Juno News - Inconsistency and Incoherence

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:06.700 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.800 Coming up, the federal government says no to Thanksgiving,

00:00:16.180 lockdown inconsistency, and Brian Lee Crowley on his newest book,

00:00:20.060 Gardeners vs. Designers. 0.53

00:00:23.680 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:32.040 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:36.000 It is Monday, October 5th, 2020, and the never-ending lockdown is continuing.

00:00:43.220 Yes, Theresa Tam, the Chief Public Health Advisor in Canada,

00:00:46.460 has said that Thanksgiving is something that we should approach with caution.

00:00:51.280 Now, I don't actually like Thanksgiving dinners in general,

00:00:54.100 so this is actually great advice for me because I get to be like,

00:00:57.260 oh no, Theresa Tam told me I can't have turkey, but I kid.

00:01:00.680 I do it because I like the people involved, so I am going to get together with my family.

00:01:04.800 But that is potentially a no-no, potentially not a no-no.

00:01:08.740 We don't exactly know, no, because Theresa Tam is not giving any particular hard and fast rules. 1.00

00:01:14.740 She's just saying, ah, you should have caution for Thanksgiving.

00:01:17.780 Keep your indoor gatherings small and ensure social distancing at outdoor gatherings.

00:01:22.360 This is dovetailing on when Justin Trudeau mentioned a couple of weeks ago

00:01:27.420 in his address to the nation that Thanksgiving is gone, it's a write-off,

00:01:31.140 but we might, might, might be able to cling to the idea that potentially,

00:01:36.560 perhaps in December, we can have Christmas.

00:01:39.180 So this is like the ultimate carrot and stick.

00:01:41.400 When the federal government is telling us if we're good and we behave,

00:01:44.340 we might get to have Christmas in two months, give me a break.

00:01:47.800 Because right now, the public health advisors can't actually figure out

00:01:51.700 what they're supposed to be doing.

00:01:53.400 So you've got Theresa Tam on the federal level saying,

00:01:56.340 ah, you should be careful with Thanksgiving,

00:01:58.080 but not putting any hard and fast rules forward.

00:02:00.540 And then you've got in Ontario advice that really restricts the size of your social bubble

00:02:06.000 and ultimately doesn't go back to the lockdown measures we saw a couple of months ago.

00:02:12.220 But then you have this tweet from Theresa Tam,

00:02:14.500 which I believe you need an enigmatologist to decipher.

00:02:18.940 She says,

00:02:19.400 our goal for COVID-19 response remains to minimize severe illness and deaths,

00:02:24.080 but this kick at the curve is a bit different.

00:02:26.820 With schools and businesses open, everyone's efforts are crucial.

00:02:31.460 This time, we've got to bend it like Canadians, 1.00

00:02:35.120 give it the old double-double by layering personal risk assessment and prevention practices

00:02:40.720 and reconfiguring and downsizing our in-person hashtag contact bubble as and where possible.

00:02:47.760 I actually didn't read the capital.

00:02:49.240 So let me try this again.

00:02:50.800 Give it the old double-double by layering personal risk assessment

00:02:53.620 and prevention practices and reconfiguring and downsizing.

00:02:59.640 Sorry if I've blown out your speakers.

00:03:02.460 I don't know if you're listening to the Andrew Lawton show on a subwoofer or some Bose system,

00:03:06.220 but I have to give it like the full capital letter gusto when I read these tweets.

00:03:10.740 No one has any idea what she's saying, by the way.

00:03:13.000 This is, and she probably didn't write it.

00:03:14.760 She has staff and bureaucrats to do this. 1.00

00:03:17.620 But you can look at the ratio there.

00:03:19.260 83 retweets at the time that I record this.

00:03:21.980 402 quote tweets, most of them saying,

00:03:24.100 what on earth are we being told to do here?

00:03:26.440 At this point, no one really knows.

00:03:28.880 There's a lot of cases where the left hand doesn't know what the far left hand is doing.

00:03:33.800 And one notable example of this is the city of Toronto,

00:03:37.380 where their chief public health officer, Dr. Eileen Davila,

00:03:41.840 has put forward a sweeping list of recommendations to Toronto

00:03:45.540 that she wants the Ontario government or the Toronto government to impose.

