Juno News - Canada a laughingstock？

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juneau News. Alexander Brown here, host of Not Sorry. Great to be back for another

00:00:07.280 episode. I'm the director of the National Citizens Coalition. I'm a writer, I'm a campaigner,

00:00:12.100 a contributor. Thrilled to get to talk to you folks. And while I have you here at the

00:00:16.200 start of the episode, promo code junownews.com slash not sorry for 20% off. Please take advantage.

00:00:24.080 In Tuesday's episode, we lampooned the liberal toast to 2015 election night.

00:00:29.380 How offensive that was? How tone deaf? Was there anything really worth celebrating? And now

00:00:34.240 Canada's being laughed at again in a slightly different way, but similarly related to our

00:00:39.580 habit of virtue signaling and the results that follow being mixed to disastrous.

00:00:46.300 Now it's major American comedians laughing at Canada's forced land acknowledgements.

00:00:50.960 Joe Rogan and Andrew Schultz, Joe Rogan podcast, the biggest podcast in the entire world.

00:00:55.440 Take a look.

00:00:55.900 Like anytime I'm performing in Canada, like if it's on like an indigenous area, they 1.00

00:00:59.760 make me do like a-

00:01:00.760 Yeah, a land acknowledgement.

00:01:01.880 And I remember the first time they told me, I was like, you want me to do what? And they're

00:01:05.740 like, yeah, we want you to let them know that this used to be native land. And I'm like,

00:01:08.840 I remember telling it to like the chief of the tribe. And I'm like, brother, that kind

00:01:13.540 of seems like I'm bragging. Like I'm going up there and be like, yo, this used to be yours,

00:01:18.080 but the boys came in. Got y'all the fuck out of here. Like you really want me to go and 0.99

00:01:24.640 remind everybody what happened before the comedy show?

00:01:27.220 You know, my favorite part about that is it's a land acknowledgement, but also saying we're

00:01:31.980 not giving it back.

00:01:32.760 That's what I'm saying.

00:01:33.340 We stole it, but it's ours now.

00:01:35.220 So what do we do? Who are we doing this for?

00:01:37.660 Sorry. We're going to acknowledge the fact that we're on stolen land. But the thing, the

00:01:42.020 thing is, these people that go along with that are also the same people that want no borders

00:01:46.100 and no one's illegal being anywhere. Like Christopher Columbus is the only immigrant they hate.

00:01:54.240 Yo, that was, there was, there's no borders, you know, no one's illegal, but yet these

00:02:02.320 people shouldn't have been here.

00:02:03.640 We let a Spanish speaking guy into America once. Went great. 1.00

00:02:11.380 And where do those gestures, both well-meaning and ill-meaning from some, lead us? Even BC

00:02:18.280 Premier David Eby, a frequent target on this show and past episode here, is Canada's greatest

00:02:24.320 threat to recovery. He's worried about this Cowichan decision in British Columbia, where

00:02:30.780 he helped lay out the groundwork for now what is potentially Canadian private property rights

00:02:36.560 coming under threat. It's been the end point of these land acknowledgements. And it's been,

00:02:42.760 some of us were, saw this coming and were very worried and all kinds of experts, Caroline

00:02:47.520 Elliott, who has been a guest on the show and we hope to have her back on, will tell you

00:02:52.680 that this was always going to be where these gestures lead. And making this country a little

00:02:59.420 bit more of a laughingstock and it shouldn't be right now because we have so many issues

00:03:03.500 to fix because we have so many self-inflicted crises. I say all the time on here, no one

00:03:08.420 harms Canada like Canada. You can blame President Trump for all you want. Now he did make the election

00:03:14.240 difficult, but we are, holy cow, we have a penchant for stepping on rakes. And this is a moment when the

00:03:22.900 majority of Canadians want real action. They're demanding action on policies like immigration.

