Juno News - Inflation forcing Canadians to buy dollar store groceries

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lotten show

00:01:30.880 on true north the end of another week at least insofar as this program is concerned coming to

00:01:38.080 you live from the nation's capital of ottawa where you see strange things around the problem with

00:01:44.900 like there are two ottawas there's the real ottawa that is like a municipality like any other in

00:01:49.700 Canada. And you've got all your suburbs and communities and people with real lives, real jobs.

00:01:54.840 And then there's downtown Ottawa. And I was very sympathetic when the Freedom Convoy came up to

00:02:00.420 people saying, listen, I live downtown. But for the most part, it's not normal people that live

00:02:05.760 in downtown Ottawa. There are some, but it's like, and by not normal, I mean, it's politicians and

00:02:10.220 bureaucrats and stuff like that. They're humans, but they're like a very strange subset of humans.

00:02:14.380 And so everywhere you go, you're running into people like there's one guy, Jasraj Singh Hallan, who's the conservative finance critic.

00:02:21.920 I've interviewed him before. Very nice guy. I've seen him like nine times in four days.

00:02:26.760 And I had thought like I had seen him enough times. And then last night I was in a meeting with someone and he like came in because he needed to see them.

00:02:34.960 So that was number nine. So this is Ottawa. And then yesterday I was just walking around Parliament Hill and I saw Jagmeet Singh like riding away

00:02:43.780 on his bicycle and it was actually to be honest it was impressive because generally speaking I

00:02:50.040 thought you needed a spine to ride a bike and Jagmeet Singh managed to be riding at a pretty

00:02:55.940 good clip despite all of the things that he says for example if I'm talking about what's happening

00:03:01.400 on Twitter or X as it's now called Jagmeet Singh has done it never ceases to amuse me this is the

00:03:07.500 tweet he shared this morning about the rising grocery prices he puts the blame on justin

00:03:14.520 trudeau he says it's uh you know the justin trudeau the liberals have been doing this

00:03:18.060 and only the ndp are the ones that are going to uh call this out only the ndp are going to this

00:03:26.640 was a tweet from a couple of days ago but the thing that i find most interesting about it

00:03:30.480 is that he always forgets to include the other part of that you kind of have to really really

00:03:35.400 squint and you know really look closely to see oh by the way i'm the one that's keeping the liberal

00:03:40.760 government in power right now so uh maybe he was riding his bike so fast yesterday because

00:03:45.800 accountability were the things he was was the thing he was trying to flee but nevertheless

00:03:50.440 the grocery store debate about what to do with them to the liberals is basically just summon all

00:03:56.600 the ceos to ottawa finger wag and say you must produce a plan the liberal government is actually

00:04:01.480 unveiling that right now the plan that they demanded by thanksgiving to do something about

00:04:07.160 rising grocery costs it's not actually going to do anything at all all we're reminded of here

00:04:12.040 is that grocery stores in canada are really coming down to a five day a five company group it's an

00:04:19.560 oligopoly aaron woodrick uh posted this tweet here which i i found was quite incisive about the

00:04:25.000 problem he said philippe francois champagne this morning was talking about the virtues of competition

00:04:30.040 And this afternoon is talking about the federal government essentially working with this oligopoly to fix prices.

00:04:37.040 Because the government, and by the way, the NDP, have taken the view that greedy grocery store profiteers are the problem.

00:04:47.020 That greedy CEOs, the capitalist system, that's the reason that things are so expensive.

00:04:52.940 Not inflation, which as we've discussed on this show, has a number of influencing factors.

00:04:58.540 but the carbon tax is a very big one it's not grocery store profits and in fact if you look

00:05:05.660 at the shrinkage that grocery stores have to contend with if you look at the theft issues

00:05:11.300 that grocery stores especially now have to contend with if you look at their operating costs which

00:05:16.860 are driven up by fuel taxes carbon taxes all that sort of stuff and then just general cost of doing

00:05:22.580 things in Ontario for example the minimum wage is going up quite significantly I think it's now

00:05:27.660 at $16.55 an hour, which I remember when $15 an hour was seen as a very radical push. And I

00:05:35.160 remember when businesses were justifiably talking in Ontario about how difficult it was going to be

00:05:40.040 for them to make a go of things at a $15 an hour minimum wage. Now, a few years have passed, mind

00:05:45.920 you, that is going up entirely. You may say that even a minimum wage salary today is not enough

00:05:52.040 to comfortably live, which I am entirely sympathetic to. But those increases to the

00:05:57.120 cost of labor put a responsibility on employers that they cannot just shoulder. The profit margins

00:06:04.700 are not thick enough that they can just, with the stroke of a pen, say, okay, yeah, we're paying

00:06:10.160 everyone more. That money has to go down to customers. And there was a spokesperson, I can't

00:06:16.800 remember if I mentioned it yesterday, from the Bank of Canada, I did mention it, who had said

00:06:20.500 we're going to be seeing a feedback loop that inflation is going to cause more inflation which 0.84

00:06:24.320 sounds like a stupid point and ideally people in the bank of canada would be well aware of this 0.59

00:06:28.600 but it's also at the same time a self-evident point that the rising costs affect everyone 0.99

00:06:33.900 including people who have to decide what to price things they're selling at and you put this in the

00:06:40.980 context in which i think it's most important to be viewed in which is the effect on individual

00:06:45.060 people, not on companies, not on government, but on ordinary people. And it is heartbreaking

00:06:50.400 how many people are hurting. And this is something that I should actually one day devote a considerable

00:06:57.160 chunk of time to going through some of the emails I've seen that have been very difficult

00:07:00.740 on this question. Emails from people who are making very difficult decisions. And I know I'm