00:03:49.980 She writes,

00:03:50.800 for restaurants and bars, I request the suspension of indoor service for a period of four weeks.

00:03:56.040 So that's just under a month.

00:03:57.460 Four weeks represents an interruption of two incubation periods for the virus.

00:04:02.240 These venues would still be able to continue outdoor takeout, pickup, and delivery services.

00:04:08.080 Oh, well, gee, thanks.

00:04:09.420 She says,

00:04:09.900 for athletic facilities, I request the suspension of indoor group fitness classes

00:04:13.800 and indoor group recreation and team sports.

00:04:17.000 The nature of these activities creates a real risk of virus spread.

00:04:21.260 And we have seen exactly that in our community.

00:04:24.380 Again, I propose this suspension for a pilot period of four weeks.

00:04:29.140 Pilot period.

00:04:29.940 So that's not a maximum of four weeks.

00:04:31.700 That is a minimum of four weeks.

00:04:34.480 She says here she does not want a return to the lockdown that we saw last spring.

00:04:39.600 She says,

00:04:39.960 I don't believe that's necessary.

00:04:41.760 My proposals are meant to prevent the conditions that would force a large-scale lockdown.

00:04:46.740 Yet, I also have a trouble accepting that when she says in her recommendations this,

00:04:51.780 I'm recommending that individuals only consider leaving their homes for essential activities such as work, education, and fitness, to name a few.

00:05:01.440 So if we're going back to a mentality where you only leave home when you absolutely have to,

00:05:06.780 you only leave home for essential business, we are actually laying the groundwork for a lockdown like we saw in spring.

00:05:13.640 So yeah, you can say that maybe it's a little bit more liberal or a little bit more relaxed than it was from a legal perspective.

00:05:19.820 But what we have being recommended from the public health officer of Canada's largest city is that we go back to staying indoors,

00:05:27.060 the whole stay home, save lives shtick, where we don't actually get to go out unless we're going to the grocery store, going to work, or going to school,

00:05:34.940 which in most cases moot because she even says, listen, everyone should be working from home anyway.

00:05:40.420 So this is now where we're at.

00:05:42.560 On one hand, you've got recommendations that the government's going too far from activists, from advocates, from businesses that are saying,

00:05:50.120 listen, we barely survived the first lockdown. Now you've got some public health officers that are saying go further.

00:05:55.900 You've got others that are just shrugging and using some combination of capital letters that makes no sense to anyone.

00:06:02.080 And the level of inconsistency in this is astonishing.

00:06:08.120 Right now, I mentioned that the left hand doesn't know what the far left hand is doing.

00:06:12.520 We're being told by some officials that we have to stay home, save lives.

00:06:16.400 And by other officials, we're being told that, hey, we can just do whatever we want.

00:06:20.680 I was watching Wheel of Fortune last week, which is, believe it or not, still on and is a great show.

00:06:25.380 And I came across an ad that something jumped out at me from.

00:06:30.580 And I want to play this ad for you because I found it online and see if you see it as well.

00:06:37.680 Let's get a nice wolf. 1.00

00:06:39.920 She's a professional! 0.57

00:06:42.320 Hey, Grandma.

00:06:44.020 These last few months, I've been thinking.

00:06:47.300 You know, quarantine has kept us apart.

00:06:50.180 But I can't just blame COVID.

00:06:52.540 Because the last time we were really together, just the two of us, was, I don't even know.

00:06:58.580 But I'm going to change that.

00:07:00.840 And we don't need to wait for some moment.

00:07:03.980 Let's go to Niagara Falls this weekend.

00:07:06.560 What we do is up to you.

00:07:08.820 I just want to be together.

00:07:09.980 And this time, no, it's not your birthday or a holiday or some special occasion.

00:07:17.280 Because, Grandma, you are my occasion.

00:07:20.280 Okay, so that was the very ad that I saw on TV.

00:07:29.920 An ad telling everyone that in lockdown, you can drift away from your family members.

00:07:34.000 But you can come back and you can go out with Grandma and have a great time in Niagara Falls.

00:07:39.000 So right there, it seems a little bit odd.

00:07:40.900 Because the whole point is that we're supposed to stay home to save Grandma's life.

00:07:44.220 Whereas this ad is telling us we should visit Niagara Falls with Grandma and have a grand old time.

