The Overthrow of Free Speech, Merit, and Equality in Post-Liberal Canada
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Summary
Bill C-10 is being debated in the House of Commons, and there are concerns that it infringes upon freedom of speech. Should the government have the power to police our words and conduct on social media platforms? In this episode, we speak with Bruce Pardy, a professor of law at Queen's University and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, to ask the question: Do we have free speech in Canada anymore?
Transcript
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Hi everyone, thanks for joining us to discuss a very important and often heated issue, free
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speech. The conversation has only become more pressing these days as we debate Bill C-10 in
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the House of Commons, what can and can't be said during the pandemic, restrictions on the online
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world, political and academic censorship, and how to tackle extremism of all sorts. But before we
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get to our guest, I want to tell you a story. I never forget this incident that happened to me
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over 15 years ago. I attended a public event at the University of Toronto, where I was a student at
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the time, and it was on the issue of hate speech. The topic was, is hate speech free speech? The
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speaker, a tenured professor at the school, was writing a book on the issue, and he ultimately
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concluded that, yes, hate speech, however much you may hate it, is indeed free speech, generally
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speaking. Yes, it's good that there are already laws governing things such as a defamation and
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libel, and you certainly can't threaten to kill a person and get away with it, but everything else,
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you know, being a jerk, saying really offensive things online, well, you know, it may not be
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desirable, don't raise your kids to be that guy, but it's not against the law, and it shouldn't be.
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So that was the general thrust of the event that I attended, which in advance was advertised in the
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student papers, online, and on posters around the school. And oh boy, you won't believe what happened
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at that event. Several dozen people showed up. The professor, who was rather bland and apolitical,
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gave his presentation. Afterwards, people asked questions. Some agreed. Some disagreed. Unfortunately,
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there was no free food there, which is one of the main reasons students attend such extracurricular
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events, and so afterwards, everyone just went home, and that was it. That's my story. Kind of remarkable,
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right? Because not long after that, similar events on free speech happened at campuses around the
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country, and they did not go over so well. Fire alarms pulled, protests, violence even. And now
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universities know better, and such events, well, they just don't really happen anymore. Such
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conversations don't happen anymore, not just on campus, but anywhere. Was my little polite and
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respectful free speech event the end of an era? What is happening on campuses today? In broader society,
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online, in our legislatures? Do we have free speech in Canada anymore? Does the controversial
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Bill C-10 infringe upon free speech, or are such concerns overblown, and yes, government must do
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more to police our words and our online conduct? One of the best guests in Canada to tackle this issue
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is Bruce Pardy, a professor of law at Queen's University and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
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He joins us now. Hey, Bruce, how are you doing?
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Yeah, great to have you. Thanks so much for joining us. Let's jump right into it. You wrote a recent column
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in the National Post on Bill C-10, that legislation that, well, it was making its way through the
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House of Commons, and now it kind of seems like a fait accompli. It's going to be enacted. And you
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say pretty forward in that column, Bill C-10 is an autocratic piece of legislation. Describe
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what the bill is to us and, well, why we are facing something as troubling as autocratic legislation
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and what should be Free Canada. Right. So Bill C-10, when you first read the draft,
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it doesn't sound autocratic. It doesn't sound like it's a real threat because all it claims to do is
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to update the Broadcasting Act so as to give the CRTC the jurisdiction to regulate online companies as
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well as the regular television and radio stations to bring the Broadcasting Act into the 21st century.
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So it sounds pretty boring. I mean, already for regular listeners, they're glazing over and they're
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like, yeah, CRTC stuff, you know, I don't care. What does this have to do with me?
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Exactly. Exactly. And when the bill first came out, people thought exactly what you just said,
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like, yeah, whatever. But the first iteration of the bill had an exception in it. And the exception
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was that that it would not apply to the online content of individual users of social media
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platforms. That means that the CRTC would have no jurisdiction to oversee what you put in your video
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on YouTube. While in committee, that exception was removed. And so although it is still the case
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that the CRTC will not regulate you directly if you put videos or pictures or the like, but it will have
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the jurisdiction to police that content and to do so by policing and regulating the online platforms
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themselves. And so in other words, what the CRTC now has the power to do is to make these online
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platforms regulate their users. And so for example, if you put together a video and you post it on
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YouTube, it might be that nobody watches it because YouTube has put it at the bottom of the list.
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They've buried it at the behest of CRTC policies. And that means that your online speech is no longer
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free, whether or not you are putting stuff up there or whether or not you're trying to watch it or
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listen to it or read it. You just can't tell now whether you're getting the real goods because
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it's CRTC will now be interfering in what you see. And you know, it's really interesting. One
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thing I learned at Lauren Gunter writing about in a column recently in the post media paper saying
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the liberals have actually budgeted nearly $4 million this year just for the CRTC to hire
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consultants and start staff working on a proposal for how much more money and staff they're going to
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need to sort of monitor all of these internet activities. And it's like, oh, they actually
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are. This is not just about tweaking one word here or there for, you know, whatever technical reason,
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but it looks like they are planning to start doing stuff.