00:03:26.740 There's a new study from the Environics Institute covered in Juneau News showing that there are still

00:03:33.280 record highs of Canadians now who believe that immigration is too high. These are highs not seen

00:03:41.740 since the 90s. There are now increasing highs of those who understand that our refugee and asylum program

00:03:49.800 is completely broken and filled with not actually refugees or asylum seekers because they're seemingly

00:03:56.340 in violation of the safe third country agreement between the United States and America. Whereas

00:04:01.360 if they can make it to America in the first place, they're plenty safe there. Why the heck are they then

00:04:05.460 coming up here? And or it's a large group of temporary foreign workers and students who just before they're

00:04:12.520 about to get the boot are deciding that they are now, I don't know, pick a pick a social issue that

00:04:18.500 makes them vulnerable and they can't go home even though they might have just gone back home for for

00:04:22.700 Christmas. Grocery prices and the cost of living are surging. And yet very limited progress on major

00:04:32.360 projects, very limited progress on immigration. We're celebrating all the wrong things. We're becoming a 0.96

00:04:38.060 laughing stock to to talk these continued cultural crises. I'm really thrilled to have on Dr. Sean Watley. He's the

00:04:44.780 past president of the Ontario Medical Association of Civitas. He's a physician, author, terrific podcaster,

00:04:51.740 contributor to contributor to Project Ontario. And first, a word from our sponsor.

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00:05:48.620 leaders standing up for freedom, standing against big government overreach. Intakes are in September

00:05:54.300 and January. Don't wait. It's time to lead. Use the link in the description today. Check it out over

00:05:59.260 at CandiceMalcolm.com slash MACMI. That's M-A-K-A-M-I. Sean Watley joins us here on the show. Sean is the

00:06:07.540 past president of the OMA, Civitas. He is a physician, author, podcaster, senior MLI fellow,

00:06:15.200 Project Ontario contributor. Did I get all of those? Yeah, they're half true, but yes.

00:06:21.020 That's an extensive CV. And I'm glad to be talking to you because this is, and I was lucky enough to

00:06:27.320 just appear on your show the other day, and that episode's coming out soon. I want to be talking to

00:06:31.980 a guy, an ideas guy, because Canada needs better ideas right now. As the past president of Civitas,

00:06:39.060 which is this phenomenal nonprofit that brings together so many of the country's top thinkers,

00:06:45.080 it's known as the society where ideas meet. Well, we need your ideas right now because we see where

00:06:52.020 the country's struggling. What to you is your biggest pressing concern right now as an ideas guy,

00:07:00.180 as someone with such an impressive CV? When you look around the Canadian landscape,

00:07:05.160 what do you desperately see that's in need of fixing? Yeah. So I liked how you pitched or set up

00:07:10.860 the question, basing it on ideas. And it's a great way to frame the whole answer is to say,

00:07:16.600 we need to focus on ideas and getting back to great ideas. The challenge with ideas though,

00:07:22.080 is there's a risk of scaring everybody away. We just get so nerdy and we get so far into our deep

00:07:28.200 little corner that everybody goes, what the heck are you talking about? And certainly some people have

00:07:33.640 said that about my podcast. So our challenge is to rediscover the ideas that made Canada great.

00:07:39.800 Yeah. And not simply by looking backwards. Yes, the past informs us, but we have to apply those

00:07:46.780 great ideas to the current moment and then apply them in a way that makes sense. So someone I was

00:07:53.160 just talking to recently on my show said that conservatives are not very good at telling their

00:07:58.060 own story. And that's what we need to do. Conservatives, right of center people, people who just want to

00:08:04.480 have a good life and have a flourishing life. We need to figure out how to capture some of these

00:08:10.300 challenging ideas and put them into a story that people can resonate with.

00:08:15.880 Yeah. It's so much of it is a communications issue where we talk about this on your show and I

00:08:22.600 encourage people to check it out and subscribe, which is how do you present conservative ideas in a

00:08:28.820 palatable way to the public? There there can be kind of warring tribes on this or different

00:08:34.640 approaches. And so it's a how do you make it housebroken? How do you make it not too esoteric? How do you

00:08:39.960 make it? You know, we're not just stuffy Ivy League folks. And I am the complete opposite of that. I am a

00:08:45.560 yob, as Andrew Coyne would insult me as I am. I got a BA in poli sci that isn't worth the paper that is

00:08:52.020 printed on Sean. And so, you know, how do we, we, we dress up and be professional, but still be

00:08:57.480 relatable. And it's this eternal, it's this eternal conservative, uh, conundrum. I think of the,

00:09:03.240 the, the George Grant quote from lament for a nation, which is the talking about the impossibility

00:09:09.280 of conservatism in Canada, where the, the currents of progress are always against us. I building on that,

00:09:17.440 where would you see an opportunity to, to meld that kind of progress with tradition, to, to be able to,

00:09:25.420 to speak in a modern way and an appealing way to, to folks that still keeps conservative principles.