00:07:07.000 starting to do a wind up like I'm some politician on the campaign trail of, oh, well, I met a

00:07:12.220 constituent in Kelowna who said X, Y, Z. But people are hurting. And governments tend to not

00:07:19.180 be aware of that in a very real way. They may be aware in an abstract way. People in the general

00:07:25.740 sense are hurting. But the individual struggles and the commonalities between those individual

00:07:30.680 struggles, I don't think they're paying attention to. This morning, there was a report that was

00:07:36.320 released from Dalhousie and we've seen Sylvain Charlebois on the show before he's a probably

00:07:42.220 the leading scholar and researcher on food supply chain and food pricing issues in Canada and this

00:07:49.740 survey found that two-thirds of Canadians are concerned about the long-term health implications

00:07:56.020 of the choices they're making today not because they're making unhealthy choices

00:08:00.000 just for sake of preference but because they're having to buy less healthy products

00:08:05.640 less nutritious products because of inflation because they cannot afford fresh food fresh

00:08:14.780 produce you look further to this and find that half of the respondents of this survey if i think

00:08:20.240 it was 47 are doing more grocery shopping at the dollar store than they are at the grocery store

00:08:27.320 for the same reason because of inflation now i want to say first and foremost here i am not

00:08:34.220 judging anyone for the decisions they make. If you decide, you know what, I can get so-and-so

00:08:38.920 for cheaper. I don't care about the name brands. And if I want to get like Dr. Broccoli instead

00:08:44.820 of Dr. Pepper, and I can get it for half the price of the dollar store, great. I'm not talking

00:08:49.060 about people that are making just frugal decisions for whatever reason, same as some people that

00:08:53.580 used to load up at the bulk food store and only get some things at the grocery store. That's

00:08:57.920 not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who are only doing it

00:09:02.060 because of the circumstances of the economy.

00:09:06.220 People who are only making that choice

00:09:08.380 because they have no other options

00:09:10.520 or they feel they have no other option.

00:09:13.900 And that's something we're seeing so much of right now

00:09:17.520 in this country.

00:09:18.460 People that are going to the grocery store,

00:09:20.420 and we've seen this.

00:09:21.580 There have been countless studies, polls,

00:09:23.140 surveys that have showed this.

00:09:24.380 People that are buying less food,

00:09:26.840 people who are skipping meals,

00:09:28.640 people who are compromising on quality,

00:09:30.820 people who are compromising on freshness, people who are compromising on nutrition.

00:09:37.440 And all of these decisions are coming about because they cannot afford to otherwise feed

00:09:44.020 themselves or, in more heartbreaking cases, to feed their families. And this is a crisis.

00:09:51.180 This is not a problem. This is a crisis. Rishi Sunak, the other day, the Prime Minister of the

00:09:56.060 UK, was referring in some interview to the inflation tax. And he said the inflation tax

00:10:00.620 harms the poor and this smug self-righteous interviewer spends the next however many minutes

00:10:07.340 arguing with him about whether you can call inflation a tax and she's like oh it's not a

00:10:11.360 tax it's not and he says it is it's absolutely a tax it is a penalty on living that is what

00:10:17.860 inflation is and that again the fact that it was a debate being held in the UK shows this is not

00:10:22.640 exclusively a Canadian problem so no I'm not one of these people that looks to Justin Trudeau and

00:10:27.260 said, you caused this global trend. But I will look to Justin Trudeau and say that you did not

00:10:32.740 put Canada in the best position to withstand this. You did not. And Justin Trudeau's only answer to

00:10:41.380 this has been to wag his finger at grocery store CEOs. Take a look at this clip from a few weeks

00:10:48.480 back. It's not okay that our biggest grocery stores are making record profits while Canadians 1.00

00:10:56.480 are struggling to put food on the table. So Minister Champagne will be calling on the

00:11:01.860 heads of large grocers to come to Ottawa with a plan to address the rising cost of food.

00:11:08.980 We expect to hear from them by Thanksgiving on what their plan is to stabilize prices.

00:11:26.100 And let me be very clear, if their plan doesn't provide real relief for the middle class and

00:11:32.660 people working hard to join it, then we will take further action and we are not ruling

00:11:38.780 anything out, including tax measures.

00:11:43.920 So obviously the announcement today suggests that the government has gotten what it wanted.

00:11:50.340 Grocery store CEOs have put their heads together, they've come up with some agreement that they're

00:11:54.020 going to do, which I'm guaranteeing right now, and I'm not a particularly pessimistic person.

00:11:59.780 Well, no, who am I kidding? I am. I want to be an optimist. I'm like the middle class seeking to

00:12:04.140 join it. I'm like the optimist and those seeking to be optimist. But the thing about it is that

00:12:08.980 I would encourage you to, when you go to your grocery store this weekend, maybe you're doing

00:12:13.660 a big Thanksgiving turkey dinner. I can't stand turkey. I hate that it's become the default

00:12:18.060 traditional holiday food for like three holidays every year and some other ones. But nevertheless,

00:12:23.820 this isn't about my dislike for turkey I just find it boring now it's not there's nothing

00:12:28.480 objectionable about it it's just like the it's like the Aaron O'Toole of poultry it's like just

00:12:33.280 it has nothing to offer unless you just load it up with gravy and all these other things so I would

00:12:37.820 just prefer to have the gravy but nevertheless the one thing that I'll point out here is that

00:12:43.340 I know Canadians are not going to see this stability by Thanksgiving that was promised so

00:12:50.840 this tough talk we're not taking anything off the table we're doing this and we're doing that and

00:12:56.520 we're gonna put tax measures if we have to by the way like tax measures how are you going to tax

00:13:03.540 your way out of a mess that was already caused by increasing prices and increasing costs and the

00:13:11.080 government has never answered this I mean I remember trying to make sense of this with Aaron

00:13:14.460 Woodrick whose tweet I showed earlier earlier when this happened and I was like how are we

00:13:19.020 Like, I'm just, I mean, liberal logic is sometimes difficult to keep up with in general, but oftentimes you can sort of try to figure out at least how they got to the conclusion, even if you realize that it may be a dumb point.

