00:08:23.460We can do things here and not have to worry about them the same as a normal country would because we're Canadians and it's going to work.
00:08:31.440So many people, until they're sort of blindsided by the truth, keep going with that delusion.
00:08:38.100And ironically, that approach to a country is what allows bad ideas to take root so quickly.
00:08:46.060And I mean, you mentioned sort of censorship, you know, the online harms bill or medical assistance in dying.
00:08:53.060I'm going to keep mentioning medical assistance in dying.
00:08:55.540But when you look back at the piece of legislation and the Supreme Court decision which initiated that, it's quite surprising at the time how uncontroversial it was and how people deciding it actually scoffed at the idea that it could go wrong.
00:09:09.420Supreme Court justices in the court decision which legalized medical assistance in dying, there was actually, there was experts coming in and saying, as soon as you sort of break the seal on this, it's very hard to constrain a euthanasia program.
00:09:24.620And you have to be very careful about what you're doing.
00:09:26.740And you may not be able to put it back in the box once it started.
00:09:30.920And you actually had justices scoffing and saying, well, that's Belgium or the Netherlands.
00:09:36.760We shouldn't assume that it's going to go wrong in Canada.
00:09:40.300So as a result, we put in a euthanasia system with the least safeguards of anyone else.
00:09:46.800And then unsurprisingly, we have the highest rates of increase, way higher than anybody else who's put in medical assistance in dying program and way higher rates of scandals.
00:09:57.860So that's kind of true across the board.
00:10:00.420But just this, you know, delusion, I would say that I think it comes from the fact that Canada has been relatively well managed for quite some time.
00:10:10.020So we just decide, oh, you know, pluralism, tolerance, prosperity.
00:10:15.540These are all just our Canadian birthrights.
00:10:17.380These aren't things that need to be managed so we can just do what we want and not have to worry about the bottom line of all those things.
00:10:24.460And thus, when they start to be eroded, they get eroded very quickly because we're not even willing to notice that it's happening.
00:10:33.140Well, it seems I mean, it seems in some ways that Canadians are sort of like sleepwalking through like the fall of our country.
00:10:40.140And I mean, the euthanasia program is a perfect example of that.
00:10:44.320Like somehow the laws were passed and we didn't really have a national conversation on it.
00:10:49.320We never really had a debate to understand fully what it meant.
00:10:52.000And then by the time the laws were brought in, it was like it was too late.
00:10:55.480It was it was already there and it was already established.
00:10:57.800And it wasn't until they really started getting to the excesses of it.
00:11:01.300Right. Like the idea that you could euthanize a child or someone who is mentally ill, that people it really started making press.
00:11:08.800And I remember I didn't wasn't inspiring the kind of one of the sources I quote in my book.
00:11:13.640And he's he sort of studied medical assistance and time programs in other countries.
00:11:17.600And he said things kept happening in Canada that even if they happened in, you know, one of our sort of wuss peer countries in Europe, you assume we're very much like the Dutch or Belgium.
00:11:28.780And he said things happened in Canada where if they happened in the Netherlands, it would be a huge scandal and we would have people fired and you would have transparency from the government.
00:11:37.320And like the example of Canada where a veteran calls Veterans Affairs for help with PTSD and is offered made and takes made.
00:11:45.320That would be a much more controversial thing in basically any European country.
00:12:00.420I mean, we always people always criticize the Americans for, you know, how many mass shootings are they going to have and they don't change their gun laws.
00:12:07.620Canada can endure any number of horrifying crimes that are very easily solvable.
00:12:13.220I mean, you know, the guy was out on bail and he was already on parole from another thing.
00:12:17.380Like there was multiple interventions that could have stopped this stabbing massacre from happening.
00:12:22.400And we just don't notice, you know, the names of the victims of these horrifying crimes.
00:12:28.160These would be galvanizing events, say, in the United States, say, in the UK, say, in Europe, say, in South America.
00:12:34.120And they are just everyday occurrences.
00:12:48.480Canadians do not like to engage with the fact that their country is very broken.
00:12:52.840And they can't fix it until they've engaged with that.
00:12:56.580Well, in some ways, Tristan, I almost think it's the failure of the conservatives or maybe a failure of Canadians to accept conservative, like, opposition.
00:13:06.260Because one of the things you quote in your book is Bill Maher, who said that, like, in politics, the liberals are like the gas pedal and the conservatives are like the brake.
00:13:14.960And obviously, it's a quote from Bill Maher.
00:13:38.820I haven't heard any leader mention made at all.
00:13:42.880So it seems like it's kind of, like, settled.
00:13:44.620Everybody agrees with this program, which you mentioned is the worst of the worst.
00:13:49.380You have a chapter on how we outdo the Americans on identity politics.
00:13:53.060It's funny because we hear a lot from Mark Kearney and the liberals about how the conservatives want to import American-style politics into Canada.
