Andrew Yang is joined by best-selling author and columnist Mark Stein to discuss immigration in Canada and why it's not as simple as it used to be. They also talk about what it means to be a francophone in Canada.
00:00:00.000Here with another in-depth True North initiative feature, I'm joined by best-selling author and columnist and host and recording artist and human rights activist Mark Stein. Mark, good to be with you.
00:00:12.360Now, I just realized I've interviewed you many times, never in the same place. There was one time we were close. We were in the same city, but we ended up doing it remotely.
00:00:20.920So I've had to truck through the foothills of New England to get here, but we've done it and we're in the same room.
00:00:26.020Now we're knee-to-knee, so you can ask me about the most shameful and embarrassing moments of my life and I'll just open up to you and spill the beans.
00:00:35.620Okay, embarrassing moments. Who have you been interviewed by before me that might eclipse this one? We'll see.
00:00:44.700Let's talk about immigration for a moment because, first off, I had to clear it to get here to interview you,
00:00:51.080but you've actually been talking about this to an American audience for quite a while and immigration was,
00:00:56.020probably one of the key issues in the last election.
00:00:59.080And in Canada, it only seems to be just now that people are actually talking about it.
00:01:03.760And I mean, Stephen Harper continued to increase immigration numbers, but even then it was never as central to the national discussion as it is in Canada now.
00:01:11.860No, I think you're right that it was the issue with Donald Trump.
00:01:16.300And that's true today if you go to his rallies, but it was certainly true during the campaign.
00:01:21.720In fact, I think I was there the very first night he turned it into a chant when he talked about building the wall and then he said,
00:01:30.880and who's going to pay for it? And everybody in the hall yelled back, Mexico.
00:01:35.520It was central because I think people had concluded that mass immigration did nothing for the people who were already here in the country.
00:01:49.300And that's actually the way you're meant to look at it.
00:01:52.420If you notice the way people talk, people before Trump, people talked about immigration in terms of the immigrants' point of view.
00:02:01.540We need to bring them out of the shadows and that kind of thing.
00:02:04.600It's not really an American issue, I would say.
00:02:07.820My view is that no developed nation needs mass immigration for the basic reason that 30 percent of all jobs are expected to vanish in the next 15 years or so.
00:02:24.980So the argument they made after the Second World War is, oh, we need people to come here to be our nurses and to be our bus drivers and to be whatever it is.
00:02:36.540That argument no longer applies in an age of automation.
00:02:42.080And so I think the economic rationale for immigration has vanished.
00:02:48.440And what that leaves in countries like Canada is basically the virtue signaling argument for immigration,
00:02:56.480which is that we admit all these people from around the world because it makes us feel good about ourselves.
00:03:03.460And I don't think that's going to fly much longer either.
00:03:05.880No, and in Canada, when the big discussion was admitting Syrian refugees, there was the big discussion about what were considerably small numbers.
00:03:15.740And when Justin Trudeau said, we're going to do 50,000, everyone said, oh, that's too much too quickly.
00:03:21.260And you'd think that would be a moment of reckoning.
00:03:23.700But instead, it becomes an open the floodgate scenario.
00:03:26.360And over the last two years, year and a half, we've had tens of thousands of people flooding across the border illegally,
00:03:32.440a government that isn't prepared or willing to deal with it.
00:03:35.620And it's taken that for Canadians to start to have any discussion whatsoever about immigration that isn't in that virtue signaling realm.
00:03:43.120No, and I think what's interesting about that, I mean, to me, one of the interesting things about Canada in general is that unless francophones object to it,
00:03:58.460whatever your objection is goes nowhere.
00:04:01.060And what is interesting to me is that in some respects, that encounter between a Pirlene Quebeca, not far from where we're sitting right now, actually,
00:04:12.160at Saint-Anne de Sabrevoix, and Justin Trudeau, where he, because she objected to having Trudeau's virtue signaling,
00:04:24.020the cost of his virtue signaling, dumped on her province, he told her she had no place in Canada.
00:04:34.400In other words, it's like a state ideology.