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Oh, yes. Now they're taking this very seriously. And what I mean by that is that we are now in the
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era where it actually is not accepted as a given that speech shall be free, that what you say is your
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business and what you want to listen to is your business. That's not true. Now, mind you, in this
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country, we've been in a situation for a long time that that hasn't been the case on TV and radio,
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because the CRTC for a long time has regulated Canadian content and so on. So this is a long
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pedigree. But it is really becoming extreme now. If you were to put that proposition to somebody in
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the government, I think, or at the CRTC, do you believe that speech, the default position for
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speech is that speech is free and government should not be interfering? I don't think that idea would
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be accepted. And everything else follows from that. Now, one of the things that's very odd is
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the justifications that have come about for both Bill C-10 and kind of other ways that Heritage
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Minister Stephen Guilbault and other figures in the Liberal government talk about all this. Because
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in one breath, they talk about, look, this is really just about Canadian content. And we need
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a mechanism to sort of ensure that, you know, Netflix and Amazon Prime and so forth are sort of
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living up to their obligations and maybe new ways to get some tax dollars for them for CanCon and so
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forth and all that. And you go, okay, I don't know if this is the mechanism for it. Fine. And then in
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other breaths, we've seen Stephen Guilbault go before committee hearings and talk about the fact that,
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oh, one should not, for instance, be allowed to, like, criticize public servants because it makes
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their jobs difficult. Or, like, really bizarre comments like that where you're like, what on
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earth is going on here? We have Michael Wernick, who was the former chief clerk of the Privy Council,
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so, of course, the top public servant in all of the country on a federal level, saying, look,
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this online environment's crazy. You know, we got to crack down on stuff that's going on. I mean,
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they talk about the CanCon in one breath. And then, like I said, they're really talking about,
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I don't know, you're not even allowed to say you don't agree with the public service.
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Right. Yes. And the liberals, in addition to C-10, the liberals have been promising to bring forth
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other legislation that will directly regulate so-called hate speech and misinformation
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online. And you know you're in trouble when governments propose to do that, because, of course,
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the definition of hate speech, the definition of misinformation is going to be in their hands.
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That's just full-blown censorship. And that's the route that we're on. I don't know if it'll
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happen in this session, because this session is running out of days. But if the liberals are to
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be re-elected, this is one of the things that they have said that they will do. And that goes far
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beyond what Bill C-10 threatens to do. This will be, at least they've suggested, it will be more of a
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direct government control over what you can and cannot say online.
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One of the things that I find very interesting about the misinformation conversation is the kind
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of ever-changing definitions that are going on and the lack of specificity of, okay, what exactly
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are we talking about here? I can give one really clear-cut example of misinformation that is very
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problematic. So former Colonel Russell Williams, he has been convicted of murder, of course. He was a
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former Colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces, and he is incarcerated right now. A few years ago,
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there were Eastern European and, I guess, Russian allied media who were claiming that the Canadian
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troops who were stationed over in that area, over in Eastern Europe, for the sort of NATO missions we
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do to sort of check Russian aggression and so forth, there was media claiming that he was the
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commanding officer on the ground. So, of course, the goal of that was to let the, for the people to not
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support the presence of Canadian forces in their communities and say, look, they got a murderer.
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They got this crazy guy running things over there. You do not trust Canadians. You go, that's flat-out
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misinformation. And Bruce, I think it hits a really technical definition. There's a whole season of
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the TV show Homeland where misinformation plays a role in what happens in national security. I go, okay,
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fine. You know, makes sense. Other times, I've been really surprised when we talk about, say,
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coronavirus, how we talk about the pandemic. Facebook set out all these rules for things that they are
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going to ban and restrict you talking about online. And that involved basic things like,
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well, you can't say it leaked from a lab in Wuhan. Well, why can't you? Oh, that's a,
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that's a misinformation thing. That's a conspiracy. Oh, well, why is it? Well, because it is. We all
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know that. And then, of course, we're now at the point where, oh, maybe, maybe it seems like it
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actually, maybe likely did leak from a lab. Oh, okay. We'll let you post about that again. I mean,
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I think, Bruce, those are pretty clear-cut examples of, do we really want to talk about, like,
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regulating in the House of Commons, this very amorphous term?
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No, no, we don't. We definitely do not, for the reasons that you're citing.
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But part of the difficulty now is that some of us are assuming old things, and those things have
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moved on in the minds of many. So when we talk about, when they talk about misinformation,
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they, and they wouldn't, they wouldn't put it this way, but I would describe that as what they
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really mean is information they don't like, or information that's not consistent with the way
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they see the world. And we've seen during this pandemic, all kinds of misinformation and propaganda
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being promoted by governments. And if those governments had control over online platforms,
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then all of the other more accurate information that is available from all kinds of interesting
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places, including people who are educated and intelligent about medical matters, like doctors
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and other kinds of institutions, Great Barrington Declaration, and so on, those voices would be in
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danger of being silenced. And so this is the era where political correctness has, it never really
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left, but it has faded away for a while and has reemerged as a real thing. And people forget
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what political correctness actually means. Some say political correctness originated in the Soviet
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Union. And the meaning of political correctness is this. It is distinct from something that is
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actually correct. Something is called politically correct because it's not actually correct. In other
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words, you must go along with this, because if you don't, you'll get into trouble, even though it's not
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true. That's what politically correct means. And so if you have governments that insist upon political
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correctness, then the danger is you're not actually getting the real stuff. And, and so in the present era,
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One of the things that I found very interesting when I've been doing various reports and writing in columns
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on what's happening during the pandemic, I was one of the first people to, to write about
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comorbidity data here in Canada. And last fall, I guess, October, November, I wrote
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several pieces out. The Alberta government has much more robust
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reporting and public disclosure of comorbidity. And around the time, and the numbers pretty much held
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constant, about 75% of people who have died of coronavirus in Alberta had three or more
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underlying health conditions, three or more. And the percentage of people who had died of COVID who
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had zero underlying health conditions was something like 2.5% at the time. And those people would have
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included people, you know, over 80 in their 90s and so forth who had died of the virus. I wrote this
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out in a column because I think Canadians, you know, deserve to know basic, you know, nuanced contextual
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information, 101 facts about what's happening. And Health Minister Patty Hadju actually rose during
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question period and labeled my writing fake and dangerous news. And it's like, I really just
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directly quoted from the Alberta Health Services website. I mean, maybe you don't like some of the
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way I wrote this sentence or that sentence, maybe another media outlet would have written it
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differently, but there's nothing fake about it. It's just government statistics. And there she was,
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the health minister, you know, denouncing me for all this. And then the prime minister also got in
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on it a little bit as well later. And it's like, is this the new standard?