00:14:00.800And yet we've kind of, like, taken over identity politics and we've become, like, we've out-American the Americans on being woke and the identity politics.
00:14:46.660It's just not the same factor as it is in the United States.
00:14:50.000You know, if you look at, you know, chattel African slaves that were held in Canada before slavery was abolished in the entire British Empire, we're looking at, like, 4,000 total.
00:14:58.600But you'll still see government anti-racism training, which has the legacy of slavery right at the top.
00:15:04.940Now, if you were just doing an anti...
00:15:07.180If you still want to say, you know, it's an oppressor, oppressed dynamic, and, you know, all the institutions are fundamentally racist, even if you adapted that to a Canadian audience, I think those ideas are wrong.
00:15:16.680But if you were doing it within a Canadian context, you would at least say, well, okay, well, let's start with, you know, indigenous people and then, you know, anti-Asian racism.
00:15:23.420Like, you know, our legacy of racism is different than the United States.
00:15:27.080But, you know, frequently they didn't do that at all.
00:15:29.360They just, you'll see direct lines within government materials saying, oh, Canada's exactly the same as the United States on slavery, which is insane.
00:15:36.840And then, you know, as such, we sort of dial up our various racial quotas and et cetera on that U.S. model without even considering the Canadian context.
00:15:47.200So, yes, I think that criticism is valid.
00:15:49.640There's been a lot of real dumb ideas out of the States that have been imported wholesale into Canada.
00:15:55.200And we didn't have the same kind of checks and skepticism that the Americans had in their context.
00:16:00.540So, we got hit with them way harder than they did.
00:16:03.320Well, I want to ask on a couple of these, because, okay, you go through the chapters in your book.
00:16:09.180I guess there are some things that the conservatives are talking about, because you talk a lot about, or there's one chapter on harm reduction on crack, talking about, you know, the liberalized drug policies in cities like Vancouver.
00:16:21.240And then, obviously, the housing bubble, Pierre Polyev has tried to address that.
00:16:26.200But on the social issues, right, when it comes to trans ideology and this idea that kids can undergo these experimental treatments that most other countries in the world are stopping, like even in the U.K., that used to be the sort of forefront of this.
00:16:40.680And the Tavisdott Clinic, you know, you mentioned in your book, the CAS review, which basically found that there isn't any evidence that doing all of these procedures on trans-identifying children actually helps in terms of their mental health.
00:16:55.700Canada seemed completely to just refuse to have this conversation, even on the political level.
00:17:00.920Like, I haven't heard Pierre Polyev talk about this issue once.
00:17:05.720I haven't heard him talk about that issue.
00:17:07.780So, I mean, you could pick up on either of them.
00:17:09.560Like, why do you think that the conservatives are so afraid to talk about these issues?
00:17:13.780I sympathize with the conservatives not being willing to talk about it because, you know, after writing this book, a lot of what is in this book, that's why the end notes section of this book is very detailed.
00:17:30.160But I thought, no one's going to believe me when I tell them that these things are happening.
00:17:33.580So, I can sympathize with the fact that a conservative doesn't want to bring up these issues because people reflexively, when they hear a politician saying them, are going to say, that's an absolutely insane thing to say.
00:17:45.020Similar to, if you imagine if you were in 2015 and you were a time traveler and you're explaining to them what Canada is going to look like in 2025.
00:17:53.580You know, just one example, that it's going to be a routine occurrence in Toronto or Montreal, that you're going to have mass protests of people calling for the destruction of Israel, you know, having, you know, mass Islamic prayers in the middle of blocked streets.
00:18:08.120I mean, you would lose your job if you said that was somewhere in Canada.
00:18:12.320So, I can think of any number of issues, I mean, you know, males and women's prisons, which we already mentioned, the fact that many government jobs do have explicit racial quotas.
00:18:25.120So, they have to have a certain number of men, women, people of certain races, people who are disabled.
00:18:31.460I think most Canadians think that's illegal.
00:18:33.780They think that's something you can't actually do in Canada.
00:18:36.300And when you tell them that's the law, they're quite surprised by it.
00:18:39.000Or the fact that it is now most school boards across Canada, if a child as young as six says that they now identify as, you know, a different gender, the teacher has to immediately affirm that gender.
00:18:54.060And if they question it for a second, they could be in real trouble.
00:18:57.380So, if you say, you know, maybe you're saying that for this reason, maybe there are other psychological things happening.
00:19:02.500You're six years old, maybe you don't understand what gender is.
00:19:06.180That's considered conversion therapy, and you could lose your job or at least be investigated.
00:19:10.680So, I think we're in a situation where I think the conservatives could capitalize on this issue, but they're in a situation in which we've gone so crazy that just to point out that the issue is happening, you sound crazy trying to explain it.