00:04:37.080If you object to pointless mass immigration as a kind of virtue signaling, there is no place for you in Canada.
00:04:47.560And I thought that was an astonishing thing for the leader of a democratic society to say to a citizen, just not appropriate, not appropriate at all.
00:04:58.780Yes, and we actually had a few weeks ago the immigration minister in Canada saying that Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario,
00:05:05.160and one of his ministers were racist because they were raising issues about the influx of asylum seekers.
00:05:10.420And you used to associate that rhetoric with these people in the dark corners of the internet or these campus social justice warriors.
00:05:18.060We're talking about now ministers of the crown, the prime minister of Canada.
00:05:21.380And this rhetoric is very dangerous in a way because they are trying to say that criticism of this thing or criticism of your government is inherently equivalent to racism.
00:05:31.800Yeah, and it's because the unique thing about Canada, of course, is that multiculturalism is an official policy, which, and it has been since Justin's father's day, and it shouldn't have been.
00:05:47.220But I think the appropriate response, I mean, I'm not in favor of state ideologies, and I don't care whether that's communism or Nazism or these fluffy bunny things like multiculturalism.
00:06:02.360I think it offends against the maxims of prudence.
00:06:06.160And as you go around the Western world, the fetishization of multiculturalism has actually been, I would say, I mean, I do think, for example, in Sweden that it will actually destroy Sweden.
00:06:23.560And it's interesting to me that Canada, in some sense, you've seen particularly in Europe, but to a lesser extent in other parts of the Commonwealth, in Britain and Australia, voices raised against that view of post-war society.
00:06:42.520And Canada is really one of the last to have gotten into that, I would say.
00:06:45.880You mentioned earlier the Quebecer approach to this thing.
00:06:49.920And what's interesting is that when it comes to any discussion of Canadian values or values in general and a lot of these divides, you aren't allowed to have these discussions in English Canada the way you can in French Canada.
00:07:02.140I mean, you look at the face covering ban, for example, a policy that never would have flown anywhere outside of Quebec, but in Quebec there's enough of a contingent for it.
00:07:12.900Is it because Quebecers are the victim groups and no one can criticize their approach to it, or is there something else?
00:07:19.160Well, no, I think it's more, in a sense, Canada is a microcosm in that respect of the broader approach in the rest of the Western world.
00:07:28.100So I can understand the Globe and Mail, for example, when they brought in the ban in Quebec about faith, the Globe and Mail and English Canada in general said, this is ridiculous, the idea of the state telling you what kind of clothes you can wear.
00:07:45.480Which I think if you're in, if you're used to English law, the idea of the state pronouncing on particular garments that are favored or not favored is slightly odd.
00:07:58.360But outside the English world, in continental Europe, for example, kneecap bans have become quite common.
00:08:10.540And I forget how many European countries it's up to by now, but several ones have simply said, no, this is banned, you can't do it, you can't wear this stuff in public.
00:08:20.020So in a sense, Canada is like a microcosm. The divide between English Canada and French Canada is, in a sense, a microcosm of the split in the wider West.
00:08:31.520And I would say my old friend Boris Johnson, for example, shortly after he stepped down as Foreign Secretary in the UK, and he was saying he didn't like burkas.
00:08:42.020And he said they reminded him of letterboxes, as they call it. They look like a, looks like the slot you stick the letter in, he said that.
00:08:52.460And he got into a whole lot of trouble and he wound up being investigated as a hate monger and all the way.
00:08:57.960It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. You know, I've been there and it's Boris's turn. They come for everyone eventually.
00:09:03.900But what was interesting to me was that his preamble to that was he'd said he wasn't in favor of these European style bans on covered women in public.
00:09:18.940But it still didn't save him from being damned as an Islamophobe.
00:09:22.700And that's the interesting, that's what's interesting to me about this kind of conversation, this kind of conversation, is that even if you just offer the mildest criticism of all this, it's enough to get damned as an Islamophobe, a this-a-phobe, a that-a-phobe, whatever it is.
00:09:43.380And I think there's something sad about that.