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Yes, that's exactly what I mean. That is a new standard. The new standard is becoming
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a government that insists that their version of things is correct. And that quite literally,
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you should not be allowed to contradict them. And a lot of people understandably can't get that
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through their heads because it is so alien to what we think is the case and what has been the case for
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so long in this country. We are experiencing a cultural revolution in this country. We are in
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a moment where you can see the ground shift. Now, it's been in the works for a long time.
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It has a long pedigree, as I said earlier, but we have really have reached a kind of tipping point
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where governments, federal government, for example, in the instance that you're speaking about,
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are openly saying, no, no, you should not be allowed to say that, even though it's based upon
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our stats. It's not the message we prefer. It's not the truth as we see it. And therefore,
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it is misinformation that that that would be unbelievable at a different time. Today,
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it's almost run of the mill. You're using the phrase cultural revolution. I mean, let me ask,
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are you using that phrase lightly? Or do you mean maybe this portends even more dramatic things,
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such as we saw in previous occurrences called the cultural revolution in China,
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some five, six decades ago? Yes. Who knows where it will lead? I mean, I'm not drawing a direct
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parallel, but there are lots of historical examples of things going badly at moments like this. And I
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don't think that we can be assured that things won't go similarly or some other bad place in this
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country. If you look at all kinds of things that we take for granted as self-evidently true,
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the validity of individualism, the idea of sovereignty over your own decisions, health decisions,
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decisions about what to say, what to believe, the idea of merit, the idea of equal application of the
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law, equal treatment. So if you have a job posting, say for the government, the idea that everybody
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could be allowed to apply for that job, regardless of who they are, what race they are, what sex they
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are, what religion they are, that idea is out. Governments are now posting jobs for people of
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particular groups, and other groups are not eligible. This is part of the revolution, and it is
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happening before ours. Professor, let's talk about camp as something that you have a lot of experience
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on, because I gave that anecdote about this public event that was, I guess, a controversial issue,
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but it was such a polite experience. And I guess people maybe had some problems with a few of the
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things being said, but they just raised their hands, they disagreed, and I don't remember any
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drama going on. And I really do feel like that was the last time something like that happened. Am I
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being dramatic, or am I saying that I did witness, you know, I was sort of on the last helicopter out
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of Vietnam, or, you know, that was like something, that was like an event, that sort of experience that
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I had over 15 years ago? Yeah, yeah, it might have been the last one, Anthony, I don't know when the
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last one was, but it certainly is different than what might occur today. So for example, in 2018,
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I think it was, I invited Jordan Peterson to give a talk at Queens. And in response to the announcement
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of the event, a large number of my faculty colleagues put together an open letter to the
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principal, saying that essentially that this should not be allowed, because of Jordan Peterson's odious
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and ill-advised views. And that does an extraordinary thing, because all he was planning
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to do, and all I was planning to do, was to have him on the stage, to have him state things as he saw
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them. And to allow for critical questioning, I imagine, from the audience, if the audience wants
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to object to what someone is saying, feel free to, you know, challenge the person or disagree with
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them, and so forth. We had a long question and answer period in the event, and it was a long lineup of
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of people at the microphone asking really good probing questions, and the event itself was
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terrific. But it was an extraordinary lead up to the event, because at these academic institutions,
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which by the way, for the most part, still insist that they are committed to academic freedom.
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I mean, you'll be very hard pressed to find an institution that would say openly that, oh no,
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we don't believe in academic freedom. But there's usually a but attached to it. Academic freedom,
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yes, but. But, you know, you shouldn't, you shouldn't have hate speech, you shouldn't have
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misinformation, you're not allowed to harass people, you're not allowed to cause them harm,
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you're not allowed to deny their existence, and so on. So in other words, academic freedom, yes.
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Well, at face value, I mean, I would agree with all of those assertions, but I guess to go back to what
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you were saying earlier, it's that a lot of times those accusations, those phrases are used to
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kind of pick and choose. Well, that's exactly right. That's exactly the point. The picking and
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choosing is going on. So for example, let's take the issue of transgenderism and identity, which is one
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of the most, the prettiest questions today. Right? So if you were a professor, and you stood up in
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class, you know, in a class in which the topic is pertinent, and we, that you had a discussion about
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identity and transgenderism and transition and so on, would you be safe in suggesting that a person
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who was born a man is always a man? Say from what though? Because one would face consequences to
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maybe, you know, wading into a controversial issue. Right. And this is a phrase that is often
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used now. You're free to speak, but you're not free from the consequences of what you say. And in
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some respects, that's correct. It's always been the case, right? People are allowed to react to what
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you said in the way they see fit. And this gets to the core of our liberal society, right?
