00:02:08.380So this has been happening since the 1960s.
00:02:12.060So it has been going on for quite a while.
00:02:14.320So I never I entered into the university system as a graduate student in early, I guess it was 1990 and at the University of Victoria.
00:02:26.720And there was a meltdown then in 1992 by what's called a gender feminist group that accused all the male professors of sexism and racism at the University of Victoria.
00:02:40.040And there was a big blow up about it then.
00:02:42.760And I was somewhat sympathetic to it at the time.
00:02:47.560I thought, you know, there were perhaps some problems.
00:02:50.760But really, in the end, nothing was substantiated about that.
00:02:57.220So that was my first sneak preview about that.
00:03:01.180Then I worked in the government of the Northwest Territories for five years.
00:03:06.200And for a couple, I was involved with implementing the Aboriginal traditional knowledge policy.
00:03:12.760and that's when i began to understand some of the serious problems with aboriginal policy in canada
00:03:21.800and i had problems there i because i worked for the government i wasn't able to speak freely so
00:03:28.520i decided to pursue an academic career where that's where you're able to pursue the truth then
00:03:34.040no one is going to stop you from investigating questions and so on that's what it's supposed
00:03:40.440what's supposed to be what it's all about right exactly that's what i had been led to believe
00:03:45.900and everything was pretty good i had you know i was always a a dissident position because of my
00:03:52.940criticism of you know revitalizing indigenous culture as a solution to aboriginal problems
00:04:00.160i didn't think that was going to be effective in enabling indigenous people to
00:04:05.560become part of the labor force, which I think is a crucial aspect of Indigenous empowerment.
00:04:13.240So, but still people tolerated me. And sometimes they even said that I offered a contribution to
00:04:19.980the existing discussions. And I luckily obtained a position at Mount Royal University, which was
00:04:26.040becoming a university in 2008. It was a great institution. It was a fantastic institution,
00:04:32.460which understood the academic character and worked with great administrators.
00:04:39.320Robin Fisher was the provost and Manuel Merton was the dean.
00:04:43.040And they protected, they were serious academics who protected my academic freedom.
00:04:49.300And then in 2016, we began a process of what was called indigenizing the university.
00:04:57.320and that was the beginning of the end because what it did is it got the university to actually
00:05:03.740take a position on what was called indigenous ways of knowing respecting and valuing indigenous
00:05:11.600ways of knowing okay let's back it up just a little bit before we get into that
00:05:15.300so you were working for the government in the northwest territories and there was policy coming
00:05:22.680in that that had a similar flavor of like this is like specifically indigenous policies could you
00:05:27.920give us an example uh of some sort of indigenous policies that that was a red flag to you that just
00:05:34.300kind of seemed illogical yes and this was the big powder keg it was called uh well traditional
00:05:41.860knowledge so traditional knowledge is a is a combination of what's called local knowledge
00:05:47.180which is uh people who live in an area for a long period of time they recognize various patterns
00:05:54.200uh that exist you know uh red sky at night sailors delight red sky in the morning sailors
00:06:01.020take warning that sort of thing which is valid it's just not very systematic and it doesn't have
00:06:06.560the type of verification processes of the scientific method so but it's still it's got
00:06:12.520validity to it but then the other part of traditional knowledge is the spiritual beliefs
00:06:17.140so uh well the best one is animals presenting themselves to be killed is a spiritual belief
00:06:25.520of indigenous people in the northwest territories which is if an animal comes you see an animal it0.99
00:06:33.080is presenting itself to be killed and you have an obligation to kill it because that's why it is
00:06:38.860there and if it weren't there it wouldn't be there and this is disrespectful to the animal not to kill
00:06:44.060But of course, if you're trying to have conservation measures about endangered species, you know, this can have quite a destructive impact on the wildlife.
00:06:54.700So these kinds of things. And there's all sorts of beliefs that are not that well, not scientifically valid and are erroneous that in the traditional knowledge policy, again, it has this sort of language where you're supposed to be respecting and valuing this and not criticizing it and not questioning it.
00:07:15.860And in fact, you're usually called a racist if you question whether this enables us to better understand the natural world.
00:07:28.820And I suppose that's always baked into the cake with policies like that.
00:07:34.280It's like, OK, we need to respect this and we need to follow this.
00:07:38.060And by the way, questioning it is actually really, really bad.
00:07:40.680You cannot you're not allowed to question this stuff.
00:07:43.020That was that was also the case when you were in the Northwest Territories.
00:07:45.860Yes. And you weren't allowed. Albert Howard and I, that's when I met Albert Howard, who was my co-author on a number of articles and books. Anyway, we wrote a piece in 1996, and I was a government worker at the time. I did it as a private citizen called Traditional Knowledge Threatens Environmental Assessment, because I'd just been involved in a year-long going to hearings about traditional knowledge.
00:08:12.140And basically, it could be used to justify all sorts of environmentally unsustainable practices, because it was basically anything that the elders said it was.
00:08:25.560and i was disciplined for writing this article and that's when i decided that i i really wasn't
00:08:34.380going to last very long in the government because i i really had a hard time just kind of you know
00:08:40.640agreeing with these things which obviously had serious problems with them and were political
00:08:46.200like the whole thing was political to get indigenous groups to go along with the diamond
00:08:51.000mine. It was essentially a bribe, a fancy bribe to get the Indigenous groups to go along with the
00:08:56.780diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. So anyway, I thought my insightful position that0.99
00:09:03.300was based upon my, you know, hands-on experience in the Northwest Territories would be appreciated
00:09:09.160in the academic environment. And to some extent it was, but, you know, there was a lot of opposition
00:09:15.200to it. And anyway, it's just got worse and worse and worse until 2016, which, you know, that was
00:09:21.840when things really began to turn in an irrational direction. Yeah, probably because of the election
00:09:28.300of Donald Trump, things got very polarized after that. This had to do with the Truth and
00:09:33.560Reconciliation Commission. So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report came out in
00:09:39.0202015. And many universities saw this as some kind of directive. I don't know why, because
00:09:48.120usually universities are very protective about having external factors have control over
00:09:56.960academic decisions. Sorry, before we get into the academic stuff, I do just because you were
00:10:02.160talking about it just a second ago, indigenous policies and how they sort of threaten,
00:10:06.800uh you know nature conservation have you heard of undrip un drip um do you have any sort of
00:10:16.620opinions on that yes yes it is a terrible uh initiative it initially started out as a united
00:10:25.660nations declaration which was everyone obviously canada was reluctant to sign on to it because it
00:10:33.960had wording, which gave the impression that Indigenous groups could have a veto over various
00:10:40.680resource projects. But everyone was encouraged, like, I believe it was Harper that signed on to it,
00:10:48.520because it was symbolic. And it was just, you know, showing that you wanted to have
00:10:54.360reconciliation with Indigenous people. So that was, you know, it was not a good thing, because
00:10:59.880I don't think these symbolic initiatives are a good thing to do anyway because they're dishonest and they don't actually discuss the reality of what's going on.
00:11:12.120It's kind of pretend. But then things turn for the worse after the 2021 announcement of the remains of 215 children.
00:11:23.580I believe that that's what prompted the federal government to become involved in basically codifying that or putting it into a kind of a legislative type of framework, which is now Canadian law.
00:11:37.140and um in bc we have terrible problems now because of this it's drippa is the is the acronym for it
00:11:47.040but it's the provincial um entrenching it in provincial legislation which now is going to
00:11:54.100have serious consequences for uh property ownership in various aspects of bc so uh this is this is a
00:12:02.280really it's really the making it into legislation that's the problem for it yeah and i mean it's
00:12:08.580it is unfortunate because because there are some some you know more right-wing people who will just
00:12:14.400say oh all this indigenous stuff is is like nonsense and yeah i think the unfortunate thing
00:12:19.700is is that you know there is a conversation to be had about how the canadian government has
00:12:24.900continually sort of used indigenous issues almost as like a crowbar to kind of like wiggle their way
00:12:31.120to uh take away rights and and i think that like actually um improving the lives of indigenous
00:12:38.280people is the last thing that any of this legislation is actually focuses on yes and
00:12:44.240it actually has the opposite effect and that's always been the argument of albert howard and
00:12:49.940me is that we're we were really sort of looking at the industry what's called the aboriginal
00:12:55.880industry, which is this group of lawyers and consultants that disiphons billions of dollars
00:13:01.480a year away from Indigenous communities, when what you need is the high quality services of
00:13:08.260education, health care, water, housing, all these things which are in a completely disastrous state
00:13:16.480with all the other social problems which exist. And no one is really tackling those problems at
00:13:24.140It's always these legal types of initiatives which turn control over to the Indigenous leadership and the Aboriginal industry and the marginalized members of the Indigenous population who should be the main focus of policy are just completely left out of everything that's happening.