00:13:32.180 In this one, I'm like, how are tax measures going to penalize grocery stores to bringing their prices down because they will have to pay this, you know, penalty tax because they didn't lower the price of turkey?

00:13:47.080 And how are they going to recoup that?

00:13:49.020 Well, they're going to increase the price of turkey or gravy or whatever the case is.

00:13:53.900 So, like, it literally makes no sense whatsoever.

00:13:56.740 and when Canadians are buying their groceries at the dollar store they are dispensing maybe

00:14:03.200 there's a dollarama out there that has a decent selection of romaine lettuce or something but

00:14:07.720 any dollar store I've seen uh has which by the way I mean how dollar stores have survived now

00:14:12.640 I have no idea because you know nothing is a dollar so the groceries they're selling

00:14:18.720 are heavily preserved foods things that are not healthy and I no one is looking at me and being

00:14:25.660 this is the guy I'm taking health advice from. I'm not giving you health advice. My problems did

00:14:29.940 not come from buying food at the dollar store, I assure you. But I am making the point here

00:14:34.900 that when people are making these decisions, not because they're choosing them, but are making

00:14:40.480 them because the economic realities are forcing them to, this is a problem. And it's not going

00:14:46.320 to surprise me if we see in five, 10 years, the consequences of this, of children who have been

00:14:53.400 developmentally delayed who have been malnourished in some way of people that haven't developed in

00:14:58.980 certain ways because they haven't been eating as much they haven't been eating as right i mean

00:15:02.420 these are the types of things that are lagging indicators where they take a fair bit of time

00:15:06.200 to catch up with what the consequences are of the decision uh bill peace has a message he says

00:15:14.060 turkeys are 46 51 at food basics happy thanksgiving now that actually doesn't seem like a terrible

00:15:20.720 price for turkey i didn't wait i didn't even know we could put the comments up on the screen there

00:15:25.560 that's great that's just like i should read comments more often i didn't know we had that

00:15:28.560 in our uh in our program here i get all excited small things amuse small minds as they say

00:15:32.800 but that like again food basics they're supposed to be one of the inexpensive

00:15:36.900 grocers not one of the really high-end ones this isn't like loblaws or sobeys or anything like that

00:15:43.020 i mean sobeys is a pricey store they they have good quality stuff oftentimes when i've been there

00:15:48.520 But this is exactly where things are, I think, moving along.

00:15:52.220 Now, one of the big challenges, and I'm going to be talking about this a little bit more

00:15:56.240 next week, obviously, once I've had a chance to look through whatever is being proposed

00:16:01.800 and whatever is being announced here.

00:16:03.440 But I want to hear from you on this.

00:16:05.580 And I don't often crowdsource this sort of stuff because my inbox then gets a little

00:16:09.240 full and it's unwieldy for me to keep up with it.

00:16:12.560 But I want you to actually report when this change has been announced.

00:16:16.680 and we'll give it time to sink in or be adopted,

00:16:19.520 I want you to tell me if you've seen any changes

00:16:22.400 and if so, what they are.

00:16:25.920 And it's kind of a two-part assignment, if you will.

00:16:27.880 Not that I like to be the podcaster giving you homework.

00:16:30.400 Maybe we can get the CRTC to regulate that out of here.

00:16:33.160 But what I would encourage you to do

00:16:34.960 is if you're at the grocery store today or tomorrow,

00:16:37.320 take a look at the prices of a couple of things.

00:16:39.300 Pick like two or three items

00:16:40.780 and then see what they are

00:16:42.440 after these so-called stabilization measures

00:16:45.240 are in effect and in force that that's going to be the assignment that's what you have to do here

00:16:50.380 and i am gonna bet it's not going to make a difference so all of this was theatrical the

00:16:56.020 government makes it look like it's going tough on these big evil greedy grocery store ceos 1.00

00:17:00.900 and i'll say on this point by the way the grocery store ceos have done themselves no favors here

00:17:07.020 when they had that meeting in ottawa a few weeks back and they were all summoned here

00:17:11.400 and it was all five. It was Sobeys, Costco, and Costco I felt was like, I don't even think of as

00:17:17.640 a grocery store, but Costco, Sobeys, Loblaws, Metro, and there was one more that I'm forgetting.

00:17:24.500 But when all of them went there, one of the things that I found interesting about it was that they

00:17:31.360 all just blew off the media. The media were out there asking them questions, trying to scrum them

00:17:36.140 as they went in. Only one of them really stopped to talk. And he just gave like this boilerplate

00:17:41.760 line. Galen Weston, who like the NDP would basically call for the public execution of if

00:17:47.460 it were within the law, just kind of walks in smugly and gives nothing. If I were one of these

00:17:54.160 grocery store CEOs, I would be out there with the media going through in painstaking detail

00:18:01.420 what it is that the government is doing that is causing these problems because it's easy if you

00:18:08.380 don't know enough about business to look at the bottom line and say oh wow they're making millions

00:18:13.080 billions of dollars whatever the case like it's easy to make that claim but when people see how

00:18:18.960 much it costs them to be in business yes they're making profits but it's the profitability of

00:18:26.960 companies that makes it worthwhile to invest in those companies and invest in business and invest

00:18:32.800 in doing things that allow us to have grocery stores in the first place. If it weren't profitable,