00:07:48.880 Okay, have fun.

00:07:50.260 Now, this is specifically filmed knowing the coronavirus pandemic is going on.

00:07:55.220 It's not just some old ad.

00:07:56.660 But did you see the last frame?

00:07:58.960 The very last frame of that ad.

00:08:01.420 Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario.

00:08:04.660 This is a federal government funded advertisement.

00:08:08.860 The same federal government that's telling us,

00:08:11.680 oh, you know, you got to stay home and you shouldn't have too many people at Thanksgiving dinner

00:08:15.080 and we can get through this is now advertising tourism or funding the advertisement of tourism.

00:08:21.860 Now, to be clear, if you want to go to Niagara Falls with Grandma, have at it.

00:08:25.820 I don't really care.

00:08:27.300 But it's yet another example of the gross inconsistency

00:08:32.080 between different levels of government and in some cases between

00:08:35.720 different departments in the same level of government.

00:08:39.720 Advertising tourism while, on the other hand, saying that, you know,

00:08:42.700 we have to stay home and save lives.

00:08:44.260 And this was, remember, what Justin Trudeau said during his address to the nation

00:08:47.980 about that very idea of staying home.

00:08:50.900 In the spring, we all did our part by staying home.

00:08:54.600 And this fall, we have even more tools in the toolbox.

00:08:57.860 So he doesn't specifically say that staying home is something we need to do right now,

00:09:02.840 but he mentions basically that it's one of the tools we have in the toolkit.

00:09:07.440 And this is the speech, of course, where he said that we still have a fighting chance

00:09:10.940 at salvaging Christmas.

00:09:13.300 Now, I reached out to Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada to ask them about this.

00:09:17.600 Say, listen, the advice is still to not travel abroad.

00:09:20.660 What is the official advice on traveling domestically, on traveling in Canada?

00:09:24.680 And they did not give me at all a straight answer.

00:09:28.100 I was told that, yes, Andrew, domestic land travel is indeed interprovincial territorial

00:09:33.480 and should follow provincial and territorial measures and rules.

00:09:37.360 That wasn't what I asked.

00:09:38.560 I asked, is it recommended or is it advised against?

00:09:42.020 And I'm pretty sure they don't want to answer because they know that it will expose

00:09:46.440 huge inconsistencies in the advice that has been presented.

00:09:50.260 So on one hand, we're being told to stay home, save lives.

00:09:53.240 And on the other hand, the government is bankrolling ads telling us to literally bring

00:09:56.880 grandma to Niagara Falls.

00:09:59.060 So take from that what you will.

00:10:00.700 We've got to take a break.

00:10:01.620 When we come back, Brian Lee Crowley and I chat about his new book here on The Andrew

00:10:05.660 Lawton Show.

00:10:06.340 Stay tuned.

00:10:10.080 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:10:16.120 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:10:18.260 You've no doubt heard of liberal versus conservative, left versus right, globalist, populist, all

00:10:23.860 of these great divides that exist in Canadian and international politics.

00:10:28.400 There's a new one that you might not be as familiar with that's being put forth in a

00:10:32.220 book by the great Brian Lee Crowley, Gardeners versus Designers, Understanding the Great Fault

00:10:38.040 Line in Canadian Politics.

00:10:40.280 Brian, it's good to talk to you.

00:10:41.300 Thanks very much for coming on today and congrats on the new book.

00:10:44.080 Oh, thanks so much, Andrew.

00:10:45.000 It's always great to be on the show.

00:10:46.340 So this dichotomy that you put forward, what is it?

00:10:50.760 Well, look, it comes from an experience.

00:10:54.260 I don't know if any of your audience have had the same experience, but I kept listening

00:10:58.740 to all these people tell me about what a terrible place Canada was, that it's full of racists, 1.00

00:11:04.820 it's full of homophobes, it's full of genocidal maniacs. 0.99

00:11:10.040 And I began to say, but this doesn't correspond to my own experience of Canada. 0.98

00:11:17.800 And it doesn't correspond, I think, for example, to the fact that something like 40% of the

00:11:23.880 population of our great urban areas in Canada are actually people born in another country.

00:11:29.360 They chose Canada.

00:11:30.500 They came here because they had lots of choices.