00:13:47.400And that's kind of the saddest thing about it is that, you know, everyone's going to look at what's happening now and say, you know, why bother when, you know, many, many indigenous people are suffering terribly and need serious effort to try to address, you know, the injustices and all the terrible conditions that exist in indigenous communities.
00:14:08.960yeah okay so let's talk about um indigenization indigenization is that what it's called being
00:14:17.800pushed in universities yeah and uh because i know there's a lot of different technical things that
00:14:23.960have kind of you were saying the truth and reconciliation commission so maybe maybe let's
00:14:28.020fill in the gaps between the truth and reconciliation commission being introduced in 2016 2017 and where
00:14:33.400we're at now which is we're presenting a bill uh an ndp federal member has said let's let's uh
00:14:42.000make residential school denialism uh illegal criminal speech uh and of course in between that
00:14:49.360and i think in 2021 uh there was a motion that everyone in the parliament building says
00:14:54.480residential schools equals genocide period you know what we don't even need any more of these
00:15:01.460history books or historical accounts let's just have that one sentence to summarize uh canadian
00:15:06.880history uh what the heck happened here uh in your assessment yeah it's quite amazing uh that this
00:15:15.840has happened so and and this is always the way it occurs as well it has it has all these kind of
00:15:23.000what's called stealth maneuvers where you get people to kind of buy into something and no one
00:15:29.840really believes it and then it gets you know that it gets planted into the discourse and then
00:15:35.120you proceed as if everyone is really accepting this so the truth and reconciliation commission
00:15:41.380their report came out in 2015 and there was a lot of problems with the report one of the biggest
00:15:49.220one of the largest being they had all these testimonies from people and these testimonies
00:15:56.480were recounted in um very emotional settings and there was a lot of discouragement of anyone
00:16:05.600you know putting forth arguments where they would say they they had a good experience at
00:16:10.320the schools or they they learned things or they had people who were good teachers or anything
00:16:15.680anything like that was was sort of you got the message that that wasn't really an appreciated
00:16:21.840um you know kind of perspective and and there's a uh an academic last name needs and i think it's
00:16:28.480ronald needson called uh truth and indignation is the name of the book and that's a very good
00:16:34.960book because it kind of lays out the kind of pressures that were there so we got the final
00:16:41.040uh report uh it had the actual report the others um not summary reports were actually more nuanced
00:16:49.360than the summary report but the summary report was very politicized and brought forward this term
00:16:56.960called cultural genocide which is not a recognized term there there's genocide which is um a charge
00:17:06.500under the un genocide convention which has some legal character to it and then this word cultural
00:17:14.640genocide was just made up by the truth and reconciliation commission it was made up they
00:17:20.000made it up well maybe there's someone else who but it wasn't a legal term it didn't know it was
00:17:27.600it was used instead of the word genocide and everyone at the time said well this isn't really
00:17:34.420genocide this is cultural genocide and cultural genocide was um you know you stop people from
00:17:42.460speaking their language and you stop them from having their spiritual ceremonies and and so on
00:17:47.800which you know for most of the world that's been a common practice in nation building efforts for
00:17:55.580example france where they were trying to get people to speak french and stop them from speaking their
00:18:01.400local dialects and you know they would have various punishments for people who spoke the
00:18:08.040local language like Basque or Brittany and all these different, you know, these smaller languages.
00:18:17.720And so did France commit cultural genocide against, you know, the northern peoples of France?
00:18:26.740Like no one would really accept that. And this was sort of discussed at the time that these words
00:18:32.720came out and then in 2019 they just took away with the murdered and missing indigenous women
00:18:40.640and girls inquiry they just removed the word cultural so now everyone's talking about genocide
00:18:46.240and everyone's going wait a minute here yeah we were talking about cultural genocide before we
00:18:52.240weren't talking about genocide um so anyway so and now it is if you don't if you don't accept
00:18:59.280the word genocide you're somehow insensitive and you're not someone who wants to solve the
00:19:04.960problems facing indigenous people yeah yeah uh thanks for covering all that since since kind of
00:19:11.760focusing all of my sort of efforts and research on free speech and looking at bill c63 and looking
00:19:17.920at the various sort of like vectors of attack i'm definitely noticing a pattern similar to what you
00:19:22.640just said which i like to call muddying the waters people start muddying the waters between you know
00:19:28.320criminal uh violent like actual physical violence and speech and they and they start to say uh and
00:19:36.440i think there's actually examples uh for your case specifically when you get fired where it's like
00:19:40.520this is violence this speech is violence and uh it's you know similar to what you were just saying
00:19:48.480it's like you know cultural genocide is now genocide um it's very important to make a
00:19:53.820distinction between these two things but when you and i suspect when these people have a sort
00:19:58.940of political agenda to push something they don't really care about uh you know logic or uh things
00:20:05.180being consistent they just want to um you know uh they want to kind of just push forth uh their
00:20:12.660ideas but but you did say something earlier before we started recording which was uh and this might
00:20:17.620be another good sort of framework to continue to come back to as we continue our discussion
00:20:21.720you said uh i think something along like compassion is used to silence people or something like that
00:20:27.520that's like a trend of the woke could you go over yes so this is wokeism and uh i know people think
00:20:34.280that wokeism and i used to avoid using the term wokeism for this reason it's kind of an insult
00:20:39.560that people hurl at other people but it actually does have a meaning and it is a phenomenon
00:20:46.840And people have just adopted this term to describe this, which is identity politics that purports to pursue social justice that has become totalitarian in nature.
00:21:01.280So historically, identity politics was just one way of approaching things amongst many.
00:21:08.560But now it's taken over the machinery of universities.
00:21:12.260it's taken over local councils such as Powell River it's taken over the medical field and
00:21:22.140definitely education the law is is under attack and what what wokeism does is it says that in
00:21:30.500order to enable an oppressed group to overcome their oppression you must affirm their subjective
00:21:39.420beliefs so you must pretend that they're the beliefs that they have about themselves are in
00:21:45.480fact true and what happens is is that you're told if you don't you don't have compassion for the
00:21:54.740marginalized and oppressed people and so most people will say I want to help indigenous people
00:22:02.520I think it's terrible what's happened historically you know I think trans people are suffering
00:22:08.400terribly and have these terrible problems so i i if if that's what it's going to take just to0.98
00:22:14.620believe them and to you know go along with what they're saying well i'm going to do it but that's
00:22:19.720not what it's it's about it wokeism is not about compassion it's about the woke pretending to be
00:22:28.440compassionate to get everyone to go along with what they're doing while they basically impose
00:22:35.560their totalitarian agenda on everyone and so this is a real problem because you know for many years
00:22:43.040now I've been going wake up stand up stop being manipulated by all this and there's a lot of
00:22:48.920resistance to it because people are afraid that they're going to be seen like they don't care
00:22:54.720about obviously the most impoverished and marginalized people in Canada indigenous
00:23:01.820people and the genocide survivor identity is one of these big ones. So a lot of Indigenous people
00:23:10.800or a certain segment who everyone is supposed to listen to claims that they are survivors of
00:23:17.500genocide. And you're told that you should pretend to believe that because this will help these
00:23:24.300marginalized people overcome their oppression. And it has nothing to do with it. Whether or not I
00:23:30.540go along with someone saying that they are a survivor of genocide is not going to do anything
00:23:36.480to help the people suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome in the marginalized Indigenous communities.
00:23:42.980So they're not connected, but it's a tool that's used by these woke people who are generally not,
00:23:51.520like they're privileged people themselves who are using this to assert power over other people.
