00:00:00.480Finally, Preston, are you optimistic that values of individual liberty, which have taken a battering in the last two and a half years or so, and conservatism may become the dominant ideology in Canada moving forward?
00:00:16.760Well, I think the rights and freedoms are under threat, the ones that are supposedly guaranteed by the Charter, but existed long before the Charter, and Canadians should be alarmed about that.
00:00:31.700If they're not alarmed by it, if rights and freedoms can be limited in the way they have been in the COVID crisis or for other reasons, then I think democracy itself is in trouble.
00:00:45.900One of the worrisome things about that survey that I mentioned to you, I mentioned the four categories, the harms, did you experience harms to your health, your harms, social well-being, your economic well-being, or harms to your rights and freedoms.
00:01:00.660The one that was mentioned the least was the harms to rights and freedoms, which in fact only 11% said that was the one that worried them the most with respect to their personal and family life.
00:01:15.900And an even lower percentage said that was the one that was most worrisome on a national basis.
00:01:23.160And what that illustrates to you, and I've talked to some of the lawyers on this, they say people do not see the connection between losing your rights and freedoms and it having an effect on your health.
00:01:33.900Losing your rights and freedoms and having an economic effect, the mandate aspect of all of those caused those harms, but it got its legitimacy or illegitimacy from the attitude toward rights and freedoms.
00:01:53.900So I think what that illustrates is that a lot of work has to be done to stress the importance of conserving those rights and freedoms, particularly when they're under pressure through a crisis like the COVID-19.
00:02:07.900Right, and you cannot discount the power of fear and paranoia, which was very much prevalent during the two years and continues to be so actually.
00:02:20.900You wonder, like with November 11th coming along, in Calgary there's this field of crosses where they have a cross for every soldier that died in the First and Second World War, and it's a sobering thing.
00:02:34.900There's this huge field along Memorial Drive, there's just thousands and thousands and thousands of people that sacrificed their lives and for what, you know?