00:09:31.660 Yeah. So you've got so many jumping off points in that little segue. That's, that's brilliant. Um,

00:09:36.720 I wanted to make a comment when you said about messaging. So the risk for messaging is the

00:09:41.520 continual tension between clicks versus substance. So you could get tons of clicks by lighting your

00:09:47.400 hair on fire. If you still have hair and people, is that what happened there? That's what happened

00:09:52.560 there, man. Actually kids happened. I know, no, my kids are understandable. Understandable.

00:09:57.520 That's right. Life happened genetics. Uh, but there's always a tension between clicks versus

00:10:02.980 substance. And furthermore, if you actually dare to start talking about substance, you worry about

00:10:10.240 avoiding scary substance. So the safe substance for conservatives have always, has always been

00:10:17.000 economic issues. Let's focus on money. Furthermore, people love to click on stuff that talks about

00:10:23.500 money because most people feel we need more money, right? Money is a good thing. If you, if you can

00:10:28.520 find yourself some more money. So that has been the sweet spot for conservatives. Talk about the economy.

00:10:34.660 People probably aren't going to beat you up on that. Talk about getting more money into people's

00:10:38.880 pockets. Most voters will like that. So you avoid the scary stuff and you're kind of talking about

00:10:45.660 substance, but you're also talking about things that are pretty easy to understand, but you asked

00:10:50.460 the much harder question. How can we talk about progress while being informed by tradition? Now,

00:10:58.220 fortunately, you know, we can unpack tradition. Tradition doesn't have to be a scary, weird thing.

00:11:04.420 Tradition is just simply looking at all the failures and screw ups that came before us.

00:11:08.860 You would do exactly the same thing in your neighborhood. If you said, Hey, I want to make a

00:11:13.520 raised garden bed in my backyard or on my front lawn. You'd probably talk to your neighbors and say, Hey,

00:11:19.820 I see you have a really nice raised garden. How did that work out? And they'll say, Well, let me tell you,

00:11:24.360 my first three were terrible. They flooded with rain and all my plants died and I got full of slugs or

00:11:30.280 whatever. That's all we're talking about. When we talk about tradition, we're talking about looking back at

00:11:35.560 people who did things and failed and trying to identify the few people that really succeeded.

00:11:42.320 So I think if we repackage what we're talking about, when we talk about tradition, we'll be able to marry

00:11:46.800 it very naturally with progress. I hope so, because I think recently, certainly there's something going

00:11:53.940 on right now within the conservative movement in Canada, where some seem to believe that you can't

00:12:00.360 talk about the difficult stuff or they'd rather not because they just want to win. They want to get

00:12:05.520 in first and then maybe we can smuggle in some cultural ideas, but you could also make the

00:12:10.600 argument, well, you're not winning anyway. I mean, in rare instances, Danielle Smith, that's a bright

00:12:16.180 light right there. Scott Moe, bright light right there. But if the federal campaigns are struggling

00:12:22.560 to succeed and they're speaking culturally, if Ontario has this three-term majority that has

00:12:32.040 barely touched anything of substance culturally, surely this is a moment where we should be,

00:12:39.260 if the economy isn't cutting it for young people increasingly, we're seeing it in the polls. It's

00:12:44.040 not the most important thing to them. We're supposed to be expanding this right-wing voter base and this 0.82

00:12:50.000 common-sense voter base that we have to talk about the difficult things, that we have to

00:12:55.160 have difficult conversations, whether it is the work of the new publication I'm associated with

00:13:01.200 without diminishment, or I think of your terrific work and as a contributor with Project Ontario,

00:13:06.940 where let's lay out ideas here. Let's lay out, in essence, cultural ideas on changing how we do

00:13:14.220 things. You have a recent piece with Josh DeHaz in the Hub for Project Ontario about,

00:13:19.720 you know, Ontario should be opening it up to private surgeries. That is a sacred cow that 0.96

00:13:25.500 needs to be slaughtered, this clear need for an expansion of our healthcare program because these

00:13:31.320 backlogs are getting so darn long. And so we were called all kinds of names for that Project Ontario

00:13:39.760 affiliation. But is it fair that some conservatives seem to not appreciate criticism? Or do you view that this is an

00:13:50.520 important moment to be taking on culture?