00:24:00.540and we see this over and over again so people whenever someone is trying to coerce you into
00:24:07.500going along with some something that you don't believe in you know at least be aware yeah well
00:24:15.260you know francis it's just very trendy it's very in it's very popular and it's been said before
00:24:22.140i'm sure you've heard this kind of uh this perspective on it but it does sort of operate
00:24:28.460like a religion you kind of said it before like you know like if you don't subscribe to these
00:24:33.500subjective beliefs about a group of people then you are a sinner you are you don't you are a bad
00:24:40.140person uh don't you want to be a good person don't you don't you want to um repent your sins
00:24:47.100and yeah and kneel at the altar of wokeism to prove that you are a good person and you know
00:24:51.900for people who have still have two brain cells to rub together respectfully the people like you know
00:24:57.900people who um prescribe like people are actually like this people actually say this people actually
00:25:04.420say well um i'm a good person you know that's why i believe in this and uh it just it's it really is
00:25:12.340sort of like you know broad brushstrokes there's this strange sort of uh weaponization of feelings
00:25:20.260where the feelings or the certain beliefs having to do with like someone being a victim becomes
00:25:27.040the most important aspect of the situation and and if you talk to any i don't know psychologist
00:25:34.180or therapist they could probably tell you why that's horribly misguided to be a slave to your
00:25:38.980emotions uh all the time um i kind of went off on a tangent there but yeah there's a great book
00:25:45.240by jonathan height and uh greg lukianoff called the coddling of the american mind
00:25:50.980and they say feelings this is a big thing and i should link this when i mentioned a number of
00:25:57.800minutes ago about that it's been going on since the 1960s and what happened which has really
00:26:03.760enabled this to happen at least in the university system was the what's a phenomenon which is known
00:26:10.820which is called post-modernism which is when you knock out the idea there is an objective truth
00:26:18.160And I know, you know, your listeners, they might think I'm getting into some, you know, highly academic concept here, but I'm not. A universal truth is just you, we both are having this conversation right now, we're able to communicate, because we have some sense that there is a reality that we can both understand.
00:26:39.260Now, your view of what that is might be different from what my view is, but when we're talking, we're trying to reach a better understanding of that. And we're engaged in this process of doing that. Postmodernism knocks that out and says there is no such thing as this common reality that we're trying to understand.
00:27:00.100it's really you have your reality and i have my reality and it's all just completely subjective
00:27:07.760and everyone's valid everything is valid that's so valid in fact if you try to insist on there
00:27:14.700being an objective truth that we're trying to pursue you're told that you're an oppressor
00:27:20.020and a colonialist and this is just some kind of you know nefarious power play that you're engaged
00:27:27.200been to do this and that and that's what started in the 60s and that kind of created the fertile
00:27:32.560soil for all this identity politics to just insert itself because we we now have no defense against
00:27:39.040it because it's just well how can i really say that this indigenous person who's saying that
00:27:45.360they're a genocide survivor how can i really say you know that's not really a valid position because
00:27:52.880genocide as a concept generally people understand that to mean trying to destroy
00:27:59.440intentionally destroy a group and there's really no evidence of you know the founding fathers and
00:28:07.600everyone of trying to destroy indigenous people they obviously were not very competent in various
00:28:16.080ways and they were very insensitive but if they'd wanted to destroy them then they would have just
00:28:22.880engaged in mass murder like it's not it's not really all that you know they wouldn't have been
00:28:28.560thinking through this elaborate school system spending all these resources
00:28:35.120so as to destroy indigenous people that doesn't make any sense but because we don't have any idea
00:28:42.560that there's this truth that we're trying to pursue then you know indigenous persons claim
00:28:47.920that they're a victim of genocide is just as valid as my view that they're not a victim of genocide0.86
00:28:54.240you know that that's kind of the problem that we're dealing with and it's really noticeable
00:28:57.360in the university system because the university system although it didn't live up to its ideal
00:29:03.120often was about the pursuit of truth that's what it was all about and now you're saying it was
00:29:08.640as it was no it's totally over it's over like we we lost that i don't know when like i i went into
00:29:17.900it because i thought that's what that was the the purpose so that was in the 1990s and you know
00:29:24.560throughout the 2000s it wasn't too bad and then starting in about you know 2014 yeah it was really
00:29:31.300there's a serious assault on it yeah yeah and it's uh what's so annoying about a lot of these
00:29:36.680like woke isms is that seemingly there is no sort of conclusion it's never enough there's never
00:29:42.900enough diversity there's never enough reconciliation like what would that actually
00:29:46.760look like it's not really quantified at all it's always just sort of this we need to do this and
00:29:53.260it's like well what does the conclusion look like because if we kept decolonizing everything what
00:29:56.840would we would we dismantle these institutions brick by brick until we had teepees again like0.88
00:30:02.660because but you know if you want to kind of take it to that conclusion like what would all the white0.67
00:30:07.860people sail back to europe like well like where where would it end and you know it's it sounds
00:30:12.800silly but it's like also though where where is the sort of conclusion to any of these sort of
00:30:18.080ideas but i think that a lot of people make the argument that this is really just almost like
00:30:22.320vengeance or like revenge sort of uh ideologies that are about uh you know resisting uh the ways
00:30:29.840that things are uh without any real sort of uh you know objective goal in mind well it's the
00:30:38.220process so that's what they're gonna say is there is no end okay because uh it's about the process
00:30:45.740of continuing uh this sort of these measures of various kinds and what you find out especially
00:30:54.020in the indigenous uh context is it's what's called rent seeking that that's what it's all about so
00:30:59.740it is about creating the legal case based upon all these Indigenous claims for transfers to be
00:31:11.060continually provided to the Aboriginal industry. That's the orchestrator of it all. For the wider1.00
00:31:19.180woke uh kind of agenda it's about dismantling the legal protections that exist so that
00:31:30.840power will be able to be asserted over in the interest of and that's a good question in the
00:31:37.620interest of what personally i think it is in the interest of the international capitalist class
00:31:45.360that would be my take on it so there's a this is because i come from i'm a socialist myself
00:31:52.400which is quite an interesting uh intervention into this situation i think there is a conflict
00:31:58.980between the national capitalist class and the international capitalist class and the
00:32:04.740international capitalist classes woke wokeism as the international capitalist class google
00:32:10.320uh all the social media stuff uh the banks the banks are heavily into wokeism the telecommunications
00:32:19.340companies and what they're doing is they're trying to break down national sovereignty
00:32:23.380to assert their uh control over the economy and the population and and they're totally opposed
00:32:31.760to any democratic control over society and so they're breaking that down and then once that goes
00:32:39.500uh the members of the population will have no ability to fight back against what's coming down
00:32:46.620the pipe not too long from now so it's a it's somewhat because the situation yeah because they
00:32:52.520can't collectivize uh around their themselves as a sovereign nation yeah yes they can similar to
00:32:58.400what you were talking about i read this book called the the return of the strong gods uh but
00:33:03.180it talked about how all of the sort of it was essentially the origins of post-modernism since
00:33:08.600post-world war ii and he identified a couple of influential writers or authors at the time
00:33:14.660and one of the book or one of the the writings was the authoritarian personality and he essentially
00:33:21.120it laid the groundwork of any time that uh people are trying to like collectivize around like god
00:33:27.740or the nation um is is just or these like hard truths is a bad thing um and yeah in a nutshell
00:33:37.060i would i would summarize post-modernism um i saw somebody summarize it this way which is it's the
00:33:43.120death of god it's the death of objective truth and it's the death of community and uh that's
00:33:48.940kind of where we're at now uh but anyway let's get into some interesting clips uh of yourself
00:33:57.580you gave this presentation just a few days ago uh regina public library that was crazy yeah
00:34:04.560batshit crazy raw footage i'm gonna go to a clip right here first before the before the sort of
00:34:09.860assault or the person yells at you i want to get the i'm going to listen to the clip of
00:34:13.780this guy basically saying you're a nazi um but maybe set it up real quick you're sort of
00:34:20.480explaining hey this is why i got fired of wrongful termination and i was advocating for academic
00:34:26.920freedom and uh in it was like the issue of in the indigenization uh you were basically saying
00:34:34.780as an epic academic i can refuse this idea that the indigenous way of knowing is is the correct
00:34:43.060one yes so the title was uh indigenization and academic freedom and i was arguing that um
00:34:52.460academic freedom is about not having a prescribed doctrine which is a predetermined kind of idea
00:34:58.060imposed upon professors you should be able to challenge all ideas if you have academic freedom
00:35:05.260and my case is directly related to this because i was questioning indigenous ways of knowing which
00:35:12.300was part of indigenization and this was created this hostile environment that eventually resulted
00:35:19.500in me being pushed out of mount royal university anyway there was a one thug who was there who was
00:35:27.100just impossible to discuss things with and eventually he ended up threatening an 86 year
00:35:33.500old man in the audience amazing uh so before we get to that that more uh raw clip there there's a
00:35:41.420you get accused of being a nazi right here to respect and value indigenous ways of knowing
00:36:19.540Like, I think that we all have growth, like, in the Treaty 4, and I'm not from indigenous background,
00:36:25.540but if you're not willing to understand and take in and comprehend how, oh, wow,
00:36:33.540indigenous ways of knowledge is a part of treaty alliance, treaty, you know, building,
00:36:40.540reconciliation truth and reconciliation. I think that there's a reason why here you seem like someone that's obviously not employed by a university. For a reason, right? Because academically, every other place would argue that there's room and understanding and growth. Room and understanding and growth. Yes, but as an academic, you are able to take issue with that.