00:19:25.620And just doing interviews for this book, I'll often catch myself, I'm 40 seconds into describing something, and I'm realizing, I sound really nuts.
00:19:34.180And if someone didn't catch the intro to this, they thought, you know, local conspiracy theorist Tristan Hopper is talking about, you know, some conspiracy to do racial quotas within the government.
00:19:42.820So, I think that's why, and knowing what I know, and I assume that the conservatives know what I know, they'll sort of find ways to address these issues.
00:19:55.380So, they don't want to go just, you know, straight up anti-immigration, but you'll do think, like, you know, Pierre Polyev will bring up the Century Initiative.
00:20:03.480So, you'll be like, ah, the Century Initiative, we're going to crack down on them.
00:20:06.960And you'll find sort of little safe ways to attack the issue, because if he just did like me and just sort of outlined how broken the immigration system has been for the past two years, it's so unbelievably broken, you would sound like a conspiracy theorist just for outlining it.
00:20:27.040But I think that's one of the things that Pierre Polyev actually does quite well is that he goes deep on things, right?
00:20:31.620Like, in the middle of the housing crisis when Canadians couldn't afford housing, and Justin Trudeau was kind of giving his typical pablum, like, you know, not really getting to the source of the real reason, Pierre Polyev was putting out these long, detailed explanations about, like, the supply chains and the cost of lumber and the various requirements by local governments.
00:20:51.460And he was just, like, doing a really good job going deep and explaining that in his videos.
00:20:55.940I feel like he could do the same thing, because, I mean, you did your homework, and you, you know, you have all of these really, really crazy examples, like the power lifter that we talked about at the beginning.
00:21:07.020Like, I think most Canadians are tired of this stuff.
00:21:20.680Or, I mean, just, just one more, Tristan, I mean, you talked about how you can't even tell a child that's confused about their gender.
00:21:27.780Maybe, you know, you're young, you're six, let's just, like, have a conversation.
00:21:31.080You can't even have that discussion because of Bill C-4, which received unanimous approval by the House of Commons.
00:21:38.760Every single conservative liberal bloc NDP and Green MP was in favor of this bill that basically just says that if your kid, if your child is gender confused, you have to affirm.
00:21:49.920You have to go along with the delusions.
00:21:53.960So that, yeah, it's written so broadly, and I think I mentioned this in the book, that particular, it's called the, you know, conversion therapy bill.
00:22:00.860And it's actually a great example of what I'm talking about.
00:22:03.220You know, Canadians hear that, and they're like, well, I don't like conversion therapy.
00:22:05.980You know, it's 1976, and we're hooking up gays to electrodes or something.
00:22:09.560And, yeah, that is not representative of what the bill contained.
00:22:13.080It was written so broadly, and it included gender ID, that, yes, technically, if a child as young as six says they're a different gender,
00:22:23.360and you tell them, you know, just wait on that.
00:22:27.720Maybe there's other issues at play here.
00:22:29.740Maybe you don't understand what gender is.
00:22:31.200You obviously don't understand what sex is.
00:22:33.600You know, maybe this is not the right time to make this decision.
00:22:38.200Yeah, if you are in an institutional situation, or it hasn't been tested before the courts,
00:22:44.260but if you're a parent telling this to your child, you know, we don't, it hasn't been tested,
00:22:48.640whether that's grounds that you could have your children removed from you.
00:22:51.220Again, this sounds crazy, but that is what the law says.
00:22:55.040It hasn't been tested in a court situation, so we haven't had a judge saying, you know,
00:22:59.460the state is taking the children away from you because you're refusing to affirm their new gender identity.
00:23:04.600But that is the legal course we've been on.
00:23:08.800It's wild that even conservatives voted in favor.
00:23:11.720And you say that the law was written broadly as if it was accidental.
00:23:14.840You know, the liberals did that on purpose because they were trying to trap the conservatives
00:23:17.500and get them to vote against this bill so that they could point to them and say, look at these bigots.
00:23:21.740They want to, like you said, the 1976 idea of hooking a gay kid up to electric therapy or whatever,
00:23:27.340like these summer camps had existed apparently, like back in the 80s and 90s.
00:23:32.560And the conservatives didn't want to get trapped, so they basically just sold out the country.
00:23:37.760And one of the things in your book that I learned was that I think you write,
00:23:41.600according to public opinion, 70 percent or 69 percent of Canadians say that they would accept
00:23:47.660the gender of their child, no questions asked.
00:23:51.240And like 14 percent would accept it enthusiastically.
00:23:53.820I'm a mother, I have four kids, and this idea that if one day your child comes to you
00:23:59.840and is confused about their gender that you would just, without question, accept it.
00:24:04.220I mean, to me that shows, I don't even know how to describe it,
00:24:08.440but like the Canadian public has been sold a false bill of goods if they believe that.
00:24:12.580I don't know if the poll specified whether it was children or sort of adult children,