00:09:45.580But I don't like, when you're, you know, just to pick somewhere at random, Brampton, Ontario, I don't like to see covered women in Brampton.
00:09:57.120And I think if you were to look at almost, you know, what are we now, coming up to 70 years of the independence in the Indian subcontinent.
00:10:09.980And if you had said to, like Jinnah, the founder, the first governor general of independent Pakistan, if you had said to him that in the so-called old Commonwealth, that you would see huge numbers of covered women walking the streets of English cities, Canadian cities, Australian cities in 1948, he'd have thought you were stark staring nuts and he would not have thought it was a good thing.
00:10:37.060So when we bring that back to really the broader discussion, is it one of assimilation then?
00:10:44.960Well, I'm not, I don't know what people are meant to assimilate with in Canada because you have this, you have this situation, which we saw in the sesquicentennial, which is like a tragedy.
00:10:56.360You know, I felt kind of upset for my kids because everyone should have like a great anniversary for their country once.
00:11:06.180And it should have been a tremendous birthday party the way the centennial was in 1967.
00:11:12.620Instead, it was a real sort of buzz killer the way it was handled.
00:11:17.480And one of the reasons for that is because, which again comes back to, what are you meant to assimilate with?
00:11:23.540We're told that the first prime minister of Canada is like a hate monger and you have to take his, so let's say you come here from Yemen or Sudan or wherever and you settle in Canada and you pick up a newspaper.
00:11:39.500You think, oh, it's great, I want to be Canadian.
00:11:42.740That the guys who founded your country are hate mongers and racists and all the, why the hell would you want to assimilate with that?
00:11:49.080I mean, that's, that's, that's not just an issue for Canada.
00:11:52.140That's an issue, again, for almost every Western society these days.
00:11:55.520I know you interviewed Kelly Leach during the Conservative leadership race and at the time she was pilloried by the press and the Liberals and all of that for not even specifically defining Canadian values, but by saying there is such a thing as Canadian values.
00:12:10.580And I have to ask you, can you bring it back?
00:12:12.960Can you bring back that idea of a country that is not afraid of saying, yes, this is what a Canadian is, this is what Canada is?
00:12:20.660Well, I think you have to, and I think Canada was really the pioneer of that because I mentioned Sweden.
00:12:31.820Sweden was basically an homogenous society until about 20 years ago, 25 years ago, when it, when it decided that was no longer cool and that the, the things like the Canadian model were much cooler.
00:12:44.580But the idea that, you know, Canada is like a, is like a stamp collection, you know, you just want to have one of everything.
00:12:53.920And it's not, it doesn't, and, and, and, and Canada in that sense is simply, and you know this when you look at any of the official advertising for Canada or Canadian identity, they sell themselves as a kind of, you know,
00:13:09.740the government sells Canada as a sort of microcosm of the world, in fact, and, and, and, and, and in a sense, this was the conscious thing that Trudeau did in part because he thought it would help weaken French separatism.
00:13:26.080And instead of stating the obvious reality, to look at the Canadian coat of arms, which has the emblems of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, they're the four founding nations of modern Canada and of, of the dominion of Canada.
00:13:43.360And this idea that, you know, we're supposed to deny reality and, and pretend that in fact, instead, it's just a, a coalition of whoever happens to be in.
00:13:56.240And I find people like people I have a modicum of respect for, like Louise Arbour, the former Supreme Court judge who I debated on stage in Toronto.
00:14:08.800And it doesn't matter what you say, you know, you mentioned Somalis, and she said, well, maybe we have a lot to learn from Somalis.
00:14:14.920I don't know. I don't think, I don't think she actually means that.
00:14:18.360I don't think she wants to live in a society that has Somali characteristics for a moment.
00:14:27.940But in a sense, she's not doing anything unusual.
00:14:31.920She's doing, she's following the logic of Canadian multiculturalism, which to say, which is to say that Somali values are no better or worse than French values.
00:14:48.700And at a certain level, I think somewhere deep down, she understands that that's meaningless mumbo jumbo.