00:37:08.120what's so as an academic what's your are you a nazi pardon me are you a nazi so if you question
00:37:16.320indigenous ways of knowing you're a nazi uh i would okay that's so funny so they just so if
00:37:23.000you question indigenous ways of knowing you're a nazi i love the look on your face here i gotta0.54
00:37:27.680say francis this this sort of like this like this look right here uh are you okay it's like
00:37:35.600i do i do want to commend you though because you know i've been in situations like that if you
00:37:42.080didn't know i ran for the ppc in in 2019 before it was popular and you know so you can imagine
00:37:48.480what it's like uh i'm in a debate stage and with 200 300 like rabid progressives in front of me who
00:37:55.140just hate my guts and it can be very uncomfortable very uncomfortable but i do commend you for going
00:38:02.460into those spaces and uh simply speaking your mind and and you do have a lot of you're very
00:38:09.240you know respectfully stubborn and bold and like yeah this is uh this is the truth this these are
00:38:14.860the rules so yeah and i you know and i just ask questions so that's kind of what i've learned and
00:38:19.740actually it's a method called the spectrum stream epistemology which i'm starting to do now where
00:38:25.080you're just trying to understand why people believe what they believe and how they came to
00:38:30.720those beliefs and it's a great thing to do because you're just trying to get
00:38:36.180people to articulate their position and people are not doing that anymore right
00:38:40.800and and I and I also did a session at the University of Regina after I got
00:38:46.080cancelled and it was great because I was actually able to go in there with my
00:38:50.940colleague Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson who's a indigenous psychologist who's a very
00:38:56.040kind man and very wonderful man and we were able to sort of you know communicate we had some
00:39:02.860communications that we were engaging so it's all good like if we can just get people to talk about
00:39:11.440things a bit more and have other people sort of watch then I think we could develop a little bit
00:39:17.740better understanding of many of these contentious issues than we currently have right now because
00:39:23.760right now every there's just all this people yelling past one another and people don't really
00:39:29.340understand the the perspectives people have and and i just want to figure out these perspectives
00:39:36.120and stop you know sort of uh what is it when you you just a straw manning people like having all
00:39:41.980these straw men that you you know set up which is not the case at all as to what people actually
00:39:48.940believe you know that people are trying very hard to try to understand one another do debate clubs
00:39:55.100still exist in universities i have no idea um you know i've tried to do like i debates are a little
00:40:02.440bit odd in that often you have people arguing for positions that they don't believe in themselves
00:40:08.880and i don't really think that's a very good idea you know if you if you have to do it you have to
00:40:15.560do it. But what this is, is actually getting people to state what they believe is true. And
00:40:21.520you can't do that on university campuses anymore. Everyone is so afraid to put forward their actual
00:40:29.240view that no one really has a good grasp of what the actual arguments are anymore. It's quite
00:40:37.480shocking. And these students of the University of Regina, and that was the other thing, is the
00:40:42.900professor there's a professor there who wouldn't identify himself who was brought his class to
00:40:48.460basically castigate me and uh you know that's not a good way to approach these discussions and and
00:40:56.760he should be ashamed of himself uh what he was doing there using his students as weapons against
00:41:03.920another professor uh which unfortunately is very isn't that all that uncommon these days
00:41:11.040this is what you're referring to right the University of Regina earlier this
00:41:14.460week so I think I have the clip here where this this student in the gray
00:41:19.320shirt kind of well let's see what happens here
00:41:26.920this is on campus University Regina University Regina and they're they're
00:41:34.340trying to explain the street epistemology
00:42:07.040you were standing here talking about academic freedom, about freedom of speech. Freedom of
00:42:14.420speech is not freedom of prosecution. You were allowed to stand here and say these things and
00:42:17.680you are not being prosecuted by the government. Freedom of speech includes your university saying
00:42:23.720no you're kind of dumb and fired. Well is that what you think happened? Yeah. That my university
00:42:32.080said you're kind of dumb and fired? I think they had to use a lot more flowery language because they
00:42:36.720wouldn't get away with that but i think i can stand right here and say you're dumb for saying
00:42:40.600that you know that the arbitrator said that i was wrongly terminated that sucks
00:42:45.020what do you they she said do you know that the arbitrator said that i was wrongly terminated0.79
00:42:52.860and she's just like that sucks um you know kids think this stuff is like funny right like they
00:42:59.920think it's funny like haha like i don't care about the rules and it really it really is a mob
00:43:04.480mentality uh what's it like kind of being confronting that mob and kind of seeing
00:43:09.520these young animated people young the young bright minds of today basically being like
00:43:16.820haha like you lost uh i don't care like your your view isn't popular you lose um what's it like to
00:43:24.460see this happening at a university of all places yeah well there's not a very high level of
00:43:30.960intellectual content that's going on. But this method that I'm, Peter Boghossian is the person
00:43:38.720who has perfected this, and I've been watching a lot of his material. It's fantastic because it
00:43:46.560does get people to articulate their positions. And often what you find is they don't really have
00:43:53.900a well substantiated argument for what they believe and one hopes that they'll go away from that
00:44:02.420and sort of think a little bit about that like that's the hope i had a long conversation with
00:44:09.340another woman who was very nice but but she just uh thought that i was not you know being nice
00:44:16.260enough and that sort of thing that was basically her argument but she wanted survivors to be
00:44:21.280believed. That was what she was saying. That was important. And so I brought up the example of
00:44:26.480Billy Coombs, who was one of the main figures in the Kamloops case about the remains, the claim
00:44:34.500that the remains of 215 children had been found when it turned out that it was just anomalies on
00:44:39.860the GPR and it's likely septic tiles that were laid on the site in the 1920s. That's likely because
00:44:48.340not one parent has said that their child went missing from the residential school. So who would
00:44:53.080the 215 children who are buried there be? Anyway, I mentioned Billy Coombs had said
00:44:59.940that Queen Elizabeth II had abducted 10 children from the Kamloops Indian Residential School in
00:45:07.7001964. And I said that it was shown through fact-checking that Queen Elizabeth wasn't
00:45:14.940even in Kamloops that year she was in eastern Canada and this woman was saying well the queen
00:45:22.340can sort of do anything and she can control the newspapers and she can and I'm going you think
00:45:27.940that's a plausible like the queen if people watch what happens on royal visits the queen doesn't1.00
00:45:34.660have a lot of time to go kidnap kids she's she's doing ceremonies of bashing bottles against ships1.00
00:45:43.680and all you know she's doing that she's not abducting children and you know that that1.00
00:45:48.880doesn't make any sense but this woman could not she she couldn't I couldn't communicate with her
00:45:55.700about that and and I'm hoping she's going to go away and it once it settles a little bit and she's
00:46:01.300not faced with this obvious contradiction that she's dealing with that she's going to start to
00:46:07.440it'll have a bit of have an impression upon her but you have to be patient you have to be very
00:46:12.360patient and people are not patient. And that's what I'm learning is that, you know, I'm not
00:46:17.420trying to change anyone's mind. I'm trying to get them to understand the reasons for why they
00:46:25.120believe what they believe more. And that should be able to help them to think critically, think
00:46:32.060a little bit more critically. So that's kind of the task now. And it's got a great thing because
00:46:37.600what happens in universities now, and this has happened time and time again, is because they
00:46:42.220rent you space they just decide to withdraw that and it's it's not clear whether they are can be
00:46:51.180forced to rent you space so now you don't need space just go in with your portable sound system
00:46:57.060and your mats you're agree and you're strongly agree and you're neutral and and just lay them
00:47:03.160out on the ground and have your sound system and go around and ask people why they're standing on
00:47:08.260strongly agree, Matt, when the claim is the remains of 215 children were found at the Kamloops
00:47:16.080Indian Residential School. That's the claim. And if they strongly agree with that, then what are
00:47:21.820their reasons for that? So this is a very, very good way to get into the university system and to
00:47:28.320get everyone discussing things and not just yelling at one another and telling them that
00:47:33.680they're a racist and a transphobe and whatever other these accusations that are being thrown
00:47:39.380around yeah i mean it's it's well intended i i hope that you have some success with it but i don't
00:47:46.200like francis i'm already having success you are we had great we did great things at the
00:47:51.380university of vagina people should watch that that uh specter street epistemology i did one
00:47:56.900with kathy drake a very courageous student at mount royal he did uh you know you must have truth
00:48:04.180before you can have reconciliation that was the claim and then we got into all sorts of other
00:48:08.780claims and then on friday at university of calgary we are going to discuss the claim
00:48:14.920israel has the right to defend itself that's the claim okay that sounds exciting about that
00:48:23.100yeah i mean that that's definitely a spicy topic i uh i made a video about it recently and i feel
00:48:30.240like there's a lot of canadians who are just afraid to even have an opinion like if they have
00:48:34.680an opinion it's either going to be all the way to the all the way to one side of i support
00:48:39.240palestine or all the way to the other side of i support israel and it's almost like the most
00:48:44.440dangerous position is to have a nuanced one yeah well neutral so that's the thing when you start
00:48:49.760with a claim in Spectrum Street Epistemology, you get everyone to go to the neutral position.