00:18:37.540 they wouldn't do it. And then we're left with just nationalizing grocery stores. And mark my words,

00:18:42.540 there's going to be a semi-serious push from someone in politics at some point in the next

00:18:47.300 few years to create a national grocery store chain. And it's probably going to come from the NDP,

00:18:52.820 but at this point, I'm not convinced the liberal government would be opposing it. So

00:18:56.540 we'll talk about that more. But I do sincerely feel for all the people that are struggling right

00:19:01.860 now. And I can't say that I can solve the problem. But I can say that I'm listening. And I'm aware of

00:19:07.100 it. And I wish lawmakers do as well. And you know, I met a couple of MPs this week who I'm very

00:19:12.280 grateful listen to this show. So some of them are hearing it that I can tell you. Speaking of MPs,

00:19:19.120 there's no natural segue from produce to assisted suicide. So I'll just do like the hard stop and

00:19:24.300 move on here. There is, as you know, this ongoing debate in Ottawa, and it's a debate being under,

00:19:31.220 well, it's underway across the country, I think, probably more so elsewhere than it is in the

00:19:34.960 nation's capital, on assisted suicide. The government has committed to a very ideological

00:19:39.920 approach that is vastly expanding eligibility for what they call MADE, the euphemism,

00:19:46.720 medical assistance in dying. And one of these expansions includes the ability for someone to

00:19:54.500 access this when they're dealing not with an irremediable physical medical condition,

00:20:00.760 but someone who's dealing only with a mental health condition. And that is so key here,

00:20:07.060 because sometimes the symptom of a mental illness is wanting to end your life.

00:20:11.880 So how can the so-called cure or treatment to that condition also be ending your life?

00:20:19.240 And this is near and dear to my heart.

00:20:20.920 I have shared this on the show before.

00:20:22.380 For some of you, you may not have heard it.

00:20:23.860 I am a suicide survivor.

00:20:25.540 When I was younger in 2010, I had been going through for several years a mental health

00:20:31.020 struggle, mainly depression, and I very nearly succeeded in ending my own life.

00:20:36.740 And it was my greatest failure.

00:20:38.860 and it's a failure I'm tremendously proud of

00:20:41.920 because all the things I have in life since then,

00:20:43.920 my career, my life, my friends, my wife,

00:20:47.360 has come about because I found a path

00:20:50.000 and a hope that I did not know was possible.

00:20:53.080 And it is heartbreaking on a very personal level,

00:20:55.580 set aside the policy of it,

00:20:56.800 when I see a government so committed to this idea

00:21:00.280 that ending your life with a state's assistant is a right

00:21:02.980 that no one has the ability to interfere with

00:21:06.740 because I know it's a regime that if it were in place in 2010, I would have been very motivated

00:21:12.640 to avail myself of. And the doctors, the care workers that told me, no, you don't get to end

00:21:19.860 your life, we're going to help you, would have been compelled to do the opposite, to assist me

00:21:26.660 with what was a very flawed and ill approach. Now, this is a lengthy windup to a private

00:21:34.060 Members Bill that's been introduced by Conservative MP Ed Fast. It was introduced in May, but it's

00:21:39.220 actually this week getting a hearing, which I'm very grateful for. It's called Bill C-314. There

00:21:45.020 was a press conference about it just a couple of blocks from where I am earlier this week.

00:21:49.360 Alex Schattenberg is the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and joins me now.

00:21:55.000 Alex, it's good to talk to you. What does this Private Members Bill do?

00:21:59.320 Well, actually, the private members bill is very clear.

00:22:02.040 It would just reverse what was already passed by Bill C-7 in March of 2021.

00:22:09.340 So Bill C-7 was the bill that expanded euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada we call MAID.

00:22:14.640 It expanded it to include people who are not terminally ill.

00:22:17.580 One of the things that bill did is it allowed for euthanasia for mental illness alone, but they put a two-year moratorium on that.

00:22:24.500 And you might remember last December when the government was getting a lot of heat over the issue of people with disabilities who were dying by MAID because of homelessness and poverty and inability to get medical treatment, etc.

00:22:39.460 And these stories were coming at them one at a time consistently that they decided to delay the MAID for mental illness until March of 2024.

00:22:49.880 So Ed Fassbill would actually end that prospect and say that it is not part of the law to allow MAID for mental illness alone.

00:22:59.240 This has been, I mean, obviously there's an ideological aversion to assisted suicide in general among a lot of social conservatives in Canada and some other people as well.

00:23:08.600 The mental illness criterion has galvanized a lot of people that do not identify as pro-life, don't identify as social conservative.

00:23:17.080 We're talking about disability activists, mental health activists, a lot of medical providers that are at the very minimum concerned, at another level, completely outraged by this.

00:23:28.120 But even so, the government has been unflinching.

00:23:30.260 It's like they've said, well, we'll consult, we'll talk about it.

00:23:32.560 But they really haven't shown any signs of walking this back, have they?

00:23:36.600 No, they haven't.

00:23:37.420 And in fact, the Canadian Association of the Suicide Prevention Organizations, they're against, you know, made for mental illness. 0.98

00:23:47.120 In our own press conference, we had two young women give very similar stories to your story, talking about, you know, the times they went through when they were, you know, one was hospitalized for over a month and had constant relapses into deep, deep, deep depression.

00:24:02.100 And her story was, well, if you had offered it to me then, I would have taken it because I wanted death.

00:24:06.080 Another one attempted suicide unsuccessfully, thankfully, seven times and said, you know, if you had offered me medical aid in dying, I would have taken it in a second because I thought death was my only option.

00:24:19.220 I felt like I was caught into this deep, dark place and I couldn't get out any other way.