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The idea of freedom is reciprocal. Everybody has it. So if you are a man, and you want to call
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yourself a woman, then you are free to do so, because that's the nature of freedom. Right. But
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everybody else is free too. And so they should be free to, to hear your claim, and then to respond
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to it as they see fit, because they're free like you are. So if you say you're a woman, and they say,
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no, you're not. Well, now you're both engaging in your free exchange of ideas. And the idea that
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the first person's selection of their identity is the one that governs everybody is, it's contrary
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to that idea. So if, if you are not safe in a classroom saying, no, I don't agree. I think if
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you're born a man, then you're always a man. You, if, if the idea of liberal free speech,
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and the idea of academic freedom is actually being followed, then that's a perfectly fine
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statement. What about persons in the classroom who say, look, a theoretical discussion is one
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thing, but I do not want to be subjected to sort of personal, you know, personal abuse,
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personal criticism, things that are targeting me, you know, specifically in this moment.
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Well, but it's not a matter of targeting somebody in the classroom specifically, if you're having
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a, an academic conversation about these issues, then it's not a matter of pulling somebody up
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from the classroom and saying, look, you, you, you know, you're, you're a, not a woman, you're
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a man or vice versa, or whatever the case may be. It's not about signaling somebody out. It's
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talking about the, the, the conceptual question. And that kind of conversation is also apparently
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now in many places beyond the pale. Professor, I want to get your thoughts on something that
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happened at Queens university, where you were stationed several years ago, a group of students
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put together something called the free speech charter. They were basing it on something that
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happened originally, I believe at the university of Chicago, which has a great pedigree of really
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being a bastion of free thinking, a liberal exchange of ideas that the great books program by
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their, their former president many decades ago. And it was really considered a great sort of
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liberal arts facility and so on. Queens sort of taking that, this enshrining the free speech
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charter. That was kind of a big moment. And a lot of people, well, some people plotted
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those students. Other people did not support all of that. And then there was the idea, would
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it catch wildfire? Would you see this happening at other universities and would administrations
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enshrine it? And maybe one or two did, but by and large that, that kind of fizzled away.
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Why is that? Was it too controversial? Was there just not an appetite for it?
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Well, the universities today, especially in Canada, but not just in Canada, are essentially
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captured by a particular constellation of interests, faculty, students, administration. And
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they're not all of one mind to a person. But as constituencies, they pretty much all agree
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about many of these issues. And those interests, because they are powerful on campus, will not
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allow the kind of open dialogue that you're speaking of. The Chicago principles are good.
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And in fact, they were mentioned in a policy document developed by the Ford government that
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purported to require Ontario universities to adopt their own free speech policies that were
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consistent with those Chicago principles, so as to protect and promote free speech and academic
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freedom. And that policy was very well intended. And the idea is good, but its actual impact has been
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not great. It has been a sort of a feeble document to try to accomplish what needs to be done, for sure,
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but it's just in the wrong form and doesn't work very well. And so we're still stuck with the status quo for now.
00:24:42.180
Yeah. And the status quo, you would say, is not amenable right now to freedom of discussion, whatever the matter is.
00:24:49.860
Well, let's not go quite so far, because in many respects, discussion is able to be conducted on campus.
00:24:57.740
I mean, it's not... So when I teach my classes, nobody has said to me, look, Hardy, don't talk about this or that,
00:25:05.000
or you're getting into trouble. Nobody has said that, and nobody was suggested.
00:25:09.460
I'm tenured, yes, but even some tenured people at some universities across the country have gotten into trouble
00:25:18.040
for things that they've said. Sometimes it's been stuff they've said on social media, sometimes not, sometimes in
00:25:23.600
papers, sometimes not. And so tenure is a great thing. It's a good protection for people who want to color outside the
00:25:30.180
lines, but it's not a 100% guarantee. But even so, people, for the most part, are able to
00:25:39.420
have academic discussions in their classrooms and write what they want without interference.
00:25:43.280
However, at the same time, there is, I think it's fair to say, resistance at universities from coast to coast
00:25:51.100
to the idea that there should be ideological diversity and ideological dissent that is allowed and promoted
00:26:01.760
and embraced on campus. And by ideological diversity, I mean a genuine mixture of political perspectives
00:26:09.620
from left to right. Because those perspectives that come from the right, primarily, are often regarded
00:26:19.400
on campus as not simply diverse, but wrong. Like, they're just wrong. And they should not be promoted.
00:26:27.440
And so, if you had universities adopting the idea that they were going to embrace and promote
00:26:34.320
viewpoint diversity or ideological diversity, what that might require them to do is to actually go out of
00:26:41.440
their way to hire more people who weren't on the left. Because the left dominates the universities.
00:26:50.340
And that's something that they just probably wouldn't be able to solve.
00:26:53.380
One other anecdote from my university years, when I was in second year university, I studied philosophy.
00:26:57.560
I took a course, a second year course on Karl Marx, on Marxism. And just because, you know, this is a guy,
00:27:03.620
big figure, lots of people talk about him, and it seems like he had a lot of influence over 19th century,
00:27:07.600
20th century thought. So, it kind of makes sense to learn a bit about Karl Marx, even though,
00:27:11.440
I did not think I was a Marxist while enrolling in that course. But, you know, you want to learn.