00:48:56.520And, you know, sometimes you're going to take the neutral position just because, like that claim,
00:48:59.820Israel has the right to defend itself. I find that a very confusing kind of claim,
00:49:05.560because there's so many facets to it that I'm not exactly sure where I would stand on that.
00:49:11.820And I might, if I was very confused, I might just go to neutral and say, I'm in neutral,
00:49:17.240because i don't really understand the claim very well and i need to have it kind of more specific
00:49:23.440yeah i need it more specific what does that mean and and what is what does the right mean or what
00:49:29.280do we mean by defend yourself you know just defend yourself mean that you go and carpet bomb a whole
00:49:35.420entire population including their hospitals and their schools and everything like that is that
00:49:40.480defending yourself i don't i don't know like these kinds of things so but but that's what we're trying
00:49:45.860to do is to get like to tease out the reasoning that people have rather than just having this0.53
00:49:52.240i'm right you're wrong shut up you're not allowed to say this i mean it's it is great because it's
00:50:00.320it's taking uh it's almost like you know taking someone by the hand and going step by step of
00:50:04.880like okay how do we how do we construct you know statements about how we believe the world is or
00:50:11.940um but uh do you have a sort of uh remedy for what i'm sure has happened over and over again
00:50:19.080with every so many interactions we saw it on a clip earlier where they say well well well like
00:50:25.020when you kind of start to ask the questions well are you a nazi you're just a racist uh how do you
00:50:31.200how do you deal with that situation how do you sort of answer with the question so what why is
00:50:36.980that why do you think that that makes me a nazi what what do you first of all what do you mean
00:50:40.680by nazi so that person probably wouldn't even be able to articulate what they mean by nazi right
00:50:47.460so and the other thing about spectrum street epistemology you spend a lot of time
00:50:51.400repeating what the person has said to make sure you understand what they're talking about right
00:50:58.320so if i had been able to have a conversation with that guy that thug i don't know what he would have
00:51:04.160said to the question what do you mean by nazi he would have said something like you know it's
00:51:09.400someone who thinks it's okay to oppress indigenous people and by long explanation so then i would say
00:51:16.460let me see if i understand this here you're saying a nazi is a person who does x y and z or something
00:51:24.420like that and then you would try to think of some parallel type of thing to compare it to and say
00:51:30.640like would you be a nazi if you did this for example so that's the kind of process i think
00:51:35.740that has a lot of um traction you can gain a lot of traction because you're not telling someone that
00:51:42.000they're wrong i'm not telling him no i'm not a nazi right um which would then get like i'm an
00:51:48.660you're a nazi no i'm not yeah yeah yeah i'm not like that's not helpful at all for this thing
00:51:53.560it's trying to get them to articulate why they believe the things that they do and so i'm i'm0.60
00:52:01.020very uh i find this to be very effective i might have to yeah i might have to try that sometime
00:52:05.960because uh usually my response is like i don't care where are you located i'm in the toronto
00:52:12.620area okay well when i come to toronto we can do a spectrum street epistemology when are you coming
00:52:18.140to toronto uh in the near future awesome awesome october 30th i'll be in toronto perfect perfect
00:52:26.140that's good um so you might want to interview apps you go to uh i don't know like it can be
00:52:31.900anywhere university of toronto or sure uh new york university or whatever and then you start
00:52:36.940like you have claims like you've probably got all sorts of contentious topics that right you know
00:52:42.860people are not able to articulate very well uh we might want to interview you for our upcoming
00:52:47.640documentary for safe free speech.ca if you guys want to help stop uh you know stop bill c63 and
00:52:53.820expose the far you typically far left antifa journalists you can go to give saying go.com
00:53:00.480slash save free speech um please donate to our upcoming documentary if you like my work
00:53:06.460donate and the other thing you could do actually a spectrum street epistemology on
00:53:11.580bill c63 that'd be great is that a way to stop harm like is is stopping people from speaking
00:53:18.840on the internet stopping people from speaking on the internet is a way to reduce harm for children
00:53:26.360or something like that or like whatever it may be this list of claims that you you agree to you get
00:53:31.900your audience to um select and then you go about you know sort of getting people on the mats and
00:53:39.520then asking them why they're standing on the strongly agree mat and then you can we should
00:53:43.960we should coordinate for this because i i have a good setup to do like a live stream that's with
00:53:49.240a good microphone so i could document whatever you're doing maybe we could do something at the
00:53:53.100same time and yeah maybe we'll get beat up and mobbed by like this together yeah well brock
00:53:58.320university on so wilfrid laurier on uh october 28th okay brock university on october 29th and
00:54:08.320toronto october 30th and expect like i'm doing talks uh the talks that i was shut down at the
00:54:16.300university of regina we're gonna do that at brock so this is gonna be another test for the
00:54:22.420universities okay so we're gonna talk all about bill c63 in just a minute and free speech and
00:54:30.160kind of kind of start to wrap stuff up but i do want to get i do want to react to this clip though
00:54:34.480of uh at 34 minutes and 40 seconds a thug tells an 86 year old man to shut the fuck up and then
00:54:43.280proceeds to threaten him physically the event eventually was shut down okay so let's this is0.57
00:54:48.300this is 40 seconds before that i kind of want to see the build up to it here we go yeah and you
00:54:52.760know unjustly dismissed but uh let me talk a little bit about it excuse me let me talk a bit
00:55:01.700about my background. Please, and then you can ask me questions, too, if you like.
00:55:05.880I'm looking at individualization as a prescribed doctrine.
00:55:08.940Here's the point. I just want to make one point, and I'm going to turn it back over here.
00:55:13.060Excuse me. If you don't stop talking, I am going to get security and get you out of here.
00:55:19.160I don't get the security here. What the hell you're saying? Shut up and stop.
00:55:23.060Yeah, get the security. Why would I want to hear this nonsense?
00:55:27.780Well, then go. Why would I have to leave a public library?
00:55:31.320You shut the fuck up. Hold on. You shut the fuck up. I'm up.
00:55:36.320No. I'm walking around. Whoa. Yeah. You want some? Whoa. You're threatening an 86 year old man. Of course. That's the kind of person he is. Yeah. You, sir, and your white settler colonialist. Fuck off. Let me. Okay, that was so funny. You and your white settler colonialist. Fuck off. That is so funny.