00:13:54.600 Yeah. So I'll start out by saying, in fairness, all of our people that we beat up for saying,

00:13:59.780 ah, you guys got into office, and then you wimped out and didn't say anything.

00:14:05.500 There's something that is important about what they're doing, too.

00:14:09.700 Yes.

00:14:10.060 You have to win or you don't make change. And so a former political staffer was explaining this to me.

00:14:16.700 She said, Sean, like, smarten up. You need power. If you don't get power, you can't make any policy

00:14:22.940 change. So in fairness to our people who are in power, yes, thank you for winning elections. We

00:14:28.880 love you for it. Now we want you to actually stand by some principles and actually make some

00:14:34.840 changes. And I think this is where you and I probably share the same criticism of the provincial

00:14:39.700 government right now. Premier Ford, seven years, I believe, of a majority government, not a lot to

00:14:45.200 show for it. And we can talk about it if you want. But it seems like that once you're there,

00:14:51.440 you're so happy that you're there, you lose the confidence of actually standing for something

00:14:57.220 and trying now to convince people that, hey, let's consider this. And so one person on my show said

00:15:06.260 that we need leadership. That's what leaders do. They take a challenging idea and say, consider this.

00:15:14.640 These are the pros. These are the cons. These are the good things about our current state.

00:15:18.660 But these are the great things about where we could get to. Do you want to come with me on that

00:15:23.660 journey? So you don't freak people out and say, we're just going to dictate how things are going

00:15:27.900 to be. But you actually lead and you engage and you explain your ideas to people in a way that they

00:15:35.580 can get excited about. So you avoid being captured by your audience. That's what you said yesterday.

00:15:40.100 I think you said, yeah, you get captured by your audience and that's all you care about is clicks.

00:15:44.780 Now, you mentioned private surgeries. Perfect example. So we could say that that is such a scary

00:15:53.120 thing. The third rail of Canadian politics, you must never talk about it. But yet polling doesn't

00:15:59.520 support that. Yeah. Many polls show that people are open to options if they can't get the care they

00:16:06.980 need in a timely fashion. And the example I always use is with the toll highways in Southern Ontario.

00:16:12.660 People either love 407, which is a toll highway parallel to the 401 in Toronto area. They either

00:16:21.260 love it or they hate it. But even if they hate it, they're actually happy that some people are willing

00:16:27.080 to pay the extra couple dollars to drive on the 407 if it lightens the traffic when I'm driving on

00:16:33.240 the 401. And so Canadians are fundamentally okay with easing weight on the public highways if people

00:16:42.740 are able to take the toll highways. I could use the same example with respect to clinical care in

00:16:50.200 Ontario. And the example I use all the time is to do with infertility care. In Ontario, now this is

00:16:57.780 slightly old data, I believe 2020 or 2021, Ontario was funding 5,500 IVF cycles. So people can't get

00:17:05.600 pregnant, women can't get pregnant, you can have in vitro fertilization. The government said we will 0.98

00:17:11.220 pay for 5,500 cycles of IVF. So if we only allow public fertility clinics, no private options at all,

00:17:21.300 those 5,500 cycles could maintain maybe five or six clinics. So a full-time clinic does around

00:17:28.600 a thousand cycles per year. In 2020, Ontario had 13 fertility clinics. So over twice the number of

00:17:40.040 clinics that could be sustained if it was only being funded by public funding. So in other words, that

00:17:46.080 means you have clinics that are closer to home for patients that are spread across the province,

00:17:52.180 including the far north. They've hired a bunch of people, everyone from the front desk to technologists,

00:17:58.560 they buy technology, ultrasound machines, lab. So you've got a whole industry built around fertility 0.99

00:18:04.900 because we allow a blend of public and private services when it comes to fertility care. And the sky 0.74

00:18:13.800 hasn't fallen. People are happy. People still get access to the public IVF cycles. People are getting

00:18:18.800 their private care IVF cycles when they need them. And so we shouldn't be so scared about having these

00:18:27.760 conversations. We need to shift that Overton window. And the sky never fell in Europe, right?

