do they have more standing than their opponents? And on the Twitter and internet mass

00:35:25.000 mobbings, they should be, the headline news should be, hey, a mass mob of anonymous people 0.99

00:35:31.840 has really attacked X or Y. If J.R. Rowling, J.K.R. Rowling, she makes, again, the point of history

00:35:41.140 and biology that men are not women. There was a time this sentence was not controversial.

00:35:48.120 And she gets hate attacked. Now, all the sensitive people, even in Mr. Trudeau's government,

00:35:54.380 they're so against hate. But when J.K. Rowling gets hated, you don't see someone coming out from

00:36:01.400 the cabinet and saying, this will not stand. A famous and an accomplished author, a female, 0.99

00:36:09.480 a woman who worked herself off from social welfare to one of the triumphant figures of 0.99

00:36:14.220 the world, is being slandered by an anonymous troop. We will find out who these people are,

00:36:20.280 and we will ask them what's the basis for their hate. No, no, no. J.K. Rowling is transphobic.

00:36:27.360 Where did that word pop up? You wouldn't see it in the dictionary three years ago.

00:36:31.980 And where did this lost art of disagreement start to crumble away? I mean, the bottom line,

00:36:38.480 J.K. Rowling, you agree, you disagree, you get on with your day. I mean, you hosted a call-in

00:36:42.280 show for many years. People call in. They say all sorts of stuff. I mean, I get the emails from

00:36:46.360 the correspondents. They agree. They disagree. You go out for beer. Someone tells you,

00:36:49.520 you say, oh, did you vote conservative? Did you vote NDP? No, I voted for the Canadian

00:36:52.340 Communist Party. Oh, well, what do you know? And anyway, then you order your next round of beer.

00:36:55.940 I mean, I've been in those CBC green rooms where you're actually shaking hands with the person who

00:37:00.840 later on air you disagree with. It ain't that big of a deal, people. Like, you know, some people like

00:37:06.340 Star Trek, some people like Star Wars, other people have different political views. I don't get why

00:37:10.100 we have to crucify everyone now. No, no. When people, especially on television and radio shows,

00:37:16.300 when the microphone is placed before them, they adopt a persona. The persona is one of

00:37:22.060 their group, their in-group. It could be a race group. It could be a political group. It could

00:37:26.860 be a sexual group. There's all sorts of groups. But they want to be the collective voice of the

00:37:32.120 whole. They cannot, by their own lights, afford to have the slightest disagreement with the

00:37:39.060 doctrines. And they are doctrines. They are doctrines as much as any religious doctrine was

00:37:44.120 a doctrine in the age of religions. And they know they will be blended as heretics. 0.99

00:37:49.380 Have you ever heard a single environmentalist saying, you know, if the world is going to burn,

00:37:54.100 and that's what we think it is, and we've been saying it for 40 years, then I think it would be

00:37:58.600 a really great idea, even though it has its perils, that we introduce nuclear power. It really is the

00:38:04.880 only one that is completely free of the emissions that we so fear. Or have you ever heard an

00:38:11.640 environmentalist say, you know something, that last protest was infiltrated by people

00:38:16.520 who have nothing to do with us, and they have no knowledge of the circumstance in which they are

00:38:21.900 protesting? When have you heard, ever, I know I'm slightly digressing, but when have you ever heard

00:38:28.100 an analytic report of any major demonstration from the G70 10 or 11 years ago to the latest mass

00:38:38.020 gathering in Montreal or Baltimore? Where's the analysis, by the way, of 100 nights in Portland

00:38:45.460 that was known? This is mainly a peaceful demonstration, says the reporter, as the tree

00:38:50.980 story building behind him goes up in an inferno. The answer to your question is what I referred to

00:38:58.020 earlier. Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a news media that had eyes, had ears,

00:39:05.840 ears, and occasionally had the capacity to tell the truth. That news media has shrunk. And what we have

00:39:12.480 now is performance art. And all the people who go on these shows, once they come on, they don the mask,

00:39:18.160 and the mask is more real than the person. And the person has no conscience because he or she

00:39:23.440 never really says what he or she really thinks and actually knows.

00:39:29.360 All right. Well, speaking of things that someone older than me can answer a lot better than I can,

00:39:34.160 was there ever a time, Rex, in Canadian politics when politicians weren't also donning the mask and

00:39:40.160 weren't also total phonies in pretty much everything they said? Because I do not remember that.