00:27:16.300
That's what you're in university for. So, I'm taking this class. And as I read through the various
00:27:21.500
books, I mean, I knew the basic ideas, but we were actually studying the books in depth. It became
00:27:25.600
clear to me that the students who asked some pushback questions were getting a bit of a rough
00:27:30.140
ride from the professor. And then, I guess it was on me for not knowing this, but I do a bit of googling
00:27:35.160
around, and I found out that the professor is also the person who ran as the local Marxist-Leninist
00:27:39.640
candidate, you know, perennially every single election and so forth. I thought, oh man, you
00:27:42.920
know, this guy's a true believer, and this is some sort of, you know, ideological activism thing as
00:27:47.420
well. And I don't know how he can separate himself from this course. So, you know, I took the full
00:27:51.840
course and wanted to learn. I had some issues at the very end with the exam, the last paper I wrote,
00:27:55.920
and so forth. And I can't help but feel it was because the papers were not saying, you know, okay,
00:27:59.600
I've studied Karl Marx, two thumbs up. Where do I sign up? I'm ready to put in the button and start
00:28:03.860
handing out the literature, and so forth. And I look back at that, and that was, I don't know if this
00:28:08.420
professor had ever had any problems with, you know, being censured and so forth by other, you know,
00:28:14.120
administrative people for the way he was conducting himself. But I just kind of thought, wow, I mean,
00:28:17.640
if there was something like this going on on the other side of the spectrum, I mean, Bruce, would
00:28:21.420
that person have not been removed by now and run out of town? Hard to say, depends upon what university
00:28:26.260
he was at and what the students' reactions were. It's also a generational thing, right? Because
00:28:33.600
our students today have been through, you know, 13 years of school. And from what I can tell,
00:28:43.140
all of this revolutionary woke stuff is very much more entrenched in the public school curriculum
00:28:50.220
than it is even at the universities. And so they're used to all of this, and they think it's the truth.
00:28:56.380
Now, of course, not to a person. I mean, there are lots of students who don't,
00:28:59.760
lots of them. And, you know, good minds and so on. But for the most part, this is maybe even what
00:29:09.100
they have come to expect. And so it is not a matter of universities having an iron fist and
00:29:17.540
saying to, you know, giving marching order to their faculty. That's not what happens. It's not what
00:29:22.040
happens at all. Instead, what tends to happen over time is that you get universities reproducing
00:29:32.500
themselves in the sense that they contain a particular political constituency. And that
00:29:38.480
constituency exercises control over who it is that's appropriate to hire next time. And they hire
00:29:44.020
more of their own. So over time, you get a concentration of a particular kind of thought
00:29:47.740
at universities. And so at these places, it is quite safe for the institution to endorse academic
00:29:54.960
freedom, because academic freedom means that you're free to say what you think. And what most
00:29:59.440
people there think is consistent with the prevailing view. And every once in a while, you get somebody
00:30:06.880
who sticks out and who says something that's not politically correct. And then there's a problem
00:30:14.140
about what we're going to do about this. And very often, the answer is a good one, which is no, no,
00:30:18.520
no, we have academic freedom, this person is allowed to speak like everybody else. And that's
00:30:23.300
been my experience at my school. And that's good. But it is not the experience of everybody at every
00:30:30.500
school. And that's why there's a difference between academic freedom on the one hand, which means people
00:30:36.300
who are on the inside can say what they think, versus a commitment to viewpoint diversity, which
00:30:44.620
would require the university to go outside itself, and to make sure that the range of views reflected
00:30:50.300
inside is a broad one. It really hits home for me when you talk about, you know, your students at
00:30:55.860
university, they've had, you know, 10, 12, 13 years of public schooling education, I'd heard a lot of
00:31:00.440
people complain about the school system for a few years now. And I was wondering, you know, what did they
00:31:04.020
really mean? What are the specific complaints? I have some small children now in the Ontario school
00:31:07.900
system, I was a little surprised one assignment, that one of my children in a much younger grade
00:31:13.300
had received was, okay, here's who Greta Thunberg is, here's what she stands for. Let's talk about
00:31:18.460
Greta at great length for a while. And your assignment is to make a protest placard as if you
00:31:25.060
are going to a protest in allegiance with Greta Thunberg. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a
00:31:31.100
second. You do not say to a child, and you know what, happy with the education, teacher, lovely
00:31:36.760
person, great teacher. But I'm like, you can say who Greta is, what she's rallying for, and so forth.
00:31:43.380
And I think even at the younger grades, I don't think there's any reason to do that. But let's just
00:31:46.220
say you can do that. But then you say your assignment is you must do a protest placard, which
00:31:52.100
you are echoing her views. I mean, come on, I don't, I don't care what the issue is, left wing,
00:31:57.700
whatever it is, that should not be something that is done. Well, it shouldn't be done in a primary
00:32:03.640
school, secondary school, university setting where you assign them, this is your political view, go
00:32:08.760
and, you know, attend a protest with this sign. But in a younger grades, I mean, heavens. And part of my
00:32:15.300
problem is the fact that, that the person is such a good teacher and a lovely teacher. And you know,
00:32:20.100
we're otherwise very happy with it, and so forth. It's not even like, I don't think people in the
00:32:24.860
system even think like this is not sometimes you have a teacher who knows they're radical and knows
00:32:29.200
they're pushing agenda and is doing it very aggressively. That is not the situation.
00:32:33.420
Oh, and I think it's probably not the situation with most teachers. I agree. But, but many teachers
00:32:42.680
in the public schools are teaching critical theory, even if they don't realize it. And critical theory
00:32:48.300
is not critical thinking, right? The two things are very, very, very different.
00:32:51.700
What is critical theory? Critical theory is an academic
00:32:55.160
theory, and it's really not even a theory. It's more like an agenda or a, or a, or a conviction.