00:11:32.620 They could have gone to many places, but they chose Canada.

00:11:34.640 And surely they didn't choose Canada because it's a terrible place.

00:11:38.160 And so I began to ask myself, so what is really behind this?

00:11:44.200 And how can we begin to understand what a great place Canada is?

00:11:47.720 And really, that's what my book is about.

00:11:49.080 My book is about what a great place Canada is.

00:11:51.820 Well, we shouldn't be, that Canada is not a problem to be fixed.

00:11:56.580 Canada is instead a rich inheritance to be enjoyed.

00:11:59.660 And that gets us to this idea of gardeners versus designers, because my view is that what

00:12:07.740 the designers want, the people who really want the top-down model, they want to be able

00:12:12.080 to tell us how to live.

00:12:14.180 They want to be able to organize our cities.

00:12:16.300 They want to tell us how to get our health care.

00:12:19.060 They want to, you know, just organize our lives, how to get daycare, you name it.

00:12:24.360 They've always got a program.

00:12:25.940 They've always got a way to fix what's wrong with Canada.

00:12:28.600 And what I wanted to do in the book was to say, well, actually, every time we let the

00:12:32.980 designers have their way, they tell us how they're going to fix Canada, it actually turns

00:12:37.500 out to be a pretty big mess.

00:12:40.060 And the alternative is not to do nothing.

00:12:43.380 The alternative is to elect Canadians through their own experiences, their own knowledge, 0.66

00:12:49.640 their own understanding of their own circumstances, of themselves, about what's important to them,

00:12:53.520 about what's important to their family.

00:12:55.260 They solve their own problems in a way that's pretty impressive.

00:12:59.040 And what we need to do is we need to support these grassroots solutions to our problems

00:13:04.980 rather than the top-down ones.

00:13:06.420 And that's the opposition I'm talking about between gardeners and designers.

00:13:11.300 One of the things that I found when I was reading through it, there's almost a similar

00:13:15.220 parallel to some of the ideas you see in foreign policy and international relations discussions

00:13:20.560 of people on one side that want to view the world the way it is and work within that, and

00:13:24.780 then the cursed idealists on the other side that are so focused on this abstract vision.

00:13:31.260 And I don't know if that was something that you thought of when you were formulating this,

00:13:34.560 but it does seem like there is that contrast between, on one hand, the people that sort of

00:13:39.140 refuse to look at how the country is and are trying to make it into something else.

00:13:43.560 Yes, I think there's a lot of truth to that, Andrew.

00:13:46.300 And in fact, you know, the people who are enamored of, you know, the United Nations as,

00:13:53.000 you know, the great hope for democracy, the same organization that just elected, what was

00:13:58.920 it, Iran and Russia and China to the Human Rights Council, as if these are people who are going

00:14:03.960 to defend human rights around the world at the time when they're abusing them without apology at home.

00:14:10.360 I, you know, one of the reasons why I think genuine Democrats are rather concerned about this creeping

00:14:19.160 internationalization, you know, that we take our lead from the UN and, you know, the IMF and,

00:14:26.040 you know, the World Economic Forum and so on, is because, you know, these idealistic organizations

00:14:34.920 are very far from the real world that we inhabit. And only democracies, I think, are able to defend

00:14:44.520 democracy. We can't look to non-democratic countries to defend our interests.

00:14:50.120 Do you see the gardeners and designers as falling strictly on what we would understand as left,

00:14:55.700 right lines?

00:14:57.300 No, I don't think so. In fact, you know, it's one of the reasons I wrote the book. I said,

00:15:01.620 you know, we don't think very well about these things. And in fact, part of what I'm saying is

00:15:08.260 that at the moment, designers seem to be in the ascendant, you know, the kind of progressives,

00:15:14.820 the people who, you know, every day they're, they're tweeting, you know, Canada should be ashamed

00:15:20.100 about X. And we have a plan to fix Canada. And I think the gardeners have kind of almost forgotten

00:15:33.380 what it is that's so great about Canada, how it became one of the most attractive societies in the

00:15:39.620 world. They need to be reminded what it is that made Canada great and how we can harness, you know,

00:15:48.580 the intelligence of Canadians and their knowledge about themselves and their communities