00:24:25.120 And yet, of course, now they are both much better.

00:24:27.340 But the point of it is, is that Ed Fassbill I really like because as much as I'm opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide in general, he has just carved out this part of the legislation saying no to that because clearly Canadians oppose that.

00:24:42.220 A recent poll done by Angus Reid showed that 82% of Canadians thought that this should

00:24:49.040 not happen until we improve mental health supports, but only 28% of Canadians actually

00:24:54.280 supported the concept of euthanasia for mental illness alone.

00:24:58.940 Yeah, and actually, you raise an important point there, and I know you don't work for

00:25:02.720 Ed Fast, you're an advocate on the issue, but Ed has done something very important here

00:25:06.960 because when C7 came up, the problem was this was really an issue that was being debated

00:25:11.840 within a broader context of changes.

00:25:14.720 And that was sort of the excuse to just pass it.

00:25:17.040 Whereas if you deal with an isolation,

00:25:19.260 someone who believes that this exception

00:25:22.120 for mental illness should be taken out or left in, 0.98

00:25:26.480 like you actually have to defend that issue alone.

00:25:29.460 You have to defend that slice of it alone.

00:25:31.300 And it's very difficult for private members

00:25:33.180 to be able to get a hearing.

00:25:34.080 This one actually is by virtue of where it is in the queue.

00:25:37.280 Right, yeah.

00:25:38.000 So it's having its second hour debate actually today.

00:25:40.680 The fact is that you might remember the history of it is that Bill C-7, when it came out, originally did not allow MAID for mental illness.

00:25:47.780 And then what happened is a certain group of senators got together saying that they would not support the changes to the legislation if it didn't include that.

00:25:57.700 So what happened, it went back to Parliament, and Parliament then passed it.

00:26:01.100 But I see a lot of them never even debated it.

00:26:03.320 They didn't even think that this is what they were doing.

00:26:05.880 They didn't understand.

00:26:06.920 What I'm also concerned about is this issue of democracy.

00:26:09.400 You know, why am I saying this? There's a lot of members of parliament who are saying, you know, I agree with Ed Fass, but I have to support with my I have to vote with my liberal party.

00:26:18.120 Well, this is a private members bill. It's got nothing to do with liberal policy.

00:26:22.160 It's got nothing to do with a budget or anything like that.

00:26:24.620 It has to do with a private members business.

00:26:27.140 So therefore, there should be clearly a free vote.

00:26:29.020 But the liberals and the NDP, they have been, how would you say, they've been whipping the vote on this issue.

00:26:35.060 and that to me is ridiculous if you consider the fact of where Canadians are at and how Canadians 0.53

00:26:40.020 simply oppose this. Let me ask you about the the other issue of this that we see in Canada which is

00:26:48.460 increasingly stories of made being offered to people who are not dealing with mental illness

00:26:54.320 or physical illness people that are dealing with housing insecurity people that are dealing with

00:26:58.680 poverty and and you know I was talking earlier on about rising cost of living problems about

00:27:03.580 grocery store prices, these are contributing to these broader social ills that we know are at

00:27:10.280 least in a handful of cases, more than I would say we can call isolated, converting to people

00:27:16.540 being recommended or seeking out assisted dying. Now, the reason I bring that up is because the

00:27:22.040 law, as I understand it, and as I read it, does not allow that. This is practitioners of this

00:27:27.720 going above and beyond what the regulations and the law says. And I'm concerned that we already

00:27:33.400 have this attitude in parts of the medical community that doesn't really care about legal

00:27:39.880 restrictions, it seems. And I'm wondering what your take on that is. Well, first of all, there

00:27:44.180 is a small group of doctors who do a lot of euthanasia, medical aid and dying. There are

00:27:50.440 some that do a little bit of it, but there's a small group that do very many of them. And you

00:27:55.740 see that in some of the articles. But what happened is, is that they actually technically

00:27:58.780 allow this and we the reason is is that they uh bill c7 when it got rid of the uh the type of a

00:28:05.300 terminal illness requirement it led to the fact that essentially what you need now is to have an

00:28:09.940 irremediable medical condition because they say you have to be suffering but as you know andrew

00:28:14.540 i if you tell me you're suffering i can't tell you you're not suffering so there's nothing

00:28:18.320 objective about it you can't you can't gauge that so yeah men like suffer from like the cold

00:28:23.560 or the flu in a way that like some would argue is irremediable. Yeah.

00:28:28.660 Well, you threw that in because your wife probably reminded you of that. But anyway,

00:28:31.960 the fact of it is, is that, you know, the fact of it is, is that if you have an irremediable

00:28:36.300 medical condition, essentially means that people with disabilities really do qualify almost all

00:28:41.880 the time for medical aid and dying in Canada. And that's what's been happening. So these people who

00:28:46.380 are going through really quite extreme poverty or homelessness, or a lot of them, they had a

00:28:51.300 situation where they were really having a hard time getting the medical treatment they needed

00:28:56.400 so that had to do with the access to our medical system which is also a whole nother issue that we

00:29:01.220 we uh we know is a serious problem anyway they were then saying i have no choice because

00:29:07.060 i cannot continue living this way so i will ask for euthanasia made they were being approved

00:29:12.580 based on their disability so they weren't being approved based on their poverty they were

00:29:16.780 requesting it based on their poverty or their homelessness or the inability to get their

00:29:21.520 medical treatment. And there's a few other reasons that are all social issues, serious social ills

00:29:26.660 within our country. And of course, the thing of homelessness is just exploded. And there's many

00:29:31.740 reasons for that. And you could do multiple shows on that one. But the fact of it is, is that when

00:29:36.360 you're getting such a high level of homelessness, you can see how somebody with a disability who

00:29:40.560 can't get access to social housing because they have a limited income, they're sick enough that

00:29:45.900 they can't work, they can't get access to social housing, they're in fear of ending up on the

00:29:50.860 streets, but they do qualify for euthanasia. So we can't get them a house or a place to live,

00:29:56.460 but yeah, we can kill you. And that's somehow going to be about freedom, choice, and autonomy, 0.99

00:30:00.600 which is, of course, the big joke of the whole thing. It's not about freedom, choice, and autonomy

00:30:03.880 at all. It's really about abandonment when it comes down to it. Yeah, it's heartbreaking all

00:30:08.520 around. I'm glad Ed Fast is, who, by the way, I mean, look, I don't know Ed Fast all that well.