00:33:01.700
It is a, it has a long pedigree, and it's based originally upon Marxist theory, although they
00:33:09.660
rejected the, the, the class conflict inherent in Marxism, and instead substituted over a long
00:33:15.540
period of time, identity politics, essentially. And so the theory is that Western civilization
00:33:20.160
consists of power struggles between groups. And, and the white group is, is ascendant and
00:33:25.700
oppressive, and everybody else is a victim. And there, the objective is to, to basically
00:33:31.120
to bring Western civilization to its knees by either eliminating or totally reforming its
00:33:38.620
Is this being articulated by them, or this is what you sort of discern?
00:33:42.420
Oh, no. This is articulated over a period of time. Now, critical theory is a very broad,
00:33:46.980
a very broad and, and, and longstanding theory, and has given growth to all kinds of different
00:33:52.780
branches. Critical race theory being the, one of the most prominent right now. And it's very
00:33:59.640
difficult to summarize critical theory because a lot of the theories disagree with each other,
00:34:03.380
and it's been written in long, wordy tones over a long period of time. So it's very hard to put
00:34:08.900
your finger on it, but essentially it comes down to what I've just described. And it's,
00:34:14.580
as I said, it's not really theory and it's not really critical in the critical thinking
00:34:19.300
sense. It's simply a platform. And one of the difficulties is that the platform includes
00:34:26.800
a rejection of many of the features of Western civilization, the ones that grew up from the
00:34:33.720
enlightenment. So for example, the idea of, of evidence, evidence now is rejected in favor of
00:34:42.460
lived experience. So if somebody says, well, my experience is this, and you say, well, that's all
00:34:46.480
very well, but the statistics say that, you will be, you will be dismissed because you're not going
00:34:53.640
I think some people don't realize how extreme that stuff can get. I remember, I think it was,
00:34:59.380
so Donald Trump, before he was out of office, he banned, I think that the teaching of critical
00:35:03.820
race theory or workshops related to it in the U S federal government. And I know someone was
00:35:08.800
saying to me, Oh, isn't that awful that he's banning? He's saying, you can't talk about,
00:35:12.880
you know, anti-racism initiatives and so forth. So that's a very different thing. I mean, I think
00:35:17.280
it's very important and good that my children in school are taught that, look, you're going to run
00:35:20.400
into people of all different walks of life. And, you know, some of your fellow classmates,
00:35:24.140
you know, some of them will have two mommies or two daddies or what have you. And, you know,
00:35:27.020
that's, that's life. And, you know, and everything's great about that. Like there's
00:35:31.180
no issue with all of that. And let's all respect each other and care for each other as a society.
00:35:34.660
But the doing these other workshops is very different than that, isn't it? It's very different
00:35:39.360
about tolerance and respecting differences and so forth, which I think we probably should pause
00:35:44.620
every now and then and acknowledge those facts, but this is not the same thing.
00:35:48.560
Of course, of course. But what you've just described are opposites, opposites. So what you've
00:35:53.380
described is non-racism. The idea that your race doesn't matter, that your sex shouldn't matter,
00:36:00.840
that your background shouldn't matter. We should just all be human beings and we should embrace
00:36:05.040
each other for what we are, for our individuality, for our, for the, for the content of our character.
00:36:11.680
And what, what you have described there and what you are practicing in the eyes of critical theory
00:36:16.160
is racism. That's racism. Why? Because it's not anti-racism. And anti-racism is the opposite
00:36:25.800
from non-racism. Anti-racism in their books is when you fail to acknowledge race. If you fail to treat
00:36:34.400
me as a member of a group, then you are being racist. If you fail to compensate me for the victimhood
00:36:41.820
that I have because of my race, or if you fail to blame me for the privilege that I have because
00:36:48.440
of my group, then you are being racist. And that is the version that's being taught in the public
00:36:53.720
schools. And you know, it's very interesting because I know we're encouraged to, to talk about
00:36:58.860
these issues more and more. And I'm certainly on board with talking about, you know, real problems
00:37:02.740
we have in society and so forth. But I mean, back, you know, when I grew up and how I was raised,
00:37:09.300
I feel like it was, we were told it was impolite to just bring up people's demographic position.
00:37:15.640
You know, you meet someone, you get along with them, you have a connection, you both like Star
00:37:20.040
Trek or whatever. So you start talking about Star Trek and their friendship is formed. But this other,
00:37:25.000
and you don't just acknowledge, hey, I'm going to start talking about your skin color to you right
00:37:29.720
now. I mean, my impression is that's kind of like a rude and socially awkward thing to do. That's how I
00:37:35.240
was raised. But I'm getting the sense that now, no, now the opening conversation with someone is,
00:37:40.720
you should be talking about and kind of accentuating those differences. Is that what's going on?
00:37:46.480
Well, I mean, Anthony, you and I are old school, I totally agree with you that,
00:37:51.160
I mean, this is the whole idea, right? I mean, racism used to mean that you thought race was
00:37:57.320
important. But the way to be racist was to think that race matters. And the way not to be racist was
00:38:04.440
to treat people as people. And if you had both had Star Trek in common, that you should
00:38:08.780
engage with that person, because they're a person, because they have an interest like you do,
00:38:13.920
and just carry on people. And we're all we are all the same, in the sense that we are all
00:38:19.560
individuals, all unique individuals. And our group identity is relevant. And that and that's the
00:38:27.640
opposite of what they want. What they want is group conflict. And so if you're white,
00:38:33.000
your job is to acknowledge that you are privileged, and you have power. And, and to you, your job is to
00:38:43.160
condemn the privilege that you have. And then maybe you can carry on.
