00:00:00.000This is a bit of a weird topic because it goes back to when we, I can't remember if we did it on this show a couple of weeks ago or if it was just on my show or if it was just on Twitter or if I dreamed the whole thing, but it'll be a story that's a couple of weeks old now, which is the somehow losing the ability to speak English under oath when you've been testifying under oath in English for several hours and using words like specificity and microaggression.
00:00:25.800That was Ottawa City Councillor Matthew Fleury, but sometimes the opinion columnists are a little bit late to the party here.
00:00:35.800It'll take me a while to write a column and by the time I publish it, other people have moved on, but I think it's still relevant.
00:00:41.300In this particular case, the Toronto Star in a piece on the 26th, so that was Wednesday of this week, took aim at francophobia at the Emergencies Act inquiry.
00:00:52.380It was a piece contributed by Isabel Borgo Tassé, which I believe is an Irish Chinese name, if memory serves, but Isabel Borgo Tassé says that francophonie meets francophobia at the Emergencies Act inquiry.
00:01:09.280And she says, English is always first, the French follows, my tongue is put in its place, disquieting absence of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis languages, manifestations of Canada's troubling linguistic pecking order, emblematic of the country's colonial history.
00:01:29.600That one just like got a straight line, a box, the four corners, diagonal line, everything.
00:01:35.280And what I find interesting about this, the column just goes on to talk about, you know, Matthew Fleury's francophone, anglophone distinction and all of that.
00:01:45.420But it's like of all the things you take from that, like we made fun of the language thing, but it wasn't actually like the central thesis of the Public Order Emergency Commission's work.
00:01:55.060It's like that, like you just have to be really looking for a grievance if you've been watching the, what is it, 11, 12 days of testimony now, and that's the one that, the one thing you've taken from it is they're francophobes.
00:02:06.820I, you know, it's very easy, I think sometimes, if you're really plugged into the day-to-day news and it's your job to read too much into things.
00:02:16.540And I think all of us at certain points fall victim to that, just overanalyzing things and reading too deep into them.
00:02:22.800The reality is, as we all know, Matthew Fleury just miraculously forgot how to speak English when he was put in his place and asked to define a word that he had accused truckers of committing microaggressions multiple times.
00:02:35.740The second he was asked to define that, he breaks out the whole I'm francophone for the first time, I should say, in the hearing.
00:02:42.680The only time he broke that out was when he was being cross-examined by Brendan Miller, the convoy lawyer.
00:02:47.380So very, very, very creative excuse to just decide, actually, I'm not going to be able to speak in English for this one section, and I'm going to go back to speaking English just fine, without an accent, without a problem, right after.
00:03:00.520Right after I'm done being questioned by someone I don't like.
00:03:02.880And that's really what this is all about.
00:03:04.360And the article itself is so absurd, Andrew.
00:03:06.900You talked about the woke bingo card, the fact that, you know, it would be an instant win.
00:03:11.200Those aren't even all, those aren't even all, like, the sort of fake words they're putting into this article.
00:03:14.840There's one here, Anglo-normativity, which I haven't heard before.
00:03:18.760It's like this idea, I guess, I guess it's becoming too normal, Andrew, to speak English in Canada.
00:03:24.260Last time I checked, I think English is the dominant language spoken in Canada by quite a significant ways.
00:03:30.620So I guess in that instance, Canada is far too Anglo-normative.
00:03:36.200And I guess the point of this whole article is to basically say that we are far, we speak too much English in this country, and it's not right.
00:03:43.860At the beginning, this writer says that along with the fact that English is always first and French follows,
00:03:49.880it's in tandem with the curious, disquieting absence of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis languages.
00:03:56.200And I'm just trying to figure this out, Andrew.
00:03:58.000Like, are we supposed, is this article trying to basically tell us that we need to have Inuit, Métis, and First Nations languages
00:04:04.820in government documents, in more public places?
00:04:09.780Like, is that going to help us better understand things that are going on?
00:04:12.780Again, I'm very confused about all this.
00:04:15.540And the reality is, you don't always have to defend people for, you know, absurd things that they're doing that are obviously absurd.
00:04:23.280I think it would be, the average position for anyone who hears this will say,
00:04:27.660that's ridiculous, this guy sounds like he's just bitter and trying to avoid answering questions.
00:04:33.140We don't need to have some great big francophone, anglophone debate over this.
00:04:38.140It's clear that Matthew Fleur was obviously playing around, trying to mess around,
00:04:42.820and he got called out for it by Miller, who rightly said, if he was asked to speak French,
00:04:49.000he reintroduced himself as Je Mappelle Brendan.
00:04:51.400The perfect response, in my opinion, Andrew, to such a ridiculous thing to try and pull like that,
00:04:56.500as if no one was really paying attention.