00:30:13.060 he's not exactly like a hardline social conservative culture war creator so he crusader

00:30:18.800 so he's actually probably one of the best people to put this forward because he's fairly moderate

00:30:23.260 and I uh it's it's unfortunate from what you've said that the other parties are not taking it in

00:30:27.800 in that uh tone and and working with him on this but uh hopefully if we get the public pressure up

00:30:32.860 there that might be able to change Alex Schattenburg Euthanasia Prevention Coalition thanks for coming

00:30:37.580 on Alex thank you so much for having me thank you all right thank you and uh we're just like

00:30:42.360 rapid firing through topics today. We had a lot going on, all the things we couldn't get to earlier

00:30:46.460 in the week that we're trying to cram in before the weekend, but trying to give each one a little

00:30:51.680 open air breathing because some of these are very important topics. And I've said time and time

00:30:56.820 again, free speech is my hill to die on. And that means, you know, legal free speech that is

00:31:01.760 to stand up against censorship and regulation of speech by government, but also academic freedom

00:31:07.260 and cultural free speech, the idea that we must foster in society an attitude that encourages

00:31:13.620 and welcomes the exchange of ideas and information rather than discourages and cancels.

00:31:20.100 And I was, of course, very intrigued by this course that was not offered when I was in

00:31:25.580 university.

00:31:26.520 I'll read the proper name of it because I don't want to give it a crude summation, but

00:31:31.340 the proper name of the course is, and it's a study of woke ideology here, and I lost the

00:31:38.180 thing here. There we go. It is called Woke, the Origins, Dynamics, and Implications of an Elite

00:31:45.680 Ideology. Now, this is not being offered at a Canadian school, not yet, but it is being offered

00:31:50.600 at the University of Birmingham by a Canadian professor, Eric Kaufman, who joins me now.

00:31:56.280 Professor, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

00:31:58.860 Good to be here, Andrew. I should just one slight correction. It's University of Buckingham,

00:32:03.260 not Birmingham. I'm so sorry. I get my hams. It was all the Thanksgiving talk. I'm getting my 0.94

00:32:08.480 hams mixed up here. Buckingham, yes. And I should say University of Buckingham is like a very,

00:32:13.980 well, you've said it's the only free speech university really in the UK.

00:32:18.540 It is, yeah. I mean, it has a strange origin because it was founded through Margaret Thatcher

00:32:24.280 And it sort of, you know, even though most of the staff and students still lean left, it's got more viewpoint diversity than you'll find on a typical British campus.

00:32:32.940 So it's somewhat more hospitable and the leadership is very much in favor of moving it in this direction.

00:32:38.680 So what is your class about? I mean, obviously, you've got 15 weeks of material here.

00:32:41.920 I don't expect you to give it all in a few minutes. But what is this course about?

00:32:45.700 well it really is sort of begins with the intellectual history the you know the how did

00:32:50.260 we get to this ideology how does it relate to for example socialism liberalism anarchism and these

00:32:56.980 other isms that go back earlier into the 19th century and then we kind of look at what happens

00:33:02.420 in the 60s uh how the left shifts you know from class towards identity and and then how that plays

00:33:09.460 out into our own time i then move on to looking at public opinion data sort of who supports

00:33:16.180 something like cancelling jk rowling for example i mean it would tend to be younger people would

00:33:20.580 tend to be is it more female than male is it more left than right and so on and then how this is now

00:33:26.020 affecting electoral politics uh the culture wars the politics of the culture wars and speech

00:33:32.100 boundaries uh you know critical race theory all of that and then finally looking at the philosophy

00:33:37.620 the questions that it raises, free speech versus so-called equal speech. So that's kind of a very

00:33:44.340 quick and dirty. I mean, it's certainly there on the website. If you go to my Twitter, you can sort

00:33:48.820 of see a link. But we're going to do this sort of very empirically. I mean, there's a lot of

00:33:54.760 academics. There are thousands of papers on the populist right, lots of courses on it.

00:33:59.520 I've taught in that myself, but there's nothing on the woke left because it's just too uncomfortable

00:34:03.640 to do. One thing I'm curious about, I years ago sought out to write a book about political

00:34:10.860 correctness, and I did years of research on this and just ultimately, for a number of reasons,

00:34:15.460 walked away from it. But one of the things that I found in doing that is that political correctness

00:34:20.260 as a word or as a term, when it was first introduced, was described and used by the

00:34:27.340 people that wanted political correctness, and they wanted to be politically correct. And then

00:34:30.640 it morphed and was only used by people that were decrying it and criticizing it. And am I correct

00:34:37.280 in saying that woke has kind of gone through a bit of a similar phase where it was introduced as

00:34:41.360 a very positive, favorable concept by the woke people? And now they've sort of backed off of the

00:34:46.220 word and it's only really being used by people that are calling out wokeness. Yeah, you're 0.64