00:56:01.220let's hear that again i doubt it you're threatening an 86 year old man of course
00:56:08.820that's kind of personal you sir and your white settler columnist let let me please
00:56:20.020love it love it aside from the politics this is just good content this is good stuff
00:56:25.300that was just that that was the classic i've never seen anything like that i just
00:56:31.460i was just sitting there going i cannot believe this is happening um but there were we're here
00:56:36.900that's where we are you know that's the kind of thing is the the kind of intimidation and you
00:56:42.900know this you know this is not about compassion this is about we're telling you the way things
00:56:48.900are and you're gonna bend down and take it otherwise we're gonna you know assault you
00:56:54.500like that is basically it and so that was just complete revel you know that was revealed
00:57:00.500everything that's going on in a very short space of time but you know this this man i you know i
00:57:05.940just gotta love him you know he's he's he's up for it yeah he's not gonna take any of this crap
00:57:13.140and uh you know that's kind of you know you know fortunately nothing happened but it was still it
00:57:18.340was a bit everyone was completely and then the the worst thing about it is that that thug was
00:57:24.820threatening people he was pretending that he was the victim and that he was and it's like how could
00:57:33.700you even think that you are completely impossible you won't have any discussions you're calling
00:57:39.940people all these these serious defamatory to call someone a nazi you know this is a serious
00:57:47.460accusation and then for him to just you know be just doing this you know all over the place was
00:57:53.980was was really quite shocking yeah i mean it's people don't people don't think about that think
00:58:00.500about it that way enough in terms of like racist nazi like these are slurs these are really much
00:58:05.720slurs that you know the average person if they think you are one of these things then they think
00:58:11.080you are a bad person you think that they're you're this evil vile uh person so it's like it's really
00:58:16.800not uh to be taken lightly when someone does that that being said unfortunately people well
00:58:22.520for i guess it's fortunate uh that people like this have kind of watered down these words so
00:58:27.880much that i think it's kind of becoming sort of passe or sort of it's kind of becoming a joke to
00:58:34.100a lot of people which is which is i think is a good thing because i don't know what's going to
00:58:38.720happen next well it's unfortunate because the word actually kind of used to mean something but now
00:58:42.680it's just sort of uh no and you should be able you know there are nazis in the world and it's
00:58:48.900not good to be it's terrible to be a nazi and if we don't know nothing to call people who are
00:58:55.300actually nazis nazis then we're not going to be able to make any distinctions about anything
00:59:01.780anymore so it's it's got serious consequences george orwell is the best uh author on this
00:59:08.100topic and he you know he used to talk a lot about language the politics of the english language
00:59:13.460and how people not being clear is a real problem for trying to figure things out and i think that's
00:59:20.260it's it's just as true if not more true today than it was in you know 1945 it's just unbelievable
00:59:28.580let's talk about bill c63 i want to i want to freak you out and spook you with some of the stuff
00:59:33.780that some of this legislation that's being presented in this country a lot of people say
00:59:37.780hey it's not going to pass i think it could easily pass with what we've seen with this government and
00:59:42.020more importantly the fact that this stuff is even being presented by our government is outrageous
00:59:47.140and i think is enough on its own that's the worst part of it yeah is that people are actually not
00:59:52.580saying hey this is absolutely terrible we are heading down you know a road like you know nazi
00:59:59.380germany that was you know but the nazi germany was not always nazi germany it was uh you know
01:00:04.660know it was a nascent democracy and that's the first thing that went was freedom of speech
01:00:11.300that's what they took out right and so that's what they're doing now and if we don't push back
01:00:16.980against it we're gonna have serious problems yeah so uh first and foremost detestation
01:00:26.080and vilification uh do you do you think it's uh if there's anything that we've talked about or any
01:00:33.740behavior that you've seen in canada would you classify that as detest detestable or villainous
01:00:39.500uh well there you see that you know it's a it's it's uh in in the court decisions
01:00:48.020which i've read it means uh it's supposed to be a very high bar um which is that you say that
01:00:56.360someone is outside of the boundaries of protection by the law like it's it's like when you start
01:01:03.320calling people cockroaches and vermin and things like that that that's what it's supposed to be
01:01:08.040about well that was the initial intent now still it's obviously going to be abused uh this this
01:01:15.480kind of way of looking at it so it's not going to work really it's the united states that has it
01:01:21.320right on this and i was just uh one of my colleagues trevor tomash was was was discussing
01:01:27.560this with me which i was aware of before i just hadn't kind of congealed it in my mind i believe
01:01:34.040it's called the brandenberg decision where um you uh it's incitement that's the that's the that's
01:01:42.520the that's the line so if you are inciting someone to uh uh or if you're inciting it has the potential
01:01:51.880to incite that's what that's where the line is and that's where the line should be not musing
01:02:00.040with your friends which has no consequence whatsoever about you know whatever might be the
01:02:06.920horrible idea that's going through your head like you're not trying to say hey let's go out and kill
01:02:11.720a bunch of people or do anything you're just wondering about some particular horrible thing
01:02:18.760like like that's not at the level that we should be prosecuting people for it's got to be a kind
01:02:25.240of an imminent threat that is there yeah yeah and this is this is the thing i brought up earlier
01:02:32.780like the the muddying of the waters that's happening uh you know there's there's so many
01:02:37.640issues with bill c63 but first and foremost like the initial version of this bill a couple years
01:02:43.060ago was bill c36 and it was talking all about hate propaganda and stopping hate crimes and all
01:02:48.500this stuff and that and that rose a lot of red flags of like hey this is probably going to take
01:02:52.980away some fruit of the speech so they went back to the drawing board and they came back with bill c63
01:02:57.580it's all about protecting kids online but then when you look into it it's all the same stuff
01:03:03.380about stopping hate speeches in there and one of the most disturbing things they have
01:03:07.940well there's a lot of disturbing things but when it comes to the definition of hatred they want to
01:03:12.860redefine hatred in the criminal code to mean detestation or vilification and they try to give
01:03:21.480them like so many times throughout the bill they're like you know this doesn't include humiliating you
01:03:25.140can still disdain somebody you can still do this but it's just when you detest or vilify them
01:03:28.960and it's like well if you look up the definition of detestation it's intense dislike yeah so you
01:03:38.300know it's like to use a crude example it's like i think pedophiles are detestable monsters villains
01:03:45.280that you know fill in the blank i don't think they should yeah technically technically that
01:03:52.220would be criminal hate speech uh under bill c63 yeah usually it's a protected ground well this
01:03:58.340is human rights so see this is what's happened is i believe that's part of human rights kind of
01:04:05.440codes and and and in human rights codes is you can it's fine to detest and vilify some people
01:04:11.440i'm detested and vilified all the time but because i'm detested and vilified for my ideas and not
01:04:18.720because of a protected ground that's okay so if they were detesting detesting and vilifying me
01:04:25.920because i was a woman that would be a problem exactly but if they ask to vilify me because
01:04:31.360i'm a so-called residential school denier that's fine that's fine that's right or the recent
01:04:38.680example is uh you know if you chose not to get the uh the covet vaccine uh you know you can be
01:04:46.140you can hate that group we were very much uh dehumanized and dismissed by the prime minister
01:04:51.340of the country actually what do we what do we uh do we tolerate these people was actually the quote
01:04:55.660that uh justin trudeau said and there was a lot of very disturbing um messaging and political
01:05:03.560cartoons right before the convoy where just this idea of even tolerating unvaccinated people was
01:05:10.700like this this awful detestable thing but um yeah so that's the one to test detestation and
01:05:16.940vilification being uh included into into the definition of hate speech um another one is
01:05:24.580being able to tack on a hate crime charge to any other charge so you could say let's say i'm trying
01:05:32.820to think of maybe maybe maybe something went haywire at that event and you assaulted somebody
01:05:38.960or someone assaulted you yeah uh then the prosecutor can say well actually uh francis
01:05:46.120actually did it because uh she hates black people so and that additional charge can go up to you
01:05:52.680know life imprisonment yeah it's crazy yeah no and it's like equality and the law is is all being
01:05:58.460corroded because of this certain victims um have more you know sympathy than others which should
01:06:05.900not be part of our legal system you know if you if you kill someone you're killing them you know
01:06:12.880and if you do it because you hate them that should be a like a more of a you know punishment
01:06:19.220punishment there's all sorts of problems with this and and really we shouldn't have my own view is
01:06:24.660that the whole idea of hate speech should never have gotten into the law anyway like like we have
01:06:30.420already protections for what we should protect which is you know threats uttering threats things
01:06:37.440right like and that's what the united states has so we should you know the united states you know
01:06:42.180they do some things right and they've done that's what they've done right and if we go down this
01:06:46.280path, you know, it's already on seriously shaky ground and it's going to be used as a weapon
01:06:54.480against people. It's obvious for, for, for ideas that are disliked and, and for trying to hold
01:07:01.040people accountable for various things. That's the other problem. You know, it's going to,
01:07:05.400it's going to be, it's not going to be workable in any kind of objective sense.