00:39:44.000 Well, no, there probably wasn't, but it was never, ever to the intensity and scale of this.

00:39:51.440 It was never structured and powered by systems of communication that are instant and mass at the

00:40:00.960 same time. It was also a period when people were not quite willing to surrender all of their

00:40:08.800 intelligence and all of their common sense to maintain visibly erroneous, in fact, illogical,

00:40:17.600 paradoxical, oxymoronic ideas. A man is not a woman. This is not a radical statement. 0.86

00:40:26.480 But again, and this is true, you know it, on campuses, in universities, in certain news stations.

00:40:33.920 I even saw a debate on CBC where a woman was arguing that point and the two hosts

00:40:41.520 kept nudging her that, you know, you're transphobic. I mean, you're only a woman. 0.98

00:40:47.120 So why are you, we have, we have genuflected, we have taken the knee to so many irregular and false 0.98

00:40:57.280 notions and paid artificial respect to them. The triumph of hypocrisy has always had some

00:41:04.880 attendance, but it has never been as full. It has never been as full as it is today.

00:41:10.960 Do you see a way out? I mean, when we see things happening that are literally out of like 1960s

00:41:20.960 China Cultural Revolution playbook, and you think, well, I feel like they get worse before 0.98

00:41:25.920 they get better. What are the next steps?

00:41:30.400 I can't project them. I really don't. It becomes, I'm not being, you know, shouting at it. It has become

00:41:37.920 so absurd in so many directions. For example, sensitivity trainings, unconscious bias. Oh,

00:41:46.160 you don't know your bias. I do. And I'm going to order you to take training. This silent consent to

00:41:53.040 every wild doctrine that some unappointed, you know, so-called radical throws out. The cringe,

00:42:02.480 the bending to whatever is the opinion of the moment. The lack of courage that you spoke of. It's not

00:42:12.720 great courage. It's not like death courage. At worst, it's job courage. And in most cases, it isn't even

00:42:19.680 that. I don't know where it goes. There have been some attempts to remind people of rationality,

00:42:28.160 of decency, of civility, of their connection to their own country, which most of them actually

00:42:35.760 really do like or love. Certainly, they like their provinces and the parts of the provinces where they

00:42:41.120 live. But to demonstrate an affection for either of those areas, people are shy. We had a Canada Day,

00:42:49.920 and this is only days ago, when it seemed like it wasn't. It seemed like half the country wanted to

00:42:55.760 cancel. What kind of country? We know we have deep and truly, you know, outrageous episodes in our

00:43:05.280 history. But we also have counter episodes. But it cannot come to the point where you say you disown by

00:43:14.320 silence the work of 150, 200 years and multiple generations, and so many hundreds and thousands

00:43:22.720 and hundreds of thousands of also good people. This is not a difficult concept. And we are making

00:43:29.600 genuine efforts. They may have been sloppy. And in terms of government, they may have been

00:43:34.000 grossly inefficient. But the soul of Canadians in the main is very much with those who have genuinely 0.79

00:43:41.120 suffered. And there is a genuine regret and there's a genuine impulse if the means is there to fix.

00:43:48.800 This is not a deeply racist country. All of these things are now radical. And again, you ask how

00:43:56.080 we pass it? I have no idea. Because I don't see the resolution in any particular form. The political

00:44:03.200 parties are only too content to keep up this kind of show, this serrade. If we're going to have an election on

00:44:11.040 conversion therapy rather than the expenditure of 500 billion dollars and the management of the

00:44:17.520 pandemic, I think it'll be time to despair. But you saw conversion therapy walk into the news very 0.99

00:44:23.520 recently. I mean, how blatant can you get? And by the party ended like this. If the Conservatives can't

00:44:31.360 really find a spirit and make a challenging statement of what they would like to see,

00:44:38.320 what the country is and what they will really do. Don't give me ads.

00:44:43.440 Give me your heart. Give me your truth. Say what you mean. You don't need a professional

00:44:47.520 communications firm if you've got something to say. I don't know. I don't want to sound despairing.

00:44:53.280 I'm sure your audience is a much more cheerful bunch than the person you're having as a guest.

