Juno News - December 23, 2021Are social conservatives losing the culture war？
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Summary
As we wind down the year, we ve been taking some bigger picture looks at some of the key issues that have dominated our coverage over the last year. And the one thing that we keep going back to is a lot of the battling that we see taking place in the broader culture war. Now, there s no one better to unpack that than the man who literally wrote the book on the culture war, Jonathan Van Maron.
Transcript
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Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, a look at the culture war, social conservatism, and Aaron O'Toole's leadership with author Jonathan Van Maron.
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Welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
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As we wind down the year, we've been taking some bigger picture looks at some of the key issues that have really dominated in our coverage over the last year.
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And the one thing that we keep going back to is a lot of the battling that we see taking place in the broader culture war.
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Now, there's no one better to unpack that than the guy who literally wrote the book on the culture war, Jonathan Van Maron.
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He's been on the show before. He's with the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, also produces some great content over at the Bridgehead,
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and as mentioned, the author of the book, The Culture War. Jonathan, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on, as always.
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So I've been asking everyone I've been talking to about these sorts of issues, this question, and I always regret asking it, but I think I nevertheless need to.
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Would you say you are optimistic or pessimistic headed into 2022?
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Well, pessimistic, of course, is the obvious answer, but I'll nuance it a little bit.
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We're in a really weird place in Canadian politics because what we have is a Canadian Conservative leader that is, as most of your listeners and viewers will know, Aaron O'Toole,
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who isn't really interested in being the official opposition to the Liberal Party of Canada.
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So what's very interesting is that there is no voice for social Conservative issues in politics right now.
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Aaron O'Toole is dragging the Conservative Party to the left as fast as he possibly can,
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despite the fact that his attempts to do so resulted in him winning fewer votes and getting less seats than Andrew Scheer did.
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And so this puts us in an interesting position where, because there is no political voice for issues like the conversion therapy ban,
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which, of course, we have a lot of issues with as social Conservatives and just as people who are concerned about freedom,
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because the definition of conversion therapy as put forward by Justin Trudeau's Liberals basically would ban conversations between pastors and parishioners,
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between councillors and people with unwanted same-sex attraction.
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Last time this bill was put forward, there were witnesses who testified to Parliament that they'd been victims of sexual assault,
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that this had changed their feelings, and that they sought out counselling to ensure that those feelings didn't interfere with the sorts of lives they wanted to live.
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And there were a lot of Conservatives who were trying to ensure that this definition of conversion therapy
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didn't make it into the final legislation, which is why 63 Conservatives voted against it.
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But, of course, we saw last week that, by unanimous consent, the Conservative Party supported the Liberal Party of Canada
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in basically jettisoning the entire deliberative process and sending the conversion therapy ban off to the Senate.
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So that needs to be brought up just because it's recent and it indicates the extent to which Aaron O'Toole is successfully
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When there are no voices on the stage speaking to issues that hundreds of thousands of Canadians care about,
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it means that somebody's going to surface at some point and that that might be really interesting.
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Just to flip into the optimistic stage for a moment,
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most of your listeners and viewers will know that there is an abortion case being heard at the Supreme Court of the United States
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that looks likely to determine the future of Roe v. Wade when the decision is announced next year.
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I was one of the cynics in terms of how this case would go because there are so many justices on the American Supreme Court
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that are as concerned with the reputation of the court as they are by the jurisprudence they produce.
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I was concerned that we were going to end up seeing a very limited ruling on the abortion case that they're deliberating on right now,
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Jackson, or Dobbs versus Jackson's Whole Woman's Health.
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But the first couple of days of hearings indicate that there seems to be at least five justices with an appetite for overturning Roe v. Wade.
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And as somebody who works in the pro-life movement,
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I find it hard to articulate just how much that means to so many people.
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If Roe v. Wade finally goes down after half a century and 65 million aborted babies, then everything changes.
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It's impossible to fully explain the number of ways in which everything changes,
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but it will usher in an entire new era of American politics, whether that be good, bad, or ugly.
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You gave a lot there, and I want to delve into a bunch of that as we go through our conversation right now.
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But let's talk about the conversion therapy issue, because this is one where, irrespective of what one thinks about the bill,
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the Conservatives gave the Liberals a win without getting anything in return, and I'd say actually went back a few steps.
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And what I mean by that is that the Conservatives had taken a principled position, like, what, three months ago, four months ago,
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maybe a few months more, in which, as you mentioned, 63 said, yeah, we've got issues with this bill.
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Almost all of them said, we are against conversion therapy. This bill is a trap.
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That was the Conservative line. I spoke about it with Andrew Scheer. That was what they all said.
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The bill has not changed. The same issues that were there are still there.
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So what the Conservatives have done is now conceded that either they were wrong,
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or that they just don't care, and they'll just vote however it's politically expedient to do so.
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And so when the Liberals were coming over, and Justin Trudeau and the Attorney General and Liberal MPs were shaking Conservative hands,
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the Liberals have won without giving up anything.
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And this is where the Conservative movement is right now.
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It's, okay, we don't want to deal with the pushback, even though we've already been on record with our principles,
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Yeah, well, so we don't really have a Conservative movement in this country at the moment.
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It's so interesting on so many different social debates, whether it's abortion, whether it's gender theory,
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you know, whether it's, you know, like lockdowns.
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There's no significant pushback from the party that's supposed to be on the Conservative side of the fence.
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Work your way through the list of culture war issues and ask yourself,
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who in power is actually fighting for a sizable minority, and on some issues, a majority of Canadians on these issues.
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And the reality is on this issue that Aaron O'Toole wants to remake the Conservative Party of Canada
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into a hardcore, socially liberal party that serves no purpose other than ushering him into power.
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The best description I heard of Aaron O'Toole from one of my friends, who's worked with him a little bit,
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is that he's the sort of guy who wants to be a great man but doesn't know how.
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And he's concluded that what he needs to do is become really socially liberal to prove to the Canadian people
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that he's right where Justin Trudeau is, but he has a slightly better accountant.
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Now, as I'm sure you know, because we talk to a lot of the same people,
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there are all kinds of theories emerging at the moment as to what exactly went down in the House of Commons last week.
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There are MPs who were reportedly quite sandbagged, that knew this was being discussed,
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but had no idea that this was actually going to be taken to the floor, that this was going to be announced.
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And so I think Aaron O'Toole saw the conversion therapy ban coming up,
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decided he did not want any headlines, you know, in the CBC or the Toronto Star,
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that tarred himself or any of his MPs as anti-LGBT,
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and that he was just going to sort of tell all of his MPs to abandon their views on conscience,
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which, by the way, he had, the news reported that morning that he was going to allow a free vote.
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That morning, right, hours later, you have the Conservative Party putting forward a motion to expedite the process,
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and that he just sort of ramrodded this through.
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Now, what's disappointing is that roughly 80% of the Conservative caucus is pro-life, is socially conservative,
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so there were more than enough MPs that could have banded together.
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When you're pressing for a unanimous consent, it just takes one guy or one female to stand up.
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And so this is one of the very few instances in Canadian politics where it literally would have just taken one
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to stand up and be like, no, and then we would have been, you know, back to committee,
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back to the deliberative process, you know, there would be multiple hearings on this,
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all of which we didn't get because nobody was willing to stand up.
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Most nauseating, though, was, you know, MP Barrett and Candace Bergen, who were actually applauding.
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These are people who have been, you know, voting against conversion therapy,
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had raised significant concerns that, as you pointed out, were not addressed, right?
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There were Liberal MPs who admitted when they heard the testimony of people like Colette Akema,
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who testified to Parliament on this issue just a couple of months ago and said,
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look, like, I was the victim of sexual assault,
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and I needed counselling to get over all of the hang-ups and all of the trauma that this produced
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so that I could have a fruitful relationship with my husband.
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And they were like, yeah, wow, if our bill includes people like you, that's a problem.
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And the Conservatives just tossed people like her right under the bus,
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and they did so for sheer purpose of political expediency.
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Like, there's really no way, there's really no way that anybody can frame this any way.
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Like, this is not about principle, it's not about conviction,
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because as you rightly pointed out, none of the MPs opposed a ban on conversion therapy.
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They opposed a ban that encompassed conversations between people with unwanted same-sex attraction
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And those conversations basically just got one step closer to being banned
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with the assistance of people who claim to speak for these Canadians.
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And you mentioned the overwhelming number of Conservative MPs who are pro-life.
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One is that Aaron O'Toole seems to have managed to have a pretty solid grip on his caucus
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so that not even one of them would have spoken out.
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And not all of them were in attendance on that day, but nevertheless.
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And the other aspect of this is that if we look at the shadow cabinet
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that Aaron O'Toole put forward, I mean, he gave out so many titles.
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I think it was that, like, two out of three in the caucus
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had some shadow cabinet or assistant shadow cabinet title.
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And of those who were excluded, almost all of them, not all of them,
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People like Leslyn Lewis, who did very well in the leadership race last year
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the one that ultimately delivered Aaron O'Toole his victory in the leadership
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has been basically persona non grata in the party now that she's an elected MP.
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So if you are going to look at a party that's doing this,
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is there a revolution that needs to take place, like a split-off and a reunion,
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Well, it's really interesting because you're not the only one asking that question.
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There is a lot of people on the conservative side of the movement asking this question.
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And where this, I think it's particularly dangerous for Mr. O'Toole,
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is the pro-life movement in Canada is small but vocal.
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We punch above our weight, but we have no illusions as to our size, right?
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So the majority of Canadians would support legislation on things like gender selection, abortion.
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It's also true to say that the majority of Canadians don't have any form of abortion
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anywhere near the top of their priority list, right?
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So we can say, look, the majority of Canadians are on our side.
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We can't say the majority of Canadians are on side enough that they'll actually punish MPs for voting against it.
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However, the number of constituencies that O'Toole is willing to trample in his bid to flank Justin Trudeau on the left
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and to somehow create a coalition by cutting people out is starting to grow, right?
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He hasn't said anything about restrictions whatsoever.
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His view on COVID is more or less identical to Trudeau's except for going on about inflation
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without saying what he would have particularly done any differently.
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He's thrown us under the bus on every single social issue and has manhandled his MPs into doing the same
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But we know that this is primarily a leadership problem
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and we know that because we got 63 votes in the right direction last time.
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And, you know, now we didn't, despite the fact that he promised a free vote.
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So he has to be careful because when it's, you can afford to just piss off the pro-lifers
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You can't, you can't keep on screwing over all of these different factions,
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none of whom like you, without running the risk of the gun owners and the libertarians
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and the COVID hawks and the pro-lifers and those who are opposed to, you know,
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the genital mutilation of children who are still minors and not allowed to vote or drive.
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You can't, you can't piss off all of these constituencies without running the risk
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of creating a new party at some point or, or just losing your leadership.
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He's obviously trying so hard to sideline Leslie Lewis because A, she, she does have principles
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and not all of them are popular, but she has principles and she's willing to stand for them.
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And secondarily, she's, she's more personally popular than he is.
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And the thing about a rat, and this is O'Toole, right?
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O'Toole, it's well known was, was, was one of those who was agitating behind the scenes
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to get rid of Andrew Scheer so he could take a second shot at it as a true blue candidate.
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When you're, when you operate that way, you assume everybody else operates that way.
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So we're seeing day, day by day, week by week, the activity of a paranoid leader who's trying
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to reshape the party while trying to keep all of those who disagree with them, which is
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almost everybody but a small handful of red Tories under wraps.
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And I don't think he, I'd love to know what you think about this as well, but I don't
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think he can keep that high wire act up for, for any length of time.
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The problem is, is that you need to get some of the people that are critical of him that
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I remember when Senator Denise Batters launched her petition, there, there were sort of whispers
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And in the end, we got like a bunch of, uh, not even a bunch, we got a handful of national
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councillors and former MPs that no one's ever heard of that joined that campaign.
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And I do think that some of these MPs that are in the conservative caucus need to speak
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up and realize, yeah, you, you may not want to compromise your political future because
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you are going to get kicked out of caucus, but you don't really have much of a future
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if you're in a caucus and can't do anything there.
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Well, and especially like you have nothing to lose, but your integrity, right?
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Like there's a lot of MPs who by virtue of their silence, de facto voted for the conversion
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therapy ban in contravention of, of their own convictions and their own beliefs.
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I, I, I know some of them have kind of pushed back and said, I didn't vote for it.
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I'm like, by, by, by definition, you, you did in fact vote for it.
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When they say any nays and you don't say anything, you voted for it.
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Like, look, look, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not particularly targeting any one MP because
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I understand the amount of pressure must've been massive.
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Um, but, but at the end of the day, uh, and who wants to be part of Aaron O'Toole's
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conservative party and what is Aaron O'Toole's conservative party?
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And that's, that's almost a genuine question, right?
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Besides being slightly hawkish on China, I'm not really sure what he brings to the table
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that somebody of a conservative disposition should care about.
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And I mean that you don't have to be a social conservative.
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You can be any, any number of different, um, different dispositions on the conservative
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So in this country, it's when you, when you say, you know, are you optimistic or are you
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I mean, this country, I'm very pessimistic right now at the moment while we're having this
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discussion, but that's not to say that there's not a lot of leadership potential
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elsewhere that I think could build a coalition that could win.
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It's just that the current leader we have is by def is by definition much worse than
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Um, since Stephen Harper took over bar none, he's, he's just awful.
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And fortunately, I think a lot of the MPs are beginning to understand that as well.
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Nobody's willing to wield the knife yet, but when they do, I think we're going to see
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There's a, there's a cyclical aspect of this that I know you're very familiar with, which
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is that in the leadership, uh, social conservatives are a ready-made, uh, victory machine.
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And at the same time, you get the general election shift that takes place after winning a leadership.
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We saw it with Andrew Scheer, who I believe is a genuine bona fide pro-lifer.
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We've seen it with countless other leaders where they're all about pro-life, pro-life,
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And even with Aaron O'Toole, he was always transparent.
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I'm not with you on, on being a pro-lifer, but I'm offering you the opportunity, which
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Well, the really interesting thing is I, I believe Andrew Scheer's leadership was a
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Um, because as you say, he shared our convictions.
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He was, he was open to trying to figure out how to respond to the broad concerns of the
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Canadian people and to stay focused on the areas where there was consensus, but he simply
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And then he left before he learned his lessons.
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Like he was in the process, I believe, of trying to figure out how to talk about these things
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more articulately, um, to, to say things that, that were true to his own values, but also
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And as you and I have talked about on, on this show before, there are many, many social
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conservative issues where you can get broad support.
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You don't have to go for, for the extremes of any position.
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And so the fact that Andrew Scheer left was really disappointing to us because I think
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with the second kick at the can, he would have done a lot better.
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Um, with Aaron O'Toole, like one of the things that I think is, is, is so interesting that
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we've never had before, you know, we've had the Harper doctrine is what I call it, uh,
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And Harper's doctrine was basically like, you need to unite as many different factions of the
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conservative base under one tent, but you've got to keep the SOCONs in the tent, but off
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The only way you win is if you keep pro-lifers quiet, right?
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Most infamously, he interfered in parliamentary procedures to ensure that motion 408 didn't
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And that's become sort of gospel amongst the, the, the conservative strategy elites that
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Um, but this last election just proved that the pivot, the media has been begging for, for
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The conservatives would start winning the second they start waving the rainbow flag, the second
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they start becoming socially liberal, slightly fiscally conservative, right?
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One of the first statements O'Toole made was, I will march in pride, right?
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He was so eager to get out there and announce this.
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The guy who apparently lost because he was so socially conservative, got more votes and
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more seats, uh, than the guy who went hard left and screwed over all the factions.
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He was reliably informed by the media and the conservative strategy tapes he needed to screw
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In fact, he lost in all of the major demographics he was supposed to gain in by doing so, right?
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So all of these constituencies, he was supposed to be bringing in by being open-minded and moderate.
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And the reason that's so valuable is because this is the first election we have that directly
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And I think that now when people say, well, this is what you got to do, it's like, well,
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it didn't work and you had over the following day, CBC, Global, CTV, all of them saying,
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Now it's not like anybody's going to learn their lesson because they didn't care if it
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worked or not because the media, surprise, surprise, isn't particularly invested in
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But at the end of the day, what we know that that doesn't necessarily work because you
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I think every conservative leadership race, the last several, has shown us what kind of
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You had Brad Trost, who was, you know, really, really hardcore socially conservative, and
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But then if you look at Pierre Lemieux's platform, I think that's a good example of the kind of
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thing that can appeal to Canadians more broadly.
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He had this speech called, you know, Social Conservative Values are Canadian Values.
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And there was sort of the Leslyn Lewis versus Derek Sloan type, right?
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I think that in each race, you've had a Pierre Lemieux or a Leslyn Lewis figure that shows
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what the winning path forward is to take social conservative principles, but only to appeal
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to the broad consensus to ensure that you achieve the maximum amount of votes.
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Unfortunately, O'Toole, there's not a lesson he's willing to learn from any of this.
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I know we've spent a fair bit of time talking about the politics of this.
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I want to return to the Andrew Breitbart axiom that politics is downstream of culture.
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The Margaret Thatcher quote that first you win the argument, then you win the vote.
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Because ideally, if we're making inroads culturally, the political class will have to respond.
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And it does seem like we're backsliding politically, though.
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And that's sort of the frustrating thing, right?
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Because while it is true that politics is downstream from culture, politics also shapes and informs
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And so when Stephen Harper came out and said, look, you change the culture and then we can
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act, he was being a bit facetious because the polling data that was available when Motion
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408 to condemn gendercide was put forward, the most recent poll published by mainstream
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newspapers indicated that 93% of Canadians were opposed to it.
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I understand that we're not going to get an abortion ban, right?
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I understand there's a long list of things that social conservatives approve of that will
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never happen in this country, at least not in the foreseeable future.
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However, when presented with the option to pass a social conservative policy solely in
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the majority, like what do 93% of Canadians agree on?
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I don't think anything at this point, except for maybe Stuart McClain.
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And so as such, I think that over the last 10 years, pro-lifers, the movement, a lot of
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social conservatives, I think have indicated their willingness to play political pragmatism
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Uh, they're willing to actually, you know, put forward policies that have a broad appeal.
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They recognize that leaders and prime ministers are not going to risk their careers over our
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So they hand them issues they don't need, uh, to risk, to risk anything over.
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Like I think on a whole range of issues, the culture has actually gotten significantly
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It's difficult to tell over the last two years because nobody talks about anything but COVID
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Um, and so we're having like a separate culture war that has much more to do with libertarianism,
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your opinion on lockdowns, your opinion on vaccines, and then your opinion on mandatory
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So those are the culture wars that have dominated the headlines for the past 24 months.
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But no, I think that a leader could put forward an agenda with a substantial socially conservative
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component, uh, that would, would, would actually increase the voting base.
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Not that you could squeak through and satisfy the SOCONs.
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Interestingly enough, there's a fair bit, and you and I have talked about this casually
00:23:24.800
in the past, that there's a fair bit of historic revisionism about abortion rights in Canada.
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A lot of people would, if you ask them, and I think even informed or ostensibly educated
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people would say that the Supreme Court has affirmed a woman has a right to choose.
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The Supreme Court of Canada has said through Morgenthaler that abortion is a right, which is not
00:23:46.060
That case was one that literally requested the government respond with a law that was
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more evenly applied nationally, which never happened.
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So this idea of political cowardice, even at a time when I'd say there were a lot more
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pro-life sentiments in the population around the time of the Morgenthaler decision, political
00:24:07.940
And it's interesting you bring that up because you do see these new narratives being kind of
00:24:13.620
Justin Trudeau says the woman have a charter right to abortion.
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You know, his father would have disagreed with that, like vigorously.
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In fact, his father assured, you know, the Roman Catholic bishops and the cardinals and
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the people he was talking to that the charter did not affirm the right to abortion, right?
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So this is a Trudeau family feud going on here in the newspapers during election time.
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And yet the Supreme Court not only did not affirm a right to abortion, they just affirmed that
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the current abortion regime or the abortion regime in place at that time was not constitutional
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but said explicitly that the government had a vested interest in protecting the baby in
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Justice Bertha Wilson, one of the only female justices in Canada's Supreme Court, suggested
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And then again, as you said, they put it back to Parliament and said, please pass new laws.
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And has never tried again since while pretending that it's been settled when in fact there's
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sort of this open-ended request from the Supreme Court that, you know, the democratically
00:25:15.920
elected parliamentarians do the heavy lifting on this issue, which they haven't bothered
00:25:20.540
to do, especially because on that culture question for a minute, if you look at the polls
00:25:26.180
that come out on the views of new Canadians, of immigrant Canadians on a wide range of issues,
00:25:31.560
Canada is actually a far more socially conservative country than most people think.
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It's just that the views of immigrants don't get taken into account, right?
00:25:41.340
Most of our debates around abortion and LGBT issues are basically inaccessible to the vast
00:25:47.000
majority of new Canadians who don't understand the language of the debate that's being used,
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who don't read the same newspapers we do, don't consume the same media, and essentially
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just vote on a handful of issues that have nothing to do with the social issues that are
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going on, which makes for some really interesting responses.
00:26:06.360
If a conservative MP wanted to, when Justin Trow says, you know, pro-lifers don't reflect
00:26:11.820
Canadian values, it's like, do you mean the Syrian refugees, or do you mean the Indian immigrants,
00:26:18.060
Like, who specifically is un-Canadian for disagreeing with you on abortion?
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Because if that is in fact the case, I know he thinks he's beating up on elderly Catholic
00:26:25.660
women, but in reality that applies to a lot of the people that he's been bringing in over
00:26:31.400
Yeah, and this is where the media aspect of this is so critical, because the media is
00:26:37.760
The media will ask the questions of, you know, why are you pro-life?
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That's the basic approach that the media takes with Andrew Scheer.
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And even with Aaron O'Toole, when he took that chip off the table, or he thought he did,
00:26:49.200
the question then became, why do you have pro-lifers in the party?
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And at a certain point, it's going to be, why do you live on the same street as someone
00:26:59.020
But I would love for the media to ask Justin Trudeau, just as one notable example.
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He claims, and has claimed repeatedly, that he's a devout Catholic.
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Like, I believe that he's genuinely pro-choice.
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But he also tries to claim the benefit of being a man of faith to deflect against criticisms
00:27:23.360
that he's totally content to take away the religious freedom of Canadians.
00:27:28.900
Well, this brings us to a totally different issue, right?
00:27:31.660
Because in many ways, Justin Trudeau is the perfect microcosm of a Quebecer at this point, right?
00:27:37.900
Where since the Silent Revolution, they've been fundamentally post-Catholic.
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They don't believe in any of the dogmas of the tenets of the Catholic church.
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They have the highest abortion rate in the country.
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They have the highest rate of third abortions in the country, right?
00:27:51.440
Yeah, they want the cathedral and the basilica and, yeah.
00:27:54.660
Yeah, it's sort of this weird nationalist flex against immigrants, right?
00:27:58.100
So it's like, we get to have our crucifix with the Christ we don't believe in in our courtroom,
00:28:02.060
basically just to make the Indo-Canadians feel less at home, right?
00:28:05.860
Like, that's where you see a lot of the religious trappings of French-Canadian Catholicism
00:28:10.440
actually being used as this bizarre nationalist weapon.
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If it's just, you know, like a sign that somebody else is the other and shouldn't be here,
00:28:21.860
So I actually find the whole Quebec Catholic debate very, very amusing.
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And I find, because it's just, it's so hilarious that the Quebecers do things
1.00
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that nobody could do anywhere else without having a hammer dropped on them by people like Justin Trudeau.
00:28:36.580
But as a post-Catholic Catholic himself, I think he fully understands what they're doing in Quebec, right?
00:28:43.700
They don't believe any of it, but at the same time, they want to kind of hang on the legacy of Samuel de Champlain
00:28:48.680
and all of these heroes that ended up there and started it.
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So I'm sure he'll abandon his Catholicism once somebody starts to really lean on the point
00:28:56.340
that the Catholic Church was involved with the residential schools and in certain areas and stuff like that.
00:29:01.080
Like, it's, he's only using it out of convenience, but it is, it is really sort of a,
00:29:05.240
it's a uniquely Canadian absurdity to see somebody claiming to be Catholic
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At the same time, it's being used to exclude people from other religious traditions in one province.
00:29:20.860
And if, if I were the type of person that weren't routinely banned from liberal press conferences
00:29:24.800
and I had more than one opportunity every four years to ask Trudeau a question,
00:29:30.220
Just, is the Catholic Church wrong about abortion or some variation of that?
00:29:34.520
But again, when you only get the one chance in an election and you have to sue your way into the debate,
00:29:38.800
like, you don't want to waste your one question on that.
00:29:41.140
But I do think it's an important one because it is proving that even to Justin Trudeau,
00:29:45.680
he thinks there's value in claiming that he's a person of faith.
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So he understands the importance of faith to Canadians by and large,
00:29:53.460
but doesn't want any of the responsibilities or beliefs or values that go along with that.
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And the Canadians he's appealing to, I mean, some of them might be what, you know,
00:30:02.120
we used to call the Christmas and Easter Catholics or the Christmas and Easter churchgoers,
00:30:06.120
where maybe they don't internalize their faith all that much.
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But for a lot of Canadians, and not just Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, a lot of Canadians,
00:30:15.100
they have a religious belief that would be uncomfortable with the progressive ideal for social policy.
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Of most of them, and just one thing on the media question here,
00:30:27.300
because it's such an important part of this puzzle.
00:30:29.520
If you look at how homogenous the Canadian media is on all these issues, right,
00:30:33.480
why would nobody ask him the question, you know, your beliefs sort of interfere with the values you proclaimed during the election, right?
00:30:42.780
Everybody asks Scheer, but it's Catholicism, right?
00:30:45.040
Michael Corrin, you know, Canada's most irritating media commentator,
00:30:50.340
would constantly say, like, he's a Catholic, that means he's anti-abortion, ask him a question.
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No, nobody would flip that around and say, well, that's a valid question for the current prime minister as well.
00:30:59.040
And on social issues, pretty much nobody writes anything interesting or inquisitive or investigative
00:31:04.360
on abortion or euthanasia or any of these issues.
00:31:08.320
Almost nobody covers the tragedies happening with medical aid and dying.
00:31:12.420
Andrew Coyne wrote some good columns on euthanasia during the first debate,
00:31:16.120
but pretty much ignored the second debate about expanding it to people with mental illness.
00:31:21.460
So aside from yourself and a handful of alternative media outlets,
00:31:27.280
there's almost nobody reporting on any of this stuff.
00:31:32.060
So the Canadian social conservative movement and conservative movement
00:31:34.960
doesn't have a powerful media superstructure like they do in the U.S.
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and even like they do in most European countries.
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But another question I would ask is, we also don't have the intellectual framework.
00:31:49.200
We don't have the sorts of things they also have in the States or even in the U.K. or other places, right?
00:31:53.460
If I had to ask you, name five prominent conservative intellectuals in Canada, right?
00:31:59.380
You'd have to go, like, you go back 25 years, we're talking, you know, Ted Byfield in the media sphere,
00:32:04.380
George Grant in the sphere of philosophy, and then, you know, William Gardner, whom we both know,
00:32:11.960
who wrote The Trouble of Canada and several other very good books.
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But who now would qualify for the position of a serious Canadian conservative thinker?
00:32:20.620
And we know everybody who's everybody in Canadian media circles, right, and conservative circles.
00:32:26.920
This just sort of highlights the point that there are some scribblers like you and I, you know,
00:32:31.320
who try to present a conservative or libertarian bent on the news and try to do some on-the-ground reporting ourselves.
00:32:39.680
But we don't have what they have in other countries.
00:32:42.020
You go anywhere else to these conferences and you've got these heavy-hitting conservative intellectuals,
00:32:46.780
everybody from Robbie George to Patrick Deneen, right, here, you go to a conference and it's like,
00:32:52.020
here's all of my friends, but we don't really have.
00:32:54.740
The conservative intellectual tradition in Canada feels more or less dead to me,
00:32:59.000
which just makes it a lot harder for us to press our case in the right places, if that makes sense.
00:33:03.620
And when there is a heavyweight, it's always an American speaker who's been brought in to be the keynote.
00:33:07.460
Or people, you know, some of the best conservative writers flee the border, like, you know, like your friend Mark Stein, right?
00:33:13.260
You know, I think I remember him ending a column after he was getting persecuted by one of our tribunals
00:33:19.880
that he was going to buy his kids a Vancouver t-shirt.
00:33:22.620
Then he figured, nah, I'll just wait till I land in New Hampshire and buy them one that says live free or die hard.
00:33:27.920
Like, a lot of them just get so sick of Canada they leave entirely.
00:33:30.700
So if you combine that exodus with the fact that we didn't have that many to begin with,
00:33:35.380
yeah, we're not in a great position in terms of the frameworks we need to mount a real movement.
00:33:40.140
One final question for you, Jonathan, because you mentioned the conservative-libertarian divide.
00:33:45.720
And also earlier we were talking about how the pandemic has really sucked the oxygen out of a lot of other debates.
00:33:51.700
I would argue that over the last year and a half, there's been a significant convergence between social conservatives and libertarians
00:33:58.940
because the battle has moved to, you know, can the church stay open?
00:34:06.640
And these sorts of questions, and I wonder if you think that will be an enduring friendship
00:34:11.020
or if that's one that is just very specific to the pandemic challenges.
00:34:15.760
I actually think that it could be more enduring than it is in the states, right?
00:34:19.800
You bring this question up at a very interesting time because the libertarian-social-conservative alliance
00:34:27.860
As you know, there's this big debate in American conservative circles led by Yoram Hazoni and the Edmund Burke Foundation
00:34:33.740
as to to what extent can government be legitimately used.
00:34:37.300
But I think in Canada the debate over whether or not government should be used for things is kind of settled.
00:34:44.840
But I think libertarians and social conservatives agree on where the line is.
00:34:51.140
And this will never make sense to me unless somebody can give me details that do explain it.
00:34:57.080
But I'll never understand why conservative Catholic premiers like Jason Kenney handed their political opponents such brutal imagery.
00:35:06.360
You know, arresting that Polish pastor in the middle of the street.
00:35:08.620
Regardless of what you think of him and his rhetoric about, you know, the SS and the Gestapo or whatever,
00:35:15.620
You know, like pulling the guy over, like on an overpass in the middle of the rain
00:35:19.280
and having him put his hands up like he's an actual threat, right?
00:35:28.700
And as we at CCBR know, images are far more powerful than arguments.
00:35:32.780
So if you want a picture of what government overreach during a pandemic looks like,
00:35:36.960
maybe arrest a pastor on a busy overpass in a rainstorm and have him put his hands up and get on his knees in the street, right?
00:35:43.800
So I actually think the SoCon Libertarian Alliance in this country could actually last a lot longer,
00:35:50.240
especially because I think libertarians are as suspicious of things like gender theory as social conservatives are.
00:35:55.620
So for the first time, we have a growing laundry list of things where the Venn diagram overlap, I think, is going to be far more lasting.
00:36:04.620
In some cases, we agree with each other for different reasons.
00:36:09.640
But I think those reasons are going to be solid, actually, myself.
00:36:18.020
Great work over at the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.
00:36:21.180
At the centre of it all, Jonathan Van Maren, who joins us now.
00:36:28.120
That is Jonathan Van Maren here on The Andrew Lawton Show.
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My thanks to all of you tuning in our last program before Christmas.
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So I hope you and your family have an absolutely wonderful, wonderful Christmas.
00:36:38.360
We'll be back next year with some other content looking back on the year that was and ahead of the year that will be.
00:36:51.860
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:36:53.700
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.