00:15:54.180 in a way that makes Canada an even better place. I don't think there's any political party

00:15:59.460 that really gets this yet. It's true that there are probably more people in the Conservative Party that

00:16:05.300 are going to read about gardeners and say, gee, yeah, he's articulating something that I feel,

00:16:10.100 but I've never been able to put into words. But you know, the fact of the matter is that for

00:16:16.180 100 years, the Liberal Party was a gardener's party, no doubt about it. Sir Wilfrid Lurie was

00:16:21.460 a gardener of the first water. So the Liberal Party has forgotten its gardener roots. And I think

00:16:29.540 both the Liberals and the Tories need to be reminded that there is an alternative to the top down

00:16:34.580 program. Canada is a problem to be fixed. You mentioned in that response there,

00:16:40.820 knowledge. And one of the arguments that I found really unique, and I hadn't actually considered it

00:16:45.620 in the book, was how you equated freedom to knowledge, and specifically in the context of

00:16:51.220 freedom to pursue, to explore, to experiment as being really the direct path to knowledge. And I don't

00:16:58.180 think a lot of people traditionally view liberty in those terms. I think people, and for good reason,

00:17:03.220 look at freedom as a means and as an end unto itself. But you're saying there's something more

00:17:07.620 fundamental to that about true human progress. Well, yeah, I mean, without getting into a

00:17:14.740 technical discussion, you know, the fact of the matter is that if we act on mistaken ideas,

00:17:23.860 you know, if we're wrong about how things work, when we exercise our freedom, you know,

00:17:29.140 we make mistakes, we get things wrong. And so the truly free person is always seeking

00:17:37.220 the most up-to-date, the most effective, the most real, the most proven knowledge on which to act,

00:17:44.500 right? And so the question then becomes, free people have a tremendous interest in having the

00:17:51.380 most knowledge available. You know, the best knowledge about how to provide healthcare,

00:17:57.460 how to provide daycare, how to provide prescription drugs, how to, you know, how to get an education,

00:18:03.860 all the things that make up our lives in order to be effective in exercising our freedom. We want to

00:18:10.100 have the most knowledge possible with which to exercise that freedom. And, you know, part of the

00:18:15.220 argument of the book is that people at the very top, you know, the people designing all these fabulous 0.98

00:18:21.140 programs that are going to fix all our problems, they're the most ignorant people in society. They're 0.99

00:18:25.620 ignorant about our lives. They're ignorant about, because every one of us is unique. You know, we are not 0.98

00:18:30.980 a statistic. Statistics take away from us everything that makes us an individual and makes us this abstract

00:18:39.060 number. And, you know, because people at the top have to be guided by statistics, because they can't

00:18:44.820 possibly know Andrew Lawton's life and Brian Crowley's life and Joe Smith's life and Jane Smith's life.

00:18:51.620 You know, only you and I have the knowledge about who we are, about what we want, about what's

00:18:57.540 important to us in our community. And so when we let people at the top tell us how to act, we're actually

00:19:03.460 less free and we're actually acting on less information than when we can make our own decisions for

00:19:09.140 ourselves. That's a key part of the book. And your chapter on identity, which I think needs to be

00:19:14.580 required reading in every high school across the country, by the way, really expresses that well.

00:19:20.020 You talk about how most people cannot be reduced down to the identity group of whatever it is,

00:19:26.100 you know, a woman identity, LGBT identity, a racial identity, and so on. But there does seem to be in

00:19:32.900 the designers this idea of pushing that as being really the trump card, more important than however

00:19:38.980 anyone else identifies. Yes, well, you know, you can't assign, in my view, you can't assign a person

00:19:48.660 to a group like, okay, your skin is black, therefore you're black. And that's now we know everything that 0.96

00:19:55.700 matters about you because you're black. Yeah, but the fact of the matter is, if you get into the mind of 0.99

00:20:01.540 someone who's black or someone who's female or someone who's Chinese or something, pick your

00:20:05.380 identity group, it doesn't matter. As soon as you get inside their mind, you realize they're not

00:20:10.100 reducible to a single dimension. They are complex people. They have ideas. They have things that are

00:20:16.260 important to them. They have objectives in their lives. They have different people that they care

00:20:20.980 about. Sometimes they're workers, sometimes they're trade unionists, sometimes they're mortgage holders.