01:07:11.040Yeah. Yeah. And there already are some, uh, some laws on the books, which are sort of,
01:07:15.640um you know the lowest possible threshold this is the criminal code the lowest possible
01:07:21.080threshold is right here willful promotion of hatred everyone this is already on the law books
01:07:26.480by communicating statements other than in private conversation willfully promotes hatred against any
01:07:31.300identifiable group yeah um this already seems like it could be used like quite you know yeah
01:07:41.200liberally if they wanted to yeah like it's all um often it has a kind of subjective a very
01:07:47.280subjective character as well it depends upon how people who are listening to it are going to react
01:07:54.480um the other the really disturbing one and i don't this is probably not in the criminal code
01:08:00.160area but it was definitely the human rights uh type of legislation which is another it's civil
01:08:07.360civil uh hate speech and that was bill watcott the case of bill watcott who was saying you know
01:08:14.000terrible things about homosexual people that was his uh thing but he wasn't he had no power over
01:08:18.960anyone and you know who cares like you know let asses pray kind of thing he had he had no he had0.74
01:08:25.360no way of controlling anything in society but one of the things that came out is that truth
01:08:31.280this is civil in civil law truth is not a defense truth is not a defense no not in the civil uh case
01:08:43.120how can truth not be a defense i don't know because um if you're making fun you're doing
01:08:49.040something to someone on the who has on the space of this protected ground like if you and this is
01:08:54.800not a the same thing but just example if you make fun of someone who's fat which is not a nice thing
01:09:00.560to do um it doesn't matter whether they're fat or not like like the fact that they're fat doesn't
01:09:07.280doesn't doesn't do anything to the fact that you're being but your honor they're 300 pounds
01:09:12.960they're morbidly obese so my client was kind of accurate when they said yes you know this is kind
01:09:19.520of the with human rights is sort of about whether you're respecting the dignity of someone and so on
01:09:26.560and you know ridiculing someone because of something which happens to be true is still
01:09:32.020you're ridiculing that person that doesn't take but i was very disturbed about that
01:09:36.560side of things because i that's how i've always kind of seen things that if you
01:09:41.040if you're saying something that's true it should be protected if it's true
01:09:44.740because saying things that are true helps us to understand reality more and and and to not
01:09:54.100protect people for doing that is a is a very you know it's a very dangerous thing i think so that's
01:09:59.680another kind of problematic thing that that's probably the civil area not the criminal because
01:10:04.600in the criminal area it's always been truth is a defense so uh when it comes to bill c63 another
01:10:13.460thing have you heard of uh section 13 of the human rights code by chance uh yes i have but i can't
01:10:21.100i'm just trying to recall what it is it's okay it got repealed uh by the harper government but it
01:10:26.800was a section of the human rights code which was essentially abused when it was in effect it was
01:10:31.620abused by this man named richard warman over and over again and it was used to say like okay these
01:10:37.500people uh were committing hate speech against me against me and uh i i need to be i need to get
01:10:44.600paid for that because i've been hurt by what they said to me yeah um and yeah this would um
01:10:52.600this would come back uh under bill c63 as it is and the most disturbing part is um yeah
01:11:00.600not only could people anonymously report you uh for committing hate crimes or hate speech
01:11:08.100for what you said on the internet or to them but uh they they would be financially incentivized to
01:11:13.860do so if things went well at the at the human rights court so uh you know that presentation
01:11:19.620you had the other day could be a big payday to some of those people who might have gotten offended
01:11:23.380i know i know uh that saying that book title oh that is hate speech and that is all these things
01:11:29.560right and yeah that's that's another aspect which i'd forgotten about with these bill c63 is this
01:11:35.480you know people getting uh they're they're able to get money from their complaints
01:11:41.880anonymous there should never be anonymous complaints this is this is terrible because
01:11:47.320that just means that no one's accountable for what they're doing like it just turns everyone
01:11:53.400neighbor against neighbor these kinds of terrible you know weaponizing of these uh types of these
01:12:02.240types of uh human rights commissions which have not been good at all uh on speech issues like
01:12:10.580they're the opposite of free speech these human rights commissions yeah do you do you see any
01:12:17.640major forces like like fighting against this trend in general do you see this trend getting worse
01:12:22.960because as we we've we've talked about academia you talked about in the government this sort of
01:12:27.940trend of like fifes of like feelings sort of becoming these these very real things that can
01:12:34.100be weaponized to oppress people or silence people it doesn't really seem to be going away if anything
01:12:39.180think it seems to be getting worse it's getting worse um do you see any anything that's inspiring
01:12:44.720that is that that is pushing uh against this i think politically you know they're the city
01:12:52.260councils is the place i've seen the most hope in powell river for example i've been involved with
01:12:59.160the citizens of powell river that are pushing back against the totalitarian takeover of their
01:13:05.660council which is insisting that they change their name from pal river to some indigenous name that
01:13:13.460no one wants it to happen and even though there's it's obvious that the town doesn't want the name
01:13:19.600to be changed this woke city council is going ahead trying to push it through anyway and they
01:13:25.020are fighting back they're fighting back big time so i think the local councils are one area where
01:13:31.660there's some hope because that's where local democracy still does exist and there's protections
01:13:39.120of local democracy but they're trying to crack down on the ability of people to speak
01:13:45.540at these local councils and so that's another kind of huge battleground that's going out
01:13:52.040so I think that's uh I think that's that's one of the most promising areas I've seen
01:13:57.680The universities are very difficult, but I think the Spectrum Street epistemology is a way to go in the university. So I'm really quite enthused about this possibility. So those are a couple of examples that you need to organize.
01:14:12.240the law doesn't work very well in trying to fight these battles unfortunately because it's often
01:14:19.100stacked against um people who are in the less powerful position and you spend you have to spend
01:14:26.340all this money on lawyers and then it gets into these procedural kinds of arguments and not
01:14:31.700it disavoids the main issues that need to be discussed and let's talk about some of the
01:14:37.620really absurd stuff to uh residential school denialism and of course there's already a
01:14:44.300precedent set in our law uh with holocaust denialism yeah um you know i i try to simplify
01:14:51.340it as this of these laws are so absurd it's like canadians are perpetually being tested
01:14:57.480on a specific uh historical event um so even if you're even if you're just some i don't know
01:15:04.460adult who's working at a bank and then you you accidentally say the wrong stat or fact
01:15:10.440about a historical event then you're a criminal yeah it shouldn't exist you know this history is0.54
01:15:18.780always up for discussion and you know you know i think the holocaust is a pretty you know it's it's
01:15:25.200not really a disputable facts but although you you know there's arguments about numbers of people
01:15:33.240and these sorts of things but if someone is wrong about a historical detail why should that be
01:15:41.400criminalized that makes no sense like what you want to do is you want to correct erroneous views
01:15:50.360and and it just gives um you know oxygen to various you know people thinking that there's
01:15:57.400something to hide because why would you need to make it illegal if it's just a matter that should
01:16:03.320be discussed and errors should be corrected so you know i think that you know having holocaust denial
01:16:09.480illegal is a ridiculous thing anyway even though you know i don't think there's really a a debate
01:16:16.680about whether the holocaust happened or anything but you do have people like norman finkelstein who
01:16:21.400was called a Holocaust denier because he was just arguing that the Holocaust was being used as a
01:16:28.960weapon against the Palestinians. That was the kind of arguments that he was made, and he was
01:16:34.500accused by Alan Dershowitz of being a Holocaust denier. So that's just an example of the
01:16:40.440weaponization of that again. But then we have the residential school denialism, which is just,
01:16:46.680you're questioning all the misinformation which is being put forward by the aboriginal industry.
01:16:51.400So people claiming that there's 215 remains of children in Kamloops, that there's no evidence for that. And if I question that, now I'm a residential school denialist? Is that what's being argued? I find it just, well, it's when you deny that they're genocide, the residential schools, that's really what they mean.
01:17:11.640And the most well-known historian on the residential schools is J.R. Miller, who's written numerous books. He argues that they are not genocidal. So it's even in terms of the weight of scholarly opinion, I don't even see how that can be argued in that context.
01:17:34.120So that's a very mysterious. It's just about power. It's about asserting power. That's all that it is. And, you know, that's got to be, you know, but we made the mistake of making Holocaust denial illegal. So, you know, I can see why we're going down this path, because we made the initial mistake. So we should correct that mistake and not have that, take that out of there. Stop criminalizing different opinions about history.
01:18:02.420that's crazy this is matters yeah you know yeah um i i when i was at the society for academic
01:18:10.900freedom and scholarship uh annual meeting in in may there's this huge debate about whether the
01:18:18.260plays of shakespeare were written by this guy called shakespeare you know are we going to
01:18:24.800criminalize that disputation about that historical fact?
01:18:30.200Because some people who study Shakespeare and are really wedded to the idea
01:18:34.580that it was this guy from Stratford-on-Avon who wrote the plays.
01:18:51.060I mean, I think if you get details of history wrong,
01:18:53.720there should be consequences if you are taking a history test because that's the whole point but
01:19:01.320aside from that no um yeah and i i want to you know you were bringing up this early we were
01:19:08.840talking about the indigenous history and and residential school denialism um real quick
01:19:14.680what is the indigenous industry uh it is a group of lawyers and consultants who work for aboriginal
01:19:22.360organizations who manufacture grievances so to divert money from indigenous communities
01:19:32.920and they essentially have corrupted the leadership the indigenous leadership so they
01:19:39.080yeah they get money to participate in all these uh processes that go on and the land claims are
01:19:46.040the best example but the whole residential school file i believe it's i don't know how many built
01:19:51.240You know, hundreds of millions of dollars went to lawyers about that.
01:19:54.680Every single dispute that you see, you have a whole large body of lawyers and consultants who are all making large salaries at the expense of the Indigenous population.
01:20:08.340And they actually, what they do is they maintain indigenous people in this isolated and dependent state because that's what makes people think that there needs to be more resources devoted to the aboriginal problem.0.85
01:20:25.180So, you know, these are just ongoing disputes that are manufactured by the aboriginal industry.