00:44:57.120 Well, hold on. But before we go to wrap it up, to bring it back to what we were talking about with

00:45:01.200 institutions, it seems like a lot of we're talking about festers most in institutions,

00:45:06.160 in government settings, in bureaucracies, in academia. But when you look at those polls,

00:45:11.120 should we cancel Canada Day? You find out, well, white liberals kind of like the idea leftists and so

00:45:15.680 forth. But, you know, persons, new immigrants and so forth, persons of different backgrounds,

00:45:19.520 they're actually not so inclined to support that. We thought, you know, is Canada a deeply racist

00:45:23.760 country and so forth. I mean, I do think there's still quite a great sort of unifying,

00:45:28.560 powerful heart and soul out there. And the us and them is just all the regular decent folks

00:45:33.360 versus the elites. Well, I don't know if elites, because that's the word I'm kind of teasing,

00:45:38.880 but you're right on this. The so-called professional classes, the journalists, the academics,

00:45:44.880 the classes that didn't get affected by the pandemic. No one lost their salary. Here's a simple

00:45:50.240 way to answer by way of illustration. And I'm not making it up. I know still a young woman in the

00:45:58.000 CBC who came over from one of those desperate Eastern European countries where her parents 0.52

00:46:04.960 literally had been persecuted, where her grandfather had been put in jail. And she was one of the last to

00:46:11.520 escape about 15, 16, 17 years ago and slip out of the nightmare of an Eastern Bloc country and get 1.00

00:46:21.760 over to Canada. And she's so pleased. I also know a Chinese family. They're my favorite family of all.

00:46:28.800 Two kids, two parents, little education, but workers. They've been here for, again, about 17, 18, 20 years,

00:46:36.880 working at very low-class jobs, happier than the angel in paradise. They've got a free country. Their

00:46:45.040 daughters can go to the school. Even though they labor mightily, they have said it over and over again,

00:46:51.760 how good it is. You can feel the pulse of excited joy in their answers. And the lady from the Eastern Bloc,

00:47:00.800 when she finally arrived at CBC, I won't say her position or where, and after a while heard the

00:47:07.760 kind of silent barriers to saying certain things, to adopting an opinion not current with the hard left.

00:47:15.280 She actually said this, and others have said it too. You know something? I thought I left this.

00:47:21.360 Jordan Peterson interviewed the Korean lady Park, and she spoke of her in North Korea.

00:47:28.000 And you imagine her life, escape, capture, prostitution, starvation. But she, one of a million,

00:47:38.720 escaped one out of a million. And she went to Columbia University at the end of her great

00:47:46.160 odyssey. And she found there, in a softer version, she said, this is something like what I fled from,

00:47:55.360 that the greatest, richest, most open countries in the world are putting a mental blinker, a mental

00:48:02.000 blanket and an emotional blanket over saying truths. And the press are corrupt. Three years of the Russian 0.99

00:48:10.880 collusion. I know it's not popular to say because it's Trump. It was a lie. It was a damn concoction.

00:48:18.080 It is a plain lie. But for three years. So, you know, at this stage, we need to repair ourselves. 1.00

00:48:26.720 And to get right to your point, the people who are not into professional classes, the people who are not

00:48:32.080 absorbed with the news, the people who are certainly not on the panels, they remain sane.

00:48:37.440 I speak in a town in Saskatchewan, Wayburn, at a farmers meeting a couple of years ago. This stuff hasn't

00:48:47.280 corroded their minds. But the preoccupations of people in high places, in politics, in the high

00:48:54.880 corporations, especially in the schools and universities, I don't know why they've wandered

00:49:00.400 into this pit. But they're in it, they like it, and they want to impose it on the rest of us. So we should

00:49:07.520 resist. And I presume that's why you're so noble in this career.

00:49:13.680 And Rex Murphy, I know it's those regular folks of all walks of life who thank you

00:49:17.200 for what you're doing. And we thank you for joining us today. Thank you, sir.

00:49:20.960 You take care. See you later.

00:49:22.400 Same to you. All the best.

00:49:24.480 Full Common is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury.

00:49:27.520 This episode was produced by Andre Pru, with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:49:31.280 Kevin Libin is the executive producer. You can subscribe to Full Common on Apple Podcasts,

00:49:35.920 Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can help us by giving us a rating or a review,

00:49:41.120 and by telling your friends about us. Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - July 18, 2021

Rex Murphy on the 'progressives' that are recklessly vandalizing Canada's legacy

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript