Juno News - Are social conservatives losing the culture war？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.820 Coming up, a look at the culture war, social conservatism, and Aaron O'Toole's leadership with author Jonathan Van Maron.

00:00:21.040 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:24.000 Welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:32.580 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.

00:00:41.740 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.

00:00:49.460 Now, there's no one better to unpack that than the guy who literally wrote the book on the culture war, Jonathan Van Maron.

00:00:55.540 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,

00:01:03.440 and as mentioned, the author of the book, The Culture War. Jonathan, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on, as always.

00:01:09.540 Yeah, thanks for having me on again.

00:01:10.640 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.

00:01:19.740 Would you say you are optimistic or pessimistic headed into 2022?

00:01:24.220 Well, pessimistic, of course, is the obvious answer, but I'll nuance it a little bit.

00:01:33.100 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,

00:01:46.160 who isn't really interested in being the official opposition to the Liberal Party of Canada.

00:01:51.180 So what's very interesting is that there is no voice for social Conservative issues in politics right now.

00:01:57.980 Aaron O'Toole is dragging the Conservative Party to the left as fast as he possibly can,

00:02:02.700 despite the fact that his attempts to do so resulted in him winning fewer votes and getting less seats than Andrew Scheer did.

00:02:10.080 And so this puts us in an interesting position where, because there is no political voice for issues like the conversion therapy ban,

00:02:17.860 which, of course, we have a lot of issues with as social Conservatives and just as people who are concerned about freedom,

00:02:23.940 because the definition of conversion therapy as put forward by Justin Trudeau's Liberals basically would ban conversations between pastors and parishioners,

00:02:32.380 between councillors and people with unwanted same-sex attraction.

00:02:36.020 Last time this bill was put forward, there were witnesses who testified to Parliament that they'd been victims of sexual assault,

00:02:42.840 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.

00:02:50.900 And there were a lot of Conservatives who were trying to ensure that this definition of conversion therapy

00:02:57.200 didn't make it into the final legislation, which is why 63 Conservatives voted against it.

00:03:03.040 But, of course, we saw last week that, by unanimous consent, the Conservative Party supported the Liberal Party of Canada

00:03:09.420 in basically jettisoning the entire deliberative process and sending the conversion therapy ban off to the Senate.

00:03:15.800 So that needs to be brought up just because it's recent and it indicates the extent to which Aaron O'Toole is successfully

00:03:22.180 remaking the Conservative Party in his image.

00:03:24.720 Of course, that brings up opportunity as well.

00:03:27.160 When there are no voices on the stage speaking to issues that hundreds of thousands of Canadians care about,

00:03:33.080 it means that somebody's going to surface at some point and that that might be really interesting.

00:03:37.480 Just to flip into the optimistic stage for a moment,

00:03:41.580 most of your listeners and viewers will know that there is an abortion case being heard at the Supreme Court of the United States

00:03:47.880 that looks likely to determine the future of Roe v. Wade when the decision is announced next year.

00:03:54.120 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

00:04:03.500 that are as concerned with the reputation of the court as they are by the jurisprudence they produce.

00:04:09.060 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,

00:04:17.460 Jackson, or Dobbs versus Jackson's Whole Woman's Health. 0.97

00:04:21.340 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.

00:04:29.780 And as somebody who works in the pro-life movement,

00:04:32.200 I find it hard to articulate just how much that means to so many people.

00:04:37.680 If Roe v. Wade finally goes down after half a century and 65 million aborted babies, then everything changes.

00:04:46.680 It's impossible to fully explain the number of ways in which everything changes,

00:04:51.720 but it will usher in an entire new era of American politics, whether that be good, bad, or ugly.

00:04:56.940 You gave a lot there, and I want to delve into a bunch of that as we go through our conversation right now.

00:05:02.720 But let's talk about the conversion therapy issue, because this is one where, irrespective of what one thinks about the bill,

00:05:11.100 the Conservatives gave the Liberals a win without getting anything in return, and I'd say actually went back a few steps.

00:05:17.740 And what I mean by that is that the Conservatives had taken a principled position, like, what, three months ago, four months ago,

00:05:24.540 maybe a few months more, in which, as you mentioned, 63 said, yeah, we've got issues with this bill.

00:05:30.100 Almost all of them said, we are against conversion therapy. This bill is a trap.

00:05:34.220 That was the Conservative line. I spoke about it with Andrew Scheer. That was what they all said.

00:05:39.960 The bill has not changed. The same issues that were there are still there.

00:05:44.620 So what the Conservatives have done is now conceded that either they were wrong,

00:05:49.260 or that they just don't care, and they'll just vote however it's politically expedient to do so.

00:05:54.340 And so when the Liberals were coming over, and Justin Trudeau and the Attorney General and Liberal MPs were shaking Conservative hands,

00:06:01.300 the Liberals have won without giving up anything.

00:06:05.000 And this is where the Conservative movement is right now.

00:06:07.760 It's, okay, we don't want to deal with the pushback, even though we've already been on record with our principles,

00:06:13.180 so let's just roll.

00:06:15.340 Yeah, well, so we don't really have a Conservative movement in this country at the moment.

00:06:19.920 It's so interesting on so many different social debates, whether it's abortion, whether it's gender theory,

00:06:27.040 you know, whether it's, you know, like lockdowns.

00:06:29.500 Like, work your way through the list.

00:06:31.020 There's no significant pushback from the party that's supposed to be on the Conservative side of the fence.

00:06:36.700 Work your way through the list of culture war issues and ask yourself,

00:06:39.300 who in power is actually fighting for a sizable minority, and on some issues, a majority of Canadians on these issues.

00:06:47.160 And the reality is on this issue that Aaron O'Toole wants to remake the Conservative Party of Canada

00:06:52.640 into a hardcore, socially liberal party that serves no purpose other than ushering him into power.

00:06:58.960 The best description I heard of Aaron O'Toole from one of my friends, who's worked with him a little bit,

00:07:04.200 is that he's the sort of guy who wants to be a great man but doesn't know how.

00:07:07.940 And he's concluded that what he needs to do is become really socially liberal to prove to the Canadian people

00:07:13.480 that he's right where Justin Trudeau is, but he has a slightly better accountant.

00:07:17.780 Now, as I'm sure you know, because we talk to a lot of the same people,

00:07:22.160 there are all kinds of theories emerging at the moment as to what exactly went down in the House of Commons last week.

00:07:28.960 There are MPs who were reportedly quite sandbagged, that knew this was being discussed,

00:07:33.820 but had no idea that this was actually going to be taken to the floor, that this was going to be announced.

00:07:39.400 And so I think Aaron O'Toole saw the conversion therapy ban coming up,

00:07:42.680 decided he did not want any headlines, you know, in the CBC or the Toronto Star,

00:07:48.260 that tarred himself or any of his MPs as anti-LGBT,

00:07:52.100 and that he was just going to sort of tell all of his MPs to abandon their views on conscience,

00:07:57.860 which, by the way, he had, the news reported that morning that he was going to allow a free vote.

00:08:03.060 That morning, right, hours later, you have the Conservative Party putting forward a motion to expedite the process,

00:08:09.800 and that he just sort of ramrodded this through.

00:08:12.020 Now, what's disappointing is that roughly 80% of the Conservative caucus is pro-life, is socially conservative,

00:08:18.240 so there were more than enough MPs that could have banded together.

00:08:22.220 When you're pressing for a unanimous consent, it just takes one guy or one female to stand up.

00:08:29.360 And so this is one of the very few instances in Canadian politics where it literally would have just taken one

00:08:35.460 to stand up and be like, no, and then we would have been, you know, back to committee,

00:08:39.440 back to the deliberative process, you know, there would be multiple hearings on this,

00:08:42.860 all of which we didn't get because nobody was willing to stand up.

00:08:45.480 Most nauseating, though, was, you know, MP Barrett and Candace Bergen, who were actually applauding.

00:08:51.580 These are people who have been, you know, voting against conversion therapy,

00:08:54.740 had raised significant concerns that, as you pointed out, were not addressed, right?

00:08:59.960 There were Liberal MPs who admitted when they heard the testimony of people like Colette Akema,

00:09:04.660 who testified to Parliament on this issue just a couple of months ago and said,

00:09:08.440 look, like, I was the victim of sexual assault,

00:09:10.820 and I needed counselling to get over all of the hang-ups and all of the trauma that this produced

00:09:16.540 so that I could have a fruitful relationship with my husband.

00:09:18.840 And they were like, yeah, wow, if our bill includes people like you, that's a problem.

00:09:22.600 And the Conservatives just tossed people like her right under the bus, 1.00

00:09:26.440 and they did so for sheer purpose of political expediency. 0.81

00:09:30.300 Like, it's really gross.

00:09:31.380 Like, there's really no way, there's really no way that anybody can frame this any way.

00:09:37.920 Like, this is not about principle, it's not about conviction,

00:09:39.940 because as you rightly pointed out, none of the MPs opposed a ban on conversion therapy.

00:09:44.460 They opposed a ban that encompassed conversations between people with unwanted same-sex attraction

00:09:50.280 from a whole variety of different experiences.

00:09:53.440 And those conversations basically just got one step closer to being banned

00:09:58.400 with the assistance of people who claim to speak for these Canadians.

00:10:01.660 They just don't care.

00:10:02.440 And you mentioned the overwhelming number of Conservative MPs who are pro-life.

00:10:08.580 I mean, there are two issues.

00:10:10.100 One is that Aaron O'Toole seems to have managed to have a pretty solid grip on his caucus

00:10:14.220 so that not even one of them would have spoken out.

00:10:16.940 And not all of them were in attendance on that day, but nevertheless.

00:10:20.160 And the other aspect of this is that if we look at the shadow cabinet

00:10:23.040 that Aaron O'Toole put forward, I mean, he gave out so many titles.

00:10:28.260 I think it was that, like, two out of three in the caucus

00:10:31.380 had some shadow cabinet or assistant shadow cabinet title.

00:10:35.300 So you had to work hard to be excluded.

00:10:37.400 And of those who were excluded, almost all of them, not all of them,

00:10:41.080 but almost all were pro-life.

00:10:42.660 So there is still an exclusion taking place.

00:10:45.460 People like Leslyn Lewis, who did very well in the leadership race last year

00:10:49.600 that Aaron O'Toole welcomed with open arms,

00:10:51.480 the one that ultimately delivered Aaron O'Toole his victory in the leadership

00:10:55.300 has been basically persona non grata in the party now that she's an elected MP.

00:11:00.660 So if you are going to look at a party that's doing this,

00:11:04.580 is there a revolution that needs to take place, like a split-off and a reunion,

00:11:09.980 or is it just unfixable?

00:11:12.900 Well, it's really interesting because you're not the only one asking that question.

00:11:16.520 There is a lot of people on the conservative side of the movement asking this question.

00:11:19.820 And where this, I think it's particularly dangerous for Mr. O'Toole,

00:11:23.200 is the pro-life movement in Canada is small but vocal.

00:11:26.820 We punch above our weight, but we have no illusions as to our size, right?

00:11:30.220 So the majority of Canadians would support legislation on things like gender selection, abortion.

00:11:35.000 It's also true to say that the majority of Canadians don't have any form of abortion

00:11:39.080 anywhere near the top of their priority list, right?

00:11:41.380 So we can say, look, the majority of Canadians are on our side.

00:11:44.260 We can't say the majority of Canadians are on side enough that they'll actually punish MPs for voting against it.

00:11:50.940 That's not the case.

00:11:51.980 However, the number of constituencies that O'Toole is willing to trample in his bid to flank Justin Trudeau on the left

00:11:59.140 and to somehow create a coalition by cutting people out is starting to grow, right?

00:12:04.660 He hasn't said anything about restrictions whatsoever.

00:12:07.260 His view on COVID is more or less identical to Trudeau's except for going on about inflation

00:12:12.580 without saying what he would have particularly done any differently.

00:12:16.320 He's thrown us under the bus on every single social issue and has manhandled his MPs into doing the same

00:12:22.000 and they're responsible for their acts.

00:12:23.800 But we know that this is primarily a leadership problem

00:12:27.640 and we know that because we got 63 votes in the right direction last time.

00:12:31.340 And, you know, now we didn't, despite the fact that he promised a free vote.

00:12:35.820 So he has to be careful because when it's, you can afford to just piss off the pro-lifers

00:12:40.640 if it is in a leadership race context.

00:12:43.020 You can't, you can't keep on screwing over all of these different factions,

00:12:47.540 none of whom like you, without running the risk of the gun owners and the libertarians

00:12:53.000 and the COVID hawks and the pro-lifers and those who are opposed to, you know,

00:12:57.800 the genital mutilation of children who are still minors and not allowed to vote or drive.

00:13:01.520 You can't, you can't piss off all of these constituencies without running the risk

00:13:05.520 of creating a new party at some point or, or just losing your leadership.

00:13:11.380 And it's interesting you brought it up.

00:13:12.640 He's obviously trying so hard to sideline Leslie Lewis because A, she, she does have principles 0.95

00:13:17.840 and not all of them are popular, but she has principles and she's willing to stand for them.

00:13:22.000 And secondarily, she's, she's more personally popular than he is.

00:13:25.600 And the thing about a rat, and this is O'Toole, right?

00:13:27.680 O'Toole, it's well known was, was, was one of those who was agitating behind the scenes

00:13:32.220 to get rid of Andrew Scheer so he could take a second shot at it as a true blue candidate.

00:13:37.420 When you're, when you operate that way, you assume everybody else operates that way.

00:13:41.360 So we're seeing day, day by day, week by week, the activity of a paranoid leader who's trying

00:13:47.820 to reshape the party while trying to keep all of those who disagree with them, which is

00:13:51.560 almost everybody but a small handful of red Tories under wraps.

00:13:54.940 And I don't think he, I'd love to know what you think about this as well, but I don't

00:13:58.600 think he can keep that high wire act up for, for any length of time.

00:14:03.280 There's just, there's just too much going on.

00:14:05.520 I would, I would agree in principle.

00:14:07.680 The problem is, is that you need to get some of the people that are critical of him that

00:14:12.580 have some prominence in the party to speak up.

00:14:15.080 I remember when Senator Denise Batters launched her petition, there, there were sort of whispers

00:14:19.640 that this would just become a very big thing.

00:14:22.280 And in the end, we got like a bunch of, uh, not even a bunch, we got a handful of national

00:14:26.420 councillors and former MPs that no one's ever heard of that joined that campaign.

00:14:30.080 We really didn't get a heavyweight there.

00:14:32.420 And I do think that some of these MPs that are in the conservative caucus need to speak

00:14:37.460 up and realize, yeah, you, you may not want to compromise your political future because

00:14:41.940 you are going to get kicked out of caucus, but you don't really have much of a future

00:14:45.880 if you're in a caucus and can't do anything there.

00:14:49.220 Well, and especially like you have nothing to lose, but your integrity, right?

00:14:53.620 Like there's a lot of MPs who by virtue of their silence, de facto voted for the conversion

00:14:58.820 therapy ban in contravention of, of their own convictions and their own beliefs.

00:15:03.180 That's not something that's easy to live with.

00:15:04.800 Literally in that case, silent was assent.

00:15:08.220 Yeah, that's right.

00:15:09.260 I, I, I know some of them have kind of pushed back and said, I didn't vote for it.

00:15:12.460 I'm like, by, by, by definition, you, you did in fact vote for it.

00:15:16.060 When they say any nays and you don't say anything, you voted for it. 1.00

00:15:20.380 I know.

00:15:20.960 And it's tragic, right?

00:15:21.880 Like, look, look, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not particularly targeting any one MP because

00:15:26.340 I understand the amount of pressure must've been massive.

00:15:29.260 Um, but, but at the end of the day, uh, and who wants to be part of Aaron O'Toole's

00:15:33.660 conservative party and what is Aaron O'Toole's conservative party?

00:15:36.460 And that's, that's almost a genuine question, right?

00:15:38.300 Besides being slightly hawkish on China, I'm not really sure what he brings to the table

00:15:43.380 that somebody of a conservative disposition should care about.

00:15:46.260 And I mean that you don't have to be a social conservative.

00:15:48.540 You can be any, any number of different, um, different dispositions on the conservative

00:15:52.900 side of the fence.

00:15:53.600 So in this country, it's when you, when you say, you know, are you optimistic or are you

00:15:57.140 pessimistic?

00:15:57.940 I mean, this country, I'm very pessimistic right now at the moment while we're having this

00:16:02.260 discussion, but that's not to say that there's not a lot of leadership potential

00:16:06.380 elsewhere that I think could build a coalition that could win.

00:16:09.980 It's just that the current leader we have is by def is by definition much worse than

00:16:15.180 any leader we've had for social conservatives.

00:16:18.000 Um, since Stephen Harper took over bar none, he's, he's just awful.

00:16:22.160 And fortunately, I think a lot of the MPs are beginning to understand that as well.

00:16:26.420 Nobody's willing to wield the knife yet, but when they do, I think we're going to see

00:16:30.660 a pile on.

00:16:31.240 There's a, there's a cyclical aspect of this that I know you're very familiar with, which

00:16:35.540 is that in the leadership, uh, social conservatives are a ready-made, uh, victory machine.

00:16:40.420 It's a block in a box ready to vote for you.

00:16:43.120 And at the same time, you get the general election shift that takes place after winning a leadership.

00:16:48.140 And we've seen this with Aaron O'Toole.

00:16:50.040 We saw it with Andrew Scheer, who I believe is a genuine bona fide pro-lifer.

00:16:54.260 We saw it with Patrick Brown in Ontario.

00:16:56.660 We've seen it with countless other leaders where they're all about pro-life, pro-life,

00:17:00.720 pro-life.

00:17:01.280 And even with Aaron O'Toole, he was always transparent.

00:17:03.620 He said, I'm offering you conscience rights.

00:17:05.180 I'm not with you on, on being a pro-lifer, but I'm offering you the opportunity, which

00:17:09.980 Peter McKay was not doing.

00:17:11.800 How do you break that cycle?

00:17:14.880 Well, the really interesting thing is I, I believe Andrew Scheer's leadership was a

00:17:18.780 huge missed opportunity for us.

00:17:20.520 Um, because as you say, he shared our convictions.

00:17:22.460 He was, he was open to trying to figure out how to respond to the broad concerns of the

00:17:28.280 Canadian people and to stay focused on the areas where there was consensus, but he simply

00:17:32.280 never figured out how to talk about it.

00:17:34.080 And then he left before he learned his lessons.

00:17:35.900 Like he was in the process, I believe, of trying to figure out how to talk about these things

00:17:39.480 more articulately, um, to, to say things that, that were true to his own values, but also

00:17:44.360 appeal to the largest number of Canadians.

00:17:46.440 And as you and I have talked about on, on this show before, there are many, many social

00:17:50.740 conservative issues where you can get broad support.

00:17:52.900 You don't have to go for, for the extremes of any position.

00:17:56.020 And so the fact that Andrew Scheer left was really disappointing to us because I think

00:18:00.320 with the second kick at the can, he would have done a lot better.

00:18:02.960 Um, with Aaron O'Toole, like one of the things that I think is, is, is so interesting that

00:18:08.420 we've never had before, you know, we've had the Harper doctrine is what I call it, uh,

00:18:12.380 for decades now.

00:18:13.720 And Harper's doctrine was basically like, you need to unite as many different factions of the

00:18:17.840 conservative base under one tent, but you've got to keep the SOCONs in the tent, but off 0.96

00:18:22.440 the platform.

00:18:23.000 The only way you win is if you keep pro-lifers quiet, right?

00:18:26.000 Most infamously, he interfered in parliamentary procedures to ensure that motion 408 didn't

00:18:31.000 reach the floor and embarrass him in some way.

00:18:33.540 And that's become sort of gospel amongst the, the, the conservative strategy elites that

00:18:38.340 you need to keep them off the platform.

00:18:40.240 You need to keep them shut up.

00:18:41.800 Um, but this last election just proved that the pivot, the media has been begging for, for

00:18:46.200 decades, right?

00:18:46.980 The conservatives would start winning the second they start waving the rainbow flag, the second 0.99

00:18:51.520 they start becoming socially liberal, slightly fiscally conservative, right?

00:18:55.080 One of the first statements O'Toole made was, I will march in pride, right?

00:18:58.540 He was so eager to get out there and announce this.

00:19:01.300 And, and what happens?

00:19:02.500 The guy who apparently lost because he was so socially conservative, got more votes and

00:19:06.300 more seats, uh, than the guy who went hard left and screwed over all the factions.

00:19:10.920 He was reliably informed by the media and the conservative strategy tapes he needed to screw

00:19:15.540 over to win.

00:19:16.500 In fact, he lost in all of the major demographics he was supposed to gain in by doing so, right?

00:19:21.540 He was just absolutely shut out of the GTA.

00:19:24.240 He, he did worse among women than Scheer had.

00:19:27.060 So all of these constituencies, he was supposed to be bringing in by being open-minded and moderate.

00:19:31.520 He didn't.

00:19:32.320 And the reason that's so valuable is because this is the first election we have that directly

00:19:37.340 rebuts the reigning consensus.

00:19:39.620 And I think that now when people say, well, this is what you got to do, it's like, well,

00:19:42.960 it didn't work and you had over the following day, CBC, Global, CTV, all of them saying,

00:19:47.560 huh, I guess that didn't work, right?

00:19:49.700 Now it's not like anybody's going to learn their lesson because they didn't care if it

00:19:52.420 worked or not because the media, surprise, surprise, isn't particularly invested in

00:19:56.540 conservative success.

00:19:58.420 But at the end of the day, what we know that that doesn't necessarily work because you

00:20:02.200 can't run against the base and win.

00:20:04.100 I've said this before.

00:20:05.120 I think every conservative leadership race, the last several, has shown us what kind of

00:20:10.140 SOCON platform can win.

00:20:12.020 And it's the moderate, right?

00:20:13.000 You had Brad Trost, who was, you know, really, really hardcore socially conservative, and

00:20:19.320 he couldn't attract enough people.

00:20:21.160 But then if you look at Pierre Lemieux's platform, I think that's a good example of the kind of

00:20:26.220 thing that can appeal to Canadians more broadly.

00:20:28.460 He had this speech called, you know, Social Conservative Values are Canadian Values.

00:20:31.760 It was a brilliant speech.

00:20:32.660 And there was sort of the Leslyn Lewis versus Derek Sloan type, right?

00:20:36.060 I think that in each race, you've had a Pierre Lemieux or a Leslyn Lewis figure that shows

00:20:39.700 what the winning path forward is to take social conservative principles, but only to appeal

00:20:45.380 to the broad consensus to ensure that you achieve the maximum amount of votes.

00:20:49.960 Unfortunately, O'Toole, there's not a lesson he's willing to learn from any of this.

00:20:54.140 I know we've spent a fair bit of time talking about the politics of this.

00:20:57.640 I want to return to the Andrew Breitbart axiom that politics is downstream of culture.

00:21:02.520 The Margaret Thatcher quote that first you win the argument, then you win the vote.

00:21:06.920 Because ideally, if we're making inroads culturally, the political class will have to respond.

00:21:13.460 And it does seem like we're backsliding politically, though.

00:21:16.540 Do you think we're doing the same culturally?

00:21:18.000 Well, no, we're not.

00:21:20.860 And that's sort of the frustrating thing, right?

00:21:23.160 Because while it is true that politics is downstream from culture, politics also shapes and informs

00:21:28.660 culture in a very big way.

00:21:31.380 And so when Stephen Harper came out and said, look, you change the culture and then we can

00:21:35.500 act, he was being a bit facetious because the polling data that was available when Motion

00:21:40.180 408 to condemn gendercide was put forward, the most recent poll published by mainstream

00:21:44.740 newspapers indicated that 93% of Canadians were opposed to it.

00:21:48.640 So again, he was being facetious.

00:21:50.400 I understand that we're not going to get an abortion ban, right?