00:20:25.460 So there's a zillion things that make up every individual. And when we reduce them to membership

00:20:32.980 in a group, it's always the designer to say, ah, you see, I've found the one thing that we need to

00:20:38.580 know about this person in order to help them or fix them or, you know, bring in a program that will

00:20:46.020 make their lives better. And the argument I'm making in the book is the only thing you need to know about

00:20:52.100 a person is what's in their head. It's what they want. It's what's important to them.

00:20:57.140 The color of their skin, you know, the ethnic group, their origin, whether they're an immigrant

00:21:02.420 or a native, these are all, they're not irrelevant, but they're small things compared to what's in our

00:21:09.940 heads. And only we know what's important to us as individuals. And lest anyone think this is a

00:21:16.500 theoretical problem, I would point out that there are a great many hiring practices, as you note in the

00:21:21.460 book, and we see this especially in the Canadian government, that are based on that idea of what

00:21:27.140 we would call identity politics. So it's not just a theoretical issue you're raising here, but one

00:21:31.940 that we're seeing in practice, and probably increasingly so.

00:21:37.060 Absolutely. And part of the argument I make in the book is, it's, it's just math, you know, if you

00:21:43.940 genuinely wanted to say, well, all employers must have workforces that are representative of the

00:21:50.420 population by which they mean, all the groups that they can identify that they think are important,

00:21:54.580 you mentioned LGBTQ, etc, etc. There is nobody, no country, no company, no group, no organization,

00:22:03.380 including the federal government, that has a workforce large enough, that it could be truly

00:22:07.860 representative in that sense. And as soon as we start focusing on group membership in things like,

00:22:14.740 how, you know, the employees you have, rather than the competence and the knowledge of the people

00:22:19.940 themselves, we move away from meritocracy, and, you know, picking the best person for the job,

00:22:26.900 which I still think is one of the, one of the, one of the gardener institutions that we've developed,

00:22:32.420 you know, we are a society in which people get ahead, not because of who they are, who they know,

00:22:37.220 but be, but because of what they know, if we allow that to be, you know, shunted aside in favour of,

00:22:44.500 oh, let's make sure every group is represented in every workforce, it will be a tremendous loss

00:22:49.620 to Canadian society. When you look at choices and freedom, I have to point out this line that

00:22:56.820 jumped out in the book, the state does not protect your choices, it protects you, the chooser.

00:23:03.460 What does that distinction mean? And why is that so important?

00:23:07.140 Well, I guess the, the thing to remember is that what makes your life, what makes my life,

00:23:15.620 what makes the life of every human being is the choices that we make. This, this is how we make

00:23:20.500 our lives. This is how we make our character. This is how we make our profession. This is how we choose

00:23:26.820 our mate, you know, everything about our life is what we choose for ourselves. And the important thing,

00:23:35.220 therefore, is to protect our ability to choose, not to say, gee, you know, if you knew as much as I know,

00:23:43.700 I'm, I'm the great, you know, minister of X, or, you know, I'm, I'm the head of Statistics Canada,

00:23:50.020 if only you knew what I knew, you would make the right choice. But we, you see, that's exactly what

00:23:54.900 we can't do in a society of free people, is we can't let people at the top say, we know more than

00:24:00.420 you do. So we're, we will make choices on your behalf. So the important thing is not the role of

00:24:08.980 government is not to make choices for us, because we're too ignorant to make our own choices. The 0.96

00:24:15.460 role of government is to make sure that nobody interferes with our ability to make our own

00:24:19.940 choices. That's when we get to live our best life, according to our own understanding, our own lights,

00:24:26.580 what we care about, and who we know. And that's especially timely in the last eight months,

00:24:31.780 where we've been subjected to some people would argue for good reason, others would argue not so

00:24:36.340 much rule by experts. Yeah, well, I mean, one of the themes of the book is that we defer way too much

00:24:44.260 to experts. You know, this is, again, part of the designer idea that, you know, we, we at the center,

00:24:53.060 we in government, we advise by the most important experts in the world know far more than you do.

