Juno News - Jason Kenney stands up for John A Macdonald

00:00:00.000 I want to talk in this segment about a few related stories from the last week that aren't even really newsworthy at this point.

00:00:13.520 I mean, they're newer innovations in what are basically becoming the norms that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

00:00:20.480 This historic figure being cancelled, this monument being defaced, all under the auspices of trying to make people who lived in the 1900s, the 1800s, the 1700s, the, I don't know, the 4000 BCs or whatever,

00:00:33.920 make them all live up to the standards that we set out for how you're supposed to be in 2021.

00:00:40.280 And John A. MacDonald, I've talked about John A. MacDonald's legacy numerous times on the show.

00:00:44.780 Here's a guy who was Canada's founder. Without him, there would be no Canada.

00:00:49.660 This is something that a lot of people who don't understand the country's history do not realize,

00:00:54.800 that John A. MacDonald staked a lot of political capital on the idea of a Canadian confederation

00:01:00.280 and had to continue to do so to his own personal detriment to hold confederation together.

00:01:07.500 And because we are now in this moment, this moment in time where we keep re-evaluating and reassessing,

00:01:14.100 even when no one of substance is really talking about these issues,

00:01:18.000 we now have to continue this defense.

00:01:20.700 Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, was asked at a press conference this week

00:01:24.380 what he thinks of statues of John A. MacDonald.

00:01:28.620 And to his credit, he gave a very detailed answer about the importance of standing up for Canadian history.

00:01:34.960 I'm not going to play the whole seven minutes.

00:01:36.700 If you want to see that, if you're a glutton for punishment and you like watching seven minutes of political press conferences,

00:01:41.980 you can head on over to my Twitter page.

00:01:44.140 I posted it there, but I'll play a snippet here because he actually takes a stand against cancel culture 0.99

00:01:50.000 and is correct to point out that that's what it is that's driving this assault on John A. MacDonald.

00:01:56.660 If we want to get into cancelling every figure in our history who took positions on issues at the time

00:02:08.220 that we now judge harshly and rightly in historical retrospective,

00:02:12.860 but if that's the new standard, then I think almost the entire founding leadership of our country gets cancelled.

00:02:19.040 Tommy Douglas, who recommended the use of eugenics to sterilize the weak, as he said,

00:02:26.740 to, if we talk about members of the famous five heroes of Canadian feminism

00:02:34.280 and the fight for equality for women, 0.93

00:02:36.700 some of them were advocates of eugenics that we would now regard as deplorable.

00:02:42.720 So, if we go full force into cancel culture, then we're cancelling most, if not all, of our history. 0.93

00:02:52.200 Instead, I think we should learn from our history.

00:02:54.020 We should learn from our achievements, but also our failures.

00:02:58.440 So, very well said, Premier Kenney.

00:03:00.220 And by sharing that, I got a whole bunch of backlash from people, activists,

00:03:03.780 that were saying that, you know, this is insensitive to the bodies that were just found

00:03:07.920 at that large grave site at the Kamloops Residential School,

00:03:11.720 as though these two things are related.

00:03:13.440 A point that bears repeating here is that the absence of perfection from historic figures

00:03:20.660 does not equate to the presence of evil.

00:03:24.220 And a lot of the folks who are trying to drive these cancel campaigns of historic figures

00:03:28.900 are actually trying to cancel history itself,

00:03:31.740 a phenomenon in most cases they don't seem to understand.

00:03:35.180 We can accept the darkness and dark chapters of Canada's history

00:03:39.500 while also looking at the broader story that is Canada.

00:03:44.640 And John A. Macdonald, in no uncertain terms, cannot be classified as a villain

00:03:49.620 when you have an objective assessment of Canada's history.

00:03:52.940 But that doesn't matter.

00:03:54.020 Like I said, no one's interested in facts.

00:03:55.820 Ryerson University, named after Egerton Ryerson, is going through this.

00:03:59.820 The journalism school's publications are being renamed ahead of the next school year,

00:04:04.420 dropping any reference to the school name itself.

00:04:08.720 There are currently two publications, the Ryerson Review of Journalism and the Ryersonian Newspaper.

00:04:14.460 And because they say that Egerton Ryerson was indisputably one of the architects

00:04:18.780 of the residential school system, they're going to change these names.

00:04:22.900 Now, if you really want to make a stand, why don't you resign from Ryerson?

00:04:26.000 Why don't you rip up your degree with Ryerson on it?

00:04:28.960 Why don't you really go all the way if you're insistent on destroying the legacy,

00:04:34.880 which is now the school's legacy as much as it's a part of the country's legacy?

00:04:39.480 Now, look, I'm a firm believer in the fact that people can make their own decisions

00:04:42.900 to associate with whomever they want.

00:04:44.820 The Egerton Ryerson statue was defaced just a day prior to the news outlets or media organizations

00:04:51.620 at Ryerson making that call.

00:04:53.260 Well, I do not support the vandalism that takes place there.

00:04:57.080 Edmonton's, the Edmonton Eskimo.

00:04:58.800 Oh, no, sorry.

00:04:59.440 You can't say that.

00:05:00.740 Okay, let's try this again.

00:05:02.640 The Edmonton Elks, as they're now known,

00:05:05.380 they just announced the new name for the team

00:05:07.020 a year after announcing they would change the name of the formerly Eskimos,

00:05:12.700 the artists formerly known as Eskimos.

00:05:15.000 And it was odd.

00:05:15.980 This change happened like a lot of other changes

00:05:18.380 in the wake of the George Floyd protests,

00:05:20.960 as though there's a direct connection between

00:05:22.940 this very brutal takedown by police in Minnesota

00:05:27.160 and a longstanding CFL team in Canada.

00:05:31.020 But the problem is that this comes in waves.

00:05:33.340 And I mentioned on the show earlier this week

00:05:35.220 that the activist mob doesn't really care

00:05:37.060 about the individual circumstances that they decide to pipe up over.

00:05:41.200 They see this all as one big prolonged war

00:05:44.400 and any individual battle, no matter how insignificant it may be to them,

00:05:48.840 they will take up.

00:05:50.400 But cumulatively, these things are significant

00:05:54.400 because at the end of it, you have,

00:05:56.380 well, the Ryerson newspapers have changed their name.

00:05:58.420 This is going to apply pressure to every other school newspaper

00:06:01.200 that might have a historic figure in the name to change that and so on. 0.80

00:06:05.100 And eventually, there's not going to be all that much left

00:06:08.120 because one thing that the left does very well

00:06:10.440 is move right on to the next fight without losing any momentum.

00:06:15.200 So that's why it's so important to stand up for John A. Macdonald,

00:06:17.900 to stand up for the country's history,

00:06:19.380 because it's not just about drawing the line around a few.

00:06:22.620 The word they use is problematic figures.

00:06:25.860 It is genuinely about anyone who had the misfortune

00:06:29.240 of living in a time prior to now.

00:06:31.340 That is no longer compatible with 2021.

00:06:35.720 If you liked watching this clip of the Andrew Lawton Show,

00:06:38.260 True North has lots more for you.

00:06:40.040 All over at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 06, 2021

Jason Kenney stands up for John A Macdonald

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