00:38:47.340
Is there any harm in doing that? There are a lot of people who do say that they make those notes and
00:38:52.220
so forth, I would like to acknowledge my privilege and so forth. Is there a problem with them opting to
00:38:57.660
do that? Yeah, because it because it's based upon race. There are, I mean, I don't I don't even really
00:39:03.540
know what white privilege is supposed to mean. But I know that there are a whole lot of people out
00:39:09.280
there who don't have any privilege in any real sense at all. So the whole premise is,
00:39:16.840
but the activist counters that they're talking about systemic issues, they acknowledge that there
00:39:20.300
are, you know, downtrodden, impoverished, Caucasian persons who are on the streets and dealing with
00:39:25.340
addiction and so forth. But broadly, they would say, systemically, the system is set up in a
00:39:30.900
different way. But next question is, though, what does that mean? Systemically, the system is set up
00:39:36.500
so that I mean, when you asked, when you asked them that question, they all usually have a hard
00:39:41.760
time entering what what that is systemically. So let's talk about the legal system.
00:39:45.580
It would be a it would be a valid complaint, as it was at certain points in history, that the legal
00:39:53.660
system was set up systemically, to favor some people and not others means so, you know, if men could own
00:39:59.900
property and not women, if you have slaves, those were terrible laws. And they were systemically oriented
00:40:08.320
to favoring some and not other people. That was true. It is not true today. Our laws don't favor,
00:40:17.120
well, they do now, but in the opposite way than the way that they mean. If you are allowed to have
00:40:23.840
job openings for non white people, but not just for white people, then actually, the whole thing is
00:40:29.780
flipped. And I remember years ago, the the liberal government, liberal NPs used to say, I'm talking about
00:40:36.080
the Paul Martin years, which it's hard to believe those are years ago, but they are now coming on 20
00:40:39.280
years, they would say we are the party of equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. And I guess
00:40:45.560
the NDP would be the party of equality of outcome, basically meaning the liberal said that they would
00:40:51.380
strive for everybody's ability to succeed, you know, regardless of their background, and whether they
00:40:56.140
started impoverished, and so forth. And now, I think things have very much shifted in those past 20
00:41:02.820
years. And it's, it's no longer considered acceptable to talk about equality of opportunity,
00:41:07.740
I guess, because we would be told, we have since learned that systemically, there cannot be equality
00:41:14.660
of opportunity, because the system is rigged, such that so many people are set up to fail. So one needs
00:41:20.380
to go even further, and even beyond equality of outcome, I guess, to what now is meant by the phrase
00:41:26.720
equity? Yeah, okay, so these are the, these, to me, are the two competing versions of equality in the
00:41:33.640
law. And, and they're not complementary, they're opposite. And the two ideas are these, either the
00:41:40.800
idea is that the same rules and standards apply to everybody, without regard to race or sex or
00:41:48.380
background, or different rules should apply to different groups, because of who they are. And
00:41:59.700
you can't have both those ideas, it's got to be one or the other. We have been shifting for a long
00:42:05.920
time. But we have, we seem to have shifted now to the second, not the first. So the first, the first one
00:42:13.200
is equality of opportunity, or equality of treatment, or equality of application, or formal
00:42:19.080
equality. Those are the words you will, you will hear used to describe that idea. And the second idea,
00:42:25.360
that the idea that there should, in fact, be different rules for different groups, is equity,
00:42:31.620
or substantive equality, or equality of outcome. And, and that is the idea of equality that is now
00:42:37.900
beginning to govern. Let's bring this back to Bill C-10, what we began this conversation with,
00:42:44.020
an autocratic piece of legislation, as you write in the pages of the National Post. How does this
00:42:50.020
seemingly small issue about kind of tinkering with the specifics of CRTC legislation, things they can
00:42:56.140
and can't have overseeing ability over, how does Bill C-10 sort of continue or not continue down this
00:43:03.500
path? Well, it, like so many other things, it gives the, the, the say to the state about what is
00:43:12.000
proper and what is not. And in this particular case, it's in the hands of the PRTC, PRTC, but the CRTC
00:43:20.060
is a, is a, a, a state body that will have the ability to demand social media platforms to comply with
00:43:28.920
its policies. And so, like so many other things today, the government is setting the agenda. And
00:43:35.020
that is taking us away from our basic ideas, that, that your, your beliefs, your ideas, your thoughts,
00:43:45.720
your speech are yours, to exercise as you see fit. That, that is no longer a given. And the more that
00:43:55.000
we get legislation like C-10 and like the other legislation that the liberals have promised to
00:44:00.260
bring in, uh, the further away we get from what we think we are. We've had this battle before a
00:44:06.620
number of years ago, young people, folks in their twenties, teenagers will not remember this at all.
00:44:10.860
The battle over section 13, the Canadian Ontario human rights tribunals, taking people to what was
00:44:17.420
called kangaroo courts, uh, Barbara Emile, Mark Stein, Ezra Levant, when he was associated with other
00:44:23.440
publications was a part of all of this issue here, where a number of people were accused of violating
00:44:29.360
section 13 of the Canadian human rights code. That section said, uh, it was against the code,
00:44:35.860
against those laws. If you had said something that was quote, likely to expose a person or persons to
00:44:43.220
hatred or contempt. Now there's a lot of challenges, court challenges over that. The debate was very
00:44:49.160
fraud. It was a national conversation for quite a few years. Ultimately section 13 was rescinded
00:44:53.960
in 2014. And I think a lot of it was just based upon this idea of likely to expose persons to contempt.