00:21:53.180 I understand there's a long list of things that social conservatives approve of that will

00:21:56.740 never happen in this country, at least not in the foreseeable future.

00:22:00.000 However, when presented with the option to pass a social conservative policy solely in

00:22:06.160 the majority, like what do 93% of Canadians agree on?

00:22:09.480 I don't think anything at this point, except for maybe Stuart McClain.

00:22:13.760 And so as such, I think that over the last 10 years, pro-lifers, the movement, a lot of

00:22:20.520 social conservatives, I think have indicated their willingness to play political pragmatism

00:22:24.980 properly.

00:22:25.820 Uh, they're willing to actually, you know, put forward policies that have a broad appeal.

00:22:30.760 They recognize that leaders and prime ministers are not going to risk their careers over our

00:22:34.400 issues.

00:22:34.640 So they hand them issues they don't need, uh, to risk, to risk anything over.

00:22:38.360 And that's been, that's been put away as well.

00:22:40.280 Like I think on a whole range of issues, the culture has actually gotten significantly

00:22:44.580 better.

00:22:45.380 It's difficult to tell over the last two years because nobody talks about anything but COVID

00:22:49.400 of course.

00:22:50.320 Um, and so we're having like a separate culture war that has much more to do with libertarianism,

00:22:55.400 your opinion on lockdowns, your opinion on vaccines, and then your opinion on mandatory

00:22:59.380 vaccination, all of that kind of stuff.

00:23:01.580 So those are the culture wars that have dominated the headlines for the past 24 months.

00:23:05.760 But no, I think that a leader could put forward an agenda with a substantial socially conservative

00:23:11.540 component, uh, that would, would, would actually increase the voting base.

00:23:15.600 Not that you could squeak through and satisfy the SOCONs.

00:23:19.280 No, that would actually work very effectively.

00:23:21.440 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.

00:23:29.740 A lot of people would, if you ask them, and I think even informed or ostensibly educated

00:23:35.300 people would say that the Supreme Court has affirmed a woman has a right to choose. 0.98

00:23:39.140 The Supreme Court of Canada has said through Morgenthaler that abortion is a right, which is not

00:23:43.420 at all what Morgenthaler said.

00:23:46.060 That case was one that literally requested the government respond with a law that was

00:23:51.960 more evenly applied nationally, which never happened.

00:23:55.360 So this idea of political cowardice, even at a time when I'd say there were a lot more

00:23:59.780 pro-life sentiments in the population around the time of the Morgenthaler decision, political

00:24:03.920 cowardice is not new.

00:24:07.020 No, it's not.

00:24:07.940 And it's interesting you bring that up because you do see these new narratives being kind of

00:24:12.040 created in real time, right?

00:24:13.620 Justin Trudeau says the woman have a charter right to abortion.

00:24:16.680 You know, his father would have disagreed with that, like vigorously.

00:24:20.320 In fact, his father assured, you know, the Roman Catholic bishops and the cardinals and

00:24:25.220 the people he was talking to that the charter did not affirm the right to abortion, right?

00:24:28.800 So this is a Trudeau family feud going on here in the newspapers during election time.

00:24:34.500 And yet the Supreme Court not only did not affirm a right to abortion, they just affirmed that 0.70

00:24:40.140 the current abortion regime or the abortion regime in place at that time was not constitutional

00:24:44.660 but said explicitly that the government had a vested interest in protecting the baby in

00:24:48.800 the womb at some point.

00:24:50.340 Justice Bertha Wilson, one of the only female justices in Canada's Supreme Court, suggested

00:24:54.620 that was sometime in the second trimester.

00:24:58.120 And then again, as you said, they put it back to Parliament and said, please pass new laws.

00:25:02.560 Parliament tried to do so, failed in 1990.

00:25:05.640 And has never tried again since while pretending that it's been settled when in fact there's

00:25:10.880 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.

00:25:35.640 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,

00:25:52.020 who don't read the same newspapers we do, don't consume the same media, and essentially

00:25:57.060 just vote on a handful of issues that have nothing to do with the social issues that are

00:26:01.500 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,

00:26:17.200 the Indo-Canadians?

00:26:18.060 Like, who specifically is un-Canadian for disagreeing with you on abortion?