00:24:58.740 So please, you know, just be quiet and let us tell you what to do. And I, in the book, I talk about

00:25:05.860 COVID as a, as an example of, well, you know, how realistic is this idea that experts are going to

00:25:12.500 fix things for us? And I, I look at, you know, all of your listeners, Andrew, will remember that

00:25:20.180 at the beginning of COVID, you know, the idea that we would close the border was nonsense. Then

00:25:25.380 we closed the border. No, no, wearing masks, according to the experts, won't make any difference.

00:25:30.260 Now we're all wearing masks. And the list goes on and on and on of experts. Well, experts learn too.

00:25:38.980 Experts don't know everything. In fact, experts mostly know the past. They know, well, yes, okay,

00:25:46.580 we have historical knowledge of what happened in other pandemics, etc. But every bug is different.

00:25:53.620 Every circumstance is different. And now, you know, we're, we're deep into COVID. And there,

00:26:00.340 the expert advice is changing every day. And different countries have different experts

00:26:05.300 offering different advice. The idea that there is some kind, some kind of expert consensus driven

00:26:10.580 by science that gives one answer that we should all capitulate to is absolute rubbish. 0.71

00:26:17.940 Do you think that the designers are so integrated in the Canadian bureaucracy,

00:26:24.180 in academia and other institutions, perhaps in the media that there really

00:26:28.580 is not an easy path forward to reclaim the gardener mentality?

00:26:32.340 Well, the thing that gives me hope, Andrew, is that, you know, no matter how much designers claim

00:26:42.020 that they're acting on the best knowledge, thanks to the best expert advice, the fact of the matter is

00:26:47.860 that most of the time they get it wrong. And they make mistakes. And those mistakes ramify,

00:26:54.340 you know, they multiply, you know, just think about the Ontario government, its attempt to bring in a

00:27:01.620 green economy and how they ruin the, the electricity system, and that had huge knock on effects on

00:27:08.420 employment, etc, etc. And now the federal government is trying to reproduce that the the it would be hard

00:27:16.420 to defeat the designer mentality, if designers got it right, and their solutions worked.

00:27:23.780 Fortunately, they often don't get it right. In fact, most of the time, they don't get it right.

00:27:29.140 You know, our circumstances evolve. And even if they got it right, when they brought it in,

00:27:33.060 their program soon is outdated and based on outmoded information. Whereas gardeners are always able to

00:27:41.060 be at the cutting edge, because they're always asking people to use their own knowledge. You know,

00:27:46.980 what you and I know about our lives is always more up to date than anybody else can know about us.

00:27:53.220 And so when, you know, gardeners say, No, let's, let's rely on what people say they want,

00:27:58.900 let's rely on their own efforts, let's encourage them, let's give them support and making their own

00:28:04.580 choices. The outcomes are better. And I think that as we move into an era of, you know, designer dominance

00:28:16.980 in our in our politics. It's a bit like Margaret Thatcher, used to say, you know, yeah, you know,

00:28:23.620 socialism is okay. Spending other people's money is okay, except eventually you run out of other

00:28:28.580 people's money. Eventually, you run out other people's money. And people start saying, Well,

00:28:33.700 wait a minute, you're taking a lot of my money to provide programs that don't actually work very

00:28:38.900 well for me. And that's when you start to get the pushback. Do you see populism as being an inherent

00:28:45.140 byproduct of this gardener approach? No, I think populism is an inherent outcome of the designer

00:28:51.780 approach. You know, really, that is that populism is a reaction against designerism. It's a reaction

00:29:01.780 against the mentality that says, you know, I'm at the top of the political food chain, I'm really smart,

00:29:09.460 I've been to a fancy university, I have a big PhD, I hire the best experts. And I'm telling you what's

00:29:16.500 good for you. And if you don't like it, well, you're obviously an ignorant redneck, and your opinion 1.00

00:29:22.820 can be completely dismissed. This drives people crazy, Andrew. It's it's the basket of deplorables 1.00

00:29:29.780 mentality. And I think that populism is an inevitable outcome of a designer dominated political

00:29:39.940 era, when people say, I'm sick and tired of politicians telling me that what I know about

00:29:45.380 my own life doesn't matter, is unimportant, is ignorant, and in fact, is embarrassing. 0.90

00:29:52.820 So I guess with that being said, do you think that the designer 0.85

00:29:55.780 uh realm is going to collapse on its own? Or do you think there is a response of sorts that's needed

00:30:02.900 to steer things back into the gardener column? Well, you know, look, I think that it's inevitable

00:30:11.060 that people come to realize that designerism doesn't work. But I also think that it's amazing how hard it

00:30:19.220 is and how much work it takes to make something inevitable happen. It doesn't just happen by itself,

00:30:25.140 Pete. Yeah, people will still keep trying to ram the square peg into the round hole.