00:34:51.600 absolutely right about that. I mean, what I would say, I mean, there's no question people abuse the

00:34:56.660 word and stretch the word to mean anything they don't like. Well, some people just use it as a

00:35:01.820 stand-in for left, which I don't think is entirely accurate. No, I don't think it's accurate and is

00:35:07.220 somewhat of a way of devaluing what is actually quite a useful, I think, empirically tight

00:35:13.420 social scientific term. So I have a one-sentence definition. It's the making sacred of historically

00:35:22.200 marginalized race, gender, and sexual identity groups. So once you erect these groups as sacred,

00:35:29.400 anything that might offend the most hypothetically sensitive member of one of these groups

00:35:34.840 is blasphemy or criticizing anything that's done in the name of helping

00:35:40.680 such as these groups such as anti-racism or trans affirmation or whatever. If you criticize

00:35:46.120 any such movement that is also a violation of the sacred and therefore cause for excommunication or

00:35:52.520 cancellation so there's this very religious quality to it and i think it is a useful term 0.99

00:35:57.000 and it describes uh something that is very real and has emerged strongly in our time

00:36:02.760 based on that definition can wokeness be separated from victimhood and this veneration of victims

00:36:08.680 It very much, it springs from the victimhood culture. So the wider ideology is based on,

00:36:18.200 you might call it a victimhood culture, and sort of emotional safety, emotional trauma prevention

00:36:24.840 is sort of the mantra. But of course, that is broader than just race, gender, sexuality could

00:36:31.000 apply to disability, even potentially class in theory would fit into the victimhood model. But

00:36:38.680 there is a focus very specifically in wokeness on just race, gender, and sexuality. I think the fat 0.97

00:36:44.520 stuff, the class stuff, that doesn't have the same pickup. It doesn't seem like there's as much

00:36:49.940 energy in canceling and pushing for DEI along those axes. So I think it's much more specific

00:36:55.700 to these three categories. Is your view that the woke, whoever they are, and maybe that's something

00:37:03.180 you want to define, do they see wokeness as a tool, as a vehicle to get to where they want,

00:37:07.640 or is it the destination? I think it is the destination. Jonathan Haidt has his moral

00:37:15.760 foundations theory, and there's really two foundations. One is equal outcomes. So all

00:37:21.280 identity groups that could be black, white, male, female, et cetera, should have equal outcomes in

00:37:27.200 terms of income, in terms of honors and esteem and so on. That would be one prong of it. The

00:37:32.600 other prong is, again, this microscopic, even microaggression, sort of harm protection. So

00:37:39.120 anything that might offend or upset in any way, somebody's emotional state must be prevented,

00:37:45.200 which is why they're going after free speech, for example, which speech which might offend,

00:37:49.880 right? So I think there is something real there and is rooted in these two moral foundations,

00:37:56.080 but just taken to the extreme. Your description of it as making sacred,

00:38:01.160 I think is incredibly appropriate because a lot of people have seen that religious-like fervor

00:38:05.880 from people who, again, would identify as fundamentally anti-religion in a lot of cases

00:38:10.780 and would talk about the harm of religion against certain groups. And it's interesting how blind

00:38:17.020 they are to what this does to several groups and people as well. And I guess I wanted to ask a

00:38:23.700 little bit about that because by making it sacred, you have to elevate it above other things that

00:38:29.240 have had a level of sanctity in society. Freedom of speech is a notable one. I mean, it used to be

00:38:34.320 that even people who are fairly progressive would still operate within the parameters of free speech

00:38:40.300 is important. And, you know, they'd use free speech to make their point. That was, I think,

00:38:44.440 the dominant force you'd saw in progressives for much of the last 50 years. And now freedom of

00:38:50.940 speech no longer has any sacred value. In fact, it's viewed as an evil that needs to be dealt

00:38:56.140 within society by a lot of these people. Yeah, and that's been documented in opinion survey data

00:39:03.200 in the U.S. going back to the 70s, that there's been a shift from kind of a more moral relativism

00:39:08.400 toleration to moral absolutism in young people. But I don't want to, I think it's a mistake to

00:39:16.200 see this as completely new. And I think, you know, if you talk about political correctness in the 80s

00:39:21.920 and 90s. Was it acceptable to offend minority groups in the late 80s and early 90s? No,

00:39:30.880 is the answer. They had speech codes at US universities. I actually think you already had

00:39:35.520 a pretty restrictive speech climate. The doors were kind of, I think, pretty wide open. And

00:39:40.880 that's why you did see episodes of cancel culture. You know, the UBC political science department in

00:39:46.020 the mid-1990s was just one episode. It just was less frequent because you didn't have social media

00:39:51.040 to organize flash mobs. If I could jump in though, Professor, I feel that what happened there,

00:39:58.460 you're right, the acceptability was already established or the unacceptability. I feel

00:40:02.680 what happened is the threshold was changed, is that what a fence was, was redefined. And I wonder

00:40:08.700 if that's the goalpost shift that leads us to where we are now as well, the same idea. I mean,

00:40:13.060 being a racist has been out of vogue for many decades, but the definition of racism has changed

00:40:20.220 a lot in that time. True, true. I mean, I think you're right. You know, the idea of hiking being

00:40:25.140 racist and punctuality being a white thing, you know, that there's no question that they've taken

00:40:30.760 it to the next level. The only thing I would say, though, is you can find examples, you know,

00:40:36.640 in the mid 70s, evolutionary psychologists who argued that genetics mattered. And this wasn't

00:40:43.300 race IQ. This was just genetics mattering for social behavior. They were ostracized. They had

00:40:47.940 open letters. So I'm, even though you're right that there are some new, there's been some new

00:40:54.420 conceptual stretching, I think quite a bit of that had already occurred. And certainly in academia,

00:40:59.780 if you look at the published work already in the 70s and 80s and 90s, you know, critical race theory

00:41:06.480 dates from the 70s, you know, Chris Rufo in his book talks about this. So these ideas were already

00:41:12.400 there. It's just that they hadn't spread as widely. And yes, there were some innovations,

00:41:18.000 the trans thing is new, but I would stress the continuities more than the discontinuities.

