Juno News - December 30, 2019


A Decade in Review： Canadian Identity


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

181.94002

Word Count

724

Sentence Count

39

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 When we talk about decade in review issues, I think one very inescapable issue, but one that
00:00:12.080 is very difficult to nail down and be precise upon, and it means different things to different
00:00:16.960 people, it means different things in different parts of the world, is the identity question.
00:00:22.100 I think that meant a lot in this decade that's just drawing to a close, and I think it's
00:00:27.360 only going to matter more in the decade to come.
00:00:31.680 But what does that mean, and how will it play out?
00:00:33.780 I don't know, but I think it's something that we need to be attuned to and attentive to.
00:00:42.420 It's unfolding in different ways in different parts of the world.
00:00:46.120 In the United States and the United Kingdom, they have their concerns with broader sort
00:00:51.100 of sovereignty issues as it relates to multilateralism.
00:00:55.260 So they're concerned about bodies like the EU or the UN and other forums that are kind
00:01:01.300 of doing this lowest common denominator thing, where we've signed up for this club, but what's
00:01:06.520 really in it for us, and we're having to follow other people's rules, but it might not be to
00:01:10.460 our benefit.
00:01:11.100 And the UN and the EU, rather than kind of go, yeah, you guys have a point, we're going
00:01:15.260 to try and change things, they actually almost are defiant, and they want to make things even
00:01:19.420 more difficult.
00:01:20.020 So we're going to see that continue.
00:01:21.600 Boris Johnson has his mandate to do Brexit.
00:01:24.320 He's been sort of ratified in that in the last election.
00:01:26.660 He's going to get it done.
00:01:27.580 But those sort of issues under the surface are going to continue.
00:01:31.900 More broadly speaking, in Europe, their identity questions are related to migration, because
00:01:37.340 there they are in Europe.
00:01:38.640 We know it sort of culturally as being what it is for hundreds of years with the Renaissance
00:01:43.520 and Reformation and all of that.
00:01:45.060 They're seeing a lot of changes, because they are not landlocked, they are interconnected
00:01:49.380 to all these different parts of the world, the Middle East and North Africa, where they're
00:01:53.680 seeing a lot of migration come and changing the fabric of their society.
00:01:57.360 And it's a very awkward, and at least to some people, even a taboo conversation about what
00:02:02.160 all of that means.
00:02:03.400 So that's how the identity issue unfolds for them.
00:02:07.700 Looking in other parts of the world, Turkey, lots of identity questions there.
00:02:12.400 Pakistan and India, they are having major fights over issues related to citizenship and
00:02:18.540 borders and the Kashmir region and so forth.
00:02:21.400 And China, well, they're becoming a rising global superpower even more so, but they still
00:02:25.900 have these insecurities related to identity issues.
00:02:28.760 Having to put all these Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps to suppress that, they're figuring all of
00:02:34.640 that out.
00:02:35.240 In Canada, things are, of course, much tamer.
00:02:37.720 And it's interesting because our identity is more of a mixed identity right now, but
00:02:42.560 people are so incredibly sheepish about the issue.
00:02:46.180 Justin Trudeau himself says, no core identity in Canada.
00:02:49.000 We are post-national state.
00:02:50.760 People go, excuse me?
00:02:52.160 What the hell does that mean?
00:02:53.240 And I think it's probably because he hasn't thought through this issue very much.
00:02:56.700 Like most issues, Trudeau doesn't seem to think rigorously through things.
00:03:01.060 And I think he means identity is almost always ethnic identity issues.
00:03:06.520 And then he gets a bit squeamish about that issue.
00:03:08.880 And that does not mean the case at all.
00:03:10.520 Cultural identity, national identity are things that really go bigger and beyond those questions
00:03:16.820 of ethnicity and race and can expand to include people of all different backgrounds.
00:03:21.520 If you have these rallying points where you talk about a Canadian identity that focuses
00:03:26.360 on the things we have in common in the best of our country, where we want to head rather
00:03:31.120 than focusing on our differences.
00:03:33.240 But again, hard to have that conversation.
00:03:34.980 I wish we'd had that back in 2017 during Canada 150.
00:03:39.400 And sadly, we did not.
00:03:41.200 So the identity issue, it's there.
00:03:43.560 It was there last decade.
00:03:44.680 And I think it's going to be there even more in this decade ahead, just unsure in which
00:03:49.740 ways it'll unfold.
00:03:50.880 But it'll be an interesting one, hopefully a positive one, but certainly in some parts
00:03:55.460 of the world, probably an increasingly negative one.