00:30:29.380 Yeah, people have to make a decision that no, look, we tried this doesn't work, move on.

00:30:37.300 You know, making the inevitable happen is a big effort, you got to push that rock up the hill.

00:30:41.300 And it may well be that I remember talking to one former politician the other day, and she said,

00:30:51.220 well, you know, the problem is that it seems that the designers always win at election time. And I think,

00:30:58.660 well, I've heard people say this, but then, you know, think about, I mentioned the Ontario government,

00:31:06.660 you know, the Kathleen Wynne government, you know, they were kind of designers par excellence. And

00:31:12.500 finally, people said, No, this is not working. And they were out on their ear. So sometimes you have

00:31:19.140 to let these things run their course. But you have to keep reminding people what the alternative is,

00:31:24.820 so that when they understand that this has run its course, and it doesn't work, they say, Oh,

00:31:29.060 wait a minute, wasn't there an alternative here? So I part of the part of the purpose of the book

00:31:33.940 is to keep these intellectual tools sharp and available to the population. So that when people

00:31:42.420 say, Yeah, boy, this really doesn't work, they say, Oh, wait a minute, but there was an alternative. And

00:31:49.860 and that alternative is there, easily available within reach, so that we can put it to work. And

00:31:55.780 people will realize that it actually works for Canadian.

00:31:58.820 And I guess the one thing I would end with here is asking you if you were to put forward a roadmap

00:32:05.860 that you were going to share with all of the political leaders of Canada, and I guess you have

00:32:10.100 to some extent done it in the book, but something more tangible, because we know I don't think they

00:32:14.420 are always reading, reading the books they need to, what would be the approach that you would recommend

00:32:20.340 that would really help write the course if it is not, as you mentioned earlier, strictly a left,

00:32:25.140 right divide between these two schools?

00:32:28.580 Yeah, well, I think that politicians need constantly to draw a contrast between, you know,

00:32:37.380 these, these arrogant politicians, you know, telling us what a terrible place Canada is,

00:32:44.340 and how they have the the expertise that's going to fix it. And to contrast that with the experience that

00:32:50.980 Canadians have every day, of what a fine country this is, and how pleased they are to be here,

00:32:58.500 how many of us came from other countries, is to be here, because this is the best place in the world

00:33:03.780 to be. And I think if we keep reminding people, compare your experience, compare your day-to-day life,

00:33:12.180 compare what you see around you, and what people say to you about living in Canada, compare that with what

00:33:18.500 the politicians are telling you. And soon you'll realize that the politicians live in a world of

00:33:24.580 abstraction, which has nothing to do with the life of Canadians. And it's the life of Canadians,

00:33:30.740 and what they love, and what they care about, and what, you know, motivates them, that should drive the

00:33:36.260 politics of this country. I think if we, if we were able to communicate that message to people, to be

00:33:41.780 proud of being Canadian, not to be ashamed, I think you would find that Canadians would vibrate 1.00

00:33:48.900 very strongly with that message. The book is Gardeners Versus Designers, Understanding the Great

00:33:54.740 Fault Line in Canadian Politics. The author, Dr. Brian Lee Crowley, joining me on the line. Brian,

00:34:00.500 thank you so much. Fantastic book. I really appreciate you taking the time to share a bit about it.

00:34:04.740 Thanks so much, Andrew. I really enjoyed it.

00:34:06.500 That does it for me. My thanks again to Brian Lee Crowley and all of you for tuning in to the show

00:34:12.180 today. We'll be back on Thursday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show. Thank you,

00:34:16.980 God bless, and good day Canada. If you enjoy the show and want to hear more of it, we need your

00:34:22.260 support. Head on over to andrewlaughtonshow.com and click donate to support the work that we're doing

00:34:28.340 and stand up for independent media. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the

00:34:32.820 program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - October 05, 2020

Inconsistency and Incoherence

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