00:14:58.660But at the same time, if you, if you live in a land of meaningless mumbo jumbo for long enough, it sort of starts to come true.
00:15:08.960Well, you look at the now official catchphrase of Canada, diversity is our strength.
00:15:13.740I mean, that's the type of thing where if some politician says it, it might not mean anything.
00:15:19.900No, but that actually, diversity is our strength.
00:15:21.780I can't stand that, because diversity is morally neutral.
00:15:26.780And you can have five nice ladies like Madame Arbour, five nice CBC listening ladies of Denset and Aj, who like to listen to CBC radio.
00:15:41.460And that group of five ladies, Denset and Aj, is not in the least bit diverse.
00:15:48.680So you add to them Sudan's leading clitoridectomy practitioner.
00:15:54.380And you've made it more diverse, but you haven't necessarily made it better.
00:15:58.980Diversity is an entirely morally neutral term.
00:16:02.460And simply saying diversity is our strength with a glassy-eyed expression, because you've been told it ever since kindergarten, does not actually make it so.
00:16:14.240I think you should actually pitch that to, like, the replacement of The View.
00:16:17.460You know, Sudan's leading clitoridectomy specialist, Louise Arbour, and everyone else.
00:16:21.620It would make that show a lot more interesting.
00:16:25.480Oh, actually, let's not start with The View.
00:16:27.720This cockamamie thing they've got on the Nationals since Peter Mansbridge retired, they've got, like, four anchors carefully selected according to some CBC focus group thing.
00:16:38.480Sticks Sudan's leading clitoridectomy practitioner in the middle of the National as the fifth host.
00:16:44.600When you bring up that idea of diversity being morally neutral, I find it to be a fascinating one, because the point that I've made is that Trudeau sees diversity as the end game,
00:16:53.620whereas I've always viewed diversity as some natural thing that might emerge when you're pursuing other values, like free speech and free association and economic opportunity and all of these things.
00:17:07.500And the question becomes how much the politicians advancing that are going to ignore everything else.
00:17:13.060And I think that this border crossing crisis we have in Canada is showing that they're prepared to look the other way on pretty much everything just to get to that diversity.
00:17:22.920And what's interesting to me is that during the years of conservative government, conservatives did not even challenge that.
00:17:32.180I would say, you know, for example, Jason Kenney is a very smart man in many respects.
00:17:39.120You could almost rely during during the entire time of Mr. Harper's ministry in Ottawa.
00:17:45.420You could pick up a paper almost any day of the week and there would be Jason Kenney in some semi-national costume of whichever particular community group he happened to be.
00:17:56.840And there he would be with a group of Hmong Canadians or Tajik Canadians or whatever, celebrating their particular national day.
00:18:12.540I think it's a sort of indulgence of I think it's the I think I think it's basically I think it's the latter day equivalent of colonial condescension.
00:18:24.220You know, you had to put on your piff helmet or your solar topi and go off to Africa or Asia to condescend to the natives.
00:18:34.320And I think I think in the modern Western world, we sort of decided we could we could get the same frisson as old school colonialism by bringing the natives here so we could condescend to them closer to home.
00:18:49.860At the Conservative Party of Canada's policy convention in August, they actually the members of the party voted on adopting a policy that would eliminate birthright citizenship.
00:19:00.020And this I find interesting and I don't think it would ever be actually run on.
00:19:05.040I mean, they can vote for whatever they want.
00:19:06.820And that doesn't mean Andrew Scheer will talk about it in the in the election.
00:19:09.800But but a policy like this, what's your take on it?
00:19:12.860Because even Trump, for all of his, you know, supposed racism and this ism and that ism, hasn't put forward this definitively.
00:19:19.540Well, he is against birthright citizens.
00:19:22.000What's interesting to me is that there's only really of the developed nations.
00:19:26.480It's only really Canada and America that have birthright citizenship.
00:19:30.120And if you look at, for example, health care policy in Canada, the reason Canada has its health system is because it defines its health care in opposition to America.
00:19:42.720So if you say in Canada, why don't we have a health care system like Italy?