00:18:33.400 Like this Canadian mindset that, oh, we're going to lose like a part of our progressive identity.

00:18:40.460 We have all these, what we think of as sister countries, as these progressive European nations,

00:18:46.560 where they do a version of two-tier healthcare. And because of it, they have far lesser backlogs,

00:18:52.780 correct? Yeah. So last time I checked, there are 32 countries with blended healthcare systems,

00:18:59.680 universal healthcare systems. So everybody in the population gets care and they're all blended. 0.95

00:19:05.860 The only country now in the world that on principle outlaws private care is Canada. And people would

00:19:14.680 right away say, well, Sean, it's not exactly outlawed and some provinces allow it, but the

00:19:20.160 amount of regulation that's in place effectively makes it so that it can't exist. And so we could

00:19:26.700 quibble about the details, but ultimately Canada is the only country in the world that goes out of its

00:19:33.180 way to block it. We're good at cutting off our nose to spite our face. It's kind of our thing

00:19:37.940 with, with elbows up and it purely seemingly out of spite that we are, we are refusing to change

00:19:43.600 another one of those, these kind of sacred topics that we've suddenly been forced to talk about

00:19:49.960 because the public mood is very much changed. And I believe that, that there are those like Juno News

00:19:55.240 doing great reporting and others who are speaking honestly about this is immigration. Like the,

00:19:59.740 the consensus and opinion on Canadian immigration has shifted in the last few years. And, and some

00:20:05.440 have been reluctant to, to say, so I don't think anyone enjoys the topic. And if they do, there might

00:20:11.100 be something else going on there, but we're now seeing that even there's a new environic study that

00:20:17.740 just came out showing that there's this increased high since sort of 1994 to 1996, showing opposition to

00:20:26.620 immigration levels. We have an increased number of Canadians who now believe that even refugees

00:20:32.140 aren't real refugees, which we know the bulk of our new refugees and asylum claims are not above

00:20:38.980 board. They're there, you know, there's these, the safe country, safe third country act from the United

00:20:44.300 States where they're arriving there first and then coming straight up when they're not supposed to do

00:20:47.980 that because they were theoretically already safe in the United States. We have students coming up on

00:20:52.440 their visas and deciding like, actually, you know what, going back to Amritsar, I've been oppressed

00:20:57.840 this whole time. And it's like, but you just went back there for holiday. Like, are you sure this is a

00:21:02.280 legitimate asylum claim? And so we can see that there are these, these cultural issues that we, we can't

00:21:08.920 avoid anymore, whether it's fixing healthcare or immigration or God forbid, bail reform in any

00:21:14.760 meaningful way in any, just, just, can we not just tidy this up a little bit?

00:21:19.760 Yeah. So you laid out the failure points, uh, around immigration really well, and we could spend

00:21:29.320 all of our time for the next few weeks, just focusing on that and trying to fix all those problems.

00:21:34.680 My, my worry with that making, with that being our focus is that I'm, I'm not sure we have agreement

00:21:41.940 on, on what is good or, or where, where we should go. And that's why we're having the debate, but

00:21:47.000 I guess I would just for a moment, again, wanting to look behind us, what sort of successes did we have

00:21:54.620 in the past? And I mean, when I was going to high school in the eighties and university in the nineties,

00:22:00.560 anyone that was an obvious immigrant. So due to the way they dress, the way they talk, the, the, 0.98

00:22:08.640 the amount of melanin in their skin, I immediately said, oh, they must be a professor or they must be

00:22:15.000 the children of a professor or a CEO. Like these were high class people. They probably had wealth,

00:22:20.400 they were smart, they were articulate. They spoke, you know, at least two or three languages,

00:22:24.760 like they were the, the top of the top. So Canada had a focus on skilled immigration and

00:22:32.400 these super high class people that everybody wanted to associate with. Oh yeah, I know that

00:22:37.680 person. Yeah, of course I know. I won't mention names because my high school was, we had over a

00:22:42.220 thousand people, but the, the, the number of immigrants were small enough that if you mentioned

00:22:45.940 their name is like, oh no, he's talking about that person. So I won't mention names, but these people

00:22:51.680 brought a cultural background with them, but they integrated to the Canada that existed.