00:26:21.540 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

00:26:30.280 the past several years.

00:26:31.400 Yeah, and this is where the media aspect of this is so critical, because the media is

00:26:36.020 not interested in asking the questions.

00:26:37.760 The media will ask the questions of, you know, why are you pro-life?

00:26:41.660 That's the basic approach that the media takes with Andrew Scheer.

00:26:44.860 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?

00:26:51.820 And at a certain point, it's going to be, why do you live on the same street as someone

00:26:55.320 who goes to a Catholic church?

00:26:56.660 Like, the narrative is already set.

00:26:59.020 But I would love for the media to ask Justin Trudeau, just as one notable example.

00:27:02.800 He claims, and has claimed repeatedly, that he's a devout Catholic.

00:27:07.560 How do you reconcile those two positions?

00:27:09.280 Are you saying the Catholic church is wrong?

00:27:11.020 Are you saying you're not actually Catholic?

00:27:12.420 Like, I believe that he's genuinely pro-choice.

00:27:15.260 I believe that he is not at all pro-life.

00:27:17.280 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. 0.95

00:27:41.160 They don't believe in any of the dogmas of the tenets of the Catholic church.

00:27:44.680 They have the highest abortion rate in the country.

00:27:46.600 They have the highest rate of third abortions in the country, right?

00:27:49.620 Yet they want to hang on to all the trappings.

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.

00:28:13.580 If you believe it, it's your culture, right?

00:28:15.980 If it's just, you know, like a sign that somebody else is the other and shouldn't be here,

00:28:20.380 it's something else entirely.

00:28:21.860 So I actually find the whole Quebec Catholic debate very, very amusing.

00:28:26.100 And I find, because it's just, it's so hilarious that the Quebecers do things 1.00

00:28:30.760 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.

00:28:52.380 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 0.99

00:29:09.920 because they want to be part of this legacy.

00:29:11.740 At the same time, it's being used to exclude people from other religious traditions in one province.

00:29:17.780 Yeah.

00:29:18.440 Yeah, that's a very valid point.

00:29:19.940 And it's interesting.

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,

00:29:29.040 I would love to ask that.

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.

00:29:49.300 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.

00:29:58.500 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.

00:30:08.940 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.

00:30:21.260 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.

00:30:53.980 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.

00:31:30.580 And there's one other point to bring up here.

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.

00:31:38.740 and even like they do in most European countries.

00:31:41.320 But another question I would ask is, we also don't have the intellectual framework.

00:31:47.900 We don't have the think tanks.

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.

00:32:14.160 But who now would qualify for the position of a serious Canadian conservative thinker?

00:32:18.740 Honest question.

00:32:19.820 I don't have the answer.

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.

00:32:37.920 There's plenty of activists.

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.

00:33:27.440 You know what I mean?

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?

00:34:03.020 Do I have a right to preach?

00:34:04.540 Do I have a right to go to church?

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

00:34:25.020 is in the process of collapsing in the U.S.

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.

00:34:43.580 We don't have the same debate here.

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,

00:35:13.120 which was amusing but slightly inaccurate.

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? 0.94

00:35:22.060 This was so ludicrous. 0.92

00:35:23.220 It was so staged. 0.97

00:35:24.900 I have no idea why that actually happened.

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.

00:36:13.460 Very well said.

00:36:14.480 We'll leave it there.

00:36:15.080 Thebridgehead.ca.

00:36:16.440 Fantastic book, The Culture War.

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.

00:36:24.040 Always a pleasure, Jon, and Merry Christmas.

00:36:26.040 Yeah, same to you, Andrew.

00:36:26.860 Thanks for having me on.

00:36:28.120 That is Jonathan Van Maren here on The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:36:31.440 My thanks to all of you tuning in our last program before Christmas.

00:36:34.340 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.

00:36:45.160 And that's all coming up.

00:36:46.280 But do have a wonderful time, truly.

00:36:48.540 With that, we'll bid you adieu.

00:36:49.700 Thank you, God bless, and Merry Christmas.

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.

Juno News - December 23, 2021

Are social conservatives losing the culture war？

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