00:45:01.800
And I'm like, okay, well, that's not how I roll. And I know there are these losers in Canada who want
00:45:07.460
to go in their, you know, Nazi forums or homophobic forums and, you know, their radical Islam groups and
00:45:14.180
so forth. I don't know why they're doing it, but this section, I don't know, this thing is so broad.
00:45:19.860
You can, you know, drive multiple 18 wheelers through it. And I think that's why they rescinded it.
00:45:24.780
And Bruce, a lot of people felt like that battle was won, but that battle is not only coming back
00:45:30.340
now, but one feels like it's coming back with a vengeance. Yes. Yes, it is. It's going to come back.
00:45:37.160
And in fact, it never really left. I mean, we still have sections like that in other legislation in this
00:45:41.860
country. Section seven of the BC human rights code still has a section very much like that that
00:45:48.040
prohibits statements that either discriminate or are contemptuous. And it was good to repeal section
00:45:57.420
13 for sure. But that that's not the end of the story. And this is this is going to come back for
00:46:05.760
sure. And we still have these problems in this country. We it's a difficult idea now for people
00:46:13.600
to accept that people, other people who are saying things with which they disagree, things that they
00:46:19.480
might find to be offensive and hurtful and outrageous should themselves be protected. If you don't believe
00:46:28.500
that someone who is saying something with which you vehemently disagree. Shouldn't be allowed to say
00:46:34.940
that? You mean they're not advocating violence? If you don't believe they should be allowed to say
00:46:41.300
that, then you don't believe in free speech. As soon as you cross the line of saying, yes, free speech,
00:46:46.020
but not offensive speech. Well, that means you don't believe in free speech. That's not what free
00:46:49.920
speech is. Free speech means the right to say things that are hurtful, offensive, outrageous and
00:46:56.080
wrong. Free speech does not depend upon speaking the truth. It's not because something is truthful that
00:47:02.800
you have the right to speak it. It's because it's yours. It's your speech. You can say what you want
00:47:08.020
as long as you don't advocate violence and as long as you don't defame. And there are a couple of other
00:47:13.860
exceptions as well. But for the most part, offensive speech is free speech.
00:47:19.400
Now, there are individuals who say, look, some of that speech does lead to violence, though. So what
00:47:25.260
should be done? Now, it should be noted that there are people with the RCMP and other law enforcement
00:47:30.160
agencies across Canada who are tasked with monitoring. You know, there are people who are
00:47:33.780
saying unsavory things online, various white supremacist yahoos or what have you. And there
00:47:39.140
is law enforcement who is tasked with paying attention to that in case they step across the
00:47:43.900
line. And I fully support my tax dollars going to paying attention to what radicals are saying and
00:47:51.440
potentially getting up to in my country. Is that the remedy for when people say, look, we think we
00:47:56.240
might have a problem here. We got to do something. Well, let's just be careful, though, about drawing
00:48:01.420
our lines. So if somebody says something unsavory, that's no test because people say unsavory things
00:48:10.160
all the time. In a free country, in a free country, a country that is actually free, you are allowed to
00:48:19.060
hate other people. Why? Because you're free. Now, that's not a good thing. We don't want people to
00:48:25.700
hate other people. You don't want them to say that they do. But if it's a really free country,
00:48:30.420
then they're allowed to do both. But do you have a problem with law enforcement monitoring the
00:48:34.820
jihadist chat groups and the neo-Nazi chat groups to go, well, I think this is where these guys start
00:48:41.460
talking about maybe doing an attack kind of thing? We can do that, can't we? Let me just describe
00:48:48.980
what's on the other side of this line. The other side of the line is counseling a crime, counseling
00:48:54.180
violence, saying, all right, you know what we're going to do? We're going to hurt these people.
00:48:57.400
We're going to do it in the following way. Show up to this address with your pitchforks.
00:49:01.420
That's not on because that's not just speech now. Now you're talking about actual violence.
00:49:06.720
And when you cross that line, then of course, the police have the duty and the right to investigate
00:49:12.800
that. No question. But it's the distinguishing between the two things that's important.
00:49:18.540
If you're just online spouting off about this or that, even if it's offensive stuff and nobody
00:49:24.800
agrees with it, if we're in a free country, you're allowed to do that until you cross the line and say,
00:49:31.520
oh, you know what? We're going to do something about this now. That's no good.
00:49:34.760
Bruce Party, before we go, let's assume Bill C-10 gets royal assent pretty much as is,
00:49:41.020
which seems to be the situation it's headed in. CRTC has the ability to regulate YouTube videos,
00:49:46.160
Twitter videos, and so forth. What happens next for free speech in Canada?
00:49:53.080
Well, the next challenge may be, depending upon what happens in the next few months in terms of
00:49:57.860
an election and so on. If the liberals retain power, it might be this legislation that they have
00:50:04.840
promised to bring in sooner or later that will, it may end up, Anthony, recreating section 13 that
00:50:13.180
you mentioned earlier, maybe in the context of online speech. Maybe we will have a federal
00:50:21.140
legislation basically defining what it is you can and cannot say online. I don't know. No drafts have
00:50:28.480
been produced. It remains to be seen, but I think this is going to be an ongoing struggle because it
00:50:34.060
seems to be the fact that the federal government, anyway, the one we have presently have, is determined
00:50:40.780
to, um, to control what people say in accordance with their prevailing philosophy, which in my mind
00:50:49.220
is taking us away from being the liberal democracy that we're supposed to be. Bruce Party, a compelling
00:50:55.180
conversation. Thanks very much for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Anthony.
00:51:00.120
Full Comment is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme
00:51:05.920
music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. You can subscribe to Full Comment on
00:51:10.720
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