00:22:58.180 So they didn't say, yeah, no, I believe in tearing down things and boarding up

00:23:02.920 Sir John A. MacDonald and none of that nonsense. So highly skilled and integrated.

00:23:08.160 And then you mentioned culture today. We have almost the exact opposite. We have people who

00:23:17.160 aren't highly skilled and don't want to integrate at all. And, and perhaps not through any fault of

00:23:23.340 their own. If you bring in waves and waves of people, if you and I, a whole mass of us went to

00:23:29.840 a country that didn't speak English, I'd probably say, Hey Alex, you speak English. Great. Can you help

00:23:34.160 me find a house? Can I live next to you? We can help each other. That would be a normal human response.

00:23:40.860 And so it's really unfair of us to bring in so many people that there's no possibility that

00:23:45.780 they're going to be able to integrate. Furthermore, we're embarrassed of the culture we had in the

00:23:51.420 past. And so we don't even want them to integrate into them. We want them to bring their own culture 1.00

00:23:55.740 and transform Canada. So we have problems on multiple levels, but I think people are willing

00:24:01.120 to talk about them now. My worry though, is that we could talk about them in a way that is not

00:24:07.240 helpful or progressive, shall we say? I know progressive is a bad word, but

00:24:12.480 around these parts, it's a swear word. We might bleep that out.

00:24:18.440 Yeah, that's okay. No problem. I'm used to being bleeped. I'm joking. We can tackle this problem in

00:24:26.820 a way that is really focused on humans. How can this be great for humans and great for our country

00:24:32.520 and great for communities? What we're doing right now is exactly the opposite. We're taking advantage

00:24:37.840 of the lowest skilled people. We're not allowing them the opportunity to integrate into what I

00:24:43.000 thought was a fairly high functioning culture. When you look at the other countries around the world

00:24:47.560 and we need to get back to some sanity. No, there's a real human cost to this where it's,

00:24:54.320 and I believe it's a real black mark against modern Canada, which is that no matter how charitable

00:25:00.180 you want to be about the kind of industrial complex that sprung up overnight, seemingly despite the GDP

00:25:05.680 coming out of COVID, it's relied on just throwing bodies at problems and suppressing wages and

00:25:12.900 forcing people to live 15 to a basement and sharing one bathroom and to work really lousy positions or to

00:25:22.820 be taken advantage of by some really dodgy employers or the illegal trucking practice and all the sort of

00:25:29.280 public safety and humanitarian crises therein. There's not much to be proud of there. And in

00:25:36.820 that vacuum of a country that seems to harm itself worse than any president south of the border,

00:25:45.240 folks were going to come in and be immediately balkanized because what else were they supposed

00:25:49.640 to do? We weren't rolling out the red carpet in a meaningful way. We weren't offering them anything

00:25:55.520 good. Many of these guys have been a little bit of bad news and we were no longer recruiting the best

00:26:01.940 and they weren't coming into the white picket fence. This became this entire shadow network.

00:26:08.540 And within a year or two, you look around and go like, whoopsie, my town's changed. My country's

00:26:12.920 changed. And so there were these sort of sacred cultural issues we can't talk about. And now we

00:26:19.120 can, and we're increasingly trying to do so and put the right face on them and have these appropriate

00:26:24.460 discussions and do good reporting. And from a conservative lens in this moment and going back

00:26:32.040 to the sort of winning elections piece, keeping in mind this cultural context, what does successful

00:26:38.680 conservative leadership look like for you today? Like how would you define success?

00:26:46.200 Yeah. Brilliant. So success, obviously we have to win. So that you have to win an election,

00:26:51.240 but before you can win an election, you have to win hearts and minds. So you opened the segment with

00:26:55.700 ideas. And when you're talking about the human impact of a failed immigration approach, really

00:27:01.100 it's the logical outcome of the liberal, and I'm using that term philosophically liberal assumptions

00:27:09.240 about what it means to be human. So you said, we just grab bodies and stick them into places.

00:27:13.860 I like Mary Harrington's description of, she calls it meat Legos. He said, people are just like meat

00:27:21.680 Legos and you can just plug them in wherever you want. We think of humans as abstractions. They're

00:27:27.000 just workers that are coming to fill a technological function in our giant technocracy. Well, those are

00:27:33.580 all liberal ways of understanding the world. So I think we have a tremendous opportunity

00:27:38.200 on the non-left and I'll, you know, steal Jody Brun's term for the, because it's a coalition, right?