00:41:24.780 Social media is more quantitative scaling up rather than a qualitative change in my view.

00:41:30.640 One of the challenges that I would have, and again, I'm basing this off of how I've used woke,

00:41:37.000 not necessarily the parameters that you've set for it, is that there's a prevailing theme in it,

00:41:42.980 and there are commonalities in how it's applied. But is it coherent enough to be an ideology in

00:41:51.080 the sense that do the woke apply the rules they set equally, in your view? If someone's committed

00:41:57.600 to wokeness, do you find that they're consistently applying it, or do you think that there are

00:42:02.080 inconsistencies in that? Well, I think if you narrow it to the sort of sacred categories,

00:42:07.980 then it's pretty consistently applied. So any time there is a disparity in outcome between

00:42:13.960 white and black, let's say in terms of entering Harvard or in terms of wealth,

00:42:18.900 they will be on top of that. If there are more black people being incarcerated or excluded from 0.77

00:42:25.980 school, they'll be on top of that. Now, what they won't apply that to is, for example, 0.75

00:42:30.360 So if Jews are doing better than Gypsy and Irish travelers here in Britain or if West Indians or sort of East West Africans are doing better than West Indians within the black group, they don't care about those distinctions.

00:42:45.960 So because those distinctions aren't the sacred ones. So I'd say they're being inconsistent in ignoring a lot of different social categories where there are inequalities of outcome.

00:42:55.600 but on their sacred categories, I think they're applying those fairly consistently. So the rules

00:43:03.340 are simply, yeah. So I'm just like, look, in Canada, as you're well aware, in the last few

00:43:08.800 weeks, we've had the boiling point in the parental rights movement, where we've had trans activists

00:43:13.900 and Muslim activists that are in conflict. And generally speaking, I'd say the woke left has

00:43:18.140 sided with the trans activists, despite the Muslims being their sacred cows for much of the last 0.97

00:43:23.020 20 years. So I'm just curious with your approach to this issue, how you would explain that

00:43:28.100 phenomenon? Well, there is a sort of hierarchy of oppression points. You know, there's the top

00:43:34.200 of the totem pole, and then there's the white male cis hetero type at the very bottom of the

00:43:39.220 totem pole. Yeah, I don't stand a chance. No. So the question that is, right, is who's got more

00:43:44.140 points? Is it the Muslims who have more points or is it trans who have more points? And I think it's 1.00

00:43:49.600 as simple as trans having more points. It's just like trans gets more points than feminist 0.97

00:43:55.660 and female. And I think it's as simple as that, is who is seen as punching up and who's seen as

00:44:02.840 punching down. I don't think it's more complicated really than that. And of course, what matters are

00:44:08.380 those sacred categories, race, gender, sexuality, and it's just who has more points.

00:44:12.880 So I'm just curious, and I don't know the student profile at the University of Buckingham,

00:44:16.520 But what would you love to see in your class? What's the enrollment profile of your class you'd absolutely love here? Because I think secretly, or maybe openly, you might like the really like woke, lefty, non-binary with the purple hair student in there, having it out with someone who loves free speech and all of that.

00:44:33.940 Yeah, exactly. I think it would be ideally it would be 50 50. I mean, a lot of the data we have from fire in the US would show, you know, when you have a roughly 50 50 mix, you've got the least self censorship going on. I'd only want you know, I would want somebody who is was woke and I want plenty of left wingers. I don't want it to be an echo chamber. If we're going to get somebody in there who was woke, but who was willing to defend it in a Socratic style to say, well, I think, you know, equality, Trump's liberty and

00:45:03.360 this is important for human flourishing, or the speech

00:45:06.120 boundaries should be much tighter than they are. I mean, I

00:45:08.740 think that kind of debate would be really interesting. The

00:45:11.580 problem, of course, is when you get people who just stick a

00:45:15.060 label on others and think, okay, they're toxic, and I'm going to

00:45:17.800 be polluted by hanging out with them. And so no, we have to no

00:45:20.760 platform. I mean, once you're into that or emotional blackmail,

00:45:24.920 then then it's not productive.

00:45:26.600 Yeah, or someone who feels unsafe in the climate of ideas,

00:45:30.480 which is not an issue I hope you'll have to contend with in your new university home here.

00:45:36.560 Professor Eric Coffin, I wish you the best with the class.

00:45:40.440 Maybe we'll find some great essays you've done that we can publish over at True North for some of your students.

00:45:46.220 But thank you so much for coming on.

00:45:48.400 Thanks, Andrew.

00:45:49.240 All right. Thank you.

00:45:50.100 That was Professor Eric Coffin.

00:45:51.740 What a great idea.

00:45:52.900 And again, I mean, it's like there's like a class in the U.S. where you can do like the history of Taylor Swift or something.

00:45:57.640 So, which might actually be enjoyable, but I'd rather do a deep dive academically and empirically into wokeness.

00:46:05.560 That's more my bag than T-Swizzle.

00:46:07.480 But nevertheless, hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

00:46:11.940 We will talk to you all on Tuesday with Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show's return.

00:46:16.860 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:46:18.020 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:46:20.940 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:46:23.020 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:46:53.020 We'll be right back.

00:47:23.020 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 05, 2023

Inflation forcing Canadians to buy dollar store groceries

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