00:19:47.820All we know is ours isn't like America.
00:19:50.060Whatever America's is, we're not like America's system.
00:19:54.080And so it's interesting to me that that doesn't apply on birthright citizenship.
00:19:58.860And essentially, it's only America and Canada that have it.
00:20:04.020For example, in Ireland, if you're born in Ireland, you have to be born either to a citizen of Ireland or of the United Kingdom in order to be a citizen of Ireland at birth.
00:20:21.600And if you think about it, that's far more rational than France and other continental countries are the same.
00:20:31.460That's far more rational than simply saying a lady gets off the plane eight months and three weeks pregnant,
00:20:40.460and she checks into a hospital and delivers an American citizen or a Canadian citizen.
00:20:45.620Now, in the U.S., it exists supposedly because of Article 14 of the U.S. Constitution supposedly licenses birthright citizenship.
00:20:56.200It's never actually been tested at the Supreme Court level, that proposition.
00:21:01.120But everybody's super craven in America about going against so-called anchor babies, birthright citizens, so-called birthright citizenship.
00:21:11.440In Canada, it's actually a hangover of empire because it goes back to before there was Canadian citizenship,
00:21:23.160when there was just everyone within His Majesty's dominions was a British subject, and that was it.
00:21:34.900And there were no subcategories of citizenship underneath one generally imperial view of everybody within the empire as a subject of the crown.
00:21:46.320And so before they created Canadian citizenship, everyone wants to control their borders, and the Canadian government was no different.
00:21:57.740So they created a sort of a kind of pre-citizenship idea of someone, a British subject who is born in Canada as a kind of prototype Canadian,
00:22:14.480to distinguish between someone born in Kingston, a British subject born in Kingston, Ontario,
00:22:19.540as opposed to one born in Kingston, on Thames, or Kingston, Jamaica, or Kingston, wherever.
00:22:26.520And what's interesting to me is then when they created Canadian citizenship as a subset of British nationality in 1947,
00:22:39.240that that was sort of preserved in there, that idea that being born in Canada is what makes you Canadian,
00:22:45.980which is why Ted Cruz, as you know, was born in Canada, and under the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act,
00:22:59.360he was born a Canadian citizen and a British subject.
00:23:03.380And I used to get, when I was on the Rush Limbaugh show, and I'd be making jokes about Ted Cruz as a Canadian,
00:23:08.820all the Ted Cruz supporters hated it, but that's like a fact, that's a fact.
00:23:12.480He was born a British subject and a Canadian citizen, Ted Cruz.
00:23:16.720And he can't do anything, and he can't do anything, even though in his case, neither of his parents were Canadian.
00:23:25.200So I can see why that would bother him.
00:23:29.640The Duke of Wellington was once described as an Irishman, and he said a man can be born in a stable and it doesn't make him a horse.
00:23:36.700And Ted Cruz looks on Canada as being born in a stable, and he doesn't want to be called a horse.
00:23:44.860And so I think that whole view of citizen, that whole, in the Canadian context,
00:23:52.460the birthright citizenship basically predates the creation of Canadian citizenship in the 1940s.
00:24:00.700And the other thing about it, too, is that originally, when, I think it's around the time of the First World War,
00:24:12.520it's about a century, but they started to do, they started to distinguish between British subjects born in Canada
00:24:22.060and British subjects born in the rest of the empire.
00:24:26.820And that was really the logic behind so-called birthright citizenship,
00:24:32.360is it's not to mean that if, you know, somebody gets off the plane from Tajikistan
00:24:37.020and has a baby at the Royal Victoria in Montreal that that baby is Canadian.
00:24:43.200It was a way for the government of Canada to distinguish between the people for whom it was responsible
00:24:51.200and people elsewhere within the Commonwealth.
00:24:54.640And so this idea that it now means you get off the plane, you give birth,
00:24:59.580and you've given birth to a Canadian citizen is not how it was intended
00:25:04.200and actually is a perversion of how the thing was originally set up.
00:25:09.660You see this in the discussions in the United States about illegal immigration there as well