00:27:46.560 Conservatism isn't one thing. It's not a monolith, but we have a tremendous opportunity

00:27:50.600 to tell a different story, to say, Hey, you're not a meat Lego. We actually care about you having

00:27:57.240 not just a job, but a job that you like that fits with your skills and abilities and talents

00:28:02.200 and things that you want to do with your life. We want to talk about a life of meaning. What do you,

00:28:07.720 what do you want to achieve out of this life? What does good mean to you? What does a good life

00:28:12.000 look like? And, and I'm not saying in talking about it with great specificity where you have

00:28:17.660 to do this and you have to do that. No, just in, in general, sort of a minimalist conservatism where

00:28:23.920 you're offering people a new way to think about life as opposed to feeling like I'm just a meat Lego

00:28:29.360 being plugged into this giant liberal technocracy. So that's what I think is winning, telling a new

00:28:35.360 story. Of course we have to win elections, but we have to win hearts and minds first.

00:28:40.180 I'd vote for you right now. Not that I wish public office on you and referencing Jody Brun,

00:28:44.700 one of my favorite Canadians and a terrific writer. That's another big check in the positive

00:28:51.080 department. You have a great feature in your show where you end up, you end up the proceedings

00:28:55.540 asking the guest and it's a thoughtful way to make sure you haven't missed anything. Like what's,

00:29:01.380 what's top of mind to you? What did we maybe not get to as we wrap up here? I mean, Dr. Sean Watley

00:29:07.560 looking at the, the Canadian wilderness, looking out upon a country with, with varying degrees of

00:29:14.520 crises. What would you like to impart on the audience right now as, as sort of your, your most

00:29:20.400 pressing commentary issue hope for the future? Yeah. So I didn't realize how stressful it was

00:29:27.980 to be asked that. So now I'm second guessing whether or not I'll ask you can repeat yourself

00:29:32.400 if you want. It's harder being on the other side. It's good. I've got an answer, but I think it's

00:29:38.300 brilliant. I, as you know, my passion has been to get people off of this assumption that Canada is

00:29:45.880 nothing but one giant liberal country. There is nothing else politically besides liberalism.

00:29:53.380 Liberalism to be fair, is an excellent political theory. It's very thin and it works great when you

00:29:59.800 have a robust culture, when some, when we all have moms and grandmothers and coaches and people in our

00:30:06.220 lives that told us what it means to be a decent human, to stand in line, to tell the truth, to live

00:30:12.300 up to your promises. So all these things that people used to pick up somewhere and they knew

00:30:18.200 that it didn't make sense to act like a silly person and block streets and make ambulances turn

00:30:23.640 around. And just because you're trying to resurrect your own idea of what we should be focusing on 0.93

00:30:29.840 from an argument on the other side of the world. So that is an opportunity for us to say, okay,

00:30:36.980 liberalism is great, but it needs substance underneath it. Liberalism as a philosophy doesn't

00:30:45.480 talk about that substance. That's why we love it. It's strong. But given that it doesn't talk about

00:30:51.360 that substance, we need to find a different philosophy. And I think that different philosophy

00:30:55.920 is an intellectual conservatism or a, I don't have a word for it yet. Some people call it green

00:31:01.460 conservatism, right? Where we love our land and we love the environment. We love gardens,

00:31:06.660 but we also think that there's some content that we need to talk to people about. So that's what

00:31:13.260 keeps me awake at night. And I think we need to figure this out really fast. Ideally, a few years

00:31:20.060 ago, we should have figured it out, but it's never too late to start. We need a work of rescue. And

00:31:25.580 that's, you know, Roger Scruton's one of my favorite, one of my heroes. He said,

00:31:29.460 conservatism is a work of rescue. Canada needs a work of rescue right now. And part of that rescue

00:31:36.000 is rediscovering an intellectual conservatism. More George Grant. It's not a country you love.

00:31:41.820 It's a country you worry about. And of course we love it too, but intellectual rescue sorely needed.

00:31:47.940 Dr. Sean Watley, thanks for joining us today. My pleasure.

Juno News - October 23, 2025

Canada a laughingstock？

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