01:20:31.180yeah uh maybe let's touch on that briefly because we didn't it isn't a fascinating topic and it
01:20:36.540sounds like you might know a bit about it which is when i ran as a ppc candidate we actually had
01:20:41.040a specific policy on the indian act which makes it so some indigenous communities don't even have
01:20:47.360the right to private property yeah and a lot of canadians don't know about this archaic piece of
01:20:53.180legislation do you have any thoughts on the indian act and if we were to actually care about solving
01:20:59.460this problem briefly like what would that look like yeah well and this is where i differ from
01:21:04.920many of my colleagues i really don't think the indian act is a very important part of the puzzle
01:21:11.260like it does have an impact on the more um uh viable communities but in these the worst situations
01:21:19.620for the indigenous population are those communities that are in the north and in isolated areas and
01:21:27.980having private property in those areas isn't going to matter at all because no one wants to
01:21:34.040buy anything that's there. They're just basically warehousing centers for, you know, people who
01:21:41.140can't leave those areas and desperately need help, assistance of various kinds to deal with
01:21:48.140the serious dysfunction that exists in those populations. So the Indian Act will, you know,
01:21:54.540getting rid of it well i think it's a bad piece of legislation anyway because it's a segregationist
01:22:02.160piece of legislation but in terms of an economic development vehicle getting rid of it it's not
01:22:08.680going to assist the most marginalized members of the indigenous population okay um so i was
01:22:18.060watching your presentation earlier and you're talking about academic freedom and academic
01:22:22.560freedom is very well defined you know the professor has the right to question things and
01:22:26.920challenge things and purport their their beliefs or ideas uh and you know there's this thing called
01:22:32.260freedom of speech yeah in in the charter of rights and freedoms and it's it's well defined
01:22:37.500um despite having these principles that make up a free democratic society it seems like they
01:22:45.500constantly keep getting violated or dismissed or pushed aside like they don't even mean anything
01:22:50.880at all yeah uh why do you think that is uh nascent fascism you know we are yes so it's it's coming
01:23:03.340right people got to wake up here um so freedom of the freedom of speech and these freedoms are
01:23:08.780the the first things that are freedom of speech especially is knocked out because that uh you
01:23:15.380know sort of deprives people of having their you know a fundamental mechanism they have to
01:23:22.320search for the truth and to hold their leaders accountable and once that gets knocked out
01:23:30.360that's when you're going to see the naked agenda of what's coming down the pipe and that's not far
01:23:37.600off. So, you know, I'm amazed that the opposition to Bill C-63 is not much stronger than it is.
01:23:48.360And, you know, people have just been, again, misled by these arguments about being a nice
01:23:55.940person, being compassionate, helping people, these sorts of things. And that's not what it's about.
01:24:01.660and people need to understand that it is about asserting power and that is going to help
01:24:08.920whoever's in power to consolidate their power and you know make them basically impervious to
01:24:16.200being held to account and that's what we're going to be looking at in the future and it doesn't
01:24:20.940really matter what political party that you're you're going to have in there they're going to
01:24:25.320just use their their position to consolidate power yeah i um you mentioned that you were socialist
01:24:34.340earlier and i've always kind of been like a more traditional liberal since i've seen the kind of
01:24:41.260like more or yeah traditional liberal libertarian i've kind of been pushed further to the right
01:24:47.060just because i see how aggressive like the wokeism is yeah um but especially on this like
01:24:53.420israel palestine issue for example it's like sometimes i feel like i have more in common with
01:24:57.660with the leftists uh in in terms of what's going on here but i but i guess are do you do you lean
01:25:03.520further left or right and how do you think there's solutions to try and bridge a gap uh between these
01:25:10.400two polar opposites uh yeah yeah so uh the big thing to understand is that wokeism is not left
01:25:22.500And the person that I really respect the most in terms of a thinker is George Orwell.
01:25:27.740And George Orwell is a socialist because he saw that there were serious problems for the working class in the capitalist system.
01:25:37.140And he was trying to deal with those problems.
01:25:41.160But George Orwell, at the same time, was someone who really was concerned about freedom,
01:25:47.120the freedoms that people had and saw that there was a very disturbing tendency in socialist
01:25:52.800movements for this kind of totalitarian takeover. And he saw that in the Soviet Union was the,
01:26:00.560you know, when you look at his books, 1984 and Animal Farm, they were talking about the,
01:26:06.200you know, the use of socialism to consolidate power. So I think with left wing is about the
01:26:13.360working class and is about the ability of people who produce everything of value in society to be
01:26:20.860able to have the resources that they they need to thrive and often what you see in capitalism is is
01:26:27.360that that's not possible but that doesn't mean that you should be manipulated into giving up
01:26:34.780fundamental rights and freedoms such as equality under the law and and freedom of speech you know
01:26:44.140that that's kind of when that's wokeism is pretending to be on the left so that it can kind
01:26:50.660of manipulate people and and i think that's a real serious problem now with the analysis
01:26:56.600of wokeism is not understanding the the kind of totalitarian reactionary character of what's being
01:27:04.320argued like when you think about something we haven't talked about this issue trans activism
01:27:09.920and all this like what has that got to do with anything about people being able to thrive in a0.99
01:27:16.240society that that is just totally it's just a terrible terrible um type of movement which is
01:27:23.760vicious and you know basically has complete ill intent towards anyone who wants to raise very
01:27:31.680very legitimate concerns about what's happening to children in this country and and yet it's seen as
01:27:38.800a quote-unquote left-wing uh kind of movement like this is just nothing it's got nothing to
01:27:45.360do with it at all it is just a you know it's luxury beliefs of a what appears to be a mentally
01:27:52.240disturbed uh group of people uh so you know which we can have sympathy for the terrible circumstances
01:28:00.080that people have but that doesn't mean that we should be allowing you know all sorts of things
01:28:05.180to be happening to children which they are going to have terrible lifelong consequences if we don't
01:28:13.120you know right the ship and have the medical perfection profession acting responsibly with
01:28:18.860respect to this and i think the trans issue is really is the one of the major underpinnings of0.99
01:28:26.780post-modernism today it is it really represents the epitome of truth is dead yes trans women are
01:28:35.780women what does that even sex until five minutes ago this was one of the most well-established0.76
01:28:42.040facts like we would not exist as a species unless you know like that's what allows us to exist as
01:28:48.960species and now that can't be that truth cannot be uttered you know that and it's completely
01:28:55.840subjective but that's why it's post-modern is that there's no basis in reality for this it's just
01:29:02.800someone's feeling about who they are uh but anyway yeah um i just got one more question then we can
01:29:10.000then we can get going um we watched a couple clips of you being i know it's getting dark in there
01:29:15.760but uh it's getting darker and darker and i'm just there we go whoa amazing uh so we were
01:29:26.320watching a couple you know the clip of you kind of being harassed by these by these students well
01:29:30.800you know they were harassed they were being very uh dismissive and sort of mean-spirited toward you
01:29:36.880but i really admire uh your sort of bravery and and like you were just unflinching you were just
01:29:43.200totally focused on the topic um and you have this this bravery of jumping into the conversation
01:29:49.400being surrounded by people who disagree with you um where do you get that where does that sort of
01:29:54.780strength and confidence come from and i also kind of want to ask of how do we get more canadians to
01:30:00.580be like that yeah well it was it's my husband actually i've got to give him credit albert
01:30:05.940howard uh so i used to be a little bit you know deferential to authority and i i get worried when
01:30:12.300You know, people are opposing me. And he really convinced me, if you think you're right, you should fight it out. If it turns out that you're wrong and you've made a mistake, you should say, yes, okay, I was wrong there. But if you think you're right, don't allow people to bully you and stop you from continuing to hold that position.
01:30:33.680and that's very very important and once I sort of realize that it gives you a lot of confidence
01:30:40.360because you're saying look I'm doing nothing wrong here I truly believe what I'm doing and it's
01:30:46.840entirely possible I could be wrong in what I'm arguing but no one yet has given me a convincing
01:30:53.760argument for why I should change my mind and so people you know just need to develop a little bit
01:30:59.920of confidence about this. It's not the easiest thing, but I think it's James Lindsay, who you're
01:31:03.900probably familiar with, who I have a lot of respect for. I disagree with him on a number of
01:31:08.380things, but he says, courage begets courage, cowardice begets cowardice. And if you think
01:31:15.440you're right, stand up for it and people will stand behind you. The worst thing you can do
01:31:22.000is just, you know, do some kind of groveling apology for something that you don't even think
01:31:28.500that you did wrong because that will not only, you know, it's not going to help you because
01:31:36.520that's blood in the water for the woke.
01:31:39.500But the people who would have supported you normally will then just disappear because
01:31:46.560they'll say you're not someone who's reliable in terms of standing behind principles.
01:31:52.100So I think once you kind of get that realization, it can really help you a lot that you should